WordCamp, you didn’t let me down. I travelled all the way from my adopted city of Fredericton back to my home in Toronto for a great WordPress conference and I wasn’t disappointed, it was wonderful.

So what did I learn from WordCamp Toronto?

The community is amazing.

When I arrived on Saturday morning, I realized that I had forgotten my monitor adapter, which meant I wouldn’t be able to use the slides I’d prepared, but the WordPress users of WordCamp Toronto came to my rescue! It was great, thank you.

In fact, the whole weekend was like that. WordPress users never cease to amaze me, the community is as open and supportive in person as the tool is online.

Yoda Conditions

This concept is in the WordPress Codex but it took Chip Bennett to point it out this weekend. By inverting the conditional, you’re sure to break the code if you do it wrong as opposed to hunting for an error later. It’s an easy concept but one that will save me hours of pain in the future.

Chip’s whole presentation was great but it wasn’t the only one. In fact, I would struggle to identify a presentation that I didn’t learn from.  Mo Jangda’s presentation on Edit Flow showed us how to turn WordPress into a true newspaper publishing platform, while Kathryn Presner went over the basics of WordPress so well that even seasoned developers would have learned a few new tricks.

Multisite is amazing

I missed Ron and Andrea‘s presentation on Multisite twice now. Once in Montreal and now in Toronto, there was simply too many great presentations and in both cases I was torn between events. This time however, I was lucky because I got to spend time between sessions listening to them answer questions for other users and …. wow.

If you’re not familiar with WordPress Multisite, take a few minutes and learn. It’ll save you hundreds of hours of frustration.

Habs fans will crash any party

Speaking from a Toronto hockey perspective, the one good thing about this weekend’s poor excuse for a hockey game was that it was Boston that handed Hogtown it’s bacon and not the Habs. I don’t think I could have taken the ribbing of watching Montreal slaughter us while surrounded by some of Montreal’s best WordPress talent. Thanks to everybody who came down for the weekend!

Don’t judge a woman by her moustache

Liesl Barrell’s project management workshop was inspiring, but what I think I’ll take away from the conference was her dedication to movember! Kathryn Presner (also from Montreal) and Andrea Rennick all brought an amazing level of technical expertise to the event.

As a man, women in technology is a subject I always want to push but I can’t approach it without the message getting confused.  The Girl Geek’s on the other hand seem to do it perfectly. It’s a great program designed to get past the image of IT as a guy’s domain and frankly … they have the coolest t-shirts.

Overall, the conference was amazing. I want to thank  Al Davis, Andy McIlwain, and Craig Taylor for putting on such a well organized and amazing event. The sponsors who helped finance the event and the Toronto WordPress Meetup Group for putting their support behind it!

Thanks everybody and I hope to see you next year!