Recap of 2012 WordCamp Vancouver ( WCYVR )

October 14, 2012

Grant Landram and I had the pleasure of representing freshmuse this weekend by attending the 2012 Vancouver, BC WordCamp as speakers. Grant and I bookended the day as the first and last speakers.

https://twitter.com/benlobaugh/status/257151985780944897

Grant’s talk on Tips to Grow your Professional WordPress Business ( slides ) has been highly sought after this year, and Grant deliver another stunning rendition of his presentation today. Though delivered many times ( and traveling together ), today was the first WordCamp presentation by Grant I was able to attend. It was very good. Unfortunately Vancouver did not video record the sessions, but I highly recommend you head to WordPress.tv and watch Grant’s Portland session. Some tweets from Grant’s session

https://twitter.com/benlobaugh/status/257151985780944897

https://twitter.com/chrisyakimov/status/257152362735611905

Grant as so great he even was immortalized in an artistic rendition of his presentation!

https://twitter.com/danpozo/status/257175772240957440

https://twitter.com/katebusiness/status/257177499052679168

I was delighted that I was asked to present on Interacting with External APIs at another WordCamp. There was a great turnout, with 100+ people attending. I opened by telling people that I like a lot of audience interaction and that I was going to perform a live demo and heckling was encouraged. The people really took that to heard. I swear there were some professional hecklers in the crowd. It was all in good fun though. My presentation was in the last time slot of the day, which is typically when the attendee’s brains are buzzing from information overload. I designed my presentation to be pretty light due to that, and it was a lot of fun. Lots of laughs. A great way to end the day. I found myself laughing more than the audience I think. Each attendee was given an evaluation card to fill out at the end and my talk apparently received high marks and comments like “It was life changing!” I am not sure if I would go that far, but I know I had a fantastic time. I was nervous following two great speakers, but it came off well. I even received a clapping ovation when my code worked the first time around. Here are some tweets around my talk:

Pre-talk support from Jon Brown who had seen the same presentation in Las Vegas

https://twitter.com/benlobaugh/status/257181319614853121

https://twitter.com/cawebhosting/status/257255686604480512

https://twitter.com/neverything/status/257253397202366464

https://twitter.com/MrDWright/status/257258993490210816

https://twitter.com/yumi_ang/status/257259556248367104

https://twitter.com/tjmedia/status/257259692559052801

https://twitter.com/tjmedia/status/257259976370843648

https://twitter.com/EricaHargreave/status/257261283081060354

https://twitter.com/jkudish/status/257262195056984064

https://twitter.com/arianecdesign/status/257263310284652544

https://twitter.com/tddewey/status/257264756174512128

https://twitter.com/CourtFantinato/status/257264771051683841

https://twitter.com/BoweFrankema/status/257265191950098432

https://twitter.com/GrantLandram/status/257266787157155840

https://twitter.com/thoronas/status/257267548662398978

It is now edging closer to 2 AM and as I need to be up again in a few hours for BuddyCamp instead of doing a play by play recap I will provide you with some select curated tweet that help illustrate just how fun WordCamps can be. If you missed Vancouver WordCamp this year be sure you keep an eye out for next time around!

https://twitter.com/mor10/status/257248175109312512

https://twitter.com/jkudish/status/257167027263909888

https://twitter.com/cawebhosting/status/257167234030505984

https://twitter.com/yumi_ang/status/257175867187408896

https://twitter.com/benlobaugh/status/257178714406809600

https://twitter.com/daaganon/status/257181313541472256

https://twitter.com/jameswanless/status/257182372510965761

https://twitter.com/jillbinder/status/257182750283550721

https://twitter.com/thoronas/status/257185934985031680

https://twitter.com/giuliaforsythe/status/257186910345252864

https://twitter.com/arianecdesign/status/257196697233530880

https://twitter.com/jb510/status/257198770712883200

https://twitter.com/benlobaugh/status/257217688689057792

https://twitter.com/benlobaugh/status/257213861369876482

https://twitter.com/GetSource/status/257219077980966912

https://twitter.com/jasonbobich/status/257224482224226305

https://twitter.com/GetSource/status/257225101446115329

https://twitter.com/thoronas/status/257230848141705216

https://twitter.com/jb510/status/257232652673896448

https://twitter.com/jb510/status/257233792522145792

https://twitter.com/jb510/status/257242969428606976

https://twitter.com/mor10/status/257248175109312512

https://twitter.com/kevinfukawa/status/257238064659832832

https://twitter.com/millbistro/status/257315676799254528

https://twitter.com/blogsitestudio/status/257271726549909504

3 thoughts on “Recap of 2012 WordCamp Vancouver ( WCYVR )

  1. Silvan Hagen (October 15, 2012)

    Good recap Ben and thanks for your talk on external API’s! I’m trying to wrap my head around some of the stuff for a small widget right now. Glad you liked the bus on my laptop.

    1. blobaugh (October 16, 2012)

      It was my pleasure! If you have any questions do not hesitate to ask

  2. Silvan Hagen (October 16, 2012)

    I already implemented some of the methods you showed in a little widget I’m working on. It reduced code (was wir cURL before) and readability. One thing that kept me awake all night was the, in my opinion, false cookie value handling by WordPress WP_Http_Cookie. The cookie value gets filtered through urldecode (see: class-http.php) this function removes “+” and other special characters from the value and made it nearly impossible to use the cookie again in the second request with wp_remote_get(). I came up with a nasty fix here: https://gist.github.com/3903478.

    Just in case you have experienced something like this before and have the time, I would love to hear your opinion on this.