WordCampSF 2009: Q & A with Matt Mullenweg
Right off the bat, Matt was invited to speak to a group of older blog users. How could he say no?
Here he is pointing to people asking questions in the cavernous room on the SF Bay where we are all meeting. Are there 500? 750? There’s a lot of people here–almost every seat is filled. Those clustered around outlets doubly so, since most people are using one or more electronic devices. For example, I’m on my laptop and just took this photo with my iPhone, downloaded it and delivered it to you immediately. But all this takes juice!
Other tidbits:
glot.press.org is an open source translation resource
yes it is easy to move your blog from somewhere else onto WordPress!! and other places and ways and such…
some stuff too techy for me to follow–sorry! I’m sure you can find that info elsewhere, you php junkies out there.
wow, developing a better parity between WordPress.com & .org–more new stuff for .com coming from .org developers!! yay!
One difference is that .org folks get access to fancy plug-ins. Matt says this is a way to test the popularity of certain plug-ins to see whether it’s useful to add them to the core platfom.
Ed Morita of Baker’s Hours tattoo celebrates WordPress.
Speaking of celebrations, Matt Mullenweg started WordPress at 19; WordPress celebrates its 6th Birthday tonight. Which makes Matt 25 years old. Amazing. He was born in 1984.
WordPress was conceived and delivered via a blog post and a comment. Matt wrote a post about what he’d like to see in a blogging platform using features from the various ones available at the time. Someone commented, saying let’s work on this, and away they went! Most of the people building WordPress worked virtually and didn’t meet and shake hands until after years of projects together. The WordPress community was born. A flexible platform for users to adapt to their needs.
WordPress’s stats have all doubled or tripled in the last year. For example: 22 billion pages views this year; up from 8 billion last year. Read more…
Get to know your neighbor, Matt Mullenweig says. That’s the theme of this year’s WordCamp.
In “Straight from Google: What you Need to Know” Matt Cutts asks, Why do you blog? Access? Fame? Fun?
Most people want to at least be read, to be found. That’s where Google comes in and Matt Cutts is here to help. Here’s some ideas from his talk.
How does Google rank pages?
Be relevant and reputable.
Ask yourself: Read more…
Think big. Play often.
This is the message on the big screen at WordCamp SF 2009 as I walk in with a cup of Peet’s Coffee and a raison bagel (one of the best I’ve ever had by the way). More on that in general: WordPress WordCamp 2009–here I come, SF!!
The message is courtesy of Tim Ferris, session one. I’m a bit late–after all, I was up late courtesy of a black tutu and a red bustier at the Fishbug party in Emeryville with other Burning Moms–hi Tara!–and he’s fielding questions on managing twitter and your love life.
Who’s Tim Ferris? He’s the author of the 4 hour work week. His law is “Don’t do things that aren’t fun!”
Tim Ferriss
Timothy Ferriss, nominated as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People of 2007,” is an angel investor and author of the #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been sold into 35 languages. Read more…
The blue skirt is this summer’s netty in “windandsea” fresh yesterday from the Great Pacific Iron Works/Patagon
ia store in Patagonia’s home town of Ventura.
And here’s just a hint of last summer’s skirt which I wore to last year’s WordCamp –and every where else!
One guess what I’m wearing this year to WordCamp–but not on the Critical Mass ride at 6pm tonight meeting at the bottom of Market Street in SF. For that I’m in my navy Ventura Bicyclists Union with red logo t-shirt and linnen men’s dress shirt with black logo.
Say hi if you see me! I’ll be in pigtails, too.
Oh, yeah, gonna be fun! Art Predator hits SF for a wild weekend!!
I loved last year’s SF WordCamp, so once I heard the next one was May 30, I’ve been planning on attending–especially since I re’d that scholarship I applied for! Here’s more on that: WordPress WordCamp 2009–here I come, SF!!
Since I figured out how to achieve escape velocity Thurs May 28, I’ll hook up with fellow Burning Moms at the Piss Clear Book Release Party. For more details, go here: http://www.pissclear.org/party. html
My mind spins considering all that I might do with a day to myself in SF on Friday–check out the new Academy of Sciences? the recently reopened Legion of Honor? MOMA? Ramble the aisles of fav bookstores like Green Apple on Clement? Visit with old friends? Wine tasting? Ride my bike around Golden Gate Park? all of the above?
Friday night in SF I plan to join the Critical Mass ride, then drive across the Bay Bridge for another Burning Man-esque event with more Burning Moms, this one a big warehouse party fundraiser for a large-scale fire sculpture at Burning Man–support the FishBug! <http://fishbug. net/?p=114>
Chimera is a symbol of hope for our next step in the evolutionary time line. By creating a sculpture that includes participatory elements within an enticing form we create a space for participants to be, think, play and imagine. Chimera is a steel-based structure, whose presence describes a living creature at pause in its movement, while it manifests radical visions its simple mind can barely accommodate.
*When:* Friday, May 29th, 2009
*Where: *Acme Warehouse, 1281 30th St, Emeryville, CA
MAP<http://tinyurl. com/qgsq8x>
Saturday’s WordCamp San Francisco starts bright and early with bagels and coffee at 8am and Matt will kick things off at 9am. Mr WordPress warns: “Be sure to register soon. We’ve got a great speaker line-up, free WordPress schwag to give away, and, of course, a BBQ lunch.” And you get in to the 6th year anniversary party for WordPress that night! So if you haven’t registered yet, now’s the time!
You know you can count on me to report on all these events as they occur as best I can!
Gary Snyder's book in the Black Rock Desert
Just in case you didn’t know, Burning Man takes place on a “playa,” which is Spanish for beach, which is an apt enough name considering that the playa is a lake much of the year, with plenty of beach!
I first heard about the Black Rock Desert from friends trying to convince me to go to Burning Man with them in 1992. A few days later I was talking with Gary Snyder at the Squaw Valley Writers Conference about Great Basin National Park and he suggested to me I go see Black Rock, one of his favorite places on the planet, he said. That’s high praise coming from someone like Gary Snyder, author of so many wonderful books of poetry and prose about wild places, including one about Black Rock, not to mention the man featured in Kerouac’s Dharma Bums.
The Black Rock Desert’s playa where Burning Man takes place is in the north eastern part of Nevada. I’ve heard it said that the Black Rock Desert is so large that you can see the curvature of the earth; I’ve also heard that’s an optical illusion. It is one of the largest, flattest areas of land on earth. For miles and miles you see nothing but flat dry alkali former lake bed; most winters it is covered in a shallow slick of snow and water. The amount of water and snow determines the quality of the playa we play on come Burning Man time in Labor Day.
Hint: if there’s not enough water, the playa gets really really dusty, and it can be hard to ride your bike to get around. And if it rains during Burning Man, which it does with a vengence every few years, that dust turns into mudslicks. Walking you get moon boots raising you several inches high as the muck cakes on. The alkali composition means that water just makes every thing slippery; the best way to wash it off is with vinegar.
Have I made you curious? Learn more about the Black Rock desert here: http://blackrockdesert.org/ While you’re there check out the new PLAYACAM which gives you a straight shot onto the playa towards BRC (Black Rock City, the temporary installation of a community which houses 50,000 inhabitants during the Black Rock Arts Festival aka Burning Man. Remember, how it looks now will impact how it will be when we get there!
For more video Burning Man fun, check out LENNY JONES & CLAUDIA’S BURNING MAN VIDEOS which run about 58
minutes in 6 clips, all shot in HD.
http://lennyjones.net/burn2008/burn08video/burn08videomain.html
Burning Man Joins Forces with Social Media
Need to know more than the Burning Man website has to offer? Need to know what’s going on NOW in the world of Burning Man? Need to be reminded that those LOW INCOME SCHOLARSHIP APS are due NOW? (info on that here: Burning Man tix going fast! Low-income & scholarship apps due May 30) Join Burning Man in the social whirl of social media by hooking up via these handy dandy links:
The Official Burning Man Facebook Page:
http://tr.im/bman_fb
Official Burning Man Twitter Account – All Things Burning Man:
http://www.twitter.com/burningman
Black Rock City Twitter Account – All Things BRC:
http://www.twitter.com/blackrockcity
In addition to these official links, there are lots of Burners and wanna be Larry Harveys and more out there in twitter land…some of it well worth following. Oh, yeah–and sign up to follow me too! My link is there in the right hand corner of my home page!
Show your support for gay marriage with a free sticker!
You can get one sticker for free. Buy 5 or 50 stickers from CREDO and they’ll donate the profits to fight for marriage equality. For $5 they’ll send you 5 stickers; for $25 they’ll send 50 stickers. Stickers are 4.5″ x 6″ (about the size of a postcard) and may take 3-7 weeks to arrive.
It’s easy. GO HERE: “I support gay marriage” sticker! Get yours at http://act.credoaction.com/stickers/.
The hard part will be changing the Constitution to support marriage for all. We can do it, and we will. Keep reading for more details on how and why.
According to CREDO,
After a lot of years of devastating setbacks in the fight for marriage equality, it seems like we’re finally moving in the right direction. With marriage legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and Maine, and the fights going strong in New Hampshire, New York and California, this movement is gaining more momentum every day.
“Code Poet” Robert Peake writes in a recent blog post, “What Marriage Means to Me.” It begins:
The best man at my wedding was, and is, gay. We met several years before I met my wife. We were both fresh out of college, finding our way in relationships.
No matter your position on the topic, go read his words, and please consider them.
Poet Paul Squires emailed me to commet, “No idea why anyone would want to get married but all should be allowed who wants to. Here is the a number one poem on the subject written by Bryan Borland, it is a fantastic poem and says everything that could and should be said at this point on the subject” and offered this link:
http://poeticgrin.com/2009/05/26/wallow/
The ruling upheld a voter-approved ban on gay marriage, but allowed existing marriages to stand.
Why is this critical? Need more convincing? Watch this moving video:
new poem
yep fresh from the sierra that will arrive any minute is the plan
art predator 