Whether you’ve never contributed to WordPress or you have loads of experience already, we welcome you to join us for WordCamp Lancaster Contributor Day!

What is Contributor Day?

A contributor day is an event which focuses on giving back to the WordPress project. It’s for those with experience contributing as much as it is for those who are entirely new to doing so. There are many ways to contribute including code, accessibility, themes, design, documentation, training, event organizing, and much more.

Date: Sunday, March 6th, 2016

Time: 10 am – 4 pm

Coffee: YES

Snacks: YES

Location: The Candy Factory at 342 N Queen St, Lancaster, PA 17603 (get directions)

We’re excited to kick off speaker announcements with the following 10 talented speakers. In alphabetical order:

• 

  Joe Casabona

  Session title: Have Empathy when Teaching WordPress

  Session description: Teaching anything that comes second nature to us can be a difficult task. While we talk about something we know very well, it’s completely unfamiliar to someone seeing it for the first time. In this talk I’ll go over some of my tried and true methods for introducing and training people on WordPress.

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• 

  Jason Coleman

  Session title: Transitioning From Consulting to Products

  Session description: I’ll go over the past 5 or years of our business as we developed Paid Memberships Pro, integrated it into our consulting, and then eventually transitioned to a 100% products business. For background, some of this is covered in our transparency report blog post from this past summer:

  Original Post: http://www.paidmembershipspro.com/2015/07/transparency-report-this-is-how-much-weve-made-since-2012/

  Follow Up: http://www.paidmembershipspro.com/2015/11/transparency-report-pmpro-plus-launch-update/ This talk will be helpful for any WordPress developers or consultants who are thinking of building products of their own.

  I’ll use our own story as one example of how to do this, with advice that should helpful for businesses and freelancers looking to increase the value of their consulting services, add revenue streams from products, or transition 100% into products like we did.

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• 

  Casey Driscoll

  Session title: Unicode

  Session description: How is language represented? As communication has expanded over the Internet over the last few decades, the world has needed more consistent ways to send messages and information.

  Unicode is the most popular way to express our collective and historical visual language characters into a series of digital ones and zeros. This talk is for people who have heard the word ‘Unicode’ before, but don’t know what it is.

  Very few people need to grasp the complexities of Unicode for their daily work. However, an overview of the problems it solves, and the clever ways in which it solves it, will give all practitioners a better understanding of how the underlying technology works. This is an overview that will only scratch the surface. We will discuss bits and bytes, but the talk will be presented in a way to introduce these foundational computer science ideas to new users.

  It may be challenging for some, but all focus will be put on introducing deep, abstract ideas to new users, empowering them to discover more on their own going forward. Preliminary structure is:

  1. Representing characters as abstract numbers
  2. The limitations of historic charset standards
  3. ASCII and Latin1 ‘single byte’ representations
  4. UTF-8 ‘multibyte’ representations
  5. The WordPress 4.2 UTF8mb4 upgrade and emoji
  6. Unicode 9.0 and the Future

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• 

  Reed Gustow

  Session title: Tiptoe Through The Templates

  Session description: In this session, I’ll explain how a typical WordPress page template works, using the Twenty Sixteen theme as an example.

  I’ll show:
  – How does the page template display your content with a header, footer and a sidebar (or two)?
  – How does the header get there in the first place and what does it do?
  – How did the default menu get there? – Why do some pages have sidebars and others do not?
  – How do sidebars work, and can I add a new one to my site?
  – What is a sidebar, really, and why do you find them in the Widgets section?
  – And what about the footer?

  This is a “tiptoe through the templates“, not a “camp out for 2 weeks in the templates“, but by the time we’re done, you’ll have a reasonable understanding of how page templates work and how you might use your own in a child theme.

  I will be showing live code, not slides, using the files in the Twenty Sixteen theme.

  This session is aimed at advanced beginners to intermediate users who are developer rather than design oriented. You’ll need a working knowledge of HTML. If you know a little PHP, great, but you don’t need to know PHP to understand what I’ll be covering.

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• 

  Russell Heimlich

  Session title: Searching for A Better Search

  Session description: WordPress’ built-in search functionality leaves a lot to be desired. A LOT! Why is the default search lacking in features?

  What are the options for making search on your site better? In this talk I will cover a range of solutions for improving the search results of your site and integrating with WordPress.

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• 

  Nicole Kohler

  Session title: Common Misconceptions About Content Marketing

  Session description: Content marketing sounds like a magic bullet — something that can improve your SEO, boost your traffic, and bring in more sales.

  Reality check: it’s not, at least not for everyone.

  I’ll clear up three common misconceptions about content marketing and explain the realities, plus how you can find the best use for it based on your business, audience, and desired outcome.

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• 

  Sarah Moyer

  Session title: Pushing Your WP Development Skills: Learn by Doing It

  Session description: In this session, I’ll demonstrate how I pushed my limits in WordPress development by building a custom WordPress slider for a client website.

  I hope you will be inspired to take on challenging projects even though you might not know the outcome.

  In this project, I realized that advanced client specs aren’t indomitable; they are catalysts in pushing skills as a person and developer.

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• 

  Bryan Nelson

  Session title: Knowing Your Audience

  Session description: Why do sites fail? They don’t know exactly who their audience is or where their audience is lurking throughout the internet.

  The lack of knowing your audience puts you at a disadvantage in content creation and actually marketing your site to that audience.

  I’ll discuss what you can do to solve this problem by connecting with your audience and paying close attention to who is viewing your site.

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• 

  Anthony Paul

  Session title: Organizing Your First Website Usability Test

  Session description: You’ve built a shiny, new WordPress site. You asked your grandma and your client if they like it and they both do. However, you’re lying awake at night wondering if you’re missing something—because you know you’re not the end user.

  You yearn for actionable feedback. In this talk, I’ll distill my background in usability research into a how-to framework for taking your site and conducting your first moderated usability test.

  I’ll cover what to look for, best practices in facilitation, tools on the cheap, and how to glean the most from a brief window of time.

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• 

  Tracy Rotton

  Session title: You Have Something to Say

  Session description: We all have to start somewhere. You might be new to WordPress, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have something to say.

  In this talk, I’ll share my journey from WordPress newcomer to experienced speaker and how everyone, regardless of their skill level, has something valuable and worthwhile to share with the community.

WordCamp Lancaster is right around the corner, and speaker submissions are closing on Friday, February 5th. We want to invite and encourage young and new speakers as well as those with experience to apply to speak.

Like all WordCamps, WordCamp Lancaster will cover a wide variety of topics. We invite designers, developers, content writers, bloggers, website owners, administrators, and anyone with interest in WordPress to share their knowledge.

A Few Things to Keep in Mind

• Being a professional speaker is not required
• It’s okay if you don’t know everything – no one does!
• Consider how your talk will relate to WordPress
• Consider the value for the WordCamp Lancaster audience; what do you want attendees to learn?
• We’re a friendly bunch, and an excellent place to gain confidence and experience
• Feel free to submit more than one proposal, each as its own form submission

A Few Topic Ideas

• How you’ve used WordPress to do something unique and innovative
• A super awesome trick that saved you and/or your clients time and energy
• Something you’ve just learned about
• Something you do every day, whether you think everyone already knows it, or not (not everyone does!)

Everyone has a story, and we invite you to share yours with us on March 5th at WordCamp Lancaster. If you have any questions, please contact us — we hope that you will apply.

Want to be involved, but don’t want to speak? Please consider applying to be a volunteer or being a sponsor.

Apply to speak.

Welcome, and thank you for sponsoring WordCamp Lancaster 2016!
We’ve got some terrific sponsorship levels available for area businesses that are interested in getting involved.

Queen Street ($1,000)

• Your name or logo in the WCLancaster sidebar and printed in the program.
• A link to your home page on the WCLancaster sidebar.
• Public thanks during opening/closing remarks.
• A post thanking your business on the WCLancaster blog.
• Up to 4 complimentary tickets to WordCamp Lancaster!
• A company representative is welcome to join us for the Speakers Dinner on Friday, March 4th.
• One table of approximately 3’W x 6’L or equivalent floor-space in the sponsors’ area.

Strasburg Railroad – $600

• Your name or logo in the WCLancaster sidebar and printed in the program.
• A link to your home page on the WCLancaster sidebar.
• Public thanks during opening/closing remarks.
• Up to 2 complimentary tickets to WordCamp Lancaster!
• Up to 1’W x 3’L of swag table space for promotional products (one or two tables on which you may place products along with other sponsors.

Cart and Buggy – $350

• Your name on our WCLancaster sidebar and in the program.
• A link to the social media account of your choice on the WCLancaster sidebar.
• A complimentary ticket to WordCamp Lancaster!