People arriving for the start of WordCamp Nashville, at Watkins College

People arriving for the start of WordCamp Nashville, at Watkins College21-Apr-2012 09:55, Canon Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, 3.2, 5.9mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 320

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My dependency injection talk at WordCamp Nashville (photo by Patricia Melton)

My dependency injection talk at WordCamp Nashville (photo by Patricia Melton)21-Apr-2012 00:56, Canon Canon EOS 40D, 4.0, 70.0mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 1600

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@rfair presenting "Less, JS, and WP"

@rfair presenting "Less, JS, and WP"21-Apr-2012 16:07, Canon Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, 3.2, 5.9mm, 0.04 sec, ISO 400

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The Otto and Nacin show - @otto42 @nacin

The Otto and Nacin show - @otto42 @nacin21-Apr-2012 12:09, Canon Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, 3.2, 5.9mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 250

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@ryngrn presenting "Child Theme Frameworks"

@ryngrn presenting "Child Theme Frameworks"21-Apr-2012 11:06, Canon Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, 3.2, 5.9mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 400

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@studionashvegas presenting "The Blank Screen: Overcoming Fear of Pressing from Scratch"

@studionashvegas presenting "The Blank Screen: Overcoming Fear of Pressing from Scratch"21-Apr-2012 10:11, Canon Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, 3.2, 5.9mm, 0.025 sec, ISO 400

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I’ve traveled coast-to-coast across the US 4 times, but until this past weekend I had never been in the South (except for a brief visit to UVA many years ago). I was in Nashville for only 48 hours, and I enjoyed every minute of it. The first thing I noticed was how kind and polite everyone is. The driver of my shuttle bus from the airport pointed out all the sights as we drove into town, and he seemed genuinely interested in what everyone on the bus was planning to do that weekend. I spent the day on Friday with my friend Caryn, who I hadn’t seen since we finished grad school 16 years ago. She showed me around town, and it was great to catch up.

This was Nashville’s first WordCamp. The organizers did a great job pulling it together, and they clearly had a lot of local talent to draw upon for their speakers. Coming from Philly, I think I was the only Yankee among the speakers – I felt honored to be included (Nacin, coming from DC, is a borderline case 😉 ).

I was in the developers’ track all day. The first two sessions were design focused, and here’s an excellent summary of both presentations. They were followed by the Otto and Nacin show. They are both deeply involved in the development of WordPress, and they gave a preview of features in WordPress 3.4. Their talk was the most popular of the day in the developers’ track.

I was up next after lunch, and my talk went well. It was an advanced topic (dependency injection) so I drew a smaller crowd. But I got some good questions towards the end, and some good tweets:

@rfair's tweet about my session29-Apr-2012 19:40

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Here is a non-technical summary of my talk.

Russell Fair wrapped up the day, and he did a great job of sharing his experiences using LESS with WordPress.

I didn’t get to see Joel Norris’ WordPress bootcamp presentation, but from what everyone was saying, I believe he gets the prize for having the most popular session. He stayed in character as a drill sergeant for almost the entire session. And he was in costume – here’s a photo.

The speakers dinner and the after party were both a lot of fun. I learned a lot chatting with Otto and Nacin, made some new friends, and my friend Caryn was able to come too, so it was a great evening.

If you want to read more, WP Candy has a great review, and they also have links to many of the presenters’ slides. There’s also a great photo pool on Flickr. Here are my slides: