WordCamp Europe is of course the topic of the past week. The first reviews are already ready. One highlight of the event, for example, is the Q&A with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. In addition, the beta version of the new Gutenberg Editor is now available in the plugin repository.

That was WordCamp Europe 2017

2900 WordPress enthusiasts followed WordCamp Europe on site or via livestream. We were also there with the whole team. The session topics ranged from intercultural communication in the global WP community to design and WP security - so there really was something exciting for everyone.

One of the highlights of the event was the Q&A with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, who had to answer some critical questions from the community. The question of the importance and role of inclusion and accessibility was one of the overarching themes of the WordCamp and played a central role in some very interesting sessions. All session videos will probably be made available for free on WordPress.tv in the coming days.

Q&A with Matt Mullenweg

One of the highlights of WordCamp Europe 2017 in Paris was the Q&A session with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and moderator Om Malik. The Q&A session provided surprisingly good insights into Mullenweg's world of thought. The 33-year-old believes that despite the growing relevance of gestures and spoken language, text will still play a key role in online content in the coming decades.

Mullenweg's answer to a critical audience question regarding the takeover of WooCommerce by Automattic in 2015 is also worth seeing: "When you buy something in open source, you're not buying the code. [...] It was the people. 53 people joined the company, joined Automattic. It was the brands, the brand of WooCommerce. It was the integrations and the meetups and everything that they had built since then."

The question and answer session focused on the presentation of the new Gutenberg Editor. This will revolutionize WordPress "until everything is a block", said Mullenweg.

The new WordPress editor Gutenberg

The future of WordPress is block-based. At least that's the impression you get when you look at the presentation of the new WordPress editor Gutenberg .

The new editor is currently available as a plugin in the official WordPress plugin directory and will also be integrated into the WordPress core after the 100,000th download.

Gutenberg is more reminiscent of a page builder than a classic text editor. According to Mullenweg, its block system is also intended to replace widgets and many other standard elements of the WordPress core.

More news at a glance

WordPress TV
All sessions from WordCamp Europe 2017 are expected to be available for free on WordPress.tv in the next few days.

WordCamp Europe 2018
Next year's WordCamp Europe will take place in Belgrade from June 14 to 16.