The title says it all. We had some great applications for cities to host WordCamp US after we finish up in Philadelphia this year, and the city chosen for 2017-2018 is Nashville, Tennessee.

Based on the other great applications we got I’m also excited about the pipeline of communities that could host it in future years as WordCamp US travels across the United States and gives us an opportunity to learn and love a new city, as we have with Philadelphia.

By the way, if you haven’t yet, now is a great time to take the Annual WordPress Survey and ask your friends to as well.

Photo Credit.

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WordCamps are locally-organized WordPress conferences that happen all over the world (and are so fun). Sometimes people don’t realize that WordCamps are organized by local volunteers rather than a central organization, and they contact us asking, “Can you bring WordCamp to my city?” When this happens, we always suggest they start with a meetup group, and think about organizing a WordCamp themselves after their group has been active for a few months. We emphasize that WordCamps are locally-organized events, not something that the central community team plans from afar.

This has been successful in many areas — there are currently 241 meetup groups on our meetup.com chapter program! In some regions, though, enthusiastic volunteers have had more of a challenge getting things started. Because of this, we’re going to try an experiment this year called the WordCamp Incubator.

The intention of the incubator program is to help spread WordPress to underserved areas through providing more significant organizing support for a first event. In practical terms, this experiment means we’ll be choosing three cities in 2016 where there is not an active WordPress community — but where it seems like there is a lot of potential and where there are some people excited to become organizers — and will help to organize their first WordCamp. These WordCamps will be small, one-day, one-track events geared toward the goal of generating interest and getting people involved in creating an ongoing local community.*

So, where should we do these three events?  If you have always wanted a WordCamp in your city but haven’t been able to get a meetup group going, this is a great opportunity. We will be taking applications for the next week, then will get in touch with everyone who applied to discuss the possibilities. We will announce the  cities chosen by the end of March.

To apply, fill in the application by February 26, 2016. You don’t need to have any specific information handy, it’s just a form to let us know you’re interested. You can apply to nominate your city even if you don’t want to be the main organizer, but for this experiment  we will need local liaisons and volunteers, so please only nominate cities where you live or work so that we have at least one local connection to begin.

Thanks, and good luck!

* For the record, that describes the ideal first WordCamp even if you have an active meetup — there’s no need to wait until your group is big enough to support a large multi-day event, and small events are a lot of fun because everyone has a chance to be involved and get to know most of the other attendees.

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WordCamp San Francisco is the official annual WordPress conference, gathering the community every year since 2006. This is the time when Matt Mullenweg addresses the community in his annual State of the Word presentation – a recap of  the year in WordPress and giving us a glimpse into its future.

This year the speaker lineup is stellar. There will be talks by three of the lead WordPress developers: Andrew Nacin, Helen Hou-Sandí, and Mark Jaquith. We’re also looking forward to speakers like Jenny Lawson, also known as The Bloggess, and Chris Lema. If you’re at all interested in the web, you will appreciate the appearance of Jeff Veen – one of the creators of Google Analytics and co-founder of Typekit.

Even though San Francisco is far far away for most of you, you can still be part of the fun and watch all presentations in real-time via livestream:

Get a livestream ticket and watch all talks from WordCamp San Francisco live

If you hurry, you can get one of the special livestream tickets, including a WordCamp San Francisco 2104 t-shirt. You can find all the technical details and start times at the WordCamp San Francisco website.

WordPress News

The annual WordPress conference, WordCamp San Francisco, starts in fewer than 8 hours. The sold out event — three full days of programming for bloggers, developers, theme designers, and professional WordPress users — will be shared with more than 1,000 ticket holders from near and far. If you are one of the many people who wanted to come but couldn’t swing the time off or travel expenses, you should check out the livestream tickets that are for sale. You can even get a conference t-shirt to commemorate your “virtual” participation.

Speakers include members of the WordPress core development team, leaders of WordPress-based businesses, hobbyists, and everything in between. Take a look at the schedules for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and if you see something that sounds interesting (how could you not?), buy a livestream ticket. The stream will start at 16:00 UTC on Friday, August 12.

Viewing Parties

Celebrate your own local WordPress community by calling together some friends and having a livestream viewing party. In the case of regular WordPress meetup groups, if you do a viewing party we will have a process after #WCSF is over whereby attendees will be eligible to buy conference shirts if their meetup group organizer confirms viewing party attendance.

Videos from all the recorded sessions will be posted for free on WordPress.tv within a couple of weeks, but watching the livestream allows you to support WordCamp while providing instant gratification. And let’s face it: the best part is that you’ll know what the heck people are talking about on Twitter using the hashtag #wcsf.

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As we complete speaker selection for the annual WordPress conference (a.k.a. WordCamp San Francisco), it’s clear that even though there were more than 200 speaker applications, many great WordCamp speakers did not apply. No fear! We will seek them out to make sure that WordCamp SF has a fantastic lineup, including people who didn’t apply (too shy? who knows?) but have wowed local crowds at previous WordCamps.

This is about as basic a survey as there is. Tell us the three best WordCamp presentations you saw in the past year or so. For each, give the presenters name, the topic (exact title not necessary) and which WordCamp it was at (important).

Example:

1. Joe Shmoe, Using the Loop, WordCamp Sheboygan 2011
2. Jane Doe, Top 5 WordPress Plugins, WordCamp La Mancha 2010
3. Lee Smith, Your First Core Patch, WordCamp Atlantis 2011

That’s it. We don’t need your name or any info at all, just your three top speaker votes. We’ll take a look at the people with the most votes, and consider them for WCSF if they’re not already in the application pool. Thanks for your help in making this year’s conference better and more WordPressy than ever.

Vote Now!

P.S. Have you bought your tickets yet?

WordPress News

The annual WordPress conference, WordCamp San Francisco (home of the very first WordCamp), is now accepting speaker applications. Past speakers have included core WordPress developers, people building successful businesses on WordPress, popular bloggers, people from related projects and businesses…you name it. In addition to Matt Mullenweg’s annual “State of the Word” address, WCSF has played host to talks by people like Mark Jaquith, Matt Cutts, Richard Stallman, Scott Berkun, Karl Fogel, Tim Ferriss, Tara Hunt, Chris Pirillo, and John Lilly. With 3 days of content this year instead of just one, the list of speakers should be even more impressive. If you think you’d make a good addition to this year’s roster, check out the WCSF Call for Speakers.

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