So … I think this will be long.  But I learned lots of great stuffs.  I felt like such a noob.  Still do.

I think at some point everyone’s slideshow will be up on the Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp Web site, but they aren’t yet.

First and foremost, the Twitter feed for the entire day can be found here.  If you weren’t there and feel like reading it, I would highly recommend it.  Some good stuff was said that day, mostly by me.  Haha, I only jest.  Most of what I said were quotes from all the fabulous presenters!

First up was the keynote, Matt Mullenweg (aka @photomatt), founder, right?) of WordPress and one of PC World’s top 50 people on the Web.  He told us all about the four things to get hip to on WordPress.  I don’t fully understand all of this JUST yet, but here they are:

1. WP.com – WordPress just obtained this URL after years of trying.  Neat, but not entirely useful to me.  Just redirects to wordpress.com.
2. P2 - This is kinda neat.  It’s sort of a hybrid of WordPress and Twitter.  Good for a casual blogger and convenient like Twitter without a dashboard.  I kind of like having both for now though.
3. WordPress.tv – uhh … YouTube for wordpress??
4. Buddy Press – Part blog, part social network.  WordPress for multiple users, aka MU.

Matt also had a neat little video for P2, but I couldn’t find it anywhere (I didn’t look that hard), but the best part about it was that the sound didn’t work and he had to narrate himself.  It was cute.

So, the entire day there were two tracks.  One for developers and one for business and/or community people.  I mostly stuck to the latter because I don’t speak code very well.

First I saw Michelle Montoya talk about WordPress as a Training Tool (which was mostly an intro to WordPress, which I kinda needed).  She pretty much hits the high points in her slideshow.  In fact, I may just print it out as my notes

On a side note, she is an English teacher at TMCC and I SO wish I had her as an instructor when I was in school.  She is fun and rad.

Next on the business and community track, I listened to Twelve Horses CEO, David LaPlante talk about personal branding.  And if you follow me on Twitter, you know how inspired I was after his session.  Read my tweets about it here for highlights.  I am feeling residual inspiration from this session.  Have buku respect for David and Twelve Horses.

Mostly though, I just was very inspired to fine-tune my personal brand.  I also became very aware of how my company brand has influenced my personal brand.  AND.  I.  LIKE.  IT.

Probably another blog to come later re: my personal brand.  Stay tuned.

We then had a box lunch, chatted it up, talked about how inspiring all our colleagues are and nearly got attached by some ducks who wanted our potato chips.  And I wouldn’t write about the lunch break otherwise, but these ducks were freaky.

See how VIOLENT they are?!

Next up was “Journalism and Blogging” by my friend Mike Higdon (sorry for so many links, btw, but I am only doing it because I really like them!  If you only click one more link though, click this one )

Mike offered great tips on who should blog, why and how.   And also that you can’t reach everyone (which I knew), and that it’s okay that some of your audience might be ignored or even offended (which I did not know).  I don’t think I will ever be blogging on anything that heavy, but you never know.

Next was Chelsea Otakan‘s preso on building themes in WordPress, which I am HOPING will make a buttload more sense once I start using the WordPress software.  She is so cute and tiny and it is totally intimidating to see her spread so much knowledge about something I only understand enough to be dangerous.  However, I have LOVED following her on Twitter.  View her slideshow here.

Next I got to listen to Ed Adkins talk about using WordPress as a content management system (CMS), which makes sense because that’s exactly what it is.  I didn’t know it at the time, but a Web site we recently developed was created with WordPress.  Cool stuff.  Can’t wait for more of that.

Oh yeah, and Ed is hilarious, etc. etc. which I already knew.  He’s smarter than he gives himself credit for though.  He hasn’t posted his slideshow yet, but I’ll provide a link when he does.  That’s where all the funny was.

During that session, there was another session going on called “Blogging for a Living.”  I hear it was great.  No slideshow posted yet, but hopefully my BFF, Annie, will comment here about it.

(Jeez, I just realized how very long this is getting … really sorry)

Um … oh, I guess I’m done.  The last one I saw was called “WordPress & House Arrest,” but I really didn’t learn much from that.  Sorry Glenn.  It was quite funny (if not totally disgusting) but that was about it for me.

If anyone reading this learned other fabulous things from Saturday’s Wordcamp, please feel free to comment here!  I know there was a lot I missed that day, even though I learned so much!

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Update: Click here for a recap from John Hawkins, who attended almost the complete opposite sessions.  He also spoke (at a session I unfortunately missed).  View his stuffs here.

Had a really lovely, energetic, exciting, inspiring day today at the Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp.  I don’t think I will fully understand everything I learned today until I start playing around with the WordPress.org software.  But either way, I had a great time.  Sometimes I can’t BELIEVE that I get paid to go and learn that stuff.  Can’t wait to start implementing everything in the Olsen Blog.  I think later on I will transcribe some notes and give some links to some slideshows … but not tonight because I am way tired.  Just felt the need to get on and gush a bit.

A few highlights:

• Found out just how funny Ed Adkins really is.
• Learned a retarded amount of goodies from David LaPlante about personal branding
• Became very aware of how limited my knowledge is of html code and PHP (to be honest I don’t even know what PHP is).
• Realized I need to do to understand this stuff.  More on that once I have started doing.

Guess that’s all for now.  Guess none of this was about my bike (which, another thing I learned today, according to Mike Higdon, is that bikes and bicycling happen to not be a very good/original blog topics), but I don’t care enough.    Today was a fabuloso day and I enjoyed it very much and just had to share.  Wish I had enough time/felt comfortable enough to ride my bike to the university today for the Wordcamp, but didn’t.

I thought there was something else I had to say .. but not anymore, I guess.