Time for Day #2 for WordCamp Chicago and I gotta admit today seems a little bit better – I’m more comfortable and able to relax a little bit ready to take on the day. As I spent the majority of yesterday in developers (DEV) side there was quite of sessions I wanted to check out in the users side.
Starting off was SEO for WordPress by Shannon Steffen (@SKSDesigns). One word: WOW! I like to think I know SEO but Shannon is NOT messing around. While her presentation was great a lot of the audience took over with some basic questions. I wasn’t upset but found myself awaiting to check out the slides of of her session that she had to skip over due to the questions.
Next on deck was Jim Turner (@Genuine) talking about The Next Generation of WP Bloggers. Breaking down digital media – there was some great discussion around the audience. However, it did get a little specific which got a little annoying but all in all – two thumbs up.
Last up for the user side of WordCamp Chicago 2010 was Cori Miller (@CoryMiller303) on Entrepreneurship. Honestly, this was the best speaker to me and found some great quotes:
light yourself on fire and people will come and watch you burn
love what you do – change it
team concept – fight for each other and your staff will fight for your customers
Then again don’t take my word for it be sure to check out what happened after he was done talking
In the end I am ready to take on next year however, I’m not sure what the size will be since last year it was 200 and there 500. Quite a big difference so let’s see what the future holds.
As you might have already know I was fortunate enough to attend this years WordCamp Chicago. It was blast and I was able to learn quite a bit and it took me a while to get back into the swing of things. I’m just now able to go over my notes from the 2 day event and all the new sites/blogs that people tweeted me. So, let me break it down for everyone.
The first one up was Brad Williams (@williamsba) talking about WordPress Security. What a GREAT source of information – I couldn’t stop taking notes esp after doing some awesome fist pumping
There are something I haven’t implemented on some of my sites that I KNOW will definitely help down the road.
Next up was Josh Byers (@joshbyers) speaking on WordPress for Client. A pretty good session on how to work with your clients and how to convert sites over to wordpress.
After lunch was Scott Robbin (@srobbin) on Making WordPress Faster Front-end Performance Tips. In recent Google news the quicker your site the better it’s ranked so why not optimize it to make it faster with some great tweeks. I was pretty impressed with the concepts he presented and plan on inputted them into my own client site plans.
Being the SEOer I am I headed over to the user side to hear Scott Stawarz (@scottstawarz) speak on Maximize the All In One SEO Plugin. A great plugin that has a TON of features and benefits to match. I watched more-or-less to see if there was anything I was missing regarding this particular plugin. I wasn’t – I’m not trying to come off cocky but…when you DO SEO then you should know the plugin. Nonetheless great presentation and back and forth with the audience.
Headed back over to the DEV side of the banquet hall to hear Dan Milward talk about WordPress and E-Commerce. Dan is one of the developers for the widely used E-Commerce plugin and highly recommend it to anyone. Extremely user friendly and not to mention SEO. Sadly I wasn’t able to stay the whole time as I was extremely worn out and from what I could tell it was fairly basic. However, he mentioned the new integration with BuddyPress but I got the idea.
Right now it is Day #2 of WordCamp Chicago and I have to admit there are some great sessions that have happened with a few more coming up. This being my first WordCamp I came to conclusion that there is just about every level of wordpress users/developer. This year’s wordcamp was broken down the middle into two section: users / developers. The first day I was mostly in the developers side (detailed line-up coming up later) but looking over the schedule today I will more than likely be in the user.
This small but unique change makes a big difference for when you try to shift from developing (codework) to learning about Search Engine Optimization. Plus, day #1 in the developer side the A/C wasn’t working and given the amount of laptops around the room increased the temperature by at least 10 degrees.
As of right now I am definitely planning on coming back next year and networking more. As I mentioned I will be doing a more detailed review in the following day and have am creating a development process for more updates so keep an eye out.
