The conference will feature 2 tracks, one targeting WordPress UX topics and issues, and the other targeting strictly development issues. The day will also be host to a WordPress Un-Conference where participants are encouraged to pitch talks and join in discussion.

The conference is open to all WordPress Developers and Designers interested in learning about practical, applied WordPress development by industry thought leaders and local WordPress practitioners.

WordCamp:Developers is part of the Vancouver Open Source Week.

We hope to see you there!

http://wordcampdevelopers.com/

We had thousands of possible beers to choose from, but we were most attracted to the pumpkin beers from local microbreweries from the taps. We enjoyed a down home meal of mussels, beef, and a crab cake sandwich and fries. A few things to point out in the pics above: Not the skull foam in the beer glass, the chocolate cake, the double chocolate stout, the elephant tap, the cans in the wall, some familiar faces from the php community, and the trappist ale. So never mind the fine dining in DC, go for the soul food and beer.

The conference was great, I learned stuff, I learned what I know, what I dont know, what I need to know, and more. I met a great group of people and traded lots of business cards.

Dr. Geist is Canada’s leading technology law expert and the guru of the Canadian movement to prevent copyright restrictions from infringing on key free speech principles including parody, artistic use, fair use, and device transferability.

A national innovator in using Web 2.0 tools like blogs and Facebook for campaigns for law reform and policy change, Dr. Geist’s advocacy, in partnership with Cory Doctorow, resulted in more than 30,000 people joining a Facebook group opposing proposed Canadian copyright law changes and ended in the tabling of the proposed changes by then Industry Minister Jim Prentice.

To learn more about Dr. Geist’s work, visit his website at www.michaelgeist.ca.

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=147315202089

So this beautiful logo:

Got turned into this:

I think this is what Viktor Frankl meant when he said Logos is deeper than logic.

Short excerpt from Richard Stallman’s lecture at UBC on 7 February 2009,
Sponsored by the Vancouver Institute and the UBC Faculty of Law

Dr Stallman is founder of the Free Software Foundation and progenitor of much of he Gnu/Linux operating system: http://www.gnu.org/

UPDATE: FULL audio lecture from the UBC talk in OGG vorbis format link

RMS came to Vancouver recently for a series of talks about Free Software. At the Vancouver Maritime Centre on Feb 6, he joined the opening , Creaking Planks, to sing the Free Software song.

Some of you may have been wondering, why is a PHP group doing an event like OpenWebVancouver 2008. The reason is that we have held very successful conferences in the past and we would like to do more. As a volunteer run, community based group, we are a group of dedicated people who would like to bring in new people into our community who share our common interest in Free Open Source Software.

PHP Developers always have to be aware of so much more than just PHP. We have to be well acquainted with the whole LAMP stack and much more. This is also the case with our colleagues who code in Python or Ruby on Rails or who are designers – they have to know much more than what their discipline represents. And hosting an event that would focus only on PHP while interesting to us, would not serve the purposed of exposing ourselves to new information.

It is time we felt, for people in the different areas of Open Source to come together and be more aware of each other. Vancouver has over 20 user groups for different technologies. The number of groups is necessary for the specialization of interests, but we all share the common interest of ideas that embrace the Open Web. Our event is a call for less fragmentation and to have strength in numbers. We all distribute software using the GPL, we deploy on systems that use it, and for the most part access a common family of tools to produce our work. The products of our work are distributed on the Internet and World Wide Web, and therefore we all depend on open and unfettered access to it.

Bring your open minds. See you there.