I’m just back from WordCamp Europe 2015 (AKA WCEU) and wow, what a weekend. I was there with the whole Human Made crew, and carried on to the company retreat near Tarifa, which is in fact ongoing. But WordCamps are curious affairs and in a way they’re the soul of WordPress itself, so it felt like I was there with 900 of my newest closest friends.
This was also my first chance to meet with all the Human Made crew, and what a blast that was! I sort of knew it would be great to meet up with everyone, but now I get why the word awesome keeps coming up with such clichéd regularity – they ARE awesome!
Ryan and the Humans (me in cap) after his session at WCEU 2015 – Awesome images by Florian Ziegler http://florianziegler.com/
In an effort to get under the skin of it all quickly I teamed up with my fellow Human, Bronson Quick, to produce some little podcasts. This gave me the excuse to grab anyone we liked into a small room and throw at them some truly random questions. Like so many conferences, the presentations may be awesome, but you can catch them online – it’s the conversations that *really* count!
We’re still working out where the canonical place for the podcasts to live – while Japh is running the store we might get them into Post Status, but i think Brian’s been a bit preoccupied! So by way of a holding pattern, I’m just going to hoof them into SoundCloud and then we can always pipe the RSS across to wherever makes sense. I’ll give each a post here too, for convenience etc.
Bronson Quick interviews Graham Armfield about accessibility for our podcast
So, what do I think of my first WordCamp? Well, WordPress is a community project that is also, for many many people, a proper job. it reminds me in some ways of the Backstage shenanigans we used to get up to a decade ago – from those early efforts of hack Days and Bar Camps it looks as though a proper sustainable business model has emerged for skilled people to do interesting work for a reasonable pay on an open source project. I’m going to do a whole other blog post about the essential story at the core of WordPress, it’s validity and sustainability, but at first pass, it is an extraordinarily convivial, collegial and welcoming community.
Seville is a fabulous city, but the temperature and humidity there makes Vegas feel dreary by comparison. Walking back to the apartments from the after party with a belly full of Pragmatic tequila in 35 degree heat at 3am was a bit full fat for my delicate constitution. But brunch at Kök fixed it right up.
Kök
Kök rocks btw – a proper Copenhagen style cafe with eggs benedict to die for, really extraordinary, and I was so glad to be able to share the experience with Anna from Poetica and Adrian Zumbrunnen of Front Kit fame. (Interested in front end editors of various flavours? Why you might say so, but i couldn’t possibly comment…. ).
Right, I’d better get those podcasts up! Oh, and if I saw you in Seville, and didn’t mention it above, fear not. I didn’t forget!
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