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Rick Tuttle - Miami Web Application Developer

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Barcamp Miami & WordCamp Miami FTW!

22 Feb 09 by Rick Tuttle

I was glad to be a part of BarCamp Miami 2009 which also included WordCamp, a track dedicated to WordPress. Hundreds of geeks descended on Coconut Grove at the Anokha Restaurant and the Mayfair Hotel.

I admit I was a little skeptical about how this was going to work out. It was my first unconference and I am not generally of the opinion that things “just happen”. You need leadership and fortunately we had some leadership with the visionaries who brought BarCamp to Miami, namely Alex De Carvalho (@alexdc) and the rest of the BarCamp team. There were many volunteers who helped make the event a success. Thank you.

So, the way this gig started was with a big slab of paper on a wall with time slots. People rushed to put up post it notes with the presentations they had prepared. This was the part that had me nervous. I had ominous visions of an American Idol tryout for geeks.

It turns out many of the presentations turned out to be quite good.  Here were my favorites.

  • David Bisset (@dimensionmedia)  introduced us to BuddyPress.  I’m very excited about BP and am thinking of using it for a community site for solo entrepreneurs at Solo Startup.
  • Jim Turner from One By One Media (@Genuine) spoke on Blogging for a Living and did a live web broadcast of Social Mediasphere on Blog Talk Radio once he got the wifi working.
  • John Carcutt (@johncarcutt) gave an information-packed session on WordPress SEO that confirmed what I have learned and taught me lots more about SEO for WordPress.
  • Finally, Jay Berkowitz (@JayBerkowitz) and Alex Harris (@alexdesigns) gave a super session on tips for using social media increase traffic to your site.

There were many other sessions that I did not attend but I heard were very good. I hope to see some of the info online after today and maybe I’ll link up to some at that point.

The best part about today was that I was able to meet several people whom I had gotten to know “virtually”.  It’s always good to have some face-to-face to strengthen a relationship.

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Comments

  1. Jim "Genuine" Turner says

    23 Feb 09 at 2:25 pm

    Thanks for the inclusion of my presentation. I appreciate the kind words. I always come away from a conference of this sort with new friends. Thanks again.

  2. Jay Berkowitz says

    1 Mar 09 at 4:26 pm

    Thanks for the kind words Rick, it was great day lots of fun to meet all the Barcampers!

© 2012 Rick Tuttle, Papasoft