Escape the Room, More Speakers, and final Sponsors.

Escape the Room challenge

Do you have the wit and team work skills to escape the room? On Saturday April 8th we’ll be golfing, but also taking a group to participate in an escape the room challenge at Dare to Escape. This is a pretty fun activity, one we did as a team on our last company retreat. A $50 ticket is required if you’d like to join us – lunch will be provided [menu].

More Speakers

Lawdan Shojaee is CEO of the software company AxoSoft and an advocate for workplace diversity. Chris Hooley is a walking contradiction in the best way possible – huge sports fan, weightlifter, recovering affiliate marketer of supplements and SEO legend, now turned community activist working to help the Phoenix homeless population. John Eckman of 10up will share his insight and acumen on running a scalable business. Neill Feather of SiteLock and Robert Rowley of Pagely will both be to breaking it down for us about the threats we face in digital security.

Additional speakers announced soon – Maybe your name? We’re still looking for a few more great lightning talk submissions. Have something to share? Do it.

Final Sponsors

Please welcome hosting co’s: DreamHost (Travel Sponsor), BoldGrid (C Sponsor), and Liquid Web (Coffee Sponsor), and SiteGround (Community) to the fold. Finally welcome Astoundify as a community sponsor.

Speakers, King’s Corners, and Lightning Talks

Speakers

We’re happy to share with you our first round of speakers. We are pleased to welcome: Jeanette Maré, Chris Lema, Sean Tierney, JR Farr, Andrew Norcross, Jason Coleman, Syed Balkhi, and James Giroux. Some of these folks have spoken before, some will be new to the PressNomics stage.

screenshot33

Look for additional speakers to be announced in the coming weeks.

King’s Corners

Alex King suggested this idea to us a couple years ago. Essentially we will take the latter part of the first conference day and split the room into 4 quadrants and a facilitator in each will lead a bar-camp style breakout session. The topics are Business Administration, Security, Positioning/Marketing, and Code/Tech. Bring your thinking caps and get ready to dive in.

Lightning Talks

On the second day after lunch we thought it would be fun (and interesting) to open the floor for lighting talks. These will be 10-12 minute presentations on 1 Big Idea. Virtually no topic is off limits and presenters will attempt to share/communicate one idea, concept, thing, skill, or belief in the time allotted. Wish to participate? Great please pitch us your topic here – extra points for originality and humor.

Huge thanks to our primary sponsors.

screenshot32

Let’s get ready to rumble….!

It’s 2017, and that means the clock is ticking down to April 6-8 for PressNomics 5. The team here at Pagely is once again working hard to bring you all a great event.  If you want to get a feel for prior events, scroll the social page here. Over the coming weeks we’ll have announcements of speakers that will be joining us and the schedule will be populated as well. We have a few ideas this year to mix up the format a bit.

If you have not yet done so.. you REALLY should purchase your ticket

One thing that stunned me was how quickly sponsors stepped up when we announced the first PressNomics 6 years ago. It was a new idea, untested, unsanctioned, and unruly – yet they all took a chance. PN5 was no different. Within a few days of sending out the sponsorship prospectus this year we met our sponsorship goal. These fine companies make this event possible, and help us share the proceeds with worthy charities.

mojo

MOJO Marketplace stepped up huge and is the title sponsor this year. Brady and J.R. are class acts.


Envato, Formidable Forms, SiteLock, Gravity Forms, and GoDaddy all came forward as well. These folks will all be present at the event so be sure to say Hello.

The following community sponsors also have our thanks as these are the folks that drive our ecosystem and evangelize the WordPress message.

Visit our sponsor page where you can see all their twitter handles, give them a shout of thanks won’t you?

THANK YOU SPONSORS!

screenshot12

Pn5 Tickets on Sale Nov 29

Interesting week we had. You may (or may not be) a bit flummoxed by the election results. Well it is not business as usual — but the show must go on.

Tickets for PN5 go on Sale Nov 29th at 7:00AM MST at $375 for Early Bird and $425 for General Admission.

Shoutout to our early sponsors:

  • Envato
  • Pagely
  • Formidable Pro
  • OptinMonster
  • WP All Import
  • rtCamp
  • Pressed
  • StoreApps

screenshot3248

PressNomics 5 – April 6th-8th, 2017

Here we go again.

PressNomics is the event for the WordPress Business professional. The annual gathering of the best and brightest in our ecosystem is back for v5. Dates have been secured at Tempe Mission Palms Hotel in Tempe, Arizona for April 6th – 8th.  Tickets on sale soon.

We can tell you what PressNomics is, but we rather let past attendees do the honor – Scroll through the historical social stream.

It feels a little like this though:

James Tryon
Photo of James Tryon by @ifyouwillit

Our interview with Alex King

It was my pleasure to know and learn from Alex. He was the first name I came across in the young WordPress community, the first person we asked to be interviewed on our blog, and the first person we asked to speak at the first PressNomics. He was legendary to many in our community. Alex Passed away after a fight with cancer 10 days after we filmed this video.

Alex King – Interview Sept. 2015

What if.. By Cory Miller

Below is a guest post from one of our sponsors, AND speaker Cory Miller. Enjoy.

What If Next Week at PressNomics 4 …

maxresdefaultAt the first two PressNomics, I recently confessed to Josh and Sally, I had left each time somewhat down in spirit and extremely anxious.

My problem was simple: I got wrapped up in things I shouldn’t have, particularly jealousy and envy seeing so many younger, more talented, more energetic people entering the WP scene.

But last year, I was determined to make my experience better.

And I’m happy to say I had an amazing time and came home refreshed, energized and looking forward to next year (which is this year).

If you haven’t noticed, PressNomics 4 is NEXT week … and I’m excited, again.

And I wanted to share a couple of thoughts about how we can make it so much better for each other.

Here are four things that made the difference for me:

  1. I packed, prepared and came with a positive attitude — I said to myself, “I am going to have a good time this year, dangit, in fact, I’m going to have an epic time, and I’m going to leave excited!”
  2. I sought to spend time with quality people — deepening existing friendships as well as making new ones. By far the most memorable experience was walking in late and a moment after Josh had told everyone to go out the door I was standing next to to get your free hoodie.
  3. I sought to connect and introduce good people to each other — by far some of my favorite times were seeing friends make friends with each other. Several times when I would meet someone I would ask them what they were wanting to get out of PN and they would say, “To meet [insert someone’s name]” and if I knew them, I could go introduce them.
  4. I told jealousy and anxiety to take a vacation for a couple of days — Meaning, I sought to keep my focus on what matters most to me, to remind myself that I’m striving for my own definition of success and happiness, and to simply be happy for others in the pursuit of their own versions of that.

As a result, PressNomics is NOW so much than a conference or our annual industry event to me. It definitely is not just a couple of days in beautiful Tempe, although every year I fall more in love with the area.

It’s also not PrideNomics either. If you’re coming to show off, I just don’t think you’ll enjoy it much. The great thing about PN is that we all have awesome stuff going on.

PN is our time to “collaborate, learn and relax.” It’s our set aside time, with no other distractions (mostly) to just be around each other.

But I think it is even more and want to make the most of what PN is and can be.

I believe we have an opportunity to truly become a vibrant, authentic community that celebrates and encourages each other, every year at PN … AND throughout the year.

SO … WHAT IF … this year, 2016, for PressNomics 4, we took the next step, a big step from hanging out at a conference to being a real, vibrant, authentic community?

WHAT IF ….

  • We took one step in the direction of authenticity and were a little more honest about our struggles, pains, obstacles as well as successes?
  • We stop pretending everything was perfect, and got to the marrow of life as WP entrepreneurs?
  • We first sought to celebrate each other’s successes and encouraged each other with our struggles?
  • We let our guard down just enough to gauge and pursue authentic relationships with each other?
  • We asked these questions of each other, “What are you most thankful for?” and “How are YOU doing?”
  • We posed another question: “How has WordPress changed your life?”
  • We purposefully talked and made plans on how to keep the conversations going between PN’s?

AND, perhaps most important, at a bare minimum, what if we agreed NO ONE eats alone (breakfast, lunch and dinner)?

So how about it …. What if we made 2016 the year to compare all years to … and that the end of PN4 it only marks the beginning of the next level of our tribe?

P.S. — And finally, really, this is the end …. what if we got a headstart on all of this and started talking via the Post Status #pressnomics Slack channel? (And if you’re not a PS member, you join PS today!)

 

Formidable Forms and Pressnomics: A Story of Opportunity

Below is a guest post from one of our event sponsors, enjoy.

The team at Formidable Forms is gearing up for another great year at Pressnomics. Last year we attended Pressnomics as the last community-level sponsor. We’re thrilled to be back this time around as a Level 3 Sponsor, still planning to attend as many sessions as possible.

Pressnomics is all about inspiring new and existing businesses to succeed by paving the way for new opportunities and relationships. Pressnomics has been the most valuable conference we’ve ever attended, surpassing exponentially what we spent in the registration cost. That’s why Formidable Forms decided to sponsor Pressnomics this year: because we love WordPress, we love business, and we love meeting the amazing entrepreneurs who will be in attendance.

Following Pressnomics 3, we had a clearer idea of what we want our company to be, and—just as importantly—what we don’t want it to be. Others at the conference had ideas and insights that, when implemented, directly increased our conversion rates, our install base, and our customer satisfaction. Session after session left us eager to move forward with the new insights we gained.

Now, one year later, Formidable Forms is more robust than ever. We have a clearer understanding of who we are and what we have to offer the WordPress community. Behind Formidable Forms is an amazing team of individuals who pour their hearts and souls into continually providing the best product and the best support.

This didn’t all happen overnight. Strategy11, the company behind Formidable Forms, started much like many other WordPress-based companies around today: with one client at a time. While working with our clients we found common needs without readily available solutions. We wrote a bit of code to address some of those common needs (mostly to make our job easier!) As more and more clients benefited, a bigger need appeared that we knew we could fill. Little by little—or quite literally, line by line of code—Formidable Forms was born.

In the beginning, we never expected our little plugin to have over 200,000 active installs. We never expected it to provide solely for our family and the families of others. We never expected other developers to build their businesses and livelihoods around our product. But here we are, six years after launch: still learning, still growing, still figuring out innovative ways to address those common needs. Most notably, we are building and strengthening relationships. We love to see our product help others succeed, and we reinforce that success continually with our customer support. Formidable Forms wouldn’t be where it is without solid customer relationships.

steve_steph

Our success has been the result of this passion for seeing others succeed. Behind that passion has been a ton of hard work, a little luck, the support of amazing mentors, the willingness to take risks, and the determination to seize the opportunities that present themselves. Opportunities abound at Pressnomics. We invite you to connect with us this year as we all explore the opportunities to cultivate our passions and our businesses.

Stephen Wells – Formidable Forms Co-Founder