WordCamp NYC debrief

Lets take a quick look at WCNYC 2009 through mine eyes.

Thursday 12th

I arrived on the Thursday night at 11:30pm and thanks to the sheer brilliance of the “iPhone Maps” application strolling to the Gershwin Hotel from Grand Central Station was an easy feat and the first of many NYC adventures. That night I wandered down to Union Square Park and had some not so good NYC Pizza.

Friday 13th

I met with Chris Adams where we discussed how his company, Orbit Media Group might help us launch our mobile game creation platform and social networking software into North America. Chris is in the process of preparing a proposal for us – this could be the first step towards a really great software launch.

After my meeting with Chris I headed to the WordCamp venue and helped the volunteers stuff the WordCamp New York “schwag bags” full of WP e-Commerce flyer’s. Afterwards we all went to the Globe Bar for a Speakers / Sponsors meetup. I met so many awesome people – although my personal highlight of the night had to be challenging Beau Lebens from Automattic to a dual.. to the death. That night I went for my first really big walk around the city.

Saturday 14th – WordCamp Day 1

I finally got to meet Shayne Saunderson. Shayne is our main man based in the US of A. Shayne helps people with their WordPress e-Commerce sites and travels to WordCamp conventions on my behalf. Shayne and I hung out in the Genius Bar, he came to my presentation and we also hung out on Saturday night for drinks. Shayne has setup a company with some other fine men called 9seeds, who provide WordPress development and support. Shayne introduced me to Evan Stein who is a friend of both the Thematic + WP e-Commerce Plugin projects, a really nice guy and pro web designer.

I met Jason Laskodi from Laughing Squid while helping people at the Genius Bar, we connected at very deep and meaningful level, the kind of level where we discussed to an almost exclusive level about Peter Jackson and his repertoire of New Zealand made gore films.

I didn’t really get to see as many presentations as I would have liked because I ended up helping people with their WordPress sites in the Genius Bar most of the day. The only full presentation I made it to was the GPL debate hosted by everybody’s favourite WordPress gal Jane Wells.

At 5pm I did my presentation on the WordPress Ticketing Plugin that was used to sell tickets on the wordcamp.org website, my presentation was well received – my moment of glory was being able to ask all the people who bought a ticket to raise their hands. None of the 700 + attendees can ever deny that the WP e-Commerce Plugin works and works brilliantly at that.

That night we all went out for drinks at some NYC bar. The room was full of WordPress rockstars – I met Brian Gardner from StudioPress (best premium WordPress themes in town) and a ton of other people too. At some point I envisage discussing WP e-Commerce friendly themes with Brian and also migrating his support forum to a bbPress powered forum.

Afterwards Jane Wells and I finished the evening off at one of her favourite NYC Italian joints where we both had a mighty fine Salmon pasta dish.

Sunday 15th – WordCamp Day 2

On Saturday morning I had a coffee with two fellow attendees at the Birch Cafe downstairs at the Gershwin, afterwards we walked to WordCamp to see Jane’s opening unconference presentation. When I got there I was pleased to meet both Andrea and Ron from wpmututorials.com, I really hope that I can make it to the next Canadian WordCamp so that I can spend some more time with these guys. Otherwise I’ll have to try and convince them to come the next WordCamp New Zealand in 2010.

After Jane’s opening presentation we all headed out to lunch. I ate with and enjoyed the company of Clifton Boston from Performance Marketing, Kitty Shaw, Amanda and actually a range of WordPress friends. After lunch we all headed to the 2nd venue where we all watched a number of snap fire presentations, the Plugin & Theme competition winners were announced and finally Matt Mullenweg closed with his usual State of the Word Q & A on all things that are WordPress.

That night I had Japanese with Amanda Blum & Andrew Christian. It was a very nice way to wrap up the WordCamp experiance. That night I went for another walk and found the Chrysler building.

2009 WordCamp NYC Conclusion

I had the most amazing time in NYC. I met so many people (more then I can mention here) that share the same passions around technology and WordPress that I do. WordCamps bring likeminded people together – its our tribe.

I liked the location of the venue however it was a little confusing at first. However once I figured out how to navigate my way around everything was fine. That said I still have an issue using universities for these events, my experiance has always been the same,  people never really stick around and hang out because the venues make it easier for people to disperse. And naturally people do because naturally most people are shy (to a degree). For an event that had over 700 attendees it never felt that big until on the Sunday when we all met at the second venue.

If I could make just one suggestion for next time then I would suggest cutting some of the smaller presentations out of the schedule and I would have at least one or two main presentations on the first day that serve to bring everybody together in one big room. That way every attendee gets to see / feel how big their tribe really is.

Over all WordCamp NYC  got an 8.5 out of 10 on the richter scale. It met all of my expectations, I’m considering a NY office and the people that I met touched me. So here’s to next years WC and meeting everybody all over again!!