WordPress Cape Town

I’m overwhelmed by the way things have been going lately regarding the planning of the next wordpress meetup, which is set for 28 May at the Bandwidth Barn. Grab the badge on the right for your site to show u’ll be joining us. So far we’ve got the following on the go.

Venue:

I’ve secured the Bandwidth Barn as a venue and have set the date for Wednesday 28th May. Bandwidth Barn, 125 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town (map). Buitengracht street runs just between Cape Town City Centre and Bo Kaap. There’s a Euro Scooter Shop just below it and it’s opposite a building with a Huge O painted on it.

Date & Time:

Wednesday 28 May 2008, 4pm - 7pm (feel free to come an hour early & stay an hour later if you’re a wordpress freak)

Speakers

• Mark Bloomfield - Wordpress as a CMS
• Johann Botha - Wordpress Security
• Rafiq Phillips - SEO for wordpress
• Adriaan Pienaar - Topic to be confirmed
• Ashley Shaw - Wordpress MU, bbpress, Buddy Press

more speakers requested

Sponsors Secured

• FrogFoot Networks - Domain & Hosting, the new domain with fresh installation of WP & a media wiki should be up in the next few days.
• FormFunction - T-Shirt Sponsorship & Wordpress Hoodie Prize
• Adii - Premium Wordpress Theme as a prize + T-Shirt Sponsorship
• Red-Button - 50 mb per person for the event
• World Wide Creative - T-shirt Sponsorship

Sponsors Negotiating

T-Shirt sponsorships being negotiated (more sponsors required!) We’ll be putting a list of logos or urls of the T-shirt sponsors on the t-shirts so hop on board. If anyone knows of a good place we can get the T-shirts printed let us know.

We’re looking for a few people to chip in for Yellow Llama’s flight costs, he’s covering most of it but as I asked him to come down to Cape Town to speak, I thought it might help if we helped him out a little.

Sponsors Required

• Snacks - Sponsorship required
• Looking for someone to sponsor copies of wordpress for dummies
• Projector Needed for the Presentations
• Additional T-Shirt sponsors

Marketing

I’ve been talking to a few people in my own capacity about the event, but need the rest of the community’s involvement in getting some interest going, sharing some ideas and preparing topics etc. Sharing your pics of previous events and blogging about the upcoming one will be much appreciated.

All you online social networking junkies out there are requested to work your magic with getting the message for the meet out there and drumming up some interest.

Register

Once again, we need to get an idea of numbers so please please please register by commenting on this post.

See you all there!

already attending:

1. Christine Says:
   April 10, 2008 at 2:38 pm Hey Nur,
   Always happy to help, speak etc.
   See you there
2. nomadone Says:
   April 10, 2008 at 2:48 pm Of course I’ll be there as well and hope to do a short session though I’m still deciding on what, Maybe wordpress 2.5 if there’[s still an interest. I’d like to focus on wordpress MU and buddypress if there’s anyone who has any experience.
3. rodgerhoffman Says:
   April 13, 2008 at 6:56 pm Hello
   I am keen to join the discussions. I am doing loads of work with WP2.5, WPMU, bbpress and testing the beginnings of buddypress. Feel free to contact me if you would like to chat about anything - ashley_at_lsdev_dot_biz

   Regards
   Ashley Shaw
   0845656767

4. Marek Samulski Says:
   April 13, 2008 at 10:09 pm Salaam.. Ill be there Nur.. Ashley.. woudl you liek a banner ad with that post?? LOL
5. WPCPT#3 Planning Progress « Cape Town WordPress Meetups Says:
   April 14, 2008 at 11:06 am […] Meetup 3 […]
6. Joe Frog Says:
   April 14, 2008 at 8:41 pm I’ll be there.

Ok so there’s been a little bit of background shuffling getting the 3rd meetup going but I’ve secured the Bandwidth Barn again(where I’ve just setup my own office) as a venue and have set the date for Wednesday 28th May.

Follow the planning post for details & progress and visit the meetup 3 page to register.

To those who attended the last event we’d like to start by thanking you for your involvement and would like to announce that planning for the next event will be starting soon and those who would like to be involved are encouraged to sign up by commenting on this post, with a little detail about how you’d like to be involved.

Feedback from session 2

We are also encouraging feedback as to how we could improve the event and what you’d like to see at WPCPT3.

Venues

I’ve started thinking about venues and hope we might be able to reserve the Bandwidth Barn again, though we might want to sort a venue which provides a little bit more atmosphere.

I know the owner of a coffee spot just off the M5 going out of Town in an interiors office park which could be a good venue as the owner is keen to get some events going there. If anyone can think of a nice alcohol free venue let me know so we have a few to choose from.

Topics

I think based on feedback from the first & second meet we need to focus on topics to be discussed before hand. It would be good to have one or 2 workshop/tutorial style sessions, a few presentations and a few open discussions. Those interested in attending session 3, please have a think about what might interest you and make a wish list. We’ll also appreciate it if anyone could refer us to WP gurus who may be able to attend and speak about specific aspects of wordpress. I’ll be very interested in any sessions which include using wordpress for social networking and using wordpress as a full on CMS.

Sponsors

We’re looking for some light sponsorship for the next event to allow us to do a few more things like possibly printing some T-shirts. If anyone could sponsor hosting and domain registration we could register a proper domain for our group and get a much better site going. I’ve also been in discussion with a local wordpress pro about joining us here in CT, we might need to sponsor his flight but he’ll have some real good value to offer us should we manage to get him down here for the meet. I’m not saying who!

Writers

We’re looking for anyone who can write about wordpress

• Tutorials
• How to make a plugin
• Interesting uses of wordpress
• Technical details
• Extending wordpress etc

We would like to get a proper online community going around the meetups which could possibly feed our meets with content and inspiration.

We’re also interested in building a gallery of great uses of wordpress, specifically locally and then for somemore advanced usage of the platform we could look internationally. I have a copy of Small Potato’s wordpress gallery theme which we could use for now to run this area of the site.

Wordpress Gurus

Something which was mentioned at the previous session was the need to have experts presenting on specific areas of wordpress. I’ve been in touch with someone recently who might be getting involved at the next session but don’t wanna spill the beans too early. If anyone thinks a specific wordpress pro migth be interested in speaking, sharing, teaching then send them our way, we’ll also appreciate you listing those you know who might be interested so we can spam them about this meetup :).

Wordpress Projects

One of the other ideas coming out of some discussions is to get a few projects started, kind of like a collaborative initiative where those interested can get together and start something beneficial whether it’s knowledge sharing, for an NGO or whatever you might be interested in. Hopefully we can push the boundaries a bit and  develop some really cool uses of wordpress. If you have great ideas about new and exciting ways of using wordpress and would like to explore some of these with other wordpress enthusiasts, we’re excited to talk to you about what lies ahead for the WPCTP meetups.

Wordpress Marketplace

Callum got us talking about networking and affering our expertise in the wordpress arena or related products and services. I think we could get something really good going by setting up a directory of service providers or if we have any products be they themes, plugins, sites we want to sell, business ideas connected to wordpress etc.

That’s it for now, please add to the conversation, post your comments and if ur really interested and think you could add some good value to the process join the planning team.

Ok well not exactly a bang, but it was way better and more interactive than session 1 and I’m positive we can get a good thing going on a regular basis. Thanks to all who attended: ChrisM, Callum Macdonald, Henk Kleynhans, Adii, Foxini, Sarah, Selim Kagee, Nadah, Jamaal, Francois Raubenheimer, rafiq, Foxinni, Stelio, Johann Botha, Kilian Hagemann, Miguel, Frans Kuipers, Joe(amobia) - (let me know if I left anyone out). Apologies to Jonathan Carter, I didn’t make a list of those who attended so the 1 or 2 I have forgotten please remind me.

Jamaal(www.jayz.co.za) who sponsored the space and the snacks could only make the opening minutes and then shot off to deal with some business. Thanks Jamaal for setting us up and we hope you’ll be free next time around to spend the time with us.

Henk did a great job with the opening presentation: A comparison of blogger, movable type & wordpress which got the discussion going quite a bit. I’m hoping Henk will be involved in future meetups as well.

If anyone took any pics on the day please share them so we can get a sense of the goings on out to other semi-interested peeps out there.

Also those who expressed an interest in being part of the planning team going forward please mail me on nomadnur@gmail.com. We’re still not sure whetehr to get a wiki going or whether to put wordpress through it’s paces a bit more in creating a nice collaborative website which can serve all our needs.

Callum, the mastermind behind the meetup is off to Bangkok on his Continuous Global Tour. We have to thank him for starting what many of us have been thinking about but never made any moves on. Callum, we’ll miss your Scottish wit and wordpress guruness at the next meet, Maybe you can join us for a conference call at the next meet?
I (nomad-one) will be looking for a couple of wordpress bloggers, hopefully those who attended or who will be attending future meetups to spice up this site a bit and get a more meaningful conversation going.

You, meetup 2′ers and potential meetup 3′ers are requested to share your thoughts on the session passed and give us some ideas on how you’d like to take this on forward. I think for starters we need to decide on a date for meetup#3. For a little more insight into the goings on from meetup 2 have a read on nomad-one.com.

Please post a comment on what you thought of WPCPT#2.

Nadah secured the 25th spot at our second meetup. It looks set to be a fantastic afternoon.

We’re now onto reserve spaces. Naturally, there will be a few no-shows, so the first few reserve places should come along anyway. If we get to 30+ people, then we’ll have to negotiate with Jamaal and the venue to see what can be done.

I’m optimistic that we can squeeze everyone in. I know that personally, if I was on the reserve list, I’d turn up anyway and see what happens!
Please give some thought to the type of sessions you’d like to see at the meetup. It will be a very relaxed affair, so any ideas are most welcome.

Henk of skyrove fame has kindly agreed to present a (short) session on his comparison of Blogger, Movable Type and WordPress. He administers at least 1 site on each system.

He said the session focused on “the one most irritating thing about each of the 3 blogging platforms!” Personally I have limited experience with the other platforms, so I’ll be very interested to hear what Henk has to say.

Don’t forget to register.

That is of course if anyone disagrees in and provides something better. I did a few roughs and seems this one was the favourite, so in the spirit of moving forward, I’m planning on whipping up an I’m attending button for you to put onto your blogs. Lets hope this will stimulate a little more interest in the event which will be taking place 26th March, 4pm at the Bandwidth Barn in Cape Town CBD.

What do the rest of you think of the logo?

Grab the badge below or paste the code into your sidebar to let others know you’ll be there and to encourage more to join us!

<a href="http://wpcapetown.wordpress.com" title="Wordpress Cape Town Meetup March 26 2008"><img src="http://www.nomad-one.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/wpmeetup-button.gif" alt="Join me at the Wordpress Meetup Cape Town March 26 2008" border="0" /></a>

As Rob pointed out, Monday is Easter Monday, so better we meet on Wednesday.

So, after a slow start, we’re now absolutely and most definitely out of the blocks and on the track. Please publicise the meetup as widely as you can. Blog about it (on WordPress or otherwise!), talk about it, twitter it, pownce it, email your friends, and so on.

Please also register, register, register. Please do take the time to hit the registration page and drop us your name if you plan to come along. Seating is limited, so please register early to avoid disappointment.

Forgive my date confusion in the last post. The 24th of March is a Monday not a Tuesday. So just to be doubly clear, the meetup is on Monday 24 March 2008!

Jamaal came through with the venue, so we’re confirmed at the Bandwidth Barn. Seating is limited, initially to 25 places, so please register early to avoid disappointment.

Date: Monday 24 March 2008

Time: 4pm - 7pm

Location: Bandwidth Barn, 125 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town (map)

Register Now

We had a good session yesterday. It was a useful first session. Jamaal potentially offered to host future meetings. Nur offered to design a logo for the group.

We agreed on the date and timing of the next meetup. Venue to be confirmed.

Date: Tuesday 24 March 2008
Time: 4-7pm