The next WordCamp Europe conference is fast approaching and that’s reminded me that I haven’t posted about last year’s event yet. After having a good time in Berlin in 2019, the event was paused because of the pandemic: I decided to cancel my trip to Porto in 2022 because of the uncertainty around travelling and I decided against going to Athens in 2023 because of the potential for high temperatures, so it’d been five years since I’d attended the biggest in-person event on the WordPress calendar.
With around 2,500 attendees—twice as many than WordCamp US and WordCamp Asia—WordCamp Europe in Turin was a monster event. The Lingotto Conference and Exhibition Centre is a huge space which was filled with people and sponsor stands and catering, as well as the three “stages” where the talks were held. As it turned out, the space was too big for me to get all that I’d wanted from my time there and I spent most of the conference days walking between the stages and bumping into people I know from the online communities and chatting to them.
I made a conscious effort to intersperse my social time with some quiet time to try and calm my busy mind: I’m an introvert, so spending four consecutive days in company was quite a lot for me to deal with. I would’ve liked to see more of the talks, though, which is a goal for this year’s event.
Because of the scale of the conference, it was difficult to get to connect with anyone for more than brief chats, although I did manage to have a very nice dinner with Swiss attendee Marc and a couple of Dutch guys in a peculiar little cabin on the street, attached to a restaurant, which looks very odd indeed but where the food was quite good. After having visited a few Italian cities over the last thirty years or so, Turin seems to contrast them with a distinct lack of dining culture and a predominance of the kind of restaurant which you’d describe as “local haunts”. I’ll be happy to admit it if I’m wrong, but I spent two evenings doing my best to find somewhere nice to eat, and wasn’t really successful.
I did enjoy a really good apéro and a good pizza in a really loud pizzeria with friends from Required, which was slightly drowned-out by a television showing the Italy match in the UEFA Euro 2024 championship. If in doubt in Italy, head for a pizzeria. (My first “proper” pizza in Italy was on my first evening in Pisa in 1998: the fact that I can remember it says just how good it was.)
I was also invited to the pre-conference social event by a friend on the organising team, where I proceeded to stuff my face with free food and a respectable (read: sensibly small) amount of alcohol. (I learned my lesson about getting drunk at WordCamps at Zurich in 2019 and will never make that mistake again!) It was nice to catch up with Anne-Mieke and Remkus, and to be introduced to a few new contacts.
Aside from the chats at the conference and these two meals, I felt quite isolated while I was at the event, which a few friends have since mentioned is quite common at such big conferences. Because of the sheer number of people there, I largely failed to connect with friends and so as the event went on over several days, I felt quite isolated. It was nice to see Jem and Gaz while I was there and to chat with them and a few others from various countries when we bumped into each other through the event.
Thanks to being so tired after being sociable and walking between 15,000 and 20,000 steps every day I was in Turin, I’ll admit that I got a bit emotional when the introduction video at the end of the event announced that WordCamp Europe is to come to Basel in 2025.
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