Branding David

What is sure to be an interesting event is being held at my favourite building in Toronto, the MaRS Centre on July 21st from 6pm to 9:30pm called Cross Media TO. Billing itself as a conference that will bridge the gap between the different media sectors in order share information and find new opportunities, the event includes demos, debates, case studies and a panel presentation that is sure to open the eyes of many business executives still working hard to understand the changing landscape of media in North America and the world.

The list of speakers looks rather impressive, and don’t worry if you don’t recognize their names, just look at their titles and the companies they work for. If they don’t have experience in modern media, then who would?

Jacob Blackstock – CEO, Creative Director and Lead Designer, Bitstrips
Richard Bernstein – S.V.P. Managing Director, Arc Worldwide, A Leo Burnett Company
Lisa Charters – SVP Director Digital, Random House of Canada Limited
Colleen DeCourcy – Former Chief Digital Officer for TBWA Worldwide
Douglas Edwards – CEO, ES3
Sabrina Geremia – Head of Agency Relations, Google Canada
Gavin McGarry – President, Jumpwire Media
James Milward – Secret Location
Siobhan O’Flynn – PhD, Transmedia Consultant, Narrative Now
Steve Pratt – Director CBC Radio 3, CBC Radio 3
Chris Van Noy – Chief Strategist, Akamai
Pete Watson – Senior Business Development Manager: Consumer Partners, Research In Motion Limited (RIM) / BlackBerry

I’ve been invited to the event to cover it, and will be publishing posts on a variety of different blogs thanks to the friendships I’ve made over the years. I will hopefully give those unable to attend a good rundown of all that is happening. Check back here the night of the event, as well as the day after.

And if you are interested in attending, you don’t have much time left, so jump over to the Cross Media TO website, and purchase your tickets today!

So, I am finally putting all my stuff together and selling it all. I’ve created a for sale page, so that you can see what I have available, and everything is “or best agreed upon offer”. (more…)

For a very long time now, I have been a WordPress user. I have released free and paid themes, I’ve worked on a few different plugins, I’ve blogged about WordPress (Blogging Pro) and its community, and I’ve been part of two WordPress focused podcasts (WordPress Podcast and WordPress Weekly). I never reached the brand tie-in that many upper echelon WordPress fans have been able to reach, despite having been using the software, and touting its awesomeness for far longer than most. This limitation has been, in my mind due to my need to speak out on things that I find odd, unreasonable, and strange, as well as my inability to really connect with the people doing the amazing work behind the scenes.

My post today isn’t about my involvement with WordPress though. Instead it is about WordPress itself, and the unfortunate state of the WordPress community today. It isn’t the WordPress community of a few years ago. Things are a mess, and I feel like I need to stand up, one more time, and go over my thoughts on the current state of the WordPress project. (more…)