“I gave this presentation today at the Twin Cities UnSummit. This year’s UnSummit theme was “Hacking The Recession.” And my presentation was focused on the changing role of trade associations and communities–how can they evolve to better benefit their communities in tough times, yet remain true to their missions. All of the images and videos are copyright to their respective owners (links embedded). Please respect the Creative Commons license for all assets in this presentation. Thank you.”

Thanks to y’all for attending the Wordpress session on Saturday!  If you have any questions, please email me at toby [at] themightymo.com, Tweet me @TobyCryns, or visit The Mighty Mo! Design Co. on the web.

My main point of the discussion was to let y’all know how easy it is to do fun stuff with Wordpress and to hopefully motivate you to explore the software further.  I have had a ball designing themes for Wordpress and making said themes do summersaults, and I hope can find some enjoyment in that as well! 

Some of the plugins we talked about include:

• Podpress (podcasting plugin used on Minnov8)
• WP Shopping Cart (see it in action at cryns.com)
• NextGEN FlashViewer (great for photo slideshow management)
• All in One SEO Pack
• flickrRSS
• Twitter widget
• Role Manager

Other great plugins include:

• CForms II (see it in action here)
• Subscribe2 (see it in action here)
• Ozh’ Click Counter (track file downloads and clicks)
• Viper’s Video Quicktags (a must-have if you embed lots of video in your blog posts)
• WP Page Numbers
• My Page Order (order your pages)

Please let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, etc.

Thanks again for helping make the session valuable for me.  I learned a lot from our discussion, and I hope you did, too!

Future of the UnSummit from Peter Barry on Vimeo.

UnSummit 3.7.09 Conversation on the future of the UnSummit. Pete Barry (@pjbfcp) & Keith Wolf (@wolflow)

The Minnov8 Gang podcast is up and this week it’s a recording of the Unpanel we had right after lunch. Also, I’ve added a Flickr photoset here. Wanted to publicly say “thank you” to Mykl Roventine, Don Ball and Meg Canada for putting forth the effort to make this event a reality and a success.

Thanks to everyone for helping to make UnSummit09 a success. See you at happy hour!

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? There are thriving Ignite communities in Seattle, Portland, Paris, and NYC. The session included a demo and discussion of starting one in MSP.

Sites referenced in the session:

• http://ignite.oreilly.com/
• http://igniteboulder.com/

Follow us @ignitempls on Twitter for updates and to get involved.

Lindsi: “Immediacy is trumping quality. Ultimately it’s up to the client. #unsummit”

Jake: “here’s my thought – easier/cheaper access to tools makes it cheaper to hire an expert. #unsummit”

Jenn: “do not impoverish yourself with a lack of imagination #unsummit”