Second Round of WordCamp Miami Speakers Announced

WordCamp Miami is happy to announce the second wave of approved and confirmed speakers for WordCamp Miami 2017.

Rebecca Gill

Rebecca is a Michigan native and president of Web Savvy Marketing. She has as a well-rounded business background within SMB and enterprise organizations, as well as over fifteen years of experience in sales and online marketing. She provides one-on-one SEO coaching, teaches group on-site workshops, and is an SEO instructor at diyseocourses.com and seobootcamp.com.

Diana Espino

Diana Espino is a Software Architect and Zend Certified PHP Engineer with 15+ years experience in Full Stack web development. She specializes in large-scale web applications, modern PHP and JavaScript frameworks, growing engineering teams, and creating great engineering culture. Recently, Diana was recognized by Google as a Passionate Woman in Technology. Her passion has helped produce 2 of the Top PHP Conferences in South Florida – SunshinePHP and WordCamp Miami.

Mike Herchel

Mike Herchel is a front-end web developer at Lullabot and has worked on prominent projects such as the Syfy network, SpaceX, Principal Financial, and more. He’s been passionate about web development since creating his first website in 2001. Mike started using Drupal in 2008, and has been involved in the Drupal community since 2010, and is one of the organizers for the annual Florida Drupalcamp conference. He enjoys presenting at conferences, sharing knowledge as much as possible, and writing about himself in the third person.

Josh Pollock

Josh is a WordPress developer and educator. He is the founder and lead developer for Caldera Labs, makers of awesome WordPress tools including Caldera Forms — a drag and drop, responsive WordPress form builder.

Also, he is a WordPress core contributor, the author of The Ultimate Guide To The WordPress REST API and a member of The WPCrowd.

Chris Wiegman

Chris is a developer for UF Health at the University of Florida who has been working on WordPress since 2008. Over the years Chris built one of the largest security plugins on WordPress.org as well as numerous other plugins, themes and other 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.

Aleksander Kuczek

CEO of Perfect Dashboard. OpenSource CMS aficionado. Joomla Extension Directory team member, and WordPress Directory aspiring team member. A frequent speaker at WordCamps and Joomla Days around the world. 10 years of experience in freelance & agency business. Foodie & computer games freak. Originally from Poland, excited to visit in Miami!

Jodie Riccelli

A lover of all things Philadelphia who is intrigued by the constant expansion of the tech world, Jodie Riccelli began using WordPress in 2006. A graduate of Millersville University, Jodie brings 15 years of sales and marketing experience to WebDevStudios. Entrepreneurs in the real estate, music, technology and education industries have recognized her marketing expertise and ability to restructure and systemize businesses. A self-proclaimed foodie and music aficionado, she now lends her creativity to create unique web strategies and solutions for clients.

Jodie participates on the organizing team for WordCamp US; sits on the advisory committees for PHL Live Center Stage, the PHL Diversity Board and the Blackboard Labs board; and is a member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Recording Academy.

John James Jacoby

Project lead for BuddyPress and bbPress. WordPress contributor, BackPress supporter. Cranky driver. Puppy whisperer. Naps required.

First Round of Tickets Now On Sale!

The time has finally arrived!

You can now purchase your tickets for WordCamp Miami!

We’re offering several ticket types:

  • A full weekend ticket, which covers sessions for both Saturday and Sunday (March 25/26). This will include lunch each day, glorious swag, an official t-shirt, and some surprises. All for only $40!
  • Beginner’s Workshop (which we will post more information on this week) ticket for March 24th. This ticket includes lunch and gives you full access to the workshop.
  • WP REST API / BuddyCamp workshop ticket for March 24th. It’s more than a second workshop on that day – it’s a tradition! If you are a developer or want to hear talks on the WordPress REST API, BuddyPress and developer topics, this is your rally point!
  • Freelance Workshop ticket for March 24th. Our third and final workshop will have speakers give topics on how to be a better freelancer, how to deal with clients, and more. We will release the full schedule for this workshop soon.
  • Kid’s Workshop tickets for March 25th and March 26th. If you have a child ages 8-13 then consider joining your child for our workshops on Saturday and Sunday. We show kids how to publish using WordPress as parents watch them create their first blog posts! We also will be introducing coding for the kids for the first time at WCMIA. Bring your laptop or tablet!

If you applied to speak or volunteer and wondering if you need to buy a weekend ticket now – don’t worry. We are holding weekend tickets in reserve for speakers, sponsors, and volunteers. If you want to attend a workshop, you can grab your ticket now if you’re sure you want to attend that workshop and we will refund you if appropriate.

We’ll be posting information regarding speakers and schedules, so please be sure that you’re subscribed to our mailing list to get ticket updates via email. Or join us in our Slack channel. These are the best ways to be the first to be notified of future announcements.

First Round of WordCamp Miami Speakers Announced

WordCamp Miami is happy to announce the first wave of approved and confirmed speakers for WordCamp Miami 2017.

Ptah Dunbar

Ptah Dunbar is a core contributor of WordPress, BuddyPress, bbPress and founder of WP Dev Agency, a WordPress development consultancy. Since 2006, Ptah has been involved in the WordPress eco-system creating themes, plugins, providing WordPress training, pioneering new development best practices and speaking at several WordCamps across the States. He is best known for his work contributing in WordPress and for developments in JavaScript and application frameworks.

 

Jayvie Canono

Jayvie likes to call himself an accidental careerist in web development: he graduated college with a biology degree but life had other plans for him. He started developing static websites in 2002, and has been an avid user of WordPress to this end since its first release. Since then, he’s found himself a happy little corner in an integrated marketing company in Baltimore, where he uses WordPress beyond site integration.

 

Troy Dean

Troy Dean is co-founder of WP Elevation, the world’s largest business community for WordPress consultants and freelancers. He is also co-founder of RockStar Empires, and online education platform that helps entrepreneurs use the Internet to scale their businesses. He is a proud university dropout and freaking loves the Internet. He is also a voice-over artist, singer and guitar player. He lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife, who runs a psychology podcast on WordPress, and his dog Lucy who is more a Drupal kinda gal.

 

Naomi C. Bush

Naomi’s been working with WordPress as a professional developer since 2005, and you can currently find her over at gravityplus.pro, where she specializes in quickly delivering custom business applications at a fraction of the cost, and curating The Gravity Guide. She contributes back to the WordPress project through the core code, the codex documentation, free plugins, organizing the WordPress Gwinnett meetup, organizing WordCamp Atlanta, and speaking at WordCamps.

 

Tracy Apps

Tracy (or @tapps) is a Visual/UX Designer for Cornershop Creative and loves solving problems creatively. Her overlap of skills in design, user experience, strategy, front-end development, photography, video, and traditional art help her not only think outside the box, but to stay miles away from the box altogether! With over 20 years of web development experience, and over 15 years of client work under her belt, Tracy approaches design very strategically, thinking from all angles to ensure a consistent and effective creative solution… not just something that “looks pretty.” She also could probably deadlift you.

 

Cal Evans

When not banging his head on his monitor, attempting a blood sacrifice to get a particular piece of code working, Cal enjoys building and managing development teams using his widely imitated but never patented management style of “management by wandering around”.

These days, when not working with PHP, Cal can be found working on a variety of projects like CoderFaire. He speaks at conferences around the world on topics ranging from technical talks to motivational talks for developers. If you happen to meet him at a conference, don’t be afraid to buy him a shot of Bourbon.

Cal is based in Jupiter, FL where he is happily married to wife 1.31, the lovely and talented Kathy. Together they have 2 wonderful kids who were both smart enough not to pursue a job in IT.

 

Chris Coyer

Chris Coyier is a web designer who writes about web design at CSS-Tricks, talks about web design every week on the podcast ShopTalk, and co-founded the code playground CodePen.

 

Shilpa Shah

Shilpa Shah is co-founder, Hummingbird Web Solutions and primarily focuses on CyberChimps, a WordPress Themes Store. She was bitten by the travel bug pretty early on and was lucky enough to have a job (in her earlier corporate avatar) that took her to various countries, meeting some truly wonderful people everywhere! She loves dancing in the rain, trekking and camping in the wild. She has recently taking a liking to running ( strictly for fun – and that means not tracking any metrics of any sort). She believes running marathons should be a by-product of and not the goal of running. Shilpa is based in India and you can follow her on Twitter @IdleGazer.

 

 

Preview of WordCamp Miami 2017

With our early bird tickets sold out, regular tickets will be on sale in a few days. In the meantime, we want to tell you about some changes to the WordCamp Miami lineup, workshops, and some other cool things.

Our Focus This Year

This is the 9th year of WordCamp Miami, but we are still experimenting with new formats, tracks and lineups. Here are some previews:

  • We will be adding an “ask the expert” session into each morning and afternoon track on Saturday, March 25th. These six tracks will be about 20 minutes in length and will allow attendees to ask basically any question they want to a guest or guests. Think of this as a mini “town hall”. For example, we will have someone in an “ask the expert” session that specializes in WordPress security.
  • We have three workshops this year: WordPress beginner’s workshop, BuddyCamp/REST API workshop, and our freelancer’s workshop. All workshops will be held March 24th. Specific schedules and location information for these events will be available later next week.
  • For developers, the second year of the Learn JavaScript Deeply track will be on Sunday, March 26th.

We have several “focuses” this year in our main weekend schedule:

  • Customizing/Extending WordPress
  • Ecommerce
  • JavaScript
  • Looking At WordPress From “Outside The Bubble” (Joomla, Drupal, etc.)
  • Mental Health
  • Content / Content Marketing
  • Building a better business (from freelancers to agencies)
  • Kids and Youths: Talks and Panels along with activities both Saturday and Sunday

We will be selling tickets and announcing our first wave of speakers NEXT WEEK.

More information will start pouring in now, so make sure you are following us on Twitter, in Slack, or on our mailing list.

Announcing BuddyCamp Miami 2017!

 

What Is A BuddyCamp?

TcHTOhsrBuddyCamp is a mini-conference (or a workshop) that focuses on the BuddyPress and bbPress plugins. This unique conference focuses on how you can use these plugins as you use WordPress to build SOCIAL or COMMUNITY sites and web applications for you or your clients.

As of now, the schedule follows a traditional WordCamp format, with beginner sessions along with designer / developer presentations. Key people and contributors will be speaking, answering questions, and hanging out.

But That’s Not All – Here Comes The WP-REST API!

Would you like to learn more about the WP-REST API. Perhaps you want to prepare for the day when BuddyPress has it’s own REST API. Either way, if you want to lean about the WP-REST API we are planning on including some instruction into this workshop for developers!


BuddyCamp Miami has been happening for FOUR years. Attendance has been strong every year, and we’re happy the community has supported the longest running BuddyPress event. Seriously 4 or 5 years is sometimes remarkable for a plugin to exist, let alone have a conference for it.

Lead organizers of BuddyPress even call Miami the unofficial home of BuddyCamps (are we misquoting? probably). Please check out BuddyCamp Miami videos on wordpress.tv from our last WordCamp Miami.

What is the date for BuddyCamp Miami 2017?

Our confirmed date is March 24th, 2017 (a Friday). 

Some of our confirmed speakers include…

John James Jacoby: One of the core contributors to BuddyPress… he will be talking about the current state of the plugin and answer questions.

Tara Claeys: Will be reviewing case studies and helping attendees appreciate how they can use BuddyPress for their own projects.

Tanner Moushey: Will be covering how to use BuddyPress to build a successful community site, and at the same time not just focused on features.

…and more speakers talking about the WordPress/BuddyPress REST API!

Tickets coming soon!

Watch this site for ticket announcements, which are coming IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS. You can also follow us on Twitter at @wordcampmiami and @buddycampmia for more details.

Please spread the word, and we look forward to seeing many of you at the fourth BuddyCamp in Miami!

In Search Of Sponsorships!

WordCamp Miami wouldn’t be able to operate for nine years (and counting) without the kindness and generously of our sponsors. Some of the biggest and best companies in (and out) of the WordPress community have called WordCamp Miami their home (for a few days). This year’s lineup of speakers is no different. Sponsors are the biggest reason we can provide nice food, comfortable venues, and reasonable ticket prices for the weekend.

To that end, we are still searching for sponsors – especially those who want to contribute on the SILVER or BRONZE level. Here’s information on all our sponsor levels.

At the same time, if anyone can provide the following services to WordCamp Miami at a noteworthy discount, we would be able to provide a sponsorship:

– Food / Catering
– T-Shirts / Swag
– Video Services
– Professional Photography

Please help spread the word by sharing this link with those in the community, your meetup, or your business.

WordPress and WordCamps provide a great value – both in terms of education and networking. Sponsorships and helping to get the word out (especially since WordCamp Miami is a non-profit, volunteer based event without really a marketing budget!) is a great way to give back.

Feel free to reach out to us via miami@wordcamp.org or our contact form.

Speaker Call Opening…. For Kids!

Update: The call for speakers is now closed

We broke records once again with our speaker call which ended last month. We are confirming final speakers now with emails going out to everyone – regardless if they were chosen or sadly not able to be selected this year.

But now it’s time for us to open a new speaker call…. for kids. We are looking for two or three kids who want to give a 5 minute presentation at WordCamp Miami on March 25th/26th. The young person must be between ages of 7-18 (and if under the age of 16, with their parent or guardian present).

Possible topics:
– How I Use WordPress
– How I Publish Content Online (Even If They Don’t WordPress)
– How Can WordPress Be Better/Easier For Youths My Age

…and those are just suggestions. We would love to see what our youths have to talk about.

WordCamp Miami is known for it’s events specialized for young people. We have had young people speak in previous years. Plus in 2016 we had two full days of activities for the younger generation, plus our first Kid’s Panel. We are looking to expand and give youths their time to shine.

Please ping us with any questions. The deadline for applications is February 10th. And remember… no adults please! 🙂

Early Birds Tickets Available!

Click here to buy your weekend tickets!

What are EARLY BIRD TICKETS?

These are tickets that you can purchase in advance BEFORE we start announcing the bulk of confirmed speakers. There are only 100 early bird tickets available.

Why should I get an EARLY BIRD TICKET?

WordCamp Miami eventually sells out, so grabbing a weekend ticket ensures you a spot at the conference for the weekend – which means you get the great food, talks, networking, and swag – guaranteed!

What other perks do I get?

This cute Wapuu shirt was a hit at WCMIA 2016. We’re bringing them back in limited quantity.

EARLY BIRD TICKETS are locked in at $35… regardless if the price goes up for regular tickets. You might be getting the cheapest tickets for the weekend.

In addition as a reward for those early birders, we are automatically entering early bird ticket holders into a contest to win a REALLY cool Wapuu t-shirt plus some other prizes.

Legal: Prizes may vary depending on final budget. Also organizers and sponsors are not eligible for any prizes, even if they are an early bird ticket holder. You must be present at the end of the event on Sunday March 26th 2018 to win.

Our workshop tickets for Friday March 24th 2017 will be released soon. You don’t have to wait for these workshop tickets to purchase your early bird weekend tickets. Currently we are not offering student or teacher discounts for early bird tickets. If you are selected as a speaker, we will refund your ticket.

Click here to buy your weekend tickets!

Kid’s Workshops For WCMIA 2017: Sneak Preview

WordCamp Miami 2017 is coming up fast and we wanted to showcase one of the most special and dear to our heart aspects of the conference: the focus on the next-generation of WordCampers and digital publishers: our children.

If you are thinking about returning to WordCamp Miami or attending for the first time with youth, we would love to get them involved. Also – we would love it if you could help SPREAD THE WORD. Do you know a teacher, parent, student, etc. that might be able to spread the word… especially if attendance for children would be without cost?

Here’s our gameplan for children and young ones for WordCamp Miami 2017:

1. We are again planning two near FULL days of activities. On Saturday, we will likely be having a “code camp” where kids can learn how to publish their own blogs with WordPress… and possibly some actual coding. On Sunday, we will continue our activities with coding and STEAM/STEM activities.

2. One of our weekend sessions will be a panel of youths, focused on how they publish content on the web (with and without WordPress). We had this panel at our last WordCamp on a Sunday and it was met with great success.

Can your child participate in our kids sessions? Can your child be a part of our Youth Panel?

WordCamp Miami 2017 is over. Check out the next edition!