About two months ago, I was invited by Basilis Kanonidis of creativeg.gr to speak in the second greek WordCamp, which would take place in Thessaloniki in early June.
At first, I reacted as I always react to new challenges: I won’t be good at it. I won’t know what to talk about. I will stutter and lose my train of thought. An ACME anvil will fall from the sky right on top of my head. You know, it’s a cruel thing, sabotaging yourself, but I’m trying to get over it.
Then I realised, there is something I want to talk about, something that disturbed me every time I checked the Wordpress premium themes marketplace. So I forced myself to steer clear of procrastination and work on this idea, and soon realised I really, really liked working on it after all. Plus, I’d get to visit beautiful Thessaloniki again after 11 years and have fun with some dear friends! What more to ask for?
Skip to 4th June morning.
Mild pre-presentation stress. Rehearsing the slides in my mind while brushing my teeth. Arrived early with Thanos, so we had the chance to break some glasses socialise a bit more. Marveled at the weird Thessaloniki weather – scorching heat, cloudy and then, pouring rain? Wow.
Then the event started, Basilis gave us an intro and Dimitris hopped on stage to talk about what he loves more, blogging. Since I was second in the speaking schedule, I tried to focus on what Dimitris was saying without worrying about that ACME anvil – I think I succeeded.
Then, it was my turn. And I talked about this:
(I hope it makes sense without my presenter notes. If not, leave a comment and we can discuss it over e-mail.)
Phew, done! I think it went well. Worry-free now, I sit comfortably to watch the next presentations.
Apostolos gave us some hints on good theme design practices from a blogger’s viewpoint. Thanos talked to us about typography (and his project WireframePlus – do YOU know what WireframePlus does?), Vasilis gave a very informative presentation on using Wordpress as an advanced CMS, Gerasimos introduced us to the pros and cons of Wordpress frameworks, Fotis decided that merging CodeIgniter and Wordpress would be fun so he told us to go for it, Basilis showed us how easy it’d be to setup a mini social network using BuddyPress, while George Kanellopoulos from Microsoft gave two presentations, on Wordpress & Microsoft Web Platform and on HTML 5 that I’m sure many found interesting.
It was excellent.
I love the vibe of this kind of events – many savvy people in a room, talking about what they like best and socializing, networking, having plain stupid fun. If I changed one thing, it’d be the fact that I didn’t talk with as many people as I wanted to, as I’m kinda shy – next time, if you see me around drop by and say hi!
These two days were such a welcome break from my routine – walking around the city discovering places (and ruining my feet – damn you, strappy sandals), having good food, being lazy in Navarinou Square, gazing at the lovely Roman Forum view from our hotel window, walking by the sea, all lovely and a great start to my summer.
Thanks to everyone involved and special thanks to Thanos, Yiannis, Gerasimos and Eleni for showing us around the city. You rock, peeps.
Here’s to a great third WordCamp next year!
I’m the worst freelancer in the world.
I wish I was one of those industrious web designers that can work for a focused 4 hours and produce small miracles, but alas, I am not. I never was. As I’ve already explained in My (totally) Paranoid Way of Working, design is such a heart-wrenching procedure for me, I sometimes wonder why I chose to do this for life.
For over a year, I’ve been going around claiming to be a freelance web designer and I had no real portfolio to show. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
I worked my derrière off in numerous projects throughout 2010 and I had nowhere to showcase them. On a whim, I created a Behance.net profile and started populating it with my work, but it never felt right.
During all this time, I kept working on it, on and off, based on an elusive idea I had in early 2010, an idea that said I should divide my work into two separate fields: design & content. I liked that idea a lot, however, I never found enough time to really put my soul in it and I kept pushing this particular to-do list to the bottom of my favourite GTD app.
So my portfolio design lagged. And lagged. And lagged some more. Pressing deadlines and client projects always got in the way. My own perfectionism, always a huge problem, whispered in my ear all the time that if you gonna do it girl, you must do it well.
All in all, it got me over a year to put together something that could be done in a week or less.
But I don’t really regret it. Working on this thing for so long has given me the luxury of sweating over small details that I wouldn’t normally sweat over (for example, how to create miniature Safari, Coda and Mail.app windows for the different kinds of work I’ve done).
I can now safely say that a huge burden is off my shoulders. I have a place I can call home, where I can properly showcase the projects I work on.
In that sense, Sugarenia.com was so worth the wait.
Thanks all known (and unknown) suspects for keeping up with my whining and nagging me to finish this thing.
Hat tip to all of you for the warm welcome. Now, if you want to hire me, you know where to find me.
As I sat down on my desk to start typing the obligatory enthusiastic blog post about New Adventures in Web Design, one thing dawned to me: I really don’t know what to say.
Other than I had a terrific time, that is.
The place
Maybe I see things through the tourist’s rose-tinted glasses, and maybe I like UK a bit too much for my own good, but I loved Nottingham.
The city is pretty and clean and friendly. People were eager to help and cheerful. Everything was just a walk around the centre – none of the usual London hustle. It was cold but not too cold – even though the temperature dropped below zero at nights, I felt quite nice for the exotic bird I am.
It was a great place to host a conference – not too big, not too small, just perfect.
The talks
I spent a full day hearing web design supernovas talking about new ideas and perspectives. What’s not to love?
Each and every presentation had its unique charm. If I had to choose one as a highlight, that’d be the one lovely Ms. Veerle Pieters gave. Not that it was the most innovative, but because it felt like it was made directly for me, procrastinating little me that always struggles to find inspiration and turn it to something useful. It’s good to see that people as insanely creative as Veerle is face the same dilemmas and anxiety as everyone else.
The people
Conferences should be all about the people though. And what matters the most to me is that this particular conference was a terrific chance to see Yiannis again (and share a room, school excursion style) and finally (emphasis please) meet Maria, aka acidsmile, aka one of my favourite people on the webs since time immemorial.
I also had the chance to talk briefly with Mitul, who I’ve only met through Twitter (cheers friend!). Being an introvert person, I really didn’t jump at the chance to start talking to other attendees and I now regret it. Maybe I should. Maybe it’s a goal for the next conference.
The host
I’ll bow towards the general direction of Nottingham, because Mr. Collison has done a great job in making us all feel warm and welcome. He really looks like a sweet, humble person, instantly likeable. A terrific host. The standing O at the end of the conference didn’t do him justice.
The outcome
Please, mr. Collison, can we have another? People seem to have liked it a lot.
