The night before my first WordCamp event today, I looked at the attendees list and said, “this is gonna be good”.

It was way more than just “good”. It was spectacular. Eye-opening. Not one word would be sufficient to describe it.

Andrew Nacin of Automattic gives the closing keynote at WordCamp Seattle 2014.
Andrew Nacin of Automattic gives the closing keynote at WordCamp Seattle 2014.

I usually doze off during presentations, but the speakers at WordCamp Seattle were top-notch experts in WordPress, and brought some real, tangible experience to the event. From the first minute of Siobhan McKeown’s History of WordPress to Kailey Lampert’s “Hidden Treasures of WordPress” to Andrew Nacin’s concluding keynote, and with all the speakers in between, there was never a dull moment. I learned about WordPress’s __return_*() functions. After a delicious lunch provided by Ingallina’s Catering, Jennifer BournScott EklundMichelle CastilloHeather Johnson came to bring their expertise of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to the crowd. Skipping the latter half of the SEO talk, I headed over to Sonja Leix‘s User Experience Checklist talk, after a brief chat with Matt Eppelsheimer of Rocket Lift.

There were so many great talks in the latter half of the day that I was a bit torn at times. Paul Clark of 10up presented a wonderful case study of how, and how not to build a scalable web service. After the presentation, I headed down to Taylor Dewey — also of 10up — who presented a brilliant workshop on SASS. Having always used LESS, Dewey’s workshop presented many new insights into the wildly popular CSS preprocessor. To round off the already excellent day, the panel of Nancy ThankiJordan QuintalTaylor DeweyMerrill Mayer revealed their insights on developing WordPress themes, and Andrew Nacin of Automattic gave a splendid closing keynote. From accessibility to zeitgeist, these talks alone were well worth the $20 price of admission.

Takeaways

Taylor Dewey of 10up: "I am not a breakpoint!"
Taylor Dewey of 10up: “I am not a breakpoint!”

If you use WordPress and you don’t already, attend WordCamp! Seriously! I’ll probably be kicking myself for the next two weeks for not having known about #wcsea earlier.

WordCamp is worth more than any online tutorials or textbooks. Nothing compares to meeting other people who are passionate about all aspects of WordPress, whether it’s just getting started with a blog or doing some hardcore performance optimization.

From the talks and workshops I attended, here are some of the awesome things I learned:

 It’s not over, even though it’s over

WordCamp Seattle after-party, hosted by Media Temple
WordCamp Seattle after-party, hosted by Media Temple

WordCamp Seattle is a one-day event, and one of the best weekend events I’ve been to. But tomorrow, there’s WordPress contributor day, led by Automattic’s own Andrew Nacin. I’ll be at the Impact Hub Seattle to do some contributing to the codebase, and I look forward to seeing many #wcsea attendees there as well.

Thank you so much, WordCamp Seattle organizing team. Kudos to all the speakers for their collective insights and volunteers for their dedication to the event. And lastly, thank you to the UW Husky Union Building for hosting this event. It was a pleasure to attend WordCamp at my home university!

Published by Geoffrey Liu

A software engineer by trade and a classical musician at heart. Currently a software engineer at Groupon getting into iOS mobile development. Recently graduated from the University of Washington, with a degree in Computer Science and a minor in Music. Web development has been my passion for many years. I am also greatly interested in UI/UX design, teaching, cooking, biking, and collecting posters.

3 thoughts on “Seattle WordCamp 2014: What an experience!

  1. Awesome, awesome write up! I too LOVED this year’s event. And I’ll be going through my notes (and yours!) the rest of this week, I’m sure. 🙂 So much to take in…. Thanks for the great recap!

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