WordCamp Miami 2017 In Photos

Last week I ventured to Florida for WordCamp Miami, a three-day event filled with sessions and networking with the WordPress community. It was a huge success! Take a look below for what went down at this year’s WordCamp Miami in photos…

WordCamp Miami kicked off this year on March 24 and ran through March 26. The theme of this year’s camp was a nod to the 80’s where Miami Vice and Back to the Future made an appearance.

The event was held at Florida International University, a beautiful campus for hosting WordCamp Miami. Over 900 attendees congregated together for three days of WordPress content.

We brought a team of four with us for this special WordCamp. (From left to right: Brian McMahon one of our Technical Account Managers, Steven Word our Core Contributor, Shayda Torabi from the Marketing team, and Chris Reed one of our Sales Engineers.)

WCMIA featured a handful of panels with industry influencers to provide attendees with opportunities to ask questions and get insights from the experts. This type of content allowed for a deeper discussion amongst the panelists and the audience with topics ranging from ecommerce to business.

Torque brought their famous Torque Toons book which was a hit with not only the adult attendees but also with the Kids Camp (now a staple event at WCMIA). The toons book is a zine filled with a sampling of hand-drawn cartoons by Doctor Popular — you can view them all at torquemag.io.

If you stopped by the Happiness Bar, you probably would have been delighted to pick up this punny candy bar. The Happiness Bar is manned by a group of individuals who are there to provide you with WordPress help…think of it like the Genius Bar at Apple.

We realize all the hard work that goes into planning a WordCamp and appreciate the opportunity to provide sponsorship to aid in helping make them happen. WordCamps are the hard work of volunteers, organizers, sponsors, and vendors to help make these weekend events possible. 

A new piece of programming this year was the “AMA” Ask Me Anything section. It featured key industry experts and allowed the crowd to ask them anything in an informal setting. We’ve seen these done online, but to introduce it into an offline setting was really cool.

WordCamp Miami also featured a few talks that dove into Drupal and what we can learn from the Drupal community. It’s awesome to see us go beyond our own ecosystem and to get insight and ideas from neighboring open source communities.

The people are some of our favorite things about coming to WordCamps. We got to catch up with so many old friends and made time to meet some new ones too. Here we are with Patrick Rauland an ecommerce freelancer, Andrew Weikel of WooThemes, and Bob Dunn of BobWP.

One of my favorite talks was by Troy Dean of WP Elevation. He’s a great storyteller and he echoed a sentiment that we love about WordPress — the community is there to support you, and you can do anything you put your mind to.

We also met with Meagan Hanes, a WordPress developer and designer who keeps a bag full of stickers from all her WordCamp visits. She said she brings it to each camp she visits, often times leaving stickers and adding new ones in place — a simple way for Hanes to share a little bit of the community with everyone she meets.

All in all, WordCamp Miami put on a great event! We loved getting to meet our customers in person and make new friends who were attending their very first WordCamp. These are the special moments…getting some face to face time with the community!