WordCamp NYC 2010

So many to choose from! In a running-late fashion, I’m finally getting in touch with all the people who submitted proposals. My work-in-progress speaker grid is somehow even more complicated than last year’s! Most of the proposals made in the comments on the call for speakers post will be represented one way or another, though not every single person/topic will be on the official program. Here’s how it’s breaking down:

– Almost all the potential speakers will be part of the WordCamp community show-and-tell and will give a 5-minute lightning talk on their proposed subject on Saturday morning in front of the full WordCamp audience. Last year people wished they’d seen the lightning talks first, so they could have chosen sessions from a more informed position.

– Some proposals are being scheduled for longer regular sessions Saturday afternoon (ranging 30-60 minutes) based on community feedback on the proposal as well as feedback from last year. In some cases, where people proposed the same or overlapping topics, we will ask them to work together as a panel for the follow-up, if a follow-up is put on the schedule.  These sessions are the more official ‘speaker’ slots.

– Most of the rest of the time (Sunday, and a room or two on Saturday) will be organized at the event unconference style.

Last year the unconference portion didn’t get much love, b/c proposed sessions were kind of unknowns and it was early on Sunday (when, let’s face it, many people were “recovering” from Saturday night). This year the unconference portion will get more attention, and the proposals not given a scheduled session will be put on the unconference session list for attendees to sign up for/vote on, which is why participating in the community show-and-tell is a good idea, to generate interest in the unconference sessions. If no attendees sign up to attend an unconference session, that session will not be given a room assignment.

I’ll start posting the confirmed sessions/speakers tonight and tomorrow, but it’s looking like a pretty cool lineup so far. I know I’m psyched for it! So if you haven’t bought tickets yet, do it now! (unless you are a sponsor, then wait until tomorrow’s email)

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]