Full Schedule and Speakers Announced

It’s an exciting day for WordCamp Denver – all of our speakers have been announced, and the full schedule is live. Check them out for yourself and let us know what you’re excited about on Twitter!

2017 WordCamp Denver Speakers

2017 WordCamp Denver Schedule

Haven’t got your ticket yet? They’re selling fast and the event will be here before you know it! Grab tickets for one or both days now:

WordCamp Denver Tickets: Saturday, August 26 and Sunday, August 27

Workshop Speakers Announced!

We’re excited to share that the speakers for WordCamp Denver 2017 have officially been confirmed, and we’ll be trickling out their names over the next few days. Looking forward to hearing them speak? Purchase your WordCamp Denver tickets today!

The first round of speakers will be leading our Sunday workshops, and we’d love to introduce them to you:

Tracy Malone

Tracy is the owner of a successful marketing company – CoWEBop Marketing. Her team has been building websites for small businesses for over 20 years. She happily shares her knowledge with the WordPress community as a co-organizer of the Boulder WordPress Meetup.

David Hayes

David is a developer from Fort Collins, Colorado. He’s been working with PHP for almost a decade, and does a lot of intensive backend work, a fair bit of JavaScript, and dabbles with CSS sometimes. While I’m big into WordPress — he co-owns and runs the popular development tutorial site [WPShout](http://wpshout.com) — he’s got experience with everything from old school PHP to the latest and greatest of Symfony and Laravel.

Dwayne McDaniel

I have been working in tech and open source sales since 2005. I knew as soon as I started working with Java middleware developers I never wanted to work outside of open source ever again. I first started building in Drupal and WordPress when I needed to build projects for the San Francisco Improv scene. I fell in the love the community of developers and then found my position at Pantheon at the end of 2013. As a Community and Agency Success Manager I have had the privilege of presenting at MidCamp (Drupal), Twin Cities DrupalCamp, DrupalCamp Colorado, WordCamp Milwaukee, WordCamp Baltimore as well as leading BOFs at several other events. Outside of tech I love producing and performing improv theater. I also love comic books and karaoke!!!

Ryan Kanner

Ryan is a WordPress Developer for Digital First Media from Denver, Colorado where he works on websites for newspapers such as the Denver Post, Orange County Register, and Mercury News. He has been working with WordPress for the past 9 years, building websites and products for customers around the world. He is also one of the organizers for the WordPress Denver Meetup. You can find him most places on the internet as @CodeProKid.

Zac Gordon

Zac Gordon is a professional educator, currently working on the JavaScript for WordPress Master Course. Previously, Zac taught WordPress for Treehouse. He has years of experience teaching WordPress and JavaScript at high schools, colleges, bootcamps and online learning sites. In addition to teaching, Zac also runs Web Hosting for Students, one of the world’s largest hosting companies dedicated to students and teachers.

Erin Flynn

Erin has been making websites since 1999, and started her own web design and development company in 2012. After a few years creating websites for clients, Erin shifted her business. Now, her primary business is helping other designers and developers navigate the difficult waters of entrepreneurship by providing courses and guides to teach everything from how to start a web design business to how to deal with nightmare clients.

When she’s not teaching designers or working with her own design/development clients, Erin can be found exploring the mountains near her home in Aspen, Colorado.

Michael Newman

Michael Newman has designed and developed innovative, professional interactive experiences for over 20 years. He has worked with diverse clientele, including IFC, AT&T, Honda, UCLA, Godiva, MTV, Comcast, AOL and Gartner. After leading Interactive groups for companies including IFC, AT&T and Heavy.com, he founded Pomp Productions to create unique experiences for clients. Michael has taught at Pratt in New York City and currently teaches Design & Development courses at UCLA Extension.

Michael’s first experience with WordPress was in 2005. Using WordPress as CMS, he quickly learned the power of plugins and why you never hack the core. In 2016, Michael created the plugin Logic Hop to bring the power of personalization to WordPress through conditional logic, goals and lead scoring.

An avid maker, Michael has exhibited projects at TEDx, Maker Faires and museums, including an an SMS controlled Nerf machine gun, a hands-free skeeball game and an analog, hand drawn video game. He currently resides on the beach with his wife Katharine and sons Jack Tesla and Luke Edison.

Grab your ticket to WordCamp Denver now!

Call for Happiness Bar Volunteers

We’re looking for WordPress experts who will be at WordCamp and are willing to spend an hour or two helping to answer questions at the Happiness Bar.

What is the Happiness Bar?

A place for people to come and ask their pressing WordPress questions. It is staffed by volunteers (as is the rest of WordCamp!) who graciously provide their expertise for free as part of bettering the WordPress community.

How Can I Get Involved?

It’s simple! If you can spare an hour during WordCamp on Saturday, we’d be incredibly grateful if you could spend it at the Happiness Bar. Please fill out the form below with interest, and we’ll get back to you as far as particulars:

Accommodations for WordCamp Denver 2017

For those coming to WordCamp Denver from out of town, we’ve compiled a list of hotels within a reasonable distance of the venue:

Of course, don’t discount the further out hotels – Uber and Lyft are very cost-effective in Denver!

For additional options, consider vacation rentals through VRBO and Airbnb. But act quickly – these are apt to be the quickest to be scooped up and rented out!

Need more assistance? Feel free to tweet us at @WordCampDenver with any questions!

WordPress Migration Doesn’t Have to Be so Bad

Guest post by Emily Miller of Pantheon, official sponsor of WordCamp Denver

WordPress is the most popular content management system and powers 28% of the web. What started out as a blogging platform is now the most widely-used CMS on the internet. New users can get started with it easily, and it is also powerful and customizable enough for some of the web’s most complex, large-scale sites.

WordPress is a powerful and flexible CMS, but it needs the right infrastructure to reach its full potential. If you’re experiencing WordPress hosting woes, it may be time to make your move.

Moving to a new WordPress host is not a decision to take lightly. It takes planning and strategy to pull off a migration that results in not just a functional site, but a more performant site on a better WordPress hosting provider.

Our crew at Pantheon has no shortage of experience in WordPress development. We’ve experienced smooth as silk migrations, but have also powered through many a migration nightmare. From non-responsive hosts, to bad or outdated hardware, one thing is certain: we all have horror stories we’d rather not see anyone relive. So we decided to do something about it.

We’ve gathered our collective knowledge to build a comprehensive resource: The Quickstart Guide to WordPress Migration. This guide covers everything you need to know to ensure a successful WordPress migration. We’ve also sourced tips from some of the top experts in the field, such as Mason James and Josh Pollock.

Whether you’re thinking about migrating, ready to start, or picking up the pieces from a disastrous first attempt, we hope this guide can help. And if you have any questions about migrations in general, or how Pantheon can help, be sure to stop by our booth at WordCamp Denver! Or drop us a line.

Call for Volunteers

We need your help!

WordCamp Denver 2017 is currently recruiting volunteers. We’re looking for volunteers to help in the following areas:
  • Registration
  • Sponsor relations
  • Speaker/workshop relations
  • Task runner
  • A/V assistance
  • Room host
  • Lunch distribution
  • Setup and teardown
  • Influencers – take shots, tweet, tag #wcdenver
Volunteers can help for an hour or two, or help out for the entire event. Either way, you’ll be part of making WordCamp Denver great.

Continue reading “Call for Volunteers”

WordCamp Denver, CO is over. Check out the next edition!