Welcome! Please Read About Our Changes For 2018!

WordCamp Miami has hosted hundreds of speakers in the past decade. Some have been as young as 10. Some have joined us from all over the globe such as India, Brazil, England. Some have been long-standing members in the community, many have been first time speakers. We pride ourselves in diversity – but alot of this relies on our speaker submissions.

This year for our 10th anniversary we are doing a few things differently. We have already taken surveys from our local community and we have a roadmap. Next comes those who want to join us. Please read this page before submitting EVEN IF YOU HAVE SPOKEN at WordCamps or at WCMIA before.

Submission deadline is Midnight EST on Friday December 8th, 2017. Submission deadline has been EXTENDED to Midnight EST on Sunday December 10th, 2017. Deadline has passed and we are no longer accepting speaker submissions.

First Time?

If you are considering to apply to speak at WCMIA for the first time it’s highly recommended you contact us so that you have the opportunity to speak at a local meetup first, if you are from the area. Also we encourage you to watch some videos of past talks at WordCamp Miami. Notice how the talks are given by knowledgeable people without self-promotion.

Suggested Topics

We are able to share more plans based on surveys from our local community. Keep in mind these are plans and can change without notice… please take this information as just that. If you have something already in mind, feel free to submit after reviewing this page.

• Ecommerce will be an area we will be focusing on this year for both end users and developers. So if you work for companies that produce (as examples) WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, WP eCommerce (or have experience in running a store by such kinds of plugins), we would encourage you to reach out. Perhaps you know how to do some cool integrations with other WordPress plugins or 3rd party software. Remember that subject material should apply to a wide enough audience, but we encourage you to submit and you can ask us for feedback.
• We are planning on hosting the 3rd “Learn JavaScript Deeply” track again this year. Early plans put our focus more on React. Our attendees love live coding demos. Attendees have also requested being able to see presentations and talk to people who have done medium to large scale React/JavaScript projects (with or without WordPress)
• If you work with Gutenberg or are very familiar with it, our community has expressed interest in it and also how it will impact WordPress in the future.
• We have a special category for “outside the bubble” speakers and topics. If you are a member of a community that the WordCamp Miami audience (and global WordPress community, since videos are posted on wordpress.tv) would benefit from, consider applying. In the past we’ve had speakers from Joomla, Drupal, and other communities.
• As always we welcome submissions from a wide variety of topics. This is a short (but not complete) list of topics we’ve covered in the past:
  • Content Creation (Writing, Strategy)
  • Security
  • Building Themes
  • Freelancing / Business Topics (Dealing w/ Clients, Best Practices, Hiring Developers, etc.)
  • Web Design / Theme Design / UI / UX
  • PHP / HTML
  • Advanced WordPress Development Topics (Coding Themes, Plugins)
  • Case Studies (“What We Did Wrong”)
  • BuddyPress

Things To Keep In Mind

• NEW! This year our schedule will be a bit different compared to the past. More lightning talks are being planned. If you are submitting an application for a talk consider spinning that off into one or more lightning talks that focus on a more specific topic from the bigger talk.
• We always on the lookout for new speakers of ALL ages and backgrounds, especially young ones!
• Being a professional speaker is NOT required HOWEVER you must know what you are talking about. In your speaker submission, let us know how your talk can relate to WordPress or the WordCamp Miami audience.
• Your session is not primarily to promote your own product or business. If your session is to detail how you used WordPress code to build some really great aspect of your theme, plugin or business, and you’d like to present that as a sort of case study, go ahead and submit your session, but know that we’re not going to allow for a sales pitch at any point.
• You have to know how to spell WordPress. And respect the WordPress logo/trademarks.
• You can submit multiple speaker submissions for different topics.
• Please be prepared to submit speaker slides or review your presentation with a WCMIA organizer PRIOR to the event if asked.

Kids Panel

It’s likely we will have our 3rd annual “Kid’s Panel”, so if you know someone who blogs, codes, works with WordPress – please wait for our speaker call for this.

Talk Lengths

This is still being finalized. Standard talk times will be approximately 30 minutes. Lightning talks are usually 10 minutes.

Happiness Bar

All speakers (with exception of speakers that speak last or right before lunch) are being asked after their talk to proceed to the Happiness Bar for post-talk questions that couldn’t be answered during your talk.

Selection Process:

All selections and submissions are collectively reviewed by our committee. We cannot accept all submissions, and in fact the majority are NOT selected. Factors we look for in presentations are the degree of uniqueness and popularity of the topic, the speaker qualifications and experience (past speaking experience is NOT required though, since we do have first-time speakers at WordCamp Miami), hometown of speaker (we try to keep a certain percentage of speakers local), and other factors. If your submission is not accepted we will notify you although we might not be able to personally respond to each submission or applicant.

Finally, there’s been a lot of talk about variety of speakers at technology conferences. Our general policy is that we don’t consider the race, sex, religion, or any other factor of the speaker to play a part in our selection process. That being said we encourage EVERYONE to submit talk proposals – including women and other groups that may not be represented traditionally well at tech conferences. EVERYONE has a story and you can reach out to us privately at miami@wordcamp.org if you have any questions – please consider submitting a proposal!

Submission Form:

Deadline has passed and we are no longer accepting speaker submissions.