What I learned by organizing the first Bogotá Photo Walk event

The idea was to invite people interested in photography, from newbies to pros, to meet casually in a beautiful big park to contribute to the WordPress Photo Directory.

People outside the usual tech circles joined the event—for example, marketing agencies and other communities.

The event was family-friendly; someone brought her child and dog.

Bogotá is a vast city. By announcing the event within enough days, it’s almost guaranteed that someone will see the notification in their WordPress admin.

Since this kind of event is relatively new, it’s focused on a segment of people, and it’s not mainly about listening to a speaker but collaborating; I noticed the signup rate was slower than, say, an event with a trending topic like AI.

Nevertheless, 27 people signed up, and almost 10 attended, which could seem low, but it was worth it for the mentioned circumstances and goals.

It was also on a weekend. It was good to experiment with different days since some people usually can’t attend on weekdays.

It was a pleasant sunny day, which for Bogotá is extremely rare but helped us immensely.

We started the walk in a very famous sculpture that was easy to recognize. This was crucial since Parque Simón Bolívar’s venue is bigger than Central Park.

We briefly presented each other and decided that it would be best not to split it and walk together, covering the whole area due to the group size.

This event was community-based, so participants were invited to bring or purchase food to share with others. We had a picnic in the middle of the event.

The venue cost was reduced since the event was in a public place. DreamHost, the sponsor, could offer good desserts.

Consider that for some places, you must ask for permission, and for some types of cameras, like drones.

We reached a library with enough fresh shadows at the end of the three hours. I focused on explaining the guidelines for photographers and some of the benefits of collaborating, like exposure.

I asked each person to choose their best photo and submit it to the directory.

Some people didn’t have their WP.org account created. We helped each other with that and pre-reviewed the photos before submitting them to make suggestions.

The directory only had one photo of Colombia and zero from Bogotá. At the event’s end, the team got five photos approved.

I watched this video before the event, which was beneficial in explaining and giving examples of what to do.

This video helps photographers understand the rules for uploading, the legal ramifications, and the practical steps to get photos into the WPPhotos project. Note, this is for photographers, NOT moderators.

If you organize an event like this, encourage people to send multiple photos. If people don’t get into submitting pictures, they probably won’t do it afterward.

In general, the event was a success because people enjoyed walking and casually connecting across the park a lot.

It was a safe space to explore, but it was extremely crowded. Since we were not allowed to show faces, it wasn’t easy to take pictures.

Also, if there are a lot of attendees, I recommend splitting the group into smaller objectives to cover more areas in less time and avoid taking the same pictures.

Only one person got their photo rejected due to the image’s dimensions, which were less than 2000 by 2000 pixels in size.

I had to convert my photos from Heic to JPEG using my laptop. People usually won’t carry their laptops, only their cellphone, which is fine.

Probably, there is an easy way to convert them from the iPhone.

An elderly couple entering the Virgilio Barco Library designed with exposed brick by renowned architect Rogelio Salmona in Bogotá, Colombia.
An elderly couple entering the Virgilio Barco Library, designed with exposed brick by renowned architect Rogelio Salmona in Bogotá, Colombia. by Jos Velasco is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

I encouraged people to use the essential editing tools with their phones to enhance things a little, like contrast and brightness.

For the descriptions, we tried to include the word “Bogotá” to ensure we could find them later. I know some photo events have used hashtags.

Searching “bench bogotá” in Openverse directly from the block editor allowed me to insert this image with credits in its caption:

Close up of a wooden bench at Simon Bolivar Parl, Bogotá, Colombia. Blue sky in the background.
Close up of a wooden bench at Simon Bolivar Parl, Bogotá, Colombia. Blue sky in the background. by andreago85 is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

Some people translated their descriptions using Google Translate to speed up the process.

It was remarkable that one of the organizers knew Colombian culture very well, so he helped complement some descriptions with essential details like the name of the famous architect who built the library.

We also asked the contributors to post their approved photos in the Community chat to share the results and encourage others.

Chontaduros, exotic fruit from the Colombian Pacific coast, presented on a street vendor’s cart.
Chontaduros, exotic fruit from the Colombian Pacific coast, presented on a street vendor’s cart. by diegobarbosa is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

One pending task for me is to ask people to submit the rest of the photos they took.

I’m excited for the next one; people mentioned a colorful neighborhood that, unfortunately, is more insecure. We plan to use the budget to hire a tourist company to help us guide the crowd.

Jos Velasco.

Featured photo credit: CC0 licensed photo by Juan Carlos Garcés Castro from the WordPress Photo Directory.

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Comments

3 responses to “What I learned by organizing the first Bogotá Photo Walk event”

  1. Juan Pablo Ledesma Avatar
    Juan Pablo Ledesma

    Felicidades por esta primera experiencia. A donde vayas irá contigo ese espíritu de reunir gente y alentarnos a hacer cosas nuevas. Gracias por hacer comunidad, Jos.

    1. JosVelasco Avatar
      JosVelasco

      ¡Muchas gracias amigo!

  2. […] There have been other WordPress photo walks in Mumbai, Bhopal and Nagpur. This is not just an Indian phenomenon, I recently came across a nice writeup on organising photowalk meetup by Jos Velasco in Bogota, Colombia. […]

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