Highlights from WordCamp Europe 2024
2,584 attendees participated in the 12th annual WordPress event in Europe, held at the Lingotto Conference and Exhibition Centre in Torino, Italy.
From June 13-15, 2024, WordPress enthusiasts from across the globe gathered in Torino to explore and celebrate the world’s most popular web platform. A dedicated team of 250 volunteers, led by WordCamp veterans Wendie Huis in ‘t Veld, Juan Hernando, and Takis Bouyouris, organized and produced the event.
Impact in Action on Contributor Day
Contributor Day brought together 726 contributors working across 25 teams to support the WordPress project. Their accomplishments included translating 79,059 “strings” for the WordPress user interface across 29 languages, updating documentation for the forthcoming 6.6 release, onboarding new contributors for the support forums and testing teams, and identifying ways to improve plugin security.
Sustainable open source is the future
Joost de Valk and Juliette Reinders Folmer delivered the event’s opening keynote address on sustaining open source software projects. Their keynote covered funding open source, contributing beyond code, and convincing buyers in commercial enterprises that open source is a viable alternative to proprietary platforms.
Two days of engaging sessions
Friday and Saturday saw 60 presentations and workshops held across three tracks. Topics included WordPress development, accessibility, design, business, community, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity.
A youth workshop gave younger attendees hands-on opportunities to build WordPress websites, explore new tech, and learn about internet safety. Meanwhile, a wellness-themed track included yoga lessons and walking tours of Torino, encouraging attendees to step away from their screens and explore the beauty of this year’s host city.
Mid-year project update
WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg shared a mid-year project update on WordPress and concluded by fielding questions from the audience on various topics, from Gutenberg Phases to the WordPress Playground, and acknowledging a request to escalate a bug fix.
Matt’s presentation highlighted the success of the contributor mentorship program and WCEU Contributor Day, demoed Translate Live, and shared an update on the Data Liberation initiative.
Matt also covered the latest innovations with WordPress Playground, highlighted performance gains, and previewed features anticipated in future releases, like rollbacks for auto-updates and zoomed-out view.
Acknowledging an exciting new trend in the WordPress community, Mullenweg discussed “speed build challenges,” where onlookers watch WordPress experts build websites in real-time, showcasing tips, shortcuts, and best practices. One such event took place during a WCEU session, and in the Q&A portion of Matt’s presentation, he was invited to participate in one–an invitation he accepted!
Matt reflected on WordPress reaching its 21st anniversary since he and Mike Little launched the first version in 2003. He shared 11 things to ensure that WordPress remains sustainable for decades to come:
- Simple things should be easy and intuitive, and complex things possible.
- Blogs and dynamic sites are better.
- Documentation should be wiki-easy to edit.
- Forums should be front and center.
- Plugins and themes with community infrastructure.
- Great theme previews and diverse aesthetics.
- We can’t over-index for guidelines and requirements.
- Feedback loops are so important.
- Core should be opinionated and quirky.
- If you make WordPress, use WordPress.
- Stay close to our end-users
Closing remarks
In their closing remarks, the event organizers expressed gratitude for the endorsements of the European Parliament, the city of Torino, and Turismo Torino, the regional tourism board. The volunteer team was celebrated for their hard work in producing the event.
Closing out a robust three days of programming, the organizing team announced that WordCamp Europe 2025 would be held in Basel, Switzerland, from June 5 to 7, 2025. The announcement was met with hearty applause and plans to meet in a year’s time.
Stay connected
WordPress events enable technologists, open source enthusiasts, and community members around the globe to meet, share ideas, and collaborate to drive WordPress and the open web forward.
Mark your calendars for WordCamp US (Portland, Oregon, United States), State of the Word (Tokyo), and next year’s WordCamp Asia in Manila!
This post is a collaboration between the contributors who produce content for wordpress.org/news and the WordCamp Europe Communications team.