Get ready, get set, get classy!

Hey classy people, are you ready for #wcsd on Saturday and Sunday? Below is some helpful information to ensure you get the most out of your WordCamp weekend.

Registration

Registration begins at 7:45am. Come early for meeting cool people just like you. Opening remarks will start at 8:45am of the corresponding rooms for each track.

Help Bar

Located on the 2nd floor and staffed by volunteers from various backgrounds, the Help Bar will be available on Saturday from 9am – 12:10pm and 2pm – 3pm. Then on Sunday from 12:40pm – 4pm.

Feel free to stop by if you have questions.

Saturday After Party

The After Party will be held from 7-11:30 pm on Saturday at Little Italy’s Loading Dock in Little Italy. You MUST have your WordCamp name badge to attend – no badge, no entry, sorry! Little Italy’s Loading Dock is a 21+ venue, and you should be prepared to show proper ID.

Sunday Networking

Join us for some great networking over coffee and donuts at 11am on Sunday, right before our keynote speaker, Stephen Carnam from SeverPress takes the stand.

Parking + Directions + Logistics + Special Needs

Check out parking and directions here. The Thomas Jefferson School of Law is an ADA compliant university and handicap accessible.

Last of all

Please give a big thank you to our sponsors, speakers, volunteers and organizers for all their efforts in making WordCamp San Diego one classy event.

Meet the Organizers

This WordCamp San Diego has been peppered with all-star anchormen and anchorwomen. A team of 8 persons who have been working relentlessly for 6 months in the planning of San Diego WordCamp so that bloggers, designers, developers, authors, marketers, non-profits, photographers, consultants, entrepreneurs— the whole kit and caboodle, can expand their knowledge in WordPress and meet others who share their love for WordPress.

If you see us around  WordCamp and want to give us a high-five, we would not object to said high-five. In fact, we would give you ten!

Our organizers’ page says more about us, if you’re interested in who these classy people are.

Start Planning Your Weekend: Track Recap

Can you believe #WCSD is only a couple of weeks away? Baxter can, but he’s always prepared. Here is a recap on what’s happening so you can start to plan your days.

Saturday:

Saturday has three tracks: How-To, Development and Beginner. Also, there is a “Help Desk” where you can get WordPress assistance at any level (beginner user to developer etc.), so tighten your belt and get ready for some fun!

Time Beginner - Floor 2, Room 229 Development - Floor 3, Room 325 How To - Floor 3, Room 323
7:45 am
Registration
8:45 am
Opening Remarks
9:00 am
9:50 am
10:40 am
11:30 am
12:10 pm
Lunch
1:30 pm
2:20 pm
3:10 pm
4:00 pm

Sunday:

Sunday has three tracks running: How-To,Development and Business. The “Help Desk” will return Sunday as well, get WordPress assistance at any level.

Time Business - Floor 2, Room 229 Development - Floor 3, Room 325 How To - Floor 3, Room 323
11:00 am
Coffee + Donuts + Networking
12:00 pm
12:40 pm
1:30 pm
2:20 pm
3:10 pm
4:00 pm

Get pumped for this year’s WordCamp San Diego. It’s going to be a classy time.

Get ready to party at Little Italy’s Loading Dock

Join us on Saturday evening following WordCamp at Little Italy’s Loading Dock, formerly 98 Bottles. Little Italy’s Loading Dock is a 21+ neighborhood bar with an extensive craft beer selection along with great wines, sake and creative Soju cocktails. We’re lucky to have the entire venue for our WordCamp attendees from 7 – 11 PM.

Little Italy’s Loading Dock is located… you got it, in Little Italy. Just north west of downtown. This historical neighborhood has plenty of restaurants. A few of our favorite foodie spots are Filippi’s Pizza Grotto, Bencotto, Monello, Ballast Point, Ironside Fish & Oyster, and Underbelly. We will have some light appetizers at the after party, but we recommend stopping somewhere in beautiful San Diego for something more substantial before the event.

Location and Parking details for Little Italy’s Loading Dock are below. Please be sure to bring your WCSD badge for entry – we will not be able to accommodate any +1’s for this event, so you must have a WCSD weekend badge to attend the after party. We are looking forward to unwinding after a wonderful, exciting WordCamp day with you! See you all there. And as always, stay classy!

LOCATION

Little Italy’s Loading Dock
2400 Kettner Blvd
San Diego, CA 92101

PARKING

Parking can be a bit tough in this neighborhood on a Saturday night, so you may want to consider using Uber or Lyft.

Below is information from littleitalysd.com regarding where to park:

Rate: First 2-hours free, then $2.00 a hour thereafter.
7:00am to 4:00pm
Washington Elementary’s Parking Lots:
W. Fir & State Lot
Union & W. Date Lot


610 W. ASH @ LITTLE ITALY
Rate: $5.00 per car
Monday to Friday from 5:00pm to 1:00am
Saturday and Sunday All-Day


Valet Parking

Rate: $9.00 a vehicle

5:30pm to 11:30pm
India & W. Ivy (Presented by Ballast Point Tasting Room & Kitchen)
5:30pm to 12:00am
Kettner & W. Ivy (Presented by Herb & Wood)
6:00pm to 11:00pm
India & W. Cedar Streets
India & W. Date Streets
India & W. Fir Streets


County Parking Structure
The County of San Diego has officially opened their parking structure on Kettner Boulevard and W. Cedar Streets to the public all day on the weekends.

WordCamp San Diego Help Bar

WordCamp San Diego 2017 will have a Help Bar (previously called a Happiness Bar) to help answer your WordPress questions.

New to WordPress? The Help Bar can help!

Want to learn how to customize your theme? The Help Bar can help!

Need to find a plugin for your site? The Help Bar can help!

If you’d just like to chat one-on-one with someone about your WordPress site, then guess what? The Help Bar can help!

Some tips to help you get the best out the Help Bar:

  • Bring your laptop
  • Remember your login details 🙂
  • No problem is too small
  • We don’t know everything. If we don’t know the answer, we’ll help you find someone who does

Staffed by volunteers from various backgrounds, the Help Bar will be available on Saturday from 9am – 12:10pm and 2pm – 3pm. Then on Sunday from 12:40pm – 4pm.

Feel free to stop by if you have questions, or if you want to help answer questions too! See you there.

Lunch Is Where It’s At

Let’s not fool around, it’s time to eat!  Most importantly, it’s time to give that old noggin a break. It’s time to meet new people, re-affirm friendships, and discuss why San Diego is the classiest.

Lunch is included with your ticket on Saturday. It will be provided by The Wild Thyme Company and will be a boxed lunch. Lunch will be served on the 2nd floor of Thomas Jefferson School of Law.

Each lunch will include fresh fruit, kettle chips, and dessert. Choices will be:

  • Black Forest Ham Sandwich with Spanish manchego cheese, caramelized onions, arugula, & roasted garlic aioli
  • Lemon-Thyme Chicken Sandwich with organic lettuce, tomatoes, havarti cheese, & sun dried tomato aioli (there will be a Gluten Free version of this too)
  • Roast Turkey Sandwich with applewood-smoked bacon, lettuce, roma tomatoes, & Dijonaisse
  • Thai Chicken Wrap with soy-ginger chicken, carrots, cucumber, jasmine rice, lettuce, & peanut sauce
  • Grilled Vegetable Wrap with seasonal grilled vegetables, arugula, & white bean hummus (This is the Vegan, Vegetarian, Dairy-free and Lactose-free option)

If this doesn’t float your boat, Thomas Jefferson School of Law is within walking distance of the Historic Gaslamp District, with many restaurants to choose from.

If you need to change your lunch dietary requirement preference, please click on the “edit” link in your ticket confirmation email to update that info.

As always, eat classy!

Announcing How To Track Speakers

wcsd-speaker-mashup-how-to

The WordCamp San Diego organizing team is excited to announce out awesome lineup of speakers for this year’s How To track.

Tessa Kriesel

Tessa has more than a decade of experience as a developer, including both freelancing and working for creative agencies and corporate companies. She is also an Instructor for the Minneapolis chapter of Girl Develop It!, a national nonprofit that teaches women to code, where she manages curriculum and teaches courses. Tessa is a northern Minnesota native, but now lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and four children – three boys and a baby girl. She loves dogs and enjoys helping local organizations search for and rescue lost dogs in her free time.

Stephanie Hellwig

Stephanie is a southern California native now living at the base of the Bighorn mountains in Wyoming. Working with WordPress since 2010, Stephanie is a recommended Genesis developer and owns her own theme shop & design agency, where she works with clients across the globe. Not only does she offer support and live training to her own clients, but for the last two years she has been the sole support provider for one of the most popular feminine WordPress theme shops and looks forward to sharing some of what she has learned along the way. Join Stephanie to learn 10 ways to provide great support and find out why support can be the golden nugget for residual income.

Krystle Herbrandson

Krystle has had the great pleasure of being a part of the Sucuri family for the past 3 years. Throughout her time she has experienced everything from cleaning a website to building and establishing a sales organization for the company. In her current role as Director of Sales she aids users, agencies and enterprises in navigating the complexities of website security.

Peter Malick

From a side hustle building custom PCs in 1991, to my first attempts at digital music production in 2000, to a full immersion in the Inbound Marketing world, I have always embraced technology with a passion. In 2008 my wife and I founded the Luxury Wafers Indie Music Blog, and after flirting with Squarespace we fell in love with WordPress. Currently I am the CEO and co-founder of Lumen foundry, and web development and inbound marketing company based in Los Angeles.

Chris Ford

Over the course of her 20 year career Chris has been a writer, teacher, visual and UX designer, speaker, front end developer, support lead and project manager.

Joseph Abraham

Joseph Abraham is primarily a web designer, but is proficient in both internet marketing and web development as well. Born in Maui, Joseph graduated from Point Loma Nazarene University in 2010, where he studied music and theology. He worked in the marketing department at PLNU from 2007 to 2010. At the start of college, Joseph aimed to be a professional minister but later pivoted due to his experience at the PLNU marketing department. He has been freelancing as a web designer since middle school. Joseph has been a featured developer and designer by: WooThemes, Themify, and Morning Print. He founded Savage Cat Food, a health conscious cat food company. Savage Cat Food won many brand related awards in international magazines and conferences during Joseph’s tenure. He recently rebranded his freelance web design business into Techie Design, which has served over two dozen clients in the last six months. Over the last year, Joseph has been an active participant in the Advanced WordPress group here in San Diego and is passionate about building upon the San Diego WordPress community.

Austin Gil

I studied Kinesiology in school, but after discovering web development, I got hooked. Since then it has been an ever-growing passion which started as a hobby, turned into an internship, got me into freelancing, and has now landed me as a full-time, lead developer. I currently work at Visceral, a San Diego based digital agency where we build award winning sites for some of the world’s leading causes. Professionally I do WordPress all day, every day. In my free time however, I like to play with some of the latest tech. Currently working on a React + WP Rest API application.

Rachel Carden

Rachel Carden is a Senior Software Engineer for The Walt Disney Company with over ten years experience in back and front-end web development and digital design. Before Disney, she spent over nine years working in higher education and is the founder of WPCampus, a community and conferences focused on using WordPress in the world of higher education. When she’s not using WordPress to help build the web, she enjoys promoting the importance of accessibility and working to encourage openness, collaboration, and professional development as a conference and meetup organizer. Rachel lives in Pasadena, California but you can find her on Twitter, GitHub, and bamadesigner.com.

Evan Scheingross

Evan is a proud native San Diegan who loves good surf and good tacos. He runs his own business creating and consulting on user-focused, result driven WordPress websites for a primarily local client base. He is passionate about creating engaging and intuitive user experiences, and using design as a tool for communication. He has been working with WordPress since 2007 and attended every WordCamp San Diego to date. For more info, check out http://evanwebdesign.com/

Cody Landefeld

Senior web strategist and founder at @modeeffect. #WordPress #WooCommerce for enterprise companies, technology innovators & e-commerce store owners.

Adam Silver

Adam Silver is a native of Southern California, and is a serial entrepreneur. Currently providing WordPress development and support services through ConciergeWP.com, produces a weekly podcast at KitchenSinkWP.com & runs the SouthBay WordPress Meetup. Additionally, he was the lead organizer for WordCamp Los Angeles 2016, and in his free time, he speaks at industry events sharing his insights & expertise into all things digital. Has been married for 18 years to his amazing wife and has 3 wickedly cool kids.

Jen Miller

Jen Miller believes in the value and power of the written word in sharing truth and story, in life and in business. Combining her journalism background with a passion for customer service and marketing, Jen built NeedSomeoneToBlog.com, a blogging service focused on delivering highly-targeted, local search engine optimized blogging and page content primarily for real estate clients. As the business grew, Jen discovered areas that could further develop authority, garner trust, and build engagement for her clients online. Her agency NeedSomeoneTo.com combines these services to share engaging messages of community and industry knowledge with their clients and followers. Jen also hosts a weekly podcast, Be Seen Blogging, delivering website content tips in under 10 minutes. Jen Miller believes in the WordPress Community which is why she founded WomenWhoWP.org, a nonprofit dedicated to encouraging women in their WordPress journey. She also founded a specialty Meetup to accomplish the same goal. Serving as a volunteer blogger for WordCamp Los Angeles in 2016 and 2017 and as Content Organizer for WordCamp Orange County 2017, Jen is active in the local WordPress Community. She presented at WordCamp Orange County in 2016 on Creating and Maintaining Sites While Mobile.

Mark Uraine

As an interdisciplinary designer I’m dedicated to making the web more accessible, and human friendly by facilitating the transfer of information. I’m a designer at Automattic striving to be an impactful contributor to open source. I design. I communicate. I get things done (preferably in automated ways while experimenting with new technology).

Second Round of Tickets Go On Sale Tonight at 6pm!

Wow! That first round went quickly. If you didn’t get your ticket, don’t worry we have good news! The second round of tickets go on sale tonight at 6pm PST. We will be releasing more tickets to this year’s event to be held at Thomas Jefferson School of Law on March 25-26, 2017. We’re assembling an excellent list of top notch speakers and a great lineup of tracks and sessions for WordPress users of all skill levels.

Be sure to schedule your reminders and tell your friends. See you in March.

WordCamp San Diego 2017 is over. Check out the next edition!