The Lancaster Science Factory! 🎉

The Lancaster Science Factory is a hands-on, interactive technology and science center one mile from our venue on the same street. We are thrilled to celebrate WordPress and our community at this museum, and we have been eagerly looking forward to this announcement.

We hope that you will join us for a day of learning and inspiration at WordCamp Lancaster 2017. Tickets are on sale now!

If your WordCamp weekend will be longer than a day trip, Lancaster welcomes you with a unique array of rooms to accommodate your stay.

Near the Venue & in Downtown Lancaster

Lancaster, Pennsylvania is a friendly, vibrant, and walkable city with deep roots in American history. Today, Lancaster is home to thriving theater and arts scenes, hundreds of casual and fine dining restaurants, five museums, and many attractive events.

Guests staying at the Lancaster Marriott at Penn Square will rest at our city’s center and wake up across the street from Lancaster Central Market, the oldest farmer’s market in the country. The best reason to stay Friday night may be because Central Market is not open on Sunday mornings.

The Lancaster Arts Hotel is a boutique hotel of just five floors, filled with contemporary art, and built in a 19th century tobacco warehouse. Today, the hotel is a smoke-free building that also houses a restaurant.

The Hotel Lancaster is two blocks north of the square and was designed for business travelers from top to bottom.

The closest rooms to our wonderful venue, the IU13 Conference and Training Center, are just down the street at the Cork Factory Hotel. Unfortunately, we have been told that they are booked for the weekend of March 4th.

Outside City Limits & Amenities Galore

The Eden Resort has two restaurants situated in an amenity-rich, relaxing environment for guests. The Eden is also home to a gorgeous wedding venue and sits adjacent to route 30, providing perhaps the best access to our areas highways.

Outside City Limits & Near Tourist Attractions

A few miles east of Lancaster on Route 30, a bustling shopping district attracts so many tourists that hotels are built faster than mapping services can create listings for them. Tanger & Rockvale outlet shopping centers, the (closed for the winter) Dutch Wonderland children’s amusement park, and Amish shops & villages are key drivers behind the nearly two billion dollars that are spent by tourists in Lancaster County each year. Choosing a hotel on route 30 near this business district will mean competitive rates and traffic with access to hundreds of retail stores and restaurants.

Join us on March 4th! Plan your stay and check out our advice for travel: Getting In and Around Lancaster.

WordCamp Lancaster is a mere thirty-five days away and speaker submissions are closing at midnight on Friday, February 3rd. We’d like to invite and encourage new and experienced speakers to apply to speak.

 

In true WordCamp fashion, WordCamp Lancaster will cover an array of topics, anywhere from design and development to blogging and website administration and more.

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 4th 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.

Traveling to Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Lancaster is the eighth largest city in Pennsylvania and was the nation’s capital for one day on September 27, 1777, after the Continental Congress fled Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War. We hope this travel information will make your trip to Lancaster more pleasant than that of our revolutionaries.

• By automobile
  • Parking
• By public transit
• By plane
• By boat

By automobile

From the west, via the Turnpike/I76

Take exit 247 Harrisburg East & follow 283 East to Lancaster

From the east, via the Turnpike/I76

Take exit 286 Reading & turn left on 222 South to Lancaster

From the south, via I83

Take exit 19 for PA-462/Market St & turn right onto 30 East to Lancaster

Parking

Parking at our venue is plentiful and free. Street and garage parking are administered throughout the city by the Lancaster Parking Authority.

By public transit

Via train

Lancaster has an Amtrak station, LNC.

Via bus

Ten of the Red Rose Transit bus routes extend outside city limits into surrounding towns.

By plane

The closest comfortable airport is Harrisburg (MDT), but you’ll still likely need to catch a connecting flight at a larger regional airport. Connections from Washington, DC (IAD) are about 20 minutes wheels up to wheels down.

Philadelphia (PHL) and Baltimore (BWI) are both about 90 minutes away.

Lancaster Airport (LNS) has daily service from Pittsburgh (PIT) and Baltimore (BWI), but these flights are on small propeller planes that frighten casual fliers even though ear plugs are usually provided.

By boat

You can’t really take a boat directly here. If you must take a boat, try to dock in Baltimore, then take a Penn Station Amtrak train to LNC station in Lancaster.

Showing up is 90%!

WordCamp Lancaster is a not-for-profit conference celebrating its fourth year. Our speakers, volunteers, and staff all donate their time to make an event that is as engaging and accessible as possible to anyone who wishes to participate.

Lancaster is unique in that we have a very passionate, growing community of technology professionals, and have seen consistent growth year after year. WordCamp Lancaster is frequently attended not only by locals, but by WordPress professionals and enthusiasts from all over, most notably the regional Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., and New York WordPress communities.

Sponsoring a WordCamp is an incredible way to contribute to the WordPress community and meet users, designers, and developers from near and afar.

Similar technology conferences cost hundreds to attend, while WordCamp Lancaster costs less than dinner for two. To keep ticket prices low, we allow generous sponsors to join our event, and WordCamp attendees appreciate that sponsor contributions help strengthen our community, and make the event possible.

Have something in mind for swag, or a special idea to engage attendees? We’re excited to work with all sponsors this year to refine their ideas, provide suggestions, and of course, assist with any issues that may arise.

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We’ve got three terrific sponsorship levels available for businesses that are interested in getting involved – Maple, Cherry and Oak, named after the three most highly-used hardwoods in the Lancaster County area:

Maple, $1,500

• 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 3rd.
• One table of approximately 3’W x 6’L or equivalent floor-space in the sponsors’ area.

Cherry, $750

• 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.

Oak, $500

• 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!

We strongly encourage local and first-time speakers to apply to speak!

Speaker sessions make up the bulk of the conference, and are typically 30 minutes each. If you’d like to present, we’d love to hear your ideas! If you’d like to propose multiple topics, please submit this form multiple times (one for each talk topic). There’s no limit to how many submissions one may submit, but it’s a good idea to limit yourself to five or less.

Speaker Submissions closed at midnight on February 3, 2017.

If you weren’t able to make it in time this year, we encourage you to try again next year!

Speakers will be announced this Monday, February 6th, 2017.

We’re happy to announce that WordCamp Lancaster 2017 is officially on the calendar!

WordCamp Lancaster 2017 will be on March 04, 2017 at IU13 (the excellent venue from 2016).

Subscribe using the form in the sidebar to stay up to date on the most recent news. We’ll be keeping you posted on all the details, including speaker submissions, ticket sales and more!

We’re still working on the site appearance itself, but speaker, volunteer, and sponsor submissions are open!