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.

This past weekend John and I took the ferry over to Victoria to participate in WordCamp Victoria. I was slated to speak as a part of a blogger panel with Lorraine Murphy and Mike Vardy, as well as give a talk about securing WordPress (for beginners, just the basics). While no voice-over commentary is included, you can view my slides here:

During my session there was a question from Twitter about plugins and that since they are third party applications, they should not be trusted.

My response was that you can’t fear all plugins, but you can look out for the most effective and least damaging. Look for the version number and the date it was last edited. If a plugin was submitted yesterday and has no feedback, it may not be the best idea to install it. You want trusted plugins that have been updated, reviewed, and that work with your version of WordPress. Also, always install plugins from the WordPress directory and not third party websites.

As you can see form Lloyd’s response (he works with Automattic), plugins added to the official directory are vetted for malicious code. I would also add that the community is pretty good at policing plugins as well. If something’s not working, you’ll hear about it in the feedback, comments, and probably even on Twitter.

Should you have any questions about the basics of securing WordPress, please feel free to drop a note in the comments.

Finally, having organized WordCamp Whistler and WordCamp Vancouver before, we can appreciate all of the time and effort organizers put into these events and I must say, WordCamp Victoria was pretty stellar. Over 175 people showed up to participate, present, ask questions, and have stimulating discussions in the coffee room. Lunch was provided and Twitter was abuzz with backchannel chatter. Kudos to Paul Holmes and his team on another successful event.

I just finished up giving my session on Building an Intranet with WordPress at WordCamp Fraser Valley this morning. This session reflected mostly on a personal project that I’ve worked on at my radio day job. In the true spirit of giving back to the WordPress community, I showcased the project as well as the story and planning that went into it.

As promised, here are the slides from my session on SlideShare.

Here is a break down of the plugins I mentioned in this session. The conversion of Keynote to PowerPoint to SlideShare didn’t take so well, so here’s a list of those plugins with links to find out more about them.

• Ad-minister
• AddQuicktag
• Add Local Avatar
• cforms
• Easy Flash Embed
• FancyBox Gallery
• FAQ-Tastic
• Flv Player
• Pods CMS
• Simply Show IDs
• WassUp
• WordPress Database Backup
• wp-forecast
• WP-RSSImport
• WP-UserOnline
• WPaudio

If you having any questions about the material I’ve presented, please leave a comment on this post.

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.

This week a colleague passed along this beautiful video of Vancouver, developed in partnership with the Vancouver Film School. The goal of this campaign is to highlight how the city has been the hub for many technological advances, start-ups, and innovative entrepreneurs over the years.

“The goal is to put our city on the map as the technology hub that we actually have been for quite some time, by drawing together stories of products and technologies people know about and that have daily impact in a visually compelling way,” said Ian Bell of AppSocial.

Some social media companies featured in the video include Flickr and the HootSuite Twitter client.

If not for the welcoming and nurturing local tech community in which we immersed ourselves back in 2006, we would have not been able to grow our business the way we have. The success stories in this video are inspirational and a great reminder that business in Vancouver is looking toward the future, while building upon the past.

When John and I started up our company there were several resources and tools that helped us through the entire process. One of those resources was Small Business BC online and in Waterfront Station. We got forms, advice, and flipped through micro-fiche listings of business names before we settled on sixty4media.

Next month Small Business BC is hosting the Successful You Business Awards and we’ve been invited to check it out.

The event will announce the winners of the Successful You Awards and provide a unique opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs and the media to network with over 350 local business professionals and successful small businesses. Keynote speakers, Larry Finnson and Chris Emery, founders of Clodhoppers Candy, will share their success story of making Grandma’s candy recipe into a recognizable worldwide brand. [Small Business BC]

Where Birks Flagship Store, 698 Hastings Street
When Thursday June 10th from 5:00pm – 8:00pm

If you’re a small business and aren’t familiar with the services offered by Small Business BC I highly recommend checking them out or at least coming by the event. Tickets for the awards event are currently on sale starting at $36 (early bird) and $60 (then $70 at the door).

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.

Cross-posted from Miss604.com

To many people, Facebook is the internet. It’s open in a browser throughout the day, it could be their home screen, and on average users are connected to 130 “friends” at a time [Facebook: Stats]. However, even with close to 400 million users (11 million in Canada alone) Facebook isn’t on everyone’s friend’s list.

Recent changes from everything to layout, policies, and terms of use have some people wanting to quit the platform. This has prompted the creation of “Quit Facebook Day” which will be coming up May 31, 2010.

For a bit of background as to why the extraordinarily popular site is seemingly losing momentum, here’s a brief history of Facebook:

Facebook Timeline

2004
February: Mark Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin launch Facebook from their Harvard dorm room
December: Facebook reaches nearly 1 million active users

2005
August: The company officially changes its name to Facebook from thefacebook.com
September: Facebook expands to add high school networks
December: Facebook reaches more than 5.5 million active users

2006
August: Facebook and Microsoft form strategic relationship for banner ad syndication
September: Facebook expands registration so anyone can join (not just school networks)
December: Facebook reaches more than 12 million active users

2007
February: Virtual gift shop launches as a feature
March: Facebook reaches over 2 million active Canadian users and 1 million active UK users
July: I wrote a post about why I use Facebook (and you should too)
October: Facebook and Microsoft expand advertising deal to cover international markets; Microsoft takes a $240 million equity stake in Facebook

2008
January: Facebook co-sponsors Presidential Debates with ABC News, Vancouver hosts first Facebook Awards
April: Facebook launches Facebook Chat and releases Translation application to 21 additional languages
August: Facebook reaches over 100 million active users
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada launches the world’s first investigation into Facebook’s scanty privacy safeguards [Globe&Mail]

2009
February: Facebook updates its Term of Service, backlash follows: “Facebook’s terms of service (TOS) used to say that when you closed an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore. Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. ”

December: Facebook reaches over 350 million active users

2010
February: Facebook reaches over 400 million active users
April: A new privacy setting called “Instant Personalization” was launched. It shares data with non-Facebook websites and it is automatically set to “Allow.” Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites and uncheck “Allow”, then repost this to your profile. “Many users take issue with the social network’s now-default opt-out inclusion of its users in new features and services and “How do I delete my Facebook account” has become a top search suggestion on Google.”[ReadWriteWeb]

Quit Facebook Day

When I give presentations about social media for business I usually focus on Twitter and blogs however Facebook always comes up. It’s a great way to connect with millions of users and it’s good to have a presence there. However, in every presentation I have at least two people who were completely unaware about Facebook’s Terms of Service. What you upload to Facebook, belongs to Facebook and they may share your information at will. See: “Shocker: Facebook Does What’s Best for Facebook“.

That being said, many users are rightfully unhappy about the “opt out” information sharing that can now take place on Facebook. This is where “Quit Facebook Day” comes in. Created by Matthew Milan and Joseph Dee they are hoping to organize a mass exodus of users from the platform.

From the campaign’s website:
“Why are we quitting? For us it comes down to two things: fair choices and best intentions. In our view, Facebook doesn’t do a good job in either department. Facebook gives you choices about how to manage your data, but they aren’t fair choices, and while the onus is on the individual to manage these choices, Facebook makes it damn difficult for the average user to understand or manage this. We also don’t think Facebook has much respect for you or your data, especially in the context of the future.”

Still, ReadWriteWeb has us ask ourselves some valid questions:
“And while the sharing of your data sounds quite scary, we have to wonder if this reactionary unchecking is causing some who would otherwise benefit to miss out. After all, are we really all that concerned about Pandora knowing, from the moment we load the site, that we’re huge Weezer fans?”

You may take a look through the updated policy (with changes highlighted) in order to form your own opinion on the matter.

Cross-posted from Miss604.com

Twitter was experiencing the effects of a bug this weekend that exploited the following/follower method (as this post on Mashable explains). This morning, as an after effect of this bug, all users have noticed their following and follower numbers have dropped right down to zero. This means the little corner store down the block has the same follower count as Ashton Kutcher or CNN at the moment.

I’m certain Twitter is working to rectify the problem and it’s not something permanent as timelines are still filling with updates. However, things like this always seem to cause panic, mass hysteria, and the inevitable shouting at inanimate objects such as a computer screen or iPhone. To alleviate some stress in the future, here are a few ways you can back up your Twitter account.

Backupify
John Biehler clued me into the Backupify service a few months ago and it can be used to archive and back up your accounts from Twitter to Flickr, Delicious, Google Docs, WordPress, Blogger, and Facebook. The very basic service is free (although they do have premium options) so there’s sanity to gain from simply singing up.

Backup My Tweets
The Backup My Tweets service will back up your Tweets since they have a limited shelf-life on Twitter.com. It doesn’t back up your followers as Backupify does, but it will provide you some peace of mind. There is a program you can download for your PC that will backup your friends however I have not tried this so I cannot guarantee its security.

The best thing anyone can do right now is wait this out. Do not go on a mass re-following spree as I can only imagine this would muck up any backups or restoration process they might have Twitter has posted an update saying they have suspended following until this is resolved. Stay tuned to Mashable.com or @Mashable for updates since they have been crowned the most influential account on Twitter (well, at least up until this morning).

Update All is right with the world. From the official Twitter account: “Follow bug discovered, remedied. Read our status blog for details. http://bit.ly/dhQ3fF“.

Going through some photos today, I rediscovered one that was worth noting in the realm of social media marketing.

In case you’re not familiar with Steamrollers, here is how they describe themselves on their website:

Steamrollers is a unique Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) concept. We serve a menu of west-coast style burritos called “Steamrollers”. Steamrollers are unique, in that ALL of the ingredients are cooked exclusively with steam. In fact, we are the only QSR concept that cooks ONLY with steam! Cooking with steam prevents shrinkage, locks in moisture and nutrients and tastes great!

Their sign at the counter is a great way to promote their presence in the social media space (Twitter in this case) and what extra benefits you get as one of their followers. It’s a clever way, albeit analog, to pick up followers who are mobile based while they pay at the register and wait for their food to be prepared.

As people often ask us how one gets more followers on Twitter or Facebook, this is a simple technique if you’re a business looking to expand your presence.

Example of a tweet by Steamrollers on Twitter.com

However, don’t forget to keep up with what you promise as well as engage the audience you already have with worthwhile conversations. Thousands of followers are great and make you look popular, but when you have all of that attention, it never hurts to have something worthwhile to say to the community you have created on a two way street of communication.

We’ll try to do posts like this more in the future as we spot social media marketing like this in the real world.

I’ve been interviewed at least a dozen times about how social media people are covering the Olympics in Vancouver. However, I think an equally interesting story is how traditional media outlets are using social media to add to their coverage.

CTV Olympics Video
The official broadcaster of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games has been posting footage to YouTube. The type of event action videos that would get pulled down with a cease & desist letter from the IOC are up and running in full glory on the CTV Olympics channel. Although you cannot embed the videos, you can watch clips of medal moments and even streaming replays of televised events on their main website.

Government of BC
The Province of British Columbia has been capturing Olympic moments and posting them to their official YouTube channel as well. They have athlete interviews, montages, and even an interview with yours truly.

They don’t have Games footage but they have been everywhere around town, profiling businesses and the fan experience.

Global has added a video section to their website and although they’re not posting the videos as shareable items on YouTube, they are blogging and tweeting to enhance their coverage. Same goes for the CBC who has a Road to the Games section of their site, acting as a 2010 newsroom complete with sidebar event listings. You can read more about their coverage game plan in my post from last week.

With such restrictions for non-official broadcasters these Olympics haven’t necessarily made journalists out of citizens, they’ve made the mainstream realize that social media can help them with their coverage — and it can make it that much more interesting.

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 recently discovered that my account on Twitter now has the “Lists” capability so I thought I would produce a quick screencast to help others understand this cool function that was introduced last month.

You’ll also find roundups or mass postings of lists on blogs in the coming weeks, such as ReadWriteWeb’s “10 Twitter Lists You Should Follow” or the mega directory over at Listorious.

Update November 2nd, 2009: Mashable has also put out a “HOW TO” for Twitter lists using images.

Technorati, the authority on blog listings and ranks, has released their 2009 State of the Blogosphere. This annual report looks at household incomes of bloggers, genders, topics, measures of success and more. Here are a few interesting stats:

Who are the Bloggers

The “Why” of Blogging

The “How” of Blogging

Each part of the report is being released day by day with new articles to follow later this week.

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.

To say that Twitter is huge in Vancouver is an understatement. During Vancouver Canucks hockey games the word #Canucks is often within the top ten trending topics on the service which is used by millions worldwide. Combining Vancouver and top trending topics has been a bit impossible, until now.

This afternoon Mashable featured Trendsmap, a way to find the hot topics specifically in your area. The big football match in Buffalo might not be on your top trends list however if you’re based in Vancouver perhaps you want to see why so many people are talking about the Olympics, traffic, weather, or the latest celebrity sighting.

As of this afternoon, the top trends in Vancouver are: Organic, Olyimpics, Oakridge (I assume because we have a new Apple store opening up there), Canucks, Climate, and Craig Ferguson. The Trendsmap packs hundreds of cities’ information into an interactive Google Map so it’s a big clunky right now, however the information it provides is pretty interesting. I see this being useful for hyper-local news agencies, businesses, and individuals who would just like to keep on top of what’s being talked about the most in Vancouver at any given time.

WordPress version 2.8.4 came out in early August, and now there is a serious issue that has come to light for users whose installations are operating with previous versions.

Otto42 of OttoDestruct, a key WordPress developer and supporter, reports that there is an “attack” on older versions of WordPress right now. The number of sites hit by this is growing every hour. Protect your WordPress blog now: UPDATE NOW!!! [lorelle.wordpress.com]

Lorelle’s post is very in depth regarding the various aspects of what this major security vulnerability entails and should not be taken lightly.

In addition, Matt Mullenweg has an even more informative post on the official WordPress.org Blog with even more specifics of these attacks and the severity of them.

Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.

The tactics are new, but the strategy is not. Where this particular worm messes up is in the “clean up” phase: it doesn’t hide itself well and the blogger notices that all his links are broken, which causes him to dig deeper and notice the extent of the damage. Where worms of old would do childish things like defacing your site, the new ones are silent and invisible, so you only notice them when they screw up (as this one did) or your site gets removed from Google for having spam and malware on it.

I’m talking about this not to scare you, but to highlight that this is something that has happened before, and that will more than likely happen again. [wordpress.org]

The battle wages on. The full read is very intriguing and worth the click to finish reading.

For information about how to upgrade your WordPress on a self-hosted installation, the WordPress Codex offers directions on how to do that. If you need assistance getting the upgrade done, feel free to contact us so you can get your content protected as soon as possible.

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.