WordCamPDX Wrap-Up

Skipped the after-party to wander home (I don’t drink, and today was long enough as it stands, otherwise would have joined the crew at the Green Dragon). Hoping to collect my thoughts on the day while they’re still fresh.

The short of it: it was a REALLY fantastic event, and I’m very glad I went (it would have been worth coming down from Seattle for were I still in Seattle, let me put it that way). As can be gathered from my previous post, there was a virtual wealth of information regarding blogging, and thats not even getting into the deluge of tweets on Twitter regarding it — at several points in the day, we were anywhere from the number one to the number three item in Twitter Trends, even beating out the political stuff the day after the debates. And the attendance was just 150 people(ish), so that should be saying something on just how much everyone was tweeting. I about doubled my Twitter Follows/Followers.

On the quibbles side of things, I’d say it’d be nice if it was broken into two shorter days rather than one PACKED day. More chance to socialize and network between peers, and it would also give the opportunity to provide a bit more tracking options for sessions (as it was, there were a few that ran opposite each other that a lot of people wanted to go to both of). That said, the price was unbeatable, the presenters and topics were interesting, and the location was excellent. Overall, if you’re going to have issues, having too many neat things packed into the time is a pretty nice problem to have.

A few mental notes to myself:

  • I promised to look into more effective ways to migrate or batch edit categories in MediaWiki (the wiki software the Codex uses)
  • The WordPress Codex needs more volunteers to help write tutorials and document features, especially with 2.7 right around the corner! This is something that is worth at least a portion of my time, even if it’s just taking a few hours a week to fix typos and grammar.
  • Unrelated to WordPress, worth looking into the Information School at Berkeley, as their graduate program sounds like potentially a good fit. Thanks for the tip about goes to the lovely @snelson, one of the numerous awesome people I got to meet today.

I feel like the event made me excited about being a blogger again, which is a great feeling. I’m excited to put some of what I learned about into practice to make my blogs better and more effective. Some of these include the plugins that got listed, and implementing OpenID support and finding other ways to foster communication on the blog. I’m excited to update to 2.7, and plan to pull a nightly for local testing to make sure my theme development doesn’t break. I’d like to finish my new theme and get it implemented on the site, and maybe (shock of shocks!) share it with the community in case someone else likes what I did! Which, I think, is the biggest takeaway from this event: it’s not about the tool you’re using, it’s about the community that uses it.

Liveblogging WordCamp Portland

8:33am: We’re all set up in the main conference room at CubeSpace, bagels and coffee in hand… slide on the project points out that if you want to search on twitter or flickr or anywhere, the hashtag to look for is #wordcampdx.

8:38am: Giveaways of random things, like a free copy of Blogging Tips

8:40am: “Compost Compost Compost!” (Eva explaining CubeSpace)

8:42am: Automatic sent us a bunch of buttons and stickers and tattoos (temporary tattoos). Tattoo contest for creative use (PG-13 please!) over the day.

8:43am: Random silly little WordPress video done to “When You Wish Upon a Star” — cheesy but cute. It’s sort of a list of bloggers and developers and such who’ve managed to be successful using wordpress.

8:48am: Random interviews with various WordPress users.

8:53am: Lorelle just came in dressed as a Fairy Blogmother. “Has no one’s lives have been changed by WordPress here? What the hell am I doing here?”
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Breaking Radio Silence

Apologies for the lack of posts lately — no real excuses for the radio silence, but there it is: a hair under 3 weeks since my last entry. Here’s a quick sum up of the past few weeks:

  • Bernie put out a call for citizen co-signers for a petition against the current Wall Street bailout. Signed that, and encourage EVERYONE to contact their Senators and Congressmen ASAP, as this is something on the floor NOW.
  • Been introducing Jessica to Dr. Who, in all its glory. Currently in season 2 of the new series, and discussing with several friends picking up the old series and doing a Who night going through the whole damn thing.
  • Picked up a 1TB hard drive (LaCie Quadra) and an eSATA card for my laptop, which is making me happy — I was effectively out of room on both my laptop (120gb) and my extra drive (250gb), and this way I’m nicely backed up once more and have a bit more space.
  • Purchased a new domain: wanderlu.st. As the name might suggest, it’s going to be a travel related blog, with essays and writing and photography about various trips and locations (and even some local stuff from various places I’ve lived that I think are neat). It’s not really live yet, as I’m waiting until after WordCamp to properly set up the site. Looking forward to it, though!
  • WordCamp is this weekend, looking forward to it. Sounds like we’re going to get to preview WordPress 2.7, and the event has been filled to capacity (around 150 people). Woo!
  • Have the wanderlust, BAD. The air is finally starting to cool and turn autumnal, and as usual, it is sparking both the creative impulse and the desire to go explore.
  • Planning to head up to Seattle on October 3rd to attend Neil Gaiman’s reading from his new book (The Graveyard Book). Should be a fun trip!
  • Yes, I’m still looking for work. Had a phone interview with Apple last week regarding a Mac Genius position, which (while effectively a retail position) would provide full benefits and decent pay and help lock me down to an actual living situation again (how novel!). Despite having passed the phone interview, I’m not holding my breath, and continue to look and apply elsewhere, like Omni’s listing for a Software Test Pilot, which is WAY too up my alley to not try for (and for a company I like, to boot!).

So, err, yeah, I think that about catches ya’ll up. I’m still debating whether or not to split personal and professional blogs again for Critical Games (still have the nadreck subdomain after all, so why not use it?). As is suggested by me going out and getting a new domain and hosting service for wanderlu.st, I’m more and more leaning to making the materials more granular, instead of converged. (“All things have their place.”)

Testing Flock

Trying out a new web browser that is purported to be highly Web 2.0 centric… so, built in blog editor, built in Flickr support, gmail support, deicious, etc etc etc… all built on top of the Firefox engine.  Kinda neat. Flock.

Frustrations

So, I’ve been applying for jobs all over the place, and this includes having a long-running search agent on Microsoft’s staffing site. When jobs I’m qualified for come up, I’m notified, I log in, decide whether it’s something I should apply for, apply, log out. Easy.

Except they’ve been doing a lot of work on the Passport network of late, migrating things for Windows Live support and who knows what else, which is causing problems. Like, now I can’t fully sign out, but when I try to sign back in, it claims I’m not using a current enough browser, and should upgrade to IE6 (not even possible if I wanted to — I’m on a Mac). I swap out my reported user agent for IE7, and the sign in process now works. I can forgive the sign-in funkiness, since I AM using a brand new, beta release of Safari 4.

However, signing out still doesn’t work, and I STILL can’t reach my job agent. That, my friends, is lame.