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Upcoming Speaking Gigs

August 27, 2009
WordCamp Los Angeles

This year I have been extremely lucky to have been a part of some amazing conferences. After organizing WordCamp:Las Vegas in January, I had the pleasure attending two more excellent WordCamp events in Denver and San Francisco. To top it off, the amazing people behind WordCamp:Reno-Tahoe saw fit to invite me out to be a presenter at their event. If you a regular reader of my site you probably also heard that I’ve been asked to organize a WordCamp event as part of Blog World Expo coming up in October. It truly has been an exciting and eventful year so far and we haven’t even reached the 4th quarter yet.

There are two other events coming up that I’m extremely proud to be a part of.

WordCamp Los AngelesWordCamp Los Angeles
September 12, 2009 ~ Loyola Marymount College
This is the first ever WordCamp in Los Angeles and it’s shaping up to be an amazing event. Since this is my old stomping ground, I’m really looking forward to being back in LA and checking out the local WordPress scene. I know LA is going to have some amazing talent on hand. My presentation will be about creating a WordPress plugin.

WordCamp PortlandWordcamp Portland
September 19, 2009 ~ WebTrends
After the success of last year’s Portland WordCamp, it’s no surprised that they sold out all the tickets more than a month in advance. This goes to show that Portland’s tech community is thriving! I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am to spend two days mingling with all the sharp minds attending this event. Once again I will be speaking about creating a WordPress plugin.

If you are within reasonable driving distance of either event, definitely come out and support these two fantastic events. I hope to see you there!

Filed Under: WordCamp, WordPress Tagged With: , , ,

WordCamp Las Vegas @ Blog World Expo demystified

August 26, 2009
WordCamp Las Vegas

WordCamp Las VegasLast night on the Blog World Expo website they announced that WordCamp Las Vegas would be part of the Expo this year. Based on some of the responses I read about the news today on Twitter, it became obvious that there was some misunderstanding with regards to how much it would cost to attend WordCamp Las Vegas as part of Blog World Expo. So let me attempt to get all the mystery and confusion out of way once and for all!

WordCamp Las Vegas @ Blog World Expo will take place in the exhibit hall on Friday and Saturday, October 16th and 17th. To attend WordCamp, you need to be a registered attendee of Blog World Expo.

Blog World Expo Packages
There are 4 different packages you can purchase for Blog World Expo that range in price from $75 to $895. No matter which package you choose, they will all grant you access to the exhibit floor, the keynote speakers and WordCamp. Visit the Blog World Expo site for descriptions of each package.

WordCamp Discount
When you register to attend Blog World Expo, use promo code WordCampVIP to receive a 20% discount on your registration. You must use the code at the time of purchase and you need to register before September 14th to take advantage of the discount.

Hopefully that answers any questions you might have had about WordCamp Las Vegas. If not, you are more than welcome to contact me directly and I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions you might have.

Filed Under: WordCamp Tagged With: ,

Favorite WordCamp SF moments

June 4, 2009

Each time I go to a WordCamp, there are certain moments that stick out as great memories. Some have to do with who you meet, some are just right place/right time and others are just personal. This past weekend at WordCamp San Francisco, I had a few of these moments and thought I’d share them with you.

The first one happened at the WordCamp after party. I was chatting with Joseph Scott from Automattic and my friend Todd and I asked Joseph what projects he’s been working on. He then spends the next few minutes talking about a ridiculously cool feature that is going to make handling videos for your blog easier (i.e. from your dashboard) and without having to give away all your rights to the video by placing it on other services… When he was done, Todd and I agreed that this sounded freakin’ awesome. So I did what any true geek would do when presented with something so cool information, I threw my arms out and said, “Bring it in.” Joseph, being the cool guy that he is, opened his arms and leaned in for a quick hug.

Later that night when we were back at our hotel and grabbing some food in the pub, the thought of hugging Joseph came back to me and I cracked up. Thanks Joseph for being such a good sport!

The second moment requires a little bit of setup. My wife is very much non-technical. Even still, this past weekend was her 3rd WordCamp event thanks to hanging out with me. Though at her first WordCamp she worked the registration desk and at her second she spent much of her time playing games on her iPhone.

While at the Reno-Tahoe WordCamp, we heard Matt Mullenweg talk about a cool WordPress theme called P2. P2 gives you the ability to post directly from the front page (like Twitter’s home page) and then updates automatically when new comments come in. This can be used for groups of developers to discuss a project they are working on collectively and will store all the information for viewing later if needed…

Fast forward to this past Saturday. We were sitting in the Q&A session hosted by Matt. Somebody in the audience stood up and started asking a question. As he was describing it, in my head I already know that Matt is going to tell him he needs to check out the P2 theme as the answer to his need. Just then, still before the guy has finished his question, my wife leans over to me and says, “He needs P2, doesn’t he?” I can’t tell you how proud I was at that moment!

This final moment I’m going to tell you about also needs a little back story. Last Halloween Todd and I set up a photo booth at the party we were at. As the evening went on, people had more and more to drink. This made the photos later in the evening just that much sillier. One of the photos is of my wife holding up her fingers as if she’s holding a couple six-shooters, and though you can’t hear it, she’s saying “Pyew Pyew” as she’s shooting them. And, for the record, “Pyew Pyew” has stuck around and is still something we laugh about.

On Friday, Todd, Chris and I decided to visit Alcatraz. As we went through the line waiting to get on the boat, there was a photographer there taking photos of couples and groups that they would then sell you upon your return for $22 for two 5x7s. I was certain there was no way we were going to purchase these photos, so I told Todd to go ahead and join Chris and I in our shot. Right before he snaps the shot, I hold up my hands and make the pyew-pyew noise. This makes the photographer laugh and in turn Chris and Todd, too. So I make Chris and Todd join me and we all throw our six-shooters in the air. When we got back, the photo was just too good to pass up.

You can find the original photo on this page for comparison.

Filed Under: Family, WordCamp Tagged With: , ,

WordCamp San Francisco Wrap-up

May 31, 2009
wp-sf

I just returned home from WordCamp San Francisco and wanted to write my wrap-up right away so I didn’t forget any of the details I wanted to throw in. I’m exhausted from a day of travel that included our flight being delayed (twice), landing in Vegas and sitting on the tarmac for 20 minutes and then another 20 minute delay as they failed to let us know which carousel our luggage was going to come out on. Ahh, the joys of travel.

Anyway, on to the good stuff.

My wife and I made our way to San Francisco a few days early to do some sightseeing prior to spending all day at WordCamp on Saturday. This is 3rd time this year I’ve traveled to attend a WordCamp but the first time I saw something other than the inside of a conference hall. I gotta tell ya, it’s the way to do it! We had a blast being tourists on Thursday and Friday!

Oh, right, this is a post about WordCamp. OK, I’m back on track now.

After the morning welcome by Matt Mullenweg, we headed downstairs to check out Andy Peatling‘s talk about BuddyPress. Andy is the lead developer on the BP project and his passion for the project shows through. He gave a bit of an overview on how you can integrate BuddyPress in to a site to let people contribute and interact, but stressed the fact that BP doesn’t automatically turn your website in to a social network type site. He provided some links to resources that will help designers and developers customize their BP installs. I’m definitely looking forward to researching this further.

Here are the resources if you are interested:
- List of BuddyPress loops
- BuddyPress hooks
- The Skeleton Component
- Vote for new BuddyPress features
- BuddyPress dev community

We stayed in our seats downstairs after Andy wrapped up and got ready for the next presenter. Dave Moyer who was going to give an intro to Podcasting. At the ripe old age of 16, Dave is a “been there, done that” guy in the podcast community. He’s been podcasting since 2004. He passed on some info about the tools he uses (Skype and Audacity), places to find free/inexpensive tunes for your podcasts (penmachine, freeplaymusic, soundsnap) and an easy way to make your podcast ready for iTunes (hint: publish via feedburner). Again, this is something that I’ll be researching more over the coming weeks as it’s a topic that I’ve been interested in for ages and just haven’t dove in to yet. Soon, though!

Next was the State of the Word. This is when Matt Mullenweg gives a past, present and future view of WordPress. One of the big announcements was that WordPress and WordPress MU (multi-user) are going to merge. Undoubtedly this means that a site admin would have the ability to turn on/off the ability to add multiple blogs to a single install of WordPress right from the dashboard. No real time-table given on when that would be happening, though. He also spoke about the P2 theme. A very cool theme that turns your blog in to a twitter-like site. This would be a great tool for a team working on a project. New posts and comments are shown in real time and the page doesn’t need to be refreshed to show new content. I’m interested in getting my company to use this for development groups.

In a stroke of genius, rather than having a Q&A session immediately following the State of the Word, instead we broke for an awesome BBQ lunch and then headed back for an hour-long Q&A. I say it’s brilliant because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss any part of either, but not sure sitting for nearly 2 hours straight would have been all that much fun.

Next we checked out Tara Hunt‘s “Makin’ Whuffie” presentation. Tara gave some great information on using social media to build your business. She talked about how it’s ridiculous for companies to say “We need a twitter campaign” when what they really need to do is find out why their customers use/like twitter and how they should become part of the community.

We headed downstairs again to check out Ann Oyama giving an intro on WordPress Themes and Plugins. For those of you who read my blog on a regular basis, you know that plugin development is something I’ve been in to lately. As I’ve said before, it’s impossible to teach an entire subject like building custom themes or plugins in a 40 minute presentation, but Ann gave a nice overview and people should have plenty to follow up with once they get back home.

Steve Souders was up next. For me, this was the highlight of the day. Steve is a performance guru who works at Google (after many years of working at Yahoo) and he gave a VERY informative talk on how to speed up your website. Some of the stuff sounds incredibly advanced and may intimidate you at first, but, with some info from Steve and a couple hours of time, you could drastically improve the performance of your website and it could make all the difference in the world to your visitors.

I wouldn’t even begin to do justice to Steve’s presentation. Instead, I’ll tell you to download his powerpoint presentation and as soon as the video is available on wordpress.tv, watch it.

We wrapped up our day by listening to Scott Porad from Pet Holdings (the geniuses behind FailBlog, LolCats, etc…) as he spoke about user-generated content. It was interesting to hear how they do everything they can to make it super simple for people to create and submit content. Then, rather than having people from their company being the judge of what does or doesn’t make it to the website, they leave it up to the community. If enough people say it’s funny, it makes the site. If not, well, sorry.

Even though this wasn’t the last session of the day, it was for us. We headed back to the hotel, grabbed some dinner and made our way to the after party. You just can not pass up the opportunity to have this kind of access to the staff from Automattic and the passionate WordPress community. Guys like Joseph Scott and Jake Spurlock make the entire trip worth it. Where else are you going to be able to bend their ear for 30 minutes and get the inside scoop on what projects they are working on. Plus, it’s a great way to drop a feature request directly in the laps of people that can make ‘em show up without having to code them myself. ;)

There are two very unfortunate things about my experience at WordCamp San Francisco;
- As much as I love the idea of having multiple tracks, I’m really bummed that I wasn’t able to see all the presentations. Yes, I know I can watch the presentations online at WordPress.TV in a few days/weeks, but it’s not the same as being there.
- A second day got added to the event that was more geared towards WordPress developers. This was hosted at the Automattic offices and I’m sure would have been exceedingly cool to attend. Unfortunately it wasn’t announced until well after we had booked our flights and I didn’t hear about it until it was too late to make other arrangements. This was definitely a sad trombone moment for me.

Kudos to all the presenters and everybody who had a part in putting together WordCamp SF. I had a great time and I’m already looking forward to attending again next year!

Filed Under: Social Media, WordCamp, WordPress Tagged With: , ,

Preparing to attend your first WordCamp event

May 28, 2009
mfwc

I’ve done a bunch of writing about WordCamp events over the past few months. Likely due to the fact that I’ve organized one (Las Vegas), attended one (Denver), spoke at one (Reno-Tahoe) and am currently sitting on a plane heading to San Francisco to attend yet another. As if that’s not enough WordCamp for one person, I also plan on attending the Los Angeles event and I’ll be speaking at the Portland event on back to back weekends in September. So at this point, I’m a bit of a seasoned vet when it comes to attending WordCamp events.

I was recently asked by somebody who is planning on attending their first WordCamp, what they should do to prepare for the event. Since they asked me via Twitter, I tried for 5 minutes to figure out how to answer in 140 characters. I finally replied, “I’ll have to turn this in to a blog post.”

Where it’s at

Not everybody lives within shouting distance of a city that is going to host a WordCamp event. If you visit WordCamp.org, you can find the schedule for upcoming events and hopefully find one that’s not too far away. If that’s not the case, I strongly suggest planning to go to a WordCamp event in a city that you’d like to visit. Plan on going a few days early and do some sightseeing and then attend the event before heading home. Be sure to leave enough time to take part in any after parties that may be planned following the event as these are excellent networking opportunities.

It’s too far, I gotta fly

If you need to travel to attend your first WordCamp event, do yourself a huge favor and plan ahead. Flights and hotel reservations are usually less expensive if you book well in advance. If you aren’t real picky about the exact hotel you stay in, use Priceline.com to find accommodations in the area surrounding the event.

I know when and where, now what?

Once you’ve decided on the event you are going to, the first thing you should do is register for the event. Register as early as you can. Waiting for the last minute is a bad idea for a couple reasons. Each event will have a different capacity based on where it’s being held, so it’s possible the place may sell out earl. Also, by registering early, you are helping the organizers get a head start on ordering supplies for the event.

Who’s speaking at the event?

Each WordCamp is different and will have a unique set of speakers and topics. When you visit the WordCamp.org website, you’ll find a link to site dedicated to your specific event. The site will typically have a list of speakers scheduled to appear with links to their websites. Take some time to read up on the speakers. I have found some excellent blogs this way that I have added to my RSS reader and continue to follow. Most speakers will have a Twitter account that you can follow as well. This is another great way to get familiar with who is going to be there.

What will I learn at WordCamp?

As I mentioned, each event is going to cover a unique combination of topics. Take some time to review the schedule for the event to figure out which topics you are most interested in. Many of the events recently have had multiple tracks running during the day. They usually have one track dedicated to the technical aspects with the other track dealing with more of the front-end user elements. If the event you are going to has multiple tracks, before the day of the event you should print out a schedule and highlight the presentations that you want to attend. This can save some confusion and stress on the day of the event.

WordCamp is a great place to pick up ideas for things you want to research further once you get home. It’s hard for any presenter to teach you an entire subject inside a 30-60 minute presentation. That’s not really the point of any presentation. But, assuming you pay attention and take some notes, you can use each presentation as a jumping off point for when you return back home. Even though I’ve been using WordPress for more than 5 years, I’ve still come away with new ideas and concepts from each WordCamp I’ve attended this year.

Preparing for the day of the event

I can’t stress this enough… DRESS COMFORTABLY!! The event itself will last 8 – 10 hours and there will probably be some sort of after party to attend. Yes, you’ll likely be sitting for much of the day, but also be prepared to walk/stand for quite a while as well. After WordCamp in Denver we ended up in a bar chatting with people for more than 3 hours. Most of that time we spent standing. Do not fear that you are going to be under dressed wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

Most WordCamp events try to provide wireless internet access. But, from what I’ve experienced so far, do not rely on having wireless access. With 100+ people all trying to get their laptops and cell phones to connect to a single router, access is going to be spotting and slow.

Bring something for taking notes. I personally have horrible handwriting, so I bring my laptop to type notes and save them for easy reviewing when I get home. If I were to bring pen and paper, it would be like trying to decipher the Dead-Sea Scrolls. Do what works best for you.

Bring a snack. There will most likely be a break for lunch, but still you may want to consider packing a Snickers bar or something for either the mid-morning or mid-afternoon. You don’t want to be falling asleep during a presentation due to lake of sustenance.

Plan to arrive early and stay late. There is great value in all the presentations, but I believe there is equal if not greater value in the networking opportunities that happen on breaks and after the event has concluded for the day. If there is an after party, make sure to go! I have made some excellent contacts at these gatherings that would have never had happened if I skipped out early.

What do I do when I get back home?

This is probably the most important part. When you get back home it’s important that you take your notes and review them. Then, for everything that you took notes on, do some additional research. Get involved with the information that you found interesting at the event. If you liked the hearing about building templates, hit up Google and search for “Building a WordPress template from scratch”. Did you like the info about plugins? Search for “Building a WordPress plugin”.

You should also connect with the presenters that you found most interesting. Send them an email and let them know what you thought of their presentation. Many of the presenters will make their slides or even video of their presentations available a short time after the event has concluded. This is another great way to review the information to listen for things you may have missed.

Resources

Here are some handy resources that you can check out to help enhance your WordCamp experience

  • wordcamp.org – See when the next WordCamp is going to be in your area
  • wordcamp.tv – Check out presentations from WordCamps all over the world
  • wordpress.org/support – Forum where you can find answers to most any WordPress question

Oh, and don’t forget to have fun. The WordPress community is filled with some amazingly cool and incredibly knowledgeable people. They are one of the most helpful bunches of people I’ve found on the Internet. Interact with them and you’ll see what I mean.

Did I miss anything?

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I’m happy to help.

Filed Under: WordCamp, WordPress Tagged With: ,

Using WordPress as a CMS for Affiliate Marketing

April 26, 2009
header_using

On April 25th I spent the day at WordCamp Reno-Tahoe where I gave a presentation on using WordPress as a CMS for affiliate marketing. Other than being the MC for WordCamp:Las Vegas, this was my first time putting together slides and a speech and presenting it in front of an audience.

For those who weren’t there, unfortunately not many of the sessions were recorded. I believe most of the presenters will be uploading their slide decks and, from what I hear, they will be linking to them shortly from the WordCamp Reno-Tahoe website.

Here is the slide deck from my presentation:

I had my handy-dandy Flip video camera with me and recorded my presentation which you can see here:

Using WordPress as a CMS for Affiliate Marketing from John Hawkins on Vimeo.

Thanks again to Colin Loretz for putting on a fantastic show this weekend and especially for letting me be part of it.

Filed Under: General, Technology, WordCamp, WordPress Tagged With: , , , , ,

WordCamp Reno-Tahoe Wrap-up

April 25, 2009
dscf2034.jpg

This morning I woke up early and hopped on a plane from Vegas and landed in Reno around 8:30. We quickly made our way to our hotel to drop of some bags and have a quick bite to eat before heading over to the Reynolds School of Journalism on the UNR campus to attend WordCamp Reno-Tahoe. As I sit in bed after an amazing day of learning, networking and even presenting, I wanted to write a quick post to recap the day while it’s all fresh in my mind.

We arrived pretty early and took a couple seats in the back row. While we waited for Matt Mullenweg to arrive and give the keynote speech, we went around the room having each person stand up, say their name, twitter handle and one word that summed themselves up. This turned in to a pretty fun exercise. People threw out words like under-caffeinated, excited, confused, inspired, geek (that was me), but nothing got a better response than the girl who choose the word boobies.

You can’t go wrong with boobies. Remember that.

With the San Francisco WordCamp just about a month away, Matt chose to switch up his normal routine of giving a “state of the word” speech and instead went with the 4 things you should be hip to. There seems to be some big things happening over at WordPress central as there are some big updates going out for WordPress MU, BuddyPress and the Twitter-esque theme, P2. Matt also announced that they recently gained control of the domain name WP.com. They haven’t figured out exactly what to do with it yet and are taking suggestions. Yes, a URL shortening service has already been suggested. Matt also spoke about the fact that Geocities is going to be shut down by the end of the year, and let on that he has a Geocities page that somebody tweeted and you can see here.

Matt was using a very cool (though it has some bugs) presentation software called Prezi. The crowd seemed to like the swooshing of the pages as he went from slide to slide. I have to admit, I’ll be checking it out next week, because it did look cool.

After Matt was done, half the people left the main room, which now became the development track room. Upstairs was the marketing track sessions. We hung out in the dev room most of the day. The first dev session was Enhancing WordPress with Custom Fields by Kyle Provost. I’ve used custom fields several times for different things, but usually they were the result of a theme or plugin I had installed. Thanks to Kyle I realize how I could use those myself in theme and/or plugin development.

Following Kyle was Colin Loretz. Colin pulled double-duty as the organizer of the event and also a presenter. His topic was called Creating Your First WordPress Plugin. Since I just recently wrote my own plugin, this was one of the sessions I was looking forward to most to see if there was anything I could pick up. The answer is, of course there was! Colin gave some great information that I plan on using to go and update my existing plugin to make it even more useful for users.

Next up was lunch. I have to say that I really liked the way they handled lunch. Simple, simple, simple. Set up was a table that had boxed lunches. Each contained a sandwich, chips, a cookie, an apple and a soda.

DSCF2034.jpg

Most people picked a box and headed outside to enjoy the beautiful weather and do some socializing at the same time. I forgot to mention that it was in the low 40s when our plane landed this morning, and I didn’t think to bring a jacket. Luckily, it warmed up nicely and it didn’t become an issue. We spent our lunch outside chatting with Joseph Scott from Automattic who asked if I was on a West Coast tour of WordCamp events. This is, of course, because I saw him in Vegas, Denver and now Reno all within 90 days.

DSCF2035.jpg

After lunch we went back to the development track room to hear Joseph Scott talk about WordPress Performance and Scalability. Not only was his speech interesting and informative, it is amazing to listen to a guy who is passionate and excited about the content he’s presenting. When it comes to talking about servers, data centers, load balancers and memcache, I’m not sure there’s a better suited person to deliver this speech than Joseph.

Following Joseph was Chelsea Otakan speaking about Creating WordPress Themes. While I’m certainly not a graphic designer, Chelsea gave some very good information about how the theme files themselves work and how WordPress works with them. I was definitely inspired to put together my own theme, if for no other reason than to say I’ve done it. You can find Chelsea’s presentation and sample theme on her site. And, here’s a shot of Chelsea taken from the back of the dev room.

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After a short break it was time to head upstairs for the final two sessions of the day. But, before I get to that, I have to say the marketing track room was ridiculously cool. They call it the war room. There’s a projector mounted on the ceiling pointing to a screen on the far end of the room. But, the room itself is taken over by a massive circular table. OK, I’m not doing it justice. Here’s a photo instead.

DSCF2039.jpg

Next to present was Jim Turner talking about Blogging For A Living. Jim presented at WordCamp Las Vegas, but I was so busy running around that I wasn’t able to catch his presentation. It was nice to be able to sit and listen to the entire speech rather than 30 second chunks as I ran in and out of the room in Vegas. There is a lot of interest in earning money from blogging, and Jim is in the center of it when it comes to getting bloggers jobs.

Finishing off the day on the marketing track was me talking about Using WordPress as a CMS for Affiliate Marketing. As it was my first time presenting in this fashion, I have to say that I’m quite pleased with how it went. I had several people asking questions in the middle of my speech, which is perfectly fine with me as I’d much rather engage in a conversation rather than talking AT a group for 45 minutes.

My time “on stage” flew by. I remembered most of what I wanted to say and never felt nervous or uncomfortable. I am definitely looking forward to doing it again in the future.

After it was all over we headed back to the hotel to check in and then headed out to dinner with Jim Turner. Even better than hearing his presentation was being able to sit and talk logistics face-to-face for some projects that we have cooking together. I would have loved to have chatted for another couple hours, but the day was catching up to us all and it was time to say good night and head back to our hotels and get some rest.

It doesn’t appear that the presentations today were recorded in any way. I brought my own recorder and will be writing up my presentation and posting it here in a day or so. If anybody else recorded any sessions, I would love it if you would leave a comment and point me to them.

Thanks again to Colin for inviting me to be a presenter at WordCamp Reno-Tahoe. I’m already looking forward to returning next year, even if it’s just to attend.

Filed Under: WordCamp Tagged With: , , ,

Get your tickets for WordCamp Reno-Tahoe

April 1, 2009
wordcamp_reno

This year has already been a very exciting year for me as it relates to WordCamp. In January I organized WordCamp:Las Vegas. In February I took a photo safari to Colorado to attend WordCamp Denver. And now, I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at the upcoming WordCamp Reno-Tahoe event!

WordCamp Reno-Tahoe will take place on Saturday, April 25th at the Reynolds School of Journalism on the UNR campus. There is already a strong list of speakers confirmed for the event and I believe they’ll be adding a couple more before the date arrives. Tickets are already on sale for the 1 day event and are only $20. If you’ve been to a WordCamp before, you know what a bargain $20 is for the amount of information presented throughout the day.

At the event you can expect to hear about creating WordPress Themes & Plugins, blogging best practices, podcasting and I’ll be speaking about using WordPress as a CMS.

If you are unfamiliar with WordCamp, head over to WordPress.TV where you’ll find a collection of videos from previous WordCamp events.

I’m looking forward for the opportunity to attend another WordCamp and am very excited to have been invited to present. I hope to see a large group of my Vegas friends and bloggers make the trip for the event!

See you all there!

Filed Under: WordCamp Tagged With: ,

The birth of Beer & Blog Las Vegas

January 30, 2009

“Who would have thought that all this would have grown out of WordCamp:Las Vegas?” That’s a question I’ve been asked several times over the past few weeks while attending Beer & Blog.

If you haven’t heard, Beer & Blog is a weekly meeting that takes place on Thursday nights at the Freakin’ Frog. A group of Las Vegas blogging and social media enthusiasts get together to talk about all aspects of blogging and social networking.

The idea for beer & blog was introduced to me by Aaron Hockley, who I met while organizing the WordCamp:Las Vegas conference. Aaron was organizing a similar conference in Oregon and mentioned to me that he was interested in speaking on the topic of Beer & Blog and how it has helped to explode the tech scene up in Oregon. After hearing his explanation, I knew this would be an excellent opportunity to bring the Las Vegas blogging community together and hopefully start our own group. I invited Aaron to speak at WordCamp, and to say that his message was well received would be a tremendous understatement! Before the end of the conference, one of the attendees, Jackie Mason, had already contacted the folks at Beer & Blog and we were set up with our own Las Vegas chapter. 4 short days later, using Twitter as the main source of promotion, we had our first Beer & Blog event with roughly 30 people in attendance.

I’ve tried in the past to coordinate weekly/monthly meetings to talk about blogging over beers, but it has been difficult to gain interest and the idea would end up being scrapped. So why is working this time? I think the answer is WordCamp. At WordCamp we had a room FULL of people who are already interested in blogging and were taking steps to better their blogging through education from other like-minded individuals. When Aaron introduced them all to the idea of Beer & Blog, the lightbulb went on over all their heads. I had a dozen people come up to me asking if we were going to get something like that going here in Las Vegas. The interest was definitely there. All it needed now was somebody to step up and set the date. Jackie stepped up, made it happen and the rest, as they say, is history.

While it’s too early to tell how the group will hold together over the long haul, the early results are impressive. We had 30 people in attendance that first week, a little over 20 people the second week and a very impressive 40 person turn-out last night.

So, to answer that question, “Who would have thought…?”, the answer is me. I knew Las Vegas had a passionate group of bloggers and I’m thrilled that we are finding each other and sharing our knowledge over a pint of beer.

Come join us and help put the “Social” back in social networking.

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media, WordCamp Tagged With: , ,