WordCamp London 2015

Elliot Taylor -

Day Two of WordCamp London starts in a few hours. Another cracking day is in store.

WordCamp’s inspire without fail. It’s nice to be on ‘home turf’ and to see so many from all over the world have come to visit London.

I have to say it’s been a very British affair. I mean, look at the food!

I am bowled over by the energy in the UK WordPress scene.

So many forward thinking and innovative companies are based in the UK. It’s great to meet those I’ve been following on twitter and discover new people.

The Future of Themes

Jack Lenox gave us a sneak peak of how to build themes using the (much anticipated) WordPress REST API.

His new theme is called Picard (The Next Generation of Themes…) which was working at warp speed. The site was accessing all the backend data via JSON and built with Angular JS.

Because the site doesn’t have to reload it has a completly seamless feel. It acted like an app. It acted like websites should work.

I was seriously impressed and look forward to seeing more theme development here.

Later we had Joe Hoyle from Human Made open up Sublime Text and give us a look at the wirings of the API.

An amazing talk and interesting insight into how and why this addition to WordPress has been iterated and improved.

Great work and big hat tip to all those contributing back to core.

Last year at WordCamp Europe the main theme was giving back to the community. Matt had just announced his vision of five for the future. It’s good to see this spirit fighting strong.

How to influence people and make friends

There were some talks in Track 2 that really caught my attention.

Jon Buchan stepped in last minute after a cancellation. And what a treat to get an inside view of how to make content work for you.

He touched on the importance of persuasion science, influence and how to turn a ‘No’ into a ‘Yes’.

Becs Rivett gave some fantastic pointers about how to make email marketing work for you. I also learned a bit more about Mail Poet – an email newsletter plugin that integrates directly to WordPress.

We’ve been advising clients to stick with MailChimp, but the segmentation tools, ease of use and integrated preference centre of Mail Poet look much better for WordPress sites.

WordCamp Sponsors and Thanks

Big thanks to all the Sponsors who made this possible, including JetPack who contribute to all the WordCamps across the globe.

We’re proud to be a micro-sponsor this year.

Finally a big thanks to all the volunteers who have made this an awesome event so far.

Well done to Brighton based David Lockie who is doing a cracking job keeping Track 3 under control.