Wordcamp NYC! I saw, I spoke, I sponsored

I returned Monday from Wordcamp in New York City and it rocked!

I attended, presented and made a donation to the event!

Attending

I decided to attend because Andrea Rennick of WPMU Tutorials was speaking. If you don’t know Andrea (@andrea_r on Twitter), Jim Groom put it best in his presentation,

“Andrea single handedly runs the WordPress support forums…as a volunteer!”

Not only does she tirelessly help people on the forums, she develops WordPress and WPMU sites!  She is extremely technical, cheerful and ever so patient!  I was looking forward to meeting her in person after chatting with her online via email, Twitter and by phone.  My chance came to give Andrea a big ole’ hug, hand her the “Free Hugs” pin for her daughter (see 500 Hugs for Blogworld) and watch her present!

The sessions were good.  The event was held at Baruch college in the heart of Midtown Manhattan.

I’ll be doing a writeup on my personal blog, ButYoureAGirl.com later this week.

Presenting

I did two sessions:

Borrow, Buy or Build? Get Your Dream Theme or Bust. How To Find, Build or Buy a Great WordPress Theme. WordPress is easy to install, right? Well, what’s not so easy is a great looking site. Beautiful designs keep people on your website. Where do you find your themes? Most people start with Google; looking through hundreds of themes and trying to find just one that hasn’t been played out. Learn how to find, build and buy themes that will have people doing a double take!

Blueprint for Small Business. Every day, there are thousands of people who need a website built. They have no idea what it will take, how to do it or where to start. WordPress is great but how to tell that to a business owner? Join me to learn what it takes to prepare for a successful project.

Received a TON of positive feedback from both sessions and have had a steady influx of consulting and training requests come in!  For the second session, I’ll be posting the checklist for Small Business later this week.

Donating

For this Wordcamp, I made a sponsorship donation of $250 because Jane’s call to action moved me.

So come on, what are you waiting for? Celebrate your success by giving something back to the community that makes WordPress possible, and let us celebrate you in return.

Making money in the WordPress community, contributing back and sustainability have all been hot topics.  I’ve donated before to individual developers but this request touched my heart.  I remembered when I first realized how big the WordPress community was and how much I had grown as a person since starting my personal blog last year.  Jane, who works for the parent company of WordPress (Automattic) was certainly right that other conferences would be more expensive:

At $250 and $500 respectively, these sponsorships are still cheaper than any of the conferences most people working with WordPress are likely to attend. In comparison, Future of Web Design (in NYC the 2 days after WordCamp NYC, one workshop day and one conference day) is $695. Web 2.0 Expo (in NYC the week following WordCamp NYC, lots of panels) ranges from $845 to $1995, depending on how much of it you want to attend. South by Southwest Interactive (in March in Austin, lots of panels) is $450-$550, depending on how soon you register.

I’ve been selected to speak at SXSW and was given a free Gold pass and discounted room rate so I felt that it would make sense to contribute to this Wordcamp.  Hooray!

Remember, I offer training for WordPress so check out the upcoming workshops!

Related posts:

1. Wordcamp NYC Attendees Save 50% on Workshops!
2. Wordcamp Atlanta Presentation: What The Heck is WordPress?