Yesterday I attended the Amsterdam Flickr Meetup at the NDSM Wharf. An amazing amount of people from all over the world showed up and we spent a great day in Amsterdam North.

I started using Flickr less than a year ago but it only took me a few days to take over two hundred pictures so I decided to get a Pro account. Not only did Flickr spice up my enthusiasm for photography, it also increased the amount of photos I take and my interaction with other photographers. I love to wander through my Flickr contacts and look, enjoy and learn.

My whole Flickr Meetup at the Amsterdam NDSM Wharf set.

Saturday afternoon I went to one of New York City’s billions of Starbucks for the New York City WordPress November Meetup. Even though only a few people attended it was very interesting to meet fellow WordPress users and enthusiasts. WordPress was applauded for its ease of use, the fact that its free and that it has a huge developer community.

Easy to use

One person who attended the meeting had not even begun using WordPress yet and mainly came to the meeting to find out if WordPress is the right tool for his purpose. Other people set up some blogs for friends who had no computer knowledge at all. Because the WordPress interface is so easy, all these blogs are now actively used by people who hardly had any computer skills.

It’s free

The fact that it’s free is a big motivation for using the software. Nearly all WordPress plugins and themes are free too so you can customize your blog to your wishes.

The huge (developer) community

We often referred to all the wonderful people who make plugins and themes, write excellent articles on blogging and WordPress and answer questions on the forums. The fact that there is such a innovative community behind WordPress was a big choice in choosing WordPress.

Lorelle was mentioned a few times by other people as a major resource for excellent articles on blogging and WordPress:

What interested me most was that it is hard to talk about WordPress only. We talked a lot about WordPress plugins, themes, WordPress MU and shared some tips but we often went “offtopic” as well. We talked about content management systems in general, Joomla, photo editting software, hosting and various other programs and services.

WordPress and blog software are tightly knit into a web of services and software. You cannot talk about starting to blog with WordPress without talking about hosting and databases. It is hard to talk about WordPress and uploading pictures without talking about photo editing software or services such as Flickr. When we exchanged contact details I was really happy with my new MOO business cards, it makes it fun to exchange business cards!

The only negatives of the meeting were the fact that Starbucks has no free wifi and that it took forever to get a skim milk latte with sugar-free hazelnut syrup.

I also wrote a piece on this meetup and The Value of Meeting Your Fellow Bloggers – Offline! for the Blog Herald.