It’s deja vu, but in a very good way. I’m going to be speaking at WordCamp Dallas, which is being held June 27th and 28th at the University of Texas at Dallas. I’ll be joining an all-star line up of speakers including Lorelle VanFossen, Liz Strauss, Cali Lewis, Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, Dave Moyer (whom is also a fellow host with me on Aimless Agenda), DB Ferguson, Randy Hoyt and, of course, the head of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg as well as many, many others.

Needless to say, I’m feeling a bit intimidated right now.

Despite my presence, the schedule this year is packed with great speakers. The lineup is incredible and, since all of the talks, including mine, are 30 minutes, there’s a lot more different topics being covered.

This year, I’m doing a slightly different talk compared to my usual. Rather than a talk about how to protect your content on the Web, which would be hard to cram into the new timeslot anyway, I’m speaking on how to find free, legal content for your blog and how to avoid copyright issues.

For those who are interested in protecting their work, I’ll be holding a breakout session during the course of the day and will be available to talk on that topic between sessions. I’m going to bring literature and information to help people protect their writing.

Also you can watch my presentation from the 2008 WordCamp Dallas, embedded below, even though some of the technology is now a bit dated.

I definitely hope to see many of you there. Last year WordCamp Dallas was absolutely incredible and I’m hoping this year’s will be even better. With so many old faces coming back and great new ones for the first time this year, it is going to be very exciting.

If you’re in the DFW area, definitely consider attending. It’s going to be a great event. If you do attend, definitely stop by and say hello and ask any questions. I’m looking forward to seeing you!

I am looking forward to attending the event this year and am very excited about this panel. Not only do I think it is a great topic needing more discussion, especially as social media becomes a bigger part of the Web, but I am also a planned speaker for it.

So, if you’re coming to SXSW and would like to see me speak or just want to see additional discussion on this issue, please take a moment to vote for the panel.

Click Here to Vote For This Panel

Most of the readers of this site may think that this talk is a little bit on the basic side. It was definitely an introductory discussion that may be a little bit below some of the long-term readers of this site. However, as I found out compiling my notes, a refresher course never hurts either.

I want to give a special thanks to John P. for arranging the video and getting it online as well as the wonderful people working for the city of Frisco, TX for both allowing us to host the event in their town hall and for doing the video editing and making me look almost good.

The video is below followed by links to other session videos as well as some of my personal WordCamp memories.

Other Sessions

Here are the other sessions that are currently available:

• Matt Mullenweg: WordPress 2.5 and Beyond
• John Pozadzides: 45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog
• Cali Lewis & Neal Campbell: Just Start
• Liz Strauss: C’mon, Let’s Talk!
• Lorelle VanFossen: WordPress Power Tips
• Charles Stricklin & Company: WordPress Podcast Live (also includes me)
• Aaron Brazell: WordPress FAQs

There are other sessions slated to go up later this week or early next so pay attention to John P’s blog and see if any of the new sessions posted are of interest!

Personal Memories

WordCamp Dallas was a lifetime of memories in a few short days. I can not even begin to thank all of the people I met for making it special but I do want to thank Charles Stricklin, the nice people at the city of Frisco and everyone that contributed to the event. It was a great time.

With that in mind, here are, in no particular order, five of the strongest memories I’ve carried away from the event.

1. The unveiling of Woopra.
2. Matt Mullenweg announcing the release of WordPress 2.5 and 100s of laptops start firing up.
3. Lorelle ordering a large vegetable plate at a steakhouse and making all of the meat eaters, myself included, jealous.
4. Matt Mullenweg “hijacking” my laptop during the WordPress Podcast and using my beat up computer (his fingerprints are worth way more than the laptop).
5. Seeing Lorelle, Liz, Charles and everyone else for the first time in person and realizing that they are just as wonderful face to face as they are over the Web.

All in all, the experience was great and I can not wait until next year!

On a personal note, I am very excited to be going and looking forward to meeting many old friends for the first time face to face. Among the people I am eager to talk with are Lorelle VanFossen, Liz Strauss, Charles Stricklin, the entire crew at Automattic and anyone else who comes up and says hello.

I am also preparing a special, somewhat-limited-edition business card to hand out at this event. I’m getting it printed later today so I do not know how many there will be, but once these are handed out, they are gone and the design will change.

On that note, as I said, there will be no update today or Friday. I’m pre-posting the linkroll so that should go live Saturday as usual. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to follow my Twitter account as I’ll be updating regularly from the road.

Thank you for your patience and I hope to see you in Dallas!

Update!

I’ve embedded the slides that I used in the presentation below. I will be posting the video to the site in a new post some time in the coming days. Let me know what you think!

| View | Upload your own

According to the current schedule, I will be speaking shortly after lunch on the Saturday, the first day of the event. I will be giving an hour-long presentation entitled “How to Prevent, Detect and Stop Content Theft”. The presentation itself will probably last about 30 minutes with plenty of time for Q&A.

Looking at the lineup, I’ll be sharing the stage with many other blogging notables including Matt Mullenweg, Lorelle VanFossen, Liz Strauss, John Pozadzides and Cali Lewis, all on the same day.

This is going to be a huge event and I am greatly looking forward to it. If you are interested in attending the event, you can register for the event now. Registration is $20 and pays for both days as well as for the complimentary T-shirt.

If you do attend, I’d love to meet with you and hear what you have to say, so be sure to catch me during any of the breaks and introduce yourself.

The one thing that I’m not looking forward to is the drive there. It won’t be the longest drive I’ve ever made, Key West was 16 hours, but eight and a half hours is nothing to sneeze at either. Still it is going to be worth it to not only meet some long time friends for the first time, but also to be able to present to a group of dedicated bloggers about this issue.

I hope to see some of you there. Please let me know if you plan on attending so I can be looking for you!

What I’ve done is recorded and uploaded a modified version of a presentation that I gave to the Virtual Assistant Revolution group in September that goes over the basics of preventing, detecting and stopping plagiarism on the Web.

It is a lengthy presentation, this version clocks in at about an hour and twenty minutes, but it provides at least a decent overview of the issues at hand. It doesn’t go into much detail into any one issue, but offers fairly broad coverage of the needed topics.

The video is embedded in this post below the fold and is available directly from Revver. If you wish to embed it into your site or blog, please feel free to do so.

Also, I am taking requests for future videos. From here on out I plan to create much shorter videos, under ten minutes in length, that demonstrate demonstrating various aspects of fighting plagiarism. I am taking suggestions or requests for these upcoming clips.

Finally, my thanks goes out to the Virtual Assistant Revolution forum. They were a great group and I thoroughly enjoyed speaking to them. They were also very generous in allowing me to use this presentation in this manner.

I hope you enjoy the presentation and find it useful.