Category Archives: Announcements

Thank You For Another Successful WordCamp!

Photo by Found Art Photography | Camp group photo highlights, at WordCamp WordCamp Minneapolis 2016

Photo by Found Art Photography | Camp group photo highlights, at WordCamp Minneapolis 2016

Now that we’ve all had a week to recover from WordCamp Weekend, we wanted to take some time to thank everyone involved for another successful camp.

Thank you to the attendees who came to learn and support our event. We had over 100 people at Foundation Friday, and over 400 people attend during the weekend. That’s a ton of people who love WordPress! We are grateful that ticket costs are kept low for WordCamps so that we can reach as many people as possible without a huge financial burden.

Thank you to the organizers and volunteers that sacrificed time, energy, and sleep to coordinate the event months before it ever happened, and showed up on the day of to run things as smoothly as possible! We understand that everyone’s lives are incredibly busy, and to see so many people choose to give up their limited free time to put this event together, purely out of a desire to volunteer, is amazing.

Thank you to the speakers that volunteered their time and expertise to join us from the local, regional, or national community. We appreciate all of our speakers, whether it was their first time speaking or their fortieth. WordCamps pride themselves on bringing you not only recognized talent, but also empowering people to present their first conference talks, enabling more people to contribute to the sharing of ideas. Who knows, maybe next year it will be you!

Thank you to the sponsors who make it financially possible to put on an event at a scale that couldn’t be done on ticket income alone. They enable us to keep WordCamps affordable and accessible to almost anyone. We are grateful to the global sponsors Bluehost, Jetpack, WooCommerce, GoDaddy, Pantheon, WPML, Dreamhost, and Plesk for committing to WordCamps around the country and world, and to the local sponsors 3five, Modern Tribe, Rocket55, SiteGround, The Iron Yard, ServerPress, Lightning Base, Flywheel, Press75, Cimbura, AreaVoices, Crowd Favorite, Robert Half, Cardinal Store Locator, and Westwerk for recognizing the value of the Minneapolis WordPress community and choosing to support us.

We will be adding links to speaker slides and videos to the session descriptions  in the weeks ahead, so continue to check here and WordPress TV in order to watch your favorite talks again. If you attended WordCamp and have not yet filled out the feedback survey emailed to you, please do so in order to help us make next year even better. The organizing team personally looks at every single response, so know that your feedback is valued.

If you’re looking to continue your involvement with the local WordPress community, consider joining the MSP WordPress Meetup, and keep an eye out for opportunities to volunteer, speak, or contribute next year!

Foundation Friday: Hands-On WordPress Training

New to WordPress? Or want to ramp up your web design or development skills?

Attend WordCamp Minneapolis Foundation Friday

WordCamp Minneapolis 2015. Photo © 2015 Paul Lampland

Photo © 2015 Paul Lampland

We’re excited to announce that WordCamp Minneapolis is offering a day of workshops with our first Foundation Friday. This is a smaller, separate event taking place Friday, May 20th prior to the weekend conference. Unlike the normal conference tracks, these are full-day hands-on learning sessions.

If you’re new to WordPress, you can get up to speed before WordCamp. If you’re a graphic designer or programmer who wants to work with WordPress, you can acquire a solid foundation to get started.

You should plan to bring a laptop computer, as many of the sessions will be working live in WordPress. You may have your own WordPress website installation, or we’ll offer options for local and remote workspace. All sessions will be in a classroom format, led by professionals with WordPress expertise.

You can purchase these tickets in addition to the normal conference tickets. Capacity is limited and we expect tickets to go quickly—so don’t delay, register today. There are three tracks from which to choose depending upon your interest.

INTRO TO WORDPRESS
for bloggers, content managers, and marketers

From setting up WordPress to creating content and managing a website, you’ll learn everything needed to get started with the world’s most popular content management system. You’ll become skilled using the WordPress dashboard to create web pages and blog posts, add images and videos, customize themes, manage users and comments, monitor security, and even extend your website with new features from the thousands of WordPress plugin options.

Prerequisites: None, but please bring a laptop to follow along working in WordPress.

BUY TICKETS

WORDPRESS DESIGN
for graphic designers

Moving from print design to web design, or from static content to dynamic content? Explore how to design a great user experience for both the website audience and the content administrator. You’ll learn how design relates to content output, and explore “thinking like WordPress” via the template hierarchy, WordPress content types, modular design, front-end best practices, and more.

Prerequisites: General design experience is encouraged, but not necessary, though we will be talking about design concepts on a high level. Experience with the WordPress Dashboard/Admin and comfortable talking about WordPress content. Bonus if you have some HTML/CSS experience.

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WORDPRESS DEVELOPMENT
for web developers

Starting from scratch, you’ll learn about using WordPress logic and template functions to output dynamic content, as well as writing clean, reusable code. You’ll learn how to use core functions, the template hierarchy, custom queries, actions, and smart programming logic to build themes and plugins, as well as best practices for creating a maintainable, scalable codebase.

Prerequisites: Experience with the WordPress Dashboard/Admin and comfortable talking about WordPress content. Comfortable with HTML/CSS, and some experience with a programming logic language (like JavaScript, PHP, or similar). Highly recommend bringing a computer with your local development environment of choice already setup with a WordPress install.

BUY TICKETS

Location

Foundation Friday will be held at the McNally Smith College of Music on Friday, May 20, 2016, conveniently located adjacent to the METRO Green Line 10th Street Station in downtown St. Paul. Schedule coming soon!

McNally Smith College of Music
19 Exchange Street East
Saint Paul, Minnesota 55101

Check out the Location page for more details about hotels, transportation, and social events!

 

The McNally Smith College of Music is not affiliated in any way with the activities conducted by WordPress Foundation on the McNally Smith College of Music campus. The relationship between the McNally Smith College of Music and WordPress Foundation is solely that of licensor and licensee.

Want to Volunteer for WordCamp Minneapolis?

Are you looking for a great opportunity to get involved with the WordPress community?

We are in search of WordPress enthusiasts eager to lend a hand! WordCamps would not be possible without a strong volunteer base of people like you. If you’ve been thinking about attending WordCamp Minneapolis and want to help out, we would love to have you join us! We have tons of positions, from setup to registration to the Happiness Bar to helping with the rooms and everything in between. Sign up now to get on our volunteer list, which includes a ticket to WordCamp, some special swag, and of course our gratitude!

 

Call for Sponsors

WordCamp Minneapolis is looking for sponsors for our 2016 event.

Sponsoring WordCamps is a rewarding experience for companies of all sizes, giving you lots of positive visibility and good karma. Plus, it’s a great way to give back to the WordPress community.

Why sponsor WordCamp Minneapolis?

By sponsoring WordCamp Minneapolis, you show your support for the WordPress project, that free, open source software has enriched your life and/or business; you also contribute to the growth of your local WordPress community.

WordCamps are run entirely by volunteers and the only funds available are those from ticket sales and our sponsors. We strive to keep ticket prices low ($20/day or less) to ensure accessibility to freelancers and small business owners with limited funds. However, that introduces a challenge when it comes to having a suitable venue, food & beverages for hundreds, technical capabilities, support services, and top-notch speakers. We literally cannot do it without you!

That’s where you come in.

Whether you would love to feed us lunch, willing to perform a service we are in need of, or have a spare $1,000 lying around, we absolutely appreciate that help. With a wide variety of sponsorship levels and ways you can contribute, we have something that fits nearly any budget.

Ready to help us out?

Download our sponsorship information document to get some more details, and then fill out the form below. Our organizing team will be in touch. Thank you so much for helping!

 

Apply To Speak At WordCamp Minneapolis!

Speaker Applications are now CLOSED, thanks to everyone who applied! We’ll be announcing speakers in the coming weeks.

Our theme for WordCamp this year is “Creating Intention.”

We feel that our best work is always done when we have a sense of the greater purpose behind it. So, we want to explore the reasons why we do things, whether that’s development, design, content, teaching, learning, or strategy.

In addition to the typical rules for speaking at a WordCamp, there are a few other things we are looking for:

  • Represent a diverse range of voices from the local and national community, including experienced speakers and new speakers with a passion for their topic.
  • Emphasis on connecting with other creative and tech communities outside the WordPress space, or outside the typical presenters we normally hear at WordCamps.
  • Appeal to an audience with a broad skillset, especially the thriving development, design, and blogging communities here in Minneapolis
  • Present a variety of topics on WordPress, including Web Development, Design, Technology, Writing, SEO/Marketing, and other fields as they relate to using, building, creating, and improving WordPress sites, themes, plugins, and products

What does that mean for your talk submissions?

  • Topics presented should focus not just on “what to do” or “how to do” something, but why it should be done and the purposes behind it.
  • Special consideration to talks that can promote cross-disciplinary collaboration, applying lessons from one field/area to another, or the importance of learning/education
  • We want to encourage diversity (of opinions, of people and backgrounds, of voice, and of skillsets)

Additional thoughts for potential speakers:

  • Talks do not have to be specifically about WordPress, but must relate to WordPress in some way, whether it’s using WordPress, building/developing/designing for WordPress, enhancing WordPress, or interacting with the WordPress community
  • Calling JavaScript developers! In light of the call to “Learn JavaScript Deeply” in 2016, we are trying to have a dedicated JavaScript track on Sunday afternoon, from beginner to intermediate (and possibly advanced)
  • Calling design thinkers! We’d like to try to run a design/”design-thinking” track both days. This isn’t just visual design, but user inferfaces, user experience, animation, and cross-disciplinary applications of design thinking principles in other fields
  • Calling strategists, writers, bloggers, and content producers! The web wouldn’t exist without content, and we want to hear from you about creating it purposefully
  • Looking for 45 minute talks (including Q&A), and a few lightning talks. We are also open to panels or multi-person talks.

Know someone you’d like to hear speak?

If you know a person who is a great speaker, or maybe a new speaker with tons of knowledge to share, and would like to nominate them to speak, get in touch via our Contact Form and let us know who it is, where they are located, and what it is they speak about, as well as a way for us to get in touch.

Ok, enough introductions… apply now!