I have two tickets for Saturday only. The event is sold out, so if you want these tickets they’re easy to get. Just make a donation to the WordPress Foundation ($20 per ticket) and forward me your receipt for the donation. The first two that I receive will get the tickets.

Forward email(s) to shayne[at]shaynesanderson.com

Easy enough….go donate!!

Anyway, to get things sort of caught up, I’ve been busy. 9seeds has been busy, thus the lack of posting…just working going on here. But this weekend I’ll be at WordCamp Phoenix and thought I’d write a little about it.

First, on Friday I’ll be doing a free Intro to WordPress for Beginners class as part of the Free WorkShop Friday, which should be really cool. It’s from 9am-4pm and we’ll cover everything you’d probably ever want to know about using WordPress. I really like this idea as a lot of beginners are lost at WordCamps and just need a very basic intro to what WordPress is, etc so I’m excited to have been asked to do this.

Saturday I’ll be speaking about WordPress and eCommerce at 1:30pm and will cover WP eCommerce, Shopp and PHPurchase which are shopping cart solutions for WordPress. I have 30 minutes, so don’t blink as you might miss something ! I’ll be around all day and helping out at the Genius Bar so there will be plenty of time for questions.

On Sunday my wife Abbie was asked to teach a WordPress for Kids class. This is really cool! Again – they’ve thought of everything. Everything! We homeschool our kiddos so she’s the perfect fit for this class and what better thing to teach kids than to know WordPress?

Working at home and being far away from my WordPress friends is tough sometimes but it all evens out at WordCamps – it’s sort of like reunion time so I’m excited about seeing all my friends that I haven’t seen in a while. The whole 9seeds crew will be there as well so that’s cool, since we don’t see each other often enough either – so it’s going to be a packed weekend but good times will be had.

I’d also like to recognize Amanda Blum, Chuck Reynolds and the rest of the team at WordCamp Phoenix for all the hard work they’ve put into this event. 5 days of WordPress, over 600 attendees and surprises around every turn – I really don’t think they’ve left a single detail unnoticed. If you’re attending WordCamp Phoenix, make sure to find them and let them know how much they are appreciated and not just drink all of the free coffee

That’s it for now…

It was a super busy fall this year and the month of October I was barely home at all.

It started with WordCamp Detroit on October 8th. This was Detroit’s first WordCamp and it was great. The organization and varying topics that were presented were done well. It’s always nice to see a “first” WordCamp with lots of eager minds ready to learn.

The following weekend, October 15th, I was at WordCamp NYC for the second year. This year’s event was much smaller than the previous year, but it was awesome nonetheless. It was more locally focused, but still brought together some great minds and topics.

From NYC, I flew to Las Vegas (where my 9seeds partners are) and spent the week there helping prepare for WordCamp Las Vegas which was on October 23rd. This was the 3rd WordCamp Las Vegas and while we didn’t have a huge turnout (BlogWorld was the weekend before), it was a really great event. Everything went smoothly, there were no big issues and everyone that attended was excited to have a smaller “classroom” feel I think. I saw a lot of friends I haven’t seen in a while and had a really good time, but at this point I was just tired and really missing home.

I’m home now and don’t plan on going anywhere until WordCamp Phoenix in January, so back to work I go.

From San Francisco, I’ll be traveling to Chicago to speak at CMS Expo on WordPress plugins. This event is shaping up to be pretty cool as well and on top of that, it’s the first year that WordPress has a track there. I’m very excited to be a part of this event and representing WordPress in a small way. I’ll be presenting on “WP Ecommerce and must-have WordPress plugins” on Tuesday May 4th. If you’re nearby and have not gotten a ticket to this event, you better go grab one now and come say hi.

After these events, I’ll be traveling to the Reno Tahoe WordCamp in June and probably several other events over the summer/fall, but plans are not definite, so those will be posted when I know what I’m doing.

So for now, you’re caught up and if you’re going to be at one of the events I have listed, make sure to stop me and say hi!

First, let me say what a great event it was. It was held at the Microsoft New England Research and Development (NERD) Center and wow…what a place! They did not hold back when designing and building this place…it was as amazing as you can imagine! Just a gigantic piece of technology disguised as a building on the river. So for WordCamp…everything from registration, to presentations to lunch…everything was covered to the T by the organizers (Amanda Blum, John Eckman, Kurt Eng, Jake Goldman and others I’m forgetting). I received a text message 15 minutes prior to my presentation letting me know that my time slot was coming up and where to go…things like that were just amazing to me!

I met tons of cool people at this event (Josh Strebel and Boone Gorges to name a couple), made some great business contacts and overall had an incredible time. Boston is a great city and I enjoyed every minute that I was there.

My wife Abbie, took lots of pics on our trip, but I don’t want to double post, so if you want to see the pics, you can head over to her site and check them out.

I’m not much for going into a lot of detail, so this is about it…but I had a great time at WordCamp Boston and look forward to attending next year. To those of you who missed it, make sure and get a ticket early next year!

For those of you who might have missed my presentations, I have a page with info related to each.

WordPress & PHP & CSS, Oh My!

Selling Sh*t on WordPress

So, with that I’ll do a short wrap-up of what happened this past year and we’ll go from there.

January 2009, I go to Las Vegas for WordCamp and speak on WP Ecommerce. There I meet John Hawkins and Todd Huish.

June 2009, I go to Raleigh, North Carolina for WordCamp and you guessed it…speak on WP Ecommerce. I left from Raleigh and headed to NYC for a family vacation.

The rest of the summer was fairly uneventful..just normal stuff.

September 2009, I go to Los Angeles for WordCamp and again, speak on WP ECommerce. Seeing a trend here…but while I was in LA, I again met up with John Hawkins and Todd Huish and had some interesting conversations.

The following week, I go to Portland, Oregon for WordCamp and talk about our old favorite, WP ECommerce and again meet up with John Hawkins and do some more talking. This will start making sense soon, I promise.

October 2009, John, Todd and myself decide to start a new business venture which becomes 9seeds, LLC. See? I told you…makes sense. So 9seeds is born and we’re on our way.

November, I go to NYC for WordCamp. John does a presentation there and I hang out in the Genius Bar answering WordPress related questions…good times.

The holidays were pretty normal…and busy. 9seeds is doing well!

So that brings us to the present, and as I’m writing this I’m preparing for my presentation at WordCamp Boston on January 23rd, 2010. This time I will be speaking on how to edit/manipulate code for WordPress themes and plugins to get it to do what you want. I am self-taught so I thought a presentation on how I learned what I did would be good for others trying to accomplish the same thing.

This year is already shaping up to be pretty exciting, so check back often and see how things are going.

I love your opinions and comments, so don’t forget to leave me one below.