#1 – The first bug hunt of 2.9 will be Thursday through Saturday, November 5-7, 2009. This should give people a few days to plan for it, upgrade their dev environments if they haven’t been following trunk, and figure out how to allot their time. We’re stretching over both weekdays and weekend to try and accommodate everyone’s schedule.

#2 - The second bug hunt will be a week later, Saturday through Monday, November 14-16, 2009. This should make it possible for anyone who needs more than a week to set some time aside to participate. This bug hunt will coincide with WordCamp NYC, where a special Hacker Room will be set aside for people to go and work on 2.9 bug tickets alongside regular core contributors including Mark Jaquith and Matt Martz (sivel from IRC).

The Goals

Test, test, test existing patches! You can see all tickets with patches that need testing by checking this report. When you’ve tested a patch, report your results in the ticket comments, so core committers can see how the patch is faring.

Fix known bugs! You can see the bugs that need patches by checking this report. Look for the ones that seem that they’ll affect the most people or have the biggest impact by being fixed. Edge case bugs should be lower priority.

Report new bugs! As you’re testing out the development version, if you come across a bug, search trac to see if someone has reported it yet. If so, add a comment with your experience to the ticket so we’ll know it’s affecting more than one person. If no ticket exists yet, create one.

Core committers will be around (in the #wordpress-dev channel at irc.freenode.com) both weekends to review patches that have been thoroughly tested, answer questions as needed, and give feedback on patches that need more work before being commit-worthy.

If you’ve never participated in a WordPress bug hunt before, but you’d like to get involved, we’d love to have you join us! To prepare, you’ll want to set up a test environment, start using the current development version/maybe install the beta testing plugin, join us in the #wordpress-dev IRC channel, and read up on automated testing.

To celebrate we’re throwing a party in San Francisco at 111 Minna, starting at 9PM. You can get the full details and RSVP on Upcoming.org or on Facebook.

I hope you see some of you there, should be a fun time.

If you host a party in your area for WordPress’ 5th, let us know and we’ll post it here.

Update: Party in Sydney! Blog post, Facebook.

WordCamp San Francisco will be August 16 at the Mission Bay Conference Center.

WordCamp Paris will be on May 3rd. Here’s their official site.

WordCamp Italy in Milan will be May 10th. (And I believe I’ll be there.)

WordCamp Birmingham UK will be July 19-20.

WordCamp Toronto will be October 4th.

There are people in the planning stages in Australia, Philippines, Beijing, Utah, Hawaii, UK, NYC, and possibly others, so if you live in one of those areas and would like to help set up a WordCamp in your area Google around or connect with bloggers in your area.

You can always find out more at WordCamp Central.

The conference normally costs just under a thousand dollars to attend, which is well worth it, but because of our association with the folks they’ve set up a discount for WordPress users.

If you enter AEAWP on checkout the price drops to $795, or $200 below the regular registration fee. The coupon is unlimited, and can be used for one ticket or five. They have events coming up in New Orleans, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago. You can learn more and register on their site at aneventapart.com.

We’ll also have some final dates for WordCamp San Francisco coming up, I’ll be posting those soonish so people can start making vacation and travel plans. (Nothing like a blogging vacation.)

This year we’re expanding the conference to two days instead of one with the first focusing on user and blog-facing topics, like search engine optimization and podcasting, and the second day will focus on more development topics, such as usability, iterative design, and the future of publishing. Speakers this year include several WordPress developers, Matt Cutts, John Dvorak, Robert Hoekman Jr., Dan Kuykendall, Om Malik, Rashmi Sinha, Lorelle Vanfossen, and Dave Winer. Check out the entire schedule.

Just like last year there will be free lunch (with the legendary BBQ on Sunday) and t-shirts for everybody, and a party on Saturday night. Unlike last year we’re asking for $25 to help cover costs, but if that’s a problem there are scholarships available. Registration will be closing July 9th and there will not be tickets at the door, so get yours soon.

The first is the Sandbox Designs competition, which is like a theme competition, but working only with CSS and the highly semantic Sandbox theme. They already have a thousand dollars in prizes, so check it out.

Second our friends at Weblog Tools Collection are running a WordPress Plugin competition. They have a blog to track all the entries, but if you’re participating don’t forget to submit your code to the Plugin directory.

Both competitions require entries to be under the same GPL license that WordPress is, so regardless of who wins they’ll make the entire community much richer. (Remember, WordPress itself was written on the base of existing GPL code!)

Another movement close to my heart, Barcamp, is in full effect here in Austin. Saturday March 10 at 6 PM we’re going to do a WordPress meetup at the Barcamp venue Bourbon Rocks on 6th Street. Unlike many other SxSW parties, it is completely open to the public and doesn’t require a conference badge. There will be food and drinks available, and a live band after we wrap up the meetup.

So come enjoy part of your SxSW evening in this beautiful Austin weather with fellow WordPressers. In addition to the good company, we’ll have an assortment of cool WordPress stickers free for the taking.

Finally if you’re attending the conference part of SxSW Interactive, be sure to check out the following cool speakers who are WordPress users like yourself:

• Glenda Bautista
• Lane Becker
• Jeff Beckham
• Frances Berriman
• Carrie Bickner
• Kimberly Blessing
• Jonah Bossewitch
• Jonathan Boutelle
• Melanie Boyer
• Colin Brumelle
• Kyle Bunch
• Ryan Campbell
• Sally Carson
• Jose Castillo
• Kevin Cheng
• Eddie Codel
• Amanda Congdon
• Tony Conrad
• Julie Davidson
• Jay Dedman
• Dustin Diaz
• Molly Ditmore
• Nick Douglas
• Andrew Dupont
• Zack Exley
• Christopher Fahey
• Derek Featherstone
• Tim Ferriss
• Amelia G
• Scott Gledhill
• Josh Greenberg
• Aaron Gustafson
• Carlon Haas
• Kevin Hale
• Kaliya Hamlin
• Jane Hamsher
• Patrick Haney
• Matt Haughey
• Ryanne Hodson
• Michael Kaply
• Marshall Kirkpatrick
• Raph Koster
• Micki Krimmel
• Cheryl Lead
• Carlo Longino
• Ethan Marcotte
• Tom Markiewicz
• Alice Marwick
• Jake McKee
• Casey McKinnon
• James McNally
• Eric Meyer
• Matt Mullenweg
• Thor Muller
• Annalee Newitz
• Brian Oberkirch
• Justin Oberman
• Jerry Paffendorf
• Bre Pettis
• Bianca Ramos
• Eric Rice
• Narendra Rocherolle
• Dan Rubin
• Patrick Ruffini
• Kelsey Ruger
• Erik Sagen
• Dylan Schiemann
• Christopher Schmitt
• Toni Schneider
• Robert Scoble
• Glenda Sims
• Eric Steuer
• Mike Tatum
• Penelope Trunk
• Samantha Velez
• Bryan Veloso
• Michael Verdi
• Mark Wallace
• John Wilbanks
• Nick Wilder
• Alex Williams
• Stephen Wilmarth
• Susan Wu
• Jeffrey Zeldman
• Ethan Zuckerman

Congrats to each of the above for being speakers this year!

The conference will be a 1-day event, with a party that night, and be free to anyone and everyone. We’re aiming to do it in the style of BarCamp, so the agenda will be largely determined by you guys. I’ve posted a little bit more about the ideas behind WordCamp on my blog.

I know it’s relatively short notice, especially for folks in other countries, but if you think you can make it or if you just want more information check out WordCamp.org, where we’ll coordinating the event. I’m really looking forward to meeting people I interact with online every day.

Whether you’re a die-hard WordPress hacker or just looking to gain some familiarity with WordPress internals, we need your help! Join us in #wordpress-bugs on irc.freenode.net as we triage and eliminate as many bugs as possible. Work with us to confirm bugs, submit and test patches, and generally geek out.

All you need to bring is a text editor, and an installation of WordPress 1.6-ALPHA! We’ll provide the snacks, and manage the schedule.

We’ll start as soon as you arrive, so please be prompt!

See WordPress Bug Hunts on the Codex for additional information. This looks to be a recurring effort, so if you can’t attend this one, stay tuned for future Bug Hunts! We’ll also be working on Sunday, though the main thrust of the event is Saturday.

Update: Shel Isreal blogged the panel and also has been blogging the rest of the conference.