The first WordPress Toledo meetup of 2019 was our Geek Dinner at The Beirut restaurant and featured lots of fantastic food and lively conversation. One of our co-organizer’s Michael Temple along with another Meetup member, Paul Hoag; ventured to the WordCamp US Nationals in Nashville, back in December, so we spent most of our dinner hearing about their WordPress adventure. I say most of the conversation because by the end of dinner there was plenty of other entertaining discussions, like we learned that Mike can speak Japanese….. and well there was some talk about goats.
Both Michael and Paul raved about the food, and all the pomp and circumstance the sponsors and attendees received at that special year end event. There were even special visits to the Science Center to top off all of the excellent talks at this amazing 3 day WordCamp! I hope someday to attend!
Both mentioned that although there were the regular talks given – like at normal WordCamps, the focus was mostly on the future of WordPress, where it is going and what we can all expect in 2019, oh and of course tons of chatter about Gutenberg! They even got to watch Matt Mullenweg give the long awaited State Of The Word. I bet that was great to hear live!
To tie up the end of our Beirut Meetup there was discussion on finding affordable online help with learning WordPress for folks just starting out, some discussion on how to research a ‘good’ plugin and ideas on finding a good web host.
One of the highlights came at the end of our meal when Paul Hoag whom obviously succeeded in scooping up lots of great swag in Nashville, started tossing his collection out to the Meetup attendees across the dinner table. There was everything from fun tee shirts to socks and sunglasses! Thank you Paul for toting those items all the way back from Tennessee, and saving them for this fun Geek Dinner! It was a fun and informative evening for sure!
Everyone loves these Meetup dinners, so we will for sure do more of them in the future!