WordCamp Chicago » Blog

Glitch with @Eventbrite Registrations..and other notes

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:05:48 +0000

Good morning, WordCampers!

Did you know there is only 92 days left until WordCamp Chicago?? Hoping you’re as excited as I am – because this year is going to be amazing!

Couple things to go over this morning for you all….

Registration FAIL! There appears to be somewhat of a glitch in the Eventbrite registration system. If, when you registered, your payment got processed via PayPal – but you got a message saying “Your registration for WordCamp Chicago is not complete” – let us know via comments here. We’ve had a handful of people who have paid for registration but, for whatever reason, Eventbrite did not include them in the attendees list and has not sent out the printable ticket and confirmation. I apparently need to gather all the names and transaction ID’s to provide to Eventbrite so they can look into it…and that’s a pretty timely process to compare payments to our attendees list manually, but I’m making my way through it and you could greatly help if you happen to be one of the aforementioned people and can just leave me a note here. Thank you, in advance!
Speakers and the schedule!! I know you all are very very patiently waiting for us to get the speakers list and program available – and we are working on it. We were delayed by the earlier issue we had with the venue, which completely threw us off schedule over here. Once Brian has a suitable level of Starbucks caffeine in him (seriously, Starbucks should sponsor us, don’t you think?), however, he is working to get this published. Once again, thank you, everyone, for your continued patience, and I do promise that we are making progress with the program and should have one up for you shortly!
Sponsors! Sponsorship opportunities are still available and we are still looking for sponsorships to help cover expenses such as catering, t-shirts, bags, name tags/lanyards and other incidentals. Ch-ch-checkout our sponsorship information on this page. We’ve also placed a Donate Now! button in the sidebar (over there –>) for those of you who want to help out, but cannot afford full sponsorship. We have had a couple of individual donations, and we’re listing them, with a link, on our sponsors page, as well.

That is it for now.

92 days left until WordCamp Chicago – - are you coming? Are you bringing a friend, or two?

Do over!! WCChicago 2010 Venue Announcement Part II

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:38:16 +0000

Hello Chicago WordCampers!

Thank you SO much for your patience this week! I know I mentioned I would be updating the site with additional hotel information on Monday. Monday became Tuesday, then Wednesday….and now it’s Friday already – how did that happen??

So, due to circumstances WAY beyond our control (and budget, and capacity) – I would like to introduce you to our newest venue for WordCamp Chicago 2010. Forget what we announced a couple of weeks ago about the Congress Plaza – - we have nulled our contracts with them, and have moved WordCamp Chicago down the street a little and have contracted with, and secured, a new and different venue for our event. This time it’s solid (I swear!) and we’re ready to put all planning efforts in full motion. I won’t go into details here on the reasons for the switch – - if you’re curious, ping me and I’ll fill you in… but let me just say that for a volunteer role here at WordCamp Chicago, this has become somewhat of a full time job over the last couple of weeks trying to wade through some of the issues we’re facing.

But – we’re golden now and I have tons of info for you – so without further ado….

The Chicago Mart Plaza
350 West Mart Center Drive
Chicago, IL 60654

Tel: +1 312 8365000 Fax: +1 312 2229508

View Larger Map
Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza is located atop the Apparel Center (the building with ‘CHICAGO SUN-TIMES’ sign)

We have secured the Sauganash Grand Ballroom for our event — the ballroom has the capacity for 500, and has an electronic door that we can use to split the room in half to enable us to hold two break out sessions for a User Track, and a Developers track. Sliding the wall closed takes about 20 minutes – during which time we can take a break, enjoy some breakfast and chit chat with our fellow Chicago Wordcampers:

Some quick facts:

Find Transportation information here.
I have provided you with a long list of area hotels within walking distance of the venue – the venue, itself, does NOT have rooms available and , as such, we were not able to contract with them for special rates for our group (sorry!)
Driving direction and different ways to get to the Chicago Mart Plaza can be found here
WordCamp Chicago will provide a nice continental breakfast on BOTH mornings – lunch is still up in the air.
Registration starts Saturday June 5 at 7:30 am – attendees MUST have tickets and ID’s to present at the door. As of right now, it us unclear whether or not we will be accepting walk-ins – stay tuned.
On Sunday June 6 – - the official panels and presentations will end at 4pm – however, we have the Grand Ballroom scheduled until 6pm . . so we we have unofficial WordCamp Chicago networking and general milling around form 4-6, but for those looking to plan their travel – the official event will conclude at 4pm on Sunday June 6, 2010.
We cannot emphasize this enough – - there is a large medical convention being held in downtown Chicago on our same weekend – - plan accordingly! This means book your rooms as soon as possible and plan for a little extra time getting to and from different places . . . and Brian – that probably means longer lines at the Starbucks, FYI

More details forthcoming as we have them – - we’re still working on the programming portion of the event, but rest assured we have a fantastic line up for you all! Those of you who have submitted proposals for speaking opportunities – thank you for your patience during this time. Honestly, the delays here were unexpected and unavoidable – - but we have things well in hand at this point. The devil is in the details, my dad always says!

105 days left!!

Reserving a hotel for WordCamp Chicago

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:45:18 +0000

I posted the information about our venue last week and mentioned that The Congress will be holding a block of rooms for our group at a special rate – - that is true, however I have run into the tiniest glitch with the contract agreement that will be resolved by Monday, at the latest. To resolve, I have scheduled a face-to-face meeting with the Congress Plaza folks who, I have to say, have been extremely nice, prompt and accommodating in helping us organize.

There are several different contracts we need to enter into with The Congress in order to hold this event. The room block contract is just one of them…and that is the one we’re holding out on at the moment.

Anyone who has organized a large event in Chicago knows that there are unique challenges that come into play when juggling the different union contractual requirements. The Congress currently has 4 unions in their employ, as well as one small union currently on strike. Contracting with them has been a pretty straightforward process, but making sense of the different requirements and charges based on union requirements can muddy the waters just a little – - so my visit with their staff has the goal of clearing the waters and making sure we have everything we need and that we know exactly what we are paying for. Sometimes a face to face meeting can resolve things that a phone call doesn’t. Besides, I love Chicago – so I have no troubles visiting again for a day!

New developments because of this:

If you have contacted The Congress to book your room – they are not yet honoring the special room rate until we agree to sign the final contract.
Providing everything goes as planned, this contract should be finalized by Monday. I will announce it here when we have it ready for you to book your rooms at The Congress
In the event that we are unable to reach an agreement, I will post alternatives for you
Either way, I will also have alternative nearby hotels that you can arrange for your stay in Chicago for WordCamp

As always, thank you for your patience and understanding! I will get the information to you, via this blog, as soon as it is finalized on our end!

113 days left!!

Video: Remembering 2009

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:58:24 +0000

It only took him (almost) a year – but our friend, Brian Artka, finally edited and published his video from the WordCamp Chicago event held in June 2009. Brian did such a fine job putting this video together that we invited him back in 2010 as the official videographer of WordCamp Chicago – and he agreed. Awesome!

Wordcamp Chicago 2009 from Brian Artka on Vimeo.

Makes me excited for our upcoming event this June! There are 115 days left until WordCamp Chicago – have you registered yet? You should bring a friend!

WCChicago 2010 Venue Announcement

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:54:16 +0000

After much searching and, literally, walking the beat in downtown Chicago – we have a venue for our event in June! I will spare you all of the messy and confusing details that got us to this place, but I do believe we have found a great place, and one that will suit our purposes in 2010 and beyond!

The Congress Plaza
520 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60605

(on Michigan Avenue by Grant Park)

We have two rooms secured that enables us to run two tracks of panels/presentations – which is great! That is the number one suggestion we received from your feedback from last year’s event, so we are really excited to be able to provide the space for it this year!

The Great Hall is for our General Sessions (Keynote, Opening/Closing Remarks):

Congress Plaza - Great Hall WordCamp Chicago

The Windsor Room is for our break-out sessions (either Track 1: User Track or Track 2: Developers Track):

Windsor Room - Congress Plaza

We also have another room called the Rendevous room that is being used for registration, schwag bag grabs and vendor tables/booths.

Now that the venue is solid, Brian and I will be putting our heads together on developing a great 2-day program that we’re sure you will all benefit from. A little while ago, I published a poll and survey looking for YOUR feedback on what topics you would like to hear about, what tracks you are likely to attend and general suggestions on how we can make WordCamp Chicago YOUR event – - the poll and survey are still open, so if you have not already – please browse over there to give us your feedback – thank you, in advance!

We are still accepting sponsor contributions for WordCamp Chicago 2010 to help us pay for the costs involved – so if you are interested in sponsoring WordCamp Chicago – please let us know! We’ve already got some great sponsors – so far, ForDummies.com (Wiley Publishing) is our largest sponsor, opting for the Gold sponsorship for WordCamp Chicago – which is great! As many of you know, ForDummies.com (Wiley) is the monster publishing house behind my own books, WordPress For Dummies and BuddyPress For Dummies (which is officially available on Amazon.com as of TODAY) – it is great to see them giving back to the WordPress community! Also, ServerBeach, Margaret Roach and DigitalPure are Copper level sponsors for this year’s event…big thanks to them for their support!

A word about hotels and lodgings in the area: One of the biggest challenges we had in planning this year is that a HUGE convention is going on the same weekend – The American Association for Oncologists. Basically, these guys and gals are taking over downtown Chicago and are having their convention at the McCormick Center. Why am I telling you? Because hotel rooms in downtown Chicago, close to our venue at the Congress Plaza, are going fast…..so book early!

The Congress Plaza, itself, has booked off a block of rooms for WordCamp Chicago attendees, but it is first come, first serve, as they are only holding a block of 100 rooms. During the booking process, let them know you are attending WordCamp Chicago and they will give you their special rate of $229.00 per night. (Note: hotel rooms in downtown Chicago for this weekend are unusually high due to the Oncologist convention – as usual, big cities jack up room rates when a large convention is in town … just because they can.) I am working on putting together a listing of other hotels in the area for you and will post it on our FAQ Page when I have it ready.

A word on WiFi – the hotel has it, but when we told them that this group is 500+ large and every single one of us will want to be online throughout the day, they cringed…not just a little, but a lot. They warned us that their WiFi may not hold up under the pressure. We are currently working on an alternative solution with some local providers in the area – - in the meantime, anyone who has their own portable MiFi, plan on bringing it because, as of right now, we cannot make any predictions as to the stability and uptime of the WiFi at the location. I will keep you updated as we go along – as I said, we are currently working on alternatives.

As the weeks go by and I assemble more and more information – I will post the info you need here in terms of transportation, parking, attractions in the areas, locations of Starbucks close to the venue (well..that’s mostly for Brian…) and any other information you’ll need to make your weekend visit to Chicago a great one!

119 days to go!!!

A Poll: User or Developer Track – or both?

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:37:07 +0000

Because we are planning for two different tracks of panels/presentations, we’d like to get a feel for which track you will most likely spend the most of your time at WordCamp Chicago:

User Track: This track presents information useful for users of the WordPress platform, topics like monetization, using WordPress as a CMS, information on plugins, themes and additional things you can do to extend the basic ‘out of the box’ WordPress platform, news and resources about upcoming changes to the platform (upgrades, etc) and beginner to intermediate level information on making/tweaking your themes and creating simple plugins and widgets.
Developer Track: This track is intended for advanced to guru level developers and covers an array of information about plugin development, hooks, API usage, server level security issues, core commits and theme development (hooks, functions and loops, etc), jQuery, AJAX and more

We realize that most people will bounce between both tracks, depending on the information being presented, but if you had to choose a track where you are most likely to spend the bulk of your time:

Which track are you most likely to spend the bulk of your time at WCChicago(answers)

Lastly, a survey — we’d like to hear from you on the topics and information planned for WordCamp Chicago – we want to make sure that we are presenting information that YOU want to hear and learn – take this quick survey and let us hear your ideas:

That’s it for now – - we have a few announcements that will come later this week, including the venue, as we continue planning and plotting over here! Hope you all had a great weekend – - congratulations to our Colts and Saints fans, and our condolences to our Vikings and Jets fans!

Glitch with @Eventbrite Registrations..and other notes

WordCamp Chicago is all over Twitter

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 19:00:21 +0000

For last year’s WordCamp Chicago – our Campers blew up the official hashtag for the event. Don’t believe me – check out Adria’s twitter update from earlier this month about it:

This year we expect it to be no different – - and here are some WordCamp Chicago Twitter resources for you to follow:

You can follow WordCampChicago on Twitter for all the latest information – This account will be invaluable to attendees leading up to and during the event, as it is where we will broacast all announcements, pre and post parties and meetups and the latest information about the event.
The official hashtag for the event is #wcchicago
There is a WCChicago Twitter Hashtag widget you can install on your WordPress blog to display the latest BUZZ going on about WordCamp Chicago on Twitter – - download the WCChicago Twitter Hashtag plugin here (be sure to rename the file twitterhash.php) – - courtesy of our good friends over at WebDev Studios – thanks guys! (download then upload to your /wp-content/plugins/ folder and activate – then add the widget to your sidebar. Easy peasy! here is the CSS we use to style it – feel free to nab and tweak as needed.)
The WordCamp Chicago Attendees list can be viewed on our Registration page – - we also have developed a list on Twitter called WordCampers-Chicago that we will be updating with new people as the registrations continue to fly in.
Interested in knowing who are the generous sponsors of WordCamp Chicago? Check out our WCChicago-Sponsors list on Twitter that will be updated as we obtain sponsorships for the event.
We already have some superb speakers in mind for WordCamp Chicago – but we have not yet developed a completed, official list yet – however, when we do – you can follow our WCChicago-Speakers list on Twitter to follow those folks!
Lastly – your humble organizers of WordCamp Chicago have their own list at WCChicago-Organizers where you can follow the organizers and volunteers for the event.

Hmm…maybe I need to get a Sync – - the tweeting car from Ford???

Random Posts

The gift of sponsorship – how you can help

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 04:18:41 +0000

Over the coming weeks and months, we will be posting all the information you need here for WordCamp Chicago. We are getting really excited about the event – planning it is not only hard work, but it is really a lot of fun, as it gives us the opportunity to reach out and connect with some really fantastic people in the WordPress community.

Right now, during the planning phase of WordCamp Chicago – we are dancing the very creative line between planning a fantastic event for everyone planning to be there while trying to stay within our budget as well. For this reason, I would personally like to invite any interested businesses to contact me with interest in helping sponsor WordCamp Chicago – no contribution is too big, or too small. If your business has benefited from the WordPress platform – now is a perfect time to give back – not too mention it is a fantastic marketing opportunity for your business to reach 500+ WordPress fans within a very desirable demographic – VERY social geeks who actively participate in Internet technology, blogging and social media!

Potential sponsors find it very helpful to know that this year, WordCamp Chicago is officially WordCamp Chicago, Inc – a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, as such, contributions for sponsorship are a federal tax deduction for your business, as well as being a fantastic marketing opportunity, and SEO investment.

All collected sponsorship and ticket sales monies go directly back into the planning and budget of the event in an effort to make it not only a richly educational event for everyone involved, but a fun and exciting networking opportunities for content publishers, small business, freelancers and entrepreneurs within the WordPress community.

Your gift of sponsorship for WordCamp Chicago help us pay for such things as:

Venue rental costs
Catering
Event Insurance
T-shirts, bags and schwag
Equpiment (A/V production, WiFi, Power, etc)
Beverages – coffee, water, soda, juices

Details on sponsorship opportunities can be found on the official WordCamp Chicago Sponsors page, including our Sponsor Information Sheet that details out the tiered sponsorship opportunities we currently have available.

So, what do you think? Would you love to contribute to help make WordCamp Chicago amazing? We would love to hear from you today – - the sooner the better, since we are currently looking to cover the costs of deposits for the venue and equipment contracts for the event! Hit us up on our contact form or contact Lisa Sabin-Wilson directly at lsabin-wilson AT wordcampchicago DOT com – let’s talk about the opportunities and how we can help each other out!

WordCamp Chicago 2010 Badges

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:59:30 +0000

You want badges – we’ve got badges! We’ve got large badges…we’ve got small badges.

We’ve got badges for attendees, badges for speakers, badges for sponsors and even badges for those of you who (regrettably) cannot make it to WordCamp Chicago 2010, but would like to show your support anyway!

(Note to speakers – we’ve gotten a lot of interest in speaker opportunities for WordCamp Chicago, and we have not yet formed an official list. If you’ve submitted for a speaking opportunity and don’t yet know if you’re speaking – – grab and attendee badge for now – – then you can change it later to a speaker badge if/when you get confirmed!)

Head on over to our Badges Page and pick your poison!

Tickets are on sale and SELLING!

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:27:25 +0000

Hello Chicago WordCampers! You may have noticed that tickets for WordCamp Chicago went on sale yesterday – and we’ve already sold 10% of available tickets in just a few hours after sales opened up. For those of you who attended last year, you know that we sold out after 200 and, regrettably, were not able to sell more due to venue capacity limits. This year is NO different – however, we have increased up’d our capacity to 400-500 and it remains to be seen if we’re able to climb higher. Last year, we had several dissapointed folks who didn’t make it to WordCamp Chicago because of our 200 limit cap. combined with the fact that they waited until the last minute to secure their ticket – - so, moral of the story is: Buy Early! Because once we sell out, generally, we do not have the ability to sell more – - Chicago is pretty strict on it’s capacity limits at their venues. So, we started selling 400 tickets, for now – - keep your ears here for updates on those numbers as the weeks fly by!

Everything hinges on the venue at this point and we are soooooooooo close to securing it – I can smell it, and it smells like the lake shore and deep dish pizza That is all the venue information I have for now – - though, I can tell you that I am personally making the trip into downtown Chicago on Friday afternoon for a couple of meetings to tour and view a couple of different venue locations that are available, that meet our capacity and technology requirements – it’s just a matter of details at this point. Well, that, and any good reason I have to breeze into downtown Chicago is an opportunity I’ll snap up anytime – so Chris and I are coming for the venue planning and staying for the pizza! I should have more info on the venue in the coming weeks – - soon as I know, you’ll know!

That being said – I would like to put a call out to any interested sponsors of WordCamp Chicago. We have detailed information now published on our Sponsors page that includes information on our tiered sponsorship opportunities. Any support and assistance you can give to help Brian and I cover the costs of throwing this nifty shindig is greatly and deeply appreciated. Have a peek at our Sponsor Sheet and then drop us a line with your thoughts on how you would like to help sponsor and support WordCamp Chicago 2010! We already have a couple of interested parties who are being generous in helping us make WordCamp Chicago most awesome, but we do need more sponsorships to really help us seal the deal on things like venue rental, catering, A/V equipment, wifi, etc – so please let us know what you can do! (thank you, thank you, thank you in advance!)

Don’t forget to follow @WordCampChicago on Twitter and join our WordCamp Chicago Facebook page to stay in the loop before, during and after the event!

WordCamp Chicago » Blog

Glitch with @Eventbrite Registrations..and other notes

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