In-person events are good. I have missed them.
Last week was the reboot of LoopConf – an independent tech conference for WordPress developers. It was excellent, and it was an honour to be speaking. Here’s some thoughts on the event and my talk.
An invitation to speak
Back in May I was a speaker at WordSesh (recording), which is organised by Brian Richards.
A while later the re-boot of LoopConf was announced and it was to be in London, also organised by Brian Richards! This was super exciting. London – and the south of England in general – had not had a WordPress conference for many years.
Then I found out that my employer was sponsoring LoopConf. And then through the path of Brian asking my employer if they wanted to put someone up to do a talk, and suggesting that it might be me, I was invited to be a speaker.
Little old me on the LoopConf stage? What an amazing opportunity! Of course, I said yes.
I don’t make public speaking easy for myself!
I have a lot of my own thoughts about what makes for a good conference talk. And I try to stick to those ideas when I’m public speaking myself.
But… it’s hard work and takes a long time. I want to do a good job.
For this talk I submitted a couple of ideas, and the one selected was definitely a challenge.
The idea was to deliver 25 lessons from my 25+ years of software development in 25 minutes. Some “lessons” could be really short – just a couple of lines. And that would make room to expand on some of the others.
I’ve had the idea of delivering a talk on general software development topics for a while. But taking on 25 was a bit crazy.
I enjoyed the challenge though, and as the slides came together and I got rehearsing, it reached a form that I was pretty happy with. (With help from both colleagues at work, and from the excellent Jill Binder, who workshopped the talk with me and gave me on a ton of tips and advice and confidence in what I was doing!)
But it was a lot of work. I partly made it a lot of work! But also, good presentations just are a lot of work.
The conference
LoopConf 2025 was great. I really enjoyed being amongst old friends and meeting both WP Engine colleagues and other people that I’ve only ever met online (Taco, Courtney, Simon – it was great to meet you in person! Thanks for coming over.)
The venue was excellent. The catering was really good.
And the talks were awesome too. I loved the variety of topics and diversity of speakers.
It was amazing to hear from Ryan McCue about all the many components of the FAIR project.
It was great to hear John O’Nolan’s stories about Ghost, and the principles behind it’s growth and operation. Really inspiring stuff. I love the idea of using resource caps to encourage creativity, and how they capped their headcount at 50. I also loved the audience question: “Why 50?”
Fun aside: John asked if anyone in the audience had backed the original Ghost kickstarter. I was sat in the front row, so couldn’t see, but his response suggested that maybe only a handful of people put their hands up. I later found my original Kickstarter receipt and went and showed him the proof and he seemed genuinely grateful that I’d supported him in getting off the ground.
I was too tired after giving my own talk to really take in the technical details of Rashmi and Ivelina’s talks – I will watch them back when the edits are available.
Ana Rodrigues gave an excellent and inspiring talk about using personal websites to build community. I know this had an impact on the audience because at least two people I know responded by actually using their personal websites more! And yes, perhaps this post is inspired by it too.
Juliette Reinders Folmer shared her open source story and implored us to support open source maintainers. “OSS funding should be from the IT budget, not the marketing budget” was a big takeaway from me.
And Andy Bell wrapped up with a talk that I’ve seen before and is excellent. I felt that it nicely complimented my own talk, expanding a lot on how to do good, thoughtful communication and collaborative work.
Mingling and After Party
It’s cliché, but it was all about the people. I made some good connections with new people. I took some customer support requests for WP Engine to follow up on. And I made some helpful introductions.
And I hung out with my friends! I can’t overstate it. These people I know mostly on the internet – Tim, Belinda, Jo, Rhys, Keith – you’re great and we’ve known each other for years and it was really good to be at an event in person with you. I’m so glad you all came and thank you for all your encouragement and kind words as I spoke from that stage alongside some real giants of our community.
After the conference I headed for some food and a nap. But I over-napped, and underestimated the distance to the after party venue. Oops! So, yes, I skipped it, and enjoyed some rare quiet time.
These events are important
I am so grateful to Brian, the sponsors, and the Human Made folks for making this happen. I know it wasn’t easy. But it was awesome. I was so glad to be a part of it, both as a contributor, and as an attendee. I would totally have bought an early-bird ticket if I didn’t have my free/hard-earned pass.
I really hope there are more events like this for WordPress folks in the UK in the future.
I know the Manchester, Bristol and Cheltenham local meetups continue here in the UK (possibly others too?), and I’m super-grateful to all who organise them.
Events are important. Hanging out with people is important. Maybe that’s lesson 26. (If you know, you know!)
Hopefully the talk video will be available at some point. And maybe “25 Lessons” goes on to become other things? I’ll be sure to share when there are things to be shared!