WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences that focus on everything WordPress. Each WordCamp is different, reflecting the local WordPress community it represents, but usually a wide range of people from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other.

WordCamp Austin 2013 got off to a rocky start, we have had one car accident, one major surgery and 10 days in ICU and we are still holding things together. I put the above definition of a WordCamp there to remind those reading this, or those on Twitter, that WordCamp is put on by volunteers for the local community, based on a mutual respect for one another. If you’ve been to a meetup in Austin, you’ve seen the volunteers they are the ones putting out the power strips or making the signs, they are helping answer questions after the meetup, they are the one’s taking time out of their personal lives to help give back to the community on a weekly basis.

This year has been a struggle to get things organized because there has been a lot of internal change with the local group, our regular meetup spot has been split between 4 places, some faithful volunteers have left us completely, but the goals of the WordCamp and what is best for our attendees is at the heart of our decisions.

This year, based on Survey data of the Local MeetUp we’ve developed 4 tracks with 4 sessions each in a larger venue because the biggest complaint we received last year was the size of the event was not large enough to support the interest of the community.

This year’s topics include:

Saturday May 18th

WordPress Administration/Management Topics
WordPress Design/Development Topics
Running a Business Site on WordPress
Content Specific Topics

There is a a second day, Sunday May 19th, organized by Clark Wimberly that is reserved for highly technical topics with specific applications held in a traditional unconference format so those topics will be decided on at conference time based on the consensus of the attendees.

We’ve had some schedule disruptions which complicated the messaging for our social media staff which has left the messaging stale and uninformative. While we worked to update the sessions and I apologize for that. We are working together as a broad community to organize an amazing WordCamp for Austin and appreciate your patience and look forward to meeting you May 18th.