Does your website need an extreme makeover? My advice is "keep it simple". Get an affordable facelift and use WordPress to free you up to manage your own content.
My name is Rick Tuttle. I'm a web developer living in Miami Beach, Florida. After working in the corporate IT industry for over 15 years I ventured out to start my own little web shop, Papasoft in 2005. Barcamp Miami & WordCamp Miami FTW!
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.
Comments (2)
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.
Thanks for the kind words Rick, it was great day lots of fun to meet all the Barcampers!