Session Spotlight: What’s Ahead for WordPress

Track: Publisher

Presenter: Jane Wells (@janeforshort)

WordPress 3.3 is right around the corner and we’re fortunate enough to have Jane Wells, User Experience Lead for WordPress to walk us through not only what to expect in the coming version, but also in the coming year for WordPress.

Jane will demo WordPress 3.3, discuss the state of WordPress and its community as well as what she has planned for 2012.

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WordCamp Orlando Sponsor: WP Engine

We’re going to take a moment here and thank WP Engine, the latest sponsor of WordCamp Orlando 2011. Their support will go a long way to making the event a success.

You’ve heard the rumors of pages being delivered in milliseconds, blogs scaling instantly when they get featured in the New York Times, and top-tier security.

This is WP Engine – the premier, managed WordPress hosting company. They serve 100,000,000 requests daily, each one carefully and continuously tuned for speed, scalability, and security. They’re beloved by hundreds of bloggers from huge, popular sites down to small company home pages who care about their SEO ranking and their users’ experience. Perhaps best of all is their tech support, where only WordPress experts answer questions.

Now here’s the part where you’re going to be thanking WP Engine for more than just their support of a day of knowledge sharing and getting together to talk WordPress:

For WordCamp Orlando attendees only, WP Engine is offering their most popular hosting plan, typically $99 per month, free for life! You heard that right; WP Engine is giving ALL WordCamp Orlando attendees FREE HOSTING FOR LIFE!

Hosting includes:

  • 1 Standard WordPress Installation
  • 30 GB Bandwidth including CDN
  • 50,000 Pageviews/mo
  • 10 GB Disk Storage
  • Off-Site Automated Backups
  • One-Click Staging Area
  • Managed Upgrades

You can sign up for your free hosting plan at http://wpengine.com/wordcamp-orlando/

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WordCamp Orlando Sponsor: CNP

Joining the ranks of WordCamp Orlando sponsors is CNP. Read a little bit about this great company:

CNP is an integrated marketing and communications agency offering advertising, design, public relations, brand development, Web and social media services. From research and concept development to communication and measurement, CNP’s focus is ensuring that our clients receive the tools necessary to develop effective relationships with their audiences to advance their organizations’ missions. Clients rely on CNP to bring “substance + style” to their companies’ marketing and communication efforts.

We’re proud to have CNP among the other great companies who have decided to Sponsor WordCamp Orlando 2011.

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WordCamp Orlando Sponsor: SiteGround

We’re welcoming SiteGround to the list of sponsors of WordCamp Orlando 2011. Want to get to know SiteGround a bit better? Here’s what you should know:

SiteGround offers high-quality hosting services and has created a special hosting package for WordPress that is currently used by thousands of WordPress websites. The packages includes a unique server setup that increases the security of the WordPress installations and a 24/7 support team with in-depth WordPress knowledge.

Additionally, SiteGround team has developed WordPress resources like themes and tutorials that are available for free download and use by any WordPress fan.

SiteGround has given back to the WordPress community in those ways and, by sponsoring WordCamp Orlando 2011, they want to continue that support as people come together to talk and learn. Out thanks to SiteGround and all our other Sponsors.

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WordCamp Orlando 2011 sessions are taking shape

While we’re still working on the schedule for the day (we can tell you the day will start at 9:30 AM) we did want everyone to see some of the sessions that have already been finalized for WordCamp Orlando 2011. Click through on each one for a full description of what each session will cover.

Publisher Track: 

Developer Track:

There’s still more to come so keep an eye on the Sessions page for updates as we get closer to December 3rd.

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WordCamp Orlando Sponsor: Jetpack.me

Thank you to our Silver-level Sponsor Jetpack by WordPress.com. If you’re not familiar with JetPack here’s what they’re all about:

Supercharge WordPress with tools that help you to blog better and faster — all by activating a single plugin. Jetpack is a suite of great add-ons that are fully supported by the team behind WordPress.com.

With Jetpack…

  • you can get better feedback on your site’s popularity with WordPress.com Stats
  • never publish a typo again with After The Deadline
  • readers will love the social features from Sharedaddy (including sharing posts on Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and many others)
  • Twitter Widget lets people know your latest 140-character thoughts

WordCamp Orlando is shaping up nicely and will be a great event thanks to sponsors like Jetpack and others you’ll here more from in the coming days. Find out how you can sponsor the day right here.

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Become a WordCamp Orlando Volunteer

You know what makes a successful WordCamp run? Yes, coffee – and lots of it. Yes, passion – much of it fueled by the previously mentioned coffee. Yes, organization, which is largely possible only because we’ve had enough coffee to focus our passion into something resembling, well, anything.

Aside from that what makes a successful WordCamp are the volunteers that keep everything – and everyone – moving in the right direction and on the proper schedule. These are the folks without whom a WordCamp wouldn’t even be possible. They are the tiny little gears moving beneath the face of the watch that are indispensable to an efficient mechanism.

If you’d like to be a gear in our watch (it’s possible I should abandon the analogies) and want to volunteer to help with WordCamp Orlando 2011 we’d love to hear from you. Contact us right here and let us know what you’d be interested or able to do and we’ll get you set up. There are always opportunities for volunteers, whether it’s helping with registration, helping speakers with something they need or any of a bunch of other jobs.

We’re sure that with the help of any and all volunteers WordCamp Orlando 2011 (Saturday, December 3rd in case you weren’t aware) will be a great day for speakers, sponsors and attendees alike.

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Share Your WordPress Experiences at WordCamp Orlando

We’re all big fans of stories. Why I remember my grandmother used to spin yarns about a spectral locomotive that would…wait…that might be from Ghostbusters. Let’s try this again.

We’re all big fans of stories. And WordCamps are meant to be focused around those stories. How did one developer improve page load times. How did a publisher successfully migrate decades of archival material into a new WordPress site. How did a company use a WordPress installation to rally a customer community around a single cause.

While there are already a number of great speakers already lined up for WordCamp Orlando 2011 there’s still time to submit a proposal of your own. Just visit our Speakers page and fill out the form there on why you want to want to come and talk to everyone there. There are tracks for both Developers and Publishers and we’re still looking for speakers on both of those.

Much like WordPress itself is about sharing your code with the community for them to tweak for their own needs, WordCamps are all about sharing your experiences and successes with the community for them to learn from and apply to their own projects. You’ve got knowledge and we’ve got a platform for you to share it. Submit your proposal today.

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Sponsor WordCamp Orlando

The other day we mentioned that for individuals who wanted to support WordCamp Orlando there were $100 “Individual Sponsor Packages” available. Those are just one of the sponsor levels to choose from, though.

By visiting the Sponsors page of our site you’ll be able to choose from any of the levels we’re offering:

  • Gold – $2,000
  • Silver – $1,000
  • Bronze – $500
  • Individual – $100

Each sponsorship level comes with its own perks, from being able to offer swag to attendees to mentions in our Twitter feed, in the program and more. Be sure to visit that page to choose at what level you or your organization would like to become a sponsor at. If you have clients with WordPress sites or if you make money building WordPress websites this is a great opportunity to contribute back to the free software that makes it all possible.

And thank you to Voce Communications, our Platinum level sponsor, for their support and resources.

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Get Your WordCamp Orlando Tickets Now!

We’re happy to announce that tickets are now available for WordCamp Orlando 2011. We’re offering both a general admission rate of $20.00 and a discounted student rate of $10, something we’re hoping will bring out plenty of young people who are excited to learn and hear about the WordPress community and what’s being done with that platform.

If you’d like to be more generous and would like to be mentioned among the sponsors on the Sponsors page of the website here there are what we’re calling “Individual Sponsor Packages” available for $100. Your support at that level will go along way toward helping to cover the costs of putting on this event and we encourage anyone who can afford it to consider chipping in at that level. It’s a great way to help us out as we prepare for what’s sure to be a great event.

Best of all: Your ticket includes all sessions on Saturday, lunch and a t-shirt! For $20 – or more – you can’t go wrong.

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