In October last year I left my job as a Business Analyst & Software Developer at British Airways to embark on a career as a Freelance Web Developer. This meant that I could focus all my efforts of building websites for clients and equally as important – spend more time working with WordPress.
Focus
It’s hard when you have other commitments (such as a full time job & a life) to allocate time to improving your skills but freelancing full time gives me the opportunity to do so and I’ve found that this can take a number of different forms; whether it be reading tutorials, learning by doing or via the experiencing a vast range of clients and their different ways of working – there’s no doubt that my skill set has drastically improved over the last 9 months.
WordCamp
The other element to having more time is the ability to be more involved with the community of which WordPress has a fantastic one. Whether this involves contributing in the support forums or discussing best practices on other blogs the online WordPress community can only be described as vibrant… and then there’s WordCamp.
WordCamps are annual WordPress related conferences that take place annually. There are WordCamps that happen all around the world but the UK version is taking place this year in Edinburgh on 14-15th of July.
WordPress Retreat UK
To add to this I’ll be staying with the brilliant Human Made and others in a flat in Edinburgh the week prior to the event to talk WordPress, do WordPress and generally chill out with some cool and like minded people – a.k.a. WordPress Retreat. I’ve often seen people tweet about attending WordCamp so it’s great to actually get to go for one for the first time.
I hope to be doing some more WordPress related blogging and tweeting when attending the event and I’m also putting my name down to be one of the WordPress geniuses (like the ones in the Apple store). If you haven’t bought your ticket yet you should do as tickets are still available at a mere £45. Hope to see you there!
