WooThemes gets involved in the WordPress community

Over the years, WooThemes has been involved in sponsorship for a number of WordCamps around the world. This year, however, we decided to go a bit deeper and do some more hands-on work with the community. To do this, a few of us from WooHQ decided to take over the organising of our local WordPress events in Cape Town, South Africa. The previous organiser was stepping down so there was a gap that we saw an opportunity to fill.

We wanted this to be a bit of a fresh start for the community so people would know that they can expect things to be different and (with any luck) more exciting. So far, we’ve been doing this in two ways:

Rebranding & Engaging

Thanks to the awesome design skills of Woo’s very own Cobus Bester, we rebranded the community with a hot new look. He also put together the community website where we promote upcoming events and will be offering much more community interaction in the future.

Along with this we took over (and rebranded) the community Twitter account, Facebook page and Google+ page – we have been using these channels to engage with the community and get people excited for community events.

Regular Events

We decided to kick things off with a bang and we organised the Cape Town party for the 10th anniversary of WordPress. The party was a huge success and over 100 members of the community attended – not only did we have a sponsored bar tab and some great food, but we had a specially baked WordPress cake and some great giveaways to mark the occasion.

Talking about sponsorship, we have had some great local tech companies coming alongside us to help get these events up and running. We want to make sure every event feels like a premium experience for everyone who attends and it makes a huge difference having so many local companies who are keen to be involved. After all, community involvement is what WordPress is all about.

What’s Next?

Our next event is none other than WordCamp Cape Town 2013! We are organising this year’s conference at the incredible Cape Town Stadium on 7 November and the event is guaranteed to be awesome. The event website is live and tickets are available for purchase right now. We expect to fully sell out of all 400 tickets soon, so make sure you book your spot ASAP!