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Recently I’ve been getting back to my roots and doing a lot of public speaking again. Last night I presented at t meex6 and here are the 5 points I covered:

• #killcommunity step 1 Twitter #fails
• #killcommunity step 2 Facebook f**k ups!
• #killcommunity step 3 frigging forums!
• #killcommunity step 4 I got a blog!
• #killcommunity step 5 – follow steps 1-4 and repeat!

If you have spent anytime talking to people in either the Montreal or Toronto WordPress communities, chances are that at some point you have heard the name Brendan Sera-Shriar, or as he is more likely referred to, Digibomb.

Brendan Sera-Shriar from Make Web Not War on Vimeo.

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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!

I’m very excited to be speaking at WordCamp Toronto this year on behalf of Mega Bloks and PressWork. As an ex Torontonian and WordCamp Toronto organizer (2209) I’m looking forward to heading back to my old stomping ground. I’m really looking forward to seeing how far WCTO has come over the past few years, re-uniting with old friends, and seeing family.

I’ll be honest, I don’t make it out to TO often, I’m a jaded ex TO’er living in French Canada, but I’ll try to keep an open mind

This year I’ll be doing a dual presentation. I’ll be speaking on behalf of Mega Bloks and how we are using PressWork to grow our social presence. I’ll also be giving a few cool Mega Block prizes at my presentation so don’t miss out!

See you soon Toronto!

On Wednesday August 3rd at 7:42 am I became a father for the second time! Nathaniel Joseph Sera-Shriar ( or as I refer to him digibomb 3.0, my first son being digibomb 2.0) was born.

As with my first son so far it has been an amazing, but exhausting, experience. My wife and I could not be happier. He’s strong, healthy, and already growing up before our eyes

This alone is a life changer, however it’s only the tip of the iceberg. As many of you know my other full-time job is Social Manager at Vanilla Forums, or should I say was. After 2 incredible years at Vanilla I have flown the coup and started my own Startup “PressWork” with good friend and now co-founder @cbavota.

My years spent at Vanilla taught me a lot about the industry, Startup life and culture, and gave me the necessary skills to move on and start my own thing. I have mad respect for the team at Vanilla and wish them the best of luck!

A little more about PressWork …

PressWork is a free, open-source theme framework built for WordPress 3.2 using HTML5 and CSS3. It was created out of a need for a framework that catered to all types of users. As developers, we needed it to be powerful enough to allow for complete customization, which is why every element in PressWork can be hooked into. But we also didn’t want to scare away beginners and that’s why we came up with the PressWork front-end toolbox, which gives users the ability to change their site’s layout and design in a live preview environment while taking advantage of all the bells and whistles that WordPress already has to offer.

We just launched our first premium theme “InstaPress” which we are really excited about and a premium suite of plugins for PressWork called “BriefCase“.

I know what you’re thinking, I must be mad to start a new business venture with a 2 year old son, a new born, and a wife on maternity leave. Well, you’re right! However sometimes in life you need to take risks in order to succeed. I feel great about this decision. Don’t get me wrong, it’s scary, and it will be a long hard road, but totally worth it in the end. We have already seen some success with PressWork. PressWork has been downloaded over 30,000 times in the last month, we made the top 15 most popular themes on WordPress.org, and Matt Mullenweg mentioned us in his “State of the Word” at WCSF this year.

dropping digibomb’s from coast to coast …

You may have notice that I have slightly re-designed and re-organized the blog. It’s currently running PressWork and a modified version of a premium child theme called “Postly” which will be released soon. I plan on using my blog as a sandbox for PressWork over the next few months testing out new themes and features. So keep watching the blog and let me know what you think.

This is only the beginning of digibomb’s REDUX – I have some other projects up my sleeve

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