[00:00:08.24] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.06] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.18] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.11] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.12] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and the vidcast, where we talk about things that have been affecting our businesses over the last seven days. And welcome back if you've been with us before.
[00:00:26.02] - Taylor
Welcome back.
[00:00:27.02] - Gordon
We always have really good intentions of doing episodes when we're away, or even if just one of us is away, and we never manage it, do we?
[00:00:37.10] - Taylor
No.
[00:00:37.25] - Gordon
I think what happens is we just get caught up in what's going on there and you want to spend as much time doing what it is you're doing rather than doing everyday things like we do with this. And I think that's what happened. So apologies if you were waiting for last week's episode. It never happened. However, we have a whole episode today dedicated to what we've been doing over the last seven days and the reason why we couldn't come to you last week. Isn't that right, Taylor?
[00:01:13.07] - Taylor
It is.
[00:01:14.11] - Gordon
So first of all, do you want to tell everyone a little bit about the history of this event and what you know about it because you've been before.
[00:01:23.09] - Taylor
So WordCamp Europe, or just WordCamps in general, are a place for people who to use WordPress, whether that be a freelancer, an agency owner, a plug-in developer, a core contributor, or you just use it for your own small local business. And it's a way for people to be able to just come together and hang out, learn more about WordPress, so whether that's through a talk, through a workshop, talking to other community members, or even visiting any of the sponsors and their booths and things like that and finding new partners, making new partnerships or things like that.
[00:02:08.05] - Gordon
So last, when was it? Last Wednesday, not the one we've just had, but the one before, Taylor and I caught an aeroplane very early in the morning, even though it was delayed, which was slightly annoying because we got to the airport really early because we were expecting to leave at a certain time, and then it was delayed 2 hours, which It was very annoying. Could have had an extra two hours in bed. And we went over to Turin in Italy, which is where the event was taking place. And we got there late morning, I guess. Found where we were staying and checked in, had a bit of a sleep because we were quite tired then, and went out and had a lovely meal with someone that you know.
[00:02:56.28] - Taylor
Yeah, one of my friends.
[00:02:57.20] - Gordon
One of your friends and his girlfriend. So hi, Jake. Thank you for being our company that night. It was great. It was actually really good to see him and lots of other people. We'll come back to that, I think. The following day, we had Contributor Day. So this is a day where you have to sign up for it, and they only allow around 700-ish people to be part of this day.
[00:03:29.07] - Gordon
And Taylor and I signed up, and we were there on the day. We registered, we went in, and they had lots of tables with different skill sets or jobs that needed doing within the WordPress open source community. And you basically sat at a table where you thought you could give some sort of value. What did you sit down at?
[00:03:54.08] - Taylor
So I did the theme. I contributed a bit to the themes. I built a new pattern for one of the new community themes that they're working on, and I submitted that and that got merged in to the theme. And I also did an accessibility review of a theme that was requesting the accessibility ready tag. So this is a tag that people can have on their themes in the WordPress directory that basically say, this is an accessible, accessibility ready theme, and it agrees and it adheres to the guidelines set by the WordPress.org community.
[00:04:43.29] - Gordon
Okay, I sat down on the design table and we were looking for inspiration around the web for different designs for the new 2025 theme when that comes out in 2025. And it was a really interesting day. We got to meet lots of people there, talk with other people, and I think collaborating is probably the word for that day, isn't it?
[00:05:09.17] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:05:10.10] - Gordon
Even though we were all contributing to one goal, one community, it was the collaborating bit that was very different. And hopefully, if there were people who haven't done it before, they'll go home and they'll continue to contribute, because I think that's basically how WordPress grows, isn't it?
[00:05:34.24] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:05:36.01] - Gordon
So that was Contributors Day. The day after that, we were there for the first day of the event, basically. And that entailed lots of workshops and talks, as Taylor was saying. We had the opening remarks, which was good. We then had a talk, which was very good. I can't remember what it was about, but I remember.
[00:05:59.18] - Taylor
It was about the interactivity API and the new features coming to WordPress core.
[00:06:09.23] - Gordon
No, it wasn't. Not straight after the opening speech. It was the-
[00:06:14.29] - Taylor
The open source sustainability...
[00:06:17.20] - Gordon
That was it.
[00:06:18.15] - Taylor
Yost.
[00:06:19.01] - Gordon
Yeah, that was it. That was a really interesting talk. If you're interested in these, I think they're available, right?
[00:06:26.15] - Taylor
They will be. They're being uploaded.
[00:06:28.20] - Gordon
Okay. So even though you don't want to go to Italy or you weren't able to go to Italy, you still have the opportunity of watching the talks and the workshops. You may even see us in the audience because they had cameras pointing at us. So if you do, then let us know. That'd be great. We then went and had a wander around. We looked at all the different people who were selling their plug-ins or services or advice or systems. There were all sorts of people doing all sorts of things. Hosting companies were there as well. And it was really interesting to talk to some of these people that maybe you've heard of, but you don't actually understand what they do and gave you a chance to go and talk to them about it. Any surprises or things that you found that were really interesting in that area?
[00:07:26.16] - Taylor
No, it's just good to meet people, just chat, basically, and network.
[00:07:32.09] - Gordon
We got some chocolate from Woocommerce. They were showing everyone their redone mobile app on an iPad, and you got to order some chocolate, and then they gave you the chocolate at the end, which was really nice, wasn't it? Yeah, we enjoyed that. And then the following day was pretty much the same again. And it was very tiring, especially when you're 25 minutes away from the venue and you've got to either walk or get the bus. In fact, the bus was quite good, wasn't it?
[00:08:03.29] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:08:04.14] - Gordon
Yeah, we found that the bus service was really good. So we did... Oh, that was your finger. We did the party night as well, which was great. We spent most of the time watching the Euro and also eating pizza and also chatting with people outside. It was quite nice temperature. And we had a really interesting conversation then, didn't we? We also met up with a few people. Anyone you want to give a shout out to?
[00:08:38.04] - Taylor
There was quite a few of my friends that I met from lots of different communities, things like the WP Managed Ninja team.
[00:08:48.13] - Gordon
They were pretty much... All the leads were there, weren't they? It was lovely to meet them.
[00:08:54.07] - Taylor
People from the Oxygen Discord that I'm friends with, people from The Admin Bar, And yeah, just people that I have met around the internet, really and use WordPress.
[00:09:07.17] - Gordon
Yeah, it was very good. Was this different in any way to the previous two that you've you're getting to?
[00:09:16.01] - Taylor
I think that if you know people and you end up going around with them and hanging out with them, it makes the experience a lot nicer because it doesn't feel as lonely. The type of people that are there, because a lot of them are developers and things like that, they're very awkward and not... They won't strike a conversation unless they're in something like marketing maybe or they're just very extroverted. There's a certain type of person that goes to these events, and so it makes having conversations with people just a bit harder, really. People aren't as approachable, not approachable, but they won't approach you because of maybe their status or what they've deemed to be someone's status and like, "Oh, I can't talk to them. They're a lot higher than me in terms of being recognised and being known in the community." If you know people and you become friends and you hang out with them and walk around with them, then other people are more likely to come up and come and say hi to you and chat to you and things like that.
[00:10:32.26] - Gordon
I was surprised at how many people there were. They sold, I think it's 2,900 and something tickets for the event, and there was 2,500 and something people there from 97 countries. Which is, I mean, that's a huge number. I wasn't sure quite what I was expecting, but I don't think I was expecting quite that many.
[00:10:53.24] - Taylor
Yeah, I think it's the biggest WordCamp in the world and has probably the biggest reach in terms of the number of people that visit you from different countries, I guess. Whereas if you go to other WordCamps, like the one in Asia and the one in America, the type of demographic you get is people from Asia mainly or people from America mainly. You still do get people from lots of our countries, but not as wide of variety, I guess.
[00:11:28.21] - Gordon
Well, I mean, Europe is huge. So you're bringing in all the people from all those countries into one place. So I can see why it's quite big. And of course, you need a big venue. And we were in something called Lingotto, which was the old Fiat factory in Turin. The whole factory itself, the building is still there. It's being used for lots of different purposes these days. There's a shopping centre in there and there's businesses and there's this conference centre and everything else. But the actual building itself is huge. I haven't looked it up, but I think it must have been the main, if not only, Fiat factory in Italy because the size of it, they could easily have been making pretty much all the Fiats ever needed from that one venue because it was so big, wasn't it?
[00:12:26.16] - Taylor
Yeah, very big.
[00:12:27.21] - Gordon
So let's talk about things that we got out of our experience. You go first. Did you have any goals when you set off to go, and did you have any successes or minor wins or things that you weren't expecting?
[00:12:47.11] - Taylor
I just like talking to people, networking. I collected more pins for my WordCamp lanyard, WordPress lanyard. I like selecting pins that I can put onto the lanyard because then you can take that home. And it's something that is not useful, but it's not not useful. It's not something that you're just going to keep in your cupboard and it's just going to sit there and do nothing. I don't wear T-shirts apart from white plain T-shirts, so for me, collecting T-shirts isn't that useful because I'm just not going to wear them. And then collecting other things like pens, et cetera, I'm not going to use and they're just going to get thrown away. So pins are something I like to collect because they're something that I can leave on the lanyard on my door that I have all my past ones from. But yeah, just networking, chatting to people, making connections and partnerships and things with people is I think for me, the biggest thing, and I think you'll find that most people will say that. The talks were good. There were some really good ones. I saw the interactivity API one. There was one on accessibility by Amber Hinds.
[00:13:59.16] - Gordon
That was good.
[00:14:00.28] - Taylor
And yeah, there were some that were really good. I didn't get to many just because I ended up chatting and missing the workshops or talks I planned to. But they're going to be online. So if I really want to watch them, I can watch them online. But I think the friends I made, the friends I got to meet that I met online, things like that, for me was the highlight.
[00:14:24.11] - Gordon
I think you're right. I think for me, the highlight was the networking and the talking to people and the meeting new friends. I mean, in the WordPress community, Taylor is getting quite well known, and I'm not so well known because I don't really talk in the community. I'm a user as opposed to a developer. So it was nice to see people coming up to you and saying, "Oh, you're T. Drayson. How lovely to meet you." And that was great. And I made a few friends. We met up with Jake, who we mentioned earlier. We met up with the WP Managed Ninja team, which was lovely.
[00:15:14.08] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:15:14.19] - Gordon
That was really good. Went out for a meal with them. That was a really good night, wasn't it?
[00:15:19.19] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:15:20.09] - Gordon
Yeah, really good night. We also met up with Dan, who, if... We should put a link to his plug-in, I think. Yeah. So we met up with Dan, who is a developer of a plug-in called WPextended.io. We'll put a link in the show notes. But if you are looking for a plug-in that will basically allow you to extend WordPress and add features like Duplicate Post. Just a really simple thing. This plug-in has it, but it's got over 40 different modules. And there are some really exciting plans coming for that as well, which I think are going to be great. So Dan was really interesting. We spent a bit of time with Dan, didn't we?
[00:16:13.28] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:16:14.06] - Gordon
Chatting, and he even came home on the same plane as us on the same flight. So we got to say goodbye in England rather than Italy, as we did for most of them. In fact, I was surprised how many people from the Euro, the WordCamp event were on our plane. You've no idea how many people are coming back on the same plane as you. And it was like the day after and it was in the evening because it was like nearly 24 hours after the whole event had finished, not including the party. So I thought people were going to be going off pretty quickly, but I'm guessing probably about a third of the plane was full of WordCamp, people going back to the UK. So yeah, that was really interesting. So overall, did we have a good time?
[00:17:08.21] - Taylor
I did.
[00:17:09.11] - Gordon
Yeah, I did as well.
[00:17:10.29] - Gordon
They've announced where the next one is going to be. Do you want to tell everyone?
[00:17:14.21] - Taylor
So it's going to be in Switzerland in Basel.
[00:17:17.06] - Gordon
Basel, yeah. Will you be going?
[00:17:19.26] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:17:20.11] - Gordon
I think I might be going as well. Yeah. So if you haven't been to WordCamp and this thing interests you, tickets are available soon June, if not already. Flights and everything else. The date's been announced, seventh and eighth of June, 2025, I believe.
[00:17:38.15] - Taylor
Something like that.
[00:17:38.28] - Gordon
Something like that. So, yeah, look it up. And if it's the sort of thing that you think might be of interest to you, come along. And if you do come along, come say hello to us, because if we end up being there, be lovely for people to come and chat, because that's what we got the most out of, didn't we?
[00:17:54.12] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:17:56.14] - Gordon
Thank you for joining us. As always, we're on YouTube and on Facebook. Please like, share and subscribe.
[00:18:03.02] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.
[00:18:07.27] - Gordon
And we're on all of the major podcast platforms, so you can find us there and listen to us in the car or dropping off the kids or on your way to meetings. We'll be back with you all being well next week on Friday at 1pm. Until then, my name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:18:28.02] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:18:59.07] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:18:59.21] - Taylor
Bye.
