WordCamp Victoria 2012 has been announced for January 14, 2012. As a WordPress developer, I’ve attended my fair share of WordCamps, from San Francisco to the Fraser Valley, and organized WordCamp Whistler as well as WordCamp Vancouver. It’s always a pleasure to attend the event organized in our province’s capital as well. Last year I presented “WordPress Plugins to Make Your Blogging Life Easier” showcasing several basic plugins and how you can select the right one for your needs.

I have been asked to be a keynote speaker for WordCamp Victoria 2012 and have prepared the following outline for my talk:

Time Management with WordPress
One of the questions I get asked most often is “when will I find time to blog”. While most of my tips can be applied to almost any platform, there are specific features of WordPress that can save you a lot of publishing time. From the WordPress mobile application (for iPhone), to pairing WordPress with plugins and social media management tools, I’ll discuss ways that you can optimize your blogging time as well as your time spent offline.

Other topics on the schedule so far include multi-site installation, multimedia plugins, social comments, Drupal to WordPress, and more.

Tickets are currently on sale for $22.40 for a full day of WordPress-related talks. It’s a great way to learn more about the platform and network with the online community on Vancouver Island.

WordPress.com powers over 50 million blogs and in total, the WordPress platform powers 22% of all new websites created. This open source content management system is used by your favourite international new outlet to your favourite knitting blog. Miss604.com has been proudly powered by WordPress since 2006 and my company, sixty4media, has been building custom WordPress sites since 2008.

It’s Open Source Week in Vancouver which means a series of events, conferences, and activities celebrating Open Source technologies are taking place around town.

Open Source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in. The non-profit Open Source corporation maintains standards for the good of the community (developers, software users, corporations and governments).

What this means to me is that platforms such as WordPress, that power millions of blogs and website worldwide, are constantly being developed and improved thanks to the contributions of the Open Source community.

As someone who owns a website development firm that specializes in WordPress development, celebrating and promoting its Open Source roots is key. I have done so through attending and speaking at WordCamps (conferences for WordPress users), liveblogging events (on Miss604.com), offering tutorials, promoting WordPress through blog posts and social networks, and organizing WordCamp Whistler (2009) and WordCamp Vancouver (2010).

As a part of Vancouver Open Source Week, there will be a WordCamp:Developers conference on Thursday May 5th, however this is just one of the many events.

The others include a Joomla Mixer Meetup Tuesday May 3rd, Drupal Mixer Wednesday May 4th, Linus User Group Meeting Thursday May 5th, Show & Tell: Storytelling for a Web Made World hosted by The Museum of Vancouver Friday, May 6th, and an HTML Meetup Friday, May 6th.

The week’s biggest event will be Make Web Not War (MWNW), a Canadian conference for designers and developers that has made its way to Vancouver for the first time. It will have a full day of sessions followed by an evening party, the details of which will be announced shortly.

All of the week’s events will offer networking opportunities and the chance to connect with the web community that drives Vancouver’s growing on and offline reputation for excellence in technology. Follow @WebNotWar on Twitter for updates throughout the week.

Cross-posted by Rebecca from Miss604.com

WordCamp Fraser Valley returns for its 3rd year of talks and workshops in Surrey on November 20th, 2010. WordPress is the top blogging platform in the world however it is also used to power millions of websites that you visit each and every day. Its endless theme and plugin capabilities make it one of the reasons why I have been building a business around the platform since 2008.

My company develops WordPress websites, specializing in social media newsrooms that tie blog and multimedia functions into a much more robust website platform. Along with Brave New Code, we hosted WordCamp Vancouver this year and received a fantastic response. I’m hoping that those interested in WordPress, from design and code to using it as a writing tool, will check out WordCamp Fraser Valley this weekend as well.

Speakers include my husband (and business partner) John Bollwitt who is an engineer at CHUM Radio Vancouver. He’ll be talking about how companies can built intranet sites using WordPress to keep their teams informed and in the loop. John has been using WordPress since 2005 and got me hooked on the platform in 2006.

He’ll be joined on the roster by Tris Hussey (author of Using WordPress), Dave Zille, Lynn Robson, and Kulpreet Singh. Raul Pacheco, Danny Bradbury, and Leah Cross will also address how to write and publish your various forms of content using WordPress.

Tickets are still available for $45 so if you’ve ever been curious about WordPress as a user, writer, or developer, these sessions and networking opportunities can’t be beat.

We’re at WordCamp Victoria 2010 today. Rebecca just wrapped with the blogging panel during the lunch break with Raul and Lorraine, so we’re taking a break to get caught up on some food, post some photos, and catch some of the chatter over various WordPress related topics.

There are a lot of great topics being discussed here. Lloyd Budd gave us some great insight on what’s to come from WordPress 3.0, even giving a slight plug to WordCamp Vancouver that we are helping put together with our friends from BraveNewCode, John Biehler, and Kulpreet Sing on June 12th.

If you are interested in WordPress and want to find a way to learn more about it, WordCamps are a great resource to do this. I know I always walk away from these events with something new that usually ends up in a project somewhere down the road.

You can see more of my photos from today on my Flickr set, and there is also a yyjWordCamp Flickr Group to check out as well.

This weekend I presented a quick “Who, What, When, Where, Why” of blogging and online branding for the Travel Media Association of Canada. The conference took place at the brand new Pinnacle Pier in North Vancouver and had a spectacular view of Vancouver from across the inlet. Unfortunately I couldn’t setup my shiny new Epson projector (due to the shining sun through the un-treated floor to ceiling windows) so I did the talk unassisted. I did however promise participants that I would post my slides on Slideshare regardless.

| Get your Presentation Pack

This is my presentation pack from Slideshare in case you would like to view any of my recent slide decks from speaking engagements. The one for TMAC does not have accompanying sound but I’ll try to make it a slidecast in the near future. Enjoy!

WordCamp is returning to Vancouver in the summer of 2010, welcoming WordPress developers, enthusiasts and bloggers once the Olympics have moved out.

We have a great group of people signed on to organize so far who all want to see this event become a smashing success.

It’s still very much in the planning phases so please follow @WordCampYVR for updates from Duane Storey (BraveNewCode), John (sixty4media), or myself. The website will be up at WordCampVancouver.com and it’s already listed on the official WordCamp directory.

Related: See John Biehler’s post about WordCamp Vancouver 2010 as well.

I few weeks ago I was asked to take part in the Cool Twitter Conference, a global event circuit that is making its way to Vancouver this Friday, October 23rd.

CBC Radio’s Steve Pratt will be the keynote and speakers include The Vancouver Sun’s Gillian Shaw, The Georgia Straight’s Stephen Hui, Adam Loving, Eric Becker, Kari Quaas, Ray Levesque, and Lauri Stevens.

My talk will be about using Twitter for personal and business use — knowing when to separate them and also how to remain professional while still being personable and friendly.

Tickets for the event are currently on sale and you can also purchase a voluntary carbon offset. After Vancouver, the conference moves to Anchorage, then on to Orange County, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and off to Dubai November 18th.

The South by Southwest festival brings together music, entertainment, film, technology, social media, and a whole lot of BBQ each year down in Austin, Texas. There has always been a strong Canadian contingency, in particular from the Vancouver area. In preparation for next year’s SXSW Interactive, submissions have been collected and the public is being asked to vote on their favourite topics, which they will see presented in March of 2010.

I took a look through the 2,219 submissions in the PanelPicker and have weeded out some of the gems that are being proposed by some of our own local talent.

• Our good friend John Biehler is putting together a panel about the way we do business: Do Cool Kids Leave When the Suits Arrive?
• With the Olympics coming to Vancouver in 2010 this session proposed by Robert Scales is of great interest: Social Media and the Olympics: A Case Study
• Another one of our good friends, Dave Olson, has prepared: Hitchiking to the Boardroom
• James Chutter has two talks up for your consideration: Ubiquitous Participation: Graffiti Streets to Social Networks and the other is Beta Campaigns: Planning for User Driven Advertising
• Cecily Walker from the Vancouver Public Library proposed: Can I Reserve This Book With My iPhone?
• Ellitot Hurst from Supernova.com wants to talk about things like the CFOX Vancouver Seeds competition: Online Community Saved the Radio Star
• SXSW veteran and photographer Kris Krug is pitching the following: Your Content is You, Your Website is Dead and Listening the the Internet: Online Media Monitoring
• Not from Vancouver but our friend Meghan at Hill & Knowlton has proposed: Passionate People: The Key Ingredient to Social Media Success

The public vote counts for 30% with another 30% coming from staff and 40% decided upon by an advisory board. Should you have a panel submission you’d like us to check out, please feel free to link to it in the comments of this post. Best of luck to our peers and counterparts from Vancouver and we look forward to joining you down in Austin.

On August 22nd we’ll be participating in the second WordCamp Fraser Valley. The day will be laid out in tracks for beginners, intermediate users, developers, and a track just for Twitter use with WordPress.

This will also be our third WordCamp this year, having organized WordCamp Whistler, and attended WordCamp in San Francisco. My specific talk will be about how WordPress can be used for much more than blogging.

I’ll be giving examples of websites powered by WordPress where a blog is not the main feature and sharing some tips on how to achieve this use of the platform. It is in the “beginner” track so it will be far more educational than code-heavy. My hope is to spread the word that WordPress is powerful and easy to use but not just for blogging although that’s how my experience began.

WordCamp Fraser Valley is 9:00am – 5:00pm August 22nd at the SFU campus in Surrey at Central City. Easy to get to by SkyTrain and transit, with plenty of parking as well. Each track is $25 or you can get a ticket to all tracks for $75 by registering online.

The following is cross-posted from Miss604.com

I have the fortunate opportunity to participate in two upcoming conferences, both of which are geared for entrepreneurial women.

The first is the Enterprising Moms Network Conference on June 13th at the River Rock. It will run 11:00am until 5:00pm and sixty4media will have a swag table setup as well. My talk will be at 3:15pm and will be about social media basics specifically used for business. Other speakers that day include travel guru Claire Newell, Rita Kim of the Business Development Back of Canada, Fiona Walsh and many more. The Enterprising Moms Network is a community of business-minded working mothers who meetup regularly for workshops and events. Chapters span from Prince George, to White Rock, and down through Seattle. Proceeds from the conference on June 13th will go to Ronald McDonald House.

My next speaking engagement will be at the Chicks Who Click. It has been held in Kansas City, San Jose, Dallas, Raleigh, and now in Vancouver on June 27th at the Listel Hotel on Robson. Megan Cole, Monica Hamburg, Victoria Revay, Maura Rodgers, Erica Hargreave and Gillian Shaw are all my esteemed co-presenters throughout the day. I’ll be on a panel with Gillian and Erica talking about privacy and transparency online. There will be a tweetup the night before and you can follow all Chicks Who Click updates on the conference blog or Twitter by searching the tag: #CWC09.

John and I have been attending Canada’s largest blogging conference, Northern Voice, since 2007 and each year we’ve contributed liveblogs, podcasts, and been speakers in our own sessions or on the panel.

John speaking at Northern Voice. Credit: John Biehler

This year, I will be on two panels with some amazing individuals.

Who are you? Defining yourself in the online world
Panelists: Jenn Lowther, Rebecca Bollwitt [sixty4media and Miss604], Linda Bustos, and Nadia Nascimento

The panel will discuss the various social networking sites that can be utilized to build your brand online, and identify advantages and pitfalls of these sites, their usage, and their relationship to one another. During the discussion, they will provide context for the growing significance of social networking for personal brands, as we discuss the paths each of us took in order to build our personal online reputations.

Dealing with angry comments, Trolls, Spammers, and Sock Puppets
Panelists: David Eaves, Rebecca Bollwitt

The entire Northern Voice schedule can be found here along with information about the amazing keynotes including Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr.

The conference is sold out on both Friday, February 20th and Saturday February 21st, however plenty of conversations will be happening on Twitter and I will be liveblogging several of the sessions.

This past weekend sixty4media co-hosted WordCamp Whistler alongside Brave New Code. We had originally planned for 50 people and we ended up getting over 100 attendees joining us for the weekend for a day of talks about WordPress and online publishing.

Keynote Lorrelle Van Fossen (aka Lorelle on WordPress)
Dave Olson (Topic, Are you Worthy?)
John Biehler (Topic, How To Sex Up Your Blog With Photos And Video)
Dale Mugford (Topic, WordPress On The Go)
Andy Peatling (Topic, BuddyPress)
Quentin Mulhurt (Topic, WordPress and Search Engine Optimization)
Morten Rand-Hendriksen (Topic, Using WordPress In Alternate Configurations)
Tris Hussey (Topic, Using WordPress as a Generic Content Management system (CMS))

We were very please with the location and the accommodations, while the attendance, input, insights, and presentations exceeded expectations. We definitely look forward to doing this again next year.

You can read the live notes on the WordCamp Whistler website that John setup and I also have a few day blogs up on Miss604.com.

Today I’ll be speaking at the Making a Scene Conference on Granville Island. This annual event provides presentations, workshops, and panels about the professional theatre industry. I was asked to sit on a panel, “The New Face of Marketing”, to hopefully address questions about blogger outreach and online marketing.

Making a Scene runs from November 13th until the 16th, passes start at around $75.00.

After several successful WordCamps in Vancouver, Kulpreet got the wheels in motion for the next event, coming this winter. Last night on Twitter something magical also happened – the idea of having the event in Whistler was hatched and so planning for WordCamp Whistler is now underway.

Read Duane’s blog post for a preview, view the Facebook event, and feel free to sign up on the wiki. More details to come in over the next little while. sixty4media will once again be involved as an organizer as well as presenting.

WordPress is an open source blog publishing application powering millions of blogs worldwide.

Photo by miss604 on Flickr

Rebecca had the extreme pleasure of attending Blog World Expo 2008 in Las Vegas this past weekend. Needless to say, there is wealth of information to be shared at this event. True to her live blogging skills, you can see many of her posts on miss604.com.

The International Internet Marketing Association is set to hold their annual conference in Vancouver this month and sixty4media has been enlisted to do some live blogging.

As a preview to my live blog, which will take place on Miss604.com, I had the chance to find out more about the IIMA from John Hossack VP of Business Development at VKI Studios, and President of the International Internet Marketing Association. Hossack will be acting as the chair of the conference.

The purpose of the conference: To help marketers better understand the latest ‘tools of the trade’ when it comes to online marketing, and to learn how to leverage these tools to their advantage.

Who will be attending? What type of professionals or industry?: The conference will be attended by students, practitioners, executives and consultants from all type of industries, education, finance, government, retail, B2B etc.

How long has it been running?: The first IMC conference was back in 2000 and was held in Copenhagen, it was last in Vancouver in 2002.

According to Hossack, “Highlights will be the speakers and the sessions as well as the networking opportunities. Too many great things going on to just pick one or two.”

Speakers on this international stage will include local social media heroes like Darren and Julie of Capulet Communications, Jon Husband of Wirearchy Network, and Andre Charland of Nitobi.

The event takes place September 11 – 12 at the Coast Plaza Hotel, downtown.

Rebecca was invited to the Massive Tech Show this week to be on a panel regarding social media and what it can do for businesses. The annual event takes place in downtown Vancouver, and it’s pretty tough to say no to something we have such an interest in while not having to go too far to talk about it.

The Massive Technology Show is a three-part, interactive event that showcases technology for business. In one action packed day, Massive connects business professionals with high tech companies, giving them a chance to learn about technology in a user friendly environment. [massivetechshow.com]

She made a couple of posts on her personal blog here and here. You’re invited to read more of her take there.