Made Better Studio @ WordCamp San Diego 2013

WordCamp San Deigo 2013I had a blast taking a road trip with Carol Stambaugh from TechToolsOnline to WordCamp San Diego 2013.

San Diego is an awesome place to visit, but throw in hours of geekery on the road trip + two full days of WordPress awesomeness and you’ve got yourself one heck of an awesome weekend.

Friday was mostly driving with Carol, cooking up good ideas for the 2014 Phoenix WordPress conference, sharing work stories and finding more ways to work with one another.

Carol had brought along all kinds of roadtrip treats (something I’ve found that mothers of small kids do well).  One particular treat is sooo tasty! You have to check out Trader Joe’s Powerberries! Oh my are these delicious! Thanks Carol for the introduction. 😀

powerberries

Friday night I was left on my own (while Carol went to the speakers dinner – Way to go Carol!), so I took a evening stroll in Little Italy with was lovely, the weather was warm, the sea breeze was refreshing, I even saw some really interesting windows.

Saturday was the main day of WordCamp San Diego, it was so great to meet Austin Passy in person as well as hang out with all the regular WordCamp peeps like Dre Armeda of Sucuri and Chris Lema. Loved the content, and it was great to see the way another city does WordCamp.

Carol’s session was a big hit, and it was so awesome to see someone who I taught WordPress 101 to at a Phoenix WordCamp speaking only a few years later at another city’s WordCamp! 😀 Go Carol!

cards-against-humanity

At the after party, Phoenix WordPress peeps Carol, Cody, and Josh Stebel from Page.ly got together for drinks, while mingling with the rest of the peeps enjoying free drink tickets thanks to WordCamp San Diego. After everyone was good a liquored up, Chris Lema broke out Cards Against Humanity.

Now, I love this card game so much I bought my own copy right after I got back into town, but let me tell you this game is not for the faint-of-heart or easily offended. It is after all, a card game for “horrible” people.

It is a really great concept, and I love the way the creators have crowd-sourced their cards and made the cards available for people to print out their own decks.

imageSunday, WordCamp San Diego did a business development / for WordPress developers day where the best of the best talked about how those of us who contribute to and help set up others on WordPress can do business better. Got a ton of great notes about contracts, dealing with clients, and making my own schedule.

By the afternoon, Carol and I were ready to go home. Our brains were full and our minds inspired, we packed up the car and said good bye to WordCamp San Diego.

Such a great trip!

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WordPress for Small Business

I was selected by the lovely Susan Baier who has been leading the Chandler division of Laid Off Camp to speak at their first Small Business Workshop at Gangplank last Saturday.

I gave a 45 min. presentation on WordPress for Small Business, a basic overview and tips on getting started. Slides are available below:

WordPress for Small Business on Prezi

Here are the resources I suggested within the slide deck and during the presentation:

Support on WordPress.com – This is a great resource for beginners that are using WordPress.com, it really has a lot of great detail on how-tos, getting started, and other items that are great for learning the basics and getting familiar.

Support on WordPress.org – This is a great forum where you can get help with your WordPress.org self-hosted setup, customization and other questions.

WordPress.org Codex – Looking for documentation on how to get started with WordPress.org self-hosted installations? This is the definitive resource created and maintained by the WordPress.org community.

Arizona WordPress Meetup Group – This is a great group of WordPress folks (many who help setup and support WordCamp) that meet around Phoenix and Tuscon. It’s a great place to find support, ask questions from people also using WordPress, and get more information on WordPress.

Gangplank Hacknight – Gangplank Chandler has a hacknight every Wednesday night that is place to come in and dedicate some time to learning and setting up your new WordPress website. There are generally people there who can help out if you get stuck, have a question, or just want to bounce ideas off of.

WP101.com – If you’re looking for some training videos on the basics that we covered in class, WP101 has a great set of tutorials available for a mere $20 for a lifetime subscribe (meaning if WordPress changes, they get you out new vide0s)! Each tutorial is professionally done and pretty extensive for the basics, plus you can watch it over and over and over…

Easy WordPress Guide – This resource was suggested by Christie Simmons of Launch MiE as a great way to learn WordPress through a guided process.

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Another Great WordCamp PHX!

Made Better Studio speaks at WordCampSuper thrilled at the success of presenting the WordPress 101 class at WordCamp PHX this past weekend.

I met a lot of great people getting started with WordPress, and loved their enthusiasm for the getting in and getting their creative juices flowing with this great tool. It was wonderful to hear all the different ways people are using WordPress, from business websites to personal blogs.

During this 8 hour workshop we really got participants feet wet with all kinds of knowledge, from how to get started, choosing the right WordPress setup, to more advanced detail of themes and plugins. While most of the presentation was demo-based, I did have a small slide deck with information on hosting types, a hosting/domain/files metaphor I like to use and places that these beginners can become more affiliated with the WordPress community, get help, and share knowledge. You can check it out the slide deck below. As the video from that class becomes available I’ll update this post to let you know. 🙂

WordPress 101 on Prezi

Here are the resources I suggested within the slide deck and during class:

Support on WordPress.com – This is a great resource for beginners that are using WordPress.com, it really has a lot of great detail on how-tos, getting started, and other items that are great for learning the basics and getting familiar.

Support on WordPress.org – This is a great forum where you can get help with your WordPress.org self-hosted setup, customization and other questions.

WordPress.org Codex – Looking for documentation on how to get started with WordPress.org self-hosted installations? This is the definitive resource created and maintained by the WordPress.org community.

Arizona WordPress Meetup Group – This is a great group of WordPress folks (many who help setup and support WordCamp) that meet around Phoenix and Tuscon. It’s a great place to find support, ask questions from people also using WordPress, and get more information on WordPress.

Gangplank Hacknight – Gangplank Chandler has a hacknight every Wednesday night that is place to come in and dedicate some time to learning and setting up your new WordPress website. There are generally people there who can help out if you get stuck, have a question, or just want to bounce ideas off of.

WP101.com – If you’re looking for some training videos on the basics that we covered in class, WP101 has a great set of tutorials available for a mere $20 for a lifetime subscribe (meaning if WordPress changes, they get you out new vide0s)! Each tutorial is professionally done and pretty extensive for the basics, plus you can watch it over and over and over…

Loved all the great feedback I got from the presentation attendees. If you have any suggestion on ways I can make my presentation of the 101 material better, please contact me or leave a comment below. 🙂

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Using WordPress to get the Work You Want

Looking forward to speaking at LaidOffCamp SW PHX today! I have my slides all ready and very excited to see all of you there. Below are the slides as well as some additional information on how to get started with WordPress.

Building and maintaining a website used to be something only geeks and techies could do. But that has changed in the last few years with the development of WordPress.

Maybe you’ve heard of WordPress. It’s been around since 2003, and today it powers over 25 million blogs and websites around the world.

Yours could be next!

WordPress takes care of most of the technical details for your online presence. No other tool does that! Because WordPress does the heavy lifting, you are free to focus on what you do best—writing great information to share with the world.

Your brilliance + WordPress = an awesome online presence

Using WordPress to get the Work You Want on Prezi

Additional Resources

WordPress.com – Signup for your own WordPress website/blog by going to WordPress.com

WordPress Support – Get help directly from WordPress on how to get started, add content, and more.

Page.ly – Managed hosting for WordPress.

WordPress Coaching – Feel like you need a support system to get started? I’m happy to help you along! Learn more about how I can help.

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WordPress Howto Workshop

I was lucky enough to be selected to help Laid Off Camp Phoenix with their new HOWto series today at Gangplank! We put on an hour and a half workshop on how to get started with WordPress for past Laid Off Camp attendees.

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Redesign: Made Better Studio

It’s been over a year and half since Made Better Studio was re-birthed in March 2010. During this time, I’ve focused on helping my clients make their communications better and have been very fortunate to have earned a great deal of referral business based on the work ethics and quality I try to provide through the services that Made Better Studio offers to it’s clients.

I fell off the good marketing bandwagon and started down the stale marketing trail.

But you see, while I was making all this great work for everyone else, I had abandoned the Made Better Studio communication channels. I fell off the good marketing bandwagon and started down the stale marketing trail. 🙁 Yep, even I can use a little tender loving care when it comes to my business marketing.

What’s a good marketing company if you don’t focus on your own marketing every once in a while? So, I decided to take on the task of treating Made Better Studio not as my own business, but as my own client. Read more

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