WordCamp Detroit was held over the weekend at the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit. It was awesome. My thanks to all the organizers for all their hard work. It really showed.
My favorite talks were (in chronological order):
- How to make a living, giving it away for free by Christoper Ross
- Treating your readers like customers by Doug Hanna
- Building community around your content by Matt Lincoln Russell
- Can you commercialize your plugin? by Garth Koyle
- In the beginning was the word by Wally Metts
- Custom Post Types by Heather Acton
- An introduction to WordPress Security by David Wilemski
I learned a lot from all the talks, though. In no particular order, here are some of the things I learned:
- 15% of the websites out there are currently running on WordPress.
- That percentage is even higher for new sites.
- That being the case, why develop websites with anything other than WordPress?
- Commercializing a plugin is not a trivial matter.
- There are a lot of awesome plugins out there that I wasn’t aware of, including Bad Behavior, Press Backup, Yet Another Related Post, GASP, etc., etc.
And, here are some things, I should probably do:
- Have some business cards printed that tout my WordPress development skills.
- List myself in the Pros section of WPCandy.com.
- Give a talk at WordPress Ann Arbor.
Dan we would love to have you speak at WordPress Ann Arbor. Ross and I are changing things up a bit – we will have more details at our next meetup. I’m glad you liked WordCamp, my favorite session was “An introduction to WordPress Security by David Wilemski” I thought he did an excellent job.
Thanks so much for the compliment, Declan! I’m glad my presentation on Custom Post Types was helpful for you, especially since I had just learned about them early last year. Hope to catch you at another WordCamp soon!