WordCamp US 2023: Welcoming the Future

Although summer was coming to an end, the weather and the people on the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center were equally sunny due to WordCamp US 2023!

The flagship event – held in National Harbor, Maryland, from August 24-26, 2023 – drew over 2,000 WordPress enthusiasts. Because the first-ever WordCamp was held within the US, it’s all the time nice to see the WordPress community come together within the region.

This yr, Hostinger participated as a Super Admin sponsor. A few of our team members also attended the Community Summit, participated in Contributors Day, and volunteered for the event. Read on as we walk down the memory lane and relive the nice times.

Before WordCamp’s three-day important event began, there was the Community Summit. Participants gathered in person on the Summit for cross-project discussions to advance the WordPress open-source project.

The Community Summit took place on August 22-23, 2023, at the identical venue as the remaining of WordCamp US 2023. Not every WordCamp has a Community Summit, so this yr’s WordCamp US was much more special.

The Summit was an invitation-only event to make sure everyone present could actively participate. The organizers attempted to incorporate WordPress contributors from various backgrounds to cover as many perspectives as possible. This yr, it was attended by 125 participants.

It’s price noting that the Summit shouldn’t be intended to be an area to see “who’s who” in WordPress. The participants were a mixture of latest and experienced contributors, facilitating more inclusive dialogues.

The topics discussed during these two days were pretty comprehensive. They ranged from technical ones like aligning processes and contributions between WordPress Core and Gutenberg to human-oriented issues like ensuring Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) for all contribution teams.

No decisions were made on the Summit. As a substitute, the event focused on identifying issues the community should address within the project’s future.

Fortunately, notes about each discussion can be found on the Make WordPress website in order that contributors who couldn’t attend the Summit can meet up with the conversations.

Contributors Day

Next, it was time for the WordCamp US 2023 important event!

As usual, WordCamp kicked off with Contributors Day. Here, attendees could join any of the 22 Make WordPress contributor teams and get actively involved within the project.

What’s wonderful about Contributors Day is that it’s open to everyone, no matter skill level. So, the more experienced contributors could help newcomers onboard and share hands-on guidance to navigate the tasks. Attendees could also join multiple tables and were highly encouraged to explore their interests.

What was latest about Contributors Day at WordCamp US 2023 was the room setup. As a substitute of everybody gathering in a single big room, they were spread into multiple rooms.

Closely related teams were put in the identical room to encourage deeper cross-collaboration initiatives. Although the camaraderie of being in the identical room with all the opposite contributors is unrivaled, it was nice to have a more focused space to elaborate on an initiative.

Hostinger has some sponsored contributors involved within the Five for the Future initiative. A few of them attended this Contributors Day alongside other Hostingerians.

“I joined the chat about cross-team collaboration to translate WordPress documentation and training material,” says Leonardus Nugraha, our WordPress Content Specialist and a Documentation team contributor. “This concept had been brewing for some time. On the WordCamp US Contributors Day, we had all of the reps from the various teams we would have liked.”

Meanwhile, Aditya Remy Shah, our Affiliate Partnerships Manager, joined the Sustainability team’s table. “We had a discussion from the hosting brand’s perspective. We brainstormed ways WordPress can develop into more sustainable from 4 angles – social, economical, event, and environmental,” he says.

By day’s end, contributors connected and gathered actionable ideas. As contribution is at the center of WordPress, Contributors Day is definitely some of the effective ways to strengthen the collective effort.

Conference Days

Moving to the second and third day of WordCamp US 2023 – the Conference Days! That is when attendees got to hitch various talks and workshops.

Greater than 30 talks and workshops covered a broad spectrum of WordPress-related topics, from core web vitals to community constructing.

One talk wasn’t directly related to WordPress, however it spoke to the anxiety surrounding AI and the longer term of the writing occupation. Ken Liu, an award-winning fiction author, delivered “Tell the Story You Want To Tell”, where he talked about rediscovering storytelling’s meaning in human lives. His session challenged attendees to rethink how and why we, humans, tell stories.

One other interesting talk was “For All Userkind: NASA Web Modernization and WordPress”. During this talk, Abby Bowman and J.J. Toothman discussed the beta.nasa.gov website redesign, which uses WordPress.

In a breakout session afterward, they took attendees on a site tour, including its back end. Some people still think WordPress only suits small businesses or personal web sites, so it was fascinating to find out how big organizations like NASA utilize the platform.

And because the WordCamp US 2023 venue is just around a 30-minute drive from the nation’s capital, it’s only fitting that we had a session about probably the most high-profile WordPress website within the US – whitehouse.gov.

Presented by Andrew Nacin and Helen Hou-Sandí, the session chronicled the behind-the-scenes story of the positioning’s launch by those that led the project themselves.

All of the talks are actually available to observe on the official WordPress YouTube channel. The presentation slides may also be available shortly on the WordCamp US 2023 website’s session pages. And like other WordCamps, the talks may also be public on WordPress.television.

Hostinger Booth

Standing tall within the Sponsor Hall with our signature violet-and-black colorways, attendees stopped by the Hostinger booth to talk about our services, try our features, or collect merchandise.

Opening a booth is one technique to connect higher with our customers, IT professionals, and tech enthusiasts. “WordCamp is an ideal opportunity to listen to our customers’ feedback directly so we will proceed to deliver one of the best managed WordPress hosting experience,” says Domantas Gudeliauskas, WordPress Marketing Manager at Hostinger.

Among the many features attendees could try at our booth, they were mostly enthusiastic about Hostinger’s WordPress AI Assistant. Most attendees said they loved the way in which it may well speed up the web site creation process.

One other crowd favorite was hPanel, Hostinger’s own custom control panel. We were glad many purchasers and attendees found hPanel easy to navigate and informative. Advanced users were also obsessed with Pro Panel, which empowers users to handle multiple web sites efficiently.

The Way forward for WordPress

In a recognized WordCamp tradition, Conference Days normally wrap up with two signature sessions.

The primary session by WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy reviewed essential conversations and ways to drive the project forward.

During “Josepha Haden Chomphosy on the longer term of WordPress”, Josepha reflected on how WordPress has evolved in the past 20 years and the way it keeps growing due to the WordPress community.

Josepha emphasized the importance of constructing WordPress accessible for everybody, in order that it may well thrive in the longer term and last more than the community who builds it. “We deserve an open web that’s secure in the longer term,” she says, highlighting WordPress’ vision to democratize publishing and provides voice to the voiceless.

Next, WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg’s session, to debate current and upcoming technical improvements, followed by a live Q&A.

During “Gutenberg: Next with Matt Mullenweg.”, Matt discussed the then-newly released WordPress 6.3, and highlighted improvements on the upcoming WordPress 6.4.

This next WordPress release is being led by a squad of gender-underrepresented contributors, which only happened once before with the historic WordPress 5.6, code-named “Simone.”

WordPress 6.4 will include a brand new default theme, Twenty Twenty-4. Unlike past default themes, Twenty Twenty-4 is a multipurpose theme. It may well look equally beautiful for displaying a number of images or chunks of text.

Matt also highlighted that Gutenberg is now entering the third phase of its development, which can give attention to collaborative workflow. Users will soon have the option to work concurrently with their team on the identical post or page and see who made which edit. This could possibly be a game changer for a team of distant staff.

As Josepha said in her talk, “We exist for so long as people need to use our software.” Indeed, the upcoming collaborative improvements might be another reason for people to stick with WordPress.