WCChicago 2010 Venue Announcement

After much searching and, literally, walking the beat in downtown Chicago – we have a venue for our event in June! I will spare you all of the messy and confusing details that got us to this place, but I do believe we have found a great place, and one that will suit our purposes in 2010 and beyond!

The Congress Plaza
520 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60605

(on Michigan Avenue by Grant Park)

We have two rooms secured that enables us to run two tracks of panels/presentations – which is great! That is the number one suggestion we received from your feedback from last year’s event, so we are really excited to be able to provide the space for it this year!

The Great Hall is for our General Sessions (Keynote, Opening/Closing Remarks):

Congress Plaza - Great Hall WordCamp Chicago

The Windsor Room is for our break-out sessions (either Track 1: User Track or Track 2: Developers Track):

Windsor Room - Congress Plaza

We also have another room called the Rendevous room that is being used for registration, schwag bag grabs and vendor tables/booths.

Now that the venue is solid, Brian and I will be putting our heads together on developing a great 2-day program that we’re sure you will all benefit from.  A little while ago, I published a poll and survey looking for YOUR feedback on what topics you would like to hear about, what tracks you are likely to attend and general suggestions on how we can make WordCamp Chicago YOUR event – – the poll and survey are still open, so if you have not already – please browse over there to give us your feedback – thank you, in advance!

We are still accepting sponsor contributions for WordCamp Chicago 2010 to help us pay for the costs involved – so if you are interested in sponsoring WordCamp Chicago – please let us know! We’ve already got some great sponsors – so far, ForDummies.com (Wiley Publishing) is our largest sponsor, opting for the Gold sponsorship for WordCamp Chicago – which is great!  As many of you know, ForDummies.com (Wiley) is the monster publishing house behind my own books, WordPress For Dummies and BuddyPress For Dummies (which is officially available on Amazon.com as of TODAY) – it is great to see them giving back to the WordPress community!  Also, ServerBeach, Margaret Roach and DigitalPure are Copper level sponsors for this year’s event…big thanks to them for their support!

A word about hotels and lodgings in the area: One of the biggest challenges we had in planning this year is that a HUGE convention is going on the same weekend – The American Association for Oncologists. Basically, these guys and gals are taking over downtown Chicago and are having their convention at the McCormick Center. Why am I telling you? Because hotel rooms in downtown Chicago, close to our venue at the Congress Plaza, are going fast…..so book early!

The Congress Plaza, itself, has booked off a block of rooms for WordCamp Chicago attendees, but it is first come, first serve, as they are only holding a block of 100 rooms. During the booking process, let them know you are attending WordCamp Chicago and they will give you their special rate of $229.00 per night. (Note: hotel rooms in downtown Chicago for this weekend are unusually high due to the Oncologist convention – as usual, big cities jack up room rates when a large convention is in town … just because they can.)   I am working on putting together a listing of other hotels in the area for you and will post it on our FAQ Page when I have it ready.

A word on WiFi – the hotel has it, but when we told them that this group is 500+ large and every single one of us will want to be online throughout the day, they cringed…not just a little, but a lot. They warned us that their WiFi may not hold up under the pressure.   We are currently working on an alternative solution with some local providers in the area – – in the meantime, anyone who has their own portable MiFi, plan on bringing it because, as of right now, we cannot make any predictions as to the stability and uptime of the WiFi at the location. I will keep you updated as we go along – as I said, we are currently working on alternatives.

As the weeks go by and I assemble more and more information – I will post the info you need here in terms of transportation, parking, attractions in the areas, locations of Starbucks close to the venue (well..that’s mostly for Brian…) and any other information you’ll need to make your weekend visit to Chicago a great one!

119 days to go!!!