Had a great time talking about What’s New in WordPress 3.1 at the Web414 “Ultimate WordPress Showdown” Thursday. It wasn’t as pugnacious as it sounds, though. Scott Offord from OrionWeb demonstrated listing child pages, custom fields for arrays, and a couple SEO-oriented plugins (slides here). Jeramey Jannene made a simple plugin before our very eyes.

When my turn came, I looked really stupid, as I couldn’t get the laptop and projector to play nice with each other (Thanks, Ashe!). Once I recovered from that, it went pretty well. At some point, I think there will be video at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/web414-meetings-channel.

My publisher may not entirely approve, but I promised to offer links to posts I found really helpful in preparing my talk. It’s just coincidence that they both have books about WordPress:

• Ten Things You Need to Know About WordPress 3.1
• Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s Post Format Reference, with some sample template implementation code

One more thing: There was a positive response in the meeting to my proposal for a WordCamp in Milwaukee in 2011. I’ll be submitting a proposal to WordCampCentral this week. Watch this space for updates.