WordCamp Verona 2023 – the last event of the year 

Visiting the birthplace of Romeo and Juliet and strolling along the Adige River may sound like an appealing plan for anyone. But imagine if on top of that you can be surprised by what a WordCamp and the city of Verona can offer you, a plan you can’t refuse!  

At YITH we close the year of events in a big way: WordCamp Verona. This event closes a year full of events in different parts of Europe. In Italy we were able to attend and sponsor 3: Web Marketing Festival, WordCamp Torino and finally WordCamp Verona. It’s always a pleasure for us to be part of these great events!  

Once again this year, we are proud to be able to attend and sponsor a beautiful event like this and we are looking forward to being part of the next.

Contributing together  

The first day of WordCamp was dedicated to contributing as a community. For hours, we were divided into different tables to give way to the Contributor Day.   

Our developer Francesco Grasso led the ‘themes’ table due to his extensive experience, as may be the case with our free themes Proteo and Wonder (some of the best block themes available on worrdpress.org). It was gratifying to see how the table was full of curious people. The interest was such, that they had to add another table to make room for everyone. For hours, this talk turned into a training course on creating and managing block themes.   

We moved around the venue appreciating how the people engaged with WordPress, sharing knowledge and learning endlessly. It’s always wonderful to share days like this. 

A Full day of talks and lots of networking  

After Contributor Day, we started a WordCamp Saturday with different kinds of talks. We could not attend most of them. But every room was packed with curious people eager to learn.  

It was one of the Italian WordCamps with the largest number of sessions and a high level of quality. Many of them were related to website editing. But there were also sessions about advertising, marketing, and more. We were fortunate to have a very high level of participation at the start of the day. Our developer Francesco Grasso, “theme.JSON file dinamici” (dynamic theme.JSON file), opened the day in room 1. We will talk about this session later on. 

There were also talks on accessibility and inclusion that caught our attention. One of them was Elena Brescacin’s presentation BlIND – Blogging e indipendenza: WordPress senza vedere (BIIND – Blogging and Independence: WordPress without seeing). In it, she talked about the reasons why a plugin should be compliant with the web accessibility guidelines, so that developers can see how an inaccessible backend can make life unnecessarily complicated. 

Francesco Grasso

The Italian Community is an extended and welcoming family. Where everyone is included in all aspects of the event. We were not seen as a sponsor that only brings financial support to the event, but as a living part of the event itself. The volunteers and organizers were always super available to listen and meet all the needs of the attendees. And both the speakers/sponsors dinner and the after party were simply perfect. Beautiful moments of conviviality and friendship in which to chat happily and make new professional friendships and much more.

Halfway through the day, our Content and SEO Director, Marco Salvo, gave a talk on the Odyssey of Public Speaking, entitled “Odissea Public Speaking – Supera le tue paure e riscopri il potere della tua voce” (Odyssey of Public Speaking – Overcome your fears and rediscover the power of your voice). 

In the meantime, many curious visitors came to meet us, to talk to us at our booth, to give us feedback and suggestions, or just to say hello. Thank you to all those who came to visit and talk to the YITH Team! 

Or take one of our popular t-shirts. As always, big success! We hope you got yours. 

The day would end talking about accessibility, with Stefano Minoia and his talk “WCAG 2.2: ci siamo! Cosa cambia per l’accessibilità?” (WCAG 2.2: Here we are! What changes for accessibility?), where we were able to talk about what’s new in version 2.2 and which groups of people with disabilities it affects. At the same time, Nicola Lapenta offered a simple and practical guide on WordPress settings and plugins that are essential to implement effective web analytics.    

But there was still one of the best moments of a WordCamp: the after-party. Despite a long and busy day, we had time to catch up with friends from the community and share experiences not only about WordPress, but also about our families, our goals, and our concerns. What a great time to be in the company of so many wonderful people!    

Alberto Ruggiero

Participating in a WordCamp is always a great experience, it’s always nice to meet old friends from the WordPress community and meet new ones.

The experience of our speakers  

At WordCamp Verona we were fortunate to have our speakers.   

Francesco Grasso – theme.JSON file dinamici (dynamic file theme.JSON)  

Our developer Francesco has explored the use of the theme.json file and its variants, and how the development of a WordPress theme has changed in a significant way. Thanks to his experience in creating and maintaining our YITH Wonder block theme, he was able to give an overview of the current state of the art in editing full sites and block themes. In addition, he showed how it is possible to filter the main configuration file of the theme (theme.json) in order to customize, add or remove features of the theme, the editor, and WordPress.   

If you weren’t able to attend the talk and want to learn about it or just re-watch it, here it is >   

Marco Salvo – Odissea Public Speaking – Supera le tue paure e riscopri il potere della tua voce (Public Speaking Odyssey: Overcome your fears and rediscover the power of your voice)  

Public speaking is challenging for many people. It is a limiting fear that our Content and SEO Director wanted to talk about in this WordCamp. In 10 minutes, Marco shares his personal story of struggling with the pandemic and tries to challenge the fear of public speaking and get people involved by encouraging them to face it.    

Marco Salvo

I wanted to bring this up because WordCamps are a wonderful place to face this fear because there is the WordPress community that supports you through everything and never, and I mean never, demoralizes you. We are all human beings and each of us has fears that can also be faced together with friends. in this case I did it with the WordPress community. I also gave advice on how I found a way to fight my fears by accepting myself and the person I have become over the years. […] I hope my work and my message can serve as an inspiration to those who would like to present as a speaker but for a million reasons don’t do it.

You can watch the talk here >   

See you next year!  

It is always a pleasure for the YITH family to be part of such events and to be a sponsor. That’s why, year after year, we are present in Spain, Italy and many other places that we have the opportunity to visit.    

Each community is different, but each one has something special and something in common: our love for WordPress and human warmth. Thank you, Italian community, for always making us feel so welcome! See you soon.    

Next stop? WordCamp Zaragoza, January 19th and 20th. We will meet again at the WordCamps after the Christmas break.