Three weeks leading up to WordCamp London and I didn’t buy a ticket. Having had a busy schedule last several months, I wanted to take a small break of traveling but decided WordCamp was as good as an option to unwind as any. I quickly reserved a flight to London (from Treviso, which included a 4-hour road trip to reach the airport) and booked a room on Airbnb.

WordCamp London had two full days of content spanning across three parallel tracks. The problem with multiple tracks is that you often miss interesting talks that are on different tracks at the same time or that you don’t have enough time to network and switch tracks. WordCamp London had a solid schedule and offered plenty of time between talks to network, switch rooms, get coffee, etc.

These talks really resonated with me:

• Tammie Lister had a talk Know Your Users — inspiring talk to get everyone working on the project excited about doing (good) user research.
• There were three #a11y topics at the same time, so you had to pick one — sneaky organisers :). I opted for #A11Y and How to Sell it to a Client by Mik Scarlet. I validated some of my thoughts how accessibility should be presented to clients (and agencies, developers, and designers).
• The Art of Empathy in Customer Marketing by Nevena Tomovic was also a jewel in the haystack. Nevena shared interesting points on why empathy is important when presenting your stories.
• My dear friend (and my travel buddy) Nela Dunato talked about Ending Design Revision Hell. I heard her talk on WordCamp Split 2016 as well and would wholeheartedly recommend it to you — especially if you are a freelancer who deals with clients.

Contributor Day was the day before the official start of the conference. I joined the Design + Flow team (not much of a surprise). We had several tasks to choose from, and I personally went for writing a testing script for the Gutenberg prototype editor. Accompanied by Johan Falk and Martin Lugton, we managed to build a test script with 18 questions which covered all required use–cases for the prototype editor. One day wasn’t enough to do a significant number of user tests (only one full), but we are hoping the community will jump in. Tammie was the team lead and did a good job of getting everyone involved and contributing — and helped us with valuable input on improving the script. Since WordCamp London, we published a post on how to help with testing on Make WordPress Design blog and shared first results from the testing.

Kudos to conference organizers, speakers, volunteers and sponsors who made this WordCamp London happen. It was one of the most exciting WordCamps I have visited and raised my personal expectations for future events. Cheers.

See You Soon

I was in London for only four full days, and three days were allocated for the conference. One day wasn’t enough time to visit museums I had in mind, but I’ll visit London again. I did get a chance to walk around Camden Town a lot — tasting different cuisines on Camden Market and visiting some friends. I had a great time, and I hope to be there next year — or sooner.