Out & About – WordCamp Madrid

Each team member at 93digital has a £1,000 personal development budget each year. In our ‘Out and About’ series, we catch up with the team following their adventures at conferences, events, and learning. This time we chat with David, following his recent trip to WordCamp Madrid

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1. What is your role at 93digital?

WordPress Developer

2. What have you attended recently, where and why?

I have attended WordCamp Madrid 2018 – one of the most important WordCamps in Spain.

As a WordPress Developer I have only worked here in England, so I did not know how the WordPress Spanish community is and which topics are trending over there:

Are they also worried about Gutenberg?

Do they build themes and plugins as we do?

How do those professionals in Spain work?

3. Tell me more about the premise, and benefits of the event?

I had the chance to swap opinions with them and I am really happy to find out there are great professionals working with WP there too. I am a little bit worried about the approach that the community is taking there to deal with Gutenberg. Not only did I talk with devs but with content creators and people which different backgrounds, and they were a little bit confused about what Gutenberg really is.

4. What did you learn that you can take into your work day-to-day?

Gutenberg was the centre of the event, as expected. I learnt a lot about what it really is , how it works and how some expert Spanish developers are facing it. I have been focused on extending my own knowledge about it. I am also working really hard with JS, which is the immediate WordPress future. I have also started learning React.js, as Gutenberg has been built on that framework. So this was a very productive event for me!

5. What did you learn from a more long-term perspective?

As I said before JS will be the future of WordPress. Learning React will allow me to decouple Gutenberg and use that to build possible dev-friendly solutions to create and extend blocks in Gutenberg. I think other companies and open-source devs will arise with custom solutions, but it is not an excuse to do nothing. So in a long-term perspective, I am pretty sure all this time invested in Gutenberg and JS will bring not only benefits for 93Digital but for other WordPress Developers as well.

6. What surprised you the most about WordCamp?

The food was great for a WordCamp! I guess that might be normal for people who are used to attend events in Spain.

7. What made you decide to go to this event?

It was my first time attending a Spanish WordCamp. I really wanted to know how the WP community is there and meet other professionals from outside the UK. Hopefully, I can repeat this experience there in WordCamp Barcelona next October!

8. Last question David, what is up with the bear?

Jaja! The Bear and The Strawberry Tree is one of the symbols of Madrid, which is why it was used as the WordCamp logo.

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