The weekend that was - WordCamp SA 2008
August 27th, 2008 Denham CooteWhat do geeks, code, blogs, Matt Mullenweg and I all have in common? Well, for one, we were all in Cape Town this weekend for WordCamp SA. The glue that holds it all together? WordPress.
Friday, 22nd August, 2008
WordCamp weekend kicked off with Tyler and I heading out to the airport on Friday morning at 5am, meeting Vincent Maher on the way. Upon landing, we were taxied around by Jason Bagley. A few client meetings later, we made our way to the hotel we were staying at, which happened to be a mere 20 meter walk from The Wild Fig (where the event took place).
After dropping off our luggage, we made our way back to Cape Town International to meet Warwick Poole and Matt Mullenweg, both of Automattic. After waiting an hour or so, Warwick came out and informed us that Matt’s bags were missing. Fantastic! There were still held up US side.
After stopping to do some essential shopping for Matt, we made our way to none other than Spur. Not quite South African gourmet, but certainly a home-grown experience. From there we went to the pre-un-conference geek-meet at Asoka. I’d love to be able to link to all the people we met, but I’m afraid Google might turn on me. Needless to say it was an awesome evening, with me introducing Matt to his first Jaeger Bomb!
Back at the hotel, Tyler and I worked until about 2am, sorting out last minute details, and spending a bit of time on Project Wolf.
Saturday, 23rd August, 2008
The event that got 100+ geeks and their laptops assembled in Cape Town: WordCamp SA 2008. Organised by Younique, with the likes of Matt and Warwick as guest speakers, it was a day of note.
Kicking off at 9am, with coffee and muffins, the venue quickly filled up. Prominent bloggers and entrepreneurs alike were crammed into the The Wild Fig. An awesome line up of speakers kept everyone interested (and awake) throughout the day.
Matt is a very natural speaker. He spoke about running a business, and making money, utilising a business model based of free software. Warwick, also of WordPress, gave us some incredible stats about wordpress.com - its traffic and infrastructure.
The day, however, was not without incident. As Tyler was giving the closing speech, I managed to knock a glass of water over into his brand new Macbook. It’s amazing, but in those few seconds following, I was photographed more times than all the key speakers combined. *blush*
That night we went off to Sinns at Wembley Square for dinner. Sinns is the type of place that charges twice as much as Spur, serves half the amount of food, but makes it look pretty. It wasn’t bad at all, though.
Chris Rawlinson, of Stormhoek (who were kind enough to sponsor wine for the day) invited us back to his place after dinner. A special word of thanks to him for putting up with us until 5am, even after having parts of his apartment demolished.
Sunday, 24th August, 2008
I managed to surface at 10:30. I felt like ass. Now, normally, I do not suffer the after effects of consuming too much alcohol. This day was different. I blame Matt. Those Mohitos (sp) were lank dodgy, oke. After dragging my sorry ass out of bed and getting showered, the only logical thing to do was to go to KFC and buy out half their shop. After buying enough for 17 people, Tyler and I were happy that we had enough for the 2 of us. We were also kind enough to share with the other guys when we got back to the hotel.
From there, we made our way to Stormhoek Wine Estate. Graham Knox was simply awesome, giving us a private tour of the farm, and treating us to a wonderful lunch. I have never had so many open bottles of wine in one sitting. Stormhoek is an estate that is full of history, and really takes pride in the wine it produces. I shall certainly be buying many many bottles from them in the future.
After a great day out in Wellington, Jason once again taxied Tyler and I back to the airport for the last flight back to Joburg.
A very big thank you goes out to Tyler, who is responsible for the weekend. Though he will try pass credit on to other people, WordCamp would not have happened without him. His guiding hand, his generosity, his huge personality and his ability to bring people together and enjoy themselves. Thank you, mate!
This post is VERY short compared to the sum of the events of the weekend. I think the best suggestion I can make is that you don’t miss next year’s!
