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WordCamp Ann Arbor 2014 Slides

Check back often as we’ll continue to post speaker slides from today.

WordCamp Ann Arbor 2014 Attendee Information

The first WordCamp Ann Arbor is kicking off at 8:45am this Saturday. I’ve included some information that should help you prepare below.
 

Driving & Parking

WordCamp Ann Arbor is being held at the Michigan League (911 N University Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48109). The League is downtown, so give yourself some time to find parking. We recommend the Liberty Square parking lot which is a short 5 minute walk and only $3 dollars for the day. You can get directions including a walking map here.
 

Location

The event will be held on the second and third floor of the League. Registration will be on the second floor and will be hard to miss.
 

Registration

Registration starts at 8:00am, opening remarks at 8:45am. Make sure to arrive early so you can get checked in and into your first session on time.
 

Event Schedule

You can viewing our online schedule to identify which talks you’d like to attend. This schedule will be available to you in printed format the day of the event as well. Note: You don’t have to RSVP for individual sessions, just walk to the room of the session you’re interested in before it starts.
 

Food – Breakfast / Lunch

We are providing coffee, juice, water, sodas, bagels and muffins for breakfast. We hope you enjoy!

Lunch is on your own, but there are tons of restaurants just a block or two away from the League. We have a handy interactive map with many of the restaurants on the event website.
 

Equipment / Bags

There will be plenty of free wifi and we’ll have some outlets to charge your devices. Feel free to bring your laptops and tablets so you can take notes or follow along. You’ll receive (at least) two gifts for attending WordCamp Ann Arbor so you may want to bring a computer bag that has space to carry them.

Code of Conduct

Please review the WordCamp code of conduct before attending. We fully expect everyone to follow these rules and treat all attendees and participants with respect.

After Party

We’re hosting an after party starting for all attendees, speakers and sponsors at 7:00pm. It will be located at the Old German in downtown Ann Arbor. There will be food and drink tickets for your enjoyment. You MUST wear your badge to attend. The Old German is located at the corner of South Ashley and Washington, which is a 15 – 20 minute walk from the League. Alternatively there is plenty of parking around including right across the street if you wish to drive.
 

Weather

There is a chance of rain, so make sure to bring an umbrella and suitable coat just in case. We’ll cross our fingers for some beautiful fall Ann Arbor sun.
 

Sponsors

Please take a moment to check out and thank our sponsors. We could not hold this event without them.

Bluehost
Media Temple
Code Poet
34sp.com
WPML
Dreamhost
Flywheel
A2Hosting
3.7 DESIGNS
LearnDash
Web Savvy Marketing
Nexcess
CorePHP
Sticker Giant

If you have ANY QUESTIONS you can contact us online, or ask the registration table during the event.

Thank you so much for being a part of WordCamp Ann Arbor. I look forward to meeting you on Saturday.

Meet Six More Speakers

We’re excited to announce six more WordCamp Ann Arbor 2014 speakers:

Marc Benzakein

Marc has been involved with almost every aspect of technology for the past 30 years. Having built a tech startup from the ground up (ServerPress,) Marc has had to take part in the development of every department necessary to make a company function. Customer service is his passion that has driven him to learn, through both good and poor experiences, how to determine what the customer really needs and how to deliver it to their great satisfaction.

He lives in Milwaukee, WI with his lovely Wife, Jessica and two Childrean, Eli (9) and Brenna (4).

Angela Bergmann

Angela has 13 years of experience in website design and development – 10 of which she has specialized in WordPress. Angela creates user friendly websites that are aesthetically pleasing, easy to navigate, and optimized for search engine indexing. She also has expertise in Social Media, Search Engine Optimization, and Pay-Per-Click.

Rebecca Gill

Rebecca is president and founder of Web Savvy Marketing. With over a decade of experience in internet marketing, she was an early adopter of blogging, SEO and social media. She and her team specialize in creating custom WordPress websites and building stock child themes for the Genesis framework. She has spoken at the University of Toledo, Grand Valley State University, Michigan State University, WordCamp Miami and WordPress MeetUps.

Nathan Driver

Nathan is a digital media strategist and web developer for Ohlmann Group a Dayton based advertising and marketing company. He has been using WP since 2007-08 creating niche websites.

Tim Yow

Tim began a successful career as a freelance designer back in 2004 but, within one short year, client demand steered him into the world of search engine optimization. Somewhere along the line, SEO became more than a career, it became his passion. Out of that passion, he opened YowSeo LLC to offer custom marketing strategies for startups and small businesses with a focus on SEO and local search marketing.

Tim understands the significant and lasting benefit that a company can gain by having a strong presence on the first page of a Google search and all the various strategies, good and bad, that can be deployed to gain those top spots.

Phil Hoyt

My name is Phil Hoyt, I’m a web developer, and I like to create cool things. Ever since I was a child I have had a DIY attitude towards life, plucking away at my keyboard late into the nights until the caffeine wore off. Now I develop professional creative and technical solutions with user experience always in the forefront.

Five More Speakers

Hello everyone,

We’re very excited to tell you about another five of the many great speakers we’ve lined up for WordCamp Ann Arbor 2014. Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for future announcements and secure your tickets today.

Our second five speakers are:

Jim Luke

By day Jim teaches economics at Lansing Community College (last 13 yrs) both online and f-2-f. He’s been using WordPress since 2008 to teach those courses as both course sites and blog.

In the last couple years he’s started a 501(c)3 non-profit called Malartu Inc (malartu.org). The purpose of Malartu is to help support all teaching faculty at all .edu institutions with WordPress sites (from a multi-networks install), a Buddypress-based commons, a plugin based cross-installation social network, and development of specialized, advanced plugins needed by faculty. It’s an exciting project that fills a so-far unmet need in higher education, promoting academic freedom, better student success, and lower costs. We are launching our first pilot sites this summer/fall.

Topher DeRosia

Topher’s a WordPress developer from Grand Rapids MI working with X-Team. He’s been building web sites since 1995, PHP since 1998, WordPress full time since 2010. He also grew up living off the electrical grid.

Jon Kuperman

Jon’s a web programmer in his mid-twenties. He’s an avid Linux enthusiast, PHP and JavaScript developer and loves building web applications. He works at Twitter as a Software Engineer. He also started the PHP User Group in Ann Arbor.

Brian Retterer

Brian is a web developer in Dayton, Ohio. He’s been using WordPress for a long time, since 1.5 in fact! He’s also the organizer of Dayton WordCamp in Ohio.

Nicole Arnold

Nicole is a software developer at Alley Interactive, a leading WordPress.com VIP service partner. She develops WordPress sites for Alley Interactive’s high profile media clients, such as Fortune and The New York Post. She also contributes to WordPress as part of the Documentation Team, and has spoken at Detroit area meetups and WordCamp Phoenix.

More to come

We’ll be releasing the next five speakers soon, so make sure to subscribe to the e-mail newsletter for more updates. If you’re as excited about these speakers as we are you might just want to secure your tickets now.

First Round of Speakers Announced

Hello everyone,

We’re very excited to tell you about five of the many great speakers we’ve lined up for WordCamp Ann Arbor 2014. Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for future announcements and secure your tickets today.

Our first five speakers are:

Dustin Hartzler

Dustin Hartzler is a Happiness Engineer at Automattic and a weekly podcaster at YourWebsiteEngineer.com. His passion is to teach others how to use WordPress.

Justin Ferriman

Justin Ferriman is the co-founder of Ann Arbor based LearnDash, a WordPress based LMS and Learning Strategy provider. His background involves implementing large-scale training programs for Fortune 500 companies.

Ian Wilson

Ian Wilson bridges the gap between designer and developer at build/create, an Ann Arbor based agency he owns along with his business partner.

Joel Worsham

Joel Worsham is a Jackson, MI based WordPress developer and a web designer. Worsham has extensive experience in building websites from the ground up, constructing plugins, and creating themes.

Adrian Roselli

Adrian Roselli is a member of the W3C HTML Working Group as well as the W3C Accessibility Task Force. He has written articles for trade journals, web sites, and participated as an author and editor on five web-related books. Back in 1998 he co-founded Algonquin Studios, now a ~30 person software development and consulting firm. Adrian has been developing for the Web since 1993.

More to come

We’ll be releasing the next five speakers soon, so make sure to subscribe to the e-mail newsletter for more updates. If you’re as excited about these speakers as we are you might just want to secure your tickets now.

Call for Speakers

Howdy all,

We’re opening the door for speaker applications! Speaking is a great way to share your experience, make a name for yourself and give back to the WordPress community. As a bonus, all presentations will be recorded and then published on WordPress.TV.

Expect 30 – 40 minute sessions with 10 minutes of question and answer. We will provide a projector, microphone and common Apple adapters.

We have a general idea of what types of topics we’re looking for, but don’t let this list limit your creativity. If you have an idea or subject that we haven’t considered please submit anyway, we are happy to adjust our tracks to accommodate great presentations.

At this time, we’re looking for:

  • WordPress Basics
  • Blogging and Content Creation
  • Custom Website Development
  • Themes and Front End Development (HTML/CSS/JS, Etc…)
  • Design and User Experience
  • Marketing and Branding
  • Running a WordPress Based Business

If you are interested please fill out our speaker submission form here. We will be making a selection in the next four to six weeks.

Welcome to WordCamp Ann Arbor

We’re excited to announce WordCamp Ann Arbor, brought to you by many of the folks who assisted in past WordCamp Detroit events. We’ve got some big plans for this fine event which will happen on a beautiful fall day in Michigan. Please stay tuned for more information.