Author Archives: Mike McCallister, aka workingwriter

Thank You Sponsors!

WordCamp Milwaukee is upon us, and we’d like to thank all of our sponsors for their generous support of this second WordCamp weekend!

Please visit the Sponsor page and visit their websites for more information about these folks. If you see their representatives during WordCamp, thank them too!

One more time, WordCamp Milwaukee 2013 sponsors are:

Pillar

Bluehost

Cruiser

ZippyKid

Sport

WebHostingHub
WebDev Studios

Champion

Dreamhost

Touring

Code Poet
Backup Buddy

Dirtbike

Orion Group
Sultan Solutions
Snow Day Group

Moped

Tuna Traffic
ServerPress

Venue

Bucketworks

In-Kind

Sticker Giant (in-kind providing stickers)
C2 Graphics Productivity Solutions (in-kind providing food at Thursday Meetup)

AfterParty!!!

After a long, hard day of learning, networking and other WordPress goodness, you’ll want to unwind with a fine fermented malt beverage for which our city is so well known. We can help with that, and there’s more food to be had too. The 2013 WordCamp Milwaukee AfterParty is but a few blocks away from Bucketworks (so you can get some exercise too if the weather cooperates).

wcmke-after-party-map

Milwaukee Brewing CompanyThanks to our friends at Milwaukee Brewing and Transfer Pizza, the AfterParty is included with your WordCamp ticket!

You’ll be able to tour one of Beertown’s finest breweries, the home of Louie’s Demise, Love Rock Lager and Polish Moon Milk Stout, with unlimited samples, and a pint glass to keep. You even get a beer chip for a free MBC beer after the tour, to be used at a participating bar in the neighborhood.

Transfer PizzaMore fun and goodies:

  • Dinner features pizza and bruschetta from Transfer Pizza, including veggie and gluten-free varieties
  • Ice Cream from Purple Door Ice Cream
  • Soda and water available
  • Bean bag toss for your recreational needs
  • Many WordCamp speakers will be around for more conversation and questions

All in all, a great way to finish the day. Bring your badge for free admittance to all the festivities!

Where: Milwaukee Brewing Co., 613 S 2nd Street
When: 7:30pm Saturday, June 8

Sustaining Yourself Through the Journey

When you’re taking in so much information in a short period of time, your brain and body will naturally need a bit of sustenance to make it through. Fortunately, you don’t have to waste any brain cells wondering where you’re going to eat while at WordCamp. Food and beverages are included in your ticket! Let’s take a look at the menu:

Coffee, Snacks, and Water provided throughout WordCamp by Milwaukee Waterfront Deli, 761 N. Water Street in downtown Milwaukee.

Saturday Lunch: Sandwiches and salads by Milwaukee Waterfront Deli

Saturday AfterParty: assorted goodies from Transfer Pizza, 101 W. Mitchell Street (not all that far from Bucketworks). You’ll see more on the after party later in the week.

Sunday Lunch: Gyros and other pita sandwiches from American Euros, 3133 N. Oakland Avenue, near the UW-Milwaukee campus on the fashionable East Side, and out and around town in the summer.

Lunch will be served each day in the Bucketworks garage area, and you can eat pretty much anywhere. If it’s nice outside, you can even take it out on the Deck and look at the bees!

You’re really going to love this food, and it will get you in the right mood to learn some more. Yummmmm…

Bucketworks: WordCamp’s Home

Where do we begin to thank Bucketworks? This wonderful venue donates their space to host WordCamp, the monthly WordPress meetup, and all the other Tech Milwaukee meetups. It has served as an inspiration to many of us as the “health club for your mind,” the “physical wiki” and the simple co-working space it has always been.

WordCamp sessions will take place in the Studio room and the Shop on the first floor, and the Boardroom on the second floor.
The Happiness Bar (WordPress Workbench) will be in the second-floor Kitchen.

Rest Rooms: Folks who remember the umm… “extended waiting period” to get personal relief last year will be relieved to hear that we have secured some temporary rest rooms, which will be located in the Bucketworks garage, in a handy location not far from where lunch will be served.

Street parking in the Walker’s Point area is still available. Parking directly in front of Bucketworks is metered on Friday and Saturday, so bring change if you plan to park here. All parking is free on Sunday and street free street parking for extended periods of time are available on side roads in the neighborhood.

It appears that WordCamp Milwaukee may be one of the last events at the space located at 706 South 5th Street in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood. We are confident that Bucketworks will be able to continue making its contribution to Milwaukee’s technical and creative community.

Thanks to Tim, James, Jenn and everyone else at Bucketworks for their support!

Belly Up to the Happiness Bar

If you’ve been to a WordCamp before, you probably know what a Happiness Bar is. If you haven’t been to a WordCamp before, you’ll be glad to find out: the Happiness Bar is the place where you can come to talk with a WordPress expert about any problem you’re having with your site! You can also get answers to questions about anything related to WordPress, themes, plugins … pretty much anything (though you may not get the best answers for questions not related to the Internet).

Most of the speakers at WordCamp Milwaukee will take a turn at the Happiness Bar (which some folks call the WordPress Workbench) at some point during the weekend. WCMKE Organizers and other Really Smart People also staff the Happiness Bar. So come on up to the second floor kitchen of Bucketworks anytime during WordCamp and get answers!

Think you can help others with their WordPress problems? We love volunteer helpers at the Happiness Bar too! Click the Volunteer tab to sign up!

Sponsor Spotlight: ZippyKid

We are grateful to have ZippyKid as our Cruiser level sponsor for WordCamp Milwaukee 2013! ZippyKid specializes in hosting businesses on WordPress, with such well-known and high-profile clients as Reuters, CareerBuilder, Kangol and the McGraw-Hill companies.

ZippyKid was founded by Vid Luther in May of 2010 in southern, sunny San Antonio, Texas. While having an abundance of management experience in website hosting, Vid started seeing the complication and frustration that customers of all sizes were facing with their hosting company and he knew there had to be a better solution, a better way to treat customers. “I was tired of the way hosting companies were treating small business owners… started ZippyKid, where I could dictate the quality of service and offering.”

ZippyKid offers reliable, secure and cost-effective web hosting solutions that keep your website up and running. Our standard features include CDN, malware scanning, firewall protection, SSL, daily backups, and more. With ZippyKid, your website will load faster on our platform, that means more sales/inquiries and SEO for you. We keep your WordPress install up to date, we monitor and block attackers, and we un-hack your site, if the attacker gets through. Our customers go on national TV shows all the time, we make sure their audience can meet them online afterwards.

ZippyKid can host your business for just $25 per month.

Thanks, ZippyKid!

One Week Till Foundation Friday

Foundation Friday is just one week away! We’re so happy that this new addition to WordCamp Milwaukee proved as interesting to you all out there as we thought! The WordPress User 101 and WordPress Developer 101 workshops have both sold out!

Here’s what we have planned for you lucky ticket holders:

WordPress User 101

  • 1:00 WordPress.com vs WordPress.org: What hosting solution is right for you? Presented by Heather Acton (the User 101 team lead)
  • 2:00 Getting Started with WordPress.org: Part 1: Choosing a domain and a host, Installing WordPress, choosing a theme and plugins for your site. Presented by Joshua Alexander, Kari Sharp and Rose Fields
  • 3:00 Getting Started with WordPress.org: Part 2: The WordPress Admin Dashboard, Creating Pages and Posts. Presented by Joshua Alexander, Kari Sharp and Rose Fields
  • 4:00 Blogging Basics: Where to write a blog post, getting people to read, share and comment. Defining categories, tags, links and structuring a good blog post. Plus a couple of cool tips and tricks. Presented by Kimanzi Constable

For those of you just getting your feet wet with WordPress, this afternoon will get you up to speed, and ready for the weekend.

WordPress Developer 101

Developers being developers, the exact schedule probably won’t be defined till Thursday night. Here are some of the topics currently being bandied about:

  • What happens when (a) WordPress loads and (b) gets a request
  • File Structure
  • Debugging Tools
  • Actions and Filters
  • wp-settings.php
  • The building blocks of web development: HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript

John James Jacoby is leading the Developer 101 team, so be confident you will have one awesome afternoon, getting you ready for the main event.

See you next week!

Sponsor Spotlight: Bluehost

We are grateful to have Bluehost as our Pillar sponsor this year. A longtime supporter of the WordPress community, Bluehost sponsors every WordCamp in North America! They’ve been on the WordPress.org recommended hosting provider list since 2005.

Based in Utah, Bluehost has been hosting websites for businesses and individuals since 1996 (remember that the World Wide Web was only invented in 1993!). Today, they host over 2.2 million domain names, and will host your WordPress site for as little as $4.95 per month. Do I have to mention that the Bluehost blog is on WordPress too? Unlimited space, unlimited file transfer, unlimited email accounts – what more could you want? Visit Bluehost.com for more information.

Thanks, Bluehost!

Next Thursday: Debugging WordPress

We are counting down the days till WordCamp Milwaukee 2013! Just ahead of Foundation Friday next week, John James Jacoby (JJJ) will lead a special edition of the Milwaukee WordPress Meetup on Debugging WordPress.

JJJ works at the highest levels of WordPress: He’s the lead developer of BuddyPress and BBPress, but also codes on the WordPress core and the WordPress.com VIP program. He’s also a recent transplant to southeastern Wisconsin, which is cool by itself!

Next Thursday, we will be learning the keys to debugging WordPress and getting to the bottom of all of those problems you have with your WordPress site, custom theme, or plugin. JJJ will get down and dirty and let us know how to find all those WP bugs that are hiding. He’ll also be speaking Saturday at WordCamp on “Scrubbing WordPress – The Actions Timeline.”

The fine folks at C2 Graphics are sponsoring food and beverages for the meetup, so there’s no need to stop for food on the way. Just head on over to Bucketworks (the same location as WordCamp) Thursday night, June 6 at 7:00 PM.

Not to discourage you, but with a whole bunch of WordPress folk gathering at the Camp site, we’ll be taking advantage. Expect to be asked to help set up for Foundation Friday.

Please RSVP at the Meetup site, so we have enough food!

Celebrate 10 Years of WordPress tonight

It’s been ten years (and a day) since Matt Mullenweg revived a dying blogging platform and started building this community that makes WordPress.

WordPress was released on May 27, 2003, but with Memorial Day we are waiting a day and doing it on Tuesday.

Come celebrate with us at Callanan’s Parkway Pub, 11505 West National Avenue, West Allis, WI (see map here)

This will be a purely social gathering with no formal presentation. Just a gathering to network and enjoy some food and drinks.

This is part of a world-wide meetup by WordPress, so RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/WordPress/Milwaukee-WI/