WordCamp Montreal 2009 Archive

WordCamp Montréal 2009 was our first event and by all accounts it was a great success. It took place in July 2009 at the SAT, and had over 170 participants attending the two days of activity.

WordCamp 2009 was organized by Sylvain Carle and Jeremy Clarke.

We had several big names from the international WordPress community along with the best in WP-expertise that Montréal had to offer. We sought to bring you educational, interesting and relevant talks about all aspects of using, developing and deploying WordPress for your online publishing needs.

Watch videos from WordCamp 2009 »

Full 2009 schedule

See below for language and logistics details.

Saturday July 11, 2009

Time Room 1 Room 2
9:30 AM Registration and opening remarks
10:00 The Perfect Migration to WordPress: Why and How
Jerome Paradis and Kim Vallee
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Lifestreaming: The New Future of Blogging?
Erin Blaskie
View Slides
11:00 AM WP-MU 101: How to Install and Avoid Common Mistakes
CT Moore
View Slides
Ecommerce on the cheap with WordPress
Alexandre Simard
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12:00 PM Catered Lunch inside the venue
1:00 PM Q&A Session with Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress
Matt Mullenweg
2:00 PM WordPress Security
Brad Williams
View Slides
An Easier Way to Embed Video in Your Blog
Stephane Jolicoeur & Audrey-Rose Savard
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3:00 PM Cooking with BuddyPress
Andy Peatling
Discussions
4:00 PM Caching and Optimization for WordPress: Keeping your site fast and stable.
Jeremy Clarke
View Slides
Communication 2.0: le projet Pontmercierbridge.ca
Philippe Martin
5:00 PM Socialising, drinks avaiable from bar. Free time until 6pm Party at St-Sulpice

Sunday July 12, 2009

Time Room 1 Room 2
9:45 AM Coffee and Hangovers from the party last night.
10:00 FlashPress – Bridging Two Worlds
Brendan Sera-Shriar
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Using WordPress As An Integral Part Of A Social Media Marketing Strategy
George ONeill
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11:00 AM The Future of WordPress
Jane Wells
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12:00 PM Lunch hour. Lots of nearby restaurants to choose from.
1:00 PM WordPress Theming for Epic n00bs: Intro to Template Tags, Themes and PHP
Jeremy Clarke
View Slides
Making Laconica and WordPress work together
Sarven Capadisli
View Slides
2:00 PM Using WordPress as a Web Framework
Sylvain Carle
View Slides
Discussions
3:00 PM The Integrator Project: BuddyPress in action
Mario Asselin
View Slides
Hacking WordPress: Intro to custom plugins and advanced templating
Pier-Luc Petitclerc
4:00 PM Brief closing remarks then WordCamp is over :-(

Q&A Session with Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress

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Matt Mullenweg · Ma.tt

Description: A special Question and Answers session with Matt Mullenweg, the founder/evil genius behind WordPress. We have some questions we’d like answered but we also want to hear what you’d like to know. If you have a question for matt please leave it as a comment on this blog post!

Bio: Matt is the founder of WordPress and the boss of its parent company Automattic. Tons of info here

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The Future of WordPress

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Jane Wells · Jane on WordPress

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Description: Jane is one of the key architects behind the many recent and awesome changes to WordPress. She’ll be discussing what’s in the pipeline for WP 2.9 and beyond.

Bio: I’m Jane, which is short for Jenifer, which is a long story. I work at Automattic doing user experience stuff for WordPress and related projects.

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Cooking with BuddyPress

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Andy Peatling · Andy Peatling on WordPress

Description: Andy will talk about his WP social networking system BuddyPress and give practical advice for people considering it as a platform.

Bio: Andy works for Automattic and is the lead developper on the WP-based social networking system BuddyPress. Andy likes to hop between coding and designing, sometimes mixing the two together and making his code look “pretty.” He has been tinkering with WordPress for a number of years both in theme design and plugin development.

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Caching and Optimization for WordPress: Keeping your site fast and stable.

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Jeremy Clarke · Simian Uprising

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Description: WordPress is a powerful tool, especially when you start adding plugins to get new features, but the more its doing for you the more resources it takes up, and if you have a lot of traffic it can be more than your server can handle. This talk will explain why your site might be going slow and show you how to squeeze more out of your cheap hosting (and avoid upgrading to expensive dedicated servers!). We will look at caching plugins to help you in case of a traffic spike and tuning plugins to help you identify expensive features that need work.

Bio: Jeremy Clarke is a PHP, HTML, CSS and WordPress hacker from Montreal. He loves his job working on the nonprofit citizen media site Global Voices, where he manages dozens of WordPress sites, blogs, plugins, themes and a couple of bitchy Linux servers. He has a communications degree from Concordia University, but is mostly a self-taught web developer.

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WordPress Theming for Epic n00bs: Intro to Template Tags, Themes and PHP

Jeremy Clarke · Simian Uprising

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Description: Not for seasoned developers, this talk is targeted at WordPress users who know how to blog but have not yet figured out how to control the way their blog works at the theme level. Widgets, plugins and theme frameworks can get you pretty far, but sometimes you need to know how to edit the right files and add the right template tags to get what you want for your site. I will explain how the files in your theme folder work to define different kinds of content, how to identify WordPress “template tags” and move them around in your theme (and find new ones in the Codex). There will also be an incredibly simple explanation of how PHP, the programming langauge WordPress is based on, works when mixed with HTML. Nothing to be afraid of! Just enough to help you work around it and get things done.

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Using WordPress as a Web Framework

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Sylvain Carle · Praized

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Description: We will present our thinking on building a significant part of our technology strategy on WordPress and how we implemented plugins to extend the core capacity of WordPress as a local/social search platform.

Bio: Sylvain is Praized Media’s CTO. He has been on the bleeding edge of new media and networked applications for more than a decade (and has scars to prove it). He is a frequent speaker at technology events and has been blogging since 2000. You can read his thoughts at afroginthevalley and follow his stream at afrog.in.

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FlashPress – Bridging Two Worlds

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Brendan Sera-Shriar · digibomb

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Description: FlashPress is an extension to WordPress, which allows the ability to use an essentially PHP based CMS to communicate with a Flash site. The FlashPress project aims to develop a new WordPress bundle that will allow anybody to download, install, choose a template, and be up running with a fully CMS backed Flash site or blog in minutes. As part of this project we will be publicly documenting the process, code, and challenges along the way.

Bio: Brendan Sera-Shriar has been an interactive designer, developer, author and teacher for over 10 years. Brendan studied Graphics, Animation, and Web Development at Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology (Toronto, Canada), Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada), and Pratt University (Brooklyn, NY). Brendan is a prominent member of FlashinTO, PHUG – Open Source Culture, has taught web design at Long Island University Brooklyn campus, and has been a professor at Seneca College in the School of Communication Arts for over 7 years.

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Communication 2.0: le projet Pontmercierbridge.ca

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Philippe Martin · Nayez pas peur!!

Description: Présentation de un mandat réalisé pour le compte de AGC Communications et Société des ponts fédéraux Limitée dans le cadre du plus grand projet de réfection d’un pont jamais entrepris au Canada. Le blog a été monté sur WordPress 2.7 utulisant plusieurs extensions et intégré avec Twitter, Flickr et Youtube. Depuis son lancement en mai dernier, ce projet a déjà reçu la visite de 23000 usagers, 400 abonnées RSS, une centaine de commentaires. Le but de ma conférence est de présenter un cas de école de communication 2.0 dont le but est de engager une stratégie de prévention et de conversation avec les usagers.

Bio: Philippe Martin est formateur, conférencier, auteur et « accompagnateur » dans les nouvelles technologies. En 2005 il a fondé La Fabrique de Blogs qui conçoit des blogs et accompagne PME, institutions, universités, écoles, partis politiques, médias, entrepreneurs et professionnels durant leur stratégie de maximisation des pratiques web 2.0.

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Making Laconica and WordPress work together

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Sarven Capadisli · identi.ca

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Description: Laconica, the Open Source microblogging platform, makes a good complement to WordPress. In this talk, Sarven will go over ways that you can make these two technologies work together.

Bio: Sarven Capadisli is a UX architect from Montreal. He works on Laconica and sips away cappuccinos. Poke him with: #laconica #semweb #remix #green #philosophy

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WP-MU 101: How to Install and Avoid Common Mistakes

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CT Moore · Gypsy Bandito

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Description: The WordPress multi-user platform, WP-MU, is a great tool for building communities and portals. It can power mutliple blogs on one domain. But it’s not quote the same as regular WordPress. In this presentation, I will cover:

  • Intro: Why WPMU?
  • Common Installation Mistakes: WP vs WPMU
  • Choices: directory vs subdomain
  • Live installation demo

Audience members will leave this presentation understanding what WP-MU is, what it is good for, and how to install and configure it to power their own multi-blog portal.

Bio: A self-described new media ninja, my fighting styles include SEO, SMO, PR, and new media production. I use these to both fight boredom, and achieve branding and communications goals on the interwebs. A social media enthusiast, I currently manage communication strategy for affiliate networks Share Results and Income Access, as well as their parent company Ecom Access.

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WordPress Security

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Brad Williams · WebDevStudios

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Description: Learn how to keep your WordPress powered website secure from hackers and exploits. I’ll show examples of hacked sites, share tips and plugins for keeping WordPress secure, and talk about my experiences with WordPress and security overall.

Bio: Brad Williams is the CEO and Co-Founder of WebDevStudios.com. He is also a co-host on the SitePoint Podcast and an Advisor on SitePoint Forums. He was one of the original co-hosts on the WordPress Weekly Podcast and still joins the show on occasion. Brad has been developing websites for over 12 years, including the last 2 where he has focused on open-source technologies like WordPress. Brad is a computer programmer and tech junkie who enjoys exploring technology and sharing his knowledge and experience with others.

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Hacking WordPress: Intro to custom plugins and advanced templating

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Pier-Luc Petitclerc · pLs Hideout

Description: Pier-Luc will explain how you can use your own plugins and functions to make your WordPress site sing.

  • Introduction to creating a plugin.
  • Managing your sidebars and widgets
  • Using the Codex documentation and API to save time
  • Advanced templating – hacking up your templates to use all the power provided by WordPress

Bio: Pier-Luc is the creator of two WordPress plugins, WP-prettyPhoto and WP-Konami, a JavaScript enthusiast and professional PHP developer.

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An Easier Way to Embed Video in Your Blog

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Stephane Jolicoeur & Audrey-Rose Savard · ONF/NFB

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Description: Problem: Video embed Codes are annoying. Solution: We developed this WordPress plugin to embed videos with one simple line (the link to the video page). The plugin works with oEmbed-compatible sites like NFB.ca and Vimeo.com. We willl talk a little bit about what oEmbed is, how this plugin works, and how it can help you share films online.

Bio: Stephane Jolicoeur is the lead programmer at NFB.ca. He likes Python, photography and webservices. Follow him on Twitter at @sjolicoeur
Audrey-Rose Savard is a programmer/integrator at NFB.ca. She likes PHP, WordPress, Python/Django, Web Development and History.

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Using WordPress As An Integral Part Of A Social Media Marketing Strategy

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George ONeill · GeorgeONeill.ca

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Description: I will discuss how I use WordPress as the core component in my social media marketing strategy to grow my on-line real estate business. Video blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and LinkedIn are other components which will be described how they are tied into this strategy.

Bio: George ONeill is the president of his own real estate investment business and is a sales representative with Royal LePage Estate Realty in Toronto. He uses on-line technology extensively and is considered a leader in the real estate industry in this regard. On Twitter, George is the number one followed agent for Toronto real estate, and is currently number six globally.

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Ecommerce on the cheap with WordPress

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Alexandre Simard · Broche à foin

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Description: Vendre en ligne sans investir une fortune? Cest possible. Avec WordPress, Paypal, quelques plugins et les bons thèmes, vous aurez votre boutique prête en un rien de temps, sans coût de départ et sans avoir à coder. Dans cette présentation, je vous guiderai à travers les étapes utilisées pour la mise sur pied de http://magasin.bddecul.com/

Bio: Alexandre Simard est un penseur, idéaliste et développeur Internet. Il offre ses services de consultation sous la bannière Brocheafoin.biz. Sa devise: on peut toujours le faire pour moins cher. Son blog personnel est au http://qbert72.com/. Il a installé WordPress pour la première fois en 2004, pour le site officiel et le blog de son frère, lauteur Matthieu Simard. epuis il a travaillé sur pas mal dinstallations WordPress. Il devrait probablement en mettre une à jour en ce moment.

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The Integrator Project: BuddyPress in action

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Mario Asselin · Mario tout de go

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Description: We consulted with the MELS to build a real learning community in a course named The Integrator Projet for those fifth graders in Quebec beginning next september. We used BuddyPress to bring tools to each school board, each school, each class and each student according to their needs. We programmed a console to manage permissions and access to the blog farm. This talk will discuss lessons and strategies used along the way.

Nous accompagnons le ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du sport dans l’aménagement d’une communauté de pratiques inhérente à un cours obligatoire en 5e secondaire (sept 2010). Nous utilisons BuddyPress pour que chaque C.S., chaque école, chaque classe, chaque prof et chaque élève disposent des outils dont il a besoin. Nous avons programmé une console de gestion des permissions et accès pouvant aussi créer en lots des blogues.

Bio: From school principal to blogger there is a lot of work for someone who was not supposed to use ICT to make learning happen. Partner and Director General with Opossum, Learning and Technology Division (a subsidiary of iXmédia Group), I’m involved in a lot of social software projects.

De chef d’établissement scolaire à blogueur, il a eu beaucoup de travail pour celui dont rien ne le prédisposait à utiliser les TIC pour faire apprendre. Actuellement, il intervient auprès des institutions, des entreprises et des ministères au Canada et en France. Il anime vigoureusement un blogue très fréquenté, «Mario tout de go», qui est devenu une composante de son portfolio numérique et sur lequel il entretient des conversations Web depuis bientôt sept ans. Il est l’une des dix personnes les plus influentes du Web québécois selon un panel d’experts formé par Radio-Canada.

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Lifestreaming: The New Future of Blogging?

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Erin Blaskie · erinblaskie.com

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Description: Since the release of the iPhone 3.0, YouTube has experienced a 400% (and growing) increase in video uploads. Social media sites, YouTube, Posterous, Ustream and other similar sites all have the ability to post back to your primary space… thus, allowing you to create a minute by minute snapshot of what you&re doing, reading and listening to.
Lifestreaming could become the new future of blogging and we&ll examine how that can be seamlessly integrated into the WordPress platform.

Bio: Erin Blaskie is a girl involved in a passionate love affair with Internet marketing but more importantly, the Internet as a whole. At the age of 21, Erin founded BSETC – a creative, professional services agency that services clients from around the world. Now, between traveling to technology conferences and playing World of Warcraft, Erin runs four businesses dedicated to various aspects of running a business online.

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The Perfect Migration to WordPress: Why and How

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Jerome Paradis and Kim Vallee · At Home with Kim Vallée

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Description: Kim’s blog had 1,200 published posts split into 25 to 30 categories when we decided to migrate it from subText to WordPress. We took this opportunity to completely change the layout and the identity of the blog, adding sophisticated features on top of the new design.
This talk will address the how, the why and the benefits of carrying out this migration. Including why you would move to WordPress, demystifying the good and the bad of changing all our URLs, migration tools and techniques and a migration checklist.

Bio: Jerome is a software developer with a vast experience in database applications. He is now working on Web 2.0 business applications and develops social games.
Kim is a full-time blogger with a long career as a Web designer and strategist. She blogs about home decor, entertaining and social media. She is well-versed about the women blogging universe. She gave conferences about blogging and how social media improves our daily activities.

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Language of presentations

It would be impossible for us to perfectly deal with the glorious bilingualism of Montréal. Our goal is to be as inclusive as possible with our talks. To this end presenters will be allowed to speak in either English or French (please, no one ask to speak Spanish!). The final schedule will make it clear what language the talk will primarily take place in.

Want to help us translate?

During WordCamp we will make two twitter streams available, one for english and one for french. If anyone is attending a talk and wants to translate it live we will give you access to post to the twitter account and anyone who doesn’t speak the presentation language will be able to follow along there. It will depend on volunteers for each session though, so we probably won’t be able to cover every single talk in this way.

Topics and Tracks

User and Developer tracks: Something for everyone

WordCamp Montreal will conceptually split its talks into two tracks/streams: Users/Design and Development/Code. We will try to have one of each type of talk happening at any given time so that different users with different skill levels will always have something to do (worst case scenario you hang out outside and talk to other WP fans!).