## Claim When an event's established audience contracts, the durable move is to widen the funnel toward first-time users rather than spend the year re-courting a shrinking core. <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ## Scope & conditions Holds when there's a plausible new-user pool nearby and a low-friction on-ramp exists. Breaks when the core's departure signals a deeper product or sentiment problem that newcomers will hit just as hard once they arrive. ## Evidence WCUS 2026 paired a quantified ~38% ticket decline with a concrete new-user on-ramp (the one-day beginner-to-portfolio-site track) rather than a campaign to win back lapsed past attendees. > [!quote] > This year feels like what the old guard might call a reset, and I really want to use that to target new users. ## Links - [[Commons & Community Governance MOC]] — the durable response to a contracting audience, as against defending the existing core - [[3. Resources/MOCs/DevRel MOC.md]] — because widening the funnel toward newcomers is a core community-growth tactic this MOC tracks ## Tests/falsifiers - This claim would be undermined by a clear counter-case where the described dynamic holds even without the scope condition above, or fails to hold even when the scope condition is met. ## Maintenance - Last tended: 2026-08-16 - Next review: 2026-11-16 ## Source [[3. Resources/Readwise/Full Document Contents/Articles/Inside WordCamp US 2026 Lead Organizers on Hitting ‘Reset,’ Adding a New Beginner Track, and Beating the Phoenix Heat]]