Local WordPress enthusiasts Greg Linch and Ben Balter will be sharing best practices and how you can take the next step with WordPress as a platform.

Pulling from their wide-ranging experiences in journalism, publishing, government, and development, they'll be discussing how you can use WordPress to craft your personal brand, and what lessons that can be learned from how journalists use WordPress.

We've invited the DC Hacks/Hackers group, a meetup for journalists and developers, to join us this month. You can learn more about them here.

Here's their cheeky bios:

Since 2007, Greg Linch (@greglinch) hasn't had a journalistic job or project in which he hasn't thought about using or -- in most cases -- used WordPress. His current job at The Washington Post is the only exception, but it's only been a few months, so give him time. Most notably, Greg led The Miami Hurricane's migration to WordPress in 2008 and co-founded CoPress to help other student news organizations do the same.

An aspiring attorney, a coder, and an all around geek, Ben Balter (@BenBalter) is a J.D./M.B.A. candidate at the George Washington University and a member of the FCC’s New Media team. When not working or in class, he enjoys tackling otherwise-impossible challenges to sharing information using nothing more than WordPress, duct tape, and occasionally a pack of bubblegum.

Also!

WordPress 3.1 was released last week. If you need help updating, a few of us will be at Fathom Creative early that evening (starting at 6:15 pm). Bring your WordPress and FTP login information (and your laptop, if you'd like) and we'll help!