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395 Attendees, 17 Speakers, 2 Days and 1 Men’s Room

And that’s where WordCamp 2007 started and stopped feeling like “camp”. This is not the YMCA.

The Skinny

After letting everything soak in for the past week, three key things from WordCamp 2007 jump out at me.

1. Blog from your heart
2. You want your readers to be like you
3. Don’t complete your thoughts

Maybe I’ve over simplified it a bit. You might as well return to writing in your 5th grade journal. Actually, after having some time to reflect, I’ve realized all 3 of these key points have 2 things in common. 1) They are all tips for the blogger. and 2) They are all points made by Lorelle VanFossen’s presentation on kick ass content. Brilliant, Lorelle.

I was a bit surprised that these three things stuck with me more than anything else in the conference. During the conference, I was much more engaged in the philosophical and cultural implications of blogging vs. journalism, in John C. Dvorak’s and Om Malik’s presentation. I think the reason is quite plain. When all is said and done, I went to WordCamp for me (as one should) and I wanted to learn how I could be a better blogger. Selfish and simple.

Highlights

WordCamp started off Saturday morning, with the practical. Dan Kuykendall, developer of PodPress gave a great presentation on Podcasting. I’m not a Podcaster, so Dan probably captured my attention the most when he started playing Weird Al’s White and Nerdy.

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Judging the book by its cover

Creating expectations is what a designer does. We tell you what you are looking at, before you make a decision to read more and delve deeper. We are asking you to “please, judge this book by it’s cover.” While this may not be the best practice in life, it’s a commanding force in our consumerized society and it is the way of the trade for designers.

For good or for bad, we designers carry a responsibility. At Object Adjective, we dedicate a good portion of our time developing web applications. The question of how true the cover should be to the book, is one that comes up often when we’re designing applications targeted for early beta. There are two general considerations we make. The first being, and this is typically the one a favored by designers, is the need to create an enticing and marketable design. The second, which is primarily a consideration for the end user, is to avoid creating false user expectations by designing something much slicker on the outside, than the insides can live up to. In other words, making sure the cover fits the book.

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Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t rule it entirely out, but chances are…

Anyway, this week I got to thinking, you know those moments where you just know you’re pushing things in the wrong direction? Like trying to back a car into a tent, or, I guess, pushing a cart up a hill? Sure, it might work, but chances are… Let me be the one blogger who isn’t going to talk about the iPhone or mini-feeds or Quicktime updates this week. No. I’m going to talk about something much more rudimentary and much more important to designers: inspiration (and not forcing the square peg in the round hole)

Sometimes, the absurd is the best channel for inspiration and when the peg doesn’t fit, most people will first try using force. When that fails, they will just give up. The hacker, on the other hand, will whittle the peg down so it is nice a round and will slide right in. The web developer needs to do better. The developer needs to assess the situation and understand that holes and pegs all need to work together and then come up with a set of standards.

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