Webinar: Getting Started With WordPress
I did a Webinar last night and recorded it, on the basics of WordPress. We wanted to give our beginners a little prep before walking into their first WordPress experience. You will find out about the difference between WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress.org, how to get a domain name and what you need for hosting, and how to get started with either WordPress.com or WordPress.org.
Although, I cover a lot of info in an hour it is only scratching the surface. At WordCamp we have a beginners Workshop as well as six or seven separate presentations that will break down the beginner information into topics and present it in more detail. But, many of you asked for a bit of an overview before camp and we aim to please. Let other people know about this. Feel free to Tweet it out. You don’t have to have a ticket to WordCamp to get in on this.
(If you would like to attend the two hour hands-on beginners workshop on Friday morning of WordCamp sign up here. We are also having an hour long overview for beginners on Saturday morning, but you do not have to register for that.)
Judi
Beginners Cheat Sheet
We have planned a series of presentations that will provide a good foundation for beginners to get started with WordPress. Since beginners and new users may not know which presentations were designed with them in mind, I have put together this list to help you plan your camp schedule.
On Friday morning, Russell Fair will be coordinating a two hour hands-on workshop called, Hello WordPress. If you have a laptop you can sign up here, you will get your own WordPress site to practice on. You will get the overview and by the end of the workshop actually be creating posts and pages uploading images and other nifty things bloggers do. If you aren’t bringing a laptop or you just need a refresher please attend the beginner session which will be held Saturday morning for an hour, presented by Kathy Drewien. Kathy will walk you through many of the same things covered in Friday’s workshop but without a hands on component. If you don’t have a laptop you might want to go to her presentation.
Bret Phillips will be going over the Mysteries of Pages and Posts which is always somewhat of a conundrum to new users. Some people say, “But, I don’t want to blog”. But then they ask things like, “Where do I input information about my upcoming event?” Or, “Where do I put my recommended books?” These my friends are often posts. So tune into that talk for more detail. Continue reading
Attention Ticket Holders
If you purchased a ticket and filled out the form and paypal took your money, you are registered. Most of you should appear on the attendees page on our site. If you are there then we have all of your information and you will simply go to registration to pick up your badge and your t-shirt.
There will be no walk-ins and we do not want to find people without Badges in our conference area.
If you purchased several tickets in your name, please send us your name and the full names and info on each of your ticket holders.
We need this info below:
Unisex t-shirt size: xs, s ,m, l, xl. xxl. xxxl
Meal: Turkey or Vegi
Type of Camper: Beginner, User, Designer, Developer
Twitter handle
Gravatar E-mail
Send it along and we will enter your 411 into the database for you to get your goodies 
Oh, and please be sure to let us know if you have a ticket that you don’t need. We can’t give refunds, but there are a lot people who would love to be able to take your spot.
Hey WordCamp Attendees (and others) Get Yourself a Gravatar!
I am getting ready to post a list of our attendees and noticed that a lot of you don’t have a Gravatar. How do I know? If you don’t have a Gravatar ( globally recognized avatar) when you leave comments on blog posts or when you sign up for WordCamp your photo will not be there and instead we see the mystery man.
You don’t have to live like that. A Gravatar is absolutely free. All you need is an e-mail address and the photo will appear when you use your e-mail anywhere that uses Gravatars on the entire Internet. Watch this:
Attention SCAD Students
Don’t worry. We are getting a fix for you to get your tickets! We held out block for you and now that the others are sold out we need to get you a link to register. Stay tuned.
Schedule
We are close to posting a schedule but haven’t got it quite ready yet. In the meantime, let me give you the overview.
Registration will start both Friday and Saturday at 8:30 AM, with the Welcome and Keynote talk starting at 9 AM. The beginners workshop be two hours beginning at 10 AM. Bring your laptops, if you have one, and you can actually work on a site we will have set up for you.
We will have five simultaneous presentations throughout the two days giving people a great selection of talks for various levels of expertise and backgrounds. Each day, we will end at 5:00 PM. We have a location where there will be a happy hour both days, after a hard day at Camp!
WordCampAtl is Sold Out!
As of today, we have officially “sold out”. Thanks everyone for signing up, it is going to be a great event. Our lists of speakers and presentations are really quite impressive. If you have not already, we encourage you to check out the speakers and sessions available.
Sorry to all of you latecomers! We knew we were going to have a full house and the tickets did fly out of here fast. We still have some tickets for some SCAD students who are just back from break. But the rest of you, don’t despair. Scurry on over to the WordCamp Birmingham site and snag one of their tickets for WordCamp Ya’ll January 14 and 15. A lot of us from Atlanta will be presenting there. And they have a lot of people who are not speaking at WordCamp Atlanta.
In fact, even if you are going to WordCamp Atl, you might also want to go to the Birmingham camp. You can’t get enough live WordPress training at these prices!
If for some reason you can’t make it and already have a ticket, please consider donating it to someone else; just contact us for information about transferring your ticket.
Speakers and Presentations
Today we posted most of our speakers and their presentations, although we are still missing a half dozen or so. The remaining few will go up in the next couple of days. We don’t have tracks per se but we do have specific presentations earmarked for beginners, users, designers and developers.
For the absolute beginners, we will have a 3 hour workshop on Friday morning as well as an hour long recap Saturday morning for people who missed it or want a refresher.
All of the talks will be categorized based on relevance and importance to users, designers or developers (and/or some of the above). We do realize that there are developers and designers that are just getting into WordPress, so we have provided presentations that will be just right for your stage of learning.
Some rooms may fill up quickly, and it may turn out that you can’t attend every presentation that you have your eye on. There are great second choices as well as a happiness bar where you can get your questions answered (or answer other peoples) and an entire room for un-conference topics.
It is exciting to see the schedule take shape. I hope this initial list of presentations whets your appetite.
