Approximately 50 people attended, ranging from bloggers to experienced developers to entrepreneurs with WordPress based businesses. The meet-up had a great vibe, and I met alot of really interesting people.
Format
There was a huge turnout – standing room only. Shortly after we grabbed pizza provided by sponsor Web Dev Studios we split into groups – blogger and developer. This format worked for me. There is some discussion on the meetup site about keeping us together in the future, and I see the benefits of that too. I joined the developer group, and really don’t know what transpired in the blogger group. I think it’s fair to say that many in the developer group blog too, and I would love to share my knowledge of customizing WordPress with non-developers.
Discussion: Future Topics
There was a lot of great discussion around future topics. @Zamoose, who will speaking at October’s WordCamp, wowed the developer group with his knowledge of securing WordPress, speeding it up, optimizing it for tons of traffic, and finding the best parent themes to develop with. (He has his own parent themes he built).
Philly WordCamp
Philly’s first ever WordCamp will be happening October 30th. Also coming up is the September 11th WordCamp Mid-Atlantic, which looks pretty stellar.
People
I met LOTS of great people at Wednesday night’s meet-up. Most of the tech events I get to are pretty, um, technical. So I had no idea there was this huge social media scene in Philadelphia. I managed to find quite a few of the people I met on twitter. Interested in seeing who attended? Join the group’s meet-up page.
Giveaway
Did I mention that I won the door prize – Professional WordPress – authored by meet-up organizer Brad Williams (@williamsba). Sweet! The other prize was a free class at Future Media Concepts, who hosted the event. I don’t know who won that. I was probably looking at the book I just won.
Update 8/13/2010: Check out @zamoose blog post with links to resources discussed at the meeting
