After WordCamp Montréal 2013

This was my second WordCamp, and it will definitely not be my last. WordCamp Montréal (WCMTL) fulfilled all my expectations and went beyond.

This time around I decided to loosen up a bit more than I did previously, and did my best to meet people and get to know about what they did. Needless to say, that resulted in a far more interesting experience for me than when I focused on the talks exclusively, as I did when I attended WCTO: Developers. (See below for the talks I attended.)

People

There was plenty of people to meet at WCMTL, and there was rarely a time when I felt I had nobody to speak with. Everyone there was very open and accepting, and I think everyone went in with the mindset of meeting people, which worked well for everyone present.

I enjoyed talking with some of the various organizers of the event: Shannon, Kirk, Carl, Richard (didn’t get to meet Richard), and Jeremy, all of whom were great people who were clearly capable of putting on a great event.

Additionally, meeting people such as Yannick Lefebvre, Dion Hulse, and Brian Levine who all gave great advice and encouragement about their field was much appreciated.

There were many more people whom I got the chance to speak with at the event that I couldn’t list here. Rest assured that the people who attended WCMTL were top notch.

Education

Before attending, I published that I wanted to discuss how WordPress could be used in education, to teach digital publishing; but also to teach web development and “how to code.” To this end, I had discussions with many people about the potential for WordPress to fill that role, including Al Davis, who heads up education at WPUniversity.

There were many unique perspectives about the issue, including some which ran contrary to what I was pushing for. That’s perfectly acceptable, and I appreciated the different outlooks on what coding issue should be like in schools.

I think we’re at a time where WordPress has the potential to be really disruptive in coding education. I’d like to help instigate that push, so expect to hear more from me on that topic in the future.

Wrap Up

WordCamp Montréal was great.

Thanks to the hard work of the organizers, speakers, volunteers, and the help of the sponsors, it was an awesome event, a great way to mark its 5th anniversary.

I definitely want to come back next year if schedules allow, and I’ll hopefully be able to ramp up the number of WordCamps I attend in the time being.

Talks

I moved these talk links to the bottom, because the sea of blue was rather ugly. I’ll be posting my notes on all of them in time, but here are the links to the slide decks and presenter Twitter accounts. In chronological order:

Day 1

Day 2

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