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.
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.
We need a design volunteer to help pump out a few things:
1. The sponsor skyline. This will involve looking up each building chosen by sponsors (I can give a list), grabbing a photo online, turning it into a silhouette, and then assembling all the silhouettes into a spatially more-or-less ordered skyline. Estimated time commitment: A couple of hours.
2. Program. While you work on the skyline, I’ll work on the schedule, and when we’re both done, you can put it all together in a nice layout for our printed programs so we can get them printed up (b/w). Estimated time commitment: An hour or so, if you use a basic grid. More if you get fancier.
3. Badges. Make some sidebar graphics that people can put on their sites/blogs for attending, speaking, sponsoring, wish-they-were-coming. You can pretty much rip these off from last year’s with a couple of minor updates. Estimated time commitment: Less than an hour.
These tasks can also get divvied up among a few people if we have multiple volunteers. Leave a comment if you want to help out and I’ll email you tomorrow (since I’m guessing most people won’t know about this post until the email feed goes out in the morning). Thanks!
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)
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:
Ready to commit to an awesome weekend filled with WordPress wonder and awe? And maybe a singalong if you’re lucky?
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.
Visit WordCamp Central
Code is Poetry.
NYC 2010 is over. Check out the next edition!