Minneapolis WordCamp 2013 is over. As fast as it started, it finished.  The chairs are stacked, the desks are moved back to their places, and the classrooms at MCTC are full of design students again today. I want to thank all of the organizers and sponsors who made this event possible. I know that your experience wasn’t nearly as quick. It took a ton of work to put something like this on, and I am glad I was able to take part.

I walked away from the day with an overall positive opinion about the day. There’s nothing harder than trying to put something like WordCamp together, and the organizers did well with it.

Final Opinions on a Great Weekend

Positives:

• Fun people – I <3 the PHP community
• Well organized – From the speakers’ dinner to the swag, you can tell a lot of thought went into putting together a great day
• Swag – The speakers’ sweatshirt, poster, and pint glass would’ve all been among the best swag I’ve ever gotten at a conference, even if it was the only thing we were given. Put together? Awesome

Room for Improvement

• Lunch setup – I really think the food should’ve been served from where we registered. That crowded hallway was so difficult to navigate around
• Session length – 45 minutes is a great length for a presentation, but then there should be 15 minutes of Q/A time if needed

The Sessions I Attended

During the day, I was able to attend 4 sessions, since I taught one, then taught a followup in the overflow room.

“Quickly and Easily Measure WordPress Performance” by Peter Chester

This was an interesting discussion of a topic that most web developers ignore, or at least underemphasize the importance of. Google puts so much emphasis on speed that their dev team will work for months to save milliseconds. Peter had a great set of tools he introduced us to, as well as a fun presentation style that held the attention of my (extremely) ADD brain.

Only criticism: Go deeper. We’re smarter than you think we are. If you don’t have time, reference some blog posts. I am looking forward to digging into these tips.

“Creating and Selling Premium WordPress Plugins” By Daniel Espinoza

This was a great talk on best practices when attempting to monetize WordPress plugins. While I’m not an awesome straight-PHP developer, I’m excited to use some of these techniques when working on custom themes and Node extensions.

“You can make a living with WordPress” by Becky Davis

I think this was my favorite talk of the day. Becky outlined what she’s done and how she’s been able to make a living making custom themes. The discussion during the Q/A portion was equally valuable. It was fun to help newer freelancers shape the early parts of their careers. Remember: You’re worth more than you think!

“Inspecting WordPress” by Josh Leuze

This was a 100-level introduction into Firebug’s inspector tools, but it’s always good to see what other developers are doing with the same tools that I use.

My Presentation

I want to thank everyone for attending my talk on responsive web design! It was a full crowd, but the awesome questions are what made it so great. Here are my slides from my talk.

If you use my slides to create something amazing, PLEASE link to it in the comments. I love to see the web going responsive.

Image credit: The awesome @jasperjacobson!