A Blog Not Limited

As part of my whirlwind of presentations, I recently spoke to the University of New Mexico's Information Architects group about microformats.

The presentation was a huge success (at least from my perspective). There were about 20 attendees, and it was the first time I felt comfortable in a public-speaking situation.

Slideshow, Resources & More

For folks who were unable to attend the presentation, the S5 slideshow is available for your perusal:

In this slideshow, I provided links a bunch of microformats resources:

• Microformats Wiki:
  • hCalendar
  • hCard
  • rel-license
  • rel-nofollow
  • rel-tag
  • VoteLinks
  • XFN
  • XOXO
• Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0 by John Allsopp
• microformatique
• My Getting Semantic With Microformats blog series:
  • rel-home, rel-tag, rel-license
  • XFN
  • hCard
  • hCalendar
  • hAtom
  • hResume
  • Themes & Issues

And I demonstrated several tools and sites that utilize microformats:

• Technorati's Contacts Feeds Service
• Technorati's Events Feeds Service
• Operator Plug-in for Firefox
• Tails Export Plug-in for Firefox
• Oomph Microformats Toolkit
• Technorati's Tags
• HuffDuffer
• Yahoo! CC Search
• Google Maps
• Yahoo! Upcoming

Lastly, I fielded a number of questions after the presentation, some of which addressed information not included in the presentation so I'm including them here:

• As per the W3C, you can use additional class values along with those for microformats.
• Using microformats in natural language
• Tools that help you implement microformats in various blogging CMS tools:
  • MT Blogroll 2.12 Manual is a plug-in for Movable Type that allows you to define XFN relationships for blogroll links.
  • WordPress Links Manager is configured to allow you to define XFN relationships for blogroll links.
  • WP Microformatted Blogroll 0.2 is a WordPress plugin that outputs microformat-annotated links on your blog.
  • Both the pnh_mf plugin and JMC_Event_Manager gives you an easy way to add microformat content to your Textpattern blog/site.
  • WordPress, too, has a couple of plugins that help web authors add microformats to their WordPress blogs/sites: Structured Blogging (which is also available for MovableType) and WP-Microformats.
  • WordPress Sandbox theme is a "skeleton" theme that can be used as the foundation for custom WP themes and it supports hAtom.
  • An hAtom PHP WordPress loop can be added to existing WP themes.
  • hResume plugin for WordPress.

Post-Presentation Thoughts

I took the advice of several friends and really prepared for this presentation. Not only putting the slideshow together, but making notes for my "script" and then practicing in front of the mirror. And, while I could've definitely prepared more if I had the time, the preparation I did do certainly paid off.

I was extremely comfortable in front of the group, and I definitely knew the topic. I had no problems answering questions and keeping my train–of–thought.

And even better than my own experience, it seems the attendees liked it as well. In fact, I received one email after the presentation thanking me for sharing and letting me know that he is going to implement microformats.

I ran into another attendee at a different event later that day, and she told me that after my presentation, she went straight to her site and added several microformats … and that it was easy.

I seriously couldn't ask for more.

But I can offer a heartfelt thank you to the group for attending, as well as special thanks to Greg Gomez and Matt Carter for inviting me to speak and giving me this great opportunity!