WordCamp Philly is now looking for speakers! It’s your expertise and willingness to share your WordPress stories that makes our event a success. This is your opportunity to shine.
We want to shape the best possible WordCamp experience for all — attendees, speakers, volunteers, sponsors, and even organizers. With that in mind, we have some guidelines as to what we’re looking for and how we’ll select our speakers.
Important: Deadline for Application
The application period to speak at WordCamp Philly 2017 closes on Friday, June 30, at 11:59 pm Eastern Time.
Key Aspects of Our Call for Speakers
As co-organizers for our Philadelphia area WordPress community, we’re particularly interested in ensuring that the range of topics and the individuality of our speakers reflect our community. To that end, we’ll be working to develop a slate of speakers with the following in mind:
- Diversity adds strength, depth and understanding: We want to hear from speakers of all the many communities that make the wider WordPress community what it is. Voices from varied backgrounds add a deeper level of knowledge and sharing.
- A local WordPress supported by the wider community: In keeping with WordCamp best practices, we’re eager to invite as many local presenters to the stage as we can. Yet we know that WordPress is bigger than Philly, so we very much invite speakers from beyond the immediate area to share their knowledge and experience.
- WordPress in all its shapes and uses: While diving into design and development techniques, workflows and the like will be a focus, we appreciate that WordPress is more than just a basic CMS. We hope to hear about advanced uses of WordPress. We expect to have presenters focused on online marketing and SEO, content creation and more.
A Four-Track WordCamp
As in 2015, we’ll have four tracks at WordCamp this year. However, we changed it up a bit. The tracks are:
Designer
Web design is an art and a craft, the product of skillful HTML, CSS, Javascript, color theory, typography and so much more. We hear a lot about UX and UI these days. Accessibility is always important. WordPress theming is a rich topic in itself. What new or interesting twist can be shared to make the web more intuitive, more useful and more engaging for all?
Developer
Developing on the web offers challenges. What was yours, and how did you solve it? Code is important, but there’s more to it than simply code. Plugins. Tools. APIs. Philosophies. And maybe a bit of poetry too. (See what we did there?) In particular, we’d love to see talks about projects beyond WordPress, using REST or other tools.
Business/Freelance
The track focuses on best practices for growing and managing your business or freelance career. Suitable topics could also cover self-care, remote work and related topics.
WordPress 101
As we did at WordCamp 2015, we’ll be rolling out a full day of sessions to help those new to WordPress get their heads around it. This track will help users install WordPress locally, get it running on their local machines and begin to use the WordPress Dashboard.
Nuts and Bolts: What We’re Looking For
Here are a few more thoughts about what we’re seeking. These are not posted in any particular order, but we hope they make it easier for applicants to fine tune their speaking applications.
- While the “what”, “where” and “how” of specific techniques are important, the “when” and “why” are equally so. Submitted talks should look to address all these areas where appropriate.
- WordPress is huge, but there’s more to the web than it alone. We’d love to hear from people who rely on Drupal, Joomla, Ruby on Rails, and other systems or technologies. What can you teach or share with the WordPress community?
- Designing and developing with WordPress constantly evolves. What new tool, system or workflow has proven valuable?
Three’s the Limit, Please
We’ve learned from past WordCamps that properly reviewing speaker applications takes considerable effort. To that end, we ask that applicants submit up to three different talk ideas. We appreciate your understanding there!
Apply Now!
Now that you’ve read the guidance, we invite you to go ahead and apply to speak. We can’t wait to see what wonderful proposals you send out way!