This past weekend was WordCamp NYC 2014, and I must say, it was a huge improvement from previous WordCamps in New York. It’s no secret that I’ve been a bit critical of New York WordCamps in the past.
For the record, I’ve only been to WordCamps in two cities: New York and Boston. Until now, Boston was doing it right and New York wasn’t. I’m mostly referring to number of different tracks. In 2012, New York WordCamp was a hot mess with 13 tracks. They literally gave a talk to anyone that wanted one. It was next to impossible to choose which talks to go to and which to skip. I ended up going to a lot of lousy talks.
Boston WordCamp 2013, in contrast, had 4 tracks, only 2 of which were dedicated to development. So basically, my decision was this or that. I ended up going to a lot of great talks there. New York WordCamp 2014 followed this format of 4 tracks and it was much, much better. Props to the coordinator, Eric Andrew Lewis.
In addition to WordCamp, I decided to participate in Contributor’s Day the Friday before. There I met Ryan McCue who is leading the effort in the new WordPress REST API, slated be included in the 4.1 or 4.2 release. It felt really good working with him and writing some code for that project. I’ve contributed to WordPress 4.0 by closing the same ticket I opened, but Contributor’s Day is definitely a great environment for the newbie wannabe contributor (like me) to get involved, since there’s so many people to help and support you.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend Sunday’s sessions. Being from New Jersey and having a new baby doesn’t really allow me the freedom I once took for granted. I would have really liked to attend Ryan’s talk on the REST API, Helen’s on WP_Query, and Daniel’s on WP-CLI. I guess I’ll just have to catch those, and others, when they become available online.
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