WordCamp Finland 2015

If you’re looking for instructions on how to get to Tampere, read this post first.

WordCamp Finland 2015 will be held at the Hullu Poro Restaurant in the heart of central Tampere.

Hullu Poro Restaurant

Koskikeskus Shopping Centre
Hatanpään Valtatie 1, 2nd floor
Tampere, Finland

The main entrance and the registration is located on the ground floor of the Koskikeskus shopping centre, on the riverbank side. Look for the WordCamp signs and shirts!

Registration opens at 8:00 am.

Directions from the Railway Station

WordCamp Finland is just an 8-minute walk away from the Tampere Railway Station.

1. Head south on Rautatienkatu toward Verkatehtaankatu
2. Turn right onto Otavalankatu
3. Cross Hatanpään valtatie and enter the Koskikeskus shopping centre
4. Head to the riverbank side of the shopping centre, registration is on the first floor (see the map above)

Attendees from the Helsinki metropolitan area: Should you wish to participate in the first talks of the day and have time to register, it’s recommended you take the 6:30 train, which arrives 8:00 at the Tampere station.

Attendees from Jyväskylä: To be in good time, take the 6:22 train.

Attendees from Turku: The first train is at 7:00. You’ll have to run for it.

Finding your way inside Koskikeskus

There’s an app for that! Available for Android, iOS and Windows Phone, the official Koskikeskus application links can be found here. In addition of giving you directions at the shopping centre, there’s useful stuff in case you want to take a stroll around the shopping centre (but why’d you want to do that!).

WordCamp Finland would not be possible without our sponsors. We hope you check the links in this post to see what they have to say, and come and say hi at the sponsor area during the event. On a global level, we and many other WordCamps worldwide are supported by the following:

Outstanding: Jetpack

Superb: Bluehost, PlanetHoster, GoDaddy

Splendid: WPML

Locally, we are supported by these amazing organisations:

Gold: Alma Media and Exove.

Bronze: Bananas, Geniem, H1, Seravo and Wysiwyg

Kiitos!

The last 20 tickets were put on sale this morning at 10:00 and went in 6 minutes. This time we really are full, so if you didn’t manage to get a ticket, we suggest you give a shout on Twitter with the hashtag #wcfi in case there’s someone who can’t use theirs.

Many people have asked whether we’ll have more tickets available, so we deliver: On Monday 20th at 10:00 there will be 20 more tickets on sale here. If you want a ticket, you’ll have to be quick!

Only three weeks to go till WCFI 2015! Is anyone excited yet?

On Friday evening after the conference day, there will be an afterparty starting at 20:00 downstairs from the conference venue in Skål Bar, so you’ll have plenty of time to have a bite to eat after the last session, and perhaps explore the industrial beauty of Tampere centre. For the afterparty you’ll need your WordCamp badge so don’t lose it. Some drinks might be on the house 😉

WordCamp Finland 2015 is now sold out, and we’re all amazed and happy for the interest for the event. If you missed your chance to get a ticket, we might be releasing some more tickets (~20) for sale, so keep your eye on the WCFI site.

It’s now 4 weeks till WCFI and the excitement is building up, at least with us organisers. As of this writing there are under 10 tickets left, so get yours quick before they run out!

This post introduces our last group of speakers. See the full list here. A detailed schedule will be announced in the coming days, keep an eye on the Schedule page.

Perttu Tolvanen is a CMS expert that helps clients choose partners and technologies for their Web and eCommerce projects. His daily work involves writing RFPs, analyzing proposals, meeting vendors and facilitating workshops. Most typical cases for him are large web projects where client organisations are renewing their web presence from websites to eCommerce. In his flash talk Perttu will be analyzing the differences between WordPress and other CMS’s like EPiServer and Drupal from a client perspective.

Jussi Tuoma is a self-taught web and WordPress enthusiast who’s been developing and learning web since 2007. He is currently a WordPress developer and a partner in a digital agency called Höyry. At WordCamp Finland Jussi will give a lightning talk about creating a HTML Presentation using the Reveal.js framework and Advanced Custom Fields.

Miika Arponen is a web developer from Tampere with about a decade of experience in web developing. He has been developing WordPress sites for Geniem (http://www.geniem.fi) for two years. Miika’s flash talk at the event gives a glimpse on Geniem’s upcoming DustPress plugin that brings the advantages of Dust.js templating, MVVM pattern and a pinch of isomorphic design into WordPress development.

Erilaiset tapahtumat eivät valitettavasti järjestä itse itseään, vaan aina tarvitaan alkuunpaneva voima sekä taustalle hääräämään useampiakin henkilöitä, jotta suunnitelmista päästään konkretian tasolle ja lopulta pullautettua ulos jotain mitä voi ylpeydellä kutsua tapahtumaksi. Millaista sitten on järjestää tapahtumaa nimeltä WordCamp Finland ja miksi minä olen tässä mukana?

Loppusyksystä 2014 kuulin huhuja, että Suomeen oltaisiin vihdoin saamassa oma WordCamp-konferenssi. WordCampeja on järjestetty useamman vuoden ajan ympäri maailmaa lukuisissa maissa, pelkästään vuoden 2014 aikana noin 80 eri tapahtumaa. Pian minulta kysyttiin, kiinnostaisiko minua mahdollisesti osallistua WordCamp Finlandin järjestämiseen. No totta hemmetissä kiinnostaa, kiitos kysymästä. Mitä voin tehdä ja joko aloitetaan?

WordCamp on siis ensimmäinen laatuaan Suomessa, joten on ollut mahtava tilaisuus päästä mukaan organisoimaan asioita ja vaikuttamaan tapahtuman sisältöön. Mainetta ja kunniaa (eli käytännössä oman nimen näkymistä organisoijien listassa) parempi motivaattori on, että omalla työpanoksellaan voi edesauttaa kasaamaan monipuolisen kattauksen WordPress-asiantuntijuutta ja tarjoamaan tämän kaiken aiheesta kiinnostuneille.

Työskentelen itse WordPressin parissa päivittäin projektipäällikön roolissa, joten järjestäjätiimiin mukaan astuminen tuntui luontevalta. Parhainta antia on ollut tavata uusia ihmisiä ja tutustua henkilöihin, jotka aiemmin ovat olleet vain etäisiä nimiä. Järjestäjäporukkamme on aidosti todella rento, avoin ja mukava. Oman mielipiteen esille tuominen on ollut helppoa ja kaikki on muutenkin sujunut harmonisessa yhteisymmärryksessä. Järjestäjänä takaan myös itselleni pääsyn itse tapahtumaan ja saan toivottavasti mahdollisuuden tavata lisää WordPress-ammattilaisia ja oppia uutta, sen mitä järjestäjän velvollisuuksiltani ehdin.

Kaikkea ei onneksi tarvinnut aloittaa tyhjästä, vaan WordCamp Central tarjoaa suhteellisen tarkat puitteet ja ohjeet WordCampin järjestämiseen sekä kontakteja ja tukea. Organisointiin on voinut osallistua oman aikataulunsa salliessa ja vastuuta ottaa sen verran kuin haluaa ja kykenee hoitamaan. Oma vastuualueeni on ollut kokonaisuudessaan suhteellisen pieni, joten kiitokset kaikille muille mukana olleille jo tässä vaiheessa.

Vielä tarvitsee loksautella palasia kohdilleen ennen h-hetkeä, mutta tasaisen varmasti edetään ja hyvällä meiningillä. Nähdään Hullussa Porossa 8.5.!

-Minna Siltanen

The first WordCamp Finland will be held in the Hullu Poro restaurant, located in the Koskikeskus shopping centre in the centre of Tampere, so arrival via bus or train gets within a short walking distance of the venue.

Arrival by plane

Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport

Easiest way of getting to Tampere from Helsinki-Vantaa is by train. You can get to Tikkurila train station via local bus that goes from Helsinki-Vantaa airport in every ten minutes. In daytime, there are trains at least every hour to Tampere (see about trains later in this post).

There is also a direct bus connection from Helsinki-Vantaa to Tampere every hour, which is also a good option, especially late in the evening or by night, when there are no trains.

Bus to Tikkurila station

• Price: 3 euros / adult

• Line:

61/61V

• (Tikkurila train station is the last stop)

• Schedule:

http://aikataulut.reittiopas.fi/linjat/en/v61.html

Tampere-Pirkkala Airport

Tampere-Pirkkala airport is near Tampere, so the best way of arriving is to either come with a local bus that leaves from the airport once / twice an hour depending on the time of day, or by arranging an AirPort Taxi beforehand.

Bus

• Price: 2,60 euros / adult

• Line: 1 (leave the bus at stop Koskipuisto H (0517))

• Schedule:

http://aikataulut.tampere.fi/?line=1&lang=en

Taxi

• • Price: 19 euros

• • Information:

http://www.taksitampere.fi/tat/en/services/airport

Arrival by train

You can buy tickets to the train from VR (Finnish State Railway). The train station is in a close walking distance from Koskikeskus shopping centre, see this Google Maps for directions.

Arrival by car

There is a lot of parking places near the venue. There’s a parking hall beneath Koskikeskus, and other nearby parking halls can be found at this site.

Finding the venue & Location in Koskikeskus

Instructions on how to get to the venue from the railway station are in a separate post: Finding the WCFI Venue.

See you there!

In addition to six amazing full-length talks, at WordCamp Finland we will have another six bite-size lightning talks. In this post we’ll introduce the first three of these speakers.

Otto Kekäläinen is the CEO of Seravo, a Finnish company that provides support services for companies that use Linux and other open source software, e.g. WordPress. Otto has 15+ years of experience in using, developing and advocating open source software. He also serves as the CEO of the MariaDB Foundation, as the president of the Finnish Unix User Group Foundation and is also active in many other free and open source software promoting organisations. Otto used WordPress for the first time in 2004, but really got into it in the past 2 years. His talk at WordCamp Finland Otto will explain how the open source community works and what benefits there are from a single developer and from a company perspective in publishing plugins at wordpress.org.