WordCamp Zaragoza 2024: Caps, Churros and WordPress

Hosting a WordCamp in the middle of January in Zaragoza is quite daring, but the organizers of WordCamp Zaragoza are not deterred by the harsh wind.

As last year’s hurricane-like and freezing wind coming from the Northwest was a bit wild, this year they organized something more subdued, a snowfall like we haven’t seen in years.

This can hinder transport infrastructure, and ruin the heating of the venue, but it does not intimidate WordCamp attendees.

If you want to read a totally biased opinion of what happened, keep reading. If you want something much more objective, realistic, and credible, we can recommend a few authors with much more reputation.

Contributor Day with a scarf

With fewer attendees than confirmed due to the snowfall, we joined the Contributor Day, Joan Vega at the Accessibility table and myself at the Documentation table.

We had two quite different experiences:

How to sign up on GitHub and not get kicked out of the table

Erika Orlando, leading the Documentation table and with more patience than a saint, waited for the drama of signing up on GitHub to succeed.

Half an hour later, after solving 4 rounds of puzzles and audios, with more desire to finish the sign-up process than to read the puzzle instructions carefully, we managed to pass GitHub’s containment wall and access its interior. Good start, surely I left Erika speechless…

She proceeded to explain to me, ignoring my pitiful entry into the platform, how the process of accessing and reviewing the documentation of WordPress’s “Spain-Handbook” worked. Luckily, they made a test repository for the occasion.

Forward-thinking people.

With the collaboration of the team outside, we made a couple of examples and even, at great risk to her professional integrity, she dared to suggest that I get a copy of the spain-handbook repository on my profile.

To the relief of the Documentation team, I haven’t broken anything,

…yet…

The accessibility manual

Joan (Vega), as usual, was doing much better at the Accessibility table.

Along with Vicent Sanchís, the contributors at this table were already fully engaged in discussing aspects of translation, structure, and editing on GitHub.

Joan, specifically, was tasked with drafting the installation protocol for the Buzz tool, which creates subtitles using AI tools for MacOS.

We expected no less, Joan….

Lettuces or Presentations

As Silver Cachirulo sponsors, we wanted to be at the front of our booth as much as possible, because we had small windows of opportunity to capture those unsuspecting individuals who fell within the range of our table.

As we had set up the table, we harbored doubts about whether people would identify us more with a vegetable nursery than with a Managed WordPress Hosting.

The hope was that the doubt would draw them into the trap, and our table, amidst all the Wetopi green and lettuce green, distributing seeds left and right, could be misleading. Did we go too far?

Thank goodness we have principles,…. or so the rollups said 😉

In any case, I would say that it has been, just by eye, an excellent event in terms of visits and networking.

Thanks to the patient visitors who endured our spiel for a handful of seeds.

In the end, we had little time to see the presentations, but thanks to the work of the WP tv team, we have already started watching them.

We have our favorites, but the level is very high… with speakers like Vicent Sanchís, Ana Cirujano, David Ayala, Pablo Moratinos, Maylén García, etc.

Here is the link to the videos on wordpress tv and I encourage you to listen to them carefully, at speed x1 and taking notes.

Networking

Let’s not kid ourselves. We are not very prone to going out and showing ourselves.

Therefore, putting a face to those you follow on LinkedIn or X is priceless. Chabi Angulo and Alvaro Torres are two of the ones we were most eager to meet in person.

But Networking starts much earlier. Almost from the moment you decide to attend a WordCamp.

We loved running into Sergio Buisán from PePA Marketing at the speakers’ dinner. A very proactive person with a whirlwind of ideas in his head. One who tries everything, so we hope to see him drop by wetopi at any time.

Yannick García was a surprise find. We followed him on social networks and it’s not usual to find him at a WordCamp, although he assures that he will repeat.

We saw familiar faces from other WordCamps and many new ones.

It’s partly an advantage when you’re not very well-known, because you give others the opportunity to discover something different and, depending on how, maybe even a joy.

We do not forget the guys from Sirvelia and the good people from Lawwwing. Amadeu from Sirvelia, who is a troublemaker, acted as a unifier of the 3 companies, and who knows what will come out of there.

With a good portfolio of contacts and a return that is already starting to be noticed, we’ll see what challenges we face in the next ones.

Conclusion

In summary, WordCamp Zaragoza 2024 was a mix of climatic challenges, technological adventures, and human encounters.

Between surprise snowfalls, conquests on GitHub, life-saving churros with chocolate (courtesy of the guys from Modular DS), and distributing seeds, we have shown that not even the most intense cold can freeze our passion for WordPress.

And although we may not have attended all the presentations (thanks, WordPress TV!), we have collected more than enough anecdotes and contacts to keep us busy until the next WordCamp Torrelodones.

See you there, with more WordPress stories to share!

We are techies passionate about WordPress. With wetopi, a Managed WordPress Hosting, we want to minimize the friction that every professional faces when working and hosting WordPress projects.

Not a wetopi user?

Free full performance servers for your development and test.
No credit card required.

This might also interest you: