Speaker Spotlight: Jerrett Farmer and WordPress for Beginners

How do you quickly get a WordPress site up and running with a minimal amount of effort?

Jerrett Farmer of InMotion Hosting will present an overview of core plugins, page builders, and themes, as well as the latest cutting edge software to help even the unmotivated get a high quality WordPress Site up and running.

He will also reveal with humor the pitfalls of taking shortcuts and more. Check out his talk at 9 AM on July 9 in the Dwarf Star for tips aimed at beginners to quickly get up and running using best practices. He might even bring a special guest!

Jerrett is the Marketing Production Manager at InMotion Hosting. He oversees the creation and maintenance of the company’s main websites and WordPress blogs. He’s been previously employed as a Producer, Project Manager, Software Architect, Programmer, 2D/3D Production Artist, Art Director, and Lead Technical Artist.

Speaker Spotlight: Russell Aaron and WordPress Theme Demonstrations

One of the awesome parts about buying a product always includes the test drive or the free sample. The same goes for themes and plugins. However, are theme demonstrations being completely honest when it comes to showing off the goods?

In this session, Russell Aaron of WebDevStudios will discuss the pros and cons of coding standards when it comes to building themes and plugins. He’ll also be taking a deep dive into three WordPress theme demonstrations to show what they are really selling you on.

If you’re a beginner navigating the wild world of WordPress theme and plugin marketplaces, don’t miss Russ’s talk at 9:50 AM on July 9 in the Dwarf Star.

Russell got his start coding by building MySpace band layouts and using the blog feature on MySpace to share triumphs and failures. After writing 50 blog posts, a friend of mine showed him WordPress.com. After his next 50 blog posts, the same friend showed him how to install WordPress on his own website. Since that day, he’s spent every minute of every waking hour learning WordPress.

Speaker Spotlight: Dustin Meza and WordPress Upgrades

Do you fear pressing that “Update All” button in your WordPress dashboard, knowing that either everything will be fine or your entire site could break? Dustin Meza of WP Engine has some strategies to help combat this anxiety and allow you to update with ease.

Dustin’s high energy presentation will teach you the importance of keeping WordPress upgraded, a simple 5 step test plan to ensure your site is ready to upgrade, and how to test your sites on beta and release candidates to provide feedback to the community (it’s the open source way!).

Don’t miss his talk on Saturday, July 9 at 10:40 AM in the Nebula.

Dustin Meza is the Director of Customer Experience Operations at WP Engine. He has been in the hosting industry for 7 years and has been with WP Engine for 3 years. At WP Engine, Dustin oversees many aspects of the WordPress platform including WordPress upgrades for over 100,000 WordPress installs. Outside of WordPress, Dustin loves being outdoors in Nashville with his wife Megan, and black lab, Maddy. He enjoys all kinds of sports, both watching and playing, and has been known to play some video games when time allows.

Thanks to our amazing sponsors!

We’re getting ready to put on a fantastic weekend of learning and fun, and we couldn’t do it without our sponsors.

These wonderful companies are making it possible for us to bring you the best possible WordCamp – cool swag, our after-party, prizes for our Plugin-A-Palooza contest, coffee, and a custom Snapchat geofilter. Check them out now and during the event! Continue reading “Thanks to our amazing sponsors!”

Tickets on sale May 17 at noon

ticketsThe time has arrived! Mark your calendars for May 17, 2016 at noon Pacific time for the official start of ticket sales for WordCamp Orange County.

Be ready to go right when they go on sale – in previous years, tickets have sold out within just a few hours. If you need to get the purchase approved by someone in advance, they’ll be $40 for the whole weekend. We do not sell single-day tickets.

We’ve received all the speaker applications, and we’re reviewing them now. WordCamp will take place at The Cove at UC Irvine, a beautiful, modern space dedicated to the incubation of great ideas in business and technology.

This is shaping up to be one of the best years yet of WCOC. See you there!

Pre-WordCamp Golf Tournament

For the past couple of years, we have held a golf tournament on the Friday prior to WordCamp and it has become an awesome tradition! We have so much fun that we figured that we might as well do it again.

img_5456-e1429724068515

Whether you’re new to golf, or you’re a veteran player, you’ll enjoy hanging out with fellow WordPress community members in a no-pressure, 4-player scramble tournament.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the tournament, enter your name and email in the form below. Note: The price of this extra event is not covered in your ticket price.

So You Want to Speak at WCOC16…

Speaker submissions are going to be closing very soon.

You don’t know what you want to talk about? No problem, we have a lot of sessions we’d love to see this year. Just take a look at these:

    Design

  • Good UI – How to recognize it and put it to use from a dashboard perspective
  • Accessibility in Theme Design – how to make what you’re building work for everyone
  • Modifying the Customizer – how to give your users more configurable options
  • Photoshop to WordPress – a step by step breakdown
  • Building a Political Website – what’s needed to run
  • Collaborating with Developers – Things a designer should know and do to make a developer happy


    Development

  • The JSON REST API – what it is and how to use it
  • Javascript – it’s been on everyone’s lips since the release of Calypso, let’s break it down
  • Decoupling WordPress – using WordPress with other backends
  • CLI – don’t be afraid of the command line
  • Git Basics – how to get started with git and why it’s important
  • WordPress Coding Standards – learn them and work with them, let’s all get on the same page; and how to start the debate to change them
  • Responsive Images – RICG integration and how to use it


    Business

  • Teamwork – working well with others
  • Role Definition – what should you know to be a designer? A developer? A project manager? How do you acquire that knowledge?
  • Documentation – what are the key documents and how do you read them? How do you create or modify them?
  • Writing a Scope – how to scope a successful project, with real examples!
  • Contracts – how to sell your skill right


    Beginners

  • The WordPress Community – unique ways to give back to the community
  • Kids and WordPress – they are our future



Apply today!

Call for Volunteers

UnityUPDATE: Our volunteer call has closed. Thanks to all the people who signed up to be volunteers! You’ll hear from us very soon with more details.

WordCamps don’t happen without the generous help of the WordPress community.

We need a few good people. You’ll get a free ticket to the event, an invitation to the speaker/sponsor dinner, our gratitude, and the adoration of attendees. You might also get the warm-fuzzies.

We need folks we can count on. If you are interested, drop us a line with the form below. We’re looking for a few people who enjoy lending a helping hand.

Call for Speakers

UPDATE: Speaker Submissions are now closed. A hearty thank you to all of you who have submitted!

Speaker submissions for this year’s WordCamp Orange County are now open. Are you a WordCamp veteran? Are you a first-time speaker? Show us what you got!

This year’s speaker submissions are a little different. The Cove (our new venue) has one larger space where we’ll be staging broad topics and one smaller space where we’ll be staging focused talks. Please keep this in mind when submitting.

Submit your talk using the form below.

Also, if you’re submitting a session please submit your A/V release along with it.

If you have several sessions to submit, please fill out both forms multiple times.

WordCamp Orange County 2016 is over. Check out the next edition!