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WordCamp Seattle

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Morgan

I just got home from WordCamp Seattle, a day of talks about WordPress. This was a really fun and really informative event. It was well-organized, divided into tracks for bloggers, themers, and developers. I spent most of my time in the theming room, and learned some really great stuff.

My favorite talk was “Theming for the Masses” by Michael Fields. He talked about what he learned in the process of creating a free theme. I always create themes for a specific purpose: a client needs a website, I tailor a theme to their needs. But creating a theme that can be flexible enough for all uses takes a lot more careful thought. I really agree with Fields that a theme should be about the look, not about the functionality. Functionality should be reserved for plugins. I have often been annoyed by themes that I have downloaded that have all sorts of functionality built into them that I just don’t need, or that screws with other stuff that I need to do. Fields also talked about how to avoid having to provide support for a free theme: he thought of some very clever ways to build the support into the theme by providing links to tutorials, links to admin pages that can adjust the appropriate options, and cues to the user that they need to adjust their options. He put some really clever thought into this theme, and had some really great advice for the rest of us. Plus, despite his sheepishness and the occasional tangled tongue, it was a really enjoyable talk with informative slides.

It was great to hang out in a room full of other WordPressers (a big room, with lots of WordPressers!). I was really impressed by how many women were there. Usually when I go to computer geeky things, I feel pretty conspicuous as a female, but I think there might have been more women than men at WordCamp, and that’s awesome.

This was the first time I have ever tweeted at a conference or event, and it was fun to sit and see what people around me thought about the event and the talks. We could have conversations about the talks without being disruptive, and that was great.