My Experience as a Lead Organizer of WordCamp Saint Petersburg

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!

WordCamp Saint Petersburg venue

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.

Misha Rudrastyh

Misha Rudrastyh

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