WordCamp News

WordCamp Weekly Update: November 8, 2011

Posted by on November 8, 2011 with Comments are off for this post

Welcome to the weekly WordCamp Update post! This is where to find information on WordCamps about to be held, WordCamps in planning, and other community news.

This Week:

We’ve got six WordCamps happening this weekend. (True story.) Every single one of these events is sure to please even the most discriminating WordPress fanatic – so if you’re in the neighborhood and haven’t bought your ticket yet, don’t delay!

WordCamp Caguas: This is the first WordCamp to be held in Puerto Rico, not to mention the Caribbean – w00t! The local community has really rallied around this event to make it happen, and they couldn’t be more excited.  Attendees, who are coming from as far as the US and the Dominican Republic, will have multiple tracks to choose from at the inaugural WordCamp “Boricua.”

WordCamp Denmark: Only the second WordCamp in Denmark, this is a two-day event with one track of sessions. Topics include themes, video and eCommerce, and all sessions will be in Danish.

WordCamp Detroit: These two days of Motor City WordPress geekery include some great panel sessions, a WordPress trivia quiz, and a community workshop. Detroit organizers have worked hard to create a fresh and relevant program and to provide lots of opportunities for attendees to collaborate and make connections.

WordCamp Kenya: WordCamp at a campsite! This is one of just a handful of WordCamps to be hosted in Africa, and organizers have some highly relevant, interesting content in store for their attendees – including sessions on publishing poetry and photography using WordPress.

WordCamp Richmond: You’ll get plenty of bang for your fifteen bucks at this event. Lightning talks on plugins and a panel discussion of WordPress in Education are only two of the great sessions attendees have to look forward to.

WordCamp Azerbaijan: This is the first Azerbaijani WordCamp. ‘Nuff said!  Postponed due to venue woes; we should know the new date this week.

Upcoming WordCamps:

What are you waiting for? You can buy tickets for these upcoming WordCamps right now:

Venue Needed:

WordCamp organizing teams in these cities are still looking for the right space.  If you have a great idea for a free or cheap WordCamp venue in any of the below locales, email the organizers via the below links:

Call for organizers:

If you want to lead or join an organizing team, review the guidelines and  fill out the application. Organizing a WordCamp is a lot of work, but it’s really rewarding.

Categories WordCamp Central | Comments are off for this post

WordCamp Update for November 1, 2011

Posted by on November 1, 2011 with Comments are off for this post

Welcome to the weekly WordCamp Update post! This is where to find information on WordCamps about to be held, WordCamps in planning, and other community news.

This Week:

We’ve got three WordCamps coming up this weekend! And five next weekend, wow!

WordCamp Gold Coast: The fourth WordCamp in Australia, this is the first event in the Queensland area. With a low-tech and a high-tech track, there’s something for everyone. The event will be held at Bond University, and their speaker roster showcases some of the premier WordPress talent in Australia and around the world!

WordCamp Philly: Four, count ’em, four tracks are offered in Philly on Saturday for your WordCamp pleasure and edification. Saturday also features a Classroom track for more hands-on training. Sunday is a Dev Day. Check out their great speakers on the site – or, better yet, in Philly! But they’re almost sold out, so get your ticket today.

WordCamp Toronto: They just sold out, but Toronto’s lucky attendees will enjoy an amazing lineup of 26 speakers in 3 separate tracks on Saturday and 4 workshops on Sunday. If you didn’t get your ticket in time, don’t despair! The Toronto WordPress meetup is working up some great content for the upcoming months.

Upcoming WordCamps:

What are you waiting for? You can buy tickets for these upcoming WordCamps right now:

Recently Approved:

Organizers have recently been approved in the following cities and are now putting together their teams to begin planning and looking for a venue. If you’re in one of these locations and want to get in on the organizational fun, just email WordCamp Central, and I’ll be happy to put you in touch.

  • Seattle, WA
  • Austin, TX

Venue Needed:

WordCamp organizing teams in these cities are still looking for the right space.  If you have a great idea for a free or cheap WordCamp venue in any of the below locales, email the organizers via the below links:

Call for organizers:

If you want to lead or join an organizing team, review the guidelines and  fill out the application. Organizing a WordCamp is a lot of work, but it’s really rewarding.

Categories WordCamp Central | Comments are off for this post

WordCamp Update for October 17, 2011

Posted by on October 17, 2011 with 5 replies

Welcome to the weekly WordCamp Update post! This is where to find information on WordCamps about to be held, WordCamps in planning, and other community news.

This Week:

There’s a worldwide WordCamp hiatus until November, when WordCamps come back in force. Take the next couple of weeks to plan how you can attend any or many of the below exciting events:

Upcoming WordCamps:

What are you waiting for? You can buy tickets for these upcoming WordCamps right now:

Recently Approved:

Organizers have recently been approved in the following four (!!!!) cities and are now putting together their teams to begin planning and looking for a venue. If you’re in one of these locations and want to get in on the organizational fun, just email WordCamp Central, and I’ll be happy to put you in touch.

  • Miami, Florida
  • Honolulu, Hawaii
  • Seoul, South Korea
  • Phoenix, Arizona

Venue Needed:

WordCamp organizing teams in these cities are still looking for the right space.  If you have a great idea for a free or cheap WordCamp venue in any of the below locales, email the organizers via the below links:

Call for organizers:

If you want to lead or join an organizing team, review the guidelines and  fill out the application. Organizing a WordCamp is a lot of work, but it’s really rewarding.

Categories WordCamp Central | 5 replies

WordCamp Update for October 10, 2011

Posted by on October 11, 2011 with Comments are off for this post

Welcome to the weekly WordCamp Update post! This is where to find information on WordCamps about to be held, WordCamps in planning, and other community news.

This Week:

WordCamp Jabalpur: October 15-16

This student-organized event, an outgrowth of the local WordPress meetup group, will be held this weekend at Jabalpur Engineering College. Tickets to the Oct 15th Newbie Workshop sold out in just three days, but there are still tickets available for the main event. Attendees will be travelling from as far as Nepal. This is the first WordCamp to be held in India for a while, so we’re really excited about it.

Upcoming WordCamps:

What are you waiting for? You can buy tickets for these upcoming WordCamps right now:

Recently Approved:

Organizers have recently been approved in the following cities and are now putting together their organizing team to begin planning and looking for a venue. If you’re in one of these locations and want to get in on the planning fun, just email WordCamp Central, and I’ll be happy to put you in touch.

  • San Diego, California

Venue Needed:

WordCamp organizing teams in these cities are still looking for the right space.  If you have a great idea for a free or cheap WordCamp venue in any of the below locales, email the organizers via the below links:

Call for organizers:

If you want to lead or join an organizing team, review the guidelines and  fill out the application. Organizing a WordCamp is a lot of work, but it’s really rewarding.

Categories WordCamp Central | Comments are off for this post

WordCamp Update for October 3, 2011

Posted by on October 3, 2011 with 2 replies

Welcome to our inaugural WordCamp Update post! This is where I’ll put information on WordCamps about to be held, WordCamps in planning, and other community news.

This Week:

WordCamp Sevilla: October 8-9

Tickets are still available for WordCamp Sevilla – about 50 seat lefts on Saturday, and 8 seats left on Sunday, which is a Developer’s Day.  The event will be live-streamed, and speakers include Hugo Baeta, Jorge Bernal, Ze Fontainhas, Rafael Poveda, Fernando Tellado, and Remkus de Vries. Rafael’s mom will also be doing a flash talk – she’s a 63-year-old math professor who uses WordPress blogs in her classes. If you’re anywhere near Sevilla this weekend, don’t miss this event – everyone and their mother will be there!

Upcoming WordCamps:

What are you waiting for? You can buy tickets for these upcoming WordCamps right now:

Recently Approved:

Organizers have recently been approved in the following cities and are now putting together their organizing team to begin planning and looking for a venue. If you’re in one of these locations and want to get in on the planning fun, just email WordCamp Central, and I’ll be happy to put you in touch.

  • Madrid, Spain
  • Sao Paulo, Brazil

Venue Needed:

WordCamp organizing teams in these cities are still looking for the right space.  If you have a great idea for a free or cheap WordCamp venue in any of the below locales, email the organizers via the below links:

Call for organizers:

The below cities have hosted great WordCamps in the past and now need new organizers and community leaders to volunteer to organize the next event. What WordCamp Central has done in other situations like these is to gather all organizer applications, get everyone introduced, and then help the group work out the details of who should take what role.

Phoenix: Amanda Blum has moved to Portland and Chuck Reynolds is wrapped up with other things.

Hawaii: repeat organizer Bert Lum has too much on his plate; he’s been working with a number of people to get WordCamp organized, but I’d like to make sure that everyone interested in participating has stepped forward.

New York City: a number of people interested in helping with the next WordCamp approached Jane Wells in 2010, and I want to ensure that those people have the opportunity to join the team that is eventually formed. Steve Bruner has graciously agreed to be involved again this year.

If you want to lead or join an organizing team, review the guidelines and  fill out the application.

Categories WordCamp Central | 2 replies

Let’s Get Organized

Posted by on September 29, 2011 with 1 reply

Thank you to the WordCamp community and to Jane for the warm welcome! Working with WordPress community leaders all over the world is an amazing experience.

WordCamps are energizing, inspirational events – true labors of love – and each is unique. When Aaron Hockley and I organized WordCamp Portland this summer, I learned how the frustration of too many little details can evaporate when an attendee tells you how much they’ve learned that day, or how they’re now inspired to write a patch or volunteer on the forums. My goal is to give every WordCamp organizing team the support it needs and the attention it deserves, so that everyone’s WordCamp experience – attendees as well as organizers – is reliably positive.

My highest priorities right now include making sure that every WordCamp is community-driven and provides the highest possible quality content. We’re working hard to help organizers flush out their local experts and encourage them to speak. I’d like to close the gap that occasionally exists between the local WordPress meetups and local WordCamps. I’m also really excited about getting all WordCamp sessions onto WordPress.tv, thus expanding the educational influence of WordCamps exponentially.

Since coming on this summer, I’ve worked with nine different teams of brand-new WordCamp organizers. Before 2011 is over, nine additional WordCamps will be organized by new community leaders. It’s intriguing to consider how many more successful WordCamps we can have if we can make the process of organizing less daunting for newcomers. Now that organizing teams can run event finances through the WordPress Foundation, there are even fewer barriers to organizing a WordCamp. I’m working on making that part of the program run even more smoothly.

I’ve also had the honor of working with multiple teams of repeat organizers and learning from their experience. I’d love to create more collaboration between WordCamp organizers everywhere. The guidelines at plan.wordcamp.org contain a lot of valuable insights gathered from repeat organizers and attendee feedback, but I want to make sure we’re taking full advantage of the experience out there so every team isn’t reinventing the wheel. I welcome organizers to comment on plan.wordcamp.org with ideas or advice that you think might benefit other teams: what lessons did you learn the hard way? What bullets did you narrowly dodge? What’s the secret to your awesomesauce?

I’ll be posting a weekly wrap-up of WordCamp Central news every Friday. Stay tuned – we have great things in store!

Categories WordCamp Central | 1 reply

Introducing Andrea

Posted by on September 13, 2011 with 1 reply

As more and more people decide they want to organize WordCamps in their areas — especially people who are new to the community or event planning and need more guidance — the volume of applications has become overwhelming. Trying to handle all the WC organizer requests in addition to my responsibilities with core and other community initiatives meant that I wasn’t giving WordCamps as much time as I felt they deserved. As the number of WordCamps increased it became a full-time job, so it is with exceedingly great pleasure that I officially introduce Andrea Middleton to the WordCamp community.

Andrea MiddletonAs current WC organizers already know, Andrea — a WordPress user for three years and the owner of mad project management skills — took over the day to day coordination of WordCamp Central this summer. Based in Portland, she is now the one to review organizer applications, to work with WordCamps operating under the WordPress Foundation’s financial umbrella, to update the WordCamp Central schedule, and generally do all the things I’d been doing around WordCamp organization, all the things I wanted to do but never had time for, and probably a bunch of brilliant things I never even imagined.

In addition to getting her WordCamp feet wet by being in charge of volunteers for WordCamp San Francisco this year, she is cutting her teeth as a local organizer with WordCamp Portland (which is this coming weekend, will be awesome, and if you live anywhere near PDX you should totally go!).

Random fun facts about Andrea:

  • I’ve known her for almost 20 years.*
  • Her work for the past 6 years has been a blend of project management, HR, and marketing that hits all the needs of this job.
  • She is a certified wine educator, and lived in the Virgin Islands for a few years.
  • She is a certified TESOL instructor and taught in Mexico. Latin American WordCamps, Andrea’s your girl!
  • She once stayed up all night dancing in a 24-hour James Brown Dance Marathon**
  • Her husband likes BBQ even more than Matt does.
  • Her daughter is beyond adorable, and was sporting a WordPress button on her baby hat the very first day she was alive.

I’m still involved as needed, but in a more advisory capacity (more ideas and advice, less email and budgets). This will hopefully mean I’ll be able to dedicate more time to core UX, documentation and support projects, WordPress Foundation education programs (kids! girls! underrepresented populations! everyone!), and working with local meetup organizers to help grow the WordPress community in new ways. If you have any questions about this transition, feel free to get in touch or leave a comment on this post. Otherwise, please join me in welcoming Andrea to her new role!

 

*When we met in 1992, we worked together at Greenpeace in Portland, OR.

** So did I. See previous note regarding where/when we met.

Categories WordCamp Central | 1 reply

WordCamp Chicago Needs Your Help!

Posted by on July 18, 2011 with 1 reply

WordCamp Chicago is in 2 weeks, and they need your help! The organizers are looking for additional sponsors so that they’ll have enough money to cover the budget. Even when everything is done by volunteers, big WordCamps cost a pretty penny. They’re looking for more volunteers, too. :)

Of course, they also want more people to buy tickets! This is the biggest WordCamp scheduled in the midwest for awhile, so if you’re from a central state, why not take a weekend trip to Chicago and check it out? Maybe it will inspire you to start a WordPress meetup in your own town, and organize your own WordCamp someday!

Categories WordCamps | 1 reply