Category Archives: News

A Hack Day to Remember

I’m still jazzed about last year’s hack day at WordCamp San Francisco. What an amazing event! It’s still an inspiration to me. It taught me that when people come together to work on something they love, extraordinary things happen. It was by far the most productive, energetic, and well-attended hack day I’ve seen: a great way to wrap up the conference.

wcsf12 dev day

Alive with the energy of the day, I vividly remember how fantastic it felt to be surrounded by both old friends and new faces—some people I’d previously only known by a WordPress.org username—as we hacked together on the default theme for WordPress. Of the many tables and rooms at the space, we were fifteen people in a corner: designers, developers, testers, documenters—all contributing and making the software better (plus two more joined us via IRC). Kudos to the community for making a contributor day a priority, and for the organizers for making the logistics go smoothly.

Let’s make it even better this year. See you there.

Say hello to our first round of speakers!

The WCSF lineup is taking shape: say hello to our first round of speakers!

We’ll be announcing more speakers over the next few weeks, but these WordPress whizzes are confirmed for WordCamp San Francisco 2013. Whether you’re a themer, mobile engineer, hopeful core contributor, one-person (or 100-person) WordPress shop, pro blogger, or just registered your first site, their sessions will take your WordPress skills from awesome to awesomer.

  • Alison Barrett: Actions and Filters in Core
  • Andy Skelton: How pcntl_fork() Can Save Us
  • Carrie Dils: Collaboration Not Competition
  • Grant Landram: Bridging the Chasm: Working with Non-Technical Stakeholders
  • Helen Hou-Sandi: Custom Tailoring the WordPress Admin Experience
  • Ian Stewart: The Future of WordPress Themes
  • Josh Broton: Sticks, Spit & Duct tape: Advanced RWD Layout Techniques
  • Lucy Beer: How to Trick Out Your WordPress Site Without a Lick o’ Code
  • Michele Mizejewski: Positive User Experience: The Power of P2
  • Mika Epstein: Don’t Use WordPress Multisite
  • Nikolay Bachiyski: Writing Code as User Experience Design
  • Shannon Smith: Big in Japan: A Guide for Themes and Internationalization
  • Siobhan McKeown: The History of WordPress
  • Stephanie Leary: Content Strategy for WordPress
  • Tammie Lister: Beyond the Default – Explorations and Experiments in BuddyPress
  • Will Norris: How WordPress Helped Me Learn Android Development

And of course, Matt Mullenweg will give his annual State of the Word talk — your chance to learn about what’s next for WordPress and ask questions at the source.

We’ll be posting more information about each of these speakers and their sessions in the next few days, with more confirmed speakers coming next week. Get excited! (We are.)

Still haven’t decided whether you’re attending? There are still a few General Admission tickets left; snag yours today.

WordPress (After)Party All the Time

Once WordCamp San Fancisco is over, the party will just be starting!

Join many other WordCamp attendees at Automattic’s brand new office space at 132 Hawthorne Street, in SoMa. Automattic is a 30 minute walk from the Mission Bay Conference Center. There are also buses and trains to take you most of the way there. Consult the MUNI website to plan your trip using public transit. Of course, you can always try out Uber or Lyft, or cab your way over as well. If you choose to walk, on your way, you’ll pass through South Park and South Beach district of San Francisco, AKA “Startup-Central.”

Music, snacks, and tasty beverages will be provided. Simply bring yourself (and your WCSF Badge!) over to the space for a fantastic time. We can’t wait to see you there!

When: Saturday, July 27th, 7PM – 11PM
Where: Automattic, 132 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
What: Drinks, Snacks, Amazing People, Fun Times, Valhalla

PSGuests must have their WCSF badge or a handstamp (available at registration) to get in.
PPSAll ages welcome, must have valid ID (over 21 yrs) to drink alcohol.

Last call for General Admission tickets!

Seems like you’re just as excited as we are — our General Admission tickets sold out even more quickly than we’d anticipated. But if you’ve been on the fence, there’s still a chance to get your ticket to WCSF!

We crunched some numbers and are making 200 additional General Admission tickets available. They’re available as of right now, so head over to the ticketing page to get yours today.

Once these tickets are gone, they’re gone. We won’t be releasing any more General Admission tickets — we can only accommodate so many people before we all get too close for comfort!

Seats for the live stream are still available, as are microsponsorships, but this is your last call for General Admission. Get ‘em while the getting’s good!

All The Details about Contribute Day 2013

The Contribute Day takes place on July 28th at Automattic’s awesome New Offices, located at 132 Hawthorne Street, in SoMa, off Folsom Street, between 2nd and 3rd.

We’re looking forward to having so many great WordPress contributors of all disciplines in town for WordCamp San Francisco. If you’re a WordPress developer we’d love to have you come hack with us. AND, there are plenty of other ways to contribute to WordPress as well. Current and would-be contributors are welcome to attend and work on any number of efforts on the WordPress project, from writing core patches to subtitling WordPress.tv videos. If you can’t attend in person, hop onto the #wordpress-dev IRC channel to help out from afar!

People who come to this event will be 1000% focused on contributing to or learning how to contribute to the WordPress project. Veterans and future veterans are welcome.

It’s altogether possible roving “press gangs” (they’re really friendly, though) will be around to help the newbies and lead fun and exciting “How to Contribute” sessions.

Basically, if you’ve been looking for an opening to learn how you can add your contribution to WordPress, this is the perfect opportunity!

The Specifics

When: 11am-6pm
Who: Everyone who wants to contribute to WordPress core, Documentation, and more
Where: Automattic, 132 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
Food: We’ll be sure to keep you fed and watered.

If you have questions about Contribute Day please contact us. See you there!

Spread the Word: You can still buy a ticket for WordCamp SF!

Ticket sales have been strong, and the attendee list is shaping up to be one of the best of WordCamp San Francisco. There are still tickets on sale, but that won’t last! Now is the time to get your travel worked out and your accommodations booked. In the past when we’ve arranged hotel room blocks for WordCamp SF, attendees reported finding better deals using their favorite discount hotel room booking site. Since that seems to work out better (and cheaper!) for everyone, we’re not reserving room blocks this year. If you want to be close, look for hotels located within a few blocks of Market Street in downtown San Francisco with easy access to the MUNI trains that go directly to the WCSF venue as well as BART stations for transfer to/from the airport. If you are unfamiliar with the area read hotel reviews for information about the neighborhood or ask a local. There is great variance in ambiance from block to block in the South-of-Market and Downtown areas.

We want everyone to be able to enjoy WordCamp San Francisco in real time, so you can purchase a ticket to the the WordCamp Live Stream and participate over social media with the #wcsf hashtag. You can choose your Live Stream ticket with or without a WordCamp San Francisco 2013 T-shirt.

We’re counting the days until we get to see you guys in SF!

PS: We’re finalizing the details for the WCSF afterparty. Stay tuned here for the details!

WordCamp San Francisco Tickets Available!

It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: WordCamp San Francisco tickets are now on sale!

Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. You already have WordCamp San Francisco on your calendar (right?) so buying your ticket is just a formality (but a necessary one!).

There are two types of tickets available: General Admission and Live Stream.

  • The General Admission ticket ($40) gets you access to all the fabulous sessions at WordCamp San Francisco at Mission Bay Conference Center, two days of lunches and snacks, and a super-cool WCSF T-shirt.
  • The Live Stream ticket ($20 with a T-shirt, $10 without) lets you enjoy the conference online from wherever you are in the world. You supply the internet, we supply the sessions.

$200 microsponsorships are also available for showing some extra WordPress love, and include one General Admission ticket.

Click here to get your tickets for WordCamp San Francisco. You can also click the orange “tickets” button above, or the “tickets” tab on the top menu.

WordCamp San Francisco happens Friday, July 26 and Saturday, July 27, 2013 at Mission Bay Conference Center, with Contribute Day on Sunday, July 28. Tickets are non-refundable — and limited, so buy yours today!

Just two more days until we open WCSF ticket sales!

Don’t forget WordCamp San Francisco tickets go on sale this Thursday, May 23, at 10am Pacific! We’ll be releasing 700 General Admission tickets — valid for attending WordCamp San Francisco in person for both days, Friday and Saturday (July 26-27). In addition to the General Admission tickets we will be offering 50 Microsponsorship tickets. Microsponsorship is a new sponsorship level for those in the WordPress community who want to give back a little something but aren’t in a position to sign up for a traditional sponsorship package. Microsponsorship includes one General Admission ticket.

Tickets are $40 for the 2-day General Admission pass and $200 for the Microsponsorship. We will not be offering single day passes. Please note that we can not offer refunds at this time. If you find after purchasing your ticket that you won’t be able to attend after all, you can give your ticket to someone else or consider the expense a donation to the WordPress Foundation.

Tickets will be sold right here, on sf.wordcamp.org/2013.

If you can’t be with us in person, you can be with us in spirit via the live stream. Live stream access can be purchased with, or without, a WCSF 2013 shirt. Live stream access is $20 for the whole event including the shirt or $10 for the whole event without the shirt. Please note that shirts are sent out a couple weeks after the event.

Also if you want to gain some good karma points you can still sign up to be a WordCamp San Francisco Volunteer –  click here for more details.

Thank you again to those of you who submitted speaker applications and nominations. Speaker applications are still being reviewed and we’ll release more details on speakers and program as soon as we are able.

Call for Volunteers!

Do you want to get the very most out of your WordCamp San Francisco experience, see how it looks from “the inside,” and be part of an amazing team of people making it a success? Then you should sign up to one of the revered rockstars better known as WordCamp San Francisco Volunteers!

There are a variety of volunteer opportunities, each with different time commitments, experience requirements, and logistics. There are only two requirements for ALL volunteers, regardless of the job or duration: be reliable and be friendly. If that sounds like you, fill out the volunteer application form to express your interest in volunteering and our fabulous volunteer coordinator, Cat Rymer, will get back to you to discuss making it happen.

Want to know more about what you’d actually be doing as a volunteer? Check out the list below to see more details about the different volunteer opportunities:

Registration – Check in registered attendees and hand out name tags. Being really awesome with alphabetical order helps here.

Happiness Bar – Help other WordPress users with their sites. Only available to volunteers with demonstrated WordPress prowess.

Room Runners – Work with the emcees, video people, speakers, and everyone else working in the room to keep things running smoothly. Make sure there’s water for speakers, and provide support as needed for other event staff.

Casual Runners – Handle the unexpected things that always seem to happen at events.

Time Keepers – Keep things running on time. Always have one eye on the clock and give speakers a heads up when they are down to 10 and 5 minutes, and let them know when their time is up.

Green Room Guards – Watch over a safe place for speakers and volunteers to leave their stuff while they run around. We need people to sit outside of these rooms (maybe an hour or two at a time?) to guard everyone’s stuff.

Airport Pickups – Pickup speakers from the airport and take them to their hotels or local lodging. These volunteers must have reliable cars, insurance, and safe driving practices.

Pre-event Prep – Help out with some of tasks that need to happen in the days leading up to WordCamp San Francisco.

Miscellaneous Prep – Dole out random assistance here and there, as needed – running errands, etc.

So there you have it! A volunteer opportunity for everyone. Now head on over to the volunteer form and let us know how you want to help! Expect an email/phone call to determine the best use of your personal expertise. And thank you in advance for helping to make WordCamp San Francisco awesome!

Thank you to our Golden Gate Park Sponsors: Bluehost and DreamHost!

Sponsors are awesome! They make WordCamps possible.

Our Golden Gate Park sponsors for WordCamp San Francisco are Bluehost and DreamHost. The Golden Gate Park sponsors are two beautiful, talented, stellar, stylish, and service-minded organizations that help make WordCamp SF a success.

Allow us to thank them both below!

Bluehost has been providing quality web hosting solutions to businesses and individuals since 1996. Their goal is to provide outstanding services for the best possible price. To achieve these goals they’re constantly innovating and upgrading their services 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.

DreamHost is WordPress-optimized web hosting. DreamHost proudly hosts more than 500,000 sites running WordPress at their core. From bloggers to businesses, WordPress is the Swiss Army knife of web apps. They’ll install it, keep your install up-to-date, and keep you online.

Aren’t they just marvelous?

As a lot of planning and fundraising goes into making WordCamp San Francisco an awesome event for everyone who participates – whether in person or via the live stream! The event just wouldn’t be the same without the generosity of the Golden Gate Park Sponsors!

There’s still time to help make WordCamp San Francisco stupendous by sponsoring the event! Visit the sponsorships page to learn more about the great opportunities, and to boost your WordCamp karma!