WordCamp Europe Berlin 2019 review: WordPress professionals have a lot of work to do

WordCamp Europe in Berlin provided exciting insights into the future of WordPress. Gutenberg will do away with many old concepts - freelancers and agencies will have to adapt. We show you the most important things in the overview.

The WordCamp Europe

With over 2,700 participants, the event was not only one of the largest WordCamps in Europe, but one of the largest in the world. Berlin was a magnet. For old WCEU hands and visitors to local WordCamps, it was not always easy to handle the impressive number of visitors: Some old friends from the community were only encountered on the third day, with the many different paths in the congress center. More facts about the first WCEU in Germany:

Over 70 people in 11 teams organized the camp
60+ speakers from around the world
There were also over 60 sponsors, including Raidboxes, which had its own stand and supports WordCamp Europe (more on this later)
More than 160 volunteers. Our team member Leefke was also there, thank you very much!
Over 600 trees planted thanks to the participants, more information on this later
5 yoga sessions and guided meditations to keep the health factor in mind
A WordPress workshop for children who created their own website

The character of the WordCamps Europe has changed significantly with this scale, if you think back to the camps 3/4/5 years ago. The great thing, however, was that the camp in Berlin was extremely international, with over 50 languages reportedly represented.

Raidboxes Stand WCEU — Always well attended: The Raidboxes stand

While at past events the German-speaking "bubble" tended to keep to itself, this was completely different here. There was a lively mix in discussions, at the stands and during the evening leisure activities, with English as the official language. It felt like the exchange had never been as lively as at this WCEU. Besides all the technical facts, this is the most important message: WordPress and its community are colorful, open, future-oriented and diverse.

The future of WordPress: challenges for agencies and freelancers

As expected, the keynote speech by Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, was met with great interest. Unsurprisingly, his main topic was the not-so-new WordPress editor Gutenberg, which is gradually developing into an exciting tool for collaborative and, above all, multilingual writing. This heralds a new chapter that does justice to the editor's great namesake.

In high demand: The Wapuu Quartet from Raidboxes

But the many small details that Matt presented in his lecture are also quite something. Among others with:

Install new blocks directly from the editor
A comprehensive block directory (similar to the existing plugin directory)
Navigation blocks, blocks-in-blocks
A snap-to-grid function for uniform positioning of images and tables in the article
The Gutenberg team is implementing all new features in parallel for desktop, mobile and as an open source library
The editor is also increasingly available for other systems, such as Drupal or Laravel

Like so many in the community, I myself cursed Gutenberg for a long time. I am now much more aware of the efficiency of the block-based approach. What's more, it's fun to write with Gutenberg - small bugs or not. And after all, that's what blogging (and everything else you can do with WordPress) is supposed to do: Joy.

Matt Mullenweg WordPress Keynote — Full house at Matt Mullenweg

Not everyone involved is happy that Gutenberg is gradually taking over more and more CMS functions. In particular, the many service providers, agencies and freelancers who work with WordPress and WooCommerce have to ask themselves: Will my plugin/theme/service still be in demand in the future? Or will it become obsolete due to Gutenberg? Matt, for example, was asked:

With the expansion of Gutenberg, will it even be necessary to use your own theme?

His answer was simple and honest:

I don't know (yet).

Matt Mullenweg assumes that there will continue to be concepts or a framework that corresponds to our current WordPress & WooCommerce themes. However, no one can yet reliably estimate what these will look like. Gutenberg will do away with many old concepts. And no one can rest on their laurels on the agency or developer side.

Matt @ Raidboxes

The co-founder of WordPress visited our Raidboxes stand on the second day. Among other things, he was shown the particularly simple management of the hosting packages and our 1-click staging environment:

Matt Mullenweg Raidboxes — Matt Mullenweg has Raidboxes explained to him by Johannes (left) and Torben

He was particularly excited about our climate-positive web hosting (more on this in a moment) and the target group we focus on - agencies and freelancers for WordPress and WooCommerce. He also emphasized our focus on the German-speaking market, which we are gradually expanding internationally. He sees WordCamp Europe as the perfect stage for this.

WooCommerce is becoming more important

We presented our new book "WooCommerce for professionals - Online stores with WordPress for freelancers & agencies" for the first time at WordCamp Europe. It will soon be available as an e-book and in German - subscribe to our Twitter, Facebook or newsletter to be notified.

WooCommerce book — Our new book on WooCommerce

We spoke to several customers and visitors - from the local community as well as internationally - about the topic of WooCommerce. My personal conclusion from this:

Developers are well aware that the market for online stores with WordPress is on the rise. However, freelancers and smaller agencies in particular shy away from the effort of familiarizing themselves with the complex topic of eCommerce.
This has less to do with technical restrictions - if you develop for WordPress, you can usually do the same for WooCommerce. With online store projects, however, you are quickly confronted with issues relating to website topics such as online law, taxes or logistics.
The fear of contact also has to do with the fact that many freelancers originally come from the blogosphere - and have little experience with the sales and marketing-heavy processes of a web store.
Those who already support customers in the eCommerce environment report steady and stable growth rates. A very small online store with just a few products often turns into a larger project in the medium term, which then also requires significantly more support.

Overall, the opportunity to include WooCommerce in the portfolio is therefore quite favorable. More and more brick-and-mortar stores - which have only published content so far - are interested in a store. In addition to their actual WordPress portal.

With this in mind, you could lose customers in the future if you don't get to grips with the leading store system. You can find more information about the opportunities of WooCommerce for freelancers and agencies in the following articles:

Personal impressions of the team

A total of 10 Raidboxes employees were in Berlin to present our WordPress hosting for agencies, freelancers and WP professionals to an international audience. Numerous interested parties as well as customers took the opportunity to learn more about our features and our sustainable approach. The stand was extremely well attended. Here are a few comments from the Raidboxes team.

Torben Simon Meier - Founder/Managing Director & CMO:

For us as Raidboxes, it was the first time that we had our own stand at one of the biggest WordPress events such as WordCamp Europe. I am still overwhelmed by the international community, the exchange at eye level and the great interest in our climate-positive WordPress hosting, where we have already planted over 11,000 trees for our customers in three months.

Johannes Benz - Managing Director & CFO:

The WCEU was a great event. A big compliment to the organizing team. It was not only great for us to receive direct personal feedback from our customers, but also to promote the exchange between our customers over dinner. WordCamp Europe is a great opportunity to network.

Matthias Held - Head of Development & Product Manager:

As table-lead of the hosting community, it was a great experience to see how other hosters work and how we come up with great basic guidelines together. The exchange with friends from the DE and international community was also very nice. Of course, the 80s party was my personal highlight and I was able to dress like I usually do at home 😉

WCEU Party Berlin — Our three graces Leefke, Matthias and Ariane: Chic for the WCEU 80s party

Ariane Rowe - Administration & Happy Management:

As a "newcomer" to the community, the WCEU Berlin was the first event for me. I am totally thrilled about so much positive feedback. And I am happy to be a member of Raidboxes.

Leefke Krönke - Content & Social Media Manager:

I was absolutely thrilled that this year's WCEU felt like a class reunion despite its unprecedented size. Getting to know WP enthusiasts from all over the world and being able to contribute to the success of the event as a volunteer were my personal highlights. And of course the great atmosphere at the afterparty.

Auke Tembrink - System administrator

For me as a newcomer to the WP community, it was an overwhelming experience. The international community is awesome. I got to know a lot of nice and interesting people and I'm really looking forward to seeing them again at the next WordCamps.

My own conclusion (Michael Firnkes) as Content & WooCommerce Manager:

It was great to meet up with many old WP colleagues after having neglected the camps for a while. And I'm pleased to see how well our topic of green hosting was received. Despite the current climate protection discussions, I wouldn't have expected it.

Raidboxes plants WCEU trees

Everyone is talking about climate protection - web hosting consumes a lot of resources. We're doing something about it with the first climate-positive hosting for WordPress & WooCommerce. One of our measures: For every WordPress site or WooCommerce store that you host with us, we plant a tree for you. So far, we have been able to contribute over 11,000 trees - thanks to our customers. You can read more about the program and our partner Eden Reforestation Projects here.

We are making an additional contribution to WordCamp Europe in the spirit of the global community. All camp participants were able to make a mark at our stand and hand in a card for climate protection. Our promise was that we would plant an additional tree for every vote received. In the end, 301 cards were collected.

Green hosting — The participants support climate protection

Our managing director Johannes has doubled this number again, so that we are now planting 602 additional trees - a nice additional success for the WCEU!

The Raidboxes competition

At the same time, we raffled off an iPad among all participants in the campaign as a small incentive for as many new trees as possible. Around 40 of them took the opportunity to take part in the draw live on the second day. The lucky winner was Andrew Liyanage from Switzerland:

Once again, a big thank you to everyone who supported our campaign at the stand. Once again, participants came from all over the world and we received great feedback and lots of praise for our green hosting.

Comments on WordCamp Europe

Some participants have already written about WordCamp Europe 2019, below you will find a small selection. Your contribution is not included? Feel free to mention it in the comments and we'll link to it.

German-language contributions:

English-language contributions:

You can find the recordings of the individual sessions here on YouTube.

See you in Porto

A big thank you goes to the international but also local organizing team of WordCamp Europe in Berlin. The group around Milan Ivanovic (Global Lead) and Bernhard Kau (Local Lead) managed to tackle a huge challenge. Anyone who has ever organized a WordCamp knows how much work the team had to do. Especially as the WCEU has now taken on completely different dimensions and requires much more professional planning.

Raidboxes social — Gladly used: Our social frame at the #WCEU

The eighth WordCamp Europe will take place in Porto / Portugal in 2020. After the Spanish community (2015, Seville), this is a great opportunity to get to know the Portuguese community better. Raidboxes will definitely be there again. We are already looking forward to seeing you!

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