Getting Ready for WordCamp Milwaukee 2!

WordCamp Milwaukee 2013

My goodness, it’s less than a month till the second WordCamp Milwaukee!

<puts on organizer hat>

During and after last year’s inaugural event, veteran WordCampers were telling us that WordCamp Milwaukee was one of the best and most informative camps they’d been to. So, of course we had to make it bigger and better for 2013!

First off, we added another half-day to the extravaganza: Foundation Friday (June 7, 2013) is going to be a set of workshops aimed at WordPress beginners: We’ll have WordPress 101 classes for new users — bloggers, business folk, anyone who is making content for the web using WordPress.

But that’s not all! <see, I’ve got my organizer/promoter hat on!>  If you’ve been using WordPress for a while, and wonder what it might be like to design themes or develop plugins for WordPress–come to Foundation Friday! We’re having a development track too!

After Foundation Friday, you’ll still have two full days (June 8-9) of WordPress learning to enjoy! Plus a repeat of the fabulous Saturday After-Party, lunch both days, the Happiness Bar (to get your specific problems addressed), and still more wonderfulness!

<Putting presenter hat on>

Right after lunch on Saturday (June 8), I will be offering a mini-preview of my next book project, talking about “Building Authority – and Audience – with WordPress and Google Author.” Building your reputation and demonstrating your authority as an expert in your particular niche can be a difficult task. Google is trying to help you, though. I’ll show you how to put your high-quality content at the top of the findability charts, with WordPress and the Google Authorship program.

Learn more about WordCamp Milwaukee, and buy your tickets at the website. And hey, if you need some help with the price, type in ‘McCallister’ for a discount when you register.

Look forward to seeing you June 7-9 at Bucketworks!

Blatant Self-Promotion: New About page, WordCamp MKE coming

English: Flag of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hey folks,

There’s more information coming to Notes from the Metaverse soon, but this is a short piece to tell you that I’ve updated the About Notes from the Metaverse page to tell you a little more about this blog and its author.

I can also tell you that WordCamp Milwaukee 2013 will be coming on June 8-9 at Bucketworks. The organizing committee is hard at work to bring you the best weekend of WordPress information and discussion possible. Make your plans now, and I’ll look forward to seeing you there!

Storifying openSUSE Summit

Are you wishing (like me) that you could be at the openSUSE Summit in Orlando, Florida this weekend? I’ve been gathering the best tweets and images from the conference at Storify.

 

Attend WordCamp Milwaukee 2012 for Just $10

If you read this blog at all, you probably already know that WordCamp Milwaukee is coming up real soon now. June 2 is just a week from Saturday, and the weekend after a big US holiday.

Maybe you also know I’m working on a presentation for Sunday, June 3 about what YOU can learn about WordPress just by wandering around WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

A bunch of other WordPress gurus, nearly all from Wisconsin and Illinois, will be putting on a terrific program for both extraordinary users and extraordinary WordPress developers (and by “extraordinary” I just mean YOU).

Anyway, if $20 for a whole weekend’s worth of inspiration and practical help for your WordPress site is still a little tough to justify in these hard economic times, what if I can make this weekend cost just $10? Did I forget to mention that includes lunch on Saturday and Sunday, and a fabulous after-party on Saturday night?

So how do I get this deal? Go visit the WordCamp Milwaukee ticket window, and type (or paste): wcspeaker in the Coupon Code box. And you’re in!

I really hope to see you at Bucketworks in Walker’s Point on June 2-3. You don’t have to thank me for the sweet deal, but I’ll be happy to talk to you anytime over the weekend.

Spring Conferences Galore!

Busy month ahead, with much to say and much to learn. This time of year is usually when I can go to professional conferences, but I seem much more involved with organizing them this year. In particular, I’m talking about (and at, truth be told) these two, separated by just two weeks!

Flag of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Saturday, May 19: WriteCamp Milwaukee 4

This “traditional un-conference” (if there can be such a thing) is for everyone who writes: Fiction, nonfiction, with multiple books and/or bylines or just a blog or a novel cooking in the word processor that no one’s ever seen. No matter what sort of writing project you’re interested in doing, there’s a place for you at WriteCamp.

What’s traditional about this un-conference? Well, the biggest thing is that there’s no set schedule. You’ll come in to the Hide House in beautiful Bay View, in the southeast corner of Milwaukee and encounter a blank wall with time slots and rooms demarcated with tape. Want to lead a session about something? Take a Post-It note and slap the topic in one of the blank slots. You’re in! Of course, some of us have posted some ideas for sessions on the website already. You can add some there too. There are no guarantees that any of them will be presented–but if you post a comment on the ones you want to see, the people with the idea will be impressed (believe me!).

I have learned more than a little at previous WriteCamps, mostly about social media and freelance practices. I’ve led sessions on the future of journalism and held WordPress clinics. This year, I’m planning sessions on getting into technical communication and “WordPress for Writers.”

The other traditionally unconference-y thing that WriteCamp Milwaukee adheres to is that it is free to attend (though if you’re in Milwaukee tonight, April 26, check out the comedy benefit at Stonefly Brewery!), and you get lunch, a mid-day poetry slam demonstration, and a tote bag with assorted goodies besides the education.

WordCamp Milwaukee 2012

Things are really heating up for the first ever WordCamp in Milwaukee, set for the first weekend in June, and that’s terrific!

We have a spectacular lineup of speakers  for both the User track and the Developer track. These WordPress gurus are mostly from the Greater Milwaukee area and from that city of big shoulders a little south of here. You even get two authors of WordPress books: I’ll be the one standing in Lisa Sabin-Wilson‘s shadow.

What am I talking about? All about the amount of help any WordPress user can get just by kicking around the WordPress.com and WordPress.org sites.

There’s an un-conference track, where people will be running informal sessions on topics yet to be determined (and yes, you can get in on that too). And we’re working hard to staff the Happiness Bar for the full conference. This is where users and developers can get answers to their particular problems.

We’re working on some fun stuff too, but it’s not ready to unveil yet.

Unlike WriteCamp, WordCamp Milwaukee costs, though not much (just $20). Buy your ticket before May Day to guarantee your commemorative t-shirt.

All this activity is forcing me to miss the annual Technical Communication Summit sponsored by the Society for Technical Communication in Rosemont, Illinois. But you can follow news from the summit via my pals at TechWhirl.com.

Hope to see you at one of these swell gigs!

First openSUSE Community Conference in North America Coming This Fall

Image via Wikipedia

Thrilled to bits to report that for the first time in the Americas, openSUSE users, developers and folks who might want to be in those categories will be gathering in Orlando, Florida this September. This community conference doesn’t have a name yet (more on that later), but is sure to be informative and exciting. As with all openSUSE activities, participants will certainly have a lot of fun!

The story is that the annual corporate SUSE conference is happening September 18-21. This is where system administrators, developers and other people who make their living using SUSE Linux Enterprise gather. Just speculation on my part, but I’ll guess that Attachmate/SUSE got a better deal from the hotel if they reserved the entire week. The beneficiaries of this arrangement include the scruffy brigands of openSUSE.

Planning for the event began last Wednesday on Internet Relay Chat, with a dozen or so active participants, including your humble scribe (see the full transcript) (see a summary). We want to make this a conference that is comfortable for both basic users and the developers who make openSUSE the great distribution it is.

Aside: For KDE users who may be feeling abandoned by Canonical/Kubuntu today, maybe it’s time to look at another powerful, yet simple desktop Linux distribution.

The first item on our agenda, though, is naming this first ever conference. Quite a few names were suggested at the kickoff chat, and a poll is being conducted at openSUSE Connect. Choose your favorite before Saturday!

If this conference excites you, you can help make it happen. Visit the conference wiki and sign up for one or more of the task teams.

Watch this space for more news as things move forward.

 

Dreaming of Summer — and WordCamp Milwaukee!

Image by planetc1 via Flickr

You have no idea how excited I am that WordCamp is coming to Milwaukee next June 2-3, 2012. A small group of us, led by Scott Offord, have been laying the groundwork for this two-day conference on all things WordPress at Bucketworks. We’re ready to accept visitors.

What’s WordCamp? It’s a gathering of WordPress users of all types, where the experienced can share what they know and the neophyte can share their enthusiasm and quandaries. It’s for folks who just started blogging at WordPress.com. It’s for folks who want to understand how plugins work (and maybe why it’s not).  It’s for bloggers, designers, developers … anyone who wants to learn more about WordPress.

Things are still in the early planning stages, but we can tell you the weekend will feature three tracks:

• User Track: more focused on the end-user (bloggers, writers, customers, clients, less-technical, marketing, experience-driven, plugins to make your life easier, SEO, etc)
• Developer Track: more focused on web development using WordPress (Frameworks, creating plugins, customizing the dashboard, contributing to the open source project code, etc)
• Unconference Track: It being at Bucketworks, the home of BarCamp Milwaukee and so many other unconferences, you know we’d have one. This track is more focused on multi-person discussion (create your own session, conversational, philosophical, interactions about WordPress-related topics, unplanned and only slightly structured and guided by you)

In between sessions, we want to set up a “Happiness Bar,” where you can get specific questions answered and problems solved with the help of experts. We’re trying to think of other fun and useful things to do.

You can sign up for WordCamp Milwaukee 2012 right now for the early bird rate of just $20 at the Milwaukee WordPress Meetup site. In the new year, we’ll put out a call for speakers, and launch a more formal site at WordCamp Central.

Want to know more about WordCamps? You can see a ton of video from past WordCamps at Wordcamp.TV. Live around here and want to help? Tell me or sign up at Meetup.

You hear a lot about “community” around open source software generally, and certainly around WordPress. WordCamp is where that community can make itself felt. Hope to see you in June!

Feel free to share your WordCamp memories and questions in the Comments.

Related articles

• What Is A WordCamp All About? [infographic] (thetechscoop.net)

A Weekend Like No Other (with no BarCamp)

Image via Wikipedia

This was supposed to be my review of BarCampMilwaukee6, with all the usual comments on what I learned, what I shared, and how much fun I had with the always-unique band of BarCampers. Only problem is that I missed it, for the first time.

I don’t know if this qualifies as a legitimate excuse, but there was a unique confluence of sporting events in Wisconsin last weekend:

• The Milwaukee Brewers faced the Arizona Diamondbacks in the first two games of the National League Division Series (btw, that Miller Park photo up there was taken by my friend, Jeramey Jannene)
• University of Nebraska made its Big Ten Conference debut in Madison against the U of Wisconsin-Madison
• The Denver Broncos came into Lambeau Field in Green Bay to play the Packers

Like 225,000+ other Brewer fans, I tossed my name into the virtual hat to get what limited seats might be available for a playoff game at Miller Park. Astonishingly, I was one of the 5500 names selected to buy tickets for the Division Series. At the time, nobody knew when the games would be, so there was a chance that BarCamp wouldn’t be affected at all. But I had a plan, just in case the games were on the weekend: I’d buy tickets for the Sunday game, and go to BarCamp Saturday.

When the time came to actually login and buy the tickets, the Virtual Waiting Room was not kind to me. By the time I got through, there was just standing room available for Game #2. Didn’t want to spend $25 to walk around the ballpark, so I dropped out.

What I didn’t know at the time was that my brother-in-law got tickets for Game #1. After he offered me one of his tickets, I was on Plan B: I’d see baseball on Saturday, and go to BarCamp Sunday. This is what happened last year, when I went to the Farm Aid show at the same location. This would be fine.

Until Thursday. I was working hard when I got a call from my boss’ boss. This sort of thing never happens. Any worries I might have had about the subject of the call were dissipated early. The CEO was wondering if I might be interested in using his tickets to the Packer game Sunday.

For a multitude of reasons, I said ‘yes.’ I was immediately glad I didn’t get those Sunday baseball tickets. But now what? Plan C goes into effect: Baseball Saturday afternoon, BarCamp in the evening (I could forego the Badger game), Green Bay on Sunday.

We had a great time at Miller Park Saturday afternoon. What I was not expecting was that my back would suddenly start acting wacky the instant I came home from the ballpark. I literally could not get out of my chair without great pain. So I was hosed.

With several big doses of ibuprofen and a long car ride to Green Bay, I somehow managed to make it through the football game too. It was my first time at the Temple of (American) Football, and it was certainly unforgettable. But I felt pretty bad about missing my favorite (un)conference. This will be different next year.

Anyway, if you’d like to see what we all missed, here’s the schedule.

If you went to BarCamp, please share some highlights in the comments. Feel free to denounce me for my wicked choices too.

Have you ever had a conflict between two or more events that you had major passions for? How did you resolve it? Was it the right decision? Comment below.

One more thing: GO BREWERS!!

BarCampMilwaukee6 Just Two Weeks Away!

Have I mentioned this lately: I love conferences! There’s not much better times than the opportunity to get together with folks of like interests, like mind and similar skills, get away from the day to day and schmooze. Occasionally, even learning takes place. For serendipity and wide-ranging topics, few conferences beat the ones falling under the  BarCamp umbrella.

A week from Saturday (October 1), BarCampMilwaukee 6 opens at Bucketworks on South Fifth Street in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood. If you happen to be within traveling distance, you should come. You will meet fabulous people, eat marvelous food, play with assorted ideas and toys,and probably get a t-shirt too. For the second year, there will also be KidsCamp, which should be great fun. As always, there will be robots, too. Did I mention it’s all free of charge? Unless, of course, you want to make a donation.

You can peruse the Conferences and such category here to learn more about all six versions of BCMKE. Register for BCMKE6 at the site. Watch this space for further reminiscing.

And speaking of conferences, watch this space too for some WordPress news.

Conference Season 2011

Spring is here and it’s time to get educated. Yes, I suspect that a lot of you reading this are still in school, and aching for the days when you won’t be sitting in a room being educated. Tragically, I have to tell you that once you get out in the Real World, you really begin to relish the few chances to get together with colleagues, perhaps in a strange city, and learn new things. That’s what I’m doing now.

In the next few weeks, I’ll be attending (or keeping watch on) these great events. For most of these, you’re more than welcome to join me:

Society for Technical Communication Summit
Dates: May 15-18, 2011
Location: Sacramento, CA Convention Center
URL: http://summit.stc.org/
Twitter Hashtag: #stc11

This is the annual conference of my professional organization, and my employer is sending me so I can be a better tech writer. As a bonus, I get to see possibly the most famous technical communicator in the world. Tim O’Reilly is our keynoter Sunday night, and while you may know him as the god of technical publishing, I just learned from this interview at South By Southwest that the publishing business started during a slack time in his tech writing consultant business. There’s much more of interest in that hour-long podcast, but I’m really looking forward to hearing him.

This will be my second STC conference, and the last one was quite useful. I’m confident it’ll be another good experience.

WriteCamp Milwaukee 3
Date: June 4, 2011
Location: Hide House, Milwaukee, WI
URL: http://www.writecampmilwaukee.com
Hashtag: #writecamp

This local gathering/unconference of writers of all genres is a great opportunity to break out of the isolation of the Writer’s Life, see what other people are doing, and learn something new. It’s the brainchild of my friend Boone Dryden.

I’ve proposed two WordPress-related sessions. I’ll give one or both, depending on interest.

• Publish Every Day: Honing Your Craft Through Blogging
• Building a Professional Writer’s Website with WordPress

In any case, it should be great fun and always interesting.

Open Help Conference
Date: June 3-5, 2011
Location: University of Cincinnati, OH
URL: http://openhelpconference.com/index.html
Hashtag: ??

I wish I could get out of town to attend this gathering of documentation teams for various open source products, but I’ll try to follow this online.

Folks from Ubuntu Linux, the GNOME project, FLOSS Manuals (I’ve also written about my experiences with FLOSS Manuals here) and Mozilla will be there. One of my favorite tech-book authors, Anne Gentle, will also be talking about community building.

WordCamp Chicago
Date: July 30-31, 2011
Location: DePaul University, Chicago, IL
URL: http://2011.chicago.wordcamp.org/
Hashtag: #WCChicago

One of a zillion WordCamps that happen every year, where people spend a weekend talking about WordPress. Someday we want to have one in Milwaukee, but this isn’t too far away. They’re pulling together a program as we speak, and nobody knows yet who will appear. I’m hoping it’ll be great!

Meanwhile, the second Milwaukee WordPress Meetup is in the works, for sometime in June. More info to come on that!

So whether you can make any of the above events (and I’d love to see you), do try to find like minds this spring and summer, and don’t put your brain entirely on hold.

Do you have a favorite conference? Hate one or more of the above events? A preference for one or another WriteCamp session? Other spring-like thoughts? Share them in the Comments window.