Like WordPress itself, the conferences are arranged by the community, and open to everyone – from developers making contributions to WordPress Core, to people who only use WordPress as a content management system. Most of them have a developer focus, though, and feature talks that help attendees get better at building websites and services with WordPress.
The first WordCamp was arranged by Matt Mullenweg in San Francisco 2006. Since then, communities all over the world have come together to arrange more of them. To date, there have been more than 850 WordCamps organized in 65 different countries across six continents. Chances are that one is coming up close to where you live, and if there isn’t, you can become an organizer and help arrange one.
Arranging and attending WordCamps is a great way to gain a deeper and broader knowledge about WordPress. More importantly, it’s an opportunity to meet other people who use WordPress on a daily basis.