WordCamp Gold Coast 2011(#wcgold) was a blast. I’ve listed my takeaways below on this page. After dropping off Phil Hall from halfofmylife.com, I managed to enjoy a meal at my aunt and uncle’s place at Tweed Heads. A quick hi and bye then off to the airport.
I arrived at the airport to what seems, the scene of the Australian Federal Police dealing with a guy who had one to many drinks. Obviously he didn’t get the memo,drinking before a flight will get you another nights accommodation you didn’t want! The Feds were really great, the guy seemed to take it pretty well.
The flight was packed, the plane arrived 20 minutes early in Canberra. When I went to pick up the car at Airport car park, I had fight with the parking meter, $58 for a couple of days, looks good, then it wouldn’t accept my Debit Card, bummer. Across to the next machine, put the parking voucher in, cha-ching $69 dollars; that really sucks, no one to argue with at 11.50pm about the upsizing of $11 in 10 seconds. It accepted my payment, not happy.
Home in time to watch Casey Stoner win the Valencia Grand Prix, a good night’s sleep and the opportunity to think about the weekend.
Chris’ takeaways from WordCamp Gold Coast 2011:
- Evernote is a fantastic tool for documenting conferences
- Kate Swaffer, dementia sufferer set the scene for conference with commitment to blogging using WordPress
- Kate’s motto’s, “live with urgency before the emergency”, use your blog to share your life experience, use social to share.
- Meeting Des Walsh (@deswalsh) and learning a few tips using Twitter, thanks Des, the world needs more young blokes like you.
- Alan Harris from Network Dynamics’ and his insight into hosting WordPress in Australia with wphosting.com.au
- John Ford’s talk about Automattic, the supporters of WordPress and working for such a great company
- Learning the correct way to spell WordPress (with a capital “P”) thanks John Ford
- Learning from Dan Milward, the term “Social Apponomics” and Googling it as suggested.
- Stew Heckenbergs‘ quote on freelancing, “My timetable controls my work, my work doesn’t control my timetable”
- Affirming my use of StudioPress Themes for WordPress design by Dee Teal
- “If your users don’t feel ANYTHING, They wont even remember you.” Be exceptional or bad! John O’Nolan’s talk.
- “Qualifying potential clients”, Troy Dean’s talk on running a small web development business. Thanks Troy, the talk affirmed a lot of what we’re doing. Check out Video User Manuals plugin here!
- Running an on-line book club, good stuff and great work – Timothy Ferguson
- WordPress and Government – Stephen Cronin’s talk; mate, right on the money, I know the space too well
- BuddyPress – Bronson Quick; another great talk, I’ve done one site and it was valuable seeing all the new stuff
- All the other fantastic people I met there, thanks for the opportunity of meeting.
