I’m stepping down as lead organizer for WordCamp The Netherlands. Not an easy decision, but one I had to make. For myself.
Taking care of myself
With voluntary work, and the fun that it brings, for me the danger arises to accept too many tasks and drown in too much work. I like it so much, that I tend to accept too much. Also, besides doing voluntary work for the WordPress community, paid work has to be done also.
Since April 1st, I started working for Kinsta as Marketing Manager Dutch Market. This job is giving me lots of energy, teaches me new skills, makes me get to know a lot of new people and, which should be no surprise for a new job, takes time to get into my system. I really like to keep the balance level for voluntary work and paid work, this keeps me productive on both sides, and maybe even more important, prevents me from getting too busy which may result in not getting work done, or getting stressed out to get it done.
Making a decision for yourself is the best you can do.
WordCamp The Netherlands 2020
Since this COVID-19 thing entered our world, causing lot’s of tragic things to happen worldwide, lots of WordCamps have shifted to being online events. The WCNL organizing team really wanted to do a live, in-person event, so we decided to postpone the organization [NL]. Having built a new team of organizers, with lots of energy to start, this felt bad. It was the best thing we could do however.
To give the Dutch and Belgian WordPress community a change to meetup and share knowledge we decided to organize WPNL Live! A series of short online events.
WPNL Live! – first edition
The first edition was on May 28th, and it was a success. You can watch the recorded session here. Seeing how the organization team put this together, how the event was and how happy the attendees were, gave me a very good feeling about stepping down as lead organizer. Yes, I’ve had this thought for a while now…
I’ll keep contributing to WordPress
After contributing almost 10 year to WordPress, I can say for sure, I will not stop doing that. Except when things happen that I have no power over, but let’s not go there. I will be available for mentoring our new Dutch lead organizer, other organizers, and volunteers. Teaching others the details of the WordPress Community is something I really enjoy doing. WordPress is in my system and I’m happy it’s there.
My job at Kinsta
As a Marketing Manager, I take care of many different tasks for Kinsta.
One of my responsibilities is being the main contact for WordCamp related communications between WordCamp organizers and Kinsta. Having this role might bring conflict of interest if I’m also a lead organizer. Of course I would keep both roles separated, but to prevent people from seeing a conflict here, I decided it’s best to drop the lead organizer role.
I hope it’s all clear why I took this decision. If not, please reach out to me.
See you soon!
Featured image by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash
