I’ve been saying I was going to try to get more involved in the local blogging community for quite some time now, but tonight was my first foray into the wild world of Vancouver Blogging. I attended WordCamp Vancouver, sponsored by Tazzu , an online business, technology, and knowledge sharing community for creative and technical professionals. Â Held at The Network Hub, a virtual office space in downtown Vancouver, when I arrived the place was already pretty packed. My knee makes it difficult to sit on the floor for long periods of time, and standing is right out, so the hostess was nice enough to ask someone to get a chair for me from one of the offices. After 6:00pm, The Network Hub was bursting at the seams.Â
The sessions I saw were largely informative, although the format made it difficult to go into detail about many of the more advanced features and functions of WordPress. Jeff Kee of Synchronous Design& Marketing gave a brief (all-too brief) presentation on using WordPress for total website development. I wanted to hear more about the custom PHP he wrote to gerry-rig a custom sidebar that would fit with a corporate brand, but alas, there wasn’t enough time.Â
Monica Hamburg was a delightful and engaging speaker, and presented on Blogging and Social Media. I didn’t learn anything new in her presentation — well, I learned who she was, but beyond that, her presentation reinforced topics I’d encountered on other sites. And I can’t/won’t blame her for this, but all the talk of building an audience left me with an uneasy feeling that I can’t quite describe. I think in my mind talk of branding/building an audience is a slippery slope to discussions about “monetizing your content”, and as soon as I hear those discussions I start to look for the exit. To be fair to Monica, she didn’t mention “monetizing content” once in her presentation, so any unease I felt arose as a result of my own biases.Â
Rebecca Bollwitt, aka Miss 604 discussed using plugins and flickr to post photos on your weblog. Because she liveblogged during the event, I don’t feel she actually connected with the crowd as well as she could have, but I get the sense that as a YVR “blogging star”, people were willing to overlook that just because of who she was.Â
I just realized that sounds a lot bitchier than I intended it to be, and honestly, I’m not a sour grapes kind of person. Â Seriously, I’m just tired and cranky. I enjoy Rebecca’s blog, and nobody covers Vancouver better than she does.Â
But when giving a presentation, one should at least stand during that presentation instead of sitting on the floor behind a couple of chairs. I’m fairly certain there were a more than a few people who couldn’t see her. When you can’t connect with your audience at a basic physical level, your presentation may not be as effective.Â
Still, I learned something new from her presentation, which is why I went to WordCamp in the first place. I’d never heard of the Flickr Photo Album plugin for WordPress, and thanks to her demonstration, I installed it as soon as I could and I’m using it to include photos in this post.Â
By far, my favorite presentation of the night was Duane Storey’s presentation on Mobile Blogging with the iPhone. The one thing I noticed is that there are a lot of people in Vancouver who have unlocked iPhones. Storey is the developer behind the WPTouch iPhone theme, a plugin that formats your WordPress blog to an iPhone-friendly format. I couldn’t help wishing Storey (or someone with more WordPress mojo than I have) would develop a similar plugin for Symbian phones. Storey was clearly excited about the work he was doing in the mobile blogging arena, and it showed in his delivery style. He was affable and approachable, and not only did he want me make an iPod Touch something fierce (even though I love my N82), I walked away feeling a bit more excited and inspired to learn more about mobile blogging with WordPress. I’ll be looking for other tools that improve upon Nokia’s (regrettable) LifeBlog software. If you have suggestions for plugins or hacks I might try, feel free to post them in the comments.Â
It had already been a long day by the time I got to WordCamp, and by 7:00 I was fading fast. I left a bit early and I regret that, because I was really looking forward to Bruce Byfield’s Joys of Amateur Blogging presentation. Â It’s a pleasure to discover voices like his who blog for the sheer pleasure of it. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he’s a pretty decent writer.Â
I think this experience was just the beginning for me. Maybe by the time the next WordCamp rolls around, I’ll have a bit more technical experience under my belt, and I’ll feel confident enough to stand in front of a group of total strangers to talk about what I know. At the very least, maybe I’ll feel confident enough to stay and network instead of slinking out like a thief in the night.
