Blair Williams

Everything is an Experiment

WordCamp

WordCamp 2010 Orange County Style

WordCamp 2010 Orange County Style

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OC WordCampI'm excited to announce that I'll be speaking at WordCamp in Orange County, California on April 24th! The organizer of this event — Brandon Dove (of Pixel Jar, Think Press and @brandondove fame) and I met & became friends at Blog World / WordCamp Las Vegas last October.

Brandon has asked me to cover two topics related to building WordPress plugins — here they are with a link to the blog posts I did over on OC WordCamp's blog for each of them:

  • Pimp Your WordPress Plugin — this presentation's going to show people how to create their own Platform Modifying Plugin (PMP or Pimp) using a Model View Controller (MVC) approach … you can expect that I'll be sharing some tips & tricks of plugin development in addition to the MVC stuff as well 🙂 .
  • How to Create a Premium WordPress Plugin — In this presentation, I'll be covering some material that I have seen nowhere else — trust me, as I've been building premium wordpress plugins I've had to figure this all out from scratch … This presentation will cover a lot of strategy, higher level architecture but will also get into the nuts and bolts of how to do this technically.

You might now be asking yourself:

Uh … is this just one of those technical conferences? … No, it is going to be much more than that.

My topics are fairly technical but OC Wordcamp is going to have something for writers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, developers, graphic designers and marketers alike. If you'll be in or around Orange County that weekend then I hope you'll attend — it's going to be awesome!

Blog World 2009: Provide Value, Engage Your Audience and Make Some Money

Blog World 2009: Provide Value, Engage Your Audience and Make Some Money

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So I just got back from BlogWorld Expo / WordCamp Las Vegas 2009 — it was awesome! Since it seems like everyone is talking about this event now — I just want to focus on my own personal experiences and things that I learned. Here are some of the highlights and takeaways from the event:

Day 1 (Thursday):

Internet Marketing For Smart People Panel (Sonia Simone, Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan) No, I am not sleeping -- this session ROCKED!

The 2 highlights for me on Day 1 were the “Internet Marketing for Smart People” Session and the End of Day Keynote from Chris Brogan.

The “Internet Marketing for Smart People” session was a panel by Sonia Simone (http://www.remarkable-communication.com), Chris Brogan (http://chrisbrogan.com), Brian Clark (http://copyblogger.com), and Darren Rouse (http://problogger.com). This session was packed and rightly so, there was some phenomenal information shared–it even had it's own Twitter hash tag: #3tribe … The gist of the 3 tribe thing a reference to Seth Godin's Tribes book. The panelists showed that there are currently 2 accepted tribes on the Internet now, those who feel its unethical to turn a profit on the Internet and those who fall into the get rich quick scheme mindset. The panelists were pushing the notion that there was a third, emerging tribe that wants to do well by the community, provide value and ethically earn a living. They also announced a new community around this subject (the third tribe community). Since I agreed 100% with the 3rd tribe philosophy — I want to be a member of it for sure.

Chris Brogan's Keynote rocked. He talked about this huge shift in interpersonal communications due to social media and blogs. [Read more…] about Blog World 2009: Provide Value, Engage Your Audience and Make Some Money

You going to BlogWorld / WordCamp Las Vegas this week?

You going to BlogWorld / WordCamp Las Vegas this week?

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Screen shot 2009-10-11 at 1.50.01 PMHey, are you going to BlogWorld this week? It's going to be held in Las Vegas on October 15-17 and apparently it's going to be *really good* …

Let me know if you'll be there so we can meet up.

There are already a few activities that are being organized after the conference that I'm planning on attending.

1. Thursday Night @10pm — There's a photo walk out on the strip that I'm planning on attending. This one's been organized by Victor Cajiao of the Typical Shutterbug Podcast.

2. Saturday Night @7pm — John P. from One Man's Blog & Woopra has organized another photo walk that will be down on Freemont street in old Las Vegas … looking forward to this one a lot. You can read more about it on his blog.

Of course, I'm sure some fun stuff will come together for Friday night as well … but no matter what, feel free to contact me so we can hang out. 🙂