I don’t usually get involved in Movember, at least not in terms of growing, I will never shave my beard! However, I always give what I can to the cause. This is year is no exception and I’m lucky enough to be working with an AWESOME group of people to help pull it off!

As most of you know by now MEGA Bloks is my new home. I’ve had the opportunity to get involved in and organize a ton of great events, contests, etc, and this is no exception. I’m super stoked that MEGA Bloks and Twist Image have joined forces to do something really cool for Movember to help raise awareness. Check out the official post over on the Mega Bloks blog to find out what crazy mo-ness we’ve been up to over the past few days and what you can expect top still see and get involved in.

Yes, I know, I’ve said very little in this post, you’ll just have to keep reading on ;{)

Plotting ...

It was great to spend a weekend geeking out with the Toronto WordPress community. What was even more fun was being able to explore Toronto and attend WordCamp with a bunch of Montreal’ers, it was like a WCMTL reunion. There were a bunch of speakers on the bill from Montreal, @jeremyclarke @ggiiaa @zoonini @SandySidhu @lieslbarrell @cafenoirdesign, not including a handful of Montreal’ers that made the trek out to Toronto to attend the WordCamp, the Rennicks ( @andrea_r, @wpmuguru) and of course Big Al!

It was truly a blast hanging out with everybody, meeting new people from the community, bumping into old friends, and seeing family.

What made it successful

• Venue -George Brown St. James Campus . Big comfy rooms, plugs at every seat, good lighting, and big screens.
• Location – Downtown Toronto, near hotels, shopping, food, bars, transportation, and more …
• Speakers – An exceptional list of speakers from all over tNorth America! It was also nice to see some familiar faces.
• Attendees – Friendly, outgoing, smart, and interesting. What more could you ask for!
• After Party – Hernandos was a cool Mexican resto/bar in the St. Lawrence Market area. It is also now the birth place of DirtyGoogle!

If you missed my presentation you can check it out here.

Some magic moment

With so many great people you can imagine how many “Magic Moments” there were, however the most re-memorable experience for me was the birth of DirtyGoogle, thanks to a girl in a mustache at a Mexican bar and to all the founding members, you know who you are

DirtyGoogle Founding Members

… and finally … BIG THANKS to the organizers (Al Davis, Craig Taylor, Andy McIlwain)for all the hard work they put in and congrats on a successful WordCamp!

See you all next year!

Once again digibomb is reinventing himself!

As many of you already know I’m no longer with Vanilla. You also probably know about my side project PressWork. What you don’t know is that I was recently offered an amazing job as Senior Community Manager at Mega Brands. If you are not familiar with Mega Brands you will be familiar with Mega Bloks, one of Canada’s largest toy companies. If you’re  parent like me, then you know that Mega Bloks are a household name and your kids probably play with them all the time.

As Senior Community Manager I will be responsible for many things, including social strategies, online community building, and most importantly managing and organizing events, meetups, and more. This is really the perfect job for me and I couldn’t be more excited to join an amazing team of people and an outstanding company whose product is already such a big part of my life.

This will be my first stab at tech for non tech. I’m looking forward to the challenge of bringing my expertise to an off the shelf product instead of a digital one.

I’ll be blogging and tweeting more about my adventures at Mega Brands and make sure to follow us on twitter @megabloks to see what we’re up to. Over the next few weeks I will be attending and helping coordinate our brand an presence at ComiCon New York and BlizzCon Anaheim. If you a fan of Mega Bloks or into Halo, Starcraft, and WoW collectibles and building make sure you check out what we’re doing in these areas over the next few months, and if you’re going to be at ComiCon or BlizzCon come by the booth and say hello!

People always ask me “Why do you it? It’s a lot of work with no return!” This is almost half true. It is a lot of work, tremendously time consuming, costly (even with sponsors), and very difficult to balance with a family and full time job. But, the return is HUGE! You have the opportunity to make an impact on your community and you get to work with some really awesome people.

With WordCamp the return is even greater for me. I’ve been a WordPress designer, developer, and “evangelist” for over 5 years. WordPress has paid my bills, put food on my table, help support my family, and most importantly giving me the opportunity to meet some exceptional people and develop long lasting friendships.

This years WordCamp was a massive success. We, Jeremy Clarke, Shannon Smith, Carl Alexandre, and myself, the organizers could not be happier with how everything turned out. We had an incredible lineup of speakers from all over the world in two languages, generous sponsors that not only helped make this event possible but even took part in helping out during the event and actively participated in talks.

There’s more! The creators of WordPress, Automattic, set up a “Happiness Bar” staffed with employees. This was a great opportunity for attendees to get questions answered from the masters themselves one on one, or just hangout when not attending a talk. To top it all off Matt Mullenweg was our keynote speaker and was also available to answer questions and hangout with attendees.

It was also cool to run the first ever “WordPress Hackfest“, in Montreal, organized by Stephane Daury, Andrew Nacin, and Carl Alexandre. The Montreal WordPress community came together to jointly work on WordPress core tickets and submit patches to help put Montreal on the WordPress map in style.

What made it successful

• Venue -UQAM’s Cœur des sciences.
• Location – Downtown Montreal, near hotels, shopping, food, bars, transportation, and more …
• Speakers – An exceptional list of speakers from all over the world! It was also nice to see some familiar faces.
• Keynote – Matt Mullenweg held a town hall on day 2. Interesting to note, that during Matt’s talk WordPress hit 50 million sites!
• WordPress Happiness Bar – Experts from Autommatic hang around and help attendees with any questions they have.
• WordPress Hackfest – The Montreal WP community came together to jointly work on WordPress Core tickets.
• Food – St. Viateur bagels every morning and Woo Themes sponsored Starbucks coffee. Catered lunch on day and pizza lunch on day 2.
• Attendees – Friendly, outgoing, smart, and interesting. What more could you ask for!
• After Party – Free beer! Telus sponsored and AMAZING after party at the St. Sulpice where both myself and Big Al (Al Davis Telus sponsor) ran the bar, our drinks “the Caribbean digibomb” was a HUGE success and even trended on twitter.
• Ice Cream – Microsoft Web Matrix sponsored and Ice Cream on day 1. Who doesn’t love a  tasty cold treat on a hot day

Some magic moments

For me every moment was magical It was truly flattering to see so many people, over 300, come out and support WordCamp Montreal this year. I feel truly honored to be a part of a such strong local community and amazing global community of passionate, vocal, motivated, and happy WordPress users. This was a year not forget and next year will be epic!

See you all next year!

Photo Creds: Elida Arizza

Preamble

I’ve been organizing events for many years, big and small. I know how much work is involved in running a large conference with 500+ attendees or putting together a small meetup with 10 people. Either way, it takes time and dedication to ensure success.

Over the years I have organized many successful events and had a few failures along the way, it’s par for the course. I’ve learned many valuable lessons from each experience, and thus many people have asked why and how I do it? These are not easy questions to answer.

This post is part of a collection of posts mostly tips, advice, and some rants about organizing an event. I should mention that these posts are in no particular order, they are not aimed at any one or any organization in particular, and are solely my opinions from my experiences. I am not an expert, just a dedicated and passionate community leader and organizer.

This is your opportunity to ask me anything about organizing an event, give me feedback or criticism (I don’t mind), or add your thoughts and advice to any giving question. This should be an interesting experiment on a somewhat controversial topic for those of us in the event organizing game!

Posts in this collection so far:

• Check the Dates
• Budgeting

So let’s begin!

In this post I want to discuss, what I consider, the most important aspect of the pre-planning an event, budgeting!

In the inaugural post of “Things to Consider When planning an Event” we discussed the importance of checking the dates. Checking your dates is essential, but without a budget and plan to meet that budget there will be no dates check.

I often get asked by new organizes, volunteers, and sometimes sponsors, what criteria I use to determine the budget of an event. Most people who attend a successful event don’t realize how much work, time and money it takes to pull it off. I have seen many events fail because of an inaccurate budget.  It’s great to be enthusiastic about planning an event, and even better if there is interest from sponsors, however, before you ask for or accept any financial backing make sure you sit down with your team and produce a document outlining everything you will need to pay for from pencils to venue. It’s very easy to get caught up in the excitement and forget a make or break item.

I like to use google docs for this and create a very simple spreadsheet. I break it down into two areas Expenses vs. Revenue.

Expenses can be broken down into three basic sections: Venue, Food, and Swag. That being said, every event is unique and you can add to this list based on your needs. For each section you should determine your estimated cost vs. your actual cost.

For example, to determine roughly what you are going to spend on a venue you need to

1. Make a rough estimate of how many people you expect to attend, this is your goal. Tip: Always pad this number (better to have extra space instead of turning people away or having them packed in uncomfortably).
2. Make a list of local venues, contact them and get quotes. Tip: Make sure to ask what is offered/included, e.g., chairs, AV equipment, WiFi, etc.

Here’s a sample google doc illustrating venue expenses.

To help you get started, here is a basic list of expenses:

Venue

• Rooms
• AV
• WiFi
• Technician
• Chairs & Tables

Food

• Coffee & other breakfast items in the morning (each day)
• Catered lunch (each day)
• A desert table
• After parties – alcohol & food
• Speaker/Sponsor dinner

Swag

• Tees
• Stickers
• Gifts for speakers
• Prizes

Misc.

• Lanyards
• Badges
• Posters around the event space
• Printed schedules

Remember this is just a basic list, you could easily end up doubling this depending on the size and scope of your event.

Revenue on the other hand is easier to break down.

• Ticket sales
• Sponsors

You could add to this list as well.

Budgeting is never easy and takes a lot of work. I recommend you start by getting a basic list together, then go over it with your team. If you’re organizing without a team, make sure you have someone else look over it and make sure you haven’t forgot anything.

I also have to give thanks to @CafeNoirDesign, who is one of the co-organizers with me for WordCamp Montreal, she is responsible for majority of our budget and has taught me a lot. In fact, I could not have written this post without her

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you have any other suggestions for checking dates?

If you have a question about organizing an event or a specific event topic you would like me to discuss please send all suggestions to dropit(@)dropthedigibomb(dot)com I will be more than happy to help

Vancouver – beautiful, clean, friendly, and wet! It rains so much that most hotels provide their guests with complimentary umbrellas, seriously. If it wasn’t for the rain and the cost of living, which is by far the highest in Canada, I may actually consider moving there one day. Despite the weather, I had a FANTASTIC time in Vancouver during open source week. I had the opportunity to check out a handful of small events, meet some really cool people, savour some fantastic seafood, take in beautiful sites, re-unite with family, and of course the honor of speaking at WordCamp Developers and Make Web Not War.

If you missed my presentation at both events you can check it out on slideshare.

For easier reading I have broken this post down into 2 parts:

• WordCamp Developer recap
• Make Web Not Wat recap

WordCamp Developers

I thoroughly enjoyed each presentation at #WCDEV, and it was great to see some heavyweights like Andrew Nacin, Lorelle VanFossen, Steve Heffernan, and Justin Sainton come out and play.

It was unfortunate however I did not a get a chance to see Mark Reale, and old friend, colleague, and student of mine talk. I was really looking forward to hi presentation, and from what I heard it ROCKED the house!

In terms of my presentation, I took a gamble this year and decided to do a developer talk, in the developer track, and show no code. At first people were confused, and a little disappointed, but when I turned on the digibomb magic I soon won over the crowd. As usual a WordPress presentation turned into “tell me more about Vanilla”.

I’ve been to a lot of WordCamps, and I have to say this was by far the best organized. The organizers, @vanessa_chu, @Mor10, @AnnyChih, thought of every little detail leading right up to the event and during. Most impressively was how well they stuck to the schedule, everything was on time, which as we all know can usually be a fail.

I also really enjoyed the keynote, most of the time you get some hot shot who stands up there tooting his own horn This time it was more of a town hall with the one and only Lorelle VanFossen doing a one-on-one interview with great Andrew Nacin (ex firefighter).

More pics on flickr.

From one WordCamp organizer to another “kudos” job well done guys, I can’t wait until next year.

What made it successful

• Venue -SFU Harbor Center, great views, centrally located, easy to get around.
• Location – Downtown Vancouver, near hotels, shopping, food, bars, transportation, and more …
• Speakers – It was great to see so many diverse speakers. It was also nice to see some familiar faces.
• Food – Coffee, some really sexy tea “Yumberry”, bagels, and other sweet morning indulgences,  and a nice selection of sandwiches for lunch.
• Attendees – Friendly, outgoing, smart, and interesting. What more could you ask for! The people of Vancouver are very friendly but not as rambunctious as us Montrealers.
• After Party – Free beer and food! Ok, there were some cool people there as well.. Unfortunately I had to sit through a Canucks game, which is so bad, I do like the team but I felt like a schmuck sitting there in my Habs jacket

Make Web Not War

This was my third year attending and presenting at Make Web Not War. I’ve been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to take part in this great web festival in 3 different cities (Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver), 2 languages, and 2 coasts. As a professional speaker and community manager it has been quite the unique social and web experience to see how different function from one end of the country to other. It has also been interesting to see how the open source perspective on Microsoft has evolved over the past 3 years as they (Microsoft) continue to reach out and expand their open source initiative.

There has been an obvious departure from the “Microsoft sucks and is evil” attitude as both communities begin to understand each other better, develop mature relationships, and most importantly learn how to adopt each others technology. It’s interesting to note how many open source communities have ported their software over to  Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer : WordPress, MODx, phpBB, TikiWiki, and (soon) Vanilla, just to name a few. It works both ways, not only are open source communities adopting Microsoft technology Microsoft is also adopting open source, not that long 13.5 million Microsoft LiveSpaces switched to WordPress, that’s a huge move for Microsoft and an even bigger win for open source.

What I find most fascinating, after 3 years of attending this event, people are s still asking “Why is Microsoft doing this?”.

That’s what make this conference so important. It attempts, and succeeds in many ways, to show the diversity of web and how open source communities and proprietary  software developers/producers are making attempts at working together for a better web, hence “Make Web Not War”.

Ok, enough preamble … I really did enjoy the conference this year, it has come a long way and continues to surprise me each year. Also, it was great after 3 years to get the main stage for my presentation and be able to ROCK IT OUT to over 200 people at 10 in the morning, there is no recapping my talk, you had to be there to live the digibomb magic

It was also really great to hang out with the Web Not War team again specifically @interopqueen and @lydiamale (these girls rock!). Plus I got the chance to see Mark Reale do his thang, considering I missed it at #WCDEV 2 days earlier.

More pics on flickr.

What made it successful

• Venue -MASIK, a funky art gallery, really chill and cool atmosphere, but not central.
• Speakers – It was great to see so many diverse speakers. It was also nice to see some familiar faces. Most importantly covered the gamut of the web.
• Food – Props to the caterers! The food was awesome.
• Attendees – Friendly, outgoing, smart, and interesting. What more could you ask for! The people of Vancouver are very friendly but not as rambunctious as us Montrealers.
• After Party – Very cool spot called Raw Canvas, you eat drink and paint! Something I would totally expect in the plateau (Montreal).

Good people, good times …

As I’ve already mentioned, my biggest take away are the people I met, the agencies and firms I discovered, and most importantly the friends I made. I would be remiss if I did not shout out to the wonderful people that made this experience worthwhile. I would list them all here, but that would be a ridiculously long list. You know who you all are, thank you for a wonderful experience and I hope to see you all next year!

Oh, and I will totally be back next year, this time I’m bringing rubber boots and an umbrella!

Preamble

I’ve been organizing events for many years, big and small. I know how much work is involved in running a large conference with 500+ attendees or putting together a small meetup with 10 people. Either way, it takes time and dedication to ensure success.

Over the years I have organized many successful events and had a few failures along the way, it’s par for the course. I’ve learned many valuable lessons from each experience, and thus many people have asked why and how I do it? These are not easy questions to answer.

The Answer

I’ve decided to put together a collection of posts mostly tips, advice, and some rants about organizing an event. I should mention that these posts are in no particular order, they are not aimed at any one or any organization in particular, and are solely my opinions from my experiences. I am not an expert, just a dedicated and passionate community leader and organizer.

This is your opportunity to ask me anything about organizing an event, give me feedback or criticism (I don’t mind), or add your thoughts and advice to any giving question. This should be an interesting experiment on a somewhat controversial topic for those of us in the event organizing game!

So let’s begin!

I want to start with a very important and simple rule of thumb you should always follow in the pre-planning stages, check the dates!

This is one of my biggest pet peeves with new organizers (sometimes veterans forget too) is checking what dates, in your city, are available. Way to often organizers make the mistake of planning an event on the same day or night as another event. This can be easily prevented with a few very simple and quick steps.

• Google – you can easily search, with the right keywords, for events on a specific date in your city. Example: City Name and Type of Event (design, tech, etc) and Date
• Check for events on popular event listing sites: Plancast, Lanyrd, Eventbrite, GarysGuide, Meetup, twtvite, community sites that have event calendars (for example in Montreal I use Next Montreal), or any large community news portal related to your event.
• Usergroup/Meetup/Community sites related to your event. Example: if you are running a PHP developer meetup check your local PHP Usergroup site for their calendar of events. All communities list what events they or others are running each month.
• Check community papers, magazines, or other publications – yes some people still put ads in print!
• Check/join related newsgroups, forums, feeds, or mailing lists – I know it clutters your inbox, but your event will thank you for it!
• Finally, word of mouth – Ask around on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network.

It sounds like a lot of work, but I can tell you from experience it only takes a few a few hours and if you are serious about being an event organizer it needs to be done. If you want your event to be successful, which in most cases means having a good turn out, competing for attendees is not going to help.

Sometimes it can’t be avoided! There are only so many days in a month and in some cities, like Montreal, they are very busy with events all year round. If this is the case try to choose a night where there is little or no cross over of attendees. As a final step, you may even be able to merge events if you reach out to the organizers.

Personally, I also believe it is the right thing to do. No, there is no written set of ethics for organizing an event, but why step on other organizers toes or make your community choose sides. As organizers we need to work together for the common good of our, sometimes shared, communities. In the long run it’s better for everyone!

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you have any other suggestions for checking dates?

If you have a question about organizing an event or a specific event topic you would like me to discuss please send all suggestions to dropit(@)dropthedigibomb(dot)com I will be more than happy to help

Recently I had the opportunity to speak at WordCamp Miami. I can honestly say, as a veteran speaker at many WordCamps, this was my favorite by far. I know what you’re thinking: Miami, palm trees, beaches, warm weather, etc … granted, none of these pleasures made it difficult to enjoy, but, from one WordCamp organizer to another, David and his incredible team of dedicated volunteers and gracious sponsors did a wonderful job of putting together an AMAZING WordCamp.

If you missed my presentation you can check it out on slideshare.

Highlights

Where to begin …

Every presentation was good, and it was great to see some heavyweights like Mark Jaquith, Andrew Nacin, Ptah Dunbar, and Matt Martz come out and play.

My favorite highlight from the event – The morning of WordCamp Miami I woke up extra early to figure out where I was going. The hotel directed me to the Miami Metrorail, the local public transportation system, which boasts FREE WiFi, very cool! After purchasing a day pass I was informed that the next southbound train was in 40mins. So, I tweeted that I was hanging around Coconut Grove station and trying to make my way to WordCamp. I have to admit, as a Montrealer, not a bad place to wait. The temperature was 23c with a cool breeze, and my vista was palm trees and the Miami skyline, sure beats Lionel-Groulx on a  busy morning. After 30mins+ of waiting the train was coming down the track when all of the sudden I heard my name being called “Brendan, is there a Brendan, or digibomb here?” I looked down the platform an saw a young woman holding a piece of paper calling for me. I walked towards her and said “Yes, that’s me!” and she said “We saw you tweet about being stuck here, so we came to give you a lift to WordCamp!”
Thank you @thealina and Stephanie (sorry, did not get your handle) for the ride! You guys are AWESOME!

This is pretty much the coolest things that has ever happened to me at a WordCamp. It really illustrates how close we all are as a community, that WP guy in Canada is treated like family all the way down in South Florida. This really set the tone of the conference for me. The rest of the day was equally as enjoyable and educational. Forget southern hospitality, Florida is where it’s at!

Coconut Groove Metrorail Station

Miami Skyline from Coconut Grove Station

Another great highlight was the after party at Bourgainevillea’s in South Miami. I don’t have exact numbers, but it felt like most people showed up. Other than the great conversations and cheap beer the best part of the night was the Cuban band that played, Palo!, they rocked the place.

WordCamp After Party

What made it successful

• Venue -University of Miami campus, wow, what a beautiful campus. Wish I went to school there.
• Location – Miami! Do I really need to say more?
• Speakers – It was great to see o many diverse speakers. It was also nice to some familiar faces.
• Food – Coffee, bagels, and of course Florida orange juice to start the morning off, and a nice selection of sandwiches for lunch.
• Attendees – Friendly, outgoing, smart, and interesting. What more could you ask for! South Floridians are great people, seriously considering moving here …
• After Party – As a non Florida residence, the after party was exactly what I was looking for in terms of discovering Miami culture. Great atmosphere, good beer, friendly locals, and of course a Cuban band.

Good people, good times …

As I’ve already mentioned, my biggest take away are the people I met, the agencies and firms I discovered, and most importantly the friends I made. I would be remiss if I did not shout out to the wonderful people that made this experience worthwhile. I would list them all here, but that would be a ridiculously long list. You know who you all are, thank you for a wonderful WordCamp and Miami experience and I hop to see you all next year!

There’s some more great pics on flickr and facebook …

David, if you need any help next year let me know. I would be more than happy to come down a few months early and help prepare. Maybe @CrescoMedia would like to adopt a Canadian?

Social Media Breakfast is a global monthly meetup held by social media types for social media types. Social Media Breakfast was founded by Bryan Person, a self proclaimed “morning guy”.

Rising early to get a good start on the day is his thing. So is eating a good breakfast — Mama always said it’s the most important meal of the day, after all!

Read more about SMB.

The Montreal chapter of SMB is still relatively new. I went to my first meetup last month and really enjoyed the talks, the attendees, and of course the breakfast. It’s a great way to start off the day!

This month I will be speaking at SMB with @brianrotsztein, and I am really looking forward to it. The topic is yet to be determined, but you can guarantee it will be exhilarating, if you’ve seen me speak before you know what I’m talking about

The next SMB Montreal is March 30th. No information or registration has been posted yet, but you can check out their blog to stay in the loop.

See you all there!