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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Lorelle VanFossen gave a fairly short lecture a few weeks ago at WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco entitled 260 Ways to Break WordPress. She didn’t exactly give 260 ways to break WordPress, but she certainly told a story about how Liz Strauss managed this feat! And she makes some good points about how we all manage to break things.

During the discussion she covers top WordPress plugins and themes, some WordPress annoyances, ways to help foster a community on your site, and much more as only Lorelle can. Enjoy!
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Stephen O’Grady gave a lecture on Open Source Business Models at WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco. Stephen’s main point was to prove that Open Source projects and profitability are not mutually exclusive concepts. His assertion is that there is definitely gold in them there hills!

By the way, I’m sorry for the poor audio quality in portions of the video. Again, I was not in control of the audio system and the guys running the equipment were way off at times.
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I know that a lot of you may be bloggers, but might be unfamiliar with WordPress. Perhaps you’ve considered migrating your blog over from another platform, but aren’t really sure how to go about it. Well, this next presentation is just for you.

Lloyd Budd gave a presentation to illustrate the finer points of switching over from that old platform you’ve been blogging with to a shiny new WordPress installation! So, if you’ll invest 20 minutes in hearing him out, you’ll learn how easy it can be to make the move.
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Ben Huh, the proprietor of I can haz cheezeburger and other popular sites gives a lecture at WordCamp San Francisco on the Secret of Virality. I got most of the slides in the video, but if you want to download and read along, you can get the slides here.

Ben’s lecture talks about how you can achieve viral results, and why certain things work and others don’t. His message is great, and if your goal with your site is to grow your traffic like crazy, this video is going to be required “reading”.
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Andy Skelton entertained us all at WordCamp with a couple of songs, this was the second, called “Deserve”. Unfortunately, the mic is a little too hot and it caused a little distortion. Even more unfortunate, the first song Andy played was basically unusable because the mic was way too hot.

I didn’t have any control over the audio system as I was just leaching off the feed from the folks working the show. I feel really bad because I had to run down and start recording another lecture after Andy started and wasn’t able to catch the problem in time. Sorry about that Andy! But as usual, you sounded great!
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Alan Levine gave the opening presentation at WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco entitled “It’s All You Can WordPress at the EduBlog Diner”. Luckily for all of us, he’s also put together an amazing blog post to accompany his presentation, complete with links to the many, many Web sites he referenced. (Just like an educator to be thorough, huh?)

Since the film doesn’t capture all of the slides as Alan goes through them, you can check out his flicker set of the presentation and follow along as he presents. At some point in the future if I get time I’ll try and pull them back into the presentation.
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SEO consultant Stephan Spencer gave a fantastic lecture at WordCamp in San Francisco on Search Engine Optimization and, more specifically, the mistakes most bloggers make. (Maybe if I’m lucky Stephan will help me with OMB and Woopra!)

As founder of NetConcepts, a top Search Engine Marketing firm, Stephan is one of the leading experts in the field and he managed to pack more tips into this 30 minute segment than I could have imagined.
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The last speaker at WordCamp San Francisco 2008 was Kathy Sierra, and her presentation was definitely worth the wait. She spoke about “Kicking Ass and Creating Passionate Users”, and I must say that her presentation was itself “kick ass”.

If you don’t know Kathy, she is the co-creator of the Head First series of books on computer programming, which began with Head First Java.

You may also choose to follow Kathy on Twitter, and I highly recommend a stop by her blog about Creating Passionate Users (though she hasn’t posted there in a while).
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And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for. I’ve slowly but surely been editing, exporting and uploading the WordCamp 2008 San Francisco videos, and I managed to get Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word presentation up last night.

The video turned out pretty good (except for one little 30 second spot in the middle when the tape ran out… doah!), and when you watch it below I would highly recommend that you maximize the video to full screen. The quality in full screen view is great on my MacBook Pro, so I’m assuming it’s gonna work for everyone.
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As I mentioned previously, I attended WordCamp San Francisco 2008 a week ago, and it’s taken me a few days to transfer the videos from tape into the computer. At this point I’m beginning to do the editing, so I’ll start putting out a string of videos (in no particular order). To get us started we’ve got Chuck Lewis, the SEO Rapper aka Poetic Prophet.

You’ll remember Chuck from my previous post about The Poetic Prophet. He’s very cool, he knows his shizzle about SEO, and he can rap. What more do you want? Ok. How about an a Capella world premier of the WordPress rap, and an interview with Matt Mullenweg!
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Jacob Santos gave a lecture at WordCamp Dallas on WordPress testing in which he makes a strong argument for destructive testing of WordPress as a means to improvement.

When you think of a project like WordPress that powers millions of blogs, it’s hard to imagine all of the infinite ways that people will test the software and find ways to break it. But Jacob makes a case for automating the testing in order to have consistency and to find bugs much quicker than by simply releasing the code to the real world and watching what happens.
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