WordCamp NYC 2010

The Sunday Unconference schedule is posted on the Schedule page. There are still available rooms in the schedule, so if there’s something you would like to talk about, just write it in on the schedule in the main registration area. We’ll give people a chance to trickle in, and will start sessions at 12:30pm.

Don’t forget to pick up your t-shirt!

I’ll email this to everyone as soon as the attendee emailer is working, but in the meantime, here are some last minute details/logistics to be aware of before tomorrow. If there are any questions I failed to anticipate, please leave a comment, so I can answer the question for everyone at once.

We still have plenty of tickets left, so please encourage your friends, co-workers, and anyone you know that uses (or should be using) WordPress to come. It’s not often you can get this kind of conference program for the cost of a movie and some popcorn, so spread the word!

Tonight (Friday): There’s no official event tonight, but for anyone who’s in town and wants to meet up with other WordCamp attendees, we suggest heading over to the Globe for happy hour (4-7pm). The Globe is right near the venue, so if you haven’t been to Baruch before, you can use this as a practice run to see how long it takes you to get there. The Globe is on E. 23rd St between 3rd and Lex. http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-globe-new-york

Location: Come to the Baruch College Vertical Campus entrance on E. 25th St. You will see signs once you’re inside to guide you to the registration area.

Registration will be open staring at 8am. Please don’t arrive before 8am; there won’t be anywhere for you to wait, and it will cause problems for us with security. Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of time to check everyone in by 9am when we’ll start the show. When you get to the registration area, go to the table with the first letter of your last name on it.

To get past security, you will need to have a photo ID with you that matches the name on your registration.

Food: We’ll have coffee all morning, and we’re having lunch brought in on Saturday (sandwiches, salads, etc). However, you should eat breakfast before you come, and it wouldn’t hurt to bring a reusable water bottle/travel mug if you can to help us reduce waste.

Internet Access: There will be open wifi, but it is very limited in reach and bandwidth, so please consider leaving your laptop at home unless you’re planning to hang out in the hacker room and work on code for WordPress 3.1. This will help us ensure that the wifi can be used for the genius bar and other things that really need it. If you must bring your laptop, if you have an evdo card, it would be a good idea to bring it. There are also very limited electrical outlets, so your laptop will be running on battery power most of the time if you bring it.

Shirts: We will be distributing the t-shirts starting Saturday afternoon (we’ll announce the time/location at the event in the morning). We ordered a variety of colors based on what was available in each size, so it’ll be first-come, first-served for color choices.

Schedule/Timing: WordCamps are *casual* conferences, and schedule changes are always a possibility based on changing speaker circumstances, audience interest in a topic, etc. We plan to follow the posted schedule, but please understand that we may need to be flexible. If there are any last-minute schedule changes, they will be announced at the beginning of the day and the beginning of the tracks, as well as being posted in the registration area and on the session room doors.

Refunds: No refunds, please. If you can’t make it, please give your ticket to a friend (remember to update the attendee info using the link in your confirmation email) or consider your ticket purchase a donation to the cause of building a vibrant NYC WordPress community.

Volunteering: If you weren’t able to get involved during the planning stages but would like to help out, stop by the volunteer table in the registration area. Chances are there’ll be some easy ways you can help out during the event.

Video: We have Flip cameras to record the sessions to post on wordpress.tv. If you have a better video camera and would like to volunteer to record any sessions on Saturday and/or Sunday, just bring your equipment (people who have external microphones especially encouraged!) and go to the volunteer table in the registration area to sign up to record sessions.

Afterparty: WordCamp sessions end on Saturday at 6pm. After that, people will be gathering for the casual afterparty at Tonic East, a few blocks away at E 29th St. and 2nd Ave. We have the 2nd floor reserved, and if the weather cooperates, maybe we can snag the rooftop deck like last year, too. You may want to grab a quick dinner before heading over. We expect the bulk of people to congregate there starting around 7ish.

Sunday Unconference: In the registration area, you will see a sign-up table for unconference submissions. If there’s a topic you’d like to present on, lead a discussion about, or just meet other people who share the interest, fill out one of the session proposal cards and turn it in at the table. We’ll collect suggestions/proposals all day, and will announce the unconference schedule for Sunday at the end of Saturday during closing remarks (we’ll also post it on the website). If we have more proposals than we have time slots, we will get a quick show of hands from the audience during closing remarks to see which sessions have th most interest, and will set the schedule based on that.

Ticket Issues: If anyone is having a problem getting their ticket to go through, you will be able to buy a walk-in ticket for $40 when you arrive, using cash or credit card. If you bought a ticket online but haven’t filled out your attendee information form, check your confirmation email for the link. If you need the link to be sent again, email me and I can look it up for you.

And last but not least, a big thank you to the sponsors who forked over some cash to help us make this all happen, and based their amounts on beloved NYC landmarks:

Copyblogger Media: 1 World Trade Center (planned) 1776
VaultPress: Empire State 1454
Zemanta: W New York, Times Square Hotel & Marriott Marquis 1104
Rackspace: NYT Tower 1046
NorthPoint: Conde Nast Building 809
Margaret Roach: One Liberty Plaza 743
ContentRobot: Lipstick Building & Guggenheim Museum 555
nrelate: United nations 505
9seeds: Flatiron Building & Bayonne Bridge 436
WebDev Studios: 1 Times Square 395
Pods CMS Framework: The Majestic 346
Going2Media: Madison Square Garden 323
Polldaddy: Statue of Liberty 305
Double L Enterprises: NYPL: Stephen A Schwartzman Building & World Financial Center: Winter Garden Atrium 223
Page.ly: Park51/Cordoba House 195
PowerMyTechnology.com: Grand Central Terminal 130
Amphibimen Comics: 69th Regiment Armory Drill Hall 130
AroundHarlem.com: Apollo Theater 100

There will be a dedicated room both days for developers who wish to work on patches for WordPress core, which is just about to hit feature freeze for version 3.1. Committing core developer Andrew Nacin will be around, along with other core contributors like Daryl Koopersmith, Matt Martz (sivel to those who frequent the WordPress core developer IRC chat), and others. If you’ve been looking for the perfect opportunity to get involved and become a contributor to WordPress, they don’t come much more perfect than this. Take a look at the bug and feature tickets still in progress for WordPress 3.1, and come ready to code. We’ll keep the coffee flowing.

We’ve posted the main schedule for Saturday. Check out the lineup, it’s pretty awesome. Over the course of the day, volunteers are building out the pages to link the session descriptions and speaker bios to the schedule. Doesn’t this lineup make you want to buy a ticket?

Note: the afternoon schedule is mostly half-hour blocks, but a couple of sessions are running longer due to technical content. The specific start times and room assignments will be available at the event.

WordCamp genius bars are a place where you can come to ask questions of other WordPress geeks. Whether you have questions about how to back up your blog, upgrade, find themes, install plugins, or just want to know the best way to get started with WordPress – the genius bar volunteers can help!

This year, the WordPress Genius Bar will be available at WordCamp NYC from Noon to 5 PM on Sunday.

Call for Volunteers

This means it’s time to round up the WordPress geniuses. If you are attending WordCamp NYC 2010 and you are a WordPress expert, you should come join the Genius Bar to help out and answer a few questions! Please post a comment below if you can volunteer.

Thinking of coming from the NE Corridor (Boston -Philly – DC – Baltimore), but thinking driving would be a pain and the train is a little more than you want to spend? Don’t forget about the bus! People in our demographic tend to forget about buses as mass transportation outside of city metro areas, but Greyhound is cheap, pretty comfy, and did I mention cheap? One-way fares between NYC and Philadelphia are as low as $6. Yes, that is cheaper than the subway from JFK into midtown. There are deals to/from NYC right now for all the cities mentioned above that cost less than lunch at Starbucks, so check it out. Oh yeah: some of the buses even have wifi.

See all the groovy bus deals.

Tickets for WordCamp NYC 2010 are now on sale! Individual tickets are $30 each, and get you access to the sessions on October 16-17, 2010.  Tickets will also get you a t-shirt, probably some coffee and lunch, maybe a drink special or two. Note that this price is cheaper than last year! W00t!

A few notes:

• We’ll be posting the confirmed speaker list in the next few days (after I get in touch with the people who applied for slots), but if you take a look at the proposed sessions, you can be confident that we’ll have lots of great content to help you get creative with your WordPress site and improve your skills as a WordPress user and/or developer.
• If you signed up to be a sponsor or applied to be a speaker, do not buy a ticket yet. You’ll get an email from me no later than Monday, September 27 with further information. If you get confirmed as a sponsor or a speaker, I’ll have you register with a special code.
• We’re using a different ticketing plugin this year, another pro bono code contribution like last year, this time by the 9seeds consulting firm out of Las Vegas. Thanks, guys! It’s very much in beta right now, and we are all beta testers, so while we already know about the ways it could be improved and have it on a roadmap, if anything breaks while you’re buying a ticket, please let me know right away so we can fix it/I can help. You can email me at jane at wordcamp dot org.
• Like last year, please register as soon as possible so we can pre-order the right number of shirts and food. We’ll order shirts by October 7th.
• It’s only a couple of weeks away, so please tell everyone you know who might be interested, send them the link, etc. Spread the Word!

Ready to commit to an awesome weekend filled with WordPress wonder and awe? And maybe a singalong if you’re lucky?

Buy your ticket now!

With five weeks until WordCampNYC, and an expected 500+ attendees there is plenty to do… and we need people to help. So, if you want to give back to the WordPress community and you’re in the NYC area, then consider volunteering for WordCampNYC.

You’ll be working side-by-side with other community members, having fun, and putting together one of the largest WordCamps ever. Before the event we’ll need your help to find vendors and of course setup. During the event we’ll need volunteers to assist with registration and food, help attendees find their rooms (our venue is large), get speakers setup, and anything else you can think of.

You can signup to volunteer at our WordCampNYC group at WPNYC.ORG

If you plan on volunteering, please sign-up now… don’t wait until the event.

Last year, Steve and I wanted WordCamp NYC to be the biggest, broadest, most diverse WordCamp ever. With 8 tracks, over 50 speakers and close to 800 people, I’d say we succeeded! We raised a TON of money last year, including some high-priced sponsorships that we drummed up in anticipation of needing to pay NYC venue rental rates when our donated venue turned out to only have room for 200 (and we wound up not needing when last-minute serendipity found us a spot at Baruch). Since then, I’ve seen a lot of other WordCamps asking for big-dollar sponsorships, but the truth is, they shouldn’t be necessary at all. WordCamps are casual, the speakers are volunteers, ticket prices usually cover the cost of a t-shirt and lunch, and you really just need cash to cover things that you can’t get for free, like insurance, security/janitorial fees when you have a donated venue, office supplies, pizza for volunteers, printing, etc. Just as we blazed a trail last year, this year we’re hoping to set the opposite trend by proving you don’t need $15,000 sponsorship levels to have a great WordCamp.

Here’s where it gets fun.

We think of money as a foundation for structuring the event. You just don’t plan for more than you can afford, and you don’t ask for more than you *really* need, or more than your potential sponsors can really afford. This year? Roll your own sponsorship!

Just as we think of money as an event foundation, we think of buildings and bridges as the foundation of New York City’s structure and personality. This year, you can choose your own sponsorship $ amount by choosing the height of one of NYC’s buildings or bridges. What would this mean for dollar amounts? Here are a couple of examples:

Empire State Building: $1250 (or $1454 if you include pinnacle height)
Chrysler Building: $1046
Met Life Tower: $700
United Nations: $505
Brooklyn Bridge: $276

We found a handy list of the heights of buildings over 300 feet, but if you’re interested in bridges, you’ll have to look up their heights individually. The grand plan is that when we put together our programs and screensavers, we can cobble together a ‘sponsor skyline’ using the silhouettes of the structures our sponsors have chosen for their donation amounts. We’ll only accept one sponsor per building, though, so if you have a favorite, get your request in asap!

What does this do to the usual ‘what do i get for my money’ question? It turns it on its head! You should sponsor a WordCamp because you recognize the value of growing the local community and because you want to give something back to the free open source software that has improved your life and/or business, not because it’s a cheap advertising expense with one of the most highly desirable target audiences around. At least that’s how we think it should be. To that end?

• Every sponsor will be announced on the blog, regardless of the amount. Every act of generosity deserves recognition.
• Every sponsor above $500 will get space on our sponsor swag table for a postcard, flyer, sticker or button, and a space behind the table for an official company rep if desired. (Note: if we wind up with 50 sponsors this will be a problem, and we’ll maybe create a schedule or something.) We won’t put everyone’s stuff in a bag and hand it out like last year, because let’s face it — when you get a bag filled with promotional stuff, lots of people just throw it all away without even looking at it, and that is crazy wasteful. Not good. This way, people will take what interests them, so make your swag cool! And maybe have your rep wear a cool t-shirt that makes people want to talk to them! Note: If you want to be at this table, but you just like short buildings and bridges, you can combine two choices to get to 500, like pairing a 275 bridge with a 300 building.
• No logos. Your logo will not be splashed on shirts, bags, screensavers, etc. We will include a logo in the post we write announcing your sponsorship, and there will be logo representation for the sponsor swag table so people can easily tell who’s there, but otherwise? No. Why? Because WordCamp sites covered in sponsor logos look like WordCamp sites covered in ads. This event is about the content and the community, not the ad placement. What you will get is a listing on our sponsor page with your company name, link, short description, and the name of the landmark you chose for your sponsorship level. Sponsors will be ranked on this page in order from highest to lowest donation amount.
• You will be thanked at our event, in front of everyone. No one likes sitting through a lot of thanks, we know, so we’re cooking up something a little more entertaining.
• In the main pre- and post-event emails, we will thank the sponsors (landmark name and company name).

We’ll also probably offer a low-level microsponsorship of $100 in place of a regular ticket purchase for individuals who want to kick in.

Finally, in-kind sponsorships are also very welcome. Want to provide coffee service? Printing? Lanyards? Videography? Snacks? Lunch? Speaker dinner? A party? If it’s free, we’ll probably take it (as long as it’s not covered in your logo)! We’d also love to get some loans — last year we bought a ton of office supplies to keep the event running smoothly that we wound up giving away to another WordCamp once ours ended. It would be great to just borrow and/or get donations of that kind of stuff instead (staplers, hole punches, post-its, pens, sharpies, etc). If you have access to something we can have or can borrow, let us know.

The race is on! WordCamp NYC is only 5 weeks away, so pick a NYC landmark and make your sponsorship bid today! Oh wait, how do you do that? Leave a comment on this post and fill in one of the forms below. We’ll grab your email from the comment information in WordPress and email you to work out the details. Thanks!

For cash sponsorships:

Name of NYC landmark –

Height/dollar amount –

Company name –

Your name –

For in-kind sponsorships:

What you’re offering (as detailed as possible, please) –

Company name (if applicable) –

Your name –

This is it! Finally we’re taking speaker proposals. If you think you should be on stage at WordCamp NYC, please copy and paste the following form into a comment and fill in each field. Feel free to suggest people as speakers that you’ve seen before or would like to see, and to reply to speaker proposals in the comments with feedback. We’re putting more emphasis on local speakers this year, so if you know some local WordPress rockstars in the NYC Metro area, send ’em our way. Topics of interest: Using WordPress, developing for WordPress, themes, plugins, integration with other apps, cool WP case studies, BuddyPress, etc. Please post your proposal no later than Sunday, September 12. Hit the comments!

Name:

Proposed Topic:

Description:

What makes you the best person to talk about this:

Public speaking experience:

You live in: [enter city, state]