A really great WordCamp needs to offer a wide variety of talks and discussions about and around WordPress. To make WordCamp Ottawa 2016 great we are looking for people excited about WordPress who can engage our attendees while teaching them about it.
If you’d like to be a speaker at WordCamp Ottawa 2016, please complete an application form.
We will begin confirming speakers the week of May 8. While we will still accept applications after May 8, they will only be considered if we still have space in the schedule.
We are looking for traditional WordCamp speakers to provide 45-minute presentations and Lightning Talk speakers to provide 10-minute to 15-minute presentations.
Why become a speaker?
Presenting at WordCamp takes some work, but it can be very rewarding. You get to show off how smart you are, convince people you’re worth hiring and, while you help make everyone smarter about WordPress, you’ll get the satisfaction of participating and teaching others.
Who are we looking for?
The ideal speaker can make a clear and effective presentation on a WordPress-related topic that they’re passionate and informed about.
You don’t need to be a professional speaker. But you do need to be comfortable presenting. You could have 200 people hanging on your every word. So make sure you’re comfortable speaking to a crowd, and make sure you know your stuff.
Our goal with every session is to educate. Your topic should be something generally interesting about WordPress, such as how to do something, pitfalls involved in some element of WordPress or advice about WordPress. We know you want to show us what you’ve made with WordPress and we want to see it, so include it in your presentation as an example of what you’re talking about.
Also make sure to explain how you did it or what you learned in the process. Give us some code examples or 10 important lessons you learned with tips to avoid the problems you encountered. You can do this through a case study, a live or scripted example, or any number of ways.
However, this is not the time to promote your business, your custom plugin or the theme you’re about to release.
See the topic ideas section below for examples of topics and ideas if you’re not sure what to present. The subject must be related to WordPress in some way. Subjects like front-end development, how to manage freelancing, social media and SEO will be accepted as long as your talk shows how they relate to WordPress. Make sure you highlight this in your speaker submission.
We reserve the right to turn down talks we don’t think are appropriate. Hopefully we can work out a relevant presentation idea together if we have concerns about your initial proposal.
Users, designers and developers are all welcome! We want as much diversity as possible in our talks and are looking for all kinds of speakers.
On Saturday we are plan to have three tracks of presentations:
- Content Creators: Using WordPress to deliver content on the web. These topics are for those who want to learn how to publish content on a WordPress site.
- Site Creators: Using WordPress to create websites and blogs. These topics are for those who want to learn the more complex tasks involved in creating new websites but who aren’t designers or developers.
- Code Creators: Customizing WordPress to create unique websites. These topics are for designers or developers who want to learn about site set-up, theme design, plugin development, development best practices and more.
Sunday plans are still TBA, but will include workshops, community contrib sessions, and an unconference stream.
So please, send us your ideas! Nothing is too hardcore, advanced, simple or beginner. We want the full range. If you are an advanced or intermediate user please also remember that even though you think something is obvious there are lots of WordPress fans out there who don’t even know about it! You should teach what you know. So pick something you think is easy and impress the noobs 
.
Format
WordCamp talks are usually 35 minutes to 45 minutes long, with a few minutes for questions afterwards.
Lightning Talks are about 10 to 15 minutes long, with only a minute of so for questions. This is a perfect way for new speakers to overcome stage fright!
Slides help people understand you. We assume that all talks will be accompanied by visual slides to be projected behind the speaker. The format, whether PowerPoint, KeyNote, Prezi or another program, is up to you.
Applying to speak
You can submit as many session proposals as you like, but we reserve the right to select which topic(s) we’d like you to speak on.
Note that the Ottawa WordPress Group meets on a regular basis, so if you want to speak at a smaller venue, or during the rest of the year, contact the group through our meetup The Ottawa WordPress Group or our website.
Topic ideas
Here’s a list of topics we’d love to see at any WordCamp. These are just examples! Tell us what you want to present about that isn’t on the list and we’ll consider it. But if you’re stuck and can’t think of something why not tackle one of the talks below?
The examples are just starting points. Feel free to change or add value to them. You may also find inspiration at http://wordcamp.tv, where videos of many past WordCamp presentations can be found.
Please note that we’ve planned Pre-camp Introductions to WordPress for Beginners and Developers for the Thursday before the main camp to cover the basics for those attendees that are new to WordPress.
Content Creator topics
- Finding the perfect theme for a WordPress site
- The best, most popular or most-used plugins for a WordPress site
- The first 10 things you should do on your WordPress site
- Blogging for business websites
- Attracting community and readers to your site
- Writing for the web and blogs
- SEO
- Social media for your WordPress site
Site Creator topics
- Case studies of large projects with lessons learned
- Security
- Typography
- Design advice for WordPress sites
- CSS tips for WordPress
- Editing themes and using template tags
- Creating themes or child themes (intro or in-depth)
Code Creator topics
- Creating plugins, an introduction or an in-depth look
- GPL/free software and what it means for WordPress plugins and themes
- Intro to Apache/MySQL optimization
- Developer tools/setups
- Custom post types and taxonomies
- Security
- UX principles and user experience design
Sunday topics
We plan to have a couple of workshops on Sunday:
- Installing a local server to run WordPress on your computer.
- User level workshops: Creating content in WordPress, managing sites, backups, anything a bit more in depth than the Sat lectures that WordPress users need to be able to do.
- Designer/Developer level workshops: Custom Post Types, Custom Fields, Registering Widget Areas & Widgets, Registering and displaying new menu locations, Shortcodes etc.
If you would like to speak at the next WordCamp, please complete an application form on the Speaker Application page.
