Categories
Announcements

WordCamp Lancaster 2020 Cancelled

We regret to inform you that we’ve decided to cancel WordCamp Lancaster 2020. In light of the COVID-19/Coronavirus pandemic, and to avoid doing damage to our community, our event, originally planned for this Saturday, March 14th, will no longer take place at IU13 Conference and Training Center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA. We are unable to create the environment we envisioned as organizers, and we are no longer comfortable encouraging our attendees, speakers, volunteers, and vendors to participate.

We greatly appreciate everyone who donated their time and energy to this event, and we’re sorry that we can no longer commemorate your commitment to this community together this weekend. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and disappointment this announcement brings to everyone affected.

As organizers, we’re crushed. WordCamp Lancaster is the highlight of our community calendar, and we’ve been anticipating another weekend devoted to learning and celebrating WordPress and the friendships it’s brought us. We aren’t certain that those who would have attended the event would be safe, and above all, the safety of all in our community is our highest priority. We’re grateful for each of you, and especially those who have shared your thoughts during this difficult and unpredictable time. 

At this time, we do not have any dates in mind for the WordCamp Lancaster to which we all look forward. When we are prepared to make an announcement we’ll do so at our monthly meetup, in our Slack server, and via our Twitter account.

All Tickets Will be Refunded

All purchased tickets will be refunded. WordCamp Central, who has been incredibly supportive this week, will automatically refund all tickets.

If you have other concerns regarding the event, please contact us by email at lancasterpa@wordcamp.org.

WordCamp Lancaster 2020 Team

Corey Salzano
Deb Sawyers
Dustin Leer
Charlie Reisinger
Paul Barthmaier
Roland Smoker
Jonathan Ober

Categories
Announcements

WordCamp Lancaster is Next Weekend

We’re busy preparing for a WordCamp next weekend! WordCamp Lancaster returns on Saturday, March 14th, and tickets are still available. As organizers, we’re closely monitoring the COVID-19/Coronavirus news and its impact on Lancaster County. We expect to continue as planned and are excited to host another WordCamp in central Pennsylvania. 

To be sure, we arrived at this decision after much deliberation and consultation. The health and safety of this community is of utmost importance. WordCamp Lancaster draws a largely-local crowd of around 200 attendees, many who do not travel far to attend. As of Friday March 6th, the CDC, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, local Lancaster County emergency officials, or our conference venue have not suggested that events like ours cancel or postpone. Should the situation change, and that proceeding will put our community at risk, we will reevaluate our live event.

Of course, we encourage our attendees, speakers, and volunteers to do what’s best for them in considering their own safety and risk factors. We also echo the PA Department of Health suggestion, “If you are sick, stay home.” Should you decide you won’t be able to attend, please cancel and refund your ticket using the link in the confirmation email. If you need assistance, we are glad to help.

We still need a few volunteers to help us run the show. If you are interested in helping the event, please fill out this short form.

WordCamp Lancaster Team

Categories
Announcements

How to Add Your Photo to our Attendees Page

We have an opt-in Attendees page that showcases the names and photos of ticket holders. The photos are provided by Gravatar, a free, personal avatar service.

Create a Gravatar profile with the email address you used to register for our event, and upload a photo.

If you expect to see your name and photo on our Attendees page but do not, perhaps you did not opt-in during registration. Search your inbox for the confirmation email and look for the link that allows you to edit your registration details.

A majority of our tickets have been sold! We must limit the number of attendees to make sure we can cater lunch. Register now for $25.

Categories
Sponsors

Sponsor: Bluehost

Bluehost has been a WordPress partner since 2005 and powers over 1 million WordPress sites worldwide. Their objective is to help customers, whether novice or pro, create a thriving online presence at an affordable price. With a team of in-house tech experts available 24/7, Bluehost dedicates time and resources to providing the best support and services in the industry. Join millions of other site owners and see what Bluehost can do for you and your online presence.

Categories
Announcements

Printed Badge Deadline Approaching

If you would like your name and Gravatar printed on your conference badge, please register now. Time is running out to send items to print, and we’ll place our order for event badges soon. Blank badges and markers will be available for any late registrations.

Full event schedule & speaker lineup

Categories
Sponsors

Sponsor: Jetpack

Transform how you work with your WordPress sites:Jetpack connects your site to the global services, community, and support provided by WordPress.com. Focus on the substance of your site, not the software.

Jetpack security tools automatically shield your site from spammers, hackers, and malware, while real-time syncing and backup means never worrying about data loss. Traffic-building tools like easy social sharing help you attract readers and search engines, and pages delivered from a high-speed, global content delivery network mean those readers never bounce because of a slow-loading site.

Jetpack’s Affiliate program gives you 20% every time you sell Jetpack to a customer or client — with unlimited referrals, the sky’s the limit!

Whether you’re one person with a website or an agency with a dozen clients, Jetpack helps you grow. Make your site work for you at Jetpack.com

Categories
Announcements

Our Full Schedule is Now Available

Our complete event schedule is now available at https://2020.lancasterpa.wordcamp.org/schedule/.

WordCamp Lancaster will again host two concurrent tracks of presentations throughout a full day of learning and celebrating WordPress at IU13 Conference & Training Center in Lancaster Pennsylvania.

We decided to maximize the number of speakers at this year’s one-day event. Instead of a keynote, we’ve invited a total of 20 presenters to provide attendees with as much content as possible.

If you would like your name and Gravatar* printed on your badge, now is a great time to obtain a ticket. Printing takes time, and last minute registrants will be invited to apply their names to their badges with markers.

* Gravatar.com is also the source of photos on our Attendees page.

Categories
Announcements

WordCamp Lancaster Speakers: Third Wave

WordCamp Lancaster proudly announces the third wave of confirmed speakers. Join us March 14th in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for a full day of learning and celebrating WordPress, the software that powers 33% of the web. One ticket is $25, and two tracks of presentations deliver value to web professionals of all skill levels.

  • AJ Morris

    Avatar of AJ Morris

    AJ Morris is the Product Innovation and Marketing Manager for iThemes, a WordPress plugin and training company that helps businesses, bloggers, and freelancers protect their investments in their sites. He spends most of his time helping store or site builders solve challenging problems through online education and consulting with businesses build digital storefronts.

  • Erik Teichmann

    Avatar of Erik Teichmann

    Erik has been a freelance WordPress developer since 2008, with a specialty in helping nonprofits tell their stories. He currently works as a WordPress developer with Inverse Paradox of Langhorne, Pennsylvania.

  • Jonathan Bentz

    Avatar of Jonathan Bentz

    Senior Digital Marketing Strategist Jonathan Bentz leads vital SEO projects for Direct Online Marketing (DOM) in Pittsburgh, PA.

    Jonathan’s journey as a thought leader in SEO began back in his West Virginia University (WVU) days, where he received a degree in journalism. Following a decade of experience running digital marketing campaigns in agency settings and competitive industries like hospitality and cloud technology, Jonathan signed on with DOM to significantly contribute to its growing SEO client services.

    Immediately after his arrival, he integrated corporate branding and voice with SEO. Jonathan’s SEO approach isn’t near-sighted or trapped in any trendy bubbles. It’s an all-encompassing strategy devised to bolster each brand with natural web authority.

    Over the years, Google has evolved into an artificial intelligence-driven trust machine. If your site isn’t building brand trust with Google, it’s probably dying.

    Jonathan believes strongly in technical analysis, but not needlessly complicated site renovations. You’ve built a fantastic product or service; our team’s job is to ensure that your site’s SEO technical attributes are on point.

    An SEO campaign isn’t about traffic volume; it’s about traffic volume that creates revenue. For Jonathan, this means a sophisticated site analysis that extracts data and metrics about backlinks, competition, and revenue-oriented keywords. Through a discerning look at these factors, Jonathan and his team can forge a sensible way forward for the brand.

    Jonathan’s expert SEO analysis has been published in prominent publications such as Entrepreneur.com, Ecommerce Times, and CIO Online.

    In his free time, Bentz serves on the leadership team at his church. He is committed to creating new economic opportunities for underserved communities and uplifting those areas for children and future generations. He also enjoys spending time with his young children and family.

    He grew up in Lancaster, PA, and graduated from Penn Manor High School prior to attending WVU. He returned to the area in 2008 as the second outside hire for Grant Street internet marketing agency Lupeer and also served as the first in-house marketing manager for Harrisburg IT services provider Netrepid before relocating to the Pittsburgh area and leading the SEO team at DOM.

  • Kim White

    Avatar of Kim White

    Kim White has been a web developer for over twenty years building websites and web-based applications for advertising agencies, non-profit organizations as well as small to medium-sized businesses.

    Kim has been using WordPress since 2008 and is the Co-organizer of the Lehigh Valley Meetup and Lehigh Valley WordCamp. She has been part of the organizing team of WCUS for the last 3 years.

    Recently, Kim joined the support team at Paid Memberships Pro.

  • Mike Auteri

    Avatar of Mike Auteri

    Mike Auteri (@mauteri) is a Senior Software Engineer at Penske Media Corporation (PMC) who leads development for many well-known publishing brands on WordPress.com VIP. He’s contributed a few lines of code to WordPress core, written a couple plugins, presented at meetups/WordCamps, and is a co-organizer of the WordPress Montclair Meetup and lead organizer of WordCamp Montclair 2020. A New Jersey native, Mike lives not 4 blocks from a house featured in the Sopranos. Mike is a fan of good beer, hot sauce, and an avid fencer.

  • Stephen Kriso

    Avatar of Stephen Kriso

    Stephen has been involved with WordPress for over 10 years and has experience with web development and management for 20. He also has experience in video and audio production and editing. His passion and expertise are in strategic business planning and digital brand building. He is a graduate of the Disney Institute and a WP Elevation member for WordPress consultants. He also has his own Digital Media consulting agency, Stag Media Consulting.

  • Tara Claeys

    Avatar of Tara Claeys

    Tara Claeys began her career in advertising and marketing in the early 1990’s. After her first child was born, she supplemented her full-time job as Mom with illustration and stationery design for clients around the world. Her extensive marketing background and understanding of business quickly became her focus. Founded in 2010, Design TLC, specializes in websites and digital marketing for small schools, enrichment programs, camps and education-focused nonprofits.

Stay tuned, our full event schedule will be released later this week!

Categories
Sponsors

Sponsor: WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce platform built on WordPress.
Sell anything online with the flexibility and freedom of the world’s most popular CMS.

Whether you’re selling a few handcrafted items to a niche market, taking an existing business online, or going global with an enterprise-level eCommerce business WooCommerce gets you set up and selling fast, scaling securely as you grow.

Your content is forever yours and customizable down to the button color. Plus you’re joining a supportive, global community of developers and store owners.

Developed and supported by a distributed team, WooCommerce is powered by Automattic, the creators of Jetpack and WordPress.com.

Categories
Announcements

WordCamp Lancaster Speakers: Second Wave

WordCamp Lancaster proudly announces the second wave of confirmed speakers. Join us March 14th in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for a full day of learning and celebrating WordPress, the software that powers 33% of the web. One ticket is $25, and two tracks of presentations deliver value to web professionals of all skill levels.

  • Austin Ginder

    Avatar of Austin Ginder

    Austin Ginder is a Lancaster, Pennsylvania local seen frequently working out of coworking spaces and coffee shops. He’s a husband, father of six children and runs Anchor Hosting, a hassle-free WordPress hosting service for web professionals. He helps agencies and freelancers keep their customers WordPress sites running smooth.

  • Eric Karkovack

    Avatar of Eric Karkovack

    Eric Karkovack is a freelance web designer and writer. A 20+ year veteran of the industry, Eric both works with and writes about his journey in using WordPress to tackle everyday challenges for clients.

    He is constantly amazed at the kindness and generosity of the WordPress community. It has inspired him to pay it forward through writing, speaking and sharing what he has learned.

    In addition, he enjoys writing about his adventures, including a lot of ups and downs, in running a freelance design business.

    Eric resides in Carlisle, PA, with his wife and daughter. He enjoys cheering on his New Orleans Saints and Baltimore Orioles, along with seeing how many types of birds he can feed in the backyard.

    He writes for several online publications, including Speckyboy Web Design Magazine, 1stWebDesigner, Envato Tuts+ and the Advanced Custom Fields blog.

  • Kerch McConlogue

    Avatar of Kerch McConlogue

    Kerch McConlogue, retired ADHD coach and frontend developer, has been writing code by hand for 20 years and using WordPress since version 1.5.
    Her passion is helping WordPress novices to understand the basic care and feeding of their own sites and to get past their fears of breaking the internet. A one-person shop, building sites mainly for small to midsized businesses, she handles a lot of the design work.

  • Kevin Kresge

    Avatar of Kevin Kresge

    Kevin Kresge is the Digital Marketing Director at Visual Impact Group based in York, PA where he manages all digital marketing projects like search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and social media marketing (SMM), as well as other pay-per-click campaigns (PPC) for clients from a large variety of industries.

  • Sal Ferrarello

    Avatar of Sal Ferrarello

    Sal is a WordPress developer at WebDevStudios who is passionate about code and web development. He has contributed repeatedly to WordPress Core, Genesis, and is the author of the Bootstrap Genesis Theme.

    Sal’s previous experience as a Magician/Juggler, Computer Science & Mathematics teacher, and Radio DJ makes him an entertaining and engaging speaker. He has spoken on a wide variety of topics including object-oriented PHP programming, enforcing code standards with PHP Codesniffer, WordPress Post Meta, and avoiding the pitfalls of DNS.

    Sal is also a proponent of developers blogging and shares his development notes and tips at salferrarello.com as well as on Twitter at @salcode.

We are working to confirm the rest of our presenters and will release a full schedule as soon as possible.