Live stream

We are streaming WordCamp San Francisco live.

Watch Matt Mullenweg, lightning talks, and Scott Rosenberg live this afternoon.

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Genius Bar Help Desk

My Canadian income taxes are filed, and now with a clear mind I can get to enjoying WordCamp San Francisco 2010… once I share with you info about the all day WordCamp Genius Bar Help Desk.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been calling in favors and asking friends to come out of retirement to volunteer at this year’s SF Genius Bar. This is the most diverse line up yet, much less forcing of my co-workers, and there is expertise in all WordPress related areas.

Click here for the lineup with some of each person’s specialties.

Don’t leave them standing around enjoying each others company and planning world liberation — stump the nerds! No question is too basic or scenario too hard — WordPress related only please!

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Registration is Closed

Advanced registration is now closed. If you did not yet buy a ticket, you will be able to buy a ticket as a walk-in at the event for $60. There are a few people who were having trouble buying a ticket on the site who emailed us over the last couple of weeks. Those people will get an email from me letting them know they can buy a walk-in ticket at the advance rate since it wasn’t their fault they weren’t registered before the deadline.

Walk-in attendees can pay with cash or credit card (MasterCard, Visa, Discover, American Express) when they arrive, and will receive a receipt by email, thanks to the nifty Square payments system we’ll be using (more on that later). Walk-ins will only get a shwag bag/t-shirt if we have extras, but in the event we run out we can mail a t-shirt to any walk-ins after the event.

Don’t forget: your name badge will have your gravatar printed on it. Go to the attendees page and find your name. If you have a gray “mystery man” icon next to your name, then you need to get a gravatar or add the email address you used to register for WordCamp to your existing Gravatar.com account. If you don’t have a gravatar, don’t worry, you can always draw a picture of yourself on your name badge after you get there tomorrow!

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Check-in with foursquare

While attending WordCamp SF this Saturday at the Mission Bay Conference Center or the developer day on Sunday at Pier 38, we’ll have a special way for you to tell the world that you are present — a check-in using the foursquare service.

Once you arrive at one of the venues and check-in, you’ll be able to activate a special WordCamp SF foursquare badge reserved exclusively for the attendees — something your non-attending friends and family will no doubt envy for years to come.

And while checking-in, feel free to send your check-ins to twitter and use the #wcsf hashtag to get in the flow.

So happy check-ins and thanks to foursquare for working on this and showing much love to the WordPress community.

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Are You Ready to Party?

Media Temple logo(mt) Media Temple was an early adopter in supporting WordPress as the world’s best blogging platform, and is proud to be a returning sponsor at the 2010 WordCamp in San Francisco!

We’re returning this year in a more suitable role for the (mt) brand as the Closing Party Sponsor… and we love to party.  In the spirit of the community, we’ll giving out some extra special treats at the party!!  This is not your usual shwag; we’re talking an iPad or two and several lifetime hosting packages so come early and stay late!

We’re looking forward to seeing you at WordCamp!

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Bodysurfing the Blogosphere; or, It’s Okay To Talk About Money, Right?

Karl FogelEver since Nina Paley released her critically-acclaimed film Sita Sings the Blues under a free license, people have been asking her “But how does it make money?” That was never the most important question to Paley — most of all she wanted people to see her film — but it wasn’t an unimportant question either, and the interesting thing is she’s made more this way than traditional film distributors predicted she would make using the usual monopoly-based method. Sita Sings the Blues is lucky to have some highly non-traditional distributors, though, and what they did was made possible by today’s disintermediation technologies, including blogs.

This Saturday at 10:30 I’ll be talking about what motivated Nina Paley to release her first feature film under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license, what the audience reaction has been, how this economic model works, and what she’s up to now as Artist-in-Residence at the non-profit organization QuestionCopyright.org. (Sadly this talk conflicts with Scott Rosenberg’s talk, which I wanted to see. Ah well.)

I can’t resist a blatant plug for Nina’s film: Sita Sings the Blues was recently (and may currently still be) the highest rated film on Rotten Tomatos. You can find out why for yourself, as I’ll be bringing some DVDs with me.

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Hashtag!

Hey kids. As you start chattering online about WordCamp SF, try to use the hashtag #wcsf. We’ve used #wordcamp in the past, but let’s face it, that takes up twice as much room in your tweets! So remember, follow us at @wordcampsf to keep up to date, and use hashtag #wcsf to contribute to the conversation. :)

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Party Down with Media Temple!

Media Temple logoMedia Temple has been a sponsor of WordCamp San Francisco before, but this year they chose to focus their sponsorship on the afterparty. Their generous platinum sponsorship will provide for the open bar and a dancetastic DJ, and I fully expect it to live up the parties they’ve sponsored at other industry events. Frankly, the afterparty alone is probably worth the cost of a WordCamp ticket (seriously, with drink prices in this town?). And it does look like there might be a couple of iPads getting raffled off, so keep your eyes and ears open for more information about that.

Media Temple is a solid hosting company that offers a one-click install for WordPress sites, as well as more advanced WordPress hosting options. They sponsored the newbie track at WordCamp NYC last year, and I’ve used them for hosting myself. I hear they’re branching out into the cloud hosting space, so check out their site for their range of WordPress hosting products. A handful of Media Temple folks will be attending WordCamp SF, so if you see one them, say hello, and be sure to thank them in advance for the party. Because let’s face it, after taking advantage of the open bar and riding the high of the social wave that will be in effect, you might forget later on in the night. :)

Note: the afterparty will require a name badge for entry.

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WordPress and blogging: old enough to have a past

Photo of Scott Rosenberg

Scott Rosenberg

Scott Berkun is the guy who’s talking first thing in the morning about the future of WordPress. Among many other things, Scott is the author of a great book about how to be a good public speaker. So go to his session, for sure.

I’m the other Scott on this schedule, Scott Rosenberg, and though I have written a couple of books, neither of them is about public speaking.

After you hear Scott #1 talk as well as I know he can about the future of WordPress, listening to me talk about the past of WordPress and blogging may seem a little backwards.

Then again, the reverse chronology does seem somehow fitting.

Blogging really does have a long history now. Too many people think, understandably but regrettably, that blogging began roughly a year before whenever they started their own blogs.

My half-hour talk will be a little bit of a walk down memory lane for those of you who have been around all these years, and, I hope, an informative whirlwind tour for those of you who have not.

Someone once said: “The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history.” (It was either Hegel or Winston Churchill, according to various Web pages, which means, probably, that neither of them really said it.)

Together, we can refute this paradoxical bon mot! After all, blog software saves and organizes our own past, individually and collectively. Its own story deserves to be told and retold, and even, if we’re that lucky, passed down to future generations.

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Microsoft at a WordPress Conference, Huh?

Yes, you saw that correctly, Microsoft. You are probably asking yourself right now why Microsoft would be interested in sponsoring a WordCamp. The answer is simple: we <3 WordPress. We talk about it at our events, our blogging tool lets you easily create posts, we make it easy to install, build websites on it, and have built a few plug-ins.  

So as you can imagine, we are excited about being a Bling Bling sponsor for WordCamp San Francisco. We look forward as you do to hearing the latest news regarding WordPress, listening to how folks are using WordPress, and most importantly listening to you to see what we can do to make your lives easier when you use WordPress & Microsoft software.

If you see us at the event sitting next to you or hanging out at the attendee party, please talk to us. We are fans of WordPress like you. Also, we would love to hear from you as to what we can do to make your life easier when working with WordPress & Microsoft and the cool stuff you are doing. We will even buy you a drink if a bar is around for your troubles.

In fact, Friday night we will be having some drinks at the bar at Rickhouse at 7:30pm and will open a tab for WordCamp attendees. Why don’t you come out and hang out with us? It will be totally casual; we ain’t fancy. We’ll also make sure to get you on your way at a decent time so you can enjoy the big line-up on Saturday (and a clear head!). 

See you in San Francisco!

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