I‘m still finishing up my Davao visit post (lots of pictures!), so for now let’s talk WordCamp Philippines! 🙂 But unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take photos at the event 🙁 I dunno, I guess I was just lazy, knowing full well that Melo will be taking lots of photos anyway 😀 I do have three photos in my camera though, pics of me with Mr. WordPress!

I wasn’t able to attend the breakaway sessions in the morning as well 🙁 I was just too sleepy (I wasn’t able to sleep at all the night before due to some pending work needed to be done), and conked out for a few minutes in the volunteers’ lounge instead 😛 My husband Marc had rest, so he just attended the sessions for both of us (he’ll just teach me the new things he learned). Next WordCamp, I swear I will get some sleep before the event! (Aileen and I were witnesses when Matt made Blogie promise WordCamp Philippines 2009! LOL).

Regardless of which, I totally enjoyed WordCamp. Lunch was great (Chowking’s pancit had always been my favorite, not to mention the prawn crackers!), and the cute cupcakes for dessert… YUM! But best of all, the bloggers. It’s not everyday you get to meet and greet fellow geeks and non-geeks alike who love blogging and WordPress as much as you do. I never had the trouble of running out of things to talk about with everyone—I got to talk to anybody without sounding like a total nerd.

But the real highlight of the day for me was Matt’s unveiling of WordPress 2.7. Exciting new features! The new admin panel would make great use of AJAX, without overdoing it. But best of all was the research the WordPress development team put into designing the user interface. They asked people to sit down on their special computers that can track eye movement using a laser. Cool huh?

Matt said that WordPress 2.7 will be released sometime in November. Theme designers don’t need to worry, they won’t be making any drastic changes (if not at all) to the WordPress theme tags (I was relieved to hear this; that would mean I wouldn’t need to drastically change the custom themes I’ve created for clients just to upgrade WordPress). Major changes will be on the admin panel, focusing on the User Interface (UI) Design. IMHO, that was a good decision. Because frankly, the current 2.6.1 admin interface is a bit difficult to navigate. Stuff are all jumbled up together on the lower part of the Post Editor. I guess those are the things that they considered “least important.” But the thing is, what may be insignificant for the developers may be important to me. So since I’m not part of the dev team, I’ll just have to live with scrolling down to get to the stuff I need 😛 Fortunately, WP 2.7 addresses this concern by allowing users to hide, drag, and drop the things they need. Nifty trick looks like it’s using Script.aculo.us, but I’m not so sure.

Another great feature to expect from WP 2.7 is being able to search and download plug-ins through the admin panel. Search, download, then install. No need to go through FTP. Pretty cool, though it does make me wonder a bit about security. I just really hope they take all the necessary measures to ensure that the plug-ins downloaded from their directory would be exploit-free.

Ok, enough with the geek talk 🙂 I’m glad to have seen new and familiar faces at WordCamp, and learned new things even though my brain was only half-conscious in the morning 😛

See you all next year!!!