I may be a bit late in sharing of my experiences at WordCamp Europe 2019 held in Berlin, but it’s worth sharing despite being late. This was my first WordCamp outside India and I was so excited to attend it. Dhruvin and I attended the event. Unfortunately, our founder & CEO Vishal Kothari couldn’t attend the event due to some Visa issues. It would have been icing on the cake had he attended the event with us.
This was the biggest WordPress event ever, breaking a number of records. An incredible 3260 tickets were sold, 2734 attendees present, with over 56% of them attending their first-ever WordCamp.
The best part of this WordCamp was meeting different people involved in different aspects of WordPress. We got an opportunity to learn so many new things which I was totally unaware of. This is the beauty of WordCamps.
Let me try to take you through my journey:
Contributor day
Unfortunately, we didn’t get the ticket to attend the Contributor day but we did get to collect our badge so as to skip the line next day. On requesting them, they did allow us to attend the second half of the Contributor day.
Registrations done at @WCEurope #WCEU #WCEUContributorDay pic.twitter.com/3yZRCrOYse
— Dhruvin Shah (@DhruvinShah8) June 20, 2019
During Contributor day, we met some interesting people and got to learn about many new products in WordPress that would be helpful in day to day tasks.
We met Vito from WP Feedback and he shared with us some statistics via his survey. We learnt some interesting facts.
Just met this cool guy @FeedbackWp .. Awesome time talking to you. Haven't read your survey completely yet but it's a great one so far #WCEU @WCEurope pic.twitter.com/3TFK5vPckv
— Dhara Shah (@DharaShah61) June 21, 2019
Day 1:
We attended the opening remarks by Bernhard Kau and Milan Ivanović. It was really a good start. We checked the list of sessions and each session felt like one that shouldn’t be missed. I did plan to attend some sessions. But with 3 tracks running together, it was difficult to attend all the sessions and Dhruvin and I had to split and choose the sessions of our interest.
I tried not to worry about that too much and only attended a few talks. I ended up spending some part of my time in the Sponsors Area interacting with people.
We discussed the work we do with WordPress and about our popular WooCommerce plugins. How we are able to solve delivery problems of stores and issues related to cart abandonment and many more. Some of the guys we met included – Chris Lema, Beka Rice, Adam Warner and others. Here are some pictures 🙂
It was indeed very good talking to you @wpmodder .. Hope to connect with you again soon 🙂 #WCEU @WCEurope pic.twitter.com/2C1V2cLeEE
— Dhruvin Shah (@DhruvinShah8) June 21, 2019
Look whom we bumped into – its @chrislema .. Until this time just had conversations over emails. Had a good talk 🙂 .. @tovishalck you were being missed pic.twitter.com/BDLPvSph0d
— Dhruvin Shah (@DhruvinShah8) June 21, 2019
Awesome conversation with @Beka_Rice on the current trends going around .. Special regards to @tovishalck from her 🙂 #WCEU @WCEurope pic.twitter.com/45P923x1TL
— Dhara Shah (@DharaShah61) June 21, 2019
Many hosting companies had sponsored this WordCamp and got to interact with the teams of WP Engine, Siteground, GoDaddy and 1&1 Hosting. Conversations with them were largely focused on how they are trying to simplify their solutions for the end-user so that even a novice user can easily set up their sites in minutes and get going. We also discussed with them as to how their teams are focusing on contributing to the WordPress community.
Then we attended Matt’s session. He shared some updates regarding the development of Gutenberg. What we can expect in the coming releases of Gutenberg. Few highlights included a Block directory in the main menu itself and also some cool features being developed currently.
Thousands of attendees, all attention on @photomatt at #WCEU. pic.twitter.com/mYFX41LcNI
— WordCamp Europe (@WCEurope) June 21, 2019
Post lunch there were some lightning talks from Rahul Bansal regarding “The art of pricing” and “Understanding what makes a website landing page convert” by Rob Hope. Both these sessions had a huge impact on us and helped us to focus on minute things which we ignore. This was good learning for us.
Awesome talk by @robhope on getting maximum conversions using landing pages. You just set the stage on fire 😛 #WCEU @WCEurope pic.twitter.com/BsKumWhGK4
— Dhruvin Shah (@DhruvinShah8) June 21, 2019
Day 2:
We started Day 2 by attending some sessions. Dhruvin attended a session by Felix Arntz – Leveraging the power of custom elements in Gutenberg. Felix is involved with Google and Dhruvin has been closely following his work on AMP Plugin. His session was more about how you can create custom element irrespective of the development language and integrate with Gutenberg. Our team is yet to explore this area but it was an interesting talk.
I at the same time attended a session by Brian Teeman – The power of free. This session has inspired me to contribute back to the community by volunteering your time in some or the other way. This was indeed an inspiring session. He explained that there is no freedom without a community and no freedom if the community is restricted into how and what they can be involved with. Our team is already preparing itself on how they can contribute back.
A good session on The power of free by @brianteeman #WCEU @WCEurope pic.twitter.com/zGJG5v33eN
— Dhara Shah (@DharaShah61) June 22, 2019
On this day we also met some people whom we have been communicating over emails over the past many years. Some of them are as below:
Had a good time talking with you @jeangalea .. Hope to connect with you again soon 🙂 https://t.co/h9E60ojiBE
— Dhruvin Shah (@DhruvinShah8) June 22, 2019
One more beautiful memory which I got from WordPress is I was able to connect with one of our clients Annette Voelckner. I had a conversation with her on emails regarding some feature which she requested. It was so great meeting her in person. One thing I loved about her is she is self-employed for over 15 years.
It feels so great to catch up with a customer @WCEurope
Discussed many different things regarding our plugins 🙂@DhruvinShah8 @onthisearth @tychesoftwares #WCEU pic.twitter.com/pH35vbEkwx— Dhara Shah (@DharaShah61) June 22, 2019
WordCamp 2020
Ohh yes, the next year venue is already decided. It’s the city of Porto in Portugal. We are looking forward to attending it and this time with my full team. 🙂
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT! WordCamp Europe 2020 will be held in … Porto, Portugal
It’s not about perfect. It’s about effort. And when you bring that effort every single day, that’s where transformation happens. That’s how change occurs.
