Wordcamp Feedback

Well I attended Wordcamp Toronto 2009 on both Friday and Saturday, the 8th and 9th of May.

Before I get into my feedback a little rant about city streets:

I guess I must be a simple country girl (with a Chemical Engineering Diploma and a knack for all things internet marketing ) but I don’t understand why the roads in cities need to be so completely confusing!!

I mean, really, what’s wrong with being able to GO BACK a road you came from?? I could write about five posts about getting lost in the city (yes, even WITH a GPS).

I know I risk sounding like an idiot here for not being able to find my way around in the big T. dot but man there’s got to be other people like me who get lost for an hour at a time simply trying to make their way to or from an event that someone wisely decided to hold downtown. LOL – OK< Rant Over.

Sidenote - I live on a one-lane, dirt road with four houses a farm and a big field. Known as 'cottage country' to some.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Feedback <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Ok, now on to my feedback.

There was an interesting lineup of speakers at Wordcamp Toronto 2009, you can see them all here.

The keynote speaker, Nick La of Web Designer Wall, spoke on Sunday which was also Mother’s Day so I didn’t get to see that one.

The attendees were a variety of programmers, business owners, employees, students and casual bloggers. When I got there I connected with Erin Blaskie and Trina Lemarche of BSetc.ca.

Here are some of the talks I heard personally and some of the things I learned:

Terry Smith
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Terry is from b5 Media. His talk was about using WordPress MU, Buddypress and bbpress. The two latter programs run on WordPress MU and allow you to set up a user profile area on your blog and a forum. The presentation was interesting but it appears there would be some advanced programming to get all three programs to work together so I don’t think this is something I’ll be attempting.

A lot of the speakers were very skilled in really working a program from the inside out since I think Wordcamp was originally just for programmers and recently more open to everyone who has anything to do with WordPress.

Flashpress
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There was a presentation about a new program that is to work with WordPress called Flashpress. Honestly I didn’t get it. I came into the presentation a bit late (after being caught in the rain after dinner) but from what I understand it allows you to make Flash elements and WordPress work together.

I think for Flashpress you still need to know a lot about coding/programming to make it work.

Erin Blaskie
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Erin had an interesting presentation about using WordPress to become an internet celebrity. Erin launched a website as a case study to show how you can quickly create a name for yourself in a brand new niche if you really get out there.

I don’t know if everyone really wants the kind of attention of an internet celebrity but for those who do this presentation was full of great ideas. Using social media with WordPress seems to have been the main way Erin built up a large following and got press inquiries and invitations to speak and present at events in the niche she chose. It’s a great case study of what you can do in a short period of time if you really put yourself out there! Erin posted a clip of it on her blog here.

Joey DeVilla
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I really enjoyed Joey’s presentation. He was from Microsoft but not much of his presentation had anything to do with the company. Since I do have an interest in public speaking myself I couldn’t help but notice the differences in presentations at the event and to take note of the things I liked about the ones I enjoyed.

The things that made Joey’s presentation stand out was the sheer volume of images he used in the presentation. It really helped to hold interest and emphasize his presentation. Also he had stories. Great stories about how he used his accordion to build relationships and how he then turned the interest from his accordion into a blogging passion. His blog is The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

Here is Joey’s presentation:

Lorelle Van Fossen
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Lorelle had a lot of tips for using WordPress. She is also known as something like the ‘tab queen’ because she using so many tabs for her internet browser (firefox). I learned a few little tricks I didn’t know before which was great and I also will definitely now start checking out Lorelle’s blog every now and then and following her on Twitter.
Lorelle’s site is here: Lorelle On WordPress

Ilya Grigorick
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I really liked this presentation. It was about metrics for social media. The presentation was also about a site called PostRank.com, where you can have your blog posts ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 based on the popularity of various social media components. You’ll have to check it out to find out more, I need to go through the site myself to figure out how it works.

Ok there were a few more but those are the highlights for me.

Overall I really enjoy getting out to meet new people and I really liked that this event had a different group of people than the regular crowd I usually meet at events. It’s great to get to know people from all different industries and skill sets.

If you have a chance to attend any Wordcamps in your own area since there are a few coming up, I highly recommend it!