Last Friday 10th July I had the chance to participate in the WordCamp Marbella 2016. Although I’ve been working with WordPress for the last 10 years, have sponsored different camps and followed them via live streaming this was actually my first one (…shame). It was a great event with amazing people and interesting speakers.
For those who don’t know where they can find Marbella on a map… we are located at the Costa del Sol in Andalusia (south Spain) where I moved last year. Compared to the location of other WordCamps Marbella is a small town. But thanks to the core of active community members celebrating regular meetups they decided to make something bigger namely to organize a WordCamp (see location at Andalucia Lab). And so they did.
¡Muchísimas Gracias!
The WordPress Marbella community deserves a big shout-out! They managed to organize this amazing happening in only a few weeks time. Nonetheless the quality of the speakers and their speeches was impressive. Thank you WordPress Marbella for giving us the possibility to meet each other and network in such a great environment!
Speeches
I was pleasantly surprised that the majority of the talks had a pretty high level of in-depth knowledge. Taken into account the fact that Marbella is just a small community I somehow expected more beginner-level talks.
Each and every talk had interesting topics. But here’s my very personal TOP3.
#1 ¿Puedo alojar mi WordPress en un servidor en Estados Unidos? Regulación legal tras la anulación de Safe Harbour (*)
Both regarding contents and presentation this talk was by far the most interesting one for me personally. Camino García did an awesome job explaining the details of data transfer from the EU to the US after Safe Harbor in a precise and comprehensible way. Hat tip!
* Can I host my WordPress on a server in the US? Legal regulations after the suspension of Safe Harbor
#2 Diseño de Producto Digital con WordPress (*)
For me personally another great speaker was Abel Sutilo explaining us the UX and UI design work-flow from wire frames, to prototypes, mockups and more comparing projects with turn-key paid themes or custom designs from scratch. He was very explicit and skilled. Great talk!
* Digital Prodoct Design with WordPress
#3 Protección de datos, email marketing y WordPress (*)
Another incredibly interesting speaker was Antonio Felipe Martín Reyes. Although a small part of his talk had also been covered from Camino García he did a great job with his additions and extensions to data privacy and then taking off towards email marketing and its possibilities and importance. Thank you!
* Data privacy, email Marketing and WordPress
Almuerzo
As on many WordCamps the food was a sensitive matter… even more if we talk about a Spanish lunch 🙂 The program of the WordCamp states that there would be an “almuerzo” (lunch). So most of the people expected a complete meal. But they were only offered a tiny appetizer hamburger, a (piece of) sandwich and a drink.
Of course it is fully understandable that the budget of the event, especially of such a small community, is limited. But from my point of view they should have added a note to the program to give people the option to bring their own sandwich.
Final Thoughts
Apart from certain incomprehension about the food topic among the attendees everybody was excited about the quality of the event. The feedback was outstanding and seems to have exceeded all expectations of many participants… such as mine.
Personally I met many interesting people to stay in contact with and will definitely show up at one or the other meetup whenever the job and my little daughter would allow me to. I’m impressed with the “level of WordPress” that is offered so close to my new home (the camp was a 10 minutes walk on the beach away from my house).
¡Hasta la proxima!