Be A Speaker

Eliza Arrizza

Photo: Mimi Zhou

Each year WordCamp Montreal strives to offer a wide variety of talks and discussions about WordPress. We are looking for people who are excited about WordPress to entertain our attendees and teach them new things.

Submissions are now closed.
Our submission deadline was Monday, May 11, 2015. We expect to send out acceptance emails the week of May 18, 2015.

Why speak?

Presenting at WordCamp takes some work but is very rewarding. You get to show off how smart you are, convince people you’re worth hiring and help everyone learn about WordPress, all at the same time. Speakers also receive free admission to WordCamp.

What we’re looking for

Presentations

The ideal speaker has a WordPress-related topic they are passionate about and that they can present in 45 minutes with attractive PowerPoint/Keynote slides and detailed, coherent explanations. Designers, bloggers, businesses and developers are all welcome to apply! Talks can be in English or French. Your topic should be specific to WordPress.

Show us what you’ve made with WordPress and explain how you did it, or what you learned in the process. Give us concrete examples: code snippets, 10 important lessons you learned, specific advice on how to avoid problems, etc. Nothing is too hardcore, advanced, simple or beginner-level. We’re looking for diversity.

We reserve the right to refuse any submission.

Workshops

We are also looking for workshop leaders for WordPress-related workshops. We’d like to offer workshops in the evenings, the week before WordCamp (June 29-July 2), and during the day, the weekend before (June 27-28). Workshops should last 2-3 hours. Workshops can be in English or French. Your topic should be specific to WordPress.

Please let us know your preferred date, how many people you would feel comfortable leading, what equipment you would need, and if you would need teaching assistants.

We reserve the right to refuse any submission.

Unconference Sessions

Have a great idea for WordPress-related activity that doesn’t fit into the above categories? Unconference sessions should last 45 or 90 minutes. Unconference sessions can be in English or French. Your topic should be specific to WordPress.

We reserve the right to refuse any submission.

General Areas

The general fields we are hoping to cover include:

  • Using WordPress to blog and write.
  • Using WordPress to design and build websites.
  • WordPress plugin and core development and systems administration.
  • Primers on underlying web technologies (HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript) that are needed for WordPress development.

Please view last year’s schedule for example topics.

Topic Ideas

Here’s a list of topics we’d love to see at WordCamp. These are just examples!

User/Blogger Track

  • Finding the perfect themes/plugins
  • HTML for bloggers
  • Using child themes
  • Monetizing your website
  • Attracting readers
  • Writing for the web
  • Case studies of large projects

Designer/Developer Track

  • Creating Bilingual sites
  • Design advice for WordPress
  • CSS tips for WordPress
  • Editing themes and using template tags
  • Creating plugins (intro or in-depth)
  • Releasing and/or selling themes
  • GPL/Free Software and what it means for WP Plugins and themes
  • Intro to Apache/MySQL optimization

WordCamp panelists

Photo: Elida Arrizza