<\/a>I seemed to have come to Melbourne at a great time – Priscilla the Musical<\/a> is still on going, one of my favorite travel writer Peter Moore<\/a> is launching his latest book in Australia, and the event I attended last Saturday, WordCamp Melbourne<\/a>.<\/p>\n

WordCamp is a gathering of WordPress users talking about (you guessed it) WordPress and blogging. Among the speakers were Alex Shiels<\/a> of Automattic (who quite succinctly told us how big WordPress is), James Farmer<\/a> of Edublogs (who organized WCM07 and quite a jolly person), Darren Rowse<\/a> of Problogger.net (how can this be a blogging event without Mr. Rowse? He’s a very nice, down to earth guy, by the way, and he even granted my odd request of posing with my Pinky St doll), Christine Davis <\/a>of Neato.co.nz (developer of the Ultimate Tag Warrior, which I’m currently using), and Alister Cameron<\/a>, the self-proclaimed blogologist (who was wearing a TinTin in Vietnam t-shirt, which had me racking my brains whether TinTin ever went to Vietnam).<\/p>\n

Darren Rowse mentioned in passing that Melbourne bloggers have been talking about having one of these gatherings for a long time, and this is the first time it has pushed through. Also, when I asked him if he gives talks on blogging a lot, he said he gets invited to talk overseas, but hardly in Australia. <\/p>\n

Apart from the talks given by the speakers, there were also round table discussions, where in participants get to talk among themselves regarding a topics pertaining to WordPress or blogging. Topics like choosing a blogging platform, selling plugins, online reputation management, themes, and blogging as new media. I joined the plugins table, reputation management and new media.<\/p>\n

The online reputation management discussion was facilitated by Gerry McCusker<\/a>, a Public Relations Analyst. We discussed how organizations can optimize blogs for better public relations. I found myself drifting off at certain points, thinking of how certain individuals can hurt their reputation through online self-publishing. <\/p>\n

When the time came for the last round table, I eagerly headed to the table set for the new media discussion. Disappointingly, there were only three of us there. Hmmm, as I told Gerry, who was also at the table, this table would’ve been full had it been in Manila.<\/p>\n

Overall, it was a great, enlightening event. I was able to see the “blog culture” in Melbourne, and how people are utilizing it. It was great to meet people with such passion for blogging. Oh, and Lucio<\/a>, too bad you left early…you could’ve won a WordPress shirt \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

Pictures from WordCamp Melbourne<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n<\/a>
\nDarren Rowse talking about how to make money by blogging<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nAlister Cameron telling us about all the fun to be had with Sandbox<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nJames Farmer sharing his trick for increasing your multi-user blog from 1 to 1,000<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nChristine Davis differentiating between tags and categories<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nThe panel of speakers with Alex Shiels answering question from the audience<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I seemed to have come to Melbourne at a great time – Priscilla the Musical is still on going, one of my favorite travel writer Peter Moore is launching his latest book in Australia, and the event I attended last Saturday, WordCamp Melbourne. WordCamp is a gathering of WordPress users talking about (you guessed it) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,31,57],"tags":[1885,666,667,74],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1739,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/1739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwandering.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}