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WordCamp Europe 2023 Speaker Applications Open, Organizers Call for More Interactive Sessions

WordCamp Europe 2023 is being hosted in Athens this year with two conference days scheduled for June 9 and 10. The first day’s theme is “WordPress Now” (Everything that can be currently achieved with WordPress) and the second day is “WordPress Tomorrow.”

Organizers have opened the call for speakers and are especially interested in scheduling talks that “empower people to feel more comfortable using WordPress.” They are soliciting new voices this year with fresh perspectives.

After reviewing attendee feedback from the previous year, organizers have identified more than three dozen requested topics across the development, business, community, and design categories. These include many more development topics, such as security, CI/CD, headless CMS, ReactJS for PHP Developers / Building Blocks, and more. Attendees are also eager to hear about content monetization, recurring revenue, GDPR compliance, brand identity, and designing for accessibility, to list a few examples.

Presentation formats will include traditional talks, hands-on workshops, expert panels, and lightning talks. Organizers are encouraging speakers to add activities to sessions that will get the audience involved and avoid the afternoon slump. They cited a few examples, including a WordCamp in the Czech Republic where a security researcher installed a Wi-Fi honeypot in the venue and demonstrated how dangerous public wi-fi is when logging into a WordPress site that doesn’t have SSL.

WCEU has launched a Speaker’s support program to help fund selected speakers with financial barriers to attending. Organizers arrange for speakers and the sponsoring companies to connect but are not involved in selecting who receives the funds.

The call for speakers will close the first week of February and applicants will receive a response by the second week of March. Speakers will be announced in the second week of April.