Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to within WordPress and with us today are not one, but two guests and I'll let them introduce themselves.
But I wanted to say this is a special kind of podcast. I've not done a podcast with more than one before, so that's special.
But also the narrative, the reason, the why we are here is different.
So yeah, let's start with you, Karol. Welcome to the Within WordPress podcast.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Hey, thanks for having me, Ramkus.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Sure thing.
Where can people know you from?
[00:00:46] Speaker B: I've been around in the WordPress industry for, yeah, I think it's my 10th anniversary this year. So I have been working with different companies within this industry for the past 10 years. I have been traveling the world with WordCamps. I have been organizing WordCamps for, for several years and I think I have been in general just, yeah, an enthusiast about the WordPress community and the industry.
But I have also been involved into cloudfest for the past eight years. So.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And that is the topic of today, cloudfest.
For those who have no idea what cloudfest is other than maybe you've heard the name somewhere somehow, please introduce cloudfest.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Cloudfest is the biggest business conference in the cloud and hosting industry and it has been evolved from the former world hosting days into Cloudfest. And in general we're celebrating the 22nd edition this year, so we have been around for quite a while already.
So yeah, you would meet more than 10,000 people of the cloud and hosting industries, mostly hosts, CSPs, MSPs, product owners, but also a lot of people involved in the WordPress business world and also hopefully a lot of agencies altogether locked down for three plus days in the biggest amusement park in Europe, which is Europa Park.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: It is a big park. It is really, really a big park. Yeah, Cloud Fest is. So I've been there a few times and the reason we are having this discussion now is you've asked me to present a do a presentation on the stage and which I happily said yes to. But one of the things you said that triggered me in the very most positive ways is everything is going to be different this year.
And you also mentioned somebody who was being very vocal in making sure things were going to be different.
He's quite silent currently, but
[00:03:18] Speaker B: spoiler alert, he's not gonna stay silent for much longer, I can promise you that.
Yeah. So we are adding the very first time, the so called WordPress business and agency Summit into the Monday program preceding the main festival which starts on the Tuesday.
So this, this new site event is going to be the natural connector between the cloudfest hackathon, which is the open source part of cloudfest, leading into the main business event, cloudfest, which is starting on the Tuesday.
And while we were building ideas around what program we would like to offer to our target audiences and new target audiences at Cloud First, I had very interesting conversations with Mark. Mark Weisberg from grade.
Yeah. And he gave us some really nice food for thought. But I think I'll let you elaborate more on that.
[00:04:21] Speaker C: Mark, thank you so much. And Remkos, also, thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm Mark. I'm CEO of Great. And not a regular to the WordPress community. I've been around for the last, I think three to four years.
So this is my first visit in the open source community then. So WordCamps and those events, this was pretty new to me because I'm just a regular business guy. And being a big fan of the Hackathon and also of cloudfest and having traveled to some different wordcamps around the world, became clear to me that we have tremendous events all around the world and a huge community. And that's nice. But what we are missing is the business aspect. And as I'm not a front row guy in WordPress, so you don't see me a lot, but I'm very vocal when it's about enterprise, when it's about business, etc. And I was more or less nagging Carol, to talk more about business, have more business presentations and make agencies outside of the WordPress community being part of those events. Because on those word camps you only meet the community. But what we need to meet, we need to meet customers, new partnerships, etc. That is the reason why I'm here today, I guess
[00:05:40] Speaker A: what would, what, you know, this is going to sound. Up until last year, the Monday basically was called the WordPress Day, if I'm not mistaken, around, sorry, WP Day.
Very important.
And it started around noon or something.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Yeah, correct.
So I haven't been involved into the organization myself in the previous years, but I have always been around and it was, it was a smaller scale, although it was already very successful. We had packed rooms, but it was mostly one track half day event starting around noon, 1 1ish. And then there would be like four or five hours of sessions and then the program was over.
So this year we're gonna, we're gonna change that a little bit. We're gonna have a full day program which is going to build around two tracks. So there's gonna be much more sessions. But what is also really interesting is there's going to be an exhibition area, like a small exhibition area for anyone who has been at cloudfest knows why it's important I make the difference as a small exhibition area because cloudfest really has a trade fair that I've failed to see anywhere else. Like these just like three floor booths. It's really, really different from what you
[00:07:06] Speaker C: would see at work.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I've seen a tiki bar at a, at a third floor once for, for a partner. It was, it was very impressed.
So it's going to be a little, it's going to be a smaller scale, but I believe that is going to be very interesting because it also combines the value of the topics that we're going to see on stage with the business aspect of having our partners represent themselves and the solutions they bring to the table to help agencies grow their businesses now and in the future. And also using the new, the newest technologies and in a time where there's like almost daily and constant change going on, I think this is a really great opportunities for everyone involved for the agencies to connect in a more intimate space with each other, learn from each other, but also learn from our partners and also teach our partners what they could maybe do better to cater their needs. And I think that is.
So we are expecting around 800 attendees and that is for WordCamp. This would be a rather big size already. But compared to Cloudfest which is a 10,000 plus people event, it is a rather intimate space and targeting a certain type of audience and taking into account their specific needs and cater towards that. And something that I'm really passionate about like, like building these bridges and to say it in, in, in, in in a way that, that really is at the core of what WordPress as a project is democratizing opportunities. I'm very passionate about that. I believe that I can contribute with what I am doing and with the help of people like, like Mark to make that happen to, to have the community and the smaller businesses connecting and creating win win situations.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that. I mean I, I've, before I joined the web world, so to say more than 20 years ago.
I've been to large events as well and they were always a little too businessy. Right. So you'd be forced into talks that are just like what am I doing here? I, I know they're sponsors but can we not have something that tailors like to stuff that I need or I'm curious about it instead of, you know, that sort of thing.
And it's nice to see that these types of events like so the WordPress has, the ecosystem is, I think, rapidly growing up in understanding that, yes, we are open source and wordcamps are part of that and everything, but we need another layer as well because there's other stuff happening as well. I'm assuming, Mark, that's what triggered you to say, hey, hold on, because I know you've been there at cloudfest last year, was that your first time?
[00:10:19] Speaker C: That was my first time as a sponsor or in the trade for of cloudfest. We have been part of the hackathon, but this was our first time having a booth at CloudFest. And I mean, when I think about that, I think about trade fairs and then I think about leads, contacts, and I mean, it's always for a small company like Grade, it is expensive to have a booth at an event like this. And furthermore, you need hotels and everything and you need your developers at the event, so they are not developing stuff. So for us, it's a huge investment. I was very motivated to go to cloudfest and the first, the first idea after last year was we want to have more contacts, we want to have more leads. And when I talk to other sponsors, it's every time the same. They under a lot of pressure. They have to sell, they have to get leads.
And if you go to the regular events, they told me that you always meet the same people. And that's fun because I meet you guys and that's a wonderful thing. But we need to attract more customers, more business potential, etc. That's the reason for having those events. And for example, when I have a look at Great, then most of our customers are not part of the community and they would never think of going to a WordCamp because that's just not interesting for them or they don't know that this would exist. So I asked myself, if we want to have more agencies, more people outside of the community and make this a business event, what would be interesting?
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:52] Speaker C: And from that on, I thought about a total different approach because at WordCance we. We talk a lot of very general technological things. But as a business event, as talking about a business event, as you describe it, it's more about business impact, and I mean direct business impact. So everything on stage would have to be changed dramatically. I guess so. And I think that the WordPress business and agency Summit this year is one of the first tries to do that.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I like what you said with regard to this is how wordcamps work, and that's not what this is.
I think it's a Good distinction to make because wordcamps having started a few and organized probably close to 20, there's a particular, like the, the, the goal of that is to have a learning and connecting environment for people in the WordPress community.
And whichever way you, you try to make that wiggle a little bit to the left, to the left or to the right, the core is that you are primarily entertaining the WordPress community. And the WordPress community is the builders, the connectors, the developers, the agencies, but also, you know, the, all the layers that are in between. So the product people, the content writers, everybody who has a serious relationship with WordPress in the sense that it's more than just a tool, they log into every day and do their work.
That to me is a Word Camp. And there will always be a place for wordcamps. Like that's not up for discussion.
There's another discussion that goes in the line of does it make sense for work camps to want to cover all angles? And I'm very happy with cloudflare cloudfest direction now where that answer is actually, well, you know, sure, you can try and do that, but we're over here in a, what's already an industry leading event.
Why don't we figure out how to best target Everybody working with WordPress who normally would never consider going to a Word camp.
I, I, I really like that because like I said, I think actually I said this before we recorded, so I can't say like I said, but before the recording I mentioned that there's, that there's, there's a, a slow but steady move for everything inside of WordPress to become more professional.
Not just on the business side of things, but just because we're at that stage. I guess the influx of AI forcing us to look at the things we can use, the tools that do the things that we found very difficult but now much quicker, all that sort of stuff, it's much closer to grasp. Right. You can lean into it harder and faster.
And I really like the positioning with cloudfest is now turning itself into, I'm curious, Mark, what is the biggest suggestion for change that you've done that has been or is being implemented now,
[00:15:26] Speaker C: yet the agencies are outside of the community in the end because they will drive the change, because everything else is us.
There have been a lot of events like Cloudfest who had a kind of WordPress day and what do you do in that case? You create a smaller version of a WordCamp and that doesn't make sense at all.
As you said, you need to have the agencies outside of WordPress. Because if you see the whole market, then the community is just a small. It's the tip of the iceberg. And I think there are a lot of people who don't know that. So most of the business is outside of the community and these agencies can help us a lot.
And the second thing is if you want to have a successful event today, you need the entertainment factor. And one example was that in Germany we had a lot of very interesting trade fairs like dmex, GUI etc, so everybody was traveling there every year. So that was irregular. And then we had Covid and there was that one festival that, yeah, that could still be on top and that is OMR in Germany. And what was the idea about omr? It was. It is not just. It is not just business, it is not just lectures and meeting, it's also an event. It's.
It's having superstars, they are giving concerts or whatsoever, or TV stars, et cetera. So we need an entertainment factor because it has to be interesting. And you have to mention that if you have a, if you have an agency with 20, 25, 30 people, then sending three people to an event for three, four, five days, that is a lot, that's a lot of money. So it has to be worth it. And if it's a mixture of business and entertainment, it has a good chance to attract a lot of people.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: There is definitely entertainment at Entertainment at Cloud Fest.
Are we having a cut all? Are we having the. What is the band name? The Lord of the Whatever?
[00:17:33] Speaker B: Lots of the Uptime.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: Lords of the Uptime. Are we having that band again?
[00:17:38] Speaker B: I mean, is that seriously a question? Of course, of course we do. And you'll see me first row as
[00:17:45] Speaker A: always for those listening, have absolutely no clue what that band is and who is in that.
Can you share a little bit?
[00:17:55] Speaker B: So basically it is an all stars band of folks from the cloud and hosting industry that are uniting and they are practicing actually very little time to perform just greatly on stage once a year at Cloudfest. So it's basically your only opportunity, unless you know them as friends to see them perform.
And it is really a rock metal vibe and a once in a lifetime adventure. When you see all the people like going crazy on stage and in front of the stage and dancing and singing and going all in together.
It's the opening event for each cloudfest for the past few years.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it is. Do the people listening to this, do they know perhaps the lead singer?
[00:18:55] Speaker B: The lead singer? I'm not sure they would know, but they would probably know our dear Vito Pelek from uttering. Who is playing. He's. He's on the bass. Is he. He's not on the.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Is he.
Please forgive me if you're listening to this and if I, if I, if I, if I got this wrong.
But yeah, so I, so my, my personal challenge every year is to take the best possible picture of Vito on stage. And I have a few contenders in the meantime that are challenging me on this. But I, I always.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: He's a showman with the, with the guitar.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: Odd bass.
Well, it is really guitar.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think, I think what that is at the Monday evening, right?
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Correct. So that is always the. We call it. Yeah, it's actually the big opening party for cloudfest and then there's a street food festival in the main area of the amusement park.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Big favorite of mine.
[00:20:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And then the concert usually starts around 9ish. 8ish. 9ish. And yeah, it's always a big. It's so much fun. Like in general. It is, it is, it is some experience. It's not your usual conference.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: No, because I was going to say the start of it. So if we again look at work camps, you, if you are a volunteer, a speaker, an organizer or whatever, you may have the.
I don't know what the name of it nowadays is, but let's call it the speaker sponsor social media dinner the night before.
And if you think you understand that I'm just going to help you out here. Now, Cloud Fest opening has nothing to do with that inside in terms of size and, and things going on and whatnot. There's a, there's a whole street, like a theme park street, like a whole street that is filled with first of all, people, but lots of food places where you can, I mean, if you leave that place hungry, you've done something really, really wrong.
And then in. Inside of some of those buildings there's things happening and you know, it's a lot of fun. It's. It's nice to have these types of.
I don't know, it's not a party, but it's, it's certainly a joyous event. Maybe that's the good.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: I would definitely recommend anyone that is listening to this that would join us for the WordPress business and agency Summit to make sure that they can stay at least two nights.
So first of all, we will have the welcoming event to the summit which is happening on the Sunday night.
So that is like an exclusive event for all the folks that are going to, that are Going to attend the summit on the Monday in a more intimate space again. And then on the Monday there is the big opening party. And if you stay one night longer, if you stay for the night of Monday as well, there's an opportunity first of all to be part of that party and to connect in a different setting with the folks that you have met during the Monday.
And it will give you the opportunity to get the glimpse into the main event if you haven't done that in the previous years already and to find out for yourself, hey, is this something. I may want to stay longer in the next year or even become professionally involved as an exhibitor or. Yeah, there's tons of different possibilities also for partnership, basically everything can be customized.
I would definitely tell anyone and I'm doing that for years already. Everyone in the WordPress industry and the community, you should at least once visit Cloud first and find out for yourself if it is your thing or not. But it is so, so valuable to get out of the WordPress bubble from time to time and to just broaden your horizon and then you can decide what you want.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I was waiting for you to finish your enthusiastic called people. Why don't you just come?
Because it's exactly that. It's a different vibe.
It's, it's, there's touches of WordPress because the topic is WordPress, but it's an entirely different vibe even the days before. So I remember Mark, you and I were so last year during the Hackathon, there's moments where you, you know, have lunch and interact with the people at the hackathon, but also around the hackathon, like there's people coming in and early and just saying hi and checking out the projects and I'd love for you to share a little bit more about what the Hackathon is in total later, Carol. But Mark, you and I met there and I think it's interesting to, to highlight how much of a network opportunity just being there in of itself is.
[00:24:36] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I think I need to mention that I never take part in a project at the Hackathon, but we are a sponsor and I'm a regular hangaround. And why do I do that? Because it, it is basically the only event where you have two or three days in a row to talk to someone about an idea. Because I mean, you know that you meet somebody at a Word camp, for example, and you talk about something, cooperation, an idea whatsoever.
But you might need 24 hours to think about that and then add some different things to it and Hackathon is the only chance to meet that person the next day and tell them, yeah, I heard what you say and I think we should go this or that direction. And that's totally not possible at a Word camp because everybody's so busy and the whole vibe about the hackathon was always about communication for several days. So it is a dialogue and we used that last year and this is also why we do a lot of things together. We had the time to discuss that and that is only possible at Hackathon. It is a wonderful event to recruit. It is a wonderful event to meet, obviously to hang around, incentivize your developers and other people in your company.
And this is why I love Hackathon and, and also this year I will hang around, definitely.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's the, the, I mean a lot of these events that we go to and, and I've seen, I see you both at all the various events we have, right? There's from Press Conf to work camp, Europe, WordCamp US, you name it, and there's value in every single one of them. But I, and I think it's, it's difficult to stress how different this environment is because one of the things I, I like about the hackathon, specifically, it's an open source hackathon. It's not a WordPress hackathon, meaning you sit at the table with people who kind of glance at WordPress and go like, yeah, no, that's not for me. But I hear let me do typo three. Let me do, you know, whatever. Joomla Magento.
I don't know, probably not Magento, but you know, all of these other tools that are adjacent to what WordPress does, but brings a whole different crowd, like a different type of mental model, I would even say.
And yet it's still part of the open source.
Has the hackathon always been that way?
[00:27:04] Speaker B: It's evolved from not really being open source into becoming very WordPress heavy. Like with me, with me becoming evolved and my network mainly having been at that time within WordPress, it became very WordPress centric as a natural consequence of me being involved.
But then also I think, and this is actually a good cue because I felt like I wanted to mention what I'm going to say now already five minutes ago or so, I think that I evolved as a person and for my career and for what I see what I want together with cloudfest, it's Hackathon and what I am involved with because the WordPress community is outstandingly amazing. But it's also very easy to get stuck in your bubble.
So you would hang out with your usual suspects. You would bring the usual suspects to different events. If you become involved into a different event organization like I did, you obviously tend to invite your usual usual suspects and you will also bring your usual usual suspects to the stage.
And that was needed for me to be successful in my position in the first years. But I also noticed very quickly there is so much more opportunity, not only for me and other communities out there to become, to become involved into TF event that I am responsible of, but also the other way around the communities that I care for to create these opportunities for them to broaden their horizon and to create new synergies to facilitate cross CMS collaboration which, which I have been heavily, heavily pushing for for the past four or five years already.
Because I believe that we all have a common goal. We want to have an open web in 10 years from here, right? We do not want to have Meta or any other corporation dictate where we can publish and cannot publish anymore. So most of us, we have a very strong interest, not only business wise, but I would believe like also ethical wise, into enforcing the open web in general. And we can do that much better as collaborators and making sure that we all have our place in 10 years from here in terms of working towards that same goal instead of just competing against each other.
And I think that the hackathon is partly, also has partly been initiating these larger corporations that now exist between different CMSs. And I'm very proud of that.
And in the same way we're doing that with the summit now as well, because you will find some of your usual suspects on stage.
And that is perfectly fine because we were selecting them in a way that we knew they would add value to not only the agency audience, but also to our cloud first core audience. But you will also see folks on stage that I have not ever seen before on stage. And we give them the chance and we give our audience the chance to learn from, from different speakers that come from a different angle, that are not heavily community invested or maybe not even invested that much in the open source project, but that are users that have successfully built a business on top of the software we produce. And I think that is going to be super valuable for everyone involved. And it is already, it has already been super valuable for me, me to, to, to be constantly able to, to broaden my own horizon and to advocate for other folks that I care for to do the same.
[00:31:21] Speaker A: I think you hit the nail on the head with how you explained this, because that's exactly how I see it. It's the, the wordcamps are the people who are enthusiastic about not just the software, but also the community and, and, and, and all of that. But not everybody has to be because it's just, you know, it's not, it's not a given for every, every single person out there working with it to also be wanting to invest in the, in the community. And that's fine. Ideally we get as many people on board in the community as well. But I get that everybody has a different angle in, in why they're there and why they would go to such an event.
I think for agencies especially.
Mark said this in the beginning. There's, there's people there who will never go to a word camp, but they as an agency are interested in learning about new integration providers, learning about all different kinds of, you know, more like half related stuff to the hosting and, and you know, there's, there's so many different angles. Like, let me take a little sidestep here.
Some of the main event booths are on the hardware side of things. Like if you want to build your own server, here's a booth where you can configure that exact thing that you need and then they'll set it in the cloud for you. Like things like that, that's, that's hyper specific specific. And you can have those there because if you're, if you're catering 10,000 people, you know, they'll find their crowd. And I think that's a huge distinction to make in terms of why would this potentially be interesting for me as an agency if I'm not really that interested in going to work camps? I know they're there, but you know, why whatever.
Cloudfest is a different beat. Cloudfest is a different angle to presenting all the variances that are in our market as a whole. And specifically not from a WordPress perspective. Yes, you'll find plenty of WordPress companies having a booth there.
I love Patch Tax Booth last year for instance, and what they did and on all those things. So, you know, you'll find them there.
But it's just different. It's just different.
I don't know. Is it from, from, from your perspective, Mark? Is the, is it, is it primarily something catering the agencies? Are you going into the main event as well?
[00:34:02] Speaker C: I mean, I, I definitely will.
This is the only event where you can have a business pitch in a theme park, so you have to do it anyways.
No, I mean, I mean, obviously we are a WordPress company, but we started to look outside of WordPress also talking partnerships, etc.
And there will be other interesting things on the other days.
For example, Web Pros is always very active at Cloudfest, etc.
But the big differentiator this year will be the topics of the presentations.
I mean there are a lot of things that are very interesting for agencies. I mean, how does sales work? We never talk about sales at work caps. I mean we don't do that.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: We almost. A dirty word.
[00:34:52] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Kind of a dirty work, but it's, it's a big part of our business. Yeah. Every. If our customers are agencies as we are WordPress product companies, then we need to talk about sales. Yeah.
We need to talk about pricing. Yeah. Not everything is for free, even if it's open source. And I mean pricing is not new. But it, it's also a dirty word. Yeah. Especially if it's high pricing.
And also other things like how does a sales playbook looks like, how a sales process should look like. Or also things like the regular way. If you are an agency and you want to become a product company, what does that mean? That's not just about now I create a plugin or a theme.
There's more to it, way more. I will talk about that, for example. And there are also other topics. For example, topics about how you would build up your, your maintenance business because you create websites but you maybe also maintain them and that could be one part of your business, but that is not project work. That's totally different. So how can you do that? So everything very business driven, everything very pragmatic and not that general. Yeah. And if you talk about, if you want to talk to or invite an agency owner of an agency with 20, 30, 50 people, these are his problems.
These are his everyday problems.
And if we talk about that, these people will join us.
And as you said, that is mostly not possible at a word camp. And I don't know for the future if we should add that to a word camp. Maybe this is a total different event then with a total different perspective.
[00:36:35] Speaker A: I think so. I think so.
The first word camp I went to is the one, the first one I organized as well, which is 2009. So if you look back from 2009 to now and I look at the schedule, like what type of talks have we had up until this point?
There's a, there's a huge variety and there's, there's certain themes that are quite clear, but everything on the business side of things. Things. Yeah. No, that's.
We don't see that. And if we haven't seen it now, we can try and push for it. I mean, I know that WordCamp Central is really working hard in finding different ways to do different types of events and different focuses and all that. All that. But I don't see the agency slash business side of things. I don't see that happening at a WordCamp. There may be a workshop here and there, there may be a. Maybe one or two talks, but to have a full day dedicated to this and also covering the developer side of things, you know, it's a, it's a different angle because it's, it's a.
Yeah, can I say business first almost. I mean it's not technically, but like we're getting into that type of corner where we can say we want to be of value for the people, people who go who, who come to cloudfest who understand the, the, the vastness of the ecosystem of the web and hosting on the web and using the cloud and the services that go onto there.
You know, there's, there's, there's a, such a large diversity of what is an agency. I don't think we've even covered that.
An agency can be an agency of developers, it can be a full stack agency including all, all the advertising and the ROI and the SEO and you know, all that whole corner. But an agency can also be
[00:38:34] Speaker C: all
[00:38:35] Speaker A: of that, but then hyper focused on, I don't know, e commerce or hyper focused on publishing.
There's, there's so many angles to just even describe the word agency. What does that actually mean?
You're not going to be able to cover that at a, at a word camp from a primary role. But at cloudfest, as I'm deducing now, that is for sure the goal to be that on the primary level. Like, let's figure out all the different agencies that are common and let's figure out a, a plan for at least for the Monday and is there stuff to do on the Tuesday as well for. Because the main event starts on the,
[00:39:19] Speaker B: the summit is basically day one leading into the main event. So sometimes we call it day one, sometimes it's the day before the main event. It depends on who you're talking to.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: Day zero.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: Day zero.
Yeah. So what is also going to be interesting is that there's part of the contents that we are, that we are having covered and mainly attracting or attractive to agencies on the Monday that is going to be on the program as well during the main event. So there's for example, let's say three pillars that we are covering on the Monday, which you probably know are like maintenance, security and performance.
And we have these three pillars covered as well during the main event by similar same people so that folks that are not attending the Monday will have the opportunity to see a different talk, but still focusing on these three pillars during the main event. So there's still a lot of content that is interesting for agencies that is also going to be brought into the main event and that hasn't been necessarily the case in the previous years.
So there is a new, a new stage that is currently being programmed and set up that you don't find on the agenda yet, but you will find it on the agenda next week with very interesting content, not exclusively for the WordPress industry, but partly for the WordPress industry and open source projects in general. So that is also pretty new to cloudfest.
I just wondered if you let me just add one thing about wordcamps and should they fulfill this role at the same time or should they be different events? I'm a firm believer they should be different events because also we are not talking about the same institutional structures when organizing them.
So Cloudfest is a for profit organization. It is a GmbH, German GmbH and it has entirely different possibilities to organize and set up such an event in terms of resources, in terms of structure, in terms of mission.
And I believe that business events should be organized by business driven organisms because otherwise I see a huge confidence.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: I see where you're going, I see where you're going.
[00:42:04] Speaker B: But coming back to webcams and their initial mission, which is, as you correctly stated, learning.
Yeah, you're going there to learn. And it's about educating the community and how to use the tools and how to maybe also give back and the whole open source philosophy and how to take the most out of the project, but also how to possibly put the best inside the project.
There is one component that I see is missing there when we talk about education and learning and that is the business side of things.
[00:42:39] Speaker C: Things.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: So I would very much appreciate, and I'm preaching that to the choir for years already when it comes to democratizing, democratizing opportunities.
When we are seeing the community as maybe the small businesses and the contributors, we also owe them to teach them how to, to take the most out of it for themselves, for their contributions, for paying their invoices, for providing for their families. Families. And that is what I mean with democratizing opportunities. And I don't see that enough happening at Word Camps and it doesn't have to do anything with a sales pitch on stage. But bringing these, these topics of that may sound dirty that how am I actually making money out of what I'm doing here in order maybe to, to be also in a position to put back some money in the project.
Right. There's only winners there. And that I feel is maybe an educational mission that I haven't seen wordcamps fulfilling. And that is also something that we can include into, into, into our programs and missions even though we are obviously commercially driven. And that is, I'm saying, I'm saying that because I'm, I don't think there's any reason of not being honest about that because we all, I think it's
[00:44:01] Speaker A: a wonderful distinction because again the comparison with work camps is that it's community driven volunteers only and they look at what they think is the best suiting thing to do for the, the schedule for those one or two days.
But it's from, it comes from a very different mindset if there's zero commercial thinking in why you participated in, in, in it in the first place.
Yeah, there's, there's one thing that I think I want to make very clear.
We've mentioned and it's kind of, you kind of said it already. But there's a.
The event is in the 10,000 people range.
The WordPress event itself is you're aiming for 800 people and for, for, for reference, the first WordCamp Europe I organized is we sold 832 tickets. So that's pretty much up there. That's a good size crowd.
But because it's the venue of where it's at and this, the incredible spaces around it, I wanted to make sure that people don't listen to the oh crap, this is going to be 10,000 people. I have to process.
You can.
If you're more on the introvert side of the spectrum.
It is a wonderful event to be it because there's plenty of places from plenty of places where you can say I'm hiding to, I'm mingling to let me give me some real distance here. All of the opportunity is there. So there's no reason to get scared if that's the right word of the number of things. 10,000. Because that, that's not a thing necessarily.
[00:45:52] Speaker B: It doesn't feel like that.
[00:45:53] Speaker C: Right.
[00:45:53] Speaker B: And then I, I, I, I am already looking forward in between to just have a stroll in the park because it's, I need this disconnecting times like the older I become, the more I feel like I had, I had A conversation like that earlier today with.
With a business partner where I said I used to go to conferences and it would just give me an enormous amount of energy. And the more I connected with folks, the more I felt energized. And it kind of changed a little bit over the years, but now it's like I really need to balance how much time I am spending in business conversations or leisure conversations and how to just make sure that I also have some downtime. And I can tell you there's a special connection between our CEO Christian Jaeger, and we call it Petrus in Germany. The kind of guy up there in the sky, or wherever you may want to call it, that is responsible for the weather, because we always have great weather at Cloud Fest.
[00:46:57] Speaker A: I've driven there in pouring rain expecting like, oh, and then perfect three days.
[00:47:04] Speaker B: Exactly. And it is magical to just take half an hour. You grab some food somewhere and you try just disconnect and you walk through that magical atmosphere of. Of this amusement park. Like, I cannot stress it enough. It's an amusement park. You'll connect to your inner child, inner teenager, and it's.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: It's absolutely fantastic in, in this context, Mark, there's a very important question for you.
Are there any gyms?
[00:47:36] Speaker C: Obviously there are. Are workhouse gyms at least?
No, I mean, for me. I also want to mention that I like the whole vibe of that whole event, especially if you start with Hackathon, because hanging out with the developers and the project people, that is always very different to what I do. And I like those days because you have a lot of time to discuss, to hang out, to discuss, even slowly. And you have time to go to the gym if you want to do that.
[00:48:05] Speaker A: And steak.
[00:48:06] Speaker C: Eat steak. Yeah. I think last year we couldn't go to the steak restaurant because it was. What was the water system damage or whatsoever. So no steak at all.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:48:17] Speaker C: We have to talk about this this year.
And then. And then the Monday starts. And for me, the Monday that's like, that's not 24 hours, that's 24 minutes. Because you. You start. It's a whole total different wipe. You now have 800 people. You are on stage. Yeah. And everything is very fast. And then you discuss with partners, with customers, etc. Etc. And in the evening you have the concert.
And then after that day, they're being very energetic. And I love that day. The whole Cloud Fest starts. And having that vibe, having discussions, being able to have business discussions in a theme park, it always remembers me on what was that Beverly Hills Cup 3, because it is your only chance to be maybe alone in a theme park.
So. And that is.
[00:49:05] Speaker A: That's a good one.
[00:49:06] Speaker C: And. And that is very strange. And I have to tell you, last year I even got a bad sunburn because hanging. Because of hanging around in a theme park and having business discussions. So the vibe, the vibe of that whole event is totally different to anything else that you know. And, and I do love that.
And yeah, we will probably spend some time at the gym, I guess.
[00:49:30] Speaker A: Good. I'll bring my gym clothing this time.
[00:49:32] Speaker C: I hope so.
[00:49:34] Speaker B: I just.
[00:49:34] Speaker C: Can I.
[00:49:34] Speaker B: Can I just add. Oh, I'm sorry.
[00:49:36] Speaker A: Yeah, of course not. Go, go, go.
[00:49:38] Speaker B: I just wanted to add a small detail before we forget it because. Thank you, Mark. You're praising the Hackathon so nicely, but I just want to make sure that people understand there is no way to apply anymore. So I really hope that everyone out there is not going to. To be super disappointed when I'm sharing these news that we are like fully, fully booked.
But please, if you're interested in the Hackathon, when you're listening to this, make sure that you bookmark the cloudfest Hackathon website and that you are keeping an eye on it in late November, early December, because that's when we open applications and we have every year a few hundred applications for only roughly 110 spots.
So that's the bad news. So, Remkas, you now have to bring the mood back to something positive.
[00:50:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I was gonna.
Well, I think I was going to suggest. I have one final question for you, Carol, and that's when is it?
[00:50:40] Speaker B: Oh, the WordPress Business and Agency Summit happens on March 23rd on the Monday, and the Cloudflare main event is going to start on on March 24th and is going to last until March 26th, which is a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
[00:51:01] Speaker A: So very soon, very soon indeed. And I for one, am looking very much forward to it. And I want to thank you both for coming on and explaining a little bit more what's different about a cloudfest versus a wordcamp. Thank you so much.
[00:51:18] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:51:19] Speaker C: Thank you for having me.
Bye.
