Attending WordCamp – What You Need to Know

Is this your first WordCamp? Read the official What to Expect, and review our helpful guide below:

What to bring (each is optional):

Laptop for note-taking, participating in online/offline demos, getting help from another attendee, or showing off your stuff.

Business cards for networking.

Writing utensil and something to write on for note-taking, networking, etc.

Cell phone for networking and to take/share pictures (on social media hashtag #WCRaleigh)

A Twitter account to keep up with the #WCRaleigh hashtag posts by other attendees. Make sure to follow the official @wordcampraleigh account as well!

Slack access for asking questions. There’s a channel for each track as well as one for general information. You can also get help in the #happiness_bar channel. Sign up here: http://wordcampraleigh.herokuapp.com

Dress code: You’ll see clothes from shorts/flip flops to suits, and everything in-between, with the trend toward the casual end of the spectrum. Wear something weather appropriate that you feel most comfortable in.

What we’ll provide:

-Coffee, tea, water

-Snacks (including gluten-free)

-Five tracks of WordPress awesomeness (advance signup is required for the ]three workshops, but not for the other sessions)

-Plenty of time between sessions for networking and/or learning with speakers, sponsors, and other attendees

-Full lunch on Saturday at On The Oval

-Donuts on Sunday (Rise Biscuits and Donuts)

-Free wifi courtesy of NC State University – ncsu-guest (no password required)

Happiness Bar throughout WordCamp where you can ask questions from volunteers including speakers.

-One free drink ticket for the afterparty

How to get to WordCamp:

https://2017.raleigh.wordcamp.org/getting-to-wordcamp-raleigh-2017/

-Registration is from 8:15-9:00 in the atrium of Engineering Building 1.

Free parking in marked garages on Partners Way

-Map of our location can be found on our Location page 

FAQs:  https://2017.raleigh.wordcamp.org/faqs/

Thank you to our Bronze sponsors

Due to the generous financial support of global and local sponsors, ticket prices for WordCamp Raleigh are again only $35!

The sponsors listed below are donating their time and money in support of the Raleigh WordPress community.  Remember to wander over and thank them personally.


WPML turns WordPress websites multilingual. It works with caching, SEO and E-Commerce plugins, and allows the building of complete multilingual sites. WPML powers simple blogs as well as corporate and enterprise sites.

WPML allows users to translate everything in the site, including content, menus, widgets and even theme and plugin texts. WPML powers over 500,000 commercial websites from all over the world.

More information about going multilingual can be found at WPML.org

We are looking for talent. If you are a smart programmer you are welcome to contact us here: http://wpml.org/home/were-hiring/.


Since 1997 DreamHost has helped individuals, small businesses, entrepreneurs and developers the world over bring their dreams to life on the Internet. From domain registrations to traditional web hosting and highly-optimized managed WordPress hosting, more than 400,000 customers trust DreamHost to be their online home. DreamHost supports the WordPress project and community with dedicated resources and a passionate team. Packed with excellent value, DreamHost is a great place to launch a blog, website, or online application into the stratosphere! Learn more at www.DreamHost.com


Currently protecting more than one million WordPress sites, SiteLock delivers a patented 360-degree website security solution to find, fix and prevent malware and other threats from affecting websites and their visitors. Services include automatic malware scanning and removal, an advanced web application firewall, static application security testing, PCI compliance and website acceleration powered by a global CDN. SiteLock offers phone, email and chat support, 24/7/365. With SiteLock, you can focus on what’s most important—your business, your passion, your word.


SiteGround, with over 13 years in the business, provides managed WordPress hosting that does not miss a thing! Their servers, available in 4 different data centers across the world, are optimized for ultimate WordPress speed and security and they provide many goodies for the WordPress fans – automatic updates for the core WordPress and its plugins, WordPress SuperCacher for ultimate speed acceleration, staging tool for the coders and unique WordPress autoinstaller for the starting users – all crafted in-house by the SiteGround team. And still they do not forget the importance of the good old standard hosting features like the domain name registration, the email service, control panel and the reasonable pricing. They also have a support team that is not only available 24/7 by phone, chat and ticketing, but consists of WordPress enthusiasts who will help you with specific WordPress issues. SiteGround has been actively involved with the community speaking, supporting and attending various WordCamps around the world and by sponsoring WordCamp Raleigh, they want to further contribute to the amazing WordPress community.

Thank you to our Silver sponsors

Due to the generous financial support of global and local sponsors, ticket prices for WordCamp Raleigh are again only $35!

The sponsors listed below are donating their time and money in support of the Raleigh WordPress community.  Remember to wander over and thank them personally.


GoDaddy Pro is a free membership program for web developers, designers & agencies. It offers exclusive tools to help onboard, manage and maintain multiple clients and their sites fast and easy. With GoDaddy Pro tools, you can easily shop for your client, monitor their sites, and manage their products from a single dashboard. Additionally, your membership includes advanced 24/7 technical support and rewards for recommending GoDaddy to your clients.

You can use GoDaddy Pro with all of GoDaddy’s newly refreshed hosting products, including Managed WordPress, cPanel shared hosting, our brand new cloud product, and our virtual and dedicated solutions.

And, always get the best price on GoDaddy products with your “30% off list price” member benefit.

Learn more about GoDaddy Pro.


Since 2003, A2 Hosting has specialized in linux-based, developer-friendly hosting. We cater to the WordPress community by offering robust servers and hosting accounts at an affordable cost. Whether you have never run a website before or a professional developer, rest assured we have a web hosting solution to meet your unique needs. Best of all, we back up our hosting with 24/7 US-based support available by phone, ticket, or live chat.

At A2, we dedicate a percentage of our development time to WordPress as part of the Five for the Future initiative, and we are active in the WordPress community. We support many WordCamps and WordPress meetups around the country and several members of our team help organize their local WordCamps, including WordCamp Ann Arbor and WordCamp Jackson.


Liquid Web, a managed web hosting company, offers a wide array of hosting solutions, including VPS, cloud, dedicated, and shared hosting plans. WordPress users will find our fully managed hosting solutions, built on powerful and flexible servers, ideal for hosting WordPress sites of all sizes. In addition, all of our fully-managed solutions come backed by our industry-leading, 24/7/365, on-site Heroic Support®. Our Heroic Promise features a comprehensive SLA with 59 second phone and live chat responses, 30 minute helpdesk responses, 30 minute hardware replacement, and 100% power and network uptime guarantees. With wholly-owned, state-of-the-art data centers in Michigan, Arizona, and Amsterdam, we provide true global reach and geographic redundancy. Whether your hosting needs are big or small, managed or unmanaged, shared, VPS, or cloud … Liquid Web is the perfect match.

Liquid Web around the web:


Give is the most flexible, robust, and easy to use WordPress plugin for accepting donations directly on your website. Upon activation, Give provides you with powerful fundraising features for your Cause.

iPad, Backpack, and 55″ TV Raffle Giveaways!

Yep, you read that right! We’ve got some amazing sponsors who are very generously donating some awesome raffle prizes. All attendees are automatically entered into the raffle drawings. The drawing will be Sunday morning immediately following Cory Miller’s talk.

55″ TV – Bluehost

iPad – All in One SEO Pack

branded backpack – Siteground

 

Thank you to our Gold sponsors

Due to the generous financial support of global and local sponsors, ticket prices for WordCamp Raleigh are again only $35!

The sponsors listed below are donating their time and money in support of the Raleigh WordPress community.  Remember to wander over and thank them personally.


Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin that simplifies managing your sites. This single plugin enables Photon (a global CDN for images), uptime monitoring, brute force protection, traffic-boosting tools, single sign on, multiple-site management, and automatic or bulk plugin updates. Additionally Jetpack includes several features that help you customize the look and feel of your site without installing other tools. More information can be found at jetpack.com.


37% of all online stores are powered by WooCommerce. Built on WordPress, WooCommerce is a fully customizable, open source eCommerce solution.

Whether you’re selling a few handcrafted items to a niche market, taking an existing business online, or going global with an enterprise level eCommerce business – WooCommerce will get you set up and selling fast and scale securely as you grow. Plus your content will be forever yours and customizable down to the finest button color.

Developed and supported by a distributed team, WooCommerce is powered by Automattic, the creators of WordPress.com.


Bluehost has been a WordPress partner since 2005 and powers over 1 million WordPress sites worldwide. Their objective is to help customers, whether novice or pro, create a thriving online presence at an affordable price. With a team of in-house tech experts available 24/7, Bluehost dedicates time and resources to providing the best support and services in the industry. Join millions of other site owners and see what Bluehost can do for you and your online presence.


BoldGrid is a website builder powered by WordPress. It is a free set of WordPress plugins, themes, and other content that allows site creation and management similar to non-WordPress website builders. By placing WordPress more in line with DIY site builder solutions on the market, our mission is not only to make WordPress more accessible and easy for beginners to utilize, but also automate and streamline typical WordPress tasks to provide a fast, creator-friendly platform that even web professionals will appreciate.

Experience WordPress as a website builder, including: free pre-built themes, drag and drop editing, integrated image banks, simplified photo editing, built-in staging, automated backups, and so much more.

BoldGrid will have you creating professional looking WordPress sites in minutes!

www.boldgrid.com


All in One SEO Pack Pro is the popular WordPress plugin, developed since 2007 by Michael Torbert and Semper Plugins of Raleigh North Carolina, for managing the Search Engine Optimization of your website or blog. All in One SEO Pack is one of the most downloaded plugin for WordPress with over 30 million downloads. Chances are you’ve searched Google and found a website that’s running this powerful WordPress plugin.

Learn more and purchase online at SemperPlugins.com


Farside Films is a production company with roots through out the southeast and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. They specialize in videography and photography for live music events, independent shorts, local and regional commercials, website marketing videos, music videos and other media. They have a passion for creativity in every aspect of production which can be seen the work from script to screen.

Farside Films is proud to be a sponsor for the 2017 WordCamp Raleigh conference.


GoGoCreate.com provides an all-in-one white labeled dashboard for creatives, designers & developers to monetize additional revenue streams by providing hosting, domains, invoicing and other services to their existing client base.

Check out the Schedule!

Most years we announce speakers in multiple waves. We now have all the speakers confirmed and the (probably) final schedule, so we’re going ahead and releasing it today!

We’ll have 34 incredible speakers this year, including an amazing Keynote by Chris Lema as well as featured speaker Cory Miller.

Now that the schedule has been released, tickets will sell out soon, and you don’t want to miss this.

Saturday, April 22nd

Time Beginner Business Power User Developer
8:15 am
Registration
9:15 am
Opening Remarks
9:30 am
Keynote by Chris Lema
10:30 am
Break
11:00 am
12:00 pm
Lunch
1:00 pm
2:00 pm
Break
2:05 pm
3:05 pm
Break
3:25 pm
4:25 pm
Break
4:30 pm
5:30 pm
Day One Finished
7:00 pm
Afterparty!

Sunday, April 23rd

Time Beginner Business Power User Developer
7:00 pm
Afterparty!
9:30 am
Managing Your Iceberg Cory Miller
10:30 am
Break
11:00 am
12:00 pm
Break
12:05 pm
1:05 pm
Break
1:15 pm
2:30 pm
Closing Remarks

Featured Speaker : Cory Miller

Cory Miller is a former newspaper journalist turned full-time entrepreneur. In 2008, he started iThemes, one of the first commercial product companies in WordPress, that now offers key products like BackupBuddy, iThemes Security and iThemes Sync.


Topic Title: Managing Your Iceberg

Topic Description: Life is like an iceberg.

Too often we only see or share the good and great, the sunshine and success (or the above the surface stuff). But in reality, we all suffer and struggle at some point with things buried under the surface.

Particularly in the online world we’re immersed in, it’s too easy to get lost, or to suffer in silence.

My story is an example of that. In almost 9 years of entrepreneurship (10 in the WordPress community), I’ve had my share of above the surface successes (co-authoring a “For Dummies” book, building a great WP company) as well as below the surface struggles (divorce and depression).

I will be sharing my personal experiences and story and how I manage my iceberg in business and life.

Keynote Speaker, Chris Lema

Chris Lema has been building web applications since you could build them (1995). Over the last 12 years he’s used WordPress to build everything from blogs to websites to web applications for folks like his brother, his friends and companies like ABC. A regular blogger and public speaker, he is also the Vice President of Products for Liquid Web.


Keynote Title: 

Getting the Right things Right

Keynote Description:

Every day there are more things you have to think about – from new technologies to new tools, and from content management to pricing. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and confused about the essential things. Whether you’re an agency, a freelance designer or developer, a blogger or builder of website for neighbors – you’ll benefit from hearing Chris’ take on perspective, priority and performance. 

WordCamp Raleigh 2017 is over. Check out the next edition!