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Kids 17 & under can get into WCSLC free!
WordCamps are all about education and learning and sharing knowledge. But one thing we’ve never done at WordCamp Salt Lake City is invite kids to learn alongside everyone else. We’re changing that this year.
While kids have never been explicitly excluded from WordCamp SLC, we’ve never taken the time to actually invite them or provide any kind of resources for kids and their parents. So, this year, we’re making it easier to take your kids to WordCamp with you. Using the wcslc2017-17-and-under you’ll get a full price discount ($20 off) for kids and young adults.
A couple caveats:
- This coupon code can’t be used in combination with another coupon code. So if you’re using, for example, the early bird discount, you’ll need to register yourself and your kid separately.
- There will be no child care available at WordCamp SLC. It’s assumed that you will keep track of your own kid or that they are old enough to take care of themselves.
- There’s no specific kids camp or kids track (this year). But they’re welcome to hang out with you, at the Happiness Bar, or attend whatever talks they are interested in.
- This offer only extends to kids and young adults 17 and under. But we do have a coupon for students — wcslc2017-student — for $10 off.
- It’s unlikely that we will have youth-sized t-shirts, but they can get an adult small.
- Please make sure to actually register your kids. That way we are able to properly make a head count for shirts, badges and food.
If you have a kid that’s interested in WordPress, coding, or making websites, this is a great opportunity to introduce them to the WordPress community, and some of our amazing friends, colleagues and teachers!
You — yes YOU — have a WordPress story to tell
Everyone has a story to tell. Maybe it was the first time you climbed up in the Uintas and you never thought you’d make it to the top but you pushed on and finally reached the top of Bald Mountain and celebrated your success by gazing out at the amazing view of the valley. Or maybe you have a story like me about the first time you went to a professional soccer game and, even though we lost 5-0, the excitement of the crowd, the chanting, the energy in the stadium, the “Believe” chant all combined to make you a diehard, lifelong fan of Real Salt Lake.
Everyone has a WordPress story, too. That time your website was hacked and how you fixed it. The first time you wrote a plugin or a theme. Submitting a theme to the WordPress theme repository and going through the review process. Committing a patch to WordPress core. Submitting documentation to the WordPress Codex or developer docs. Setting up WordPress for the first time for your business. Creating an online store with WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads.
WordCamps are about stories. The stories we tell each other when we introduce ourselves, the stories we hear from speakers, and the stories we share among our friends, peers and community.
This year, we’re doing something new and we want to hear your stories. That’s why this year we’re doing lightning talks. They are short — even if you are fantastically introverted or suffer from severe stage fright, you’re only up there for five minutes which is less time than it takes to get a filling at the dentist — so you know there are worse things 😉. They don’t need to be technical, in fact, it’s probably better when they aren’t — it’s way too hard to get a lot of technical information out there in five minutes. And they encourage storytelling.
Some things that would make great lightning talks would be getting started with using WooCommerce, development tools that help theme or plugin development, how to write a Grunt file, what to look for if you think your site may have been hacked. We all have something we’ve been through that we can share, and we all benefit from learning from each other’s experiences.
If you haven’t already, I’m asking if you would consider presenting a lightning talk at WCSLC 2017. Don’t think of it as a presentation. Think of it as an opportunity to share an experience that you learned from with a group of friends, so we all can learn with you.
Speakers! Round 4!
Our last round (officially) of speaker announcements is here. Let’s take a moment to give all our speakers a round of applause.
Keep your eyes peeled next week for an announcement if you are interested in presenting something at WCSLC but you didn’t get your talk in on time or didn’t feel confident enough to submit a full 30 minute presentation.
Without further ado, here are your WordCamp SLC speakers!
Jo Murgel
When he’s not in front of a computer, he’s behind the lens of a camera and building furniture for his five fur babies.
Velda (supernovia)
Chris David Miles
Gina Marie Zanutto
Gina Marie Zanutto is a young media professional with experience in journalism, marketing, publishing, and business. Her background is in mass communication, project management, qualitative research, and event planning. She is ambitious, organized and intelligent with a rich international history. Gina is originally from Chicago, IL. Her bachelor’s degree is from the Manship School at Louisiana State University, and her master’s degree is from the University of Tampere, Finland. She completed her thesis research at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto, Canada.
Previously employed by Microsoft, she is currently working and residing in Denver, CO as a marketing executive in the data center sector. She maintains more than 20 active WordPress sites and has built more than 50 while moonlighting as an independent contractor.
Ride the Lightning! Flash talks are coming to WCSLC
I’ve teased it for the last couple weeks but we’re officially announcing it today, WordCamp Salt Lake City will have lightning talks!
For those of you who don’t know what a lightning talk is, or need a refresher, lightning talks (or flash talks) are short presentations that are usually only a couple minutes long and typically cover one specific idea or topic. In a WordPress context, it might be this cool plugin you discovered (or wrote!) that you want to show off. Or it might be a story about that one time your site was hacked and how you dealt with it.
There are different flavors of lightning talks as well, including Ignite Talks, which are strictly defined as 5 minutes and 20 slides long, with the slides automatically advancing every 15 seconds.
What I like about lightning talks is that they can be very laid back and casual — much more so than a traditional presentation. They can use slides, or not, and can be used as an opportunity to demo something really quickly, like how NPM works and what it does. One pro-tip I learned about lightning talks is to put very little text on your slides — or none at all! You don’t have enough time to read it, and your audience will be trying to listen to you speak while reading the slide which means they’ll end up retaining less information.
How it works
Now that you know what lightning talks are, let’s talk about how they are going to work at WordCamp SLC.
- Lightning talks will be no more than 5 minutes long. They will be timed and you will get kicked off the stage if you go over.
- There will be no time for questions, so be sure to include your Twitter handle or email in your presentation so people can ask you questions later.
- There will be two rounds of 3 lightning talks with a 5 minute break between them for a total of 6 lightning talks.
- Talks can be on any subject but will be loosely grouped into “general WordPress stuff”, “WordPress development” and “business”.
- The submission deadline for lightning talks is August 13.
- All lightning talk speakers will receive the same benefits as other WordCamp speakers, namely free admission and an invitation to the speaker dinner on September 22nd.
If you didn’t get a chance to submit a talk, or your talk wasn’t accepted, here’s your chance to still take the stage and present your idea. It’s especially great for people who are new to public speaking and want to dip their toes in the water without having to prepare a full-length talk. We’ll especially be looking for lightning talks that are:
- original or presented in a unique way
- fit into one of the three general “categories” of general/user, development, and business/entrepreneur
- can easily be presented within the time limit
- present a new idea, technology or trend that is emerging in your realm of expertise
- by speakers who haven’t presented before at WordCamp Salt Lake City
- by speakers who are part of an underrepresented or marginalized group (people of color, LGBTQ, refugees, Joomla! users, etc.)
- fun!
Submit your lightning talk!
Update: Lightning talk submissions are now closed. Check out our lineup of lightning talk speakers and let us know if you’d like us to do lightning talks next year!
Resources
Still feeling nervous? Check out these resources for more information and some ideas about the format. And don’t worry! Lightning talks are fun and casual and low pressure (even if the time limit seems like a lot of pressure). If in doubt, submit your idea!
WordCamp SLC Speaker Announcements: Round 3!
Speaker submissions are now closed (although stay tuned for another announcement in the next couple weeks — there may yet be a chance for you to present a lightning talk if you didn’t get a chance to get a talk submitted and still want to speak) but we’re still running through our awesome speaker lineup. Make sure to grab your tickets — the wcslc2017-earlybird promo code is valid through the middle of August!
Tevya Washburn
He’s been building websites almost exclusively on WordPress since that time. Soon after, he decided to make these side projects into a business. He and his small team at Fiddler Online have now handcrafted over 100 unique WordPress websites, and actively maintain and manage 60+ of them.
Tevya is the founder and lead organizer of the Boise WordPress Meetup and hopes to one day help take his home state of Idaho off the list of a few remaining states that have not yet hosted a WordCamp.
Chris Reynolds
When not coding, he may be found chanting for Utah’s own Major League Soccer team, Real Salt Lake.
Susan C. Daniero
Founder and President of Materiell and NeatlyPressed. Materiell has designed and developed WordPress websites for enterprise, government, and education clients throughout the U.S. since 2011.
NeatlyPressed provides comprehensive WordPress site support services, code reviews and audits, and site migrations.
Susan loves coffee, deadlines, snow skiing, Park City, UT, her dog, friends, and family. (not necessarily in that order!)
Garth Mortensen
Dhanushka Samarakoon
Joelle Reeder
Once upon a time, I was an an award-winning blogger, and I am also co-author of the book, “The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie” (Wiley & Sons Publishing) and have spoken on panels at industry events such as SXSW Interactive and appeared in several publications, podcasts and radio programs, including Entrepreneur Magazine, BlogTalk Radio and The Derek & Romaine Show.
I’m a retrophile who sings jazz, and a brunch enthusiast on a quest for the perfect bottomless mimosa.
Natalie Osborne
Natalie began her career in early 2000’s working tech support and product development at one of the largest virtual-shared hosting companies. She rode out the first boom-bust of the DotCom era working in front-end production for some big-named online companies that you’ve probably never heard of now: HotelNet, Invite Internet, and KBKids.com (now eToys). Most notably was her tenure at MLB.com (Major League Baseball). After seven years of producing online campaigns for baseball clubs, she left the comfort of a pension, 401k and health insurance plan to start her own small web dev agency – WONDERBUILD.com.
Natalie chose WordPress as her platform of choice for a variety of reasons and credits the success of her business to the WordPress community.
Speaker deadline approaching! Get your talks in!
Due to an amazing combination of excellent speaker submissions and invited guests, we’ve already got almost a full WordCamp SLC speaker roster! We’ve gotten so many great submissions, even with three full tracks, it’s hard to fit everyone in! We’re preparing to send out the final round of acceptances for the final 6 slots and will then get in touch with potential backup speakers. That means we’re going to have a schedule finalized long before the originally announced speaker submission date of August 13.
Now is your chance to get your submission in!
Don’t wait. If you are thinking about speaking at WordCamp SLC, submit your idea. We’re happy to work with you to brainstorm a topic, flesh out a description or otherwise help you make your voice heard. We are trying our best to have a diverse range of speakers and topics and yours could just be the one we need to fill in the gaps.
The deadline for speaker submissions is July 16. That gives you about a week and a half to get your talk in. Get cracking!
WordCamp SLC 2017 Speaker Announcements: Round Two!
Continuing with our ongoing speaker announcements, we’re delighted to include the illustrious Lisa Sabin-Wilson as our keynote speaker. Lisa is well known in the WordPress community and is the author of the WordPress for Dummies series. She’s flying to Utah for the first time from her home in Wisconsin and we’re thrilled to welcome her!
There are still tickets available (and one or two speaker slots), so make sure to get yours with promo code wcslc2017-earlybird. And now, on with the announcements!
Keynote Speaker: Lisa Sabin-Wilson
In this role, she provides the leadership, management, and vision necessary to ensure WebDevStudios has the proper operational controls, administrative and reporting procedures, and people systems in place to effectively grow the organization and to ensure financial strength and operating efficiency.
Prior to her role with WebDevStudios, Lisa operated her own freelance business for 10 years, starting in 2003, providing custom design and development services to her WordPress clients.
Lisa is a subject matter authority on WordPress and is the For Dummies™ brand franchise author on all things WordPress due to her extensive experience and knowledge on the platform and shares it as the author of several WordPress-related books, including the best-selling WordPress For Dummies.
Lisa is a regular public speaker at national events on topics such as: WordPress, Development, Design, CSS and Social Media. You can find her on Twitter @LisaSabinWilson.
Clarence Bowman
Michael Sheen and Angie Fenimore
Michael Sheen with Dandelion Platform Design has over 15 years of experience in marketing and branding, and web and graphic design. Michael has worked with NYTimes Bestselling Authors, world-renowned artists and coaches, and worldwide companies to establish and expand their unique online presence. Michael was the Technical Director for the emPOWR Film Festival for the Parliament of the World’s Religions.
Joseph Stevenson
Mike Selander
Obsessive over QA, testing and code standards, Mike is also quite passionate about publishing, front-end performance, photography, and the great outdoors.
Tyrel Kelsey
WordCamp speaker Scott Deluzio mentioned in Post Status footnotes
Just noticed this today as I looked at my (several days old) latest Post Status email:
Accountant Scott Deluzio has developed WP1099, a plugin that automates filing 1099-MISC forms for site owners who are running affiliate programs or an online marketplace. This niche plugin came into being after conversations Scott had with Pippin Williamson, Cory Miller, and Andrew Norcross.
The Post Status newsletter is an exclusive email for Post Status members by Brian Krogsgard and is always an excellent source of WordPress news (in addition to Post Status itself), so it’s always fun to see yourself, or people you know, featured in his features and footnotes. Congrats Scott and come hear him talk at WordCamp Salt Lake City about, what else, “Taxes for Techies“!
Announcing our first round of WordCamp SLC Speakers!
I’m so excited to be announcing our speaker lineup for WordCamp SLC 2017. We’re putting together an amazing mix of locals you may know from the Utah WordPress meetups around the valley, some amazing individuals that I’ve personally worked with over the years (including some names you might recognize) and some newcomers to WordCamp SLC. We’re still accepting speaker applications for the time being, so if you’d like to throw your hat in the ring, please submit your talk, but time is running out and slots are filling up!
Buckle your seatbelts and grab your tickets (using the wcslc2017-earlybird promo code, natch) for these amazing WordPressers!
Andy Johnson
For those of you who are WordCamp SLC regulars, you might recognize Andy as being “that guy with the cool sketch notes”. Example:
.@cdils "Decisions not Options" 💣🙄 blew my mind. Loved it! 🍧🍦#wcslc @wcslc #sketchnotes pic.twitter.com/UV37dS1p9Y
— Andy Johnson (@3leftturns) September 10, 2016
We’re thrilled to see him take the center stage this year! 😄
Theresa Smith
She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication studies and a certificate in graphic and web design from Boston University’s Center for Digital Imaging Arts. She works in the Adobe Creative Suite, WordPress, and Drupal and enjoys helping organizations and businesses find the best solutions for their technical and communication needs.
She owns a CrossFit gym and primarily specializes in creating fitness-related websites. Because of her experience as a gym owner and her technical and design background, she has found a new specialty in helping other gym owners put their best foot forward in their online presence.
Scott DeLuzio
Carrie Forde
After moving back to California, Carrie had an opportunity to pursue her passion, and enrolled in the Graphic & Interactive Design program at Foothill College where she learned about the graphic design process, and how to properly write HTML and CSS. Before graduating from her program, Carrie created her first theme from scratch on the Genesis framework, and realized that developing on WordPress is what she wanted to do for a living.
When she’s not doing front-end development, you can find Carrie at home cuddling with her four cats K2, Whitney, Minnie, and Paul; enjoying a latte or cold brew at a nearby coffee shop; or exploring the greater San Francisco Bay Area with her husband Darren.
John Hawkins
John is a huge fan of the community aspect of WordPress and loves to give back in whatever ways he can. He founded the Las Vegas WordPress meetup group and was its lead organizer for 4+ years. He’s also a frequent presenter at the meetup and at WordCamp conferences around the country.
John lives just outside of Las Vegas with his wife and two grown children. When he’s not working, John enjoys doing CrossFit and is a CrossFit Level 1 trainer. If you meet him at a conference, there’s a good chance he’ll challenge you to do some burpees with him.
John is returning to WordCamp Salt Lake City after a five year absence and we’re thrilled to have him back!