Inaugural WordCamp Hamilton a smashing success
Yesterday I attended and spoke at the first ever WordCamp Hamilton event. WordCamps occur globally to galvanize and connect local WordPress communities. The first occurred in San Franciso in 2006, and they have since taken place all over the world. The event finally came to Hamilton, thanks to the efforts of a great grassroots organizing team including the following people in the community:
Dale Mugford (@dalemugford)
Roz Allen (@therozblog)
Martin Kuplens-Ewart (@mkuplens)
Nick Tomkin (@ntomkin)
Michael Canton (@MichaelCantonVM)
Geoff Campbell (@geoffcampbell1)
I’ve never been to a WordCamp before so I wasn’t too sure what to expect in terms of the feel of the event. I was really happy with the overall vibe and energy at the event. It was positive, educational and social. These are just some quick thoughts on my favourite things about the event:
1) So many new faces
Out of the 120+ attendees I could only recogonize about 20 or so. At the start of the event Dale asked who had never been to a WordCamp before – virtually every hand in the room went up. WordCamp Hamilton sucessfully brought together a community that was out there all along in Hamilton but that maybe just didn’t know it existed yet.
2) Lots of diversity
Men, women. Younger, older. Beginnners, experts. Developers (front-end, back-end), designers, bloggers. WordPress Hamilton brought together people with a very diverse set of skills and experiences, represented both in the community and the speaker line-up. When a back-end developer collides with other back-end developers and form relationships at events a certain type of value is created, mostly educational / peer mentorship, but when you get more diverse people together forming relationships some really cool stuff can happen.
3) The venue
I’m biased in that I’ve organized a couple DemoCamps hosted at The Art Gallery of Hamilton, but I found the venue to be perfect. Especially for changing the perception any “out of towners” coming into Hamilton may have of the city. We were able check out the gallery for free during the event as an added bonus.
4) Cat jokes
I lost count at 14.
5) Grassroots organized, institutionally supported.
I love grassroots organized events. By that I mean events where individuals in the community come together to put together an event for the community, and in return the community and relevant institutions back those events with speakers, sponsorship and publicity. Hamilton has some excellent, must-see events that are run by institutions (Lion’s Lair and AppsForHealth come to mind) that provide all kinds of excellent value to the city, but the grassroots events volunteer-organized by community members are very important too. I think WordCamp was very important in terms of expanding on the momentum we have going on in Hamilton.
6) Al Davis’ talk
I enjoyed all the talks, they were all very educational. But I thought Al Davis’ talk was worth the price of admission on its own in that he gave us 10 simple things we all should do after installing a WordPress blog. I liked it because it was so “actionable”, it’s only a day later and I’ve already used a couple of his points.
7) Postmedia contest
Throughout the event Postmedia, represented by speaker Todd Dow (@toddhdow), ran a contest to give away an iPad mini based on answering 5 questions that were presented throughout the day. The questions and contest seemed oriented around recruitment, and with the talent in the room that day I hope Postmedia was able to find a great WordPress developer.
8) Kristin Archer and Seema Narula’s talk
They did a great job covering the content creation and publicity side of WordPress. A lot of the best practices they talked about ware lessons people like myself have had to learn the hard way; hopefully they saved people some trouble!
9) The “code is poetry gritty” t-shirts
Hamilton’s revitalization is being effectively captured with the “You Can Do Anything in Hamilton” and “Art is the new Steel” t-shirts. The t-shirts given out to WordCamp Hamilton attendees took the WordPress tagline “code is poetry” and turned it into something that I think could be and hope becomes another slogan for Hamilton’s revival.
10) It’s going to keep going
Not only can we expect WordCamp itself to become an annual event, but it looks like more regular WordPress-oriented meetups will start occurring this Fall. I think it’s incredibly important that this new community “keep going”, so I’m really glad to see that’s happening.
I’ve tried to briefly summarize some of the talks below for those curious about what went on at WordCamp, though it’s just a “best effort” and I may have incorrectly captured details or points people were trying to make.
I talked about some community building ideas, largely derived from stuff I’ve read or heard from Brad Feld (@bfeld) and David Crow (@davidcrow). I pushed that communities are networks, not hiearchies, and that it’s not about a “president” running a club so much as leaders emerging and taking on roles that galvanize the community through organizing activities that create value in different ways. I also talked about why a WordPress community was important for Hamilton in particular given the job market shift away from manufacturing and towards new industries such as software.
Joey Coleman (@JoeyColeman) talked about his history as a journalist and a blogger, how he decided on the different blogging platforms he used, as well as advice and information about licensing content. Joey responded to an interesting question about news website pay walls – though he said others can “go ahead” if they want to, he generally advised against them, and suggested newer models instead. He also responded to a question about building reader trust with the advice of just being honest and quickly admiting when you get something wrong.
Next up were Kristin Archer of IHeartHamilton.ca (@IHeartHamilton) and Seema Narula of ThisMustBeThePlace.ca (@ThisMustBeSeema). The common thread in their discussion about their blogs was a love and passion for Hamilton and a desire to spread their enthusiasm to others. Kristin and Seema talked about tricks and best practices for bloggers, emphasizing the need to “put yourself out there” in terms of honestly talking about your passions. Other tips included:
Consistency – readers should know what to expect, and the layout of the articles should be consistent too
Frequency – don’t leave readers hanging without content for too long
Categories – sort your content into categories that users can browse through, be creative with your categories
Personality – be yourself, people want to know there’s a real person behind the blog
Connect – connect with other people, see what other people are doing, maintain relationships over time
Social Media – use social media to build your audience, add share links to your blog posts
Accessibility – be accessible to your readers to expand your reach
Richard Rudy (@thezenmonkey) talked about “the mobile elephant in the room”, the problem that the increasing amount of mobile traffic is creating for website creators. How do you re-format the look and feel of a site made for the desktop for mobile devices? The problem is tricky, with different solutions like responsive design or WPTouch available. Richard took us through the different options and their strengths and weaknesses.
Al Davis (@adavis3105) past organizer of WordCamp Toronto and WordPress user groups, gave an awesome talk that I thought was worth the price of admission alone on After the Install: 10 Things To Do After Installing WordPress.
Laurie Rauch (@lauriemrauch) gave a talk on how to create a child theme. It’s something I’ve always thought about doing but haven’t bothered with yet. It turns out that it’s really not that bad if you know what you’re doing, and you can check out her talk here.
Todd Dow (@toddhdow) from Postmedia overviewed at a perfect level of depth the various options for hosting, backing-up, monitoring and securing WordPress websites, amongst other guru advice in his talk that you can find here. Builder of WordPress websites like Canada.com, Postmedia is a company some might not realize is partially located in Hamilton, but they have an office in the Meadowlands area of Ancaster.
The event concluded with a panel discussion featuring all the past speakers, followed by a jam packed after party at Radius Cafe (@RadiusDowntown). Usually you lose a lot of your attendees when transitioning from one venue to another, but the fact that so many people came to Radius speaks to the positive, social vibe of the event.
Overall I can’t think of a more successful way that a WordPress community could have began its formation in the city. The fact that Hamilton has the capacity to hold and support an event like this is wonderful. Code really is gritty – and I’m sure the future is bright for the new local WordPress community.
