Fully recovered from the last WordCamp Barcelona 2015 I’d like to share my personal experience, being this WordCamp the first I didn’t go as attendee.

All started in the last WordCamp Seville 2013, where I went with Javier Casares. In there some asked us why there was no WordCamp in Barcelona. It was like a pique so we sent directly to WordPress Central the WordCamp application to organize WordCamp Barcelona. And they said no.

One of the requirements to organize a WordCamp in your city is to have an active Community (normally with a Meetup group). In Barcelona there wasn’t so we started the WordPress Barcelona group with José Conti, Joan Boluda and Raul Illiana. José and Raul tried to maintain this community after the last WordCamp Spain but it was difficult. Joan started just before us the WordPress Mataró group (a city near Barcelona) so we invited him to join us. Thanks to all these people we’re able to relaunch the Barcelona Community.

After more than a year organizing WordPress Meetups in Barcelona we decided to organize WordCamp Barcelona 2015. We sent the application and after a ton of emails, hangouts and some chats in Slack, a mentor was assigned to us who was in charge of the budget review. We adjusted it to get more reasonable numbers and on February 23 we got the budget approval. The WordCamp Barcelona had to be in April 24 and 25. And we didn’t have nothing. Here the adventure began 🙂

During these two months we confirm the reservation for the venues, CaixaForum and Mobile World Centre, and we started to work hard with all the things that you have to do in a WordCamp: sponsors, food, speakers, t-shirts, badges… Lot of things happened. I think that the organizing team managed around 300 emails. A very stressful craziness but in the end I loved it.

And then the Contributor Day arrives who Rafa Poveda led (thanks) and it was awesome. We had several teams: translations, BuddyPress, Theme Review and Community. We were around 40 and we had a lot of fun (we had beers during lunch 🍻!).

The next day we had the hard day, the talks day. We had 25 talks spread over two rooms with quite varied themes in a very beautiful place, the CaixaForum. WordCamp attendees loved it and they gave us congratulations (thank you!).

All of this would not have been possible without the help of everyone who helped us:

• All the volunteers team that without you the Open Sessions day not have been possible: Fran, Adrià, Natalia, David, Víctor, Alejandro, Josué, Ibon, Albert, Javier Q, Mateus, Javi F, María, Marta, Marcos, Javi M.
• The two photographers Ramiro y Karim for making these amazing WordCamp pics, that you can see here, here and here.
• The Mosaic team who recorded all WordCamp sessions and the Contributor Day (and soon will be available).
• Rafa Poveda, for helping us with the Volunteers and for being our spanish mentor.
• Pancho, for giving me encouragement in WordCamp London about our WordCamp and give me some advice.
• Darío, for reviewing all speakers slides and managing them. And also for CSSing the WordCamp website.
• LaCaixa Global Payments and Mobile World Centre, for giving us these cool places.
• All sponsors for being WordCamp sponsors.
• And the organizing team: Joan Boluda, Javier Casares and José Conti. Without you all of this would not have been possible.

See you at WordCamp Barcelona 2016!