The biggest highlight for most of us was Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, coming out to South Africa to speak and mingle with us bloggers. As part of Younique, we somehow managed to organise a pretty smooth running event, and over the past few days I have had the privilege to spend some really quality time with Matt. He really is the most humble and down to earth online personality I have met.

Sunday, a couple of us headed off to the Stormhoek farm where Graham Knox braaied us some awesome steaks and veggies, not to mention the number of different bottles of wine he whipped out for us to try. It’s these type of relaxed, chilled environments out in mountains, where you can really get to know people. Matt shared with us a number of really interesting stories, upcoming projects and personal things, that I’ll never blog about, nor tell anyone, but they just made me realise how genuine an “oke” he really is. (Matt thought it was strange how we called everyone “okes” here in SA. Hehe)

Back to the event – Tyler and I learnt tons about organising Wordcamp. One thing is for sure, it’s a lot of work! There are a ton of things we will improve on for next years event, so expect an even bigger and better Wordcamp SA next year around!

I have to say a big up to Henk from Skyrove – he really made sure everyone at Wordcamp was sorted with Wifi – even bringing in a 2nd hotspot after we managed to bring down the 1st one!

Secondly to Matt and Warwick for coming out from the US to attend and speak at Wordcamp – I learnt a great deal from your talks. Not only was it great to hear you talk, but to also spend time with you guys after Wordcamp.

Check out my Wordcamp SA wrap up video on Zoopy that I created just after Wordcamp. See you all next year!

Wordcamp on Zoopy

Check out the custom channel of Wordcamp SA on Zoopy that Mark from Yellow Llama designed, and check out the uploaded photos and videos of the event.

Twitter

How about all the tweets that are flying around? Check out anything tagged with #wordcampsa

More to follow…

From imod:

A big thumbs up to the following sponsors who made the event happen: Nomad-One, FormFunction, Frogfoot Networks, Radiiate, WorldWideCreative & Butlers Pizza. Without these great sponsors, events like this would never be as amazing!

Personally I enjoyed Adii’s and Rafiq’s talks the most. Adii for his total enthusiasm for WordPress and Rafiq for handing out some really cool tips on SEO for your blog.

Also a big up to Nur from nomad-one.com for organising the event and giving me a quick spot to announce Wordcamp South Africa that will be happening in Cape Town on the 23rd of August. Check out the blog for information or get in touch with me and I’ll let you know whats happening.

Once again, attending these events makes for great networking opportunities and I got to meet Joey from FormFunction, Paul from the WorldWideCreative crew, Marcel the magician, Ashley Shaw, Nur and a few others. (Sorry if I’ve forgotten someone). Also spotted the regulars, imod, Rafiq, adii and foxinni.

There will be a few pics up this evening of the event, and I’ll update this post when they available.

Can’t wait for the next meetup!

Update! The pics are up at Paul’s Photostream.

Once again, its another chance to do some networking with other bloggers as well as have a good time and chat about our favourite CMS – WordPress.

There are a number of sponsors, speakers and prizes on offer. So far this event seems to be one of the biggest sponsored events I’ve been to in Cape Town. I hope I’ll be able to catch a free t-shirt while I’m there!

Also, I’ll be giving a quick chat / announcement regarding Wordcamp SA that is happening in August. There are 1 or 2 really awesome announcements to be made regarding it, so stay tuned for that!

Go and read the WordPress Meetup blog to find out more about the event, venue, speakers, sponsors, freebies and what to bring along. I hope to see you there!

After one twitter message, some time back, I accidentally also created a personal brand for myself – The Bagley – which is something I am going to try and build over the next few months. We have Adii, Zoopedup, Foxinni and Fariq to name a few, so add to that list my friends – The Bagley.

WordPress 2.5

This blog is officially running WordPress 2.5 and all I can say is swheeeeeet! I found out that happy cog are the okes behind the redesigned admin panel and they did one stellar job. There are improvements to the layout and UI all over the place, and its going to take a few weeks to actually find all of them. The only problem WP 2.5 created for me is that it broke the popularity plugin by Alex King. So for the time being I have disabled it. Below is a screenshot of my new 2.5 dashboard:

Redesign

I’m not entirely sure how long it actually took for me to whip out this re-design, but it felt like a long time. The main aim of the redesign was to allow me some flexibility in the blog and sidebar, which I have now achieved. The previous design was very rigid and fixed – whereas now I can drag and drop widgets onto my sidebar at will. One thing I still have to add are all those blog buttons – amatomu, afrigator, Nike+ runs etc.

Buying and Giving

I have also included a personal buying and giving sidebar widget. What I’m trying to do with it is, 1. Buy myself some gadgets and neat gear and 2. give some money to a few good causes. So, all the money I make on this blog – whether it is paid advertising, or even *gasp!* an (honest) paid review – will go towards Buying and Giving. What do you think of the idea?

And… with buying cool gear, comes cool pics and reviews! These will be posted on my soon-to-be-rebranded I.T. Week.

Link Love

Calling all you link whores A-listers. It’s time to stop pretending to be my friend on twitter and actually add me onto your blog roll. For those that have, you’ll be the envy of all your friends when I add you to my Link Love list WITH a favicon. Pop me a comment or tweet and I’ll get it up. ;-) This blog ain’t PR4 for nothing yo.

So that’s about it for now. So what do you think? If you were looking for a someone to redesign your blog, would you consider me as a WP designer? (honestly?)