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.
As one of the few that attended, I agree that it was a great experience meeting fellow WordPress users offline.
I also found it really interesting how we couldn’t just stick to discussing WordPress. Sometimes I think bloggers (and WordPress users) stay in their own little world.
WordPress is bigger than blogging… and bloggers are bigger than WordPress.
There are lot of free tools available to help both.
It was great meeting you!
Steve
Thank you for your feedback. I really like how you sum it up with “WordPress is bigger than blogging… and bloggers are bigger than WordPress.”
It not only nicely fits our meeting but applies to the whole issue in general.
Thanks for the mention and the wonderful picture of “my blog”. :D That is brilliant and a wonderful touch.
I hope my travels next year will take me closer to more WordPress meetups, including New York, where I hope to meet some fantastic fellow bloggers and WordPress fans.
It was an old-fashioned Kodak moment when an attendee wrote down your URL.
I thought it was interesting that it took an eight hour flight to New York to attend a meetup. I would love to attend a Wordcamp but the nearest one is in Hamburg, Germany. Even though it is only a six hour drive from Amsterdam the fact that the blog is in German only isn’t very inviting.
I would love to see more meetups of any kind in the Netherlands or Europe. I guess there is only one solution, I should organize a Wordcamp Amsterdam. Hopefully I’ll have time for it in 2009 :)
Say what? There’s a wordpress wordcamp in Hamburg? Tell me more, or I swear, I’ll google it.;-)
So it was you who wrote that Blog Herald piece. Well done – and thanks for the comment on my blog.
Thank you.
You’re refraining from Googling? What a self constraint!
Wordcamp 2008 » Die WordPress Konferenz in Hamburg :: Januar 2008
Unfortunately the whole blog is in German which is not too inviting for non-German speakers. Depending on the ever changing time/money situation it would be great to go!
Ach Deutsch, kein Problem! Thanks for the link and maybe we’ll see you there.