I’m going to WordCamp Buenos Aires!

May 25, 2015May 25, 2015Richard A. 5 Comments

I’m really excited about this: I was selected to speak at WordCamp Buenos Aires this coming weekend, so I’m going taking an overnight flight on Wednesday and will get there Thursday, giving me a couple of days before WordCamp to explore the city.

As I usually do, I’ve read a bunch of guide books, and of course, I’m ready and excited to take the Subte.

I’m looking forward to the wine, and exploring neighbourhoods likes Palermo and Puerto Madero. I’m definitely going to stop by the beautiful Ateneo bookshop; what are other must-see places that I should visit?

El Ateneo Bookstore” by David – http://www.flickr.com/photos/99255685@N00/1245345652. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

WordCamp Paris!

January 29, 2015January 30, 2015Richard A. 3 Comments

This past weekend, I went to Paris for WordCamp. I was lucky enough to have found a very nice AirB&B in le Marais neighbourhood, in the 4th arrondisment, really close to Hôtel-de-Ville metro station. The area was beautiful, with all the really old architecture, the little shops, cafés and bars, and the Seine close by. It was cold, though, between -5 to +5 degrees Celsius the whole time I was there. I know, I know, a Montrealer complaining about -5 weather? It felt colder than that, though, because it was also very humid, so it felt like the cold was just getting into my bones sometimes. It was also grey and cloudy for most of my time there, except for my very last day, when I explored the city. Before I get to that, let’s talk about WordCamp!

WordCamp Paris was on Friday and Saturday, in 2 different venues. On Friday, I saw a few talks, in the morning, but the jetlag unfortunately hit me quite hard and I left before the day was done, as I was having hard time staying fully alert for all the talks. I did do a quick stint at the Happiness Bar before leaving, though! Saturday was billed more as a “workshop” day and was the day I was scheduled to talk, so I gave a quick overview talk on Jetpack and then answered people’s questions about it for the rest of my allotted time. I had hoped that I would also get the chance to perform some in-person Happiness Engineering, but no-one had any burning problems (which is a good thing, I guess!). Here are my slides that used for the overview (note the gratuitous use of Metro maps and images):

The best part of the whole WordCamp experience, however, was meeting so many kind, intelligent and motivated people, all wanting to learn about and share their knowledge about WordPress and the web. I was particularly pleased to meet someone I had been following for years, Ozh Richard, the creator of yourls and co-author of Professional WordPress Development:

http://www.amazon.com/Professional-WordPress-Plugin-Development-Williams-Ozh-Tadlock/dp/0470916222/

Can you believe it was his first WordCamp? I think he got bit by the WordCamp bug now, though, and I hope to see him speak again. I had a lot of fun talking to him about his previous visit to Québec, and shared with him my insights on Québec swearing. Look at how pleased I am! 😀

@richardmtl @ozh Les fameux Richard au #wcparis 🙂 pic.twitter.com/U4kwD2ozvp

— Patricia Brun Torre (@PatriciaBT70) January 24, 2015

Finally, Sunday was my last day, and the day I took to explore. I walked all day, for about 7 hours all told, with stops at the Pont Neuf, the Jardins des Tuileries, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower. Then, a quick hop on the metro all the way to Bastille stop, and a tour of Place de Voges. I really wanted to stop and have a coffee at Café Hugo, but it was completely packed with not a seat available anywhere, so I left disappointed. In any case, it was a a fun day, and I was especially lucky that the sun came fully out from behind the clouds once I’d reached the Eiffel Tower. Lots of pictures after the jump!

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I’m going to WordCamp Paris!

December 21, 2014Richard A. 4 Comments

I am really exicted about this. I submitted a workshop on Jetpack for WordCamp Paris, and it was accepted! I will only be there for four days, one of which will be a jetlag day and two of which will be full of WordCamp goodness, so I elected to stay one extra day to walk around for as many hours as I can and see as much of the city as possible in one day (and of course, have a few pastries and glasses of wine along the way). Oddly enough, a few weeks before I even considered applying to speak there, I read How Paris Became Paris:

http://www.amazon.ca/How-Paris-Became-Joan-DeJean/dp/1608195910

which was a fascinating look at the history of things like urban parks, sidewalks, the Pont Neuf, the Place Royale (now known as the Place des Voges), and other aspects of Parisian urban history. And now I’ll get to see these places in person! I even found a nice Airbnb in Le Marais neighborhood, close to Île St-Louis and Île de la Cité and all the other things I read about in that book. I can’t wait!

So, of course I did what I usually do before going someplace new: I took out a bunch of books from the library:

Just a few books on Paris!

and I have extensively studied the metro and public transit maps that my friend Miguel gave me:

Le métro!

I already have my route mapped out from CDG: I’m taking the train!

Needless to say, I’m exicted! Of course, with only one full day in which to really walk around and explore, I can’t sacrifice any time to wait in line to go into any museums so (no Louvre this time), but my boys really want me to go visit the Eiffel Tower, so I hope the weather will be nice and that I’ll have a great view from the top. I’m going to try to do something like this itinerary, which will guarantee exhaustion by the end of the day!

For any of you who have been to Paris, I have a few questions:

Where do I definitely need to eat (especially in the Marais area)?
Which alcoholic beverage should I bring back, that I can’t find easily in Montreal?
Last but not least, is there any particular noteworthy metro station that I should visit?

WordCamp Montreal 2013 Recap

July 5, 2013August 10, 2013Richard A. 5 Comments

This past weekend, I participated in my 4th WordCamp Montreal (the 5th Montreal WordCamp ever), and the first one that I helped organize. I had a really great time, and by the end of the weekend, I felt as though it was the best WordCamp I’d been to. And in truth, it really does get better every year. Here’s why this year’s was the best yet:

More submissions than ever before. We had over 70 speaker submissions this year, so we were able to pick the best possible talks, from out-of-towners and even more importantly, from the local Montreal WordPress community.
Because of the large number of submissions, we were able to expand to include a 3rd track of talks, so attendees always had plenty of interesting talks to choose from.
We sold 400 tickets this year, more than last year, and actually sold out! This meant that our WordCamp was just filled to the brim with WordPress enthusiasts, including some people who were just beginning to learn about it and who were eager to expand their knowledge.
Our veteran organizers (@cafenoirdesign, @twigpress and @jeremyclarke) brought their valuable experience and made sure that every little detail was taken care of, and taught me and my fellow rookie organizer, @kwightca, everything there is to know. We owe a lot to their leadership!
Our fabulous volunteer coordinator, @molecularcode, did such a fantastic job wrangling all the volunteers for her second year in the job.
We had more volunteers sign up than ever before, so we had tons of friendly people manning the registration desk, helping the speakers with their every need, and guiding people around.
The Happiness Bar (where people can ask for WordPress-related help from experienced people, and for free!) was more than fully-staffed the whole weekend, and saw lots of traffic!
There were lots of my colleagues from Automattic in town for a team meet-up, and they all either volunteered for the Happiness Bar or were speakers, sharing their expertise with anyone who needed it.
The co-founder of WordPress and founder of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) gave a great Town Hall in which he answered audience members’ questions, and told some pretty funny stories (Penguin wars!).
We had 2 panel discussions, on multilingual options for WordPress sites, and on how to make money with WordPress. These panels were a great success, and I hope that we’ll have some great submissions for further panels for next year.

All in all, it really was a great WordCamp Montreal this year. If you weren’t able to make it, then you can view many of our speakers’ slides on our site, and eventually we hope to have most of the speakers’ talks available on wordpress.tv. If you want to keep in touch with the Montreal WordPress community, sign up for our mailing list. We have monthly developer meetups or social events, and we also want to have start having meetups that are more focused on content creators. We’ll keep you informed of all our activities through the mailing list and through or Facebook group. Hope to see you there!