This weekend I attended my first WordCamp, WordCamp San Francisco 2009. And here are the top 11 best things about the day’s events.

1. Matt —
   Matt Mullenweg’s opening presentation was wonderful. He’s a charming and able public speaker who clearly is passionate about what WordPress makes possible and all those who feel that way too.
2. The other Matt —
   Matt Cutts, in his presentation on WordPress and SEO, joked that he wished that he was the highest ranked “Matt” on Google, but instead it was Matt Mullenweg. Matt Cutts is also a charming and able public speaker and quite probably a stand-up comedian. Finally, a confirmation of what I had suspected, that WordPress, because of the way it’s been put together, takes care of 80-90% of Search Engine Optimization for a website built on it. He had a lot of great, grounded points about improving your own SEO and what to avoid, all of which you can see for yourself at WordPress.tv soon.
3. Andy Peatling —
   This presentation really made me happy because it dealt mostly with WordPress MU and the newly announced BuddyPress installation that together seem to add a whole lot more functionality to a WordPress-based website than I thought possible. Suffice it to say that one of my next to-do items is to install WordPress MU and BuddyPress and see what they can do.
4. Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A —
   I’ve found that Q&As at conferences tend to dredge up the dumbest questions. That was not the case here, happily. In fact, I learned a lot just from the Q&A. For instance, I need to look into P2…
5. The awesome catered BBQ lunch.
6. Meeting other very cool WordPress developers from the moment I stepped off of the train to Mission Bay. Now I can actually ask someone some questions in realtime rather than on a forum, and return the favor, hopefully.
7. The cool T-shirt that came with the ticket price. Thanks! (Lunch and a T-shirt?)
8. Getting a much better sense of what the term “developer” really means.
9. Getting exposed to (just some of) the many faces and executions of WordPress, the platform that allows you to offer your clients a solid and scalable website platform…that they can edit!
10. The Anniversary Party at the Automattic Lounge! (Lunch, a T-shirt and a party?)
11. Matt Cutt’s suggestion to focus on adding relevant content on your website, such as writing a post entitled, “The Top 11 Best Things About WordCamp SF 2009” or something to that effect.

Very, very cool. Thanks WordPress/Automattic! …and everyone else!

When’s the next one?