WordCamps are informal, community-organized conferences about everything WordPress. They are great networking and learning events put together by WordPress users of all types, from the casual user to the hard core developers and code wranglers. Everyone gets to participate, share ideas, and get to know each other.
WordCamp South Africa
The last WordCamp South Africa was held in 2008 with big success at the Wild Fig Restaurant in Cape Town (Mowbray).
Over a 100 bloggers, geeks and journalists attended the event and speakers ranged from WordPress founder and inspiration Matt Mullenweg to local legends like Adii Rockstar (born Adriaan Pienaar) founder of WooThemes and Dave Duarte self styled Marketing Geek.
LightSpeed wants to host the next WordCamp SA and we need your support!
We want to put the following out to the community for ideas and suggestions. Please contact us and share your thoughts by commenting below the post:
WordCamp Meetup
For the run up to the actual event we want to host an informal WordPress Meetup, open to anyone with an interest in WordPress and the WordCamp event, to share ideas and get the WordPress juices flowing.
WordCamp Meetup’s are usually smaller events held before the actual conference and help to set the tone for the big event as well as providing an opportunity for potential hosts, co-hosts, speakers and sponsors to meet and discuss ideas and come up with actionable plans for the conference.
Our initial ideas for a meetup is to have a small get together early in 2011, similar to the Geek Dinners for interested parties. If you have any suggestions for Venue, Topics, Date or just want to share some general thoughts, Speak up by commenting below.
The Big Daddy: Suggestions for WordCamp SA 2011
Call for Venue Suggestions
The Previous WordCamp SA was held at the Wild Fig in Mowbray, Cape Town. Ideally it should be held at spot that is close to accommodation and transport facilities for all out of town attendees, is large enough to host a crowd of geeks in excess of 100 people and has excellent Wifi to enable all those tweets, blogs and live streaming video feeds that will be generated on the day.
Call for Speaker Suggestions
We want to make WordCamp SA 2011 the best WordCamp possible, and the success of a WordCamp depends heavily on the quality of the Speakers available to attend the event and blow our minds with WordPress awesomness
Our suggestions for Speakers:
- Dan Milward – owner of instinct creators of getshopped.org
- Andy Peatling
- Matt Mullenweg
- WooThemes
- Google Summer of Code mentors or interns
Call for Sponsors
Anyone interested in sponsoring WordCamp South Africa 2011 or has a suggestion on whom to approach for sponsorship can contact us here at LightSpeed or simply leave a comment below
Things to consider:
- Wifi access is essential. Previous WordCamp brought down the first Hotspot and a second had to be initiated
- AV equipment is needed
- The Speakers really do make or break the event
Rad… i think might be a good idea to have one again. Good Luck!
Take the bull by the horns Ash. Pick a date, find a venue, charge a small entrance fee, call some okes you know will sponsor and run with it!
Communities always need a leader in some form of another, so to make this work, you going to need to do that!
I’ll be there and help out where I can.
Very keen!
Pop me a mail Ashley, we’d be keen to get involved and help out.
Great news – going to be very cool
This is great! Would love to see all the big names here in S.A.
Well done to LightSpeed for initiating the discussion, let us all stand together and bring WordCamp to South Africa in 2011.
You can count on me if you need assistance.
Awesome idea – glad someone has taken the initiative!
Yes Pls, been waiting for this
Hey Ash,
I was part of the organising team for the Digital Freedom Expo at UWC in 2007 and have a lot of experience coming out from that which I can share…
Plus some good leads re:sponsorship.
Great news. I’m keen to get involved. Where do we sign up?
Any update on this post, we are 2 months into 2011 already, time is ticking away!
Make that 4 months in, any more news on this? When is it planned for?
Hi Nomad,
Thanks for the keen interest in WordCamp, that’s a very good sign for us! We will be making an official announcement on the state ot WordCamp very soon.
Make that 5 and a half months! Any news?
@James – We will be announcing details next week. Its been quite a process to get approval to host the wordcamp.
Please could everyone go take a look at the WordCamp Cape Town 2011 website – http://2011.capetown.wordcamp.org/
Follow us on facebook – http://www.facebook.com/pages/WordCamp-Cape-Town/194229677280363