Jamie Smith is the owner of Jamie’s Notebook, a Northwest Arkansas copyrighting service, and a Certified Personal Leadership Effectiveness Advisor, which sounds pretty impressive. Jamie’s pretty impressive in person, too, so make a point of meeting her at WordCamp.

Her background is in journalism, and she continues to write for various publications as well as for area businesses and nonprofits.

Jamie is sharing “Using WordPress to develop effective, quality writing” at WordCamp this year. She has been a popular speaker at WordCamp Fayetteville and WordCamp Kansas City over the past several years. Get to know her at her personal blog, too.

Micah Sparrow is a teacher and blogger, and WordCamp Fayetteville is her first WordCamp speaking experience. We love to hear from new voices, and Micah is a special voice. She writes at Homemade Mostly, a food blog promising “Home Made Taste in Drive Through Time.”

Micah’s blog is mostly recipes, but she also has a special page introducing “The Ingredients Challenge” — what to do if you have ramen and strawberries on hand, or half a head of cabbage. You can actually fill out a form with your challenging ingredients  and Micah will research and create a recipe for you.

This creative problem-solving approach seems just right for Micah’s topic: “How to Generate New Blog Ideas and Keep Track of Them Using WordPress“. Beginning bloggers, get this one on your calendar!

Ben Pollock has been organizing the WordPress 101 track at WordCamp Fayetteville for… well, for as long as we’ve had a WordCamp 101 track. Each year, Ben shepherds new users through the .com vs. .org maze, teaches how to install the software and choose a theme, and provides encouragement to bloggers and business people alike.

Ben is a journalist, a Digital Specialist at the University of Arkansas, and a longtime blogger as well.

Bring your newbie questions to Ben at WordCamp Fayetteville 2017!

WordCamp, someone said at WordCamp Europe, is the celebration of the WordPress community. That comment, and a lot of other conversations I had with WordPressers, Automaticians, and WordPress contributors, made me think about our local WordPress community here in Northwest Arkansas.

When people reach out for help at our Facebook page, they can expect a quick response, with lots of encouragement and helpful suggestions. When we meet up for a Drink and Think or a social evening at a local coffee shop, we can always count on a welcoming group. We’ve done some fun projects together, in various permutations of agencies and individuals.

You can hear abut life-changing experiences at Fayetteville’s WordCamps.

But we have trouble keeping those meetups going. We don’t all turn out for WordCamp. We like each other, but we don’t always maintain the real-world connections we make.

I’d like to see WordCamp 2017 be the start of a stronger local WordPress community. Would you?

Is there someone out there reading this who would like to help organize Meet Ups for our meetup group on a regular basis? Could we take some of our networking time during WordCamp Fayetteville 2017 to find out what kinds of events would be good for our community in the year coming up? Do you know a WordPress user who would like to get to know other WordPress users?

Get your ticket, and maybe get a ticket for a friend, too.

Wolf Bishop will be schooling us on Code Free WordPress Themes at WordCamp Fayetteville this year. Wolf works in the greater St. Louis area, and is a WordPress and web hosting expert.

Wolf has experience with Joomla, Drupal, HTML/CSS, Boonex Dolphin, OxWall, OpenCart, ZenCart, and other platforms, but he remains faithful to his favorite, WordPress.

This question came up here in Paris as we’re getting ready for WordCamp Europe. Konstantin had a question about the schedule, and I mentioned that we had quite a few speakers from WordPress this year.

“How many?” he asked. We were enjoying lunch by the canal, me and some Automatticians.

“Five,” I said.

Everyone turned to stare. Five official WordPressers at one little WordCamp in Arkansas?

“Well, a few came last year and they had a good time,” I explained. “They told their friends. We also have community organizers from several different towns coming this year.”

The staring continued. WordPress Europe, sure. WordPress USA, naturally. But how could we get so much firepower in a town nobody had even heard of?

I had the explanation. “We’re the friendliest WordCamp in the world,” I assured them. Modestly.

Word is spreading.

Get your tickets today and find out why our little local WordCamp draws WordPress leaders.

Polls and surveys can be powerful… if you do them right. David Bernstein of The Bernstein Agency has 30 years’ experience in marketing and is the Chapter Chair for Northwest Arkansas SCORE, so he has the expertise to make the most of this tactic.

Join David at WordCamp Fayetteville 2017 to learn more.

George Spake is the lead organizer of the WordPress Memphis User Group and member of the web services team at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. George is going to share his experience of using custom post types to create a highly functional news site.

Check out a blog post George wrote to accompany a talk on demystifying WordPress plugins:

Talk: Demystifying WordPress Plugins

Then buy your ticket so you won’t miss George’s talk!

Haley Allgood is the Executive Director of the University of Arkansas Community Venture Foundation. She is passionate about the local start up community, and has worked with Startup Junkie.

Haley will be speaking about how businesses can use WordPress for an economical website they can keep up on their own. From choosing the right theme on, Haley will share her insights for entrepreneurs.

Are you tired of being told that you have to blog to make your small business an online success? Travis Pflanz, of WebWorks, is going to tell you the opposite. His session exhorts small business owners to quit wasting their time with blogging.

Travis has been on the WordCamp Kansas City and KC meet up organizing teams for several years, he develops WP plugins, and he’s a volunteer for the WordPress Community Team. This is Travis’s first presentation at WordCamp Fayetteville, and we’re looking forward to it.