2010-07-17

These are notes of things that interest me as opposed to a report on what occurred in the session. In part, this is because the session consisted of a conversation amongst two, three or four people. See also Add second regular monthly session for ‘workshops’?

Updated: 2010-07-20, 1200: Pearson/Mullenweg kerfuffle external links.

The Linux Cafe venue worked out just fine as it turned out. It was a bit sticky from anemic A/C but the atmosphere, service and location were good. Ten people around a table is a good number for mixing and conversation (aka interaction). So many venues are formula driven exercises and this was a nice change. Net net — it worked.

We canvassed ideas and leads on getting inexpensive support for experienced bloggers migrating to WordPress. That’s a topic worth devoting a session with a presentation because there are an interesting variety of ways to get support some of which are WP innovations. Evaluating a potential provider is an important related topic.

One of the people attending is actually making money through ads on a blog! When this came up in a conversation, another person had some excellent advice to which I listened avidly (avoid AdSense, use a good ad network, go direct, etc.). [Regarding the money making blog’s name and owner, I’m not sure what the etiquette here is. Feels like something one should be careful about reporting. I’ll err on the safe side and not provide more than this. It’s something to discuss.]

I had written a post with four issues or questions on which I am working. By doing so, I could include some links and notes. I didn’t get them all answered by any means but it did expedite the process. For the effort, I got a good return and recommend this approach if you really want help.

The topic of tags and categories and how to use them effectively made its usual appearance and I was encouraged in the work I have underway on that very thing. I’m looking for people at different stages of blogging and developing appropriate strategies and best practices, so identifying representative people is useful.

I had a brief conversation on the recently released CS5 Dreamweaver and what has been added to enable the development of PHP-based content management systems such as WordPress offered. We agreed that we needed to check it out. See CS5 Dreamweaver features and CS5 Dreamweaver PHP WordPress.

One of the topics of which I caught only the end was the Pearson/Mullenweg kerfuffle. The issue is one close to or hearts — making money from open source software. Pearson‘s commercial Thesis theme is quite popular and one I have evaluated and liked for my own purposes. I haven’t spent any time yet checking it out but the Pearson Mullenweg Twitter Thesis search query produced some good hits including a Google News page and a 19,000 word Mixergy post most of which is is a compilation of comments. See also the Google News chris pearson page.

In a discussion on venues and the desire to have sessions in one which provides more space and facilities, Andy mentioned that he may have a potential company sponsor. I mentioned again and made a mental note to dig up the request letter I used for space at Metro Hall.