Unlike most tech events, WordCamp Austin wasn’t boring! There, we said it. The two day WordPress event included a diverse set of sessions and the opportunity to chat it up with a mixed crowd of WordPress Developers, Copywriters, Newbies, & Marketing Masterminds.

These are our 4.5

1. Great Conversations:

• @Pat_Ramsey – Fearless WordCamp Austin Organizer, Design Chief & WordPress Guru
• @codyL - WordPress Designer & Developer. He also plays a mean game of ping-pong.
• @austingunter – Brand Ambassador for @wpengine and connoisseur of fine cigars.
• @jmcvearry - Marketing Manager @mediatemple. He knows how to bring the swag.
• @RealDoubleBee – Process Magician, Nerf Gun Hacker, Trouble Maker and Realtor.
• @tchaymore – Product Manager at Wordnik

Thank you all for a great time!

2. Wonder Woman Made an Appearance:

Wonder Woman is Modifly's own Social Media Queen Tianna Calcagno

3. Killer Sessions:  We all had our own unique take aways, but these are a few of our collective favorites.

• Darth Vader’s Guide to SEO and Galactic Domination – Josh Ward
  Josh gave an excellent talk on how to establish your brand with content generation. He explained the most recent Google Penguin update and why it’s important to not try too hard to make your SEO specific. Google can actually penalize you for being too deliberate. Josh also discussed the importance of building link profiles, deeper keyword research, and gave an extensive list of tool recommendations to help with the heavy lifting. As a group, the room of attendees discussed the importance of original visual content and agreed that infographics were an SEO must.

• 12 Secrets of Excellent Blogs by Thomas Umstattd Jr
  Right off the bat, Thomas started quoting Seth Godin (double points were given) “Something remarkable is something worth making a remark about” – Seth Godin Discussion began taking shape around the questions – “How do you become remarkable?” “What does your blog help people with and why?” These are great questions to ask when thinking about good content for your blog.

• Getting to Third Base With wp_insert_post
  Excellent examples of creatively using WordPress to create a community of androidandme.com were given. With wp_insert_post() you have the ability to create posts from anywhere.

• Integrating WordPress with External APIs
  This session explored using WordPress’s built in functionality to integrate with external APIs. Attendees were shown several code examples from plugins that can be used for future reference.

4.5.* The After Party: How could you not have a good time when the venue looked like this?  An extra .5 was added for the queso at Maria’s Taco Express. 

Maria's Taco Express