Survey Results

We published a survey to ask people what they would like to see at WordCamp this year. Here’s a summary of the results: if you’re thinking about speaking at WordCamp, this is a great starting place to get ideas!

Topics people want to learn more about (topics marked with an asterisk were requested multiple times):

  • *How to choose plug-ins and templates that will best serve my blog
  • Content strategy, marketing and business
  • Marketing your theme business
  • Theme design
  • *Responsive design
  • Integrating the theme customizer in your themes
  • *Best coding practices
  • What’s new with core WP
  • *Innovative web solutions using WP (not blogs)
  • Custom multiple loops, Pages and posts that do not need the loop.
  • Starting a WordPress based business
  • Working with / contracting Photographers
  • Best Practices in “training” new clients how to use their site
  • Best Practices in selling to people with horrible sites (out of date, poorly designed, etc)
  • *Creating Membership sites
  • Maintaining a WordPress site
  • Moving blog from WordPress.com to self-hosted
  • *SEO
  • Step-by-step talks on development that start absolutely from scratch
  • *Security in WordPress
  • Largely unknown uses of WordPress that are inherent in core (like Post Formats, or available WP Config lines of code that are being under utilized, and things that can be ‘turned on’ or ‘off’ easily to enhance the functionality and experience of just a core install – no plugins)
  • *Multisite
  • *Theme frameworks
  • *Starter themes
  • *Running a WP business, marketing, getting clients
  • launching wordpress sites from stage/local to live
  • how to get my wordpress site lean and fast, not bloated
  • Rich snippets for non-developers
  • business planning and why you need to set goals before starting a website design/build.
  • Git and WordPress development
  • wordpress core functions every new dev should know
  • enqueue files/scripts and how to clean up plugins that bastardize the function
  • combine/minify includes like JS and CSS
  • *SASS and/or Compass
  • *WP-CLI
  • Content creation
  • Social Media
  • *How to pick a good hosting company
  • Does managing your blog from a mobile device make sense?
  • Non-programmer’s guide to applying CSS to achieve desired effects
  • How to create cookie-cutter WordPress websites
  • Non-Core Contributing (theme reviews? documentation?)
  • Third Party Server Best Practices for WordPress
  • WordPress Small Business Best Practices
  • WordPress in Seattle
  • How WordPress integrates to enhance User Experience
  • HTML coding
  • Manipulation of themes, customization
  • Best plugins, most used, popular
  • WP as an app platform
  • how to run a dev agency
  • Using your blog as a resume to start a career
  • frameworks versus themes
  • are plugins good or bad?
  • modern design trends
  • important elements of business sites
  • beginner troubleshooting
  • How to leverage the built in JS libraries within WordPress
  • Using WP as a RESTful backend
  • integrating with other platforms
  • Logo Design for Web Developers

We asked what formats people prefer, and by far the most popular choices were lecture with Q&A and workshop.

If you have knowledge to share about any of these topics, head over to our call for speakers page and submit your talk!

What would you like to see at WordCamp Seattle?

As the organizing team starts getting into the nitty-gritty planning of WordCamp Seattle, we’d like to collect some feedback from the community to help guide our decisions and make sure this year’s WordCamp delivers the things that matter most to you.

If you could give us a few minutes of your time to answer this short survey we’d really appreciate it. 

And if you’d like to get more involved, sign up to volunteer!

Call for Speakers Now Open!

Our Call for Speakers is now open! We will accept proposals until April 18, 2014.

We know we have a really knowledgeable community, so we’re excited to see the topics you’re interested in presenting this year.

If you’re thinking, “Wow, I’d really love to speak at WordCamp, but I don’t know what to talk about!” we’ve got you covered! Later this month, we will host two brainstorming events where we can come up with ideas, start to outline talks, and even practice giving short talks. We also have a survey to find out what topics people want to hear about: we’ll publish the results of that survey soon!

If you’re thinking, “But I’ve never spoken in front of a big group before and that makes me nervous!” fear not! We are also planning some speaker training events, so if you’re nervous about speaking, you’ll get a chance to practice and get some expert advice before you speak.

If you’re thinking, “I wish I could do something other than just stand in front of the room and talk,” then we’re ahead of you on that one too. This year, we are open to a variety of formats for your talks. We will have a workshop track, where you can guide your audience through a task or project. You can also facilitate a panel discussion, group discussion, or series of lighting talks.

So what’s stopping you? Go submit your talk idea(s)!

Officially Announcing WordCamp Seattle 2014

It is with great pleasure that we announce WordCamp Seattle is officially on the calendar for 2014!

WordCamp Seattle will be Saturday, June 28th, 2014 at The HUB, a fantastic building on The University of Washington campus, and the same venue WordCamp was held last year. We received rave reviews of the venue from last year’s attendees, and are very excited to be back for another year.

hub_sw_entrance

You can find more details about the venue on the location page of this site.

Follow WordCampSeattle on twitter or subscribe using the form in the sidebar to stay up to date on the most recent news. We’ll be keeping you posted on all the details over the coming months, including speaker submissions, ticket sales and more!

Cheers!
Your Organizing Team