Author Archives: Sandi Batik

About Sandi Batik

Sandra is a WordPress Consultant and Trainer as well as a co-organizer of the Austin WordPress group. In addition to being a WordPress Evangelist, she is a partner in Pleiades Publishing Services and Pleiades WebCenter.

‘Grown In Texas’ WordCamp Austin May 18th, 2013

The theme of the WordCamp Austin 2013 is ‘Grown in Texas’. We are celebrating the tenth anniversary of WordPress, and saluting the WordPress Community that has grown and flourished here in Austin, and throughout the Lone Star State. We are designers, developers and users of WordPress. We’re colleagues, a community, and a ready resource to the small business owners, bloggers, artists, designers, educators, publishers and developers who contribute to vibrancy of the Austin WordPress Community.

WordPress Austin has grown over the years from a small informal group meeting at Halcyon coffee house in 2007, to a more structured interest group meeting first at Austin’s Conjunctured, and later at CoSpace. Today the Austin WordPress group has over 1460 members. To reflect our continuing membership expansion, we have segmented our WordPress group meetings to better address the different user levels and interests. We now hold five meetings a month at locations throughout the Austin Metro area. This will be our third WordCamp Austin adventure. In 2010 we held a 60-person WordCamp. Our Austin WordCamp 2012 boasted 250 attendees. This year’s WordCamp Austin will host 450-WordPress enthusiasts gathered to celebrate the tenth anniversary of WordPress and talk about, “What’s next?”

The first official announcement, thus the official “Birthday” of WordPress was made on May 27, 2003 in a humble summary post called “WordPress Now Available.”

Born out of a desire for an elegant, well designed, personal publishing system, GLP licensed and built on PHP and MySQL — what started as a fork of b2/cafelog by founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, has since grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world. WordPress is used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

WordCamp Austin 2013 is a celebration of how we all use WordPress today.

The tracks and sessions have been developed based on the data gathered from the 2013 Austin WordPress Member Survey. Come prepared to learn, share and have fun doing it — because that’s the way we do WordCamp here in in the Lone Start State.

A Small Orange Joins WordCamp Austin 2013 as a BRONZE Level Sponsor

a-small-orange-logoA Small Orange has once again joined Word Camp Austin as a BRONZE Sponsor.  Since A Small Orange was founded in Atlanta in 2003, they have grown to a point where we now have over 30 employees and serve tens of thousands of customers around the world. Their team provides award winning customer service and support 24-hours a day, 7-days a week over email.

The Small Orange team feels that the best customer experience is offered by focusing on the customer’s perspective. They design all their products and services with customer satisfaction in mind. Ease of use and clarity in presentation are some of the key factors to A Small Orange success, and they enjoy providing their customers with rewarding experiences every day.

Their vision is simple: “Perfecting hosting while maintaining a homegrown feel with a focus on people – our customers, our employees, and our community.” The Small Orange headquarters are now located in beautiful downtown Durham, NC. When you see the A Small Orange representatives at WordCamp, please welcome them to Austin and give them our thanks for supporting the Austin WordPress Community.

If you’re interested in joining the ‘A Small Orange’ always-growing team, check out their jobs section.

Code Poet Joins WordCamp Austin 2013 as SILVER Sponsor

The WordCamp Austin 2013 Organizing Team is happy to announce that Code Poet has agreed to sponsor this year’s WordCamp at the SILVER level.  This the second year that Code Post has sponsored our WordCamp.

Last year the Code Poet representatives gave a well-attended presentation about why Code Poet was formed and explained their charge to find ways to Learn, teach, inspire and motivate the ever-growing WordPress Community.

If you use WordPress to build things for other people, Code Poet wants to make your life easier. No matter whether you freelance on a solo basis, lead a small web shop, make plugins in a dark closet, or crack the whip at a large design firm, our aim is to become your go-to source of information and resources to help you expand your WordPress skills and know-how. To make you better at what you do. To make it easier to make your living and look great doing it.

You’re part of a tribe of WordPress designers and developers over 10,000 strong, spanning the entire globe. codepoet.com aims to bring the working knowledge and real world strategies of those people into one place, for you to tap into.

Here’s what Code Poet has accomplished in their first year: they’ve collected their favorite resources, published case studies featuring real live Code Poets out in the wild. They share their experiences, reflections, and tips on how they tackle the challenges of making a living with WordPress. Code Poet has created two ebooks, one on Responsive Web Design, and one that tackles the treachery of charging for your work. Dive into the Code Poet content, install that security scanning plugin on the site of your choice, and let us know what you think.

Please note, while Code Poet offers resources for people who work with WordPress, we’re not able to offer WordPress support. For help, please visit the WordPress Forums.

Automattic is the parent company of Code Poet, WordPress.com, Polldaddy, Akismet, VaultPress, Gravatar, and more.

Fat Media

FAT Media Signs On As WordCamp Austin 2013 First GOLD Sponsor

WordPress Austin 2013 is happy to announce that FAT Media has agreed to be our first Gold Level Sponsor.

FAT Media is a new-media marketing agency based out of Tampa, Florida. They understand that if you’re doing business online you need to do things BIG.
Their Business focus is to make sure their clients get noticed, no matter what.

FAT Media is deeply connected to the web and how it functions at a cellular level. They specialize in positioning their client’s brand online and leverage the web to increase the client’s bottom line.

FAT Media offers custom WordPress development, eCommerce solutions, website migration, internet marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing, content marketing, eMail marketing, WordPress consulting and support.

When you see the FAT Media representatives at WordCamp, be sure to welcome them to Austin with a BIG THANK YOU for supporting the Austin WordPress Community!

Want to learn more? Contact FAT Media.

WP Engine Agrees to DIAMOND Sponsor Level for WordCamp Austin 2013

The organizers of WordCamp Austin 2013 are proud to announce that once again WP Engine has sign on as our first official Sponsor of WordCamp Austin 2013. WP Engine was our first Sponsor for WordCamp Austin 2010 and  2012. In 2011 WP Engine sponsored the Austin WordPress Developer’s  WordUp ‘Un-Conference”.

WP Engine and the Capital Factory also hosts our Austin WordPress Developers Meetup at their downtown office facility every month. The folks at WP Engine are an integral part of the Austin WordPress Community, who over the years, have invested time, talent and treasure to help the Austin WordPress group grow to be one of the largest, most active WordPress MeetUps in the Country.

WP Engine Team

WP Engine Team

Shayda Torabi, Austin WordPress Fairy Godsister, inexplicably left out of team photo on the WP Engine Team Photo

Shayda Torabi, Austin WordPress Fairy God Sister, inexplicably left out of team photo on the WP Engine