Yay, WordCamp 2010!

I apologize for such a lame title but I’ve been meaning to write this right after the event. There are really instances when the title should come first for one to move on in writing the body. This makes me feel that the talks were of no use to me (because frequency of posts matter, and I should be doing all the best practices shared by blogging professionals and experts).

WordCamp Philippines 2010 is the first WordCamp event I have ever attended. That should come as no surprise since it was just this year that I have made the move from platform B (as Jonas Roque would put it) to the exciting world of WordPress. Lifted from the official WordCamp Philippines site, WordCamps are:

WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other. WordCamps are open to WordPress.com and WordPress.org users alike.

The geek in me enjoyed the breakaway talks. For our first talk, we signed up under Misty Belardo‘s Integrating Social Media lecture. There’s something about her which I really liked, and not to mention I’ve been doing most of the tips she shared. I feel very proud about that fact, considering I’m a newbie when it comes to promoting my blog in social networking sites and the like. I guess the talk was a validation that I am taking the right path in terms of making my site more visible to readers and potential subscribers.

Camera fail. I wish I took better photos

I wonder who wasn’t intrigued with Facebuko when it first came out, and that’s mainly the reason why I chose to attend Jonas’ talk too, dubbed Customizing a WordPress Blog with Themes and Plugins. All along, I thought it was Jonas who did the theme from scratch! Man, this guy is a resourceful geek. I was impressed with how he utilized tools available to him to make something so awesome. The success of his site can also be attributed to the fact that he provides good content (he really knows what he’s talking about), thereby proving that it’s not just the looks that matter, especially in the realm of blogging.

The guy behind Facebuko

Last breakaway talk we attended was Blogging with Passion with Jayvee Fernandez as speaker. I have been reading his blog for quite some time now and I am still inggit over the fact that he has close ties with Nokia Philippines (Nokia fangirl alert! Nokia fangirl alert!). His is a hard topic to discuss, after all, it’s not easy to convince everyone to find their passion because searching for what you really want in the first place is already a task that does not yield results most of the time. But his insights and examples was enough to inspire me to just keep writing… like this. It’s hard for someone like me who’s a Jill-of-all-trades to choose just one passion to concentrate on. This is the way I am so I’ll just keep writing entries this way. Haha.

The afternoon consisted of more talks, and I was really happy with the discussion by Danny Arao. It was one of those lectures I have come across in college. The nerdy side of me couldn’t resist Tweeting two of my favorite professors. Come on, it’s about time journalistic principles be applied also to blogging. Publishing online is also a form of writing, and some bloggers tend to neglect basics like grammar. Eeek!

So sorry, we're too lazy in taking photos

Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress was present in the event. The guy looked “k-kinda busy” when we tried approaching him the first time. But he seemed like a friendly guy, taking time to make chika with the attendees and even gave photo-ops. He also likes Tweeting food photos, LOL.

It’s a shame that I took crappy photos. Aja and I decided on that prior to the event so we could concentrate more on the talks, but I did get tempted by the Nokia Ovi Store free downloads (which happens to me whenever I am in a Wi-Fi hotspot; I have to blame a pretty breezy connection courtesy of one of the major sponsors, Smart Communications. I was annoyed in the earlier part of the event when I couldn’t connect to any of their given Wi-Fi access points) at some parts.

I’m looking forward to next year’s edition of WordCamp PH. I found the event to be well-organized and what makes them more awesome is that they hailed from Davao! Congratulations, Avatar Media! Now on to next year’s WordCamp preparations!

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