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Aaaand it’s a wrap

What an amazing weekend!

A huge thank you to all our speakers for the time and effort they poured into their presentations, they were amazing! Also a big shout out to our sponsors – we couldn’t have done it without you. And then there is to you our attendees – you were a stellar crowd. We hope you had as good a time attending as we had hosting you.

On behalf of the organising team I’d like to give particular thanks to @tareiking and @rklis who organised WordCamp Auckland last year and helped out massively before and during the conference. Also to @ricky.blacker for carting the video gear in all the way from Brisbane. What a wonderful bunch of individuals.

So who’s organising WordCampNZ 2019?

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Cheers to our Tūī (Bronze) sponsors

Three  magnificent companies are sponsoring WordCamp Wellington at Tūī (Bronze) level. Thank you for being good sorts and helping make this conference happen.

Our Tūī sponsors are:

Booking X
Booking X is a flexible WordPress plugin that allows you to create, accept, and manage bookings for your business. You can access and arrange bookings all in one place. The seamless workflow from posting your bookings to managing payments are just a few clicks away.

  • See Everything in Your Schedule
  • Remind Your Customers Through Email
  • Manage Bookings in Your Personalized Dashboards
  • Built to be customizable to fit your WordPress theme and branding
  • Do More With Booking X

Sign up for the newsletter at booking-x.com and get notified when the Booking X Bounty program begins

WP NET
WP NET is New Zealand’s first 100% dedicated Managed WordPress web host. We provide high-performance, NZ-based hosting services and friendly, responsive support from WordPress Experts.

WP NET offers cost-effective shared-server hosting and fully managed single-tenant cloud servers for businesses needing the next-level of performance, security and scalability.

Our Managed WordPress service includes all the extras you expect from a managed host, including managed updates, automatic backups, improved security, malware scanning, uptime monitoring and more.

Visit the WP NET website: https://wpnet.nz

Yoast
Yoast helps you to get the most out of your website by making SEO available for everyone. You might know our Yoast SEO plugin; with over 7.8 million active installs, Yoast SEO is one of the most popular WordPress plugins worldwide. But there’s more!

Our online courses help you develop the skills to make your website easier to find. And we’ve brought Yoast SEO to Magento and TYPO3 too, as we love to contribute to open source projects. All that ties up nicely with our ultimate goal: trying to make the web better for everyone.

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Thank you to our Kererū (Silver) sponsors!

We are chuffed to have three wonderful companies sponsoring us at Kererū level. We hugely appreciate their support in making this WordCamp happen.

Our Kererū sponsors are:

GoDaddy Pro
GoDaddy Pro is a free membership program for web developers, designers & agencies. It offers exclusive tools to help onboard, manage and maintain multiple clients and their sites fast and easy. With GoDaddy Pro tools, you can easily shop for your client, monitor their sites, and manage their products from a single dashboard. Additionally, your membership includes advanced 24/7 technical support and rewards for recommending GoDaddy to your clients.

You can use GoDaddy Pro with all of GoDaddy’s newly refreshed hosting products, including Managed WordPress, cPanel shared hosting, our brand new cloud product, and our virtual and dedicated solutions.

And, always get the best price on GoDaddy products with your “30% off list price” member benefit.

Learn more about GoDaddy Pro.

Bluehost

Bluehost has been a WordPress partner since 2005 and powers over 1 million WordPress sites worldwide. Their objective is to help customers, whether novice or pro, create a thriving online presence at an affordable price. With a team of in-house tech experts available 24/7, Bluehost dedicates time and resources to providing the best support and services in the industry. Join millions of other site owners and see what Bluehost can do for you and your online presence.

FutureLab
FutureLab custom-creates online solutions for businesses in New Zealand and Australia. Specialising in online magic-making, slick content-creating, smart industry-shaking, we blend technical wizardry and a critical eye for design with digital strategy to maximise impact online.We specialise in highly customised WordPress websites, infinitely customisable, easy to use and a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes.

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Meet the speaker: Rachel McAlpine

Rachel McAlpine first saw a web page in 1995 and jumped right in, boots and all. As a writer, she instantly saw that the World Wide Web was a game-changer for all communications, first for business and government and eventually even for literature. When Rachel retired from business (Contented.com) at 75, she turned her attention to writing for non-commercial reasons.

Rachel will introduce you to the wonderful world of seniors blogging for personal reasons.

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Meet the speakers: Mike Eastwood and Ralf Klis

Mike Eastwood designed and developed his first website, in 1994, for the Arts Marketing Board of Aotearoa (AMBA). Since then he’s worked with clients in Europe, America, Australia and New Zealand. Mike’s business Webalite is a Certified HubSpot Partner Agency that creates custom Themes and Plugins to extend WordPress websites.

Ralf Klis is still enjoying programming, despite running the WordPress Agency FutureLab. Originally backend Perl and PHP developer Ralf has been with WordPress since 2009. As one of the organisers of Auckland Meetup and WordCamp Auckland Ralf tries to attend as many WordCamps in the region as possible.

Both Mike and Ralf will discuss Life with Gutenberg during our panel.

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WP Engine makes the party happen

The fine folks at WP Engine know a thing or two about a good experience. So we are not entirely surprised but certainly extremely grateful to have them on-board as our After-party sponsor. This party wouldn’t happen without you.

Thanks! Now over to you:

WP Engine is the world’s leading WordPress digital experience platform that gives companies of all sizes the agility, performance, intelligence, and integrations they need to drive their business forward faster. WP Engine’s combination of tech innovation and an award-winning team of WordPress experts are trusted by over 70,000 companies across 130 countries to provide counsel and support, helping brands create world-class digital experiences. Founded in 2010, WP Engine is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and has offices in San Francisco, California; San Antonio, Texas; London, England; Limerick, Ireland, and Brisbane, Australia.

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Meet the speakers: Haley Brown and Brendan Woods

Haley Brown is straight-shooting head honcho of Brand Shack. Your guru in all things design and branding, on a mission to create cutting edge design that knocks your socks off.

Haley will share her way of reaching freelance work/life balance. In this talk, you will learn different ways on how to manage a healthy work/life balance and relieve the stress of self-employment while ensuring a recurring income.

Brendan Woods works as a Team Lead with XWP, managing large-scale WordPress solutions, though Brendan has also had substantial experience in the Product Owner role.

With a keen interest in data analysis (currently completing a Masters of Data Analytics), Brendan has quickly become one of XWP’s resident GDPR experts, working with companies to assess the impact the incoming legislation will have for how technology companies operate in the EU.

Brendan’s talk will provide an overview of the major changes brought in by the GDPR, what businesses need to know in order to comply, and why data privacy is becoming an even greater issue in the minds of consumers.

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Cheers to Jetpack

Our massive thanks go out to Jetpack. As a Kākā (Gold) level sponsor these excellent people made WordCamp Wellington a reality. We couldn’t have done it without them.

Kia ora Jetpack! Now let’s hear from you:

Transform how you work with your WordPress sites and rest easy knowing they’re always firing on all cylinders. Jetpack connects your site to the global services, community, and support provided by WordPress.com so you can focus on the stuff that matters.

Jetpack automatically shields your site from the unwanted attention of spammers, hackers, and malware, while real-time sync and backup means you don’t have to worry about data loss. Straightforward traffic-building tools help you attract the attention of readers and search engines. Pages and videos are delivered at high speed from a global, ad-free content delivery network.

Jetpack sends new content directly to your subscribers’ inboxes and shows readers related content, helping you increase page views per visitor and boost ad revenue. Whenever you need it, you can rely on priority support from our global team of WordPress experts to ensure a friction-free experience for your visitors — and for you.

Make your site work for you. Get your Jetpack today at Jetpack.com

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Meet the speakers: Hannah Malcolm and Talia Carbis

Have you planned your WordCamp Wellington weekend already? To make it easier for you, we keep introducing our speakers.

Hannah Malcolm loves pixels and code. She can usually be found in front of a screen, researching front-end techniques, or embarking on a new digital project. Hannah will share her journey of creating WordPress-ception:  a WordPress website that creates new WordPress websites. You will learn about the process and tools she used to automate bespoke WordPress theme design and development entirely.

Talia Carbis is a teacher, artist and mother from Brisbane, Australia.
She has been using WordPress since 2005 in many capacities including blogging (personally and professionally) and consulting.

Talia will focus on diversity:

  • Is there much diversity in the WordPress community currently?
  • What role do we play in encouraging diversity as WordPress users, developers, employers, and contributors?
  • How can we improve diversity?
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Food at WordCamp

Dear all, we tried to address all your dietary requirements and requests in our catering orders. Just in case you need to know a bit in advance what kind of food we’ll serve during the event:

Saturday, 23rd of June:

Pomegranate Kitchen is our caterer for the day. Welly people know Pomegranate really well – this is a great social enterprise that employs cooks from a refugee background.  And the food is delicious. You can take a look at their catering menu on their website. We’ll serve wraps and sweets.

Sunday, 24th of June:

We’ll serve Hell Pizza (who can customize their pizza and make it vegan, vegetarian or gluten-free). And Sweet Release will provide sweets for coffee breaks.  There will be gluten-free and vegan options.

Coffee of the weekend:

We are lucky to have our own barista from Ripe Coffee both days.  The menu includes full espresso menu, tea option, decaf, soy, almond and rice milk options.

We provide 3 drinks a day for each participant – we’ll give you coupons for that during the registration. Coffee will be served from 9 a.m. on Saturday, from 9.15 on Sunday. Please let us know if you need more caffeine, we’ll sort it out.