This year for me was more relaxed and enjoyable. I’ve been working on getting more focus on my projects and I made goals for WCEU, after learning my lesson from Torino.
See last year in Torino, I was desperate on finding sponsorships for my WordPress contributions and I spent 3 days stalking sponsors and begging for money. This year, I forgo looking for sponsorships. Instead, I focused on getting advice from certain individuals to continue with my projects, as well as solving a technical issue.
Pre-WCEU
Arriving early to WCEU has its perks, after a long train ride, Ohia and I took a long walk at night from St. Louis to Basel.
Wednesday was the only day I had for doing the “touristy-thing”. Walked through Old Town, visited the City Hall and the Cathedral, amazing buildings. Found the Hoosesagg Museum, the smallest museum about miniatures and oddities of the past. There was an exhibition of handmade tiny chairs on the door.
After that I attended the picnic organized by Patricia, that took place at a cafe this year due to the pouring rain. It is always fun to say hello to many people I only once a year but probably talk to often online.
Contributor Day
I have never worked so much at a WCEU contributor day with the documentation team. Few people joined our table but we were enough. After a quick onboarding into the team and the perpetual internet failure, the team closed 19 tickets and updated 8 articles. And the cookies were gone! – if you don’t know about the cookies, maybe join the WP docs team at a contributor day.
Talk days
So I only saw the last half of one talk. Honestly, I rarely attend live talks because I can’t stay still for too long, so I prefer moving around, meeting people, talking to anyone and everyone.
I spent most of the time at the Sponsor Hall or hiding in quiet places. I had a nice lunch with Alex Kirk on Friday and talked about WordPress documentation translation with AI and he actually gave me a better idea on how to start using AI with documentation, more to come in a different post.
I finished my lunch with the ladies of WP Includes, where we talked about the things we want to see in this project and how we would like it to grow. Looking forward to all the things coming from this group.
Had a conversation with Hostinger about the issue I had when trying to migrate this site to their hosting. I don’t put all the blame on them, migration is an impossible task for me. Since they are a wonderful company and believe in their product so much, they migrated my site on the spot and made sure it is working. Thank you Danielus (I hope that is how he spells his name) and all the Hostinger team for your help.
On Saturday I talked to Jono Alderson about SEO, I am still learning about it and Google announced many changes that I felt like someone moved the rug from under my feet.
Also had the chance to meet Cory Miller (opens in X.com), we met online when he was in Post Status but never met in person, so it was fun to finally meet him.
And lastly, I had a conversation with Matt Mullenweg about how to invest my newly sponsored time. I asked for his advice and opinion for the 2 projects I have in mind and I appreciate his encouragement and support.
Party time!
As always, there was no evening without a party, dinner or happy hour to go to. I only attended 4 events, the WordCamp Social Event, the Hostinger dinner for Contributor Day Table Leads, The Yoast Pride party and the After Party.
We almost missed out on attending the Social Event for taking the wrong tram. Yeah, we found out line 14 had 3 different routes and of course, we took the wrong one!! Only in Basel will they give the same tram number to 3 different routes.
Big hurray to the Hostinger team, this is the 3rd dinner I am invited to and they know how to pick restaurants. The food was amazingly delicious, although my favorite is still the dinner in Torino.
The Pride party is always the best! Always packed, always fun. Too much dancing, too much singing. And lots of rain by the time we got to the AirBnb.
The After-party was ok, I didn’t stay long because it was too loud for me but I saw lots of people dancing and having a good time.
Traveling and Cost
I do not recommend traveling by train from Trieste, Italy. Four trains to get to Basel, that was an 10-hour train ride. On the way back, three trains with a 90 minute delay, turned into a 12-hour trip.
Between lodging, train, local transportation and meals, I spent circa €700, which is about the cost of every WordCamp I attend. Note to self: move to a city with better traveling connections.
Good times
Photos by me, except where credit is given.