HorseflyGroup Content Director Attends WordCamp Miami 2016
The 8th annual WordCamp Miami 2016 was held last month and took place on the weekend of February 19th thru the 21st. It was the largest it’s ever been with about 850 attendees, including children from the WordPress Kid’s Workshop. Held in sunny South Florida, WordCamp offers a series of informative training workshops and conferences related to WordPress, an open source content management system. WordCamp Miami is very beneficial for WordPress users, bloggers, content creators, SEO experts, website designers, web developers, and digital marketers and is always an enjoyable experience.
Over the three-day weekend event, attendees had the opportunity to enjoy and participate in some inspiring course tracks presented by over 70 speakers, including industry leaders and WordPress users alike. You also had the opportunity talk to experienced WordPress developers to ask any questions about your WordPress site or to get advice about your next website. The exciting thing about WordCamp Miami is that it offers a venue for WordPress users to come together to deliver WordPress solutions that respond to the needs of the community and the user base.
Beginner’s WordPress Workshop (February 19th, 2016)
At WordCamp 2016, there was a full-day workshop available for those who have never used WordPress before known as the “Beginner’s WordPress Workshop.” The limited availability for this workshop allowed instructors to take you step by step from learning hosting basics to being able to customize a basic WordPress site of your own. Attendance for this workshop was amazing.
Freelancer’s Workshop (February 19th, 2016)
Along with the Beginner’s WordPress Workshop, WordCamp also offered another full-day workshop dedicated to giving valuable advice and knowledge uniquely targeted to those who are “on their own” a.k.a. freelancers. Topics covered in the Freelancer’s Workshop included sales & pricing strategies, client relations, how to handoff projects, how to fire a client, branding, giving support to angry customers, how to handle change orders, from clients, and more. This workshop was meant for freelancers and small business owners, whether they currently use WordPress or not.
BuddyCamp (February 19th, 2016)
BuddyCamp is another popular workshop and has been happening for three years. BuddyCamp is a mini-conference that focuses on the BuddyPress and bbPress plugins. This unique conference focuses on how you can use these plugins as you use WordPress to build sites for you or your clients.
Main Conference Day (February 20th, 2016)
The main day of the WordCamp conference was stuffed full of a variety of topics and includes a number of informative lightning talks. There were a full range of courses discussing everything from how to improve your website’s SEO to how to build an ecommerce site with WordPress which were divided into 3 different learning tracks: the “How To” track, the “Content & Design” track, and the “Developers” track. This allowed people to attend WordPress related courses that focused on their specific learning needs.
WordPress Kid’s Workshop (Saturday, February 20th)
For the third year in a row, WordCamp Miami 2016 held a WordPress beginner’s workshop for kids. This class was designed for 8-12 year olds, however, any age was welcome to attend with limited seating available. The instructors for this workshop walked the children and their parents through the process of setting up a new WordPress.com account and showed them how to get started blogging and publishing content to the internet. It was very exciting to see an entire new generation of content creators in the WordPress Kid’s Workshop.
Children’s Panel – WordCamp Miami 2016
This year’s WordCamp Miami was the first year to have a children’s panel. The first panel was centered on the technologies and tools used by young people to publish content. The current and older generations from the audience really benefitted from this. It allowed them to take notice on what the new generation and their friends are using. The first panel consisted of all young women as well.
Last Conference Day (February 21st, 2016)
The last day of the conference was geared towards business professionals, business owners, general WordPress users, and WordPress developers. The three tracks available were “Business” track, the “All Users” track, and the brand new “Learn JavaScript Deeply” track for those looking to improve their JavaScript skills.
All in all, WordCamp Miami 2016 was a great experience and the turnout was great this year. Everyone involved from the organizers, volunteers and participants were true ambassadors for the open source community. Hope to see you there next year!
Visit WordCamp Central for more information.
