Event News

Important Information for WordCamp Miami 2014 Attendees

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WordCamp Miami starts in just a few days! We wanted to send you a notice to help you get prepared and ready. There’s a lot going on, so please read the following carefully:

Location/Venues

We have prepared detailed information for every venue and event at WordCamp Miami. Since we will not be able to respond to last minute questions before the events start, please review the following NOW and be prepared:

Visit our location overview page with general location information, maps, directions and public transportation information:
https://2014.miami.wordcamp.org/location/

If you have registered for BuddyCamp, read this:
https://2014.miami.wordcamp.org/may-9-buddycamp-location/

If you have registered for the Beginner’s Workshop on May 9th, read this:
https://2014.miami.wordcamp.org/location-may-9-beginners/

EVERYONE should read this, which is information for the location of the weekend venue, parking, and shuttle information:
https://2014.miami.wordcamp.org/location-may-10-11/

For Saturday and Sunday, we are asking people to park at the PAVIA parking garage first. Please note there is a brief walk to the venue building itself from the parking garage. We plan on having visible signs and/or volunteers guiding you from the garage. If the PAVIA parking garage fills up, there is an alternative parking arrangement and shuttle service being finalized and will be at the URL above shortly.

Parking in the Pavia and Ponce garages is $7/day and $1.25/hour. There will be shuttle service available on Saturday and Sunday mornings from the garages to the venue and then back in the evening.

  • Saturday May 10
    • 7:30am-9:30am – From Garages to Student Center
    • 5:00pm-7:00am – From Student Center to Garages
  • Sunday May 11
    • 8:00am-10:00am – From Garages to Student Center
    • 4:30pm-6:30am – From Student Center to Garages

Use this great Google map for all the venues and location:
https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zU7I5WXrVkwg.kwrmfaFKrRBs

Opening Remarks / Session Tips

On Saturday, opening remarks start at 8:30am with sessions starting at 9:00am.

WordCamp Miami is a SOLD OUT EVENT, so it’s possible your preferred session room might be filled to capacity at times during the day. If your desired session room is full please proceed to the next preferred session during that time slot (if you don’t have one, go to one anyway – you might learn something new!). We are planning on posting all videos to wordpress.tv afterwards, so you won’t miss a thing.

If you have special needs, please contact us as soon as possible.

Power/Wi-fi

Everyone asks, so we wanted to include information about this. While public or guest wi-fi should be available, it’s not a guarantee. Events of our size typically cause hicups and issues, so please be patient. We will announce wifi information at the beginning of the workshops and in opening remarks.

We recommend that everyone FULLY CHARGE their phones, laptops, and other devices each day. Some workshop rooms on Friday have power outlets, but we can’t guarantee anything. Our Sat/Sun venue is theater seating to accomodate our large expected attendee turnout. WE WILL HAVE VERY LITTLE OUTLETS IN THESE ROOMS. Please come prepared. We plan on having a small charging station on site.

Food

We are planning on providing lunch for all attendees during the workshops and on Saturday. There is a Starbucks present at the venue which is available Saturday and Sunday morning for breakfast and coffee. Sunday there will be food trucks available for lunch with affordable and delicious options (similar to last year’s WordCamp Miami). We are planning an ice cream social on Sunday, with us providing ice cream to all attendees at no charge. While we are planning on providing veggie alternatives in our meals, if you have special diet needs please feel free to contact us. Packing a backup meal and snacks if you have a special need or diet is never a bad idea.

Social Gatherings

We are planning an open pre-party meetup to celebrate our 5th Anniversary at the LiveNinja offices in Miami. Here’s more information, which we will update if need be: https://2014.miami.wordcamp.org/may8preparty/

Our networking party, sponsored by MediaTemple, is being held at Finnegans on the River. We will be providing some contests, music, and will be providing appeziaters. Finnegans has a full menu if you want a more traditional dinner and has great sections for networking and conversations:
https://2014.miami.wordcamp.org/party/

We are also planning a breakfast social on Sunday May 11th at 9am at the Starbucks at the venue site. We are treating a few to coffee if you make it there on time!

Of course, our lunches and ice cream socials are great times to network and meet new people!

Social Media / SMS Updates

Important updates such as last minute schedule changes, lunch announcements, etc. will be broadcast on SMS and Twitter.

You can signup for SMS alerts and updates here (over 100 attendees have so far):
https://gather.mailchimpapp.com/subscribe/signup-for-text-alerts-from-wordcamp-miami

You can also follow us on Twitter @wordcampmiami for the latest.

Hashtags and Photos

Please feel free to take as many videos and photos as you wish. Please hashtag any tweets or photos with #wcmia. We are planning on putting up a site devoted to monitoring social streams: http://wcmia.wparmchair.com

Looking For Work/Hire

On Saturday May 10th we will be doing the following:

  • We will be providing “Looking For Work” and “Looking To Hire” stickers that you can stick on your lanyard or badge to let people know at the event what you are looking for.
  • We will be providing a physical bulletin board, if you want to write messages related to work or hiring to those attending.
  • There will be PLENTY of opportunities to network before, during, and after the event on Saturday and Sunday (our ice cream social event is Sunday afternoon). Please use this time to reach out and network with potential job hires or workers.

Code of Conduct

WordCamp Miami believes our community should be truly open for everyone. As such, we are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, religion, preferred operating system, etc. Please review our code of conduct which outlines our expectations for participant behavior as well as the consequences for unacceptable behavior. We invite all sponsors, volunteers, speakers, attendees, and other participants to help us realize a safe and positive conference experience for everyone.

https://2014.miami.wordcamp.org/code-of-conduct/

See You There!!!

Looking forward to another great WordCamp Miami. See you soon.

WordCamp Miami Planning Committee

Event News

Signup For Text Alerts

Thanks to MailChimp’s “Gather” App/Service, WordCamp Miami can send out text alerts to people right before and during the conference.

Here’s the link to the signup form: https://gather.mailchimpapp.com/subscribe/signup-for-text-alerts-from-wordcamp-miami

We will use this sparingly (only for important announcements or emergencies). You can unsubscribe at any time, and WordCamp Miami never has your personal information or phone number.

Event News

T-Shirt Deadline: April 5th

If you are thinking about grabbing a WordCamp Miami ticket, be aware that you must do so by April 5th in order to guarantee yourself on our infamous (famous?) WordCamp Miami t-shirts. After April 5th, we send off our order to the t-shirt company who doesn’t guarantee any additional shirts on late orders.

This year, we have quite a bit of surprises for those who don’t wait until the last minute. Don’t be left out!

Event News

Time is Running Out! Last Few Tickets For Beginner’s Workshop

Response to our beginner’s workshops has been the usual – fantastic! In fact, our beginner’s workshops are just about to sell out. So if you or someone you know wanted to be a part of the full-day class focused on those learning WordPress for the first time, then you would need to act now. 🙂

Our beginner’s workshops are sponsored this year by SiteGround. Please click here to read about our workshops in general, and you can click here to read about our May 9th speaker lineup.

If you aren’t attending the beginner’s workshop but still thinking about grabbing a ticket, our general weekend ticket is also close to selling out. Don’t be left out!

Click here to buy your ticket.

Event News

Beginner’s Workshop (May 9th) Speakers Announced

WordCamp Miami will have two beginner’s workshops this year. One workshop will be happening on April 19th at Nova Southeastern University, and the other will be happening on Friday, May 9th at the University of Miami. Both workshops will be covering the same information. Here’s more information about the workshops.

We are proud to have Syed Balkhi back to host the workshop this year. We also proud to have SiteGround sponsoring the workshops this year. Here’s the lineup of planned speakers for the May 9th workshop:

Syed Balkhi

He is the founder of WPBeginner (the largest free WordPress resource site) and List25 an extremely popular entertainment site with over 725,000 subscribers and 90 Million video views. Syed’s work has been featured in NYTimes, HuffingtonPost, Yahoo Small Business, Wired, Mashable, and countless other well-reputed online magazines. Syed has worked with some of the largest brands in the industry including but not limited to WarnerBros, Webs, Mercer, and more.

Steven Alig

Steven Alig is the President and Founder of South Florida Web Studio. He has been professionally involved in the internet industry since 1997. Working directly with both large national corporate accounts and small local business, Steven understands the diverse set of requirements that different businesses have. Working with many different technologies throughout his career, Steven committed exclusively to WordPress in 2010 and has not looked back since. Over the years Steven has provided online marketing, web development and consultation services for clients such as The Miami Dolphins, Walmart, Arvida Homes, The St. Joe Company, Motorola, The Hollywood Florida Office of Tourism and more. Today, every project completed by South Florida Web Studio is built on WordPress.

David Laietta

David Laietta is a WordPress theme and plugin developer, as well as community organizer. He leads the WordPress Orlando Meetup, as well as WordCamp Orlando. David is also a long-time supporter of WordCamp Miami.

 

Zac Gordon

Zac Gordon teaches WordPress for the amazing online education company, Treehouse. Before that he taught WordPress, web design and development at the high school and college level. In addition to teaching, Zac runs a web design company that builds $975 templated WordPress sites for small businesses.

Gabriela Levit

Gabriela Levit is a developer with over 15 years programming experience. She started Jacaranda Technologies six years ago, primarily creating web sites, custom WordPress themes, and now expanding into plugins. She was a recent 2014 WordCamp Phoenix presenter and upcoming speaker at the WordPress NYC Meetup. As well, past WordCamp New York volunteer and WordCamp Philly sponsor. When not programming, she can be found taking pictures, eating/cooking yummy food, and flying small planes.

Hristo Pandjarov

Hristo is a WordPress enthusiast who’s done it all: supported WordPress clients, built websites, designed WordPress themes, wrote tutorials, dug deeper into SEO and developed his own WordPress SEO plugin. He’s been fortunate to have his passion for all things WordPress and his job overlap at SiteGround, where he develops and implements various in-house performance boost solutions to help make WordPress websites faster and more secure.

Speaker News

Epic Panel: The Business of WordPress

The second year of our business track (being held on Sunday, May 11th) will be epic in many ways thanks to our new lineup of speakers and sessions. But what could be the highlight of the track is a special panel – “The Business of WordPress”.

There are all sorts of challenges to building a WordPress business. Come hear the “behind the scenes” stories and lessons learned as the brilliant entrepreneurs behind WPBeginner, Gravity Forms and iThemes answer questions in this business panel moderated by the famous Chris Lema.

We are proud to have these insightful speakers – all of which have created blogs and plugins that many thousands of WordPress users work with EVERY DAY – with us this year at WordCamp Miami.

Syed Balkhi

He is the founder of WPBeginner (the largest free WordPress resource site) and List25 an extremely popular entertainment site with over 725,000 subscribers and 90 Million video views. Syed’s work has been featured in NYTimes, HuffingtonPost, Yahoo Small Business, Wired, Mashable, and countless other well-reputed online magazines. Syed has worked with some of the largest brands in the industry including but not limited to WarnerBros, Webs, Mercer, and more.

Cory Miller

Cory is a former newspaper journalist turned full-time web entrepreneur. In January 2008, he founded iThemes in his home, fulfilling a lifelong dream of running his own company. Now iThemes has grown to over 20+ team members, hundreds of products and thousands of customers worldwide.

Carl Hancock

Carl Hancock is one of the co-founders of Rocketgenius, Inc. A premier provider of WordPress plugin solutions and the creators of one one of the most successful commercial WordPress plugins: Gravity Forms. He loves building innovative solutions for WordPress, and is a devoted father, loving husband, amateur photographer, startup founder and travel addict.

Celebrating Our 5th Anniversary (May 9-11, 2014)

WordCamp Miami 2014 is over. Check out the next edition!