Speaker Announcements – Round 2

More Speakers! More Speakers! More Speakers! …We heard you, so here’s the next 3 presentations! For those at home keeping count, that makes it 6 of 28!
Do you have your ticket yet?


My year on the front line, cleaning infected sites

Stephen Rees-Carter

Stephen has been working with the Wordfence Site Cleaning team part-time since early 2017, Fast-forward to the middle of 2018 and he’s recently stepped back from cleaning to join the Wordfence team full time as a developer, so now it’s time for him to tell us his story.

He’ll share stories from the more memorable sites he’s cleaned, revealing his all-time favourite WordPress malwares, and the epic tale of the persistent attacker that almost thwarted them completely.

Scattered throughout will be tips and ideas to help protect your site from compromise and keep everyone (except the bad guys!) happy.

Stephen has been a PHP developer for many long years and still loves working with PHP each day. He joined the security industry back in 2012 and has been working on security products, large SaaS applications, and spent some time cleaning infected WordPress websites. Now he’s a senior developer at Wordfence/Defiant, working hard to secure your website.


Using WordPress to set up an internet radio station

Richard Scherer

Richard is joining us to discuss the pleasures and pitfalls of setting up web streaming from a WordPress site, including equipment, licensing issues, and adventures with Gutenberg.

Websites are now expected to be media rich as well as responsive – but how do you use WordPress to present and maintain such content, beyond embedding YouTube files? Richard will be answering this, and much much more.

In mid-2018 Richard co-founded Living Arts Canberra, a not-for-profit WordPress website, set up particularly for the arts and community sectors. It features interviews which are available both as podcasts and from a internet radio stream. While its focus is primarily local, its reach is worldwide.

Richard began his professional career in media as a newspaper journalist before moving into communications for a number of federal government departments and agencies. His first website, in the mid-1990s, was hand-coded, but for more than 10 years he’s used WordPress as his CMS of choice to design websites for community and not-for-profit groups.


How we handle 90% of our annual traffic in 5 mins

Phillip Johnson

Phillip works in the music and festival space, and they see the majority of the traffic within the first hour after the lineup announce. 18 months ago we launched a new WordPress site at 8am for the lineup announce only to have it drowned in traffic and crash instantly… for 6 hours.

He’ll talk about the codebase they’ve worked on for all their websites, so that they can be launched instantly without any fear of the site failing. He’ll cover how they have utilised OOP PHP with MVC in their WordPress environment to cope with high server load while maintaining low hosting costs.

Phillip is a passionate web developer with experience in all areas of multimedia. Originally hailing from Brisbane, He now work out of Melbourne with a specialty in music touring and festival websites.


This is the second round of speaker announcements for WordCamp Brisbane 2018, Subscribe for updates to get notified as the announcements happen, or check out the other speaker posts. 6 announced, 22 to go!

A long long time ago..

A long long time ago.. well, actually the year was 2015, Wapuu first came to Australia and Wapuunder was born, Wapuunder even made an appearance at WordCamp Brisbane 2017!

Making a special appearance at WordCamp Brisbane 2018, is the recently discovered Kopuu and Wapurwin! Please make them feel welcome at #WCBNE!

We don’t expect this is the last time we’ll hear from Wapuunder though, stay tuned for more!

We’d like to thank our sticker sponsor StickerGiant for their ongoing sponsorship of WordCamp Brisbane.

Speaker Announcements – Round 1

We’re officially 1 month out from WordCamp Brisbane – How time flies!
We’ve been busy going through all the speaker applications and we’re happy to announce the first 3 presentations! (We’ve got many more to come)


To Eight Zeroes and Beyond: When WooCommerce Gets BIG

Ryan Fitton and Ben Rollins

Ryan and Ben will be joining us to talk about what happens when your client’s WooCommerce business grows from around a million dollars in sales to well over $20 million in a very short period, and how your development skills and processes can face a wholly new set of challenges.

Come join them in asking the question of “will it scale?” and find out how you can very quickly get answers you don’t like.

Ryan is the Co-founder of Punch Buggy and is passionate about the digital and helping brands innovate with unique experiences. When he’s not optimising customer journeys, you’ll find him mountain biking, surfing or spending time with family.

Ben is the Head of Development at Punch Buggy, and has worked in development, in one form or another, for over twenty years. He likes good wine and running stupid distances through the mountains, but hasn’t yet found a pleasant way of combining the two.


Contributing Back to WordPress – Getting Involved in the Community

Wil Brown

Wil is joining us to talk about the many ways to contribute to WordPress – Many people think that the only way to contribute to the WordPress project is to be a core developer, but that’s not the case at all! There are many ways you can use your skills to contribute and be a community rock star.

One of the many ways Wil explains you can contribute, includes Volunteering at WordCamp Brisbane!

Wil hails from Sydney where he lives his life as a Dad, WordPress Consultant, Developer, Conference Organiser and Speaker.


10 truths learned from a career of Freelancing

Samuel Levy

Sam will be joining us to talk about tips, truths, and lessons learned from his 7+ career of being a professional freelancer.

Sam is a Freelance Web developer who has worked in development for over 12 years, and has freelanced for the last 7. He’s done everything from server management to front-end development, but is most happy solving ugly problems with elegant solutions.


This is just 3 of the amazing presentations you’ll see at WordCamp Brisbane in 2018, Subscribe for updates to find out what the other 25 presentations are when announced!

PS. The full speaker lineup hasn’t been finalised yet, if you applied for a speaking position you’ll be hearing from us very soon!

Volunteer Callout

WordCamp Brisbane is just a few weeks away (tickets here if you need an extra reminder), and we need YOU! Well, more specifically, your help!

You’ve heard the spiel before, but just a friendly remind that WordCamps are a volunteer effort. The organisers and speakers are not paid in any way, we do it out of the kindness of our hearts to spread more WordPress knowledge to everyone. On the weekend we need some help to make it an enjoyable experience for everyone.

We need a bunch of friendly volunteers to assist with all aspects of WordCamp, including (but definitely not limited to):

  • Registration desk – we need some friendly faces to welcome people to the event, hand out lanyards, throw swag, point out bathrooms/coffee/etc
  • Room MC  – we need a chatterbox who isn’t afraid of a crowd – and is happy to deliver critically important information about lunch, as well as introduce speakers, let attendees know what is coming up next and other such details!
  • Mic Runners – Did you know most presentations will have a Q&A Session? We need someone who isn’t afraid of stairs and is willing to deliver mic’s to broadcast attendees burning questions
  • Audio/Visual – Have you ever operated a camera? We’ll need a handful of people to help record all the sessions.
  • Photography – We love photos! Help record WordCamp Brisbane for those who can’t make it, or those of us who will look back with fond memories in a few years.
  • Have I forgotten something? Have you attended a conference recently and just wished there was someone to do this, that and the other thing?… Well, let’s just say, if you can think of it, chances are we need it.

If you’re interested in volunteering some of your day to help make the event run smoothly, apply to be a volunteer today!

We don’t expect you to work 24/7, a few hours from a bunch of people over the WordCamp will make hard work easy for everyone – and you’ll forever have our appreciation. We may even have a special volunteering shirt and other perks.

Apply to Volunteer Today

Purchase your ticket today!

We’re happy to announce that tickets are officially on sale for just $50!

Purchase Now

We’re happy to announce that Tickets are officially on sale! If you’re definitely going to be coming along to #WCBNE (on October 27-28, 2018) get your ticket early to ensure that you don’t miss out.

Tickets are available for the super-low price of $50, which covers two days of talks spread over two tracks, morning tea, lunch, tea/coffee, and some special yet-to-be-announced swag! We can afford to keep the ticket price this low thanks to our amazing sponsors. If your company would like to help make this event a success we’re still looking for sponsors!

Every ticket sale helps our bottom line, and allows us to properly gauge interest and attendance – the number of people in attendance affects everything, the amount of swag we order, the number of sponsors we receive, the amount of coffee to pre-order, the amount of food needed, and even the size of the venue rooms!

Ticket sales will remain open until tickets are sold out, or, we need to close sales due to the risk of running out of one of the above (food, coffee, swag, etc) – We have to lock in head counts for orders weeks in advance, estimating the number of last minute ticket purchases is impossible!

If you’re not yet sure if WordCamp Brisbane is for you, or maybe you want to wait for the schedule to be released, check out the 2017 schedule and videos from WordCamp Brisbane 2017 for an idea of what to expect. If you have any questions, please get in touch!

Purchase Now

Our Call For Speakers is closing at the end of this week, Make sure you get your submissions in by September 7th!

PS. For those of you who reserved a ticket you should’ve received an email with instructions on how to claim your reserved tickets! You’ll have a few weeks to claim those tickets, but we’d prefer you to purchase them ASAP to help with our cash flow 🙂

Reserve your Ticket Today

Would you like to come along to WordCamp Brisbane 2018? Maybe you missed out last year? Today we’ve opened ticket reservations to make sure that everyone who wants a ticket can get one.

Update: Ticket sales are now open.

Get a ticket now

WordCamp Brisbane 2017 was a sell-out (we sold over 350 tickets!) and many people unfortunately missed out on getting a ticket 🙁

Unfortunately we’ve not been able to open ticket sales for 2018 quite yet, so in it’s place, we’re offering everyone the chance to reserve a ticket today and purchase it later – That’s right, if you Reserve a ticket we’ll ensure that you’ll have enough time to get a ticket before they all sell out!

Subscribe for updates in the footer to be notified about future posts, we’ve got some good ones coming soon!

PS. Our Call For Speakers is also open for just over a week, Get your submissions in by September 7th!

Call for Sponsors

Did you know? WordCamp Brisbane tickets sell for only $50, but the actual cost of an attendee is almost 3x that? It’s thanks to our Sponsors that we’re able to make WordCamp Brisbane happen.

We’ve recently finalised our sponsorship prospectus, and we’re officially inviting anyone who is interested in Sponsoring WordCamp Brisbane 2018 to get in contact with us – We’ve got several packages this year to match most budgets.

Sponsor WordCamp Brisbane

WordCamps are known to be one of the best value for money conferences, with packages starting as low as AUD $500 and hundreds of WordPress End-Users and Developers in attendance it’s a great way to share your brand with prospective customers and future employees.

Your sponsorship is what allows us to keep our ticket prices at such low prices, it ensures that members of the WordPress community are able to attend no matter what their background or level of technical experience.

WordCamp Brisbane 2015 and 2017 were sell-out events with 250+ and 350+ attendees respectively, and 2018 is shaping up to be bigger and better than ever!

Call for Speakers!

WordCamp Brisbane is a community event that brings together designers, bloggers, developers, artists, small business owners, entrepreneurs, and educators from all across Queensland, as well as Australia and the rest of the world. It’s our mission to have WordCamp Brisbane represent the passion, talent and diversity of that community, and we want YOU to be a part of it!

Talks for all skill levels will be considered, and a presentation on things you learned setting up your very first website can be just as valuable as a technical walk-through of how user capabilities and roles are implemented within WordPress.

Please be aware that we do NOT require you to be famous, an “expert,” a programmer, even specifically credentialed or anything like that, and if you haven’t spoken at a conference before don’t let that hold you back either! All we ask is that you be able to present your chosen topic passionately and respectfully.

Feel free to submit more than one talk, but make sure each talk is submitted separately.

Submissions close at 11:59pm on the 7th of September, but please get your talk in as soon as possible to allow us time to assess all entries suitably.

Apply To Speak

Need some tips for what to talk about? Why not have a look at some of the talks recorded at other WordCamps around the world over on WordPress.TV:  https://wordpress.tv/category/wordcamptv/

 

We look forward to receiving your submission 🙂

Welcome to WordCamp Brisbane 2018!

We’re happy to announce WordCamp Brisbane 2018 is officially on the calendar!

WordCamp Brisbane will be happening again this year at QUT Gardens Point, with two small changes from last year; #WCBNE will be happening 27-28 October 2018, and we’ve moved to larger room’s that will comfortably hold up to 500 attendees!

This WordCamp is going to be bigger than ever! But don’t worry, all the things that you’ve come to love about WordCamp Brisbane will remain, we’ll still have two tracks of amazing talks to cater to every interest, free lunch and coffee, and lots of networking chances to help make new friends (and reconnect with old friends!)

Subscribe using the form in the footer to stay up to date on the most recent news.
We’ll be keeping you posted on all the details over the coming months, including speaker submissions, ticket sales and more!