This morning I hopped on the 7 am ferry to Victoria and spent the day hanging out at WordCamp Victoria 2012.  Here are some observations and thoughts from my time there:

• There was a great demographic mix in attendance.  I was expecting a bit of a younger crowd – but that was not really the case.  All ages were there as was a good mix of male and female attendees.
• I loved the various stages of learning and knowledge that attendees seemed to be at.  There were folks there who were totally new to the world of Wordpress and then there were others who were much farther along in their levels of experience and knowledge.  All of that said, people seemed most interested in helping one another.  It was clearly an open community of learners and information sharing.
• While there were lots of netbooks and other devices out and in use…all in all it seemed that Mac products ruled the roost here.  I saw lots of Macbooks, iPhones and iPads in use.  Any surprise there? No…not really 🙂
• I have never been to a conference where a speaker was so enthusiastic to start talking that they actually began BEFORE they were supposed to!  Yet, that is exactly what happened in the session by @hummingbird604 began his session Grow Your Online Community WordPress.   After a reminder from an attendee @hummingbird604 ended up stopping and waiting for everyone to arrive in the room…a cute moment for sure!  Here are the slides from the session:

• UVic is a beautiful campus.  Parking was easy and low cost.  Washrooms are clean.  Power was easy to find. Chairs were comfy in lecture halls. WiFi was reliable and excellent!!  The building that the conference was held in is a LEED certified facility.  You can so tell this; it has a really nice feel to it!
• Lunch line was long, but moved quickly.  Vending machines were not overly expensive and contain fairly healthy snacks.
• The two key Twitter #hashtags that seemed to be in use for the conference today were #wcv12 and #yyjwordcamp  I was live tweeting lots of great quotes, tips and resources that were mentioned during the sessions.  You can find them in my tweet stream here.
• One of the key messages of the day was that blogs and websites are the home base that you build from.  You drive traffic to your blog/site using various forms of social media.
• Another key message was to limit the noise you make online.  Don’t just post the exact same content everywhere.  Mix things up a bit.  Modify how you introduce things online.
• I heard several negative comments about Facebook – indicating that it is no longer the place for discussions.  I also heard many uncertain comments about how to use Google+.
• Overall the presentations were EXCELLENT!  Every session that I was in I took good content away from. Here is a listing of all of the speakers.
• I found the presentation on Time Management with WordPress by Miss604 to be FULL of super content.  It had lots and lots of great suggestions and ideas she generously shared.  Here are the slides from that session: