Thanks for a great Wordcamp Houston 2010!

This weekend marked the very first Wordcamp Houston event at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.   As well as being a Community Sponsor, the Schipulites were active participants as coordinators, speakers, volunteers and excitable (what’s new?!) attendees.

Didn’t get to make it this year and wondering what you missed?   Here are some of the highlights of the day at HMNS, in the Schipulites’ own words:

David Stagg (who taught the swell WP 101 class)

I was honored to be given the chance to speak; it was a pleasure leading the WP 101 class, setting up Monica (aka Cosmopolitician) and Chris Everson—two incredibly talented people—for the 102 class. I felt honored to teach some new people from the Houston Zoo, Noah’s Kitchen, Reliant Energy all about how user-friendly WordPress truly is. The class was lively, had some great questions, and was genuinely curious about how to further their WordPress knowledge. Since it was the inaugural WPCamp Houston and it sold out quickly, I can only imagine what it will look like next year!

Albert Hughes

My thoughts:

• Kelsey Ruger is a genius and I heard a lot of people agreeing with that statement.

• There was a WP framework war : genesis vs. thesis

• I saw several people including Matt Mullenweg wearing ‘toe shoes”

April Kyle
I really enjoyed having HMNS at the host. It was such a neat backdrop for us; and as part of being there I personally was exposed to things in the museum I’d never seen before. In the break times and lunch; we got a chance to play around a bit and have some fun’ totally cool for breaks as opposed to had we been in just a conference center or hotel. It was just super neat seeing the kids learning, and we played around with the exhibits too. Plus, there was a shark.

Eloy Zuniga
My favorite moment was sitting next to Matt Mullenweg during a session simply because I said “I saved you a seat”.   He is ridiculously nice and humble.   I’m glad he’s a Houstonian.

Derek Key (who led a great panel with client Susan Saurage)
My favorite sessions from WordCamp were Kelsey‘s ‘Rebirth of Slick” and Bill Erickson’s ‘WordPress Beyond Blogging”. Kelsey’s was incredibly fun as always and made me think about websites in general, not necessarily WordPress, and Bill’s was very informative and relatable to what we do for clients.

I think the two biggest takeaways are:

1. Shopify‘ ecommerce solution for WordPress that can be easily updated graphically to match a site and is easy to manage on the client’s end (from Roby Fitzhenry’s session)
2. Custom post types and custom taxonomies in WordPress (from Bill Erickson’s session). Allows for more than just pages and posts so you can actually call different content different names… very Drupal-esque.

Michael Coppens (from his @urbanhoustonian Twitter account)

Not sure how I didn’t know WordPress founder @photomatt is from Houston. Makes it a perfect home for Urban Houstonian

 

Chris Minor (our fearless intern and videographer)

My favorite session was Kelsey Ruger‘s presentation about design called ‘Rebirth of Slick”. Kelsey weaved his valuable insight into designing a website with a multimedia experience featuring music like hip-hop and jazz that made his presentation not only enjoyable but relevant and understandable in our society. WordCamp was also the first time I have been exposed to a real-time Twitter conversation. Many times I found myself staring at my twitter feed watching all the participants sharing what they were learning and I gained valuable brain-candy from the many passionate developers and users of WordPress.

Katrina Esco
The major takeaway I got from Wordcamp:  We understand things in story so we should be able to tell a meaningful story about a brand or company.

Christine Portillo

Kelsey Ruger’s preso was a highlight, and in a slide asking audience which of many companies listed had the ‘cool factor,” Schipul client IKEA was one of the few (along with Virgin Airlines, Zappos, and more). Best PHYSICAL takeaways: nifty, comfy, stylin’ T designed by Ben G and boasting Schipul on the arm and the bounteous bags of M&Ms provided by the blogger track’s ‘Whose blog is it anyway?” session.