WordCamp Victoria

WordCamp Victoria 2011 is only 16 days away – January 22nd, 2011 – and most of the seats are now reserved.

We are absolutely firm on the number of seats available (due to limited space), so please don’t wait and be disappointed, register now.

We are very excited about some of the fabulous speakers coming, and the Genius Bar is filling up fast, too.

If you are new to WordPress, don’t forget about the WordPress 101 orientation on January 13th.

Sponsors

• If you are coming from out of town, please consider staying at our host hotel, Accent Inn Victoria. Ask for the “WordCamp” rate, which is $79 per night plus tax.
• University Canada West has graciously contributed the space again for WordCamp. They also now have an audio system in the gymnasium, which has allowed us to expand the offerings this year.
• Once again, Ambrosia Catering will be providing a fabulous lunch. A special thanks to them for supporting the WordPress community!
• Que Publishing has donated 9 books for our door prize draw, including three by speaker Rebecca Bollwitt.
• My company, IdeaZone.ca, has donated all the graphic and web design, and partner DotCanuck Domain Services has contributed the website hosting.
• Finally, my new coffee business, Everything Coffee, is sponsoring all the coffee for the event (and a gift basket worth over $70).
• We still have room for additional sponsors and door prizes; please contact us this as soon as possible.

Guest Post by Beth Campbell Duke. Beth is speaking at 9am, and on the Genius Bar at 10am.

Thinking about starting a blog? Or in using WordPress as a “content management system” to give you more control over your website?

Then WordCamp is for you.

You don’t need to have a WordPress blog, or even a whole lot of knowledge about WordPress to attend WordCamp. For those of you just starting out, the first workshop of the day in the “Beginner” stream is designed to get your first WordPress blog up and running.

Bring your own laptop so we can help get you set up with a WordPress account, and your first blog. Over the course of the hour, you’ll learn not just WordPress skills but valuable blogging lingo:

• Choosing a WordPress theme,
• Completing your profile, setting up a Gravatar and Hovercard,
• The difference between a page and a post,
• The kinds of widgets you can add to your sidebar(s),
• An introduction to categories and tags,
• Setting up your blogroll and displaying links,
• Finding help on the WordPress.com and WordPress.org forums.

You’ll leave this first workshop knowing enough about WordPress that you can make the most of your day at WordCamp. In addition to the day’s lineup of workshops and speakers, you can get help with your WordPress questions at the Genius Bar. Truth be told, you can probably get help with your questions from anyone attending WordCamp – it’s a friendly and welcoming bunch.

Learn more about the day’s workshops and speakers here.

Sign up for WordCamp here.

We have our speakers set now for WordCamp Victoria 2011 on January 22nd. Thanks to all our speakers who are volunteering their time for the WordPress community in Victoria!

Want to contribute some of your time? How about volunteering for the Genius Bar?

What is a Genius Bar, you ask? It’s new to our WordCamp, but the concept is not new.

I believe it was Victoria’s own Lloyd Budd who was one of the first to try the Genius Bar concept at WordCamp. It has since been replicated at WordCamp’s around the world.

The idea is simple:

A “smart person” volunteers for a shift to help people one-on-one with their problems, questions, etc. During that hour, people can approach these geniuses to ask them anything… and they will try to help.

Want to volunteer for this?

Leave a comment, or contact us. Indicate your preferred time (the schedule is posted), and the topic area you feel you are most expert at.

At the last WordCamp, I received completed surveys from about 1/3rd of the attendees. On that survey, the final question was:

Would you attend a local WordPress Users Group?

The response options were “Monthly”, “Quarterly” or “No”, and totals were as follows:

• Monthly: 14
• Quarterly: 24
• Monthly and Quarterly: 1
• No: 10 (… and 4 indicated they lived too far away)
• Blank: 3

Clearly there is an interest in having a regular Victoria WordPress User Group. As such, I have undertaken the task.

Since there was a split between Quarterly and Monthly, I split the difference.

Dale Gann of Vancouver Island Technology Park has kindly volunteered their space for our meetings. I have booked the 2nd Thursday of odd numbered months, with meetings scheduled to begin at 6:30pm.

This means the first event is 9 days before WordCamp. I timed this intentionally … so people who are interested in coming to WordCamp, but feel they need a bit of a primer first can take advantage of this opportunity. At this meeting, I will be presenting an Introduction to WordPress. We will be charging $20 for this first meeting, to be split 50/50 between (a) funds for future WordPress User Group operations, such as speaker expenses, and (b) the Cridge Transition House for Women.

Why a charitable contribution? I figured this is a good habit to get into from the start. We can discuss whether to continue this as a regular practice at the meeting.

I’ve put some of the digital infrastructure in place, too, as follows:

• I renamed the Meetup group we had for WordCamp to WordCamp Victoria and Victoria WordPress User Group (since the audience for getting together is likely to be pretty much the same, as indicated by the survey).
• I set up a separate Twitter account for the Victoria WordPress User Group, though. I figured that this could eventually be a shared account for people who become active in the group, vs. yyjWordCamp, which we’ll keep specifically for WordCamp Victoria.
• I registered the domain name wpug.ca for potential future use. I figured we’d see what the interest is in having a website/blog for the group. While it seems obvious for a group of this nature, we could always use a section of this website for WPUG, instead.
• I did not set up any other social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). I thought we’d wait and see if there is a need/demand.

I’m looking for a team of people who’d like to help out with things. I suspect we’ll keep things pretty “ad hoc” until we see what the real interest is. If you are interested, please reply below or contact me elsewhere.

Like WordCamp, this is an event for everyone in the WordPress community. This includes bloggers, developers, designers and anyone else who is interested.

See you on January 13th!

A big thanks to Juhli Selby who recorded this video at Social Media Camp.

Early-bird registration is now open for WordCamp Victoria 2011 – January 22nd, 2011 at University Canada West.

A huge thanks goes to UCW for permitting us to use their space again for this event!

Please contact me if you are interested in speaking, volunteering or sponsoring.

More details will be shared on this website, and elsewhere…

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Flickr

We’re a ways off from the next WordCamp, but Social Media Camp is coming up on Sunday, October 3rd in Victoria. I suspected there may be some WordCampers that would find this event interesting and useful.

We had 44 surveys returned after the event. Thank you!

According to our survey (which we handed out during the final session), WordCamp Victoria was generally well received. Here are the scores, out of 10, that people rated the event:

No Score – 3 people
“3″ – 1 person
“6.5″ – 2 people
“7″ – 8 people
“7.5″ – 1 person
“8″ – 17 people
“9″ – 9 people
“10″ – 3 people

42 people indicated they would attend again, the person who rated the event “3″ was the only one who indicated they would not come to another WordCamp, while another person left the question unanswered.

I also asked whether WordCamp should be Quarterly, Every 6 Months, or Annually, and here were the results:

“Quarterly” – 9
“Every 6 Months” – 22
“Annually” – 12

Based on this feedback, I’m thinking that approximately every 6 months will probably work best, at least for now.

Again, there were almost as many “content was too technical” comments as there were “content was not technical enough”. Given the diversity of skill levels, interests and capabilities, it’s a difficult balancing act. I’m open to ideas as to how to solve this conundrum. I could have speakers rate the “technical” nature of their talk (i.e. 1 to 10, or use the same designations ski-hills use)? I also recognize that we need more technical speakers, so if you have a speaker contact that falls into this category, please let me know now, so we have that information before we start organizing the next event.

One idea that came out of discussions at the event, was to have a “4th” stream, where we would have a pre-determined “topic” (perhaps determined through crowd-sourcing), and allow a completely unmoderated discussion – people just show up and chat, either in a big group, or in smaller groups.

We had a similar concept last November, which I affectionately called the “Camp Out”. The difference was that we didn’t pre-determine the topics. As a result, there was only 1 session that actually came together – but those who attended that session were generally very happy with it.

I’m hoping to pour through the data more in the coming weeks, and incorporate more of the feedback into planning for future events.

Thanks again to everyone who volunteered, spoke, facilitated, or attended! You make the event great!

Raul Pacheco-Vega was one of the first speakers at Social Media Club, Victoria, and Victoria locals in the social media world who weren’t already fans quickly became so.

Raul is an academic by day, and a blogger and social media personality by night.

While speaking in his unique and entertaining style, he has an uncanny ability to make complicated ideas simple.

Raul uses WordPress for his personal and professional sites, using different themes, layouts, and blogging strategies. In his talk, WordPress for Professional and Personal Blogging: Two Approaches, One Site Building Platform, he will show you how you can use the same blogging platform and customize it to make your personal blog as fun as you want, and your website as professional looking as you need it to be.

Raul also featured prominently in the video DCMC Productions did from the last WordCamp:

We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Raul back for the second WordCamp Victoria.

WordCamp Victoria 2010 is excited to announce the final list of 21 exciting speakers and facilitators for WordCamp Victoria on Saturday, May 15th, 2010.

Check out the complete list of speakers here, and the workshop facilitators here.

There is something for everyone here – whether you are a beginner, a businessperson using WordPress for your website, an avid blogger, a designer, a social media personality (or wannabe social media personality), or a programming wizard.

There is limited space. Registration is open now.