WordCamp Raleigh 2010 was this past weekend. This was my first “official” WordCamp that I have gone to, although I have caught some other WordCamp speakers online. I was very excited to go, as I had met a lot of people through community networking efforts,  and most were going as well. I  attended the Power Users track the most often during the weekend. I just felt from the descriptions that most of these were right about in line where I needed to be.  I do wish Dave Moyer would have been his own “unique track” though. He was listed in the beginner track conflicting with a session I really wanted to attend (more on that below) but the organizers have said they taped all the sessions so I  look forward to going over his online. I did see Dave at the Sitepoint forum, and was really impressed with his knowledge and the way he presented himself. I am now following his tweets and pod/video casting sites.

I won’t go into all sessions, but point out some of the highlights for me:

I started off with Jayvie Canono, (@onefinejay) a super nice guy who went over “Thoughtful Theming”. This presentation was focused toward intermediate theme developers and first-time themers. Jayvie went over CSS and WordPress conditional tricks. I liked his enthusiasm for his topic (especially first thing in the AM) and he really stressed doing it yourself. Yes, there may be times when you need to buy frameworks, but you can’t learn to modify those if you don’t know how to break something you have made, fix it, and get the satisfaction of knowing you figured out how to do something.

Another notable was Cory Miller (@CoryMiller303) who spoke on “5 Tips for Building a WP Web Design Business”. Although his talk was rather general, I enjoyed hearing how his dedication is paying off and how others can do what he did with his iThemes company. However, the highlight of this talk was finding out about BackupBuddy – a product they offer that sounds so promising for WP backups and migration. Really looking forward to using that in the future.

The Sitepoint panel was great, but I will point you to their videocast for that.

Jumping over to Sunday, one would think the second day would be a “wind-down” day, but honestly I got a lot out of the speakers I attended on Sunday.

First off on Sunday was Dan Milward, (@danmilward) Founder/Owner of Instinct.co.nz, (and extra bonus to start the day, a Kiwi!). Dan spoke about “Blogs for Business” and how to setup your WordPress site to sell your products online. Instinct’s  WP e-Commerce Plugin has been downloaded over 445,000 times, so he knows what he is talking about. Dan went over his plugin, as well as another plugin “playa”- jplayer. I really enjoyed Dan’s talk. Not only did it have technical meat, but he also had insight into plugin development and the business model behind e-commerce sites with WordPress.

The last full session I attended was by Tony Zeoli, (@dswks) the founder of Digital Strategy Works. Tony’s session was “WordPress & Multimedia: Podcasting, Streaming Video & Photos”. Tony went over WP’s capabilities for audio, video and photos. I liked his session because he engaged his audience. If something was too basic and everyone knew it, he moved on to more advanced topics. If someone needed a clarification, he gladly stopped and gave it.  He covered the NextGen gallery in all its wonderful incarnations (I love that plugin) and he also went over  Kaltura, a freemium service for video, and WordTube, which uses the Open Source JW Player to run video content directly from your server. I must be living under a rock, but I had never heard of Kaltura. I am glad I did though, have several instances where I can use this for client sites.

Shortly after this was the panel on the sustainability of open source platforms, moderated by Lisa Sabin-Wilson (@LisaSabinWilson). Finally, Jane Wells delivered a Q&A style State of the Word. Jane discussed the future of WordCamps, including potential GPL speaker requirements and WordPress learning tools sponsored by the WordPress Foundation.

The organizers did a super job and I know it can’t be easy to put on something of this scale. From what I could tell, everything went smoothly, there were sessions for all levels of WordPress confidence, and I am not only going to go to the one next year (no doubt) but may be looking for other WordCamps to attend. Good stuff!