One of the clients that I contract with on a regular basis has joined forces with another firm to host a new conference for the hospitality industry. The Hospitality Marketing Summit will be taking place in Denver, CO on November 17 – 20, 2014. The focus is on improving your businesses bottom line through technological innovation, marketing trends, and hands on tips and tricks. Check out the website for more information and mark it on your calendar. I’ll be there and would love to meet you in person!
WordCamp Denver 2013
This past weekend I attended WordCamp Denver 2013. Since this is my local camp I was able to volunteer at registration. It was nice getting to greet everyone first thing in the morning, and to put faces with names of several people I interact with online. The organizers also invited the volunteers to enjoy lunch in the speakers and sponsors room, so that was a nice bonus! I sat at a table of about 10 people and via our course of talking someone suggested we go around the table and introduce ourselves and how we work with WordPress. It was a great way to get to meet people and sparked some interesting discussions. I definitely want to remember to do that again next time I’m in a group setting.
The presentation that I enjoyed the most was Breaking up with *AMP by Luke Woodward of 10up. It was a great introduction to Vagrant and great examples of how to set it up initially. The Varying Vagrant Vagrants tool seems very impressive, and I love that it is open to the public since it is such a great example of giving back to Open Source. Even though I haven’t put this tool into my daily use, yet, I really enjoyed learning about it. Hopefully all the presentations will make it up to WordPress.tv and you can watch if you are interested.
WordCamp San Francisco 2012
On Friday I will be travelling to San Francisco to attend WordCamp. This will be my third year in a row going, and I am looking forward to it. Each year I am so inspired to see what other great teams are doing and it always makes me want to improve, which I guess is the best part about a conference. Plus it is a fun city to be in for a few days, and the 60° weather sounds nice right now.
WordCamp San Francisco 2011
This year I get to return to San Francisco to attend WordCamp 2011. I enjoyed it so much last year, that I’m very happy to be going back. Joining me at this years conference will be another Blizzard employee Julia, our designer. I’m already excited about all the speakers. I’ll have to post more from the conference, but just had to share my excitement!
Working on Recipe Blog
So I’ve spent the better part of today working on a Recipe Blog. I’ll share the link with you as soon as it’s a bit further along. But I just have to say a quick I LOVE WordPress! It’s making this project so quick and easy.
Update: Recipe Blog is at www.lindysrecipes.com
WordCamp San Francisco
This past weekend I traveled to San Francisco to attend WordCamp. It’s a convention dedicated to WordPress and had over 700 “geeks” like me. The trip was a ton of fun. My personal take is that it’s just awesome to be surrounded by other people that have your same passion. In particular Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, has a very contagious energy that’s just inspiring. I feel like I could listen to him talk all day. 
The conference was very well organized. I enjoyed the great Jazz music playing between sessions, personally selected by Matt. The Developers Track had tables, and ample amounts of power cords, which is simply a must for any technology conference. WiFi was super easy to connect to and stable. There was an above average selection of continental style breakfast foods, while I didn’t eat breakfast, I LOVED that they had a cooler full of Coke and Water through the day. I was dehydrated from flying the day before, and the bottles of cold water helped a lot. Lunch was super good, it was BBQ and the chicken breast was very tender and flavorful.
Vanessa Fox was also very generous and gave me a copy of her new book called Marketing in the Age of Google. So far I’ve only had a chance to skim through it, but it seems like it’s an awesome book. I can’t wait until I can catch up and really read it. I highly recommend anyone concerned with online marketing go buy a copy now! Here’s a link to the book on Amazon to make it easy on you.
There was a great After Party at the Automattic lounge too. I didn’t stay as long as I’d wanted as there were a lot of people in a tight space, which I’m just never comfortable with.
The first WordCamp I ever attended was in February 2009 in Denver. So I’m really looking forward to the WordCamp in Denver that will be held this year in July. I’ve offered to volunteer, and am looking forward to making even more contacts with locals who share my passion for WordPress.
So what is it that you are passionate about, and are you lucky enough to do that for a living?
Photo by Eva Blue