WordCamp SF 2013 was great!

We had such a good time at WordCamp this year! Want to re-live WordCamp SF 2013? You have lots of options:

Watch this and other sessions from WordCamp SF 2013 at WordPress.tv.

Recaps: 23 Posts and a Podcast

Really curious about WordCamp SF data? Check this out:

We sold 1059 general admission tickets, including micro-sponsorships and volunteers, and 863 live stream tickets.

General Admission ticket buyers were:
Locals: 33%
Out of Towners: 67%

How Do They Classify Themselves?

Type:
Everyone:
Locals:
Out of Towners:

Dev/Other*
60%
55%
61%

Designer
17%
18%
16%

Blogger
10%
14%
8%

Project Mgr
8%
7%
9%

Publisher
2%
4%
2%

SysAdmin
2%
2%
1%

Attendee Survey General Results
Attendee Survey Venue and Party Results

Accessing the WordCamp SF live stream

If you’ve purchased a live stream ticket to WordCamp SF, you’re in for a real treat! Enjoying WordCamp from the comfort of your living room, dining room table, or backyard is pretty fantastic. Haven’t bought a ticket yet? There’s still time! You can even buy a live stream ticket during the event.

The stream starts at 9am Pacific on Friday, July 26 and 8:45am Pacific on Saturday, July 27, and will be available at https://2013.sf.wordcamp.org/livestream/

You will need to enter the following information to sign in:

First Name
Last Name
E-mail address

If you’d like to join in the conversation via Twitter, the event hashtag is #wcsf. We’ll get as much hallway track content into the early Friday breaks as we can, and later in the event should have a steady supply of interviews and shenanigans.

If you miss any of the sessions on the live stream, don’t worry! All of the sessions will be recorded and posted on WordPress.tv over the coming weeks.

Enjoy the event, and we’ll see you in the stream!

Get smiley with WordCamp SF t-shirts

If WordCamp SF itself wasn’t reason enough to put a smile on your face, check out this year’s awesome t-shirt! Thanks to Tammie Lister, Marko Heijnen, and Prasath Nadarajah for lending their WordCamp panache.

Change in Saturday’s Schedule

We’re sad to announce that Andy Skelton is not able to join us for WordCamp. Mike Schroder has agreed to jump in and give an awesome talk called Magical WordPress Management using WP-CLI on Saturday at 1:30pm. Thanks, Mike!

My first WordCamp San Francisco

The countdown is on, and I’m about to start my journey from the UK to my first WordCamp San Francisco. As if attending wasn’t awesome enough, I am also going to be speaking. I’m hugely grateful for the opportunity and still, every few hours, pinching myself to check this is really happening. My mind is racing, my bag is packed, the butterflies in my stomach are multiplying at a surprising rate, and I’ve pretty much got a permanent grin on my face.

I’ve never been to San Francisco and, looking on the map from here in the UK, it seems so far away. Rather than scared, I’m excited because one thing I’ve learnt is any WordCamp you go to is like visiting family. I’m just going to see a new set of relatives a lot of miles away. Maybe I don’t know them yet, but in a few days I’ll be lucky enough to.

Last year this time I watched WordCamp San Francisco on the live stream. If you can’t make it to SF, I’d really recommend the live stream as it – along with the chats in IRC or Twitter – makes you virtually part of the WordCamp. What is being planned this year for the live stream and podcasting interviews/chats is really cool, and I’m sure will make it even better.

I’ve been to a few WordCamps now and every single one seems to bring new amazing people into my life. I also learn new things, and not just from the talks, each one. I love the downtimes, the hallway chats, the meals you share – these are the priceless gems of a WordCamp.

So, if you see me wandering around say hello, and I look forward to my first WordCamp San Francisco.

What WCSF means to me

I probably have one of the stranger (but not strangest) associations with WordCamp San Francisco: abject terror and absolute salvation.

In 2012, I went to WCSF for the first time, amidst some of the roughest professional turmoil of my life. At the time, I worked for a bank and was exceptionally unhappy with my work. I really wanted to work doing WordPress, and had spent much of the last 12 months applying to places and just not finding the right fit. Then I decided I should go to WCSF and see if I could make magic happen there, so I bought a ticket and had my car decide that brakes were optional. Short on the money for the trip, I appealed to the community, crowd raised the funds, and the day after I made goal, was asked to speak! I’d never spoken at any WordCamp, but I said yes because I was determined to change my life. Serendipity happened again, and I was contacted by DreamHost about a job. They too were coming to WCSF, so we had an interview and then agreed to meet up after my talk. This meant my talk was also part of my interview, and thus extra terror set in.

Of course, everything worked out perfectly. Now I’m happily employed doing WordPress work, traveling the US talking at WordCamps, and otherwise helping the community at large, being paid to do what I love.

Live stream attendees: welcome to the Hallway Track

The live stream is a great way for people all over the world to take part in WordCamp San Francisco and learn from our amazing speakers. But what about all the fun (and educational) conversations that happen between the sessions, in the hallway, or at the lunch table?

This year, we’ve recruited members of the WordPress podcasting community to roam the halls of Mission Bay Conference Center, interviewing attendees, and capturing the WordCamp experience on video. Thank you to members of the DradCast, WPTavern, and WPwatercooler for participating, and thanks to the WordPress Foundation for lending us the camera kits!

Podcasters will be uploading footage to the live stream hourly, so you’ll be privy to “hallway track” discussions throughout both days. The interviews will also be published – along with the recordings of all the sessions at WordCamp SF – on WordPress.tv.

Did the WordCamp SF live stream just get even cooler? We think so! By the way, live stream tickets are still available, with or without t-shirt.

Dolores Park Sponsors, Thank You for Supporting WCSF!

X-Team is holding it down for the Dolores Park Sponsors, they really are superheros! We are so lucky to have them representing at WordCamp San Francisco in just 14 days!

X-Team is a revolutionary league of web superheroes formed in Melbourne in 2004. Since then, we have rapidly expanded to USA, Canada, Europe and Asia, working with some of the worlds most loved and respected brands. We have teams stretching around the globe specializing in many areas, including world-class enterprise WordPress development. If you believe you have what it takes to join our internationally-distributed WordPress team whose culture is built around passion and which thrives because of our innovative collaborative community, then become an integral part of helping to shape the future of the web. We want to speak with you!

You will find the X-Team superheros hanging out at WCSF, so be sure to say hello!

Word Camp San Francisco’s Presidio Park Sponsors ROCK!

A huge thanks to CodePoet and Media Temple for all of their support in making WordCamp San Francisco the awesome event that it is! We are counting down the days, and looking forward to seeing you all there.

If you use WordPress to build things for other people, we want to make your life easier. No matter whether you freelance on a solo basis, lead a small web shop, make plugins in a dark closet, or crack the whip at a large design firm, our aim is to become your go-to source of information and resources to help you expand your WordPress skills and know-how. To make you better at what you do. To make it easier to make your living and look great doing it.

You’re part of a tribe of WordPress designers and developers over 10,000 strong, spanning the entire globe. CodePoet.com aims to bring the working knowledge and real world strategies of those people into one place, for you tap into.

Media Temple is a web hosting and cloud services provider headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Since 1998, they have provided businesses and consumers around the world with professional-class service to host websites, applications, virtual servers, email, and other rich internet content. Their infrastructure serves approximately 100,000 customers and over 1 million websites in top-tier datacenters on the east and west coasts of the United States.

Media Temple staff will be onsite in the lobby of WordCamp San Francisco to answer all your hosting questions. Please stop by the Code Poet “corner” in the upstairs lobby for more information on Code Poet.

A Big Thanks to InMotion Hosting and SiteGround, Our Buena Vista Park Sponsors!

WordCamp San Francisco wouldn’t be possible without the generous contributions from sponsors like InMotion Hosting and SiteGround. They will have representatives onsite in the lobby of WordCamp San Francisco to share information about their hosting services. Stop by their tables to learn all about their offerings.

At InMotion Hosting, we understand business – not just e-business. We have stood behind this statement since our inception in 2001 and have been rewarded by a loyal – and growing – customer base.

Our web hosting network is based on the fast and reliable Linux and Unix operating systems. It is monitored 24/7 for any unusual activity and bench-marked continuously for performance. This allows us to immediately respond to short term issues as well as grow our system optimally – keeping it broadband ready and economical at all times. Staying true to this technology and concept has allowed us to offer domain name registration and web hosting that consistently outperforms our competitors – in reliability, speed, and economy.

SiteGround, with over 9 years in the business, provides managed WordPress hosting that does not miss a thing! Their servers, available in 3 different data centers across the world, are optimized for ultimate WordPress speed and security and they provide many goodies for the WordPress fans – automatic updates for the core WordPress and its plugins, WordPress SuperCacher for ultimate speed acceleration, staging tool for the coders and unique WordPress autoinstaller for the starting users – all crafted in-house by the SiteGround team. And still they do not forget the importance of the good old standard hosting features like the domain name registration, the email service, control panel and the reasonable pricing. They also have a support team that is not only available 24/7 by phone, chat and ticketing, but consists of WordPress enthusiasts who will help you with specific WordPress issues.

We are so grateful for their support and excited to bring you a fantastic WordCamp this year! See you all in just two weeks!