News: Networking at WooConf 2017!

The WooConference (in short: WooConf) in Seattle is the most important event for the WooCommerce community. There the Woo team, developers, agencies and experts meet and come together. Or in short: All who are in the topic of e-commerce on the basis of WooCommerce. Two days full of presentations, talks and workshops about the future of e-commerce await the participants. And Inpsyde is one of them, as we want to bring the WooConf 2017 e-commerce trends to Germany!

WooConf 2017 e-commerce trends: What you can expect

We sent four of our Inpsyders to the WooConference. There, they will do especially two things: listen carefully and network. In so doing, we want to discuss the newest approaches and ideas and pick up innovative ones. Because as WooExperts Gold Partner of WooCommerce we want to stay up to date.

The WooConference has quite some big names as sponsors. These are for example PayPal, Amazon Pay or hosters like Bluehost and WP Engine. Moreover, mailing services like MailChimp belong to its supporters. This underlines the importance of the conference taking place currently. Of course, well-known persons like Matt Mullenweg or Todd Wilkens will be there, too. And we want to network with all of them to stay in touch with the latest trends.

Arriving

The airplane landed in Seattle after 16 hours – without exciting flight maneuvers. Right at the same day we went to the meetup Seattle. In the Optimized Brewery, we got to know really interesting people and had  many good talks. And best: We had pizza for free!

Later the day we went to the hotel bar where we waited for Inpsyder “man-with-the-hat” Robert. Unfortunately, he had missed his connection flight in Amsterdam and landed in Seattle eight hours later than the rest of us.

Day 1

After some jetlag we’re going to meet other experts at WooExpert meeting. That’ll be exciting, for sure!

The WooExpert Meetup at CoolBluWeb: We did not only have delicious cupcakes, but great discussions! WooCommerce gave some information about the plans concerning marketplace (you’ll get more details) and there had been quite some interesting questions and answers between WooCommerce and the WooExperts. Later the day we went to the VIP Dinner where we enjoyed many more talks with Woo employees and other WooExperts plugin developers.

After one last drink at hotel bar we went to bed – but bedtime didn’t last very long. At 2:40 am, we all awoke because of a fire alarm. This way we saw many well-known Woo employees and WooConf participants  earlier than expected 🙂 20 minutes later, the nightmare was over and we went back to 8th floor by feet. It can never do any harm to do some sports 🙂

Ready for #WooConf now!

Day 2: The WooConf

On the first WooConference day, we listened to some very interesting talks. The first important event: Todd Wilkens’ keynote. There he talked about the current status of WooCommerce and what’s its future plan. Imagine, WooCommerce does over 10 billion Dollars in sales this year. An impressing number increasing year by year. Moreover, WooCommerce shall be even more stable with the next versionsand updates are going to b rock solid. Furthermore the WooCommerce team is going to focus on simplifying the first setup of WooCommerce and improving the UI.

Later the day we listened to David Lockie’s, Pragmatic, and Jimmy Rosen’s, Angry Creative – very nice guys – interesting talks about how to implement WooCommerce in enterprise projects. As we, they are experts in complex solutions. It’s always interesting to exchange ideas with them. By the way: Angry Creative uses our plugin MultilingualPress in their international WooCommerce projects, which they mentioned in their talk, too.

After great presentations and many talks the Happy Hour was connected smoothly. And right after that we went to Skyverge’s afterparty in a cool bar where he had delicious snacks. And the culmination of this evening: visiting a whiskey bar with some guys. ?

Day 3: The WooConf

Day 2 of WooConf: Once again we went to many interesting talks. But even more important: we had a lot of great discussions with other agencies, PayPal and the WooCommerce employees. In the evening, we went to the after party, of course, where we enjoyed a cool live bad, great food and a boisterous party. Finally we started a pub tour with Michael Tieso from WooCommerce, David Lockie from Pragmatic, Dominik and Mitch from Saucal and the guys from Angry Creative Jimmy, Richard and Sam. And in the hotel, we had a great talk with Zack from Mindsize until 5 o’clock in the morning.

Day 4: Sightseeing Day

On Saturday, we had our sightseeing day. First of all, we went to the famous Pike Market. There, we tasted very delicious food. Of course, we also visited the very first Starbucks.

Later the day we went to the Space Needle – although the weather wasn’t that nice. And in the evening, we enjoyed a relaxed dinner in an asian restaurant. As conclusion of our Seattle visit, a few last beers at hotel bar were a must before we went to bad early. After all, we wanted to be rested for our departure.

Conclusion

All in all, it was a worthwile travel. We both became familiar with many great people and met well-known companions. We are especially happy about the many interesting talks with our partners like WooCommerce and PayPal. They are the basis for our further cooperation.

We’re already looking forward to the next WooConference. Thanks a lot to WooCommerce and the whole team for the great event and the smooth organization!