Category Archives: Site Announcements

Tickets Now On Sale!

With over 200 early bird tickets purchased, we are now opening the rest of the tickets to the public. Here are the tickets you can purchase:

  • General Admission Tickets For The Weekend (May 30th/31st)
  • BuddyCamp Miami (May 29th)
  • Front-End & WordPress Theme Full-Day Course (May 29th)
  • WordPress 101 Full-Day Course (May 29th in Miami)
  • WordPress 101 Full-Day Course (May 2nd in Davie, FL at Nova Southeastern University)

Click here to buy your ticket(s).

To learn more about the full-day courses and workshops happening on May 2nd and May 29th, click here.

WordCamp Miami has sold out EVERY YEAR. With over 770 attending last year, we sadly had over 100 on our waiting list. So do yourself a favor and grab a ticket and not wait until it’s too late. 🙂

First Round of BuddyCamp Miami Speakers Announced

The third BuddyCamp Miami is happening on May 29th (click here to buy a ticket before the sell out and also check out what BuddyCamp Miami is all about).

WHAT IS BUDDYPRESS? GLAD YOU ASKED. If you want to add social features to your website, BuddyPress will knock your socks off. Learn more at buddypress.org.

Here’s the first three speakers that you’ll be seeing at the event.

John James Jacoby

We are honored to have back John James Jacoby, the project lead for BuddyPress & bbPress. He’s also a WordPress contributor, Founder of Flox, 10up & Automattic alumni. John is going to be talking about the latest enhancements to BuddyPress, and what’s in store for it’s future. He’s also got some interesting discussions about communities and concepts that you don’t want to miss.

Ryan Fugate

Ryan Fugate is a BuddyPress enthusiast and mobile WordPress fanatic. Previously working in social media marketing using WordPress as a secret weapon where Ryan built sites for many major brands. His current status: BuddyPress trac and forums, creating fun plugins, WordPress as a mobile framework and coffee. When he’s not breaking WordPress he rides his fixie around Los Angeles and frequently indulges in churro consumption at Disneyland.

Brian Messenlehner

Brian, a former Marine Corps software developer is the Co-Founder of WebDevStudios.com, Co-Founder of AppPresser.com, Co-Author of Building Web Apps with WordPress and runs the New Jersey WordPress meet up group. Brian loves using WordPress as an application framework for building cool websites, e-commerce solutions, social networks and mobile applications. When he’s not working on WordPress he’s teaching his kids WordPress. WordPress! WordPress! WordPress!

Second Round of WordPress Speakers

WordCamp Miami is happy to announce the second wave of approved and confirmed speakers for WordCamp Miami 2015.

Morten Rand-Hendriksen

Morten Rand-Hendriksen built his first website in 1997 and has used the web to further communication between people ever since. He’s a staff author at lynda.com where he has published 50+ courses on WordPress and front-end development and also teaches web design and development at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. In his spare time he co-organizes the Vancouver WordPress Meetup Group, contributes to WordPress core, and wears out his shoes on a ballroom dance floor.

Jesse Petersen

Jesse Petersen is a theme and plugin developer and the founder of Petersen Media Group, an exclusive Genesis framework agency in Tampa, FL. He is the face of the Genesis framework at the e-learning site, Treehouse, with two courses released and one in production. Since 2010 when Genesis was released, Jesse has been on the StudioPress Recommended Developer List. Jesse is a veteran WordCamp speaker of several business topics and is launching a Genesis theme shop called Genesis The.me. He and his wife have been the foster parents of 22 (and counting) children since 2012 and live a very crazy life as a result.

Sze Liu

Sze Liu is the CEO and Founder of 852 Creative Marketing & Design. Originally from Hong Kong, Sze has always loved branding, marketing and technology and has been involved in the field throughout her career. She has managed online and offline marketing for start-ups and major corporations (Manpower, Inc. and Ryder System, Inc.). She also has experience in global business development, including projects based in China.

Andrea Rennick

Andrea started out as a volunteer in the WordPress.org forums, and now works for Copyblogger Media in customer support for all products.

She likes to learn and likes to help people. Often changing her hair color, Andrea makes quilts and entertain her three grandkids in her spare time.

Rami Abraham

Rami Abraham is a WordPress developer and ‘gif savant’ at WebDevStudios. He’s been building with WordPress since version 2.8, with a heavy focus in JavaScript and CSS. Prior to that, he worked in a few lead roles at web agencies, with a focus on JavaScript application development. He enjoys working with an unending variety of frameworks, SVG animation, and is part of the AffiliateWP support team after hours.

Tim Sisson

Tim loves WordPress and enjoys leveraging it to meet businesses needs. He leads the Customer Community Team at InMotion Hosting where they write content and act as subject matter experts for software like WordPress.

He’s an avid outdoorsman who loves the crisp mountain air of the Virginia mountains. When he’s not tinkering with WordPress he spends his time on adventures with his wife Lisa, three daughters Autumn, Stella, and Petra.

#WPMIA – WordPress Meetup

wpmia-meetup_stevenYou don’t have to wait for our annual WordCamp Miami to learn, share and network with other bright, inspiring minds. You can learn all-things-WordPress year-round, by joining local Meetups around South Florida.

We offer a broad range of topics and presentations to address diverse skill sets and user needs. Among our Meetup topics are: WordPress for beginners, WordPress for entrepreneurs, web design and development, content creation and much more. If a Meetup topic of interest to you is not offered, you can suggest one or initiate dynamic discussion to enhance the group.

wpmia-NSU_meetup_users

Through WordPress Meetups, you’ll discover unique networking options to encounter new people and businesses. You may even find industry experts who can assist you with your own WordPress projects. We currently host three Meetups in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area. Click here for locations and other details.

Hope to see you there!

Davie Location:

Nova Southeastern University, Carl DeSantis Building

Every first Thursday of the month, we have the WordPress User Meetup.

Every third Thursday of the month, we have the WordPress Developer Meetup.

Miami Location:

Miami Ad School | 571 NW 28 Street, Miami, FL 33127

The space is incredible, centrally located and has free parking!

Take a look of what others have said about past meetups:

https://twitter.com/jorgevalens/status/431583773873160192

First Round of Speakers Announced

WordCamp Miami is happy to announce the first wave of approved and confirmed speakers for WordCamp Miami 2015.

Sarrah Vesselov

Sarrah Vesselov hails from Tampa, FL. She is the Creative Director for NRS and freelances in the areas of web design, PPC Marketing, SEO, and media project management. She teaches classes in WordPress, HTML5, CSS3, and internet marketing at several Tampa colleges. Sarrah has served as Mentoring Lead for SIGGRAPH, Production coordinator for Evolve CG, and is currently the Director for the Women Who Code Tampa chapter. She holds a B.F.A in Computer Animation, a M.B.A in Marketing and has just completed a Front End Engineering program.

Chris Lema

For twenty one years Chris has been managing high performers and overseeing new product development. He is currently the CTO & Chief Strategist for Crowd Favorite.He’s a daily blogger, an ebook author, a public speaker and regularly coaches and consults with some of the most well known WordPress companies around. He is a WordPress evangelist.

Michelle Schulp

Michelle is an independent graphic designer based in Chicagoland. She was formally schooled in many aspects of design including print, branding, packaging, etc., with additional education in Psychology and Sociology, all tying together in a love of How To Solve Problems. Lately she has been specializing in WordPress websites, infographics, and high-end presentations for her clients. She is a lover of WordCamps and the WordPress community, a Meetup junkie, @3themes contributor, and WordCamp Chicago 2014 lead organizer. Check her out at mynameismichelle.com.

Aaron Campbell

Aaron has had more than fourteen years of web development experience, have been a regular contributor to WordPress for the last eight years, and even co-lead the WordPress 3.6 release. He’s worked with clients ranging from small local businesses to Google, Yahoo, Disney, and Harvard. He’s been called both a coffee snob and a beer snob, but he considers both to be strong complements. When not buried in code, he enjoys spending time with his wife and son, attending or hosting beer tastings, and reading sci-fi/fantasy books.

Adam Culp

Adam is a South Florida PHP developer, certified engineer, and part of the Zend Certification Advisory Board. He currently works as a Senior Professional Services Consultant with Zend Technologies. Adam is very active in global and local PHP communities, and organize the South Florida PHP Users Group (SoFloPHP) as well as the SunshinePHP Developer Conference in Miami. Check him out at geekyboy.com.

Chris Wiegman

Chris is a Senior Web Engineer for 10up and has been working on WordPress since 2008. Before joining 10up Chris built one of the largest security plugins in the WordPress community as well as numerous other plugins and solutions. When not coding Chris loves to teach and has presented at numerous WordCamps and other conferences as well as taught computer security for St. Edward’s University and other University courses ranging from computers to aviation. Check him out at chriswiegman.com.

WordCamp Miami Tickets On Sale April 7th

All “early” tickets have been sold out. Remaining tickets will be going on sale 9:00am EST on Tuesday, April 7th. This includes:

  • General Admission Tickets For The Weekend (May 30th/31st)
  • BuddyCamp Miami (May 29th)
  • Front-End & WordPress Theme Full-Day Course (May 29th)
  • WordPress 101 Full-Day Course (May 29th in Miami)
  • WordPress 101 Full-Day Course (May 2nd in Davie, FL at Nova Southeastern University)

To learn more about the full-day courses and workshops happening on May 2nd and May 29th, click here.

Tickets will sell out quickly, so be ready. May the Force be with you!

May 2nd & May 29th Courses

In addition to grabbing a ticket for the weekend (May 30th and 31st), there is also a limited number of tickets for full-day workshops (or what we are also calling “courses”) this year. These courses have limited availability and sell out quickly. We are urging people to read the information below and only buy a ticket if you know you are able to attend.

Note: No computer or tablet is required for these full-day courses – but feel free to bring your own laptop or tablet since no computers are provided at the beginner’s 101 courses or any other courses.

WordPress 101 Beginner’s Course

This full day class is especially tuned for those new to WordPress. Topics covered include everything from hosting, making your first post, finding themes, and basic installing of plugins. We have TWO beginner’s course days to accommodate those from Broward/Palm Beach and those in Miami to be able to attend a beginner’s course fairly close to them (one is in Davie, FL on May 2nd and the other is in Miami, FL on May 29th). Both courses are IDENTICAL, so you only need to attend one.

If you already know how to use WordPress to publish, chances are this workshop is NOT for you. This course is targeted for those who have barely or never used WordPress before.

We are encouraging people attending the 101 Beginner’s Course to bring a laptop or tablet – we will be providing a WordPress site for you to login into (even if there are wifi issues at the venue – which hopefully there won’t be – you will still have a WordPress site to play around with after the day is over). We will not be providing computers at these courses. The format will be 2-3 speakers leading you through a progressive tutorial through their slides and presentations.

Location: The Beginner’s Course on May 2nd will be at Nova Southeastern University in Davie, FL and registration will start at 8am EST. The Beginner’s Course on May 29th will be at FIU (same location as where we will be over the weekend) in Miami, FL and registration will start at 8am EST. (We will be posting venue location information here shortly).

BuddyCamp Miami

This full day class is for designers, developers, and ANYONE wanting to learn more about BuddyPress. We’ll start the day taking everyone for a test-drive with BuddyPress. Then experts from around the globe will be on hand to discuss topics ranging from design, scaling, and how to grow a community with BuddyPress.

You can read more about BuddyCamp Miami here.

Location: BuddyCamp Miami on May 29th will be at FIU (same location as where we will be over the weekend) in Miami, FL and registration will start at 8am EST. (We will be posting venue location information here shortly).

Front-End & WordPress Theme Course

This full day class is especially for front-end developers or designers who already know HTML/CSS coding but want to improve their skills in coding and their ability in building WordPress Themes. This is a NEW workshop course for WordCamp Miami and we are excited to have some great developers and theme-builders present pack alot of knowledge in just one day.

To be clear, this full-day course is for those already knowing some about HTML and CSS. This is not for those wanting to learn HTML or CSS basics. If you fall into that category, come by on the weekend and we’ll have people that can help you with that!

Location: Front-End / WordPress Theme Course on May 29th will be at FIU (same location as where we will be over the weekend) in Miami, FL and registration will start at 8am EST. (We will be posting venue location information here shortly).

WordCamp Miami 2015: New Tracks

We have a lot of new things, refinements, and classic traditions planned for WordCamp Miami 2015 on May 29-31st.

But what has us excited most is our changes to our sessions and our session tracks. We are making some minor refinements (“if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”) in several key areas. In a few areas, we are hitting a reset button. For a couple of things we’re going to be trying something new and fresh.

(Please note that plans can change, with some details in flux due to venue and personal confirmations).

jjj-presenting

“How To” Track

This year we will be adding a new format of a track we are calling “how to”. This track will be focused on users walking into the room and walking out in that same hour with actionable insights and knowledge. Although there will be abstract and motivational talks at WordCamp Miami, they really won’t be in this track. This track will focus on getting things done – a mini-workshop with step by step instructions… steps you can go home that night and do hopefully on your own. Experienced speakers will be hand selected and slides will be formatted in such a way where users can use them as a resource. Additional techniques and technologies will be used, and we will share with you more about this as we get closer to the event.

One session in this track, as an example, might be focused on installing and using “Google Analytics on your WordPress blog”. An attendee will walk into the room knowing almost nothing about analytics… and walking out with knowledge and materials to be able to install and use the basic settings of that plugin on their own (perhaps even going into another room and trying it right at the conference or heading toward the happiness bar if they need further assistance). Session topics will be deliberately small in scope, but just the right size so an attendee can leave WordCamp that day saying to themselves “I know now how to do X” with physical materials they can refer to (and being able to follow up on that knowledge with the local WordPress meetups).

It sounds simplistic and maybe obvious, but we can’t wait to show it in action. Once we have things in place, there will be a few surprises that will make it more interactive and instructional for the attendees and speakers. You’ll just have to be there to find out what we REALLY have planned.

 

debut

Developer Topics

WordCamp Miami has always had a developer track on it’s main day – but primarily presenting talks meant (more or less) for general developer audiences. Which makes sense – WordCamps tend to attract all kinds of developers with various levels of experience. Wouldn’t it be great for developers if they actually got into some deeper topics? How about more insight into PHP and other topics maybe not directly related to WordPress? We are going to make such pushes for developers this year.

What’s more important – we think Miami is ready for more serious developer talks and conferences. According to feedback from local meetups and other sources, more and more advanced topics are being desired (and less of the very early or beginning level topics).

Hallway Tracks

We’ve decided to officially unofficially welcome networking/hallway tracks into WordCamp Miami. More on this in the coming days.

Screenshot 2015-02-19 12.23.41

We Mean Business

Business talks will be back this year and will be aiming toward providing those in attendance with knowledge, slides, videos, documents, and links for many talks. Think more “this is what you need and how you do it” and a training course more than a schedule of random tracks. It’s a cohesive plan from beginning to end (so you don’t want to miss any early sessions).

Kids: Workshops and Beyond

WordCamp Miami 2014's Workshop For Kids brought 30+ kids and one of the biggest highlights of the event.

Our WordCamp for Kids last year was a first for us and a HUGE success (read the highlights here). Expect it back this year, but we are also bringing something else for young ones to WordCamp Miami 2015. One of our biggest goals at WCMIA is diversity – and diversity includes young ones. They are the next generation of bloggers, developers, and coders.

What we got planned currently is going to knock your socks off.

BuddyCamp Miami III

The third BuddyCamp Miami was announced already for May 29th – we couldn’t wait. We hope to have a solid speaker lineup this year. And to go along with our developer topics mention, it looks like this year’s BuddyCamp Miami might be more developer focused and have a more limited attendee maximum than previous years. We really don’t want people just to come and listen to talks, but actually CHAT with developers and contributors one-on-one to learn and improve their development and design skills with BuddyPress and bbPress. So speakers: be warned!

Additional Friday Course

In addition to a Beginner’s Course and BuddyCamp on Friday, we are planning another small intimate full-day course. We will be announcing this third course – along with it’s lineup – in the coming days. Right now, it’s a surprise.

…and that’s what we have planned so far. See you in Miami at the end of May. 🙂

Second Round of Early Bird Tickets Available

Update March 19th: Our second batch of EARLY BIRD WEEKEND TICKETS have sold out. We will be offering general admission tickets shortly. Make sure to be on our mailing list for any ticket announcements.

Just a quick note that we have opened a second round of early bird tickets for those who want to grab a ticket before we announce speakers and detailed plans. Click here to buy your weekend ticket.

A reminder that this is a WEEKEND ticket only (May 30th and May 31st) and that we will be posting workshop tickets (for May 29th) shortly, so stay tuned. 🙂

Meet Our WordCamp Miami 2015 Organizers

We wanted to introduce you to the highly dedicated volunteers that are donating their time and effort into making WordCamp Miami 2015 a memorable event – our WordCamp Miami organizers! They are putting in blood, sweat and tears so that everyone that is attending can learn, grow, play and network at WordCamp Miami.

Steven Alig

Information Architect and SEO specialist – I build, manage and market with WordPress

soflaweb.com | @salig

Syed Balkhi

Technically Awesome. Marketer with Design & Dev Skills (that’s lethal). I created @wpbeginner  @list25 @optinmonster @soliloquywp @enviragallery etc.

syedbalkhi.com | @syedbalkhi

David Bisset

David is a full-time freelancer developer living in South Florida. He’s a WordPress developer and specializes in BuddyPress sites/applications along with stand-alone PHP work. Also a speaker, meetup organizer, conference organizer, and father of three.

davidbisset.com |@dimensionmedia

Deja Canty

Future Cornelian | Intern Coordinator for Word Camp Miami 2015

@dc_slomo

Michael Chacon

VP of Product Development @ LiveNinja, CEO @ SIC Digital, WordCamp Miami/WPMIA Co-Organizer. I write a lot of code.

sicdigital.com |@sicdigital

Wendy Delfosse

Web & Graphic Designer. Addicted to child themes.

@WendyDelfosse

Ptah Dunbar

Open source hacker, full stack web developer and curious learner of ALL THE THINGS

ptahdunbar.com |@ptahdunbar

Jean Felisme

I am an Entrepreneur, Speaker, WordPress Designer and Developer. I am the founder of

jeanfelisme.com |@jfeliweb

Erik Lindgren

Software Product Manager

@jeriklindgren

Todrick Moore

God fearing and loving husband. Graphic designer and print production artist. Lover of logos. WordPress user.

todrickmoore.com |@todrickmoore

Jeremy Roberts

Happiness Engineer for @WPBeginner, working my way into coding.

@twitjjr

Michael Schofield

Front-end dev and librarian interested in the creative application of data-driven user experience design.

libux.co |@schoeyfield