WordCamps

One turning point in my career happened at a WordCamp, in a hallway, between two talks I’ve since forgotten.

It was WordCamp US 2018. WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg were launching, and I wanted to see what everyone was doing firsthand, ask questions, learn, really just get as close to the source as I could. 

The sessions were good, but the real value was in everything around them: the conversations in the hallways, over coffee, and at the afterparty. WordCamp regulars have a name for this.

They call it the hallway track.

And once you’ve been, you understand why it’s kind of the part everyone goes to WordCamps for.

That’s where I met the people whose plugins I’d studied and whose leadership helped inspire how I approached building my own products. And it’s where the GoDaddy team first reached out to meet, after seeing my early work on CoBlocks.

A couple months later they acquired CoBlocks, which pushed me into my first real run at full-scale product management, and, a few years later, toward leading Growth and Data at Automattic.

That likely doesn’t happen if I stay home. You can’t plan the conversation that changes your career, but you can give yourself the best chance for opportunity to strike.

That saying, the next WordCamp US is in Phoenix, August 16–19. Grab yourself a ticket, line up the sessions you want, then leave room for those conversations you can’t plan.

I’ll be there too, and I’d love to hear what you’re excited about.