Event Day Details

Announcements

Tomorrow is the big day and we’re excited to see all of you! Just a reminder we’ll be at Impact Hub SLC, 150 State St #1, Salt Lake City, UT 84111, and registration opens at 8am with opening remarks at 9am.

For those of you driving there is parking on the south side of the block near the Carl’s Jr., or one block north at City Creek. Or you can park at the Inter-modal Hub, 300 S 600 W, and ride Trax over to the event for free.

For those taking public transit there are Trax stops, Gallivan Plaza Station and City Center Station, which are both a six minute walk from the event.

Impact Hub
Impact Hub (red), Parking (purple), Trax (green)

Bagging conference shirts this year

Announcements

TL;DR? If you hate the swag this year, blame me. If you love it? YAY!

Overheard: “WordCamp shirts last year were the literal worst.”
Also overheard: “Last year’s shirts were my favorite! I wear mine all the time.”

Personal taste is tough when you’re dealing with a hundred or two persons. Add in weird sizing issues between various brands and, you know what? We thought it might be fun to try something else this year. Ever had a Bagito bag?

As a little back story, I used to collect reusable shopping bags whenever I’d travel. It was a cool idea: bags pack flat and are super useful away and at home. But I travel fairly often, and it was starting to become a bit of a problem. My friends threatened to intervene when they saw a 30-gallon bin in my trunk completely full of them. “But I use them so often! They wear out! They’re hard to wash, so I’ve got to have a lot of them!”

I was a literal bag lady.

Then I came across these at a meetup a few years ago. These bags are thin, soft, super compact, ultra washable, made from plastic bottles — and still big and strong enough to hold what would normally take 4-6 plastic bags at the grocery store, especially considering how most stores double-bag the heavier stuff.

2 quarts of milk, a box of cheerios, a loaf of bread, 3 cans of soup, a pound of pasta, apples, cookies, and a big jar of peanut butter? Yeah this is a tough bag. And this year’s design is about our local meetups AND WordCamp.

Slowly I started to realize I wasn’t even touching my previous collection anymore. I donated my old bags to a better cause, and now I’ve got my trunk back.

I can’t say as much for my t-shirt drawer though, which is constantly full no matter how much I try to do my version of Kondo to it.

So this year I finally convinced the WordCamp SLC team to give away bags instead of shirts. If you hate them, I’ll take all the blame. But I really hope you’ll find them as useful as I have. And if nothing else, registration and swag distribution should go *way* faster this year.

And, if you don’t like them, come help with the organizing team next year — we’ll figure something out 🙂

Either way — see you on Saturday!

Announcing our 2019 WordCamp SLC speaker lineup!

Announcements

We’re thrilled to announce our lineup of speakers for this year’s WordCamp SLC!

Brett Palmer is a software developer and says he has the best parent job of “traveling around the country watching my daughter compete in Big Mountain ski events – much more fun than dance recitals.”

Ryan Sullivan founded WP Site Care in 2012 and enjoys writing…really!

Andres Arias is a full stack developer who’s also a drummer, coffee drinker and cat lover.

Chris Reynolds is a Senior Engineer at Human Made and a loyal Utah Royals FC season ticket holder.

Velda is an artist raised by geeks and can snap her toes but has spent most of her life not knowing how to snap her fingers properly.

Dustin Nay has started a number of businesses over the years in marketing, web design and event planning, plays Dungeons & Dragons but has never broken a bone.

Dustin Olsen has been building websites based on Elegant Themes for over a decade and buckled down to pay off $45,000 in student load debt in 2 years and now teaches others how he did it.

Alex Young has a small, WordPress-centered YouTube channel called WPCasts.

Cheryl Montgomery is the web director at Oozle Media and her first website was about the Beatles, built in 1997 using Netscape Navigator.

Tyrel Kelsey runs the UtahWP meetup group and is the lead organizer of this year’s WordCamp SLC!

Ben Jenkins is the owner of Wodobo, building websites and providing training and also shares his love of making bread and, in particular, pizza with the world via his Instagram account.

Mike Adams is a system administrator, instructor, consultant and courseware author who has been playing with computers since the TI 99/4A.

You can check out everyone’s full bios on our Speakers page or check out the schedule.

Last call for speakers: Deadline September 30

Announcements

WordCamp SLC is right around the corner and we are crossing our t’s and dotting our i’s. Along with that is preparing an awesome speaker schedule for you.

To that end, we need to get all your submissions in and make our final selections. If you haven’t submitted a talk, we’d love to hear from you. We’re still looking for submissions from all experience levels and topic types — even things outside of WordPress, specifically. If you’ve never presented before, WordCamps can be an awesome place to start to flex those muscles and step outside your comfort zone in a positive and supportive environment.

The final deadline for speaker applications is at the end of this month, September 30. That gives you about a week and a half to get your idea in, so do it soon!