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WordCamp Whistler Live Rundown
Jan 24 2009 • Written By Dale Mugford • 2 Comments

Exposure

We’ve had a great time being a part of WordCamp Whistler ’09, From organizing it with Rebecca & John and the team at sixty4media, and an awesome time meeting some very awesome people from our great sponsors to longtime WordPress evangelist Lorelle VanFossen.

Lorelle VanFossen

Today we started off with a great hour-long keynote presentation from Matt Mullenweg’s minion of all thigns WordPress Lorelle VanFossen. Her presentation touched on all things WordPress, going over some general but important do’s and don’ts, and explored learning some of the important tasks associated with installing, maintaining and upgraging WordPress. She entertained the crowd with her energetic and passionate presentation.

Dale Mugford (me)

Next up I gave a half-hour presentation on mobile WordPress, and gave a short rundown of the past/present/future of mobile internet and working with WordPress. I also demoed WPtouch 1.6, and showed everyone here how they can quickly and easily add WPtouch thier WordPress website and support the iPhone, iPod touch & Android with its full-featured goodness.

Following me was John Biehler, who gave an incredible rundown on media publishing with WordPress, including exploring some flick and video plugins, and showcasing some of his work.

Morten Rand-Hendriksen

Morten was up next with how to emancipate yourself from the shackles of a blog when dealing with WordPress. He went through what defines a blog and how though WordPress is a blogging platform, you don’t have to use it simply for personal journals. An example he uses is DeSmogBlog, where even though blog is in the title, it’s more article-driven and breaks the mould when it comes to traditional thinking on blogs. What defines a blog is not really the content, it’s how the content is presented. Morten offers up a few amusing and updated definitions Ancient Norwegian Proverb blog is only a blog if it looks like a blog.

It’s time for lunch, and we’ve got a lot of hungry souls in here. I’ll be back later with some more on what transpires this afternoon, I know there are many eager attendees waiting to hear from a couple of our afternoon speakers Andy Peatling and Dave Olson.

Lunch was great! Very Delicious!
If you’d like to check out some photos of from WordCamp Whistler, visit the tag for WCW on Flickr, WCWhistler09.

Tris Hussey

Tris is currently discussing taking WordPress further than the defaults, and offered up a great list of must-have plugins like SEO, Google XML Sitemaps, and our very own WPtouch (touch mobile plugin).

Andy Peatling

I think will everyone was blown away with his talk on his very own work, BuddyPress, the social networking transformation for WordPress MU. Andy’s work is exemplary, and the full breadth of what BuddyPress is going to do on the web and in intranets everywhere is simply too exciting to really wrap your head around at this time. Andy showed lots of screenshots from the beta of BuddyPress.org, but to really see how awesome it really is just go see for yourself.

Quentin Muhlert

Quentin discussed all things SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and WordPress. Quentin listed and showed lots of WordPress options for SEO, and detailed just why if you’re looking to increase your page ranking and site exposure in search engine results.

Dave Olsen

Dave gave an enlightening, refreshing, analog discussion on the path of creative works throughout the ages, revealing the true power of today’s publishing mechanisms for independents, giving everyone true appreciation for the ease with which the internet has given power to independents to publish anything they wish. Humorous, insightful, and unique, Dave Olsen was the perfect closing speaker for the day.

So thanks again to everyone for coming, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and we hope you did too! We’ll be updating this post writing again with more links to content as the weekend progresses, but for now, it’s time to relax and enjoy the company of the WordPress family that gathered here today down at the Longhorn in Whistler Village.