I made a point of making my event one that would set trends and challenge the status quo.

Mid-Atlantic

One thing I did think of early on was that I detested the trend that identified an event with a singular city, especially when there were multiple cities, all offering different, yet complementary modus operandi. I bucked the trend of identifying the event by a city, eschewing names like WordCamp DC or WordCamp Baltimore. These names, while celebratory of the city that hosts them, inherently bear the problem of inferred exclusivity.

From the very first WordCamp in the region, I challenged that designation and attempted to bring the cities together. It was called WordCamp Mid-Atlantic.

Three Cities, then Two

The original plan was to bring the three cities together in Baltimore for a WordPress event. Ideally, the result would be more collaboration and resources shared between the various communities. Ultimately, Philadelphia never bought into Mid-Atlantic (and in fact, ended up with their own successful WordCamp Philly). However, Mid-Atlantic was wildly supported by both Baltimore and DC. even garnering coverage in the Baltimore Sun business publication Maryland Daily Record.

For WordCamp Mid-Atlantic 2010, the event was geared mainly to the Washington Metro and Baltimore.

Keynotes That Challenge

In both events, I wanted to bring in someone from the WordPress leadership hierarchy as a Keynote as well as someone from outside of WordPress entirely to challenge the gathered attendees. This as quite controversial, actually. In 2009, I brought in Anil Dash, founder and former SVP at SixApart. Anil was known historically as somewhat of an antagonist, but did a wonderful job in sharing and illustrating the similarities between WordPress and SixApart who provided a competing platform. His message was one of learning from each other.

This past year, I opted to bring in Marco Tabini who has also been a frequent antagonist of WordPress. His message was one from the perspective of the PHP community and reconciling how the PHP core people could learn and help the WordPress core people, and vica versa. My inbox became a little tense in the weeks leading up to the event due to other incidents involving dissenting views about the GPL license and WordPress’interpretation of it. Needless to say, Marco did an amazing job.

It’s Not My Baby

As most of you know, I have left the Baltimore/Washington region. As a result, this past WordCamp Mid-Atlantic was my last. People have asked me quite a lot about who I would pass the baton to. This is a tricky question because the event is not mine. It’s yours.

That said, this is not for just anyone to run. I cannot put any strings on who will run the next event but I do have the platform to voice my sentiments:

• I want to see Mid-Atlantic stay in the event. I do not want to see a fractured event where there becomes a WordCamp Baltimore and a WordCamp DC. Both cities have user groups that meet frequently. I want to see the WordCamp Mid-Atlantic event retain it’s place as a regional/local event.
• I want to see the idea of challenging (and even dissenting) opinions welcomed to the stage, like Marco… and Anil. We should not be scared of being shaken up. We should embrace it and learn from it. That said, future organizers should be sensitive as to who you have come and speak.
• Retain the unconference. One of the amazing success stories of WordCamp Mid-Atlantic 2010 was the unconference, organized by Steve Fisher. Besides the pre-scheduled and organized tracks that are familiar to conference goers, we provided a separate, yet equal unconference for ad-hoc discussion and talks. The only thing I’d change is to make it true barcamp style and make a no-powerpoint rule.
• No one organizer. I became the defacto organizer for both events. While I had varying degrees of help for both, I really became the guy for the event. This was not wise on my part. There should be an organizer in each city.

This is Baltimore’s event. This is Washington’s event. This event brilliantly integrated both communities. It really, really did. I want to see it continue (obviously with new leadership), but I want it to be with people who take it seriously and can make it better than it ever was. Put your own spin on it. Make it your own, not mine.

Our Challenges

Let me back up for a moment and paint a picture of the landscape we dealt with in organizing this event. From the outset, I explicitly gave the event a number of roadblocks. More so, I gambled a lot with the event.

For one, there has never been, to my knowledge, any WordCamp event that has been focused to a region, and not a city. Even events branded to a country, such as WordCamp China, were really still city-specific (Shanghai in that case).

The original organizer of our event was going to place it in DC and brand it WordCamp DC. I had a fundamental problem with this idea because DC has enough of a social media presence already, and I felt like there was talent, knowledge and community to be tapped into in the larger region. City-based events tend to reinforce the already existing city-community norms and creates silos. I’m all about connecting silos (a theme that would be echoed throughout the event). So when I took over as the organizer, I moved it out of DC and rebranded it as WordCamp Mid-Atlantic with an express intention of marketing it to not only DC, but also Baltimore and Philadelphia – cities that have their own unique personalities, experiences and perspectives.

As a rider to the first challenge, I also intentionally placed the event in Baltimore. Some people questioned the wisdom of this, and in fact, Matt Mullenweg gave me a bit of a hard time at last years San Francisco event for wanting to do the event in Baltimore (it was before there were active plans). Baltimore suffers a negative perception syndrome as a unattractive, petulant younger sibling of Washington, DC – a city filled with sexiness and stature.

However, Baltimore has its own unique identity that is emerging. Thanks in large part to serial entrepreneur, David Troy, things are actually beginning to develop in the city. From a vibrant co-working community, Beehive Baltimore to the Baltimore Angels Network, a group of local businesspeople looking for great ideas to get behind and fund.

Juxtapose this emerging community against a central location between Washington and Philadelphia, ease of transportation via BWI or the Amtrak station across the street, the state of the art University of Baltimore Business Center – it made complete sense to support that city.

The third challenge I faced immediately was the decision to invite Anil Dash, a Senior Vice President and co-founder of WordPress rival SixApart. I knew I wanted Anil to come speak to our community for a number of reasons I will get into later. I also knew it would create controversy and setup certain scenarios where members of the greater WordPress community might criticize or outright disparage our event. It was a choice I made for intentional reasons. More on that in a bit.

The Event and Logistics

If it was possible to have an event go off seamlessly without a single technical glitch (including persistent wifi throughout the day), I would not have known. Since I go to events, conferences and unconferences around the country, I have a fair degree of experience in these things. It doesn’t ever happen.

EVERY conference organizer will tell you that wifi is always a problem. That issues like laptop hookups never work all the way through the day. That schedules are kept. That audiences always engage. That attendence was 110% fill rate.

These things don’t happen. Ever. Wireless always breaks. Somebody is bound to not be able to get the A/V equipment working so that their presentation can be used. Sessions always run over and organizers are always left scrambling to figure out how to get back on schedule. Crowds get bored and wander for food or cigarettes during sessions. Speakers aren’t dynamic enough and tend to be boring.

None of this happened this weekend. None of it. And whoa… I have no idea how, but I’m not arguing. Thank you all for helping us stay on target.

Ignite Baltimore

As part of the original push to support the local Baltimore community, I also asked the Ignite Baltimore folks to come and host a mini-track of presentations, one between each session. Ignite Baltimore co-host, Patti Chan of 600Block MC’d these talks.

Sidenote: For those not familiar with Ignite, speakers are given 5 minutes to do a presentation with 20 slides, each of which automatically advances after 15 seconds. They are lightning talks, and the speakers are dynamic, insightful and passionate.

Throughout the day, these Ignite talks were provided as a way to break things up, give WordPressers something else to think about – such as running a startup, culture and art, and even applying an Agile development methods to lifestyle. It worked, and it worked beautifully. Thank you, Patti and crew.

Anil Dash, SixApart and WordPress

Of course, the elephant in the room for this whole thing, was Anil Dash kicking the day off with a keynote. Based on historical angst, this was somewhat akin to inviting a wolf into the hen house. However, I know that there is a symbiosis between the rival SixApart suite of products and WordPress’suite of products.

When I reached out to Anil to pitch him on the idea, my idea was… let’s talk about what SixApart is learning from WordPress and how the two are collaborating. Anil took it a step farther.

He spoke of islands of networks, where a single blogger could create their own community or social network by using BuddyPress or Movable Type Community. Yet that only solves technical problems. It does not address issues that arise from lack of connectedness. He spoke about how our communities really are very similar because we all love blogging and want to see the medium thrive.

He then went on to announce the release of a suite of plugins that SixApart is releasing for WordPress. This kind of symbiotic relationship is not new. When Automattic released the highly popular Akismet anti-spam plugin, the first non-WordPress version was for Movable Type. Of course, Automattic properties IntenseDebate and PollDaddy can also be used transparently anywhere on the web, whether on TypePad, Blogger or Expression Engine.

Historically, SixApart hasn’t done all that much outside of their own suite of products and though they admit to needing to do more, they are now making their efforts to cross over platforms and reach out to the greater community. What’s good for blogging is good for both WordPress and the SixApart platforms.

Frankly, Anil came into the lions den needing to play nice, balanced the entire day extremely well, knocked the ball out of the ballpark by being extremely embracing of our community, putting the questioning crowd at ease with humor, style and grace and gave us something productive. Anil tells me this is only the beginning.

I say, don’t discount SixApart. If you’re a WordPress user, developer, theme designer or simply an interested onlooker – don’t discount these guys. We are all in this thing together. Frankly, sometimes MovableType is a better solution than WordPress. Sometimes it’s Drupal, though it’s never Joomla (Sorry, Joomla folks :-)).

As a note, the entire keynote was captured on video and can be seen here.

Finally…

I’d like to send another shout out to our sponsors, Network Solutions, JESS3, Amplify, Blue Sky Factory, Groove Commerce, WebDevStudios, SkinnyMinnyMedia, Margaret Roach, The Sister Project, iStrategyLabs, AwayFind, Mingle360 and Sticker Giant. It was a truly unbelievable day.

Really Finally…

I let this slip on Twitter so I might as well acknowledge it. We are tentatively targetting May 8, 2010 for WordCamp Mid-Atlantic 2010. Please subscribe to wordcampmidatlantic.com to be notified when tickets go on sale later this year.

* All Photos were taken by Dawn Casey, dubbed the official photographer of WordCamp Mid-Atlantic. To view the whole set and find more of her work, please visit her Flickr page or read her recap of this event from a photographer standpoint.

We have locked down the venue as University of Baltimore Thumel Business Center, which has also been the facility for a variety of other events – most notably, SocialDevCampEast. It is in proximity to major transportation hubs, including Amtrak.

We are launching the website and information about the event with the announcement that WordPress founder, Matt Mullenweg, will be attending (and speaking). Subscribe to the RSS feed to stay up to date on speakers and other information you’re going to need and I look forward to seeing you in Baltimore!

Update: We’ve announced that Matt Mullenweg and Anil Dash of SixApart will be the Keynotes.

In such environments, the ability to share ideas and collaborate, is of such value that the first steps had to be taken to organize. It’s all about providing a venue and the tools for collaboration and then getting out of the way to allow the entrepreneurial and creative juices to flow. This is the success of Indy Hall and since I’ve discovered them, I’ve kept a close eye on what is going on there.

I’ve seen Alex a handful of times since, most recently at SXSW, where I whined more about the fact that the Baltimore/Washington area needs coworking but that space was so expensive, the community might not latch on, that I was too busy to make things happen. Blah blah blah.

And that’s about what Alex said. Blah blah blah. In fact, he hears these sorts of broken record excuses regularly as he outlines in an amazing post titled, Your Problems Aren’t What Make You Special, Your Solutions Are.

Here in the Baltimore/Washington area, we have a small group that has been working out of Starbucks for well over a year. It’s loose. It’s unorganized. But it’s grown and on any given day, there are three to nine of us working and taking up the space. Starbucks love us because we keep buying coffee. We love each other because we can share our ideas and bounce thoughts around, share a YouTube video, talk about something that some blogger wrote, etc.

One of our number is the CEO of an Air Taxi company. Another is a financial investor. Another is a freelance photographer. And the list goes on. We’re tied together by a common bond of wanting to share our ideas because iron sharpens iron. We want to see the local entrepreneurial movement grow because we all also agree that working in an office sucks.

Last week, we decided to formalize some things. Little steps at first, but we want to lay the groundwork and see how the community reacts. Every Friday, we’re meeting here (for now) at the Starbucks at 6490 Dobbin Center Way, Columbia MD 21046. For the sake of structure, we’re saying 9am-5pm however people are free to come and go as they wish.

If you’re keeping track at home, we are meeting tomorrow, so join us. Join us once or join us weekly. We are community and we welcome you.

And if you want to get on the mailing list (it’s low traffic), join us at columbia-coworking@googlegroups.com. Hope to see you here!

I figured it was a good time to look at what you can expect from this blog, and more specifically me, in 2008.

More Travel

I traveled more than I ever did before in 2007. Met some great people from the social media community. Reacquainted myself with others. Engaged in my first public speaking engagements. In essence, 2007 for me was about a definite maturing in my professional profile. I haven’t always executed well. Some people may not like me. Others might think I don’t like them. But, I’m happy with where 2007 has taken me.

In 2008, I expect more travel and that means more of an opportunity to meet you somewhere. Though nothing is definite yet, I’m hoping to make it to Future of Web Apps Miami and New Media Expo as well as near definite appearances at SXSWi, WordCamp Dallas, WordCamp San Francisco, Gnomedex 8 and Blog World Expo 2008.

There’s also rumor of b5media doing a cross country tour, but I can neither confirm nor deny that possibility. ;-)

Hyperlocal

One of the new buzzwords getting thrown around the Web 2.0-a-sphere is “hyperlocal” – the focus on local/regional services, community and communications. While 2007 has been critical for me in developing my reach internationally and nationally, I have neglected my profile here at home. In the words of Jesus, “A prophet is not without honor save in his own country,” and while I don’t claim to be a prophet, I did predict the Ravens loss to the Miami Dolphins this past Sunday.

In 2008, I plan to cultivate the relationships that I have begun to develop in the Baltimore/Washington region more throughly. For instance, Geoff Livingston and I will be launching a Blog Talk Radio show surrounding the social media and communications environment in the Washington, D.C. area entitled “District of Corruption”. This will begin at 2pm on Tuesday, January 8.

Other potential alliances exist between myself and Nick O’Neill of Social Times and All Facebook, Mike Brenner who is looking to launch Refresh Baltimore, Ann Bernard and Keith Casey at Why Go Solo, NewMediaJim, Frank Gruber of AOL and co-founder of TECH Cocktail, Greg Cangialosi of Blue Sky Factory… and others. In the new year, I’ll be focusing a lot of my time and energy in these areas and with these people and maybe something cool will come of it.

More Original Non-English Content

Carlos Granier-Phelps has been doing a smash up job producing original Spanish language content for Technosailor.com. I’ve learned from early mistakes and provided a separate Spanish feed for this content and I expect to learn more from the experiment. I say experiment because I did this not knowing what to expect. A month and a half in and I’m seeing definite signs of traction. It’s always hard to build a new audience, so I’m grateful to Carlos for helping to spearhead this under the Technosailor banner. Social media and business is not exclusive to English speakers and so I don’t want to ignore that demographic.

In an ideal world, I’d love to see the new year bring original French and, I don’t know, Japanese content as well. We’ll see. Certainly, let me know if you’re interested in reading or writing here.

We Ain’t Seesmic

Finally, you can expect more of the same from me. In the past year, I’ve recognized that it dilutes content to force a quota on myself. I used to force myself to write once a day at least and now I only write when inspired. As a result, my content is better and more original. Traffic has shot through the roof and my subscriber count has more than doubled. Unlike Seesmic, I’m not too concerned with what critics say. ;-)

Time to get going, the plane boards soon.

Thanks, Geoff. You’ve come a long way, grasshopper. ;-)

Of note on this list – read: bloggers I do actively read, although I’ve read all of them at one time or another – are Jim long at Verge New Media, BlogWrite for CEOs by Debbie Weil and Somewhat Frank, Frank Gruber.

Details can be found here.