Totally enjoyed the day at WordCamp Seattle. It was a good event, got to see the Adobe complex, and it was a brilliantly beautiful day as well.

There were some great speakers there, check out the list here and visit their sites:
http://www.wordcampseattle.com/speakers/

I especially liked these folks:

Chris Pirillo – and not just because he told us about the Bebot app for my iPhone!

Jane Wells - Jane works with the WordPress core development team, I liked her happy attitude and general joie de vivre – she loves her job and it shows.

Ian Lurie – good ideas on web page set up for better SEO

George Plumley – I really enjoyed  Georges talk on videos for your web site.
I especially like George’s site http://seehowtwo.com/
Its a FANTASTIC RESOURCE for WordPress Tutorials – absolutely check it out.

George is publishing a book that should be coming out in November, a guide for our CLIENTS on how to update just the basic features for their WP web site.

There are books out there – like WordPress for Dummies – but there is too much info in there for the casual user. So I am looking forward to this book as something I can give my clients when we finish their WordPress site. Sign up for his newsletter to get updated on the launch date.

Also, Mark McLaren has a lot of WP resources on his site :
http://www.mcbuzz.com/wordpress/

Scott Porad – Saw Scott at WordCamp San Francisco, he’s an engaging and thoughtful speaker. Lots of info and and insights on how his company tests out different web sites to see what flies and what doesn’t. Great for modeling.
http://icanhascheezburger.com/ and the other sites in the LOL umbrella attract millions of visitors and participants a day. They duin’ it rite!

Ignite:
Fast paced and great info – funny too!
Participants had 5 minutes to share a slide presentation (15 seconds per slide) about what they are doing with WordPress.

Next WordCamp? I’d love to go to one in Spain, or Brazil, or Australia…Thailand….

Here’s a short article on the Bellingham Web Designers Unite! group that I am a part of:

Click link or read below
Web Designers Unite! article

New club provides Web designers face-to-face time
Michelle Nolan for the Bellingham Herald

Josh Parrish loves to play around with computers, but he also likes interacting with people.

The result is Web Designers Unite!, a club that he and two friends founded last year to foster in-person camaraderie among local tech enthusiasts.

The 28-year-old Bellingham resident, who likes to grow some of his own food and has chickens in his Sunnyland yard, got in on the ground floor of Web design 14 years ago as a high school freshman. He has spent countless hours teaching himself advanced computer skills, yet has remained an avid snowboarder and outdoorsman.

Married and the father of two, he manages online communications for the admissions department at Western Washington University.

About the club: “The club was hatched when a friend who works in Web design, Ritama Haaga, and I were talking in a coffee shop, and we got around to saying how neat it would be to get together a group of Web designers for happy hours,” said Parrish, who noted that Pam Nilzon also is a co-founder.

About a dozen people came to the club’s first meeting, in February 2008, at Boundary Bay Brewery and Bistro. Now, monthly gatherings routinely draw more than twice that many Web designers, and membership has risen to about 40.

“We each have our specialties, and being able to share resources has really been beneficial,” Parrish said. “We’re learning a lot from each other.”

Why founded: “I’ve always enjoyed sharing my passions about computers,” Parrish said. “I’d drag my high school friends into it. It wasn’t exactly kicking and screaming, but I would definitely share what I was learning and doing. Now we do that in the club.”

Major events: The club meets monthly, usually the third Thursday at 5 p.m. at a local restaurant, with sites announced online.

The club doesn’t hold major events yet, but Parrish dreams of hosting a Bellingham convocation of Web design clubs.

Member stories: Parrish said Nathan Carnes is an archeologist turned Web designer, having honed his computer skills while majoring in archeology at Western.

Haaga runs her own Web design company and is an accomplished glass blower. Her creations can be seen at ritama.com

Seth Thomas is one of the leaders of The INN University Ministries in Bellingham, a fellowship for college students, Parrish said, and likes to spend his summers developing his Web design skills.

CLUB AT A GLANCE

Name: Web Designers Unite!

Purpose: Foster camaraderie and knowledge among local web designers.

Year started: 2008.

Number of members: 40.

Contacts: 319-6672 or keylime@gmail.com Online: webdesignersunite.com

Leadership: Founding members are Josh Parrish, Ritama Haaga and Pam Nilzon.

Common Craft makes great videos:

WordCamp is coming to Seattle! If it’s anything like the WordCamp I went to in San Francisco in May, it’ll be fantastic. Seriously. Fantastic.

Check out their web site, sign up for Twitter and Facebook, and go!

www.wordcampseattle.com

central.wordcamp.org/

WordCamp is a conference type of event that focuses squarely on everything WordPress. Everyone from casual end users all the way up to core developers show up to these events. These events are highlighted by speeches or keynotes by various people.

Click here to read my post about the San Francisco WordCamp in May, and here for my illustrious meeting with Tim Ferriss.

I was in San Francisco June 29th & 30th for WordCamp, the event for all things WordPress. It was fantastic! I will share some more about the event and speakers soon. For now, this is all I am making time to post:

One of the highlights at WordCamp was getting to meet Tim Ferriss – of 4 Hour Work Week Fame. Ok, it wasn’t really much of a meeting – it was an oh, look, there he is in the hallway in front of the door to the conference room, I will have to pass him on the way in kind of meeting. I had just a few seconds to prepare something witty and intelligent to say to him, something that perhaps no one else had ever said to him, something to ensure that I, out of all the hundreds of people there would be, at the very least, memorable, and perhaps, dare I say, captivating with my candor and sharp mind.

Here is what I said:

“I really loved your book.”

Brilliant ‘eh? Oh, yeah, in a pinch I totally come through with prose that would make a nightingale sing.

He said Thanks! Then asked my name (I had to look at my WordCamp name tag to remember) and shook my hand. Woo-Hoo!

Let me know if you want me to write your next big speech. I can probably come up with something like: Thanks for the Nobel Prize. I’d really like to thank my mom & dad, my great partner and all my friends. Gee, this sure is swell! Thanks again!

I flew down to San Francisco at the end of May and went to WordCamp San Francisco with my brother Chris. Chris works for a gigantoramous tech company and was interested in finding out what WordPress was all about. It was great to go with him, just made the event all the more better, and he thought it was stellar as well. Plus I got quality face time with the niece and nephews

The event was $25, and for that we got: breakfast, snacks, beverages all day, an amazing lunch, a party after, a T-shirt and a bunch of bling. AWESOME!

Oh yeah, I also got to hear Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, speak about the company, future plans and current amazing things. Matt is 26 and is, quite frankly, adorable.

In addition to Matt, I heard Tim Ferris of 4 Hour Work Week fame, Matt Cutts - head of the webspam team at Google, Dave Gray – founder of XPLANE, Steve Souders – performance guru at Google, Scott Porad – CTO of the infamous lolcats, & failblog, and John Lilly – CEO of Mozilla, his company makes a little browser called Firefox.

Everyone spoke for about 45 minutes to an hour. There were more speakers, but they were doubling up, one upstairs, one downstairs, speaking at the same time, so I had to choose.
You can see the entire line-up here:
2009.sf.wordcamp.org/speakers

Go here to see videos from the SF Camp:
wordpress.tv

Everything about this conference was first rate, from the venue to the speakers. Where else can you have some of the head people from Google show up and tell you how to improve your SEO rankings and performance overall? Or have the head of Mozilla talk about what it’s like to keep Firefox ahead of the game?

Did I mention there was also a Genius Bar there that many of the speakers were at so you could personally gab with them?

I especially loved Dave Gray – I thought he was fascinating and could have listened to him for another hour or two.

Also, the next day, Sunday, there was a Developers Day. I didn’t stay because it was over my head, but anyone that is into the inner workings of WordPress, writing Plug-Ins or Themes, etc…would have loved it. I am more “front-end” designer but thought I could take notes for my developer, however I quickly glazed over…

WordCamp has conferences all around the world. Check out their main site for more info on a Camp coming to your neighborhood.
In September, WordCamp comes to Seattle – will I be there? Absolutely!

WordPress links:

wordcampseattle.com

2009.sf.wordcamp.org

WordPress Videos - go here to see videos from WordCamp San Francisco

WordCamp Central