It’s been just over a week since three members of the BerryPress team (myself included), along with hundreds of other WordPress developers and users from around the world, converged on Portland, Oregon for a whirlwind few days of talks, networking, good fun, and great food at WordCamp US 2025. But I can still feel the buzz of excitement, enthusiasm, and caffeine that punctuated the best and possibly most productive work-week (if you can call it that) of my year. So let me tell you about it and why you should attend, volunteer, or speak at a WordCamp near you!
Making BerryPress History
Starting on a more personal note, WordCamp US 2025 marks the very first time that BerryPress’s co-founders, Anna and myself, have met in person. We’ve worked together in the WordPress space for about eight years, run our own business together for just over a year, and cumulatively spent many hours on video calls and chats brainstorming, strategizing, collaborating, and generally planning market domination, but thanks to (awesome) technology and the (much less awesome) fact that we’re separated by an ocean and a day of flying, BerryPress has been an exclusively remote endeavor for us until now. Going into WordCamp, I was most excited about the BerryPress “dream team” finally being in the same place together and in person, and I was not disappointed!
WordCamp was a powerful reminder about the potency of freestyle collaboration and in-person connection, in contrast to scheduled video conferences and pre-organized meeting agendas, as useful as those things can be. There’s nothing quite like walking a lap around the convention center with no particular destination in mind and just shooting the breeze, or coming up with a revolutionary (crazy?) product feature idea during a session and getting an instant reaction (from the CEO, no less) instead of adding it to the list for the next meeting.
Partway through WordCamp, I started a Google Doc aptly titled “Ideas from WordCamp US 2025” which now comprises nearly a full page of point-form inspiration (not including Anna’s handwritten notes from the last day that are yet to be digitized), and will ensure that our product development team has no chance of being bored in the foreseeable future. Stay tuned for some fantastic updates coming to a plugin near you.
What’s the takeaway? Remote collaboration tools are awesome. Organized meetings are way better than chaotic ones. But sometimes, nothing beats leaving the screens behind, throwing the agenda to the wind, and being in the same physical space for a few days. Trust me, it’s worth the travel time (though I had it easy on that front compared to our European cohort).
WordCamp is for learning…
Despite being very busy with no plans in particular, we did manage to take in a few talks. Of particular interest to me was:
The Site Speed Frontier with Performance Lab and Beyond by Weston Ruter. At BerryPress, we have a big emphasis on great user experience, and that starts with our own site and its performance, because who likes watching a spinner when they are trying to learn about our awesome WordPress plugins? We’re pretty happy with our PageSpeed score in the high nineties, which I can shamelessly brag about because I had little to nothing to do with it (thanks, Anna!) – but there is always more to learn, and Weston’s session included a bunch of actionable ways to boost frontend performance using WordPress Performance Lab plugins.
Scalable, Ethical AI: How to Own Your Content and Your AI with WordPress by Jeffrey Paul. A really cool workshop that demonstrated the intersection of WordPress and local AI (via ClassifAI), and may have inspired an AI product feature or two in the aforementioned ideas document!
…and networking!
When asked why we were coming to WordCamp US, our probably somewhat cliché answer was something along the lines of “learning and networking” (little did we know we’d also be getting slow walking lessons… IYKYK!). But events like WordCamp really are great for meeting people and making connections, whether it’s in the vendor hall, around a lunch table, or over a beer at an after party. Some meetups were planned, but most were spontaneous. The very best one for me, and a highlight of the entire event for our team, was when another attendee recognized the (not very inconspicuous) BerryPress logo on our t-shirts and introduced himself as a user of two of our youngest products, Automatic Product Categories and Live Carts – both of which were only at a few hundred users at the time of the conference. The unexpected praise for these fairly nascent plugins meant a great deal to us as a team that tries to be user-centric and build solutions in answer to real needs.
We also had the pleasure of meeting with a variety of potential partners and users, from folks at Automattic and Woo to website operators who could benefit from our free and paid product offerings. We hope to see many of you in the near future, maybe at one of the upcoming WordCamps we plan to attend (see below)!
Also, a bit of exploring!
Team building isn’t limited to the four walls of the convention center. Despite my tight schedule (yes, I missed Matt’s talk on Friday, boo!!) we also found time to get outside and go on an adventure in the Portland area. For us, that meant hopping on a train and finding somewhere with trees, trails, and flowers… lots of flowers.
What are you waiting for?
If you’re a designer, developer, owner, contributor, or anything else in the WordPress space, or even if you’re a complete newbie or non-technical person interested in enjoying the community spirit behind the WordPress project, I heartily recommend finding a WordCamp near you (or far away, why limit yourself?). Exchange the triple-monitor setup for a laptop in a backpack, the day-planner for spontaneity, the Zoom calls with clients for chats over lunch with complete strangers. What do you have to lose? It might just turn out to be the highlight of your year.
Come hang out with us!
We’re already busy planning our appearances at WordCamps over the coming year! If you’ll be at one of these events, keep an eye out for us or connect with our team on LinkedIn in advance – we’d love to meet you!
WordCamp Gdynia
Gdynia, Poland
September 26-28, 2025
Don’t miss Anna’s talk kicking off the day in the Polish track on Saturday, Zaprojektuj Checkout, nie formularz PIT – 5 błędów UX, przez które klienci porzucają koszyki w WooCommerce!
WordCamp Europe
Kraków, Poland
June 4-6, 2026
We can’t wait to meet up in Kraków next year!
“Let’s connect!”