“Beginner Day? What exactly is Beginner Day at WordCamp LAX?”

It’s a common question, especially for the day’s target demographic; those who are new to WordPress. Held the Friday before WordCamp Los Angeles, on September 29, Beginner Day is a special session requiring registration that happens from 8:30 am-12:30 pm which covers the basics of how to get started with WordPress. This year’s beginner day, coordinated by Roy Sivan and sponsored by Pantheon, will cover topics such as:

• Setting Up a Local Environment
• Finding & Picking the Right Theme
• Child Theme Creation
• Simple Theme Modifications
• Deploying to the Internet
• Creating Your First Piece of Content & Beyond
• Best Practices for Your Contact Form
• Marketing your Creation via Social Channels

Workshop presenters include Gregg Franklin, Christina Hills, Jen Miller, Josh Pollock, Bridget Willard, and Pantheon with plenty of help from the WordCamp LAX Organizing Team.

Sign Up Here!

Grab yours before they are gone on the ticket page.

* If you are a sponsor or volunteer, you will receive a separate ticket invite in your email next week so please watch for it. *

Tickets for WordCamp Los Angeles 2017 will be released for sale at 12 p.m. TODAY, August 16th. Speed over to the ticket page as this is your chance to attend camp Sept. 29 – Oct. 1!

Check the schedule here to get a peek at what’s in store. You’ll find a wide variety of topics and speakers, as well as our Beginner Day on Friday, Sept. 29 and our Advanced Development Track on Saturday, Sept. 30.

Tickets will sell out quickly, so clear your calendars and set your alarms to make sure you don’t miss out once the checkered flag drops!

Can’t wait to see you there!

Get ready and get set! Because we are off to the races with the speakers chosen for WordCamp Los Angeles 2017! This year’s speakers are sure to jump start your WordPress experience!

Gear up to learn more about this fabulous lineup and discover details on our beginner day track, which are sure to set the pace for your WordCamp LAX adventure, September 29th-October 1st.

Amber Hewitt

Amber Hewitt is a graphic designer and front-end web developer at her company, Graphicgoo, where she has created websites for a wide variety of clients for over 15 years. With a strong background in design (graphic design degree from Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design), she has developed a passion for good imagery and typography in print and on the web.

Andrew Behla

Andrew Behla is founder of Behla Design, Graphic Design & Web Development. He has worked in the graphic design, web development, and print design for over twenty years and he has shared his industry knowledge as a teacher at Santa Monica College and UCLA Extension where he was named Outstanding Instructor of the Year.

Andrew Wilder

Andrew Wilder has been building, fixing, and maintaining websites since 1998. He now provides WordPress maintenance and support services with an emphasis on site speed and security… You know, all the un-sexy stuff that keeps sites running smoothly. This is his first time speaking at WordCamp, and he’s looking forward to helping you speed up your site without touching a single line of code!

Arsen Rabinovich

Arsen Rabinovich is the founder of TopHatRank LLC., a Search & Social Marketing Agency. He’s a husband, father to one human, and 4 animals, supreme leader, and is a big giant head.

Devin Walker

Devin Walker is the founder of WordImpress, the creator of GiveWP, a WordPress enthusiast, a WordCamp speaker, a mediocre golfer, a post-rock obsessed cat lover, and an aspiring world traveler.

Dwayne McDaniel

Dwayne McDaniel works in tech and “does” improv.

Ericka Koyama

Ericka Koyama is a software engineer at Ayzenberg Group in Pasadena. In her free time she is a ukulele enthusiast, avid science fiction reader, and gamer of all types.

Erik Osterman

Erik Osterman is the CEO/Founder and founder of Cloud Posse, a master of automation, kubernetes and all things cloud. Formerly, he was Director of Cloud Architecture, CBS Interactive.

Glenn Zucman

Glenn Zucman is an artist and arts educator from Los Angles.

Irene Donnell

Irene Donnell, from P5 Marketing, builds small businesses and agencies into rocket ships, donates WordPress sites for horse and dog rescues and helps raise awareness for the little ones and teens in orphanages in Baja, Mexico.

Jansen Henschel

I am an 11 year old homeschooled programmer. I code in HTML, CSS, Javascript, C#, Ruby, Rails, Python, and WordPress.

Jarrett Gucci

Jarrett Gucci comes from a retail background that started at Home Depot in Buffalo NY as cashier and 18 months later was asked to be a project manager based out of Carson California with a goal of opening 12 stores in 14 months. This goal was accomplished. He has also been an area manager at Big Lots and Bed Bath and beyond. He left his very last retail career as a district manager at Linens & Things in 2007 to pursue a hobby of website development as hope he could make some money doing it. After 4 years of building and managing WordPress sites, he founded a company called WP Fix It and since 2011 his company has serviced over 48,000 WordPress support tickets. Something you may not know about Jarrett besides all this, is that when he was 15 his neighbor gave him a 1962 dodge dart and he completely took it apart and rebuilt it.

Jay Hoppie

Jay Hoppie is the founder of Alpha Particle, a digital product consultancy that assists organizations in the planning of web based products and business process design.  With years of experience in digital product development, supplemented by his time in manufacturing and banking, Jay had has spent time scoping projects on as both a project manager and as a client of digital agencies.

Jen Miller

Jen Miller believes in the value and power of the written word in sharing truth and story, in life and in business. Combining her journalism background with a passion for marketing, Jen built NeedSomeoneToBlog.com, a blogging service focused on delivering highly-targeted, local search engine optimized blogging and page content, primarily for real estate clients.

As the business grew, Jen discovered areas that could further develop authority, garner trust, and build engagement for her clients online. Her agency NeedSomeoneTo, LLC combines these services to share engaging messages of community and industry knowledge with clients and followers.

Jen hosts a weekly podcast, Be Seen Blogging, where she delivers website content tips in under ten minutes and enjoys speaking on content strategy and community development.

Dedicated to the WordPress community, Jen serves on the WordPress Marketing Team and founded WomenWhoWP.org, a nonprofit and Meetup dedicated to encouraging women in their WordPress journey.

Joe Chellman

Joe Chellman is a web developer, drummer, and enthusiast. He has authored many JavaScript courses on http://lynda.com and a WordPress plugin course with http://oreilly.com.

Joseph Abraham

Joseph Abraham is the founder of Techie Design, WordPress web designer, and developer with 15 years experience.

Josh Pollock

Josh is a WordPress developer and educator. He is Founder/ Lead Developer/ Space Astronaut Grade 3 for Caldera Labs, makers of awesome WordPress tools including Caldera Forms — a drag and drop, responsive WordPress form builder.

Also, he is a WordPress core contributor, the author of two books about WordPress development and a member of The WPCrowd.

Keanan Koppenhaver

Keanan Koppenhaver is the lead developer at How-To Geek, a conference speaker, and in his spare-time, a Laravel junkie.

Kitty Lusby

Kitty Lusby is a blogger, trainer, entrepreneur, and revolutionary.

Konstantin Obenland

Konstantin is a WordPress aficionado, and Core Developer based in Ventura, California.

Lisa Ghisolf

Lisa Ghisolf is Gizmo Creative Factory, with 20 years in print, web & email design, and 14 years in business. She’s worked with big and small companies, publications and organizations alike, creating print and digital for Kraft, the National Retail Foundation, Bridgestone, the National Safety Council & many others. Aside from putting out fires, she has designed and built robust WordPress sites since 2008, starting nostalgically with HTML back in 1996. Lisa also offers training and maintenance and likes to work as a technology and design partner to her clients.

Matt Cromwell

Matt is Head of Support and Community Outreach at GiveWP.com and WordImpress.com. He is the author of several popular free plugins, the Lead Organizer of the Advanced WordPress San Diego Meetup and AWP Facebook group (which boasts over 28K members) and a WordPress Community Consultant for Media Temple. He’s a popular blogger at his personal site mattcromwell.com, wordimpress.com, givewp.com, and mediatemple.net.

Nile Flores

Nile Flores is a long time WordPress designer and Developer. While she grew up a military brat, she’s settled in the St. Louis metro east region. Nile blogs at <a href=”https://blondish.net“>Blondish.net</a>, where she covers topics on WordPress, Blogging, SEO, Social Media, and Web Design. Nile also works as an Infection Cleanup Specialist at <a href=”https://wpfixit.com”>WP Fix It</a>.

She also loves contributing to WordPress, and that includes speaking at WordCamps across the United States. She loves helping people and supporting Open Source projects.

Nile founded and runs a 9,000 member Facebook group dedicated to helping WordPressers, called <a href=”https://facebook.com/groups/AllAboutWP“>All About WordPress</a>. When Nile isn’t knee deep in coding and design, she’s spending time with her son, who is also a WordPress user.

Raquel Landefeld

Raquel Landefeld is a professional cartwheeler with a young soul. In 2010 she co-founded Mode Effect a Phoenix-based WordPress agency. Intentional about community building, she believes that wherever her feet are is where the building happens. She is currently active in several communities from tech to government to neighborhoods and more.

On the personal side of her life she is a wife & mum, dancer, music lover, an amateur photographer, and has a 20-year-curated Wonder Woman collection.

Scott Buscemi

Scott Buscemi is the Founder and Lead Web Strategist at Lumen Foundry.

Scott Stewart

Scott Stewart is a WordPress developer who enjoys building websites from scratch using the Sage stater theme by Roots. In his free time, he loves a good iced coffee and the San Diego sunshine.

Ready? Set Go!

That’s right, folks, it’s time to get in your best pitches so you can shine as a speaker at this year’s WordCamp Los Angeles! This is your chance to visit sunny Southern California and present your best material to 400 WordPressers who are revved up and ready to listen. If you’re born to perform, this is the WordCamp for you!

We’re seeking talks on every topic, but are particularly focused on the basics; from content to website development, branding and business techniques to UX design, and development for all levels. Learn more about actual presentations here and please submit on topics that spark your interest!

If you have multiple topics, please submit the form once for each topic and limit your submissions to 3. Submissions close at May 31, 2017 at 11:59pm PST! Speakers will be notified in July.

If you have any questions please contact Thomas Levy, this year’s speaker wrangler at thomas@gocodebox.com.