My Experience at WordCamp

So this past weekend I went to my first WordCamp, which was held in Raleigh, NC. Overall, it seemed to be a good experience and I would rank the event itself as a success.

For myself, I met a number of other WordPress users and developers, and picked up a few tips from the different sessions I attended. However, I may have oversold the event to myself going in.

You see, I wanted to attend this event with the hopes that I would find some earth shattering nugget of information that would propel me to a higher level of WordPress development and understanding. So going in with that anticipation, I must say that in some ways I was disappointed. It’s not that there wasn’t a wealth of knowledge… there was. But as I went from session to session, it seemed that for me the content of each session was more of a review of what I already knew! Of course, since this is not a negative post, you must know that I did pick up some really neat tips and a couple ideas which I will work on adding to my programming.

While I found myself initially dealing with a bit of disappointment, it hit me all of the sudden… a VERY encouraging point of view! I came to realize that I actually know more than I thought I knew! I could ask very intelligent questions, contribute to conversations, answer questions for others… and, in some cases, felt I could have lead a couple of the sessions I had attended – and in no way is that a knock on anyone that lead the sessions – they were all great! Its just that all of the sudden I felt a bit of WordPress maturity come over me and my confidence level jumped!

Its not that I was a bumbling idiot when I spoke about WordPress before this weekend. I have been able to make WordPress do a number of things that it did not do out of the box, and beyond the standard plugins. However, this was my first time being around others in the community that I respect and look up to and realized that (while they are still a bit ahead of me in many ways) I have a solid footing in my understanding and development of WordPress, and that I might actually be able to contribute to this great community.

While I do not expect to the be next Andrew Nacin “rockstar” of WordPress (and his session on plugin development was one that really did challenge me), I feel I can be an active and contributing part of the community in some way. So I will be on the look out as to where I may best fit in and can help add value to the project.

So in the end, I come away from my first WordCamp excited about WordPress even more, having met some great associates in the community and having gained a great bit of confidence in what I know and understand and can do with and in WordPress! I would say the weekend was well spent, and look forward to my next WordCamp! (Charlotte, anyone?)