To the organisers, sponsors, community sponsors (self promo) and everyone that attended, thank you!
What an awesome weekend hanging out in Sydney, listening to some great presentations and getting to meet people that have that slightly unhealthy addiction to WordPress is comforting.
For me it was a long time between drinks, my last WordCamp was Gold Coast 2011 (hopefully it will not be as long to my next event) and a few things have changed since then. The main difference for me is I have gone from being a user of WordPress and hobby developer, to developing client websites on a full-time basis.
So where to next?
For me the plan hasn’t really changed, but it has confirmed the areas I want to work on and in:
- Contribute damn it – After listening to Dee Teal’s (The Web Princess) keynote, it is time that I start increasing the time I give back to WordPress. From time to time I do jump into the forums and help people out with questions that normally revolve around some styling issues/modifications to the theme that they are using. Now I think it is time to step up and see how I can contribute to core or other areas. This was actually one of my goals for the year so it was great to have Dee reignite that fire.
- Code quality is sexy – The last 8 months I have made a conscious effort to really focus on making sure the way I code is in line with the WordPress code standards and the talk from Luke Carbis from Stream highlighted why we should care and a few points on how to up our skills to Yoda level.
- eCommerce is WooCommerce – Brent Shepherd of Prospress Inc presented some stats that show without doubt that WooCommerce has exploded in popularity. Keep an eye out for the project that I have worked on with Brent for WooCommerce to be out soon.
- Just build a plugin already – It seems every idea I have thought of for a plugin has been created, they may not be 100% what I was thinking, but they have been pretty close and that has put me off jumping in, no longer! I am just going to build it, release it and see what happens. If a plugin gets one download I will be amazed, if not, I am sure the build process will help to continually build my skills. WIN-WIN!
Time to go get busy!