Now is my last day in Taipei and I'm waiting for my team mates shopping at Gloria Outlets. The last 5 days are one of the best experiences I've had in my life. All thanks to WordPress!
WordCamp Asia
What I found most wonderful about this event was that I had a chance to meet face-to-face with people who make products for WordPress. There are people I have followed for a long time on X or Facebook,people I have discussed with, and people I am very close to.
There are two people that meeting them at this WordCamp gave me the most emotions. One is Ohad Raz and the other is Vova Feldman.
Ohad is someone I have known and talked to a lot since my early days as Meta Box. It's been more than 10 years, and Ohad even knew me before my wife. We coded together and shared with each other. But then we lost connection for a long time, until the Contributor Day at this WordCamp. We sat at the Core Performance table together and Ohad recognized me! We talked about our old times, and this was really a big surprise for me. An old friend, lost connection for a long time, and then coincidentally met again after more than 10 years! Ohad is currently working for Elementor, and I'm sure Elementor will have a lot of exciting things to come very soon.
And Vova is someone very close to me since a long time ago, when Vova first started working on Freemius, probably about the same 10 years. Vova and I follow each other on Twitter and often talk and share with each other. And this was the first time I met him in person. It felt like meeting a close friend who had been away for a long time. Besides work, we shared about family and children together and I feel it is very meaningful, beyond WordPress!
Of course I also met many other people that I felt very happy like Michelle Fretchette (StellaWP), Birgit Pauli-Haack (Gutenberg Times) or Katie Keith (Barn2), Bob (Do The Woo) (and there are many more that I can't mention all in this article). Many times I just wanted to meet them to say thanks and express my appreciation for what they have done or shared with the community. And WordCamp gave me this chance!
And there are also people I met for the first time at WordCamp like WordPress people in Taiwan and elsewhere. We got acquainted, shared what we were doing with WordPress and felt happy to have new friends.
I think connection is particularly important at WordCamp. It brings people closer, in a comfortable, open and friendly atmosphere. There are no events I have attended has had this.
Talks
There are many pretty good tracks at WordCamp that I had to choose from a quite long list such as:
- "Design is: An Expedition of the Multifaceted Nature of Design" by Rich Tabor. I really like the human-centeric design philosophy. In particular, Rich's style is very gentle, calm and meticulous!
- "How to achieve an efficient workflow with the Site Editor" by Benjamin Intal. Although I know a little about the block/side editors, I don't use them too much. And when I saw what Benjamin demo, it blew my mind!
In addition to attending the tracks, I also attended Contributor Day. It was also a new experience for me. When I sat down at the Core Performance table, I initially didn't know what to do. Everyone seemed to know each other and kept talking for hours. I wonder whether this table needs to discuss about coding and contribute to code? Only after the lunch, I realized I needed to work on the Performance Lab plugin and chose a module/issue myself and solved it. And thanks to Weston Ruter's help, I also created a PR for the plugin. And that made me so happy!
Taipei
Attending WordCamp is an opportunity for me to explore a new country and a new city. This was my first time coming to Taipei and it felt both familiar and strange. It's familiar because houses, roads, and people are very similar to what I've seen in movies. It's strange because it's the first time I've truly experienced that.
I was especially impressed by the traffic and cleanliness in Taipei. It seems that everyone is very law-abiding, drive very carefully and there are no traffic jams. The streets, shops and even the night markets are very clean.
When talking about Taipei, it would be not enough if not to mention the cuisine. We tasted many types of food, cakes and milk tea! I really like food and find the dishes here very unique and delicious, especially the cakes. Although, I still don't like stinky tofu!
These are some pictures I took in Taipei. I'm not good at photography, but I tried to keep some special moments and feelings. This event be an experience that I will never forget in my life.
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