Archive for March, 2009

WordCamp Egypt 2009 – Great Start

March 28th, 2009 Egypt, Wordcamp, Wordpress View Comments


So I’ve been there today for WordCamp Egypt 2009 . It’s the first WordCamp Ever in Middle East, and also in Egypt ..

The WordCamp Started at 10.30 AM with the Keynote from Jane Wells, Interface Designer at Automattic . She Started with talking about Automattic and Projects like WordPress.com, WordPress.tv, Polldaddy, IntenseDebate and talking about Features provided in Version 2.7.
There were some nice notes from Jane About Updates Coming Up For WordPress in 2.8 which will be available almost in Mid April, and What They plan to do in 2009 . The Most Important Coming Features Will Be Developing The Media Tools in WordPress From The Beginning and Offering New Services with Videos, Slideshows .
They will be working also for more developing for the Javascript Library Used In WordPress now to be more faster than now .
And There’s gonna be New Default Themes with WordPress =) which will provide more Features to Users =) .
I’ve asked Jane About If There will be a plan to make some kind of light version for WordPress to make it easier for beginners to use wordpress Simply . She said that They are actually working on a plugin that will turn The Dashboard Look to be more simple for beginners If they want to use it .
I’ve asked her too about Any plans for mobile edition after they released WordPress For iPhone . She said that They are actually looking for developers to start working on Mobile Edition that will be working with other Mobile Systems =) ..
The Rest of WordCamp Agenda was about Sessions About WordPress From Beginners to Pros . Started With Talking about the WordPress Environment and some basics about Servers, PHP and How Blogging goes From Posts to Comments …etc ..
2nd Session was talking about Top 10 WordPress Plugins Every blog must use such as All-in-one SEO Pack, Google XML Sitempas, Wp UsersOnline ..
3rd Session After Coffee Break was about How to Create Your First Plugin and It was talking about the environment of WordPress Plugins and How to Create a Simple Plugin .
4th Session & Final one was about Themes Environment and creating a theme and what does template files contain .
It was an interesting day at last, I think Many Of people came learned so much of new stuff there today.
Unfortunately, Couldn’t take photos or videos but will updating post when it’s available =)
The Final Word was so nice that It’s not bad It could be in Egypt for the First Time in Middle East and People should keep moving on and do it in other Arab countries . Speak Up =)

Thanks to Amr Ibrahim (www.amrspace.com) for the photo . You can find Videos on Youtube (Search For “WordCamp Egypt”)

The Love of .. Cloning

March 5th, 2009 Social Media, Web Design View Comments

There’s still another crisis when we talk about Clients, Which is ” The Love of Cloning “. Clients in Many Different fields especially when It comes to a Designer field (Web Design, Graphic Design, Interior Design …etc), We find the issue of cloning things .

A Client wants a website like this, A client wants the same view of this place, A client wants this exact design for his work. Everything is related to cloning .. Even when It comes to Social Networks, When there were many clones for Microblogging Networks after Twitter became the top of Microblogging websites .

I wonder why we always want to clone, while we can get inspired and do something new. For Web Design, We can find Many Sources for Inspiration to give an idea to how the project will need, colors, resources, techniques to work on with.

Yammer was such a great idea to use Microblogging in another new way which is Connecting with People in Your company or organization . Brightkite is another interesting social network using the location based idea and Microblogging .

There’s so big difference between Cloning and Getting Inspired . We should look for more Innovating in our fields of work and stop depending on the client’s view . You are the expert, then you can Convince your client with new ideas to do his/her work, whatever it was but It will be a remarkable thing you can mention in your portfolio, that you don’t clone but Innovate .