Psss, there are ways to do online conferences that do not require The Zoom.
It sounds unlikely, but I have been part of two Twitter based WordPress in education conferences cooked up by Pat Lockley, PressEd versions I’ve been a part of in 2018, in 2019, and in 2020. So when Pat messaged about looking at another one he was running, Hey Pressto! I had full intentions of sending in something.
Then I forgot.
But I managed to remember 2 days before the deadline. I decided to avoid presenting about SPLOTs again, (and Frances Bell and Lorna Campbell did more than enough in their #femedtech session) and decided to focus on a few tinkerings I have done using the WordPress API for some tasks.
It’s not that I have a big expertise in APIs, but that I could show, with a little bit of experimenting. how to create external sites that could pull in information from WordPress sites for specific purposes.
Thus, a few days before Thursday I was populating Tweetdeck with scheduled tweets for my 15 minute/tweet spot on Doing Small Things With the WordPress API. I’ve archived the “slides” as it were not, at my Best of Show site (where I hang presentations).
I pretty muh skipped trying to explain APIs and show more how 3 things I have done with the WordPress one went from really simple to quite a but more complex. The sites presented ncluded:
- The random quotes cycling on the home URL of a WordPress Multisite http://arganee.world, meant to be mysterious and to have something if anyone pried about the URLs used for Networld Narratives
- Adding endpoints to the TRU Collector SPLOT allowing it to be the source for sites offering random images (random splot and random splot glitched). I saw possibilities of creating a version of pechaflickr that could draw from images stored in one of these Collector sites) (one of the many ideas in my head I’ve yet to pry time to do).
- And the last was using the WordPress API to offer a lightweight “navigator” to a rich media site where a visitor could preserve the options for viewing (categories, custom post types) as settings stored as local storage, rather than nasty data cookies.
I thought this was kind of a Big Deal but really did not get much uptake or interest… maybe my blog post was too full of code and metaphors)
As it turns out I was on a phone call during my time, but that’s the beauty of these twitter-based conferences, the show goes on. And yes, it’s quite different, but you do get interaction and feedback. It’s always good to know when I do some fiddling to find John Johnston Has Done It Before
And as usual, Tom Woodward was way to humble on how much he helped me with the projects I demoed.
Yes, it’s not quite the same having an audience in a room or a zoom pace walking your slides, but these twitter-based conferences are worth checking out. There is a lot of ideas and content you can interact with at any time.
And you can do other things while presenting. Can’t we use more of that, now even more than ever?
Featured Image: I spotted this unsplash photo by Andrew Ridley for use in another project and recognized the tiles of the building featured in the 99 Percent Invisible episode on Instant Gramification for some reason, it felt right to use it. I added 15 twitter symbols to represent my tweets Logo Twitter Icon Symbol from Free Icon PNGs and finally the funky mascot from the Hey Pressto! site.
