WordCamp Boston (and that Ignite talk)

Patrick and I are back from Boston. I was fighting off a virus, and I have to thank him for putting up with me being slightly miserable a good amount of the time. Danielle Morrill posted the videos of all the Ignite talks today, including mine which I’ve embedded bellow.

The basic thrust of the talk was the inner-platform effect and why it matters for WordPress developers. Really, I think it’s one of the biggest problems for anyone involved in making and/or using web applications these days. This was a way to get the point out there quickly, but hopefully I can follow up with some writing on the topic sometime soon. (Famous last words, I know.)

This WordCamp seemed to be a lot more focused on the small business aspects of the WordPress community than the one we attended in New York, but we did get to see some great (if brief) dev talks on the WordPress API, HTML5, etc. and one very reassuring panel on using WordPress in academics. I also had a great time listening to Doc Searls and David Weinberger talk about The Cluetrain Manifesto among many other topics. They’re the kind of people I could listen to for hours.

At some point they were asked about net neutrality and gave an answer I hadn’t really heard before: no one really knows how to define net neutrality, but the problem could be solved by forcing content and application providers to stay out of the broadband business. I suppose that’s an internet-as-utility argument, but it’s not something that seems very present in the political debate.

Anyway, thanks to all the organizers and especially Mitcho for putting together the Ignite event.