WordCamp Ottawa 2013

See WordCamp Ottawa 2014 for the full details on our next WordCamp.

WordCamp Ottawa 2013 has come and gone, and it was a great success. Thank you, everyone, for making WordCamp Ottawa 2013 such a hit!

WordCamp Ottawa Feedback Survey

Now that WordCamp Ottawa is over, we’d love to hear what you thought of the event. Please fill in our quick online feedback survey so that we can make next year even better.

Want more sessions just like Saturday’s?  Join our meet-up.

Workshops, presentations, social events, and more, open to WordPress users of all experience levels, and we want you to join. Check us out on Meetup.com!

Want more WordCamp?

• WordCamp Montreal, June 29th and 30th, 2013.
• WordCamp Toronto, October 5th and 6th, 2013.

Thank-you!

Thank you to our speakers. We’re grateful for the spectacular speakers that joined us from across Canada, from Charlottetown to Vancouver and many places in between including Ottawa. Thank you to our volunteers. From the registration table to the videographers, everything went smoothly. Thank you to all our sponsors. The sponsors for the inaugural WordCamp Ottawa deserve a special thanks because they were willing to support this event not knowing how successful it would be. Our major sponsors: Bluehost, The Ottawa Citizen, Code Poet, BackupBuddy, WPML, and Yoast.

Missed out on some presentations? Don’t worry!

• Videos from each presentation will be sent to WordPress.tv.
• We are also compiling a list of slide decks to be published soon.

WordCamp Ottawa 2013 pictures and tweets

• epilogger.com

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Would you like to hear about future Ottawa WordCamps?  Sign-up for our low-volume newsletter. Your email will not be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Your WordCamp Ottawa 2013 organizers: Rick Radko, Jasmine Vesque, Richard Martin, Stéphane Boisvert

Check out our User Guide for WordCamp Ottawa for what to expect and bring.

If you are bringing electronic toys, charge them up Friday night, there are not a lot of power outlets in the rooms.

Remember, you will have to take care of your own lunch at WordCamp.  You can bring your own and there are loads of restaurants nearby:

• In the Byward Market, a short walk (0r drive) north of the campus.
• In the food court at the north end of the Rideau Center, just north of the campus, but before the Byward Market.
• On Elgin St., in the blocks just north and south of Somerset St.  If you are walking, there is a pedestrian bridge to cross the canal from the campus to Somerset St.

See you on Saturday,

Rick Radko, Jasmine Vesque, Richard Martin, Stéphane Boisvert

Co-Organizers, WordCamp Ottawa 2013

Without the generous financial support of sponsors it would not be possible to host a WordCamp.

The launch of a WordCamp in a new host city is particularly challenging for the organizers because the event, the city, and the location are unproven. As a result, the sponsors for the inaugural WordCamp Ottawa deserve a special thanks because they were willing to support this event not knowing how successful it would be.

Fortunately, because of their early support, the first WordCamp Ottawa is turning out to be a major success.  Over 250 people will be attending WordCamp Ottawa 2013.

Here are the Bronze and above level sponsors for WordCamp Ottawa 2013. Thank you.

Bluehost—WordCamp Pillar

Bluehost has been providing quality web hosting solutions to businesses and individuals since 1996. Their goal is to provide outstanding services for the best possible price. To achieve these goals they’re constantly innovating and upgrading their services at no additional cost to their customers. Join the millions of other website owners that have already chosen Bluehost and see how they can help you with your site.

Ottawa Citizen—Media

The Ottawa Citizen is the national capital region’s leading multi-media news platform, publishing several specialty magazine sites in WordPress including SenatorsExtra.com, OttawaCitizenStyle.com, and OttawaKidsCamps.com.

Focused on continually setting the bar for comprehensive in-depth journalism and innovative media, the Citizen is committed to providing a growing audience with the information and stories that matter, in print, web and mobile.

Code Poet—Silver Level

If you use WordPress to build things for other people, we want to make your life easier. No matter whether you freelance on a solo basis, lead a small web shop, make plugins in a dark closet, or crack the whip at a large design firm, our aim is to become your go-to source of information and resources to help you expand your WordPress skills and know-how. To make you better at what you do. To make it easier to make your living and look great doing it.

You’re part of a tribe of WordPress designers and developers over 10,000 strong, spanning the entire globe. CodePoet.com aims to bring the working knowledge and real world strategies of those people into one place, for you tap into.

BackupBuddy—Silver Level

BackupBuddy allows you to backup, migrate, and restore your entire single or Multisite WordPress install including the widgets, themes and plugins. To keep your backups safe, BackupBuddy supports sending your backups offsite to Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, Dropbox, FTP, and email. Quickly and easily restore your site on the same server or migrate to a new server with a different domain and database. The process is easy, fast, and reliable.

WPML.org—Bronze Level

WPML makes it easy to build and run multilingual WordPress websites. You’ll be able to translate everything in the site, including content, navigation, widgets and even theme and plugin texts. WPML powers over 130,000 commercial websites from all over the world. It runs with custom WordPress themes, free themes and commercial themes.

Want to go multilingual? Visit us at WPML.org

Yoast—Bronze Level

At Yoast, we help you optimize your website for SEO, conversion, and site speed, often using our WordPress plugins. We make websites more usable, easier to navigate, faster and more reliable. We can even help you find the best WordPress hosting. In other words: we make websites work. Not just for the owner, but for the visitor. The added bonus is that if you do all that right, a website becomes easier to find too.

Are you excited to attend Ottawa’s first WordCamp? I know I am.

I am mostly excited to see WordCamp finally happen in Ottawa. Montreal and Toronto have hosted several WordCamps and it was time for this event to happen in the nation’s capital.

For most of the people in attendance on April 27th, this will be their first WordCamp. Many of them are wondering what to expect, what they should bring, what the experience will be like, and whether there will be a party or not (short answer: yes, there is a party).

What to Expect

First of all, expect a lot of people! It looks as though we will have over 250 people at WordCamp Ottawa. The response has been fantastic and it is exciting to see this level of enthusiasm for WordPress in Ottawa. With this number of people, you will have ample opportunity to network with like-minded folks. Make a point of mixing with people—fellow attendees and speakers.

Second, expect to learn a lot about WordPress. There are three tracks (targeted at different expertise levels) and each track has multiple sessions.

We are excited about our speakers. They are coming from a number of locations including Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Charlottetown and Ottawa. Most are veteran speakers with a few first timers—all who know their topics well.

You should choose the topics that most interest you and move between tracks to find what appeals to you. Keep in mind that you will not learn everything you need to know about WordPress—it is too large a topic to cover on one day. However, you will get exposed to many topics and will be motivated to explore these topics after the event.

Third, if you are a WordPress debutante, I strongly encourage you to register for Rick Radko’s Introduction to WordPress on Thursday, April 25^th. Registration is required to attend. Once you register, you only need to show up at Rick’s event with a willingness to learn. Laptops are not required. You can take notes using your favourite media.

What to Bring

1. A way to take notes. Laptop not required.

You will want to take notes so bring your favourite way to capture what is happening. If you use a laptop to capture notes, bring that. However, a laptop is not required at WordCamp.

The sessions are not instructor-lead tutorials where you follow them through a lesson using a laptop. They are mostly presentation-format. Each speaker is required to post their slides on the WordCamp Ottawa website so that they are available for you. Slideshare is a popular format, although some people may post PDFs.

Internet access will be available via WiFi. However, I have found that WiFi access in crowded locations, where many people are trying to access the resource at the same time, can be problematic.

2. Lots of questions.

Spend some time looking at the schedule and plan your day. Prepare questions for the speakers. If they cannot address the question during the talk because of time constraints, they will be available during the day.

You might have questions that do not neatly fit into the session topics but still need expert attention. In that case, you should visit the Happiness Bar. The Happiness Bar is a special activity at WordCamp where local and visiting WordPress experts offer help and advice to other attendees who come up to the “bar” with their questions. Many of our speakers are also helping at the Happiness Bar.

3. Water and Snacks.

It will be busy day. You will want to take in as much as you can, quickly move between sessions, meet friends in the hall, and make new connections. Make sure you are hydrated and well-fueled. While WordCamp Ottawa will have snacks and plenty of drinks, including coffee, lunch is not included.  There are many restaurants nearby (10 min walk) on Elgin St, in the Market and in the food court of the Rideau shopping centre.  If you prefer you may want to bring a water bottle and some healthy and portable in-between-meal snacks like granola bars or trail mix.

4. Business Cards.

You will meet new people at WordCamp Ottawa.  Bring business cards so people can follow up with you after the event.

The WordCamp Experience

The focus of any WordCamp is to provide an environment where you learn about WordPress. At my first WordCamp in Toronto, I found that I not only learned a significant amount, I was impressed with how open and accessible people were. The emphasis is on sharing and developing the community. Believe me, it works.

Secondly, I think that you will be impressed with the diversity of people who attend. You might think that it is only programmers, coders, and website designers at the WordCamp discussing bits, algorithms and data structures. Bloggers, small business owners, non-profits, educational institutions, media outlets, political organizations, and more use WordPress as their preferred publishing platform. Expect to find representatives from each of these groups talking about their communications challenges and how WordPress works for them. And feel free to join in on the conversation.

Finally, things at a WordCamp run on time! Yes, they do. The agenda is packed tight with no room for overrun, so the organizers want to keep the event running smoothly.

The After Party

Once the day’s work is done, you are invited to come to the Heart and Crown at 67 Clarence Street in the Byward Market to enjoy a refreshment, chat with friends old and new, and celebrate Ottawa’s first WordCamp. The party starts at 6:00 PM.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have more questions, please visit our FAQ section.

We need a few more Happiness Bar volunteers for the 3:15 and 4:15 time slots.  Any interested developers or advanced users out there?  For more information see the volunteers page.

Registration is still going strong!  Over 250 tickets have been sold.  We won’t likely close registration, our rooms will hold over 500.  You can register on line right through Saturday, unfortunately we can’t process payments (including cash) at the door.