In just a few weeks, Joel, Steve and myself will be departing for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for a week to attend the inaugural WordCamp US. This is an exciting trip for a number of reasons:

• I’ve never been to Philly
• This is the first ever WordCamp US
• This is likely to be the single largest gathering of WordPress users in history
• I’ve been invited to attend the Community Summit for the first time
• I’ve also been selected as a speaker

The talk I proposed that was selected is Contributing to WordPress Meta which is one that interests me quite a bit, though it will only be a 10 minute lightning talk. I’ve already spent a lot of time preparing to make the most of that time.

I’m super excited to participate in the Community Summit as well. Over the past year I’ve gotten much more involved in things like WordCamp planning and contributing to projects like WordCamp.org and WordPress.tv. For the Summit, I’ll likely spend most of my time working with the WordPress.tv team on some exciting new initiatives we’re collaborating on to make the site so much better.

Of course, every trip away from home is a little bittersweet to me. This will be the longest trip away from my wife since we’ve been married and I hate doing things without her.