Last minute decision, I’m going to WordCamp Dallas!
After coming back from FOWA a few weeks ago I didn’t think anything was going on till FOWD in April which I really want to attend.
I heard about WordCamp a while ago which is basically a conference for people using WordPress. I thought it was a small event for the locals to gather up and network (kind of like Barcamp in a sense). But to my surprise, WordCamps are big events held each year at different places attracting a lot of out of towners. Big D is where it’s at for 08 and lots of cool people seem to be going including the man himself, Matt Mullenweg.
WordCamp Dallas is going to be a two day event held on Saturday and Sunday March 29th - 30th lasting from 9:30am till 4pm. The first day will be geared more towards bloggers while the second day will focus more on the developers.
I’m looking forward to hearing where Matt plans on taking WordPress 2.5. The new release seems to be paving a road for something bigger in the works. So getting his insight into where WordPress is headed should be great to plan things out for my projects. I’ll probably ask him just a few more questions in that regard if they aren’t addressed during his presentation.
Finding different ways to contribute to WordPress including helping out with the trac is something I’m very interested in learning how to do. I’d like to contribute specifically to tickets related to themes and widgets since I’m all over that area.
While the topics and speakers are great and all, the main reason why I’m really going is to introduce myself to the WordPress community since I’m fairly new to the scene. I recently just became friends with Jeffr0 after listening to his podcast talking about WordPress. He’s going to be there along with Ronald who was also taking part during the podcast.
Through that podcast during the after show (which tend to go on for hours!), I got a chance to chat with Jacob Santos about GPL licenses and theming. He’s going to be a speaker at WordCamp giving a presentation on Testing with WordPress on Sunday which should be interesting.
Nathan Rice is also going to be there too. He’s a big contributor to WordPress as a theme author and contributing writer at blog herald and more. I haven’t conversed with him too much but I plan get to know him in Dallas. There are probably a lot more talented people attending WordCamp that I don’t know of so I’m going to try and introduce myself to as many people as possible. It’s great to get a chance to meet the people behind the blogs and the creator behind this entire platform we all evangelize so much on.
Dates are still a little shaky, but I’m leaving Atlanta, Friday morning and return back either late Sunday or early Monday just in time to get back to the day job. As with FOWA, I plan on writing up a little thing or two of my experiences going down there. It’s going to be awesome!
