I attended to the eighth meeting of the WordPress London local group – the Christmas social!

Beer (courtesy of Headshift) and chat, replaced the usual presentations (and beer).

The Blue Lion proved to be an excellent venue with a great range of real ales.

Pictured is the new WordPress London badge, produced by Emily Webber.

I went to the seventh meeting of the WordPress London local group at the Headshift offices in Shad Thames on Thursday 17 November 2011.

During the meetup, Keith Devon gave a clear and succinct presentation on working with custom post types, and how they can be used in conjunction with templates, custom taxonomies and meta boxes.

Chris Adams (pictured above) gave an update on recent news developments in the wonderful world of WordPress, including drawing our attention to the WP Install Profiles plugin, which looks like it could be a bit of a timesaver.

David Bain also talked about the various possibilities for improving WordPress SEO.

The excellent evening concluded with liquid refreshment at the local hostelry Anchor Tap.

WordPress London meets on a monthly basis – if you’re not based in London see if there is a WordPress local group near you on the WordCamp UK wiki.

I attended BarCamp London 9 during the weekend of 29-30 October 2011 at the City University London Social Sciences Building.

I last attended the event at BarCamp London 6 in 2009, and although the format was the same for this year’s BarCamp, a digital grid was used for the first time, allowing attendees to populate the half hour sessions using the site.

If you haven’t a clue what I’m taking about, see Wikipedia for an explanation of what BarCamp is.

Here’s some of the sessions I participated in during the weekend:

• Lanyrd: From side-project to startup – Natalie Downe and Simon Willison (pictured above) entertainingly explained how Lanyrd, started as a side-project on an extended travelling honeymoon, ended up turning into a startup after spending three months at Y combinator. This was not part of the original plan for the honeymoon! Interesting quote by Simon from the session: “Data is a sympton of design. Watch for duplicates and bad data: these bugs are important to fix quickly because they affect the quality of your data”.
• How does IBM Watson work? – Dale Lane, from IBM, outlined how the Watson learning system works, which appeared on the US quiz show Jeopardy!
• Engaging universities – A look at the motivations for universities to host events like BarCamp led by Kate Reader. This useful session gave me some ideas relating to events I’m involved in organising.
• We are Wikipedians, ask us things – Tom Morris (Wikipedia editor) and Oliver Keyes (Wikimedia Foundation employee) answered questions about Wikipedia and gave an insight into the content editing process, against a current background policy of quality over quantity.
• How we do Agile at the BBC – Jamie Knight, BBC Client Side Developer, outlined how Agile methodologies are applied to the development of iPlayer in BBC Audio and Music. Jamie outlined how user stories (personas), acceptance crteria (defining how you know when a specific piece of work has been completed), 15 day task sprints, SVN, the use of white boards to track progress of sprints, and the pairing of developers and designers, are all used as part of iPlayer development.
• OpenStreetMap developer ecosystem – Harry Wood reported on the OpenStreetMap mapping system. Harry succinctly explained the project development process and how mapping data is served over the web. For some reason I didn’t realise until this session the project originated in the UK.
• Identity, authorisation, personalisation – An interesting discussion led by Tim Nash, which included looking at how confirmation of identity on the web can get confused with authorisation, leading to the unauthorised release of personal data.
• 5 Tips for progressive enhancement and RWD – Jamie Knight talked to two elements of web development: progressive enhancement and responsive web design (RWD).
• Semi-organised Barcamps and WordPress – I gave a session (PDF) on an alternative approach to BarCamps, using a wiki and mailing list, and it’s application to organising an annual two day WordPress conference, along with the WordPress community ecosystem in the UK. I put together this session on the Sunday morning, to address questions I’d been asked the day before, and subsequently ran a session in the afternoon. One of the great things about a BarCamp is being able to respond to events at this speed.

Plenty of other stuff happened during the weekend: including pies for all (pictured above), YouTube bingo, the Saturday evening quiz along with beer and wine.

Regrettably I had to duck out of the traditional crashing out overnight at the venue this year.

Many thanks to the BarCamp London 9 organisers and sponsors for a fantastic and fulfilling weekend.

I went to the sixth meeting of the WordPress London local group at the Telegraph offices in Victoria on Thursday 20 October 2011.

During the meetup, Paul Gibbs (pictured above), Developer at the Telegraph, gave an illuminating presentation on what’s involved in running the WordPress powered Telegraph blogs and MyTelegraph, the latter claimed to be the largest BuddyPress site in the UK.

Graham Armfield also gave an interesting presentation on WordPress and web accessibility, giving those present plenty of food for thought.

WordPress London meets on a monthly basis – if you’re not based in London see if there is a WordPress local group near you on the WordCamp UK wiki.

Dries Buytaert, project lead for Drupal, and Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, interviewed together (for the first time) at SchipulCon 2011 in Houston, Texas.

The event is planned to be held on the weekend of 14-15 July 2012.

This will be the fifth in the series of UK-based gatherings of WordPress publishers, designers and developers, which is held at a different location for each event.

The first conference took place in 2008 at Birmingham, followed by Cardiff the following year, then Manchester in 2010, and finally Portsmouth earlier this year.

The decision on the winning bid will be taken by the WordCamp UK mailing list.

Those interested in proposing a venue should follow the procedure on the planning wiki – the deadline for bid submissions is Saturday 26 November 2011.

WordCamp Portsmouth UK 2011 took place on the weekend of 16-17 July.

There’s plenty of reports of the proceedings on the WordCamp UK wiki.

As the co-ordinator of WordCamp UK I’d like to thank everyone involved – including:

• Everyone who led sessions.
• Rich Boakes who put forward this year’s winning venue bid and provided invaluable help in the organisation of the event.
• The University of Portsmouth for the venue.
• All our sponsors and microsponsors.
• Mike Little for the efficient processing of all the financial issues.
• Jonny Allbut for building the Portsmouth 2011 event site.
• Jonathan Harris for the event graphics and t-shirt design.
• The WordCamp UK Core Group.
• And last (but not least!) thanks to everyone who attended.

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive about the event, and plenty of improvements were suggested for 2012.

The Core Group has taken on board many of these suggestions, and hopes to be issuing the 2012 venue requirements in the next few weeks, against which bids for specific event locations will be invited.

The decision on the venue for next year will taken by the WordCamp UK mailing list.

So if you want to influence where in the UK the follow-up to the Portsmouth WordCamp takes place, subscribe to the mailing list now!

WordCamp Portsmouth UK 2011 tickets are now available.

Early Bird tickets are £35 until midday 3 June 2011 – thereafter they’ll be £45.

Microsponsorship, at £75, can also be purchased using the same ticketing system.

The gathering will be the follow-up to WordCamp UK 2010.

The decision was taken by the WordCamp UK mailing list following the venue bidding process.

The winning bid, proposed by Rich Boakes, is for the event to be held at University of Portsmouth on the weekend of 16-17 July 2011.

The runner-up bid was by John Read for Buckinghamshire New University.

The mailing list took a survey on the bids, and only one vote seperated the result – an indication of the excellance of both proposals.

I’m happy to be once again coordinating the organisation of the event – you can find out more at the WordCamp UK wiki.

This follows a bidding process, during which submissions have been made which aim to meet or exceed the 2011 venue requirements.

The two bids are:

• High Wycombe – John Read has proposed accommodating the event at the Buckinghamshire New University.
• Portsmouth – Rich Boakes has bid to hold the event at the University of Portsmouth.

The WordCamp UK mailing list (registration required) will be considering the bids and selecting a winner by 17 January 2011.

More details are on the WordCamp UK wiki.

Please note the final name of the event, the follow-up to WordCamp UK 2010, will be subject to change.