WordCamp Victoria

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!

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.

Special thanks to Katharine Holmes for designing some fabulous WordCamp banners.

If you’d like to add one to your blog, please link it back here, or to the reservation page.

Please feel free to use them in a blog post!

In WordPress, this can easily be added as a Widget, using the following directions.

The Quick Method

1. Go to the Appearance section, and select Widgets.
2. Drag a new Text widget to the sidebar of your choice.
3. Copy and paste the following code into the text widget:
   <a href=/><img src=/wp-content/uploads/250-going.png border=0></a>
4. Make sure it looks nice, and works.

Speaker and Alternative Image Sizes

The default is 250×250, there is also a 125×125, and a “Speaking at WordCamp” button you can use, too.

1. Do the steps above.
2. Download the ZIP archive, and unzip it.
3. In WordPress, go to Media, then Add New. Select the file of your choice, then upload it.
4. Once the upload is complete, copy the entire contents of the File URL field. It should read something like this (only your website address):/wp-content/uploads/250-going.png
5. Highlight the URL that appears after the <img src= in the code you pasted above, then paste in the new File URL.

Help spread the word by sharing the WordCamp poster with your friends and colleagues.

WordCamp Victoria [PDF Download]

Did you know that WordCamp’s take place all over the world?

Visit WordCamp.org for one near you, or travel the world for all the WordCamp’s!

We just had our WordCamp listed on the main site. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone on May 15th.

Early bird tickets are still available!