WordCamp was so awesome! The sponsors, speakers and the volunteers joined together in an non-commercial, open source kind of way to put on this amazing event. There was a sense of community, and possibility in the air that was intoxicting. It was a WordPress Love fest for sure.

It was an honor to have Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress and Jane Wells, WordPress UI ( user-interface) lead,  join us. Matt and Jane and do a “He Said, She Said talk” at the opening remarks on Day Two. I heard someone say that if that was the only talk they saw they  would have felt like they had got their money’s worth from the conference.

To keep the memories alive we posted a bunch of photos on the WordCamp Atlanta Flickr Group.  These photos were taken by photographers, Frank Neimier and Jan Stittleburg. Check them out. There are some great shots. And, feel free to upload your own photos to the WordCamp Atlanta Flickr group.

In order to make WordCamp Atlanta even better next year (is that even possible?), we put together a survey. We’d sure appreciate if you would please take a few minutes to give us your feedback.

Take Our Survey Here!

Thanks to all of you for making WordCamp Atlanta so amazing!

Until next year, see you at a Meetup!

Judi and Russell

Follow us: @judiknight, @rfair,

What questions do you want us to answer? Leave your questions as comments on this post, and we’ll pick a bunch to answer tomorrow morning.

Have a great time today!

WP-Engine is a managed hosting company that has tweaked their servers to do one thing well, run WordPress. They have made a special offer to WordCamp Atlanta attendees – FREE WordPress hosting for life! How do you sign up for this?  Just click here: http://bit.ly/wpe-for-atlanta.

ClickHOST is a Georgia company located just north of 285. They are also offering a fantastic deal to WCATL attendees.  You get a free domain and their “better” hosting package for just one dollar a month. You can find out about their offer here: http://www.clickhost.com/wordcamp-atlanta-2012/.

ZippyKidis also a managed hosting company that specializes in making WordPress uber fast. They claim to be the fastest WordPress host ever. You can find out about ZippyKid here:
ZippyKid.com/signup/ Coupon code WCATL

Our very own WordCamp EZVideo Guy, Randy Barnes is showing us the way:

We’ve been getting a lot of questions from people who don’t have tickets. The thing is, we really wish we could open up the conference to everyone who wanted to come. But we are sold out.

We have a space capacity for  350 people. We sold 350 tickets the first month, and recently opened up an additional block of fifty tickets on the assumption that some people would not be able to make it and we would end up with about the right number of folks for the space.

If You Didn’t Buy A Ticket

Some people signed up to volunteer or signed up to go to the beginners workshop who did not get a ticket.  But please note: You cannot volunteer or go to the beginners workshop without a buying a ticket.

Please don’t show up the day of the WordCamp hoping to get in without being registered because we will just hate to have to turn you away. We cannot take any walk-ins. And all people who are registered will be wearing large badges throughout the conference.

The only way you may be able to get a ticket at this point is to get one from someone who isn’t going to use theirs. You are welcomed to do this, but understand that t-shirts and meals have already been ordered and the orders can’t be changed, so you will get the t-shirt and meal choice that your ticket came with.

Since we did not actually issue paper tickets at the time of purchase, you will need to have the name and e-mail address and a transaction receipt of some sort  from the person that you got your ticket from.

If You Bought a Ticket You Don’t Need

If you have a ticket but can’t come,  you can let us know ahead of time and we can hook you up with someone looking for one

If You Did Buy A Ticket

If you went through our registration ticketing process and paid by Paypal or put in your SCAD code,  you should have a badge waiting for you at Registration. You do not need to bring a receipt but your Paypal receipt wouldn’t hurt if there is a problem. We have a list of people who got a SCAD coupon code so there won’t be an issue for you.

Capacity

We have one room at SCAD that is very big and holds everyone. We have four rooms that hold fifty people each. And we have one room for the happiness bar and un-conference meetups. We will have five presentations going simultaneously during most every time slot. We have tried to have the presentation scheduled for the large room have appeal across levels and tracks. If you can’t get into your presentation of choice, please be cool and go to another presentation or go visit the happiness bar room and get or give some personal attention.

We are videotaping each of the presentations and they will be available on WordPress TV. And in the meantime,  you can visit WordPress TV and catch wonderful presentations from other WordCamps.

We have two beginner overview presentations. Each of these has a capacity of fifty people  One two-hour beginner presentation will be held on Friday morning with Russell Fair. It is hands-on and specifically designed for people who have never made page or a post.

If you have some experience with WordPress but want a little more overview, Kathy Drewien’s one hour presentation on Saturday might be the one for you. It will be a good overview but will not be hands on and it will probably move faster than Russell’s workshop.

Other presentations have been designed to go into setting up WordPress, choosing themes, choosing plugins, security and such.

Beginners

We have a lot of people coming to WordCamp who have categorized themselves as Beginners. We have presentations that cover most everything someone needs to know to get started with WordPress.

Our badges will identify people by their indicated type: Beginner, User, Designer and Developer. We did this so you can reach out and meet others and  so you can show our newcomers some extra special attention.

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

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.

Bret is also going to do a presentation on Basic Technical Issues. He will cover things such as the nuts and bolts of getting a domain name and what kind of hosting you need and the right ways to install and configure a WordPress site.  If you want to get your own site up and running, don’t miss this one.

WordPress is an awesome place to share your photos and images. When you write a post it is great to include an image that will draw people into reading it. However, new users are often confused by how to handle images. What size should they be? What’s the difference between resolution and pixels? And how do you input images into posts and pages. Kathy Drewien is going to give you what you need to know about using images.

You won’t want to miss Randy Barnes’ presentation, Don’t hack me Bro’. Randy will give beginners and users easy to understand but essential information about how not to mess up your WordPress site. Randy is a hoot and you will learn invaluable info.

I am going to help you figure out just how to pick a theme from all of the many to choose from.  Some are good, others, not so much. Some are good for one thing but not another. And some are a lot easier to use than others.  This is one of the most frustrating, stumbling blocks new WordPress users deal with. How do you know? How do you choose? Where do you start?

Marna Friedman will be telling you There is a Plugin For That. You will learn about using plugins to extend the functionality of your WordPress installation in lots of cool ways.

Do you want to avoid having to get your own hosting account? Do you want to get your site up and running in thirty minutes? Daryl Houston from Automattic will be telling us all about Hassle Free Blogging with WordPress.com. There are a lot of circumstances when WordPress.com is just what the doctor ordered.

There will be a lot of other, more generalized presentations about topics like blogging and search engine optimization that you can fill in with that will appeal across broader user levels, but try and make it to the presentations above if you can.

If you want or need a little help, go find yourself a little one on one attention in our Happiness lounge in room 447.  Our happiness volunteers will be happy to answer your WordPress questions or find someone who can.