BlogJam 2015

When I first found out about the BlogJam conference that was being planned for Halifax I was very excited. Reading about many of my co-workers who travel to WordCamps and other conferences related had me a little envious. Just the lead up to the conference is what lead me to discover the new WordPress meetup that I attended last month. Allison, one of the meetup organizers, presented at at the conference and her involvement let me to the meetup.

Getting myself to a WordCamp is still something I really want to get to, but having a conference solely related to blogging it is amazing. Getting to interact with other people who are passionate about the same thing as me is a wonderful experience.

The day started right from the beginning on a high note. A friend from University and I made arrangements to travel with each other to Halifax together. Alex is really one of the smartest, kindest people I have ever met and it was so nice to get to chat with him and his life.

For a first year conference I was extremely impressed with how the whole day went. The organizers did a phenomenal job planning and executing it. The presenters they arranged, including the keynote speakers were all top notch. I found it hard to choose between the sessions, but the ones I ended up going to were all informative and well done.

The big thing I took away from the conference as a whole was that it is good for me to take a step back and look at the big picture sometimes. Because of my job it is easy for me to get caught up in the tools that people use to really get to their end goal. While the WordPress software itself I feel the best tool available to do that, the people using it don’t care so much about the tool as they do about getting their message out.

That’s the best part about WordPress, is it’s more than just the software it’s the mission behind it, to democratize publishing. Everyday I get to assist people with that mission, it just so happens that it’s by helping them use WordPress.