Unofficial Preparty!

Fort hose arriving in town tonight, come join us at The Brewer’s Art for some late night drinks, etc. Brewer’s Art is legendary in Baltimore. Make sure you order the Resurrection Ale or Ozzy for the most fun!

Brewer’s Art is located at 1106 N. Charles St and any cabbie in town should know where to find it.

WordCamp: Get Ready to Mingle

Mingle360 that is… As many of you are aware, we are excited that all attendees will be getting a MingleStick and can easily exchange you info with everyone else with the click of a button. The later, log into the WordCamp Mingle page and see everyone you met and add them to you address book to keep in touch.

Everyone who has registered will be getting one and the folks over at Mingle360 wanted to have you all check out the video about the MingleStick and how to get familiar before you show up.

Looking forward to seeing you all there !

Getting the Most Out of WordCamp

As of the writing of this post, I have attended, spoken at or otherwise been a part of five WordCamps around the country. Each one is different and brings its own flair. That’s the way it should be. Every community has it’s own face, behaviors and trends.

There are a few constants to WordCamp though. Take some of the advice below to make your WordCamp experience the best it can be!

Business Cards

We have a fantastic sponsor, Mingle360 who will be working the event, and bringing us electronic business card exchange. As an alternate to the Mingle Stick, however, consider bringing business cards. You never know who you’re going to run into and more than once, I’ve met people at a WordCamp that became a client, friend or partner much later on. If you don’t have business cards, go to Vistaprint.com to get cards overnighted. For a quicker, cheaper (and less professional, yet still effective) solution, make a run to your closest Kinkos.

Also, humorous cards usually stick out in peoples minds.

Don’t Stick to the Sessions

The sessions are going to be extremely valuable, and we’ve got some great speakers coming in to speak in both the advanced and user tracks. However, if we don’t cover something you are looking for, start your own session! Grab three or four people, and huddle together for a talk about your topic of interest. Go grab a coffee or some grub and connect with people! This is your event. IF you don’t get what you want, vote with your feet!

Take Advantage of Lunch

University of Baltimore is ideally located in the Mount Royal section of Baltimore. Within walking distance are a number of places to get food or a drink.

• University of Baltimore Student Center (Coffee Bar on 1st Floor/Café on 2nd): 21 W. Mount Royal Ave
• Starbucks – Mount Royal Ave and N. Charles St.
• Jay’s Deli – 1309 N. Charles St.
• Viccino’s Bistro – 1315 N. Charles St
• Oriole Pizza and Subs – 1305 N. Charles St
• Chewy on Charles – 1212 N. Charles St
• Brewer’s Art – 1106 N. Charles St
• Owl Bar – 1 E. Chase St

View WordCamp Mid-Atlantic in a larger map

Help People. Spread the Karma

WordCamp is extremely good at facilitating connections. One of the prime ways you can help is to lend your expertise and assistance (free of charge) to those in the community needing some help. Whether it’s FTP, or making a quick mod to a theme, your assistance will return to you down the road. Karma always wins.

Following the lead of WordCamp San Francisco 2008, we will have a “genius bar” in the Atrium. If you need help with a WordPress problem, look for those willing to provide their expertise their. Likewise, if you want to help, make yourself available at the genius bar.

Get There Early

Doors open at 8am. We start promptly at 8:30 with opening remarks. Anil Dash takes the stage for the first keynote at 9am. You’ll still need to register, and you might want to grab coffee. Leave yourself time. If you’re driving in, traffic should be light and on street parking will be free since it is a Saturday (trust, yet verify – check the signs!).

Tweet, Share, Blog, Shoot, Tag

Many people cannot make this event but they will be following the action vicariously. If you’re on Twitter, tweet the event up! Post your Flickr photos. Blog. The only thing we ask is that you share with the community, so everyone can enjoy it. Please license your content Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-commercial or similar community-based licensing. Tag your content #wordcampmidatl so we can find it later!

All around, come and expect to enjoy yourself, learn something, and make new connections. On behalf of the organizers and sponsors, we thank you for making this event possible. You are the biggest sponsor of all because without you, there would be no WordCamp!

Welcome Amplify.com to WordCamp

As we round the final turn and head into the stretch leading up to WordCamp in just under two weeks … (In case you are all unaware, we are holding WordCamp on the same day as the Preakness, but no sneaking off for the last minute bets) we want to welcome our final sponsor to the family, Eric Goldstein of Amplify.com.

Amplify.com is a very cool new way to share what your reading and give a little commentary on it at the same time.  I am totally into this new service and have created several “Clogs” of my own.  Clogging is a way to clip what you are reading to a blog .. thus a clog.  Others can join in to contribute to your clog for really cool group clogs as well.

Eric who is CEO of the company also found Clipmarks.com, which is a large part of the Amplify Clog technology.  Why I was particularly happy to get Eric and his team on board was there “non standard” use of Wordpress.  They use Wordpress MU as part of their backend and I thought it would be good to have them involved to meet other Wordpress folks and give a little insight as to other ways in which Wordpress can be used to build a world class site.

Thanks again to Eric and all of our other awesome sponsors.

WordCamp Mid-Atlantic Schedule

With WordCamp Mid-Atlantic less than two weeks to go, it’s time to publish the schedule. Keep in mind, we will have the main auditoriums and a large breakout room. The Breakout room is BC-143. The Atrium will be a common area where we will have the “Genius Bar” setup. The Genius Bar is where WordPress users can seek help with their blogs and knowledgeable members of the community can lend assistance to those needing help.

7:30am-8:30am

Registration

8:30am-9am

WordCamp Mid-Atlantic Opening -Aaron Brazell [Aud]

9am-10am

Keynote – Anil Dash [Aud]

10am-10:45am

• Blog Draft Day: Making it Into the Big Leagues – Aaron Brazell [Aud]
• Thesis Theme Developer Hacks – Brad Williams [BC-143]

11am-11:45am

• Being a Balanced Blogger – Jared Goralnick [Aud]
• WordPress SEO – Sri Nagubandi and John Shehata [BC-143]

12 noon-1:20pm

Lunch (on your own)

1:30pm-2:25pm

• Photoblogging – Marc Benton [Aud]
• WordPress Caching – Brandon Savage [BC-143]

2:30pm-3:25pm

• Blogging in Government – Understanding the Landscape – Andrea Baker [Aud]
• Twitter, Friendfeed and Social Tools – Extending the blog beyond the blog – Dan Zarrella [BC-143]

3:30pm-4:30pm

Keynote – Mark Jaquith [Aud]

4:30pm-5pm

Closing – Aaron Brazell

There will be an after party at a local establishment after the event. The venue will be announced before the closing keynote so you’ll have to stick around!

Our Newest Premium Sponsor- Groove Commerce

We wanted to take a few moments to send out a huge thank you to our newest sponsor to the WordCamp Mid Atlantic family, Groove Commerce, a terrific local Baltimore Company.

Ethan Griffin, who founded Groove in 2007 has been great in seeking us out to help us put on a great local tech event.  Groove Commerce is

…a full service eCommerce and Lead Generation design, development, and consulting firm. Our goal is to bridge the gap between marketing and technology and deliver a user-friendly, high converting product to each one of our clients. In order to ensure a successful partnership between us and our clients, we make close communication a top priority – our customer service is personal, plainspoken, and always available.

Groove’s full services include eCommerce website design, lead generation web site design, pay per click (PPC) management, search engine optimization (SEO), eCommerce site analysis, conversion consulting, email marketing, and hosting & maintenance.

We are so excited as we get closer to May 16th and are looking forward to seeing all of you there !

More Sponsors Join the Fun

So as we find the month of April actually winding down, scary isn’t it ?, we are happy to announce a new sponsor that signed up to help us all have a great WordCamp.  We would love to welcome Roni and SkinnyMinnyMedia !

SkinnyMinnyMedia’s main focus is blogging in the health, wellness and food blogging arena. SMM uses Wordpress exclusively to create customized blogs such as GreenLiteBites.com and RonisWeigh.com.  Recently Roni launched a new blog covering tech topics for the new blogger, found under the company name, SkinnyMinnyMedia.com.

Thanks Roni for the support.

We are still actively seeking some big sponsors to help out with our Speakers Dinner and the After Party.  It is a great opportunity to get your name out there, support a great cause, and meet some of the powerhouses coming in from across the country to speak at the event.

WordCamp Mid Atlantic Welcomes New Sponsors

Greetings from Ottawa !  Well I have been a bit behind in keeping up with all of you as we welcome a great new batch of sponsors to the event.  It is shaping up to be a great event and we are looking forward to seeing all of you there.

Or first new sponsor we want to welcome is Brad Williams of WebDevStudios.  WebDevStudios (WDS) is a New Jersey based software development company who specialize in developing WordPress powered websites and blogs.  With many WordPress website build-outs, multiple publicly released WordPress plugins, and hosting/organizing WordPress Meetup events, WDS has become one of the fastest growing WordPress development companies on the scene.  WDS are experts at building and launching WordPress websites with the most popular theme including the Thesis framework and Revolution.

Our next sponsor we are totally happy to have on board is Margaret Roach.  Margaret is the former EVP/editorial director of Martha Stewart and marthastewart.com, left her corporate career and NYC in 2008 to write and blog from her rural garden in New York State. She immediately fell in love with WordPress. Her first WordPress blog, A Way to Garden http://awaytogarden.com, has been profiled in The New York Times, Washington Post, and on “The Martha Show;” her newer MU network, The Sister Project http:thesisterproject.com explores all the facets of sisters and sisterhood, from genetic to friendship and feminist.

Our friends at Network Solutions have also come on board.  They have been so good in supporting our local events and this one is no different.  Thanks to Shashi Bellamkonda and Michael Chase for thier continued support with a Premier Sponosrship.

And last , but not least, Jared Goralnick of AwayFind has come on to help out as well.

We want to thank all who are making it possible for us to put on a great WordCamp event and look forward to seeing you all there.

A Little Scheduling Change

Public Service Announcement: I received an email last week from Automattic, and unfortunately, Matt Mullenweg will not be able to attend WordCamp Mid-Atlantic as originally intended. Clearly, this is a disappointment for many in the WordPress community who have not had a chance to meet him or hear him speak.

On behalf of all the organizers, we sincerely regret this change.

Mark Jaquith, who is a core developer of WordPress and really one of the best WordPress guys in the world, has agreed to step in and Keynote. I’ve known Mark for many years. It’s rare when you find someone who is a working colleague who is also a great friend and I am looking forward to having him at our event.

WordCamp Mid Atlantic Stickers c/o StickerGiant

Our schwag has begun.  As I was saying, one of the great things about helping out in organizing WordCamp has been the great people I have come into contact with.  People that are so passionate about all things technology.  One of those people is John Fischer of Sticker Giant.  What is great about John is his pure passion.  John actually reached out to us !  Our friend on the area, Shashi Bellamkonda of Network Solutions, was at an event recently and met John and mentioned WordCamp Mid Atlantic to him.  John was excited and made sure to pass along his conact info for Shashi to give to us.

I contacted John and off we went.  He has been awesome to work with and just the other day I picked these up in my po box

So next time you see us around, make sure you hit us up for one so we can spread the word !

And in the meantime, if you ave any sticker needs make sure to head over to Sticker Giant, they do awesome work.  While there say hi to John and the team and make sure to let him know we sent you.