What?
WordCamp NZ (09) is the first annual conference for WordPress publishers, designers and developers based in New Zealand. It combines informal presentations with debate and discussion on the latest developments in the global WordPress community.
WordPress is a state-of-the-art web publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. Attendees include some of the leading developers and users of WordPress in New Zealand, including graphic designers, digital content creators, bloggers , online community managers and marketing communications practitioners of all flavours.
When?
WordCamp NZ is to be held on the weekend of 8-9 August 2009.
Where?
WordCamp NZ was held in Wellington, the capital city of Wellington.
The venue is the Mt Victoria Bowling Club, situated near the city centre and minutes away from the dining and entertainment centres. Facilities include wifi access and exceptional meeting room facilities.
About WordPress
WordPress is a free, open source state of the art web publishing platform for building everything form a straight forward blogs to complex fully featured website.
Written in PHP and supported by the MySQL database, WordPress offers intuitive administrative tools and sophisticated design features.
Facts and figures
WordPress began in 2003 as a simple open source blogging tool and has grown to be used on hundreds of thousands of websites with a worldwide user and developer community.
Its active developer community is responsible for thousands of free plugins, applications that extend the core functionality of the platform and allow for a very comprehensive feature set.
This thriving developer ecosystem has given rise to a flourishing WordPress industry with growing numbers of developers and designers delivering paid services.
Who uses WordPress?
WordPress is used by a growing number of high profile organisations. WordPress currently powers websites owned by The Financial Times, Reuters, CNN, Wall Street Journal and Yahoo!
In New Zealand a number of high profile sites use WordPress such as the New Zealand Stock exchange, Humans, BrightMinds Labs, Slamxhype, Thewire, Techsploder, American Chamber of Commerce – (Amcham), iJump – Simon Young, Brian Edwards Media and many others like the Journalism Schools at AUT and Wellington – Whitireia Journalism School and Victoria University student newspaper Salient.
There are also many smaller community groups like GreyLynn2030, Grey Lynn Community Centre and others like The New Zealand Rose Society using WordPress. There are also many creative businesses like Spacific Films , Topp Twins, Version Productions and MokoInk using Wordpress.
There are many industry commentators like Andrew Dubber, Diversity (Ben Kepes), Bill Bennett, Lance Wiggs, Miraz Jordan , Gareth Renowden with Hot Topic , Steve Price on Media Law and Nat Torkington who all use WordPress as their platform. New Zealand techpreneur Rod Drury blogged at his personal site for 5+ years and can now be found at Xero.
The NZ Centre for Social innovation uses Wordpress (and Ning) to “bring together public, private and community partners to create new solutions to New Zealand’s most pressing social needs.” The CSI programme also uses a Camp concept to leverage web technology over an extended period for social good projects.
There are even a few government departments like e-government – SSC, ALAC, Lively, E Learning Lunchbox, and Te Ara Signposts – about the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. There is even one called Research e-Labs - web trends, open source and technology in government which looks like one to track.
If you work one or more of the blogs listed above (mostly a random list) and you have a back story that may benefit others in the WordPress community you should get in touch about possibly being a Speaker.
You Might Know Me from Wordpress.com
WordPress also powers a free, blog hosting service at WordPress.com which draws roughly 100 million unique monthly visitors and is among the top 25 global sites, according to research firm Comscore.
On June 6th for example there were 213,733 bloggers, 210,795 new posts, and 56,364,443 words today.
Event sponsorship
There are two levels of sponsorship available for WordCamp NZ 2009 – private and corporate.
Sponsoring WordCamp NZ puts your organisation in front some of the most tech-savvy web professionals in the NZ in an informal and relaxed environment.
Private, microsponsor packages start at $140, for individuals or groups who wish to contribute funds to the second WordCamp NZ event. Publicity is optional for private sponsors who wish to support the event on a more low key level.
Wordcamp NZ has been set-up as a non-profit charitable trust and further business details will be available soon.
Corporate marketing options include:
Distribution of publicity material to all WordCamp NZ delegates.
Corporate logo displayed at the event
High visibility areas for your free-standing banners/pull-ups/posters (to be supplied by sponsor).
Corporate logo and links for 12 months on the following WordCamp NZ sites:
- http://wordcamp.org.nz
We would be happy to discuss a package that suits your marketing requirements.
Why sponsor WordCamp NZ 2009?
You will be able to connect your brand with influential bloggers and talented designers and developers involved with WordPress. We are looking for a small number of key sponsors and your marketing communications will be targeted to a small but genuinely receptive audience.
The audience
This is the first WordCamp to be held in the NZ and is likely to attract a wide and varied audience of the WordPress NZ community.
Many attendees will be responsible for blogs and websites with traffic ranging from hundreds to many thousands of visits per month. A number of confirmed attendees run multiple websites or are decision makers within development organisations.
Many will be updating their blog networks and social media sites live or between sessions and so publicity wise a wordcamp makes a very big splash.
Speakers
A number of the speakers are internationally significant such as Matt Mullenweg listed as one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web.
WordCamp NZ 2009 contacts
Event enquiries – Dan Milward
Sponsors Enquiries – Jason Kemp
Relevant website links
http://wordcamp.org.nz
WordCamp NZ site
http://central.wordcamp.org/
WordCamp worldwide schedule
http://wordpress.org/
The main WordPress website
Great to see you back again. You are looking sharp today. As the Conchords would say "Yeah, you heard us right. Subscribe via Our RSS feed " WordCamp Wellington 09 is over for now but stay tuned for more news.
