I did something this weekend which was far outside my comfort zone – I organized a conference of almost 100 folks who love WordPress as much as I do.

Since WordPress is free open source software I feel so strongly about, I got a contact high just from seeing people learn to use it better. It’s my sincere hope that more people use it to write about their local communities.

WordCamp Fayetteville was a tremendous experience. I got a chance to work with amazing volunteers, speakers and sponsors as the two-day conference unfolded right here at the Fayetteville Town Center and the New Design School.

One of the speakers, Mitch Canter, wrote on his Studionashvegas site that the event was “small, intimate and awesome” and I couldn’t ask for a better description that jives with the vibe I wanted to create.

I also need to give a shout out to Mitch who was a pure rock star during the conference. I scheduled myself to give a lecture during the day, but quickly discovered that organizing a conference and speaking at a conference was a juggling act I wasn’t ready to pull off yet.

Mitch stepped into my slot and delivered an impromptu overview of WordPress 3.0 that two people told me was the highlight of the conference for them.

I’ve had about 20 people ask me since it started if I plan to put together another conference in 2011. I take that as proof that people enjoyed themselves. Also the steady and almost universally positive series of tweets under the #wcfay hashtag, makes me feel things were a success.

And for the record – yes, I do plan to do it again next year.

It was so much fun to show off my town to people from at least five different states who made the pilgrimage here to get a little WordPress learnin’.

We had a special dinner for speakers at Hugo’s. Everyone seemed impressed with the homemade french fries and a number of blackened chicken sandwiches were seen around the table.

The Fayetteville Town Center was perfect. Staff there were immediately responsive and knowledgeable.

Our lead sponsors, Paze Interactive of Fayetteville, made sure we could bring in fantastic speakers. Without their generous contribution, I doubt WordCamp Fayetteville would have gotten up and off the ground.

Cox Communication donated materials and service to fire up six wireless routers and a wired ethernet connection. WordCamp attendees are a demanding group when it comes to Wi-fi, expecting immediate and constant internet connections.

I was told by veterans of other WordCamps that we were the best they’d experienced in terms of wireless. That’s a real kudos. Thanks Cox.

Because of Beaver Water District’s generosity, we were able to offer reusable water bottles and nice reusable bags to attendees. We made cold tap water available during the entire conference and I didn’t once see a disposable plastic water bottle in use. Yay for less trash and more publicity for our region’s amazing watershed.

A personal indulgence was conducting a forum at the end of the day titled “The Transparent Blogger: How Much Disclosure is Enough” I want to thank Jon, Terri and Toni for participating. I really enjoyed moderating that.

You can see a number of the lectures on UStream, thanks to Daniel Gold’s effort to capture everything on video. Thanks Daniel. You can also see several of the presentations at Slideshare.

After a full day of lectures Saturday, we had a great After Party at New Design School. Sonia Davis Gutierrez hosted us and folks were impressed immediately upon entering the awesome space. If you’ve not seen the renovations to the old Fulbright Building, you really should take a look.

The architecture is astounding and everyone had a great time as we had a few drinks and gave away several prizes. Local musician Emily Kaitzprovided great acoustic entertainment.

Finally, Sunday we had a “Guru Gallery” as attendees stopped by and were able to ask any question they wanted and hopefully sit down and share knowledge with others who might just be able to help them.

Mike Davis at the New Design School grilled some burgers for us. Around 4 p.m, I declared the conference officially over.

In retrospect, I have to say running a conference is a much more demanding and rewarding experience than I’d ever guessed. It requires full concentration and without the help of my wife and volunteers I worked like “rented mules” it would not have come together so well.

Thanks Fayetteville for all of your help.

176 unique viewers watched the live broadcast Saturday. Now we are happy to offer archival footage of some presentations for anyone to view and share on your own schedule.

Thanks for helping make the first WordPress conference in the state of Arkansas such a success. -Dgold

Our official Twitter hashtag is #wcfay

You can tag photos at Flickr with wcfay to appear on the WordCamp Fayetteville Wire

We have a live video feed at http://wordcampfayetteville.com/live-video/

TURN ON TWITTER DEVICE UPDATES DURING WORDCAMP:

Attendees, txt “ON WCFAY” to 40404 to turn on twitter Device Updates and receive live SMS text messages from WordCamp Fayetteville.  Note you must have your twitter account enabled for mobile use with your phone number on twitter.com/devices and be following @wcfay.  Later txt “OFF WCFAY” to deactivate the updates (you will still be following @wcfay on twitter). Device Updates can also be activated and deactivated in your browser with a small phone-icon on twitter.com/wcfay that shows up when your twitter is mobile enabled. Turn ON the updates during May 29-30 for up-to-the-minute announcements as text messages from WordCamp Fayetteville official twitter.

STEPS:

1. Go to www.twitter.com/devices

2. Make sure your twitter account is enabled with your phone number.

3. Go to www.twitter.com/wcfay

4. Click Follow @wcfay

5. With your phone, send txt message to 40404 that says: ON WCFAY

6. Congratulations, you did it!! Receive txt messages from WordCamp Fayetteville during the event!

7. To deactivate updates later, send txt message to 40404 that says: OFF WCFAY

8. Or, click the little phone icon on www.twitter.com/wcfay to turn Device Updates on or off.

A little shout out to two WordCamps which share our Memorial Day Weekend event with us.

Hello WordCamp Yokohama and WordCamp Turkey. For a bonus, you can go to their sites and let Google translate the text. They are as jazzed as we are here in Northwest Arkansas.

The enthusiasm for WordPress is certainly international. My wife told me last night to stop planning next year’s event until this one is over. Sage-like advice.

There will be an informal meetup from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday at Hammontree’s restaurant, 326 N. West Ave., in the Dickson Street Entertainment District. Everyone is invited to attend, whether or not you are attending the conference.

Otherwise, we will see you Saturday morning at 9 a.m. at the Fayetteville Town Center. You can find directions and a map at the website (http://wordcampfayetteville.com). You might want to arrive a little early to enjoy theFayetteville Farmers’ Market which is just outside the conference center. There is free parking behind the Town Center for you.

2.   Should I bring my laptop?

Absolutely. We will have wireless internet access and you should be able to use it freely during Saturday’s conference. We’re also going to try to make available several power strips so people can continually charge their equipment.

3.   Which room am I in?

We’ve divided the presentations into two tracks – a blogger track and a developer track. You can freely attend any seminar you wish.

However, a problem has emerged of space. One of the rooms is smaller than the other and it looks like the interest in our seminars is almost evenly divided between the two tracks. This is my fault for assuming the developer group would be smaller. In order to rectify the situation, the developer group will have the larger space (they are the slightly larger group) in the morning and then that will reverse in the afternoon to give the blogger track more space.

I appreciate your patience on this matter. I’m hopeful this is the biggest snafu we run into.

4.   What else should I bring?

In your goodie bag will be a very cool water bottle from Beaver Water District, a generous donation which we encourage you to use to instead of bottled water. We will have a water jug set up for you. Also, we encourage youto bring your own coffee cup. We’ll have plenty of coffee but we’d like to minimize trash where possible.

Jammin’ Java is providing some pastries and coffee in the morning. Lunch is also provided.

Jammin’ Java is located just outside the conference center and will be open during the day if you want something else to eat.

5.   What about dinner Saturday night?

You’re on your own from 6:30 to 8 p.m. when the After Party starts. I can recommend from personal experience any of the following place – all within walking distance of the square.

Jammin’ Java, Tim’s Pizza, Oseguera’s, Damgoode Pies, Hugo’s and Little Bread Co.

Then you can bring your thirst, alcoholic or not, to the After Party at the New Design School

6.   What’s a ‘Guru Gallery?’

This is just a fancy word for unstructured conference time. Most of the speakers will still be available for some drop in time at the New Design School to talk one-on-one with you about your specific WordPress issue. Also, I hope you take this time to get to one another even better. Maybe we will even have an inpromtu presentation or two. If you have an idea for one, please let me know.

Kareem of Egypt was imprisoned in 2007 for blogging about politics and religion.

My interview with Esra

Meet Esra’a Al Shafei, a young woman from Bahrain who uses WordPress to push for freedom of religious and political speech within the Muslim world.

She is also the founder and executive director of MidEastYouth.com. She also received the 2007 Templeton Freedom Award for Best New Intellectual Entrepreneur.

I had the chance to interview her in September during my visit to WordCamp Birmingham. The interview happened just weeks after the uprising in Iran, so the issue had a special poignancy.

She was a highlight of the entire conference, making clear to all who attended just what a vital force blogging can be in countries where free speech is not the cultural norm.

We were told not to take pictures of Esra’a (and you won’t find them online) because of the dangers involved for her in being so publicly identifiable.

She spoke a lot about her friend, Kareem Amer, an Egyptian blogger who was sentenced to years in jail in 2007 for expressing his opinion online about the government there and Islam.

Esra created a blog, a WordPress blog, just after he was arrested to tell the world about his imprisonment.

Those first posts caught fire internationally, leading to Free Kareem parties around the world and bringing media and political scrutiny against Egypt’s actions.

Esra said much of the Islamic world looks to Egypt as an example, so it’s critical that such human right violations not be tolerated or it will make such oppression acceptable in other Middle Eastern countries.

It was a real pleasure to interview her.

It was a great low-key and fun conversation. It’s apparent we are all enthusiastic about the software and love to spread the open source gospel of WordPress.

Give it a listen.

Please steal them freely and spread them around the Interwebz with a link back to this site.

Wish I Was Going

I’m Attending

I’m Speaking

Proud Sponsor

Matt Mullenweg of Automattic

By Christopher Spencer

An Interview with Matt Mullenweg

Not my smoothest interview, but Matt was a good sport at WordCamp Birmingham. This interview happened at Shift Workspace in September 2009 when we got a few moments away from the unconference crowd.

It’s interesting that Google’s stance toward China’s censorship is prominent in the news right now. This was a hurdle that Automattic dealt with almost a year ago in a very ethical fashion by refusing to change their practices after they were blocked by Chinese authorities.

The company’s decision not to censor won them the admiration of some Chinese residents, and WordPress continues to be widely used in that country, he said.

“What we traded off was short-term profit, for long-term profit,” he said.

The Esra’a we mention in the interview is Esra’a Al Shafei, a freedom of speech activist in the Middle East and founder of MideastYouth.com. I’ll probably post my interview with her later.

On a side note, I had no idea we’d be name checking Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri or Colonization at the end of this interview. But I’m glad we did.

Eric Huber and Collin Condray of Blue Zoo Websites, will do a short presentation of their new business as well as how and why they chose the WordPress engine as one of the key elements. A short demonstration and Q&A will follow. Condray has launched Social Media Revolutionary as a business and Huber owns Mighty Creative, LLC which focuses on graphic design for web and print.

Here’s the location -