WordCamp US 2025 was a first for me: both my first WCUS and my first visit to the United States, but not my first flagship WordCamp event, as I attended WordCamp Europe 2022. Here I’m representing Yoast, with a booth to run, people to meet, and plenty of curiosity about all things happening across the ecosystem.
As is tradition, the event kicked off with Contributor Day. I joined the Core Performance team together with my colleague Leonidas Milossis. Under Weston Ruter’s guidance we looked into their projects for the Core 6.9 release and tested the Performance Lab plugin for upcoming features.
Last year WCUS introduced Showcase Day as a new part of the program, and this year it returned. It gives companies and projects room to present themselves outside the regular talk schedule. For me it’s about seeing what others in the ecosystem are building and hearing the real world use cases. And then to relate that back to what we’re doing at Yoast.
The main conference days were spent between the Yoast booth and attending sessions. Outside of booth shifts, I caught sessions that tie into my work, or into the things I’m exploring while developing my personal site. During the booth shifts I really get a kick out of hearing how our products and the work that we’re doing, impacts the people we meet. And figuring out how we can increase that impact.