WordCamp San Francisco: Visiting the Birthplace of WordPress

 

This year at Web Hosting Hub, we attended WordCamp San Francisco with our sister company InMotion Hosting.  As a hosting company, we make an effort to attend as many WordCamps as possible and  to always support WordPress and the WordPress community at large. San Francisco is the home of WordPress; a platform that now runs and manages the content of over 23 percent of the websites on the internet.  This is quite the feat for any organization and especially from it’s modest beginnings just 11 years ago and we feel like we share a very similar story with WordPress and that those with common goals need to stick together. For that reason, we are dedicated to supporting WordPress with easy use, implementation and one-click instillation on our servers and much more. What I liked about WordCamp San  Francisco, is that I believe that you have to know where you come from in order to know where you are going and this is the reason Web Hosting Hub attended once again.

I made my way to San Francisco excitedly, as it’s home to my collegiate alma mater, the birth place of WordPress, and  awesomeness all around for any tech and foodie geek like myself. For example, the food and coffee at the airport was delicious and this was also the case for the food at this WordCamp. Like San Francisco, nothing was left half done and I think that speaks volumes to the growth of WordPress and why Matt Mullenweg, the Founder of WordPress said they had outgrown the conference space and that next year there would be no WordCamp San Francisco.  You heard me right, there will be no WordCamp San Francisco next year! Don’t freak out though, because it will now be a much larger global event and called WordCamp USA. For myself, this was one of the biggest reveals at this years WordCamp San Francisco.

“WordPress is like Pringles, once you start, you just can’t stop” – Matt Mullenweg

Besides Pringles and other quotables from the keynote, it seems Matt could not stop playing our cup stacking game that  was a clear winner among the WordPress community. However, Matt was not fast enough to beat out Konstantin Kovshenin who won a pebble watch for his triumph at cup stacking with the fastest time. What does cup stacking have to do with hosting you ask? Nothing, nothing at all, we just like to have fun at our company and invite everyone else to have fun with us. In addition to the Pebble watch and our sponsorship, we gave away a Galaxy Tab 4 and our very popular 4 gig flash drive slap bracelets. These things are awesome, you can literally wear a Linux operating system on your wrist (wow, I have just totally dorked-out on you).

In addition to the awesome swag and reveals about WordCamp USA next year, some 900 awesome people attended WordCamp San Francisco, including myself, Jason Hong, Artem Minayev and our founders Sunil Saxena and Todd Robinson. Not only did I realize once again how awesome WordPress and the community is, but I realized what a great industry I work in and how fortunate I am to work where I work and for possibly having the best bosses and leadership you could ask for from a company.

It was also pretty awesome to go to the Autommatic after party to network with the founders of your company and to be able to meet the people you look up to in the world of WordPress. Even more awesome, was being recognized (…who, me?) The best part about it all is how friendly and real everyone is and this is why I left feeling very blessed and excited for the next WordCamp and to be a part of this company and contributing to WordPress.

 “WordPress now powers over 23% of  all websites” -Matt Mullenweg