WordCamp Europe 2023, Athens, Greece

I have to admit that there were quite a few moments when I felt overwhelmed with the idea that I am part of this amazing community and feel welcome amongst these fantastic people who believe in the same thing, despite our many differences.

I enjoyed all the presentations I could attend (there were many I wanted to see live, happening at the same time, so would look them up when the recordings get to be available online) and there are a few takeaways.

David Artiss’ presentation “10 things that all WordPress plugin developers should avoid” made me think about my plugins and what I can improve to make the experience better for the users.
There seems to be a general struggle we go through as developers, when our features are complex, as the core UI is not equipped with exposing anything but basic interfaces, and this seems to be the reason why we end up implementing our custom UIs. Hence, we are solving a need, this is not necessarily a desire to make our code stand out in wp-admin. Of course, this opens the door for anyone disagreeing with your choices, and endless loops of discussions.
So, for now, everyone seems to blame the developers, or at least the developers that are not building complex features point fingers in the other direction because it’s simpler this way. Will this ever be solved as a unified solution in the future? Only time will tell.

Aaron Reimann’s presentation “Where did we come from?” was for me a nice reminder of my early years with WordPress, how far we got, and how rapidly the changes were happening in the last few years. I even forgot how simple this started and still can’t recall when the multisite was introduced – that also added to my list of reasons why I got to like the framework initially and continued using it for so many years.

“The Brand of You” by Vassilena Valchanova was also one of my favorite presentations, I relate a lot with what she said about her colors approach and how the color she is wearing is making her feel more open and confident and that it’s more of how she perceives herself wearing that color and not what the rest of people see.

After seeing Sarah Galantini’s presentation about “Innovating inclusion: harnessing AI for accessibility” I decided that I use way too few of the tools that are currently available and I would start using even more of these to make sure my work gets closer to being better at accessibility.

“The Art of the code review” by Tim Nash was an amazing presentation. I was sure we do this right at Dekode, and I am also sure that how we do it is not a frustration, I am eager to get my code reviewed because it is never about ego or showing off, I am 100% convinced that in the process my code will be more secure and optimized, and of course, I will learn from all the amazing ideas and questions that my colleagues bring in. I am always prepared to accept new approaches and change my mind about what “best” is at a moment in time, including how I write my code.

“Using low vision as my tool to help me teach WordPress” by Bud Kraus is another presentation I enjoyed a lot. He told us how incredible it is for him to speak at the conference and that he did not imagine he will do that, and he said it in a way that was so touching. His presentation made me rethink a bit the way I am testing the result of my work, and adding in my workflow even more tools for this purpose.

Tor-Björn Fjellner presented us with how to “Enable truly global use of your code – avoid the typical i18n pitfalls”. The explicit examples he added in the presentation were very useful in confirming I am doing this pretty well in my code. But, I also learned one thing that I have to improve: I should break down my translatable string into smaller chunks, instead of writing long phrases (which I am guilty of).

Siobhan McKeown, Ben May, Myles Lagolago-Craig, Carrie Dils, Viola Gruner had a brief discussion about “Enterprise WordPress delivery – How some of the leading agencies deliver WordPress to enterprise globally”, and there were some interesting questions raised in the meanwhile from the public as well, which were not fully answered in my opinion, this is a vast subject anyway.

I was particularly interested in learning new things from Mitchell Leber’s presentation “Accessibility meets Style: a design revolution”, because I am also trying to combine aesthetics and accessibility to the best of my abilities when I get the chance.

I could not miss the “Variations on a theme: 20 years of WordPress” with Matt Mullenweg, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and Matías Ventura. My takeaways:

• I will definitely look up and test the playground for myself
• there is no transparency between the core teams and there are many suggestions on how to improve communication between them as there are many ways in which we can contribute
• the future of AI integrated into WordPress is promising
• ongoing work for inclusiveness and multilanguage approach
• the next WordPress phase is starting soon

There were a lot of other details that make the WordCamp Europe 2023 so great for me: the sense of being welcomed and part of something amazing, so many new ideas and things to re-think, the people I met again, and the new ones I got to meet.

I want to briefly mention my amazing husband Cezar, my colleagues from Dekode: Alexandros, Annikken, Henning, Hillevi, Ingeborg, Marius, Petter, and Pierre, the TranslatePress team, Milan Ivanovic, Ivelina Dimova, Karim Marucchi, Marius Vetrici, and the amazing Carolina Nymark – her work is very often my source of inspiration. Thank you all for making this a wonderful experience for me!

The location was impressive, and everyone involved worked so hard to make this a successful community event. Athens is a beautiful city to visit and the food is great.

See you next year, beautiful WordPress community!