Tilt

This past weekend the WordPress faithful invaded the University of Baltimore for WordCamp Mid-Atlantic. Bloggers, journalist, developers and even a few designer/developer types (like us) made up the sold-out audience who came to learn more about blogging and development on the WP platform.

For those of you who don’t know what WordPress is or want to know how we use it, jump to the end of the article.

Overall WordCamp Vibe

The Camp definitely had an energized vibe, especially for starting so early on a Saturday morning. The main atrium was filled with conversation and some serious networking (and not to mention some delicious breakfast treats). Everyone got a “Mingle Stick” from Mingle 360, so instead of exchanging business cards, all you had to do was “zap” your information back and forth, boom, instant networking.

The first couple speakers really started things off on the right foot as well. Mario Armstrong, you may know him from his Tech spot on NPR, kicked it off with an enthusiastic Ignite presentation on “The Brand as U.” Mario raised a lot of good points in his short amount of time and hopefully I’m doing it justice with the following summary.

• You are the brand
• Keep your brand consistent across all applications, be original, be visible
• Own your brand (domains, social networks, etc.)
• Be were the action is
• Build Projects, Build Personal Value

» Watch Mario talk at WordCamp Mid-Atlantic

Anil Dash, co-founder of SixApart, gave a really good morning keynote about connecting across the web, blogging and social media. If your a blogger, or are interested in starting a blog, check out the video of his presentation. Anil really does the “Brand as U” approach to the fullest, just run a search on Anil Dash, or Dashes.com and look at his saturation. If you take your blogging seriously, you should probably learn from what Anil has done, and apply it towards your own unique brand.

»Watch Anil’s keynote at WordCamp Mid-Atlantic

Thanks to @isteconnects for shooting and sharing this video with everyone.

Some Standouts

One thing that stuck out to me was the focus to network and collaborate. Numerous times throughout the day the event coordinators made it a point to tell us that the sessions were great but if you want to start your own group with a few people, or offer up your expertise to those in need, do it. Definitley a unique collaborative approach to organizing a conference, rather then having set sessions and break periods. Good work all around!

• The WordPress Caching presentation Defintiely some useful stuff, view the full presentation here.
• The WP SEO talk by Sri Nagubandi and John Shehata . These guys definitely made us feel like we’re doing a lot of things right, definitely an awesome feeling! Picked up a nice domain redirecting trick that should help our clients’ search engine saturation.

All in all, it was a good experience to learn how we can better cater sites for our clients. Hopefully, we picked up a few blogging tips of our own, as well! Read on to see how we have helped a number of clients improve their businesses with an effective website.