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.