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Grab a Snack and Catch Up on WordCamp San Francisco on WordPress.tv
Elizabeth HillisAbout one month ago, the 8th annual WordCamp San Francisco brought WordPress fans from all over the world together for two days of talks and a Contributor Day, one of the largest single gatherings of WordPress volunteers ever. 10up was proud to feature four team members as presenters this year – more than any company, with the exception of Automattic. Several other team members came along for the ride, hailing from places like Chicago, Colorado, Washington, and Virginia. Web Engineer Aaron Holbrook even joined the conference volunteer crew!
If you were unable to attend – or if you attended, but missed a session – have no fear: thanks to WordPress.tv, you can watch any of the 25+ talks from the comfort of your office or living room. One of the lesser-known community resources for staying in the loop and learning new skills, WordPress.tv features hundreds of high-quality videos, including recorded WordCamp talks from across the globe. Most WordCamp talks are posted within a few weeks following a camp, so while you miss out on the community aspects of a WordCamp, you can still get the knowledge and put faces to names.
10up in the Top 100
Last week, Royal Pingdom released their annual analysis of the top 100 blogs, based on site linking behavior and categorization over a 6 month time frame as collected by Technorati (a debatable, but reasonable metric). Royal Pingdom has pointed out that 52% of the sites are built on WordPress. Comparing this list to last year’s list, we see that WordPress’s dominance as a publishing platform rose from 48% to 52%. At the same time, competing publishing formats like Drupal and MoveableType have dropped or remained constant.
The news for 10up is even better: we’ve provided direct service for 8 of the blogs on the list. TechCrunch moved up into the top five. 9to5mac moved up two spaces from #33 to #31. Deadline maintained its place on the list at #26. Two of our clients made the list for the first time: Consumerist at #90 and hip2save.com at #98. Three other blogs enlisted our web strategy services.
With more than a dozen core WordPress contributors on our team, including a guest core committer, we’ve actually written code running on each of the other 44 WordPress-backed blogs. Add in our modest jQuery core contributions, and we’ve made some small contribution to every site on the list!
We’d like to congratulate everyone who made the list! You can find the WordPress statistics at Royal Pingdom and the original list over at Technorati.
Summarizing the Summit
The Developer Summit was a few weeks ago, but our team is still buzzing. I asked a few my teammates to share their main take away from our first ever Developer Summit – here’s what they came back with:
Jake Goldman: There were so many highlights: learning from the smartest minds I’ve ever worked with about unit testing, advanced JavaScript, and Vagrant… seeing a great group of Portland-area WordPress pros show up at our social… seeing a few members of our team in person for the first time. The real highlight was being able to sit back and watch the team brainstorm the big process and technique questions we confront, so effectively. It’s one thing to have great “online” chemistry in IRC chat rooms, small video conferences, and status blogs, but it was amazing to see just how much chemistry this team has when we get together in person – more than any brick and mortar group I’ve ever led or been a part of.
Taylor Dewey: On the first day of our summit, only a few people had lunch together. On the second day of our summit, there were a few groups of folks in different spots. On the last day of our summit, everyone was eating lunch together in the same area. Seeing everyone come together organically proved that we actually do have a team, not a group of individuals, and that has tremendous value.
10up and WordSesh: Free WordPress Presentations
If you ever wanted to learn about WordPress, but never had a chance to attend a WordCamp, now there’s an amazing opportunity to attend WordCamp-style lectures from home! It’s called WordSesh, and we’re proud to be a big part of it.
WordSesh 2013 is the first ever 24 hour free, live-streaming WordPress presentation venue. Starting at midnight UTC on April 13, 2013 (that’s 8:00 pm EST and 5:00 pm PST tonight, April 12) and running uninterrupted for 24 hours, WordSesh will feature a new session every hour, on the hour.
10up Developer Summit Wrap-Up
10up’s Developer Summit was an amazing experience. In addition to meeting one another in person (a first, for some of us), we were treated to fantastic workshops covering everything from WordPress unit testing to simulating live environments in Vagrant to advanced JavaScript performance techniques. We’re lucky to have an incredibly smart and diverse staff, over half which contributed to the presentations. Jeremy Felt and Carl Danley, two of our amazing Web Engineers, organized the entire conference and ensured that every member of our team would learn something new.
Preparing for Portland: 10up’s Developer Summit
As the new Web Strategist here at 10up, I’m still getting to know the team. Naturally, I was very excited to learn that I would be attending our Developer Summit in Portland on my second week! To find out more, I sat down with Jeremy Felt and Carl Danley (over Skype) to find out just what the Summit is all about and how it came to be.
How many people are you expecting at the Summit?
Jermey Felt: [Almost] everybody from 10up. 22 people total.
Editor’s note: Our Operations Manager, Pat, is holding down the back office in Sacramento during the Summit, and our Director of User Interface Engineering, Helen, just began her maternity leave.
There are many diverse jobs/responsibilities at 10up; how do you plan to cater to them all in one collective conference?
JF: Originally this was planned as just a Developer Summit, which is still the core focus, different web engineering technologies… [Director of Web Strategy] Jess Jurick proposed that we also have a mini project management conference, which she and [Senior Web Strategist] Megan Gray will handle somewhat separately… everyone will get a handle on the engineering concepts, and be involved in the lectures in some way… The workshop style will help us make sure nobody gets lost.
Carl Danley: The focus is primarily on the attendees, not the presenters… we’ll be there supplementing what they hear and helping them master the techniques.