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Farewell, 2018 WordCamp Denver!

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Now that we’ve all had a chance to recover from the weekend, it’s time for a recap and farewell. The University of Denver welcomed over 250 attendees on Saturday for camp and over 80 on Sunday for workshops. Over half the attendees were first-time campers (!)

This year’s official camp swag kept up the theme from previous years of being quintessential outdoorsy, ready-for-anything Colorado – colorful water bottles and wrist sweat bands!

Programming Highlights

Nobody Wants a Website. They Want Results with Dwayne McDaniel

Making the case for accessibility with Christine Laikind

How to Profit from 365 Days of Live Streaming with Phylecia Jones

How to Get Started with Podcasting in WordPress with Jeff Gamet

Mastering the Client Consultation with Nathan Ingram

Townhall: How to Run a Business and Not Go Crazy with D’nelle Dowis, Erin Flynn, Maddy Osman, and Nathan Ingram

Keynote from Angela Bowman

Why Community is More Important than Networking
WordCamp Denver ended on a high note with a keynote from one of our Colorado favorites: Angela Bowman. Angela’s keynote focused on bringing together the WordPress community, drawing from her own experience organizing 3 local WordPress meetups! She managed to get most of our attendees to stay until the very last minute, even despite some technical difficulties that knocked out her slides!

Sunday Workshops

Sunday Workshop programming was back again this year. It’s so popular, we’re already discussing how to expand the workshop programming in 2019!

Shout-out to our amazing team

Organizers

The organizing team tends to be the most invisible during camp, since everyone is busy keeping the camp wheels well-greased. Led by the always-energetic and inspiring Gordon Seirup, the organizing team worked for months to make camp happen.

Volunteers

The days of camp would never run smoothly without a huge team of volunteers keeping things running smoothly. We are so grateful to each and every volunteer this year! A conference of this size is tricky to pull off without a hitch, but you all helped WordCamp Denver 2018 run well and on-time.  We so value your contribution, and we’d love to have your support again next year.

Our Captioners

Many thanks to White Coat Captioning who helped us make the day more accessible for everyone.

Best Hallway Track Ever!

The “hallway track” was predictably one of the best places to be during the day on Saturday. This year, in addition to the Happiness Bar and sponsor booths, the hallway featured a green screen and a special guest!

Happiness Bar

Each year, the WordCamp Denver community pitches in to staff a help desk dubbed the “Happiness Bar,” where folks can stop to ask for help with anything ranging from technical questions about their site, troubleshooting frustrating dashboard issues, advice on how to grow your site, and instruction on basic WordPress usage.

Sponsors

We can never thank our sponsors enough – they’re the fuel that powers our engine!

Wiggle Booth

We’re ever so grateful to Gravity View, who provided the entire infrastructure for the Wiggle Booth – a camera + lights + green screen set-up where attendees danced to the WordPress Wiggle, celebrating the WordPress community.

Saul the Giant Sticker Ball

We were incredibly lucky to get a visit from Sticker Giant’s most famous team member – Saul. Saul is a Guinness World Record Holder, and he’s a Colorado native!

After Party Highlights

from our fearless leader, Gordon Seirup

Lifelong friends were made. We stuffed our faces with chips, salsa, guac and queso. We doused our thirst with beers and kambucha brewed right behind the bar. We met, mingled, and caught up.

Some say the best part of WordCamp is the “hallway track”. I’m a big fan of the Afterparty myself. Either way, it’s about community. Personal relationships as well as trading expertise. I met Chris and Robert, both of whom I’ll be keeping up with long-term. And I got to catch up with old friends I otherwise only “see” online.

HUGE thanks to Illegal Pete’s for the epic DIY nacho spread, and to Fermaentra for the beer, kambucha, and making us as comfortable as if we were hanging out in our own living room.

If you missed it, you missed out. But there’s always next year! See you at WCDEN’19…

See ya next year!

Heaps of thanks to everyone, from attendees to sponsors to volunteers to vendors, who made this year possible. If the energy of this year’s camp inspired you to do more, whether that’s volunteering, speaking, sponsoring, or organizing, reach out now to the organizing team via email and let us know you want to be involved. It’s never to early to think about next year!

Many thanks to Dave Warfel @davewarfel – we used his photo of the kickoff as the featured image for this post.

Be part of the next WordPress Wiggle music video

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Bring your best dance moves this Saturday!

Do the WordPress Wiggle

WordCamp Denver 2018 is taking the Wiggle to the next level: we’re going to have a first-ever “Wiggle Booth”! You and your friends in the WordPress community can take part in a new music video created during the WordCamp.

The Wiggle Booth is completely optional, but it should be a lot of fun.

The first WordPress Wiggle

WordCamp Denver 2017 was the international debut of the amazing “WordPress Wiggle” song by Jonathan Mann. The song tells the story of WordPress: it started with a few people deciding to share their code with the world, and now WordPress powers over 33% of the websites on the internet. The Wiggle song’s name is “WordPress is People (Do The WordPress Wiggle)” to celebrate the WordPress experience.

Check out the original video:

Be part of the next Wiggle video!

July 28 will be your chance to show your kinetic support of WordPress through your groovy moves. When you “Do the Wiggle,” you’ll be showing off your moves next to a whole bunch of Wapuu (the adorable mascot of WordPress through the magic of green screens. Come and Wiggle with Wapuu, and then enjoy the world premiere of the next video at the end of the day of WordCamp.

Come dance with us this weekend—look for the WordCamp Wiggle booth and come join the fun! 🎵

Looking for Code to Review

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At WordCamp Denver this year, we have a new type of session – a live code review panel hosted by Mike Selander, Zack Katz, and Robert Rowley. You will be able to see the thought-process and feedback that goes into a code review in real time as they review code in real time.

But, we need your help to make this happen!

We need code snippets to walk through together on stage. Code snippets should not be more than 100 lines (the smaller, the better) and have a clear purpose.

How to submit Your Snippets:

Two ways to submit your code:

  1. Email wcden-code-review@googlegroups.com with your code snippet zipped up.
  2. Open a Pull Request against https://github.com/mikeselander/code-review-panel with your snippet. You can see an example.

Whichever method you use, please include some general context around the snippet such as what the code is trying to achieve, when it would be used, etc.

We can’t wait to see your code on the big screen!

Thank you to our Green Sponsors

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We couldn’t have made camp happen this year without the support of our Green level sponsors!

SiteGround - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Green SponsorSiteGround, now celebrating their 14th year in the business and hosting more than 1 000 000 domain names, is a leading web hosting company internationally recognized for their unique approach to hosting.

NeverSettle - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Green SponsorNever Settle is a Denver-based WordPress and WooCommerce agency. Recognized and trusted by both WPEngine and WooCommerce, Never Settle has built a sought after brand for solutions ranging from enterprise to small business.

Pathfinder SEO - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Green SponsorPathfinder SEO helps you get found in Google, Yahoo and Bing with Pathfinder SEO.Search engine optimization can be challenging, expensive, time consuming and overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be.

Thank you to our Black sponsors

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WordCamp Denver 2018 Sponsorship level - BlackWe couldn’t have made camp happen this year without the support of our Black level sponsors!

GreenGeeks - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Black SponsorGreen Geeks’ specially engineered platform offers WordPress users web hosting that is designed for the fastest, most secure and scalable hosting available in multiple data centers.

ilkli - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Black Sponsorilkli provides discounted payment processing and revenue share to WordCampers empowering them to sustain and grow their businesses. They share the belief that the WordPress community as a whole is building the economy of the future, and those builders deserve some of the revenue from the sites they build.

Thank you to our Double Black sponsors

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WordCamp Denver 2018 Sponsorship level - Double BlackWe couldn’t have made camp happen this year without the support of our Double Black level sponsors!

Verisign - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Double Black SponsorVerisign, a global leader in domain names and internet security, enables internet navigation for many of the world’s most recognized domain names and provides protection for websites and enterprises around the world.

Ghost Browser - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Double Black SponsorGhost Browser is the productivity browser for technology professionals. If you develop, build or manage content or social media for a WordPress site, it’s going to make you faster. Stop by their table to get a WordCamp Denver discount offer, grab a free t-shirt and enter to win one free year of Ghost Browser’s plus plan!

And many thanks to our Global Double Black sponsors – GoDaddy http://bit.ly/wcdgodaddypro and DreamHost http://bit.ly/wcddreamhost – Global Sponsors make it possible for us to confidently begin planning WordCamp. Knowing that they’ve got our back before we even secure a venue makes it possible to establish early on the scope of support and programming we’re able to offer to attendees and speakers. Thanks, Global Double Black sponsors!
GoDaddy - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Global Double Black SponsorDreamHost - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Global Double Black Sponsor

Thank you to our Backcountry sponsors

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WordCamp Denver 2018 Sponsorship level - BackcountryWe couldn’t have made camp happen this year without our amazing Backcountry level sponsors!

Pantheon - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Backcountry SponsorPantheon provides web teams with the hosting, cloud-based developer tools, and scalable infrastructure needed to run awesome websites.

 

Qualpay - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Backcountry SponsorQualpay provides a modern REST API based payments platform, paired with a merchant account, that is easily adaptable to the unique needs of a business.

 

Jilt - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Backcountry SponsorJilt is an email marketing tool that helps eCommerce stores using WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, or Shopify increase revenue from their existing traffic by sending automated lifecycle emails designed for eCommerce.

And many thanks to our Global Backcountry sponsors – BoldGrid, WooCommerce, JetPack and Bluehost – Global Sponsors make it possible for us to confidently begin planning WordCamp. Knowing that they’ve got our back before we even secure a venue makes it possible to organize a planning team and set the scope for the kind of camp we can plan. Thanks, Global Backcountry sponsors!
BoldGrid - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Global Backcountry SponsorWooCommerce - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Global Backcountry SponsorJetpack - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Global Backcountry SponsorBluehost - a WordCamp Denver 2018 Global Backcountry Sponsor