ATR 42 was my ride!

Few days ago (11-12.10.2012), I had a pleasure of attending and speaking at WordCamp Gdansk 2012.

I was really lucky, to have this opportunity and still can’t believe, that I managed to get there.

Let me explain; Gdansk is the only city in Poland with a direct flight connecton with Aarhus (Danish city I currently live in), but the timing of the flights was just perfect (10th and 13th).

As you can see, this was a unique opportunity, and I had no other choice, but to sign up.

Cranes – from Gdansk Shipyard tour.
Photo by Wojciech Rownanek

The initiator and organizer of the whole thing, was Michal Zuk – who deserves kudos for putting it all together and keeping the standards extraordinarily high. Once again, thanks Michal, great job! 

The 2-day WordCamp was held in a historical building: BHP Hall – which used to be a part of the Gdansk Shipyard complex.

Great location, bunch of hotels nearby, decent Wi-Fi and professional multimedia equipment – perfect spot for a meet-up of a bunch of WordPress nerds 🙂

 
First day of the conference was dedicated to all kind of geeky stuff: Frameworks, Plugins, Hosting and Infrastructure ( “Varnish” word have been used quite often ). The theme of the second day was mostly, one big “chillout” ( each decent WordCamp has an afterparty, we had one too – that is all 🙂 )

I enjoyed the most talks by:
– Marcin Pietrzak – What to do, and what not to do when coding a plugin (plugin – database interaction).
– Pawel Pela – Clients of the freelancer: report from the battlefield and a study of hardcore cases.

The second one, reminded me of my freelancing times, and made me glad, that I’m not doing it anymore 😛

I had few WooNinjas helping me out.
Photo by Wojciech Rownanek

As I mentioned at the beginning, I also had the privilege of being one of the speakers. My talk was all about WooFramework as the engine of WooThemes.

I’m not entirely happy from my performance, but I guess I can blame it, on the fact, that this was my first WordCamp, and first WordCamp speech ever.

From the feedback, that I have received during, and after my speech, it seems that most of the people in the audience were tech-savvy and would like to hear more details and practical code examples.

 
Nevertheless, I hope, that I was able to encourage at least a small part of the croud to check out WooFramework or its indirect descendant: WooDojo and see if they can benefit from using them in their projects.

All talks were in Polish, so poor Kim would, most of the time, just do “his thing”, at the end of the hall.
Photo by Wojciech Rownanek

Last, but not least, I’m glad, that I met Kim Gjerstad – founder of Wysyja (an awesome e-mailing plugin for WordPress – if you’ve never heard about it, this is the time to check it out!)

He is a very smart guy, but also cool and friendly. I had a lot of fun, chatting with him on everything what WordPress is about: economy, people, business, plugins, themes, and literally everything else WP-related.

During the second day, he had a speech on building a business around Wysija. It was one of the best talks, in my opinion (especially, because I was the translator :P). Kim shared insightful tips on running a start-up and promoting a product in a freemium business model.

Summing it up,
For me, WordCamp Gdansk 2012 was a blast! I listened to a bunch of cool talks, met some interesting folks and just had lots of fun, being amongst people that share the same passion.

I am looking forward to the next year’s WordCamp in Poland and hope to see again, all the awesome people I met in Gdansk.