First WordCamp Dublin Set for October 14-15

photo credit: Ireland.com

Following up on the success of WordCamp Belfast last October, the WordPress community in Dublin will be hosting its first WordCamp October 14-15. Both camps began the early stages of planning last year and the two communities have shared some of the same organizers across their teams to help get these new camps off the ground in Ireland.

WordCamp Dublin will be held at DCU Business School and ticket sales will be capped at 250. In truly affordable WordCamp tradition, tickets are only €35 and include access to two tracks of speakers on both camp days, catered lunch, and an after party on Saturday night in Dublin City Centre.

“Given it’s our first WordCamp Dublin it’s difficult to select a venue when we’ve no idea about how many people would like to attend,” co-organizer Colm Troy said. “But demand so far has been great so if you want a ticket I’d recommend getting one sooner rather than later.”

Most of the camp’s five organizers are also part of the Dublin WordPress meetup, which is fairly active with 25-30 people attending regularly. They meet the first Thursday of every month and host a local speaker to teach attendees something new. WordPress developers generally gravitate towards the more technical talks, while WordPress users are more interested in talks about improving and promoting their websites.

WordCamp Dublin will feature one track with advanced WordPress, coding, and development topics and a second track that covers aspects of running a business, growing website traffic, podcasting, and other related topics.

“​The Dublin WordPress community, based on what I’ve seen and experienced elsewhere (Buenos Aires, Paris, Vienna, UK, Italy), is pretty unusual,” co-organizer Rodolfo Melogli said. In addition to co-organizing the local WordPress meetup, Melogli also organizes the Dublin E-commerce and WooCommerce Meetups.

“We have complete beginners, who after years of using other CMSs have finally decided to start using WordPress,” Melogli said. “We have passionate bloggers, who have been exploiting the SEO and content management features of WordPress since the very beginning. Then, we’ve got successful themers, popular plugin developers and experienced WordPress freelancers. Making sure everyone is catered for at each WordPress meetup and at the upcoming WordCamp is our biggest challenge and main priority.

“The beautiful thing about the WordPress community, and especially in Dublin, is that you can have a successful theme seller sitting beside a complete beginner. And they both have things to share.”

Organizers have just announced the full lineup of speakers for the WordCamp and co-organizer Colm Troy said the team was “blown away by the quality and quantity of excellent speaking applications” they received.

The camp’s designers have created a new “blocky” style wapuu for the occasion to accompany the event’s modular design theme. They were aiming for a Lego-like wapuu while incorporating the cosmopolitan landmark “Spire of Dublin.”

“​We have a couple of ideas floating around that will definitely add a unique Irish aspect to WordCamp Dublin but it’s too early to let the cat out of the bag on those yet,” Troy said. “In terms of what people can expect, Dublin and Ireland in general has a well earned reputation as one of the most welcoming places in the world. In many ways, our welcoming spirit is closely aligned with the ethos of the WordPress community and I think it’s going to be a really special weekend for attendees regardless of whether they’re new to WordPress or WordCamp veterans.”