Bring your ID if you’d like to partake in a brew.

The short version is that we’re starting half an hour later, with doors opening at 1:30pm. See the schedule page for the full weekend schedule. Sorry for any inconvenience this change might bring.

We’re still ironing out the exact topic for Jane’s talk and will update this post once we have it finalized, but I can pretty much guarantee it will be interesting.

I’ve seen Scott speak previously, he’s an engaging and informative speaker and I’m really looking forward to hearing him share with our Portland audience.

Learn more about Scott on his website, or follow him on Twitter.

As I look at the current state of things, we have about 135 tickets remaining.

There’s some great discussion going on at the open thread for discussion topic ideas.

As I browse the list of registered attendees and look at the names of other sponsors and organizers who aren’t yet on that page, I see:

• multiple WordPress core contributors
• WordCamp organizers from across the country
• authors who produce great content, developers who write plugins and themes, and designers who make things look and work smoothly
• folks like John Hawkins* and Todd Huish who build websites for Chris Brogan
• Tantek Çelik, a web standards guru and microformats pioneer

* speaking of Mr. Hawkins, check out his article WordCamp Portland – Round 3 in which he explains why (as a 20+ WordCamp veteran) he’s excited to travel 750 miles to come to WordCamp Portland.

Unconference sessions can spring up in one of two fashions:

• An attendee may come to WordCamp with a desire to speak or lead a discussion about a particular topic for which they are knowledgeable
• An attendee may come with questions about a particular topic and be seeking answers.

With those two options in mind, we’d like to offer up this post to spark some discussion (please leave a comment below) about topics or questions that might be great WordCamp sessions.

“It is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for
people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense
event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants.”

Or in more detail:

“The unconference is an adhoc gathering shaped by those who attend
with the sessions and agenda being driven by the participants. The
framework is defined in advance, but the sessions are organized and
produced by the attendees. In other words, instead of a full agenda
with sessions and speakers clearly determined in advance, you start
with a blank grid containing times on one axis and rooms / locations
on the other axis; lunches and any other common activities are often
added to the grid in advance to provide some basic infrastructure for
the event. You never know what discussions, demos, and other interactions
to expect before the event, but you can count on it being an
interesting time!”
…
“Unconferences on the other hand may tend to attract people who enjoy
shaping their environment and who may value networking and
conversation more than presentation. You become a participant, instead
of just an attendee. Sessions are proposed, refined, and often
combined as the event progresses and conversations evolve. I also find
more networking opportunities at unconferences, since many sessions
are discussion based rather than a single person giving a
presentation.”

Thanks to Dawn for allowing me to republish her explanations; this should clear things up for those who have yet to experience the benefits an unconference can bring when so many interesting people are together.

In order to spur some pre-event discussion, tomorrow there will be a blog post here that can be used as an open thread for discussion about topics folks might want to discuss at WordCamp Portland.

Andrew Nacin is a core developer for WordPress and is an active participant in the WordPress community. He is involved with development tasks including bug fixes, feature development, and wrangling contributions from other developers. He also participates in various mailing lists and forums and has been known to attend many WordCamp events.

We don’t have the exact topic for his talk, but I believe we can divulge that it’s being billed as “hint = something awesome”. Having seen Nacin speak a few times I have no doubt he’ll live up to that expectation.

Learn more about Andrew Nacin and come see him speak at WordCamp Portland.

We’ll be having a few featured speakers throughout the weekend. These will be pre-selected speakers on topics that appeal to a wide audience of WordPress users. Most of the rest of the event will be in an unconference format which allows attendees to bring ideas for topics for which they have expertise or for which they’d like to find some answers.

For more information, see our Speakers page.

We solicited suggestions through the first week of August and used community input as a factor in selecting our featured speakers. Thanks to all who weighed in!

WordCamp Portland will be held September 17-18th at the Eliot Center in downtown Portland.

Details on registration, the format & schedule, and sponsorship opportunities will be announced shortly.

The lead organizer this year will be Andrea Middleton, a former Portlander who’s in the midst of moving back to our city and she has plenty of blog and WordCamp experience. She’s currently working with myself (Aaron Hockley) along with a few previous WordCamp Portland folks; we’re putting together the pieces to bring another great WordPress/blogging conference to the Portland area.

We wanted to get the date on everyone’s calendar; we’ll have more to announce shortly and you’ll be seeing some big changes on this website. If you’re interested in volunteering to help us out, drop a note to Andrea at portland@wordcamp.org.