At WordCamp San Diego 2013, I’m watching Konstantin Obenland give his talk about the work put into Twenty Thirteen, and he displayed a few slides of three blogs that already use it in production.
Nick Hamze is one of them. Sweet!
Almost one month has passed and I’d say it’s a good time to share my meager notes of my experience at NMX BlogWorld 2013 in Las Vegas.
I also met Brett Kelly for the first time ever in real life and we took a photo. He’s super cool. (He spoke at “Productivity Power Panel: Learn the Tools, Tactics, & Workflows of Highly Productive Bloggers”, and I’ll post my notes from that separately.)
Overall, I had a great time working at the WordPress Happiness Bar in the exhibitors’ area with several other fine Automatticians, and I look forward to more opportunities like this in the future.
I’ve been quiet the last three months because my head has been down working with the fine people at Automattic on a trial basis.
Now, I’m stoked to announce that as of February 3rd, 2012, I’m a full-time Happiness Engineer with Automattic. My focus will be with WordPress.com, so when you need help with your WordPress.com site, you’ll probably bump into me. 
A few days ago, I took a few moments to write my about section for our site. I’m astonished that my name is on that page, and it’s an amazing feeling to be part of a group that I’ve admired for a long time.
Lastly, if you’re interested, you should consider working with us. We’re hiring.
See you around WordPress.com!
For the first time in five or six years, I finally met James Huff in person at WordCamp LA. I’ve known him for about seven years. In addition to being a talented musician and all-around helpful guy, he’s a Happiness Engineer with Automattic.
Since his Gravatar is from his wedding three years ago, I demanded politely asked for a portrait. 
Thanks for the good times, James!
Edit: Thanks, Amy, for suggesting that I reword my post. To clarify, this was my first time meeting James.
I hung out with James Huff at WordCamp LA 2011 on Saturday. In January, James explained why (and how) he switched MacManX.com to WordPress.com.
This afternoon, I’ve mustered the courage to move All Narfed Up to WordPress.com. I currently have 1,797 published posts and 3,049 comments. The import took a few minutes, and I only had to wait a few more minutes after switching my nameservers at my domain registrar.
I was hesitant primarily because of affiliate links, but those aren’t generating revenue anymore. Since Amazon Associates was terminated in California in June 2011, that was one less reason to be self-hosted.
I’m so relieved that I don’t have to worry about plugins, upgrades, backups, or security on my blog. I’ll be more likely to write or share more photos.
Thanks for the nudge, James!
Note: For more information, see the pros and cons of WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org.
Note #2: Here are the instructions for moving a blog from a self-hosted WordPress.org site to WordPress.com.
My categories and tags weren’t assigned to any of my posts upon import. They’ve been in dire need of reorganizing, so this gives me a reason to re-categorize all my posts. (This will take awhile.)
I used the FD Footnotes Plugin for a long time, so you’ll see a lot of posts where the footnote is inline with the paragraph. Oh well. (For now.)
I used WP jQuery Lightbox, so the majority of photos and images link to the larger file rather than an attachment page. I’ll change my behavior from now on and use the built-in attachment page from now on.
FeedBurner appears to show the new post at WP.com, so all is well. FeedBurner doesn’t seem to recognize the new RSS feed yet, even though it’s the same URL. Sit tight because DNS is still propagating. If you don’t want to wait, you can ditch the FeedBurner feed and use the default RSS feed. (2011-09-14 16:56 PDT)
I’ve had a few days to let WordCamp Los Angeles 2010 simmer in my mind.
The following are a few things I learned:
Don’t complain. You only paid $25, and the organizer(s) can’t please everyone.
I overheard a complaint about not having intermediate speakers. That was last year.[1. Attendee feedback from WordCamp LA 2009 indicated that people wanted beginner and advanced speakers.]
Don’t be scared – interact with others! You’ll get more out of the experience and feel much better at the end of the day.
Bring pen and paper. It’s good practice. If you have questions, write them down and save them for the end. (Maybe the speaker might answer your question, and you won’t break his/her train of thought.)
Ask questions pertinent to the speaker. I found myself glancing at the schedule a few times, wondering why the speaker or audience weren’t staying on topic.
Do you have a lot of knowledge you’d like to share? Write it all down and ask to speak next year. Or, write a series of blog posts about it. If it’s solid, it’ll get shared.
I heard that scheduling speakers was a difficult task this year. In a few panels, I remember some folks sharing a substantial amount of information.
Most importantly, if a speaker is talking or fielding a question, be quiet. I was annoyed at times because people kept talking and making comments to their friends, and I couldn’t hear what was going on.
Really, “adults?” Go outside, have your discussion, then come back.
Make your talk, slideshow, and/or notes available online. State its availability at the beginning, and it should reduce questions if someone misheard a website or plugin.
*****
This was the second year I’ve attended and volunteered. (View Austin Passy’s and my photos from this year)
Although I view myself as a wallflower, I did my best to talk to people I haven’t met before. For the most part, I had a good time and felt that most of the speakers did a great job.
Especially after Luke Pilon’s speech, I’m inspired to get back into WordPress (especially helping in the forums), gain purpose for my website/blog, and write more.
If you attended WordCampLA, what were your thoughts? If you blogged about it already, please share a link to it in the comments.
A couple weeks/months ago, @photomatt included text on his contact form, stating that he’d send a shirt if you sent him your shirt size and mailing address. Last Friday, I got it! (I’m not alone. Jayvie got one, too.)
The main gift was the shirt, which is clutch because my black WordPress shirt is getting worn out.
Apparently, I’m also one of the three most important people in WordPress.
Certificate transcription:
This certificate entitles the holder to a lifetime supply of free WordPresses, to be used at their discretion for life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, & the four Freedoms of the GPL.
Signed, Matt Mullenweg.
Thanks to my pal, Taylor, for taking my photo. I told him how to compose it.
There was a desperate void in my WordPress sites. I wanted Amazon S3 support for worry-free backups. Then, Automatic WordPress Backup was created. How’d they know?!
You can’t change the time of the scheduled backups, but it runs at the time of the plugin install. I’m also running WP-DB-Backup to a Gmail account for redundancy.
Great job, Dan Coulter and Melvin Ram. Yay!
Please go here for support with this plugin. I’ll ignore/delete comments asking for help.
I’ll be at WordCamp LA today. Say hi!
After upgrading All Narfed Up from WordPress 2.7 to 2.7.1, I didn’t realize that it nuked my current theme and copied the default K2 and Classic themes. Grr.
Fortunately, I had a backup. All is well again.
