WordCamp US in Nashville 2017 with my 12 year old daughter by my side

This past weekend November 28 – December 3rd my 12-year-old daughter Jessalyn and I flew out and attended WordCamp US in Nashville Tennessee. As I wrote in my previous post –  WordCamp US through the eyes of a 12 year old Jessalyn and I were sponsored to go to WordCamp US by the kind folks at Bluehost via Women Who WP and giving us the means of flight and lodging to attend the event. Instead of boring you with a massive post I thought I’d build a bulleted list of my observations.

• My daughter’s first flight ✅
• Our WordPress community is amazing.
• The venue, as well as Nashville in general, is absolutely gorgeous.
• I wish we found time to go to the Johnny Cash museum, it was right across the street from the venue.
• At first, I was a bit mad there was a room called “The Hallway Track” not because I have a show called Hallway Track but because it was weird that we legitimized something that was so organic, meeting one another between sessions during the WordCamp, it was its own destination and felt like I was depriving the speakers of people not being in their sessions. I latter realized that legitimizing this was a good thing, it allowed people who never go to sessions and just shake hands and kiss babies to do so in a room full of swag, marketers and sales folks. I spoke to a bunch of people about this and most said it was nice not having to be outside of the rooms talking with people and to be at a place where you could hang out and chit-chat with vendors.
• I loved the idea of the community bazaar, how cool is that to have communities from all over have a place to be at to showcase what they do for their local or regional community. I loved that one of my communities Women Who WP was in attendance and had a booth to spread the love and community of women in technology.
• I loved that ROSIE was EVERYWHERE including the State of the Word.
• This years word was Gutenberg, love it or hate it it’s coming to WordPress like a freight train.
• The food was awesome, Matt Mullenweg always brings the best BBQ to these events.
• The official hotel and the event venue were walking distance away which is nice when you have a tired 12-year old that wanted to take a nap. That hotel was also really nice, we enjoyed ourselves.
• My daughter’s swear jar got up to about $8 dollars. We’re not a family that swears and I have friends that don’t have kids of their own and find it challenging to communicate without swearing. Jess has an invoice she needs to send out to a few key people 🙂
• Speaking of swearing I was a bit struck when I heard from the stage a poem that was said that included the word Mother F***er. It was crazy to think this happened in such a public forum almost as if Steve Jobs himself dropped an F bomb on state. Anyhow the video has now been made available on WordPress.tv has been modified to exclude an MF bomb in the middle of the poem. I gave WordPress and @photomatt some grief about this:

• I think events like this need to foster the next generation of WordPress users, designer, developers and marketers and treating everyone in the audience on the same level outside of the professional norm is weird. I’m glad they have since modified the poem by blanking out the phrase used and the transcription of the poem, I feel this is in good taste given that WordPress is used by more than a quarter of the internet and countless businesses and organizations that dropping an MF wouldn’t be kosher.
• The Nashville Science Center being rented out the way it was and we had full reign over the place was a welcomed addition to this awesome fun-filled event.
• Jessalyn’s first room service ✅

Thank you to all the 13 women that took the time to interview with Jessalyn, 28 of you came out of the woodwork (with many of you sharing on slack, facebook and twitter to spread the word) we wish we had more time to interview you all.  Thank you for taking the time and inspiring my kiddo to get involved more with technology.

You can read Jessalyn’s blog post recap along with her interviews by going to the link below.

Thank you!

Thank you to Devin and the crew over at Bluehost for making our trip possible and for Women Who WP to supporting us throughout this project. You ladies mean the world to us!

I leave you with a big photo album from our travels out to Nashville from Southern California: