Schedule
In the coming week we’ll be filling in more and more details as we confirm featured speakers, unconference time blocks, workshop instructors, etc. For now, if you want to buy a ticket because you know in your heart (as we do) that WordCamp NYC will be awesome this year, here’s the rough schedule format we’re planning. We’ve switched things up a bit from last year based on attendee feedback of what worked and what didn’t, so we think it will have a more relaxed flow.
| Friday | Saturday 8-6 | Sunday 12-5 |
| Afternoon/early evening: volunteers come help set up, bring in donated items etc. | 8 – 9am: Registration Morning: Lightning sessions on variety of WordPress topics, everyone in one big auditorium |
We won’t start until noon, so that neither hangovers nor chuch attendance will prevent someone from attending WordCamp. |
| Evening: casual meet and greet at a local bar to see who’s coming and make some early connections. | Afternoon: Regular 30-minute sessions on specific topics in tracks Evening: Afterparty (similar to last year) |
Afternoon: Unconference sessions, genius bar, and maybe a ‘best of’ selection of videos from other WordCamps playing in the auditorium (or something fun) |
Saturday Schedule
| Blogger | Business/Publishing | Academic | Developer A | Developer B |
| Registration 8-9am | ||||
| Lightning Sessions 9am-1pm (includes breaks). All speakers will do a lightning session version of their talk. They will do their lightning talks in random order, so that people will get a variety of content, rather than picking and choosing only a few to listen to (that’s what the longer afternoon sessions are for!). If you aren’t interested in one of the lightning presentations, well, it’s only 5 minutes, right? | ||||
| Lunch 1-2pm | ||||
| Bare Bones Blogging Liz Burr |
WP for Small Business Jacqueline Lee DeVito |
Anthologize Boone Gorges |
Theming Best Practices Allan Cole |
Performance + Optimization Panel Matt Martz, Scott Taylor, Matt Dorman |
| Hidden Gems, Favorite Features Sheri Bigelow |
WP for Cultural Orgs + Non-profits Amanda McCormick |
Digital Signage Joe Ugoretz, Rich Dikeman |
Theme Typography Sara Cannon |
Security John Ford |
| WP + Multimedia Tony Zeoli |
Managing WP Projects Gina Nieves |
Vassar Digital Commons Baynard Bailey |
HTML 5, CSS3 + WP Larry Aronson |
Document Your Code Aaron Jorbin |
| Using Featured Images Sara Rosso |
WP for News Sites William P. Davis |
BaruchConnect.com Jahn Golden, Ben Guttmann, Steve Guttbinder |
From Thesis to Genesis Chris Cochran |
Advanced APIs Andrew Nacin |
| Subtitling Video Dean Jansen |
Managing Roles Steve McNally |
Pressible (Columbia) Eric Buth, Patrick Carey |
Advanced JavaScript Daryl Koopersmith |
BuddyPress Theming Boone Gorges |
| Better Search Kenny Katzgrau & John Crepezzi |
Using BuddyPress Matthew Gold |
WP vs Traditional Online Courses Mikhail Gershovich, Joe Ugoretz |
Widgetize Everything Jeremy Clarke |
Advanced BuddyPress Components John James Jacoby, Boone Gorges |
| WP + SEO Alex Miranda |
WordPress in Education, Open Forum | BuddyPress Q&A John James Jacoby, Boone Gorges, Paul Gibbs |
||
| Closing Remarks, Sunday Unconference Voting | ||||
| Afterparty | ||||
Sunday Schedule
Stop in at the main registration area to get room numbers for each area.
Main Registration Area - Pick up your t-shirt anytime between 12 and 4pm. Also, as of today we’ll now be selling extras, so if you want to get one for a girlfriend, your kids, or just extra colors for yourself, you can buy additional shirts for $15. Proceeds go to the WordPress Foundation, which is currently raising money to buy professional video kits to send to WordCamps to capture their sessions in high-quality video to post to wordpress.tv for the benefit of the broader community.
Hacker Room – Core developers will be working on patches for WordPress 3.1. If you want to participate, bring your laptop (and evdo card if you have one).
Genius Bar- Experienced WordPress users, developers and consultants will be on hand to help their fellow WordCamp attendees with their WordPress puzzles. May span two rooms, depending on demand.
Hangover Room- If there’s interest, we can use the main room to play videos from WordPress.tv for those who want to come and learn more, but aren’t quite up to human interaction yet. 
Unconference Rooms- Unconference sessions were voted on at the end of Saturday’s WordCamp. The following sessions have been assigned rooms/times. There will be several free rooms available for ad-hoc unconference sessions/birds of a feather discussions, which you can propose at the event on Sunday by writing your topic in one of the blank schedule slots on the posted unconference board in the main registration area. Since people tend to trickle in over the first hour, we’ll officially begin scheduled unconference sessions at 12:30pm. Since there were not that many proposals, scheduled unconference sessions will be finished by around 3:30pm. We have the space at Baruch until 5pm, so people can continue to talk, join the hackers, work on their WordPress sites, etc in the company of their peers. Please help us start closing up shop/cleaning up the spaces we’ve used at around 4:30 or 4:45 so we can get out on time.
| 12:30pm | 1:30pm | 2:30pm | 3:30pm | |
| Unconference Room 1 | Contributing to WordPress Andrew Nacin, code; Jane Wells, non-code |
BackPress | Themes, Present and Future Daryl Koopersmith |
available |
| Unconference Room 2 | WordPress + Windows Peter Laudati |
Parsing Strange Hal Stern |
Running WP in Large Corporations | available |
| Unconference Room 3 | Using WordPress as a CMS | Academic Community | Student Mentorship Programs Jane Wells |
available |
| Unconference Room 4 | Incident Preparedness Plugin Competition Ned Benton |
Genesis Theme Framework Daisy Olsen |
RoloPress Contact Manager Plugin Steve Bruner |
available |
| Unconference Room 5 | available | available | available | available |
| Unconference Room 6 | available | available | available | available |
Does anybody know if it’s worth it to bring a laptop to these events? I imagine wifi will be slow at best.
Correct, there’s not much coverage, and we recommend leaving the laptop at home unless you’re planning on heading to the hacker room to work on core code on Saturday or need help from the genius bar on Sunday. If you do bring a laptop, if you have an evdo card you should bring it.
And as I learned last year (thanks to Jane), best buy sells a $100 evdo card by virgin mobile, with a $10 plan for a few hundred megabytes that last 10 days (great for a weekend conference like this), or $40 for unlimited 30 days. I, on the other hand, will be carrying my iPad around all weekend and using it’s 3G.
Carlos, available outlets are scarce at Baruch as well, so unless you have all day battery life (a la iPad), that would be another reason for not bringing the laptop. My experience last year was that all the presenters made their presentations available online and I got everything covered with pen and paper.
There isn’t a date listed, does anyone know the date?
October 16-17.
Is there any additional info about the Saturday morning lightning sessions?
If you can’t make it there between 8-9, is registration open afterward? (I have already paid)
The schedule above starts at 2:00, right? Following this format, it would be 5:00 for the last set of sessions and 5:30 for closing remarks. Correct?
Hi Diane. The lightning sessions will be short-short (5-minute) versions/intros for the longer sessions after lunch. Yes, the plan is for the after-lunch sessions to be begin around 2 and go until 6. That said, if the lightning sessions wind up going quicker than anticipated, we might start lunch and the afternoon sessions a little earlier to give those afternoon sessions a little bit more time. Whatever happens will be announced as we see how the time goes.
I’m not terribly interested in anything except the developer sessions on Saturday afternoon. Do I have to show up during the 8-9 registration time, or can I take care of that before/during lunch on Saturday?
Hi Helen. The registration area will be open all the time both days, so just check in whenever you arrive.
I must be remembering a different conference. I could swear outlets and wifi weren’t a problem last year.
Oh well. My back will be saved.
I’m just bringing my Nexus One phone, spare battery and a notebook and pen to write with.
Thanks for the heads up, Jane!
so psyched about the conference! missed it last year by a few days. am so looking forward to being there this weekend.
Confused about lightning sessions. Is it better just to come around 12 then and stay for lunch and afternoon sessions?
The lightning sessions will be 5-minute intros to all the sessions happening in the afternoon. It is a way for people to get an overview of the whole day’s content, even though they’ll only get to see a few things in-depth in the afternoon, and in some cases will help people decide which sessions to go to in the afternoon based on which speakers catch their attention.