This is the original WordCamp. Every year has been fantastic!  There is no other event that brings so many of WordPress’s elite together.

They’re friendly people to boot! Thankfully, the elite are welcoming and generous with their time, knowledge, talent and bad jokes (puns). It’s a great learning environment.

The best kept secret about WordCamp is that the speaker line up includes many technology and web luminaries – Matt Cutts, Philip Greenspun, Tim Ferriss, Tara Hunt to name a few of the incredible speakers.

Can you believe it is near free — the $25 cost doesn’t even cover the cost of the food. Thank you sponsors!

Even if WordPress wasn’t your thing (shame!), if you’re in the web, it should be a must attend event. It’s a great event for all bloggers and anyone publishing online.

There is also an after party celebrating the sixth anniversary of WordPress!

And Sunday, we’re hosting a barcamp-esque WordPress developer day:

…expect more hardcore geek content like heavy WordPress performance optimization, BuddyPress internals, an intro to Erlang, a guide to secure coding, WordPress-as-CMS discussions, and more. If there’s a topic you’d like to lead start thinking about it now…

There are only 64 spaces left for WordCamp, so sign up now! (Already 536 people have registered.)

I hope to meet you there.

Budd Family helping at Genius Bar WordCamp SF 2008, as seen at http://central.wordcamp.org/

It’s a free event, and if your work is any way related to the web, you will be missing out if you don’t attend. Register now before the event is full.

Besides, we need to support the grass roots Victoria tech scene — stop the Vancouver tech drain

Dave Olson points out that it’s “strategically scheduled for the same weekend as The Great Canadian Beer Festival”. So it seems safe to expect a good turnout from Drucouver. I know Boris Mann will be in attendance, and participating.

I hope to at least make an appearance. I’ll be looking for opportunies for WordPress collaboration. But me making it there is based on the whim of my baby son — and I won’t have it any other way.

WordCamp San Francisco

I’m putting together a genius bar for WordCamp where people will have their questions answered one-on-one. Are you able to volunteer your WordPress expertise? You don’t even have to be physically there, but then no brisket for you.

Do you have a question you hope to have answered at WordCamp SF?

At last year’s amazing WordCamp (videos of most talks!) a lot of people were coming up to me and asking me questions. I really enjoyed the conversations, but it was busy and we didn’t have a chance to look at the issues on a computer.

Looking around I noticed a lot of people with questions in their mouths, but hesitation in their movements, not knowing who to ask or not wanting to bother the busy WordPress experts catching up with friends.

There wasn’t a great space to do it in.

This year I’d like to create a space for it, inspired by Apple’s Genius Bar. We’ll have an area specifically for people to discuss their WordPress challenges. I plan on rounding up some of the experts I know, and post a schedule of when they will be available, but the space will also be for you to get technical if you’re having a conversation with someone about a problem you’re having.

This is an experiment, so if have any experience with similar initiatives — what works, what doesn’t — please let me know. In February, I hosted “WordPress and your Problems at MooseCamp“, it was successful, but there are a lot of ways for me to improve that format.

Here I want to have one-on-one help, quality over quantity. No pre-booked time slots. One or two experts on a schedule for first come first served.  Plus, possibly one remote expert over iChat . There will be a 15 minute time limit with a hard cap at 20 minutes if anyone else is waiting for help.

I’m thinking I’ll need a table that sits/stands 8, reserved power supply and internet access, and a mac computer with built-in camera and a headset for chatting with our remote experts. Oh, and a couple kitchen timer that do 15 minute count downs and water put aside for the experts. Anything else?

What do you think? What types of questions do you have? Upgrading? Theming? Performance? SEO? A particular plugin causing you grief?

A day late, but not a dollar short — its a free event… well, I donated $20; it was either that or get one of the pink shirts

BarCamp Vancouver sessions are in full swing.

Generously hosted at Workspace — what an awesome environment!

Thank you to all of the organizers and participants!