WordCamp Europe 2018: Belgrade in the rain and understanding jet lag in whole new ways

Blue background with a globe on it and the words WordCamp Euorope 2018 and a dot on the city of Belgrade in Serbia

I do not often get to go to Europe. Not as often as I feel I should. Visiting a place with so much history, with such a differing culture, I always feel so small and inexperienced. This feeling comes with some small level of frustration, resulting from the forced immersion in foreign culture, foreign currency, and foreign everything else, especially time zones. At first I was a little too out of my element but was grateful I found footing quickly. I was superbly happy that there was one thing that was very familiar to me, my amazing WordPress community, who all were gathered for WordCamp Europe 2018

Food and Fun

Tuesday

Arriving in Serbia, between the Sava and Danube rivers after a brief layover in the Munich Lufthansa lounge, I was met with one of the hottest days in recent memory for the city. Fortunately for me I quickly ran into some of my WPLife folks who had a tremendous idea for cooling off, getting some awesome gelato and espresso. It was a fantastic way to start trying to fight the jet lag, which would prove to be a pretty intense battle throughout my entire trip.

Wednesday

Part of the reason that I am so in love with the free and open source community is the spirit of cooperation and competition between the service providers. I work for a website operations platform Pantheon, which can be seen as a GoDaddy competitor from a certain point of view. However, our offerings really address different concerns and use cases at the end of the day. In the spirit of an open and cooperating community the GoDaddy team opened their local office space to anyone who wanted to co-work. I took them up on the offer and got to see so many awesome people and even got some direct help on my Postitnow project on the matter of tagging from the always gracious and oh so talented Alain Schlesser. They even bought us all lunch!

One of the things I was repeatedly told about Eastern Europe was that there would be no vegan or even non-dairy options on the menu anywhere. Based on my experiences in Paris last year I came in with a bit of hopelessness that I could keep to my plant based food options. But this was a completely unfounded fear since it turns out that a) Serbia has some of the best produce I have experienced outside of California and b) vegetarianism is clearly starting to win across all cultures.

Also, I am not alone in this struggle to consume more sustainable and responsible foods in the WP community. I was invited by the just swell Monique Dubbelman to a fantastic vegan dinner at the funky and quality focused Mayka. Sunflower cheese is pretty great though a tad salty. The Belgrade Stake, seitan based, come with an ‘eggplant caviar’ that I am not entirely sure how they made but I will be attempting in my home kitchen in the near future.

Thursday –

I got much more to say about Contributor Day later on, but for this section, just focusing on the food. There were the weird, tiny cups of coffee you only can get from European catering, served and oh so many pastries and fruits for fueling us all day long. the catered lunch options were spot on and very dietary restriction friendly. It was so great to feel welcome and know others felt it too.

Speaker Dinner

It wouldn’t be a WordCamp if there were not a Speaker/Sponsor/Volunteer/Organizer dinner. As a backup workshop presenter I got an invite. We got to party at the top of one of the tallest buildings in all of Belgrade, at the Top Of The Hub, Restaurant and Lounge. While there were some vegan options, including a pretty terrific blackened tofu that even the omnivores were raving about. It was amazing to meet so many new people while seeing so many familiar faces and raising a glass with them all.

Friday

In my experience, Europeans take their pastries very seriously. I was not prepared fully for how seriously, indicated by the sheer quantity of options at the Sava Center where WCEU was held. There were also so many beverage choices that if you got dehydrated, that was on you.

There was so much amazing food for lunch. I have no idea what the omnivorous options were because the vegetarian and vegan options were in their own section. I am not going to keep droning on and on about how our hosts gave plant based options but I find myself just now realizing that I am only verbose on it because it is unexpected, though it should not be. It is kindness. And expecting less that should be a disservice to any organizer. I will refrain from gushing through the rest of this post.

Leaving the venue proved to be a bit of a challenge for some of us.

Do you like ping pong? Thanks to the awesome people at Savvii, the whole community got to come out and play at an event they called WordPint. While my host had paid for wine and beers, I couldn’t help but take advantage of the exchange rate and very, very affordable local prices on highest shelf liquids.

WCKaraoke

One of the things I learned previously ‘on the continent’ is that karaoke is not as well adopted as it is in the ‘new world’. I originally had a bit of despair that all the avenues I investigated left me befuddled at best. Fortunately there exists a most resourceful and energetic man named Vladimir Ranđelović who introduced me and the WCEU crew to SongWars. Imagine playing “Rock Band” with four singers at a time with multiple teams playing a round robin style tournament. This is not the karaoke I am used to, but my goodness, this is one of the most unforgettable nights WCKaraoke has ever known.

Saturday

Day two of sessions brought so many more pastries, fruits, coffee, beverages and rice cakes. It also brought another amazing day of food.

If I could say enough good things about my colleagues, it would take more pages than the whole sum of the world wide web currently have capacity to display. What I can say is it was a true honor to find spectacular vegan food and completely unexpected Experiment unfiltered wine at Radost. This very elegant eatery is also the home to a delightful family of cats, who entertained us endlessly as we dined.

After party:

I could try to explain the after party, but there would be no way to convey it all in text. So here are a few tweets that I think summarize it.

Sunday tour:

Serbia is so full of history and amazing sights. I am grateful for Mike Demo for organizing a walking tour of the city, including the Nikola Tesla Museum and the Serbian Orthodox Church. It was a delightful way to spend a Sunday. Capped off by a wonderful last group diner with the awesome Tina Todorovic and Dejan Markovic and a few others at the tapas joint Ambar.

Sessions

Contributor Day

The main reason I was very excited to go to Belgrade was not the food or the fun or the sessions this year. Those things are all important and I am grateful for all of it, but the real reason I think WordCamps should exists is Contributor Day. A day we dedicate to work on the project collectively and share in the energy of making WordPress together. This is the heart of what Free software is all about. Free as in speech.
Though we are building for a tool set to be used on the internet, the WordPress community and what we are building is far from just code and electrons. We had this shown to us by the internet not working almost all day. Even when we could connect, it was terrible. But you know what? That did not stop us from writing new copy, or from making plans, or from doing the thing we really had meant to do all along and connect as people.
I have rarely been prouder of my team and how far we have come in just one year. Taking the on-boarding process down to a single PDF printout and giving new users clear and simple steps to get to contributing. Things we wished we had, we made. Things we wanted to see, we invented. Getting to be part of the pioneers that made the next level and generation of community happen is unlike any other feeling I have ever had. I am so thankful for it I can barely contain it.

As far as what we actually got done, I am going to be really lazy and just link us over here.

Opening Remarks

JavaScript APIs in WordPress
Adam Silverstein

Fist session up and I thought I had enough caffeine to keep up with anything. Then the session started and Adam went so fast that he actually had to build in rest points to his talk in order to slow down. Basically there is a whole world of WP features that live right in the developer console and are exposed on every page thanks to the REST API. Some things are well documented, some are not. Overall, there is a whole world to explore here. This is an area I know I want to learn and will eventually have to if we keep making everything JS, but other areas are just calling for my time a little more these days.

Raw Notes:
Really about functions and utilities and
On github.com/adamsilverstein/wceu2018
Ma.tt told us to embrace JS deeply
Deeply = learning frameworks and build systems
Hello WP JS
RestAPI and Gutes,
hello window.wp global where JS features live
the wp name space
in console
lot of objects to play with
objects tools
docs are coming, workng on it
demo code
editor
ads.txt plugin
more code, see github
text to rich code editor
wp.media
you can customize the media editor
very complex, not good docs
tips
github.com/ericandrewlewis/wp-media-javascript-guide
plugin
attachment-taxonomies
from Felix
wp-heartbeat
periodic data transmission between client and server
runs at regular pace
data back and forth on schedule from multiple apps
very well documents
some hosts disable heartbeat due to server stress
import category of posts
2 main event, send and tick
5 seconds heartbeat is near enough real time for updates in a progress bar
wp.customize
customizer api
xwp/wp-customize-featured-content-demo
very well documented, start with the handbook
wp.ajax
workhorse in WP
wp.api
client helper library for REST API
post.set();
post.save();
wp.apiRequest
wp.utils.WordCounter
wp.sanatize
wp.a11y – speaks to screenreaders, important to JS heavy sites, annouce events to screenreads
WP NPM packages
npmjs.com/org/wordpress
gutenberg is making packages
github.com/
wp.hooks
lightweight and efficient EventManager for JS
Gutenberg hooks
pretty OK docs right now
github repo is good, but all falling out of date
wp.plugins
fill slots with custom components
wp.data
manage and interact with state
wp.element
similar to DOM construction and HTML
slew of tools in JS and APIs
NPM lets us build for WP and out of WP and in Gutes and out of Gutes
Q&A – When will it be merged?
A: April, don’t know what year… 😀
learn the chrome debugger

When to use the API
Sean Blakeley

Many a great point was made in this intro talk about the consumability of the REST API and I really like that he is talking about grabbing individual elements from any post programmatically. If you know anyone who is just dabbling with the idea of the REST API and WP, this is really solid content to help get them motivated and the creative use cases flowing.
I kinda hate to say it but the biggest lesson I learned from this is do not trust animated slides and conference centers. He still did a fantastic job even though his slides would not cooperate. But as a result, I think I need to rethink some of my animated gif based slides now.

Raw Notes:
Pragmatic
SCRUM based, 12 years or so in WP
API use in existing projects
today?
Why: what: when
tomorrow?
Why use it?
Devs and for the WP project
prior to the REST API WP was a monolithic block box
APi let us move data in and out of system, liberated data
so we can integrate with other services and systems
innovators dilemma
smaller software projects are going to disrupt and dominance means slow to change to react
WP needs to challenge it’s own dominance, REST API and Gutenberg do this
what is it?
API is like a power socket in the wall
not useful into something is plugged in
translation of what we want to another audience
imagine sports company
want to use WP to make content
also want to ingest news feeds
select and publish some with summary and contextualizing
performance overhead is too much for WP directly
build a content API and do not change the WP layer
API delivery system
simpler architecture
start up wanting to show details of swimming pools
public queryable API
elastic search
WP as the GUI, the real work done by alternative storage system
Existing systems
Fairfax and HumanMade case study
presenting integrating experimenting
PIE
plugin Site In Numbers
Personalization
chunking into zones
push and pull into the JS layer
Using the Rest API to integrate into systems
sage ecosystem case study
advice service
Experimenting
Ionic app – run by WP site
WP as a game engine??
football matches
interconnectivity of objects
time and how it persists in the virtual world
Gutes: As we have moved into modular chunks,
POst and Pages are black boxes
display or not
Gutes splits content into discreet blocks
Performance
transients as a way to store data
a-sync transients by 10UP
Tomorrow:
start integrating with other services that was not possible before

Content security policies: a whole new way of securing your website that no one knows about
Miriam Schwab

Do you remember the moment when you realized “Oh, I should be using HTTPS on everything!” If you have not had that moment yet, sorry for the spoiler. This talk effectively was a wake up call about CSP. It makes so much sense to just whitelist assets that the browser should be able to load, think about the render blocking elements you could halt before they start render blocking. I also kinda feel like I should have heard about this before. It is actually on my to do list to figure this out before my next post goes out, I will report how it goes in the post wrap up then.

Raw Notes:
Either going to love this or sleep through it
WP Garage
Strattic
most attacks XSS
Cross Site Scripting
Load their code in your browser
once in that state, has access to your storage, dom, cookies
persistent Originate in the DB – comment injection
reflected: originates in the victim’s request – bad link
DOM-Based – everything on the browser side
OWASP top 10
XSS the user is the victim, not the application
session hijacking/cookie theft, account takeover,redirects, unwanted ads,
browsealoud
a11y extension in the UK and EU mostly
line of script to use
hack library and turned into crypto mining
CrytpoJacking
user resources
CoinHive
a cryptominer for your site
slower devices
100% CPU, etc
55% of orgs affected
weatherfor.us
How do we protect ourselves and users?
CSP constant security policies
just say what the good stuff is and what you want to load
very few people using it now
not included in the whitelist, does not load
CSP Syntax
Directives
Strings specifying type of resources
content-security-policy: default-src ‘self’ https:;
only allow https assets
script-src ‘self’ https://www.google-analytics.com
font-src
never
unsafe inline
unsafe eval
script-src ‘unsafe-inline’ ‘unsafe-eval’
Nonce or Hashes more secure way to do it
upgrade-insecure-requests
subresource integrity – SRI
hashing to allow only when properly matching
don’t use
x-xss, x-frame,
how to add this in?
Server level headers,
a functions
meta tag – can’t be used with everything
also htaccess
header information and how content securit
keycdn has a tool
CSP evaluator from google
SOPHOS security headers
WP plugins Security Headers
https headers
SRI plugin
Report URI – tools for generating headers
telerik fiddler – only one that can read site and tell what need to add to security policy
adoption, 23,690 out of top Million sites
another way to test – script, plug into console

Keynote:

Keynote and Q&A with Matt Mullenweg
Matt Mullenweg

There already is so much written about this already that I don’t feel I can add too much to the conversation. I will say that I am very, very happy to hear Matt and I have the same favorite feature in Gutenberg, copy and pasting Markdown.

Staying Healthy In the Digital Space
Christina Varro

Not even going to lie, Christina gave one of the most useful talks I think I ever saw on the topic of figuring out WordPress update management tooling back at WordCamp Seattle 2016. I should publish those notes, that was before I started this blog format. The world has certainly evolved in 2 years but management tools are slower to change than the front end and it’s JS wizardry. Anyhow, I was excited to see her talk about something else other than tech because I knew she would bring her pragmatic approach to any subject and it would be awesome. Turns out I was right. Well researched and full of little tips and healthy habits, this was a talk that, since it is a lightning talk, you can send around to any department at the office and to any of your relatives and they would probably benefit. Now, sit up straight.

Raw Notes:
Eye strain
improper computer use
20-20-20 rule
position the screen
late night work
insomnia
anxiety
artificial blue light from monitor disrupts
wear blu-blockers
avoid looking at screens for 2-3 hours before bed
turn down all lights 1-2 hours before bed
expose yourself to bright lights in the daytime
anxiety
take a break
meditation
make an effort to connect to a person in person
Set boundaries between work and personal
back pain and wrist pain
Sitting is more dangerous than smoking
More you sit, the more your blood stops flowing
Stand up every 30 minutes
spend 15 minutes per hour standing
drink water
exercise
invest your office set up
learn to sit properly

Easing the anxious mind: dealing with anxiety in the workplace
Laura Nelson

Another lightning talk. They move so fast. It was solid content and took a lot of bravery to stand up on a stage and do something like this in front of a crowd that big. But I know it helped someone, because it helped me. Hearing that other people have unrealistic worries sometimes and that I am not alone out here with the struggle is pretty encouraging. I hope we have talks like this at every camp.

Raw Notes:
Generalized anxiety disorder she manages
define anxiety
often banded around as worry or stress
anxiety is a constant
1. Keep a diary
a worry journal
in real time
rank them and ‘n/10’ score
exhausting stuff
2. Make plans and stick to routine
hard as a freelancer
give yourself time to think about things
3. talk about it
it can be hard at first
You are not alone
60 Million people in the EU suffer from anxiety
4. Be kind to yourself?
give yourself a break
what’s a reasonable adjustment
1. Work starts when they get there, start later
2. Keep a nice working environment
3. promote a healthy work-life balance
4. listen

WordPress and Inclusive Design
John Maeda

John is one of my favorite speakers in the world. His vision is pretty clear as it underlays every talk I have seen him give. That mission is to help us all make a better world through thoughtful communication. I don’t know if he ever would describe it so abruptly but that is what I see in every talk. His passion to do things that make people think rather than fit into the predefined patterns has driven some very interesting conversations and I think put us on a path towards his goals.

Raw Notes:
inclusivity is hard since it requires change
pushing our limits
fashion always pushes limits
design pushes you to think differently
forces interaction by questioning how it is supposed to be
Wapuu silhouette – some anger but creator loves it since people are using it
without change we only have death
wants to start an Automattic design award focused on experience
issue with design in tech – shallow design
engineer and dev, does not work, re-fix it until it does work
too tired to make it usable
too tired to make it feel good
spray design on it
trying hard to make it look not bad
deep design is not like rocket science, it is 4 things
discovering the problem
hypothesize how to fix
deliver the solution
listen and look at how people use it
we love shipping it, we do not like the feedback
we are very focused on delivery
in deep design must spend time on listening and discovering the problem
hypothesize
all about creative, not about the money
but after a while, should he worry about the money
got his MBA
found that it is important to understand the money
Apple control of aluminum and process
not many aluminum
ability to bend wood
teaforte tea bag vs green tea in traditional bag
analogy for our modern day
FOSS vs Free but I will spy on you
best way to enhance that core service is the experience
everyone copies what is better, like the iPhone x clones
we are in less than 5% of the world that

Intro to Drupal (for WP folks)
David Needham

Yes, I do get to work with this guy. My expectations were high, having seen him talk on a few occasions before, but David brought a new level of everything to this session. From the first words out of his mouth drawing us into a story of how he met Drupal, and all OSS really, to the clear explanations he gave of how Drupal works in a different way than WordPress does, David held the whole room transfixed. I have been trying to explain the differenced between the CMSes for a while, but not have a whole slew of data points and this presentation to send them to if I get asked again. He even gave case studies, which I think are the best way to learn the value of a thing. We do have those in WordPress as well by the way (working on more and looking for new ones still).

Raw Notes:
His origin story
in a class, a professor made them write a CMS
then said “That is why you don’t write your own, now use an OSS one”
everyone else chose WP, he was encouraged to use Drupal
he got involved in the community
volunteering is very important
What is Drupal?
Dries in Belgium created one fo the first social networks
a website where friends could share things like photos
he open sources it and that is what Drupal came from
6% of the top 10K websites
that is where it excels, at the top
over 1Million devs and growing
Drupal.org
Free as in beer
free as in speech
free as in puppies
A website also requires feeding and care
D8 is object oriented
Symfony PHP framework
known as being hard to learn, but standardized now
but a professional PHP from a different project can learn it faster
small business owner at a camp hiring Drupal experience
but since D8 move, as long as they know OOP PHP they can work there
A new person with no Drupal background made a core commit on first attempt since he knew PHP OOP
Drupal is modular
the ecosystem is different, no commercial modules
no ongoing support contract around the modules
Also means less fragmentations
OSS from the Drupal community means all the code back to D.O
Drupal is themable,
extremely customizable
down to a per piece of content basis
box of legos, makes it harder to approach
built in data structure, specific content and field calls
meta around that
very good for data analysis or connecting to multiple applications
Structured content
core, very key to how it all works
build your own data structures
and access/roles is built in
staff directory example
Chicago Park District example
facilities – name, type, photos, address, photos, hours
data created elsewhere and pulled in
editors also editing
pushed out to a few other places
Views
kinda ugly interface to be honest
but configurable in any ways to display anything
slideshow, sidebar footer, whatever
block display
custom admin tables
Hong King Trade Development Council
using Views to build a dynamic front page on their site
Drupalcal to meet the community
free Drupal training online too
experiencing like a different country
see the world a little bit different
advocating checking out other communities and out of your comfort zone
in conclusion, the website for his class
it ended up doing very well and
had a fully functional ecommerce store for fake things
not here to convert you
motivation is to show that we are similar
more alike than different
grown together
Drupal had content types: WP Post Types
Drupal query building: WP has this too actually from Plugins
Gutenberg is also being thought of in Drupal form a different philosophical point
but get out there and learn
Davidneedham.me/wceu2018

Origins of Design Inspiration
Simon Cooke

You sometimes see talks that explain a technical trick or pattern that makes the mind really focus in on details. And sometimes you see talks that speak to how the universe works and how we need to widen our perspective. This talk fell into the latter camp and I walked away with a pretty different understanding of how I should be thinking about time and my day then when I walked into the room. Perhaps you don’t resonate with the findings but for me, I found that the ‘morning focus’ and the ‘evening creative’ pattern was spot on. It made me question a number of things along the way. Still processing all this still at the time of writing.

Raw Notes:
Bob Dylan quote
Finding something,
like inspiration was a think
Egyptians thought it was a spirit
Greek thought ti was something that followed you around, genius
map of the mind in modern times
looked at Design theories
many ways to bubble up ideas to the top
at Pragmatic they use “design thinking”
David Kelly thought leader around this
5 sections
Empathy
Define
Ideate <—-where we will spend most time in this talk
Prototype
Test
things start with rough sketches
digitize and
mussli (SP?) mewsly?
mind-mapping input in new chrome windows
ideation is brainstorming
input and output
I don’t believe the value of brainstorming is the ideas generated
value lies in the shared perspective of the people who participated (paraphrase)
Tim Sheiner of Salesforce
Lot of tools available, may be equal, but some can be more inspirational
The Process:
Start with our own habits
Daily Adventures
change it up, do something different, introduce simple change to change frame of mind
drink something different, new coffee shop, take a different path
Rhythm, normally about timing
creative are creative peaks 7-11am AND 4-9pm
ideation meeting, don’t do it at 2:00pm
Daniel H Pink book “When” on mood swings supports this theory
that curve is split in 2
morinng spike is hyper focused state of mind
most ah-ha moments though are in the evening peak 4-9pm
creatives minds need time to chill out, less pressure
brains get to wander and connect the dots of all experiences recently
that is where creativity really happens
Influence is the past major point of ideation for him
Influence = inspiration
they are equal
transformed in equal quantity
digital environment
physical world
community
digital – screenshots of phone, lot of visual and written content
very much influencing him
other digital content, blog posts, httpster.com,
WOGD – high quality content
http://womenofgraphicdesign.org/
jotting a lot of notes at night
in morning then process it
podcasts and audiobooks
Physical world up next
fun, slides and stuff
should feel comfortable in your working space
but can not compete with volume of written data on digital
but different
experience as much as you can of the physical world
community, there are the people around you
friends, family, co-wokers, Campers
recap:
Tools – find the ones that work for you
Process – tweak a few habits and find a rhythm
Influence – influence = inspiration
challenge, help someone find inspiration in you and find inspiration in them

Anatomy of a block: Gutenberg design patterns
Tammie Lister

My notes are not the best on this one because it is hard for me to watch demos and try to capture what I am experiencing. There was a lot of really awesome stuff but it reads flat on the page. This is THE talk you should show your designer friends who are questioning the 5.0 editor and the thinking that has gone into the UI.

Raw Notes:
Not a technical talk
about the ideas behind design of Gutenberg
basically everything is a block
all we should have to learn is how the blocks work, then we will know all of it
roots of it, sketch of it
basically based on the whole experience of WP
blueprints (shows a design sketch of the thing)
element bar
sidebar blueprint
status, revisions, all the things you expect with WP
adding block
shared and reused blocks
walked through nested block and other blocks
blueprint of a standard block
bar, menu, and arrows
sidebar can be moved and placed as you prefer
Doc sidebar is same as in block sidebar, always there
primary and secondary action
toolbar has primary actions
things it should not function without it
secondary are anything else
transformations
any block can become any other kind of block
work moving transform into one place
Unselected placeholders
selected and with content
unselected but contains content
hoverstate
basic anatomy of a block
example
Gallery block
much closer to true WYSIWYG
every bock should give a preview
and show you what to do intuitively
Blocks should adapt
blocks usable on all devices
Where should blocks live? Plugins so they can be reused!
leave the themes alone
Direct manipulation
receive immediate feedback
expected user experience
Block Styles
editor block
when should you build a block?
there are also other ways to do it
potential ideas are boundless
making content with not much or
Tips – new user experience guide
a bit of a story
thanks for all the contributions

Beyond Gutenberg
Matías Ventura

When you read the phrase “currently leading the Gutenberg editor project” in a bio, that is probably a speaker who’s session you should attend. I will admit my notes are a little lax on this one due to the jetlag yet again, but this is one I am really glad I saw live. The ideas and topics flowed fairly fast as well. The demos were hard to capture as well and should really be seen. We are getting so close to that final release candidate that makes it into the auto update, maybe. Lots to do, but then again there is always a lot to do.

Raw Notes:
how the things have been made and how it is going is goal of talk
30 releases in one year
200+ contributors
3000+ code merges
how to bring a blocked based experience without fragmenting the community and content
took a while to arrive at blocks
principals
optimize for the user
content first
no lock-in
incremental developer
Semantic web
since WP inception this is central
block editing is concern of manipulating content but not for display it
HTML as the format
page as the privileged entity and more meaningful experience
lift up and manipulate blocks
slightly higher order HTML
we are using native HTML tool manipulate content
block attributes
demo time
maintaining since last time he talked is columns block
markdown FTW
reusable blocks
scales up
seeing a lot of plugins creating blocks
needs testing help with
nested blocks
templates
layouts and
child blocks
API tools to allow mixtures of blocks and templates
reusable layout units
locking templates is new as well
experience new page mock up from Mel Choyce

Wrapping Up

In the Lyft back to San Francisco, I felt the cool air and familiar hum of a car made to be driven in America driving over truly Bay Area roads and I felt at home. I don’t know if I really appreciated what Belgrade offered and what the time really meant to me there. So many amazing new friendships forged and memories made. From the sessions where I fought sleep to the dance floor where I introduced someone to crowd surfing. From the pouring rain that overwhelmed a city’s public transportation capacity to the vacant alleys that Google Maps thought I should squeeze through. From the moment I landed to the moment I unpacked, this has been one of the more memorable things I have ever gotten to do.

Thank you everyone who made it happen.

I have no idea if I will make it back to Belgrade or even that part of the world again. I never really thought I would make it there in the first place. Next year, same conference is going to be in Berlin and I have always wanted to go there as well. Hopefully I will see you before then, but if not can’t wait for WordCamp Europe 2019

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