All posts by lcrdd

Designing a WordCamp Community

WordCamps are born out of community; ours started out as a very small meetup group and the desire to connect positively with other WordPressers. That meetup group has grown to over 500 members and 2017 marks the fourth WordCamp Asheville! We asked our talented team of design volunteers to create a visual identity that expresses and captures the spirit of our local WordCamp community and they did not shy away from the task!

Here’s what our Design Team wanted to share about what went into this year’s design:

When You Work Together Great Ideas Are Born!

This year, the central theme of  WordCamp Asheville is Community. Such a broad concept is not easy to distill and convey visually. We honed in on the fact that “unity” is contained within the word itself – but wanted to make it active and strong. When thinking about the heart and soul of WordCamps, the tagline “Unite. Share. Develop.” emerged. We literally gather [unite] en masse to share our knowledge, skills and points of view in order to develop – as WordPress users, business people, designers, developers, individuals, and a community as a whole.

Our 2017 Super Hero design!

Putting those words together really ignited the Design Team’s imagination with visions of strength. From there, it wasn’t much of a leap to start thinking about… superheroes. Superheroes can maintain their individual identities, but come together as a group for a united purpose – each bringing their own special power to the table. This, we believe, reflects the WordCamp experience in that users can come from different places/levels/perspectives and bring something unique to the table. Learning from each other, supporting each other, we unite for the common good.

We hope this year’s branding gives a sense of levity to the weekend – and encourages everyone to find, develop and share their own superpower!

Design Team:

Jamie King, Sparking Design
Katie Rotanz, Katie Rotanz Design
Marisa Falcigno, Status Forward
Dena Rutter, Dena Rutter Design

Keynote Speaker: Jodi Rhoden

We are delighted that this year’s keynote speaker will be Jodi Rhoden. Jodi is a local entrepreneur, teacher, and author. Well known in Asheville as “the cake lady,” she is the founder and former owner of the beloved and successful Short Street Cakes.

Jodi offers classes and one-on-one mentoring through Mountain Bizworks and Birds Eye Business Planning and Adventures, where she relishes working with small-scale food producers and farmers, independent artists, healing arts practitioners, and other social entrepreneurs to discover meaning in their work through developing their mission and vision.

Join us Saturday, June 3rd at 9am to hear Jodi inspire us to develop our own vision and mission for our endeavors. Learn how to use your community to help you on your journey. She will share actionable steps  to get us on our way. It all starts by using the community around us to help us, so come prepared to participate and talk to your neighboring attendees. We’re excited to have this local leader guide us on Saturday to an inspiring beginning to the weekend!

Speaker Deadline extended to Wednesday, March 22nd

We’ve received some killer speaker submissions over the past couple of weeks. The organizing team is on the lookout for a few more, so we’re extending the deadline for submissions to Wednesday, March 22nd.

Share your experience with an eager audience

Maybe you’re an expert with particular workflow, plugin, or process. Or maybe you’ve recently had a game-changing WordPress moment you’d like to share. We want to hear about it! Apply today to speak. Let’s learn, share and develop together!

Want to speak this year, but need some ideas?

Here are a few suggestions:

Beginner-friendly:
How to choose a theme
Image management
Backing up / migrating a site
Intro to WooCommerce

Intermediate/Advanced:
WooCommerce/Ecommerce Deep Dive/Case Study
Making and Selling an E-course, Membership/Subscription Site
Using WordPress as a Support Ticket systems
Vanilla JavaScript
AMP

Everyone:
Style guides/branding
Photography – where to find, how to choose
Design/productivity tools
Content First – Content drives design and function
Leveling up your skills, Evaluating what skill or tool to learn/focus on next
Intro to Google Analytics / Google Search Console
The importance of mobile – Google’s new mobile first indexing, load time, conversions, etc.
Anything and everything about Google page speed fixes
Working up Contracts/Proposals
Effective Blogging
Case studies


Become a Speaker