What can I say, one post about Friday is seriously not enough. The day lasted around 13hours, where the main focus of the discussions were the internet, google, wordpress, gossip, Moveable Type, Matt’s MySpace account, Apple versus Windows, support forums, relationships, christmas lights and architecture. What was great was the fact that we all could actually talk about this whole other world of people we’re all a part of but no one but us know about.

I thought I was pretty well versed in what was going on in the world of WordPress. I’ve got to say that I’m not the little gossip queen that I actually thought I was. The sheer amount of news I got on Friday was emmense. Little things like Mina from Moveable Type not really liking Matt very much (yeah complete understatement). How some people choose to use WordPress in the craziest and most inventive fashions around.

What was also very interesting is how this meetup brought three groups of people together each battling for their little corner of the WordPress world. Podz as you can imagine was fighting hard for the rights of the casual and individual newbie blogger that didn’t know a mouse from a keyboard. Mike’s promise to get back into active development on the project (although keeping up with Boren might prove to be a mammoth task for anyone to undertake) and finally me fighting for Shuttle.

On Shuttle

I think it's important to get a couple of things out there regarding this little project that doesn't seem to want to finish. When we originally mentioned this project it was only going to be for a couple of months and it should have been done. Originally all any of us could really hope for was to get a plugin sorted out, the style of which could then be incorporated into the final WordPress admin panel if in fact that was something that the development team wanted to do.

Upon announcing things Matt was keen to come in on the discussions and help us with tips and tricks about what WordPress users have said or complained about. We thought that stuff would be included in the final design. The current v2.0 beta is a step in the overal direction of Shuttle, however it’s not really there. If you don’t like the shades of blue at the top (that’s not what we designed, but the shades are correct) then you’ve got us to blame. Don’t like the various collapsable tabs on the side, again one of our ideas, so you can blame us. There are lots more things to talk about but that will have to wait for another time closer to when we finish the work around Shuttle.

Shuttle won’t be completed by version 2.0, but I think we’ve all set a target for it to be included in the next iteration of WordPress. Why am I being so public about the timing and everything? A couple of reasons. The first being that by setting myself a deadline we’re all going to be motivated to hitting that deadline. We’ve got a plane to catch, we’re going to be on that plane. I think part of the delay can be attributed to the fact that we didn’t actually have any deadline so things kind of ambled along at their own pace.

The second reason is that this is an open source project. At this stage we can’t really have it open to everyone to comment on because it’ll get nowhere.

One of the more amusing lines used by Matt was “What’s his real name?” To which I responded “oh right, ifelse.co.uk”