August 9, 2010 WordCamp

It was a long overdue escape from the development cave of Instinct HQ to travel half way round the world to visit some people I met over the internet, nerves and jitters aside the experience was filled with anticipation. What would they think of this long haired ferrel hippy? Did they realize what they were getting themselves into? God, did I know what I was getting into,, time would tell…

WordCamp UK

So WordCamp Uk was a huge success,the mix of talented developers and bloggers was interesting. All speakers were well versed and practiced so the nerves mounted when it came my to my turn. That plus the heat of a UK summer and lack of air conditioning left my palms in a state of constant grease. Enjoyed meeting people that I have been only in contact through the wire with for the last year. It was hard to who was who, my gravatar made things easier as everyone recognized the crazy monkey in the room (not). Ben Huson and Lee Willis obviously they had me at ‘hello’. Finally met Jane Wells the UX person for WordPress, and the WordCamp enthusiast.

Also meeting the developers from Automattic Peter Westwood, and Nikolay Bachiyski was definately a great experience. Hearing the passion in Nikolay on Test Strategies was very motivating. I believe more work needs to be done in regards to Testing for large Plugins such as WP e-Commerce.

My presentation was in a jam packed room of developers and users of the famous WP e-Commerce Plugin. Some even went on to say that it could have been a fire hazzard since some people were stuck sitting on the floor and stairs. One trouble make accidentally turned off the projector at one point to swap plugs for a fan as the room was hot hot hot.

You can view the presentation + bloopers here:

and view the resources for both my Wordcamp UK and WordCamp NZ presentations here

WordCamp NZ

To end my long overdue break I got back to the ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’ Aotearoa just in time for the second half of day one of WordCamp NZ 2010. I was extremely gutted I missed the HTML5 + CSS3 talk and the presentation by Automattic Developer Alex Shields. However I did enjoy the presentations by Anthony Cole and Bren from Mogul.

Was great to catch up with Sensei Dan and am eager to get back into full swing with Instinct this week. Some great ideas were being bounced around with a few people at the end of the day. My Presentation which I did not record this time around was well received, I think, the feedback and questions section was not as proactive as WordCamp Uk so either I lost most of the attendees with my live coding section or made a whole lot of sense? Which of the two I do not know….

So there you have it that was my WordCamp trail two Camps both very different. Exciting, nerve wrecking and fun. I look forward to the next stint with WordCamp Wellington and WordCamp Melbourne 2011 they should be good.

till next time.

Less Screaming More Coding people.

SCM