Designing a WordCamp Community

WordCamps are born out of community; ours started out as a very small meetup group and the desire to connect positively with other WordPressers. That meetup group has grown to over 500 members and 2017 marks the fourth WordCamp Asheville! We asked our talented team of design volunteers to create a visual identity that expresses and captures the spirit of our local WordCamp community and they did not shy away from the task!

Here’s what our Design Team wanted to share about what went into this year’s design:

When You Work Together Great Ideas Are Born!

This year, the central theme of  WordCamp Asheville is Community. Such a broad concept is not easy to distill and convey visually. We honed in on the fact that “unity” is contained within the word itself – but wanted to make it active and strong. When thinking about the heart and soul of WordCamps, the tagline “Unite. Share. Develop.” emerged. We literally gather [unite] en masse to share our knowledge, skills and points of view in order to develop – as WordPress users, business people, designers, developers, individuals, and a community as a whole.

Our 2017 Super Hero design!

Putting those words together really ignited the Design Team’s imagination with visions of strength. From there, it wasn’t much of a leap to start thinking about… superheroes. Superheroes can maintain their individual identities, but come together as a group for a united purpose – each bringing their own special power to the table. This, we believe, reflects the WordCamp experience in that users can come from different places/levels/perspectives and bring something unique to the table. Learning from each other, supporting each other, we unite for the common good.

We hope this year’s branding gives a sense of levity to the weekend – and encourages everyone to find, develop and share their own superpower!

Design Team:

Jamie King, Sparking Design
Katie Rotanz, Katie Rotanz Design
Marisa Falcigno, Status Forward
Dena Rutter, Dena Rutter Design

Spotlight on Our Sponsors – DreamHost

dreamhost logo

Meet DreamHost

Every year we share information about our sponsors. These companies make WordCamps across the nation and in our region possible. Today we want to introduce our Bronze Sponsor DreamHost and share a little bit of their story. Check out our Q & A with this awesome, community-focused hosting company.

Q. What is your name?
A.
Cathee Smith

Q. What business/organization do you represent? What is your professional title i.e. Director of Sales, Administrative Assistant, Developer, etc?
A.
DreamHost, Marketing Coordinator

Q. What is your company mission?
A.
The year was 1997. The scene was a college dorm room. Four friends with a love of technology, open-source software, and a strong desire to help people get online banded together to create DreamHost. Built on open-source technology with a commitment to customer success, DreamHost provides domain registration, web hosting and cloud services to 1.5 million sites, blogs and applications, and supports over 400,000 web designers, developers, content creators, small businesses and entrepreneurs with the power of the Open Web.

Q. What products and/or services do you offer? Please provide detail.
A.
Web hosting, VPS (virtual private servers), dedicated servers, and WordPress specific hosting (DreamPress 2). Whether you have a single low-traffic site or a high-traffic store, we have a hosting solution for you!

Q. Why do you love WordPress and why do you work with the WordPress community?
A.
We love WordPress simply because it follows a lot of our core values here at DreamHost. WordPress is operated openly and widely, and works for a variety of users. Plus, you can’t beat the community that surrounds WordPress, some of the best people around. 🙂

Q. Why do you support WordCamp? What do you hope attendees gain from participating? What suggestions, inspirations, or message do you have to share with attendees in Asheville?
A.
DreamHost is a BIG lover of all things WordPress, and under that umbrella falls WordCamps! We sponsor all western region WordCamps because we want as many users to find and take advantage of these amazing conferences as possible.

Q. How can people keep up to date on what is happening at DreamHost?
A.
Check out our website or join our social networks:
Facebook.com/DreamHost
Twitter.com/DreamHost
Instagram.com/DreamHost

Spotlight on Our Sponsors – SiteGround

Siteground logo

Meet SiteGround

Every year we share information about our sponsors. These companies make WordCamps across the nation and in our region possible. Today we want to introduce our Gold Sponsor SiteGround and share a little bit of their story. Check out our Q & A with this fun, reliable, and awesome hosting company.

Q. What is your name?
A.
Lilyana Yakimova

Q. What do you do at SiteGround?
A.
I am Marketing Projects Director at SiteGround.com, where we specialize in managed hosting solutions for WordPress and other open-source platforms. Since 2004 we’ve been mastering the craft of forging complex technology into human-scale web hosting solutions that actually work for our clients, not the other way round. We host over 500 000 domain names and have 5 server data centers in USA, Europe and Asia.

Q. Why do you do it? What is your mission?
A.
I joined the company since its very foundation, and have actively participated in its marketing and communication strategy to date, effectively communicating SiteGround’s strengths and helping to grow the company from a single client to an international business.Our mission is to be real craftsmen in what we do. This means that we do not simply follow the latest developments in the hosting field. Instead, we are proud to be among the few who actually take the lead. To illustrate with a small example: we were updating WordPress instances automatically in order to secure our WordPress clients long before the term “managed WordPress hosting” even existed.

Q. Why is WordPress important to you? Why do you love it?
A.
We wanted to make good web hosting services accessible and delightful to use for people of all technical levels. We empower both professionals and WordPress beginners to build better, faster, safer websites easily and not have to worry about web hosting. Apart from automatic updates, we constantly monitor for WordPress-related vulnerabilities and take proactive measures to protect our customers. We have also developed our own dynamic WordPress NGINX-based cache solution that makes websites super fast and a one-click staging and wp-cli and git for the WordPress devs.We’ve also been actively involved in the WordPress community sharing knowledge, learning from one another, supporting and attending various WordCamps around the world. It’s an amazing ecosystem that helps everyone do their best work – from the newbies to the pros.

Q. What products and services do you offer? Please provide detail.
A.
We craft managed web hosting solutions for personal websites, online businesses and enterprise projects that our customers love.

Q. Who are your ideal customers? What kind of companies and businesses should contact you for services or products?
A.
Part of SiteGround’s mission to craft truly superior managed hosting services is to do offer much more to our customers than they would normally expect from a hosting provider. We’re always looking to collaborate with innovative and forward-thinking companies who share our values that there is always a way to make things better. So we are constantly looking to improve our product and services and make them even more valuable for the clients, while giving them easy access to a service they would normally have to seek out themselves.

Q. Why do you support WordCamp? What do you hope attendees gain from participating? What suggestions, inspirations, or message do you have to share with attendees in Asheville?
A.
In a world where hosted website-building solutions are becoming more and more popular, WordPress is very important for the industry as we currently know it. We believe in keeping the web open and independent, that’s why we support open-source solutions and the WordPress ecosystem specifically. We believe in giving clients the freedom to get crafty with their website design, keep control of their content and always have an easy way to try out different hosting platforms. That’s why WordCamps are especially important, because in sharing knowledges and common issues, you’re actually helping move things forward for everyone, not just for yourself.

Q. How can people stay up to date on what your company is doing?
A.
The SiteGround blog is a great way to start and keep an eye on what we’ve been up to – we share interesting projects that we’re working on, news and other bits of industry information that can tell you a lot about the way we do things at SiteGround.

Facebook.com/SiteGround
Twitter.com/SiteGround
Instagram.com/SiteGround

Last Call for 2017 Volunteers

Last Call for Volunteers for WordCamp Asheville 2017

2017 AVL WordCamp call for volunteers

We are looking for people who love WordPress and are enthusiastic, organized, and energetic.  You don’t have to be a WordPress expert – you just need a smile and a willingness to help.

We are looking for volunteers to help with registration, to be moderators in sessions, and for a bunch of other roles that help make WordCamp a success.

If you are wondering how to get involved, please click the link below and head on over to our volunteer page loaded with info and a handy form for you to fill out.

apply now button

There is no guarantee we can give you a certain volunteer task or duty; however, we’ll do our best to match you with the task or duty that best fits your skills, schedule and interests. Volunteer roles will be defined as the event draws closer. Please provide as much information as possible.

Here’s the link to join us:   https://2017.asheville.wordcamp.org/volunteers/

We look forward to having you as a part of the volunteer team!

 

Keynote Speaker: Jodi Rhoden

We are delighted that this year’s keynote speaker will be Jodi Rhoden. Jodi is a local entrepreneur, teacher, and author. Well known in Asheville as “the cake lady,” she is the founder and former owner of the beloved and successful Short Street Cakes.

Jodi offers classes and one-on-one mentoring through Mountain Bizworks and Birds Eye Business Planning and Adventures, where she relishes working with small-scale food producers and farmers, independent artists, healing arts practitioners, and other social entrepreneurs to discover meaning in their work through developing their mission and vision.

Join us Saturday, June 3rd at 9am to hear Jodi inspire us to develop our own vision and mission for our endeavors. Learn how to use your community to help you on your journey. She will share actionable steps  to get us on our way. It all starts by using the community around us to help us, so come prepared to participate and talk to your neighboring attendees. We’re excited to have this local leader guide us on Saturday to an inspiring beginning to the weekend!

Spotlight on Our Sponsors – GoDaddy

GoDaddy Pro Logo

Meet GoDaddy

Every year we share information about our sponsors. These companies make WordCamps across the nation and in our region possible. Today we want to introduce our Silver Sponsor GoDaddy and share a little bit of their story. Check out our Q & A .

Q. What is your name?
A.
Mendel

Q. Why do you do it? What is your mission?
A.
My mission is to contribute to and bring feedback from the community to make GoDaddy’s products, service, and advertising better.

Q. Why is WordPress important to you? Why do you love it?
A.
It’s versatile with a vibrant community. What’s not to love?

Q. What products and services do you offer?
A.
Managed WordPress hosting and a suite of tools for web professionals called GoDaddy Pro https://godaddy.com/pro/.

Q. Who are your ideal customers? What kind of companies and businesses should contact you for services or products?
A.
People who build websites for others.

Q. Why do you support WordCamp? What do you hope attendees gain from participating? What suggestions, inspirations, or message do you have to share with attendees in Asheville?
A.
It’s simple, we support WordCamps to help people to easily start, confidently grow and successfully run their own ventures.

Q. How can people stay up to date on what your company is doing?
A.
Visit our site at GoDaddy.com/garage/  and join our social networks here:
Facebook.com/GoDaddy
Twitter accounts = @ifyouwillit or @godaddy
Instagram accounts = @ifyouwillit or @godaddy

Spotlight on Our Sponsors – Jetpack

Jetpack Logo

Meet Jetpack

Every year we share information about our sponsors. These companies make WordCamps across the nation and in our region possible. Today we want to introduce our Gold Sponsor Jetpack and share a little bit of their story. Check out our Q & A with one of the most amazing suites of plugins made for WordPress and learn more about the incredible Automattic – the genius team behind WordPress.

Q. What do you do at Jetpack?
A. Events Wrangler

Q. Why do you do it? What is your mission?
A. Jetpack is a single plugin that gives you the most powerful WordPress.com features, hooking your self-hosted WordPress site to WordPress.com’s infrastructure to take advantage of robust stats, easy social sharing, and a whole lot more.

Q. Why is WordPress important to you? Why do you love it?
A. WordPress is already the most popular and powerful way of getting your voice online. Jetpack helps you build on top of that platform to create beautiful, functional websites, grow your audience, and secure your investment.

Q. What products and services do you offer?
A. Jetpack

Q. Who are your ideal customers? What kind of companies and businesses should contact you for services or products?
A.
Anyone who’s hosting their own WordPress-powered site and wants to take advantage of the awesome features that Jetpack provides.

Q. Why do you support WordCamp? What do you hope attendees gain from participating? What suggestions, inspirations, or message do you have to share with attendees in Asheville?
A. Jetpack not only enjoys supporting the WordPress community, but thrives on the one-on-one feedback we receive by attending WordCamps.

Q. How can people learn more about what you do?
A. Visit www.Jetpack.com to learn more about how we can make your life with WordPress easier.
Also join our social networks at:
Facebook.com/JetpackMe
Twitter.com/Jetpack

 

Spotlight on Our Sponsors – WooCommerce

WooCommerce Logo

Meet WooCommerce

Every year we share information about our sponsors. These companies make WordCamps across the nation and in our region possible. Today we want to introduce our Gold Sponsor WooCommerce and share a little bit of their story. Check out our Q & A with one of the best ecommerce systems made for WordPress.  

Q. What do you do at WooCommerce?
A. Events Wrangler

Q. Why do you do it? What is your mission?
A. We want to be the ultimate WordPress toolkit provider to empower people to build greater things with WordPress.

Q. Why is WordPress important to you? Why do you love it?
A. WooCommerce is built to integrate seamlessly with WordPress, which is the world’s most popular and powerful method for creating a website.

Q. What products and services do you offer?
A. WooCommerce, WooCommerce Extensions, and Themes

Q. Who are your ideal customers? What kind of companies and businesses should contact you for services or products?
A. Store owners and developers looking for a customizable online-shopping-cart solution.

Q. Why do you support WordCamp? What do you hope attendees gain from participating? What suggestions, inspirations, or message do you have to share with attendees in Asheville?
A. In recognition of the open-source nature of the WordPress community we make contributing back to it a part of how we work at WooCommerce. We strongly believe that WordPress is only made better by the community working together and we aim to be a core part of that growth by helping to build the community itself as well as local projects and organizations needing help.

Q. How can people learn more about what you do?
A. Visit and connect with us at WooCommerce.com or join  our networks:
Facebook.com/WooCommerce
Twitter.com/WooCommerce
Instagram.com/WooCommerce 

 

WordCamp Asheville Tickets on Sale NOW!

Woohoo! The big day is here. Tickets for WordCamp Asheville are on sale NOW and going fast!

Tickets for WordCamp  are $40 and that includes a t-shirt and lunch both days (Saturday, June 3 and Sunday, June 4). Pretty sweet deal, huh?

Friday’s PreCamp is a hands-on workshop aimed at helping beginners get a new WordPress site up and running, and is packaged along with WordCamp for $70.

Attendees, Speakers, Sponsors, Volunteers & Organizers gather in Asheville, North Carolina for #WCAVL

Check out our Sessions to see what you’ll be learning at WordCamp! We’ll be posting a detailed schedule with all the sessions and speakers in the coming week.

Also, keep an eye out for attendee announcements and reminders, as well as event details and information leading up to the event on Facebook and Twitter!

Speaker Deadline extended to Wednesday, March 22nd

We’ve received some killer speaker submissions over the past couple of weeks. The organizing team is on the lookout for a few more, so we’re extending the deadline for submissions to Wednesday, March 22nd.

Share your experience with an eager audience

Maybe you’re an expert with particular workflow, plugin, or process. Or maybe you’ve recently had a game-changing WordPress moment you’d like to share. We want to hear about it! Apply today to speak. Let’s learn, share and develop together!

Want to speak this year, but need some ideas?

Here are a few suggestions:

Beginner-friendly:
How to choose a theme
Image management
Backing up / migrating a site
Intro to WooCommerce

Intermediate/Advanced:
WooCommerce/Ecommerce Deep Dive/Case Study
Making and Selling an E-course, Membership/Subscription Site
Using WordPress as a Support Ticket systems
Vanilla JavaScript
AMP

Everyone:
Style guides/branding
Photography – where to find, how to choose
Design/productivity tools
Content First – Content drives design and function
Leveling up your skills, Evaluating what skill or tool to learn/focus on next
Intro to Google Analytics / Google Search Console
The importance of mobile – Google’s new mobile first indexing, load time, conversions, etc.
Anything and everything about Google page speed fixes
Working up Contracts/Proposals
Effective Blogging
Case studies


Become a Speaker