Hummingbird604.com » WordCamp Fraser Valley

WordCamp Fraser Valley – The aftermath

Raul — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:10:24 +0000

After a really long and exhausting day (I had only 3.5 hours of sleep), I am at home, it’s past midnight on Thursday already and I really shouldn’t be blogging, but I should be sleeping. However, I think I need to take a few minutes to take stock of WordCamp, and ask my readers and the participants to give us feedback. Normally, I would also take some time to mention all the wonderful people I met and send them some link love (I did indeed lose the bet to Jodi), but I am really exhausted, so you’ll have to forgive me for that.

We are our worst critics and I think some of us who presented felt that we could have done a better job. Let me say that this is completely natural. With the exception of John Chow, who seems like he’s done dozens of these presentations and he is a natural, I think that we all thought we did an ok job but we wish we had done better. The funny thing is that the feedback that we all got was that our presentations were great. And you know, since the people who told us that were actually the audience, we should pat ourselves in the back.

I want to take a minute to thank Gary AND his team for superb organization (I saw Brady Valentino there as well, I am assuming as a volunteer). It was a real delight to share this experience with all of you, and the chocolates were definitely a very nice and classy touch. You guys did a great job. All of this work as well as that of Rastin, Jenn, Ash and Teresa when the first WordCamp Vancouver happened, only comes to show that we are indeed a great WordPress community. Gary and his team put together WordCamp Fraser Valley, Rastin and his team put together WordCamp Vancouver, now who is going to take the baton and organize WordCamp British Columbia or WordCamp Canada? Inquiring minds want to know…

Thanks to a wonderful audience as well. You guys were simply awesome, and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people. Everyone was supportive, friendly and I am delighted that people came and introduced themselves to me.

Those of you who attended but did not have a chance to talk to us, I would really appreciate it if you left a comment on my blog regarding what you thought of the presentations. I’m going to speak to you as I would to my own students – just when you provide your feedback, be constructive and remember that we are human beings with feelings and that we did all of this in a total volunteer manner and we are not making money out of this.

We came and spoke because we are passionate about blogging, about the WordPress platform, and about sharing this with the larger community. I think I can speak for my fellow presenters when I say that this, same as WordCamp Vancouver, was a really wonderful experience. Thank you all. To my fellow presenters: Rebecca, Kulpreet, John, Gary – your work inspires me and I’m grateful to have shared this experience.

Also, thanks are due to Andy for recording pretty much all of my talk on my Flip camera and being such a good sport taking photos and videos (while I was busy giving my presentations). Thanks to Gregg for saving me with the battieries! Tyler, Gregg, Liam, Jodi, Dale, Lorraine, Ryan, Tom, and everyone whom I might have missed but I saw at WordCamp, thank you all.

WordCamp Fraser Valley – The tekkie part

Raul — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:54:28 +0000

I gave my presentation at the very beginning (Rebecca is being her usual awesome self and live-blogging – she even has video of my talk!) and even though I was nervous with my first non-academic talk in about a decade, people seemed to have a positive reception. Andy was kind enough to take photos and video with my cameras, since, well, it would be kind of hard to do it for myself while speaking (thanks Andy!)

I did lose my bet to Jodi but I’m glad that she thinks her husband should go directly to WordPress. I got a chance to hang out and meet Tyler, Jeremy, Gregg, John Berr, and other friends whom I have been talking to for a long while (Ryan, Jodi, Liam, Lorraine).

My laptop has been acting up but all I want is to have a chance to liveblog Rebecca’s talk, since I know that she will have notes on everyone else who is presenting. So, please, laptop, be kind and stay working (everyone laughs at the fact that it has so much hardware failure, but oh well – I don’t have the cash yet to shell out implement an upgrade to MacBook (or MacBook Pro)

REBECCA BOLLWITT – CUSTOMIZED PAGES AND SIDEBARS – TEMPLATES 101

Rebecca has used WP since 2006. An intermediate presentation – how to customize your theme. This doesn’t apply if you’re on WP.com.

Why would you want a custom page? If you want a custom sidebar, you can link to a new page. Rebecca has links on her sidebars. If you want to customize your sidebar, then this presentation is for you.

Say you want your “About” page to be blue.

How much code do you need to learn? Not a heck of a lot.

Page.php Code
THE LOOP – Displays your page and content
Header
Sidebar
Footer

You tell WP which sidebar to get. If you want the WordCamp page to have different things, she takes her Page.php.

She copied it and renamed it to WordCamp page (template Name: wordcamp-page)

For sidebar – she took the standard one and renamed it, so that WP will look for this sidebar instead of the other sidebar.

They show up now as WordCamp page templates on the Dashboard. It now has what Rebecca specified in the WordCamp Page PHP.

You don’t need to know a lot of PHP, but basically it’s easily customizable. You take what comes with the theme, copy them over, add the specific elements that you want and you can have custom pages and sidebars on WordPress.

John Bollwitt is showing something he coded. NoBoundaries.org

GARY – How does Miss604 get so out there and have so much exposure on media? Rebecca says that SEO is great for that, and she puts keywords in her posts and so on so that Google picks on that. WordPress does work great for that.

RAUL (me) – question – Themes and CSS – Rebecca explains that themes are the overall view of the blog, and the CSS is the style/appearance. She shows now different themes (the Theme Viewer). And how you can change your theme on WordPress.com, you can change your theme any way you want.

She showcases with the Brave Bull site. She is showing how the previews work.

TWITTER – Now Rebecca is showing Twitter. I’ll throw a Tweet back at her.

GARY – Are you finding that people go online more to talk about local stuff? Now Facebook – the blogosphere – what is your opinion on that. Rebecca – yes, Vancouver is becoming more of a hub for all these online things (we’re close to Silicon Valley). We’re known as TechCouver. There’s a lot of businesses in Vancouver who hit all these technologies.

How much time of the day do you spend blogging – 8 to 10 hours – now I am a social media consultant, so I write on my own site, an author on MetroBlogging (50 hyperlocal blogs). A few freelance gigs, an entertainment blog, a technology blog. I do dedicate time to

You can post-date posts. Time-stamping rocks!

Question – How long does it take for you to get your own WordPress installed, if you want to set your own design and so on (if you’ve never done it).

John is blogging on his site and on Sixty4Media, which is very cool.

Rebecca is now showing the WordPress CODEX, which is something everyone who wants need to learn about WordPress needs to check. Andy clarifies that the Codex is a wiki, so people can add to it. Wiki – website that everyone can add stuff to.

And I request that we plug Blogathon 2008.

After this, is John Chow and I am sure Rebecca will live-blog it so I can now stop worrying about my laptop dying.

I want to convert you… to WordPress!

Raul — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:40:40 +0000

As I’ve posted before, I read pretty much every blog on my blogroll and then some. Thanks to a handy RSS feed reader, now I can do that in the blink of an eye, literally (I speed-read). However, I took some time to see who of my friends are still on Blogger (I am talking to you Barbara, Phaedra, Pat, Jennifer, Marina, Dan, Mitch, Sarah, to mention just a few).

If you’ve been reading my blog at all, you’ll know that I am speaking at WordCamp Fraser Valley, precisely on the topic of how I transitioned from Blogger to WordPress. I am in no way associated with WordPress, they don’t pay me a cent (although I do have friends who are indeed associated with Auttomatic).

The truth is that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing my blog on this platform. So, I’m basically plugging you to switch and since many of you Blogger friends are also my friends, friends, you should come to WCFV and hear me speak like Ulysses listened to the siren’s sweet voice “WoooordPreeeess…. WoooordPreeeess” (ok, that sounds better when I say it than when I read it).

So, join me and a roster of fabulous bloggers (Rebecca, John, Kerry, Kulpreet and yours truly) on July 16th, 2008 from 6-9pm. For more details, click on the link that says “I’m Speaking at WordCamp Fraser Valley“. And in case you didn’t know, the registration is almost full so, you REALLY want to register as in, like, right now.

WordCamp Fraser Valley and coffee/snack sponsorship

Raul — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:35:22 +0000

On July 16th, 2008, a number of local, Metro Vancouver bloggers who use WordPress as their main platform will be descending on Langley’s The Cascade Casino (no, we are NOT gambling, just in case you were wondering) to present at WordCamp Fraser Valley, and according to the most recent update from BlueFur, they’re already at 33% capacity (and it’s not even July) so be sure to register, PRONTO!

At any rate, I found out that Gary Jones is looking for coffee and snacks sponsorships. Given that I work in the environmental field, ideally I’d like to see a reduced environmental footprint. One idea would be to contact local, environmentally-conscious producers to see if we can get some type of sponsorship (e.g. organic vegetable platters, or organic, ethically-traded coffee). I’ll see what we can do – I am sure amongst my readers there must be people who work in environmental issues and the food industry, so if you do (or know of someone), drop me a comment or send me an email.