Charnell Lucich

Chuck Lewis aka The SEO Rapper and yep, me!

So after a long weekend, I’m finally home and while I had a really good time in San Francisco it feels great to be back!

Last Friday morning Kevin and I headed to the airport on our way to meet Joe and his wife in San Francisco. Joe and Kevin are on the Product Engineering Team for our company (Joe, the PE Mgr. and Kevin, a Q/A & Implementations Engineer). Our company sponsored WordCamp 2008 this year and I was the “booth babe” except we didn’t have a booth, we had a “table” and I’m really not a “babe”, I’m “just your average geek-girl”. *smile* Nonetheless, I was there to give out schwag and talk to tons of people who flew from all over to attend WordCamp.

Since WordCamp 2008 didn’t start until Saturday morning and we landed in San Francisco Friday evening, the four of us met up on Pier 39 and wandered around. I of course held everyone up on the wandering being the typical “tourist” and taking pictures of literally everything I was passing. Walking around Fishermans Wharf was a total blast. The restaurant we ate at was a little freaky for me as I’m not used to seeing creatures of the sea thrown in a huge pot and boiled right in front of me then slapped out on a huge counter type thing. But the food was awesome. Joe had a HUGE crab, his wife had some sort of seafood pasta, and Kevin and I stuck with what we knew (cannelloni, hah!) as we weren’t feeling too adventurous yet.

The stores were GREAT – okay, the candy stores *cough* (I blame Joe’s wife *grin*). We did manage to hit a couple of retail type stores in between the candy stops and pick up a few t-shirts and a couple of jackets. So while Sonia and I wandered in and out of stores, Joe and Kevin just stood outside doing the man thing since shopping isn’t their forte.  My goal after about 15 minutes of walking was to pick up a jacket. I had left San Antonio with high 90 degree weather to walk around in low 70 degree weather and the temperature just kept dropping, quickly. I’m a cream puff (as Kevin has so graciously named me) and I get cold easily. But I have to admit, the cold was a nice change. It was beautiful.

After just not being able to take the cold anymore and being tired from the travel, we headed back to our hotel – the Le Meridien. It was expensive uniquely beautiful. The room was on the 16th floor, an executive suite with a breathtaking view of the Bay Bridge, the water, the Pier. Simply beautiful. I hated to leave it.

Saturday morning, having my body stuck in another time zone by 2 hours totally threw me off. I was bright-eyed and bushy tailed..okay, not bushy tailed literally, that’s kind of a weird thought, but I was ready to go 2 hours before the alarm clock went off. NOT.HAPPY. So the first thing we all do is meet at the Starbucks across the street from our hotel (God loves me). Those of you who know me, know that I typically replace my meals with Starbucks venti double-shots on ice. Of course, it’s FREEZING outside. Okay, to me because again, I’m a cream puff. Yay for my new jacket!

We grab a taxi and head on over to the Mission Bay Conference Center for WordCamp. I headed upstairs to find Maya Desai, Automattic’s Anti-chaos Engineer to get the table of schwag set up (I had been working with Maya via e-mail prior to flying out there to get our table and sponsorship put together). Shortly after that, I have a camera pointing in my face (thanks Lorelle! =p) doing an interview on me and the company that I work for. Talk about not being prepared! I spent the majority of the time at the table as I said earlier, which I’m glad I did. I met some really great people – one being Chuck Lewis aka The SEO Rapper (as seen in the picture above). He kept popping in and out of the sessions and we chatted each time he did. He’s a really cool guy, very down to earth and real. We talked about Houston, which is where he’s from. Talked about San Antonio, good ol’ Texas barbecue, his job, my job, etc. I’ve been chasing this guy for months now around the Internet – on Twitter, trying to contact him through e-mail addresses that I’d find on all of his websites, all to no avail. So I told him that I felt like a stalker and why I had been trying to contact him for so long and we had a good laugh. The end result, I’m getting what I’ve been wanting from him after all this time. I can’t say what that is right now, but in due time it’ll be spreading around like wildfire. *smile* Did I mention he’s a super cool guy?!

Another super cool young man I had the opportunity to meet
was Daniel Brusilovsky – founder and CEO of Teens in Tech.
This young man is simply amazing, if you haven’t heard about him I highly recommend you do some research.

Daniel is a 15 year old podcaster, blogger, entrepreneur, consultant and soon to be author, who is currently working at a start-up called Qik.com. Fifteen! Can you believe it?

You can learn more about him at his blog. Amazing, simply amazing. How many of us would have loved to be successful at such a young age?

So throughout the afternoon there is dual sessions taking place – upstairs the sessions discussed programs for WordPress. Downstairs were sessions discussing a lot of code. The entire event was fabulous!

Sunday, we met up with Barry Abrahamson also known as the WordPress Systems Wrangler and had breakfast. From there, the WordPress Charity Scavenger Hunt took place – 11 teams of four met up on one of the Piers, all determined to win. The cause was to raise money for 826 Valencia, an organization which offers free educational programs to encourage students to improve their writing skills. Just one more awesome thing that WordPress does. You can find all the details of this hunt here and all the crazy pictures here. Lots of laughs and fun!

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend spent with Kevin along with my close friend and co-worker Joe and his wife. While San Francisco is a beautiful place, for me..beautiful to visit. Home is still San Antonio, Texas and I missed it terribly.