Attending Wordcamp 2006 and SES San Jose 2006

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One of the things that I don’t get to do on the east coast of the United States is to go to some of the more spontaneous events happening in the world of the Internet and web development.

But, after a red-eye flight to the west coast ending yesterday at the San Francisco Airport around noon, I find myself with the luxury of signing up for WordCamp 2006. This is a day long conference for users and developers of wordpress software, which happens tomorrow, Saturday – August 5th, 2006, from 9 AM – 6 PM, with a 8:30 PM after-party. The location is the Swedish American Hall, San Francisco CA. The conference is free, and it could be fun to have the ability to provide some input into the future growth of wordpress. There’s a big list of suggested sessions, and it should be fun to discuss many of those topics with people who are passionate on the subect.

I’ll be in San Jose next week at the Search Engine Strategies Conference, speaking on Tuesday afternoon alongside Rand Fishkin of Seomoz and Jon Glick of become.com, in a presentation on Search Algorithm Research.

My part of the presentation will be focusing upon how the analysis of queries from users is playing a stronger role in what the search engines serve, how they collect information from users, and how they could expand their personalization efforts by looking at information outside of the interaction they have with their users.

Speaking of the presentation, I started searching at the patent applications that came out this week, and in my sleep deprived state, I didn’t get past the first one I found. Surprisingly, it reminds me a lot of my presentation topic. Could this be the future of search engines:

Methods and apparatus for using personal background data to improve the organization of documents retrieved in response to a search query

I’d dig more into it, but I’m heading out to try to take a ferry ride around the San Francisco Bay, and tour Sonoma Valley a little. If you’re in the San Jose area, and want to meet sometime next week, send me an email, and we’ll see if we can find a time and place.

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17 thoughts on “Attending Wordcamp 2006 and SES San Jose 2006”

  2. Hi Nadir,

    It’s been fun so far. Too late on saying hello to Donna for you – I just came back from touring around Sonoma with Barry and her – beautiful place, and we had some fun out there. Thanks for the suggestions on some places to visit while I’m here.

    Loren,

    I didn’t anticipate participating in workcamp until after I arrived, but it seems like a great opportunity to meet some people and share some tips and ideas. I just volunteered a few minutes ago to lead a discussion on SEO for WordPress or Blog Promotion 101, a few minutes ago. I’ll definitely take some notes.

    Looking forward to seeing you in San Jose.

    Cheers.

    Bill

  3. Bill, you lucky duck… wish I could’ve made it to San Fran for WordCamp myself but looking forward to hearing and reading about your experiences.

    See you in San Jose, Loren

  4. It sounds a wonderful experience, Bill. How you find the time to tell us about it too I don’t know, but it all makes me very envious. Have a great time. Barry

  5. Thanks, Barry.

    It was an interesting get together, and there was some great discussion of plugins and widgets and blogpromotion and SEO.

    Om Malik discussed the perception of bloggers, and steps to take to be perceived more seriously by bloggers by the media and the public – make phone calls to people to confirm facts, find multiple souces of information, include information about opposing views in what you write – edit carefully – people tend to read posts that are two hundred words than ones that are a 1000 words long.

    Cameron Olthius and Neal Patel, both of whom I had the chance to meet, spoke about Blogs and SEO, and had a very lively question and answer approach to issues involving WordPress and search engines and left the audience with a list of the five most important things that they could address for making sure that their blogs attain greater visibility in search engines. It was nice to meet them and their other Advantage Consulting Services team mate, Hiten Shah.

  6. Barry – I don’t know how Bill does all he does either! He doesn’t miss a thing, he takes everything in and remembers it and puts it all in perspective and that takes time and thought. He is not human. Wink.

    Hi Nadir. Hi Bill, hope you are still having a great time on the west coast!
    Donna

  10. Hi Bill, Have a great time in San Jose. I’m jealous. Maybe next year, but definately NYC. Risa

  11. Hi Bill! Hope you’ll have a great time in S.Josè. Hopefully, I will attend the same event in Chicago in Dec; hope you will be there in case.

  12. Hi Risa,

    It’s been a good trip so far.

    The atmosphere at San Jose is pretty different than in New York. I’m still acclimating to it, and to the time zone change.

    Wish you were here though – you would probably be enjoying it a lot.

    Cheers

  15. Thanks Marco,

    I’m not sure yet about Chicago. But San Jose was great.

    Risa,

    I’ll write some more about the San Jose SES, along with some pictures, when I get back home. 🙂

    In some ways though, it was both more rowdy and more mellow.

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