BackSpaceStudios Blog

Open Source Design Presentation at FSOSS 2008

The good and the bad…This morning I woke up with the flu, how nice on the day of our big presentation. It was a bit of struggle getting through but we did, and successfully to a full house!

BackSpaceStudios presented “Open Source Design” - Exploring the world of Open Source Design, looking at what designers are doing with open source tools like gimp, inkscape, and blender3d. We also look at how designers get creative with interface design using various designer friendly open source languages like CSS, PHP, JS, and more.

We also had the opportunity to sit down with members of Mozilla, Linux, IBM, and other leaders from the Open Source Community to discuss how PHUG is making an impact online and offline. Everyone was really exited about our FREE Workshops, DEV Days, and WordCamp Toronto 2008. This will be a good year for PHUG!

We have uploaded our presentation here!

Some pics of our presentation:

Videos from WordCamp Toronto 2008

Just came across this video of my presenation from WCT 08. Thanks to newmediaMike for posting this and all the other videos from the conference. You can view the rest here.

WordCamp Toronto 2008 - Making the Most of Plug-ins with Brendan Sera-Shriar from Mark Wood on Vimeo.

WordCamp Toronto ‘08 - Day Two

Day two was a success at WordCamp! There was an incredible lineup of speakers. The BackSpace team had the opportunity to meet many passionate WordPress designers, developers, and professional bloggers. It was great to network with others in the community and spend a little one on one time with some very talented and created individuals.

What impressed me the most today was the overwhelming number of folks interested in getting together outside the conference to explore, create, and inspire new open source tools.

This is what I love about WordPress! Its another great example of how a solid open source community can develop offline and continue to make its mark on the industry as a whole, from all walks of digital life.

My presenter pick of the day had to be Mark Jaquith, a core developer for WordPress, the geek in me was waiting all weekend to drool over some fancy WordPress code, and Mark delivered with his presentation on “Secure Coding with WordPress”. Check out Marks presentation here.

The craziest presentation of the day has to go Mark McKay. Awesome, that’s all I have to say! If you don’t know Mark Mckay, you should. Check him out here.

As usual I geeked out with some code bling! I covered the essentials of writing, customizing, and extending WordPress plug-ins, how to pimp your blog from front to back, and some basic tips on getting starting with WordPress development. You can download my presentation here.

WordCamp Toronto ‘08 - Day One

It’s about 3/4 into day 1 at WordCamp Toronto 2008, and the momentum and excitement is outstanding. It’s the first WordCamp I’ve been too, and it’s great to see faces from all over North America, all the way from Waterloo, Ottawa and even Vegas!

Joseph Thornley kicked off the day with a great presentation called ‘Blogging as a Cornerstone of Social Media’, emphasizing the need for companies and organizations of all kinds to be involved in establishing a community around themselves, their products, services. It was a great presentation that showed the transition between what the web was about 1995, to what it has evolutionized into now, as we approach the end of 2008.

We also had the opportunity to hear from Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress. We had the chance to view what was going on at WordPress, what changes were being made and what we should look forward to for WordPress 2.7!

It’s been a great day so far, and stay tuned to BackSpace for more on what’s going on at WordCamp 2008!!