Considering the fact that I have been using / playing with / hacking this beautiful piece of Open Source Software called WordPress for as long as I have been, it did surprise me quite a bit that it took me so long to attend my first WordCamp. Then again, I shouldn’t be that surprised – geographical remoteness of Paradise played its part to some extent. Having gotten into the city a day earlier, I had the opportunity to (eat &) walk around in parts of it (that I had never seen before – including Central Park) with a new found friend (and a long time citizen of Packers nation). Much of the evening (and night and early hours of Sunday) was spent hanging out with some friends that I have known for a looooong time and some that I got to know hours earlier.
Having camped at Latha & Vathsa‘s, I woke up to a rainy Sunday morning; got the LIRR train (I know it’s expensive but it’s super fast too) to reach the Penn Station. Walking several city blocks in a slight drizzle while sipping Tall Skim Chai Lattae portrayed the city in a different way than I had ever seen before.
Thanks to David Reiff for the picture
About the event itself, kudos to Jonathan Dingman for organizing it the way he did – giving sufficient breaks between every presentation, which in turn gave us the opportunity to interact more with the speaker and/or fellow attendees. Meeting many a geeks and non-geeks alike, who use WordPress for a variety of things was fun (an understatement) and so was meeting many a people face-to-face — whom I had known as the author of a website and/or as a comment author in my blog (an understatement again). Getting a sneak preview about very many cool things to come in the November release in a His Steveness-like presentation from the legend himself (and getting to check out his GPS mounted Nikon D3 as well) was nothing short of exciting either!
Aaron Brazell (Making It Into The Big Leagues), Owen Brunette, Joseph Casabona, Jeremy Clarke (Running A Blog Network), Cynthia, Shay David (Interactive Blogging), Patricia Furtado, Kris Guntaka, Jonathan [PCWorld and MacWorld], Kit Latham, Dave Lester, Kerry Michaels, David Reiff, Jen Simmons (Video on WordPress), Maria White, Jeremy Zilar (On The Blogs – New York Times) and more … are some presenters & participants that I had a chance to chat/discuss/interact. As accomplished as they are in their respective area(s), it was really nice of them to engage in down to earth conversations about a variety of topics – geeky and non-geeky alike.
Imagine, if you can – me still kinda flying high with excitement and pardon me, if you can – for if you hear it more than once from me about it. And if you realize, like me, that this post is not as coherent as it should have been, blame it on my excitement :)
I am so glad that you got to go to a WordCamp. One of these days we’ll go to one together. I hope that Matt sees that you two are Open Source kindred spirits and gives you a job. :)
I sure hope so (for going to the WordCamp together and the job too :) )
so – did you have the wordpress shirt before or after wordcamp?
yay geeks! :) looks really fun!
@Karen:
I bought that shirt few years ago I believe – WordPress was pretty well known but I didn’t know (I am quite sure they didn’t either) that it would become as popular as it now, to be having a WordCamp (or two or three or four) every weekend in some part of the world.
I did get one more shirt though – WordCamp New York City 2008 with Sun Microsystems logo on the back. Haven’t tried it yet but I like the old one better – not the best of the design but makes me look like an old timer :)
PS: My ego be damned!
I have that same shirt. I also have the newer shirt with the smaller logo. I think I like the smaller logo better, but I love them all.
Note2Self (and others):
The photos from the event are here and here are the videos.