Steve Mortiboy helping me out. Photo courtesy of Michael Torbert.
Well, it’s the weekend and something feels missing. Oh, yea, I’m not at WordCamp or in the mountains. I’m back in Charlotte enjoying all the humidity. Quite a difference from last weekend, when I attended my first WordCamp and it was awesome!
Here are the top 3 things I loved about it:
- The People: Everyone was super nice and helpful from the attendees, the volunteers, the presenters, and the vendors. Here are some examples:
- Attendee: I was in one of the presentations and someone from the audience was intelligently commenting on one of the topics, so after the presentation I tracked her down and picked her brain on the topic. Even though it was time for lunch and I’m sure she was starving, she still had the patience to educate me and answer all my questions.
- Volunteer: After I registered, I proceeded to take advantage of the free coffee and then noticed that I didn’t have a lanyard. I asked one of the volunteers if I could have one and she showed me that it was actually wrapped around my free t-shirt (instead of saying something like “duh” which is what I might have done). I did have an excuse though, I hadn’t had my coffee yet!
- Presenter: Most of the time I had what felt like a gazillion questions for the presenters, so I tracked them down at the Happiness Bar and they were all more than willing to help. One in particular was Steve Mortiboy from Semper Fi Web Design (see picture at top of this post). He actually spent around 45 minutes showing me how to do some graphical stuff that was invaluable. Thanks, Steve!
- Vendors: All of the vendors were super helpful and not once did any of them plug their products or services when I spoke to them and they had plenty of opportunities to do so. You won’t find that at all events like this. In fact, they are usually quite pushy. Because they weren’t, I’m actually more likely to purchase their products or services.
- The Location: What more could be said? Asheville is an awesome city and although it was slightly hot for some, it was not for me at all. It was a relief from the humidity in Charlotte. Also, having the camp at UNC-A was a great choice – a beautiful campus and great facilities. Not to mention the awesome cafeteria! Pretty much any food you could think of, even for vegans, vegetarians, and gluten-free options as well.
- The Content: All the presentations that I attended were top notch – very informative and educational. The time allotted seemed to be just right, too. The tracks were setup in such a way that made a lot of sense. There were only 1 or 2 times when I had wished that I could attend two at the same time, but luckily everything was recorded on video and the presentations are available. Sweet!
A huge thanks to everyone who helped put this together. Awesome job! Stay tuned for “The Top 5 Things I Learned at WordCamp Asheville 2015“. I’ll post that one next week.