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Have to say this was my best WC yet. First the bad:

• I left my phone on the beach the first day. Thankfully someone found it and called my hotel, but I spent the whole evening trekking it across SF getting it back.
• I wanted soo bad to take SouthWestern up on a delay for travel voucher, but just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Next time!
• I forgot my business cards.
• I forgot my laptop power cord.
• I brought shorts.
• I totally screwed up my travel plans by not extending my stay through Sunday, and thus missing out on contributor day. What is wrong with me? This was by far the biggest screw-up of the trip.

Now the good:

• I met some really great people: Brad Thomason, Robert Rusnack and Vincent Burkhead, Vijay Vasu, K. Adam White, and many more; got to see Matt Mullenweg and too many Automatticians to list, and generally be around the most awesome people in the world.
• I was happy to see that Yuri Victor uses  timeline.js and the JSON API to convert WP posts to a timeline for the Washington Post. I did  an entire project on this last summer (password there is 123fh321)
• I thoroughly enjoyed Siobhan McKeown and Mika Epstein’s talks.
• I got to do a lot of sketching.
• I ate really good Mexican almost every day.
• The flight was absolute cake, and I got halfway through World War Z.
• I got a shout-out from the grand wizard himself, Matt Mullenweg (jump ahead to around 36:00)

A few thoughts:

• It was really well organized.
• The amount of love for and pride in people’s connection with WP was everywhere. It’s just amazing to see a piece of technology have such a strong connection with the people who use it.
• The sponsors were almost all hosting companies. Not that I have anything against it, but I would like to see more premium plugins sponsoring. Gravity Forms, iThemes, you heard me!
• The Mosser Hotel is a great little place to stay, and half the price of anything around. Yeah, you have to share a bath and toilet with your floor, but c’mon people, stop being so pampered!
• Matt Mullenweg is truly an amazing speaker. The challenge of putting a year’s worth of full-throttle development of one of the fastest growing technologies on the planet into a one hour presentation must be daunting. But he pulls it off every time. It’s fun to try and read into some of the stuff he says.

Maybe the most loaded topic was on WordPress as an app framework. WP as a foundation to build on is a controversial topic, and faces a ton of skepticism and criticism. WordPress will outgrow itself, it’s getting too big, it’s losing touch with the simplicity of just writing, etc. are all sentiments that seem to be all the rage these days, but it’s hard to go to one of these giant WordCamps and not feel confident that the WP world will always remain a truly user-focused, community-driven, open source, and free.

 

I’m researching plugins that will auto-post to FB and Twitter accounts. Most plugins force you to create facebook “apps” to do the FB thing, a process that I despise. This one is called “social”, and it apparently doesn’t require an app.  I’ll report my findings at the next Buffalo WordPress Users meetup tomorrow evening. If you haven’t joined the meetup group yet, what are you waiting for? It’s free! http://www.meetup.com/Buffalo-Wordpress/

Made this last night, easy and quick, mmm. This is a great way to cook shrimp as it’s hard to overcook them, and they absorb all the flavors of the rice. I call it “Dirty” rice because this batch ended up with a nice grey-brown color, but YMMV…

Ingredients:

• 1 bag frozen, EZ-Peel shrimp, 24-30 count (preferable western hemisphere like Belize)
• 1 cup rice (I used Jasmine, anything should work)
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 2 tbsp white wine
• 1 peeled carrot
• 1/2 peeled red onion
• 3-4 cloves peeled garlic
• 1 stalk celery
• 1 Jalapeño pepper
•  2 tsp. black peppercorns
• 1 tsp.  caraway seeds
• 1 tsp. sea salt
• 1 tsp. ground cayenne pepper
• 2 tbsp. oil of your choice

Rinse the shrimp briefly under cold water and allow to thaw. The bag says run continuously under cold water until thaw. Great advice;  way to conserve water. When they’re ready, peel off and chuck the skins.

Dice the veggies into small pieces.

Mortar/pestle the spices into a coarse mixture.

Heat up the oil in a heavy pot on medium-low heat. Let the oil get really hot, then throw in the veggies. Stir them until they caramelize.

Pour in white wine to de-glaze. Add rice and continue stirring until wine is absorbed and stuff starts to sizzle again.

Pour the chicken broth slowly, a little at a time, stirring continuously, over a 15-18 minute period. Test the rice occasionally, it should get tender yet firm, creamy and maybe a little crunchy.

Turn heat on low, toss in the shrimp, and cover for 5 minutes.

Serves 4.