Wordcamp Israel - Wordpress User's Conference

I went to the Wordcamp Israel 2007 conference last Thursday. It was an typical technical meeting that could have been anywhere in the world. The most unique characteristic here was English screen presentations and programs (PowerPoint & web examples) with Hebrew lectures. This is a typical 'leading edge' conference, the invitation was listed on some writing and professional listings like Techshoret, IsraelPCdoctor, and Tanglo (all on Yahoo! groups). Actually, Israel tech scene is very much a word-of-mouth type of organism. It probably goes back to the way the country was developed, where the 'protekzya' (essentially nepotism) and 'histadrut' (the all encomassing Israle labor union) counted more than titles and academic accomplishment. But anyway, the scene was full of bloggers and want-to-be bloggers in Hebrew. The idea was to show how easy blogging can be and the fact that WordPress is fully Hebrew compatible. But that is not enough of a reason to gather 100-some people and feed them cold burekas and instant coffee for 8 hours. The real reason is that people who have been moving the WordPress Hebrew version, have used mostly through e-Mail and blogging to communicate, can get together and put a face to the words and the once in a while / late night phone call.

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Wordcamp Israel English site, follow that to the Hebrew site...
In addition to that, small 'underground' conferences tend to get people connected and talking, and in Israel this is one of the most common activity anyway. The interesting fact is that this happened here. Israel is the first country after the US that had such a 'formal' meeting. WordPress sent Laurelle VanFossen as a representative. She is somewhere between an evangelist and a public relation 'geek'. I use the 'geek' term in a sense that she is a non-techy pushing a totally technical product. So to people who mostly write, market, communicate, document... essentially deal with words and ideas, she is the 'techy' connection. Laurelle has a new book about blogging and she apparently lived in Israel in a 'previous life'. So she liked the people and the food. That's good enough for most Israeli bloggers.

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The blogging book by Laurelle
Like in the US, there are a few blogging services (in Hebrew) associated with portals and mainstream publications (nana Isra-blog, Tapuz blog, bloggerim) - but this is not what "hard core blogging" is all about. WordPress is trying to get people to run and manage their own blog software. That means design, posting, advertising - essentially make each blogger a small business. What a concept? Well, this is really the first time a company or a community has told people: go forth and run your own site ~ it's not that hard. JUST DO IT! Well, is it working you ask? I am not sure, like me, blogger (from google) is good enough for most bloggers. But than again, every writer, business person, marketing freelancer, cartoon doodler and political pontificator has the urge to "control everything". Even if it's just the way a blog page looks and the width of the columns. After all, blogging is about running your own tiny newspaper, advice column and ongoing advertising newsletter.

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The speakers mostly covered technical topics, how to design your own style, how to run an audio blog, how to advertise and publicize. At this point not much about the writing, motivation, marketing or other topics related to content. There were two 'business' bloggers who spoke about using a blog to essentially promote their work and get people "prepared" for business. There were a few artsy bloggers who plan to eventually run a blog for a living. But at this point, this is not happening yet in Israel. There are also writers who want to use the blog simply to get a word out, some are political and some cultural (a movie reviewer). Overall, a nice distraction from the keyboard and the daily toil of posting. A techy (not just a 'geek') from the city - Tel Aviv - //AmiV