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Wearing Two Hats at WordCamp LA
Taylor Aldridge
WordCamp Los Angeles keeps getting better. This year, by adding another full day of talks for designers, small business owners, and beginners, the organizers have improved upon an already stellar and full weekend of sessions and activities.
I have the honor of speaking not once, but twice. Friday morning, in the business track, I’ll wear my former small business owner hat, joining Wes Chyrchel for a short Q&A session covering what web shops need to know when scoping a project. After lunch, I switch to my Creative Director hat where, in the design track, I’ll present Uncommon Design for a Common Web.
I’m looking forward to connecting with WordCamp friends, and meeting up in-person with fellow 10upper, Senior Engineer Mary Cadwell.
WordCamp Boston Turns 5, 10up Helps Celebrate
John Eckman on
This weekend, Boston will hold its fifth WordCamp, and 10up will be there to help celebrate the #BestWordCampEver.
Jake and I will be part of a panel on “What Boston Gave WordPress, and What WordPress Gave Boston,” which will include the story of the first WordCamp Boston, which we helped plan back in late 2009 / early 2010. In many ways that first WordCamp Boston set in motion a series of events that would result in his founding of 10up and my joining as CEO. It’s really exciting to see the impact the camp (and the meetup) have had on the WordPress community in Boston and across New England.
Taylor Lovett, our Director of Web Engineering, will also be giving a talk about the JSON REST API targeted for WordPress core in 4.1.
Finally, we’ll be joined at the 10up sponsor table and throughout the weekend by 10uppers Dave Ross, Sara Tirrell, and Helen Hou-Sandí. Stop by and say hello!
From West of the Hudson to East of the East River
Helen Hou-SandiThey say good things happen in threes, and the next week of meetups in NYC are no exception.
At the WordPress NYC Meetup next Tuesday, August 19, I’ll be showing off a preview of the upcoming WordPress 4.0 and talking a bit about what it’s been like to lead the release.
On Thursday the 21st, I will be presenting “Code is Poetry: A Musician’s Tale” at the JerseyScript takeover of Brooklyn JS, which 10up is excited to sponsor. I’ll be giving a longer version of the talk at WordCamp San Francisco in October, so no spoilers here! Be on the lookout: our Director of Engineering, Taylor Lovett, will be in attendance as well.
Finally, Brooklyn JS will turn the tides and take over the JerseyScript meetup on Tuesday, August 26, also sponsored by 10up. I’m especially excited to be coming on board as a co-organizer for JerseyScript proper. We’ll be releasing another block of tickets soon, so get on the waitlist now if you’d like to join us and check out Jersey City, just a quick subway ride over from Manhattan.
If I won’t see you here on one of the sides of the rivers, there’s always WordCamp Boston the weekend in between. If you will be at any of these places, come say hi!
10uppers, Code, and Lobsters at WordCamp Maine
Jason Clarke on
While four 10uppers are down south for WP Y’all in Birmingham AL, another contingent of three 10uppers is heading up north to speak at the first WordCamp Maine this weekend.
Fresh off his popular talk on modernism and responsive design at WordCamp NYC last weekend, CEO John Eckman will take the stage twice in Maine: first joining MaineToday Media’s Director of Digital Services to present Delivering the News – a look at their online relaunch, and second, to give the keynote address! Senior Strategic Engineer Rachel Baker joins the development panel to answer Maine’s toughest engineering questions, and I’ll be discussing empathy for our clients and teammates, and how that leads to better projects.
Tickets are still available – including a harbor cruise with the requisite lobster dinner – so it’s not too late to join us this weekend for some WordPress-centric learning and conversation during the beautiful Maine summer!
10up at WordCamp Birmingham – #WPYall
On August 16th, Birmingham will have the chance to hear from 4 10uppers as we pay a visit to the Magic City. WordCamp Birmingham is the South’s oldest WordCamp, starting back in 2008. We say WPY’all loud and proud and look forward to sharing with this community.
Being local to Birmingham, I’ve had the pleasure of o-organizing the camp this year. I’ll also be talking to designers about How to Use WordPress to Present a Design in the Browser. Senior Designer Louis Dorman will be presenting his experience Designing for Growth, and Design Engineer Allen Moore will describe how 10up used child themes to quickly turn out big features on multiple sites in his talk, 3 sites in 6 weeks? WordPress can do that!
Last but not least, our President, Jake Goldman, will be giving the keynote address following lunch: Don’t Create For WordPress* (*Create With WordPress). He’ll inspire us to build the next great sites on WordPress by focusing on project vision, and worrying about tools like WordPress after the fact.
It’s going to be a great weekend in the Magic City and we’re excited to be a part of it!
10up at WordCamp NYC
WordCamp NYC 2014 is this weekend and we’re excited to take part as speakers, attendees, and sponsor. WordCamp NYC is always a great time, and this one is no different, with four full tracks across two days at the Marriott at Brooklyn Bridge.
On Saturday, Adam Silverstein will be presenting Put a little Backbone in your WordPress! and our President, Jake Goldman, will share Best Practices for Plugin Development. Then on Sunday, catch Drew Jaynes’s insight into the core docs initiative and the major part he played as the docs committer for WordPress. Director of Platform Experience Helen Hou-Sandí and CEO John Eckman will be presenting simultaneously with a deep dive into WP_Query and ‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins’: Modernism, Post-Modernism, and Responsive Web Design, respectively. Doug Stewart and Amy Hendrix will also be in attendance, and you’ll also find many of us at Friday’s Contributor Day at NYU.
We’re also Park Avenue sponsors under the PushUp Notifications brand, so stop by the 10up/PushUp sponsor table and say hello. We’ll be happy to chat with you, especially about push notifications and 10up, and get you signed up for PushUp with the help of our team for just 99 cents.
Asynchronous WordPress
Eric Mann on
When John Bloch and I (Eric Mann) started working with TechCrunch last year on their site redesign, one of the main goals was to improve site performance. Among the various tools we built to help meet that metric was a library called WP Async Task: an abstract library meant to give structure to asynchronous background tasks.
Thanks to WP Async Task, we can offload time-consuming requests (like Twitter interactions) from the main WordPress thread. Editors can publish posts as usual while expensive tasks run in the background rather than holding up the publication process.
In June, the TechCrunch team presented on “Non-Blocking WordPress,” explaining some of the approaches we took. Attendees were interested in learning more about WP Async Task and particularly interested in whether the code was available anywhere.
Being big believers in the power of open-source and giving back to the community, we’re thrilled to say that TechCrunch has decided to open-source the library and make it available on GitHub. Check out the library and look at the documentation on how to use the library in your own code.
10up in the Brew City at WordCamp Milwaukee
This weekend, 10up will be making its midwestern presence known in Brew City. Seven 10uppers will be taking part in the event, many taking on multiple roles to make this an amazing WordCamp. Learn more about WordCamp Milwaukee on the official website.
The organizing committee features two 10uppers: lead organizer Dustin Filippini, and Kara Buffardi, who is organizing the Charity Hackathon which will build a web site for a Milwaukee area non-profit dedicated to helping young women and girls in the city.
10uppers will also be speaking throughout the day. In a can’t miss talk, Rachel Baker will be presenting on the new WordPress JSON REST API, which she took a major role in developing. VP of Strategic Engineering Vasken Hauri will be presenting “jQuery: The good, the bad, and the anonymous.” Faison Zutavern, Web Engineer, addresses Ethics in Web Development with his talk on Sunday, and Alison Barrett rounds out the schedule, discussing cooperation between developers and designers in “So I Married a Developer.” Jess Jurick, our VP of Consulting Services, will also be in attendance. Check out the full schedule.
We’re also sponsoring the camp under our PushUp Notifications product brand; so if you’ll be at WordCamp Milwaukee, stop by the 10up/PushUp sponsor table, talk with one of the many 10uppers, and sign up for PushUp with the help of our team for just 99 cents.
WordCamp Seattle
Grant LandramThis weekend 10up will be bringing some sunshine (and ten 10uppers!) to the Northwest for the 5th annual WordCamp Seattle. Seattle is a two day WordCamp this year with a jam packed Saturday featuring speakers, panels, lightning talks and even workshops. Sunday is a special contributor day with a number of core contributors leading groups who will be contributing back to the WordPress project. If you’re in the Northwest and haven’t already picked up your ticket, don’t miss this massive, 700-attendee WordCamp!
Kicking off the day on Saturday, Kailey Lampert and Adam Silverstein will each be delivering a presentation as a part of the developer lightning talks. Their sessions will focus on the hidden treasures of WordPress core and working with WordPress revisions in Backbone. Kailey will be pulling a double feature on Saturday, also being a part of the How to Become a Better WordPress Developer panel with Kronda Adair, Jeremy Felt, Zack Tollman and Morten Rand-Hendriksen.
Next, Paul Clark will be running an excellent session on Performance, Scale and WordPress, using real world examples from 10up’s experience with sites like Ted.com and hosting platforms like WordPress.com VIP. For anyone considering WordPress and it’s application in an enterprise context, don’t miss Paul’s presentation!
At the same time as Paul, Taylor Dewey will be running a workshop on SASS, walking through real life examples and breaking down some of the complexities of the workflow. If you’re thinking about getting into SASS, or have started and need a good tutorial, make sure you check out Taylor’s workshop. Taylor is also pulling a double feature, and will be giving a lightning talk on Responsive Web Design Workflows.
In addition to the four 10uppers presenting this weekend Andrew Mowe, Zach Brown, Luke Woodward, Cole Geissinger, Drew Jaynes and myself will all be on-site organizing, volunteering and contributing to the event. We’d love to see you there!
Telling my story at WordCamp Romania
Eric Mann on
I love working in a global community! WordPress touches every corner of the globe and attracts both writers and developers from just about every country on the planet. Many of them are so enthusiastic they hold annual WordCamps to celebrate the application that ties us together. This weekend, I get to visit one such WordCamp.
On Saturday and Sunday, I’ll (Eric Mann) be visiting the far reaches of Europe at WordCamp Romania – my first international WordCamp experience! It’s going to be a trip to remember.
WordCamp Romania is themed around telling stories, so I’ll be telling a bit of my own history with WordPress as well as encouraging new developers to become even more involved in the platform.
Sunday is a “leisure day” when I hope to touch base with some other WordPress aficionados to sit down and work on core code (the WordPress 4.0 beta is coming near, we need all hands on deck!).
Above all, though, I’m excited to connect even more with the global WordPress community. WordPress is global, and 10up has a growing global presence. I’m just honored to be a part of both!