Category Archives: Site Announcements

WordPress Beginner’s Workshop – February 19th

If you are new to WordPress, then you want to make sure you attend our beginner’s workshop. And as our beginner workshops are quite popular, we wanted to share with you some information before they sell out.

Our workshop is happening on February 19th at FIU. Our workshops worked out last year very well and sold out rather quickly. We limit our workshops to about 100 attendees, SO IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY DONE SO GRAB A TICKET BEFORE OUR WORKSHOPS SELL OUT.

Registration will start at 8am, and a full day’s schedule is planned (9am to 4:30pm). Lunch will be provided, so just bring yourself (a laptop or tablet is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, or something to take notes with) and get ready for a full day of getting up to speed with WordPress. After this workshop you’ll be ready for WordCamp Miami weekend (Feb 20th and Feb 21st).

Schedule

Here’s what we cover in our beginner workshop (note that this schedule might be adjusted, and if so we’ll alert all ticket holders).

1. Decisions / Education (Selecting a domain, what hosting provider might be the best for you, comparing WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org, etc.)

2. Installation and Setup (Guiding through how to install WordPress and giving a tour of the general WordPress admin)

3. Getting Started with WordPress (Showcasing every day things that you do in WordPress such as creating and editing posts, pages, categories, tags, etc. Also we go into items like comment moderation)

4. WordPress Themes (Discussion about trusted sources of getting WordPress themes, best practices, widgets, menus, header images, background images, and more)

5. Trouble Shooting (Knowledge share on common WordPress problems, troubleshooting, customizing, importing/exporting, and more)

6. Plugins (Best practices for plugins, “must-have” plugins, and how to use WordPress beyond a blogging platform)

Our beginner workshops usually sellout, so if you want to learn more about using WordPress or want to review the basic concepts before the WordCamp Miami weekend, grab a ticket.

Changes To Beginner’s Workshop For 2016

Every year WordCamp Miami offers one of the best ways in South Florida to get up-to-speed on WordPress – our beginner’s workshops. We wanted to take a few minutes to let you know some some changes this year. In the past, we have offered TWO beginner’s workshops (one during WordCamp Miami and one that happens in Broward County a few weeks prior). This year we have decided to only offer ONE BEGINNER’S WORKSHOP. This workshop is the one that happens during WordCamp Miami – so the date you should mark off in your calendar is February 19th if you want to attend the beginner’s workshop in Miami before WordCamp Miami weekend.

Again to summarize:
– We are not going to have a beginner’s workshop in Broward County this time. WordPress Meetup group might offer something AFTER WordCamp Miami, so you will need to make sure you have joined the WordPress Meetup Group for updates on that.
– The Beginner’s Workshop on February 19th, 2016 is still a go, just like past years.

Tickets for the February 19th beginner’s workshop will be onsale soon, so keep watching the website or follow us on Twitter.

Special Invite to Drupal and Joomla Shops

WordCamps draw those interested in WordPress, but they also strive to be welcome places for ANY developer of any platform to learn more on open-source and web related technologies. Open source projects shouldn’t harshly separate open source developers, regardless if they use WordPress or not. Matt Mullenweg lead by example and accepted an invite to speak at the Joomla! World Conference in 2013.

Speakers

Last year WordCamp Miami had one of our first “non-WP CMS” speakers: Jason Nickerson give a talk on How Joomla and WordPress Influence Each Other. This year we would love to see speaker submissions from other non-WP communities that our attendees would appreciate and relate to. So while you might not want to talk about Drupal development, there are other possible subjects and topics to cover.

Click here to read more about speaker submissions and how to submit.

Attendees

We are extending an official invite to any dedicated Drupal and/or Joomla developers to come to WordCamp Miami and be a part of South Florida’s open source community. Not only are we making an official invite, but we have several (read: very limited quantity) of free and/or discounted tickets to any developers or developer shops that work in Drupal and/or Joomla.

So if you are not a WordPress developer, but work with another open-source solution like Drupal or Joomla, please contact miami@wordcamp.org. Again to qualify for a complimentary ticket, you’ll need to prove you are a part of an agency or you are an established contributor to Drupal or Joomla.. We will review entries on a case by case basis.

But no matter what you develop in – then we would love to have you at one of the biggest local web conferences in Miami and one of the largest WordCamps in the United States.

WordCamp Miami 2016: Getting Personal

I’m not really sure when the phrase “This Time It’s Personal” truly caught on, although it could have started with this movie. Nevertheless, the kind of personal we’ll be talking about isn’t like that.

Throughout the last seven WordCamps (yes seven) in Miami, we have done quite a bit and tried alot of things. Some ideas were born and weren’t revisited – other times idea blossomed into full tracks (see last year’s “How To” track) and firm traditions (we’ve been doing speaker cards for a number of years). We covered an abundance of information and knowledge in the sessions from great speakers. And while we aren’t planning on changing that aspect in our eighth WordCamp… there is something we wanted to focus on as much as possible as we build the event happening in February.

WordPress is about people – more than blog posts, more than code.

What does that mean for WCMIA 2016?

While we are busy focusing on what knowledge, tips, and code that is shared with 800 attendees we don’t want to lose focus on those in the WordPress community that make that knowledge and presenting that knowledge possible. Everyone in the WordPress community has a story to share – from the personal to the professional – that can be just as instructive and inspiring (or even more so) then strictly sharing code.

To that end: in addition to our usual buffet of WordPress knowledge we’ll be setting aside some special times for “fireside chats”, one-on-one interviews, and focused network events.

Getting Outside The WordPress Bubble

We have been slowly searching and finding great speakers from outside the usual “WordPress bubble” and we will continue to make this one of our goals this year. A recent successful example was Jason Nickerson’s talk at our last WordCamp on how Jommla and WordPress influence each other. And as always WordCamp Miami is open to developers and users of other popular CMS.

Hallway Track

This year we are making a concentrated effort to offer an “unofficial unconference” experience in a particular location at the venue. Will this be the location of some of our “fireside chats” and the sharing of personal experiences? Stay tuned to our site updates to learn more as we get closer (and also feel free to join us on our own Slack channel).

BuddyCamp Miami

As many of you might know BuddyCamp is a conference devoted to the BuddyPress plugin (and related plugins and technologies). BuddyCamp Miami 2016 is in the planning stages as we reach out to various key contributors and speakers. We will announce more information as it becomes available.

WordPress: The Next Generation

Our WordCamp for Kids for the past two years were HUGE successes. Except it back this year based on demand, and we are also investigating other ways to include young ones. One of our biggest goals at WCMIA is diversity – and diversity includes young people. They are the next generation of bloggers, developers, and coders.

Because the children ARE the future of WordPress we are hoping to have more than ONE particular event devoted to kids and young ones. What we got planned currently is going to knock your socks off!

What Else?

We have alot in the works including our new Instagram account, a weekend video booth, entertainment (possibly a game show?) at our after-party, new contests and giveaways, different flavors of ice cream, and maybe even a red carpet (ok, that last one might be a joke… maybe). You’ll just have to keep following our updates to learn more!

It’s Official! Dates are Set!

We have great news regarding our eighth WordCamp Miami – it will be held at FIU on February 19-21, 2016. We are also proud to announce the Ptah Dunbar will be stepping up as our lead coordinator this year!

We have been in the early staging of planning for the past two months, and we can’t wait to share with you what we’ve got planned. Some ideas, concepts, and workshops from previous years are being carried over but also several fresh new concepts as well.

If you don’t want to wait and book travel way in advance (at least in WordCamp terms) you may already begin by looking at the same hotels we recommended last year.

Our call for volunteers, sponsors, and speakers will happen shortly so watch for those announcements. Here’s the best ways to keep updated:

Join our public Slack channel.
Join over 1000 already on our mailing list.
Follow us @wordcampmiami on Twitter.

Be A Part of WordCamp Miami 2016

As of this writing we are literally days away from officially announcing our WordCamp Miami 2016 dates.

This past month we have been starting up the “event engine” which means waking up the coordinators and inviting new ones to increase the energy and diversity of WordCamp Miami planning. If you are interested in being a high-level volunteer and coordinator, please reach out to us directly.

In the meantime, we are happy to report that we are creating a new Slack team just for this event – and it’s completely open to the public. Which means are free to ask questions directly to the team, in addition to monitoring and offering feedback as we plan the event. What’s also great about this Slack team is that you can meet other future WCMIA 2016 attendees and start conversations BEFORE the event. It’s a great way to have meaningful talks at the event itself if you’ve already started talking beforehand!