WordCamp Orange County 2013

We do need some stinking badges! These came a little later than usual, but we were busy getting some of the other stuff for WordCamp together. Hopefully the event will make up the late badges. So, get your badges here!

Hey campers! We are just about two weeks out so we wanted to keep you all aware as to how our WordCamp weekend is going to go down. Again we are doing a two day event similar to last year with an expanded Sunday. The days events break down like this:

Saturday

• Registration 8am-9am
• Breakfast breads and coffee will be available at registration, coffee will continue to be refreshed throughout the day
• Opening remarks @ 8:45am
• 15 Standard WordCamp session in two auditoriums from 9am-5:10pm
• A Wellness Booth from Southland Physical Therapy providing consultations for RSI, posture, walking gate and all the other things we programmers ignore
• Hosted lunch from 12:20pm-2pm.
• 200 servings of Moustache Mike’s Italian Ice for afternoon snack time available from 2:30pm to 4:30pm
• LIVE DradCast postcast @ 2:50pm.
• Closing remarks with some small giveaways after the last session
• After party at Durty Nelly’s starting at 7pm, karaoke starts at 9pm, first round of drinks are on us

Sunday

• Unconference Room from 10am-3pm to collaborate, ask questions, get advice and mingle with fellow attendees, speakers, and sponsors
• 1 Intro to Command Line WorkShop
• 4 Plugin Workshops to walk through configuration and use of our most common plugins
• 1 Business Panel from 10am-1pm
• Coffee service throughout the day
• Sidecar Donut Truck visits from 10am-12pm to fuel up for Sunday’s events with a bevy of seasonal treats

Our speakers and sessions are now available for viewing. We are still working on the schedule for the sessions, so you won’t be able to plan your weekend just yet, but stay tuned. We’ll have more info on the schedule and more specifics for our Sunday activities (such as the business panel and plugin workshops).

We are stunned and humbled by how quickly the tickets sold out for this year’s WordCamp. If you were not able to obtain tickets, we are sorry we will miss you at the event. There is a slight possibility that a few tickets may open up as we get closer to the event date, but we can’t guarantee this will be the case. If more tickets do become available we will notify everyone via the usual channels – website, twitter, facebook, newsletter.

For those of you who did buy tickets, thank you so much. We will work as hard as we can to put on a good event for you this year. See you all in one month.

Tickets are now available! Get them while you can as there is a limited amount. There is a possibility that a few more may open up later, but don’t count on it. Looking forward to see you all in one month!

Here is your starting line up for the 2013 WordCamp Orange County, in no particular order (unless you are a developer and count “random” as a way to order things). Please give a big round of applause to the following speakers for graciously volunteering their time and energy:

• Ben Lobaugh – Prepare for a Global Audience with Plugin Internationalization
• Syed Balkhi – Time Management for Bloggers: Streamlining your Editorial Workflow & Grow your Business Efficiently
• Natalie MacLees – Responsive Typography in WordPress Themes
• Blair Williams – Creating and Connecting to Web Services with WordPress
• Chris Lema – Membership Sites
• Derek Springer 3:10 to YouTube – Navigating the Wild West of native HTML5 media
• Steve Zehngut – WordPress Mobile
• Taylor Lovett – What You Need to Know about Computer Science and WordPress
• Devin Walker – WordPress Website Optimization for Speed
• Brad Williams – Security
• Chris Ford – An Agile WordPress Design Process
• John Hawkins – WordPress Case Study Examples
• Lucy Beer – WordPress 101
• Alex Vasquez –  Parent/Child Themes vs. Starter Themes
• Lizelle Brandt – Legally Blogging: Keep Your Blog From Being Sued
• LIVE DRADCAST! – Featuring Dre Armeda, Brad Williams, and guest?

Some of the titles may change a bit as time goes on and we will post more thorough descriptions, audience types and content weights in the very near future. Also stay tuned for other surprises we are working on for the event!

And remember, tickets go on sale on May 1st!

We know you are all waiting with baited breath to find out who the speakers are for this year’s WordCamp Orange County. We have notified all the potential speakers as to our selection, but we won’t be posting the list until Monday. (We want the speakers to get their notification emails before we post the list so they don’t find out via some weird way.) Also we’d like to confirm that all the selected speakers will indeed be available to speak. So stay tuned Space Rangers – speakers and topics will be announced on Monday.

Remember also that tickets will be going on sale May 1st.

There are only seven Saturdays left to WordCamp Orange County 2013, which means things are starting to get serious around here. We already have lots of great speakers submissions, but we are still looking for more. (Submit your talk idea here!) We also have a few fun ideas we are working on for Saturday and Sunday which we’ll announce once they are solidified.

Just a few things to make you all aware of at this point. The following things will happen in the near future in this order, take note, campers! First, we will select and notify our selected speakers by the end of next week (April 26). (So if you are still hemming and hawing about submitting something - get the lead out!) Second, tickets will go on sale following the speaker selection on Wednesday May 1, so be ready. And of course, WordCamp will be happening on June 1 and 2, so keep your calendars clear for that.

Hey gang! Speaker submissions are now open for WordCamp Orange County 2013. If you’d like to throw your hat into the ring, please to do on the Speaker Submission page. We’ve been collecting suggestions from attendees for topic ideas, so be sure to scroll to the bottom of that page to see the growing list of suggestions. Also, if you’d like to add a suggestion, please do so on our Suggestions page. We are looking forward to hearing from you.

WordCamps don’t happen without the generous help of the WordPress community. With that, we need 5 or 6 volunteers. Why volunteer? Well, you’ll get a free ticket to the event, an invite to the speaker/sponsor dinner, our gratitude, and a big hug from Brandon.

We need folks we can count on. If you are interested, drop us a line with the form below. Here’s what we are looking for.

ROOM MONITORS: We need 4 room monitors. We’ll have two auditoriums running simultaneously. Each room needs one person to make sure the camera is running, introduce the speaker and bring the room to order at the start of each session, keep the speaker aware of session time, and help transition between speakers. We don’t want any one person tied to a single room all day, so we are looking for teams of two per room to divvy up the workload.

VIDEO WRANGERS: Admittedly we are the worst at getting our WordCamp videos up on WordPress.tv. This year, we’d like help to ensure our videos make it up to the site. We’ll need 1 or 2 people to help edit the videos, upload the videos, and submit the session information to WordPress.tv. (And if you are especially eager, we have two years of back logged videos to upload as well, if you REALLY want to help.)