Wait a minute… It’s June already?! Guess it’s time to announce our next meeting…
Save for the lack of dependable WiFi — which is an understandable sticking point for some people — folks really seem to be enjoying the meetings over at the LA Farmers Market. So we’re going to keep at it for at least one more month and meet up at the tables between Loteria and 326 Beer and Wine on Sunday, June 14th at 11 AM.
There’s listings for the event over on Upcoming and Facebook. If you’re interested in joining us, we’d appreciate it if you’d RSVP on one of those or by leaving a comment here. We need to know how many tables to grab, after all.
For the LAWPUG meetings in April and May, we’re going a bit more central and meeting for brunch over by Loteria Grill at the LA Farmers Market. This should make it easier for our friends on the Westside, who seem to have an issue dragging themselves east of La Brea before noon… 
If you’re interested in joining us to geek out — or even get some WordPress help — feel free to RSVP for April’s meeting over on Upcoming.
Update: April’s meeting will be on the 3rd Sunday due to conflicts with the holiday of Easter. Sorry for any confusion this might have caused.
So a few quick notes on the meeting going on this Sunday:
- I’ve received a hefty shipment of WordPress swag from the super awesome folks at Automattic. This means that everyone who joins us is going to walk away with a few stickers, buttons and other stuff. Cool, right?
- If you haven’t been to Philippe’s before, bring your laptop. They’ve got free WiFi! Besides, geeking out about WordPress can often be a little easier with visual aids.
- We’ll be meeting in the back room (near the circus and train displays). I’m going to try to get there a little early, so keep an eye peeled for a tall, chubby, bearded guy wearing a WordCamp shirt.
I know there’s a lot of events going on this weekend, but hopefully we’ll see a mixture of new faces and some old friends. And remember, if you can’t make it, there’s always next month! 
The last time we made any sort of noise here, we were trying to plan July’s meeting. Due to some calendar conflicts, July’s meeting was pushed back to August. Then August’s meeting got pushed back to September. Finally, when September’s meeting was pushed back until October, we sort of went into hibernation.
Should I have said something? Yeah, probably. But because I didn’t, it might have looked like this group just sort of withered away and died. That isn’t the case tho!
In fact, despite scheduling conflicts with WordCamp Las Vegas and a Social Media Club brunch, we burst into the new year with a scrappy crew of six at Philippe’s this morning. Discussing topics ranging from theme frameworks and using WordPress as a CMS to the new WordPress 2.7 interface, everybody seemed pretty psyched to keep things moving.
So instead of waiting until a few weeks before to announce a date, we’ve decided to call dibs on the second Sunday of the month from here on out. Yeah, that means that we’re probably to conflict with a few events in the coming months — but it’s better than taking another five month break, right?
That means the next meeting will be on February 8th at Philippe’s. So if you’re going to be in town and are passionate about WordPress, we hope that we’ll end up seeing you there!
It’s been said that it’s not the size of your user group that matters — it’s what you do with it. And while today’s meeting topped out at 7 people, we still had a great time noshing on sandwiches and chatting about using WordPress for podcasting, WordPress consulting and migrating your content to a new install at another host. Thanks to everybody for showing up and hanging out.
Next time around, we’re going to take advantage of the (hopefully) beautiful summer weather and head out to the park. More info on which park we’ll be going to and the dates in the next week or so.
Inspired by Joe Crawford’s BOF at the last BarCampLA, I’ve decided to start a group for Los Angeles based WordPress users. The idea is to meet monthly for a meal and have a small, semi-structured talk (or Q&A) to get other folks who are passionate about WordPress to come together and exchange ideas.
The first one is going to be a little more relaxed tho. We’re meeting for a nice Sunday brunch at the Los Angeles Farmers Market near Starbucks and Lotteria in the southwest corner (3rd & Fairfax) on April 6th at 12:00 PM. We’ll use this meeting a chance to get to know the other people in the community before we start diving into the fun technical stuff at future meetings. All the important event info should be up over on Upcoming, so please try to add yourself there so we can know how many tables to try to grab.
I’m really looking forward to getting this jump started and seeing some new (and old) faces from the LA tech community. Please feel free to spread the word if you’re interested in helping get this subset of the larger community going and drop me a line if you have any questions.
