As you already know, if you follow me on Twitter — this weekend I attended the 1st Annual WordCamp Seattle. WordCamp was a day-long conference all about WordPress community, and a place for designers, developers, bloggers, all those in between. I took a lot of notes during the speakers I saw and brought home several pages in my composition book filled with ideas for blog posts, research, etc. If you are a WordPress user you may still have time to get your tickets for the upcoming WordCamp in your city, but if you missed it this year — make plans to get out there next year, you will not regret it!
Wordcamp Seattle had a very different attitude than that of the small-business conference I attended last year. BizJam presentations seemed way caught up in the tools of the trade (namely Twitter.) However the people at Wordcamp seemed to really understand that Twitter, YouTube, (and yes, WordPress) ARE only tools and it is the people using them that make it all come together.
BuddyPress
One of the highlights for me, was learning some exciting details on the upcoming release candidate for BuddyPress, a WordPressMU plugin pack that enables a wide array of social interaction features like user profiles, instant messaging, friending, etc. It’s something I am really excited to work with! This could be a great service to offer clients who are looking add some social networking tools to their website. I will be posting more about this exciting new tool, so stay tuned!