WordCamp New Zealand 2012

Key Usability Questions – Nathaniel Flick

March 21, 2012 by Jason Kemp • Comments Off

Nathaniel Flick - Dirt & Rust- NZ

Hi, I’m Nathaniel Flick and I’m the Managing Director of http://www.dirtandrust.com , which I started in 2003. Dirt and Rust is all about usability. This will be a lightning talk so it will be a quick overview looking at key usability concepts for better web projects.

“There are at least three things to consider when optimising a website for usability: 1. Consistency 2. Responsiveness 3. Hierarchy.”

I’m a web developer/designer who started out in print design back in 1995 when Photoshop had no layers and one undo.

Trying times! I moved into web in 2000 and started doing web exclusively in 2007 and never looked back, there’s just something about the semi-permanence and fluidity (and feedback) about the web that excites me to no end.

Nathaniels site: Dirt and Rust

Other sites

Posted in 2012 | Tagged Auckland, Speakers, WordCampNZ, WordPress | Comments Off

Blogging on a Hot Topic – Julianne Taylor

March 20, 2012 by Jason Kemp • Comments Off

Julianne Taylor - PaleoZone - NZ

Many WordPress users start out as bloggers and if they write engaging content on a hot topic then the site can grow quite fast. What to do next 🙂 when and how, while keeping focussed on the passion rather than the logistics is the next challenge.

Juliannes Taylors blog was initially setup on WordPress.com and recently moved to a “self hosted” version which is journey many bloggers share.

Julianne writes about nutrition and related heath topics. She is a NZ Registered nurse, nutritionist, currently studying towards a PG dip in Nutrition science. Previous careers: designer of equipment for people with disabilities, furniture designer and artist.

The blog grew out of a project as she explains

“My blog started in June 2010 when I had 30 guinea pigs – volunteers who wanted to take on a 6 week challenge and change their eating to a ‘paleo diet’. They agreed to blood tests, health questionnaires and meal diaries to track their progress.

My blog started as a set of instructions to support them. I kept writing posts, on current nutrition topics that interested me, and I thought might interest others. They did, and some really took off – a couple of posts have over 20K views and continue to have great readership.

I’ve got ideas as to why these posts were found so interesting, and why they gathered so many comments and discussion. My blog continues to grow, and gets over 30K page views per month.”

Challenges going forward include how to keep the quality content coming, how to generate some income to cover costs and be able to keep growing in a more professional mode. So far the site has been very much content driven on a plain theme but as the content grows now looking at other magazine style layouts.

A number of posts have hundreds of comments and because the subject matter is personal health those comments can be hundreds of words and quite personal.

Many of us talk about the ‘read write’ web but there are also many blog sites with very few quality comments. How to grow and stay interesting and useful is a hot topic for many wordcampers. Website: Julianne’s Paleo & Zone Nutrition

Posted in 2012 | Tagged Auckland, blogging, Speakers, WordCampNZ, WordPress | Comments Off

DigitalMaori & WP Magazine Stylz

March 18, 2012 by Jason Kemp • Comments Off

Nikolasa Biasiny-Tule -Digital Maori - NZ

TangataWhenua.com, founded in 2003 by Nikolasa & Potaua Biasiny-Tule, is an indigenous, Māori-run and Māori-operated online news and information site based in Rotorua, Aotearoa New Zealand.

“It is the most active and popular Maori specific news website (30K+ hits a week).”

Speakers Nikolasa & Potaua will share the presentation with Nik more focussed on design and “how” and Potaua on the “what”, “who” and “why”. We find out what being digitally reconstructed by TangataWhenua.com means.

Poutaua Biasiny-Tule -Digital Maori – NZ

The name comes from the phrase Tangata Whenua, “People of the Land”. We began using basic HTML to run the site but migrated completely to WordPress in 2008/9.

We use magazine themes exclusively on our site but to really pay the bills and feed our babies we now develop commercial websites for Maori Trusts, Incorporations and Business and offer other corporate services (branding, database, news, social networking, registration drives.)

Nikolasa & Potaua will talk about the use of magazine themes (hone.co.nz, raukawaFM, TangataWhenua.com, mana.net.nz (to a lesser degree, it’s not magazine specific but has the qualities of being one) as the foundation for effective news/information focused websites.

The importance of style/graphics in turning a basic theme into something simply beautiful while reflecting the vision/kaupapa/essence of the organisation/business/entity it is being developed for.

And along the way they will talk about the favourite WordPress themes and plugins that they use and why. They developed and currently content manage the following sites:

http://www.hone.co.nz
http://www.mana.net.nz
http://www.whakaue.org
http://www.ktvconsulting.co.nz
http://www.tewaiiti.maori.nz

More info: Linkedin

Posted in 2012 | Tagged Auckland, magazine, Speakers, WordCampNZ, WordPress | Comments Off

How to Pick a Theme – Sam Cooke

March 16, 2012 by Jason Kemp • Comments Off

Sam Cooke - Thinkbox- NZ

In recent years the number of themes has exploded. On the main WordPress theme repository alone there are “1,515 THEMES, with 45,581,689 downloads, and counting”.

Sam from thinkbox in Featherston will be talking us through his checklist of how to tell themes apart, what makes some good, some great and some not.

For non WordPress users the theme is the design part that glues the back (database) and front end ( menus & visuals) of the website together.

A slightly more tech description would be a theme is part code & part graphics or a bunch of cascading stylesheets, some php and other code types ( esp. JS for menus ) and other web browser specific tweaks.

Most users tend to look at the overall layout. For example – Does the theme have a header, footer and columns combo that they like? Wireframing is a key part of the theme road mapping process.

On the other hand depending upon resources many users will use an off the shelf free theme with a small amount of customisation for their branding and maybe fonts. The best practice way to do this is to use a child theme approach.

In the mid range there are premium themes which all seems to be dominated by sliders and things that would annoy even some flash designers:) So how to pick one of them and how to change it to suit – that is the theme challenge.

At the higher end; a custom theme where literally anything is possible and it’s back to wireframing, PSD’s, slice to code and convert to WordPress templates and usually a framework (options setup) of some kind to make the back end management easier.

As well as the checklist Sam will zone in on ” theming”, “theme anatomy”, “WP as CMS”, “making it cool for your customers”and other aspects of theme wrangling.

This talk will be suited for all users – especially new ones and WordPress.com users who now have a great deal of theme and styling flexibility compared to the recent past.

So what kind of themes does Sam work on? Here are 4 of his recent projects

If you have any specific questions you like covered perhaps you add theme below as comments.

Posted in 2012 | Tagged Auckland, Custom Themes, Speakers, WordCampNZ, WordPress | Comments Off

Hello World! – What your site should Say – Amanda Blum

March 14, 2012 by Jason Kemp • Comments Off

Amanda Blum- Howling Zoe - U.S

We’re all a bit obsessed with what our sites should look like, because that’s the easy sauce.

“Figuring out what the site should say, how it should say it and where it should say it is two steps short of brain surgery.” says Amanda

Pop a few “easy pills” as I lead you on a sure-fire-how-to of how to get it done without the soul crushing doubt.

Clear concise exercises and a few laughs when you look out the right side of the plane.

Amanda is a past organizer of WordCamp Boston and WordCamp Phoenix and CMSExpo (WordPress track), a speaker at WordCamps Boston, Phoenix, NYC, Savannah, Portland, Las Vegas and Chicago, and have spoken at WordPress meetups in Boston, Providence, Cape Cod, Portland, Phoenix and San Francisco.

I talk a lot, sometimes when people have specifically asked me to:)

I’m a longtime champion of WordPress for use in microbusiness and non profits and talk mostly about information architecture, UX, the administration of WordPress and how to keep clients from f’ing up the sites you make them.

When not Pressing, I make pickles and knit scarves. My parents still have no idea what I do for a living. For more clues see her Howling Zoe website – tip:hover over the bottom left corner.

P.S If you are Amanda’s parents – we are delighted she is coming down here 🙂 (She has photos)

Posted in 2012, Speakers | Tagged Auckland, content, Speakers, WordCampNZ, WordPress, writing | Comments Off

Dee Teal – Getting involved in the WordPress Community

March 9, 2012 by Jason Kemp • Comments Off

Dee Teal - Web Princess- Au

Dee will be speaking on “Getting Involved in the WordPress Community”. This will be a talk especially for new users .

Dee has been working on WordPress meetups and other community building with some thoughts on how we can all get involved, on all sorts of levels.

Dee Teal is a freelance front end developer who, while born in NZ has been based out of Sydney for the last 13 years. She has been focused on theme development for WordPress and in the last 12 months has been focusing on using the Genesis theme framework.

She speaks regularly at Australian meetups, including at WordCamp Gold Coast ’11, is a Community Leader on the StudioPress (Genesis) forums and is so committed to the WordPress community she’s lead organiser for WordCamp Sydney, due to happen later this year.

The Web Princess

Posted in 2012 | Tagged Auckland, Speakers, WordCampNZ, WordPress | Comments Off

Ticket Sales off to a roaring start

March 3, 2012 by Jason Kemp • Comments Off

Thanks for all the interest out there. We opened ticket sales (Thurs 1st Mar) and already we are off to roaring start with early sales from people in Christchurch, Palmerston North, Tauranga, Hamilton and of course Auckland.

We have a fair number of Aussies from Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane all planning to come along and latest speaker submission is from Arizona !

Exciting times. This year we have tried to get speakers talks organised a bit earlier and plan on making some announcements over the next week or two.

If you are on our wordcampnz email updates list you will already know about The Web Princess aka Dee from Sydney and Nikolasa and Potaua Biasiny-Tule from http://news.tangatawhenua.com/ will talk design, tech, content & community on their various projects. Especially on magazine style sites – a veritable tag team from Rotorua.

More details about Dee, Nik & Taua soon along with other speaker announcements. If you made a speaker submission we are sorting through them and will make contact this coming week. We will need some photos so we can make a speakers gallery.

Last but not least tickets are only $60 this year and you don’t need anything in the coupon space on the checkout screen. Thanks to sponsors Openhost & Young & Shand especially for helping us get off to such a great start.

Posted in 2012 | Tagged Auckland, WordCampNZ, WordPress | Comments Off

WordCampNZ 2012 Venue & Date

February 5, 2012 by Jason Kemp • Comments Off

As previously announced – we are delighted to confirm the venue and date for this years WordCampNZ on Saturday 21st of April in Auckland.

The venue is the “Ellen Melville Hall” which is located centrally right near a beautiful square called Freyberg Square. The hall is on the 1st floor of the building and there are entrances off High St and Freyberg Place.

The hall has space for around 150 people. We also have a smaller room alongside which can be used for genius bar type tips and help especially for new users.

There is disabled access and car-parking is available at Victoria St, Chancery and anywhere downtown although we’d recommend public transport. It is an easy (5min) walk up from the Britomart transport hub.

This area is part of the downtown High St zone, just one block up from Vulcan Lane and right near Chancery Square which is a great location for cafes.

The main event is all day Saturday after which everyone will be welcome to socialise over a drink or dinner nearby. If you would like to be a speaker this year please use the call for speakers 2012 form to let us know. All content needs to be related to WordPress users.

On Sunday we will have a more development oriented tech meet-up nearby in a smaller workspace which will be announced soon.

The venue building is a historic place and

“was built in 1962 as a monument to the pioneer women of the city and a memorial to the late Miss Ellen Melville (1882 – 1946). Miss Melville was the first woman to practice law independently in New Zealand and was Auckland City’s first and longest serving female councillor in the history of the council (33 years).”

For architecture buffs the original modernist building was designed by Tibor K Donner between 1958 and 1960. When it was first built it had a pool and fountain immediately underneath the hall itself as it was on columns called pilotis which kept the ground level open. Unfortunately for designers the downstairs space was converted to a shop some years back. However there is now a fountain on the other side of the square.