WordCamp Portland

Bring ID for WordCamp Beer

Aaron Hockley — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:50:57 +0000

In accordance with WordCamp Portland tradition, we’ll have a couple of kegs of microbrew this weekend. Note that you’ll need to have ID showing that you’re 21 years of age or older… we won’t discriminate

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

Do it All, Have a Ball: Saturday Night

Andrea — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:13:20 +0000

As the classic Bay City Rollers song says, “after a full day of WordPress talk and geekery, there’s nothing like a libation with all your WP friends, new and old.” Luckily, you won’t have to wander far, because we’re holding our not-really-after-party* at the Eliot Center!

Plan to stick around after sessions conclude on Saturday for some tasty Full Sail beer, light snacks and all the fun you can handle. Festivities start at the end of sessions and continue until about 7:30pm.

It’s just a Saturday night.

*because, of course, there is a half-day of WP fun awaiting you on Sunday afternoon.

Slight Change to Sunday Schedule: Doors Open at 13:30

Aaron Hockley — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 05:15:26 +0000

Oh, that Murphy. On the same day that we sent an email out to attendees including the schedule, we’ve been made aware of a slight facilities issue that necessitates us changing our Sunday schedule by half an hour.

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.

Sliderocket: presentations ftw

Andrea — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 03:37:04 +0000

We’d like to thank SlideRocket for their support of WordCamp Portland at the Hawthorne Bridge level. Founded in 2007, SlideRocket’s mission is to build a better presentation experience, one that provides for every part of the presentation lifecycle and helps make great presentations.

Designed with the business user in mind, SlideRocket enables working teams to collaboratively author slide decks, manage and share a visual library of presentations slides and assets, track versions, assign user rights, automatically update content across the organization, and conduct web meetings.

Without our sponsors, none of the WordCamp Portland magic coming your way would ever be possible. Thanks, SlideRocket!

Things We Need

Andrea — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 05:14:10 +0000

Hi WordCampers! Can you believe we’re only a few days away from The Big Show? We’re stoked.

We still need some help to make this the most amazing possible event, and we’d love your help.

We have been offered the donation of some tasty soda pop from Jones Soda, but the product is in Seattle, and we have no way to get it to Portland. If any of our Seattle attendees have room in their vehicles for 15 cases of soda, we’d crown you Monarch of Soda for the duration of the event. If you can help, please email us at portland@wordcamp.org as soon as you can, or we’re going to have to go with generic from Freddies.

Also, we need a few more OLCC-licensed volunteers to serve beer. Full Sail Brewing has been kind enough to sponsor our event as a Vista Bridge sponsor, and we’ll be pouring two of their tasty brews… but we need more people to help keep us legal (and to keep the current volunteers from fainting in exhaustion, thereby cutting off our access to tasty beer). If you or anyone you know (who might be available to volunteer on Sat/Sun) has an OLCC servers license, please email us at portland@wordcamp.org as soon as you can.

Lastly, we could totally use more volunteers. We’re not able to comp tickets for volunteers this year due to budget restrictions, but it’s a proven fact that volunteering – even for 2-3 hours – at a WordCamp brings you good WordPress luck throughout the year. Plus, we’ll be really grateful. And you’ll be even amazinger than you were before. Leave a comment in this section if you can give us some of your time on Saturday or Sunday.

Thanks, everybody! Looking forward to a great time being had by all.

WebRanking: SEO in Sellwood and Worldwide

Andrea — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:09:10 +0000

WordCamp Portland would like to thank WebRanking for supporting our event as a Morrison Bridge sponsor. Founded in 1998, they’re one of Portland’s oldest Search Marketing agencies. They love WordPress because it allows an Internet novice to set up a personal blog or website, but it
is also a powerful tool that can be used to create professional corporate websites – they also love how WordPress, being free and accessible to so many people, helps level the playing field when it comes to getting online.

WebRanking’s WordPress hero is the small business owner who takes the time to implement a blog, learns the right way to do it, is committed to it, and sees success from it. They’re also fond of Michael Torbert, the author of their favorite plugin, “All in One SEO Pack.”

Thank you to WebRanking for supporting our local WordPress community by donating to WordCamp Portland!

Get your Schedule Here

Andrea — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 05:55:20 +0000

We have a schedule! It might change, subject to the vagaries of time and fate – but if you like a concrete plan, this is a good place to start.

Scott Berkun will start us off right at 9 am on Saturday, and unconference sessions will follow. After our delicious lunch, Andrew Nacin will present “something awesome” at 1:15 pm, as is his wont. Then more unconferences will roll in, bringing with them a 93% chance of inspiration and new ideas for all attendees present.

Your Not-After Party high jinks will get started after we wrap up at 5:15, at a location to be disclosed soon.

After you sleep in/go to church/play with kittens on Sunday, you won’t want to forget to come back to the Eliot Center to hear Jane Wells speak at 1:30. The final round of unconference sessions will be held, and we’ll bring the WordPress fun to a close (just for the day) at 5:15pm.

Also on the schedule page, we have compiled a list of the (many!) great ideas for unconference sessions that have been suggested or proposed. If you think there’s something missing, please hustle on over and propose a session or suggest a topic you want to learn more about.

We can’t wait until this weekend! See you there!

Featured Speaker: Jane Wells

Aaron Hockley — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:59:46 +0000

Our lineup of featured speakers will be rounded out by WordPress UX guru and former Portlander Jane Wells. Jane is a veteran of all three previous WordCamp Portland events. She has worked for Automattic for a few years and is the UX lead for WordPress core.

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.

Jetpack: the Hawthorne Bridge sponsor with cloud power

Andrea — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 03:52:11 +0000

WordCamp Portland is walking-on-sunshine grateful for the sponsorship of Jetpack, the service that allows you to supercharge WordPress with tools that help you to blog better and faster — all by activating a single plugin. Jetpack is a suite of great add-ons that are fully supported by the team behind WordPress.com.

With Jetpack…

you can get better feedback on your site’s popularity with WordPress.com Stats
you’ll never publish a typo again with After The Deadline
your readers will love the social features from Sharedaddy (including sharing posts on Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and many others)
your latest 140-character thoughts will be revealed with the Twitter Widget

Find out more, and download Jetpack at Jetpack.me - tell them WordCamp Portland sent you!

Featured Speaker: Scott Berkun

Aaron Hockley — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 01:41:12 +0000

I’m excited to announce the second of our three featured speakers for WordCamp Portland 2011. Scott Berkun will present “Lessons Learned from Blogging Every Day.” In addition to working for Automattic on the WordPress.com team, Scott is a writer and speaker whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, Wired magazine, National Public Radio, The Huffington Post and other media.

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.