At 10up, meaningful community engagement is part of our DNA… and so is Portland. Just last year, 10up sponsored four WordCamps, and team 10up employees have spoken at over a dozen WordCamps around the country, from Seattle, to San Diego, to Miami, to New York.

10up is a premium, distributed agency, that serves customers ranging from small businesses to international publishing giants like TechCrunch, to cable networks like NBC Universal Sports. We have full time, salaried employees around the country, having found amazing talent in places like Boston, the New York City metro area, Washington DC, Sacramento California, Miami Florida, and Birmingham Alabama. But the closest thing we have to a home – our center of gravity – is Portland, Oregon.

Three of our fourteen talented team members – Zack, Taylor, and Jeremy – are proud to call Portland home. And if you call Portland home, you’ve probably seen them around; they’re active members of Portland’s WordPress meet up, and have spoken at local events like WebVisions. Somehow, between helping clients like Trulia and 9to5 Mac, they even found time to help organize some of this weekend’s events!

Two of our Portland contingent will be speaking this weekend. Zack and Taylor both kick off the morning with talks that demonstrate just how diverse our team’s skill set is. While Zack examines best – and worst! – practices for WordPress development, Taylor offers an in depth look at user-centric interaction design.

Of course, we get tired of hearing ourselves speak – we want to hear from you. Whether you’re an organization looking for a first class web experience, an eager developer looking for an amazing career opportunity, or just have an inspiring story to tell about WordPress, we want you to track down us down in our 10up t-shirts. In addition to our Portland contingent of three, Jake – 10up’s President – will also be roaming the floor. We’re always seeking new and exciting opportunities, and always recruiting.

Happy camping!

Jake Goldman

You know that feeling when you’ve got all your pals with you, and you know they totally have your back? That’s how it feels to organize WordCamp Portland with sponsors like ZippyKid. Do you like barbecue more than pasteboard sandwiches? Then stop by ZippyKid’s table at the event and thank them for us (but use a napkin first).

ZippyKid was founded by Vid Luther in May of 2010 in southern, sunny San Antonio, Texas. While having an abundance of management experience in website hosting, Vid started seeing the complication and frustration that customers of all sizes were facing with their hosting company and he knew there had to be a better solution, a better way to treat customers.“I was tired of the way hosting companies were treating small business owners… started ZippyKid, where I could dictate the quality of service and offering.”

ZippyKid offers reliable, secure and cost effective web hosting solutions that keep your website up and running. Their standard features include CDN, malware scanning, firewall protection, SSL, daily backups, and more.

We’re grateful to count WP Engine as one of our Bald Eagle sponsors this year. Without them and our other sponsors, we simply couldn’t make WordCamp Portland happen. They’re the hops in our microbrew, the hot glue in our crafty creation. Do stop by their table to say thanks and hello (in whatever order you prefer) on August 18.

WP Engine eats, sleeps, and dreams WordPress.  Using their fast, secure, and cutting-edge technology, WP Engine provides top of the line Managed WordPress hosting to tens of thousands of top domains globally, such as HTC, Foursquare, VMWare, Atlassian, Bonnaroo, and Soundcloud.  WP Engine is also active in the WordPress community; they’ve sponsored and attended more than 20 WordCamps in 2012.  WP Engine offers guaranteed hacker-proof security, and top-flight developer features, all hosted on infrastructure ready to scale. For support, WP Engine hires WordPress experts to troubleshoot problems, and websites running smoothly again.

Digital Trends is a huge friend to the Portland WordPress community. They provide space for the monthly meetup in their office building, and have sponsored WordCamp Portland two years running. That’s, like, the open source community equivalent of letting us crash on their couch once a month AND lending us rent money!

Who are these awesome people, you wonder? Well, Digital Trends helps people make the most of the hi-tech lifestyle by providing sneak peeks, one-of-a-kind product reviews, editorials and technology news about trendsetting consumer products and services. By focusing on products that incorporate style along with cutting edge functionality, Digital Trends has become an indispensable resource for people who embrace the best of what technology can offer. Digital Trends is one of the fastest growing tech lifestyle sites on the web with more than 4 million monthly unique visitors world-wide.

This year, Digital Trends was able to pay for us to bring in wifi service to Norse Hall so that your WordCamp Portland experience can be more connected and robustly awesome. If you see them around, please say thanks! We’re so grateful for their support.

WordCamp sponsors are a great bunch of people: they love WordPress and the amazing WP community and want to give back to the WordPress project.

Whether you are an individual WordPress geek, a small business running your site on WordPress, or a big business that makes a living from WordPress, we all have one thing in common: we benefit from community contributions to the WordPress project. It’s impossible to say how much we all owe WordPress, it is possible to show your appreciation.

WordCamp Portland is a volunteer-organized event that needs your support to provide great content and foster the community that helps make WordPress awesome, while keeping ticket prices affordable for all.

Please support WordCamp Portland! We have affordable sponsorship levels and accept in-kind donations of things we need to make the event awesome, like coffee and lunch and, you know, unicorns and stuff.