A #latergram from the first #WordPress workshop for kids in Varna last week. Cheeky, creative, shy, enthusiastic, bold, noisy, colorful kids created their first websites on Sunday. Thank you to all our wonderful volunteers who dedicated their Sunday to the little humans. These workshops are so much fun for both kids & adults, they really make a difference and are so easy to organize. Let’s make them a thing around WordCamps! #WCVar #Varna #Bulgaria #kids #workshop #WordPress
Organising WordPress activities for kids had been on my mind for a long time and this February in Bangkok I gave the idea a go. Alongside the very enthusiastic team of WordCamp Bangkok and with the help of my good friends Jon Ang and Emanuel Blagonic, we organised two workshops – “Introduction to WordPress – build your own site” and “Introduction to creating themes for WordPress”
We didn’t get a huge amount of kids to come to the workshops for different reasons including language barrier (we had to organise the workshop in English), the holiday time for students in Bangkok and the kind of last minute announcement and no time for proper publicity. But we got enough kids to realise that the workshops are valuable for both us and the kids. The hours we spent together in Web Courses Bangkok (thank you for hosting us, Carl!) were great fun and every kid left the workshop with their own site on WordPress and a big smile on their face.
Since that first time in Bangkok, I had the chance to organise another workshop for the kids of the most enthusiastic WordPress community in Europe – Belgrade. This time we had enough time to prepare and we had a big room full of kids. We had swag, snacks, a screen, a show and tell session, and ultimately – a blast.
I now have two more workshops planned – next weekend in Varna and in November around WordCamp Sofia. Hopefully I’ll also get to do one in October in Cape Town.
After the great outcome in Belgrade I received several invitations to organise workshops around different WordCamps in Europe. These made me really happy but since I’m trying to control my urges to be everywhere at the same time, and since organising a workshop for kids doesn’t really need any special kind of expertise, I put together an organiser kit so everyone can get a workshop going around their camp.
It’s already been picked up by other WordCamp organisers. When it turned out WordCamp Varna and WordCamp Zagreb were happening on the same day, Emanuel and I had to figure out a way for Zagreb to have a kids workshop without me there. We shared our knowledge and resources into the organiser kit and this weekend both Varna and Zagreb will be having workshops. Zagreb will even have one in English and one in Croatian. Which is ❤️!
The WordPress workshops for kids – organiser kit is a living document that’s why I’m not publishing it here, but sharing a link to Dropbox paper. The idea is for the document to expand and evolve as more and more organisers put together these events.
If you’d like to get access to edit the document, please ping me on Twitter [@petyeah] or WordPress Slack [@petya]. I’ll be happy to give you a hand in organising your first workshop for kids. And I’ll be even happier to read your posts after the events with what you’ve learned and how you’d improve the workshops.
Good luck!
Love,
Petya
The photos in this post are kindly provided by Ivan Gatić (Belgrade) and Jon Ang (Bangkok)
Yana The Social Disaster performing out if character and being totally social with 20 tiny humans during the #WCBGD WordPress workshop for kids. She was the 21st kid who created her site live for the others to follow ;) Also starring my #WCEU love – Mozart Wapuu, who I never realized ended up in the GoDaddy offices in Belgrade! And yes, that is a boulder wall at the background. #Serbia #Belgrade #WordPress #kids #Wapuu #huskies #technology #nomadstories #yanathesocialdisaster
