WordCamps Galore

I know I sort of disappeared from WordCamps last year. The whole #fakemom thing seemed like the more important responsibility. Now that my mom has moved down to Savannah and Morgan is doing well, though, it’s been okay to ramp up the travel again. I’ll once again be roving from WordCamp to WordCamp, meeting WordPress users, taking suggestions/complaints/bribes, and making sure things are running smoothly on the organizational front.  I’ll be hitting Birmingham, Atlanta, Miami, and Phoenix between now and the end of February.

If you are planning a WordCamp and want me to come to yours, let me know (or ask Zé/Andrea while you’re going through the approval process). Since we usually wind up with multiple WordCamps per weekend during the summer and fall especially, I usually try to make commitments based on who asks first. If two ask at the same time, the one I haven’t been to before will win. If I haven’t been to either, then I choose the one where there’s not someone else from core and/or Automattic already going. The one with better weather and less-annoying travel may also have a very slight edge.

And yes, once I’ve got my local meetups up and running for a couple of months, I’m thinking WordCamp Savannah/Tybee, maybe before the summer season really makes things crazy (and hot).

WCSF Shirt

I am super-grateful that Randall Munroe replied to my IRC ping and gave his permission for us to use an xkcd strip as the basis for the WordCamp San Francisco shirts. You all know how much I love working on WC shirt designs (2 years in NYC, 1 in Savannah), so working on this one was an extra treat. #867 was one of my first choices, since it’s conference based. I changed herpetologists and ornithologists to developers and bloggers, and wrote some replacement text. Chelsea Otakan turned the PNG into a vector and used a fan-created font to approximate the look of real xkcd text. Mike Ritchey at High Voltage Productions (formerly Lo-fi Custom), who works with a lot of WordCamps on custom shirt printing, did some adjusting to make sure it would be legible. They’re being printed right now on sweatshop-free tees in a cheerful, summery blue color. And here is the WCSF2011 shirt art:

3.0 Kitteh Today

For the WordCamp Mid-Atlantic folks, as promised:

"Boy, are my paws tired!" (caption by @rboren)

Grizzly Adams Needs a Home

Grizzly, taken just now

Most of the littermates of the 3.0 kitteh have been spoken for, but there’s one kitten left for adoption. My niece named her Grizzly when she was tiny b/c she was the crybaby of the litter (kind of like calling the biggest guy in prison “Tiny”). She quickly grew out of that and we appended the Adams on her name, though we usually just call her Grizz. If you give her a good home (which should include spaying, please!), you can call her whatever you like.

Grizz is all black (which makes it hard to get cute pictures of her, sorry, but trust me that she is gorgeous) with short fur that is silkier than my dead grandmother’s mink coat from the ’40s. Seriously, petting this cat is one of the most luxurious tactile experiences I’ve ever had. If we hadn’t had to restrict ourselves to keeping two, I’d definitely have kept her. She has a delicate face and a sleek body with a normal/long tail. She slinks as elegantly as a panther and pounces around with the joy all the kittens had when they were still tiny.

I used a flash to try and make her more visible.

She’s litter trained (we use the recycled pine stuff that is compostable/flushable), and knows how to use one of those cardboard scratchers. She’s not a slathering lapcat, but purrs when petted, is happy to be picked up (unless she’s in the middle of something), and does a very satisfying head rub when she’s happy. She’s used to other cats (has been living with her littermates, mother, and my original cat, Lucy, who’s 13) and would probably be happy to be in a household with another animal. That said, she’d also probably be fine being the only cat… not much seems to faze her.

Detective Mittens (left) spooning Grizz (right)

I’m moving out to Tybee Island and need to find her a home asap. If anyone from the Savannah area is interested, I’ll be in town this Friday, and then again next week when I move, so could deliver her. Anyone coming to WordCamp Savannah could also pick her up at/after the event. Anywhere else and we can talk about when/where/how. Interested? She’s an awesome little cat/big kitten (about 16 weeks), and I’d like to be sure she gets a home where she’ll be loved and well cared-for. She’ll make someone a wonderful, loving companion: could it be you? Shoot me an email using the contact form on this site to tell me why you’d be a good person to take “the Grizz”and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Tell your friends!

Upcoming Trips

I have booked a buttload of travel today. If you’re going to be at any of these events/in any of these places and think we should meet up, let me know.

April 7-8: Norwood, MA for WordPress University, a NERCOMP-produced mini-conference for academics using WordPress, organized by Randall Rode from Yale University.

April 9-12: Rome, NY to visit my mom, clean out a room for her, and get all papers necessary to do my taxes. Yes, cutting it close. Shut up.

April 16-20: Tybee Island, GA to hit the Tybee Island Wine Festival (April 17) and generally relax with the twins over the weekend, then possibly some coworking with Sheri.

April 23-25: UC Irvine for WordCamp Orange County, where I’m giving the keynote.

April 25-May 14: San Francisco, CA for WordCamp SF followed by working at Pier 38 with my visiting coworkers. *Maybe* I’ll do sangria one evening at the pier. Oh, and a .org code sprint May 3-4.

May 31-June 4: Portland, OR for Open Source Bridge conference. Not speaking, just attending.

June 4-7: Chicago, IL for WordCamp Chicago. Will be doing a presentation on creating custom menus with 3.0.

Still to book: Denver, UK, Doe Bay?, Burning Man, Mid-Atlantic, Automattic meetup.

Recent WordCamp Slides

As I start on my presentation for WordCamp Ireland tomorrow, it occurs to me that I never posted my slides from Boston or Miami. Oops. Here they are.

WordCamp Boston, ending Ignite presentation announcing the WordPress Foundation:

WordCamp Miami, What’s Coming in WordPress 3.0:

WordPress Resolutions

At WordCamp Atlanta this past weekend, I gave the opening keynote, “WordPress Resolutions: What to Expect in 2010.” It went pretty well, and more people approached me about volunteering than at any previous WordCamp, which was cool. Here are my slides:

There’s also a video of the talk (I don’t come on until a few minutes in).

I talked about the plan for WordPress 3.0 (the merge with MU, custom post types, blog menu improvements, core plugins, new default theme, stricter scope control), being nice when communicating with each other, doing more to involve design/ux contributors, mentoring programs, increasing diversity among the core contributor pool, the ideas forum, redesigning WordPress.org and WordCamp.org, and mini-camps for kids to get them into WP development. I also said my personal resolution was to convince 5 theme developers to go GPL in 2010. More detail on all these topics will be forthcoming as they get fleshed out a bit.

Busy

WordCamp NYC was awesome. I’ll be at FoWD all day today, but will start catching up on the post-WordCamp chores tomorrow. Also, back to UI stuff!

Testing WordPress, PDX Edition

I’ll be here all week, folks.

Portland WordPress users: I’ll be in town tonight through next Tuesday morning to attend WordCamp, and would like to do some usability testing with you lovely people while I’m around. I have time slots all day tomorrow (Thursday), a few on Friday, a couple before/during/after WordCamp (though those will mostly be very short), and a couple on Tuesday morning. If you’d like to participate and can spare 20-40 mintues to help improve the next version of WordPress, send me an email (you can use the contact form on this site) or send me a message on Twitter (@janeforshort).

iPhone testing at WordCamp Portland

I’ll be doing some usability testing of WordPress and the WordPress iPhone app (new beta version!) while I’m in Portland for WordCamp (9/16-22). I’ve got five beta tester slots being held for participants (we can only have a total of 100 beta testers). If you use WordPress on your iPhone and would like to try the new beta version (and will be attending WordCamp), let me know.

**Update: Due to high demand, I’ll be raffling off the slots. Send me an email, or @janeforshort on twitter by 9pm tonight pacific time to let me know you’re interested, and I’ll pick 4 beta testers at random (one slot was already promised when I realized there would be more demand than supply). If you don’t get picked, you can still help with testing… I’ll have my iPhone at the WordCamp, and will let people try the beta app that way as well.