WPTech 2015

Update: 27th Sept 2019 – I’ve moved this blog post from my old blog which I’m in the process of shutting down.

So an Irishman, an American, and a hell of a lot of french people walk into a bar … but wait … I’m getting ahead of myself here let’s start at the beginning.

(TL;DR? Un ou deux images de WPTech 2015)

Saturday saw WordPress Tech 2015 coming to town. For those of you not aware it’s an unofficial WordPress conference run here in Nantes. It’s a one day event and this is the second year it has been running. With the birth of my son last year I completely forgot it was on for 2014. This year I made sure to book in advance and I even booked myself in for the afters party.

As with a lot of these conferences it had an early 8am start at least for registration and getting your name badges. I arrived fashionably late ( in fairness at that hour of the morning I’ve no idea when I arrived but it wasn’t for 8AM. Thankfully it was a brisk morning and the promised fog didn’t make an appearance.

For me … big problems ensued … I didn’t recognise anyone!!! I’m also not fluent in French and small talk really doesn’t come easily to me. Though I suspect a lot of people were in the same boat.

Not wanting to look completely lost I proceeded to get a few nice snaps of the place and made use of the staircase to get a better vantage point all the while trying to wake up with multiple cups of coffee and pain au chocolate 🙂 and before too long it was time to head into the welcome note and first of the speakers.

The WPTech 2015 Conferences begin

I’m not going to go into the conferences that much, for any non French speakers they won’t be that interesting … though you’d probably follow the code / slides without so much effort.

The turn out was rather good I believe around 300 people from all over France.

…

The real time twitter stream projected to the side of the speakers was a nice addition with useful bits of information, pictures and a whole load of hashtag spam ( until that started getting nipped in the bud.)

The first break of the morning brought the discovery of Jenny with a group of others and thank god for that. Finally someone I knew ( ish .. I’d started following Jenny on Twitter I believe shortly after or during WCEU 2013). Getting introduced to a few people is rather nice and on that note I would suggest for future events like this a speak dating style place. I first came across this a few years ago with an Anglophone group in Nantes that would hold a meeting where non native speakers would talk to a native speaker for 5 – 10 minutes before switching partner. I’d love to see a similar format at some of these events for those of us feeling a bit shy about introducing ourselves to random people we may just stalk on twitter ) 10 chairs … 10 people … a 5 minute chat and you switch chairs to the next person. You get to meet people introduce yourself and for those introverted people I think it’d be great not to mention for those who know people they could sit an meet a few people they wouldn’t normally meet. I’d also suggest to groups to Adopt a Mec! (guy or girl and bring them into your group if they are looking lost or not talking to anyone.)

More talks followed …

…and it was becoming clear that “Hook(s)” was the word of the day …

A how to migrate your CMS to WordPress followed with Tony Archambeau (@TonyArchambeau – Slides) which took a look at basic SQL commands and procedures for moving a site to WordPress. It avoided unfortunately talking about rewrite rules and plugins like redirection. It would probably still be interesting for those that don’t touch SQL that often. The general rule though is abuse the intern and get them copy and pasting ( joke but if the site is simple then copying and pasting the content might just be a simpler not to mention faster solution ) I believe the Import tool has become active again so it might have been interesting to hear about this as well and where it’s going.

It was then on to the plugin customiser with Remi Corson …

…

… and before you knew it, it was lunch time with subs so many subs!!!

People even took the time to help out friends with code problems

Wandering … taking pictures … trying to look busy 🙂

Making use of the spiral stairs I got this one … not to mention getting given out to by security 🙂

After Lunch it was yet more conferences with a great talk from Jonathan Buttigieg on best practices with plugin development

Back to taking more photos for me though for some of the talks …

Shooting of video …

The discovery of the ultra low tech job board …

Not to mention some interesting jobs …

Video Interviews happened …

The WPTech 2015 Video Interviews

• Booster le référencement d’un site WordPress avec Mathieu Chartier
• À la découverte de l’API REST WP avec Maxime Bernard Jacquet
• Comment créer des hooks dans vos devs avec Julio Potier
• Migrer les données d’un CMS vers WordPress avec Tony Archambeau

• L’API Customizer pour les plugins avec Rémi Corson

…and of course Jenny gave her talk on using WordPress to Generate PDFs which gave me flashbacks to 2002 when I was doing the same for the first time coming up against all sorts of limitations in relation to images / backgrounds and dealing with 13 different languages for print. It also gave me a lot of fuel for thought and I’ve left with some interesting ideas.

And then it was all over … the quiz took place .. laughs were had and the obligatory group team shot was taken

I found most of the WPTech 2015 talks rather interesting in particular those of:

• Mathieu Chartier (@Formation_web – Slides)
• Maxime Bernard-Jacquet (@Maximebj – Slides)
• Julio Potier (@BoiteAWeb – Slides)
• Remi Corson (@remicorson – Slides)
• Jonathan Buttigieg (@GeekPressFR – Slides)
• Jenny Beaumont (@jennybeaumont – Slides)

It had been billed as an event for all and not just techies though I’m not too sure about that. Once you start mentioning code / hooks and programming API’s … I’m not so sure. I however did enjoy it a lot not to mention the after party.

Ah yes as I was saying … An Irishman, an American, and a hell of a lot of french people walk into a bar …

I’m still searching for a punch line for that one but in the mean time … yet a few more shots from the After party.

Quick detour on the way to the bar…

The addition of alcohol to any event usually helps get people talking and this was no different …

Good conversations with Karine..

Thierry ( whose podcasts I’d followed from time to time adding my own bad french tweets from time to time )

Though the introduction was brief here’s one of Didier …

Jenny and her husband Olivier

Thomas

The white wine flowed … then the red wine … then we went back to the white wine and it flowed some more and it was good.

All in all a superb day and I’d like to say a HUGE thank you to Jenny for making me feel so welcome, introducing me to so many people and the chats in English  on a day when my head was melted from all the French; and to Thomas as well for saying hey and hanging out, and last but not least a huge thank you to the organisers of WPTech 2015 for a great day and evening.

but hang on you’ve read down this far?

BONUS MATERIAL!!!!

Problemes Techniques

Grillé

For those of you about to click we salute you

And that’s a wrap though I may tweak and edit things a little bit