Speakers

Introducing Jenny Wong

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Jenny Wong is a web developer from Reading in the UK. She works at Human Made, a WordPress-focussed agency in the UK. As well as her development work, she works to help local communities to get involved with the WordPress project.

Her first involvement with WordPress was at the PHPNW conference. As an intern, she was given the job of updating content. In 2011, she migrated all of their annual conferences into one multisite instance and built a new theme.

UK WordPress Contributor Days

WordPress co-founder Mike Little at the contributor day in Manchester
WordPress co-founder Mike Little at the contributor day in Manchester

Jenny has spearheaded a drive in the UK to organise contributor days across the country. These events are focused on getting people started with contributing to WordPress. The first was a one-day event in Manchester. The day starts with the attendees splitting off into groups and learning how to contribute in different areas.

It was inspired by WordCamp London and it was to encourage contributions outside of WordCamp events. I found that it was a common problem where people either could not get set up correctly on their machines locally to contribute / didn’t know how to contribute / didn’t have any time to contribute. Contributor Days solve this because you have people who can help you get set up, you are making time to contribute by going to a event as well as getting help and support to contributions.

It’s also more fun to be contributing together as a community rather than on your own.

The first event went really well with patches being accepted into core on the day of event. Since then, the UK community has had 3 more contributor days and there are more being planned. With so much contributor activity in the UK more names are appearing on the WordPress contributor list.

Jenny at WordCamps

Jenny’s first WordCamp presentation was last year at WordCamp Lancaster, where she talked about debugging. “I learnt a lot through the Q&A,” she says, “which was more of a discussion of tools other people used to debug WordPress.”

Since then she’s been to a number of WordCamps, and organised WordCamp Manchester. She finds that she learns a lot at WordCamps, from different developers’ methodologies to tools and plugins.

The best bit about attending WordCamps has to be the awesome people you meet. I meet people who on IRC or a forum have helped me out on setting up or developing something (Paul Gibbs springs to mind as one of the many people) and being able to say Thank You in person means a lot. Other people I’ve met at WordCamps are now my colleagues and friends.

2014 will be Jenny’s first WordCamp San Francisco! She’ll be presenting a lightning talk on “The base ingredients of debugging.” In the presentation she’ll be taking you on a tour of the debugging process and tools that will make your life easier.

it doesn’t matter what level of developer you are or what type of developer you are, we all come across bugs in our development life. I used to always get myself in a frenzy over how to tackle each bug but this process has helped me keep my head cool and my stress levels down.

News

Complete your registration, get a WCSF shirt you’ll love

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We want you to treasure your WordCamp SF 2014 commemorative t-shirt. If someone else bought you a ticket, and you haven’t circled back to fill in your personal info, then we can’t order you the right size t-shirt — and that would be a bummer!

If someone else bought your ticket for you, please fill out your registration info no later than tomorrow (October 8), so we can make sure you go home with a super-cool WCSF shirt in your size! If you’re not sure how to complete your registration info, please fill out the contact form and we’ll help you out.

Speakers

Introducing Boone Gorges

Boone is one of the lead developers of BuddyPress, a contributor to WordPress, and the author of a dozens of freely available plugins. As a freelancer, his free software work is unpaid: he’s a vocal advocate for convincing clients to cover the costs of his community-focused work.

He works as freelance WordPress developer and consultant, specialising in custom functionality for BuddyPress. As a former academic, he works mostly with universities who are interested in creating online spaces where faculty, students, and staff can meet, collaborate, and share the work being done on campus.

He is also a dad, a competitive crossword solver, a former philosopher, a barbecue enthusiast, and a very cool guy.

In the beginning

boone_cuny

Boone first used WordPress to create a forum for the students in his Introduction to Ethics class where they could share work and provide feedback to one another. In 2009, he started working professionally with WordPress when a friend started a WordPress-powered project called CUNY Academic Commons. From helping out with IE6 CSS bugs he found himself delving under the hood of WPMU and the then-in-beta BuddyPress.

The same year, he gave his first WordCamp presentation, on the WPMU & BuddyPress track at WordCamp New York. It was called “Developing BuddyPress as a Collaboration Hub.” Boone talked about some of the customizations he’d done for CUNY Academic commons.

I don’t remember much about the talk itself. I do remember being terrified that Andy Peatling – BuddyPress’s founding developer – was sitting silently in the back row. It was like being in high school and meeting a girlfriend’s father for the first time: I half expected to get my lights punched out for defiling his baby. (Postscript: I now know that Andy is One Sweet Fella and I am far less afraid of him.)

L to R: Matt Mullenweg, John James Jacoby, Boone Gorges, Raymond Hoh, Andy Peatling
BuddyCamp Vancouver. L to R: Matt Mullenweg, John James Jacoby, Boone Gorges, Raymond Hoh, Andy Peatling

At WordCamp San Francisco

2014 will see Boone attend WordCamp San Francisco for a second time. The last time he came was in 2012. He spent the contributor day working with other members of the BuddyPress team, wrapping up some final issues before releasing BP 1.6. “I had to catch the red-eye back to NYC that night,” he recalls, “and I remember sitting in a bar at SFO around 11pm, waiting for my flight to board, and drafting release materials in a WordCamp-induced haze.”

This year, Boone will be talking about why it is both prudent and feasible for WordPress freelancers and small business owners to contribute to WordPress and other related free software projects. Despite being a free software advocate himself, Boone stresses that the presentation will be non-idealogical. “The truth is that  people susceptible to Stallman-type arguments probably don’t need any convincing to contribute to the cause of free software,” he says “The people who need convincing are those who are more concerned with profits than with philosophy, and its to those people that I’ll really be addressing my talk.”

Boone will talk about strategies that enable freelancers to contribute to the project in a sustainable. He’s put together some interesting stats about the project’s contributor base:

I’ll have much more to say during the presentation itself, but I’ll tease it with this observation: WordPress powers some 20%+ of all web sites. Yet WordPress itself is built (even when we understand “built” quite broadly) by just a few hundred people. When such a huge economic burden is placed on such a small number of individuals, it puts the entire system in danger. For this reason, I humbly suggest that my presentation is super important and unmissable for every person who relies on WordPress in any way at all.

(Featured Image CC License webmatter – thanks! 🙂 )

News

Introducing Paul Clark

Paul Clark started making websites in 2006 to pay his way through business classes. It wasn’t long before he found WordPress. “I was super-excited to find a system that would let me hand content management off to clients, instead of getting a call every time some punctuation needed to be changed!”  From using WordPress for side projects he went on to co-found Brainstorm Media, an agency that was acquired by 10up in 2013. Now he’s at 10up where he’s the Director of Recruiting.

Speaking at WordCamps

For his first WordCamp presentation, Paul was thrown in at the deep end. At WordCamp Phoenix he gave a co-presented a day-long WordPress 401 course for advanced programers. It was also at that event that he gave an early version of the talk that he’ll be giving at WordCamp San Francisco.

WordCamp San Francisco

This isn’t Paul’s first WordCamp San Francisco. He attended last year: “My favorite memory was connecting with so many people in the community, of course! I interact with so many WordPress friends online every day; it’s a special treat to see everyone in person!”

medics-using-wordpress-1

This year, he’ll be speaking. In his presentation How WordPress Saves Lives and Moves Governments, Paul talks about how the Free Burma Rangers have used WordPress as part of their relief efforts in Burma. It really shows the power of free and open source software, empowering people to change their lives.

This talk encompasses so much of what I love about the community we have. The opportunities we have to make the world a better place in big ways by putting technology to work for people. It talks about complex medical, political, and human rights problems that received real-world solutions thanks to the openness and accessibility of the WordPress community.

This talk is about making computers work for people, not the other way around. It’s about using our skills to make microphones that amplify the work of others.

 

News

Introducing another group of WCSF speakers

Just when you thought WCSF couldn’t get any better, we’ve got another nine speakers to introduce you to. There’s some familiar ones and some unfamiliar, but we think you’ll love hearing what they’ve all got to say:

  • Lyza Danger Gardner is the the co-founder of Cloud Four where she leads mobile development. She’s the author of Head First Mobile Web.
  • Joseph O’Connor is a member of the WordPress accessibility team. He leads Cities, a world-wide effort to build free accessible themes.
  • Sam Hotchkiss is the creator of BruteProtect, a WordPress security plugin acquired by Automattic in August 2014.
  • Josepha Haden is an Analyst at Haden Interactive with nearly a decade of experience managing web analytics, behavioral analysis, and overall site performance.
  • Erick Hitter is a web developer, WordPress contributor, Automattician, former accountant, and occasional audio engineer.
  • Davide Casali is an experience director at Automattic with 11+ years of experience and a hybrid background in design, psychology and technology.
  • Andrea Rennick started out as a volunteer in the WordPress.org forums and now works for Copyblogger Media in customer support for all products.
  • Aaron Hockley is the founder of both WP Photographers and WordCamp Portland.
  • Dave Martin is the Creative Director at Automattic, and WordPress core contributor.

 

News

Second round of tickets go on sale Thursday

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If you didn’t get your ticket the first time we opened registration, Thursday at noon Pacific time is your chance to purchase a General Admissions ticket to WordCamp SF.

We’ll be publishing our pending schedule in the morning, and then opening general admission ticket sales again for a second round of registration. Set your calendar reminders, and we’ll see you tomorrow on the Tickets page!

News

WordCamp SF Scholarship Tickets

WordPress is free, and we want to make sure that no one is barred from WordCamp for financial reasons. This year, WordCamp San Francisco is running a travel assistance program for people who live outside of SF, and for locals we’re offering a limited number of scholarship tickets for admittance to Mission Bay Conference Center on October 25-26.

Our scholarship ticket team will be looking for applicants passionate about WordPress who would not be able to attend the event without financial assistance. Please only apply if you really can’t afford the ticket; don’t apply because you’d rather spend your $40 on video games and beer. 🙂

Apply for a scholarship ticket here.

October 25-26, 2014