Philadelphia is ready for you!

Philadelphia SkylineWe are coming up on one of the most exciting weeks for Philadelphia—WordCamp US 2015! At about a month away we’re getting ready to make some big announcements! We’ve told you about the locations for WordCamp, Contributor Day, and the Community Summit. We’ve shared with you 24 of our amazing speakers (there are more to come tomorrow), and of course we’ve let you know where to stay and how to purchase tickets.

But there is so much more to come. In the next week we’ll roll out announcements about the rest of our phenomenal speakers followed by the full schedule. Leading up to the event there’ll be posts about our generous sponsors, food recommendations, coffee recommendations, a list of must see places, the unveiling of our after party location, and a few surprises.

Because Philadelphia is ready for you.

We’ve been prepping city officials, residents, and our many tech groups about the significance of holding the inaugural WordCamp US in Philadelphia and wow they are excited. I mean really excited. The city is ready to welcome you with open arms and full plates; because food. Have we mentioned the food yet? No matter what your preference, Philly has you covered. From James Beard award winning chefs to the famous Philly cheesesteak, you will fall in love with our food. Side note, you can totally run the Rocky stairs a few times if you want to burn off the extra calories.

The Pennsylvania Convention Center can’t wait to welcome us.

WordCamp US has a private entrance known as the Broad Street Atrium. Completed in in 2012, this section of the Convention Center is adorned with floor to ceiling windows at registration, a concourse full of sunlight, and state of the art A/V equipment. There will be yoga during registration, a quiet area if you need a break, a bar full of experts ready and willing to help you with your WordPress needs, and wonderful sponsors waiting to talk to you. And swag. There will be awesome stickers and swag.

The Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown Hotel is kind of a pseudo headquarters.

Most attendees in need of overnight accommodations will be staying there so the party won’t stop! The hotel will be teeming with speakers, sponsors, volunteers, and fellow attendees.  If you arrive the day before, you’ll be able to stop by our early registration table in the lobby to pick up your badge. That’s right, you could skip the lines at the Convention Center and stroll right in to a yoga class or opening remarks. Plus there’s a coffee shop for your morning pick me up and a great bar and restaurant to help wrap up your long day. Some of the rooms have crystal clear views of the Art Museum so you an watch your fellow WordCampers work off their cheesesteaks. From the Sheraton it’s a brief walk to the Convention Center, Community Summit, and After Party Venue.

The knowledge and friends you will gain are the perfect way to wind down 2015.

One thing that stands out above all at any WordCamp is the information you take with you. This event is specifically designed to cover all levels of WordPress abilities, from enthusiasts to advanced developers. Regardless of your comfort level, you are going to find sessions tailored to you. The only thing that can rival the benefit of knowledge gained is the camaraderie. Whether it’s the new people you meet or the friends you haven’t seen in a while you’ll, get to share your days with a bunch of folks who want to be there as much as you!

If you’ve been putting off buying tickets, booking your room, or making your travel plans now is the time. We look forward to seeing you in December!

Introducing the WordCamp US speakers – Part 1

After reviewing an almost overwhelming landslide of amazing speaker applications we’ve finally reached out to all those who have applied. We’re absolutely thrilled to start introducing you to the 80 spectacular speakers who will be gracing the stages of WordCamp US! Without further ado, let’s greet our first round of speakers.

LeAnn_KLeeAnn Kinney

LeeAnn is a front-end developer living in Philadelphia, PA. She is a web accessibility advocate, co-organizer of LadyHacks and ELA Conf as well as co-organizer and teacher for Girl Develop It Philly. In her spare time she loves to hike, bike, camp and travel as much as possible.

joe_dolsonJoe Dolson

Joe Dolson is an active contributor to the WordPress accessibility team, and provides ongoing support to the Theme Review team by performing accessibility audits on themes submitted for the accessibility-ready tag. He’s been developing for WordPress since 2007. Joe provides accessibility consulting, develops WordPress plug-ins, and builds bespoke WordPress web sites primarily for non-profit and disability service organizations. Joe also brews beer, practices Shotokan Karate, and plays classical violin.

hilary_fosdalHilary Fosdal

Hilary Fosdal is the owner of Red Phone Studio, a design and development company based in Chicago. She started building websites while working in the broadcast television industry. While still a news junkie, she loves to talk shop about all things digital. In her spare time, she seeks outdoor adventures that involve mostly hiking and running.

josh_koenigJosh Koenig

Josh Koenig is a Co-Founder and Head of Product for Pantheon, the website management platform for WordPress and Drupal. Pantheon provides the complete toolchain for developers using the leading open-source CMSs to build, launch, and run all their sites.

rich_robRich Robinkoff

Rich is a WordPress community advocate, WordCamp speaker/organizer and WordCamp Central Community Deputy. He teaches Web Development at a local community college, loves to travel and is addicted to coffee. He is learning to cope with Impostor Syndrome.

David_LDavid Laietta

David began building HTML websites in high school, breaking in programming classes as they appeared at his school. PHP came shortly after, with the mind blowing ability to make websites more than static entities. Later, early in 2008, David discovered WordPress and has been a proselytizer ever since. As lead organizer of WordCamp Orlando, David regularly speaks, mentors, teaches and trains on best practices with WordPress.

Kathryn_PKathryn Presner

Kathryn Presner thrives on helping people get the most out of WordPress. After a career designing and building websites for clients, she joined Automattic as a Happiness Engineer in 2012. She’s currently Theme Whisperer on the Theme Team, where she helps folks with customization, configuration, and troubleshooting. She enjoys spreading her passion for WordPress and encouraging new public speakers at WordCamps, Girl Geeks, Ladies Learning Code, and other grassroots events. Non-WordPress obsessions include vintage Pyrex mixing bowls and growing garlic.

Rami_aRami Abraham

Rami Abraham is a developer lead at WebDevStudios / Maintainn. He’s been building with WordPress since version 2.8, with a heavy focus in plugin development and javascript applications, as well as explorations with WebGL and game development. Prior to that, he worked in a few lead roles at traditional web agencies in the mid-Atlantic area of the US; with primary focuses being php, java, Objective-C, and javascript application development. He enjoys working with an unending variety of frameworks, SVG animation, and is part of the AffiliateWP.com support team. An organizer of WordPress Lancaster / WordCamp Lancaster, Rami attends and speaks at a variety of conferences, universities, and meetups. He has an affinity for user-focused topics, and sharing ideas about emerging technologies.

Joe_CJoe Casabona

Joe Casabona is a Front End Developer at Crowd Favorite and author of the book, Responsive Design with WordPress. He is also a Yankee fan, plays the drums, and enjoys a fine cigar from time to time. You can find him over at casabona.org or on Twitter at @jcasabona.

Rachel_BRachel Baker

Lead Engineer at thewirecutter.com and thesweethome.com. Lead Developer of the WP REST API plugin and WordPress Core contributor.

 

Aaron_JoAaron Jorbin

Aaron Jorbin is a polyhistoric man of the web. Currently Technical Architect on the Conde Nast Platform Team and a WordPress Core Committer, he works to improve developer happiness and is dedicated to making the internet usable and enjoyable by everyone. He tweets at @aaronjorbin and writes regularly at daily.jorb.in.

greg_brownGreg Brown

Greg is a Data Wrangler at Automattic on the WordPress.com Data Team. He helps organize the team, writes code, juggles servers, and occasionally inserts some machine learning and natural language processing into the mix.