Photo by Rebecca Bollwitt

WordCamp Vancouver is finally coming to a close. We’re here in Granville at the Tap Room, taking in the social. It’s been a long day again, and Duane and I will burn some midnight oil trying to put the finishing touches on WPtouch 2.0 Pro tonight and tomorrow.

What a pleasure to be a part of an event where attendees, organizers, speakers and sponsors all so elegantly carried out a tremendous conference and shared their passion for WordPress.

Thanks to organizers Rebecca Bollwitt, John Bollwitt, Duane, Kulpreet Singh, John Biehler for their work in organizing the event.

Dale spoke at WordCamp Whistler about WPtouch back in its infancy, and I spoke about mobile blogging in general down at WordCamp Portland a few months ago. Chances are that one of us will be speaking at WordCamp Vancouver, but it’s too soon to tell who it will be or what the topic will be (if it happens).

The tentative date for WordCamp Vancouver is on June 12th, 2010, and it will most likely be in downtown Vancouver. For more information, check out the official WordCamp Vancouver website, or follow WordCamp YVR on Twitter.

Having helped organize several WordCamps now, including WordCamp Vancouver and WordCamp Whistler, I can honestly saw WordCamp Portland was probably the best WordCamp I’ve been too. It was well organized, and had three separate tracks going for two days straight. In addition, the majority of the presentations were not only streamed lived, but also recorded and archived for everyone on the Internet. Pulling that off involved a lot of know how and technical expertise — during my presentation I was fitting with two separate microphones, one for the house system and one for the live stream.

Without a doubt, it was a really amazing time, and I’m glad BraveNewCode made the trip down. I’m hoping to organize a small WordCamp near my home town of Chilliwack sometime in the next year or so.

Several fairly exciting things happened during Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word Presentation. First, Matt showed a slide which displayed some of the new profile information that is going to be coming to WordPress.org — BraveNewCode has actually been helping with that effort, so it was great to finally have some of it shown to everyone. Second, Matt displayed a list of the coolest three WordPress plugins, as voted by people on his Twitter stream. The first plugin that was shown, the third coolest plugin, was actually WordTwit. Dale and I were both pretty floored seeing it up there in all it’s glory on Matt’s slide in front of about 700 people. The second coolest plugin was a related posts plugin. And then, Matt flipped to the number one coolest WordPress plugin, none other than our WPtouch iPhone plugin. So, we walked away with the #1 and #3 spots for the coolest WordPress plugins — a pretty exciting event for us to be sure. A big thanks to everyone who voted for us.

Later that night we attended the social down at Automattic’s new offices at Pier 38. I had the chance to meet a lot of great people in person, many of which I had only talked to online before. The bar was completely open, so most people did fairly well in the liquor department. Afterwards all of us found a little hole-in-the-wall diner and had a nice greasy meal to close out the evening. I’ve been really enjoying guacomole lately, and I managed to find a hamburger that had a healthy dose of the stuff on it.

Dale travelled back late last night and today I’m going to be making the long journey back home, then we’ll both rest up and get back on the saddles.

A big thanks to everyone involved in putting the event together- it was a great time and we’ll be back next year.

• Official WordCamp Whistler website
• Duane’s interview with the Whistler Pique newspaper about WordCamp Whistler
• WordCamp Whistler Flickr Photos
• Miss604’s live blog of the event
• Live video of the event
• Twitter hash tags: #wcw09 or #wcwhistler09
• Kris’ videos on YouTube

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.

BraveNewCode is also one of the official sponsors for a really exciting WordPress event, WordCamp Whistler. It’s taking place on January 24th, 2009 at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, right at the base of the mountains. It’s going to be a really exciting event, and we’re happy to be involved in the organization for it. Also, for those of you with a keen eye, you may recognize the theme being used on the official WordCamp Whistler website: it’s a variation of our popular Minimalia theme.

If you’re in the neighbourhood and can attend WordCamp Whistler, we’d love to have you up on the slopes. Please visit the official page for more information. In addition, there are some really great packages available for companies that are wishing to be involved in the event as a sponsor.