A ten-plus year veteran of the IT industry (please don’t hold it against him!) and Linux expert by trade, Doug has been using WordPress since its 1.0 days and has been surreptitiously converting internal websites and coworkers alike over to it for almost as long.
Doug is also one of the organizers of the Philadelphia WordPress Meetup Group and WordCamp Philly. You can find Doug on twitter (@zamoose) and his blog athttp://literalbarrage.org/blog/
Doug will be giving a presentation in the User Track titled: Adding A Social ‘Stache: BuddyPress, bbPress And Beyond
What are you speaking about at WordCamp Philly?
I’m going to be talking about how you can quickly and easily add a social layer to your existing WordPress installs by using BuddyPress, bbPress and a few other tricks. BP and bbP, like the best of mustaches, really push the Awesome Factor to 11, so come out to find out how to add that Social ‘Stache!
What is your favorite thing about the city of Philadelphia?
I love the fact that Philly is the World’s Biggest Small Town. There are a ton of people that live in the Philadelphia metro area (where ton ~= 1.5 million) and yet, in many ways, it doesn’t feel like a big town. There’s a pretty good chance that if you sat down and talked to any one given person, they’re going to know someone you know, or maybe that someone’s best friend, etc. New York doesn’t have that. DC doesn’t have that.
Plus, I love the variety of neighborhoods and I love the pride and passion that folks in Philly put into their neighborhoods, parishes and the city in general.
Why do you love WordPress?
I’ve been using WordPress since version 1.0 and have watched it grow from a simple blogging tool into a full-featured CMS. It’s by far the easiest publishing tool available today and the variety of plugins and themes is staggering.
All of that is window-dressing, though, when compared with the WordPress community. We’ve had ups and downs, but I’ve virtually “met” and meatspace-met some of my best tech friends through WordPress. That’s what excites me about it and that’s what has me really stoked for WordCamp.
