Opening a Window

And so my season of being thankful continues…
Last fall as I finished writing my book EVENTually Perfect, I researched how to get it published. After several weeks, I decided to self-publish. If you haven’t realized it by now, I am all about getting things done. And while I could have pursued the traditional publishing routes, this would have taken a long time, and I wasn’t willing to wait. So, now that I made the decision to self-publish, I had to figure out how to do that. And I also wanted to make my book an e-book. That’s when I found out about WordPress.
I wanted to get involved in new things, and found a WordPress group onhttp://meetup.com. I attended my first meeting and was amazed. Jack Kennard (@javajoba), who headed up the group in Atlanta, worked with me on launching my site and showed me how to use some plugins. And over the next month, I took the time to learn more. I also found another meetup group for Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs (@AWE), led by Mike Schinkel (@mikeschinkel), that was hosting a WordPress workshop, so I registered to attend that.
In the four hour workshop, I would learn:
o how to install and configure WordPress
o configuring settings
o creating posts, pages, links and media
o installing MailChimp plugin (a sponsor and a email program I still use)
o installing & configuring other plugins
The amazing part of this workshop, was that I did indeed learn all of those things! I also got the opportunity to meet and learn from others at different stages in the WordPress world. I was able to see what others were doing with WordPress and how they were doing it, which is an invaluable lesson. Unlike most classroom situations, the meetup workshop forged relationships that became the beginning of my “technical” community. I was able to learn of other networking and learning opportunities that would continue to build.
What I quickly learned was that I was learning new things that would open many more windows. And I couldn’t wait to learn more. But mostly I want to thank Jack and Mike for their willingness to share their expertise and pay it forward by helping me and others to open windows to new adventure.

Tagged as: Atlanta Web Enterpreneurs, Atlanta WordPress Group, wordpress