WordCamp Atlanta

We have planned a series of presentations that will provide a good foundation for beginners to get started with WordPress. Since beginners and new users may not know which presentations were designed with them in mind, I have put together this list to help you plan your camp schedule.

On Friday morning, Russell Fair will be coordinating a two hour hands-on workshop called, Hello WordPress. If you have a laptop you can sign up here, you will get your own WordPress site to practice on. You will get the overview and by the end of the workshop actually be creating  posts and pages uploading images and other nifty things bloggers do. If you aren’t bringing a laptop or you just need a refresher please attend the beginner session which will be held Saturday morning for an hour, presented by Kathy Drewien. Kathy will walk you through many of the same things covered in Friday’s workshop but without a hands on component. If you don’t have a laptop you might want to go to her presentation.

Bret Phillips will be going over the Mysteries of Pages and Posts which is always somewhat of a conundrum to new users. Some people say, “But, I don’t want to blog”. But then they ask things like, “Where do I input information about my upcoming event?” Or,  “Where do I put my recommended books?” These my friends are often posts. So tune into that talk for more detail. Continue reading Beginners Cheat Sheet →

If you purchased a ticket and filled out the form and paypal took your money, you are registered. Most of you should appear on the attendees page on our site. If you are there then we have all of your information and you will simply go to registration to pick up your badge and your t-shirt.

There will be no walk-ins and we do not want to find people without Badges in our conference area.

If you purchased several tickets in your name, please send us your name and the full names and info on each of  your ticket holders.

Oh, and please be sure to let us know if you have a ticket that you don’t need. We can’t give refunds, but there are a lot people who would love to be able to take your spot.

Don’t worry. We are getting a fix for you to get your tickets! We held out block for you and now that the others are sold out we need to get you a link to register. Stay tuned.

We are close to posting a schedule but haven’t got it quite ready yet. In the meantime, let me give you the overview.

Registration will start both Friday and Saturday at 8:30 AM, with the Welcome and Keynote talk starting at 9 AM. The beginners workshop be two hours beginning at 10 AM. Bring your laptops, if you have one, and you can actually work on a site we will have set up for you.

We will have five simultaneous presentations throughout the two days giving people a great selection of talks for various levels of expertise and backgrounds. Each day, we will end at 5:00 PM. We have a location where there will be a happy hour both days, after a hard day at Camp!

As of today, we have officially “sold out”. Thanks everyone for signing up, it is going to be a great event. Our lists of speakers and presentations are really quite impressive. If you have not already, we encourage you to check out the speakers and sessions available.

Sorry to all of you latecomers! We knew we were going to have a full house and the tickets did fly out of here fast. We still have some tickets for some SCAD students who are just back from break. But the rest of you, don’t despair. Scurry on over to the WordCamp Birmingham site and snag one of their tickets for WordCamp Ya’ll January 14 and 15. A lot of us from Atlanta will be presenting there. And they have a lot of people who are not speaking at WordCamp Atlanta.
In fact, even if you are going to WordCamp Atl, you might also want to go to the Birmingham camp. You can’t get enough live WordPress training at these prices!

If for some reason you can’t make it and already have a ticket, please consider donating it to someone else; just contact us for information about transferring your ticket.

One of the many things I love about WordPress is the community. At our Atlanta WordPress Users Meetup we have a great group of regulars that cover all ages, all races and varied backgrounds from techies to newbies, business owners and bloggers. People come with some intrepidation having never attended a technical meetup and find a welcoming group of helpful people. You will find that same spirit of community at WordCamps. In fact, it is the norm and one of the reasons we do the whole event totally on the power of volunteers, do not want to make a profit and and keep the cost of the event affordable to most (forty bucks for two days of stellar presentations, lunches, snacks, a t-shirt and free parking. Really!!!???)

So far at WordCampAtl, we have registered a couple of people over the age of 70 and we have one boy, almost twelve years old, who is eager to learn more about WordPress. His mom asked if we had a children’s track, but I assured her that he will fit right in with the other beginners and will probably have as much or more technical ability than some people much older than himself. The curious thing is, his Mom said she is not technical at all. I am going to find out more about how he became interested in WordPress and I will let you know.

I promise in between holiday festivities, we are hard at work on our presentations and will be posting the speakers and their talks real soon.