WordCamp Whistler 2009 – Reflections and Thoughts
Thursday, January 29th, 2009 | WordCamp, WordPress, conference, education
WordCamp Whistler 2009 has now come and gone.
I did a little live blogging, but most of the time I felt that I ought to be paying attention to the speakers (after all, that’s why I went!).
I thoroughly enjoyed Lorelle van Fossen’s keynote address in which I learned the following cool things:
- Firefox has some really great additions that will save you time when you’re trying to blog at the speed of light (and Lorelle actually does blog at the speed of light – it’s quite impressive). I am now using the CoLT and AutoCopy extensions and they really do make things easier and faster.
- WordPress has an annoying catch to their WYSIWYG editor – if you write up a post in the HTML view (complete with HTML tagging) and then switch to the Visual tab, WordPress ever so helpfully “cleans” your HTML code which then puts you back at square one. Disabling the visual editor will fix this problem.
- Images posted on your WordPress site do not come with an ‘alt’ attribute – these must be put in by hand. What is an alt attribute? The alt attribute provides information to the user about your image and this is especially helpful for those with text-only browsers or if your image doesn’t load.
These were probably my favourite tips.
The other speaker I particularly enjoyed listening to and learning from was Morten Rand-Hendriksen.
Morten gave an excellent and entertaining overview of how to use WordPress in alternate configurations and instructed us all to “throw off the shackles of the blog” and do something new – like use WordPress as a website and not just a blog. He showed us some very simple manipulations of the template and CSS that can turn WordPress into a website and not “just another WordPress blog”.
Also, Morten put his creativity to good use during the Most Interesting Place for a WP Tattoo contest and put his on the bottom of his foot. You should have taken the prize for that!
I also have to applaud the Fairmont Chateau Whistler for an excellent lunch and providing such a large and lovely room for us to use (complete with power bars for laptops and other gadgetry). The lemon in the water pitchers was a nice touch and the staff handling the conference were great as they always are at any Fairmont I’ve ever been in.
Aside from learning these things – I was mostly treated to “WordPress has super-cool plugins and here are their names.” presentations.
I was especially disappointed that the lecture for using WordPress as a content management system (CMS) didn’t actually cover using WordPress as a CMS. I had been hoping to learn how a system like WordPress could be used as say a help system that might otherwise require a CMS like Flare or RoboHelp.
It’s possible that my understanding of what a CMS is and does is not the usual associations with that term, but I think that possiblity is slim.
One of the things that I felt was a bit shady was being charged a “late fee” to attend the conference. I signed up Thursday evening for the Saturday conference and was charged $30 more than those who signed up earlier. I could certainly understand paying full-price when I sign up at the last moment, but being charged more than full price seems wrong.
I laughed a little when one of the speakers mentioned keeping the cost of attending the conference down. They wanted everyone to feel they could come to the conference for a reasonable cost and take away something useful as that was “in keeping with the spirit of WordPress.” I don’t think late fees are in keeping with that spirit.
I also got the feeling that this particular WordCamp was a bit last minute given the number of speakers who admitted to putting together their presentations the night before and one the speakers admitted they had to come in pretty last minute to attend at all.
These things aside, I would consider attending another WordCamp in the future if I could be reasonably assured that it would be better organized and that the whole “late fee” concept was thrown out in favour of the “pay full price” concept which I think is much more fair.
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