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WordCamp Portland – Round 3

August 31, 2011 8 Comments
wcpdx

One of my favorite WordCamp events each year is always the one up in Portland. No, not just because they had kegs of beer just inside the front door. Although that certainly didn’t suck. Their local WordPress community is awesome and invited in us outsiders with open arms. By the end of the first weekend there, I was ready to move in.

More than just my annual pilgrimage back to Portland for beer and Voodoo Doughnuts, I’m really excited for this year’s WCPDX since they are switching things up and doing mainly an unconference style event. If you aren’t sure what that is, rather than having a predetermined list of speakers with set times, anybody and everybody is encouraged to suggest topics for sessions. Then a vote happens and the most popular topics get turned in to sessions.

I’ve been to 20+ WordCamp events, and 2 of my favorite sessions I’ve sat in on were both unconference sessions. I found that the audience was more engaged and both sessions turned in to more of a discussion than a simple presentation. I got a lot out of both of those sessions and I expect a lot more of the same next month in PDX!

If you are planning on going to the event, start thinking about discussions you’d like to take part in. Then, when you get there, write it down on the suggestion board! I have a couple ideas in mind already myself.

See you there!

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WordCamp Orange County 2011 Wrap-up

May 16, 2011 6 Comments

I’ve sorta lost track, but I think WordCamp Orange County 2011 was either my 21st or 22nd WordCamp. After that many events all centered around WordPress, I still manage to come home with a list of things to research. The best part is, my note taking abilities can sometimes be… less than stellar, so when I get back it’s important that I do the research right away or else I’m in trouble.

Here is how I take notes, on the iPhone I open up the Notes app and start a fresh page. I don’t bother typing the name of the event as the top line, because it would be too easy if looking at the list I could just go directly to “WCOC 2011″… Instead, I can find it listed with something file name or obscure function.

Here is my entire collection of notes from this weekend:

install.php
internationalization
wp_http
shutdown
imockups for ipad
restricted site access
wp site stack

Excellent. This should be simple…

The first 4 items came from Beau Lebens’ (pronounced BeYow by the waitress, much to the delight of the rest of the table) talk about JetPack as a case study. In order:

install.php – apparently, if you do a BUNCH of WP installs, you can include a install.php file that will be run automatically upon completion of the install. So, if you wanted to pre-set a bunch of settings, this would be a good way. I haven’t found a good tutorial on it yet, but if one doesn’t exist, Beau said he’d write one. (hint hint)

Internationalization – This was just a note to myself that I should really start thinking about adding internationalization to plugins earlier in the process as it will make things easier.

wp_http – This should be used any time you’re trying to connect to remote data as it will auto-handle the connection protocol.

shutdown – Some processes that may take time to run and are not critical to the current page load can be attached to the shutdown hook and will be run after WP has done the rest of it’s business. Something to keep in mind.

The rest of the notes were from random parts of the day.

imockups for ipad – (h/t @codyl) This sounded like a pretty cool tool for doing site mockups on the iPad. Gonna have to check it out.

restricted site access – (h/t @jeffhester) This was a plugin mentioned for limiting access to sites that sounded like it may be something I could use for an upcoming project. You can check out the plugin here.

WP Site Stack – (h/t @glennbennett) During a discussion about running multiple WP sites, this plugin was mentioned and figured I’d check it out as well. Available at wpsitestack.com

So, that’s what I personally took away from the event. Well, that and a ton more. I had a blast hanging out and chatting with a bunch of really cool people and I can’t wait for #WCOC12.

Did you attend WCOC? What notes did you come away with?

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WordCamp Utah Wrap-Up

August 30, 2010 Leave a Comment
campfire-w-words

I’m just getting back to my desk after spending the better part of 3 days in Salt Lake City to attend and present at WordCamp Utah. I had an absolute blast! Here’s a bit about the weekend.

The Stay
I can not say enough good things about the Chase Suite Hotel. When we arrived at the airport, we called and asked if they had a shuttle. We hadn’t requested the shuttle ahead of time and yet they showed up in about 20 minutes to pick us up. We mentioned we were planning on going out to dinner and our driver said, “just let us know when you are ready.” Sure enough, 30 minutes later they gave us a ride to dinner. The rooms are very reasonably priced, they have a full kitchen, complementary breakfast and free internet access. They rocked!

OK, speaking of dinner, Todd and I hit up The Pie for an awesome pizza. Todd ordered us a Cheese Pull-A-Part and a Mountain of Meat pizza. They serve the pull-a-part with their home made ranch dressing. Seriously, it was the best ranch I’ve ever tasted. If you’ve never been to The Pie before, you have to stop in as you pass through Salt Lake.

WordCamp Utah
We spent all day Saturday at WordCamp. It took place on the U of U campus in the Skaggs Biology building. Excellent venue! The main room had power outlets under each seat, and for probably the first time at any WordCamp I’ve ever attended, the free wifi worked the entire time. Those two things alone make this a successful WordCamp in my opinion. But wait, there’s more!

During lunch I was chatting with somebody who was attending their first WordCamp event. I mentioned that it was roughly my 15th. He asked, “Don’t they get repetitive?” I said, “Sure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t learn something new at every event I go to!” This one was no different. I picked up a couple tips in the first two sessions I went to in the morning. (I’ll be doing a follow-up post to talk about a plugin I wrote at the airport based on something I learned in Jake Suprlock’s presentation.) Plus, every WordCamp has something unique to offer. Just after lunch we were treated to a session with Tom from BlendTec, the company who makes the blender used in the WillItBlend.com videos. Tom is a very entertaining guy with some great stories to share on how they used social media to raise their online sales by 700%.

My Presentation
Right after Tom blended up a WordPress mug, it was time for me to give my presentation on beginning plugin development. While I’ve given a similar presentation several times in the past, this one was completely different. Normally I would just use a browser and text editor to show a live demo of how to build a plugin. But for this one, I used Keynote to create slides and did it more like a “normal” presentation. I have to say, I really enjoyed giving the presentation this way. I found that being able to maintain eye contact with the audience rather that staring at my screen made it easier to engage the crowd. This led to the audience asking a bunch of questions which turns it into more of a conversation than just a presentation. Based on the feedback I received after the presentation, I’d say the audience appreciated that as well. You can check out the slides from my presentation on slideshare.net.

Overall it was a terrific weekend. Congrats to Joseph Scott and his team of volunteers for organizing an excellent event! I’m already looking forward to next year’s event.

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WordCamp Boulder session review; WordPress Consulting

July 19, 2010 2 Comments

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending WordCamp Boulder. Just like last year’s WordCamp in Denver, it was organized by the guys at Crowd Favorite. They had done a great job last year and I expected nothing less this time around.

This year’s event had two main tracks, but also included a 3 set of sessions that were more of a discussion than presentation. One of the sessions that interested me most was the WordPress Consulting discussion led by Alex King from Crowd Favorite and Nick Gernert from Voce Communications. It was held in a coffee shop around the corner from the main WordCamp venue and we squeezed roughly 40-50 people in for the discussion.

I’ve been doing WordPress consulting work for the past couple years. Initially I was doing it as a side project on nights and weekends. In January I started working for 9seeds (the company I run with two friends) full time. Heading to the session I felt that I had information to share, but even more to learn myself. Here are a few of the topics from the session that really hit home for me, along with some of my own thoughts sprinkled in.

Do you present your company in a way that makes it seem larger than it is?
This is a topic I’ve always found interesting. When you create your company’s website, you want to give the impression that you can handle your client’s needs. But, does that mean making it seem like you have a large staff? I’ve never been a fan of trying to make it seem like we are a corporation with hundreds of employees because I feel it would be very hard to maintain that facade. Plus, if you ‘trick’ a client in to hiring your company, when they do find out it’s just you in your basement, how is that going to make them feel? Are they going to be comfortable that you are telling the truth on everything else?

For me it always comes down to being personal. When I write blog posts on our company site, it’s still ME that’s doing the writing. I try and use “I” instead of “we”. When I talk to clients (or prospects), I mention who’s going to be working directly on the project.

Remember this: Companies don’t do business with companies. People do business with people. No matter what, the finial decision to work with your company comes down to a PERSON making the choice to work with YOU.

Do you provide and charge your clients for project plans, documentation and test cases?
During the session, the following question was posed; When you have completed a project and are ready to show it to your client, do you send them a one line email telling them their site is up?

Think about that for just a second. How many times have you completed something and then just fired off that one line response? Your client may have just spent hundreds or even thousands of dollars and you tell them their site is up and provide virtually nothing more. Yikes. I’ve done this on several occasions, but hopefully I’ve done it for the last time.

This topic spawned in to the discussion about documentation and how much you provide to your client. The first type of documentation was the contract and statement of work. I had to agree 100% when somebody else suggested that they typically only write a contract and SOW for larger projects while the smaller (4-8 hour) projects, they typically don’t bother creating a contract. We weren’t alone. Most everybody in the room was nodding their head. The point was then made that it’s those smaller projects (or the clients on the tightest budgets) who end up being the ones who need that documentation the most. If for no other reason than to get an agreed upon list of functionality that makes up the project.

How do you find the bigger clients who will pay for documentation?
As the discussion about documentation continued to roll on, it seemed that the larger the project, the more time was being spent on documentation. That is when a lady in the crowd asked the one that all of us face as consultants, How DO you find clients with a budget? We all shared a bit of a laugh because no matter how long you are in the consulting business, we will never really have that question answered. There is no perfect formula.

That being said, there were several excellent suggestions on how to market yourself. Really, that’s what this question boils down to anyway; marketing. Word of Mouth was by far the most popular way that people are finding clients. Your past work speaks for itself, and if you did great work, the hope is that your client will tell their associates about you. Networking was another big response. Attending events like WordCamp or local meetup groups is a great way to meet people. But for me, the biggest source of requests comes from being a presenter at an event. I have been lucky enough to be invited to speak at several WordCamp events, but even before that, I would give 15-30 minute presentations to local groups. Not a presentation about my company, but topics like “How WordPress can help you and your business.” If you show somebody a way to help their business or accomplish a task, you instantly become an authority to them and when they need assistance, guess who they are likely to call first. You!

Your client doesn’t just pick you, you have to pick your clients!
When you first go in to business, you are thrilled any time ANYBODY is willing to work with you. You take on any project thrown your way because you need to do silly things like pay the rent and buy food. When you are struggling to make ends meet, your ability to be choosy is limited. There are still times when you should step back and ask yourself if taking on this client is the right thing to do.

It’s OK to take on projects that are a LITTLE above your experience level, but taking on a project way over your head early on can be devastating. You may want to consider handing off a client who’s needs are out of your reach (for now) to one of the other developers you’ve met at a WordCamp event. Believe me, referring business to another developer/agency is a great way of getting yourself some incoming referrals. Remember, not every client who contacts that other developer is going to be a perfect fit for them either.

There are definitely other reasons you may want to consider passing on a particular client. The best thing I can tell you is to listen to your gut. If something just doesn’t feel right before you agree to the project, make sure that there aren’t warning signs of a bigger issue coming down the tracks. If you can’t see a clear start, middle and end to a project (or at least a specific phase of the project), have another look at your contract and your estimate and ask yourself if you think you are going to have trouble completing the project for the amount you quoted or how easy it will be to add to that quote if the project gets off track.

How much to charge?
One of the hardest things in the world to do is estimate how long something is going to take to complete. Think about the last time you set out to clean your garage. “oh, this will only take a few hours” turns to 2 full weekends pretty easily. The same is definitely true for web development.

There are several ways to charge you clients, but the two most common are; flat rate for an entire project, and hourly billing. No matter which you go with, you’ll still have to do some sort of time estimate to gauge how long the project is going to take you. No client is going to blindly accept hourly billing not having any idea how long a project should take. Just like you aren’t going to come up with a flat rate without having a general idea of how much time it’s going to take.

How much you charge per hour is entirely up to you. You will have to play with your pricing over time. One of the suggestions was that every six months raise your prices. If you aren’t seeing a rise in clients turning you down for being too expensive, then you likely weren’t charging enough before.

Conclusion
It was very comforting to hear a room full of people who were all on much the same path as we are, but at different points in their own journey. I feel that we (9seeds) are still in the early stages of our companies development and still have a ways to go before we really find our stride. I left this session with a ton of ideas and am looking forward to implementing several of them very soon!

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WordCamp Chicago Wrap Up

June 7, 2010 2 Comments

The first thing going through my mind as I think back on my weekend spent at WordCamp Chicago, I wish my flight home wasn’t so early! I am really bummed I ended up missing the sessions after lunch on Sunday. This is terrible planning on my part.

I am attending WordCamp Chicago 2010This was my first time attending WordCamp Chicago. I had heard nothing but good things about last year’s event, so was expecting more of the same. They definitely delivered. There was a great mix of speakers ranging from content to design to development. There was a little something for everybody, no matter what level of user.

This was also the first time I traveled to a WordCamp event without bringing a laptop. I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with the lack of connectivity, but the iPad served as a great replacement in this setting. I used it to take some notes, stay updated on Twitter and check email. I have to say, the extended battery life of the iPad is awesome! I used it off and on all day long on Saturday and was still had over 50% battery life when I got back to the Hotel in the evening. I am pretty sure that this will be my new way of attending events, unless I need the laptop for a presentation.

I sat in on some great sessions this weekend. Aaron Jorbin‘s talk about creating child themes was great! He covered a bunch of things I knew pieces of, but expanded on them to give me a greater understanding of how a child theme could save us and our clients time and money. Jane Wells showed off the new menu system arriving in WordPress 3.0 and it was a blast to hear the entire room go “oooooohhhhhhhhh” when she would show off some of the fancy new functionality. Pete Mall presented on building a plugin. This is a presentation I have given at other WordCamp events, but still I picked up a tip or two from his talk. Scott Robbin‘s talk on making WordPress faster reminded me of several things I want NEED to do for a couple of my own sites.

There were plenty of other great sessions, but these are a few that really stuck out.

For me, a huge value in each of the WordCamp events I attend is the networking opportunities that happen between session and at the after parties. This one was no exception. I met some great people and cant wait to collaborate on some new projects. There is much to be learned from each of them!

Thanks to Brian Gardner and the rest of the organizers of WordCamp Chicago. You did a great job and I hope to attend again next year.

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Back on the WordCamp party bus

April 18, 2010

Last year I had such a great time hosting, attending and presenting at WordCamp events all over the country. I think I ended up at 9 events last year. It looks like this year isn’t going to be all that different. I’ve already booked travel for several WordCamp events, and have mapped out several others that I’d like to attend this year if possible. Here’s my current plans:

I wish I could say that this is the year that I get to attend my first international WordCamp event, but that doesn’t seem likely at this point. But, I guess there is always next year.

I have also heard rumblings of a WordCamp in Las Vegas some time in October. I’ll have to dig up more details for you on that one… ;)

If you are going to be in any of the cities above on the date’s listed, I strongly encourage you to attend a WordCamp event. There are a ton of great people to meet at the events and, for the price, I don’t think there is a conference that offers a better value for the price. If you can’t make the dates above, you can check out the full schedule of upcoming WordCamp events.

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Whirlwind WordCamp Weekend Wrapup

November 16, 2009

Warning: Long Post Ahead!

As I’m sitting on the plane heading back home, it’s hard to sort out all the great parts of the past 3 days. I started out on Friday by flying to Phoenix for WordCamp and then hopping right back on a plane to head to New York to be part of another WordCamp. These marked my 8th and 9th WordCamp events this year, and as far as I can tell, these are the last ones of 2009 for me.

WordCamp Phoenix blew me away. I had no idea how big the WordPress community was in Arizona. When I arrived at the venue, I was amazed to walk in to a room and see upwards of 500 people sitting and listening intently. Come to find out that WordCamp was only one of the tech events going on that week. WordCamp was being followed by a 2-day Podcasting event that I’m really bummed I wasn’t able to attend. I’m hoping that next year my schedule works out a little better and I’m able to stay longer and connect with many more of the great people in what looks like a thriving tech scene.

I completely rewrote my plugin that I used for my presentation during the week leading up to Pheonix. I wasn’t able to do a real run-through ahead of time to see how long it would take me to present it, so I was a bit nervous I wasn’t going to be able to cram it all in to a 30 minute session. Turns out, it wasn’t a problem. I finished with time to spare. I wasn’t sure how well the presentation went over with the crowd, but after leaving the stage I checked twitter to find a very large number of positive messages. That made my day!

Thanks to some nice timing, I hitched a ride with Matt Mullenweg to the airport. We chatted about a ton of WordPress ideas. Not specifically 2.9 or 3.0 features, just thoughts on where things -might- go. That’s probably a post of it’s own.

Big thanks to Chuck Reynolds for inviting me to speak at your event. Also to GoDaddy for helping to put on one hell of an event!

All save you the bulk of the details, but let me just say that my trip from Phoenix to New York was a bit of an adventure thanks to a 5 hour delay in Charlotte, NC that caused me to arrive in NY at 5am, my hotel at about 5:45 and falling to sleep at about 6:30. None of this would have been a huge deal except I was scheduled to do my presentation at 9am. I tried to reschedule by swapping spots with a presenter going on later in the day, but since I was first up, we weren’t able to make that happen. So Shayne woke me up by saying, “You have to go on at 9 or else your session is going to be canceled.”, “No problem. What time is it?” I asked. “8:30″ -sigh-

I made it on time and got everything set up and gave my presentation to a crowd of about 50 people. I must have been talking a lot faster than I did in Phoenix, because I finished up in about 18 minutes. If somebody recorded it I fear it’s going to sound like the video is sped up… But finishing early turned out to be a good thing. The crowd had a bunch of great questions and we were able to walk through a few examples. While I hope I don’t have to do it again, presenting on only a couple hours of sleep was pretty entertaining.

After leaving my session I ran in to Jane Wells. She invited me to be part of a canonical plugin talk later in the day and she also asked if I had any plugins I wanted to demo during another session. I had to laugh at the timing because 3 days earlier we released a new plugin called LOLPress. On top of those two extra sessions, I was also taking part in the Genius Bar. This was going to be a busy day! We headed to the store and grabbed an energy drink. I started feeling human a short time later.

Since my partner Shayne was scheduled for a different time in the Genius Bar, I headed up there with him to check it out. The place was hopping! I was thrilled to see so many people taking advantage of being able to sit face-to-face with somebody who could answer their questions about their blog. Some people just wanted to get an outside opinion while others wanted help making changes to themes, upgrades, backups, etc, etc. I also loved that so many people volunteered to help out. Even when it wasn’t their scheduled time to be helping out, it didn’t matter. People needed help and the geniuses stepped up to provide it.

As I was heading to the plugin demo presentation, honestly, I wasn’t expecting much. I was thinking, “Who wants to see somebody demo a plugin?” Turns out a TON of people wanted to see it. The room was PACKED. Every seat taken, people standing in the back, people sitting in the aisles and people laying on the floor in front of the projector. The session was only 45 minutes and I heard from several of the attendees that they would have loved for that session to go on for 2 hours. During this session I met Raphael from After the Deadline for the first time. Not only has he written an absolutely awesome plugin, he may very well be the nicest guy I’ve ever met. His passion for what he does is unmistakable.

The last session I was in for the day was the talk about canonical plugins. If you aren’t familiar with the term, don’t worry. Neither was I, by name. The idea is this, with so many plugins in the repository and so many that cover nearly the same functionality, how do you choose which to use. What if there was a process where one of the “best in breed” plugins became the suggested plugin in that genre? This plugin would have been reviewed by the WordPress braniacs to ensure it’s security, and rather than being developed by only one or two people, it would be opened up to development by the community in much the same way that WordPress itself is. This idea is still in the fledgling stage, but I couldn’t agree more with the idea behind it. While it wouldn’t take away a users ability to sort through the dozens of plugins available, it would at least be a place for somebody to start where they could be comfortable that the plugin will play nice with their WordPress install. I’m going to write a separate post with several of the concepts thrown.

After we finished up at WordCamp we headed back to the hotel and freshened up before heading to the after party. We quickly had to escape the second floor bar and head to the roof where the open-air bar wasn’t as crowded and hot. We were able to kick back and chat which would have been impossible inside due to the noise and heat. But outside was awesome. I was fairly certain I wasn’t going to be out late thanks to the lack of sleep, and I was right. After a short time my body said it was time to crash. We made it back to the hotel and I was sound asleep by 9.

Jane didn’t have a lot of sympathy for my lack of sleep since she had actually had ZERO sleep as she put together the final preparations for the day. Her hard work really showed! 8 tracks and 50+ sessions is a massive undertaking. The event went off without a hitch (nothing visible that I could tell, anyway.) Of all the WordCamp events I’ve been to this year I’d have to say that I personally got more information out of this event than any other I’ve been to. That probably has to do with being involved in 4 sessions, but still, it was a great event and I hope to make it back next year.

Oh wait, that was only day 1.

Shayne and Abbie were kind enough to let me crash in their hotel room. Since their flight was at 9, that meant an early morning wake up and exit from the hotel. The weather was cool but not cold and it made for an excellent time to walk around before day 2′s events started up at 9. I walked several blocks in each direction snapping photos as I went. I’m sure the locals were pointing out the dorky tourist as I went by with my luggage and camera, but I could care less! One really funny thing that happened, as I walked through Madison Square Park, I got the “shake-down” by two squirrels. They ran right up the path directly at me and stopped and just stared at me as if to say, “Yo, gimme your food.” They weren’t afraid of me at all. They let me off with a warning and headed in to a nearby tree. Phew, that was close…

After a quick breakfast I headed back to the college. The day 2 schedule was very flexible and was up for a vote. People threw out ideas for discussion topics and then rooms were assigned for each. I sat in on a great talk about WPMU that gave me some interesting ideas on how I could use one install of WPMU to run multiple unrelated blogs using domain mapping. I can’t wait to dig in and sort that out! In the second group of sessions, there was a lot of interest in having another genius bar session. Brandon Dove and I volunteered to lead it. The session went really well and I had a great bit of personal satisfaction when a lady used my example plugin from my presentation to learn how to build a shortcode and was able to write a plugin using it to solve a need for her client in a matter of minutes. Not to be outdone, Brandon pulled out some magic to solve an issue a lady was having with her Thesis theme that nobody else had been able to solve.

After lunch the group moved across the street to Mason Hall. Jane invited me to be part of the presentations going on over there as well. I did a quick 5 minute (more like 3 minute) intro to the canonical plugin topic with the hopes that more people will take an interest in coming up with ideas on how to make it all work. I was also surprised to find out that I had been included as part of Brandon’s team in the plugin competition. My involvement was strictly in a beta-testing and feature suggesting role, but I was glad to be included. I was very excited for Brandon when it was all over and his Conversation Starter plugin won the competition. His use of all the standard WordPress design elements in the admin section and some fancy menu action were the deciding factors to his victory. Hopefully he’ll finish up a couple small edits and then release the plugin to the repository.

At that point I had to skip out to the airport and head on home! I was bummed to be missing Matt’s speech, but was very excited to get back home and see my family.

One last shout out to Chuck and Jane. Thank you again for inviting me out. I had a great time in both places and look forward too seeing you guys again real soon!

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WordCamp Phoenix and WordCamp New York

October 24, 2009

I can’t begin to tell you how much fun I have had this year being part of WordCamp events. I’ve attended 2 (Denver, San Francisco), organized 2 (Las Vegas in January, Las Vegas as part of BlogWorld in October) and have spoken at 3 others (Reno, Los Angeles, Portland). I thought that was it for me for 2009. Not so fast! Two more dates have been added to my schedule!

Friday, November 13th
I will be speaking at WordCamp Phoenix.

Saturday, November 14th
I will be speaking at WordCamp New York City.

In both places I’ll be doing a really quick introduction to building your first WordPress plugin.

I’m really excited to be taking part in both of these events. It has been a few years since I have been to Phoenix, and more than 20 years since I’ve been to New York! I’m definitely looking forward to meeting the WordPress fans in both cities. If you see me walking around either event, please do come up and say hello!

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WordCamp Portland – A Love Story

September 20, 2009

I have lived in Las Vegas for the past 7 years and I have said on many occasions since then that I don’t think I could live anywhere else after living there. One weekend trip to Portland later and I believe I may have to amend that statement. In a word, Portland is awesome!

This trip to Portland, like so many of my trips this year, was based around attending a WordCamp event. When I stepped off the airplane and headed for ground transportation I found the first gem of the weekend. They call it Max. Max is the light rail tram system that will take you all around the Portland area for pretty darn cheap. You can buy a day pass for $4.75. I hopped on the tram and it dropped me off 1 block from the WebTrends offices where WordCamp was being held.

WebTrends definitely stands out as the second gem of my trip. They have a nice office on the 16th floor that they graciously donated to WordCamp to host the event. Apparently they are very active in the local Portland tech scene and are the hosts for a great number of local events. I have a hint for companies looking to get some exposure in the tech field, take a look at what WebTrends is doing. They are doing it right!

Then there is Aaron Hockley. This is his second go-round as the head organizer for a WordCamp event. Though I wasn’t at the event last year, I can say that he sets the bar high for other cities looking to put on a WordCamp. He has an amazing group of people who help put together the event and the local community of businesses really step up with food and service donations that help to make the event a comfortable and welcoming environment for everybody. Having two kegs just inside the door certainly didn’t hurt, either.

If you only look at the list of presenters posted on the site, you’d be missing more than half of the content available at the event. While I have seen the idea of “Unconference” style presentations at other WordCamp events, never have I seen a group of people take to it so well. I sat in on an excellent group discussion about WordPress and affiliate marketing.

I was able to get out and walk around a bit in Portland and check out some of the surrounding area. There were several groups putting on demonstrations in Pioneer Park including belly dancers, a group of people dancing with colored trash bags, a guy preaching to anyone who would listen (at full volume, I might add), several hacky-sack players and some guy who had a cat on a leash that looked like a cougar. All were cool/interesting in their own way.

But the biggest gem of them all has to be the people I met this weekend. Tons of amazingly nice people at WordCamp itself, the people I met at Pioneer Park, the shop keepers in the area… Everybody was friendly. At the end of my presentation somebody asked if I would move to Portland and become @PortlandGeek. “We don’t ask just anybody”, she said.

So as I sit in the airport waiting on a plane to Vegas, I’m excited to get home and see my wife and kids, but I’m sad to be leaving such a great city and the amazing tech scene up here that has made me feel so welcome.

Thank you, Portland.

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