Speaking at PHPUK was an amazing experience.  I walked in only knowing one person, and walked out having had a hundred conversations and making some new friends along the way.

Speaking about WordPress at a PHP Event was a new experience for me. I’m used to feeling like many people know who I am at WordPress events, so going somewhere as an unknown was a different experience for me. I’m not used to sitting at a speaker’s dinner spending a large amount of time defending WordPress. I’m not used to so much WordPress hate (I guess I don’t spend enough time on reddit r/php), but I felt that the people walked away with a better understanding of why WordPress does what it does.  WordPress is flawed software.  If it wasn’t flawed, it wouldn’t be so much fun to work on.

Outside of the conversations I had, the keynote by Jenny Wong on Integrating Communities really stood out to me. It is something that the technology world needs to do and I’m glad Jenny tackled this important topic in a truly inspiring way.

And in case you are wondering, that is a WordPress bowtie I am wearing. Props Andrea.