A few items to keep in mind as Saturday morning approaches:

Something for everyone
The session/speaker lineup addresses all WordPress user levels, from beginner to intermediate to advanced devs and even people who don’t work with WordPress themselves but work with agency clients or have a WP business site that someone else maintains for them.

Tickets are available
So get one. The deadline for specifying t-shirt size and lunch choice is passed but we’ve used a fancy algorithm to predict your preferences.

Walk-up ticket sales
We will be equipped to handle walk-ins.

Venue
Nashville School of Law has the ideal setup for us, with lecture-style seating and power outlets at every seat.

Beverages
We’ll have coffee in the morning and bottled water available throughout the day. If you need a regular fix of, for example, Diet Coke, Gatorade or Mountain Dew, we suggest you bring it.

See you Saturday.
Coffee and registration open at 8 a.m.

What in the world is WordCamp?

It is an event that brings together users, site owners, developers and advocates of WordPress, the world’s best open-source publishing platform. Open-source means free. WordPress people give generously of their time and expertise in forums, on websites and at MeetUps throughout the year but a WordCamp brings everyone together to share, learn and celebrate.

WordPress turns 11 years old in May. It was first released on May 27, 2003. Nearly 20 percent of the top 10 million sites in the world use WordPress. Starting in 2004, major updates to WordPress have been code-named for important jazz musicians. WordPress 3.8, released in December 2013, is codenamed “Parker,” for sax player Charlie Parker. “Smith,” named for jazz organist Jimmy Smith, was released to the public on April 16, 2014. Like a week ago. WP 3.8 has been downloaded more than 20 million times.

Nashville is in distinguished company by organizing its own annual WordCamp. Our first official WordCamp Nashville in 2012 shared the stage with WordCamp New Zealand – held same day, separated by continents and cultures but united in appreciation of WordPress. In 2013, on April 20, we split the the stage with Seoul (Korea) and Slovakia. This year, three other cities will join us on May 3, including Zurich, Switzerland.

The first WordCamp was in San Francisco in August 2006 and drew more than 500 people. By 2013, according to statistics compiled by the hard-working people at WordCamp Central, the landscape looked like this:

• Number of WordCamps: 71
• Number of WordCamps in the USA: 31
• Number of WordCamps outside the USA: 40
• Total Number of WordCamp attendees: over 19,000
• Total Days of WordCamp: 117
• Number of sessions presented at WordCamps: 1,565
• Number of people who spoke at WordCamps: 1,176
• Number of companies that sponsored WordCamps: 522
• New WordCamps: 15
• WordCamp videos published to WordPress.tv: 474

A $20 ticket is about so much more than Nashville WordCamp 2014, though we’re delighted to host you. The international WordPress community is generous, inclusive and growing. With input from local organizers, WordCamp.org sets standards and guidelines to keep these grassroots events about WordPress, learning and sharing best practices and new tricks with the platform many of us know and love.

Check out the schedule, and grab your ticket to WordCamp Nashville while you can.

A WordCamp without an afterparty is a bit like a site page without a title tag – useful, but far from optimal.

Breathe easy, for WordCamp Nashville 2014 is all about optimal. The official after-party will be at the Flying Saucer in downtown Nashville from 5 to 9 p.m.

Visitors to Nashville may not know about the Flying Saucer, or what we locals call, “The Saucer.” The venue boasts about 120 beers (some tap, some draft), plus other stuff to drink, good food and a fun atmosphere. It’s in downtown Nashville, near the Frist Museum and the fancy Union Station Hotel. (The Saucer is not fancy.)

After 9 p.m., linger longer or use the location as a jumping off point to explore Music City’s entertainment and entertaining epicenter on a Saturday night.

Make sure when you arrive from WordCamp, which ends at 4 p.m., you park in the lower level lot behind the bar. Get your ticket validated inside The Saucer and pay a scant $3 when you exit the lot.

Party sponsorship from Pantheon allowed us to secure a great venue for four hours and provide drink tickets and some coin toward food. Thanks, Pantheon and Cal Evans!

The Flying Saucer
111 10th Avenue South #310
Nashville TN 37203

Did someone say beer?

Kate O’Neill, speaker, consultant and entrepreneur, to deliver keynote talk

About 300 people who use WordPress – ranging from true beginners to advanced developers – will converge on Music City May 3 for the annual WordCamp Nashville 2014.

The daylong learning and networking event celebrates WordPress itself and the large global support community around it. WordPress is free and open-source publishing software admired by fans for its ease of use, flexibility and ability to customize. The platform drives everything from websites of major companies such as Sony Music Entertainment, TechCrunch, and BBC America to simple, single-author blogs – and everything in between.

Tickets are $20 and include lunch, a t-shirt and admission to an after-party.

Kate O’Neill, principal of KO Insights, consultant, entrepreneur and former founder of [meta] marketer, will be the keynote speaker. She is a Nashville Technology Council and Evolve Women board member and a visible, passionate advocate for women in leadership and technology as well as the city’s growing technology community.

The keynote session starts at 11 a.m. at Nashville School of Law. This is the third WordCamp Nashville, and past events attracted participants from Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri and Indiana in addition to Tennessee.

WordCamp Nashville is part of a much bigger picture. WordPress, which powers more than 75 million personal and business sites on the web, has provided a starting point for many new developers, helping fill gaps in the technology talent pipeline. Each year, volunteers in cities across the globe organize WordCamps to share best practices and new approaches, including how to use WordPress in tandem with other programs.

Attendees may choose from three tracks based on skill level but are not locked into any of them. WordCamp Nashville organizers this year added a daylong Q&A and Help Desk available to everyone, regardless of skill level or experience.

Expect a crowd that loves tech, problem solving, entrepreneurship and business. The event is entirely volunteer-run and speakers are not paid. WordCamps are run under the auspices of the WordPress Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

WordCamp Nashville 2014 has something for everyone – new users, businesses owners who want to better understand how their site works, intermediate folks and seasoned developers.

We had an extraordinary strong pool of submissions and narrowing it down was tough. Part of our “theme” this year is Celebrating Nashville’s WordPress Community, and we gave preference to presenters from Tennessee (and Southern Kentucky) to showcase local talent.

WordCamp Nashville 2014 is Saturday, May 3

You’ll see familiar names and some new ones. Samuel Wood, known to the WP community as “Otto”, is back! He’s a WordPress core developer who lives in Memphis and he’ll talk about JSON API(s) in Track 3. Nashville’s Kate O’Neill, a champion of Music City as a technology hub and women in tech and leadership, is the keynote. This year, the keynote will be before lunch, at 11 a.m.

Mike Toppa makes his third consecutive WordCamp Nashville Track 3 appearance. Jon Henshaw of Raven Tools will talk SEO. We’ve got detailed sessions on JetPack, Gravity Forms, SEO, WordPress for Nonprofits and more awesome stuff, including a panel on Women in WordPress.

So get your ticket and join us.

Tickets for WordCamp Nashville 2014 on May 3 are available. For reals.

Hop over to the ticketing page and get your WordCamp Nashville ticket. A scant $20 gets you:

Admission to a full day packed with all things WordPress
A totally awesome t-shirt
Lunch – six options that include vegan and vegetarian fare
Admission to the event after-party

This is the third WordCamp Nashville and, like last year, it will be held at the Nashville School of Law. Each year we add new sessions, new speakers, more capacity and still sell out.

Kate O’Neill, principal of KO Insights, consultant, entrepreneur and former CEO of [meta]marketer, will be the keynote speaker. Kate, who is on the board of both the Nashville Technology Council and Evolve Women, is an eloquent advocate for Nashville as a growing tech sector, as well as women in technology and leadership.

Kate O’Neill – Consultant, Author and WordCamp Nashville 2014 Keynote Speaker

And we’ve added a fourth “track,” a day-long Q&A and Help Desk that is available to everyone, regardless of skill level or experience. We are calling it Track 0, only because we already had a Track 1.

We’ll ask you to select Track 1, 2, or 3 when buying your ticket but please remember – WordCampers can attend any session, regardless of track. Move around. If a session doesn’t meet your needs, find another one. We just like a general idea for planning purposes. The tracks:

Track 1: New Users
Track 2: Intermediate Users
Track 3: Developers

The full speaker line-up will be available next week but go ahead – buy WordCamp Nashville 2014 tickets. Now.

During WordCamp Nashville 2013, an impromptu Help Desk was created by some willing and able volunteers who saw a need. For 2014, we hope to build on last year’s hectic but successful Help Desk by offering it as a special track…Track 0.

Track 0 will be unlike the other three tracks for beginner, intermediate, and developer WordPress users. For one, there are no formal sessions or speakers. The setting will be informal, and you’ll be able to come and go as you please throughout the entire day (except for a brief lunch break).

But best of all, Track 0 isn’t just for beginners, intermediates, or developers – it’s for everyone.

In the morning, from about 9 a.m. to about noon, we will host a 3-hour general Q&A session. We will have leaders from the Nashville WordPress community answering (ideally) any and every question you can think of regarding WordPress.

Don’t have a question? Come anyways – you’ll probably have one after hearing everyone discuss a topic for a few minutes. And you might just get an answer to a problem you haven’t had yet. Remember, come and go as you please, and if you’re lucky enough to be the only one in the room, you’ll get special attention.

During lunch, we will have volunteers taking names for afternoon 1-on-1 sessions across a range of WordPress experience levels. That’s right – you’ll have the opportunity to get one-on-one attention from experts in the field. We’ll even try to match your specific question up with someone who is an expert in that particular topic (no guarantees!).

These 30-minute sessions are first-come, first-serve, so you may want to sign up before grabbing your lunch. Room space and volunteers permitting, we’ll continue a smaller version of the morning Q&A.

The Help Desk doesn’t stop at the end of WordCamp! Join our meetup.com group – http://www.meetup.com/NashvilleWordpress/ – to get direct access to Nashville’s WordPress community. If you want to get a headstart on your questions, this group will host a preliminary Help Desk at the next meetup on Monday, April 2 at 7 p.m.

We’ve had a great response so far with sessions submitted for WordCamp Nashville 2014 – from both the Nashville community and beyond! The day is shaping up to be a great one, but we still need YOU to submit your session idea!

To date, we have a lot of how-to sessions submitted, ranging from the very basic, beginner topics to developer-level topics, but we’d love to see more sessions submitted about what fun/interesting/cool things you’ve been doing with WordPress lately. Sessions where you tell us how you learned something, failed at something, built something, struggled with something, or succeeded at something WordPress-related are always a big hit!

You don’t have to be an expert to tell the community about your WordPress experience – you will always be a great resource for people who are newer to the platform than you are, and there will always be something for you to learn from the experience.

We want to see the entire Middle Tennessee WordPress community involved in making this year’s WordCamp happen; preference will be given to Nashville-area or Tennessee proposals because we know this community’s talent runs deep. If you’re unsure of what you’d like to talk about, or unsure about how to take your idea for a topic and turn it into a session, you can always email the planning team with your questions.

You can use the form over here to submit your session idea. You’ve only got until March 25 to submit, and we’ll have the schedule set by April 3… but you’ll have until May 3 to prepare – so don’t be intimidated or overwhelmed! Submit your session ideas and we’ll go from there.

We can’t wait to see what y’all have in store for us this year. So go forth and submit!