Hello!
WordCamp DFW 2015 is over, but 2016’s event is coming soon! It’s on Saturday, September 24, 2016 at The University of Texas at Arlington, and tickets are $20.
Swing by the WCDFW 2016 website for more details! We’re still accepting speaker applications, looking for volunteers, and selling tickets!
We hope to see you there!
Pat Ramsey is Director of Ongoing Client Support at Crowd Favorite and an active member of the Austin WordPress community. His talk will be focused on “Leveling Up with Documentation.”
I started using WordPress in 2004 because it was the best tool for creating an easy-to-use and scalable website. I use it today because it’s still that, but with a decade of maturity, making it even more powerful.
2004, working in Higher Ed. We needed something to build our online IT helpdesk, which was basically a blog.
If you’ve never used it, try a free WordPress.com account. It’s a free way to learn how to move around the Dashboard, familiarizing yourself to some degree of how it works. If it turns out to not be your thing, you’re not out anything. If you stay with it, and you’re using WordPress for your business, well now you’ve got a better sense of things.
If you’re great at the technical side, learn the business side. Find peers you can learn from, join a mastermind group, find a lawyer or CPA. It’s business. Respect that and be serious about it.
Twitter, Slack channels, Facebook.
New faces. Every WordCamp I meet new faces and am reminded, in person, of how the community is growing.
Beyond meeting all the new faces, Several of us at Crowd Favorite will be there and we’ll get some time in-person together. For a distributed company, this is always a great thing.
Website: http://crowdfavorite.com
Twitter: @pat_ramsey
Next on deck in our Speaker Q&A series is Doug Stewart, who’ll be presenting “Tales from the Command Line!”
It puts food on the table. *grin* I work for 10up and do WordPress stuff day-in/day-out, but I got started with it as a writer and have participated in its growth and evolution over the course of the last 11.5 years.
I started using WordPress in 2004 with version 1.0. I had been using Blogger and wanted to host my own site, so I started investigating Movable Type. MT changed their license from an open source one to a for-pay closed-source one just before WP 1.0 was released, so I was looking around for a CMS with similar capabilities but with an open source license. WP fit the bill quite nicely.
Find a local Meetup, ask questions, and most importantly, play around with WP. Install themes and plugins, figure out how they work together (or don’t!).
Find a niche that no one else is exploiting and the go after it with quality code and good support.
Mainly Twitter and a heap of Feedly RSS subscriptions, plus my co-workers.
Getting other people excited about new developments and approaches in WordPress. I love seeing the “lightbulb moments” for people and I’ve been the beneficiary of just such a moment more than a few times.
Getting to interact with a whole new community of WordPress users. I’ve got family in Dallas and I’m really looking forward to it.
Website: http://literalbarrage.org/blog
Twitter: @zamoose
To whet your appetite as we close in on the final two weeks (!!) before the Big Event, we’ll be featuring a speaker Q&A right here on this blog for your reading pleasure. On deck is David Brumbaugh, who’ll be speaking about The CIA Mindset: Planning Your WordPress Site’s Security (for Business Users).
I use WordPress because it is both elegant from a programmer’s standpoint, and easy to explain to a layman.
I got started using WordPress when I was the Web Development Community Guide with DICE. During my research I discovered that WP was the single most used development environment on the Web so I realized I needed to learn it. When I started learning it I was impressed with it’s elegance.
If you are an absolute beginner, I found a free (at the time) Kindle eBook on Amazon called “WordPress in a Week or Less” by Zak Cagaros. If you are an experienced programmer just getting started in WordPress I’d recommend going to WordPress.org and just diving in. I found the Linked In WordPress groups to be very helpful for getting a feel for what people are doing and thinking.
If you are building a business around WordPress design or development – become an expert your customers can trust.
I stay informed about WP in several ways.
What I like most about WordCamps is all the positive energy and the chance to get to help people.
This is my first chance to speak at a WordCamp, so that’s what I’m looking forward to most.
Website: http://10up.com
Twitter: @DavidEBrumbaugh
Get your tickets now so that you can hear David speak in person!
We still have a couple of speakers for KidsCamp that we’ll be publishing soon, but in the meantime, here’s the final roster of speakers slated for WordCamp DFW. Be sure to grab your tickets now!
Topic: Extending the WP REST API
Pete is a senior web developer with nearly 20 years of experience He’s been developing for WordPress the past four years.
Topic: Getting Started on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Jon is the sales partner at Osky Blue, an online marketing and software development company based in Frisco Texas. He has 15 years of experience in business growth, sales and development. He has delivered over 400 seminars, classes and training sessions throughout the country on how to do online marketing effectively. He understands the right way to make online marketing efforts profitable. He has a passion for helping people achieve their dreams of business ownership and success, and has found online marketing the best way of doing this. In his free time he loves golfing, watching college football and spending time with his wife, two kids and dog, Bernie.
Topic: Selling A Million Dollars of Product Online: An Introduction to eCommerce
Troy is the marketing partner at Osky Blue, a Frisco based online marketing and software development company. He is an entrepreneur with a passion for small business. He has helped hundreds of small businesses grow and increase profitability. His first venture was an accounting firm that he started right after graduating from college. Over three years, he grew the practice through effective online marketing and guerrilla marketing practices, took it paperless and virtual, and increased profitability by 40%. He then sold the practice so he could pursue his greatest passion: small business online marketing. A driving force in his own success is a desire to help other small businesses. When not working, Troy enjoys golfing, fishing, Dallas’ sporting events and spending time with his wife, four kids and of course, his beloved dog, Osky.
Topic: Developing with Jetpack
Kraft, as he’s better known, started building websites in 1996 and hasn’t looked back. Kraft has worked with his own “weblog” since 2002, first in HTML, then Movable Type, then finally to WordPress. Kraft ran a freelance web development business exclusively using WordPress and Genesis. Now, Kraft works at Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, focusing on Jetpack. Married with five young daughters, you can follow Kraft on Twitter ( @Kraft ) and on his personal site ( https://kraft.im )
Topic: Hacking your personal workflow and the art of Inbox Zero
Hey there, I’m Mendel, an intrapreneurial change-maker, developer, speaker, and teacher.
I love the outdoors, so you’ll usually find me hittin’ the trails between tech events and code-slinging. I’ve also usually got my nose in a cup of single origin, Chemex-brewed coffee. As a GoDaddy Evangelist, I spend most of my time hanging out with developers, designers, entrepreneurs, and creative people all around the world to make sure their opinions and suggestions are heard.
Topic: Your First WordPress Site | There and back again
I am a WordPress developer, a student at UTA, a husband and father. I have been using WordPress since 2.8 (give or take a point release.) I build custom themes and plugins, I have contributed to a couple of WordPress repo plugins and I am working up the courage to contribute to core.