Leo Ibanez & Loughlin O’Nolan

Leo Ibanez & Loughlin O'NolanLeo (left) and Loughlin (right) met in the online games publishing industry and are currently working on building Community Storm, which aims to help clients create vibrant online communities using any and all available tools.

Originally from Argentina, Leo somehow ended up in Cork and has spent the last decade building and managing multilingual online communities. Loughlin is from Dublin and rather unoriginally still lives there. He has worked as a copywriter and online strategist for all kinds of clients, big and small.

Session: Building & Managing Community with WordPress

This how-to seminar on Building & Managing Community looks at the value of building community, how to actually implement community with WordPress, how to manage users as you build critical mass, and why you’re not a community manager until someone has threatened to break your legs.

Friday Night: Speakers & Sponsors

Speakers & Sponsors

We’ll be welcoming (and thanking) all of our speakers and sponsors who’ve made it down to Kilkenny in time with a private dinner at Langton’s on Friday night. The setting (and the food) will be very nice indeed but this is not a formal do by any means. Wear what you like – if you’re jetlagged, you can stumble downstairs in your PJs and we’ll be happy to see you (and give you coffee.)

We’ll be getting firm numbers for this event as we confirm speakers. You can bring your kids; we’ll be asking you about that as well.  Dinner will kick off at about 7:30 or 8 and we’ll update with details as the schedule firms up. Thanks!

And We’re Off…

©Nikolay Bachiyski

©Nikolay Bachiyski

It’s only 72 hours since the official Planning Day but WordCamp Ireland 2010 is now planned, live and ready to go. Yesterday we confirmed – and in fact, are taking over entirely – Langton’s Hotel in Kilkenny for a two-day conference on March 6th and 7th. WordCamp is on, baby!

We are absolutely thrilled at the immediate response from the speakers and sponsors we’ve approached in the last 24 hours, and would like to give an enormous smooch to our very first speakers and sponsors, many of whom said yes when the only thing we knew was “WordPress, March.” We’ll be adding many, many more fabulous speakers and sponsors soon.

Meanwhile, we’re incredibly excited because we think this is going to be an outstanding conference. The first 100 tickets are €40 each (after that they go up) and the weekend includes:

  • Registration, coffee, and nosh on Saturday and Sunday mornings
  • A swag bag that’s definitely different
  • A full schedule of talks on three distinct tracks (Intro, Bloggers, and Technical) to match different interests
  • Included lunch on Saturday and Sunday
  • An optional dinner that night (extra cost applies, sorry!)
  • Plenty of breaks and conference-wide talks so that everyone is together enough to meet and talk.

In addition, we’ve designed this to be a family-friendly conference; you can bring your partner and/or kids and not have to leave them behind for a full weekend away. Kilkenny is a great city with loads to do, but we’ll also have an on-site, supervised playroom for parents to avail of as needed. On top of that, we’re selling extra tickets for lunch and for Saturday’s dinner so your partner and/or children can hang out with you through the days.

It should be an absolutely fabulous weekend to get your WordPress on; if you have suggestions, please add your comments.