Author: Hugh Lashbrooke

I am a long-time community builder and product manager with a focus on open-source and building high-performing, strategic teams. I have extensive experience and a passion for building high-functioning teams with tight strategies, notably in the open-source space.
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Help us capture the spirit of WordCamp

You know what’s awesome? Being a part of WordCamp. You know what’s even more awesome? Being able to share that experience with other people.

Sessions from past WordCamps in Cape Town have been filmed and published online for all the world to watch and enjoy. This filming has traditionally been done by volunteers working to help bring the joy of our local event to everyone else, so this year we’re looking for someone to give back to the community again.

If you know how to manage a camera effectively and are willing to film these sessions for us, then please email capetown@wordcamp.org to let us know and we can make it happen. You don’t need to edit the footage afterwards as there is a central volunteer team at WordPress.tv who will do that for us, so this is just for filming on the day.

If you have your own equipment than that’s great, but if not we can certainly hire the equipment that we need, so please contact us if this is something that you would be keen to do!

In the same vein, we would love to have a photographer capturing the event for us this year. We didn’t have one last year unfortunately, so it would be great if we could bring that back for this year’s event. Let us know if that’s something you can give back to the community!

Interested in either of these ways to help make WordCamp Cape Town great? Email us now!

Anyone who volunteers for either of these roles will, of course, receive a free ticket to WordCamp. If you have already purchased your ticket then we will reimburse you.

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Convince your boss to let you attend WordCamp Cape Town

With WordCamp Cape Town being run over two days, there can be some consternation from members of upper-management that their employees will be spending two full working days at a conference. If you’re in this position then we’ve got your back – simply present this letter to your manager and they will be utterly convinced that allowing you to attend WordCamp is the best decision that they will ever make. Guaranteed.

To [MANAGER’S NAME],

RE: Attending WordCamp Cape Town 2017

In the interest of employee education, networking and increasing my skill set, I would like to attend WordCamp Cape Town on 26 & 27 October 2017.

WordCamps are conferences that focus on everything WordPress – there are over 150 held all over the world throughout the year, and they are informal, community-organised events that are put together by average WordPress users. Everyone from casual users to core WordPress developers participate in them to share ideas and get to know each other.

Cape Town’s WordCamp has been an annual event on the local community’s calendar for the past seven years, making this the eighth in a string of incredibly successful events that offer immeasurable benefits to those who attend.

The conference itself will run over two days, with the first day being a series of practical workshops that will teach essential skills such as working with SASS, generating SEO-friendly content, designing websites to be more inclusive, and creating effective marketing strategies across social media.

And that’s just day one…

The second day will include sessions covering broader, industry-focussed matters such as transitioning from consulting to products, understanding how to leverage new WordPress technologies more effectively, turning users into customers, and a host of other fascinating and inspiring topics.

During all of this I will have the chance to get to know a huge amount of individuals from both the local and international WordPress communities. With an expected attendance of around 300 people there will be plenty of opportunity to connect with influential people with whom we can collaborate and leverage our skill sets to mutually benefit each other.

The incredible thing is that all of this costs a mere R500 for both days! At that price I can guarantee you that the things I learn and the connections I make at WordCamp will more than pay for themselves as our business continues to expand.

If we send 5 or more of our staff, then we can get a R100 discount on each ticket – you just need to contact the conference organisers on capetown@wordcamp.org to get the coupon code.

You can read more about the conference at capetown.wordcamp.org and I’d be happy to answer any further questions you may have.

Looking forward to your response.

Regards,
[YOUR NAME]

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Introducing this year’s Session Speakers

You’ve already met our workshop instructors, so now we’d like to introduce you to the speakers from our Day 2 sessions. While the workshops are very practical and focussed on specific skill sets, the other sessions are designed to inspire you to do more and get more out of your WordPress experience. So, without further ado, here are the speakers who will be inspiring you on Day 2 of WordCamp Cape Town 2017!

You can find the full schedule for the event here.

 

Naledi Sinandile

I am Naledi, I am a seventeen year old girl and I joined Code4CT in 2016. I am a young poet and I enjoy CSS the most because I enjoy adding colour and character to a website. I attend Springfield Convent High school for Girls.

Petya Raykovska

Petya is a Senior Project Manager at Human Made where she helps large projects across big publishers and enterprise succeed. She is a huge WordPress enthusiast, active member of the WordPress community and is one of the WordPress Polyglots team leads supporting the people who translate WordPress to more than 160 languages. Petya helped organise WordCamp Europe 2014 and WordCamp Europe 2015 and lead the team that organised WordCamp Europe 2016 in Vienna.

Chris Muller

Chris Muller is a self-starter who is passionate about tech, travel, learning and going off the beaten track. Co-founding Pango (an e-Learning focused tech-accelerator) and his role as CTO for AdvantageLearn.com (an online education company) fuel these passions. Otherwise, you’ll find him running in the mountains, practicing yoga or sharing a beer with friends.

Code4CT

Code for Cape Town (Code4CT) exposes high school girls to opportunities within STEM careers and the local tech industry. We teach coding, professional development and design thinking. The three speakers representing Code4CT in this talk are high school girls from Khayelitsha who have been learning to code and build websites with WordPress.

Jason Coleman

Jason is co-author of Building Web Apps with WordPress and Lead Developer of Paid Memberships Pro, the 100% open source membership plugin for WordPress. He has been pushing WordPress to its limits for many years and is an advocate for using WordPress as an application framework to build web sites and apps that go above and beyond the typical blog of CMS site. Jason works out of his home in Reading, Pennsylvania where he lives with his business partner and wife Kimberly Coleman and their two small children.

Monehi Tuoane

I’m Monehi. I am a seventeen year old girl. I joined Code4ct in 2016, where I learned how to code basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I enjoy drawing with mixed Media and occasionally write poems. It has always amazed me how a person clicks on a button and the websites/app will automatically know what to do and what response to send back to the user, I think that’s one of the reasons why I love using Java. Let’s not forget the fun part – CSS – its one of my favorites, where I can be able to encorporate my art skills. I attend Groote Schuur High School.

Mary Job

I’m a tech consultant and I specialize in teaching newbies about using ICT as a tool for self empowerment. I’m a WordPress designer by day and blogger at night.
I founded a non profit bloggingnigeria.org which is targeted at capacity building for new bloggers and motivating old bloggers to take part in corporate social responsibilities with the goal of making Nigeria great again by blogging our stories, the Naija way.

Dwain Maralack

Developer living in Ceres, WC. I enjoy spending time with family and learning more about Software Engineering.

Shannon McLaughlin

Shannon is an entrepreneur and mama to her busy little toddler Leo, who is the inspiration behind her business, Ubuntu Baba. She strives to create the simplest and comfiest baby carrier on the market, helping new moms to step out into the world again with confidence, freedom and style.

Nonopha Mamba

My name is Nonopha Mamba a grade eleven, 17 years of age attending school at COSAT (Center Of Science And Technology). It is a school based in Khayelitsha. I am currently a Code4CT student, RCL secretary and  the Head Girl of COSAT. I am the type of person who enjoys public speaking and I aim to be a motivational speaker that Is known all over the country. I pose a feminist that is standing up for the rights of the females in my community and everywhere else I find females rights being abused. I was motivated by a feminist known as Farai who started the Africa matters organization.

Noel Tock

I’m a Swiss Digital Nomad that enjoys building solutions online. I’m also a partner at Human Made, a top tier WordPress agency (and VIP Partner). There I oversee the growing product portfolio (Nomadbase, Happytables, WP Remote, etc.). If you need enterprise solutions built on WordPress, talk to us.

I’m a jack of all trades, master of none, usually bouncing between product management, UI design and front-end development. The projects I enjoy working on most, target small businesses and the long tail, democratizing opportunity so that smaller players have a shot at being successful online.

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Introducing this year’s Workshop Instructors

We’re very excited to announce that we have confirmed all of our speakers for WordCamp Cape Town 2017! Here you can find out more about the workshop instructors and who they are – just like last year, workshops will taking place on day 1 of the event.

You can find the full schedule for the event here.

 

Thierry Muller

I am a Swiss Digital Wrangler writing code and architecting softwares for close to a decade. I am truly passionate about code quality, open source, community driven projects and building enterprise solutions. I spent a great part of my career building products and web solutions for WordPress as well as driving open source projects.

I am fortunate to serve XWP as a WordPress Architect and Senior Engineer, working alongside some of the brightest WordPress experts in the world.

Seagyn Davis

Seagyn is the Head Maker of Things at Flicker Leap, a digital solutions agency. He has been working with WordPress since 1.5 and has never looked back. He loves stretching the limitations of what has been done with WordPress. He’s currently exploring the uses of the WordPress API. In his spare time, Seagyn playing online games and spends time with his beautiful wife.

Job Thomas

Job is the only Belgian in the WooCommerce team at Automattic. He leads one of the WooCommerce support teams. He’s been working with WordPress for about 10 years, and mostly enjoys just breaking things in order to learn. Since 2013, he’s been living in Cape Town, but misses Westvleteren 12 and Belgian mayo a lot.

Roy Scheeren

Roy is a developer from The Netherlands where he worked as a freelancer building websites mostly powered by WordPress. Holding on to a long lasting dream to move down to South Africa it was WordPress that brought him there. Nona Creative needed some extra WordPress power and decided they could work with a Dutch import. Closing in on 2 years in the the Cape Roy has branched out from the WordPress environment to a more full stack environment using technologies like Vue, Node and experimenting with the JAMStack using Hugo.

Anchen le Roux

Anchen le Roux is the CEO and lead developer of Simply Digital Design.

She has a passion for everything WordPress and loves being part and contributing to the WP community.

Anchen is the author of The Content Creation Strategy Guide, advocate for green, simple and nomad living and occasionally find time to play the bass guitar.

Jarryd Long

Im a developer at CODECABIN_ with almost 4 years of experience. I also lead our USA timezone’s support team.

I’ve developed parts of WP Google Maps and WP Live Chat. Along with other team members, I also support these plugins on a daily basis.

Trust Nhokovedzo

Trust Nhokovedzo is a digital marketing consultant and trainer. He is a senior consultant at Calmlock Web Design. Trust has been active in the digital space for nine years in different roles including web designing, web development, being a WordPress, online marketing, SEO and AdWords Consultant.

He founded AfroDigital Skills Training (http://afrodigital.org) where he became the Lead Trainer for the Google Digital Skills Training Program in Zimbabwe. He has done presentations at various tech conferences including WordCamp Harare, Digital Future and Women in Tech.

Trust holds a degree in computer science and various certifications from Google, Hubspot and Marketing Motive. His passion is to see businesses and people in Africa embracing digital technologies, especially SEO.

Gareth Allison

Gareth Alison is a designer at Automattic. He still has no idea what he’s doing with his life. In his spare time, he eats.

Ed O’Reilly

Developer and Founder at Nona Creative.

 

Janet Hancock

I have been in the design industry since 2005 and I love what I do because it allows me to mix my love for art with my career. I started as a graphic designer with a very successful small firm and worked my way up to Studio Head before starting Rubio Communications and then Brand Candy. I now manage the digital marketing side of our business – looking after our clients’ marketing from strategy through to implementation and measurement. I also run two courses: a “Social Media Marketing for Business” course and “Content Marketing for Irresistible Communication” advanced course.

As a business woman, time, freedom and financial security have always been as critical as success, and although ambition works its way into every decision, I know that a well rounded person is more fun to be around than an über-successful one!

Daine Mawer

A designer, dynamic trainer and developer, Daine is a mover and shaker in the world of Education and Web Development. Having achieved his B.A at Vega: School of Brand Leadership in 2009, Daine went on to take the web development industry by storm having worked for a number of Cape Towns most prized media and advertising agencies and companies. Daine is passionate and dedicated to the world of web development, having already made a considerable contribution in South Africa.

Steve Barnett

 

Steve Barnett works as Front-end developer and User Experience consultant. He loves the One Web and applying User-Centered Design principles to Front-end Development. He’s a bit addicted to meetups and community things: you can find him helping out with RailsBridge Cape Town), Cape Town Front-End Developers, running a Device Lab session, or at conference giving a (strongly opinionated) talk or facilitating a workshop. If he’s not there, he’s probably crouched in an awkward position in front of something funny-looking, taking pictures of it.

You can find him on Twitter as @maxbarners, on GitHub as SteveBarnett, and on his own site Naga (which really, really, needs a redesign) as, erm, himself.

Nicola du Toit

Nicola du Toit is UX designer by day and a musician by night. She has a Masters degree in IT (specialising in Human-Computer Interaction) but is also left-handed, which means that usability (or a lack thereof) has always been a significant part of her life. She firmly believes that user-centred design can make the world a better place.

Stephen Tredrea

Stephen is an octopus with WordPress coloured ink and tentacles across the full stack. As a enthusiastic and slightly opinionated rule breaker, his current mission is to make WordPress easy again. In between building websites for clients he can be found compulsively obsessing over his pet project, amibe.net, or posing as a coffee hipster.

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Is a WordCamp t-shirt important to you?

We’re looking at the best swag options for the community for WordCamp Cape Town 2017. In the past we’ve usually done t-shirts and they have been met with mixed reviews, so this year we thought we’d make a point of finding out what the community has to say about it!

If you have an opinion on whether we should be providing t-shirts as swag at this year’s WordCamp Cape Town, then please answer the poll below – thanks!

Feel free to comment on this post with further thoughts on the swag for this year’s WordCamp.

WordCamp Cape Town is over. Check out the next edition!