Saturday’s lightning sessions were fun, 5-minutes pockets of information, and we’ll be doing something similar today following lunch. We have 30-minute time blocks (one for each track) designed to let you — seriously, it could be you! — share as much quick, fun, interesting information with us as possible. Are you working on an exciting WordPress project? Do you have or use a plugin to demo that everyone should be using? Lightning sessions are where you need to be.
We’re planning to have 5-6 lightning sessions for each block, and they will correspond to the theme of each track — each track will have its own lightning session, so there will be two at a time. We need your proposals for these categories and days:
Sunday: Information and inspiration for content creators
Sunday: Tips & tricks for getting the most out of WordPress
Before you tell us your idea, there are a few rules to keep in mind. First, you have to actually be at WordCamp or at least be able to mentally control someone who is, otherwise it’s going to be difficult for your presentation to actually happen. This means that you need to already have a ticket to the event. Second, you need to be on site in the morning when we vote for sessions. Finally, lightning sessions will be 5 minutes long — that means you have to go quick. You can use a web browser on a computer we’ll provide, but to move things along you won’t be able to use your own laptop, slides, other files, etc. If you want to show something on screen, make sure it’s publicly available on the web.
Sound good? Good! We want your proposals. For those of you that are interested in speaking at WordCamps, this is a great way to get your feet wet without a full-scale talk. Please leave a comment on this post with your proposed lightning sessions and let us know what you’d like to share at WordCamp SF. Include a title and description, which track it’s intended for, and any information that will help people decide if they think it would be interesting.
Voting will take place just before Matt’s keynote and if you’re not there we won’t be able to choose your session, sorry. We’ll have the selected session proposers meet with Jane at the end of Matt’s talk so they can get setup for the after-lunch sessions.
Propose your lightning sessions in the comments now!
I’d like to propose “Zen of WordPress”. I have 20 slides setup Ignite-style (20 slides, 15 seconds each, 5 minutes exactly).
This is for the Information and Inspiration track. Zen of WordPress applies the 6 japanese zen aesthetics to WordPress and how to use them to manage their WordPress and most importantly, create and publish content without letting their tools get in the way.
Unless you’re all tired of me getting up and saying stuff, I’d be interested in doing a short session about the art of personal blogging, talking a bit about finding the inspiration to write a personal blog, and what differentiates personal blogs from other social media.
For the “Tips & tricks for getting the most out of WordPress” track, I’d like to propose a talk on how we (@ErnieAtLYD and I) have dealt with lots of mean-spirited & trollish comments on 8Asians.com, a problem I’m guessing a lot of other blogs face too. We’ll also touch on a new plugin we created, called MoodThingy.com, that seems to be helping with this problem.
If it’s possible to present a dev-ish lightning talk for today:
Title: “we built things this weekend”
Speakers: Pete Mall, Andy Nacin, Alex King, mitcho
We’re devs, so of course we’ve been hacking on stuff between (and maybe even during) sessions. This talk is just a brief dev-focused show-and-tell of “things we built between sessions in the past couple days.”
For the “Information and inspiration for content creators” track, I would love to talk about how WordPress can be used to deliver content to mobile apps (iOS specific). I will show some screenshot about how apps would look like and show the backend of WordPress installation in how the customers can use it.
This goes further then just show content what can be done with a web application. It is how to interact with content. Playing with locations and times.
I’d like to propose a lightning session called “Starting your web-based company as a WordPress newbie”.
Just some quick talking points on logical considerations for theme and plugin selection, finding answers and doing research, selecting a hosting solution, etc. For developers, there are a couple of bullet points about newbies’ pain points in the process that might be useful for figuring out good opportunities for products, plugins, etc.
I’d like to propose “Using WordPress as the center of your newspaper workflow,” or something totally less lame-ass sounding which I’ll think up later. I’d like to show people how the Bangor Daily News puts out its print edition and website using some very simple ways of connecting WordPress out to other applications. I’ll go through our workflow and demo a few plugins we use and keep it under five minutes. It can probably go in either track.
For Sunday’s “Information and inspiration for content creators” session, I’d like to propose “How to use WordPress to get your city talking.” We’ve used WordPress to build a user-generated blog where anyone in San Francisco is an author.
For the past three years, we’ve used WordPress to build MuniDiaries.com, a place for public transit riders to share their stories and lives on the bus. We use a customized theme and submission form plugin to create a curated but democratic space to share stories, photos, and videos. Stories on the bus range from the hilarious, gross, weird, to the most unexpected — we’ve even solved crime!
I hope to share some of the fun experiences we’ve had running our WordPress site.
I would like to propose a session entitled “How my life and small business are made possible by the internet, Craigslist, Yelp!, and WordPress.”
I don’t know if anyone is interested in this but I am fascinated by the fact that for a small business person in the internet age, outreach, client education, booking, referrals, research, billing, PR, accounting, etc. are all completely transformed and totally within reach for anyone. My parents did not graduate from high school or even use a typewriter, let alone a computer or the internet, so I am living a life totally foreign to what they’ve experienced in their lifetime. Cool, right?