28 Feb 08 Registration Open for BarCamp Orlando

So why are you reading this? Go register!

01 Jan 08 Switch Scrollwheel Behavior Plugin Updated for Firefox 3

I’ve updated my Switch Scrollwheel Behavior (catchy name, huh?) plugin to work with Firefox 3. No changes were made to the plugin other than updating the manifest to specify version 3.0+ as the max.

You can download it here. You’ll have to save it and do an install manually since I’m too lazy to mess w/the xpi install javascript.

What the plugin does is toggle the value of mousewheel.withnokey.action between zero and one to switch between scrolling one screen or one line at a time when using mouse scrolling. The quickest way to invoke it is from the context menu (right-click) on a page.

01 Oct 07 BlogOrlando 2007 Recap

Warning: this post is long. That is all. Updated: Changed the post title from “Thoughts on BlogOrlando 2007″ since I’ll likely do I’ve written a separate post with thoughts. This is more of a recap and the title now says so.

First Some Background

Last year was the inaugural year for BlogOrlando. Josh had a name and I had the domain name so he asked if he could use it. Of course, I obliged and told him that if he needed help I could do anything from programming to printing agendas, to taking out the trash.

I ended up compiling the registration list into an Excel spreadsheet that Jeremy used for making the badges which was great fun. Really, just ask him I and my coworkers at the time manned the registration desk.

Last year, we had about 90 people show up which was great. The sessions were all rockin’ and Chris Heuer gave a great closing session about The Importance of Social Media. Go read that link–now–it is that good. I’ll wait…

Fast Forward

This year, Josh asked me to whip up some DB/PHP code to make the online registration a bit more high-tech. This made getting the info out much easier but due to either a lack of sleep or too many beers, I messed up when entering the t-shirt sized in the DB and instead of XL and XXL they ended up being XXL and XXXL. This wasn’t the case with the signup form since I had neglected to tie it into the DB (bad developer, no coffee!). Josh didn’t catch it when he went to order the shirts so if you signed up for an XL or XXL you got one size larger. So, you have me to thank for your new tent.

The planning crew was much larger this year with Alex, Danny, John, Darby and probably a few others I didn’t meet with or am forgetting helping out in various areas.

Thursday at Universal Studios

About 95 people signed up for this event and about 30-something showed up. As a result, we had more Universal Dollars per person than the $10 we were expecting. A group of us pooled ours together with some additional from an anonymous source and went to the bar across from Margaritaville (since M’ville was closed for a private party) and managed to eat and drink a good chunk of it pretty quickly. After that, we went to Pat O’Brien’s and finished off the rest, adding a nice tip for our server. Turns out our server knew of Alex from his Sprit Airlines blog post (small world). The look on Alex’s face when she said she had read that post was priceless.

Friday Conference

I had the t-shirts, drink tix, and schedules with me so I showed up about 7:30 which was way too early after the margaritas the night before. A quick coffee fix helped and I meandered around trying to help people find registration and stood around being otherwise useless for a bit.

After Shel Israel’s keynote, I made my way down to the basement where the tech track was taking place. Josh asked me to be the track leader which means I had the job of making sure everything ran on time, gave the session leaders a heads-up when their time was nearly up and making sure everything kept moving. I did a horrible job on the timing at first since we got started a bit late and I wasn’t sure if we were sticking to the schedule or still taking our alloted time.

Blogging Basics Session

This was the first session in the tech track and the one I was leading. We covered most of the topics that I had outlined and the discussion was moving along pretty nicely for most of it. I hit one topic that fell flat (which I don’t recall) so we moved on. Other than that, I think it went pretty well but considering my vantagepoint maybe that is wishful thinking

For those that attended, here’s my ma.gnolia links to some of the sites we talked about and some we didn’t get a chance to discuss (blogging tips sites). Also, if you have any feedback for me, please leave a comment.

Blogging Tools Session

Judson Colllier let this session which was very lively, packed with questions, and could have gone on for hours if we had the time. One of the older attendees joked with me asking if they had to let Judson out of high school to come talk to us. While I don’t think they meant anything by it, I was tempted to tell them to be careful since he may be their boss in the next couple years

WordPress Session

Mark Jaquith, one of the contributing devlopers on the WordPress project gave us some info on what’s coming in WordPress 2.4, what’s new in 2.3 and answered a slew of questions about what WordPress can do and why someone should use it. Many of the attendees already used either wordpress.com or hosted their own WordPress install. I think a few people using other platforms were very interested in checking out switching to WordPress.

Lunch

By noon, I really needed food and Urban Flats hit the spot.

Design On a Dime Session

How do you design a site if you don’t have the resources of the pros? Jeremy Harrington showed us some tools and shared his thoughts on how to get a professional look without spending a lot of dough. Check out his ma.gnolia bookmarks for plenty of links and also his blog for some free icons. This was a hard topic to keep unconference-y since most of the attendees were novices looking for info but I think Jeremy did a good job of engaging the group where it made sense and soliciting input throughout.

Videoblogging Session

John Rife gave a great and funny video intro on videoblogging and then went through a brief tutorial on some popular videoblogs and some videoblogging tools. There was some great discussion about cameras, video hosting sites, and other topics that kept this moving right until the end. This was another session that could have gone on longer due to most of the attendees being relatively new to the topic.

Podcasting Session

Ryan Price showed the crowd what podcasts are, how to create them, and how to find/download them–all while recording his session for a podcast. Another topic the crowd was very interested in and there was plenty of discussion on the technology as well as how to use them for personal and business use. If you attended this session, check out Ryan’s follow up post and give him your feedback.

SEO Session

Mark joined us again to talk about search engine optimization. He did a good job of sticking to the core, whitehat SEO topics. There were a few people in the crowd with some good depth of experience here so the the discussion was pretty lively and involved at times. I had to try to cut the questions off a couple times before we could finally end this one.

Closing Session

Chris Heuer once again delivered the closing session. He talked about how business is becoming personal again and what that means for social media and business interactions with customers and employees. He closed by asking how many people take time to reflect every day/week/month/etc. on what they have done and what they want to do. Some good feedback from the audience, especially the guy show said that he does all the time with a 6 year old asking him constantly what he’s doing.

Happy Hour at Slingapour’s

I walked into Slingapour’s just in time to beat the rain, talked with a few people, and had a beer. Unfortunately, that’s all I had time for since I had to get home to dinner and get some sleep for the 15K the next morning. As it turns out I skipped the 15K since I still wasn’t feeling 100% after feeling like I was getting sick on Wed. Still, I’m glad I didn’t drink too much or stay out late since I’m sure I feel better for it now.

Final Thoughts

If you’re still with me, I thank you.

BlogOrlando 2007 rocked! Josh and the other organizers did a great job of getting everything and everyone ready for an event that at least trippled in size from last year. I didn’t attend any sessions other than the tech track, but from the feedback I heard that day/night and the blog posts I’ve seen since then, I think all the sessions were all good.

I’m looking forward to 2008 already.

Technorati Tags: blogorlando, blogorlando2007, orlando

24 Sep 07 BarCamp Orlando 2007 Thoughts

Wow! Seriously, WOW!

Not only was I impressed by the sheer number of people attending but most all of the presentations were both great topics and well-presented. I agree with Alex that a bit less slideshow and more conversational or demo-type talks would have been nice.

Gregg, Larry, and everyone else that organized this did a great job and for an inaugural event–I don’t think you could ask for more (and if you are, you’re just being greedy ). The schedule was packed and everyone did a good job of keeping their talks to the limit and moving on quickly for the next speaker.

My suggestions for next year that I shared w/the group list:

• Twitter would have been cool for those of us that only had our cell phones on us or didn’t want to break out the laptop.
• Other than finding a venue with enough space, also look for a separate bar area. As it was yesterday, there wasn’t much “bar” in BarCamp since we couldn’t hang out there and chat.

Looking forward to the next BarCamp and Alex sharing the latest in cow orking

Technorati Tags: barcamporlando2007, barcamporlando, barcamp

22 Aug 07 The Paid Link Debate from SES 2007 (a topic at last Friday’s Likemind Orlando)

Rand at SEOmoz has a good recap (I’m assuming this since I’m not at SES) about the paid link debate. We discussed this for a bit last Friday at Likemind Orlando so I thought I’d throw it out here in case anyone wants to dig deeper.

Technorati Tags: seo, likemind orlando

16 Aug 07 BlogOrlando ‘Blogging Basics’ Session Topics

For the Blogging Basics session at BlogOrlando, here’s the topics I’d like to cover:

• What makes a blog a blog?
  • Posts/Entries
  • Comments
  • RSS feeds
  • Trackbacks
• Starting a blog
  • Free hosts
  • Paid hosts
  • Wordpress on your current site
• Do’s and Don’ts
  • Linking
  • Commenting
  • Corporate Blogging Guidelines
  • etc. …

Is there anything missing you’d like to see in this session? I’ve added some links to my ma.gnolia bookmarks and tagged them blogorlando2007 (thanks to Jeremy Harrington for the idea) that we’ll probably cover or that may be interesting for those of you attending this session.

Also, I’d like to have those of you that are already blog-savvy attend this session if possible to help with the discussion. I understand that depending on the schedule there may be a session in another track you want to attend but please keep this one in mind.

Technorati Tags: blogorlando, blogorlando2007

21 Jul 07 Googlespeed

I had been reading some blog posts on some SEO blogs about Google being quicker to index new pages. Actually really quick: like two hours quick.

Well, it looks like they are quick to update existing pages too. When I updated my sidebar yesterday, I also changed my home page title. I just checked and the new title is in the Google results for [chris scott].

Technorati Tags: google

20 Jul 07 Finally Updated my Sidebar

This probably matters to no one, but after my experience customizing the Copyblogger theme for Hail the Ale!, I updated this one to enable Sidebar Modules.

Now, I just need to update my blogroll with some links other than my own…

12 Jul 07 BarCamp Orlando Coming September 23, 2007

It’s official. See you there.

Technorati Tags: barcamp, orlando, barcamporlando

30 Jun 07 Why I Won’t Be Keeping the iPhone I Stood in Line For Eight Hours to Buy

I wanted the iPhone. Really wanted it. Lusted after it. So, when Dan asked me if I wanted to stand in line with him yesterday at the Millenia Mall for one, I said “hell yeah!” or something to that effect. That was a week ago.I currently have a Treo 680 and my first concern with the iPhone was no 3rd party apps which meant I wouldn’t have an SSH client or Terminal Services client on my phone like I do now. I manage servers so these are handy. As I thought about it though, I’ve used each of these apps once or twice in the past couple years so this wasn’t a show-stopper.

As last week went on and more info. came out I got even more excited and was going to buy one. Then David Pogue’s FAQ came out on Thursday and I found out that you can’t use the iPhone as a bluetooth modem. Uh-oh. I travel for work about once a month and have a fairly flexible vacation schedule that means I’m out of town for long weekends nearly that often. When I can’t get an internet connection, the slow EDGE dialup through my Treo saves me.

I can’t give this up so I asked the Apple Store employees who were going through the line yesterday after their afternoon briefing answering questions about this to confirm it. Sadly, it is true. This is the show-stopper. My time in line wasn’t wasted since I had already asked my Dad if he wanted one if I got one so I’ll be taking that over to him today and living vicariously through his activation and awe.

I know some people think I’m crazy (hi, Mom!) for standing in line all day for something I won’t even keep, but I had a blast and would do it again in a similar situation. The Apple Store employees were awesome and kept the Smart Waters and Starbucks coupons flowing and were eager to help us out and answer any questions they could.

As soon as Apple enables the iPhone as a bluetooth modem, I’ll buy mine.

Technorati Tags: iphone, iphone launch