Sponsor spotlight: Pantheon

April 14, 2015Sponsorssarahwnyc

We’re glad to have Pantheon as one of our Trail Blazer sponsors this year. They offer a WordPress managed hosting platform that goes beyond just hosting your site. With their platform, you can build, launch, and manage all of your WordPress websites in one place.

In addition to convenience, Pantheon also offers a fresh take on hosting. Rather than leveraging a traditional server farm or even the cloud, they run sites at scale with a system built on containers instead of virtual machines, which allows them to abstract away the site and environments from the OS/machine.

Have a look at what Pantheon has to offer on their website. You can also read more about their container-based hosting approach. Be sure to say hi to them at their table at WordCamp OC!

Meet Your Organizers

April 13, 2015Uncategorizedorganizerssarahwnyc

Your Orange County WordCamp organizing team has been hard at work getting everything ready for the big event.

Meet your WordCamp OC Counselors-in-Training!

David Margowsky

David Margowsky is our lead organizer for WordCamp this year. He’s also the project manager for the high-performing team at SpectrOM Technologies. He’s been working with WordPress for about three years after coming from a background in print. This is David’s first time organizing a WordCamp and we’re lucky to have his organization skills and leadership.

David Arceneaux

David is a full-stack developer at Zeek Interactive, working on WordPress themes, plugins, and mobile development. He started working with WordPress way back when version 2.8 was cool.

Priscilla Christian

Priscilla has been the Empress of Priscilla Christian Graphic Services since 1994. Began building Web projects in 1996 and discovered the wonderfulness of WordPress in 2010. She has filled many roles and worn many hats over the years. This year she is thrilled to be able to serve as the Volunteer organizer on this OC WordCamp 2015 committee. (Hence the hat.)

Brandon Dove

Brandon Dove is a co-founder of Pixel Jar and the lead developer of a commercial plugin, AdSanity. He is the current co-leader of the OC WordPress Developer meetup, and former lead organizer of our illustrious WordCamp Orange County. He’s an active member of the WordPress Community team, and has recently been deputized to help bring more WordCamps to more places for more people.

Dave Mosso

Dave Mosso is a freelance web and graphic designer, and sole proprietor of Spacious Mind Creative Solutions. In 2008, he made the leap into WordPress and has never looked back. Dave digs all manner of out-there music, 70s film, beers with pals and fellow web geeks, and the freedom of being self-employed, largely thanks to WordPress.

Robert Nienhuis

Robert is the founder and principal designer of Nien Studios, where his portfolio has been known to make web professionals weep over its beauty. Robert has been the architect of WordCamp Orange County’s visual identity for the last several years.

Jason Tucker

Jason Tucker is a WordPress web developer that works for a non profit and loves working with audio and video during his brief amount of spare time. Tucker is the host of WPwatercooler, a YouTube webshow and audio podcast featuring a weekly talk with WordPress devs and designers about various topics.

Sarah Wefald

I’m the production manager at Zeek Interactive. When not making WordPress sites myself and enabling the Zeek team to build sites and apps using WordPress, I’m looking after publicity for WordCamp OC and leading the design meetup of the OC WordPress community, or going to too many concerts. Send me a tweet at @ocwordcamp, and like us on Facebook. I’m also @sarahwefald on Twitter.

Steve Zehngut

Steve founded Zeek Interactive in 1995 and he has been the creative technologist behind the Huntington Beach based company since its inception. Under his direction, Zeek has grown from an apartment bedroom to one of Southern California’s leading development and consulting shops. Steve is the organizer of the OC WordPress Meetup and has helped build the community to over 1,200 members. He is a frequent speaker at WordCamps and has taught interactive courses at UC Irvine, USC, the American Film Institute, and Cal State Long Beach. Steve has a BA in Film from Cal State Northridge.

Jeff Zinn

Jeff started web development in the mid 1990s. In 2004 he and Brandon Dove founded Pixel Jar, a custom web development firm specializing in WordPress work. Jeff also co-hosts the monthly Orange County WordPress Developer meetup in Huntington Beach, speaks and volunteers at neighboring WordCamps. When not programming, he spends most of his free time traveling, hiking, camping, surfing, and any other activity where there is no signal.

Tickets on sale April 15

March 25, 2015Uncategorizedsarahwnyc

Mark your calendars! Tickets for this year’s WordCamp Orange County will go on sale April 15.

We’re thrilled we received so many great speaker submissions. We’re reading through them all now and will be responding soon.

Tickets for the event have traditionally sold out very quickly, so don’t hesitate!

When:
June 6th & 7th

Where:
Orange County Department of Education
200 Kalmus Dr., Building D (in the back)
Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Call for Volunteers

February 17, 2015VolunteersDavid

WordCamps don’t happen without the generous help of the WordPress community. We need 7 or 8 volunteers. Why volunteer? Well, you’ll get a free ticket to the event, an invite to the speaker/sponsor dinner, our gratitude, and the adoration of other camp-goers.

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.

Sucuri sponsors Plugin-A-Palooza; deadline to enter extended to March 1

February 16, 2015Eventssarahwnyc

We are thrilled to announce Sucuri‘s sponsorship of Plugin-A-Palooza. If you missed the first post about this new event at WordCamp Orange County, we are hosting a plugin building contest. Details are below on how to enter, but first, allow us to pique your interest in entering with our fabulous prizes provided by Sucuri.

First Place

$500 cash
1 Sucuri Business (VIP) license. Retail value: $499.99

Second Place

$250 cash
1 Sucuri Business (VIP) license. Retail value: $499.99

In light of Sucuri donating the prizes, we are also extending the deadline to enter until March 1.

To enter:

Send us your pitch for the type of plugin you’d like to build. Deadline for pitches is March 1.
We’ll confirm your entry into the competition after reviewing these pitches. There is room for 10 teams to compete.
Each team member can only be on one team in the competition. At least one member of the team must be an attendee of WordCamp Orange County!
Build your plugin!
The plugin MUST be able to be released in the WordPress repository – in fact, it must be there by May 29. So you’re going to need to submit them to WordPress plugin review no later than May 15th in order to get them approved. This means the plugin has to be completely GPL compliant.
The top teams will present their plugins on Sunday, June 7th at WordCamp.
Our judges will vote live at the event and we’ll announce the winner and runner up.
No shenanigans!

Many thanks to Sucuri for everything they do for the WordPress community. Now get entering!

Plugin-a-palooza

February 10, 2015EventsDavid

This year, we’re introducing a new event at WordCamp OC: Plugin-a-palooza 2015. We want everyone to come together in the spirit of competition, show off your mad developer skills, and create a plugin that will wow the judges.

Send us your pitch for the type of plugin you’d like to build. Deadline for pitches is ~~February 20.~~ Extended to March 1st!!!
We’ll confirm your entry into the competition by reviewing these pitches. There is room for 10 teams to compete.
Each team member can only be on one team in the competition.
Build your plugin!
The plugin has to be able to be released in the WordPress repository – in fact, it must be there by May 29. So you’re going to need to submit them to WordPress plugin review no later than May 15th in order to get them approved. This means the plugin has to be completely GPL compliant.
The top teams will present their plugins on Sunday, June 7th at WordCamp.
Our judges will vote live at the event and we’ll announce the winner.
The winning team and runners up win fabulous prizes!
No shenanigans!

Plugin-a-palooza at WordCamp Orange County is sponsored by Sucuri