WP Engine’s Trip to WordCamp San Francisco

Note: I’ve asked all the members of WP Engine who attended WCSF to send me their reflections of our trip to SF. Those thoughts appear as inline quotes in this post.

How many of you attended WordCamp San Francisco?  How many live in San Francisco and got to take the Muni out to the event center?  How many were in the Golden State and just needed a short flight up to North California?  How many of you were in the US (we came from Austin) and hopped a connecting flight out to SFO?  And how many of you all were in other countries and on other continents and spent more than a day travelling?

I have a greater understanding of what it really means to be part of the WordPress community.

WordPressers from all over the globe came to San Francisco last weekend. You can say this for WordPress, it certainly draws a diverse crowd.

Personally, it was my first WordCamp San Francisco, so I came out there with no pre-conceived notions about what to expect. I just wanted to soak it all in. It was the first State of the Word I had seen live, and the first time I had seen that many Automatticians in one place 😉

WP Engine had the opportunity to send 16 people to WordCamp San Francisco this year to volunteer, connect with the community, see the amazing speakers, hand out T-Shirts and generally enjoy how awesome San Francisco is.  WP Engine’s co-founders, Jason Cohen and Ben Metcalfe organized the trip first as a way for the company to participate in the WordCamp, and second as a way to let the members of the company bond in a new way.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon, and spent the rest of Thursday and Friday connecting and working as a company. We walked all over the city, went shoe shopping, got lost, had adventures, and enjoyed all the “slow food” that San Francisco has to offer.

On Thursday, we took the night ferry for an evening tour of Alcatraz. It was freezing (compared to Texas), and I almost missed the boat both times.  We all got separated from one another on the audio tours and I ended up having to sprint down the island with about 60 seconds before the boat left for the night. Missing WordCamp to be stuck on Alcatraz all night would have been awful…and sorta hilarious.

On Friday, we had an all hands meeting where Jason and Ben discussed all manner of things WordPress and WP Engine. After the meetings, we had dinner and then a few of us went to the ZippyKid / Range party, which was amazing. Big thanks to Vid for helping to arrange than and for facilitating the conversations that he did. Everyone was amazing.

I got to meet Matt. That was cool. He was down to earth, and really nice. He seems to really want to stay connected to the community.

And of course, then most of us were up at 5AM to volunteer alongside the Automatticians at the registration booth, and then set up the WP Engine booth. It was an early morning facilitated by some of San Francisco’s famous, locally-roasted coffee.

It would be impossible in a single post to write about all the things that made this particular WordCamp what it was. Each WordCamp I’ve been to is shaped by the community around it.  Since it was the San Francisco WordCamp, and home to Automattic, I noticed that the attendees of this WordCamp were more likely to be key players in the community. These folks run their own WordPress-based companies like Adii Pienaar and WooThemes, or Dre Armeda and Sucuri Security, or they’re part of Automattic’s workforce like John James Jacoby, Chelsea Otakan, or the folks who lead Core development like Andrew Nacin. And they also have made a name for themselves on the forums like Mika Epstein. However, I did help some folks register who were completely new to WordPress, and by the looks of them, they were new to conferences as well.

To me, the measure of a good WordPress event is the following: Did the organizers and the community keep the doors open to *everyone* who wanted to attend and participate? Was there something for everyone to sink their teeth into?  Open-source values are central to the WordPress Community, and I always look for indications that I am personally abiding by those values, and that the folks at WP Engine are as well when we participate in a WordCamp. I saw these values played out all weekend long 🙂

SF was the most advanced WordCamp I have seen thus far, and I thought that was pretty interesting.

That brings me to what I think was a defining aspect of WordCamp San Francisco: the 15-minute sessions.  This year, instead of the usual 60-minute talks, speakers had 15 minutes for their talks, with 5 minutes to answer questions. Now, anyone who has given more than a few presentations will tell you that presenting for an hour is much easier than presenting for 15 minutes. When you have an hour, you don’t have to have your information tight because you have elbow room to backtrack, ramble a bit, and pay attention to your audience’s cues. A 15 minute talk is unforgiving, and five minutes is just enough time for 2-3 good questions.  When you have 15 minutes, you must nail the main concept and inspire your audience to find out more after.

We all want to be successful with our work, but it is most important to build each other up and focus on the mission of WordPress, which is bigger than any one person or company.

So a 15-minute talk doesn’t provide the opportunity to dig into the material, and as a result you don’t learn as much while you’re sitting there. There isn’t enough time to analyze code in 15 minutes, for example. However, the brevity of the talks means the entire event has a constant flow of people moving from one place to the next, passing one another in the halls, grabbing coffee or beers together, visiting booths, stopping by the Happiness Bar, and interacting with the Community. Based on what I saw, I think the shorter talks facilitated theCommunity aspect of WordCamps. You get just enough info in a talk to follow up and do your own research, and then you’re back out in the thick of it, meeting awesome people.

The biggest thing for me is that I am super proud of WP Engine. This time last year it was Jason, Mark, and me. Now we have all these other employes and they got to spend some quality time together as a team.

As a company, one of the biggest aspects of WP Engine attending the event was connecting with all the other WordPress-based companies. We got to do some interacting with ZippyKid, WooThemes, UppSite, SiteGround, and Sucuri, to name a few. It was open-source at its finest.

Personally, the key moments at conferences are always the people I get to meet and connect with. After being on the road so much for the past 2 months, I was a bit tired when I got up at 5AM to volunteer at the registration tables, but once I had an couple shots of espresso in me, I was ready to go.

I met people that I knew only from Twitter and Facebook, and saw other folks that I had met for the first time when I started at WP Engine over SXSW weekend. I love those moments when you are face to face with someone you feel like you already know from Twitter, but you’re just now meeting them in person.

A big moment for me was introducing myself to Matt Mullenweg after Pete Davie‘s brilliant storytime about the P2 Theme and running small countries (look for the recording of this one). In person, Matt is just like how he is portrayed elsewhere. He’s a very gracious leader who is working very hard to be present for the WordPress Community as it grows exponentially. This is no small task for one person, but I saw him do a great job of this all weekend. We only spoke for a few minutes, but I came away knowing that everyone who attended the WordCamp, newbie to veteran, was important to him. That meant a lot to me personally.

When I introduced myself I laughed out loud because the first thing Matt said was, “Oh! You’ve been tweeting up a storm!”  Yup, that’s part of what I do.  I also blog, and do support, and give presentations, and I get to work as part of a company that helps thousands of people make a living and be entrepreneurs on an incredible open-source software platform. It’s called WordPress, y’all, and it’s the platform more than 20,000 of us use to make a living.

How was YOUR trip to WordCamp San Francisco?

Hope this helps.

Austin Gunter