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WordCamp Victoria 2012

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Over the weekend, I attended my first WordPress event: WordCamp Victoria 2012. It was a great opportunity to learn more about WordPress and meet a bunch of people who are passionate about WordPress, blogging, travel, food, beer, sailing and other topics. (Hey, we didn’t just talk about work!) For more information about WordCamp Victoria this year, see the #WCV12 hashtag on Twittter.

If you’re wondering why I’d be at a WordPress event, the answer is that I’ve moved to a new role here at Microsoft on the Interoperability team, and in this role I’m working with a variety of open-source technologies that run on Windows Azure, including WordPress. If you didn’t know that WordPress runs on Windows Azure, check out this article on the InteroperabilityBridges website: “How to deploy WordPress using the Windows Azure SDK for PHP WordPress scaffold.” We’ve also published guidance on deploying Wordpress Multisite, and we’ll be continuing to work with the WordPress community to improve the Windows Azure deployment experience for them going forward.

My colleague Ben Lobaugh, the WordPress expert on our team, gave a presentation at WordCamp entitled “The Proof is in the Pudding – Yep it works with Microsoft.” You can find Ben’s slides here, and he covered several topics of interest to WordPress developers including WebMatrix and the BizSpark and WebsiteSpark programs that help developers and designers get free tools, support and visibility for building websites and other applications. I learned about WebMatrix’s support for WordPress from Ben last week, and used WebMatrix to design a new personal blog that I deployed to Mahugh.com during this trip to WordCamp. The experience was simple and straightforward – WebMatrix handles installing and configuring everything you need, so that you can just concentrate on the look and feel and content of your site.

It was fun to meet so many interesting people, and I’m looking forward to returning to WordCamp next year. Thanks to Paul Holmes for organizing and running a great event!

Here are a few photos from the event, including the spectacular ferry rides between Seattle and Victoria (by way of Bainbridge Island and Port Angeles) …

view from the ferry leaving Seattle for Bainbridge IslandSocial Sciences & Mathematics Building, University of VictoriaPaul Holmes welcoming attendees to Wordcamp Victoria 2012Morten Rand-Hendriksen presenting on "Can Wordpress really do that?"Ben Lobaugh presenting on "The Proof is in the Pudding - Yep it works with Microsoft"snowing in Port Angeles on the way back home