WordCamp Birmingham — Day 1
Today was the first day of WordCamp Birmingham, and what a day it was. It all started with a great presentation by a WordPress Developer Emeritus, named Dougal Campbell. It was very interesting to see how WordPress has progressed from release to release. Also, it is always fun to speculate on what might be included in future releases (I can haz threaded commentz, plz).
The second of five presentations was focused on search engine optimization (SEO) by Donna Fontenot. This was the lesson that I took the most notes on (even though the slides were actually published online here). Before this presentation I knew that SEO existed, but I had very little understanding of SEO techniques. As a result, this session was quite a learning experience for me.
The session right before lunch was about merging you work life and blog life with David Griner as the presenter. David has an awesome personality and it really comes through in his presentations. This presentation was peppered with great information and hilarious tidbits. The slides for this presentation can be found here.
Andre gets things going -- Shared on Flickr by helmsblakea
After lunch, Jeremy Flint, Mitch Canter, and the godfather Andre Natta teamed up for a presentation about using WordPress as a CMS. Not only where the talks themselves helpful, but there were many great questions asked during this session. From my limited experience, it appears that there is a ton of value in setting up WordPress as a CMS. It seems like the only limit that it has is your own ability to develop it. Then the framework is there to allow nontechnical people to easily keep the website up-to-date. Good stuff!
The self-proclaimed SEC agnostic (love that creative wording) Dana Franks was next up with a great presentation about mainstream media blogging with WordPress. This topic hit close to home for Katie as she has had quite a bit of experience in the print media industry and has seen firsthand the reluctance to adapt to social media. I felt like this was a great presentation and it spurred quite a bit of conversation.
The last presentation of the day was by Whitney Sides, a very cool person who also happens to be a recent cancer survivor. Her presentation detailed what role having a blog played from the time that she found out she had cancer until her last day of radiation. It was a very personal presentation that mentioned some of the many emotions that someone with cancer goes through on a daily basis. It was very interesting to see how useful a blog can be when considering medical treatment, especially as told from the viewpoint of a patient.
All in all, today was a very valuable experience for both learning more about the WordPress platform as well as blogging in general. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s activities and you should keep an eye out for my recap of the second and final day of WordCamp Birmingham.