A couple weeks ago my business partner and I returned from an exciting five day adventure to San Francisco, California for the annual WordCamp SF. It is traditionally the largest WordCamp in the world with attendees from all corners of the globe, including many of the most important and influential members of the WordPress community. Thanks to some generosity from a good friend, Steve and I were able to attend for the first time.

I haven’t the time or inclination to write up a comprehensive review or summary of what I experienced but if you are interested in more detail than I’d recommend this awesome post by another good friend. Overall, the event was incredible and I’m excited to be diving even deeper into the warm and welcoming WP community.

For now, I’ll share just a few tidbits.

I met Marcus Couch!

I had an awesome conversation in the morning with Marcus Couch and his wife. They are awesome people and it was a real treat meeting them. We exchanged dog pictures and joked around for quite a while to start the day and then again later at the after party. Marcus will also be our guest on WP Round Table this coming Monday.

I hung out with Nicole Arnold (+ other cool folks from Alley Interactive)

 

Nicole is a great person and we had a nice time chatting and hanging out. She was also a guest on our podcast recently as well.

I sat through a few amazing presentations

Most of my time at WCSF was spent networking, meeting new people, catching up with old friends and generally socializing but I did rest my feet a few times and caught some top-notch speakers including…

I saw the Dradcast live

One of my favorite podcasts is the weekly WP show known as the Dradcast. It features Brad Williams and Dre Armeda, both of Web Dev Studios and highlights a new guest from the community just like we do on WP Round Table. At WCSF they did a few live interviews including this one with Clef founder Brennen Byrne:

 I met….a lot of other people

The best part of it all was meeting so many awesome folks. Listing everyone would be quite difficult but I did particularly enjoy chatting with Matt Boynes, Patrick Rauland, Dan Griffiths, Louis Reingold, Greg Douglas, Andrea Rennick, Rich Robinkoff, Nikhil Vimal (to name just a few) as well as catching up with Cory, Michelle, Sam, Steve, Topher, Brian, Jesse and so many others.

I got more than a few t-shirts

I ate a burrito

I biked across the Golden Gate Bridge

All things considered, it was an amazing trip. WordCamps rock. So does California. So does my wife for encouraging me to go. I hope to go again.