Last night I had the opportunity to venture out to the Langley Casino for Wordcamp Fraser Valley 2008. An event set up by Gary Jones and the folks at Bluefur Web Hosting.

Wordcamp was all about learning and interacting with other users of the WordPress blogging platform, which happens to be the software behind upnext.ca, strocel.com, and jackchristie.com. So it was a great opportunity to get tips on using the system, as well as network with other bloggers.

So I get in line for registration, and who’s right in front of me but my brother James coming out from Abbotsford. So it was nice to catch up with him, and makes me think we should talk more often so if we’re showing up at the same event we could meet for dinner or something.

Anyways, looked like about 80-100 people in the room for an evening speakers, chatting, and those great Coast Hotel clickable pens. The presenters were…

• Raul from hummingbird604.com about why we should switch to WordPress and suggested some good plugins
• Gary from bluefur.com on business blogging and the importance of engagement
• Kulpreet from kulpreetsingh.com on WordPress security and why nobody should have a WordPress author named “admin”
• Rebecca from miss604.com about creating custom sidebars and pages. She had a great point about having post titles match the content for better SEO.
• John from johnchow.com on getting more traffic to your blog. I now know what to do with the all in one SEO plugin.

Thanks to everyone who organized the event and came to speak, it was well run and I’m looking forward to the next one.