A tentative WordPress meetup for SxSW is starting to come together, the date and time may change, so sign up if you’re interested. This is also the first time I’ve used Upcoming and I must say it’s pretty slick.
Ah, the depressing dearth of WordPress meetup attendees this month was quite offset by the Philly Blogger meetup that happened afterward.
First, let’s give props to the gang that showed up, and then I’ll tell you all about the crazy Irish dancing and Santa invasion that you missed when you left early.
This list is mostly copied from the list at Philly Future, kindly collected and posted by Scott, and modified only slightly to point at posts talking about the meetup:
And now, photos, movies, and “Run for your lives! It’s the Santas!”
Well, I showed up way early for the meetup, which was quite shocking. Traffic was not bad on the expressway, since they must all have been gathering around the shopping malls.
Lunch at Fregie’s is always tasty, which surprises me for Bar/Pub fair. The bartender even recognized me - not bad for less than a year of once-a-month meetups!
Two guys showed for the WordPress portion of the evening - Mike, a local blogger, and masquerade, from WordPress IRC and all the way from Dover, both came and exchanged some WordPress discussion. Thanks to everyone who RSVP’ed, even if it was a “No”, since we know you’re still out there. Hopefully being after the holidays you’ll be able to hit our next meetup.
After 3pm, we moved to the back table to sit with the Philly Blogger folks, and the group grew considerably. Perhaps next time I will take the opportunity to mingle more, to avoid being labeled as some kind of techie person. ;p
As usual, the conversation was engaging. It’s nice to be around folks with considered thought that is out of the regular stream of things that I usually think about.
As I said in my previous post, I’ve never seen Fergie’s so busy, but I guess bars in the city on the weekend tend to draw a crowd, especially on the holidays. The evening rolled on and a couple of folks started to leave for other destinations, but that’s when things started to get really weird.
At 4pm they had started the Irish music. The fiddle players kept multiplying through the evening, and I think there were a total of 9 musicians by the end of the night. It was strange because every time I would look behind me, there would be another guy with a fiddle or a drum sitting at that table.
The music was so good that it inspired three folks to spontaneously start Irish step dancing. (Cameraphone Video!) It was unexpected, yet very cool, and we all clapped along to the music and dancing. I’m not a judge as to how good they were, but they were better than I would have done, I assure you, and fun to watch.
Not too long afterwards, the pub was overrun by Santas from the Santacon. Here is the Philly evite, and check out the photos from other cities, since the Philly Santas are obviously still too hung-over to have posted their own photos.
Scott mentioned on Philly Future that there were 30 Santas. The capacity in this bar is 48. Yes, the place was actually freakin’ packed with Santas and their helpers, elves, and Miss Clauses alike.
Need photographic evidence? Thank goodness for my Treo, or there might be only our word of this strange occurrance.
Fortunately, the Santas left before we did, and we didn’t have to worry about the reindeer or sleighs causing any traffic issues when we were leaving.
Ahem.
I didn’t leave until around 9pm to pick Pat up from the airport. That’s a hella long meetup, and a roaring good time. Hopefully next month’s is as grand. Thanks everyone for coming out, see you next month!
“What’s this?” you ask. “This meetup is a week early!”
That’s right! The dates have changed to avoid these blasted holidays. It seems like every week we have a meetup there is some holiday like Christmas or Memorial Day or something. So the monthly Philadelphia WordPress meetups are now the third Saturday of the month.
Meetup time is 2pm. Immediately following the WordPress meetup at 3pm (at least, last I looked) is the Philadelphia Weblogger Meetup. It’s mostly Blogspot users, but they’re a fun group of prolific Philly bloggers. It’s nice to see how the others live.
I want to see about moving the meetup to a cleaner venue. I like Fergie’s but it seems that some of the group isn’t down with the dark and smoky Irish bar scene. That’s fine, but I’ll need to find someplace new.
Jim suggested World Cafe Live, and I’m going to drop by over there after the meetup to check out their space. I wonder how much that’s going to cost me. Hmm.
In the future, assuming the group continues to show up, I would like to get some special guests. Maybe I could get them to Skype into the Meetup and answer some questions or tell us about what they’re working on. If you are interested in participating as a speaker, please let me know.
If that pans out, I would like to produce a monthly podcast from the meetup. It would be a summary of topics covered, and everyone could get some mic time, including the special guest. I’m not sure how the format would work, but I think this would be of interest not only for luring more folks into our own den of geekines, but also for getting more people involved worldwide.
Our group caters to a low-techie audience. I’ve answered a bunch of new user questions, and I’m happy to do it. Getting down with the people who actually use WordPress and make it popular gives me insight into how things can be made better for its audience. And sometimes I just like to help.
Many of our unscripted topics are of interest to computer users in general. We don’t talk about WordPress and blogs through the whole meetup. So don’t let that scare you away. If you’re thinking of coming down for a walkthrough of the software, that’s not what this is really about. We can tell you what we like about it, how we’ve accomplished things with it, what we use it for, and what we write about. We can show you some new things, talk about new features, and give you a glimpse at the future. But really, we just like to get together and hang out.
Please join us this weekend for our December meetup at 2pm. Meetups usually last for about 2 hours, sometimes longer. Fergie’s often has live Irish music at 4pm, which isn’t half bad. Come and enjoy!