Category Archives: News

Thank You!

Thank You for WCTO2013

WordCamp Toronto 2013 @ Humber College was a huge success. With over 400 registered attendees and 30+ sessions covering two whole days, this was the biggest WordCamp that we’ve ever put on.

We had great support from Humber College‘s security, IT, and facilities team. The School of Media Studies & IT was a gracious host and we received tons of compliments about the new Lakeshore campus venue. Additional thanks to…

  • Our volunteers: Your hard work went above and beyond. You plugged away all weekend to keep things running smoothly. Thank you so, so much.
  • Our presenters and panelists: Without you there’d be no reason for anyone to come out. Thank you for spending time with us and sharing your expertise, insights, and experiences.
  • Our caterers: Tailor Made Cafe and Abokichi for keeping us all well fed, and Kalamata Restaurant for hosting our Speakers’ Dinner and After Party.
  • Our Sponsors: Your support made all of this possible!
  • Our Attendees: YOU are the reason WordCamp exists! Every single one of you who came out to join us for the weekend, to learn something new about WordPress and meet others with an interest in WP, thank you for joining us.

What’s Next?

Fill Out our Feedback Survey

The Year Without PantsHelp us make WordCamp Toronto 2014 even better than 2013 by submitting your comments, suggestions, and other feedback of how this past weekend went. We have two copies of The Year Without Pants by Scott Berkun to give away for folks who complete the survey. You can read a review of the book on Torque.

» Take the Survey
Feedback survey results are in. Thank you!

New Presentations Page

We’re collecting all of the slide decks from our speakers. If you have a link to a presentation from this weekend, please get in touch with us or leave a comment on the Presentations page.

» Presentations Page

Share Your Photos & Video!

We have a public group on Flickr for you to upload your snapshots and videos from WordCamp Toronto 2013. Flickr not your thing? We’re also pulling together tweets tagged with #WCTO2013 on RebelMouse.

» Flickr Photo Group & WordCamp Toronto on RebelMouse

Thank you, everyone, for making WordCamp Toronto 2013 @ Humber College an amazing Weekend of WordPress!

Sunday Schedule Now Available

The Sunday schedule for WordCamp Toronto 2013 is now available.

This is the most ambitious Sunday we’ve ever done, with a full day of workshops and panels plus a second day of catered lunch! There are four tracks:

1.) D.I.Y WordPress gets you working with WordPress at a novice development level. The goal here is to give you the skillset to customize your site.

2.) Making a Living with WordPress is for all of the freelancers, contractors, and agencies who work with WordPress on a day-to-day basis. This track talks less about the code and more about the business: handling clients, managing projects, providing training, and so on.

3.) WordPress Development is all tech. ‘Nuff said.

4.) Community Code kicks off with WordPress project demos from local shops before diving into a panel discussion and wrapping up with a hackathon tackling Trac.

With just a little over two weeks to go, now’s the time to register!

Note for panelists: We’ve rearranged some of the panel names and groupings, but content is the same. We’ll be contacting you shortly with updated details about the discussion panels. Thanks!

Schedule Now Available

The tentative Saturday schedule for WordCamp Toronto 2013 is now available!

Key points:

  • Registration kicks off earlier this year at 8:00am.
  • Rather than gathering everyone in a common area for opening remarks, we have something special in mind for the welcome message at 8:45am. Details TBA!
  • Thanks to the earlier start, we’ve managed to fit in an additional hour of sessions.
  • The Sunday schedule is still being developed.
  • Sessions that are not linked in the schedule still need to be added to the site.
  • This is a tentative schedule. Session times and tracks may change.

A big thanks to co-organizers Ed and Terri Caissie for all their hard work in assembling the schedule this year. At a grand total of 28 sessions, it’s a whopping ten sessions bigger than what we did for Saturday in 2011 and 2012. (Woo!)

If you have any questions about the schedule, shoot us a message.

Sponsoring? Speaking? Volunteering? Attending? We’ve got web badges for ya!

Our last few WordCamps lacked web badges. 🙁

Thanks to Meetup group member and in-kind sponsor Patrice Atwell of Atwell Design, we’ve finally cleared that hurdle this year!

We’ve got a lovely batch of web badges for you to add to your WordPress website or blog.

Head on over to our new Web Badges page to take a look for yourself! You can also find your way to the page under Get Involved > Web Badges in our navigation menu.

wcto2013-attending-badge

WCTO2013 Tickets Now On Sale

Tickets Now On Sale

Registration is now open for WordCamp Toronto 2013!

It’s only $30 for the entire weekend. That’s two days. Four tracks. Sessions. Panels. Workshops. And did we mention great food? Yup, we do our best when it comes to catering, too!

If you applied to speak, you’ll be getting a notification from us in the next week or so. If you haven’t applied to speak and have something that you’re just dying to present, we’re still accepting applications until August 31st.

As announced yesterday, we’re also looking for wizards to work our Happiness Bar. (If you’re an awesome WordPress pro who wants to give back to the community, this is your chance!)

If you have any questions, shoot us a message. Thanks!

Photo Credit: John Martinez Pavliga on Flickr

WordCamp Wizard

Are You a WordPress Wizard?

We’re looking for WordPress experts — “Wizards”, as we’re calling them this year — to man the Happiness Bar at WordCamp Toronto 2013.

What’s the Happiness Bar?

  • The Happiness Bar is a space set aside for folks who need help with WordPress. It’s manned by volunteer WordPress experts (“wizards”). These experts help WordPress users troubleshoot problems on WordPress.com and self-hosted .org websites.

What’s the commitment?

  • A minimum of one hour. As with all other volunteers, if you volunteer for three hours or more your WordCamp ticket will be refunded. 🙂

What’s the benefit?

  • Give back to the WordPress community. So much of what makes WordPress successful comes from individuals contributing their time and knowledge for the greater good of the WordPress community. This is your chance to do the same.
  • It’s an excellent networking opportunity! Nothing shows off your skills as a WordPress pro like troubleshooting and fixing problems on the spot. Who knows – you might get get a gig out of it!
  • It’s fun & rewarding. Helping others tackle their WordPress problems is a great way to learn about different themes, plugins, and potential bugs that you may have never seen before.

How does one become a Wizard?

Discussion Notes from WordCamp 2013 Planning Meetup

The Toronto WordPress meetup met on Saturday afternoon to discuss plans for WordCamp Toronto 2013. The turnout was great, and we got a lot of fantastic conversations going about what’ll be happening on October 5th & 6th at Humber College.

Thanks to B2B marketing agency Brainrider for providing the space for us on last-minute notice. It was greatly appreciated! We wouldn’t have been able to do this without their support.

Notes from the meetup are after the jump.

Continue reading

Planning WordCamp Toronto 2013: Meetup

Discussing WordCamp Toronto 2013: Downtown Edition

Central Toronto’s Toronto WordPress Group is holding a WordCamp Toronto planning meetup on Saturday, July 27th from 2:00pm – 4:00pm. If you’re interested in learning more about what’ll be happening at #WCTO2013, come on out! This is your chance to speak with the organizers, share your suggestions, toss around ideas, etc…

This is a hands-on, workshop-style event. Participation is expected if you’re attending, and you must be registered with the group and RSVP (space is limited) to attend.

Full details are available on the Meetup event page.

See you there!