Why We Attend WordCamps (and You Should Too)

All year long, SiteGround supports WordCamps around the world by sponsoring, attending, or speaking at events. Our teammates are also active members of the WordPress community. They contribute to establishing hosting standards, translating WordPress, and even organizing meetups and WordCamps in Torino, Plovdiv, Sofia, Gran Canaria, and Montreal.

Earlier this month, more than 20 members of the SiteGround team went to Belgrade, Serbia for the sixth edition of WordCamp Europe. For three days, attendees from every continent gathered to listen to talks about WordPress, attend workshops, and contribute to the open-source WordPress software.

We’ve chosen a few highlights from our trip that explain why we attend WordCamps and contribute to WordPress – and why you should too.

We get to make WordPress better

WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world. Because we host so many WordPress websites, we’re committed to making the software as secure, reliable, and useful as possible – just like our hosting services. WordPress is open-source, which means hundreds of volunteers contribute to fixing bugs, improving the code, and adding features.

Contributor Days are a day-long event organized around a WordCamp where members of the community gather in-person to work on WordPress and grow the community.

For example, at WordCamp Europe 2018, six SiteGround employees attended Contributor Day, where we joined teams working to make WordPress better through community building, improving the mobile app, making WordPress more accessible, and many other ways.

Our team specifically worked on establishing standards and best-practices for WordPress hosting and developing tools to help local organizers build up vibrant and sustainable WordPress meetup groups in their communities.

The work we and hundreds of other volunteers do in the community supports the health of the entire WordPress ecosystem which includes the companies, agencies, and freelancers who make a living using WordPress. We’re proud to be among them and help shape the community at the same time.

WordCamps offer training and knowledge from industry experts

We love WordCamps for the high-quality talks and training they offer. We learn a lot from our fellow WordPress professionals and always leave with fresh ideas.

We also see first-hand how conferences like WordCamp can help SiteGround customers improve their knowledge of WordPress or grow their WordPress-related business. Thanks to sponsorships, WordCamps are also extremely affordable and allow freelancers, small business owners, and non-profits to improve their skills.

This year, WordCamp Europe included presentations on Search Engine Optimization, website code testing, ethical and inclusive design, and planning for the future of your WordPress business. WordCamp Europe and WordCamp US are also opportunities to hear from Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, on what’s next for the software and the community.

We get to meet you

WordCamps are an opportunity for us to connect with the people we serve, to understand the changing needs and realities of our customers, and to bring that knowledge back to the office so we can make SiteGround even better.

It always blows us away how many of our customers come to see us at events to tell us how much they enjoy our services. We love it, and we love being able to gift conference attendees with exclusive SiteGround swag like our legendary socks.

WordCamps are fun

We love WordCamps because we always have a lot of fun and we’re certain you will too. Between our booth games, the swag giveaways, and the contests, WordCamps are high-energy events that bring together diverse people who have one thing in common: we love WordPress!

Interested in attending your first WordCamp? There’s probably one near you!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to find out where we’ll be next!