All posts by Joe Casabona

Thank You to Our Volt (in-kind) Sponsors!

Our Volt Sponsors helped provide some great services leading up to, and on the day of the event. Be sure to check them out – we couldn’t have done it without them!

Plain

plain

Plain is a small yet well-adept team that does design, development, and consulting for applications, web sites, brands, and more. They have our own products, Barley and Unmark, and a coworking space called Coalwork. They’re based in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Contribution:  The WordCamp Scranton Logo

Sticker Giant

SGLogo300px__5526f953449aaStickerGiant prints high-quality stickers and labels. They have the best customer service, quick turnaround times and free custom shapes using state of the art laser cutting. Every sticker has a story. Want to share your story today? They’re waiting to hear from you. stickergiant.com

French Girls

FG_logo

French Girls was created over a booze-fueled weekend hackathon hosted by the world famous app development shop, APPEK. Locking themselves in an abandoned warehouse deep in the pothole district of downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, the team sat down with absolutely no idea of what to do. Several cases of beer and many games of polish pong later, the wild idea of taking selfies and having strangers draw them anonymously somehow rose from the confusion.

Solve the Net

STN

Solve the Net aims to bridge the gap between web technologies and the companies that use them by providing web site development, social media, training, and IT consulting.

Contribution: Volunteer T-Shirts

NEPA BlogCon

BlogCon

NEPA BlogCon is an annual, day-long conference that’s so much more than your average “Hey, let’s talk about blogging,” event. If you’re looking to learn the REAL scoop behind what makes the blogosphere the place to be nowadays, then this is the event for you.

This year’s BlogCon is on Saturday, September 12th.

Contribution: Advertising

Adezzo

ADEZZO-preza_v2-red-2

Adezzo is a brand new, incredible coffee shop right in downtown Scranton. They serve coffee, pastries, lunch food, and other great stuff!

Contribution: Coffee

 

Thank You to Our Watt Sponsors!

Our incredible sponsors helped make WordCamp Scranton a great event. Be sure to show them some love!

Coalwork

text_logo

Coalwork is a coworking space located at the heart of Downtown Scranton. It offers a shared office environment and is designed to help bring people together. Coalwork helps cultivate relationships…as well as get people out of the house! Learn more at http://coalwork.com

Siteground

sg

SiteGround, with over 10 years in the business, provides managed WordPress hosting that does not miss a thing! Their servers, available in 3 different data centers across the world, are optimized for ultimate WordPress speed and security and they provide many goodies for the WordPress fans – automatic updates for the core WordPress and its plugins, WordPress SuperCacher for ultimate speed acceleration, staging tool for the coders and unique WordPress autoinstaller for the starting users – all crafted in-house by the SiteGround team. And still they do not forget the importance of the good old standard hosting features like the domain name registration, the email service, control panel and the reasonable pricing. They also have a support team that is not only available 24/7 by phone, chat and ticketing, but consists of WordPress enthusiasts who will help you with specific WordPress issues. SiteGround has been actively involved with the community speaking, supporting and attending various WordCamps around the world and by sponsoring WordCamp Miami, they want to further contribute to the amazing WordPress community.

Posture

posture_logo_WCScr

Posture Interactive is a Scranton, Pennsylvania-based full-service agency committed to the highest standards of design & technology, with a focus on web development, branding & identity, marketing & consulting.

WeFixBrokenWebsites

wefixbrokenwebsites-header

WeFixBrokenWebsites is a frontend WordPress web design and development shop focused on small business and solo-preneurs. We provide answers, solutions and consulting services for WordPress sites as well as first class SEO, PPC, and local directory management. To us responsive is not only about your website.

We speak plain English to nonGeeks.

Thank You to Our Kilowatt Sponsors!

We had a lot of great sponsors, all helping to make WordCamp Scranton a HUGE success. Show them some love and check them out 🙂

DreamHost

dh_logo-a-2014-940x198

DreamHost is a global Web hosting and cloud services provider with over 350,000 customers and 1.2 million blogs, websites and apps hosted. The company offers a wide spectrum of Web hosting and cloud services including Shared Hosting, Virtual Private Servers (VPS), Dedicated Server Hosting, Domain Name Registration, the cloud storage service, DreamObjects, and the cloud computing service DreamCompute. More information can be found athttp://dreamhost.com.

Chris Lema

LemaName-HiRes-logo-604x240

Chris Lema is the CTO and Chief Strategist at Crowd Favorite. He’s also a daily blogger, a public speaker, and product strategist. He helps companies leverage WordPress, and helps WordPress companies find leverage.

For twenty years Chris has developed and managed high performing engineers to build software products – particularly SaaS products in a variety of B2B vertical markets. He’s also spent the last ten years coaching startups on product development & marketing strategies.

BlackOut Design

Screenshot 2015-06-20 09.40.28

BlackOut Design is an interactive agency that blends emerging technologies with traditional media to produce innovative, effective and measurable marketing results.

We offer the resources of a full-service advertising agency and our experienced and talented team is dedicated to delivering one-of-a-kind concepts every time.

Pagely

pagely-full-gray-640x220

Pagely is the world’s first, and most scalable Managed WordPress hosting platform

SearchWP

searchwp-576x160 (286x79@1x)SearchWP instantly improves WordPress search by utilizing your existing search form(s) and results page to provide more relevant results. SearchWP makes your ecommerce product details, PDF content, custom fields, taxonomy terms, Shortcode content (and more!) searchable and fully customizable. Find out more at https://searchwp.com

Thank You to Our Megawatt Sponsors!

Our sponsors helped us put on a great event! Be sure to check them out!

WPML

wpml-web-940x198

WPML turns WordPress websites multilingual. It works with caching, SEO and E-Commerce plugins, and allows the building of complete multilingual sites. WPML powers simple blogs as well as corporate and enterprise sites.

WPML allows users to translate everything in the site, including content, menus, widgets and even theme and plugin texts. WPML powers over 400,000 commercial websites from all over the world.

More information about going multilingual can be found at WPML.org

Crowd Favorite

cf-logoCrowd Favorite is a premier, boutique professional services firm focused on enterprise-level clients such as National Geographic, Lexus, DirecTV, Motorola, and several major movie studios. A leader in the WordPress community and the first WordPress professional services firm, Crowd Favorite has established offices throughout the world to deliver large-scale client projects. Crowd Favorite also provides consulting and web development services specializing in web applications and user experience.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy_Pro

GoDaddy’s mission is to radically shift the global economy toward small businesses by empowering people to easily start, confidently grow and successfully run their own ventures. With more than 12 million customers worldwide and 57 million domain names under management, GoDaddy gives small business owners the tools to name their idea, build a beautiful online presence, attract customers and manage their business.

Thank you to Our Gigawatt Sponsors!

WordCamp Scranton was a HUGE success, in part thanks to our sponsors. This week we will be thanking them with blog posts and social media mentions. If you enjoyed yourself, check them out. They made it possible!

Media Temple

mt-250x140-dkFrom its inception in 1998, (mt) Media Temple has been on a mission to help people and businesses succeed online.

Over 125,000 customers in 100 countries now rely on Media Temple’s tools for domain registration, web hosting, business applications, virtual servers, and other cloud services to power more than 1.5 million websites. With 200 dedicated, U.S.-based employees, Media Temple takes pride in our 24/7 customer support. Our customers range from everyday people to top bloggers, creative professionals, and small businesses, as well as large enterprises like Starbucks, Adidas, Samsung, and Toyota.

More information can be found anytime on the web at http://mediatemple.com or on Twitter @MediaTemple.

Jetpack

jetpack-logo-horizontal-940x198

Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin that simplifies managing your sites by connecting to WordPress.com. This connection enables Photon (global CDN for images), uptime monitoring, brute force protection, traffic-boosting tools, single sign on, multiple site management, and automatic or bulk plugin updates. Additionally Jetpack includes several features that help you customize the look-and-feel of your site without needing extra plugins. More information can be found at jetpack.me

WiredTree

wiredtreelogo600wideWiredTree provides Managed VPS and Managed Dedicated Servers to WordPress users worldwide from our Chicago-based data center and offices. Every WT server is backed by 24×7 telephone support, ticket support with 15 minute average response times, and is fully managed and monitored by WiredTree to maximize uptime and minimize frustration. All servers come ready-to-run with cPanel/WHM and are optimized and security hardened with firewall and anti-spam out of the box. With experience in SSD technology, MariaDB, Memcached, WordPress plugins, server optimization, and LiteSpeed Web server, WiredTree can take your site’s performance to the next level.

Bluehost

bluehost_logo-940x198

Bluehost has been a WordPress partner since 2005 and powers over one million WordPress sites. Their goal is to provide outstanding hosting services and customer support for the best possible price. Bluehost is also constantly innovating and upgrading their services and infrastructure at no additional cost to their customers. Join the millions of other website owners that have already chosen Bluehost and see how they can help you with your site.

Why WordCamp Scranton is Important

Friend and Sponsor Colin Devroe wrote a great post today about Why WordCamp Scranton is Important for our area.

Careers can be started and bolstered at WordCamps. I’ve heard many stories of people attending WordCamps for the first time and that being the starting point of them changing careers and becoming WordPress developers or designers. A WordPress developer or designer is capable of earning $80,000 or more per year and are in high demand. There are not that many jobs the Scranton area that can promise that.

I will say that I deeply appreciate WNEP’s coverage, understand why they do things the way they do (it was explicitly explained to me), and couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out. We are nearly sold out thanks to them!

Colin makes some incredible points about the technology scene in our area and everyone involved is hoping this will help bring that community closer together! We are really looking forward to a great event.

WordCamp Scranton is this Weekend (with Contributor Day)!

We can’t believe WordCamp Scranton is just a few days away, but it is! This week we will be thanking all of our sponsors, but first we wanted to get some things settled.

First, did you get your tickets yet? We still have a bunch left, but they are going fast!

Second, if you haven’t heard, Matt Mullenweg will be there answering your questions! Thanks Matt!

The schedule is now posted. Registration starts at 8am with our keynote speaker, Zach LeBar, going on at 8:45am. This is bound to be a great talk, so don’t miss it! Matt will be closing out the day.

The after party is at Backyard Alehouse at 7pm. There will be some food and a cash bar. It’s going to be a blast!

Finally, some new news! We are going to have a Contributor Day at Coalwork on Sunday July 19th! It will start at 9:30am and go as long as everyone can stay! There will be coffee, wifi, and maybe some food. If you’ve been working on something or what to finally contribute to WordPress Core, that’s the day to do it!

Get to Know Your Speakers: Ben Dunkle

1) What do you do for a living (company you work for, official title, daily responsibilities, etc.)?
I’m an associate professor at Canisius College, in the Digital Media Arts program. I teach students about the web, and graphic design, and typography, and illustration, and user interface, and print design. I research the heck out of digital icon technology. I consult for Field 2 Design, a WordPress design and development studio in Buffalo, NY.

2) How did you get into WordPress?
I’ve been aware of it since b2. Around 2006, one of my students showed me a website done in WP, and it looked just like the ones I was making with plain old html. I thought, to that point, it was just a blogging app. That’s when I saw that these platforms (WP, drupal, Moveable Type, Joomla, etc.) could power entire sites and take away the pain of heavy programming. I played around with everything and it became clear that WP was by far the best one. Then in 2008, the WP open source community had a contest to design the icons for vs. 2.7, which featured a dramatic overhaul of the wp-admin. I won. After that, I was permanently listed on wordpress.org/about as a core designer. Hooray!

3) What’s a great experience you had at a WordCamp?
Matt Mullenweg added me to his state of the word address in 2013, talking about the mp8 plugin we worked on that lead to the current WP admin. I got to stand up and people cheered for me. Hooray!

4) What are your non-WordPress, non-Computer related hobbies?
Drawing (because you need to draw constantly in this business), printmaking (I have an MFA in printmaking, focused on artist books and intaglio, from SUNY Buffalo), chess (3 minutes or less only), swimming (ex-Jones Beach lifeguard for 7 years), surfing (Lake Erie, where I live, get some nice swells in the fall–search youtube!), yoga (I do something called Ashtanga yoga to try to stay in shape), sci-fi movies (particularly anything with Ethan Hawke or Ewan McGregor).

5) If you could be any fictional character, who would you be and why?
Spiderman. No other superhero comes close.

Matt Mullenweg will Host a Town Hall Q&A at WordCamp Scranton!

We have a big announcement today: Matt Mullenweg will be closing out WordCamp Scranton with a Town Hall Q&A!

Matt is the founding developer of WordPress and the CEO of Automattic. He hosts regular Town Hall-style meetings within the company, where employees have the opportunity to ask him anything. To get an idea of the format and how his session will work, you can see the Q&A he did for WordCamp Europe.

We could not be more excited and humbled that Matt would take time out of his busy schedule to come out and christen the first WordCamp Scranton by answering any questions the NEPA WordPress community might have. We are truly looking forward to a fantastic event!

Get to Know Your Speakers: Renée Moore

1) What do you do for a living (company you work for, official title, daily responsibilities, etc.)?

I own a marketing company that specializes in working with independent pharmacies. I also work as the program director for Women & Bicycles at the Washington Area Bicyclists Association and teach bike Safety at Bike Maryland. I use WP and do blogs for all of them.

2) How did you get into WordPress?

I had a bad website and decided to change it. I head about WP and told my entrepreneur colleague about it. She needed a new site too. We figured we could have a new site in a month. Let’s just say that goal wasn’t met. But we now do web design and blogging for a living.

3) What’s a great experience you had at a WordCamp?

I was at Word Camp Toronto and met so many great people. Loved speaking there for my first time and the tweets about my presentation were so wonderful!
4) What are your non-WordPress, non-Computer related hobbies?
I love to bike, kayak, travel, read and cook

5) If you could be any fictional character, who would you be and why?

Samantha Jones from Sex and the City because she was fabulous and sexy!