WordCampNYC 2009 Is My First WordCamp

WordCampNYC was last weekend. It was held at Baruch College – William and Anita Newman Vertical Campus. I had no expectations since it was my first WordCamp. I have to say that I was very pleased. The Conference was broken up into eight tracks (or sessions). I attended the Blogger Track. There were a great many topics covered from the very first session on Lifestreaming – presented by Erin Blaskie to Media Attention – presented by Michelle Leder. Two of my favorite presenters were Adria Richards and Corey Eulas.

Adria was my 1000th Twitter follower which was rather cool. We had a few laughs about it. In any event, Adria had two sessions 1. Borrow, Buy or Build and 2. Blueprint for Small Business. I enjoyed both sessions but Borrow, Buy or Build was my favorite – it covered WordPress Themes and whether you should use:

1. Free Themes
2. Commercial Themes
3. Custom Themes

Adria made the distinction that Free Themes are great because they are free but that support was poor at best; limited to Forum support in most cases. She continued to explain that Commercial Themes are those themes that you purchase – these have a structured support model but you should always ask for references. Lastly, Adria stated that Custom Themes are themes that require a developer/designer – always ask for references and customizations normally run from $200 to $6, 000. One of the most important pieces of advice she imparted was – always have a contract for Commercial and Custom Themes. This will set expectations and protect Intellectual Property (IP).

Corey Eulas covered SEO in his session. The session was 45 minutes long and as you may have already surmised, that is not nearly long enough to cover any SEO topic in great detail. With that said Corey did a wonderful job in covering the main topics and giving a broad overview of the SEO basics. He touched on topics like the importance of having a H1 and H2 Tag, that the  ”Google SEO 101 Guide” is a must read and that most readers don’t read below the fold.

Sunday wrapped up the WordCamp 2009 Conference. The majority of the conference were presentation lighting rounds. There were dozens of presentations but in my opinion these four were the best:

1. BuddyPress
2. WordPress MU
3. Elastic Theme
4. Press This

Well that is it folks. As I mentioned in the title – this was my first WordCamp and I really enjoyed myself. I learned more than I ever thought I would learn, the speakers where great, the location was good and the WordPress NYC folks did a very nice job in keeping these two days feature rich and smooth running. I can’t wait for next years WordCampNYC.

In the meantime, if you are interested in Wordpress you don’t have to wait until next year. The WordPressNYC group meets monthly. They will be taking the month of December off. When they return in January, WordPressNYC will have a new home at Sun headquarters in NY.

Last note Wordpress 2.9 should be out  sometime December.

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