Is Attending a Blog Conference Worth It?

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I often read about how at-home bloggers, and other work-at-home-preneurs, are prone to feeling disconnected from society. Personally, that has not been my experience. While I might not be meeting my newly found ‘blogging buddies’ for drinks anytime soon, I feel that since I started blogging, I have made more connections than I would have otherwise.

Aditya Mahesh recently blogged about How To Overcome The Disconnection of Working Alone.

And it is going to be the tipping point for me when it comes to blog conferences. [Read more…]

Blog Indiana 2009 conference announced

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blog-indiana-2009-logoThe second annual blogging conference for Indiana has been announced. It will run from 13th to 15th August 2009 and is designed to bring together bloggers, marketers and small business owners from across the state, encouraging and empowering them to make the most of online social media.

Speakers include Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, Chris Baggott, Brad Ward, Douglas Karr and Tom Britt, with discussions covering Twitter, Facebook, blogging for beginners, business blogging, monetization, political blogging, and other more advanced topics. [Read more…]

Elite Retreat open for registrations: 35 places up for grabs

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elite-retreat-logoThis year’s Elite Retreat, which will be held in New York City on October 1st and 2nd, is now open for registration.

This year’s speakers include Seth Godin (keynote), Jeremy Schoemaker, Neil Patel, Chris Winfield and Brian Norgard (check out the speaker profiles for more information).

The event is exclusive (35 places based on merit, not first-come-first-served) and relatively expensive ($4,950 counts as costly as far as I’m concerned), yet it has some high profile fans so is something worth considering. [Read more…]

WordCamps 2009

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wordcamp logoThe year is off to a great start for fans with WordCamp Las Vegas, WordCamp Indonesia 2009 in Jakarta, Indonesia, a snow-filled skiing and photography WordCamp Whistler, two WordCampED educational WordCamp events in Worcester, Massachusetts and Vancouver, BC, Canada, WordCamp Jena in Germany, a warm WordCamp Miami, followed by a wintery WordCamp Denver.

In between the conference style WordPress events called WordCamps, intensive one to two day events with top notch WordPress and blogging experts, are a bunch of WordPress Meetups, community social gatherings to talk about WordPress and blog related issues.

WordCamps began in 2006 after Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, attended some of the earliest BarCamp events which were the start of the “unconference conference,” an informal gathering of like-minded folks who let the natural course of a gathering happen, where experts share what they know with anyone interested and willing to listen and learn.

While WordCamps were meant to follow an unstructured format, they quickly evolved into serious conferences, ranging from a couple dozen to hundreds of participants with workshops, special sessions, multi-track sessions, and a lot of events in and around the WordCamp program.

In 2008 Year-End Wrap-Up, Matt Mullenweg said there were 29 official WordCamp events in 2008. There are expected to be almost double that number this year.

From those reporting in to the WordPress staff, approximately 3,400 people attended the various international events, and was there for most of them giving his famous “State of the Word” address on where WordPress was, is, and the future of WordPress. That’s an average of 117 people per event, and while I don’t have the specific numbers for all the WordCamps, Podcamp and WordCamp Hawaii in October had more than 600 registrants at the Hawaii Convention Center, WordCamp Israel 2008 (English) in Tel Aviv had over 500 for their second WordCamp event. [Read more…]

Hawaii Geek Week Begins in Honolulu

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Mactoberfest in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Saturday, October 18, 2008, started the first of a week long celebration called Hawaii Geek Week.

Designated by the governor of Hawaii, there is a week of tech events all over Honolulu, ending with PodCamp/WordCamp Hawaii.

The first event, Mactoberfest, was a great success with a photography and computer tech swap meet and a day of speakers covering web technologies and applications. It began with myself, Lorelle VanFossen, speaking about how WordPress changes lives, followed by Lorenz Sell of iLovePhotos, John Dalton of Studio Artist, and a great panel discussing the past and the future of web technology, blogging, and journalism. OhScrap has some pictures of Mactoberfest. [Read more…]