The last week was tough. I mean really tough. Just two weeks ago, I thanked event organizers on this blog. Now I see myself in the exact same situation.
The cancellation of WordCamp Europe 2020
On Thursday evening last week, I had a call with Tess and Jonas, the other two global leads of WCEU 2020 and with Rocío, our mentor, as well as Andrea, who is leading the global WordPress community team.
We discussed a timeline for the next weeks and month with a plan to have a WordCamp Europe in Porto in June this year. On 5 March, things were still looking quite OK. There have been only a few cases in Portugal and only Italy had to deal with many cases in Europe. We decided to continue working on the event in June, as we were optimstic to be able to still have it. We planed to wait for early April to get to a decision.
The last days
After that meeting, things have been getting worse every day. Conferences in Europe have been cancelled. On 9 March, a large Joomla conference in Lisbon had been cancelled, just one week before WordCamp Europe 2020 in Porto.
On 11 March, the global community team made the recommendation to postpone of cancelany event until 1 June. As WCEU 2020 was planed for 4-6 June, this was just before that date.
Finally this Thursday, just a week after our “emergecy call”, we had a video call with all organiezers and we decided to cancel WordCamp Europe 2020 and postpone it to 2021 again in Porto.
Thanks to our community
The reactions that have followed our announcement where overwhelming. There was no one disagreeing with our decicion. We have received countless empathic messages on Twitter and through other channels. Many friends from the WordPress communities reached out to me directly, asking how I feel and offering help.
This is why I love this community. In good and in hard times, we support each other and offer help. This is why the organizing team is looking positively into the future and is working even harder for an amazing WordCamp Europe 2021 in Porto.
Thank you WordPress community ❤