Today I was part of something historic. Today was the first ever WordCamp Boston. There were over 400 people who descended upon the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center (MicroSoft N.E.R.D for short) for WordCampBoston.

There were so many cool things happening during the event. I am sure I won’t get to all of them but I will try. I arrived this morning early before things got going and I met Jeff Glasson from Attleboro. He runs a blog and a podcast called diecastAUDIO. What a fantastic niche that is doing some interesting things. I was glad to catch up and finally meet Jeff. We’ve had many near misses in the past year or so so it was great to connect.

We got our swag bags and headed to the 1st floor for the opening remarks. The swag for the event was great, a long sleeve t-shirt, a messenger bag that fit my 13 inch laptop and some cool stuff inside. Also prior to the event I saw that I could get some free Moo cards and later I even won a Mimobot, it was a Hello Kitty one for Eva, because every 2 year old needs a cute 2GB flash drive.

It wasn’t all about fun and games we also did some things with purpose like we raised money for Haiti through WPCares.org a site created by Brian Gardner. You can donate at any time and also they had a guy named Harlon there from Red Cross to talk with people about what they can do to help, I sat down with him right after the opening remarks, here is that video.

I went next to the Monetization in a Free World session and it was not for me. The people talking were not really giving good information that people could use, rather they were talking about how they made money with wordpress. They created either themes, plug-ins or mash up type programs that worked with wordpress. I thought it would be more about the average person making money. I should have attended the Rock My Blog session because according to Nicki Hicks’ recap it was the session to see. I did meet Joshua Strebel of Pagely after the session and I actually did like what he was talking about and he was pretty nice guy who gave away some T-Shirts, I’m a sucker for T-Shirts.

I also got a T-Shirt from Robert Collazo of Rackspace, I learned about that giveaway from my friend Megan of A Girl Must Shop.

I went upstairs and watched the WP &PHP & CSS Oh My! session, I got there too late so I sat way int he back and started uploading my photos from the day. I uploaded all day long to my Flickr Account and a new set called WordCampBoston 2010. I need to go through them and tag them all with the right people. I had tried to use my Eye-Fi card but couldn’t set it up with the network at N.E.R.D. So I uploaded every chance I could get. I was swapping between 3 separate cards, it worked well. What didn’t work well was the big bulky camera bag and the messenger bag together so I streamlined my equipment and put the extra stuff in the car. I did that during lunch. Lunch was great and it was provided by Legal Seafoods and Whole Foods.

Later I went to see Themes 101 with Jake Goldman, Jake had some good info and ideas. I also watched Adria Richards talk about useful WordPress Plug-ins abut there was nothing new for me there. I’m beginning to think that I should start submitting my name to more of these things as a speaker. I just need to bolster my confidence because I could certainly teach a beginner track at a WordCamp. I was invited to submit a session for the 1st WordCamp in Miami, FL. I wonder if a company would like to sponsor my travel to Miami to participate.

The last two sessions were ones that were filled with very good info. The first was SEO analysis by Corey Eulas and Get Seen: Web Video by Steve Garfield. Some really good info from these guys.

Then there was the ending keynote which wasn’t really that interesting or rather I couldn’t understand a thing they were saying because the sound was terrible on the 10th floor and I didn’t get to the 1st floor (simulcast). I did make it to the 1st floor for a really great part of the day called Ignite where there were 7 speakers who had 5 minutes and 20 slides. as soon as their time started the slides would automatically progress. No pauses but 3 lame take a breath jokes (okay the 1st one was funny but the other two seemed lame after the 1st one). The concept was fantastic and I should do one of those next time too.

After everything was over I took my friend Brett Bumeter over to The Asgard on Mass Ave. I tried the buffalo wings and left soon afterwards. The place was really crowded and it was hard to talk with people and concentrate.

I did have a really good conversation with one of my Virtual Mentors, Joselin Mane. Joselin created MegaTweetUp and he is the man to know when a TweetUp is involved. I pitched him an idea for a TweetUp this summer and he was excited about it. I have to formalize everything and pitch to sponsored but soon I will be able to talk about it.

There were many great moments from today and the organizers and volunteers for WordCamp Boston 2010 were fantastic, they should be very proud of such a great success.