Featured image copyright Giorgio Minguzzi

This weekend 15 people from ManageWP made their way to Vienna for this years WordCamp Europe, and the experience was incredible. Before I start telling you all of the things we got up to, I want to thank every single organizer and volunteer that made WCEU an unforgettable event, so THANK YOU!

Also, speakers you are brave people, talking in front of an audience of 2000, well done and thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.

Our Part In WCEU

We are proud to say that we had one of our own on the organization team, Milan you were great, and well done to all of our volunteers that gave it their all. Here is a quick shout out for them, Aca, Nenad, Petar, Milos, Lazar and Nemanja! Also, I need to give a virtual hug and high five to my colleague Vladeta, who spent the two days with me at the ManageWP booth answering all of the technical questions, and to Maja, who supported us during WCEU.

This year was particularly fun, because most of our team decided to join us, our software engineers came and chatted to everyone there, Bogdan, Miljan, Andrej and Miljenko thanks for all of the elaborate explanations you provided fellow WordPressers, and one more thank you for Lela ,Bojana and Milica, who sorted out all of the material and accommodation, we are not an easy bunch to organize. And, yes our elusive COO, Ivan, joined us too and supported everyone like he normally does.

That’s it with the thank you’s, let me try sum up our WCEU impressions.

In one word, it was AMAZING!

ManageWP Booth

Our booth was always surrounded by people asking us lots about ManageWP and Orion, and getting as excited as we are about the upcoming release. It was also great that we were close to the tea, coffee and cakes area, I think our team of 15 ate a significant amount of cake in those two days. Note to future organizers, keep us away from the cake.

Our booth theme was a stress free zone, just like ManageWP takes away stress from your daily lives when it comes to website management, we wanted to make everyone feel relaxed at our booth. WooCommerce, Yoast and Jetpack (just to name a few) had some very cool swag that we all collected, and will be wearing every day to the office. To relieve stress we brought with us lots of stress balls, I am very glad that they were popular at WCEU. They spread around the MuseumsQuartier like wildfire, and soon everyone was squeezing them, playing outside with them and some that have the skills even juggled them.

Here is David, VIP Wranger at Automattic, WCEU Volunteer and now ManageWP Juggler.

Like I said, our stress balls got a lot of love.

The best thing about WordCamps is that the WordPress Community gathers all over the world and comes together to exchange ideas, experiences and to make new friends. In Vienna we were lucky to have met some very interesting people, who we hope to stay in touch with and collaborate on future projects.

Here is just some of the people that we spent time with. Hey to Sucuri, who were the booth next to ours. Looking forward to being your booth neighbors next year again.

It’s also great when people come say hello, and you end up becoming good friends, and it’s all thanks to WCEU. Here are some of my new friends from TeslaThemes.

Organization at WCEU

With around 2000 people at any given time at WCEU, it wasn’t easy to organize. All talks were on time, the speakers chosen were fantastic, and it was easy to maneuver between the talks. All tracks were clearly marked, and on our registration booklets we had the times of all talks, lunch, breaks and where we needed to be. Although there were so many people, it felt like everyone knew where to go, so the waiting time was minimal. The rooms were spacious, well lit, cool and comfortable, all in all it was very enjoyable participating in the talks.

Imagine having to feed 2000 people? Lunch was tasty, and even though the line at the start seemed like it didn’t have an end, it moved quickly and everyone was able to grab their lunch and take it outside to enjoy the sun.

What I found great is that the organizers were always there for you. They would be walking around and you could ask them anything you needed and they would help you out.

Here are just two out of the many great organizers. Well done Luca and Milan!

Just an additional, go organizers for getting together a child care team, what a great idea. Now you can come and bring the mini WordPressers with you, we hope to see more of them in Paris.

Smile For WCEU

It would be impossible to put into words the positive atmosphere at WCEU, everyone there was full of energy. Not only was it a great learning experience, but it filled us all with newfound motivation, inspiration and zeal.

I want to share with you one of my favorite moments there, our engineers who embody in this picture how we all felt throughout the weekend.

and of course the guy, you might know him, Mike Schroder WordPress lead and core committer, who photobombed like a professional!

WCEU Ball

Oh yes, what happens when after two days of conferencing you get 2000 WordPressers at night in one room with drink tokens? I will let you take a guess. For us it was a night to remember. You can never be too tired to get your groove on, and we certainly did. For those of you who went you saw us, and for others I will leave you photo-less, I think it’s safer that way 🙂

Contributor Day

A whooping 450 people came to the contributor day. It’s believed to be the biggest one so far. It kicked off with hearing all about WCEU hosting applications, how to bring WCEU to your city. Now that we know what it takes, hopefully more of us will think about applying and having the honor of hosting such an event. It’s fantastic to have so many contributors, the WordPress community is like no other, and it’s growing each year. Let’s not forget to keep contributing throughout the year and to keep coming to contributor events in your country and city.

See You All In Paris!

In just under a year we get to do it all again, but in Paris. It’s going to be hard to top WCEU Vienna, but any event with so many passionate WordPressers will certainly be great. Next year we hope to bring an even bigger team with us, and fill the stage with more volunteers, organizers and hopefully speakers too.

I think that this post will be overflowing with keywords like amazing, incredible and fantastic, but really those are the only words that can sum up the whole of WCEU.

Till next time.

Final image copyright Florian Ziegler