Montreal WordCamp 2009

Last weekend, in the spirit of open source community, Alex and I went to WordCamp Montreal (proudly wearing Drupal t-shirts of course). WordCamps are mini conferences where WordPress bloggers and developers get together to talk about new WordPress plugins, trends in technology, and blogging in general.

As a former WordPress shop, we were really interested in the route that WordPress is taking. They've done a great job improving usability with the release of WordPress 2.7. They also seem to be extending the functionality of WordPress by merging with the WordPress Multiuser project.

As a community, Drupal seems following WordPress's lead in focusing on user experience for Drupal 7 (see http://www.d7ux.org). Meanwhile, WordPress is adding features to WordPress.org to facilitate better documentation, organized issue queues for plugins, and tracking features for users; features that are key to Drupal's success. Jane Wells, the woman behind WordPress's usability overhaul did a great presentation on the future of the WordPress community, focusing on different ways to contribute to the community. Get the slides here.

We also had the chance to learn about some projects going on in Montreal. We were excited to meet some of the people behind Identi.ca, a flexible microblogging service. They're developing a WordPress plugin and also mentioned the possibility of a Drupal module coming soon.

Overall, WordCamp was a great experience and gave us the chance to meet some awesome developers, designers, and integrators in Montreal. It also gave us some ideas for planning the next Drupal Camp. More on that soon!