I was one of the lead organizers of WordCamp Orlando, which was held on 1 December 2012. We ran a full day of WordPress developer and user networking, a full roster of distinguished speakers from the community who served both the novice and advanced users in their talks, and an overview of the platform and the forthcoming v3.5 release by one of the lead developers, Mark Jaquith.

My day began several hours before the actual event, full of restless sleep while I concerned myself over whether anything had been forgotten. This ended up being a waste, as the event went off nearly flawlessly. The other organizer, Gary, had double checked all of the specifics of the event, our two A/V techs, Jean and Billy, both had their things together and did a great job all day, and Carol, our volunteer coordinator arrived at the venue even earlier than I did with plenty of people to help us set up.

We held the event at the Rosen Scool of Hospitality Management, which ended up being the perfect venue. There was enough room for all attendees (save when popular developer speakers overcrowded their room), the catering was top notch, and the location was centrally located for locals and visitors alike.

I can’t speak much to the individual talks, as I was keeping track of the event and speakers/sponsors/volunteers to the point that I only caught about ten minutes of each talk. I look forward to reviewing them all when they go up on wordpress.tv, joining a roster of other impressive and illuminating talks. In particular however, I heard raves about Mason James, Randy Hoyt and Syed Balkhi, all of whom kept attendees talking throughout the day and into the after party.

We held the after party at Buffalo Wild Wings, with free drinks and food for everyone who came. I was able to catch up with people that I don’t regularly see as well as meet those who I’ve only known via their net handles, and made some new friends entirely.

The entire event left me with a renewed sense of purpose, cementing my realization that my future lies in creating systems that will allow everyone the ability to do more online, and that WordPress is how I want to do this. At State of the Word this year, Matt said that over 20,000 people self identified as making a living using WordPress. I only see that number growing, and look forward to years of relevancy for the platform.

I’m already excited for next year and have plans to make the event even larger! I of course want to thank the other wonderful organizers and volunteers, all of the amazing speakers who took time to come to this free event to share their knowledge, and to our awesome sponsors for making it possible, as well as the crew at WordCamp Central.

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