SiteGround takes Manhattan – BlogWorld and WordCamp NYC Recap

The SiteGround events team is back after ten busy days in the city that never sleeps, two major events and loads of good time and Starbucks lattes. For the last two weeks we attended two major blog related events, talked a lot first about blogging in general and than about doing it with WordPress and got to know many inspiring new people.

BlogWorld and New Media Expo NYC, 2012

We started off our Big Apple tour with BlogWorld – the world’s largest conference and trade show for new online media. Bloggers, podcasters, web TV content creators and social media innovators were gathered for 3 days of sessions in one of the largest exhibition centers in the USA – Javits center in Manhattan. The audience was comprised mainly from bloggers looking for new ways to grow their website in terms of content and functionality. That’s why SiteGround was there to offer a stress-free hosting that allows any blogger to fully focus on content building.

With the trade show starting from the second day of the event, we have planned to visit some lectures on the first conference day. Unfortunately, our exhibitor’s passes turned out not to include entry in any of the sessions. However, seeing our enthusiasm the organizers had no choice but to issue us temporary passes for some of the presentations. Two of the sessions we visited particularly stood out and we are happy we had the opportunity to get some great insights into Facebook ads management from Jason Keith and the affiliate marketing from Pat Flynn.

As for the next two days of the event we did not have much time to look around, let alone go to any sessions – there was a steady flow of people around the SiteGround booth and we were eager to talk to everyone! It was great to talk face to face with all these people, discussing their concerns and explaining how our hosting can help them manage their blogs more easily. To allow more people experience for themselves what we do, we gave away more than 30 free or discounted hosting accounts as part of our special draw.

I must also say that the mood as a whole in the exhibition hall was quite groovy. A special shout out to the Zemanta WordPress plugin team – possibly one of the best booth-neighbors to you can have to always cheer you up with great music –as true music connoisseurs, they even made their own sound speakers that both sound and look fantastic. Just as their plugin! In tune with the whole event vibe, one of the busiest booths on the site was the WordPress Happiness bar, where the guys from Automattic, WordPress’s technical squad, were helping and teaching bloggers how to use WordPress on the spot.

WordCamp NYC, 2012

The next NYC event that we visited was WordCamp NYC. Compared to the BlogWorld hassle, it was way smaller in size and much less commercial. As a serious contrast to BlogWorld our event sponsorship did not include any exhibition options, but we were able and happy to visit all the sessions we wanted with no problem!

What really impressed our team about this event was the fact that most of the people did not just listen passively to some lectures, they willingly participated in the sessions, shared their own experience, connected with other WordPress users and learned from one another. We also learned a lot about what people look for and need when they are choosing a web host for their WordPress website. We were able to see where our service stands and we were reassured that what we do for our WordPress users is on the right track. Some of the people we met on the WordCamp and the ideas we heard also inspired us for further improvements. Just back in the office we have already started to explore few new possibilities to make our WordPress hosting even safer and faster. So if you host a WordPress on our servers stay tuned to see what’s coming:)

The information once again reassured us that SiteGround service provides much more than just the essentials. Of course there are things we would like to make even better for our WordPress users and the event allowed us to to get acquainted with some tools and plugins that we plan to test and add to our WordPress hosting offer to make it even more secure and fast.

All said and done, now go check out some of our photos from BlogWorld and WordCamp NYC on our Facebook page.

Best,

Dima Peteva
Product Development – Marketing Department