WordCamp San Francisco was the first ever WordCamp, organized by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg back in 2006. It has since grown into one of the largest WordCamps in the United States, and is considered WordPress’s canonical annual community event. I’m excited to reveal that we’ll have eight 10uppers in attendance, four of whom will be presenting.

One of our newest employees, Grant Landram, will be attending WordCamp San Francisco for the first time. Grant is excited to experience the WordCamp that started this international phenomena and meet WordCampers from around the world. As a WordCamp organizer in Seattle, he’s eager to learn from the organizing team and bring that knowledge back home. Grant’s presentation explores collaboration with non-technical stakeholders, and offers an anecdotal overview of the pitfalls technical personnel may encounter when working with non-technical stakeholders. He’ll cover techniques for identifying and understanding a stakeholders’ true knowledge, and actions that help non-technical participants follow technical conversations. Grant is also volunteering at the Happiness Bar on Friday, so stop by to chat with him if you’re going!

Eric Mann will also be attending WordCamp San Francisco for the first time, and is eager to connect with online collaborators he’s engaged on Twitter and IRC. Eric will be giving a short talk on Saturday morning, highlighting ways developers can automate their coding process using Grunt. Like his presentation in Seattle earlier this year, this version will focus on the goals of automation and practical tools, along with a live demo. At 10up, we’ve built two fantastic tools that leverage Grunt for WordPress development: a template that builds the foundation for a new plugin and one that builds the foundation for a new theme. Eric also built out a template that builds a new theme based on Automattic’s _s (Underscores) starter theme. Attendees will walk out with access to plenty of tools to kick-start, simplify, and improve their development processes.

Helen Hou-Sandi, our Director of User Interface Engineering, will focus on refining the administrative and publishing experience. As WordPress has grown, so too has administrative complexity; Helen will offer methods that better serve clients’ workflows through custom tailoring of WordPress administration. She’ll present a few case studies, including some stunning 10up projects, offering a look at some finely tailored publishing experiences in the wild.

I’ll be collaborating with fellow agency owners Shane Pearlman, Brad Williams, and Alex King in a panel moderated by Matt Mullenweg, Teaming Up: From Freelance to WordPress Agency. Our panel will explore the challenges of building an agency in the WordPress ecosystem. With a range of topics, including hiring and managing a team, business models, and team configuration, the panel will analyze the challenges associated with WordPress at a larger scale, and the economics of bigger teams in an ecosystem filled with freelancers and massive advertising agencies.

Along with Helen, Eric, Grant, and me, you’ll find a few other 10uppers, including major core and docs contributor Drew Jaynes, brilliant Senior Web Engineer John Bloch, Director of Strategic Engineering Vasken Hauri, and organizer of another major WordCamp (Chicago), Aaron Holbrook.

For more information on WordCamp San Francisco, visit their website and check out the schedule. If you’ll be in attendance, be sure to flag us down. For everyone else, follow us on Twitter and Facebook for WordCamp updates.