What is Foundation Friday?

We’ll be kicking off WordCamp LAX with a full day of workshops on Friday. We’ve recruited some awesome volunteer help to put these together with us, and we think they’re pretty much going to rock. You’ve got three choices for Foundation Friday:

First up, we have our Beginner Workshop. Never used WordPress before, but looking for a jumpstart? You’ll want to join our all-day beginner workshop. We’ll kick off the morning with a 4-hour intro to WordPress with Gregg Franklin of SeverPress. In the afternoon, workshop teachers will walk you through setting up your first WordPress site and will show you how to add and edit content, create menus, add widgets, install new themes, and more!

Our second workshop is our Design workshop, being planned and curated by Chris Ford of Creativity Included. We’re recruiting a gaggle of talented, successful design professionals to come and share practical tips and case studies on real-life projects and design problems they’ve solved.

And our third workshop is our Business workshop, being planned and curated by Steve Zehngut of Zeek Interactive. We’ll be providing smart, successful professionals who will share their knowledge with an audience of freelancers. Earn more money and work smarter with the tips and advice you’ll pick up in this all-day workshop.

And don’t forget – Foundation Friday is just one day of our three-day camp! If we’re packing this much awesome into Friday, just imagine how great the rest of the weekend is going to be! We’ll be sharing details on schedule and speakers for these three workshops as they’re finalized, so stay tuned if you’re interested!

First round of speakers announced!

We’re sure you’re wondering what awesome speakers and topics we have in store for you at WordCamp LAX 2014. Here’s our first round of speaker announcements – these peeps will be dropping knowledge on us during Saturday Sessions:


Sarah Wefald

Sarah Wefald is a front-end web developer and digital marketing specialist who co-facilitates the OC WordPress Web Designer meetup group and does tons of other awesome stuff too, like playing music. She’ll be speaking on content strategy and will show you how and why content marketing will help build your business and strengthen your website.


Jason CosperJason Cosper is the Senior Technical Advisor for WP Engine and star-crossed Lakers fan. He’ll be showing some strategies for combatting spam with his patented one-two punch of plugins and WordPress configuration.


Jarrett GucciJarrett Gucci, founder and owner of WPfixit.com, will be giving a tremendously helpful talk on what to do when you don’t know what to do. Advice on troubleshooting all sorts of wierd and bizarre issues that can occasionally crop up with WordPress sites.


Cal EvansCal Evans, international man of mystery, has been working with computers since he was 14 (we’re not telling you how many years ago that was, folks). Cal hails from Nashville, Tennessee and will be speaking on NONCE (Numbers Used Once) and explaining what they are and how to properly use them.


Louis ReingoldLouis Reingold, brave man who wants Alex Vasquez to write his official biography, will be speaking on how developers can turn their skills into cash by building a WordPress plugin.


JOSEPH KARR O’CONNORJoseph Karr O’Connor is the WordPress Accessibility Team Representative and an invited expert on the W3C HTML Working Group and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group. He’ll be speaking on how to make your WordPress site accessible without sacrificing design or innovation.


Nick HalseyNick Halsey is a WordPress core contributor, plugin and theme developer, a WordPress Google Summer of Code student and a student at USC studying Civil Engineering, Architecture, and Music Composition. Phew. He’ll be speaking on the WordPress Customizer API so that plugin and theme developers can implement previewable options in their themes and plugins.


Denise Van De CruzeDenise VanDeCruze is a trilingual programmer, designer, and entrepreneur who has a passion for travel. She’ll be speaking on building multilingual sites with WordPress, including good and bad examples, plugins that are available, and properly handling things like SEO.


Jennifer BournJennifer Bourn, creative director and digital strategist at Bourn Creative and a Genesis recommended developer, will be speaking on blogging to attract new prospects and clients. She’ll cover how to get maximum visibility for your blog posts and how to get them in front of the people who need what you offer.


Derek SpringerDerek Springer is a San Diego-based Code Wrangler at Automattic. He’ll be covering easy tips for taking your blog from good to great – and we all want our blogs to be the best they can be, right?


CHRISTOPHER FRAZIERChristopher Frazier has studied type design, illustration, user interface design, programming and more. He’ll be speaking on WordPress for enterprise, and giving practical tips on how large organizations can transition to using WordPress.


87a5c83f623938569b17b62d723e31b5Mika Ariela Epstein is a WordPress Support Specialist and Manager over at Dreamhost. Maybe better known to you as Ipstenu, Half-Elf Support Rogue. She’ll be speaking on how anyone can make their WordPpress site more secure.


I mean, let’s face it, people. If we just had these twelve amazing peeps giving these talks, we could pretty much sell out our tickets and call it a day. But these are just half the sessions for Saturday. We’ve got twelve more speakers for Saturday on the way, and also the big reveal on those Foundation Friday speakers, so stay tuned!

Call for Speakers

Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen! It’s that time again – time to apply to be a speaker at WordCamp Los Angeles. If you work with WordPress, then we just know you have something awesome to share. Head on over to the call for speakers and submit to speak!

It doesn’t matter if you’re a developer, designer, blogger, business owner, lawyer, nonprofit, or anything and everything in between. We’ll have somebody at WordCamp LA who will want to hear what you’ve got to share, guaranteed, so don’t be shy!

Also, if you’ve got a suggestion for a topic you’d love to hear about or a speaker you’d love to see, we’d be happy to hear from you at our suggestions page.

Speaker submissions are now closed.

WordCamp LA 2014!

We’re happy to announce that WordCamp Los Angeles is officially on the calendar!

WordCamp LA will be September 5-7, 2014 at Cal State Los Angeles.

Subscribe using the form in the sidebar to stay up to date on the most recent news. We’ll be keeping you posted on all the details over the coming months, including speaker submissions, ticket sales and more!