WordCamp News

WordCamp Finland: back to Tampere with educational, insightful and thought-provoking talks

Posted by on June 30, 2023 with Comments are off for this post

The first-ever Finnish WordCamp gathered a few hundred fellow WordPress enthusiasts to Tampere back in 2015. This September, on 14.-15., our community will return to the city where everything started.

Content has been planned with all skill levels, employment types and interests in mind. We do not discriminate, and WordPress users, developers, designers, people working in agencies or as a freelancer and other enthusiasts are all welcome, regardless of the experience level.

We are more than thrilled about the upcoming lineup of talks and speakers. The best and most exciting part is that many of the topics do come outside of the WordPress world! WordCamp Finland will truly have educational, insightful and thought-provoking talks for everyone. 

Here’s a sneak peak of some of the topics:

  • Analytics in GDPR era
  • Climate change and WordPress, things to consider
  • Optimizing e-commerce
  • Work fatigue, how to prevent it and cope from it
  • Open source and WordPress communities, how do those benefit you?
  • Web Platform API’s and Gutenberg, modern Javascript development with WordPress
  • Terminal and WP-CLI
  • Designing more accessible websites and accessibility testing
  • Achieving better and more inclusive web design, content and UX
  • Security and hacked websites
  • …and much more!

WordCamp Finland 2023 sessions will take place in Tampere on Friday 15. September. Most of the sessions will be held in English, although there are a handful of sessions held in Finnish as well.

The day before, on Thursday 14. September, a contributing evening will take place starting at 16:00. The contributing evening will feature workshops where you can contribute and learn about various WordPress-related topics in a hands-on setting. No coding skills required!

During the whole event, there will also be ample time for networking and meeting other WordPress enthusiasts. Getting to meet and learn from other WordPress users face-to-face is one of the main reasons people attend WordCamps. In addition to learning from each other, attendees often make new friends and find employees/employers from the WordCamp crowd. 

Secure your tickets now and ensure you’ll get to experience all of the insightful talks and activities with a welcoming community!

The full list of speakers, session descriptions and schedule will be published in early August, so make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin to get the latest updates. Naturally the WordPress Finland Slack has #events-wcfi channel and discussion is ongoing on WPWoofi Facebook group.

Categories Events, WordCamps | Tags , , , , | Comments are off for this post

SiteGround joins the WordPress global community sponsorship program in 2023

Posted by on May 22, 2023 with 1 reply

Please join us in welcoming SiteGround to the 2023 WordPress global community sponsorship program! SiteGround’s pledge to sponsor all official WordPress community events (WordCamps, Meetups, and more) all around the world provides support and stability to our hardworking crew of volunteer event organizers. Thanks for everything, SiteGround!

SiteGround Logo

SiteGround‘s hosting services are crafted to make managing websites easy, whether you’re building a site for yourself, your small business, or your clients.

We host over 2.8 Million domain names on a powerful Google Cloud Platform infrastructure, optimized with an array of in-house tools for seamless, faster and more secure WordPress performance:

  • Fast: Choose from multiple data centers across USA, Europe, Asia, and Australia, complemented by over 170 CDN edge network locations with our free CDN to improve website performance. Powerful built-in Caching, custom PHP setup, and SiteGround Optimizer plugin for WordPress to make your sites up to 5 times faster right out of the box.
  • Secure: Advanced security on server, website, and application level with a free SSL, advanced built-in Web Application Firewall, SiteGround Security plugin, in-house antispam protection and AI-powered anti-bot system to keep your websites safe.
  • Easy to manage: Build or transfer WordPress projects in a few clicks with our WordPress Starter and Automatic website and Email Migrators. Manage multiple sites in one place hassle-free, get automatic core and plugin updates, add team collaborators, ship sites to clients, manage white-label hosting, and many more handy features to keep all the control, but spare you the hassle of website management.

Our long-term expertise in helping WordPress users succeed online extends into our award-winning SiteGround Optimizer and SiteGround Security; plugins, free to download and install on any hosting platform.

Categories Sponsors | Tags | 1 reply

WordCamp Jinja 2023: Empowering the Future Generation of WordPress Users in Africa

Posted by on April 21, 2023 with 1 reply
WordCamp Jinja 2022 attendees in the Computer Lab at Jinja College on 2nd Sept 2022

Inaugural WordCamp Jinja 2022 attendees in the Computer Lab at Jinja College School on 2nd Sept 2022.

At the heart of every revolution lies a spark that ignites the collective spirit, driving the wheels of change and inspiring the future. In the realm of WordPress, this spark is the passion for innovation, collaboration, and creativity. WordCamp Jinja 2023 is proud to stand as a torchbearer in this journey, with a mission to empower the future generation of WordPress users: our students and their teachers.

Scheduled for the 4th and 5th of September, 2023, at Iganga Secondary School the prestigious girl’s school in Eastern Uganda. WordCamp Jinja 2023 embraces the theme, “There is always more to learn!” – adapted from the learn.wordpress.org platform. This year, we aim to create a platform for students and teachers to engage with the vibrant WordPress community, empowering them to harness the true potential of this versatile platform.

But WordCamp Jinja 2023 is not merely an exclusive domain for students and teachers. Oh no, dear friends! The invitation extends far and wide, reaching out to the local tech communities to partake in the festivities. We believe that learning is a lifelong journey, and WordPress is a great companion along the way. Whether you are a student, a teacher, a developer, a designer, a blogger, or an entrepreneur, there is always something new to discover and share with WordPress.

The event will feature hands-on and minds-on workshops that encourage participants to explore the depths of the Learn WordPress platform, while also offering an Entrepreneurship Track with breakout speaker presentations. The extra Contributor Day, scheduled for the 6th of September at The Innovation Village in Jinja, will feature a Website Hackathon to further engage and inspire the attendees as their skills are put to the test to create stunning websites with WordPress in a limited time, working in teams and competing for prizes and glory!.

We believe that by fostering a spirit of learning and collaboration, we can help shape the minds of the future, ensuring a legacy of innovation and progress. To achieve this, we are extending a warm invitation to speakers / trainers. If you have a story to tell, knowledge to share, or inspiration to spread, please submit your proposal through our Call for Speakers page: https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-speakers/

We are also seeking sponsors who believe in our mission and would like to support WordCamp Jinja 2023. Your contribution will not only help us create a memorable and impactful event but also pave the way for the future generation of WordPress users. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, please visit our Call for Sponsors page: https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-sponsors/

Together, let us embark on a journey of learning and empowerment at WordCamp Jinja 2023, and create a brighter future for the next generation of WordPress enthusiasts at the heart of Africa and beyond!

PS: WordCamp Jinja 2023 is the second WordCamp to be organised by Jinja WordPress Meetup, after a successful WordCamp Jinja 2022 on 2nd – 3rd Sept last year at The Innovation Village in Jinja City. WordPress Jinja Meetup holds regular meetups for WordPress enthusiasts in Jinja and nearby towns.

6 places, 1 WordCamp: WordCamp Jinja in Pictures
Categories Events, News, Schedule, WordCamp in planning, WordCamps | Tags , , | 1 reply

WordCamp Buffalo 2023

Posted by on March 17, 2023 with 1 reply
WordCamp Buffalo logo, where WCBUF are in the shape of a buffalo with '23 just below. The logo is red with white open space.
WordCamp Buffalo 2023 logo. Design by Ben Dunkle.

Buffalo again will host the region’s WordCamp for bloggers and web designers and developers of all skill levels. Novices are very welcome. WordCamp Buffalo will be held Saturday, May 6, 2023.

Registration opens at 8:00am. Sessions begin at 9 a.m. and continue through 5 p.m. This year’s WordCamp will be held at Ken-Ton Elmwood Commons, 3200 Elmwood Ave Suite 110, Kenmore, NY 14217. Tickets are required in advance.

The $25 ticket cost covers WordCamp Buffalo swag, morning coffee, lunch, and the evenings’s after-party food. Participants are strongly encouraged to bring their laptops or tablets. Ticket purchase and program details are available at buffalo.wordcamp.org/2023. The capacity for this event is about 120 people, so getting tickets early is advised.

WordCamps are held worldwide, locally run and purposely at a low cost for accessibility to all. WordCamp Buffalo is dedicated to WordPress, blogging and web facility. WordCamps are sponsored by WordPress, the open-source, free, not-for-profit platform for individuals, groups and businesses to build their own blogs and websites. WordPress.org began in 2003. Its administrators call it the “largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.”

Similar to previous years, Buffalo’s 2023 WordCamp will divide its workshops along two tracks, with sessions for every ability and level of use.

Speakers will include WordPress users from Buffalo, Rochester, and beyond, with experience ranging from user/blogger to advanced developer.

Categories Uncategorized | 1 reply

WordCamp Entebbe 2023: An Amazing Recap

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WordCamp Entebbe, a two-day event that took place on the 10th and 11th of March, 2023, was a resounding success and was attended by over 200 people. The event, which was focused on the WordPress content management system, drew attendees from across Uganda and beyond. However, what made this event stand out was its commitment to gender diversity in the tech industry.

The organizers of WordCamp Entebbe made a concerted effort to ensure that women were well-represented at the event. The gender diversity program featured female speakers and student attendees. This program was designed to inspire more women to pursue careers in technology, and it proved to be a huge success.

A person stands on a stage with a microphone.
The group poses for a photo.
Students pose for a group photo with the lead organiser Arthur Kasirye
The group poses for a photo.
Students arriving at the WordCamp

Over the course of the two-day event, attendees had the opportunity to attend a wide range of sessions, workshops, and presentations. Many of these were led by female speakers who shared their experiences and expertise with the audience. 

The topics covered ranged from beginner-level introductions to WordPress to more advanced topics such as website optimization, content creation, and web security.

One of the most inspiring sessions of the event was a panel discussion on women in tech. This session featured female leaders in the Ugandan tech industry who shared their experiences and insights with the audience. The panelists talked about the challenges they had faced as women in a male-dominated industry and offered advice on how to overcome those challenges.

A group is sitting in chairs.
Women Panel at the Wordcamp
The group poses for a photo.

Another highlight of WordCamp Entebbe was the student program. This program provided an opportunity for students to attend the event and learn more about WordPress and the tech industry in general. The students were able to attend workshops and presentations, network with professionals in the industry, and gain valuable insights into the world of tech as well as introduced to the new study curriculum of the Directorate of Industrial Training (DIT) a Ugandan quality assurance directorate offering nationally, regionally and internationally recognized quality assurance services for the Business, Technical, Vocational Education and Training (BTVET) were students can use WordPress in their final year projects and graded on a national level.

A group is observing a laptop.
Students learning to install WordPress website

This year’s WordCamp was led by Kasirye Arthur the leader of the WordPress Community in Entebbe who is also a community lead for Woocommerce and Elementor

Overall, WordCamp Entebbe was a hugely successful event that demonstrated the power of gender diversity in the tech industry. 

By creating a program that was focused on empowering women in Tech, the organizers of this event helped to inspire a new generation of female technologists. It is our hope that more events like WordCamp Entebbe will be organized even in schools so that we can continue to build a more diverse and inclusive tech industry. 

The group poses for a photo.
WordCamp Entebbe organising Team
Categories Events, WordCamps | Tags | 2 replies

Get your tickets for WordCamp Kerala 2023 on March 25th!

Posted by on February 25, 2023 with 1 reply

The southern state of Kerala in India is all set to host its first regional WordCamp – WordCamp Kerala 2023 on March 25, 2023 (Saturday) at IMA House, Kochi!

The WordPress community in Kerala is not new – it had its humble beginnings in 2014, when it kicked off with an informal local meetup in Kochi. The love for WordPress grew the community slowly, but surely, which eventually spread out to multiple cities in the state. Together the community organized scores of local meetup events and three editions of WordCamp Kochi (2017, 2018, and 2019) before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down. Even during the pandemic, our community stayed active by organizing online events together under a “WordPress Kerala” banner. As the global health situation improved in 2022, our community started organizing in-person events again. A strong desire to organize a WordCamp united members the Kerala WordPress Community. As a result, the local WordPress Meetup groups of Trivandrum, Kochi, Kozhikode, and Palakkad, have decided to bounce back by organizing WordCamp Kerala 2023!

A group of people listening to a session, and a man with a mic asking a question at WordCamp Kochi 2017.

What makes WordCamp Kerala unique

Our event promises to be as unique as our location and host state. Kerala is known as “God’s own country” and was selected by the New York Times as one of the must-visit places in 2023. In 1999, Kerala made it to National Geographic’s list of 10 Paradises of the world too. 

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

At WordCamp Kerala, one of our main priorities is to ensure that every voice is heard. We are working hard to ensure that our event is as diverse and inclusive as possible, from our organizing team to our speaker roster, and every aspect of our event and its planning. 

Our aim is to present a speaker lineup that is as diverse as possible, by ensuring that non-male applicants and applicants from marginalized backgrounds have excellent representation in our roster. To facilitate the same,  we collaborated with the WP Diversity group of the Make/Community Team to hold a successful diverse speaker workshop led by Jill Binder on January 28th – the workshop had 25 attendees, and resulted in at least seven unique speaker applications!

Additionally, our event aims to have something for folks from all backgrounds – from advanced technical workshops to sessions aimed at every WordPress professional. For this WordCamp, we are also doing our best to facilitate excellent networking opportunities between attendees, which are one of the biggest strengths of WordCamps.

An Eco-friendly WordCamp

The event is planned as eco-friendly and adequate plans are in place to ensure that no harm is done to the environment at any stage of the event. It includes avoiding plastic items and using LED televisions for sponsor branding as opposed to banners to save our environment. We are even thinking of ways to reduce our environmental footprint in every aspect of event planning as well.

A group of non-male attendees posing for a picture at WordCamp Kochi 2018

Get involved

There are several ways to become a part of this exciting event! 

  • Grab your tickets to attend this event!
    WordCamp Kerala tickets are priced at an affordable INR 500 (~USD $6) per attendee. As of late February 2023, we have sold more than half of our total tickets available for public (we are planning 500 total participants at our event including volunteers, speakers, and sponsors), and there is a high probability that we may sell out way before the event date. Get your tickets now! 
  • Last chance to apply to speak at WordCamp Kerala!
    Due to popular demand, we have extended our deadline for call for speakers. Apply to speak at WordCamp Kerala 2023 before February 28th 2023, 11:59 PM IST.
  • Sponsor WordCamp Kerala
    We received an unprecedented response to our call for sponsors, and most of our sponsorship tiers have sold out. A big thanks to our community for this warm response and support! Nonetheless, we still have some available sponsorship options for interested applicants. 
  • Apply to be a Volunteer and be a part of the team that helps organize WordCamp Kerala 2023. Deadline: February 28th 2023, 11:59 PM IST.

And don’t forget to post about this event on your social media handles for all WordPress enthusiasts. Feel free to Share about us on Twitter, write about us on LinkedIn, or post about us on Facebook. Psst… You can also post about our event on your (WordPress-powered) blog or on Tumblr! Don’t forget to join the discussion on WordCamp Kerala 2023 using the hashtag #WCKerala hashtag on all social media platforms.

Looking forward to seeing you at our lovely little event celebrating WordPress, at the beautiful coastal city of Kochi, on March 25th, 2023!

Get your tickets for WordCamp Kerala 2023!
Categories Events, Sessions, Speakers, Sponsors, Volunteers, WordCamp Tickets, WordCamps | Tags , , , , , , | 1 reply

WooCommerce sponsors WordPress community events across the globe

Posted by on February 17, 2023 with Comments are off for this post

We’re very grateful to WooCommerce for sponsoring WordPress community events all around the world at the Bronze level again in 2023! WooCommerce’s support helps make local community events (like WordPress meetup groups and WordCamps) better for WordPress enthusiasts and easier to organize for our wonderful group of hardworking volunteers.

WooCommerce logo

WooCommerce is a customizable, open-source eCommerce platform built on WordPress. 

Sell anything online with the flexibility and freedom of the world’s most popular CMS.

Whether you’re selling a few handcrafted items to a niche market, taking an existing business online, or going global with an enterprise-level eCommerce business WooCommerce gets you set up and selling fast, scaling securely as you grow.

Your content is forever yours and customizable down to the button color. Plus you’re joining a supportive, global community of developers and store owners.

Developed and supported by a distributed team, WooCommerce is powered by Automattic, the creators of Jetpack and WordPress.com.

Categories Sponsors | Tags | Comments are off for this post

Bluehost supports WordPress community events worldwide

Posted by on February 16, 2023 with Comments are off for this post

We can’t thank Bluehost enough for their continued support as a sponsor for the global WordPress community! Their support of WordPress community events around the globe at our Gold level!

Bluehost logo

Bluehost has been a WordPress partner since 2005 and powers over 1 million WordPress sites worldwide. Their objective is to help customers, whether novice or pro, create a thriving online presence at an affordable price. With a team of in-house tech experts available 24/7, Bluehost dedicates time and resources to providing the best support and services in the industry. Join millions of other site owners and see what Bluehost can do for you and your online presence.

Categories Sponsors | Tags | Comments are off for this post