WordCamp Fraser Valley returns for its 3rd year of talks and workshops in Surrey on November 20th, 2010. WordPress is the top blogging platform in the world however it is also used to power millions of websites that you visit each and every day. Its endless theme and plugin capabilities make it one of the reasons why I have been building a business around the platform since 2008.

My company develops WordPress websites, specializing in social media newsrooms that tie blog and multimedia functions into a much more robust website platform. Along with Brave New Code, we hosted WordCamp Vancouver this year and received a fantastic response. I’m hoping that those interested in WordPress, from design and code to using it as a writing tool, will check out WordCamp Fraser Valley this weekend as well.

Speakers include my husband (and business partner) John Bollwitt who is an engineer at CHUM Radio Vancouver. He’ll be talking about how companies can built intranet sites using WordPress to keep their teams informed and in the loop. John has been using WordPress since 2005 and got me hooked on the platform in 2006.

He’ll be joined on the roster by Tris Hussey (author of Using WordPress), Dave Zille, Lynn Robson, and Kulpreet Singh. Raul Pacheco, Danny Bradbury, and Leah Cross will also address how to write and publish your various forms of content using WordPress.

Tickets are still available for $45 so if you’ve ever been curious about WordPress as a user, writer, or developer, these sessions and networking opportunities can’t be beat.

This weekend we hosted WordCamp Vancouver at the Museum of Vancouver. This is my second time co-organizing a WordCamp and it was a lot of fun to put together.

Photo credit: John Bollwitt on Flickr

My company builds, develops and designs websites using the WordPress platform and by organizing these events, we have a way to give back to the community. Now although “Camps” in the social media realm usually mean unconferences, the WordCamp model hasn’t usually operated that way. We hosted a structured one-day conference all focused on WordPress operations and development — and it was a blast.

My co-organizer, Duane Storey, published the following on his blog:

There were a bunch of highlights for me throughout the weekend:

1) A couple of the sponsors came up afterwards, excited about the exposure they got and the contacts they made during the event. As an organizer, it’s great to hear that your sponsors found real value in their sponsorship

2) A couple people came up to me and said they had initial misgivings about the event, but wanted to show up anyways. Everyone I talked to like that seemed to have been won over, learning something new during the conferences, or interacting with new people at the social

3) Quite a few people commented that the were surprised how much they got for their ticket. Thanks to sponsorship, we were able to provide day-long coffee, pop, muffins, cookies, a full Michi Sushi and sandwich lunch, a day long conference with 11 speakers, and a fully paid for social event in Granville Island. Pretty good value if you ask me.

4) Out of towners. Quite a few people were from out of town. A few people were from Seattle, at least one person from the Okanagan, two people from the Portland area, and my personal favourite, the guy who flew out from Malta (nearly 24 hours of traveling) to be at WordCamp Vancouver.

Those were highlights for me as well. I enjoyed meeting people from Vancouver, Portland, and Kelowna as well as hearing the feedback about the speakers, the quality of the sessions, and the gorgeous venue. There were bloggers, coders, business owners, designers and others from various professions all keen on talking WordPress. Being that I work for myself from home, it was great to get out and mingle with my industry peers.

Photo credit: John Bollwitt on Flickr

Photo credit: John Bollwitt on Flickr

It was really a pleasure to put together this WordCamp and to get help from volunteers including Justin Carlson (who took video of all sessions) and Mariska Richters who made sure we got our Ethical Bean coffee. My co-organizers were Duane, Dale, Tyler, John Biehler, Kulpreet, and my husband & business partner John Bollwitt.

Photo credit: John Bollwitt on Flickr

Please feel free to contact WordCamp Vancouver should you have any feedback or suggestions for next time.

Today is the first of four speaking engagements I have over the next week. As some may know, Miss604.com is not my full-time job – although with all the fun adventures in which I get to participate, I wish it could be sometimes.

I am the co-founder of a WordPress website development firm and I love to code and build websites for our amazing clients — it’s my “day job”. As such, I’ve been asked to speak at WordCamp Victoria today (and I am also one of the organizers for WordCamp Vancouver this June).

John and I just had breakfast in bed (my first-ever B&B stay) and we’ll be making our way over to University Canada West for WordCamp shortly. I’ll be posting photos, tweets and updates here throughout the day as the agenda rolls along.

Update Things are going great at WordCamp. This morning Tris gave a talk about some nice, clean SEO tips and Lloyd introduced us to some of the features rolling out with the next version, WordPress 3. During lunch I sat on a panel with Raul and Lorraine, which I think went very well. We were all on the same page but had different perspectives to share about writing, best-practices, the future of blogging and citizen journalism.

John‘s been snapping photos so the following is a slideshow from his Flickr set…

Coming up this afternoon I have a talk about plugins and then I’m looking forward to hearing Dave Zille give a talk and be on a panel with Tris Hussey and Lloyd Budd.

Update My talk has just ended and although I breezed through a lot of content in about 25 minutes (of the 50 allotted) there were some great discussions. My slides are posted below:

Update Raul liveblogged my talk here.

WordCamp Fraser Valley is happening today at SFU Surrey and I’ll be giving a talk about how WordPress can go beyond being simply a blogging platform. In 1998 I worked in Surrey Place Mall, and now I’m speaking at a conference in the University that sits atop it — it’s pretty surreal.

I’m really looking forward to hearing some of the other speakers who have been scheduled in beginner, intermediate, and Twitter-related tracks. In particular, the inspirational and insighful Glenda Watson Hyatt.

I’ll be updating throughout the day (in what a call a “Day Blog” style) so photos and updates will appear on this post as we carry on.

I did a quick interview with Gary Jones of Bluefur who is the organizer of WordCamp Fraser Valley.

He does mention that we’re running behind but I think that’s probably a good problem to have as the sessions, speakers and conversations are all really informative and positive.

I also did a quick interview with Kimm Mitchell who is @paddlinggeek on Twitter.

She’s a self-proclaimed geek (hence the name) and organized H20 Geeks, a team of dragon boaters in the Paddling for Kids fundraising campaign.

One of the afternoon presenters at WordCamp San Francisco is Scott Porad of Pet Holdings, otherwise known as the LOLcat franchise whose sites get millions of visitors each day.

The focus of his talk is the network of sites that they run which all have the following in common: They’re all humor/entertainment-centric, they’re all hosted on WordPress.com, and they’re all based on user-generated and user-driven content.

(honorable mentions added to the list above include PIctureIsUnrelated.com and ThisIsPhotoBomb)

He talks about the evolving style of the internet, more specifically the way content is created, sourced, and distributed. “User-generated content is not new,” says Scott referencing The Gong Show, letters to the editor in news papers and call-in talk radio. He also mentions America’s Funniest Home Videos that was sourcing from the concept of home videos that were cost-effective and easily produced. With technology these days not only can people submit content but they can choose what gets pushed back to them (instead of editors or show producers selecting the content to publish from the submissions).

User-generated content becomes crowd-controlled. The internet takes educated guessing out of content — Porad gives an example of his friend who works at a record company who seeks out new talent, making “educated guesses” about what the populace might like or purchase. His next slide features the American Idol logo to drive that point home.

JPG Magazine is an example he uses of crowd-powered content, taking high-rated user-submitted photos and publishing them in a magazine. People will go tell their friends to purchase the magazine so they can showcase their work. Same goes for Threadless which does this with e-commerce. “UGC… user-generated content can easily turn into user-generated crap.” UGC is being sorted on websites ie. “was this review helpful, yes or no?” The community will tell you what they want.

Porad says a question he gets often is how long can the “free” model last — how long can you keep asking for free content from people. “It depends on the category you’re working in.” He said if you win a design contest on Threadless you get paid. “I think it’s human nature that people like to express themselves, we provide the tools to help people express themselves and tell funny jokes.” Porad says they provide an outlet for a certain element of human nature, people want to be that funny guy or girl. Also, everybody wants attention, “but I don’t think everybody wants to be Lebron James famous.” He compares that to being “internet famous” ie. the picture of your cat made it to the home page of I Can Has Cheezburger. “It’s a way to make people feel special.”

From ICanHasCheezburger

Scott then walks us through the submission feature on the LOLcats site, “the name of the game is – get as much as you can.” He also mentions that screening is important, but on the LOLcats site they just watch for language and nudity — humans approve images before they can be posted.

“Moral of the story” is… audience creates the content (it’s not new but it’s getting easier), audience chooses (which is new and transformative) and create + choose = better and more relevant.

My first session of the day is with Matt Cutts from Google whose presentation will be “Straight from Google: What You Need to Know”.

Matt says that the number one request he receives or hears is “I want to do better in Google”. He says that WordPress already takes care of 80-90% of your SEO and offers up a few plugins that will help you fight spam and up your SEO. “The beauty of WordPress is that you don’t need to do a lot of stuff.”

Helpful plugins
Cookies for Comments
Enforce www. Preference

He goes on to explain that before you can rank better on Google you need to understand how they work. Getting to PageRank most people in the audience think it’s based on “fairy dust” or “secret sauce” although Matt explains it’s based on: The number and importance of links pointing to you.

Avoid Backlink Obsession or what Matt calls “BO”. How does Google rank pages? You want to be relevant and reputable. “If you do not love something, don’t write about it – life’s too short.” It all comes down to being relevant — What do you love? What are you good at doing? What do you have to say? His SEO tips = keywords. Think about all the ways you can naturally describe something, “you don’t have to stuff it or sound unnatural.” A great tool is the Google Keyword Tool.

Basics in WordPress include optimizing your URL structure… having clean urls like http://miss604.com/contact instead of http://miss604.com/p=?1222546. You can also update your post’s permalink structure individually to optimize single posts. He says you can also optimize your category structure — mark things as “apple” and not “cool stuff”.

“After you mention ‘furniture’ once, two or three times, we know you’ve got furniture.” Don’t go keyword crazy – you still need to keep your content relevant. “If you’re reading it aloud and it sounds stilted, you’re overdoing it.”

Matt’s next tip is to update often followed by applying the ‘Katamari Philosophy’… “the one thing you learn in Katamari is that you’re always reaching.” He adds, “Start small, start in a niche where you can do well, and that might be a very small niche. But then build up, build up, build up. Don’t overreach.”

He also says gaining reputation is important to Google and ways to build that up is by providing a useful service, doing original research or reporting, give great information, and find a creative niche. “If you have one good idea, that can carry you so, so far.” Next tips are writing some code and live blogging is a great help. Also you can make lists (people love lists) and create controversy (bumps up comments).

“Should I do a podcast or a video? Well put your photo up on Hot or Not and if you’re a 6 or higher, do video,” says Matt.

There are a ton of Google tools for bloggers including Webmaster Tools. A tip from Matt is to look at who is linking into your 404 pages (broken links) and it may be worth contacting the author to get them to fix the link. Also, use Analytics to find out what your top posts are. Revisit them and toss in some updates if they’re old or outdated.

A question from the audience is about bounces, meaning how many people come to your site then leave right away. Matt says that “related posts” plugins and links are helpful in keeping readers on your site, exploring your content.

Matt also says don’t fall for scams and don’t run scams — it’s actually in the WordPress terms of service to not use the site for evil err I mean phishing or scamming.

Photo credit: John Biehler on Flickr

He says one of the top tips he can give is to UPDATE your WordPress, make sure you’re using the latest version. An example he gives is the Nazi Party website where there is a bunch of code at the bottom that is obviously spam… “Who do you hate more, the Nazis or the hackers that hacked the Nazi Party website?”

Matt has his talk up on his website, which you should check out since I missed a few chunks. I think his commentary was great and they’re all things I believe in. I’ve been asked how I get readers or followers on Twitter, as though there’s some kind of a trick or scam to it. The thing is it’s organic — I care about my content, my readers, my audience, and I use all of the legitimate tools out there to help build and promote what I create and share.

We’re at the Mission Bay Conference Centre in San Francisco for WordCamp which is a conference and all-out love-fest for WordPress (the platform on which this site runs and on which I’ve based my entire business. I’ve decided I won’t possibly be able to cover everything I’d like to in a timely fashion today so instead of liveblogging sessions I’ll be doing a day blog throughout the day today.

Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com / WordPress) announced that today’s hashtag on Twitter is simply #WordCamp since we’re the only WordCamp happening right now. He began WordPress 6 years ago (when he was 19) and we’ll be having an anniversary party for the platform later tonight.

I’m currently doing a tour at the Genius Bar, which is a help desk for all things WordPress. I’ll be here til 10am with Lloyd Budd (of Automattic) and then Duane, John Biehler, Dale, and John will also have shifts.

Update: I already ran into Mark from Weblog Tools Collection (an amazing WordPress resource online) and look forward to meeting many more cool people.

Update: I’m heading over to live blog Matt Cutts’ talk but will keep this post open to collect all of my thoughts throughout the day.

Update: The BBQ lunch was great and we’re gearing up for Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A session.

Update: I sat in on Scott Porad’s talk as well as one from Cali Lewis. I’m shutting down the Twitter feed now for the rest of the day.

Update: We headed out to the WordPress anniversary party at Automattic’s headquarters where I met some great people including Tara “missrogue” Hunt and Cali Lewis.

Automattic were fantastic hosts, providing free beer/wine, crepes made before your eyes, fresh popcorn, and a delectable selection of desserts (including the WordPress cupcakes). Duane wanted the “Canadians” to represent shut things down so it was a late night but very fun-filled.

On Thursday we’ll be heading to San Francisco for this year’s WordCamp, which will be combined with a WordPress anniversary party at Automattic headquarters.

I’ve been using WordPress to power my website since 2006 and over the last three years I’ve come to know, code, and develop the platform, using it as a base for my company’s business. John and I co-founded sixty4media in 2008 in order to provide social media consulting services however the main focus of the company is providing custom WordPress websites.

2008 client samples, showcase for 2009 to be updated in the coming months

We offer design, theme creation, theme customization (tweaking any of the thousands of themes you can download from the directory), tutorials, and everything in between. We believe so strongly in WordPress that last summer we facilitated WordCamp at BarCamp with Duane and this past January, we organized WordCamp Whistler along with our friends at Brave New Code once again.

Since most of the themes we create are specifically commissioned by our clients, the way that we try to give back to the WordPress community is by promoting the platform, being involved with WordCamps, providing tool tips, and I also offer up free screencast tutorials every now and then to help educate users.

If you haven’t had the chance to check out WordPress.com (for web-hosting with a strong community portal) or WordPress.org (for self-hosted, custom sites with plugins) I highly recommend looking into this platform for all your website needs (not just blogging).

Toward the end of this week (after I do my Bard on the Beach + dinner contest draw) I’ll be covering our trip to San Francisco and including several posts from the conference which takes place on Saturday, May 30th. So far the Vancouver contingent includes John, Duane, John Biehler, and myself (please let me know if you’re heading down as well).

I’ve been a speaker or organizer at every WordCamp I’ve attended so it will be fun to sit back, relax, and absorb what the great lineup of speakers have to offer.

We just got back home and turned on the All Star game. A lot happened this weekend because a few weeks ago my friend Duane made a suggestion about an event while John and I told him to go for it — and we would help make it happen. As such, Whistler, BC hosted its first WordCamp.

Photo credit: Tyler Ingram on Flickr

WordPress is a blog tool, publishing platform, and content management system with millions of users worldwide. WordCamps are held across the globe to bring together WordPress users and developers to discuss the platform, network, and share stories.

We’ve decided to host the first Canadian WordCamp of 2009 in Whistler, BC – home of the 2010 Olympic Games as well as a host of world-class hotels, dining experiences and of course, skiing. This will be the first-ever WordCamp held in Whistler and we couldn’t be more excited.

We have been so pleased by the response and especially with the turnout, the venue, everyone who made the trip to attend and the amazing speakers who donated their time and energy:

Lorelle Van Fossen, Dale Mugford, John Biehler, Morten Rand-Hendriksen, Tris Hussey, Andy Peatling, Quentin Muhlert, Dave Olson.

At several points yesterday #wcw09 was a top trending topic on Twitter, and given that we had about 100 attendees at our modest conference, I think that says a lot about the reach of this platform and the fantastic people that use it.

All of my photos are available on Flickr, tagged with wcw09. My day-blog posts include the first evening, morning sessions and afternoon sessions.

I know Duane, John, Dale (who was a huge help this weekend) and I worried, stressed, and sent feverish emails (an made numerous calls) several times an hour to make sure that things would actually happen, and I have to say it was all worth it.

If you have your own WordCamp post or content available online, we would love to add a link to it on the WordCamp Whistler website.

We included lunch in the admission price for WordCamp Whistler and I think it was worth it, the Fairmont did not disappoint (although I’m hearing talks that it was just a little too starch-filled… now we know for next year).

Photo credit: John Biehler on Flickr

Karen Hamilton from TinyBites.ca (pictured above with camera) is currently running a poll on Flickr “@tinybites: #wcw09 lunch poll: what did you have? what did you like?”

Update: The afternoon sessions will begin at 2:00pm.

Update: Tris is the first talk this afternoon and he’s talking about customizing WordPress in very simple ways, while barely touching any code. He’s also giving us a few helpful SEO tips (make sure to use clean URLS, which are links that contain the title keywords of your post). Tris shares some of his “must-have” plugins: All in one SEO, CForms (which is MORE than just contact forms), Backup, Supercache, Akismet, Google Sitemaps, and WPTouch for mobile.

Side note: The photo above is Raul getting ready for Lorelle’s tattoo contest (to win a copy of her book).

Update: Tris mentions some of his favourite “out of the box” and “tweak free” themes that are available such as, iNove, Azul, deCoder, DeepBlue, Layers, and Monochrome Demo (not free though). You can view many more in the WordPress Themes Directory.

Tris has a few prizes available including a license for the Thesis Theme and two licenses for Revolution. I will be drawing a winner from the list of attendees. Nadia, Michael and Pina’s names have been drawn.

Update: Andy will be speaking out BuddyPress, a social networking platform based on WordPress MU (think Facebook functions and more but on WordPress!). “It is a suite of plugins and components,” said Andy explaining that it’s not something you download. “It’s very modular.” Andy is explaining the many feature, wires, forums and customization options of BuddyPress, “you can use any WordPress theme on the home page as long as it’s module-enabled.” Also, “a WordPress blog theme can be converted to a BuddyPress member theme with a few simple steps.” According to the chatter on Twitter, BuddyPress is “genius” and blowing people away — a very fresh spin on WordPress functions, it’s complex yet so simple and sleek.

Side note: Fearless City is still streaming everything live.

Uses for BuddyPress? Internal networks in schools and businesses (as the intranet, none-public), niche social networks (people who love soccer, are from the same town, have the same hobbies etc.), adding social networking features to existing blog networks, interacting with fellow bloggers on WordPress.com (one of the largest blogging networks in the world with millions of users).

Andy’s going through a bit of the code right now and the most appealing to me is clean URLS for profiles, groups and components — making “pretty” urls and links ie. http://domain.com/members/andy/wordcamps/…

Side note: @TylerIngram just noted that many of today’s presenters are using their iPhones to change their slides – very slick.

Now it’s time for a WordCamp Whistler slideshow while the room breaks for afternoon refreshments.

Update: The WordPress tattoo contest contestants: Morten had a sticker on his foot, Chris and Kris with “show me your WordPress”, Raul had his neck covered, Karen had a W on her belly and April won with “twin” WordPress stickers on her… ladies.

Update: Quentin from 6S Marketing (a major sponsor of WordCamp Whistler) is up now to talk about their company’s transition to WordPress as well as some SEO tips and useful plugins (such as All in One SEO and Google Sitemaps XML). Quentin also recommends the Robots Meta Plugin from Yoast and Xenu Linksleuth, “it’s small, it’s fast and it does what it says on the box.” He also suggests Hyves Hack and Wordtracker.

Update: DaveO is up next and about a dozen people have gathered on the floor between the tables to sit, listen, and take in all he has to say — all campout and hippie style (as he prefers). I think he’s been able to draw the most ‘paparazzi’ as well at the front snapping photos as well. “Today we learned a lot about how to deliver content, and I’m going to talk about what that content is.” Dave says that a real presentation has slides so he pulls out a coiled notebook that contains a few jots and scribbles and say, “bullet point and buzz words,” are usually mandatory as well. “Holistic Publishing Paradigm, there — there’s your buzz words.” Dave’s session is too poignant and captivating to live blog so I’ll post a link to the video (I believe kk is shooting) at the end of the day.

Photo credit: John Biehler on Flickr

You can follow all the choice quotes on Twitter (since everyone is sharing and they’re unbelievable) by following this link which is #wcw09 mashed with @uncleweed.