WordCamp Chicago
Whew! WordCamp Chicago is over and it was a long yet amazing weekend. Highlights for me include:
The speaker’s brilliant presentations (even through some really tough critics using the #wcchicago hash tag!) and for the underlying theme that was: be social, get out from behind your blog and utilize the tools that exist. Some people thought some of the ideas were too basic yet I’d challenge them to look at their existing site to see where they are or are not excelling themselves.
Meeting Matt Mullenweg, the creator and genius behind WordPress. This was a total highlight for me because I’ve secretly (well, not so secretly) had a professional crush on this guy for years. He is genius, humble and completely laid back – very cool to meet him.
Meeting Brian Gardner & Cory Miller. Both of these guys have created amazing WordPress themes that I have loved for years and pushed to all of my clients (although, the themes don’t need much pushing to be honest!) and it was cool to finally put a real face to their name and Twitter profile pics.
Meeting all the other cool peeps. I loved seeing some familiar faces, meeting some new people and getting to chat with some of my clients that I have never been able to meet in person. What a great, social and interactive day. It was also great for everyone to get to meet my h-band who came along as well. It was his first business conference with me so it was awesome to share that experience with him and for him to see what these events are all about.
All in all, it was a great day filled with great speakers, great food and most of all, just the ability to meet people that I hadn’t had a chance to before. The other cool thing is that I got asked to speak at a WordCamp on the East Coast next year so I’ll definitely be making my rounds! That and I’ll also be purchasing my tickets for WordCamp Montreal!
Oh, and check out my slides on Slide Share!
Technorati Tags: WordCamp, WordCamp Chicago, WordCamp Montreal, Brian Gardner, Cory Miller, Matt Mullenweg, Rebecca Zwar, Debbie Saro, Larry Null, Erin Blaskie, WordPress, WP, blog, blogs, blogging, blogger
Glad to hear that you guys had a great time! I’m still waiting on Rebecca’s pictures and stories
It was great meeting you, Erin! Loved your presentation, and also loved your grace in dealing with some of those tough critics (aka. haters!). Hope we get to meet up again in the future!
Hey Erin – thanks for the mention, it was great to finally meet you in person, as well as your husband. Keep up the great work with your business!
Erin, great to finally meet you as well … I follow your work and love what you’re doing. So cool that you have an alter ego.
I enjoyed hearing you speak at Wordcamp Chicago – following you on twitter now!
Your presentation spoke a lot to me. Actually everyone who was there was awesome. I remember getting back to the hotel and crashing because of the information. Where were you all when I was in college…then I would not have gotten bored! It was great and I loved the message. I have been starting to recap with my own visitors all of the good stuff. I just got to one of your points in your presentation on tools to get started. It is great and by the way, I was following you way before WordCamp Chicago. I loved the experiment you did for Erin Games. I am thinking of trying an SEO one with my name ‘Nile’. I am hoping to get people to link me at Nile as the anchor instead of Blondish.net.
Anyway, as I told Liz Strauss, I am fired up. I blame her, but I am ecstatic.
And also as a last comment… you and I share a common crush. I even blogged on how I felt like a fan girl shaking his hand. But it was all awesome!
Thank you a ton!