Rarely do I wake up before about 9am on a Saturday morning, much less before sunrise. Yet that is exactly what I wound up doing this past Saturday morning for WordCamp Houston. My alarm was set for 5:45am, and by the time 7am rolled around, I was already in my mom’s Jeep riding down to the light rail station.

Before I get straight to the heart of the story, a bit of background. I had been waiting eagerly in anticipation of this event for the past several months. This was Houston’s first WordCamp, and it’s a special one because Houston is in fact the birthplace of WordPress (Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, is a native Houstonian). The paid tickets sold out within days of the on-sale announcement. Usually, run-of-the-mill technical conferences fall outside the bounds of the events I cover, but if you can’t tell by the foregoing, this was anything but run-of-the-mill.

Fortunately for me and several others, volunteer signup commenced immediately afterwards, and I was able to snag one of two breakfast setup spots. Earlier in the week, there was a volunteer meeting led by the organizers and Jess, the volunteer coordinator. After a session of stuffing the remaining swag bags, it was time for the core of the meeting. One of the organizers, Monica Danna, introduced herself and started running through the list of volunteers and explaining their duties. I was instructed to be at the museum at roughly 7:45am and would be manning the breakfast table along with another volunteer, Judy King (not present at the meeting).

Fast forward back to Saturday at around 7:40am. I have barely enough time to peck out a tweet of my impending arrival; while somewhat cryptic by itself, it’s pretty obvious in the context of the previous tweet what it means. (For those not familiar with Houston, the Museum District station is the closest light rail station to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, a mere four to five blocks away.)

After entering the museum, I’m almost immediately noticed by the organizers gathered in the museum lobby. I’m directed to first help Katie (one of the organizers) move an ice chest holding ice and bottled water down to the breakfast table. Thankfully, it was not nearly as difficult as I had feared; it was certainly easier to manage than a beer keg, and I’ve had to handle those at least twice before in recent memory.

A couple of minutes go by, and then Judy arrives and introduces herself. We get to chatting quite a bit on various topics in between our assigned duties. Judy was as nice and friendly as I could have hoped for and it was a pleasure volunteering alongside her.

A few minutes go by while the crowd starts trickling in as 8am (the official start time for breakfast) ticks closer. I see quite a few familiar faces among the crowd, some of whom said hi at the time, others whom I wouldn’t get to talk to much until later. By 8:30am I could easily tell this was a sold-out event; by 8:50am the area leading into the IMAX theater where we were set up was packed. This was emphatically not territory for easily-triggered demophobics (those with fear of crowds)!

And then it was time for the keynote. I do my best Pac-Man impression on what’s left of my last kolache and file into the IMAX theater with the crowd. This is my first real impression on the HMNS as a venue and there were three things that stood out at this point. One, no food or drink is allowed in the theater, so this meant everyone had to finish or dump everything before going in. Two, the lectern for the speakers was far stage right, meaning certain seats were not conducive to a good view despite being on the first few rows. Finally, we were on a strict timetable for when we had to be out of the theater (9:45am), as the first IMAX film showing would start seating at around that time.

These combined to make the pace feel a bit more rushed at this point than it would at some other venues; however the ambiance of the IMAX theater added significantly to (at least) my enjoyment of Matt’s keynote. Video of Matt’s keynote is available for those of you who either were unable to attend, or just want to re-live it.

We had a good 15 minutes to find our way around to the first breakout session of our choice. I actually got slightly lost upon my arrival in the breakout session area, having absent-mindedly missed the signage posted in the entrance.

And so I found my way to the first session, the case study for Andrea White (wife of former Houston mayor and current gubernatorial candidate Bill White) and passionatesupporter.com. Also present were Monica (Andrea’s consultant for the project) and Katie, serving as moderator of the panel. Katie would also ask questions of her own to keep the discussion flowing, since relatively few questions came from the audience. This was perhaps one of the more insightful presentations I saw the whole day, as I learned from Andrea herself what it’s like to be in her shoes. Andrea revealed she’s a more private person than the average blogger and so doesn’t post a lot of things that many would not think twice about typing in and hitting the “publish” button on. And I respect that; blogging of the sort that I do is not for everyone (and if I remember right, Monica made reference to this as well). Both Andrea and Monica’s sense of humor made this a very interesting and enjoyable session.

Next up was one of two development track sessions I would attend, Chris Olbekson’s presentation, Optimizing for Performance – Making Your WordPress Blog Faster. While the subject matter got rather technical at times, Chris did a truly spectacular job making it relatively easy to understand for those who were not as technically well-versed as I am. Of course, at the end, I learned most of this is probably not necessary until the traffic level rises far above anything I’ve ever been exposed to; Matt Mullenweg was in the room with us and remarked that out of the box, given decent hardware, WordPress has no issue serving 20 to 30 requests per second. I wish I was getting that kind of traffic; my peak is around 200 visitors in a day. (Not exactly a traffic level that induces meltdown unless one is using a computer that saw its best days during the Clinton administration.) Still, it’s something I hope to be able to put into practice soon and I feel a lot better knowing how to make a site Digg- or Slashdot-ready.

And then it was lunchtime. We had our choice of boxed sandwich lunches from Jason’s Deli, complete with chips, pickle, and chocolate chip cookie. Again I was joined by Judy, along with a few others whose names escape me at the moment. The lounge/lunchroom got crowded quickly; on my way out I saw several people eating in the hallway or wherever there was space. Taking that cue, after I finished my lunch well before the halfway point of the alloted time, I got up and took a stroll around the area and talked to a few people. Oh, and I got to watch someone spoof the 11 News “do the weather” setup that was in between the classrooms. A little fun never hurt anyone, but it did kind of make me appreciate who we have doing our weather forecasts on TV, as well as provide much needed comic relief. The spoofs included references to acid rain and raining Jello. I had to really try to keep my laughter restrained to keep from making a total spectacle of myself.

Then, the clock struck one, and it was time for the first post-lunch session. I chose Chris Everson’s presentation, Custom Theme Development. A little side note here: the theme (design) you see here at Quinn’s Big City is one I made from scratch, with the aid of only a less-than-adequate online tutorial that I didn’t bookmark and can’t find now. It’s the only blog of mine I’ve done a custom theme for at the time I’m writing this. I hope to change that of course, and I still feel I have things to learn in this department. I came into this session ready to learn a lot, and Chris did not disappoint. I learned a lot of useful information, some of which I can probably even extend beyond my work with WordPress. The only minor quibble I had with it, was that Chris had about 10-15 minutes’ worth of slides left over to try to fast forward through at the end after we were a few minutes over the allotted time. Thankfully we were up against the 20-minute mid-afternoon break so it was less of a big deal than it could have been if this session was, say, in the 10am or 11am slot.

During this break, I got to talk to a few more people. And I think someone else did another spoof of the weather at this point for our amusement as well as their own, I’m not sure if it was at this point or at the end of the day. My memory is already a little fuzzy. This break flew by, especially since I really only had about 11-12 minutes.

Next up was the only session I would attend from the business track, Leveraging WordPress for Advocacy Campaigns, presented by Celinda Provost, Dan Derozier, and Dan Joyce, representing a company called NetVictories. This was a captivating look at political and advocacy campaigns done by the company during which many clever and profound tricks were revealed on how to make WordPress do things that most people wouldn’t even think to try making it do.

The last session for me was the case study for the Houston Museum of Natural Science, our hosts, represented by Erin Flis, Ivan Perez, and Mark Belcher. The centerpiece of the presentation was the Museum’s blog, BEYONDbones, which has been in operation since 2007. The panel covered everything from how the museum’s website was in 2002, to past unsuccessful attempts to bring more interaction to the website, to the beginnings of the blog, to present-day happenings such as Lois the Corpse Flower. One of the highlights of this panel was learning that there are particular blog entries that get a whole bunch of hits because they are among the only such web pages/blog posts on their respective topics. I did notice this session was surprisingly sparse; however, as I was told during the volunteer meeting, the entire case studies track was added on once it became obvious there were capacity issues. I’ll get to that in a bit…

So it was 4pm and the only thing left was the afterparty at Caroline Collective. The proximity of HMNS to Caroline Collective is such that it’s impractical to ride the bus or train there; I think the stated public transit directions include just walking the 0.7 miles as an option. Which is exactly what I did, and I arrived at Caroline surprisingly non-sweaty. Of course it was not too long before the body heat overwhelmed the air conditioning there, so it’s not like anyone would have likely noticed even if I had.

I stayed after the stated end time of 6pm and the party was still going strong. I got to talk to a few more people, and check back in with a couple of others that I met during the previous sessions. I left with a few more business cards than I came in with, which is always a good thing.

I originally planned to attend a couple of sessions in the blogger track. I’m now kind of glad I decided at the last minute to change these plans up, because I heard that one blogger track session in particular I wanted to attend was up to standing room only. Judy wrote in her blog entry that this was the case for at least the 11am blogger track session, so I have no reason to doubt what I heard.

This was one notable issue with the HMNS as a venue for this event. The other was that we could hear the announcements from the museum, and at least twice, the speaker paused after hearing “may I have your attention please” only to have it followed by some information of no relevance to us.

However, these things do not subtract much from my overall impression of the event. I eagerly await the next WordCamp Houston and feel this year’s event was a successful, high-quality affair overall, and will happily refer to this event and my experience as a part of it as an example of the type of quality events that make me proud to be part of the Houston community.

On that note, my thanks and congratulations go to:

• The organizers: Monica Danna from colab, Chris Everson and Chris Valdez from Primer Grey, and Katie Laird from Schipul;
• The volunteer coordinator: Jess Hampson;
• The sponsors: the aforelinked Schipul, HostGator, Houston Zoo, WP101.com, Peter Moorman, Oak Interactive, TopSpot, BlogCatalog, HomeAway Real Estate, and SupplementSavingStop.com (currently not an active website)
• The hosting venues: the aforelinked and aforementioned HMNS and Caroline Collective
• Breakfast and lunch: Kolache Factory, Coffee Groundz, and Jason’s Deli
• Afterparty beer: Saint Arnold’s
• Matt Mullenweg for a keynote that will probably never be forgotten by most of the attendees (myself included)
• Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle for the keynote introduction
• The speakers, aforementioned and aforelinked (I may be editing this post later and adding links as I find them; I did the best I could)
• The various other attendees and volunteers who made this event the success it was (seriously, there’s a limit to how much linking I can do before it’s considered link spam, please do not feel slighted)

I am eagerly awaiting the announcement of the date and venue for WordCamp Houston 2011, and you should be too.

It is so easy to forget what it’s like to see an event at a venue like the Miller Outdoor Theatre when one hasn’t been in months. And I don’t like to knock a venue at all, but a show like Cats performed by such a great group as HITS Theatre deserves better than this.

(This recap is for the Saturday 04-17 show, when I went. Others may have and probably did differ slightly.)

And I do mean both of those sincerely. Cats is a great musical; there’s a reason it was on Broadway for most of two decades. The quality of the performance was well above student level and could easily have passed for that of an adult cast. Spectacular dancing, great singing, and superb acting made for an easily enjoyable play. I noticed what may have been a couple of minor mistakes here and there, but everyone is human after all, and even the performers on Broadway goof every now and again. There were no particular standouts, but in this case that means the performers were great across the board and that’s a good thing. If this group represents the feature of live theatre in Houston, we have nothing to worry about because it’s going to be great.

JoAnne Woodard mentioned quite a few people involved with the show at the beginning; I did not catch all of the names, but it was quite an impressive list, including the set designer, sound designer, choreographers, and lighting designer. Their work complemented that of the cast nicely and helped make the show a success.

Which brings me to perhaps the most difficult part of this recap, that being a mini-rant on the kind of people that go to shows at “the Miller” as it’s often called. I was with my mom and she was sitting on my left. On her left was a quite chatty group of four younger women who could easily have done their socializing at a local coffee shop (I’m pretty sure at least the Starbucks at Montrose and Hawthorne was still open, if not the two in the Texas Medical Center).

There were people in my line of sight standing or walking by at rather inopportune times, and maybe some will say it’s partly our fault for not trying to get a seat in the covered area (we were seated about halfway up the hill). There was a younger woman that sat on a folding chair in front of me toward the end of the second act, on the part of the hill where folding chairs weren’t supposed to be allowed. Granted it was not a raised chair but it raised her up a good three inches or so, enough to put the top of her head into the bottom of my view of the stage where it would not have been otherwise.

Regardless, as much as I love this city and its arts scene, it pains me to see otherwise great shows booked at the Miller just knowing we have to put up with some of these things. If you got seats in the covered area, then none of this should have been a problem for you. But please, if you see shows at the Miller and you wind up on the hill, try not to be part of the problem.

(Note: This was written last week, and was supposed to post then but for some reason it did not.)

It’s a strange twist of fate that I had just written a post related to surveillance on one of my other blogs just two days before this exhibit opened, without even thinking about it. I was already looking forward to this since posting it on the monthly LOVIEE two weeks ago, and I was not disappointed at all.

Rather than give an in-depth accounting of all the exhibits, I’ll pick the three I found most interesting. I did not stick around long enough to look at everything completely, and I will probably return at some point prior to the exhibit closing.

First up: “Once Upon A Time” by Corinna Schnitt, a single-channel video with sound with a running time of 25 minutes. I expect relatively few of the visitors will come to this exhibit expecting humor. In summary: a living room is turned into a zoo, quite literally, and with quite amusing results. And I do mean a zoo: cats, dogs, small birds, all the way up to larger barnyard animals including at least one goat (maybe two) and one cow. I chuckled several times during the 15 minutes or so that I saw; probably not the reaction the artist was going for, I will admit, but I find it hard not to laugh while watching such things as a goat eating houseplants.

Second: “Chic Point” by Sharif Waked, a much shorter video piece (5 minutes, 10 seconds according to the program). This is a spoof of a fashion show where the men show apparel reconfigured for passing through the Israeli border security checkpoints: cropped-out suit jackets exposing the abdomen, part of the breast exposed through a T-shirt, etc. The end of the video shows several disturbing still pictures that served as the inspiration: men forced to expose themselves to Israeli border guards to prove they were not suicide bombers.

Third: “Vice Presidential Downtime Requirements” by Jennifer and Kevin McCoy. This is an installation with store-bought products based on a list leaked to thesmokinggun.com describing Dick Cheney’s requirements as sent to a local hotel. I can describe this all I want, but one actually has to see this, in person, in order to fully appreciate it. It’s only appropriate that an exhibition based on a quote by Vice President Dick Cheney contains a piece which references him and exposes him the same way that the onerous and odious surveillance has exposed the rest of us. The link should give you some idea what to expect.

Every piece in this exhibit is worth looking at; the detailed descriptions of these three alone are not intended to slight the rest of the exhibition in the least. Most notably, there are at least two pieces that make use of a live Internet connection in some form.

For those that missed the opening reception, The New Normal runs through February 20, and the hours of the DiverseWorks Gallery are Wednesday through Saturday, noon to 6pm.

At first glance, the inclusion of a gingerbread house building competition seemed to deviate from the norm of the events I feature in the weekly and monthly LOVIEEs. It is an artistic event of sorts (architecture is a discipline of art). I honestly didn’t know what I was about to see when I left the house this morning. Again, this is an event I’m wishing I had known about in time for the monthly LOVIEE.

And now that I’m back, my reaction in a nutshell: Holy cow. That’s pretty much the impression I’m left with after getting back from this exciting midday. I have never had the chance to watch an event similar to this, and I am very glad I was able to see what has been promoted as the first annual event of many to come. Let’s just say I’m already eagerly anticipating next year’s event and may even participate. The length of this post should be a clue as to how much I enjoyed it. In other words, this is going to be a long recap.

I arrived around 10:15am or so, and four of the eventual six teams had already begun construction, with the Caroline Collective team occupying their spot but not having started yet and initial supplies laid out for the remaining sixth team which would arrive later.

I took a great many pictures in the earliest hour of the competition. This would prove to be a questionable move when my camera would show the “low battery” indicator well before judging time. I did, however, get pictures of the completed houses as they stood at judging time (and I use that term a bit loosely in at least one case).

I’ll explain how this competition went down, documented with pictures. Each team paid a $25 entry fee through an Eventbrite event listing. There was an announced limit of three people per team (I would assume mainly due to the limited space at Caroline Collective’s coworking area). Each team received the following supplies:

• six sheets of gingerbread
• one tub of frosting
• one cardboard sheet covered in aluminum foil
• access to a community candy decoration stockpile

This shows the three items, the gingerbread sheets are on top of the foil platform and the white jar next to them is the tub of frosting:

This is the candy stockpile (four pictures; one wider angle, three closer up):

Teams were allowed to bring their own supplies with the restriction that all additional materials be edible. And yes, some teams definitely used other edible materials, most notably: rosemary herbs used by the Caroline Collective team, and sugar glass used by Santa’s Florida Summer Home and one other team whose name escapes me at the moment.

Our hosts at Caroline Collective kept a Christmas carols CD playing during the entire time, which I thought was a nice touch, although by the third hour it did get a bit repetitive. The computer used to play the CD did start stuttering quite badly around noon, prompting a few “remix” jokes; if not entirely welcomed comic relief, certainly nobody objected vocally enough that I noticed. A backup plan was quickly activated and we subsequently enjoyed a stutter-free, remix-jokes-free playing of Christmas carols for the remainder of the event.

Time marched on and the gingerbread houses began to take shape. A few more spectators arrived. It was then announced there was one hour before judging, which kicked the excitement up a little bit. At this point I was being very careful with the number of pictures I took, having long since triggered the low battery warning on my camera. (Truth be told, I was probably being more conservative than I needed to be, the low battery warning did not come up on power-up, I would take a set of pictures, then the low battery warning would come on again. However, I did not want to be stuck with no battery power at the time of judging.)

So, another forty or so minutes went by. Finally some of the houses were starting to look done. Some, in fact, were done before too much more time went by. The next announcement was twenty minutes until judging. Shortly before judging, the House of Cards team (yes, a gingerbread house made to look like a house of cards) ran into problems when part of their structure, well, folded. They were able to recover most of it prior to judging. I was not aware of other teams running into similar difficulties, at least until…

Judging time came at last and the first entry, Casa Dulce, was moved to the judging table. By the time the judges saw it, it was not quite the same, as you can see by the above. One account I overheard stated that it fell before even being moved; the relocation of a few feet, of course, did not help and it was subsequently decided that the judges would review the other entries in place due to concerns that the cardboard was not strong enough to support some of the elaborate edible construction (and nobody was in the mood to see yet another collapsed pile of decorated gingerbread and other edibles). It was later determined plywood would need to be procured for the move of the winning entries to the Architecture Center Houston.

The judges turned in their scores, and after considerable deliberation the winners were announced. But before I get to that, I want to show each of the six finished houses as best I can and offer my own unofficial scores for each, based on the same criteria the official judges used. (It is not a show of preference or disdain that some entries have more photographs shown here than others. Some of my pictures did not turn out that well, unfortunately.)

Santa’s Florida Summer Home

This is a very ornate design. The pictures barely do it justice; it really does look better seeing it in person.

       Structural Soundness:  5
         Decorative Quality:  5
Innovative Use of Materials:  4
             Overall Design:  5
                      Total: 19

Alienz

At first I was not overly wowed by the concept of a pyramid-shaped gingerbread house. This turns out being a well-executed concept, maybe not quite as elaborate as some of the others, but great for what it is.

       Structural Soundness:  5
         Decorative Quality:  4
Innovative Use of Materials:  4
             Overall Design:  5
                      Total: 18

Caroline Collective

It pains me to say it, but the flashy use of decorative candies by the other entries really makes this one look a bit bland by comparison. It could have been spruced up a bit. Sure, it would then be a hundred times less bland than the exteriors real-life Caroline Collective buildings then, but that would be a good thing.

(These pictures do not show a candy-cane “CC” present on what I assume is supposed to be the front of the building; this design element is visible on some of the other pictures.)

       Structural Soundness:  5
         Decorative Quality:  2
Innovative Use of Materials:  5
             Overall Design:  3
                      Total: 15

Nuclear Winter

I’m not even sure how this qualifies as a gingerbread house. It’s a great concept, though without knowing the title of it, it’s a bit hard to tell what exactly the builders were going for here.

       Structural Soundness:  4
         Decorative Quality:  5
Innovative Use of Materials:  3
             Overall Design:  4
                      Total: 16

House of Cards

While the premise sounds novel and intriguing, to me, it was a bit of a letdown once it was actually built and put on display. It was fun watching the building process and being struck with awe at the sheer quantity of heart and diamond suit symbols being put onto these icing-covered cards.

       Structural Soundness:  2
         Decorative Quality:  4
Innovative Use of Materials:  5
             Overall Design:  3
                      Total: 14

Casa Dulce

Shown here after it was reassembled post-judging (let’s face it, a shot of gingerbread rubble here would be rather anticlimactic).

       Structural Soundness:  1
         Decorative Quality:  5
Innovative Use of Materials:  3
             Overall Design:  3
                      Total: 12

Finally, the official winners were announced. For this, I actually have video. I apologize for the horrible audio quality, the camera is primarily a still picture camera so the video quality is not that great. (I rarely use the video capability of this camera for that reason.)

If you don’t feel like watching that whole spiel: third place (tie): House of Cards, Alienz; second place: Santa’s Florida Home; first place: Nuclear Winter.

That’s a wrap. Here’s hoping next year’s Gingerbread Build-Off is bigger and better.