WordCamp Hamilton 2015 a sold out success

WordCamp Hamilton 2015 took place on Saturday June 7th at McMaster Innovation Park and the event was a sold out success. WordCamp events are grassroots organized WordPress focused conferences that have been taking place around the world for years. Hamilton had it’s first WordCamp in 2013 and the event was back this year after a one year hiatus.

This year’s edition was particularly awesome for having both a developer track and a blogger/designer track. Though there is plenty of overlap, there’s a large difference between the needs of bloggers looking to optimize their WordPress site (e.g. SEO, social media, site performance, etc.) and developers (building plug-ins, development tools, etc.). As someone more on the developer side of things, it made the event much more valuable for me.

I was able to grab these links below to talk slides in the developer track. Other speakers either didn’t mention links to slides, or I couldn’t find them online.

 

Topic: A Modern WordPress Developer’s Toolkit
Speaker: Adam Wills (@heavymetaladam)
Slides: adamwills.github.io/WordCamp2015

Topic: High Voltage – Building Static Sites With WordPress-Managed Content
Speaker: Nickolas Kenyeres (@knicklabs)
Slides: bird-house.ca/high-voltage-building-static-sites-with-wordpress-managed-content

Topic: How To Set a Vagrant Development System
Speaker: Paul Bearne (@pbearne)
Slides: slideshare.net/pbearne/vagrant-26890922

Topic: WordPress Accessibility – the fundamentals of Web Accessibility
Speaker: Jordan Quintal (@JordanQ416)
Slides: docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BCLAeCGvCZl9BnybNZnv_myEBNHg9eNFMqNfdOP8fhs (YouTube video)

Topic: Speed up your WordPress website
Speaker: Alan Lok (@alan_lok)
Slides: slideshare.net/alanlok1/speeding-up-your-wordpress-site-wordcamp-hamilton-2015

 

Overall the event was fantastic in terms of the community that came out, the connections formed, and the talk content itself. The speakers came from across Ontario (and Buffalo / New York State), which is great in terms of cross-pollinating with different communities and ideas. The event was also a fantastic value at just $20. No wonder it sold out!

If WordCamp Hamilton 2013 was a starting point for the WordPress community, WordCamp 2015 has shown how much it has grown since then. WordCamp Hamilton 2015 was amazing, if you’re interested in joining the local WordPress community check out the meetup group. Looking forward to WordCamp Hamilton 2016!