Thanks To Our Pillar Sponsors!

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We want to thank these sponsors for stepping up and helping WordCamp Seattle be a success. As you know, our WordCamp would not happen if not for them.

This years Pillar sponsors.

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Bluehost has been a WordPress partner since 2005 and powers over one million WordPress sites. Their goal is to provide outstanding hosting services and customer support for the best possible price. Bluehost is also constantly innovating and upgrading their services and infrastructure at no additional cost to their customers. Join the millions of other website owners that have already chosen Bluehost and see how they can help you with your site.

You can learn more about Bluehost by visiting their site or follow them on Twitter.

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From its inception in 1998, (mt) Media Temple has been on a mission to help people and businesses succeed online.

Over 125,000 customers in 100 countries now rely on Media Temple’s tools for domain registration, web hosting, business applications, virtual servers, and other cloud services to power more than 1.5 million websites. With 200 dedicated, U.S.-based employees, Media Temple takes pride in our 24/7 customer support. Our customers range from everyday people to top bloggers, creative professionals, and small businesses, as well as large enterprises like Starbucks, Adidas, Samsung, and Toyota.

You can learn more about Media Temple by visiting their site or follow them on Twitter.

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WiredTree provides Managed VPS and Managed Dedicated Servers to WordPress users worldwide from our Chicago-based data center and offices. Every WT server is backed by 24×7 telephone support, ticket support with 15 minute average response times, and is fully managed and monitored by WiredTree to maximize uptime and minimize frustration. All servers come ready-to-run with cPanel/WHM and are optimized and security hardened with firewall and anti-spam out of the box. With experience in SSD technology, MariaDB, Memcached, WordPress plugins, server optimization, and LiteSpeed Web server, WiredTree can take your site’s performance to the next level.

You can learn more about WiredTree by visiting their site or follow them on Twitter.

Keynote Speakers

We’re happy to announce that we’ve confirmed two great speakers to keynote WordCamp Seattle this year. Siobhan McKeown will be kicking things off in the morning, and Andrew Nacin will close us out at the end of the day.

Siobhan McKeown is a Word Ninja at Audrey Capital where she writes about WordPress, deals with documentation, and has nightmares about the Codex. She’s currently working on an open source book about the history of WordPress. She spends her days delving into the brains of its early developers and community members. When she’s not worrying about the finer details of forking and the GPL, she’s helping out with the project’s future by wrangling WordPress’ documentation.

Andrew Nacin is a Lead Developer of WordPress, squashing bugs, mentoring contributors, and spearheading new development — including leading the 3.5, 3.7, and 3.9 releases. He has strong feelings about the core philosophies of WordPress, among them “decisions, not options” and “designing for the majority” — software should be opinionated in lieu of burdening the user. In his first appearance at WordCamp Seattle since 2011, he’ll be sharing what the community has been working on, where we are headed, and how we’re going to get there. Bring your questions as there will be plenty of time for discussion.

Livestreaming WordCamp Seattle

Will you be out of town on June 28th? Or do you live too far away to attend in person? Or maybe you’re afraid that being in a room with 700 other WordPress nerds will be so much awesome that you’ll pee you pants?!?!

Well, have no fear! We’ll be livestreaming WordCamp Seattle again this year, so you can enjoy all of the WordPressy goodness from the comfort of your own home. And best of all, it’s free!

If you are able to make it in person, though, we’ve got lots of extra goodies in store for you:

  • Workshops! We’ve got a whole room this year dedicated to helping you get yours hands dirty in all sorts of topics, led by an experienced guide who can give you personalized assistance.
  • Networking! Any seasoned WordCamp attendee can tell you that the sessions are only half of the experience. Building relationships with other attendees and volunteers is one of the main benefits of a WordCamp.
  • Food! I think this one is pretty self-explanatory 😉
  • The after party! Enjoy some social time with your peers and colleagues.
  • Contributor Day! Get involved with the teams that are building WordPress and its community every day. And not just by writing code, either; you can contribute by writing documentation, translating WordPress into other languages, helping users to solve problems they’ve having, and a variety of other ways.
  • Swag! Bring home a little piece of WordCamp Seattle 2014.

 

 

Child Care will be available for WordCamp Seattle

We are pleased to announce that we have made arrangements with the Child Learning and Care Center to provide child care during WordCamp this year!

The Child Learning and Care Center is located inside University Congregational United Church of Christ, just across the street from UW’s campus. They will offer child care for children aged 15 months to 8 years, from 8:00am to 5:30pm. They have lots of yummy food planned (and can accommodate allergies and special diets) and lots of fun activities, including art projects, books, board games, and some outdoor excursions.

Cost for child care for the day will be $100. Parents will need to fill out registration forms and pay the Child Care and Learning Center directly.

We will make the registration forms and payment information available when WordCamp tickets go on sale.

Child Care Survey

We are hoping we can provide child care for WordCamp this year to make it easier for families with young children to attend. As we make arrangements with child care facilities, we need some information about whether people are interested in using child care, and how much they are willing to pay.

If you have children and are interested in attending WordCamp, please fill out our child care survey!

Speaker Coaching with Scott Berkun

We are very lucky to be able to offer a wonderful opportunity to WordCamp speakers this year: a speaker coaching session led by Scott Berkun. Scott is a best-selling author and speaker. In addition to his books, he has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, Wired magazine, Forbes, USA Today, Wired, Fast Company, National Public Radio, The Huffington Post and other media. He has spoken at hundreds of events – in fact, he gave the keynote at WordCamp Seattle 2012.

Among his books are Confessions of a Public Speaker, which offers entertaining and practical advice for people who want to speak in public, and The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work, about the year Berkun spent working for Automattic (the company that runs WordPress.com) and how Automattic functions with a 100% distributed workforce.

This is an amazing opportunity for speakers to learn from a veteran speaker and coach. Speakers of every experience level will learn something valuable from Scott. We are very grateful to him for offering this opportunity to our speakers!

Speaker Brainstorming and Confidence-building Events

Are you thinking of giving a talk at WordCamp, but you are quite sure what to talk about?

Do you want to talk at WordCamp, but you’re nervous about public speaking?

Then come join us for our Talking About WordPress events! At these events, we will brainstorm ideas for talks you can give at WordCamp or at our regular WordPress meetups. We will generate outlines for our talks, and even get a little bit of practice speaking in front of a small group.

Please note that one of these events is for women only. Women face a few extra obstacles when speaking at tech events, so we’ll discuss those obstacles and how to overcome them.

We hope to see you at these meetups!

April 1, 7pm-9pm: Women Talking About WordPress
April 2, 7pm-9pm: Talking About WordPress