Friday, November 13th
I will be speaking at WordCamp Phoenix.

Saturday, November 14th
I will be speaking at WordCamp New York City.

In both places I’ll be doing a really quick introduction to building your first WordPress plugin.

I’m really excited to be taking part in both of these events. It has been a few years since I have been to Phoenix, and more than 20 years since I’ve been to New York! I’m definitely looking forward to meeting the WordPress fans in both cities. If you see me walking around either event, please do come up and say hello!

Related posts:

1. Get your tickets for WordCamp Reno-Tahoe
2. Upcoming Speaking Gigs
3. WordCamp Las Vegas. You interested?

Here’s what our weekend looked like:

Wednesday Night
We had friends arrive on Wednesday, so after I went to the Track Leader Orientation, we all headed out for dinner and a nice long chat. We followed that up by surprising Shayne with a 8′ x 9′ mural of his Twitter avatar in our photo studio. If you ever want to make a mural yourself, let me tell you that this was 120 sheets of paper and 4.5 hours of cutting/taping/hanging. But it was worth it!

Thursday night
This was the first official day of Blog World Expo. I spent a few hours at the convention center, but mainly just to meet up with and say hello to a few friends in from out of town. The fun began around 5:30 when we met up at Bar Louie for our weekly Beer n Blog meetup that was set to kick off the WordCamp weekend. We had a turnout of about 60 people including a few people I had beer really looking forward to meeting; TechnoSailor (Aaron Brazell) and Ted Murphy from Izea (pictured with me here). Both of which, as expected turned out to be really nice guys. After spending 4 hours downing Blue Moons with the group, we headed home to rest up for the marathon day we expected on Friday.

Friday Night
After a full day at WordCamp/Blog World, we headed out to the Hard Rock Hotel. You know it’s going to be a good night when you are pulling in to the parking garage and the guy in front of you is towing a Jeep on a flat bed and you get to watch the Jeep hit the “7′ clearance” sign followed by the next 3 concrete beams. Ahh, welcome to Vegas. (sorry the photo isn’t better on this one!)

Once inside the Hard Rock, we headed to the poker room where Blogs With Balls crew had organized a charity poker tournament for Ante Up For Africa. Pro poker player Annie Duke co-hosted the event and brought along a dozen big name poker pros to play in the tournament as well. Each table had 1 pro poker player and 1 pro blogger. They had put bounties on each of the pro bloggers, so if you knocked them out of the tournament you’d win a gift basket. I’m happy to say I knocked out our table pro and took home 7 xBox 360 sports games! We had a great time it was all for a great cause! HUGE thanks to Dan Levy for getting me and my friends in to the tourney and for putting on such an awesome event! Check out the video on YouTube.

Saturday Night
After WordCamp/BlogWorld ended it was time to strap on the party boots just one more time before sending everybody home. We started off hitting up the official BlogWorldExpo BBQ that went on poolside at the Hilton. They had an open bar and a HUGE spread of great food. The party was well attended by tons of speakers from BlogWorld which was nice since I was busy running WordCamp all weekend, I wasn’t able to chat with many of them during the previous 2 days. I really enjoyed getting to chat with Darren Rowse in person since I’ve been reading his blogs for such a long time. It’s was also nice to be able to chat face-to-face with people I don’t get to see in person too often like Jim Kukral, Aaron Hockley, Shayne Sanderson, Austin Passy, Darin Hardy and at least a dozen others.

Once the BBQ was over we had to make a tough decision between two events that both sounded like a lot of fun. In the end we opted for the one that required zero driving. We walked inside the Hilton and headed over to the spot where they were doing #TechKaraoke. Nobody from our group sang, but we amused ourselves by watching the drunk geeks singing (I use that term loosely) and by having a “Fake ReTweet war”. Don’t know what that is? Well, the bar had a large screen (10′ x 10′ -ish) where they were showing Twitter messages that people had tagged with #bwe09. So, what you do is write up a tweet in the form of a retweet of your buddy. For example:

RT @my_buddy: Wow, I sure hope this rash goes away! Another great time in Vegas! #bwe09

This would then scroll across the screen and we would laugh our heads off. There is nothing like childish humor plus alcohol to make for an incredibly fun evening!

After a few hours of Karaoke and fake tweets, it was time to head back home and spend Sunday resting up! We were a tired crew after 4 long days and nights. But, we are looking forward to doing it all again next year!

Related posts:

1. Blog World Expo 09 wrapup
2. WordCamp Las Vegas @ Blog World Expo demystified
3. The birth of Beer & Blog Las Vegas

As for the show itself, I’m going to need to write two different posts to cover it all. This one will focus more on Blog World as a whole. I’ll write a follow-up chronicling my experience as the organizer and track leader for WordCamp Las Vegas.

I have now been to all 3 of the Blog World events, and I had attended one of the New Media Expo event a while back. I seem to remember there being at least one or two more aisles of vendor booths at last year’s event. This is not really a surprise as all conventions in Las Vegas have seen a drastic reduction in vendors and attendees as the economy has been in the crapper. Even still, there was a decent collection of booths and I enjoyed walking the aisles and checking out their wares.

Since I started recording the Weekly WordPress Podcast a couple months back, I was really looking forward to checking out some of the hardware and software vendors in that space. I was really hoping to find a company that had mixing boards on hand that I could get an idea how they may solve some of my technical issues I’m having. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one to be had. I think the podcasting community has such great potential and I would like to see more involvement in that community at Blog World.

If you know me at all, you know that I’m a WordPress junkie. So it should be no surprise that I was quite bummed to hear that the Automattic team, as a whole, would not be on hand for the event. I understand that they have a yearly retreat where the entire company works together from one location for a week, but, the timing of it is pretty darn incredible. I can’t help but feel that there is some sort of “office politics” that kept them from being on hand this weekend. The biggest problem I have with them not being there is that it robs the Blog World attendees of the opportunity to walk up and say hello to Matt and thank him for the amazing contributions they have made to the blogging world. I know it means a lot to Matt to hear a heart-felt story of appreciation for the product that he loves and I also know, from experience, how nice it is to say thanks, in person, to one of the people who makes it all possible.

OK, that’s enough complaining. With those two negatives aside, I really did have a great time at the event. A huge part of that is getting to speak face-to-face with people that I’ve met over the past 3 years of Blog World and all the WordCamp events I’ve been to this year. The networking opportunities this weekend were abundant! Before the start of the day, between sessions and at the after parties on Thursday, Friday and Saturday… Although it makes for a very tired set of feet and vocal cords when it’s all over, it is absolutely 100% worth it and I’d do it again next weekend if I could!

Since I was running the WordCamp event, most of the show content that I was able to hear was from those presentations. I think I can safely say that I took more notes and got more actionable items out of this weekend than I did at last year’s Blog World or any of the WordCamps I’ve been to this year. Not taking ANYTHING away from those other events, it’s more a function of being able to actually sit and listen! Since the Blog World team was in charge of all stage, lighting, projector, etc…, it meant I could introduce the speakers and, for the most part, have a seat and listen. It was a great experience!

It has been an extremely fun and informative weekend (can you call Wednesday afternoon through Sunday at 1am a ‘weekend’) and I am already looking forward to next year’s event. Big thanks to the organizers who spent countless hours putting this together! Rest up. You get to start planning again in a few weeks.

Related posts:

1. Blog World Expo: The Party Edition
2. Beer & Blog is going strong
3. The birth of Beer & Blog Las Vegas

This trip to Portland, like so many of my trips this year, was based around attending a WordCamp event. When I stepped off the airplane and headed for ground transportation I found the first gem of the weekend. They call it Max. Max is the light rail tram system that will take you all around the Portland area for pretty darn cheap. You can buy a day pass for $4.75. I hopped on the tram and it dropped me off 1 block from the WebTrends offices where WordCamp was being held.

WebTrends definitely stands out as the second gem of my trip. They have a nice office on the 16th floor that they graciously donated to WordCamp to host the event. Apparently they are very active in the local Portland tech scene and are the hosts for a great number of local events. I have a hint for companies looking to get some exposure in the tech field, take a look at what WebTrends is doing. They are doing it right!

Then there is Aaron Hockley. This is his second go-round as the head organizer for a WordCamp event. Though I wasn’t at the event last year, I can say that he sets the bar high for other cities looking to put on a WordCamp. He has an amazing group of people who help put together the event and the local community of businesses really step up with food and service donations that help to make the event a comfortable and welcoming environment for everybody. Having two kegs just inside the door certainly didn’t hurt, either.

If you only look at the list of presenters posted on the site, you’d be missing more than half of the content available at the event. While I have seen the idea of “Unconference” style presentations at other WordCamp events, never have I seen a group of people take to it so well. I sat in on an excellent group discussion about WordPress and affiliate marketing.

I was able to get out and walk around a bit in Portland and check out some of the surrounding area. There were several groups putting on demonstrations in Pioneer Park including belly dancers, a group of people dancing with colored trash bags, a guy preaching to anyone who would listen (at full volume, I might add), several hacky-sack players and some guy who had a cat on a leash that looked like a cougar. All were cool/interesting in their own way.

But the biggest gem of them all has to be the people I met this weekend. Tons of amazingly nice people at WordCamp itself, the people I met at Pioneer Park, the shop keepers in the area… Everybody was friendly. At the end of my presentation somebody asked if I would move to Portland and become @PortlandGeek. “We don’t ask just anybody”, she said.

So as I sit in the airport waiting on a plane to Vegas, I’m excited to get home and see my wife and kids, but I’m sad to be leaving such a great city and the amazing tech scene up here that has made me feel so welcome.

Thank you, Portland.

Related posts:

1. Upcoming Speaking Gigs
2. Feeling the love
3. Get your tickets for WordCamp Reno-Tahoe

The event had two tracks, but Me, Todd and Abbie set up shop in the back corner of the room where Track 1 was being held and we didn’t move all day. So my recap is only going to cover those speakers on track 1.

First up Austin made a couple morning announcements welcoming us to WordCamp.

The first presenter was Beau Lebens from Automattic. He gave an overview of several of the products built by the Automattic team. Most of this was review except for when he talked about a new project called BackPress. This will be a set of functions that you can include in any PHP codebase that will give you much of the WordPress functionality inside your non-WordPress project. As a developer, this was very exciting news and I’m looking forward to learning more about it.

Next was Shayne Sanderson talking about using the WP e-commerce plugin with a WordPress MU install. If you have ever wanted to run a network of sites and give all your users the ability to sell products from their own site, this is a match made in heaven. I know I have some ideas for how to use this on some future projects.

Following Shayne was Ben Huh from the Cheezeburger network. If you don’t know who Ben is (like the lady sitting in the 2nd row), let me just point you to FailBlog, some LOL Cats or one of my new faves, Hawtness. Ben talked about how his company uses as many free services as they can to run their company. Why pay for it if somebody offers it for free? That’s a good question! Plus, you have to love their company’s mission statement: Make people happy for 5 minutes a day.

After a break for lunch Micah Baldwin took the stage. He spoke about how failing is not an end point, but just another step in the process of succeeding. If you continue to try and succeed, you may find a few hundred ways that don’t work before you finally hit that magic mix. If you stop trying, you’ll never get there.

Next was Jim Turner who talks about blogging for a living. Jim knows what he’s talking about here as he’s been making money blogging for several years now and he shows what skills you need to do it yourself. This is always a popular session with the WordCamp audience as making money is a really hot topic. Especially these days.

Following Jim was Andrew Warner. This was my favorite presentation of the day. Andrew did a real-time hands-on demonstration of how to record video from your computer and add it to your site. My description isn’t doing justice to his awesome presentation. You’ll have to trust me here, he was excellent.

After Andrew finished up, I took the stage as the last presenter of the day. I gave a demonstration on how easy it is to create a plugin for WordPress. I was pretty happy with my presentation and I’ve received a lot of positive feedback about it, so that was very exciting. I had a lady come up to me right before my presentation and tell me that she had been looking forward to hearing my presentation the most. I have to tell you, that absolutely made my day. Giving such a technical presentation at the end of the day is difficult because people are already starting to get tired. That was evident by the lady in the front row catching a few ZZZs during my talk. I didn’t mind. Heck, I’d have probably been doing the same.

Austin and the crew from InMotionHosting did a fantastic job organizing the event and after party. I felt very honored to have been invited to have been a part of it and I look forward to attending next year’s event in LA when they do it all again.

Related posts:

1. WordCamp Reno-Tahoe Wrap-up
2. Upcoming Speaking Gigs
3. WordCamp Phoenix and WordCamp New York

I’m not so sure anymore.

Since first learning about the #FollowFriday concept, I have personally tried to remain true to it’s original intention. When I send out a #FollowFriday message, I select only 1 or 2 people to include in the message and I explain a reason WHY you should follow this person. My biggest gripe about #FollowFriday these days are the people who send tweets that start with the #FollowFriday hashtag and then they fill the rest of the space with as many Twitter user names as will possibly fit. They give no reason why to follow them, just the demand to follow them. This makes no sense. You are telling me to do something but giving me no reason as to why I should. Without a reason, I promise you, I’m not going to start following.

So, the question is, has #FollowFriday jumped the shark? For me personally, the answer is an emphatic YES!

To me, the #FollowFriday tweets have become white noise. They are filler between the rest of the filler on Twitter. Have a look at the current search stream on Twitter for #FollowFriday. You’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.

If you think I should follow somebody because they have solid information to share, please, don’t wait until Friday to tell me about it. Send a tweet telling my why I may be interested to follow this person and chances are I’ll check them out and I’ll follow them if I’m interested.

Let me ask you this, when was the last time you followed somebody new on Twitter simply because of a #FollowFriday recommendation? Leave a comment a comment below and let me know what YOU think.

Related posts:

1. I’m done with auto-follow on Twitter
2. Why/How do you Twitter?
3. The 5 Phases of Twitter

After spending 3 hours trying to get some other software solution to work, I contacted my buddy Doug. He pointed me towards WireTap Anywhere and GarageBand, which is included free on the Mac. I downloaded the trial and proceeded to bounce my head against the wall. Then, just as I was ready to give up, I made one last attempt. Amazingly, it worked. It didn’t just work, it worked exactly as I wanted it to.

Since I wasn’t able to find a suitable step-by-step tutorial on how to make it work, I decided to write one myself.

Here is the scenario I was shooting for. I will be talking on a USB mic and will have a caller on Skype. I want to record both of our audio on individual tracks in GarageBand so I can modify sound levels independently as needed. I’ll wear headphones to hear the caller so the system audio doesn’t bleed in to my USB mic.

This tutorial assumes already that you have a USB mic plugged in, Skype and WireTap Anywhere should both be installed.

Step 1 – Create a new audio device that contains your mic and Skype.
This was the initial cause of my confusion. I had it in my mind that I needed to create 1 device for Skype and 1 device for my microphone. But, GarageBand will only take one input, so you use WireTap Anywhere to create a single device that contains both input sources.

Step 2. Set “Mix Sources To:” to “Off”
Since we want both of our audio streams to be recorded on separate tracks, we do not want WireTap Anywhere to mix them together for us.

Step 3. Set “Audio Input:” to your new WireTap device
In the GarageBand -> Preferences menu select the Audio/MIDI tab. Then, in the dropdown for Audio Input you should see a device named WireTap: [your device name]. Select it and close the menu.

Note, you may get the following warning message. Click Yes.

Step 4: Set the Input Sources
In GarageBand set up two tracks. One will be for you, one will be for the caller on Skype. Select the first track and in the bottom right corner you should see a settings box that looks like this:

After that’s set, select the second audio track and select the input settings like this:

Notice that on the first track I’ve selected Stereo 1/2 and on the second track I’ve selected Stereo 3/4. If I had added more input devices as part of my custom device in WireTap Anywhere, they would have shown up as Stereo 5/6, Stereo 7/8, etc.

That’s all there is too it. Have your caller call in on Skype, click the record button in GarageBand and you are all set!

If you have any questions, definitely leave me a comment!

Related posts:

1. Become a Twitter Rockstar

There are two other events coming up that I’m extremely proud to be a part of.

WordCamp Los Angeles
September 12, 2009 ~ Loyola Marymount College
This is the first ever WordCamp in Los Angeles and it’s shaping up to be an amazing event. Since this is my old stomping ground, I’m really looking forward to being back in LA and checking out the local WordPress scene. I know LA is going to have some amazing talent on hand. My presentation will be about creating a WordPress plugin.

Wordcamp Portland
September 19, 2009 ~ WebTrends
After the success of last year’s Portland WordCamp, it’s no surprised that they sold out all the tickets more than a month in advance. This goes to show that Portland’s tech community is thriving! I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am to spend two days mingling with all the sharp minds attending this event. Once again I will be speaking about creating a WordPress plugin.

If you are within reasonable driving distance of either event, definitely come out and support these two fantastic events. I hope to see you there!

Related posts:

1. WordCamp Phoenix and WordCamp New York
2. WordCamp Portland – A Love Story
3. Get your tickets for WordCamp Reno-Tahoe

WordCamp Las Vegas @ Blog World Expo will take place in the exhibit hall on Friday and Saturday, October 16th and 17th. To attend WordCamp, you need to be a registered attendee of Blog World Expo.

Blog World Expo Packages
There are 4 different packages you can purchase for Blog World Expo that range in price from $75 to $895. No matter which package you choose, they will all grant you access to the exhibit floor, the keynote speakers and WordCamp. Visit the Blog World Expo site for descriptions of each package.

WordCamp Discount
When you register to attend Blog World Expo, use promo code WordCampVIP to receive a 20% discount on your registration. You must use the code at the time of purchase and you need to register before September 14th to take advantage of the discount.

Hopefully that answers any questions you might have had about WordCamp Las Vegas. If not, you are more than welcome to contact me directly and I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions you might have.

Related posts:

1. WordCamp Las Vegas. You interested?
2. WordCamp:Las Vegas, January 10-11, 2009
3. Blog World Expo: The Party Edition

The idea is this: invite a bunch of friends over, each person brings a movie to share, draw movie names out of a hat to determine the order, sit back and watch a ton of movies with your friends. Since our group is just 8 people, we’ve asked each person to bring 2 movies.

The following is a time log of our adventures!

11:30 am – The TV is set up, food in the crock pot, snacks on the table… we are ready to go!
12:00 pm – Movie #1: Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (Paxton)
12:10 pm – DVD player fail. New DVD player set up, restart Ace Ventura
1:55 pm – Movie #2: Fight Club (John)
4:25 pm – Movie #3: Bubba Ho-Tep (Rob)
6:00 pm – Movie #4: Big Fish (John)
- 15 minute break to go grab some food.
8:30 pm – Movie #5: The Simpsons Movie (Blake)
10:00 pm – Movie #6: The Princess Bride (Chris)
11:45 pm – Movie #7: Castaway (Myya)
2:10 am – Movie #8: Grandma’s Boy (Chris)
3:45 am – Movie #9: Clay Pigeons (Marcia)
5:35 am – Movie #10: The Sixth Sense (Myya)
7:30 am – Movie #11: Super Troopers (Myya)
9:10 am – Movie #12: Man From Earth (Rob)
10:40 am – Movie #13: The Matrix (Adam)

End time: 12:50 pm for a total of 25 hours of movies.

Nobody was able to hold out the entire time without catching a little bit of sleep. Rob held out the longest and napped a bit during The Matrix.

We had an awesome group of people and though everybody is pretty tired right now, we all agreed that we’d do it again. Just not next weekend.

Related posts:

1. What makes a movie good?
2. Goodbye John Hughes
3. Need your help this weekend!