WordCamp - Day 6 (Conference)

Introduction

Today was the second and last of the WordCamp conference. The following are my notes from the day.

10am - HyperDB and High Performance WordPress

Speakers: Barry Abrahamson and Matt Mullenweg

Interesting WordPress statistics. Best if you check out the slideshow.

10:45am - Blogs at the New York Times

Speaker: Jeremy Zilar

This was a spur of the moment presentation. He spoke about how they are using WordPress to power The New York Times. Check out their theme layout. Very cool!

A few blog essentials were discussed:

• About Page - Every blog should have one and it should describe the purpose and goal of the blog.
• Blogroll - I do not like this name as I call mine “Links of Interest” but this is where you link to the favorite sites you follow and subscribe to so that others can tune in.
• Posts - Well, you do not have much of a blog without them.
• Blog Title - Should be short, catchy, and to the point.

11am - Designing Massively Multiplayer Social Systems

Speaker: Rashmi Sinha, Ph.D.

She is a founder of SlideShare which is definitely something worth checking out. She spoke of first and second generation social networks and their evolution. Check out her slides. I also recommend watching her Perils of Popularity slideshow.

12pm - BBQ Lunch

Good but Joe’s BBQ is better!

1:15pm - Musical Interlude by Andy Skelton

Entertaining. Unfortunately, he had to sing about my accidental killing of rabbits near the Natural Bridges National Monument. Hey, you try driving in the evening and see how many you can avoid as they throw themselves at your tire(s)!

John Pozadzides has captured Andy Skelton’s performance if you want watch it.

1:30pm - Past, Present, and Future of Web Publishing

Speaker: Dave Winer

It is a shame that only an hour was given to Dave to speak. He had a sheet of topics to discuss and only covered a small portion. He spoke of the following:

• OPML Import/Export - All social software should have OMPL import and export capability.
• Future Safe Archives - We need to solve the problem of using technology of today in generations to come. It should be possible to view data stored today millions of years from now without having to know how to configure and manipulate the machinery and software in use today. For example, can you still read a 5.25” floppy disk on your computer?
• Data Portability - Data should be portable and accessible in as many forms as possible.

2:30pm - Usability Analysis

Speaker: Liz Danzico, Happy Cog

Liz has been working with the Automatic team to improve the WordPress usability experience. Most of her work will not be realized until the release of WordPress 2.4 but what is planned looks great. She spoke of the following:

• Desire Lines - When developers/designers create user interfaces they design with one idea in mind but in actuality users might use the software in an entirely different purpose or find shortcuts to getting things done faster. It is these shortcuts that are known as “desire lines”. When designing software, it is good to think of what desire lines are and build them in. Easiest way to do this is to be the user of your own software.
• Object Oriented Design - Think of design in terms of objects. I like this approach, being an object oriented developer. Examples of excellent object oriented design would be: Tumblr and the iPhone.

3:30pm - State of the Word

Speaker: Matt Mullenweg

He spoke of the following:

• bbPress - Bulletin board software that supports themes and plugins.
• BackPress - I did not take very good notes on this for some reason (maybe I thought I could link to it) but it has a user system, supports HyperDB, and supports script loading.
• WPCP - Work is being done on a WordPress Caching Proxy for improving WordPress speed and performance. Sounds interesting for high volume sites.
• WordPress 2.3 - Will have plugin update notification, tags (sweet!), and improved draft/pending post/page writing support.
• Blicki - I have been searching for a plugin that would allow one to add Wiki capabilities to WordPress and now I have found it.
• Windows Live Writer - Need to study this more. It’s been on my “ToDo” list but it sounds like this is a great offline application used to publish to WordPress as it supports most, if not all, WordPress API.

4:30pm - Developer Duke-out

Speakers: Matt Mullenweg, Michael Adams, Ryan Boren, Mark Jaquith, and Andy Skelton

Entertaining but was not able to stay for all of it as I had to hit the road. I need to get more involved with WordPress development. Baby steps first, starting with this web site.

Tags: WordPress

1 Comment to WordCamp - Day 6 (Conference)

1. 

   Post Update: Updated the original post with John Pozadzides’ video of Andy Skelton’s musical interlude.
Brooke Kuhlmann on August 16th, 2007

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