I spent the past few days in Las Vegas for the Layered Tech LTPact 2008 Conference, an event sponsored by Layered Tech, the second largest web hosting and reseller in the world, among WordPress luminaries and experts and a lot of server geeks and serious online business folks.

I got a chance to spend time with Elie Khoury and Jad Younan, co-founders of Woopra, the web analytics program that was the talk of WordCamp Dallas. They arrived from Lebanon only two days before landing in Vegas and were still jet-lagged and culture-shocked from what they had seen so far in the United States - not your normal introduction to this country. Their English is great, though they were nervous speaking it at first, and I was privileged to be the first to interview them. The exclusive interview will be featured on the next WordPress Podcast with Charles Stricklin, discussing how Woopra works and the Woopra API for WordPress Plugins.

I also learned a lot about what goes on under the hood of a blog or website, something we often forget about until our site crashes, goes offline, or the blog borks. One of the most exciting things I learned about is the new hosting service options by Layered Tech called the Cloud that bloggers need to know about.

In the past, if your site was dugg by Digg or linked to from Smashing Magazine, Engadget, BoingBoing, Mashable, or any other high traffic driving site, the typical server set up just couldn’t handle it. With improvements in WordPress and its cache system, and Plugins like Super Cache WordPress Plugin, these worries are a thing of the past - but not completely.

Layered Tech is offering Cloud technology with 3Tera that I think is going to change the way we host our blogs. Called on-demand IT infrastructure or the grid, you can have a flexible website structure, only paying for services you want and need, not having to pay for that which you do not use.

Cloud computing or storage is a networked data storage system using virtual servers rather than dedicated servers. Instead of having your data stored on a single server, it is networked across huge data centers, allowing the data resources to be larger or smaller, depending upon the customer needs.

The typical blogger gets a traffic spike once in a while and the demand on the server typically lasts for a few days and things drop back to a normal level. To accommodate such a demand, we used to have to sign up for web hosting at high levels in order to be ready for the spikes, even though they didn’t come around every day. This new system basically says why pay for what you don’t need, but when you need it, it’s there and you pay for what you use, not what you don’t. You can still upgrade your services when you need them, but this way, you won’t be caught off guard when your site is suddenly the center of attention.

Layered Tech works with a variety of resellers for web hosting services with the “pay as you need” service. According to the Layered Tech representatives I talked to during the conference, you set up your basic service, and if your needs exceed that minimum, the service will expand to meet the need and you will be notified and charged accordingly, and when it drops, the costs drop, too. In a way, this allows your hosting service to grow with you rather than against you.

WordPress.com runs on Layered Tech servers, and if you are self-hosted, I recommend you check with your web hosting provider to see if they are using Layered Tech servers or if their servers use virtual servers and cloud technology. It’s the future and if you are serious about the service your blog offers, you need to be investigating this technology.

What Else Did Lorelle Learn at LTPact?

There were a number of excellent speakers I learned a lot from and will be talking more about soon, including topics on copyright protection, patent and trademark issues and SEO, topics that impact both servers, server software, and online businesses. Our Business of Blogging panel with Matt Mullenweg, John Pozadzides, and I was a great success and sparked a lot of comments and good feedback.

What I learned most had to do with breaking out of my comfort zone. I’m used to conferences where everyone pretty much knows who I am, or will before the end of the first day as I’m typically the keynote or a featured speaker. Only a few knew who I was. I loved introducing myself and being asked who I was with. The first time, I thought they meant if I was with the person I came into the room with, but they meant what company was I with.

“Me,” wasn’t a good response among the corporate thinkers. I quickly restructured my introduction to explain that I was one of the speakers here as an expert in blogging and online community building. Many thought I worked for Automattic and WordPress, so I had to explain I didn’t. I work for me.

The issue of “Where are you based?” came up a lot. My favorite question on that topic was when they asked me where the offices of WordPress and Automattic were based. I told them “on the Internet” just like I was. One man insisted on knowing the geographic location of the WordPress offices. I told them that in today’s modern office, you could have a virtual office on the web and location didn’t matter. Some understood, others shook their heads I just smiled, having lived with a virtual office for many years. It’s the future, folks. Wake up. Geography is important, but becoming obsolete on the web.

These questions helped push my comfort zone around a lot, and inspired a ton of ideas for blog posts, which is why I enjoy stepping out of the safety and security of the known.

The two day conference was filled with great speakers, fabulous food, fun schwag, neat people, entertainment with a magician comedian, and an evening poker tournament. It was in this last event that I got another lesson in blogging.

I did not understand the card game they were playing. It was all for fun, but I was lost from minute one. I’d played various poker card games growing up, excelling at seven-card-no-peek, with my father on long camping and fishing trips, but this was complicated and involved specific verbal commands and hand movements and the taking of extra money from two players on each hand involving something called a blind, a politically incorrect term for someone sensitive to disability name calling. However, I was the first big winner of the night, bouncing two other players out of the game with my very first hand. I still don’t know how I won as none of it made sense.

And I kept winning. Don’t ask me how. I just kept laughing and laughing as the winnings piled up in front of me.

At one point, Barry Abrahamson of WordPress.com threatened to shut down my blog if I threatened his hand. Then Aaron Phillips of FastServer, host of several of my other blogs, threatened to ban my blog, too. I quickly learned that gambling can bring out the mean in many. So I threatened to bet my blogs against theirs and they quickly backed off.

I never quite got the hang of the game, having more fun talking to people as the players were switched around from table to table, and yet I kept winning, finally losing it all as the 12th of the final players. The final ten were award winners so I just missed out.

Several of my fellow players wanted to see the pictures I was taking of the whole conference and especially the poker game, but I told them that I didn’t have a blog upon which to share the pictures. One fellow challenged me to come up with a way to make it work on this blog. Challenged, I went hunting for a way to blog about the poker game and apply it to blogging.

I accepted the challenge.

Blogging is Like Playing in a Poker Game…

For me, the poker tournament was like blogging as we start out all excited, thrilled with the risk and adventure. We publish a few blog posts, fishing around for our blogging voice, and not much happens, but we learn as we play. Then comes the big win when we score, publishing something that proves interesting enough for some big traffic blogs to link to us and send their traffic our way. Our careful betting and gambling has paid off. Lessons learned, we win!

As we become more comfortable with the risks in betting, the excitement begins to wear off. Some call it boredom, others call it stagnation. It’s just the same old same old and blogging becomes work. The hands we are dealt aren’t winners but they aren’t losers, and we bet conservatively, waiting for that bit of excitement.

As I played conservatively with my mediocre hands in the tournament, three different times other players at the table turned up a pair of aces with confidence. Everyone at the table knew cheered them on, also sure they were the next winners - except those betting against them. On the last dealer card, they lost to different combinations of two pairs, a set of three, and a flush while everyone, including the losing player with the pair of aces, was stunned by the loss.

To break out of the boredom, we push the blogging envelop and write specifically for our readers, trying to manipulate a big traffic spike again and again. We study the most popular posts on our blog and on other blogs and try to repeat the success. When you bet your blog with posts designed to bring in traffic, you take a risk that often doesn’t pay off. Each of these three players bet everything on the aces and were out of the game when they lost.

When the three final players of the tournament went into their final rounds, these were the players whom I had watched play well, but play conservatively, taking risks when the win was assured and holding back when they weren’t sure, testing the waters as they went, accumulating small but substantial wins along the way. Bored with the game, I could have held out longer, like them, but bored, I didn’t take the risks that would have kept me going. In the end, just two places shy of a winning position, I stepped out of the game, hurt by my lack of interest in the game.

Finding the balance for the long run not the short haul is difficult. A blog is not a five post run. So many jump in thinking they have tons to say, they say it all in the first five posts, then wonder what there is to write about next, having expended all their energies with their first few bets. It’s the balance between generating content, interest, and enthusiasm over the long term with the occasional wins that keeps a blog going. And wins the pot in the end.

LTPact 2008

Having accepted and completed the challenge, I thought you might enjoy some photographs of the LTPact Conference in Las Vegas. The images include a few of the speakers, a private party in one of the sponsor suites, Russ Merlin magician and comedian at a luncheon, various attendees, and the poker tournament on the last night.

And I encourage you all to step out of your comfort zone from time to time to explore the unknown around you. You never know how it will pay off on your blog when you gamble just a little bit.

Site Search Tags: ltpact, ltpact2008, layered tech, layered technologies, blog event, conference, event, gambling, poker, risk, blogging tips, lorelle, cloud, server, cloud server, 3tera, grid server, the grid, the cloud, cloud technology, server technology, web hosts, web industry, web servers, las vegas

Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Many of you know that I’m a geek at heart. I go nuts over all things geeky. Secretly, I adore Barry Abrahamson, the server guru of Automattic and WordPress.com, especially when he starts talking numbers for WordPress.com:

2,638,958 file uploads
About 1,074 gigabytes of new files.
417 terabytes of content transferred from our datacenters.
1,134,796,234 pageviews total across all WordPress.com and VIP blogs.

That’s a lot of server traffic - heck, that is an overwhelmingly unbelievable amount of server activity! How it all fits together is something that has always intrigued me. Now, you can join me and have many of these mysteries answered at the 2008 Layered Technologies PACT Conference from June 26-27, 2008, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The famous Caesars Palace Resort is the spot to learn all about how the server industry works and learn from the masters in the server and hosting industry, including Barry Abrahamson and Matt Mullenweg of WordPress to learn how they use the power of Layered Technologies servers to handle more than 3 million blogs on WordPress.com. And it’s all free!

The list of speakers is a veritable who’s who of leading technology and hosting experts including the top brass from Layered Technologies, representing some amazing innovators and passionate technical geeks, and other top notch experts on a variety of subjects beyond web hosting and servers including:

• James Staten, Principal Analyst of IT Infrastructure and Operations at Forrester Research, a leading expert on x86 servers and infrastructure and trends
• Andrew Skale, Attorney, Mintz-Levin and expert in patent, trademark, copyright litigation, and entertainment law
• Chris Samson, the Senior Hosting Technology Specialist from CSNA and Microsoft
• Deven Kampenhout, Web Platform Architect Evangelist at Microsoft, Tim Johnson, Senior Manager of Channel Market Development, Global Marketing, at Seagate
• Jonah Stein, blogger of It’s The ROI
• Jimmy Guerrero, the Senior Product Marketing Manager in the Database Group of Sun Microsystems coordinating MySQL’s Web 2.0 and SaaS marketing programs, Dennis Dayman, Chief Privacy Officer of Eloqua, an expert in security, legal, privacy, and public relations issues
• Barry Lynn, the Chairman and CEO of 3Tera, expert on data center innovations
• Andy Schroepfer, the Founder and Hosting Visionary of Tier 1 Research, an expert in the hosting industry

And me.

That’s right. From among all the big wigs and whose who of the industry, I will be on a panel with John Pozadzides and Matt Mullenweg talking about The Business of Blogging on Friday, June 27, at 1:15PM. You are invited to attend for free. Advanced registration is requested so there will be plenty of food and fun for everyone.

Among the fun is the LT PACT Poker Tournament hosted by Master of Ceremonies Robert W. Thompson II of NBC’s BravoTV Celebrity Poker Showdown with a total purse of USD $5,000. Get your poker face on.

On a serious note, it’s a worthwhile event to attend. It’s a rare opportunity to meet and learn from these industry leaders on how to increase your web revenue with better business practices and technology. It’s a chance to learn about the latest in new technology and where the web is going, not just where it’s been. Topics include SEO, industry trends, virtualization trends and technology, site optimization, web hosting, cloud/grid hosting technology, online storage technology, intellectual property, email and mailing list management and business practices, site automation, business of blogging, security vulnerabilities and threats, backups, and more.

I hope to see you there!

UPDATE: I’ve just learned that the lead developers of Woopra, Jad Younan and Elie Khoury, will be at the conference. They are flying in from Lebanon for this special event. If you are in love with this amazing web analytics and statistics program and/or are one of the 20,000 beta testers and want to meet the brains behind the program, come to the 2008 Layered Technologies PACT Conference. It’s free!

Site Search Tags: wordpress news, wordpress events, layered technologies, lt pact, events, meet lorelle, matt mullenweg, barry abramson, servers, server technology, las vegas, free event

Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Charles Stricklin, the host of WordCamp Dallas 2008 and The WordPress Podcast has released The Voices of WordCamp Dallas, a collection of quick interviews and questions I asked during the event.

I was so amazed at how open everyone was, willing to share their thoughts on WordPress, WordCamp, blogging, and the magic of the web today. I talked to bloggers who had been blogging for years and newbies, with only a few weeks under their belts. It was a collection of the whose who and whose upcoming in the blogosphere and thank you to Charles for sharing the magic that his efforts brought together in one place.

Some of the interviews are excerpted and I hope to bring them to you in their entirety soon, so stay tuned. In the 30 minute set of The Voices of WordCamp Dallas, you will hear:

00.10 Bill Sholar of Webfratelli
00.37 Dan Bates
00.59 Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today
01.45 Ptah Dunbar
02.34 Bryan Lee
03:14 Cory Miller of iThemes Media
03:44 Henry Pugsley
04:07 Kerry Webster of WEBsmith internet consultants
04:44 Wendi McGowan of Wendistry, LLC and Scott Ellis of vsellis.com
05:36 Dave Curlee and Katherine Curlee of RealCookN.tv
06:28 DB Ferguson of No Fact Zone
07:48 Alexander Frison of Not a Niche
09:18 Tony Cecala of Holistic Networker
10:04 Mike Borschow of MetroQ.com
11:55 Mark Ghosh of Weblog Tools Collection
12:30 Dorian Karthauser of DK Enterprises (beginner blogger)
17:35 Charlene Mullenweg (sister of Matt Mullenweg)
23:15 Jim Halloran of AlcoholismDiseaseFree.com
24:13 Ryan Joy and Michelle Greer of Volusion and Michelle’s Blog
26:41 Kathleen Ratliff
27:14 William Addington of Williamedia
28:31 Doug Smith of smithsrus.com and Hide a Pod
29:25 Ronald Huereca of Readers Appreciation Project and Weblog Tools Collection
30:23 Dimitri (blog not public - biotech)

I look forward to repeating this fascinating dialog in future WordCamps and blogging events I travel to and speak at. It’s a humbling experience as I come to teach and come away learning more than I ever expected. Thank you to all for sharing your thoughts and passions with me!

Related Articles

• 24 Reasons Why You Should Attend These Blog Conferences
• What You Need To Know About WordCamp Dallas
• 5 Tips about Surviving on the Road with Lorelle
• WordCamp Dallas Videos
• Liz Strauss at WordCamp Dallas Transcript: 60,317 Comments
• WordCamp Dallas 2008: Lorelle’s Gallery of Images
• WordCamp Dallas 2008: Celebrating WordPress

Site Search Tags: wordpresss news, wordcamp, wordcamp dallas, voices, wordpress community, interview, podcast, mp3

Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Tonight was the first event of the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) in Chicago at the pre-conference meetup hosted by FuelMyBlog.

It was a great opportunity to socialize with many of the return participants to SOBCon, but also to meet new people. It is clear that SOBCon is going to be the event of the year for myself and many of the participants in Chicago this weekend. And you still have a chance to join the fun. There is still time to register for this powerful blogging event, The Biz School for Bloggers, which begins Friday night with a boat cruise and open mic night, and then Saturday and Sunday turns the tables on everything you thought about the business side of blogging, social networking, marketing, promotions, advertising, monetization, and more with the masters of the blogging world.

From the hugs everyone was handing out, it was clear that Wendy Piersall summed it up perfectly:

SOBCon is like entering a room filled with your best friends whom you’ve never met.

The energy was powerful and the expectations for the weekend’s conference were amazing. Bloggers are here from all over the country and the world to take their blogs to the next level, investing in their blog but also in their social capital. They will learn about how to maximize the return on their investment in social media, networking, blog community building, and increasing their brand identity and visibility within their niche - and beyond. They are eager to learn, but also eager to share the lessons they’ve learned as bloggers, whether they have been blogging for a few weeks, months, or years. It’s clear that everyone is here to learn from each other as well as to share.

Here are some of the pictures of the meetup - where no one was a stranger.

Photographs copyright Lorelle VanFossen

Photographs copyright Lorelle VanFossen

I’m so looking forward to this weekend’s conference. If you are in the Chicago area and want to jump start your blog business, get down here! If you are not, then check out the amazing discounts on Southwest Airlines for flights to Chicago, or my favorite flight search, Kayak for cheap last minute flights. Trust me, it will be worth every nickle it takes to come here.

Related Articles

• Lorelle in Chicago Next Week at the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference
• Lorelle in Chicago at Successful and Outstanding Blog Conference
• SOBCon 2007 Remembered and Recommended
• Liz Strauss Guides Lorelle on a Quest To Find Her Passion
• SOBCon: Be There for the Business of Blogging!
• 24 Reasons Why You Should Attend These Blog Conferences
• Authority Blogger Contest - Win Free Trip to SOBCON08
• Looking For New Places to Take Your Blog Out
• $2,000 in SOBCon+Consulting Prizes to be Won
• What Do You Bring to a Blog Conference?
• How to Talk to a Blogger
• What Gives You The Right To Tell Me?
• Business School for Bloggers: How to Make Money With Your Blog

Site Search Tags: sobcon, sobcon08, sobcon2008, chicago, bloggers, blog event, conference, blog conference, successful and outstanding bloggers, fuelmyblog, meetup

Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

WordCamp Dallas in Frisco, Texas, began Friday night with a bang of social fun at a local restaurant, with a lot of the participants and speakers talking WordPress and blogging, and getting to know each other while competing with the loud volume of the announcements for diners.

The beers were huge and the people were wonderful. The organizers, Charles Stricklin and John Pozadzides, welcomed everyone and we all got a chance to get to know each other before we buckled down for a long weekend of WordPress.

Saturday and Sunday were jam-packed with terrific speakers. Laptops were everywhere in the audience, along with video cameras, and everything else to help live blog and capture every moment - or at least check in with blog comments and email while waiting for the speaker to get to the point. Kidding.

Every speaker was distinctive and brought something new and exciting to blogging and WordPress. The highlight for most was the announcement by Matt Mullenweg, the first speaker on Saturday, of the release of WordPress 2.5 only a few minutes before he walked on the stage.

John Pozadzides worked with the Frisco City Hall facility and has uploaded the videos of the conference.

• Matt Mullenweg’s State of WordPress
• John Pozadzides’ 45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog
• Jonathan Bailey - How to Prevent Detect and Stop Content Theft
• Aaron Brazell - WordPress FAQ
• Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell at WordCamp Dallas
• Lorelle VanFossen - WordPress Power Tips
• Liz Strauss - Cmon, Lets Talk!
• The WordPress Podcast Live from WordCamp 2008
• Chris-Smith on SEO

I’ve covered more details about this event from March 29-30, 2008 in WordCamp Dallas 2008: Celebrating WordPress on the Blog Herald.

I’ve put together a gallery, using the new WordPress 2.5 gallery feature, of the photographs I took during the event.

Site Search Tags: wordpress news, wordcamp, wordcamp 2008, wordcamp dallas, wordcampdallas2008, wordcampdallas, wordpress events, wordpress community, wordpress people, wordcamp participants, photos, photographs, gallery

Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Get ready for Friday. Lorelle and Jeffro2pt0 will duke it out on the WordPress Weekly Show!

Due to a variety of unfortunate circumstances, including tornadoes, last week’s WordPress Weekly live show was rescheduled to this Friday, April 18, 2008, with myself and host, Jeffro2pt0. You have no excuses now to join us Friday at 9PM EST!

To join the live party online, check out the instructions on the WordPress Weekly show instructions and get on Talkshoe.com to join the fun.

We’ll be talking about WordPress, blogging, WordCamp Dallas, other WordCamp events, WordPress Plugins, Themes, FireFox Greasemonkey Scripts, and a lot of WordPress tips. Do you have a WordPress question for me? Or a question about blogging, my book, WordPress Wednesday on the Blog Herald, or my WordPress Power Tips from WordCamp Dallas? We’ll be ready! Come join us for the fun on the WordPress Weekly show on Friday.

To help you catch up with the live show, I’ve looked up the time in your area. Here are some of the starting times for the show so you can jump on board the WordPress Weekly chat and talk to Jeffro and I live.

Site Search Tags: wordpress news, wordpress weekly, wordpress talk, jeffro, jeffro2pt0, blogging tips, lorelle, lorelle event, live show, live radio, talkshoe, interview

Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Weblog Tools Collection has a list of the videos and special interviews of the speakers at WordCamp Dallas, including my presentation on WordPress Tips.

Check it out and tell me if I did okay. And be sure and watch everyone else. They did much better.

Related Articles

• WordCamp Connections
• WordCamp 2007: Kicking Ass Content Connections
• WordCamp 2007
• Weekly Digest: WordCamp Dallas, Pasadena Education and Blogging and Talking
• What You Need To Know About WordCamp Dallas
• WordCamp Hamburg, Germany
• WordCamp Israel WordPress Tips Talk
• WordCamp Israel October 25 with Lorelle
• Lorelle Live at WordCamp 2007
• WordCamp 2007: WordCamp Caricatures
• WordCamp 2007 Registration and Schedule
• All The News That Was from WordCamp 2006
• What’s New With WordPress News and WordCamp WordPress Conference

Site Search Tags: wordpress news, wordcamp, wordpress tips, wordcampdallas2008, wordcampdallas, blog event, wordpress techniques, video, wordpress video, wordcamp video

Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.