Thanks to everyone that took the time to fill in the feedback forms! Your comments will be useful for us and other WordCamp organizers around the world. Speaker feedback will be sent out this weekend (sorting through it all is a bit harder)!

We wouldn’t have been able to do this without your support and participation.

There were some bumps along the way, but rest assured, we’ve taken note! With your feedback – both positive and negative – we’ll make 2012 even better than 2011.

See you next year!

The WordCamp Toronto Organization Team

Feedback Surveys

Feedback surveys for WordCamp 2011 are now available!

Speaker Videos & Presentations

Speaker videos and presentations will be posted to the website over the next couple of weeks (hopefully). Videos will appear on WordPress.tv pending approval by the WordCamp TV team.

Did you take photos? Share them with us!

Email your photos to toronto@wordcamp.org and we’ll post them to the site! Alternatively, you can upload them to the web and reply to this post (yes, the post you’re reading right now) with links to your photo collection. We’ll take care of the rest!

Toronto WordPress Meetup Group

Get involved with Toronto’s WordPress community by joining the Toronto WordPress meetup group! We meet once a month to discuss all things WordPress.

Our feedback surveys for WordCamp Toronto 2011 are now available:

• WordCamp Toronto 2011 Speaker Feedback Form
• WordCamp Toronto 2011 General Feedback Form

(Update) Here are a few observations we’ve made so far:

We need to do a better job covering all experience levels.
We had presentations for beginners and presentations for advanced developers, but the middle ground — between basic user and advanced theme/plugin development — was lacking. Based on this feedback, we’re going to tweak our program plan for next year.

George Brown College is a great venue.
Spacious and accessible, this location was perfect for WordCamp presentations.

Minimize, or remove, the steps required for internet connectivity.
Wireless access was a headache for numerous people. We caught wind of this early, but not early enough – rest assured that this will be at the top of our list for 2012!

The food was fabulous.
Saturday’s breakfast and lunch went over very well.

Installing server software, first thing on a Sunday? Let’s not do that again.
We hear you guys on this one, and we definitely agree. Local installations of WordPress are great (and useful!), but scrambling through the process on a Sunday? Not so much. We’re going to review our approach to workshops for next year. We want everyone to enjoy the hands-on experience of working with WordPress!

Saturday’s schedule (45 minute sessions, 15 minute breaks) was perfect.
Sessions were just the right length, and with the 15 minute break, there was enough buffer time for people to get between classrooms.

Remember, all feedback is anonymous, so be honest with your comments! Your constructive criticism will help us make WordCamp Toronto 2012 even better.

Thanks to Top Quark for putting this together for us.

Rick Radko

Rick Radko is the founder of R-Cubed Design Forge, where he develops and designs custom web sites and applications using open source software. Rick began building web sites and applications in 1996, using HTML and Perl.  Since then, he has worked with many PHP/MySQL systems including Mambo, Joomla! since its first release, MediaWiki, and WordPress since 2008.  Rick specializes in custom application development and multilingual WordPress sites.  He is co-leader of the newly formed Ottawa WordPress Group.

Why WordPress?

Simple, it’s really easy to use.  My clients get web sites that they can manage and update mostly on their own, and as a developer I get a framework that is easy to modify or extend with add-ons and plugins.

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

Networking and connecting with other WordPress enthusiasts.

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Toronto?

Having worked extensively with WordPress for the past 3 years, I feel it’s time to give back and share my knowledge with others.

What is your talk going to be about?

My talk is about where to safely add code snippets to your site.  With automatic theme updates, sticking code in your theme’s functions.php is no longer the best option.  I will talk about 2 ways to put code into your WordPress site that are more resistant to upgrades.

What is one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

That it is really easy, and you don’t need to be a coder, to create your own spots to save code changes to your WordPress site.

What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why?

That’s a tough question, as a developer I use a lot of different plugins.  A few that I use most of the time are Gravity Forms, Google Analytics for WordPress, Tweet Blender and TinyMCE Advanced.

» Click here for more posts from our Featured Speaker series.

Chip Bennett

Chip has been using WordPress since 2005, and has been a hobbyist web developer since the mid-90s. He has developed WordPress themes and plugins, and is a minor contributor to WordPress core. He is a member and administrator of the WordPress Theme Review Team that reviews/approves themes for inclusion in the WordPress Theme Repository. He can often be found in the WordPress.org support forums and at WordPress StackExchange. He is also a part-time freelance WordPress developer.

Why WordPress?

I love WordPress because of its speed, power, extensibility, and simplicity. I originally started using WordPress as a Blogger refugee in 2005, when I decided to find a self-hosted blogging solution. At the time, the blog was just a subdirectory of an otherwise static-HTML site. Now, WordPress manages all of the content for that same site. But most importantly, I love WordPress because of its community. From the support forum volunteers I encountered as a new user, to the core, Plugin, and Theme developer community with whom I became involved as I began to find ways to contribute to WordPress, quite simply: the community is WordPress’ single, greatest asset.

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

On a personal level, I am looking forward to re-visiting, and introducing my family to, a city I first visited two decades ago. Regarding WordPress, I am always eager to interact with the developer community, to engage in Theme development- and review-related discussions, and to help others as I have been helped before.

Regarding the Theme Review Team, I look forward to encouraging others to join us as volunteers, and to further our objective to provide an educational resource to the developer community. Finally, I am incredibly excited to meet in person several people in the community whom I thus far know only “virtually”.

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Toronto?

I decided to speak at WordCamp Toronto quite simply because I was asked to do so! A fellow Theme Review Team member asked me to consider making the trip to Toronto to speak. I see WordCamps as a great opportunity to give back to the WordPress community, to solicit developer-community engagement in our Theme-review efforts, and to gain valuable feedback from both developers and users.

What is your talk going to be about?

My presentation will cover Theme-development best practices beyond the requirements in the Theme Review Guidelines.  In the year and a half since the inception of the Theme Review Team, the overall quality of repository-hosted Themes has improved tremendously, to the point where the free Themes in the official repository often compete on a code quality basis – if not functional and/or design basis – with many commercial Themes. But plenty of opportunity for continual improvement exists.

I will be discussing some areas that are largely outside the scope of the Theme Review Guidelines, but that would greatly enhance the quality of repository-hosted Themes.

What is one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

If I were to summarize my presentation into a single objective, it would be for the audience to walk away from the presentation with an appreciation and desire for the official Theme repository to be the gold standard of WordPress Themes, and an understanding that such a goal is only possible through the combined effort of the Theme developer community.

What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why?

My favorite WordPress Theme is my own Oenology Theme. It is a “labor of love”, and something I view as a means of giving back to the community. It is my attempt to incorporate every Theme development best practice, and to serve as an example and a learning tool for other developers.

» Click here for more posts from our Featured Speaker series.

Dan Imbrogno

Dan is the lead developer at Blogging Squared, a small web design shop that specializing in helping businesses turbo charge their WordPress web sites. Over the last four years, Dan has gained experience in building powerful web applications using the WordPress plugin API. When not pouring over the Codex, Dan can be found slack lining in Trinity Bellwoods park.  Follow Dan on Twitter at @danimbrogno.

Why WordPress?

When I started freelancing out of university clients would come to me and ask me to build them a website. I’d tell them all about WordPress and convince them to give it a go. Now, four years later, most clients I meet ask for WordPress by name.

It’s really not surprising, WordPress is the cleanest, most robust and easily extensible open source CMS out there. For me, it’s a no-brainer.

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

Freelancing is lonely work, so like many others I’m looking forward to connecting with other designers, developers and users. As a developer, I think it’s important to venture out from behind the monitor from time to time and interact with real live human beings.

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Toronto?

I’ve never really given a presentation before, but after attending some WordPress meetups, I realized that I had some experience that others could likely benefit from.

I’ve spent countless hours reading the WordPress Codex and digging through the core and I’ve fallen into and dug myself out of every pitfall there is. I am always trying to find cleaner, more elegant solutions to my development patterns and I think I can help some people avoid some of the setbacks I ran into.

I know I still have a lot to learn, and nothing forces you to polish your chops than getting up in front of a room of people and trying to convince them you know what you’re talking about, so I’m looking forward to learning as much from the attendees as they’ll learn from me.

What is your talk going to be about?

I’m going to build upon the earlier workshops in the day by walking people through some common skills you’ll need to master when building a WordPress plugin.

Attendees will download the tutorial plugin and install it on the local development environment that they set up earlier in the day.

The tutorial plugin walks users through building a plugin through successive layers of complexity. We start with relatively simple stuff, like using actions and filters, but quickly ramp up to some more advanced topics like plugin internationalization, ajax and creating tables for your plugin in the WordPress database.

What is one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

I hope that people walk away from the talk with enough knowledge to take their plugin development to the next level of complexity, cleanliness, efficiency and accessibility.

What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why?

Well, Hello Dolly is pretty sweet, but I think I gotta go with Headway. Their new beta looks pretty slick and I’m excited to start using this to speed up the design process.

» Click here for more posts from our Featured Speaker series.

Linda Dessau

Linda Dessau is the author of Write Your Way to More Clients Online and the founder of ContentMasteryGuide.com.  She has been writing for the web since 2003 and has attracted nearly 100% of her clientele through blogging, newsletters and social media. Linda created the “You Talk, I’ll Write” service in July 2005, and provides blog ghostwriting, editing, training and consultation.  She is also the editor of the book Does This Blogsite Make My Wallet Look Fat? How to Use a WordPress Blogsite to Make Money, Attract Clients, and Gain Expert Celebrity Status by Sandra De Freitas, a Toronto-based WordPress expert, tech coach and consultant.

Why WordPress?

After editing Sandra De Freitas’ book, Does This Blogsite Make My Wallet Look Fat, I couldn’t wait to try my hand at building my own WP site. I’m the administrator of a non-profit website, so I revamped it and it’s been running on WP ever since. I love how customizable it is, and so quick and simple to update.

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

Meeting other people who are passionate about blogging. Sometime I feel like a Martian among earthlings (or is it the other way around?).

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Toronto?

I want to help people make the most out of their WordPress sites by publishing new content on a consistent basis – without it having to be a chore.

What is your talk going to be about?

I’m going to show people just how easy it is to post valuable new content all through the month, without having to come up with earth-shattering or intricate posts every week.

What is one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

You have more to write about than you think you do, and there are easier ways to get your ideas onto your blog.

What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why?

Automatic Upgrade makes it super easy to keep our WP installation up to date.

» Click here for more posts from our Featured Speaker series.

Kathryn Presner

Kathryn Presner of Zoonini Web Services takes a holistic approach to web design and development, building unique sites that work well, look great, and are easily found in search-engine results by the target market.  She is passionate about helping people avoid common website pitfalls and enjoys speaking to entrepreneurs on the topic.  A moderator in the WordPress support forums, Kathryn has given talks on WordPress at events including Girl Geek Dinners and WordCamps in Toronto and Montreal.  Follow @zoonini on Twitter.

Why WordPress?

As a professional web designer, I value WordPress’s flexibility – in terms of both design and functionality. WordPress lets me custom-design my clients’ sites so they look unique and are consistent with their brand – and provide great functionality, thanks to a huge range of plug-ins and the ease with which you can tie in custom PHP code.

On the user side, even my less tech-savvy clients find WordPress intuitive and they all appreciate being able to update their own sites so simply.

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

WordCamps are a fabulous place to make new connections and build on existing ones, so as an out-of-towner I’m really looking forward to seeing members of the Toronto WordPress community that I chat with on Twitter, and I’m excited to catch up with Multisite gurus Andrea & Ron Rennick, coming in from New Brunswick. I’m also looking forward to meeting new WordPress enthusiasts of all stripes!

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Toronto?

I’m passionate about WordPress and it gives me great pleasure to share what I know and maybe even inspire others.

What is your talk going to be about?

Our session aims to demystify the basics of WordPress for those new to the platform – from how it works on the technical side, to what the key lingo means, like widgets, plug-ins and themes. We’ll explain how the self-hosted version of WordPress differs from WordPress.com and log into the administration area and have a brief look around.

What is one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?

I hope people see that WordPress is not as intimidating as it might seem at first. The ideal result is if people come out of the talk super excited to jump in and get started with WordPress as soon as possible!

What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why?

I have a roster of go-to plug-ins that I love and use on virtually all client sites, so it’s very hard to pick just one, but a security-related plug-ins that I always install is Secure WordPress.