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….

WordCamp Seattle is this Saturday the 26th in the Fremont District at Adobe.

I’m excited – wonderful line-up and totally SOLD OUT.

Hope you got your tickets!

Will let you know how it goes.

www.wordcampseattle.com

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!

John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla (Firefox Browser) gave a great talk at WordCamp SF. He kept the audience engaged for 45 minutes at the end of the day – not a bad feat. He’s smart. Click here to watch.

The video is on WordPress TV, using VideoPress for the player. I could have that video on THIS blog, but I am too cheap right now to get it – too bad – you’ll just have to go to the link provided to hear Mister Lilly. I’ll get VideoPress later maybe.

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