I just got back from my second WordCamp this year and also the second in Italy: WordCamp Torino. At WordCamp London three weeks ago, I was pretty sure, that I would not attend this one. But only a week later, plans changed and I couldn’t resist 🙂
Friday: Contributor Day
With only buying my ticket two weeks before the event, the Contributor Day tickets were already gone. Thanks to the organizing team, they could find some more room for us, so I was able to attend. With the upcoming WordCamp Europe and my participation in the organizing team, I had some work to do on the new default WordCamp theme. I hope that I can present you the results soon. There was also a little workshop about VVVÂ which was pretty useful, as I just set up the new environment for my work on the new theme.
Saturday: Conference Day
After hanging out with some people on Friday evening, the second day started around 10am for me with the Conference Day. The WordCamp Tornio had two tracks and on most times, they also had some english talks.
Know your users
In London, I missed the talk from Tammi Lister about her experiences with user testing. So I was really happy, that I had the chance to see her live in Torino. She mad some really nice slides and some good insights on how to do user test and what they really are. She even started her talk with a quick “up your hands up, if…” and she stated this as a very easy user test. In summary, she invited everyone to start using user testing, no matter how easy the process might be.
Getting Started With WordPress Plugin Development
In the second slot, there was no English talk, but the third one had a nice one from Thomas Vitale about how to develop a simple plugin. He had a cool inofficial title for his talk as well 😉
I really liked his visualization on how actions and filters work and in which way they interact with the WordPress core.
Writing testable code in WordPress
As I have seen John Blackbournes talk in London and still had some work to do on the new WordCamp theme, I took some time off. But after lunch, I visited Luca Tumedei‘s talk on how to make PHP code testable. He also pointed out what the different test methods are and gave some examples with Codeception.
Big little shame – A story of empowered user experience through localization
One of the talks, I was looking most forward to, was from Caspar Hübinger, a good friend from Potsdam. He talked about his thaught on gender equality in the translation of the WordPress core. This was a little follow up to his talk last year in Frankfurt. His session was not only the highlight for me, but also for many others in the room. I have visited many WordCamps, but nothing was like this session from Capsar:
He will give this talk also at WordCamp Berlin and I am curious to see, what the German community will say about it.
Getting the REST API ready for Multisite
As the REST API is one of the release focus points for 2017, it is important, to have them be prepared for multisite installations (like this blog is on). In his talk, Felix Arntz pointed out some current pain points, when using the REST API on a multisite. Not only are some features not yet implemented. Some how are, react differently than through the WordPress backend.
Decluttering WordPress
The last English talk was given by Pascal Birchler, in which he talked about how to declutter the WordPress backend. He showed some of the aweful things, some WordPress plugins are doing and how they can frustrate not only beginners. He also gave some tipps on how to simplify the backend, so that users find the things they realls need.
After party
I think I don’t have to say, that WordCamp Torino also had a great after party. Not only with nice people and good Italien food, but also some nice conversations and some dancing later the evening.
Meeting a new community
Just as in Bilbao and Milano, I was really interested to meet new people and get a inside view into another community. I you’ve only attended your local WordCamps or the big ones, like WordCamp Europe or WordCamp US, you really missed something out.
I want to thank the organizers, the many volunteers and everyone from the Italian and internation community for a great experience and a great time in Torino. I am pretty sure, that this was not the las WordCamp in Italy, I visited 🙂