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WordCamps and 10up everywhere: Orlando, Denver, and Edmonton

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This coming weekend I’ll be traveling to sunny Orlando, Florida to speak at WordCamp Orlando, along with my friend and coworker, Carl Danley. Meanwhile, Grant Landram and Luke Woodward will be speaking at WordCamp Denver, led by our own Drew Jaynes, while Vasken Hauri speaks at WordCamp Edmonton.

WordCamp Orlando Denver Edmonton

Carl and I will be giving back to back talks on Saturday morning in Orlando, so make sure to wake up early and get the best seats. I’ll be opining on the joys of interactive debugging, which should be a core part of a developer’s tool set. If your go-to debugging tool starts with var and ends with dump(), this talk is for you! Senior Engineer Carl Danley will be covering sensible approaches to JavaScript. In his own words: “More often than not, as WordPress developers, we focus on PHP and often overlook the important aspects of JavaScript. In this presentation, I’ll reveal a series of steps that will help you rock your next JavaScript application by taking it the next level.” On Sunday, Carl and I will help lead the Contributor session along with Mark Jaquith, Andrew Nacin and Pippin Williamson – sure to be a good time!

WordCamp Orlando is also sponsored by seoslides, a WordPress presentation creation and sharing solution built and partly owned by 10up.

Westward in Denver, local Web Engineer Drew Jaynes is leading WordCamp Denver, where he’ll also lead a session on WordPress contribution. Senior Strategist Grant Landram is dropping in to take part in a panel exploring the importance of user experience. Senior Strategic Engineer Luke Woodward continues the quest to kill classic MAMP / WAMP developer environments in favor of the popular Varying Vagrants project seeded by 10up.

Finally, up north in Edmonton, our Vice President of Strategic Engineering, Vasken Hauri, will cover both theory and practical tools for automating code scanning and maintaining code quality. As a former adjunct Computer Science professor, Vasken is no stranger to tackling complex subjects.

Helen Hou-Sandí

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This Saturday I’m hosting a WordPress core hack day here in Jersey City, right outside Manhattan. I’ll be joined by a handful of WordPress developers in the NYC metro area, including lead developers from some of the largest publications, as well as some East Coast 10uppers. Since this particular get-together will be at my home, it’s an intimate group, though I plan to facilitate future hack days at larger venues as we advance our mission to make WordPress a better publishing experience for all.

10up and jQuery go to Russia

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This has been a year of firsts, from first releases on 10up’s GitHub account to our first internal dev summit.  This year also saw 10up’s first appearance at jQuery Russia – coincidentally also the first jQuery conference in Russia!

A little over a week ago, I had the opportunity to visit Moscow for an incredible day of development talks at Digital October.  The conference was sponsored by ITmozg in Russia, and headlined by the president of the jQuery Foundation, Dave Methvin.

The snacks were as impressive as the talks!

The snacks were as impressive as the talks!

jQuery Russia covered topics from JavaScript performance to the use of $.Deferred.  I was able to present an overview of the HTML5 web worker API along with a live demonstration of the million monkey problem – implemented entirely in JavaScript.

jQuery Russia was an amazing experience for everyone involved, and it showed me just how well different parts of the international development community can work together.  I don’t speak Russian and presented my talk with the help of an interpreter.  Many of the attendees didn’t speak English, but were able to ask me questions about code after the talk and throughout the conference – again, with the aid of an interpreter.

All of the conference speakers were invited back to the main stage at the end of the day for an interactive Q&A session. Questions ranged from browser standards to what we’d like to see added to JavaScript to where we see jQuery in 5-10 years. The range of opinions was impressive, but the expertise that backed each was even more so.

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5 speakers, 1 organizer, and a Platinum Sponsorship: 10up loves WordCamp Boston

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WordCamp Boston 2013WordCamp Boston has a special place in team 10up’s heart, going all the way back to Boston’s first camp, which I helped organize in 2010, before there was a 10up. In 2011, not 6 months after founding 10up, we reached into our pocket to offer a Silver sponsorship, and I spoke about WordPress as a CMS. In 2012, we again extended a Silver sponsorship; I debuted a talk on Enterprise, and was joined by fellow 10up speakers Jess Jurick and Luke Gedeon (who runs the neighboring Providence WordCamp). Today, two 10uppers live in the Boston metro area: Senior Engineer Dave Ross, and Engineer Kelly Dwan, who also organizes the monthly meet up and helped organize this weekend’s event. Three of our senior staff – Jess Jurick, John Jacoby, and I – all lived within ~100 miles of Boston at some point since 10up’s inception.

So it goes without saying that, above and beyond Kelly’s co-organizing, we were going to make a meaningful contribution to WordCamp Boston 2013. With more resources in hand, we’ve provided a top-tier, Platinum Sponsorship; we’re sponsoring Saturday’s lunch! You’ll find 7 of us at the conference, 5 of us speaking:

You’ll find more 10uppers roaming the halls and manning the 10up table (did someone say free swag?): local Senior Engineer Dave Ross and prolific core contributor (find her face on your credits screen) Helen Hou-Sandi.

Check out my guest blog post on the WordCamp Boston website for more reminiscing about 10up and Boston connections, like our work for Boston Magazine. If you’ll be in town, find a 10upper, visit our table, be sure to see our talks, and enjoy lunch – it’s on us!

What happens when 10up is in Las Vegas…gets shared with the community!

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Nearly all thirty-nine 10uppers are descending on Las Vegas tomorrow, from as close as Los Angeles and as far as Germany, for our company Annual Meeting, running through Saturday morning. In addition to many first time face to face meetings, we’ll be reflecting on the last year, talking strategy for next year and beyond, relaxing around the sky-high pool, sharing contributions and best practices, and even venturing out on a city-wide scavenger hunt. Rumor has it there are even a few team building exercises, including a symbolic game of team bumper cars.

We’ll be taking photographs aplenty for a post-meeting round-up, as we did for our Developer Summit back in April. In the mean time, follow all the action via the team10up Twitter list, and if you want to be a part of future 10up meet ups, be in touch!

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Tomorrow, Saturday the 12th of October I will be speaking at WordCamp Louisville!

I will be giving a talk on WordPress and the Command Line, which I’ve polished and refined since WordCamp Birmingham back in August. If you’re just starting out building themes and want to learn how command line tools can help improve your process, my talk is for you!

Non-Profit Hackathon Puts WordPress Center Stage

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givecampThis weekend 22 Non-Profit Organizations and over 180 Volunteers willbe gathering on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington for the 4th annual Seattle Givecamp, a weekend-long “hackathon” style event where software developers, website wonks, project managers and designers donate their time to design and build solutions for non-profit organizations in need. From health and wildlife outreach programs to community food coalitions, participating non-profits submit technology projects that require assistance they don’t have funding or expertise to carry out. Volunteers will gather on Friday to learn more about each Organizations’s Project, form teams, and spend the rest of the weekend (often working through the night) hacking together solutions.

On Saturday morning I will be leading a 2-hour workshop for participating organizations and volunteers on how to better leverage WordPress on their projects during the weekend and beyond. Many of the participating organizations are either already using WordPress, or have identified their project as requiring a WordPress component. In my session I will cover a variety of WordPress topics ranging from how to start using WordPress for the first time, to using some it’s more advanced APIs, to simple every day tips and tricks. The session will be Saturday morning from 10am to noon, and is open to the general public.

For more information about GiveCamp visit http://seattlegivecamp.org/ and follow them on twitter @SeattleGivecamp. Best of luck to all the project teams this weekend, and if you’re in the Seattle area I hope to see you there!

Doug Stewart brings in extensive systems, WordPress experience

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Howdy all, my name is Doug Stewart. I’m the newest addition to the 10up systems team, and I couldn’t be more excited to be joining the company.

I’ve been using Linux since 1997 or so, but don’t hold that against me and I’ve been going by the nickname “Zamoose” for at least that long. I’ve over 15 years of experience in the IT industry to bring to bear on problems related to networks, systems and software, with a special penchant for solving problems in the Linux space. I’ve spent time at software giants like IBM, in the advanced US Defense Department research community, working with geneticists and medical researchers as a high-performance computing administrator and have even spent a bit of time in a startup or two back in the first Internet Bubble. Lately, I’ve been working heavily in the areas of systems automation and virtualization.

I first came across WordPress in 2004 during the Great Licensing Wars and have been a dedicated WP user and contributor since version 1.0. I have experience in developing themes and plugins, contributing to the core WordPress software, participating in the greater community and helping WordPress users get the most out of their sites.

I also co-organize the monthly Philadelphia WordPress Meetup and the yearly WordCamp Philadelphia and Tech Week Philly events and am very involved in the Philadelphia metro area WordPress community.

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Heather Hogan brings passion for web strategy to 10up

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Hi, I’m Heather Hogan, and I’m honored to be at the helm of an amazing team within 10up. After stints freelancing, creative directing, and managing municipal website projects, I’m excited to focus primarily on client services using just one content management system, the best one: WordPress. I thrive on building relationships with clients, partners, and engineers to envision and execute seamless and intuitive interactive communications.

My previous adventures include designing and building award-winning websites for the Sacramento Library, ACE rail, Sacramento Beer Week, the City of Santa Monica and other municipal agencies and small businesses. I thoroughly enjoy teaching and exploring design, technology, and web development whether at Sacramento City College (where I’ve taught for the last seven years) or at local (geek) networking events.

Originally a beach baby of San Diego, California, I’ve settled in the lakes and mountains, enjoying a fruitful decade in Northern California. My loving and supportive husband and I enjoy raising our two wonderful children along with Chongo, our dog, in the Curtis Park area of Sacramento. Local fodder and libations top my favorites list, along with live music, art, travel, and the outdoors. I’m excited to shape all of my earlier disparate efforts into a laser-beam focused awesomeness at 10up!

Helen Hou-Sandí

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Although I only lived in the Midwest (specifically Wichita) for a brief 11 months, I enjoyed my time there and am very excited to head back to the area on Friday, September 27, to speak at 200 OK, Oklahoma’s premier web conference. I’m excited to be on a roster that includes a fellow WordPress developer from iThemes, as well as representatives of other open source supporters such as Adobe, GitHub, Mozilla, and Etsy. The WordPress Foundation is also proud to be sponsoring the event.

I’ll be talking about Tailoring the WordPress Admin for Workflows; not an uncommon topic for me, but to a non-WordCamp audience and as always, I’ll be similarly tailoring my own presentation. Tickets have sold out, but there’s a waitlist. If you’re in the area, I’d love to meet you there!