Category Archives: Announcements

Resources from Our Speakers

We’ve asked our speakers to provide links to slides, blog posts, or any other relevant resources from their talks. Refresh your memory and explore what was discussed last weekend at WordCamp Portland!

  • Grand Landram: Creating a Better WordPress Admin Experience for Clients – slides
  • Christina Elmore: From URL to ISBN: Making Books from Blogs – slides
  • Paul Clark: How WordPress Saves Lives and Moves Governments – slides
  • Mika Epstein: Roll Your Own WordPress Support Characters – slides / article
  • Corey Freeman: Stop Tweaking – slides
  • Bob Dunn: Making Your WordPress Knowledge Stick – slides
  • Matt Boynes: Rewrite Recipes – slides/code/etc
  • Andy Hayes: Website Critiques – Andy’s website
  • Kronda Adair: Deploying WordPress with Capistrano – slides / video tutorial / getting started with Git
  • Maria Erb: How WordPress Can Save Higher Education – slides

(these are the speakers that have provided resources thus far – if additional speakers submit links we’ll update this blog post)

Keeping cool with WordCamp swag

photo (13)On Saturday, you’ll get to add yet another amazing WordCamp Portland pint glass to your collections of awesome, thirst-fighting hardware. Even if you’re not (gasp! cough!) a beer drinker, this little baby holds iced tea, kombucha, and delicious Portland tap water like a champ. Here’s a recipe for a summer cooler that will be something the whole family will enjoy sipping out of a WordCamp pint glass:

Watermelon Mint Agua Fresca*

4 cups fresh watermelon (preferably Hermiston), peeled, seeded and chopped into 2-inch chunks
a handful of fresh mint leaves, minced
1 cup delicious Portland tap water (or any potable water you have available)
1 oz. fresh lime or lemon juice
1 Tbsp. granulated sugar

Tools: blender, chinois strainer (or cheesecloth-lined colander), pitcher, large spoon Puree the watermelon, mint and water. Strain into a pitcher and add the lime juice and sugar. Stir and serve over ice.

*Doesn’t it look like a WordPress valentine-in-a-glass?

Swag sneak peek

Pint GlassIt’s August in Portland, and the highs are almost in the 90s. Whew! Don’t hack on your WordPress site without keeping a nice, cold, frosty glass of something close at hand. On Saturday, you’ll get to add yet another amazing WordCamp Portland pint glass to your collections of awesome, thirst-fighting hardware. Even if you’re not (gasp! cough!) a beer drinker, this little baby holds iced tea, kombucha, and delicious Portland tap water like a champ. Yet another reason to love WordCamp!

WordCamp Portland Afterparty: Momo’s

After we wrap up WordCamp Portland, we invite attendees to walk or take the streetcar a few blocks over to Momo’s (725 SW 10th Ave) for an informal afterparty starting around 5:30pm. Join fellow WordCamp attendees to socialize, network, relax, and wind down from a great day of WordPressing.

Given the current weather forecast, we should be able to take advantage of Momo’s nice patio area behind the bar (as well as some inside seating).

A drink ticket will be provided to WordCamp attendees. A big thanks to our sponsors for their support of WordCamp Portland! Of course you’re welcome to purchase food and/or additional drinks on your own.

Contributor Day

WordCamp PDX would not be complete without a Contributor Day. That’s right, on Sunday, August 11th, from 10 AM – 4 PM, we will hold a Contributor Day to close out WCPDX. The Contributor Day is open to anyone wanting to work on any aspect of the WordPress open source project. Codex, Make handbooks, core tickets, plugins, themes etc. are all ways to contribute to the WordPress ecosystem and are all things that you can work on during Contributor Day.

The event will take place at the Lincoln Building in downtown Portland (421 SW Oak Street UPDATE: 208 SW 5th Ave; same building, different entrance). Digital Trends, one of our wonderful sponsors, is providing the space. The rooms have plenty of space and allow for groups of individuals to break out and work on specific projects. The building is easily accessible via public transportation and there are a few parking garages in the area.

While there is no set schedule for the Contributor Day, we are expecting a number of leaders of different parts of WordPress to assist with contributing in a number of different ways. We will provide lunch to help fuel all of the awesome work!

We look forward to seeing you at Contributor Day!

A bit of unconference fun

In years past we’ve experimented with a lot of different ways of building unconference sessions in to WordCamp Portland. 2011 even saw Portland tackle an entirely unconference conference. 🙂

This year we have a block mid-morning for unconference sessions. All 3 rooms will be available and we’ll get an unconference board going in the morning to post the schedule from.

Wondering what an unconference is? Aaron’s post from 2011 is a good primer. You can also find a list of the sessions that took place that year to get a feel for what works well.

So if there’s an idea you’ve been kicking around in your mind that you’d love to present or a discussion you’d like to lead come August 10th with those ideas. If you haven’t signed up yet you can also still grab a ticket to this year’s event.

WordCamp Portland schedule is live

We have a great group of speakers, over 150 awesome attendees already, and a fantastic day of WordCamp fun planned. With all that planned we now have a schedule for the day.

August 10th will be a day full of WordPress learning for beginners, experts, developers, and writers alike. We have 2 keynote speakers and more than a dozen other speakers. Our lightning talks on the schedule are mostly finalized and we’ll be wrapping up those details soon.

The schedule doesn’t show it but we also have some really cool swag lined up, great food, snacks, and more. You can get all of that for just $20 if you sign up today. Looking forward to seeing you at WordCamp! 🙂

Jen Mylo, our second keynote speaker for WordCamp Portland

jane-gravatarWhat’s better than one keynote and an amazing speaker lineup? Two keynotes and an amazing speaker lineup! The organizing team here is happy to announce Jen Mylo as our second keynote for WordCamp Portland 2013. Jen’s worked with the WordPress community for years now and likes Portland so much she’s even planning to move here!

She is a WordPress Jane of All Trades. After stints as the core software’s user experience lead and project manager she’s now focusing on improving the contributor community. Jen works on outreach and training, with an emphasis on increasing diversity. She’s spent more than a dozen years in the web industry, with the last five years dedicated to the WordPress open source project.

Jen’s keynote is titled, The Only Constant Is Change. Here’s what that entails:

Permanence is an odd concept when talking about an open source project, a web application, or web content, where things tend to change rapidly and be more ephemeral. The first ten years of the WordPress project has taught us that change and adaptation are the keys to success. In this talk, community lead Jen Mylo will discuss WordPress changes past and future, and will ask the Portland community to consider the change they’d like to see.

Woot! Jen wraps up our main speaker announcements for this year’s event; we’re really excited about everything. 🙂

You can find more details about this year’s speakers and a schedule for the day is coming up. Stay tuned for more WordPress fun and grab your ticket today!