25 Oct2010
Ten Things I Learned from WordCamp Las Vegas 2010
Last Saturday, I attended WordCamp Las Vegas. WordCamp is a conference that focuses on the popular blogging platform WordPress, which I used to create this blog. Most of those who attended were full-time web designers and programmers. I was probably most likely definitely the only accountant there. I admit that some of the material presented in the conference was a little over my head, especially when they got into PHP code. My PHP coding skills are a level or two above copy and paste.
John Lynn speaking at WordCamp.
- Passion and motivation are the keys to blogging, according to my friend and client John Lynn. If anyone has that passion and motivation, it’s him, having written about 6,000 blog posts in the past 5 years. This year, John quit his full-time job and earns enough advertising revenue from his blogs to support his family. John’s most recent entrepreneurial project is a website to help raise money for sports teams and non-profit organizations. You can see John’s PowerPoint presentation on his website to learn about how he became a full-time blogger. Check out the plug he gave me on slide 8 (thanks, John).
- WordCamp brings in a tech-savvy crowd. It seemed like everyone had a laptop, iPad and iPhone. It was a good thing I bought a Droid X last month because it helped me to blend in a little bit.
- Creating a good podcast is a lot more difficult than having a microphone and recording an MP3 file. Scott Whitney from Podworx gave an entertaining and enlightening presentation showing how they incorporate music and eliminate the uh’s and um’s when recording podcasts.
- The M&M peanut butter brownies at the Palace Station buffet were pretty tasty!
- I didn’t take any notes on paper. I used Twitter to jot down great quotes and to have a record of stuff I want to look into later. On top of that, I shared those tweets using the hashtag #wclv with the rest of the attendees, and one of them expressed her appreciation for it!
- Twitter provided me with opportunities to meet people in person that I had read tweets from during the conference (i.e. “hey, you’re @techguy”)! Did I mention I need to change my cryptic Twitter name? Nobody came to me and said, “hey @whe97007!”
- For security reasons, don’t use the default username “admin” to log into your WordPress admin page. FYI hackers, my new username is “Dustin.”
- I need to try out WordPress’ photo editor instead of using Photoshop every time to touch up photos. It can do more than I previously thought.
- WordPress is a very powerful blogging platform and the possibilities of what you can do with it are almost endless. A couple of the conference sessions were mind-boggling.
- I’m planning to come back again next year.
Tags: Blog, podcast, Web design, Wordpress
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chris farmand
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Great top 10 sir.
I still use admin for my WP logon, LOL. Speaking of WP, I have decided to run my new website on WP, I am having the theme built this week and should, (crossed fingers) be live this Friday. I agree with you when you say the platform is super-powerful, sometimes it scares me. Will wordcamp be coming to FL????
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Dustin Wheeler
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Hi Chris,
I did a Google search for “WordCamp Florida” and they’ve had WordCamps in Miami and Orlando in the past. At WordCamp Central there is a list of upcoming WordCamps, but none of them are in Florida. If you hurry, you could book a flight for the November 6 WordCamp in the Netherlands. How’s your Dutch?
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Shannon Tucker
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Very impressive, Dustin! A CPA wrestling with PHP code!
Interesting that you’re thinking about podcasts…I started experimenting with creating one this weekend. I’ve been on the learning curve with Pro Tools for some personal music projects, but am thinking about using that + iTunes + WordPress to get some audio content out there. Kinda fun tackling something new.
So thanks for posting some tips!
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Dustin Wheeler
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You’re welcome Shannon! When WordCamp comes to Colorado, don’t miss it! I think you would enjoy it. Let me know how it goes with your podcasting!
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