The WordCamp Stuttgart #WCSTG was special: with a sustainable and diverse agenda, inspiring sessions and an impressive backdrop at Hohenheim Palace. Raidboxes was there as a gold sponsor. Our personal review.
WordCamps and sustainability
WordCamp Stuttgart was a pioneer in terms of a "green" camp. This is probably due in no small part to organizer Simon Kraft: with wpforfuture, he is launching an initiative to make WordPress more sustainable. See our article How green is WordPress? with tips for developers and users of WordPress & WooCommerce.
Raidboxes is also a pioneer for sustainability with its WordPress hosting. More and more hosters are jumping on this bandwagon, including in Stuttgart. We're happy about that, as long as it helps the environment.
The ecological cornerstones of WordCamp Stuttgart:
- Purely vegetarian and vegan food, which is estimated to have saved up to one ton of CO2
- Avoiding disposable packaging and crockery, including at the coffee bar
- Few printed materials and little swag
- No T-shirts for the participants
- Sustainable topics on Contributor Day and in the sessions
- The organization's request to offset CO2 emissions via atmosfair
We sponsors were also encouraged not to distribute too much material unnecessarily. And - where possible - to use public transport. Future WordCamps can certainly be guided by this green agenda.
WordPress and diversity
The organizing team in Stuttgart worked hard in the run-up to the event to present a session schedule that was as balanced as possible. In the end, 8 out of 29 speakers were female, after initially only three women. Simon emphasized in conversation that the actual goal of WordCamps - equality - was still far from being achieved. But overall, the situation has improved significantly when you think back to the German-speaking camps four/five years ago.
It is anything but easy for the organization to recruit female speakers. Discussions about other events, for example on Twitter, show that the accusation quickly arises that, as a woman, you are now only being asked to speak in order to fulfill a quota. And not from a purely professional point of view. The topic is complex. Even when writing about it, I have to be careful not to slip into clichés. But the commitment is worth it.
The more colorful the speaker landscape, the more topics can be offered. And the more people feel represented by the WordPress community in the end. See also the diversity initiative of WordCamp Düsseldorf.
Overall, WordCamp Stuttgart looked like this:
- Around 200 tickets sold
- Around 170 participants
- Around a third of these are from the Stuttgart area
- Other countries represented: Switzerland, UK, South Korea, Hungary, South Africa, India, Macedonia, Finland, Belgium
The University of Hohenheim's castle was an impressive venue for all participants. It was probably the most beautiful WordCamp backdrop to date, which clearly encouraged creative discussions:
Separate rooms for discussions and quiet work supported this aim. The small organizing team of Simon Kraft, Dennis Hipp, Matthias Kittsteiner, Christopher Kurth and Nadine Hipp did a great job, and not only here.
GDPR & law for webworkers
Melvin Louis Dreyer and Maha Paris from our partner Händlerbund contributed a session on GDPR for web workers. A tiresome topic for creatives, but one that concerns all freelancers and agencies. See our articles and tips on this topic:
- GDPR & WordPress: Technical measures
- Borlabs Cookie: The GDPR solution for WordPress
- Comparison of 5 popular GDPR plugins for WordPress
- Data protection as a conversion killer: Important, but underestimated
Also our e-book "GDPR guide for WP agencies, freelancers & website operators". It familiarizes you with the most important content and recommendations regarding the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The presentation dealt with the basic principles of the GDPR that every freelancer and every company must take into account. Since the GDPR, data processing of natural persons is generally prohibited; you need consent (opt-in) for this. This is based on voluntary consent, which is why cookie banners, for example, must have a special form. See our guide on this.
As Melvin explained, there are still many ambiguities, gray areas and legal principles in the implementation of the GDPR, some of which are contradictory. His recommendation:
You should take the cookie ruling to heart now, even if the legislative development is not yet finally clear and court rulings are still pending.
This lack of clarity can change quickly, so you need to be prepared. And this despite the fact that the GDPR makes it much more difficult for many companies to analyze purchasing behavior and optimize their processes.
The purpose limitation of collected data is also important. If a buyer enters their address in an online store, this may be used for shipping purposes, for example. But you may not pass it on to partners without further consent or have the recipient visited in person by the sales department. Another pillar is the transparency and security of data processing by you or your agency:
- Data subjects must know what happens to which of their data and how it is processed
- Among other things, a meaningful privacy policy serves this purpose
- The lawfulness of the processing must be ensured at all times
- The accuracy of the data must also be guaranteed
- The data must be stored securely against access by third parties
Do you have questions about the GDPR for web workers and agencies? Feel free to ask them in the comments and we will make a post out of it together with our partner Händlerbund. You can watch the full presentation here:
In this context, a big thank you to the WordPress.tv team for their voluntary and fast work! See all sessions of WordCamp Stuttgart in the overview.
The WordPress Health Check plugin
Torsten Landsiedel presented how to work with the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin in Stuttgart. This allows you to deactivate all plugins for the admin only and switch to a standard theme. The plugins and the theme can then be reactivated individually. This allows you to track down a plugin conflict, for example. See his article on our blog on this topic.
With the Health Check plugin, you can also find numerous other errors in the configuration of WordPress and WooCommerce. These include cases where even experienced supporters are at a loss at first glance. Torsten gave the example of incorrect mass editing of posts if the WordPress PHP variable max_input_vars is set too low.
However, this requires professional knowledge and careful interpretation of the entries in the plugin. It is not easy to decode the individual values and debug information correctly. This is because they are not documented in the plugin itself.
However, there are also criticisms of the plugin. For example, even in the standard WP delivery state without installed plugins, errors and warnings are displayed. Practical on the other hand: You can add your own routines to the tests using PHP filters. You can also remove individual tests. For example, if your managed hosting has integrated functions that do not need to be tested. Or if your WordPress configuration delivers falsified results.
The session "Health Check Plugin" is also available on WordPress.tv.
Sessions for developers
Overall, there was a good mix of presentations for users, marketing and WordPress development at WordCamp Stuttgart. Our product developers Jeffrey and Marcel attended the more technical sessions. Jeffrey's impressions:
- How to recover from a security breach: Otto Kekäläinen presented a case from his practice in which five of a customer's sites went down at the same time. He described how he checked them step by step. Was it malware? Where was the backdoor? And how did he restore the system? See his talk.
- ddev, Docker and a local relationship: Frank Schmittlein explained how to use the PHP development environment ddev with the container tool docker to develop locally. Watch the session on WordPress.tv.
- Understanding git: David Remer was all about the version management system git. What runs under the surface of git? And how does it store its information in its own files? Understanding this is very helpful for recovering code that you thought was lost.
- Build, maintain and sell a WordPress plugin: Robert Windisch gave an insight into the product development of WordPress plugins. When do you sell them for free, and when in the premium model? He used the MultilingualPress plugin as the basis for this process.
The WordCamp Retreat Soltau is also still looking for speakers. You can submit a topic yourself or suggest another person. You can find more information on the camp blog.
WordPress and social responsibility
Caspar Hübinger rounded off the lasting impact of WordCamp Stuttgart. Anyone familiar with his presentations knows that they look beyond the community in a very special way. And that they hold up a mirror to us. Because as "techies", we all have a responsibility: WordPress and its use cases always have an impact on society.
His talk "Being human in times of digital dehumanization" revolved around the following questions:
- How do I ensure that commercial marketing intentions are compatible with my own values?
- How can I avoid manipulating people at some point, whether intentionally or unintentionally?
- Can I prevent myself from becoming someone I don't want to be? With which product/provider/offer do I draw the red line?
- Under what circumstances do I need to redefine this line?
Because we all market ourselves or our company in some way. This is precisely why we should ask ourselves the questions mentioned. "Another word for marketing is propaganda" - Caspar explained this reference very forcefully, based on his own family history. One of his grandfathers rejected National Socialism, the other collaborated. Caspar's question to himself is:
How would I have behaved if I had had the foresight? How existential would the disadvantages have had to be for me not to choose the easier path?
What does this have to do with us and WordPress? "We are living in the age of surveillance capitalism," is his answer. See "the age of surveillance capitalism" and the book of the same name by Shoshana Zuboff. People are increasingly being divided into segmentable clusters in order to manipulate us. The goals are total predictability and controllable consumers - with the help of something called online marketing.
This is all done under the guise of the supposed neutrality of technology. And with our data as the driving force and currency:
One example is Google. Google's self-defined goal is to organize the world's information - refinanced by online advertising. But who decided on this goal? Who commissioned it?
We all rely on and use services such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram etc., as Caspar clearly showed. So we can be critical and still be susceptible to blackmail as digital workers. It is - as in the darkest chapter of Germany - an opt-in. As digital workers, we make ourselves accomplices to the machinery of surveillance capitalism. "We have the choice to take over the means of production of surveillance capitalism, or to choose another profession," he said.
But we also have a perspective: the positive change you make through a decision of conscience will save a human life at some point. Even if it is in another generation. Even in your (marketing) job, you can always work towards a new ethic, even if only in small steps.
Something in us will want to take stock at some point. We should live in such a way that we have no regrets at that moment. Being human means constantly questioning the basis of our own decisions. Just as we should always question those of surveillance capitalism.
Caspar Hübinger's talk got under the skin. And he held everyone present accountable. You can find the complete session as a video on his blog or here:
Raidboxes at WordCamp Stuttgart
Our stand was very well attended on both days. From customers inquiring about new features, such as the extended WordPress templates or the RB Login Protector. But numerous interested parties also came to find out more: from freelance developers to larger agencies. Here too, WordCamps are becoming increasingly professional. Our team explained the advantages of our Managed WordPress Hosting and why it makes your site run much faster.
After the camp is before the camp: We look forward to seeing you at WordCamp Düsseldorf #WCDUS at the end of November! Or at the WordCamp Retreat Soltau #WCRetreat in 2020. We support both camps as a sponsor.
Do you have questions about our sustainable and particularly fast WordPress hosting? Then talk to us directly on site. Or contact our WordPress experts at any time.
