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The speaker list for the grand daddy of all WordCamps, WordCamp San Francisco has been announced. The list includes many notable people such as Lloyd Budd, Matt Mullenweg and others. Here are the details.

When - Saturday, August 16, 2008
Where - Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco — Map
Why - To get WordPress users together, learn from each other, figure out the future of publishing the web, and have a good time.

Sam Bauers - Sam will be speaking about upgrading WordPress and how to do it hassle free.

Lloyd Budd - Lloyd will be discussing the aspect of switching to WordPress. I’ll be particularly interested in what Lloyd has to say in terms of migrating from one system to WordPress.

Aaron Brazell - Aaron should be no stranger to most within the WordPress community. He’ll be discussing the aspect of search and findability.

Tantek Celik - Tantek will be discussing a subject I’m not too familiar with and that is Microformats. He’ll be discussing their past, present and future.

Jeremy Clarke - Jeremy will talk about democratizing the web through global voices.

Tom Coastes - Tom’s sessions will be about ’something’. According to the speaker list, they have him listed as mystery meat.

Liz Danzico - Liz will be talking about Crazyhorse, the new branch of WordPress which is used as a User Interface testing bed.

Ben Huh - Ben huh who runs the I Can Has Cheezburger blog will be talking about LOLcats as well as the topic of virility.

Noel Jackson - Noel who is known for producing the Monotone WordPress theme will be talking about color theory and the making of Monotone.

Mark Jaquith - Mark, author of the popular Subscribe to comments plugin will be discussing secure coding with WordPress. A topic that all plugin authors should be interested in.

Chris Lea - Chris will be speaking about Nginx for Fun and Profit.

Alan Levine - Alan will be talking about the future of education and WordPress. It will be interesting to see how many educational institutions are tapping into WordPress and what they are doing with the platform.

SEO Rapper - That’s right, Chuck Lewis also known as the SEO Rapper will be performing at the event. That should be fun!

Matt Mullenweg - You can’t have a WordCamp without Matt Mullenweg! His session will be about the state of WordPress.

Will Norris - Will (will) be talking about OpenId, OpenAuth, and OpenStandards. Perhaps this session will unearth the possibility of WordPress supporting OpenID out of the box, sometime in the future.

Stephen O’ Grady - Stephen will be discussing open source business models. I imagine a prime example of such a company who is currently operating under an open source business model is Automattic. This session should be very interesting to those who don’t believe open source and business model should be in the same sentence.

Andy Peatling - Andy Peatling, the creator of the BuddyPress project will be on hand to discuss the state of BuddyPress.

Joseph Scott - Joseph will be talking about the WordPress APIs as well as the iPhone. will be interesting to learn where the WordPress APIs are going and how the team plans on extending or using the API for future versions of WordPress.

Kathy Sierra - Kathy will be talking about a subject that is very interesting to me right now and that is, kicking ass and creating passionate users. Passionate users are something I think all bloggers would like to have but never succeed in doing so.

Andy Skelton - Andy will be on hand to perform live.

Lorelle Van Fossen - Another WordCamp fan favorite Lorelle Van Fossen, will on hand to provide bloggers with 260 different ways to break WordPress.  If anyone can break WordPress, It’s Lorelle. Someone get this session on Ustream!

Jane Wells - Jane will also be discussing the Crazyhorse branch of WordPress.

Jeremy Zilar - Jeremy will be discussing how the New York Times transformed into using WordPress. I bet this will be an interesting session as well considering how large of a site the New York Times is.

Thats it. Those are the people who will be sharing their abundance of knowledge this year at WordCamp San Francisco. For those of you attending the event, you must choose wisely which sessions you plan on attending considering this is a one day event. The schedule has yet to be posted so keep an eye out on the official WordCamp San Francisco website for details.

For Those Attending:

Which of these sessions appears to be the most interesting to you? Also, if you will be Ustreaming, live blogging or Twittering the event, be sure to comment and leave us a link so those of us who are not able to make it this year can at least pretend we are there in real-time with your updates.

It’s recently been confirmed that the first WordCamp in the Philippines will be taking place on October 25, 2008 September 6, 2008 in Manila. The event is being put together by the same group of people who were responsible for the Mindanao Bloggers Summit. The WordCamp event plans on taking two tracks. One for technical sessions with the other concentrating on beginners. Asides from the social gathering of WordPress enthusiasts, WordCamp Philippines is also planning to hold an “Install-Fest” where everyone will be encouraged to bring their laptops or desktops to the event where a guided tour of installing to the latest version will done along with, installing the most important plugins, and for demonstrations on how to tweak WP themes.

Robillo has stated that :

“Beyond the technical know-how that we wish to impart to participants, doing WordCamp in the Philippines will mean deeper awareness of blogging as an effective medium of communication and advocacy,”

Wow, it sounds like WordCamp Philippines is going to be an awesome event.

To stay up to date on the latest information regarding this particular WordCamp, be sure to book mark the official Philippines WordCamp Page.

Those of you who have been wanting a Technology conference to visit the South Eastern United States are now in luck. The event is called South By Deep South and is a take on the familiar South by South West conference. The event will be held in Birmingham, Alabama on September 26th-28th. The final details of the event are still being worked out but Ike Pigott has already let us know some of what we can expect from this event:

• Social Media/PR/Marketing
• Web development
• A full-blown WordCamp

In case you missed it, that last one says WordCamp. Personally, I thought Atlanta, Georgia would of been the first city in the South Eastern United States to get a WordCamp event, but it looks like I was wrong. Ike also notes that there will be a SideWalk Festival that will be taking place during the same weekend.

I’m really glad to see these WordCamp events making there way east rather than being confined to silicon valley. As a matter of fact, WordCamps are starting to crop up everywhere, and that is a good thing!

So, who is looking forward to this event and will you be lucky enough to attend?

This might be the last WordCamp Dallas 2008 post you see on this blog and since that is the case, better to go out with a bang! In case you were one of the unlucky ones who didn’t have a chance to attend the conference live, the good news is that there were plenty of attendees blogging, vlogging, and live blogging the event. I present to you a list of links which will correspond to the conference schedule.

Matt Mullenweg discussing WordPress 2.5 and beyond. Actually, he announced the redesign of WordPress.org along with the release of 2.5.

John Pozadzides presented his 45 ways to power up your blog.

After Lunch, Jonathan Bailey gave us the lowdown on content theft and protection along with a number of other things that bloggers of any platform would be interested in. Jonathan has also published the slides for his presentation on his own blog which can be viewed here.

Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell shared their experience with using WordPress for powering their websites.

Liz Strauss gave a presentation that was titled, C’mon, Let’s Talk! which dealt with building influence and interaction with blogging. You can check out her full presentation here.

Lorelle VanFossen stepped up to the plate and shared her WordPress Power Tips. Her presentation can be viewed here.

The next day of the event featured a live recording of the WordPress Podcast. The full video of this presentation is now online at WeblogToolsVideos.com.

The next panel was by Chris Smith who went over SEO for Bloggers. The link to the Natural Search Blog contains a link to the presentation that Chris Smith gave the attendees.

Aaron Brazell offered up an extensive presentation called WordPress FAQ. The FAQ answers questions such as can you have too many tags, what is the GPL, and the explanation of hooks. The end of the presentation takes questions from the attendees.

A panel that I particularly found interesting was the Business of blogging session featuring Liz Strauss, Mark Ghosh, Matt Mullenweg and Aaron Brazell. A ton of interesting points and conversations took place during the session and I thought it was one of the highlights of the event. Check out the ustream video that Mark Rizzn of Mashable.com recorded here.

Last but not least, Jacob Santos closed out the event with his presentation on Testing With WordPress. I have yet to see any videos posted of his session but he goes over it in more detail here.

For those that have yet to see what this thing called Woopra is all about, Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.TV interviews John Pozadzides and gives you the low down.

Tony Scott has published an entry on his blog entitled WordCamp UK proposal. Inspired by WordCamp Dallas, Tony is looking at quite possibly holding the first ever WordCamp within the UK. His blog post will serve as a gauge of interest. So far, the topics of discussion regarding this event center around:

• Format: A little more structured, such as WordCamp Dallas 2008, or more BarCamp, as WordCamp Hamburg?
• Size: Number of attendees?
• Location: London or other city? Take into account travelling and accommodation.
• Sponsorship: Would be good to subsidize the event!

If you would like to participate in or help organize the event, be sure to stop by Tony’s blog and leave a comment.

WordCamp is a conference type of event that focuses squarely on everything WordPress. Everyone from casual end users all the way up to core developers show up to these events. These events are usually highlighted by speeches or keynotes by various people. For example, WordCamp Dallas will feature the following speakers

• Matt Mullenweg on WordPress 2.5 and Beyond
• 45 Ways To Power Up Your Blog by John Pozadzides
• How to prevent, detect and stop content theft by Jonathan Bailey
• Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell
• C’mon, Let’s Talk! Building influence and interaction with blogging by Liz Strauss
• WordPress Power Tips by Lorelle Van Fossen
• SEO For Bloggers by Chris Smith
• Aaron Brazell
• A panel of people to discuss the business of blogging: Mark Ghosh, Liz Strauss, and Aaron Brazell
• Testing With WordPress by Jacob Santos

WordCamp is a spin off from the popular BarCamp which was a spin off of FooCamp. Each one of these events are smaller in nature when compared to your particular conference, but they are usually focused on a particular subject. So what can you expect when you attend a WordCamp event? Based on the numerous amounts of videos and photos taken from attendees, you can expect a whole lot of fun in an atmosphere that promotes social interaction.

The first WordCamp conference was held in July of 2006 in San Francisco. Matt Mullenweg pulled this event together in only three weeks time and ended up with about 300 people in the Swedish American Hall. The first international WordCamp event was held in Beijing China on September 1st, 2007. However, not too many people knew of the event. So the first KNOWN international WordCamp event took place in Israel on October 25, 2007. Since then, there have been WordCamps all across the world including Hamburg, Melbourne and soon to be Dallas.

You don’t have to be an expert to show up to WordCamp. In fact, the majority of folks are casual end users/fans of the open source software. The conference is great but what happens at the local pubs after a day of speeches is even better, or so I’ve heard. If you want to learn more about WordPress from those who practically have it within their bloodline, do yourself a favor and purchase a ticket and show up. You’ll be glad you did!

As January inches to a close, WordCamp Dallas is approaching from right around the corner. WordCamp Dallas is managed by Charles Stricklin who is known as being the host of the popular podcast, (The WordPress Podcast). The event will begin on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 from 9:30 AM-5:00 PM and on Sunday, March 30th, 2008 from 9:30 AM-4:00PM. WordCamp Dallas will be held at the Frisco City Hall which is located at 6101 Frisco Square Blvd Frisco, Texas 75034.

At the time of this writing, there were 261 tickets remaining. Each ticket costs $20.00 and nets you the following:

• coffee and munchies both mornings
• lunch both days
• t-shirts to take home (or to wear one or both days!)

So far, the list of confirmed speakers are as follows:

• Matt Mullenweg
• Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell
• Alexander Muse
• Aaron Brazell
• Lorelle VanFossen
• Mark Ghosh
• John Pozadzides

Thats right folks, your very own Mark Ghosh will be in attendance as a speaker. I actually purchased my admission ticket the other night. Now all I have to do is work out the logistics. I’m looking forward to meeting Mark in person for the first time and it will be interesting to see all of these people who make WordPress what it is, outside of the blogosphere. I’m also looking forward to meeting Ronald Huereca as he will also be in attendance. You can see a full list of attendees that have registered thus far by clicking here. If you plan on going, please register as soon as possible so Charles has a good head count as to the amount of people that will be attending the event.