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On Friday, June 27, the TradeMark developers caravanned to Dallas to attend WordCamp 2009, a conference that covers all things WordPress. For those of you who aren't familiar, WordPress is a free, highly extensible and theme-able, web publishing platform. It is a CMS equivalent to a Swiss army knife complete with a spork.

WordPress kicked off with a welcome party at AMF Richardson Lanes. There we joined up with some familiar Austin folks along with some new faces attending the camp. At the end of the evening we retired to our luxurious 2-star Sun Suites Hotel Motel in Plano.

The conference itself spanned Saturday and Sunday, and topics included content ideas, social media, SEO, and WordPress customization. I found many of the speakers to be very passionate about their topics and engaging to the audience. As a developer, I was looking to see more technical topics, but much of the sessions appealed more to bloggers and social media types.

Overall it was still a good experience for us. I could tell that WordCamp had more of a community feel than most of the conferences I've attended. The WordCamp staff and speakers were very receptive to feedback. In fact, while having dinner at a restaurant after the first day of sessions, Lorelle VanFossen, one of the presenters, recognized us from the conference and asked us what we thought about how things were going. Lorelle did a talk on how to effectively categorize and tag your blog, and she wasn't afraid to show her Sci-Fi geek side by tying in several references to Star Trek in her presentation.

The conference ended with closing remarks from WordPress founding developer, Matt Mullenweg, where he discussed the present and future of the blogging software. Finally we headed home, where some of us endured the many aromas of Rothko, Caroling's gassy pug. Goodbye WordCamp - we'll see you next year!