WordCamps are my favorite events to go to because there’s something about the core WordPress community that attracts smart folks with good philosophies that are fun to hang out with. In this post I’ve collated the upcoming WordCamps we know about, including the one in San Francisco. Hopefully there will be one nearby so you can meet other WordPressers in your area.

WordCamp San Francisco will be August 16 at the Mission Bay Conference Center.

WordCamp Paris will be on May 3rd. Here’s their official site.

WordCamp Italy in Milan will be May 10th. (And I believe I’ll be there.)

WordCamp Birmingham UK will be July 19-20.

WordCamp Toronto will be October 4th.

There are people in the planning stages in Australia, Philippines, Beijing, Utah, Hawaii, UK, NYC, and possibly others, so if you live in one of those areas and would like to help set up a WordCamp in your area Google around or connect with bloggers in your area.

You can always find out more at WordCamp Central.

Version 2.5.1 of WordPress is now available. It includes a number of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and one very important security fix. We recommend everyone update immediately, particularly if your blog has open registration. The vulnerability is not public but it will be shortly.

In addition to the security fix, 2.5.1 contains many bug fixes. If you are interested only in the security fixes, you can download these corrected copies of wp-includes/pluggable.php, wp-admin/includes/media.php, and wp-admin/media.php. Replace your existing copies of these files with these new copies.

If you download the entire 2.5.1 release, you will be getting over 70 other fixes. 2.5.1 focuses on fixing the most annoying bugs and improving performance. Here are some highlights:

• Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
• Better performance for those who have many categories
• Media Uploader fixes
• An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
• Widget Administration fixes
• Various usability improvements
• Layout fixes for IE

Secret lives of blogs

Since 2.5 your wp-config.php file allows a new constant called SECRET_KEY which basically is meant to introduce a little permanent randomness into the cryptographic functions used for cookies in WordPress. You can visit this link we set up to get a unique secret key for your config file. (It’s unique and random on every page load.) Having this line in your config file helps secure your blog.

Many thanks to Steven Murdoch for responsibly reporting the security issue (CVE-2008-1930) and Alex Concha for reporting an XSS issue.

An Event Apart is a web design and development conference which features some of the same fine folks who helped out with WordPress 2.5. (And many others.) I attended the one in Chicago a while back and was engaged the whole day in interesting talks on design, writing copy as interface, advanced CSS, and creativity — each topic presented by the leading folks in the field.

The conference normally costs just under a thousand dollars to attend, which is well worth it, but because of our association with the folks they’ve set up a discount for WordPress users.

If you enter AEAWP on checkout the price drops to $795, or $200 below the regular registration fee. The coupon is unlimited, and can be used for one ticket or five. They have events coming up in New Orleans, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago. You can learn more and register on their site at aneventapart.com.

We’ll also have some final dates for WordCamp San Francisco coming up, I’ll be posting those soonish so people can start making vacation and travel plans. (Nothing like a blogging vacation.)

Business and economy news is one of the most challenging parts of covering the story in Tokyo.Why? Fashion shows have their beauties, red carpets have their stars, and sporting events have their action, but what is going to catch a reader’s eye and make them do more than glance at our picture on a story about GDP?
In Tokyo we’re trying to make our financial coverage as compelling as other subjects and our approach is to try to have fun with these assignments, and working around the tight access restrictions. What we see is tightly controlled, and even in news conferences we are usually corralled into a small section of the room and forbidden to move. The subdued demeanor and limited variation in clothing (black, navy or gray suits) worn by this country’s business leaders is another challenge. There are no Richard Bransons here. Not even a Bill Gates. We had a Carlos Ghosn, but he isn’t around much anymore.

Executive Interviews:

It’s easy to get beaten down and lose hope when we walk in to shoot photos of the CEO of an industry-leading company only to find the room is lit with dim florescent lights and the only decoration is nicotine-stained curtains. But the great thing about an interview is that unlike a crowded news conference you can set up lights, move around and seize control of the light away from the florescent strips in the ceiling and do some fun strobe work. I like snouts because they’re great for getting rid of the phones, plants, decorations, thermostats, light switches and anything else that clutters up a photo. A snout can be anything that fits over the head of your strobe to limit the spread of the light from it, letting you control where light falls and where it does not.

GDP and other Economic Figures

GDP and other economic figures are broad enough that you could almost shoot anything for these, but at the same time it’s a bit bewildering to try to sum up a country’s economic mood with one frame. I think we’re most successful when our pictures are beautiful and convey a strong mood at the same time, as in the photo below.

Stock Markets

In Tokyo there is no stock exchange in the usual sense. There is a building, but inside is mostly computers. The actual trading is being done by people sitting at desks in brokerages. To get people reacting to stocks we shoot on the street and are always on the search for a brokerage or other business that has a sign that gives us the opportunity to show people reacting

Commodities

Commodities are probably my favorite economics-related story to cover because getting a commodities photo usually means putting on a hardhat, going into a noisy processing plant of some sort, getting oil and coal dust on our clothes, and witnessing beautiful scenes in ugly environments.

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Pictures by Kim Kyung-Hoon, Michael Caronna, Yuriko Nakao, Toru Hanai, Michael Caronna, and Yuriko Nakao respectively