Months of planning, late nights, Costco runs, phone calls & emails, scheduling, meetings, designing, raising funds, etc. all paid off, BIG TIME!

I’m very grateful to all of our amazing speakers, volunteers, sponsors, and attendees for making this year’s WordCamp Montréal a success.

Why was WordCamp a success?

If you’ve been following #wcmtl on twitter … do I really need to say more …

Here are a few points I see as a measure of success:

• 30% increase in attendees, not bad for the second time around.
• All-Star lineup of speakers from all over Canada.
• An incredible venue, the UQAM Coeur-des-Sciences complex.
• An AV guy that totally went out of his way!
• CUPCAKES!
• Bigger Better Sponsors and Prizes.
• More kids than I have ever seen at WordCamp in my life.
• CUPCAKES!
• Incredible feedback on twitter, facebook, etc.
• An excellent bunch of volunteers.
• Bagels and coffee every morning and 2 lunches!
• After party at Le Saint Sulpice where paid for by our sponsors.
• oh yeah, CUPCAKES!

And now a word from our sponsors …

We were very fortunate this year to have some incredible sponsors and micro-sponsors.

Microsoft – Microsoft loves to support open source, and we love them for supporting us.  For a second year in a row Microsoft graciously jumped on board as a GOLD sponsor! It was great to see them at another WordCamp. I have had the pleasure of working with there open source team on multiple events now (WordCamp Toronto 2009, WebNotWar 2009/2010, ConFoo 2010, and MonDev 2010) and it’s always great to see how far Microsoft has come in the open source. They also put together a great presentation on the WebMatrix. I look forward to seeing them more often at other events. Keep up the good work guys!

Netfirms – 1$ hosting and domains, 2 free iPad giveaways, and major sponsors! What more can be said. These really rocked. I had a great time hanging out with the Netfirms crew (above) they really showed their support for WordCamp and I hope to see them again in 2011!

Adobe – Who doesn’t use Adobe? Money isn’t everything! Adobe sent us thousands of dollars worth of software for prize draws throughout WordCamp. Thanks for the stuff Adobe, everyone already knows who you are and that your products are as pro as it gets, now they can see how generous you are on top of it all.

La Fabrique de Blogs. Depuis 2005, spécialiste WordPress, création de blogs sur mesure, design, formation, accompagnement, support, hébergement.

And last but not least our micro-sponosrs:

• Claude Malaison
• Joachim Kudish
• Kathryn Presner/Zoonini
• Jeremy Clarke

Final Words

I had a great time organizing/speaking/attending WordCamp Montréal this year. I want to thank everyone who made this happen and thank you  for all your support. I can’t wait to do it again next year!

Hope to see you all soon and the next WordPress Montréal Meetup.

I’m very excited to be presenting at WordCamp Montreal again this year! I’m also very excited to be one of the organizers this year along side the amazing Shannon Smith and inspirational  Jeremy Clarke. We’ve been working really hard to bring you an even better WCMTL this year!

I’m also taking the lead on bringing back regular WordPress Montreal meetups. Montreal has a large community of passionate, talented, and creative WordPress folk and what better way to celebrate what we love than to get together a few times a year over drinks to talk shop!

I’ve set up a new Montreal WordPress Community site and scheduled a meetup for Thursday Aug 5th at Brutopia. I hope to see you all there!

WordCamp Montreal 2010 presentation
This year I will be doing a co-presentation with Mark O’Sullivan, founder of Vanilla Forums, on ‘Adding Vanilla to WordPress‘.

Description: This presentation will discuss the benefits of adding a Vanilla Forum to your WordPress site/blog. We will walk through the basics of Vanilla Connect (Single Sign On) in order to manage users across both platforms. We will also demonstrate the ease of theming and integrating Vanilla with WordPress.

Tickets our on sale now, so grab one!

The events rundown:

• #DEVTrain (aka #nerdtrain) from Toronto to Montreal on the VIA Rail with http://devtrain.ca GPS tracker – Sponsored by Microsoft
• MonDev Open Source Demo Camp – An evening of ignite style presentations!
• WebCamp – Is a group of webheads, passionate individuals living and working with/in/on the web.
• StartUpDrinks Montreal – Is a monthly freestyle networking event hosted in pubs and bars by startup community instigators from coast to coast.
• Make Web Not War – Canada’s first cross-platform conference showcasing the latest techniques and technologies available to the ever-evolving web community, jointly sponsored by Microsoft and Open Source communities across Canada and PHP Quebec.
• CodeFest – Run by devLAB Montréal, PHPQuebec & Windows Azure
• FTW! Coding Competition – showdown featuring #findahome, #tholus, #taxicity
• Twitter Wall – A very cool app built by Jet Cooper
• After Party at Jello Martini Bar & Lounge – catered by Schwartz & sushi

For a first run the week went well, since I only had to organize one night I hope to get more communities in Montreal involved for next year and put together a full schedule of events.

Huge shout-outs!

• Arun Kirupa – Web Not Wat
  
• Angie Lim – Web Not War
• Marc Laporte – Tiki
  
• Yann Larivee – PHP Quebec
  
• Robin Ahn – StartUpDrinks Montreal
  
• Renoir Boulanger – DevLab
  
• Jeremy Wright
• Jenna Hoff – Web Not War
  
• The Vanilla Crew
• The Web Not War Crew
  

If you want to get involved for next year let me know!

make sure to follow the Vanilla progress on twitter and facebook, plus I will be uploading screenshots of the new themes on flickr soon…

I’ve been working on some experimental Vanilla themes and can’t wait to release them. I’ll publishing a ton of new tutorials here and on the Vanilla blog soon.

I have also been planning a few events, most importantly MonDev which starts next week! I’ll be organizing and presenting at MonDev Open Source Demo Camp next Tuesday May 25. Mark will also be a doing a presentation on Vanilla 2, so make sure to check that out. I’ll be at StartUpdrinks on Wednesday May 26th, come have a drink with me and the Vanilla crew. Thursday is Make Web Not War, I’ll be doing a presentation on WordPress on Windows, plus I am looking forward to the truce party that night!

More to come…

I will also be helping organize WordCamp Montreal this year and a few Vanilla events (can’t say anything yet)

If that’s not enough … I still have the next issue of creer to work on and I am hoping to finally re-launch PHUG! Maybe I’ll build it using Vanilla this time.

The next few weeks are hectic, but I am looking forward to meeting up with old friends and and hanging out…

Last year I attended and spoke at Make Web Not War, and I’m happy to say i will be attending and speaking again this year!

What is MWNW?
Coming to Montreal this May, Make Web Not War (MWNW) 2010 is one of Canada’s first cross-platform conference showcasing the latest techniques and technologies available to the ever-evolving web community, jointly sponsored by Microsoft and Open Source communities across Canada and PHP Quebec. Here we will explore the power and flexibility of new web paradigms, technologies and applications – including the Microsoft web platform, Open Source applications, cloud computing and mobile – to help you develop the ultimate web experience for your clients.

The wars of “platform religions” are over. Embrace the reality of today: mixed environments, interoperable applications, Open Source in harmony with commercial software, PHP on Windows and Azure cloud.The new technology era of pragmatism is here, and MWNW is about bridging the gap between different platforms, communities and developers of all trades and backgrounds.

Honestly, I can say I had a great time last year, met some really cool people, and was very impressed to see how far Microsoft has come in terms of outreaching to the Open Source community.

Hope to see you guy’s there!

This is the marketing video for this years event, they used footage from last year and I made the cut, twice, yay!

I would also like to thank all those that tweeted my presentation, and all those who came and spoke with me after and through out Confoo.

Here’s my presentation:

The good people of PHP Quebec have asked me to speak at CONFOO this year! I am very excited about this presentation, I have spoken at many conferences and it is always nice to do one you have not done before.

I will be doing a session on WordPress theming, description below…

WordPress is NOT just a blog anymore!

For the seasoned WordPress developer or anyone coding in PHP, CSS, and jQuery, we will look at how you can take your theme to the next level. I will explain how theme architecture works, how to extend this architecture with custom template files, and how to create custom functions. I will also walk through the some interested CSS frameworks, like 960grid, implementing intermediate to advanced jQuery features, and how to customize the back end. Finally I will briefly discuss how to take your theme mobile using WPTouch and WPMobile.

What’s CONFOO

PHP Québec, Montréal-Python, Montréal on Rails, W3Qc and OWASP Montréal are proud to announce the first edition of the Confoo.ca Conference. From March 10^th to 12^th 2010, international experts in Java, .Net, PHP, Python and Ruby will present solutions for developers and project managers the prestigious Hilton Bonaventure Hotel, located in downtown Montréal.

There’s only 15 days left to register!

Hope to see you all there!

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Check out some of the slide from other events I have presented at.

Thanks to the wonderful Joey deVilla my talk was caught on video tape (also make sure to check out the other vidfeos from that night)…enjoy!