My Experience as a Lead Organizer of WordCamp Saint Petersburg

Updated on February 22, 2022

How it All Started

I never thought about myself as a conference organizer but Gennady Kovshenin suggested me to do so and we had submitted the form.

One day a friend of mine invited me to explore Pavlovsk Park and on the way there I received an approval!

Pavlovsk park saint petersburg — That was a beautiful day in Pavlosvk park.

Now I had a goal for 2019 – to organize WordCamp Saint Petersburg and don’t screw up.

Wapuu – A Conference Mascot

Now sure why but the first thing in my todo list was to create a conference mascot.

This Wapuu was inspired by the russian history, by the emperor Peter the Great, founder of Saint Petersburg! We created this Wapuu specifically for the event.

I also added this Wapuu to wapuu archives here and here.

Misha Rudrastyh – Lead Organizer of WordCamp Saint Petersburg 2019 — We decided to have two versions on this Wapuu – with and without armour.

Wapuu stickers at WordCamp Saint Petersburg 2019 — Wapuu Stickers

Finding the Venue

My last year trip to WordCamp Oslo taught me that venue is everything!

I year before that I met Katya – she is the organizer of hundreds IT and Startup events in Saint Petersburg. When I have free time, I help her on her events as a volunteer. And this time I was volunteering on Startup Weekend event in a brand new coworking in Saint Petersburg which was located just in the heart of Petrogradskaya district.

That was when the miracles begin to happen – this coworking was building their own place for conferences and events and it was going to be ready just by the date of our WordCamp!

Preparing the Speech

I was so overwhelmed with all the organizer stuff, even with a lot of help it was so complicated for my first time. So I couldn’t care less about the speech. Even thought about not doing that. But finally I decided to do a quick 10-15 min talk about what is Gutenberg and why we should work with it.

Never expected that it was my best speech ever and … it was not recorded ahaha. Well, except this:

I think it also worth mentioning that I was surprised by the Anton’s speech – the developer from my team. His talk about WooCommerce payment gateways had a huge success! I am proud of him because I remember days when he learnt payment gateways from my tutorial.

The Long Story Short…

I go through life with a belief – “Do it at your best, or don’t do at all”, so I spent enourmous amount of time on this WordCamp. And I am so happy that the WordCamp was a success!

And of course I am so grateful for everyone who helped me on this way.

P.S. Photos of the event you can find here.

# Journal