In this wrap-up podcast for the WordCamp Chicago weekend, Ashley and I talk about the last three talks on Sunday (Jim Turner’s, Time Frick’s, and Matt Mullenweg’s) as well as our overall feelings on the weekend.

Good news: Ashley enjoys podcasting, and will be sticking around on future Theme Playground WordPress Podcasts that we put together. You can follow her on Twitter at @arae.

We’ll be updating the blog again this afternoon with photos and links to others that were at WordCamp. It was a great experience, and one that both of us hope to attend again. Why wait until next year at Chicago — there’s one coming up in Canada, right?

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or just grab the podcast RSS feed if you don’t use iTunes for listening to podcasts (both AAC and MP3 flavors available). You can also find past episodes of the Theme Playground WordPress Podcast if you’ve missed an episode or two.

With day 1 of WordCamp Chicago complete, Ashley and I did a quick recording giving our initial thoughts on the presentations today, including the after-party at Morton’s the Steakhouse.

Some highly important notes from this podcast:

• Ashley was called out on her desire for a picture with Mullenweg by Mullenweg
• Ashley’s favorite speaker: Micah Baldwin, who she says sounds like Hurley from Lost. (Just sounds like, MIcah, seriously!)
• Ryan’s favorite speaker: Jeremy Wright with his talk on using WordPress MU with b5media.

The day really was a blast, and it was probably even more fun meeting some of the great people attending than it was to hear all of the speakers.

Also: it turns out Ashley really likes this whole podcasting thing. We may have to keep her on!

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or just grab the podcast RSS feed if you don’t use iTunes for listening to podcasts (both AAC and MP3 flavors available). You can also find past episodes of the Theme Playground WordPress Podcast if you’ve missed an episode or two.

Ashley (@arae) and I are getting ramped up for WordCamp Chicago tomorrow and recorded a podcast with some of our predictions, expectations, and goals for the weekend.

Some notes and links that we talked about:

• Ashley and I each talk about our first experience with WordPress, and why we choose it over other CMS options.
• The WordCamp Chicago speaker’s list is here, and a live search of the Twitter hashtag #wcchicago can be found here.
• Ashley apparently really wants to meet Mr. Mullenweg.

Be sure and say hey to Ash and I if you see us around this weekend. I’ll be lugging my iPhone and moleskine around, Ashley will be the 5 foot girl taking photos with a D80. Can’t miss us.

We’ll do another podcast on Saturday and Sunday, before packing up and heading home. If you’d like to join in at some point, contact me (Ryan) on Twitter at @ryanimel and we’ll see if we can’t set something up.

Happy WordCamp!

Derek Fernholz once again joins me to discuss the WordPress projects for the Google Summer of Code and Automattic’s control of blo.gs, among other things.

Links we covered, this time around:

• The WordPress projects for the Google Summer of Code are announced
• Contact Form 7 is deemed not secure by Mark Jaquith (Update: the author has since fixed the problem)
• Automattic takes control of Yahoo!’s blo.gs
• Raanan Bar-Cohen represents WordPress on a trip to Iraq with other tech companies, blogs about it
• Ryan’s pick: use Twitter Connect to identify yourself using Twitter when commenting (via ozh)
• Derek’s pick: Wufoo, for easy form creation
• On Twitter, Derek is @fernholz and I am @ryanimel. Do follow.

Have something you’d like us to talk about next week? Visit themeplayground.com/drop and leave us a link or two, we’ll be sure to go over them (assuming they are any good!).

Please feel free to send any emails you’d like answered using the contact page. Or, you can call and leave a message at 917-512-7398 ext. 53563. I’ll play the message on the show and answer any questions you might have. Thanks for subscribing and listening!

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or just grab the podcast RSS feed if you don’t use iTunes for listening to podcasts. You can also find past episodes of the Theme Playground WordPress Podcast on the podcasting page (as well as the classic MP3 version of the show), on iTunes.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or just grab the podcast RSS feed if you don’t use iTunes for listening to podcasts. You can also find past episodes of the Theme Playground WordPress Podcast on the podcasting page (as well as the classic MP3 version of the show), on iTunes.

Episode #4 is also the first episode where Derek Fernholz joins the podcast, and discusses WordPress news and links with me. You can find him on Twitter at @fernholz.

In this episode, we discussed:

• bbPress announces TalkPress and begins a move toward a commercial forum
• Fighting the Diggbar with WordPress: No Diggbar and Block Diggbar (Plugins)
• WordPress HelpCenter, from Alex King and Crowd Favorite
• Matt Mullenweg announces Wiley looking for more WordPress book authors
• Unused WordPress 2.7 Dashboard design concepts
• WP.Mu, a WPMU installation service
• Ryan’s pick: WPAudioPlayer, Plugin
• Derek’s pick: P2, theme from Automattic
• On Twitter, Derek is @fernholz and I am @ryanimel. Do follow.

Have something you’d like us to talk about next week? Visit themeplayground.com/drop and leave us a link or two, we’ll be sure to go over them (assuming they are any good!).

Please feel free to send any emails you’d like answered using the contact page. Or, you can call and leave a message at 917-512-7398 ext. 53563. I’ll play the message on the show and answer any questions you might have. Thanks for subscribing and listening!

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or just  grab the podcast RSS feed if you don’t use iTunes for listening to podcasts. You can also find past episodes of the Theme Playground WordPress Podcast on the podcasting page (as well as the classic MP3 version of the show), as well as on iTunes.

Episode #3 is also the first episode where J. D. Bentley joins the podcast, and discusses WordPress news and links with me. You can find him on Twitter at @jdbentley.

In this episode, we discussed:

• Where to find WordPress news, a Theme Playground post
• Prologue version 2 is on the way, and the new ThemePlayground.TV is built on the original Prologue
• The “Making a Living with WordPress” post discussed in this episode will be on Theme Playground next week.
• The Future of WordPress Themes was discussed yet again, from Theme Shaper
• J.D. ’s picks: Photobook, a Plugin for posting your Facebook photos to your WordPress site, and WP Invoice for using WordPress as an invoicing app
• We also discussed Tweetsuite, a Plugin, and niche themes like Band Theme, a theme by Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks
• My pick: WordPress Plugin Development Beginner’s Guide, a book by Vladimir Prevolac, which I’ll be reviewing next week

This was a really fun one to record, and I think J.D. and I both enjoyed doing the show live with a chat room open at the same time. Remember to catch each week’s live recording (tentatively on Thursday evenings) at ThemePlayground.TV.

Please feel free to send any emails you’d like answered using the contact page. Or, you can call and leave a message at my drop.io site at 917-512-7398 x 53563. I’ll play the message on the show and answer any questions you might have. Thanks for subscribing and listening!

Note: This podcast should now be available in both Enhanced (AAC) and classic (MP3) format. Let me know if you have any trouble with the feed and/or audio, and I’ll get it taken care of ASAP.

In Episode #2 I discuss:

• Who’s Who in WordPress post popularity,
• podcasting rivalry,
• Mocha Theme 1.1 is released (pllus a special discount code),
• BuddyPress joins WordPress single installation,
• WordCamp Chicago announces it’s location and I’m going!,
• Ian Stewart’s “Future of WordPress Themes” post,
• “The Disposotion of WP Developers” essay,
• Theme pick: Typographic (my previous review of it), and
• Plugin pick: Audio Player

Also, please feel free to send any emails you’d like answered using the contact page. Or, you can call and leave a message at my drop.io site at 917-512-7398 x 53563. I’ll play the message on the show and answer any questions you might have. Thanks for subscribing and listening!

(Update: For those not using iTunes, you can grab the podcast RSS feed, on its own.)

After mulling it over for some time, I’ve finally taken the plunge and began publishing a WordPress podcast, called (of course!) the Theme Playground WordPress Podcast.

Theme Playground Podcast art

I’m pretty psyched about it, and have a long way to go before I’m going to be really proud of it. But we all have to start somewhere, right? I would greatly appreciate you taking a listen, and sending any feedback my way. Show notes after the jump.

Podcast episode 1 show notes

In an effort to maintain my sanity in posting show notes, I’ll adopt a bulleted list for links and things:

• The WordPress Plugin search engine has been greatly improved, as mentioned over at the WordPress development blog. The search engine is now being powered by a system called Sphinx.
• Matt Mullenweg’s “The First 100k users are the hardest”
• Slides by Andy Peatling on BuddyPress
• I discussed selling themes versus releasing them for free, and mentioned Brian Gardner and his Revolution theme project, as well as iThemes and Woothemes.
• Irresistable is a new theme release from Woothemes
• Compositio is a new theme release from Smashing Magazine
• CommentPress is a new theme as well as a new concept
• Nathan Rice begins making Plugins, and starts off with three nice ones

And as mentioned in the podcast, I would love it if you supported the podcast (and this blog) by checking out WPWebHost for your WordPress hosting needs. Their hosting is superb, and I wouldn’t recommend it if I didn’t think so.