WordCamp has finally arrived in Toronto

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WordCamp has finally arrived in Toronto

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uploaded by PhylG

The past weekend, October 4 and 5, saw the first WordCamp event ever held in Toronto, at the Student Centre of Centennial College, as the conference focussing on the WordPress blogging and software phenomenon finally reached Ontario.

Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress, was among the key speakers, giving a "State of the Word" address - that is, providing users and developers with the most up to date news on where the blog and content management platform stands right now, as well as where it's going in the near future.

The rest of the two-day conference was a mix of how-tos (e.g. how to use the new Gallery feature), demonstrations of how this software is used on professional websites (did you know the UK Prime Minister's website, "Number 10," was built using WordPress?), and discussions about the effect of electronic media on the coverage of politics and entertainment. All of this with a sprinkling of more code-oriented topics, like how they're keeping WordPress secure, and making the most of plug-ins.

The first WordCamp took place in July of 2006, in San Francisco, California, when about 300 people who either blogged on WordPress or designed sites based on the platform got together to interact with some of the WordPress developers themselves. Since then, these events have taken place all over the United States and the rest of the world, in locations such as Japan, Israel, and Australia. Another Canadian version was held on the weekend of September 27, 2008, in Vancouver, B.C.

The conferences almost always feature at least one or two speakers from the WordPress team itself, but with so many designers and bloggers successfully creating sites using the software, many have become WordPress experts in their own right. So the Toronto conference boasted some of these local luminaries as well as official WordPress people.

There were about 150 attendees for most of the weekend, which pleased the main organizers, Melissa Feeney and Mathieu Yuill, who created the event rather quickly and weren't sure it would draw much of a crowd. But thanks to the generous support of the Centennial College Student Association and several sponsors, the price was kept low, meals and refreshments were provided, and there was even some swag: t-shirts, baseball caps, and assorted buttons and stickers, all adorned with the elegant "W" logo of WordPress.

Most people learned a lot, and the discussions onstage led to some spirited and creative interaction over lunch or coffee, or between sessions. That's where the real result of a conference like this is usually felt: in the cooperation and idea-sharing that happens in the supposedly "blank" spaces between guest speakers.

Next year's conference is already being planned, with Brendan Sera-Shriar of Seneca College taking the reins from Melissa and Mathieu. Sera-Shriar hopes to move the event closer to downtown, and is already thinking of programming separate "tracks" for attendees to choose: one track being more for code geeks, while another would cater to people more interested in the features than in behind-the-scenes coding. This would respond to the only real complaints voiced by attendees, that sometimes the code-talk would overwhelm the less knowledgeable, while code people would chomp at the bit for more information when the general features were being discussed.

A few of the speakers have created an interim wiki where some of the presentations and slides are already available, but the full taped conference will be posted on the main WordCamp Toronto information site as soon as it is ready.