Our review of WordCamp Bristol 2017

This was a good one, a really good one. The venue was great, the city was great and the speakers were all great. Here is what we saw on the Saturday of WordCamp Bristol 2017.

Ten clangers I learnt while building my WordPress startup – Elliot Taylor
Our favourite talk of the day as it was a really candid look at what ‘mistakes’ Elliot had made with his current and previous product launches. There were some really good nuggets of information here and it’s refreshing to hear about someone who is willing to not only make mistakes but share this with others so they don’t fall into the same traps. He described this talk as something he wished he had listened to 2 years ago and that is an awesome thing to share with others to help them along the journey.

People source – Tammie Lister
Tammie, amongst other things, is the photographer for WordCamps around the world so here talk had some amazing photographs as slides. Her talk was about the WordPress community as a whole and how we must always embrace the differences between everyone who is involved rather than see that as a way to make a judgement. Her openness about her feelings for when she submitted her first patch to WordPress was inspiring. Yes, she felt fear and risked failure, but she did it anyway.

Don’t lose your steam! How to deal with unhappy customers – Stefania Mattana
Stefania works at Automattic as a Happiness Engineer and her talk was about the strategies she uses to deal with users issues and how they can be resolved successfully. There were some interesting psychology and strategies for how to deal with conflicts in a less stressful manner and to make the user always feel listened to and understood. Her answer about Automattic not having customers or clients, but users was an interesting viewpoint on how they view people who use their products.

Waterfall is not a dirty word – Tom Greenwood
This was my most enjoyable talk of that day as it was really well presented with some very funny repeating videos (The video of the woman falling down the waterfall in a comedy manner probably didn’t need to be on repeat as much as it seemed to get worse each time!!). Tom talked about how he wasn’t ashamed that he still embraced waterfall project management techniques and how they could be combined with agile strategies to create a successful hybrid. This hybrid gives you best of both worlds as you can control the project, create a minimum viable product and then iterate on it in a flexible manner. Really interesting to see how other companies approach managing big projects.

How to shout out about your business to the world – Melin Edomwonyi
Melin is based in Wales, like ourselves, and her talk was about how you need to get out there and shout about your business to the world. Melin’s commitment to coffee as a great way of getting to know people is good advice although she did admit that she won’t go for coffee with just anyone! The talks also touched on the brand redesign for her business, Illustrate Digital, which was an interesting listen.

Confessions of an entrepreneur – Richard Hill
This was less about confessions and more about great advice for building a business and what it takes to do that. Richard shared some fantastic ways of getting yourself out there and also some of the challenges you might face along the way. It’s always good to hear someone who is relaxed and calm about where they are on their entrepreneurial journey.

If you have never been to a WordCamp then you must come as they are really great events. I took a client who had never been to a WordCamp before and he had a great time which is amazing to hear. Click here to see a list of WordCamps around the world and I will see you at WordCamp Manchester 2017 if you are coming.