Thanks for coming to WordCamp SF. We hope you had a wonderful time!

In a few more days we’ll have collected all the recaps and links to the videos so we can post a proper wrap-up. But in the meantime, we sure would be grateful for your feedback. We have two surveys for you here: one for the WordCamp itself, and a separate one just to rate our speakers and give them some valuable input.

Thanks in advance!

http://wordcampcentral.polldaddy.com/s/wordcamp-attendee-survey

http://andmiddleton.polldaddy.com/s/wordcamp-sf-2014-speaker-reviews

WordCamp SF is less than 3 days away, wow! Seems like we’ve been waiting for this weekend forever, and excitement among the organizing team is at a peak.

We’ve made our lists and checked everything twice: badges, check. T-shirts, check. Lunch, check. But what we’ve also counted was over 50 unclaimed ticket purchases, yikes!

What’s an unclaimed ticket, you ask? Well, this year we introduced a registration flow that tied your WordCamp ticket purchase to  wordpress.org profiles. It’s been so cool to see all the WordPress.org profiles showing who’s bought tickets to WordCamp SF! An unclaimed ticket is one that was purchased but left blank of any registration info like name, t-shirt size, meal preference, and wordpress.org username — in short, all the information we need to know that it’s a real person and not a ticket squatter. 🙂

We ended up with a lot more unclaimed tickets than we thought we would, even after we emailed people a bunch of times with requests to confirm their ticket purchases (like before we ordered event badges and t-shirts). Next year we’ll build in some kind of automatic notices and returns, but in the meantime, we have to call time on this year’s registration.

Because we’re not sure if the people holding tickets with the name “Unknown Attendee” plan to attend WordCamp SF or not, and because hunting down the purchasers of over 50 unclaimed tickets at registration is going to make registration for the other 1000ish attendees pretty painful, we’re now going to refund all of those unclaimed tickets, removing them from our registration lists.

To be clear, this only affects you if your name was never even on a ticket. Only tickets with the name “Unknown Attendee” will be cancelled and refunded.

If you have been holding on to an unclaimed ticket and you DO plan to attend WordCamp SF, don’t freak out! We’ll be selling walk-in tickets at the door (and hand-writing name badges), so you won’t miss out on all the fun.

Can’t wait to see you all on Saturday morning!

Your general admission ticket not only gets you in to Mission Bay Conference Center for two days of inspiring WordPress talks, it also gets you a swanky conference t-shirt and lunch on Saturday and Sunday!

If you have food allergies, dietary restrictions, or just a healthy appetite, you might be wondering what will be served at the buffet tables this weekend. Luckily for you, we’ve posted the lunch menus — including ingredients lists for each dish.

We’ve done our best to create meal options that will mean delicious dining for every attendee at WordCamp SF, regardless of allergies or special diets, but we can’t provide specialized single meals. If you’re unable to eat anything that we’re planning to serve, please plan to arrange your own lunch.  If you have a question about our lunch menu and ingredients list, please fill out the contact form to ask!

If you’re driving to WordCamp San Francisco this weekend, you may be wondering where to find a parking place!

Mission Bay Conference Center

There are two main parking options that we recommend for Saturday and Sunday:

• Parking Garage at 1625 Owens Street: 8 hours of parking for $30. For WCSF attendees there is a discount to $15. To take advantage of the discount you need to get a parking voucher from a WCSF volunteer and then pay at the garage as you leave. There is no in-and-out parking with this $15 voucher.
• Fourth Street Surface Lot: on 4th Street, just north of 16th Street. This is only $3 per day, but is a bit of a walk from the venue.

All parking at Mission Bay is first-come, first-served, so please plan accordingly.

More info at http://campuslifeservices.ucsf.edu/transportation/services/parking/public_parking

After-party

Here are two parking garages that we recommend within 5 minutes walk of the Automattic Lounge at 132 Hawthorne:

California Parking 690 Harrison, SF, CA 94107
Archstone Parking 1 Saint Francis Place San Francisco, CA 94107

You may, or may not, have heard that the world series will be held in San Francisco this weekend. If you’re like me and you come from out of town, you might be wondering what a world series is. The world series is the annual championship series of the North-American baseball league. It’s sort of like the world cup, but with more hitting a ball with a bat and less kicking a ball with a foot.

The world series will be played in San Francisco 25th – 27th October.

What does this mean for me?

This weekend, you can expect a huge influx of baseball fans into San Francisco. Even more baseball fans than WordPress fans (if you can believe it!). Here’s what you need to know:

• Games start at 5pm on Friday, Saturday, and possibly Sunday.
• Car traffic will be particularly bad in the 2-3 hours prior to the event (from about 2pm onwards).
• Car traffic will be bad again when the games get out (around 8pm – 9:30pm).
• Trains will also be crowded during these times.
• If you are driving to the Mission Bay Conference Center, park in the parking garage at 1625 Owens Street. Collect a discount voucher from the WCSF volunteers at Mission Bay and you’ll get a discount rate of $15 for the day. You can pay at the parking garage.
• If you arrive in the morning and leave after 5:30 – 6pm you should avoid the worst of the traffic.
• Parking will be difficult and/or expensive in the area near the Saturday social, the Automattic offices at 132 Hawthorne Street.
• Restaurants will be more crowded than usual and wait times may increase. Either book ahead or plan to eat while the games are on.
• There will be a lot of drunk fans in the SOMA area.
• You can use the SFPark app to help you find parking spaces and keep up to date about traffic.
• The 511 website has updates about public transport and traffic.

The games may end on Saturday but they may continue over the whole weekend. This depends on the wins from the games being held on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday this week.

If you have any questions or concerns get in touch, or grab one of our helpful volunteers over the weekend.

We kept a few surprises up our sleeves for the schedule next weekend. Please welcome our final round of speakers!

• Pamela Bey is the founder of Be Brilliant Media, a web design and tech curriculum development agency. She is a WordPress trainer, UX designer, and mentor for women and children.
• Jen Mylo (formerly Jane Wells) is a community organizer for the WordPress open source project; prior to this she spent four years as the UX lead and project manager of WordPress core.
• Jeff Veen is the Vice President of Product Design for Adobe and the co-founder of Typekit.