Take a Hike!

#WCFay tips

When I get to a new town, my first impulse is to find a good place to walk. If that’s on your list for downtime during WordCamp Fayetteville, you’re in luck.

Fayetteville has a wonderful system of trails connecting with an almost-complete walking or biking tour up to Bentonville. Take the Virtual Tour to get a complete picture, with a map and everything.

Or read on for a few highlights.

If you want to get a real hiking feeling without leaving town, head to Lake Fayetteville. You’ll find an entrance just off of Zion Road — turn east off of College Ave. by the Northwest Arkansas Mall and park at the Veterans Memorial Park.

Lake_Fayetteville

Want to see more of the town on your walk?

Consider the Scull Creek Trail, which is wheelchair accessible, or the Mud Creek Trail. Click through the links to get maps. Both of these fully-paved trails give you a good view of the town, and they’re connected. Start with Mud Creek off of Old Missouri Road, continue on to Scull Creek, and then take the Frisco Trail, and you can get in 7.6 miles before you join us on Friday night at Mermaids.

mud-creek

Do you want some physical challenge beyond just getting in the steps? Consider the Mt. Sequoyah Woods Trail. This trail is popular for mountain bikes, but you’ll often have it to yourself. Expect to do a bit of climbing along the way.It’s only a mile from downtown, but you’ll definitely feel like you’ve had a walk in the woods.
sequoyah-trail

 

A First-Time WordCamper’s Pre-conference Thoughts

#WCFay tips

The 6th annual WordCamp Fayetteville conference will take place on Saturday, August 1, 2015. This year’s conference will be my first WordCamp experience! Many WordPress designers, developers and users get together to share their knowledge and experience. I will have the opportunity to meet WordPress users and developers who, at different skill levels, are also trying to figure things out. It will be reassuring to know that I am doing certain things well while also challenging myself to learn more complex tasks.

In 2009, I started a blog using the WordPress.com platform and learned about choosing themes and how to do basic customization. I began to watch video tutorials covering WordPress topics and practiced my newly-learned skills. In 2013, I decided to learn more about self-hosting and the WordPress.org platform. Since then, I have created a few self-hosted web sites while still maintaining my original WordPress.com web site.

While viewing WordCamp TV videos, I have often wished to be a member of the audience instead of being an online viewer in my home office. Earlier this year, I looked on the WordCamp Central web site to search for a conference in my state and was pleased to discover WordCamp Fayetteville. I look forward to attending my first WordCamp in beautiful Northwest Arkansas!

Giving Back

Sponsors

WordPress has asked all of us who make their livings with WordPress to give back to the community. They suggest 5% of your time — a couple of hours a week. There are plenty of ways to give back: help in the support forums at WordPress.org, organize and participate in meetups, help with WordPress sites at Give Camps…

Here’s something else you can do: present at WordCamp.

Chances are there’s something that you know but which other people don’t know. Maybe there’s a great plugin you know how to use. Or perhaps you have a special way of organizing your blogging calendar. Maybe you have a trick for integrating social media with your WordPress site that other people don’t know.

Think about sharing that knowledge with the rest of the community.

What will you get out of it?

  • You might get extra visibility, a job, a lead, or some other measurable return on your investment. We’re not here to promote our companies, but you know what they say about casting bread on the waters.
  • You’ll learn things, too. The comments and questions and discussions after your talk will almost certainly teach you something, and then there are other people’s sessions.
  • It’s fun. WordCamp is a great place to meet people and to get to know folks you’ve only talked to on Twitter.

And you’ll be doing your part to give back to WordPress, that free tool that makes you money.

Not a speaker? That’s understandable; some say that fear of public speaking is the #1 phobia in the nation. In that case, think about sponsoring, volunteering, or just helping to spread the word!

WCFay 2015

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We’re happy to announce that WordCamp Fayetteville 2015 is officially on the calendar!

WordCamp Fayetteville will take place from July 31 through August 2, 2015, at the Reynold’s Center on the University of Arkansas campus.

This year we have five tracks. Think of your website as a car and use these descriptions to get an idea of which track will be perfect for you:

  • WP101: Just bought the car or thinking about it
  • Developers: Getting under the hood
  • Designers: Jazzing up the chassis
  • Publishers: Delivering the goods
  • Entrepreneurs: Driving the car, not messing with the motor — and you mean business

We’d like you to pick a track when you buy your ticket, so we have an idea of how large a room we’ll need for each track. You can move around, of course, but give us your best guess.

Subscribe using the form in the sidebar to stay up to date on all the news. We’ll be keeping you posted on all the details over the coming weeks, including speaker submissions, ticket sales and more!