WordCamp Europe 2020
An illustration of a laptop displaying the text "WordCamp Europe 2020 Online." Surrounding the laptop are colorful speech bubbles and a light bulb icon, symbolizing ideas and communication.

WordCamp Europe 2020

First online WordCamp Europe conference for WordPress enthusiasts!

COVID-19 pandemic didn’t stop WordPress enthusiasts from organizing the annual WordCamp Europe conference. After much deliberation, instead of taking place in Porto – as originally planned – the event was moved online. Obviously, Osom developers wouldn’t miss it for the world and now they want to share their opinion of the event’s course below.

 

WordCamp Europe online? Organization is the key.

Running such a large event as WordCamp Europe on Zoom was quite a challenge. 8,000 registered participants, three days filled to the brim with lectures, workshops and networking – the schedule has lost no value by moving the conference to the network. Some lectures were held simultaneously, so the participants were free to switch between the discussed topics. The event was moderated at all times, so one could really feel like during any previous WordCamp.

The only drawback was the discrepancy between the schedule and the actual start times of individual presentations. In the first track, the delay was over an hour, which could somewhat thwart the listener’s plans.

 

Zoom conference

The most important element of the lecture was, of course, the Q&A session with experts. The participants were free to write their inquiries down in the chat and the moderators passed the questions along at the end of the lecture. Those especially hungry for knowledge could dive deeper into discussion after the presentation – they had two additional Zoom rooms at their disposal. Between the lectures and in addition to conversations with the lecturers, you could also indulge in some typical networking – meet other participants, exchange experiences or discuss industry-related topics. What’s interesting, Zoom rooms also hosted sponsors, where you could have a talk with representatives of companies such as Jetpack, Yoast and WPMU Dev.

 

Registration and e-privilages

While the lectures were open to all participants, the abovementioned rooms on Zoom were available to those who had “purchased” a ticket (the registration was free). The verification was carried out by e-mail and the participants received a special access code. People who registered also received a “gift pack”, that WordCamp’s participants are customarily given, which was a very nice surprise. This time it was a pack of coupons and discount codes. Nothing major, but still a great gesture. (With nostalgia we remembered the socks from WordCamp Łódź – which Osom Studio was the sponsor of.

 

WordCamp Europe 2020 – the most interesting lectures

 

Zeev Suraski – “PHP: a glimpse into the future”

Zeev Suraski’s lecture stood out the most for our programmers. Zeev, of course, is the founder of Zend Technologiesand one of the PHP language creators, so it proves difficult to find a specialist who would know more about this particular subject. The lecture he gave was an analysis of features added through versions from compilation marked as PHP 3. Zeev described how big these optimization steps were for the team and also pinpointed some major changes that could be seen after switching to each subsequent version of PHP.

Suraski also focused on the benefits of the JIT (just in time) approach in a very interesting way. He noticed that this technology is used, among others, by browsers to be able to execute JavaScript in the shortest possible time. The final point of the presentation was to introduce the changes that await us in PHP version 8the pre-loading will certainly speed up many processes. The speaker also reminded people to try to leave PHP 5 behind and move their projects to version 7 as soon as possible. If you haven’t done it already – get to work! 😉

 

Chris Teitzel – “Secure your site by becoming a hacker!”

The lecture called “Secure your site by becoming a hacker!” that took place on the first day of WordCamp was also an interesting point of the program. The presenter – Chris Teitzel – interestingly and cheekily presented specific examples of the most popular types of hacker attacks. Teitzel also pointed out some bad practices and errors in writing code that may facilitate unauthorized access to the site. As you can see, the presentation was filled with practical knowledge one could immediately implement into your activities.

Pssttt, spoiler alert… There might be an article on how to effectively secure your website on our Osom blog very soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

That’s it! We consider WordCamp 2020, the Christmas of the European WordPress community, to be very successful. And even if we missed direct contact with other participants at times, the spirit of the community could be felt in an online world as well! If you were unable to attend the conference, you can see the recordings from the lectures on the official event website.

WordCamp Europe – see you next year! Let’s hope it happens in real life this time. 🤓

Next article

wordpress security

13 Easy Steps to Improve WordPress Security and Keep Your Site Safe

By Bartosz Nowak

9 min read

small logo of osom studio wordpress and woocommerce agency

Join Osom to know newsletter!

Get your monthly dose of WordPress information.