{"id":3034,"date":"2012-08-10T17:35:38","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T23:35:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.siteground.com\/blog\/?p=3034"},"modified":"2025-09-18T14:41:49","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T14:41:49","slug":"wordcamp-sanfrancisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.siteground.com\/blog\/wordcamp-sanfrancisco\/","title":{"rendered":"The SiteGround WordCamp San Francisco Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

As you should already know, this year we\u2019ve been actively supporting the Open Source communities by sponsoring and attending different community events like JoomlaDays and WordCamps all over the world. Last week, few SiteGround pals and me embarked on a journey to fly us to the beautiful San Francisco for the biggest WordPress community event \u2013 WordCamp San Francisco<\/a>. The event was amazing and without any further ado I\u2019ll try to share the highlights of our experience there!<\/p>\n

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<\/span>What\u2019s so special about WCSF?<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Just to mention for those of you who have missed our previous posts about WordCamps, they are usually community-organized events gathering WordPress enthusiasts to learn how to get the most out of it, and more importantly meet and get to know one another. WordCamp San Francisco is special though \u2013 first of all, Automattic \u2013 the company behind WordPress, organizes it and second – it brings together all the WordPress community key players and Matt Mullenweg himself \u2013 the co-founding developer of WordPress who delivers his annual \u201cState of the Word\u201d address (which is THE WordPress talk, most inspiring for the community, but about that later!). Unlike other WordCamps where the attendees are more or less beginners or intermediate WordPress users, in San Francisco I met mostly people who run their own WordPress-based businesses, many Automatticians and a ton of core WordPress developers and influential contributors. In that sense, mingling with the best and brightest from the community was an extremely valuable experience for us as a company as we were able to present our business model and gather insightful feedback from all those great users. Speaking of presenting our business, leads me to my next thing I wanted to tell you about \u2013 the sponsors and the booth experience!<\/p>\n

<\/span>Having a booth as a hosting sponsor<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

The other different thing about WCSF compared to other WordCamps, is that it\u2019s sponsors get a booth area to showcase their offerings, so it really feels like a real conference. The booth experience, as I expected, was really great and super busy – we got a lot of traction there! We met a ton of interesting people, talked to a lot of potential clients and met some existing ones as well. I can\u2019t really describe you how rewarding and motivational it feels to hear people\u2019s positive feedback about what we do. We have a special position on the WordPress hosting<\/a> market and our goal was to put a very clear and structured message to demonstrate that position. Luckily enough, our message appealed to the attendees and we were able to make a difference among the other hosting companies that were there. So what is it all about you\u2019d ask? On one hand there were the traditional hosts that offer pretty much standard hosting package that is in no way optimized for WordPress but affordable, and on the other were the so called managed WordPress providers that offer hosting optimized for WordPress only, but at a rather high cost. We see a growing gap between the two types of providers and believe that users should not face a dilemma which one to choose. We believe that both have their advantages and disadvantages and our message was that with us, users can have the best from the two hosting worlds \u2013 fast and reliable servers optimized for WordPress performance, 24\/7 professional support and all that at a reasonable price.<\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201cThe State of the Word\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

The highlight of WCSF is always Matt Mullenweg\u2019s annual \u201cThe State of the Word\u201d speech where he talks how has WordPress performed throughout the year and where it is going in the next one. Matt is a huge inspiration for the whole WordPress community and the WordPress lovers always anticipate his WCSF talk with lots of excitement. Here are some of the highlights of his talk:<\/p>\n