Author: sarahwnyc

Sarah Wefald is a senior product manager, focusing on end-to-end B2B SaaS solutions for state & local government, finance, and education industries. She is also the founder and principal of Mother Blackbird, a digital solutions agency. Sarah has led a number of sessions on topics like WordPress development, as well as product and project management. Additionally, Sarah volunteers for Orange County WordPress, sharing knowledge, guidance and opportunities to those exploring careers in tech. Sarah attended Mount Holyoke College, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English.

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

The 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!

Date and location announced for WordCamp OC 2016

We couldn’t make any announcements until all the ink was dry on the contracts, and now we’re very excited to report that we can’t wait to see you July 9 and 10, 2016 at The Cove at UC Irvine.

Watch this space for when tickets will go on sale. If previous years are any indicator, the camp may sell out very quickly.

One of the many things we’re looking forward to sharing with you is this year’s edition of Plugin-A-Palooza, our camp’s plugin creation contest featuring fabulous prizes furnished by Sucuri Security. We’ve had fun reviewing all the submissions, and we will be announcing the participants very soon.

We’ll keep you apprised of any developments here on our website, so make sure you subscribe to receive our updates. See you in July!

Announcing the 2nd annual Plugin-a-Palooza!

Ladies and gentlemen….start! your! PLUGINS!

We had so much fun with last year’s event that we’re doing it all again: join us for Plugin-a-Palooza 2016. We want everyone to come together in the spirit of competition, show off your mad developer skills, and create a plugin that will impress the judges.

Send us your pitch for the type of plugin you’d like to build using the submission form at the end of this post. ~~Deadline for pitches is March 15.~~ DEADLINE EXTENDED!!! We’ve extended the deadline to enter the competition to April 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 part of one team in the competition.
Build your plugin!
The plugin must be GPL compliant and be released in the WordPress repository by June 20th. You’ll need to submit them for review no later than June 1st in order to get them approved and in the repo.
The top teams will present their plugins at WordCamp OC (date TBA!)
Our judges will vote live at the event and we’ll announce the winner.
The winning team and runners up win fabulous prizes.

Plugin-a-Palooza at WordCamp Orange County is sponsored 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

Third Place
• $100 cash

SHOW US WHAT YOU GOT!

ENTRIES ARE NOW CLOSED – the competitors will be notified shortly.