I remember when Konstantin first starting talking about putting on a WordCamp Ventura County he mentioned that his vision was for a more intimate, more developer-centric camp. He and the organization team delivered, big time.
The venue at Green Art People set the tone for the whole event. Right away, it was clear that this camp was going to be an exchange of ideas amongst friends and not a formal classroom which put the whole event at ease. Imagine participating in a groovy think-tank. (I’m not implying the classroom setting is bad or wrong. Each camp style has a time and place. And WCVC did a superb job of establishing the vibe they set out to achieve.)
All the presenters did a fantastic job. I was able take away skills and inspiration from each and every one. Here are some highlights for me.
- Try using BrowserSync instead of LiveReload when developing front end elements. It has the live reload, but so much more. (Thanks, Alex!)
- Avoid common mistakes when submitting a plugin to the WordPress.org Repo. (Thanks, Mika!)
- It is time to start focussing on general WordPress performance, both in core and for themes/plugins. For most benchmark stats WordPress sites are about 20% slower than than the average website. (Thanks, Zack!)
- Get WordPress communicating with anything using the REST API. (Thanks, Rachel!) (Rachel’s slides)
- Better coding means coding better. (Thanks, Mike!)
- Step up your JavaScript game using Object Literal, Immediately Invoked Function Expressions (IIFE), and jQuery plugins. (Thanks, Natalie!)
If you were not able to attend or what the live stream, do keep an eye on WordPress.tv for the videos. All are worth a watch. Wes Chychel also wrote up a great review of the event if you want to read more.