WordCamp San Francisco 2011

Wow, did not expect to get more than 200 speaker proposals this year! While that slowed down the review precess a bit (about a week), I’ll start announcing speakers tomorrow. Once all the speakers are confirmed, I’ll post a schedule as well. In general, you can plan on each day running from 9-5, with registration opening at 8 and some kind of networking/happy hour at a location offsite (most likely conveniently located pub/bar) after the day has wrapped up programming.

Since there are clearly more people who feel they have something to contribute than we have hours in our 3 days at WCSF, we’ll also have some community-curated lightning talks. This will allow us to shine a spotlight on more of the great things happening in the WordPress community. I’d love to have breakout unconference sessions as well, but the venue configuration doesn’t lend itself as well to that, so in a couple of weeks check back for more info on how we’ll work the lightning session voting/selection.

Summer’s getting closer, and planning is starting to ramp up. We’ll be putting out calls for speakers and sponsors next week, but in the meantime, here’s the rough plan for WCSF weekend (subject to change). It’s basically three WordCamps in a row, and when we open ticket sales, you’ll be able to select tickets for specific days, or for the whole thing. In the past, we’ve tried to have something for everyone on one day, but the feedback we’ve received from attendees the past couple of years has shown us that people would like to have more content in their areas of interest. This format is an attempt to satisfy those requests, and should also make it possible for more people overall to attend.

Friday, August 12 – Professional Uses

The focus of this day will be large-scale, professional installations of WordPress. If you’re a using WordPress to power a professional publication, community site, application, academic network, large-scale business, government, or non-profit site, or another kind of site with similar requirements, this day is for you. Topics are likely to include scaling, multisite, BuddyPress, working with WordPress developers, security, transitioning to WordPress, case studies, and CMS-specific features. There will be sessions to appeal to a wide range of pros, including business leads, project managers, administrators, developers, sys admins, and content creators.

If there is interest, we may also try to arrange some type of activity to introduce publishers to firms and freelancers for hire, maybe something like a low-key mini-trade show or a speed dating style intro service. If this is something you think we should do, let us know in the comments.

Saturday, August 13 – Developers

Saturday’s focus is on the open source developer community that makes WordPress possible. We’ll run a core contributor training workshop for developers who would like to get involved but aren’t sure where to start or just want some guidance, and will have sessions on all kinds of development topics, including core code, plugins, themes (including some design sessions, hopefully), and APIs. This day is for the techies. Anyone who makes a living doing WordPress development — or would like to — should attend this day.

Saturday Friday, August 13 12 – First-Time Users

At a separate location on Saturday Friday, there will be a newbie workshop for people who have not yet started using WordPress, but would like to. The workshop will include setting up a live blog/site, then learning how to create content, change and edit themes, moderate comments, and understand how to use the features built into WordPress. At the end of the workshop, attendees will have a live site with a customized theme and starter content. Attending this workshop will also provide vocabulary and reference points that will make it easier for first-time users to get the most out of Sunday’s event.

Sunday, August 14 – Bloggers and Content Creators

With 40 million people using WordPress around the world, obviously bloggers and content creators are close to our hearts, and Sunday will be devoted to helping them get the most out of WordPress. We’ll have sessions to inspire, to inform, and to instruct. Tips for better writing, ideas for sprucing up your site, how-to sessions to help you get more out of WordPress (and themes and plugins), and connecting you with other WordPress users are just some of the ideas we have for sessions. What would you like to learn or see? Tell us in the comments!

Auxiliary events like parties will be announced closer to the event. A core developer summit is also being planned to take place right before WCSF, so many of the creators of WordPress will be in town for WordCamp.

We expect to open registration on June 1st.

This year, WordCamp SF is going to be bigger than it’s ever been before, with three full days of content and additional activities. Help us plan the best event possible by giving us your input! What kind of content would you expect at the official annual WordPress conference? Who do you want to see? What would make this the most awesome WordCamp SF you could imagine? We’ll accept responses to the survey all weekend, so we have plenty to take into consideration on Monday when we start putting things together. Your input will be greatly appreciated — and if you know people who ought to attend WCSF this year, please give them the link to this post so they can weigh in, too!

This survey will remain open until 11:59pm Sunday night, San Francisco time.