We spent the weekend at WordCamp London 2017!
This weekend marked our first WordCamp of the year, (and what an exciting weekend it was!) – some of our team headed up to London for the annual WordCamp London conference, held over 3 buildings within the generously sized London Metropolitan University. We were super excited to not only be sponsors at this event, but it was also a great opportunity to premiere our new website and company branding – we received an overwhelmingly positive response from so many WordPress enthusiasts, which was great!
We received this quote from our client, Laura McQueen (Head of Product & Marketing, Leaders in Sport) who explained her experience during her time at WordCamp London 2017:
“Thanks so much for tickets to WordCamp London – Sam and I were very inspired by the user experience session and we will be doing much more user testing going forward! Cool handy tools recommended to use too which is great”
As well as branding, the fab Tom Chute, Edd Hurst and our founder and director, David Lockie held talks on all things WordPress, including expanding a business, methods behind great client relationships and content migration. The talks took place all weekend, and turned out to be a great success.
Our stall was located in the Graduate centre, where we were able to mingle with fellow WordPress folk, and give away a very unique print of a ‘WordCamp solar system’ designed by our very own marketing director Simon Cooke. We still have a few prints of this one of a kind masterpiece left over – so if you missed out on picking one up, then get in touch and we will be happy to send you one!
Here’s what the team had to say about WordCamp London 2017:
Tom Chute
After attending a few WordCamps I thought it was time I gave something back and volunteered to talk about creating and maintaining client relationships. To my surprise, my talk got accepted and I started to panic! I needn’t have spent so much time fretting as the WordPress community is extremely friendly and supportive. When the time came to give my talk, the atmosphere in the room and the friendly faces I saw in the crowd put me at complete ease. I loved it, and enjoyed a brilliant Q & A session after the talk. The slides are shared here: http://www.slideshare.net/TomChute1/tales-from-the-client-side-wordcamp-london-2017
If you are thinking about doing a talk at a WordCamp, I’d thoroughly recommend it, not least from the hundreds of people you get a chance to meet. My Twitter has gone ballistic!
The rest of the weekend was full of great talks and interesting chats. Highlights for me included ‘The WordPress Cartoonist – A User’s Perspective’ by Dave Walker, where we learnt how Dave used WordPress to promote his work, and Ross Wintle’s ‘Why and How to Use Screencasts to Train Users’. The diversity of talks this year was fantastic, and it feels like there’s something for everyone. I always leave WordCamps with a few new tricks or ideas I’m going to build into the way I work, and this year I’ve got loads!
Bryony Seal
As a Project Manager I wasn’t sure if WordCamp would be as interesting for me, but I was pleasantly surprised. There was a friendly atmosphere at the event and I enjoyed chatting to people from a variety of different backgrounds. There was a combination of talks on issues which directly affect me as a Project Manager, and also those more related to development, but as a PM are useful to have an understanding. I can’t wait for WordCamp Europe (being held in Paris) now!
Edd Hurst
A WordCamp is a great opportunity to find out some of the incredible new things that other people are doing with WordPress and to hear their stories. It’s also a great chance to sit back and think about the innovative solutions to some of the same problems that we’ve come up with over the past few months, and everybody is so welcoming to ideas.
The more WordCamps I go to, the more familiar faces I see, and the more new people I meet. I may not speak to everyone I pass, but they’re all familiar faces in a crowd, and cheery waves and handshakes are found in every corridor throughout the event.
For me it was also a first – as I took the stage and shared some of my experiences. I’m a sucker for a good metaphor, and I wanted to compare the problems of migrating your website content to those in moving house. It’s easy for people to overlook the actual content of a website and how it’s going to be moved into their new website, in part because it’s so abstract. Moving house is something we’ve all done several times though, so it’s a much easier thing to imagine, and really helps to start the conversation. The talk went really well, even though I nearly lost my voice the day before! The audience was really friendly though, and I’m really thankful that I was able to give something back to the community.
Georgia Cottle
There is such an amazing sense of community at WordCamps, I came away not only having learning loads but I also managed to meet lots of great people. The speakers were really inspiring and it was amazing to learn about fellow developers’ achievements, as well as the things that they struggle with and how they tackle them.
Michael Rochester
WordCamp London 2017 was the usual hodge-podge of community, swag, and socials that we have come to expect from The UK’s largest WordCamp. I had the pleasure of meeting swathes of new people, and reconnecting with previous WordCamp buddies. The place was littered with cool stickers, and t-shirts and more pens than you could possibly need. London Met once again provided an excellent venue making the meals and after hours social fun and relaxing. You might think that WordCamp London was my favourite yet, but, you may have also noticed I am yet to mention the talks.
As last year, there were three tracks of talks, offering a wide variety of topics from a team of excellent speakers. The tracks were well run, and the talks themselves engaging and of high quality. The problem was, I wasn’t really interested in the topics…
There was not a CSS or JS talk to be found, few talks involved any code or development techniques and many even neglected to mention WordPress at all. I am happy to see that these conferences are being attended by more than just developers. It’s good to see Designers, PMs, Copywriters, Marketers, and many more, joining this community. However I felt lost the entire conference, like I was out of place as a WordPress Developer.
This problem wasn’t helped by some odd organisation decisions. For example, all three of the accepted accessibility talks were at the same time. I hear this was to “ensure people had no choice but to attend one.” Personally, I would have loved to have seen all three.
All in all, I enjoyed the weekend, and did learn many new things along the way. I would still recommend the conference, and will almost certainly look to attend next year.