Wow, we’re only 3 weeks from WordCamp Dallas, and we’ve still got plenty of seats left, but I have a feeling they are going to go fast. So you seriously need to get registered before we fill up! What is WordCamp Dallas?

Well, it’s basically a “free” ($30 pays for the T-shirt and meals) blogging convention that is organized by users of the wildly popular WordPress blogging platform. And it’s a one and a half day weekend event that will teach you more about blogging than you will learn on your own in a year. I guarantee it.

Don’t believe me? Fine! Check out the roughly 75 WordCamp videos I’ve already filmed and posted for you guys and you’ll see what I mean! Of course, there is also my lecture from last year on 45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog, and here is the video.

Why would you want to start a blog of your own? Hmmm… well, to participate in a community of interest? To establish a reputation as an expert? To open doors for job opportunities? To earn money from your blogging efforts?

Heck, this blog generates $1,500-2,500 per month in ad revenue and I don’t even try (remember, I donate it to charity)!

Now, we’ve got an all star line up of speakers – each of which has generously volunteered their time and energy to make this event what it is. You’ll hear from some online titans on topics that will be immediately actionable after the conference.

But more importantly, you’ll meet hundreds of fellow bloggers with whom you can swap tips and build relationships that will last for years. And you’ll have free and unfettered access to people who can, and will, help you with anything related to your blogging efforts.
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Folks, as you can see from the WordCamp logo over in the top right corner, I’ll be attending, and speaking, at the WordCamp Dallas 2008 event being held here in my home town of Frisco, TX on Saturday March 29 and Sunday March 30, 2008. I’ve been working with Charles Stricklin of the WordPress Podcast to organize the event, and it’s going to be a very special weekend full of top blogging talent.

If you live anywhere nearby, or are willing to travel to Dallas, I highly recommend attending this event. But here’s the catch… we are limited to only about 300 attendees, so you really need to get your registration in quickly. It’s only $20 to attend, because we’ve got sponsors helping pick up the major ticket items. So given the fact that the speakers who will be here have tens of thousands of regular readers I want to encourage people to sign up quick – because once the slots are gone, that’s it! (View the current Attendee list.)

I can’t emphasize enough how valuable I found attendance at the WordCamp 2007 event. I made a whole bunch of new friends, like Charles, Lorelle, Matt, Donncha, Lloyd, and many more. And that was in addition to the new tips, tricks and education I received from the fantastic speakers. (By the way, I filmed those speakers, and you can watch the videos here.)

Jeremy Wright of b5media covered the topic of Blog Monetization during the WordCamp 2007 Conference in San Francisco on July 21, 2007.

Jeremy has experimented with dozens of types of monetization and ads and shared some of his experience with the WordCamp community regarding what works and what doesn’t.
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Dan Kuykendall provided the first lecture on Podcasting at the WordCamp 2007 conference on Saturday July 21, 2007 at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco, CA.

Dan spoke about the theory and practice of podcasting and how to apply it directly to WordPress using his plugin PodPress.
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This review of the Canon XH A1 Camcorder is going to be a little different from any other you might read for one primary reason, this is the first camcorder I’ve ever owned. That’s right folks, my first camcorder was a high-dollar Prosumer model because if I can’t do it right I don’t want to do it at all.

I had some difficulty with actually purchasing this camcorder. First, I couldn’t find a local retailer anywhere in Dallas. So, I had to turn to the Web.

I tried Abes of Maine with disastrous results, then I ordered it from Amazon and got free next day shipping (yeah!), but it turns out I got a defective one with a documented Iris ring problem (boo!), but a 5 minute discussion with an Amazon rep resulted in them shipping me a new one along with an RMA to send the defective one back (yeah!).
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This latest video from WordCamp 2007 features Lloyd Budd and Mark Jaquith on the topic of Getting Involved with WordPress.

This lecture occurred on Saturday July 21, 2007 from 3pm-4pm in San Francisco, CA at the Swedish American Hall.

If I had to summarize Lloyd and Mark’s comments into just one sentence it would be, “you don’t have to be a programmer to contribute to the development of WordPress.”
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What do you do when your blog goes from a thousand pageviews a day to a million? Well, you start out by watching this video of a lecture on HyperDB and High Performance WordPress given by Barry Abrahamson and Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp 2007, in which they explain how they scale WordPress.com across hundreds of servers and constantly tweak and improve performance.

This lecture occurred on Sunday July 22, 2007 from 10am-11am in San Francisco, CA at the Swedish American Hall.
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Andy Skelton was kind enough to grace us all with some original songs while everyone was partaking of the Bar-BQ lunch on Sunday June 22, 2007 at WordCamp in San Francisco.

After a funny little mic check Andy launches right into two of his original songs. Everyone got a kick out of it, and it was a nice break in an otherwise long (though interesting) day of lectures.
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This one hour session, entitled State of the Word, from the WordCamp 2007 conference features Matt Mullenweg giving an update on the current state and future plans for WordPress.

This lecture occurred on Sunday July 22, 2007 from 3:30-4:30pm in San Francisco, CA at the Swedish American Hall. Matt gave the updates and then allowed those in attendance to ask questions and make comments.
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This was the last one hour session, entitled Developer Duke-out, from the WordCamp 2007 conference conducted by Matt Mullenweg and featuring Mark Jaquith, Donncha O Caoimh, Michael Adams and Andy Skelton.

The Developer Duke-out occurred on Sunday July 22, 2007 from 4:30-5:30pm in San Francisco, CA at the Swedish American Hall and it gave everyone the chance to get to know a little more about some of the people behind Wordpress as well as have the opportunity to ask questions and make suggestions.

The guys talk about some of their favorite plugins, the current and future state of WordPress, and a number of other interesting and at time comical issues.
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This is the one hour long lecture given by Lorelle VanFossen at the WordCamp 2007 conference in San Francisco, CA two weeks ago on the topic of Kicking Ass Content Connections. In order to put it up in decent quality I had to break it into two parts.

Lorelle gave this lecture from 1pm-2pm on July 21, 2007 at the Swedish American Hall. She went immediately after lunch, and it was a good thing because normally you get that “after lunch” energy lull – but not with Lorelle presenting! As you can see from the video she is a bundle of energy and was by far the biggest challenge for me to keep the camera on.
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This is a video of the one hour long lecture given by Matt Cutts at the WordCamp 2007 conference in San Francisco, CA two weeks ago on the topic of Whitehat SEO tips for Bloggers.

For those not familiar, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and this lecture is all about ways to make your Web site rank higher in Google and the other search engines. I’ve also written an article on this topic called Improving Search Engine Rankings over at HTMLHelp.com.

Matt’s presentation is available here, and when I get a chance I’ll try to go back and plug them into the video in the appropriate spots. In the meantime I did manage to get most, if not all, of them on film although they might be a little difficult to read – especially in the low quality versions required by the video hosting sites.
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	johnpoz Oldie but goody: "Matt Cutts Whitehat SEO tips for Bloggers" - http://onemansblog.com/cutts07
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