Karin and I have never managed to attend any of the many tech events held in the Vancouver region. Most are held downtown or at UBC, and we are at the opposite side of this sprawling metro region. This makes a mid-week event especially difficult, considering my alarm goes off at 5:30am for the workday. I do love the three day weekends that working 10 hours shifts gives me; but it certainly makes weeday events tough. Weekend events are rare, and until now have always managed to conflict with something else we need to do.
We therefore were excited when WordCamp Fraser Valley was announced, as it was a short drive to Langley to attend. The entrance fee of “free” was also something attractive. We signed up looking forward to learning more about WordPress and finally getting to see and perhaps meet some of the bloggers we regularly follow.
Leading up to the actual day, I was unsure if we’d be able to go as Karin’s recent dental work has resulted in pain that builds up throughout the day and usually has her heavily medicating by the evening. She was determined to go, though, even if she wasn’t able to socialize and network due to the pain. So I left work a few hours early and we drove to the Cascade Casino.
I will not try and summarize every detail as Rebecca Bollwitt; otherwise known as Miss604, live blogged the entire event save for her own presentation. You can find a link to her excellent notes below.
The evening started with introductions by Gary Jones from BlueFur web hosting. Gary was the primary organizer and his company was a major sponsor. He introduced Raul Pacheco, otherwise known as Hummingbird604. Raul is a prolific blogger who only recently made the switch to WordPress, but once he did he dived in quickly. Raul spoke about transitioning to WordPress from other platforms and starting a new WordPress blog.
Gary had received a last minute cancellation, and therefore had to unexpectedly speak next. Despite not having time to prepare, he gave an excellent presentation on business blogging, explaining why almost any business can benefit from blogging. Many of his points apply equally well to personal blogs and I will therefore implement them.
After a short networking break, Kulpreet Singh spoke about security in WordPress. His was the most technical talk, but contain a lot of useful and important information and I hope the less technical people in the audience were able to take away a few good points. Being a geek myself, I have already secured our blogs using a lot of the methods Kulpreet covered, but I did learn a few new ones that I will use. Kulpreet was also the one speaker whom I did not already have in my Google Reader, which I have rectified as he is a knowledgeable source.
Up next was the infamous Rebecca Bollwitt, often better known by her moniker Miss604. Her’s is one of the first blogs I followed, likely because I myself often cannot grab the “Flash” nickname on many sites and have to go with Flash604. Rebecca spoke about customizing sidebars in WordPress based on what page is being viewed. She did a good job of making it sound simple, which it is but I’m sure many a non-technical person has been too scared to try. Hopefully she encouraged a few people to expand their boundaries. During the Q&A portion of her presentation Rebecca demonstrated Twitter, as it had repeatedly been mentioned throughout the evening.
Evil entered the room next when John Chow took the podium. I was unsure what to expect, as John is extremely knowledgeable but often comes across on his blog as approaching such commitments casually. John spoke about bringing traffic to your blog, and it was very organized and informative. John covered quite a few good tips, many which I have already read on his blog but some which he shared only with us and asked that we not reveal them as they will not work well if they become widely known. His blog has so much information that it was nice to know which he considered the most important.
In addition to the knowledge gained and the chance to meet other users of WordPress, part of the reason I attended was to kickstart me with regards to this blog. I have had several personal items recently clear up, and so this conference was perfectly timed. I do hope that we can attend more soon.
My thanks also go out to the presenters that do live in Vancouver; you had to do the trek that we have so far avoided.
There is no way you can absorb everything at such a conference, and so since I didn’t get to network as much as was hoped, I have been searching for the presenters and my fellow participants online and reading their summaries. Below are as many links as I could find to other participants’ blogs and Flickr photos. Please leave a comment if you know of more and I will update.
- Raul Pacheco Summary Flickr
- Rebecca Bollwitt Live Blog Flickr
- John Bollwitt Summary Flickr
- John Chow Summary
- Gary Jones Summary
- Kulpreet Singh Summary Presentation Slides
- Tyler Ingram Summary Flickr
