Author Archives: Andy McIlwain

About Andy McIlwain

Andy wrangles content at GoDaddy and co-organizes WordPress meetups & WordCamps in Toronto. Find him on Twitter and his personal site.

Presentation Slides

We’ve finally been able to get presentation slides pulled together! The links below are provided by our speakers, so if anything breaks, please reach out to them directly. 🙂

WordCamp Photos & Feedback Survey Results

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First up: We’ve got photos! You’ll find them in the photo gallery. Special thanks to Mike Day from The Art of Weddings, our afterparty photobooth team at FunPhoto, and additional thanks to Shanta for contributing some great shots.

View the photo gallery.

Secondly: Feedback survey results are in! Here’s what we’ve learned:

  • Venue is great, but distance from the city core is a big challenge.
  • T-shirt design was awesome.
  • Streaming is awesome.
  • Schedule timing was good.
  • Gluten-free, vegan- and diabetic-friendly food is a must for next year.
  • Bring back juice/bottled water as an alternative to fillable water bottles.
  • Provide more transparency into how sessions are chosen.
  • Get speakers to post slides in advance whenever possible.
  • Get microphones for speakers who have trouble projecting.
  • More live code examples. More prep and diversity in panels.

Read on for more details.

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Thank You!

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That’s a wrap! Yup, another weekend of WordPress is behind us. This year we brought together over 400 attendees and 50 speakers for two days of WordPress goodness. A great big thanks to all of our speakers, sponsors, volunteers, organizers, and attendees. #WCTO wouldn’t be possible without your involvement!

How did we do?

Please take a few minutes and fill out our feedback survey. (It would mean the world to us!) We’ll publish the results on the site and use the data to guide future WordCamps.

Take The Survey

What’s next?

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Sponsor Spotlight: Microsoft Edge

Our Sponsor Spotlight series showcases the people and organizations who are supporting WordCamp Toronto 2015 through financial or in-kind contributions. Learn more about this year’s sponsors.

Microsoft Edge

What is Microsoft Edge?

“Microsoft Edge is very proud to be recognized as a sponsor of WordCamp Toronto 2015! Rami Sayar will be joining the Toronto WordPress community to celebrate all layers of web development and also to share best practices and resources designed to help web developers adopt modern web standards. To learn more, please visit dev.modern.ie and join the conversation with us on Twitter.”

Why WordPress?

“Our favorite thing about WordPress is that it makes it so easy for anyone in the world to create a website and host it in the cloud for everyone to see, use, learn and admire. WordPress truly helps us in our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”

Do you have an interesting WordPress story?

“WordPress is used by many of our Technical Evangelists and has helped them share their ideas and opinions with the broader developer community. Our evangelists love WordPress because of how easily WordPress allows them to share their knowledge and insights on technology. ”

What’s your advice for WordCamp attendees?

“WordPress is an amazing community that is inclusive and beautiful. Stay inclusive and awesome WordPress Toronto!”

Featured Speaker: Joe Rozsa

“I’ve been a designer all of my professional career. I came up through the world of print and still prefer it over designing for the web. But since the internet doesn’t seem to be going away, I knew I had to adapt to design for it as well. I own my own graphic design studio called Trailer Trash Design where we specialize in branding start-ups, small and medium sized companies. Our ability to offer everything from logo design and brand development to web design and e-marketing strategies makes us the perfect one-stop studio.”

Presentation: Pages vs. Posts – The Mystery Is Solved!

“I decided to present this topic knowing that from conversations with new WordPress users, that there was a lot of confusion about pages and posts. There where lots of why and when and how questions. I think the most frustrating things to new users of WordPress is that they weren’t properly shown how things work. So I hope to fix that a little bit.”

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Featured Speaker: Jonathan Perlman

Jonathan Perlman is an experienced web developer and teacher that works for Dawson College in Montreal, Quebec. He builds custom web solutions for the students, faculty and staff. Recently he’s been leveraging WordPress more and more to do the heavy lifting while focusing on the needs of the institution with custom themes and plugins. Some of his sites have been built for a select few whereas others are visited by 12,000+ applicants.

Presentation: On The Move – Migration Made Simple

“I’m primarily a developer but lately I’ve been doing more and more of the server level configuration and site setup. I’m a big proponent of working in a development first and not cowboy coding. I have to migrate sites on a regular basis and I’d like to help demystify some of the issues about moving a WordPress site.”

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Sponsor Spotlight: Simplistics Web Design Inc.

Our Sponsor Spotlight series showcases the people and organizations who are supporting WordCamp Toronto 2015 through financial or in-kind contributions. Learn more about this year’s sponsors.

Simplistics Web DesignWhat is Simplistics Web Design?

Simplistics is a Toronto-based company that builds smart, sophisticated website solutions . We pride ourselves on providing our clients with straight talk and a simplified process – hence our name.

Our passion and expertise are evident in our work. We apply our insights to our client’s vision to craft a WordPress site that leverages sensational visuals and cutting-edge functionality to achieve their web goals.”

Why WordPress?

“Our favorite thing about WordPress is the Plugins. Normally, it would take months to build a complex and fully featured website. However the ability to leverage the Plugin community has made that a snap. There’s a Plugin for just about everything – literally.”

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