Author: D'nelle Dowis

This year’s WordCamp Nashville is already turning out to be bigger and better than ever. Along with the move from just a one-day event to two solid days of WordPress goodness, this year’s event moved from the Nashville School of Law in south Nashville closer to the heart of the city at redpepper and Deavor located in Historic Germantown.

Germantown has seen tremendous growth over the past few years, and there are many bars, coffee shops, restaurants, and sights for you to explore within a short distance of the venue. What’s more, Germantown is about a 5 minute (maybe 10 if you’re unlucky) Lyft ride away from downtown and all it has to offer.

Want to easily find all these spots? Check out our custom Google Map – you’ll find all these spots and more pinned there.

Coffee

There are three excellent, local coffee shops located in Germantown. The first is Barista Parlor located at 1230 4th Ave N. This isd Barista Parlor’s third location in Nashville—the other two are located in East Nashville and The Gulch (two other hot parts of town). Barista Parlor goes to great effort to show off their high-tech brewing equipment, so you’re bound to come away impressed as you watch the baristas make your drink.

The second coffee shop you might want to check out is Red Bicycle Coffee & Crêpes located at 1200 5th Ave North in Suite 104. The crêpes here are exceptional, and they don’t just serve them up for breakfast. There are plenty of different options to choose for both lunch and dinner.

Last but not least, Steadfast Coffee, located at 603 Taylor Street, is also a great spot to get coffee and a bite to eat. Unlike Barista Parlor, Steadfast Coffee keeps their counter top lines clean, sleek, and Euro-esque.

Restaurants

Germantown contains a wide array of dining choices all situated within a few square miles of each other. Even before its recent explosion, two Nashville institutions called Germantown home.

The first of these, Monell’s, serves up arguably the best Southern, family style breakfast around. You can’t go wrong choosing Monell’s for either breakfast or dinner. They’re also now serving late night breakfast on Saturdays from Midnight–3:00 a.m. The Mad Platter is the other restaurant native Nashvillians think of when someone mentions Germantown. They’ve been serving up New American cuisine since 1989.

Now that we’ve covered “classic” Germantown spots, there are loads of new kids on the block that are turning the area into a foodie destination. The oldest of the newer restaurants to call Germantown home is City House, helmed by recent James Beard Award winning chef, Tandy Wilson. 312 Pizza Company (Chicago Style Pizza), 5th & Taylor (American), Butchertown Hall (more meat than Arby’s), Cochon Butcher (Butcher & New Orleans Sandwiches), and Rolf and Daughters (New American/Mediterranean) all opened within the past four years. You might want to call ahead to see about reservations for a few of these places.

Bars

The bar scene in Germantown tends to focus itself around many of the restaurants listed above. With that said, there are a few extra opportunities for craft beers and cocktails around the area. For beer lovers, you have a choice between a local craft brewery, Bearded Iris Brewing, that opened within the past year, and one of WordCamp Nashville’s sponsors that recently passed the one-year anniversary mark in the neighborhood, Jack Brown’s Beer & Burger Joint. For fans of fancy cocktails, Tempered Café & Chocolate transforms from a chocolatier into an absinthe bar and cocktail lounge known as The Green Hour after 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.

Hot Chicken

For some, no trip to Nashville would be complete without eating some of Nashville’s namesakes hot chicken. The closest place to get your fix is Helen’s Hot Chicken at 1801 Jefferson Street. Alternatively, you can head out north of the heart of the city to Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack —the originator of the fiery fowl. There is also Hattie B’s not too far away in the Midtown area close to Music Row and Vanderbilt University.

Sites

There are a few historic sites and parks within a short walk from the venue. The first is the Bicentennial Capitol Mall. This park offers great views of downtown and 19 acres of walking history to explore. Attached to the Bicentennial Mall is the Nashville Farmer’s Market, home to many restaurants and food vendors. Another exciting point of interest located in the area is First Tennessee Park—the home of the Nashville Sounds AAA baseball club. The Sounds made the playoffs for the first time since 2007, so they might be playing on September 16, 17, and 18 depending on how their first series plays out.

Hopefully this listing helps you explore some of the exceptional sites, sounds, and tastes Nashville has to offer. While we want you to get your fill of WordPress knowledge, we don’t want you to leave town without making some kind of memory outside of the event.

Photo credit: wareagle90 via flickr

The WordCamp Nashville 2016 after party is the place to be once you’ve finished up a full day of WordPressing! Head across the river (less than 2 miles) to the Family Wash on Main Street in East Nashville for a chance to connect over drinks & appetizers with everyone you met during camp. You’ll want to take advantage of this opportunity to talk one-on-one with your favorite speaker, find out more from our sponsors about what exciting new developments are happening in their businesses, and make the professional connections you might have missed during camp.

This year’s after party sponsor is WP Ninjas, the makers of Ninja Forms, which is lovingly developed right here in Tennessee. The ninjas will be out in full force, and they’ll be bringing along some exclusive after party swag! Ninja Forms is celebrating the release of version 3.0 of the plugin and wants the entire WordPress Nashville community to join in on the festivities!

The Family Wash is an East Nashville institution famous for their live music and iconic shepherd’s pie. Now in their newer, improved location, the WordCamp after party will take advantage of the large “FishBowl” room (still Shyster Free!), front patio and coffee area. Free parking is included in the venue lot, across the street at Center 615 and in the church lot “two doors” down on the west side of Bolton’s Hot Chicken (Note: do not park in spots marked “Bolton’s”).

The after party will officially start at 6pm, so you’ll have a few minutes to head back to your hotel room to freshen up, or grab one last cup of coffee before trekking across the river. We can’t wait to see y’all there!

The Family Wash
http://www.familywash.com/
626A Main Street
Nashville, TN 37206

If you’re travelling into town from outside the metro Nashville area, we did a little legwork on hotel accommodations and transportation. We’ll be following this up with parking and venue neighborhood information ASAP, but for now, here’re our team’s travel recommendations. Feel free to comment here with questions or find us on Twitter & Facebook. We’re monitoring things and will field your questions as best we can

Accommodations

Here are the recommended accommodations for WordCamp Nashville 2016. We highly recommend making reservations from your favorite reservation app, as we found prices considerably lower than those posted via the hotel itself.

Millennium Maxwell House Nashville
2025 Rosa L Parks Blvd, Nashville, TN 37228 Map
(615) 259-4343
Website
Transportation: 7 minutes via car, walking not recommended
Located north of downtown, this hotel is an affordable alternative to staying in the heart of downtown. You can get your honky-tonk on quickly via shuttle or ride-sharing. Taking your car downtown after the camp is not recommended, as parking prices are shocking and unpredictable.

DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel
315 4th Ave N, Nashville, TN 37219 Map
(615) 244-8200
Website
Transportation: 8 minutes via car, 20 min walk via 5th Ave
A pricier alternative, this hotel is located in downtown proper within walking distance of downtown attractions. If you have a car, keep in mind the price of parking, which is not included in the room cost. Both lines of the free Music City Circuit bus also pass the hotel.

airbnb
While we can’t make any promises about individual properties, airbnb is really popular in Nashville and there are lots of interesting places to stay. One of our planning team members has a listing that we love. Find out more about their space on airbnb or instagram.

WordCrash
If you haven’t checked out our post about WordCrash, check it out!

Transportation

Music City Circuit
Nashville runs a free downtown circulator bus that has two lines: Blue and Green. This is the cheapest way to move around downtown without walking. The Blue Line goes down Broadway (honky tonks!) to the Riverfront, and the Green Line goes down Demonbruen St to The Gulch (great places to eat). On weekends, the Blue and Green Circuits operate every 15 minutes from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and every 30 minutes from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Website
Route Map (PDF)

Lyft
Lyft is offering new users a free ride up to $20 using the code WCN16.

Over the weekend it was brought to our attention (thanks, Facebook crowd!) that, although we said that we had vegetarian & vegan options for lunch, we didn’t actually have a vegan option listed on the lunch choices on the ticket checkout page.

We’ve resolved that (there’s now the option for the BBQ Asian Tofu sub), but it brought up another good point, which is that we don’t have a gluten-free option. That got us to thinking – there might be myriad dietary requirements that we haven’t addressed with our choice of lunch!

We want to be as accommodating as possible, and we totally understand how much of a bummer it is to have to bring your own lunch when everyone else is digging into catering. If you have a dietary restriction that isn’t accommodated by our menu selection, please contact us ASAP. We’ll work with you to make sure – as much as is within our power! – that there’s something there for you. We’ve got some ideas on how to make it happen, but we’ll need to chat directly to iron out the kinks.

Love,
the WordCamp Nashville Planning Team

If snagging your WordCamp Nashville 2016 ticket is still on your to do list (what are you waiting for? Get on over there and put your order in so you can make sure we have enough of your favorite Mitchell Deli sandwich on hand), you might not have noticed that the cost of the ticket increased over past years.

Community Growth & a New Venue

This year’s event is a big one for our community. We’ve seen our MeetUp group break the 1400-member mark, and Nashville is growing at breakneck speed around us. When planning started for this year’s camp, we knew we needed to take things to the next level. This included booking a venue more suited for learning, networking and community building. redpepper & Deavor are the logical next step for our event – moving us close in to the heart of the city and giving us more space for the variety of activities that happen at WordCamp (no more need to eat lunch in a classroom!).

Expansion of Programming

It also meant expanding our event to 2 days – something we’ve been working toward for a couple years now. Adding in-depth classes to the programming that allow attendees the chance to do some hands-on work, supported by an instructor, is something we’ve seen a need for in years past, and we are finally making it happen this year on day 2 of camp.

How We’re Paying For It

The new venue and the expanded programming mean a pretty steep increase in expenses, so the planning team increased the amount of local sponsorships we’ve brought in by 75% over 2015, while taking pretty much the same level of global sponsorships from WordCamp Central as we did last year. Still, in order to cover all operating expenses, an increase in ticket price is necessary.

The big-picture plan here is, of course, to provide a better, richer camp experience for everyone. For those of you with sticker-shock, consider this a sign of the times here in Nashville – everything’s getting bigger, better and busier! The planning team is confident that by the end of the day on September 18, you’ll feel like it was worth it.

So, if you haven’t bought your ticket yet – do it now! You’re guaranteed to be a part of something special – and, did we mention the Mitchell Deli sandwiches?