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:
Time Management with WordPress
View more presentations from miss604
- It was really wonderful to meet some peeps that I have only known via Twitter in person today. There is no doubt that face to face meetings help to build online community.
- The session – Screen Casting: Tips, Tricks & Techniques. Unleash the TV Studio in Your Laptop – by John S. Richards was also full of tons of information, ideas and tips. I learned about many things that I just didn’t realize were so easy or actually available to me. I loved that he had his colleague introduce him via Skype at the start of the session. Kind of a neat twist to start things off.
- It was great to see that a limited number of tickets for the upcoming Social Media Camp in Victoria this coming June 2012 were released at the Super Early Bird Rate of $199.00 today during WordCamp Victoria 2012. At the time of updating this post (10:27 pm Sat night) there were still 57 tickets remaining at this price. Go and buy you ticket now….it is an amazing price for what is sure to be a fantastic event. The keynote speaker is Chris Brogan along with a number of other great speakers.
- I am still surfing around the net to see what other great content I can add to this post in relation to WordCamp Victoria 2012. I will likely make some further updates as I find things that I think might be helpful. (Sorry for any errors between past/present tense of words…this may have happened as I was updating this post from earlier this morning – when I first blogged thoughts on the day.)
- All in all I’m glad I attended today. It was affordable, full of great content, engaging discussions and friendly folks. A perfect combination for laughing, learning and on/offline community building.
If you were at Word Camp Victoria 2012 please leave a comment with your thoughts, tips or favourite tweets from any of the sessions. I also welcome links to other posts that have been written about the event.
Jane, thanks so much for the kind words, for live-tweeting my impossibly-to-follow-and-live-tweet talk, and for this blog post. It’s a great reminder of how great a community we have here in Victoria, online and offline. Again, many thanks, I really appreciate it.
Thanks for the comment 🙂 Appreciated all that you shared with us during your presentation! So many great tips and awesome content. You are right…there is great community on and offline. It is great to both grow and nurture it, the benefits of doing so are so very worthwhile. Was lovely to meet you in person 🙂
Jane
Hi Jane, Thank you for your kind words. Glad you enjoyed my session. I had hoped to have enough bandwidth to show a live demo of 1080p video call with Skype. We didn’t have quite enough speed, Perhaps next year!