Our application was sent on April 14th<\/strong> and before it got approved on June 10th<\/strong>, we had to go through some interviews to better explain our application. This has gone through without major problems since we prepared our application in details even before we applied. There were questions like \u201cHow is the Croatian community\u201d and \u201cHow do you plan to change cities next year\u201d. We wanted to get \u201cWordCamp Croatia\u201d because we believed that this would\u00a0be helpful for the entire Croatian community<\/strong> and not WordCamp Zagreb (although there is a major community in Zagreb too).<\/p>\n So, we got ourselves WordCamp Croatia and we first announced it on June 17th<\/strong> just after we got location and venue confirmed.<\/p>\n As I said earlier, we\u2019ve been choosing between 2 cities \u2013 Split and Rijeka. We considered Zagreb and Pula as well but since Pula and Rijeka are really close and it was easier to arrive to Rijeka then to drive 100 more kilometers to Pula, we decided to support Rijeka. As for Zagreb \u2013 there is the strongest local community but we didn\u2019t want to centralize everything in Zagreb<\/strong>, although we were aware that we\u2019ll have less people in Split or Rijeka.<\/p>\n In the end, we all unanimously agreed that Rijeka would host the first Croatian WordCamp<\/strong> because of it\u2019s location (close to Zagreb and Pula) and since the most people could help (and get) there.<\/p>\n When you apply to host a WordCamp there is a thorough process that you have to go through. I would like to thank everyone in the WordPress community that helped us in the process, especially Brandon Dove<\/strong> and Kevin Cristiano<\/strong>, who were the first step in that direction since they conducted the first two interviews that got as approved (both WordCamp and budget\/venue). Thank you guys.<\/strong><\/p>\n Between announcing WordCamp and start of the ticket sales, two weeks passed. In that time we got in touch with both sponsors, volunteers and potential speakers. Our plan was to lunch ticket sales while announcing our two first speakers \u2013 Marko Dugonji\u0107 and Toma\u017e Zaman.\u00a0<\/strong>(in the end Toma\u017e and Marko were selected as the most favorite speakers for the WordCamp Croatia 2015)<\/p>\n But even before the ticket sales started we received so many good talk submissions and we were sorry that we couldn\u2019t have all of them on WordCamp Croatia. Nevertheless, we had 12 talks and 1 panel talk in our schedule \u2013 a lot of work had still to be done.<\/p>\n The biggest problem in the organization of WordCamp Croatia is that we didn\u2019t know what will be the effect of summer to tickets sale.<\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t going as good as we planned so we have to make this part better for the next year. At the end we sold 168 tickets<\/strong> and couple of news teams visited WordCamp Croatia (journalists, photographers, video journalists) during conference day. Somewhere around 160 people<\/strong>\u00a0were at the conference. This is good but it could be better. Next year we will announce WordCamp Croatia before summer so we can sell more tickets.<\/p>\n All the speakers were announced within 2 weeks after ticket sales started<\/strong>. In that time we closed speaker application form and announced two speakers at a time in separate blog posts.<\/p>\n This way we could make the most impact on social networks (Facebook + Twitter + (sometimes) LinkedIn) and media that covered WordCamp Croatia.<\/p>\n In the first few days we practically closed the entire budget<\/strong> with our awesome sponsors \u2013 Convertiv<\/a> (platinum sponsor), Jetpack<\/a> (global outstanding sponsor), Neuralab<\/a> (gold sponsor) and Rijeka<\/a> (our partner city).<\/p>\n We would also like to thank our silver<\/a> and bronze<\/a> sponsors.<\/p>\n While talking with sponsors we started to negotiate some discounts<\/a> for our attendees. Everyone traveling to Rijeka with bus (within Croatia) had an additional 35% discount<\/strong> on their bus tickets with Autotrans<\/a>. This was a major deal since 10% of people used this discount<\/strong> and we were really happy that Autotrans helped us provide this to our attendees. Other than travel discount we got special prices for the accommodation from some of the finest hotels in Rijeka like Hotel Bonavia and Hotel Continental as well as a #1 pick from many of our attendees \u2013 Botel (boat hotel) Marina that is docked in the Rijeka harbour.<\/p>\n None of this would be possible if we hadn\u2019t the support from our partner city of Rijeka. They helped us by securing the venue of HKD Su\u0161ak that was given to us with no extra cost. Since this is usually a huge expense within budget, even WordPress Foundation encourages WordCamp applicants to find free venues like libraries or universities.<\/p>\n With Rijeka being a partner to Croatian WordPress community we also got on board Department of Informatics of Rijeka University<\/strong>. They provided us with 3 classrooms for Friday workshops and gave us more support with small things like a free parking for our speakers (which was actually a good thing since parking was a problem because of the limited parking spaces at the University Campus).<\/p>\n CARNet (Croatian Academic and Research Network)<\/strong> supported Croatian community for almost 2 years now and they gave us enormous support by providing assistance and their own contacts. They also provided the video coverage for the conference as well as live streaming solution.<\/p>\n It is of upmost importance to have partners rather than sponsors \u2013 while organizing every event especially those like WordCamp Croatia, that are community-organized and with limited budget. It is also important that the community realizes the importance of giving back. Because of that we organized pre\u2013conference workshops<\/strong> that were free for everyone and we used local contractors (partly because our limited budget, partly because we wanted to give back to local companies wherever we could) to deliver needed services like WiFi and A\/V equipment rental<\/strong>.<\/p>\n One of the main reasons to organize a nation-wide conference is to boost both the local community and the community in Croatia in general<\/strong>. By organizing WordCamp Croatia we wanted to give more credit to WordPress as well. Many people in Croatia use WordPress but there is still significant room for growth and we wanted to make both people, companies and the public sector to realize what can be done with WordPress<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Media coverage was essential to build awareness of WordPress and what can be done with it<\/strong>. We selected couple of media partners that covered WordCamp Croatia on local, national and regional level. Netokracija<\/a> as the most influential Central\u2013European blog with local editions for Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, was selected as our regional media partner. MojaRijeka.hr<\/a> was brought on board as the local media partner that gave us awesome media and social media coverage through their channels. This helped a lot when we promoted pre-conference workshops that were free for everyone.<\/p>\n In the end, a lot of local media covered WordCamp Croatia. Novi list (Croatian national daily newspaper)<\/strong> published articles covering workshops, conference and contributor day. Local television KanalRI broadcasted a video about the conference in their evening news<\/strong> and MojaRijeka published a video on YouTube about the conference, a few hours after the conference ended, with Goran \u0160eri\u0107, Petya Raykovska, Daniel Pataki and myself, talking about the importance of WordCamp Croatia and respective\u00a0talks.<\/p>\n Some other media wrote about WordCamp Croatia including Bug<\/a> \u2013 the oldest Croatian IT magazine<\/strong> with a wide audience as well as some mass-media like Tportal<\/a>, Index.hr<\/a> and Net.hr<\/a>\/Telegram.hr<\/a>. Word about WordCamp Croatia (and by that word about WordPress) was seen on 4 of the TOP 10 portals in Croatia<\/strong> and with that was seen by many people outside the community. This way we could build awareness of WordPress and the importance of open source.<\/p>\n Here is a list of media coverage that we\u2019re aware of (there were some other articles around, mostly quoted from some of these sources).<\/p>\n With all in place, speakers started to arrive in Rijeka from a week earlier to the Conference day (Saturday).<\/p>\n As I said earlier, workshops were free for everyone and the idea was to get as many people on board as we could. Some of people that attended already bought a ticket for our WordCamp, some of the people bought a ticket after they signed up for the workshops. Around 120 people have gone through 3 workshops<\/strong>, from the beginner to medium to advanced, which was held by Daniel Pataki, editor of WordPress category at Smashing Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n General reception for the workshops was positive although we had to change the beginner workshop host at the last moment. This proved to be a significant problem since a lot of people already registered for the workshop and we didn\u2019t want to let them down. Anyhow, we plan to have more workshops in the future and we will certainly have workshops on WordCamp Croatia 2016.<\/p>\n A day before the conference day we came to the venue to set everything up (that we could do a day before) inviting all of our speakers to come to see and to familiarize themselves with the stage. Some of them came to HKD Su\u0161ak with us.<\/p>\n On the conference day we started arriving at 7AM<\/strong> while the doors opened at 8AM<\/strong>. We anticipated the problem with WiFi so we created separate networks for visitors and speakers and everything was stress\u2013tested couple of days before<\/strong>. Because of that we didn\u2019t have any problems.<\/p>\n The strangest thing that happened (and never happened to me before WordCamp Croatia) was that everything went smoothly. We had every single bit under control (except the air\u2013conditioning at the venue which was broken and we obviously couldn\u2019t fix that).<\/p>\n Special thanks goes to our hosts \u2013 Tomislav and Aleksandar<\/a>, Croatian stand up comedians and UI designers that hosted the entire conference from start to end.<\/p>\n See WordCamp Croatia host mr. @AleksCuracSaric<\/a> dancing on stage. It's priceless. We had a great time at #wchr<\/a> \ud83d\ude42 pic.twitter.com\/pwkmynCmV3<\/a><\/p>\n — WP Croatia (@wpcroatia) September 14, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nLocation<\/h3>\n
![\"rijeka-center\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/2015.croatia.wordcamp.org\/files\/2015\/06\/rijeka-center.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a>Tickets<\/h3>\n
Summer<\/h3>\n
Speakers<\/h3>\n
Sponsors<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nPartners, rather than sponsors<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nMedia coverage<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nPre-conference coverage<\/h4>\n
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Post-conference coverage<\/h4>\n
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Workshops, Conference and Contributor day<\/h2>\n
Workshops<\/h3>\n
Conference day<\/h3>\n
<\/a>\n