WordCamp schedules usually have an introductory API talk. That can be useful, but it’s the kind of session I can watch later on WordPress.tv.

WordPress gets us to the event, but we also have plenty else in common. We make things, work with people who don’t understand the job and all have a folder called final_FINAL_v3, and we’d all rather spend a day with interesting humans than watch one more deck. WordPress is the doorway. It is not the room.

Nobody remembers the talks anyway. They remember the hallway chat that turned into a business. They remember the session that got a little unhinged. They remember realizing the person next to them (a writer, a shop owner, a designer, a student who’s never seen a line of PHP) was having the exact same week they were.

So here are eight formats built on that. Some came from the developer corner and got pried open so anyone can play; some never touched code at all. Every one had to pass a single test: could a non-developer walk in, join in, and leave glad they came? If not, it’s not here.

And this is allowed, by the way. WordPress’s own Creative WordPress Events program exists to nudge organizers past the lecture track, and it’ll even help fund the experiment. You’re not going rogue. You’re using the program as intended.

1. Teach Me Something That Isn’t WordPress

The pitch: Five-minute lightning talks, one rule, the topic can’t be WordPress, web tech, or your job.

Sourdough. How to read a tide chart. Three knots everyone should know. Why your cat does that. Gunpei Yokoi’s lateral-thinking philosophy and why constraints make better products. One person’s frankly alarming expertise on a regional snack food.

How it runs. Open sign-ups, a hard five-minute cap, a timer the room can see. Bundle five or six into a session. Slides optional, enthusiasm mandatory.

Why it works. People get to know each other through something besides their jobs. Talking about a hobby can also be an easier first time on stage.

2. Show Us Your Setup

The pitch: Part confession, part swap meet. People show their real workspace, and everyone exhales when they see everyone else is also holding it together with tape.

How it runs. A few volunteers walk through the truth: the 47 open tabs, the chaos notes app, the plugin list they’re embarrassed by, the backup folder named final_FINAL_v3. Photos or a live share. The host asks what everyone’s thinking: “wait, you use what for that?”

Why it works. A developer’s terminal and a writer’s color-coded document can both offer useful ideas. It also helps to see that other people have awkward workarounds too.

3. Petty Grievances Open Mic

The pitch: Two minutes at the mic for one small professional annoyance. No solutions allowed. Pure catharsis.

“Make the logo bigger.” The plugin that renamed its menu item and broke your muscle memory. The Slack message that should’ve been an email. The form that wipes your card number if you fumble one field.

How it runs. A mic, a two-minute limit, one ironclad rule: you may only complain, never fix. Someone offers a solution, the bell rings. The host keeps it fast and light.

Why it works. Nothing bonds a room faster than learning your weirdly specific pain is completely universal. The no-solutions rule is the whole trick, it stops the fixers from turning it into a support thread and keeps everyone level, because every single person, whatever their job, has a “make the logo bigger” story. Catharsis as a team sport. Run it before a break so the laughing spills into the hallway.

4. Adopt a Project: A Matchmaking Show

The pitch: It’s a dating show. The contestants are orphaned projects looking for a champion. The suitors are the whole room.

The plugin directory is a quiet animal shelter, but so is everywhere else. A loved newsletter gone dark. A half-finished podcast. A community garden’s site frozen in 2019. A nonprofit that just needs anyone. A blog with great bones and no writer.

How it runs. Lift it straight from dating TV. The host introduces each “eligible” project like a bachelor leaving the limo, what it is, what it needs, its charming quirks and red flags (“loyal audience, hasn’t posted since the pandemic, possibly haunted”). Then the suitors pitch. Include people with different skills: a writer for a blog, a designer for a logo, a marketer for an unplanned launch. Ask whether they can commit and what they’d do first. There can be some jokes about whether they’re here for love or the install count.

The project “chooses,” and the match gets a public handoff, an oversized novelty key, a photo, and an actual follow-up plan so it outlives the applause.

Why it works. This gives unfinished projects a chance to continue and lets writers, designers and marketers take part. Arrange a few real handoffs beforehand so it leads to more than an entertaining session.

5. The Human Library, but Weirder

The pitch: Borrow a person for fifteen minutes. Then make the catalog far stranger than “expert in X.”

WordCamps already run a Human Library, you “borrow” an experienced contributor for a one-on-one instead of sitting through a lecture. Great idea. The shelf is usually too narrow.

How it runs. Same mechanic: a library of people, fifteen-minute chats, sign up to borrow a “book.” But stock the shelf with range, someone who changed careers at 40, someone running a business in their second language, someone who failed in public and lived, someone whose job you can’t picture, someone fifteen years in, someone who showed up yesterday.

Why it works. The richest things people know (how to start over, how to survive a public flop, how to navigate an industry that wasn’t built for you) never make it into slides. They only move in conversation. Widening the catalog is what makes the session diverse by design instead of by good intentions, and it hands people who’d never call themselves experts a reason to sit on the other side of the table. Fifteen minutes keeps it a conversation, not a performance.

6. Bad Ideas Brainstorm

The pitch: A real problem goes up. Teams race to invent the worst possible solutions. Good ideas sneak in through the back.

How it runs. Put a genuine problem on the board: “get more people to our local meetup,” “get clients to send content on time.” Short window, worst solutions win. Schedule the meetup for 4am. Require a blood oath. Bribe people with raffle tickets nobody wants. Teams read their lists, the room votes on the most catastrophic, and the host quietly flags the two or three that are secretly good if you flip them over.

Why it works. Aiming for terrible removes the fear of being wrong, the exact fear that keeps non-experts silent in a normal brainstorm. When bad is the goal, the student and the shop owner shout as loud as the consultant, because there’s no wrong answer. And awful ideas hide good ones in negative: “make registration impossible” flips into “our registration is too clunky.” Real hijinks, real action items, zero technical knowledge required.

7. The Swap Meet

The pitch: Skill-bartering, speed round. Everyone has something to trade. Nobody’s expertise outranks anyone else’s.

“I’ll teach you to write a subject line people actually open if you show me how to crop a photo without butchering it.” “I’ll explain SEO in plain English if you give me one keyboard shortcut that changes my life.”

How it runs. Speed dating for skills. Two rings of tables, a bell, five minutes a turn, you teach your small thing, they teach theirs, rotate. A wall board of “can teach / want to learn” lets matches form on purpose.

Why it works. This is the whole thesis in one room: everyone has something worth teaching, and the developer’s knowledge isn’t worth more than the copywriter’s or the photographer’s, just different. The barter makes that literal and equal. It’s also the best way to spread the small skills that never justify a full talk but quietly lift everyone’s work. Run it late, once people are warm enough to talk to strangers.

8. Hallway Track, On Stage

The pitch: Everyone says the hallway conversations are the best part. So put one on stage and stop pretending otherwise.

How it runs. No slides, no speaker. A moderator, comfy chairs, roaming mics, snacks on stage to seal the bit, and a topic anyone can answer: “how do you handle a client who doesn’t get what you do,” “the tool you’d take to a desert island,” “what you wish you’d known on day one.” The moderator opens it and then gets out of the way.

Why it works. The hallway-track joke is funny because it’s true, the unscheduled talk beats the scheduled one almost every time. This harvests it instead of fighting it. A no-expertise topic means the whole room can play, which is the point, and it surfaces the war stories and disagreements that polished talks sand off. Pick a moderator who’s comfortable with a silence and good at gently rescuing the mic from the one person trying to give a TED talk.

A note for organizers

These aren’t here to replace the schedule, they’re here to break it up and widen the door. The lecture track earns its place; someone who needs the Settings API explained deserves a clear explanation of the Settings API. But a program made only of that quietly tells everyone who isn’t a developer that the room isn’t really for them. They usually believe it, and they usually don’t come back.

Try one after lunch. Start with formats that don’t require coding, such as the Swap Meet, Grievances mic or Teach Me Something That Isn’t WordPress. They give more people a way to take part, including those who wouldn’t submit a normal talk. The Creative WordPress Events program gives organizers a way to try this.

WordPress gets us together. I’d like the event to give us more reasons to stay and get to know each other.

Try something people won’t get from another recorded talk.