WordCamp Nashville

Interview with Brady Nord, Bluehost’s Sr. Director of Product

5 WordPress Questions with Brady Nord, Bluehost’s Sr. Director of Product

As a champion of all things open source, Bluehost takes its commitment to WordCamp seriously. We sat down with Brady Nord, the company’s senior director of product, to talk about his involvement with WordPress, Bluehost’s relationship with the platform, and the important role of WordCamps.

How did you personally get started with WordPress? I decided to get involved with WordPress because it provided me a way to control my content and scale at the same time. Back when I first started, I knew very little about how websites worked. The fact that I could control so much of my web presence right out of the box was impressive. In hindsight, I attribute the majority of my technical background from learning WordPress in the early years.

What is a big hurdle facing WordPress today? One of the biggest challenges is there are still so many people who don’t know how websites work. That holds many customers back, and WordPress ends up being their guinea pig. Because of this, people leave the platform for reasons beyond WordPress’s control. The platform is trying to accommodate beginners and establishing itself as an enterprise solution.

How would you describe the relationship between Bluehost and WordPress? Bluehost is a great platform for WordPress users to grow with because we have spent the last decade building tools that help WordPress websites succeed. Very few companies have the volume of WordPress customers that we do and even fewer understand what it takes to support them. I was impressed as a customer long before working here — and now I’m even more impressed — by how much the employees care about the WordPress community. A lot has been said about the unique nature of WordCamps.

What, in your opinion, makes this community noteworthy? In the seven years I have been involved in WordCamps, I have not seen another community or conference where people are so devoted to the vision and cause. People travel all around the world on their own dime to attend these WordCamps, and they do it frequently. It’s not a conference that is attended once a year. I’m amazed by the commitment of so many to attend.

What upcoming WordPress changes are you most looking forward to? I am really excited to see where the investment in Javascript and front end developers leads the project. I think bringing more Javascript talent into the community will provide some fresh perspective on the experience and, hopefully, help new users interact with the framework better. Obviously, that goes hand in hand with the rest API, which I’m equally excited about. To learn more about Bluehost, visit the web host’s blog.

Thank you to our Silver sponsors

We couldn’t have made camp happen this year without our fantastic Silver level sponsors.

Content Connects, led by the intrepid Pamela Coyle, has been a WordCamp Nashville supporter for years. As the former Publicity Lead, she set us up for success this year with an amazing content infrastructure that we could build on to bring you fantastic pieces like our Faces of WordPress posts. Content Connects is her brainchild: a content strategy agency that creates content for web, social media, email, white papers and more. Thanks, Content Connects!

LearnDash, out of Ann Arbor, MI (hey! That’s where the brains behind WordCrash are located!), give back to the WordPress community by supporting WordCamps around the country. LearnDash is a Learning Management System for WordPress that allows users to create and sell online courses quickly. Thanks, LearnDash!

UpThemes, headed up by President Andy Wilkerson, is coming to us from Huntsville, AL. WordCamp Nashville is pretty special for Wilkerson – not only was #wcnash the first camp he ever attended, it was also the first camp he spoke at… and now it is the first camp he’s sponsored! UpThemes makes simple WordPress themes and offers speedy customer service & helpful website-building tips. Thanks, UpThemes!

Kurate.it is the brainchild of Ah So Designs and brings the Nashville-native Emma email marketing platform into our favorite place – the WordPress dashboard! Talk about a perfect match! John Housholder, the Ah So head squirrel, has been supporting WordCamp Nashville since the very beginning as a sponsor and volunteer. Thanks, Kurate.it!

Plesk is the only tool you'll ever need to build, secure and run websites and applications in the Cloud.

And many thanks to our Global Silver sponsors – WPML, DreamHost and plesk – Global Sponsors make it possible for us to confidently begin planning WordCamp. Knowing that they’ve got our back before we even secure a venue makes it possible to organize a planning team and set the scope for the kind of camp we can plan. Thanks, Global Platinum sponsors!

It is thanks to our Silver sponsors that we are able to provide snacks during the day and coffee on both days! When you grab a cup of coffee in the Wonderland Cafe, thank a Silver sponsor!

Faces of WordPress: Bonita Kolb

Name: Bonita Kolb

Employment: Author

Primary website:
www.bonitakolb.com

Twitter handle: @bonitakolb

How were you first introduced to WordPress? My publishers, Routledge and SAGE, request that all authors maintain websites. In other words, we are now required to participate in marketing our books. Knowing nothing about websites I luckily found information about WordPress online and decided to save money by developing my own site. I used the videos produced by WordPress and had my site live in a couple of days.

What do you like about it? WordPress is a system where you can learn as you go. You can start with a single page and then have the site grow as you gain skills. When you want to add features you can always find a video clip and written instructions to show you how.

What do you do with WP now? I use my website to promote myself as an author and keynote speaker. The site is also where I post my blog. I use Publicize to send my blog out to my other social media sites.

How has the WP community (local and beyond) helped you? Being new to Nashville, I have not attended a WordCamp here, but I have attended local WordCamps and also WordCamp US in Philadelphia. I am always impressed that the most gifted developer is always willing to answer the most basic question!

Did learning WP lead to any significant professional, personal, creative changes in your life? Tell us how! Through my website I have received comments from readers of my books in many other countries. It is always rewarding to an author to know that someone has found their books helpful.

What would you tell a brand new user? Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Everything that you screw up can be undone. Someone else has already made the mistake and can help with the correction. While professional help would improve my website, with minimal technical skills I have a website that does what I need it to do.

Anything else we should we know? While I have been an author of marketing textbooks for years, I plan on introducing a line of short eBooks that I will self-publish. I am glad I already have the website developed to use as a marketing platform.

Do you use WordPress? Do you live in the Middle Tennessee area? If so, we want to feature you and your story of how WordPress makes your work awesome. Submit your story here.

Faces of WordPress: Shelby Webb

Name: Shelby Webb

Employment: Holistic Nutrition Consultant

Primary website: webbwellnessconsulting.com

Twitter handle: @webbwellconsult

How were you first introduced to WordPress? I began with a wordpress.com site, then moved over to wordpress.org in 2015.

What do you like about it? I like that WordPress is intuitive as I knew nothing about websites before I started my own.

What do you do with WP now? I use wordpress as a blog for my holistic nutrition consulting business.

How has the WP community (local and beyond) helped you? Free plugins and forums have been absolutely critical. They have helped me teach myself how to do all the basic things.

Did learning WP lead to any significant professional, personal, creative changes in your life? Tell us how! It definitely helped me spread my message about holistic health, and the more I learn, the more exposure my website gets.
What would you tell a brand new user?

Definitely use the free resources available to you online so that you can learn about plugins, etc. You can definitely learn this!

Do you use WordPress? Do you live in the Middle Tennessee area? If so, we want to feature you and your story of how WordPress makes your work awesome. Submit your story here.

For out-of-towners

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.

A note on Saturday lunch catering

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

Wait… why did the #wcnash ticket price increase?

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?

Faces of WordPress: Pam Saxon

Name: Pamela Saxon

Employment: Saxon Creative – Brand Strategy, Web Design/Development & Marketing

Primary website:
http://saxoncreative.com

Twitter handle:
@pamsaxon

How were you first introduced to WordPress? I began in print design 16 years ago, and my clients began asking for web design soon after. In order to accommodate them, I taught myself HTML and started using Dreamweaver. Soon after that, blogging became more popular and I could see the writing on the wall that WordPress was the way to go. In 2007 I began using WP and have never looked back.

What do you like about it? Being a brand strategist and designer first and foremost, I like its flexibility and ease of use. WordPress allows me to design sites in a way that reflect a brand’s personality, while simultaneously offering the capability for my clients to post without having to contact me first, giving them ownership of their site(s). They like feeling self-empowered, and that makes me happy.

What do you do with WP now? I help small business owners brand their company’s websites in a unique and compelling way. I tackle big questions, envision the “big picture”, and am driven to provide outstanding strategic creative solutions that help my clients make more money, position themselves as industry leaders and support them in their quest to improve the world we live in. I love this stuff. Helping people put a shine on their brand is the reason I get out of bed in the morning.

How has the WP community (local and beyond) helped you? Getting involved in our local WP community has connected me with other WP users, helping me to solve problems for my clients and giving me a place where I can share ideas with others. I feel a real sense of belonging.

Did learning WP lead to any significant professional, personal, creative changes in your life? Tell us how! Once I learned WordPress, I never went back. Before, I was paying someone to develop my websites for me. This was fine, but he was so busy and I found I was waiting longer and longer to get the work completed. By learning WordPress, I was able to take that control back and get my websites completed at a much faster pace. VERY empowering.

What would you tell a brand new user? I would tell a brand new user, “Don’t be afraid of breaking anything.” If you become part of the WP community, there are always people around who can help you through it. Breaking things and making mistakes is how you learn.

On that note, the second thing I would say is, “Always remember to BACK UP YOUR WEBSITE!”

Anything else we should we know? In my previous lifetime in show business as a performer, choreographer and director, I learned from people like Leonard Bernstein, Gregory Peck and Harrison Ford that a good brand is successful because of the way it makes people feel. People just want to be happy. They want a solution to their problems, and they want to sleep well at night. I am helping companies find their “it.” And “it” is thrilling.

Do you use WordPress? Do you live in the Middle Tennessee area? If so, we want to feature you and your story of how WordPress makes your work awesome. Submit your story here.