While downtown for the WordCamp conference, I was able to go out on my own for lunch. I wasn’t sure exactly where I wanted to go, so I hopped on the 16th Street MallRide. I didn’t make it very far before noticing the newly opened Katie Mullen’s Irish Pub, which I had read a little about on some local blogs. I decided this would be the place for my lunch, and had a seat at one of the large bars (I’m told there are four to choose from). My drink of choice was the house beer, Katie Mullen’s Lager, brewed by Steamworks Brewery. I would highly recommend giving this a try, even if you only have one before switching over to a Guinness.

For lunch I decided on the Reuben sandwich, with turkey substituted of course, with their house made fries. Again, I was impressed with the results. The service was great, and there was a pretty steady crowd for a Saturday afternoon. However, the restaurant is gigantic (11,500 sq feet. with seating for over 700), so it could have easily accommodated many more customers. Paul Maye, the owner, and his family have four pubs in Northern Ireland. This is the first U.S. location for this concept, but there are plans to take it to Chicago, Miami, New York, and California. I’d say they are well on their way.

As I mentioned awhile back, I attended WordCamp Denver over the weekend. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the event, but I was hoping to learn a bunch about the WordPress system. Unfortunately, I don’t think that goal was met, and I think I could learn more in a couple of hours reading online than at the entire full day of presentations. On the other hand, the amount of entertainment in some of the presentations made up for the lack of information.

My favorite event of the day was the presentation by Ben Huh. Ben is the CEO of Pet Holdings, Inc., the company behind the hugely popular blogs I Can Has Cheezburger?, FAIL Blog and others. Though he didn’t have any of the famous cat pictures in his slides, the presentation was hilarious. I’m amazed at the number of weird ideas he has come up with that have actually worked, and made lots of money too. His MPH theory, short for Mr. Potato Head, is a great theory. He said that they often just plug different pieces onto their websites, even if they aren’t finished. And if they end up not working, they just simply take them out. He related this to what you can do with a Mr. Potato Head.

After lunch I attended the technical track, where I was really hoping to gain some new knowledge, especially from the plugin workshop. Unfortunately very spotty WiFi definitely hampered this. Though I did get some general knowledge of building a plugin from scratch, I was really hoping it would have been a more hands on demonstration. On the other hand, learning about and seeing demos of the newly developed Carrington theme, along with the BuddyPress system, turned out to be highlights of this session.

Even if I was a bit disappointed in parts of the day, it was still an alright experience, and well worth the small fee to attend. They mentioned trying to make it an annual event, and though I’m not sure if I would attend, there are likely many that would.