Talks, WordCamp, WordPress

Speaking at WordCamp Bristol 2019

David

Bristol WordPress expert and studio owner

UPDATE 19/06/19:

The footage from the talk has been uploaded to WordPress.tv. It can be viewed here:

The talk

I recently spoke at WordCamp Bristol 2019. Even though I have spoken at a number of local WordPress meetups, this was the first at the scale of a WordCamp.

My experience of general web conferences hasn’t been great, they have always felt unfriendly, promotional and overall too corporate. WordCamps are the polar opposite to this and actually feel like the embodiment of the WordPress community at large. Very approachable, friendly and always willing to support each other.

Even though WordCamps are community driven, there are a small number of people that actually organise and make the events happen.

All the WordCamp 2019 organisers. Ben from Atomic Smash is in there somewhere 👀

The amount of time and sheer effort that is required to wrangle X number WordPressers into one place is incredible. Not forgetting organising speakers, technical issues, food, printed assets and the list goes on.

One other thing to note was how well the organiser selected and scheduled the talks (mine excluded 😉). It’s was a great mix of technical development related subjects and topics more suitable for site owners and people just getting into WordPress.

My talk about Gutenberg

I had the great fortune of being the first speaker on Saturday morning, directly after the opening remarks.

Here are the slides from the talk:

One of the roles of the WordCamp organisers is to try and arrange video capture for the whole conference. After allowing time to edit and upload, this will appear of wordpress.tv for future viewing. I’ll post a link back on here when that is available 😉.

Thanks again to the organisers/volunteers everything ran smoothly and it was great to engage with some fantastic questions at the end. Here is some feedback about the talk:

Interesting talk on agency adaptation to the Gutenberg editor by @david_darke from @atomicsmash #WCBRS pic.twitter.com/3hUfRsegI9
— Sarah (@MulberryDesign) May 18, 2019

I was fortunate to be able to attend that talk and as always @david_darke was inspirational, informative and has an amazing ability to explain complex issues in a clear, concise manner. I have much to learn 👍
— Dave Barr (@barrd) May 19, 2019

@david_darke from @atomicsmash talking about how Gutenberg has effected their agency and how they have adaped as an agency, good to hear similar thoughts to me from an established agency @wordcampbristol pic.twitter.com/wg4ecQUCdU
— Paul Jackson (@pixelsnthings) May 18, 2019

Helping at a WordCamp

Conferences like these are awesome for the attendees, but they also promote the wider tech community and help forge Bristol as being a hub for everything digital. Again, this is all off the back of a handful of unpaid individuals that simply want to give back to the community and help others.

If you would like to attend or better still help out at a WordCamp, check out central.wordcamp.org/schedule/

Global view of all upcoming WordCamps for 2019

There are always new events popping up all the time, so it’s also worth doing a search for local WordPress meetups as well on meetup.com.