What a great start to Montreal’s first WordCamp, Congrats to Jeremy and Sylvain for organizing such a great event!

WordCamp MTL was hosted at SAT, a really neat techno center in Montreal. The turnout was excellent, 160+ attendees/speakers from 2 countries all for $30 which included free lunch on Saturday, coffee and of course Montreal bagels every morning! Not only did we get to geek out all weekend in 2 languages, it was also the 30th anniversary of the Montreal Jazz Festival, Just for Laughs, the Warp tour, the Haitian festival, and all the other fantastic things Montreal has to offer.

This weekend was a huge success and next year should be even better. I met so many great people this weekend, would love to list them here, but there are just to many, but you know who you are  It was also great to see so many faces from WordCamp Toronto 2009 making the voyage out to Montreal.

Here are some of my favorite highlights…

• Erin Blaskie on Lifestreaming and the future of blogging. Even though she was in track 2, the smaller room,  she had a full audience, in fact her presentation was so popular it blocked the front door and the organizers had to open up another entrance…
• CT Moore did a presentation on WP-MU 101: How to Install and Avoid Common Mistakes, which I was really looking forward to. He discussed the ins and outs of installing and using WPMU from his development experiences, it was informative, but a little to basic, was hoping for more tech stuff on the subject matter. However, towards the end of his presentation Andy Peatling, Automattic and BuddyPress developer,  joined in the conversation to help field some questions and add some new insights.
• Special Q&A by Matt Mullenweg (Founder of WordPress). Matt discussed a wide range or topics from translation plugins, to community development, education, and the future of WordPress. My favorite audience question was “How do you make money?” You can find some really great interviews from Matt during WordCamp Montreal on amicalmant’s YouTube page.
• After party at the St. Sulpice – Had the opportunity to hang out with Matt and talk poetry and Jazz, met some really great Montreal WP’ers, and was reunited with my long lost brother (Stephane Daury)

WordCamp Gangstas

• Jane Wells did a fabulous presentation on the Future of WordPress. I was very enthused about their call to developers/designers to contribute to WordPress on so many levels. I hope to be able to help out in some capacity.
• Another great after party at the Ste. Elisabeth on Sunday night, then on to the Pizzadelic for dinner, and then to the FREE Ben Harper concert at La Place des Arts, and finished up at the Benelux (it was a really long night…)

Some other quick mentions…

• You should check out some of the great pictures taking during the event at the official Flickr pool, also huge props to EvaBlue for taking some awesome shots during and after the event!
• make sure to check out all or some of the WordCamp Montreal Presentation Slides
• Don’t forget to visit there facebook group, follow them on twitter and #wcmtl, and check out the official page.