We’re less than two weeks away from this year’s WordCamp Birmingham! There are several announcements that need to be made this week, including additions to the speakers lineup (there are more coming), when our meeting for volunteers will take place (this Friday – more info to follow) and information about those businesses that will be helping this year’s event take flight…

We do need to place an order for t-shirts and determine a final number for lunch; in order to get this as accurate as possible, we need you to register before 11:55 a.m. this Friday, September 10. Registration will reopen later that day, but those registering at that point will not be guaranteed a t-shirt or lunch.

Getting folks to register as soon as possible is one of the best ways to help us ensure that we can provide the best overall experience possible. Thanks in advance for helping us out.

More to come later today!

Photo: Rockin the Chimp. Dougal Campbell/Flickr

Dougal Campbell (pictured to your left) will be returning for his third WordCamp in Birmingham, serving as our opening keynote for our first year back in 2008. He plans to talk about the downsides of a certain popular project.

Sara Cannon presented last year and has since presented at WordCamps in Atlanta and we’ll be able to say after next week, Savannah. She’ll be exploring the world of advanced web typography.

Syed Balkhi will be making his first appearance here in Birmingham. The founder of WPBeginner will be talking about ways to boost your WordPress site’s speed and performance.

We’re excited that they’ll be joining us on September 18 and we’re looking forward to announcing more names in the coming days – stay tuned!

Photo: Dougal Campbell. wohlford/Flickr

BTW – we’re still looking for sponsors! Find out more about the different levels.

The cost to attend this year’s conference will be $40 (as promised).

The microsponsorship option is also currently available to those interested.

Other sponsorship opportunities will be announced on Tuesday, July 6. Many of the options currently posted will remain the same and we will be adding additional opportunities for you to support this year’s effort.

We hope you enjoy the first of a few changes to the design of our conference website made by local WordPress designer Tammy Hart. We’re hopeful that we’ll hear from Tammy on this blog before September rolls around.

Thanks for your patience and spread the word to those that may be interested in sponsoring #wcbhm10 to check out the site on Tuesday morning.

We’ve been in the process of redesigning the website to allow for us to run registration from within the website. The redesign is scheduled to be finished on Thursday, July 1.

Whether or not the redesign is complete, we will open registration on that date (though we will have to manage it through a third-party service). We apologize for the inconvenience to those who wanted to register earlier but we felt it made more sense to delay it and have a fully functional site for this year’s conference.

We’re looking forward to formally opening speaker submissions by next week.

Thanks!

We’ll be holding the first planning meeting on Wednesday, June 16 at 12 p.m. at The Red Cat (formerly known as o kafés) – 2901 2^nd Avenue South (in Pepper Place). I’d hoped to announce the meeting earlier today, until I realized that the location I’d hoped to hold the meeting originally would be hosting World Cup viewing party that day

It should take no longer than one hour. Please let me know if you’ll be able to attend by commenting below.

We launched a programming survey yesterday via our social media outposts that will help shape this year’s event. We’ve received a great number of responses so far but want more, so please fill it out if you have not as of yet. The replies received by midnight June 15 will help shape the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting.

If you can’t be there on Wednesday and you still want to help out, please use the contact form to let us know.

Looking forward to seeing some of you next week!

The first thing that needs to be done is to ask you to save the date – WordCamp Birmingham 2010 is currently scheduled for September 18 & 19, 2010!

We also still need to “close out” WordCamp Birmingham 2009 so be sure to stay tuned for a couple of mp3 files and a few other things over the next 2-3 weeks.

We’ll also be reaching out to find folks that want to tackle different aspects of planning this year’s WordCamp Birmingham. Please fill out the contact form and we’ll let you know when the first organizational meeting will be (most likely before the end of March).

Be on the lookout for information about a regular metro Birmingham blogger help desk session as well. We’re hoping to start that in the near future.

Looking forward to the upcoming conversations!

FYI – we ended registration earlier this week to allow for us to secure enough chairs and food for the event. Those willing to attend without a guarantee of a seat or lunch will be able to do so for a registration fee of $60.

Here are a few other helpful notes for you:

• Twitter hashtag: #wcbhm09
• Flickr tags: wordcampbham, upcoming:event=3071680
  • (You’ll also want to add your photos to the WordCamp Birmingham and WordCamp Flickr Groups.
• Available wireless networks for Saturday at Innovation Depot:
  • IDA
  • IDB
  • WordCamp (password: wordcamp09)

The final schedule will be posted to the site by 8:30 a.m. Please note that when posted Matt Mullenweg will speak during lunch, with Esra’a Al Shafei being our last speaker of the day. We will also be announcing the location of the after party during lunch.

We’ll see you later on…

You may also want to meet up with some of the folks that are already in Birmingham and attending for a pre-camp get together at Jim N Nick’s in the Five Points South district. We’ll get there around 6 p.m. and we’ll make sure that you know where we’re sitting.

Reply below if you think you’ll be able to join us on Friday. Hope to see many of you there.

Esra’a had planned to be in Birmingham last month during the successful inaugural Social South conference but was unable to appear in person. Instead, her moving presentation via Skype has been considered by many people to be the highlight of that event.

MideastYouth.com is a successful website built using WordPress as a content management system and she’ll be able to talk with those in attendance about her experiences and just how powerful the tools have been for her and her contributors.

We’re grateful to a local blogger The Microfit Group, who volunteered to pay for Esra’a's airfare up front so that she can attend. We will be raising funds to reimburse them and are extremely grateful for their generosity repay the blogger. Please contact André directly to find out more information about how you can help or note that you want your sponsorship funds to go towards this goal.

So if you haven’t registered yet, you may want to do so soon, if not to be there for what will no doubt be a powerful presentation but because space is starting to go fast…

Looking forward to seeing you there!

We’re happy to announce that we’ve secured our location for Saturday’s events!

We’ll be at the Innovation Depot, located in downtown Birmingham’s Entrepreneurial District. As mentioned before, Sunday’s events will take place at Shift Workspace.

More announcements coming starting next week! Stay tuned – and don’t forget to register…

Photo: Innovation Depot. Photo Mojo/Flickr