It has been a little more than a week since I was out in Chicago and that gives away how far behind I am on recapping my talk about Digital Media at the event. Better late than never in some cases, but I wanted to make sure I gave some information on not only what I talked about but what I learned. I had an opportunity to talk about business blogging in 2009 at this event and this year I was talking about a slightly different topic – using video and audio with WordPress. You can see my slides for my own presentation on Slideshare.
I first want to thank one of the organizers, Lisa Sabin-Wilson of E.Webscapes Design Studio. Lisa has been a friend for quite a while and I continue to be amazed at how she keeps up with running that business as well as writing books like WordPress For Dummies, (you can find my company and my name on page 330) and organizing events such as Wordcamp Chicago. Brian Gardner of Studiopress is also one of the organizers, and I use his templates for my own business sites. I recommend both Lisa and Brian if you are looking for a way to get your business or personal blog designed to look amazing.
photo courtesy of Jane Goodwin
Wordcamp Chicago had two separate tracks, one for the User and one for the Developer. I was not able to get into Chicago until very late Saturday evening, so I did not get to see the Saturday sessions, but I heard they were amazing and if they were anything like Sunday’s sessions, I can vouch that they were. I took up a spot in the front of the “Users” track on Sunday. I am not the person you want to be judging how the “Developer” track was, as they tend to say things far over my abilities and understanding. I am a WordPress user so I fit right in where I was seated on Sunday.
The sessions were very informative from a user point of view and the first thing I learned was that this was the year of SEO, or for those that might not know what that means, Search Engine Optimization. Those sessions are always well attended and in this particular case, it was well presented by Shannon Steffen of SKSDesigns. I related back a number of times to her session in my own presentation, and embarrassingly referred to her as “Stephanie Shannon” which we had a good laugh at later. She is a great resource for organic SEO and I recommend her if you are looking for that type of consultant.
The session that had me wanting to quickly call my own host and alert the team at One By One Media was Chris Jean of iThemes. Chris presented on backup for your data or archiving of your website. He put the fear of God in me when he gave some information about their company that had lost client data and information due to a server malfunction. If you don’t have a data backup plan for your company, I suggest you contact Chris to find out what can happen when you lose everything. The folks at iThemes are a great resource for themes and for their WordPress plugin for backing up your data called BackupBuddy.
The event was a classic example of the WordPress community coming together and being helpful and inspiring. You can go to the WordPress site and see if there is a Wordcamp near you. These are great events to get some wonderful information at a price that won’t break the bank. You can network at these events and learn some valuable tips and tricks. I know I have been to a number of these events and I never leave without getting some great information.
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Tags: BackupBuddy, Brain Gardner, Chris Jean, Digital Media, E.Webscapes, iThemes, Jim Turner, Lisa Sabin-Wilson, One by One Media, Shannon Steffen, SKS Designs, Slideshare, WordCamp Chicago, Wordpress, Wordpress For Dummies, Wordpress Plugins
