My WCEU 2026 Recap

WordCamp Europe 2026 in Krakow was my first ever WordPress event, and first time travelling abroad.

Overall, although it was overwhelming at times, I had an amazing time.

Being my first event, I thought it would be worth me writing a detailed recap of my overall experience, talking through almost all the key things that happened.

Not only to share the experience with others who may be interested (no worries if you’re not), but also more importantly to keep a journal for myself as a memory and reminder of the time I had, and also a lesson on how I can improve my experience next time.

This is a fairly long blog post with a log of my whole experience, over the 8+ days I spent in Poland.

This includes 4 days at WordCamp, and another 4 days afterwards with my family exploring the wonderful Krakow!

If you are interested, then I hope you enjoy the read!

Wednesday: Arrival

I arrived on Wednesday 3rd June, and checked into my hotel at around 5:00pm. I was a little tired after a long day, and my first time travelling abroad, but was more so looking forward to the event.

Dave Grey invited me to join him for some food and drinks along with Katie Keith, Blake Whittle, and his wife Shay, at a nice restaurant along the river at around 8:00pm.

Several food intolerance’s make eating out a little awkward for me, so I previously checked that this place did have 1 or 2 options for me. Unfortunately, as we got there it turned out this restaurant was closed for a private event.

There were not many other options nearby in the area, so we stopped at a a bar just further up from the river. I asked about their menu options, and they only had fries that I could eat.

Although the group was understanding and happy to look elsewhere, it was getting late and I didn’t want to cause too much hassle, so was happy to eat here. I had already eaten a little beforehand anyway, and had some backup food to have later at my room, for situations just like this.

Overall the evening was nice with some good conversations. It was my first interaction with a group of people in WordPress that I’d not met before, so I was probably a little quiet and anxious at first, but everyone was very friendly and welcoming.

I then headed back to my hotel, had a little more to eat from my supplies, and got ready for the next day.

Thursday: Contributor Day

I was considering going to Contributor Day for a while, but by the time I had decided (realised I had no other plans), I saw that registration was closed.

So, I planned to potentially meet up with some people to take a look around the city, though those plans fell through due to the weather and others being busy with their own meetings.

So, on Thursday I headed down to the venue at around 12:00 to take a quick look around on my own.

As I was looking for the main entrance and registration, I bumped into Sergio Pardo García from marketgoo. This was my first interaction with someone at the event who I knew nothing about. We both had a chat about WordPress and our products as we looked for where to register, then collected our badges.

Afterwards, Sergio showed me a demo of his product, and then we chatting for a while after. This was a nice friendly first interaction that give me a positive feeling about how the rest of the event may go.

I had a little wonder around the venue afterwards, but there was not much going on just yet.

So I decided to take a walk around the river-side, admire the views, and take a few photos.

After walking around some more, and saying hello to a few people, I headed back to my hotel, ordered some Steak and Chips from the hotel restaurant (which they were able to make gluten/dairy free), and then caught up on some work and emails.

Overall, Thursday was a fairly slow and quiet day for me, but it did give me the chance to take everything in.

Friday: WordCamp Day 1

On Friday, I woke up early at around 8:00am, had a little snack for breakfast, and headed down to the venue for the Opening remarks presentation, and stayed around for the “Two worlds collide: WordPress at CERN” presentation afterwards too, which was quite interesting.

For the next few hours, I walked around the whole venue, visiting a large amount of sponsor booths, talking to them about their products, finding out what they are working on, and generally getting to know them a bit better.

I had a few interesting conversations with some of them, some of which asked about my own products, whilst others would mostly show off their own things, which is completely fine.

I did attend a few talks on Thursday, the first being “Why WooCommerce loves its competitors” by Rodolfo Melogli which was a great talk about how WordPress-based ecommerce platforms and competitors in general should be working together to benefit the WordPress ecosystem as a whole. Essentially, if the ecosystem grows, we all grow.

It was time of lunch, and I especially appreciated that all the options was completely free of common allergens, and completely free!

I took my meal over to a table on my own, and shortly after Matt Tutorials asked if he could join me. We had a talked about the growth of my plugins, the success of his YouTube channel, and more, whilst enjoying our meal.

I bumped into many people throughout the day that I recognized, and had some quick chats with them, for example Mark Westguard and his son at their booth who was super nice, along with many others.

I also collected plenty of swag such as t-shirts, socks, pens, and stickers, from all the different booths throughout the day!

However, due to spending most of my time at the booths today, I was still looking to meet a few more people that I knew online.

I headed back to my hotel to prepare for the side events in the evening, and had a little food in-case there was not much available for me.

At 5:00pm I walked down to the Freemius meetup venue with Dave and had a chat on the way. (Shoutout to Dave for being super nice and helpful throughout the event.)

Once we were there, I ordered a drink, collected some Freemius swag, then had a few good discussions with some other software makers who I had not met already, like Ross Morsali, Patrick Posner, Nabi Abdi and more.

I lost count of when I joined Freemius exactly, but it has been around 8 years since my first ever plugin sale was made with them.

I would highly recommend Freemius to anyone looking to start their plugin journey. Their service and support has been amazing from the start, up until today, so it was great to finally meet some of the people involved.

It was especially great to finally have the chance to say hello in person to the founder himself, Vova.

After the Freemius meetup, at around 7:00pm, myself, Dave, and a large group of others had a nice walk along the river towards the WooCommerce meetup.

This was also the first time I met Jack Arturo and Matt Cromwell, and had a little chat with them on the way there. It was especially interesting hearing about Matt’s journey with GiveWP over the years.

We finally arrived at the WooCommerce community meetup, at a nice venue alongside the river, though the music was quite loud at first which made it difficult to talk and hear people.

Once again their was free drinks and food, which was great, with a rice and cauliflower curry that I was able to eat, and was actually quite enjoyable too.

I initially ate at a table with Dave Grey, Katie Keith and others. I also got to meet Sam Waines from Barn2 for the first time, along with several other people, such as Mark Jansen and more.

These side events were a great way to meet even more new people who I had a little more in common with (WooCommerce and plugins) in a more casual setting.

A highlight of this side event was meeting Rodolofo in person for the first time, and getting the chance to have a fairly long one-on-one chat with him about all things WordPress, his future event plans, the future of WordPress plugins, and more, which went on until the event closed. Rodolfo was super friendly throughout the event, being very welcoming and happy introducing me to new people.

Afterwards, since we stayed late, me and Rodolfo somehow became part of the moving out squad, helping carry some of the boxes of gear out the venue and up the road, which was a fun little side quest for us (and also a workout).

This did give us the chance to briefly meet some of the WooCommerce team that I’d not met before however.

One of those was Adrian Labos, a member of the WooCommerce marketplace team, who we walked back to the hotel with. A really nice guy, and a great new connection made. I had a good discussion with Adrian later on about WordCamp, the future of WooCommerce plugins, the marketplace itself, and a few plugin ideas too.

After this, I headed back to my hotel room, to get ready for the final day of WordCamp.

Saturday: WordCamp Day 2

The final day of WordCamp began a little later for me after getting back late from the night before.

I headed down to the venue at around 10:30am, and had another walk about checking out a few booths I missed out on the previous day.

I spotted Bud Kraus who had messaged me earlier to say hello when I saw him. We sat down and had a great chat together about how this WordCamp compares to others Bud had been to in the past, the future of WordPress with AI, and more. He was super friendly and a pleasure to meet in person.

Shortly after, I bumped into Dave Grey again, running his impromptu “rock, paper, scissors” station which he setup as a way to promote his products and give away some prizes (which he talks about in his recap here). Even though I’d played it already on a previous day, I played along again to help grab some attention from others passing by, and snapped this photo of him playing with someone a little later on.

I had another wander around, and headed to the PayPal booth hidden in the corner, to fill out their survey, enter their competition on collect a little more swag.

After I was done at that booth, Rodolofo spotted me, invited me to join him, and introduced me to a few people at his table including Olaf Lederer, where we had a general chat about how events could be improved, and a little about plugins.

I was then randomly invited by someone to join a group that was about to go sing happy birthday for Robert Abela at the Melapress booth (who I also had not met yet), so I joined in for that briefly as a fun side quest (although they ended up filming it instead, since Robert was busy elsewhere).

After walking around some more, at around 2:30pm I headed back to my hotel room for a short rest and break, which was a well needed reset.

I went back down to the venue at around 3:30pm and once again bumped into Adrian outside, where we continued our conversation from the night before about plugins and the WooCommerce marketplace.

I headed inside and had another wander around, planning to potentially go to the final “Fireside chat” and “Closing remarks” talks.

I spotted Vova from Freemius again, and had a quick chat with him about my discussion earlier with Adrian, who then happened to walk by and joined us to talk some more.

A little later Katie saw us and joined, asking Vova some questions about the overall growth (or decline) in WooCommerce plugins sales, which was interesting to hear about.

Me and Adrian eventually left Vova and Katie to talk amongst themselves. I stayed outside to have a sit down, and then a final walk around to see if I could spot anyone else I had not seen yet, before the “Closing remarks” talk.

On walk around, I said hello to Bob Dunn and had a quick chat, briefly spotted Remkus again busy in meeting (who I still had not chatted with yet), spoke to Aaron Edwards about his DocsBot product (I currently use their competitor Chatbase), and said a quick hello to a few other people.

One person I was still looking to meet at the event, but still had not found anywhere, was Nathan Wrigley, who actually lives just 30 minutes away from me in England, yet we had still not met in person.

Although the “Closing remarks” talk was starting, I finally spotted Nathan near the exit, who seemed busy talking to Bob. Not wanting to miss the chance to say hi before he left, I politely interrupted them, and introduced myself to Nathan, who seemed quite pleased I did.

We managed to have a quick chat together, and was then was joined by Remkus and Katie shortly after, which lead to some fairly interesting topics of discussion.

At this point I had missed the “Closing remarks” talk, but didn’t mind as I could just watch that later anyway, and I’d already heard about next years WordCamp location being in Malaga.

Nathan had a leave, but before he did, we grabbed a quick photo as proof that we actually met.

Afterwards, I stayed a little longer to talk with Bob about the event, then headed back to my hotel room to get ready for the main after party.

I didn’t have any plans arranged for the time between the end of the event and the after party, so I caught up on a few emails, and had some food at my hotel restaurant, before booking an Uber to Forty Kleparz, the after party venue.

The After Party

I arrived at the after party alone, and headed over to the bar to get a drink.

I wandered around, and ended up initially meeting and talking to a few new people about all kinds of things (mostly WordPress).

Early on, somehow I managed to finally spot Remkus alone, and managed to have a short chat with him about his new product, Scanfully, which I’ve been following and using for a while now, and was great to hear things are moving along nicely.

After walking around some more, I bumped in Jonah Baker who I had not met before, and he introduced me to his friend, Julia Wilk. They were both super friendly, and both website developers.

We happened to have a great chat about WordPress and Jonah’s interest in potentially creating his own plugins and SaaS business, since he had an unique and interesting idea for something new he could launch.

He mentioned that after hearing about my plugins journey, he was now inspired and determined to finally launch it.

During conversation, I mentioned Freemius to Jonah, as a way to easily take care of his checkout, transactions, licensing, and taxes, etc. I happened to spot Freemius founder Vova nearby, so I introduced him to Jonah to discuss his idea and connect with each other, to help him launch his first commercial plugin.

I ended up hanging around with Jonah and Julia for quite a while, walking around to the other side of the fort where I saw Ross Morsali, Patrick Posner and Mark Jansen again, visited the karaoke area, and walked up to the grassy area at the top, where we met a small group of people I’d not met before, to chat with for a while.

After this Jonah and Julia decided to say goodbye and head back to their hotel. So I continued wandering around on my own.

I bumped into Rhys Wynne, who I had previously handed one of my largest maintenance clients over to when I switched my focus over to plugins last year. We talked about how things are going for him with that client (which all sounded positive), and Rhys was also very polite and thankful for the referral. He also mentioned the client asked him to say hello to me, when they found out we were both going to meet at WordCamp, which was nice to hear.

I also got the chance to finally meet Vito Peleg at the bar, who I’ve known online for many years now, ever since he first launched “WP Feedback” (now Atarim). Back then, I became a “founding” lifetime member of his product, and used it quite actively, when my main focus was website development rather than plugins. We had a nice chat about Atarim’s amazing growth and success over the years, among other things.

Later on, I saw Rodolofo again, who called me over to his group to talk for a while about WordCamp and future events. One person there had also previously used my free Turnstile plugin and mentioned they had an issue with one of the integrations (Elementor Popups), and stopped using it. Thankfully that was already fixed in a past update, so maybe they’ll give it another try.

After this, I headed over to the dance floor area for a little while as the venue became a little less busy, before finally deciding to head out at around 2:30am.

I booked my Uber to head back, and just as it was arriving Vova and Xaver appeared behind me who happened to be going to the same place, so I invited them to join me. It was my first time meeting Xaver also, so we had a quick chat Freemius and about our plugins.

We arrived back at the hotel, said farewell, and I went back to my room, to conclude my WordCamp experience.

I needed to get some sleep, before an early wake up the next morning, to join my family who were staying at a nice apartment about 15 minutes drive away, and get ready for 4 days of exploring Krakow, starting with a visit to Auschwitz (you can see more about this further down).

Final Thoughts

Overall, WordCamp was genuinely a great experience and much better than what I was expecting.

I actually came into it not really knowing if I would enjoy it much, since I’d never really been to anything like this before.

Beforehand, I prepared myself mentally for the worst case scenario, where it doesn’t work out and I don’t really enjoy it. Awkward silences, constant sales pitches, and spending most of my time alone was a possibility in my mind. In that case, I would simply accept it, and just not come to one again.

Thankfully that didn’t happen.

There were indeed times when it was a little overwhelming, I felt a little out of place, was occasionally alone, was hesitant to approach someone, or I didn’t know what to say, but this didn’t happen often, and wasn’t even that bad when it did.

Pretty much everyone I met was very welcoming and easy to talk to. Some people being extra helpful and kind, inviting me to chat, and introducing me to their friends.

I felt myself getting more comfortable with everything fairly quickly, as I talked to more people over time. I usually find it easier talking one-on-one than in larger groups, but that’s something I hope I can improve on.

I also noticed that I attended less talks than I thought I would, and spent more time exploring and talking to people outside in the halls.

If you are reading this and considering coming to a WordCamp in the future, but are a little anxious about whether it’s worth it or if you’ll enjoy it, I would highly recommend giving it a try!

Key Takeaways

So, what did I actually get from WordCamp?

I didn’t really come into WordCamp this year with a plan on what I want to take away from it. I just wanted to see what happens, and what I end up learning.

Here’s a few of my key takeaways…

Have a Plan for WordCamp

I can see why having a plan before coming to WordCamp, on what you want to learn specifically can be helpful, since it then gives you some talking points and questions to ask people, and potentially more actions to take when you get home.

Should my 100% free plugins be commercialised?

One question that several people asked me about my free Cloudflare Turnstile plugin, now with nearly 200k active installs, was:

“Have you thought about ways to make money from it?”

Most people that I spoke to about it suggested that I figure a way to benefit more personally from the plugin, rather than offering it completely free, without any paid version, paid upgrades, upsells, or advertising.

I’m essentially contributing many hours per month for free managing updates, bug fixes and support.

Is that sustainable long term? Should I do something to benefit more from it?

Even if the answer is “yes”, the hard part is figuring out a way to actually benefit from it without hurting or frustrating the 200,000 websites that use the plugin.

Paid Version: There’s not much that can be added to a “paid” version, and I personally feel it works well as a 100% free plugin, which is also most likely the reason it became so popular.
Upsell: Add an upsell to a related plugin or service, which could have great potential. The issue here is that I don’t really have any related premium plugin, for example a security plugin. Most my plugins are WooCommerce based.
Advertisements: Advertisements could be added to the settings page for my other plugins or services, though I feel like this would be more of a nuisance and distraction, ruining the user experience. Even then, would these really convert that well if the plugins are completely unrelated to Turnstile/spam protection?
Plugin Sale: Something that some people have mentioned is selling the plugin to a company that would benefit from it more (like a security company). I have thought about it in the past and had some offers, but it isn’t really something I’d want to do if I think it’s going to frustrate and break the trust of the ~200,000 websites currently using plugin. Even then if I had some guarantees or trusted the company taking it over to honor current free version commitments, I’m not too sure that I’d even receive any offers tempting enough to give it up.

One person that I spoke to said they think I shouldn’t change anything. The plugin itself brings in a lot of brand awareness, which can be extremely valuable in itself. This is a valid point to consider.

Even if I don’t do anything about it now, it is something to think about.

Don’t rely too much on one source of growth

I noticed a lot of plugin developers saying they are now struggling to grow their WordPress plugin sales compared to the past.

Maybe due to AI, or maybe due to WordPress growth slowing down.

Personally, with my own plugins, even though I had a slower end to 2025 than usual, this year (over the past few months) I am seeing promising consistent growth.

One takeaway from WordCamp, is that I should probably not get too complacent with my current ways getting sales. I should continue to diversify my marketing efforts even more, putting extra effort into things like content marketing, email marketing, and brand awareness.

AI Automation

I have heard people talking about how they now automate all-sorts of processes in their business with AI.

I have been hesitant to do this too much currently, only dabbling into it a little with things like documentation, support bots, and of-course coding, without going “all-in” on AI.

However I think it is something I’m going to explore a little further at some point, to see if I can find more ways to automate certain processes and save time.

Get more involved

After this WordCamp, I think I’d like get more involved in the community in some way. Whether that’s attending more events, contributing to projects, or taking part in more discussions online, I’m going to try to do more.

So, hopefully I’ll see you next year in Málaga, Spain – or maybe sooner!

Exploring Krakow

If you are interested, here’s a short recap of what I did on the 4 additional days after WordCamp, spent exploring Krakow with my parents.

When I mentioned I wanted to go to WordCamp in Poland, my parents also decided to come and explore Poland too. So we traveled down together, they did their own thing for a few days whilst I was at WordCamp, and I rejoined them for an extra 4 days, with a lot of activities planned!

Sunday: Auschwitz

After 4-5 hours sleep following the main after party, I woke up at around 9:00am, packed my bags, and headed over to my parents holiday apartment, just north of the Krakow square.

They decided to come with me to Krakow for a family holiday, and we had a lot planned for the next 4 days.

The first day we visited Auschwitz, which was about a 70 minute drive from Krakow.

The tour took around 3-4 hours, and as expected was an saddening experience, but also an interesting and educational one. It was quite shocking and emotional to visit and see all the places, buildings and items in person that you hear about in the stories.

After we returned to Krakow, we headed to a lovely Indiian restaurant that had plenty of gluten and diary free options available (Royal India).

Monday: Exploring Krakow

Monday morning started out by visiting “Cakester”, a gluten-free cafe for some tasty waffles, with cinnamon apple, coconut cream, and chocolate sauce.

We spent the whole of Monday walking around the Krakow square area, visiting a bunch of beautiful churches, synagogues and other buildings.

Then we visited the Wawel Royal Castle, which was also stunning.

Finally, I ended the day with a gluten-free burger at Hard Rock cafe, looking over the main square.

Tuesday: Jewish Quarter

On Tuesday we spent more time exploring Krakow, mainly in the Jewish Quarter area which had more beautiful churches, synagogues and buildings. We also visited the Old Synagogue museum, Ghetto Heroes Square, and the Remuh Cemetery.

Wednesday: The Salt Mines

On Wednesday, we headed down to the salt mines (about a 40 minute drive), which was an interesting place to visit, with the tour taking around 2-3 hours in total.