Movin’ right along…

I’m still on target for announcing our venue for WordCamp Chicago next week – it’s been narrowed down to a few and confirmation will take place over the next few days, so stay tuned!

I’ve also been updating our Sponsors Page with information on the companies who are helping sponsor WordCamp Chicago by making monetary contributions to help us cover the expenses involved in hosting an event like this. I have a few more sponsors to list there over the next week, as well. I want to give a shout out to Wiley Publishing, of Dummies.com for their generous sponsorship of the event! As many of you may know, Wiley is the publisher for my WordPress For Dummies book – – they are also being generous to give discount codes to every WordCamp attendee for Dummies.com products.

Another big shout to my friends over at ServerBeach, who just confirmed as a sponsor today! ServerBeach was launched to serve the market’s thirst for self-managed servers equipped with powerful hardware, fast and reliable bandwidth, convenient automation tools, and first-class support – all at an affordable price. Self-managed servers are not an afterthought at the Beach, it’s our business. And we do whatever we can to satisfy the needs of our core customers, the “Geeks” – people like you.

E.Webscapes and BlogsAbout Hosting are both my own companies and are kicking in to sponsor WordCamp Chicago. Brian Gardner’s StudioPress is also a generous sponsor for the event. We are getting there, but still in need of more sponsorship – so if you, your company, or anyone you know is interested in sponsoring WordCamp Chicago – get in touch with me and we can talk about how we can help one another.

Brian has also been hard at work recruiting and scheduling some fantastic speakers for your educational pleasure – – I’m really excited about some of the names he has on the line-up so far:

• Matt Mullenweg, founder of our favorite blog/CMS platform, WordPress
• Brian Clark, copywriting guru and owner of the very popular blog Copyblogger
• Jeremy Wright, CEO of one of the largest global new media blog networks, b5media
• Sarah James, uber-cool mommy blogger of popular sites Whoorl and Hair Thursday
• Erin Blaskie, CEO of global internet marketing strategy consultancy, Business Services, ETC
• Mark Ghosh, owner/blogger of a great WordPress resource site, Weblog Tools Collection
• Micah Baldwin, VP of business development of search-powered web application, Lijit
• Tim Frick, who creates design-driven communication solutions with his company, Mightybites
• Doug Hanna, head honcho of running the day-to-day operations of the WordPress showcase

If you haven’t already signed up – why not??