After the Deadline

Now that WordCamp NYC is over, it’s time to show some link love to those I met. Thanks for saying hi to the smiling guy in the velvet blazer.

1. I watched Jake Goldman‘s demo on the Recommended Reading using Google Reader Sharing Plugin for WordPress. I like this plugin because it follows the philosophy of do one thing, do it well, and make it easy to use it in different ways. There are many possibilities to populate your blog with content from your Google Reader feed consumption process with this tool. Great work.
2. I met Carl Valcarcel yesterday at the beginning of a session. He blogs about genetic algorithms, eclipse plugins, and code.
3. I ran into Chris Masiello at a Starbucks. I was talking about this blog post in fact. He wowed me with a neat story. He started as a pre-school teacher in the projects, moved to working IT so he could afford to eat, and then transitioned to a career as a technical trainer. He now blogs about how to use different technologies that he is passionate about, including WordPress.
4. Jeff Chandler of WP Tavern fame was a presence to reckon with. We met at a discussion about open source communities led by Paul Kim. He was very up on what is going on and had a lot of great insights.
5. I helped WCNYC volunteer Kitty Bradshaw put After the Deadline on her blog. It’s really neat to see the passion and diverse interests in the WordPress community. If you’re interested in NYC life from a California girls perspective, you’ll need to check her blog out.
6. I ran into the Mojofiti guys at the speakers party. They’re doing neat stuff. They’ve joined WordPress-MU, BuddyPress, and Google’s Translation API to create a community website where all the content is automatically translated to your language as you read it. They’re trying to help the sharing of ideas by breaking down language barriers. Bravo guys.
7. Another one I met from the speakers party was Stephanie Cockerl who is a NYC based blog developer and consultant. Stephanie gave a talk on WordPress analytics.
8. I had the pleasure of eating lunch with Cris Lombardi and Elizabeth Willse. A journalist and a connoisseur of blogs and beers makes for an interesting time. Cris has a great passion and respect for the military and what soldiers, airmen, seamen, and marines go through. I appreciate her taking the time to spread our stories.
9. Keith Casey made a visit to the AtD API session. He’s CTO of a technology company and blogs about open source and technology leadership. I’m definitely going to give his stuff a deeper read when I get a chance.
10. Christine Labate, the Design Director of Designs for Growth, gets points for best networker. I love watching people and how they interact. Every time I saw Christine she was engaged in deep conversation with someone new. This is great and it’s the total power of conferences. A technology conference is going to have the whole range of values on the introvert to extrovert scale. Someone like Christine helps seed the process by bouncing around from group to group getting folks to open up.
11. Anne Jonas, an AmeriCorps volunteer with the Participatory Culture Foundation was also in attendance. I think it’s so cool AmeriCorps is involved with IT infrastructure, community development, and helping organizations becoming self-sustaining.
12. Danilo Diaz, Developer Evangelist, from Microsoft was a strong presence at the WordCamp. He gave a great talk on Windows Live Writer. Microsoft is embracing cloud computing and I look forward to Office Web Apps. I’m told document fidelity is their first priority but I’d love to see their proofreading tools brought to the web too. If they raise the expectations in this space, I expect others will look for solutions to meet that demand and AtD will be there to help 🙂 Selfish? I don’t know–I just want to help people write better.

So that’s my wrap up of the folks I met at the conference. Well, ten 12 of them anyways. Who did you meet?