This past weekend I surfed, drank a lot of coffee, and soaked in the wisdom and enthusiasm of presenters and fellow blogging-attendees of WordCamp! (Simultaneously!) WordCamp is a two-day conference for users and developers of the WordPress blogging application, featuring speakers on topics from usability to design to future WordPress developments. I'd been totally wound up and geeked out about this for several weeks.
There's nothing better on the internets than a good blog. I love the infinite potential of writing plus design plus obsession/occupation/expertise/free time. And the possibility that other people will think your finished product is worth their time. So after a spell of blog-envy, I finally set up my own. And immediately realized the amount of work required to make it appear effortless and at least slightly interesting. (I'm sure J is starting to tire of me constantly snapping photos "for the blog"). Lucky for me, W.C. came along at just the right time.
I really enjoyed the fact that everyone at the conference was approachable, 'experts' and 'civilians' alike, and was excited to talk about whatever they had going on. WordCamp confirmed what I'd suspected: people are doing very cool and interesting things. You like funny cat photos?
W.C. presented a ton of information over the two days, and I'll defer to others for an in-depth review. I highly recommend the sessions with John C. Dvorak and Om Malik, Matt Cutts, and Rashmi Sinha. And as it was a *bloggers* conference, I'd say stay tuned for slides/podcast/video to start turning up.
Meanwhile, I'll share with you the running list I kept of Things to Look Into. I tried to keep track of names/ideas that people mentioned during the course of the weekend's conversations, both on- and off-stage. Websites, applications, books, people etc. Will these improve my content/usability/stats? Check back in awhile and see if things are looking better/faster/sparkly-er.
Things To Look Into v1.0:
- Dan Gillmor on "Citizen Journalism" (Center for Citizen Media)
- Liz Strauss, successful blogging (successful-blog.com)
- Tumblelogs - "If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks." (tumblr.com)
- Informit - web development and design resource
- Google webmaster console (Matt Cutts!)
- SlideShare, for hosting and sharing slides and presentations. Definitely worth a look.
- Jamaes Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds
- Duncan Watts, Small World Project
- stumbleupon.com, "channel surf the internet"
- Guy Kawasaki (who didn't mention Guy Kawasaki)