A WordPress and WooCommerce Presence at CloudFest

Jonathan: Robert, how are you?

Robert: Great, nice to chat with you again, Jonathan. It’s what, been only a couple of weeks, I guess.

What is CloudFest?

Jonathan: And in our last time together, we shared the same physical time zone and space for a while. And that was over at CloudFest. That was my first CloudFest, but you’ve been to a few, right?

Robert: Two. This was actually my second. So the first one was back in 2018, missed 2019. And then it was virtual for the last two years, which I did go to those as well. But CloudFest is something that you really need to be there to experience it.

Jonathan: Man, what an experience. There’s a lot that we want to talk about today. I want to unpack the CloudFest experience for folks. How about we start off, though, with just a broad description of what CloudFest is. So you’ve been more than I have. How would you describe CloudFest to someone who’s never been, especially from your position in the hosting space?

Robert: Sure. And mentioning hosting is key because it used to be World Hosting Days, and very focused on the hosting industry from down to pieces, parts, refrigeration, battery, really hardcore, very hardware-driven show, and then started expanding into all the software services that hosting companies are getting into and utilizing, everything from virtualization.

And then the cloud part came, I think 2018, I think that was the actual first CloudFest by name, if I recall correctly. And really expanded into other software that’s living out in the cloud, living out in the internet. I’m trying to remember, I think 2019s, even though I wasn’t there, I think they had a focus on artificial intelligence.

Jonathan: Ah, interesting. Okay.

Robert: I can’t remember 2018 at this point.

Jonathan: It’s a big event. This year had over 6,000 attendees, just for perspective, I’m imagining a lot of the folks listening, been to WordCamps, you’ve been to maybe some bigger events, but this is a big event. And the venue, what do you think of the venue?

Robert: So for our audience, it’s held at a theme park. It’s pretty epic in that regard. The park is called Europa-Park. It’s in this tiny city, like two and a half hours west of Frankfurt. And it’s genius, because no one’s going to do anything else. They’re going to be talking to each other, networking, having dinner for the whole experience. I mean, it’s not like you’re going to run away somewhere, because, well, you’re isolated.

Jonathan: Yes. You’re focused on being there. And I was going to say, I like that two and a half hours from Frankfurt bit. In my situation, I flew into Munich. So it’s like four and a half hours northeast of Munich.

Robert: There’s so many different ways, and people would come in from Zurich or there was a couple other sort of more regional locations that people would be coming in from. But most of the international folk were coming in through Frankfurt.

Jonathan: Logistics were quite well… Once you got to the nearest train station, there was buses there for CloudFest, picking people up. And there were signs on the train station, like on the floor, it’s like, “This way to CloudFest.”

Robert: So that’s for CloudFest official, but there was a pre-CloudFest.

The Hackathon

Jonathan: Oh. So there was the Hackathon this year.

Robert: That’s what I’m talking, the pre-CloudFest.

Jonathan: Tell us about that.

Robert: I think they’ve been doing it for 10 plus years in various incarnations, the sort of CloudFest Hackathon, or just the Hackathon, previously to that.

Jonathan: They said that this was officially the fifth edition of the CloudFest Hackathon.

Robert: Oh, fifth. Okay. I couldn’t remember how many years.

Jonathan: Well, but to your credit, at this point, with COVID in between, it’s like closer to 10 years.

Robert: Oh, yeah. Good point. Yeah. Because everything disappeared for two years, and I keep time warping that way.

Jonathan: So what was that like?

Robert: It was awesome. It was one of the best Hackathons I’ve ever been at. And that’s not really to pump up CloudFest in a specific way, it was just done right. And a lot of energy, and maybe some of that is just people, developers wanted to hang out with each other again. I mean, this is one of the first big events that afforded that opportunity.

So there were, just for the Hackathon portion, 90 to 100 people were there, which really amazing. I mean, and everyone was really excited and knee deep into their projects. And there were eight projects that were being run out of that. Some really cool stuff.

Jonathan: That’s amazing. And of those projects, can you give us like, just a broad… what types of projects were people doing here?

Robert: Some of them were all over the place. It was so interesting. There were, I would say, about half or more focused on open source, and even more specifically, WordPress. Going through the list, there was WordPress in the IndieWeb, there was Bento and WordPress. So pairing WordPress with the WPCLI. Building and performance testing with WordPress core. Spam protection with WordPress. I mean, so that’s like six of them, five or six of them are just WordPress.

And then you had Joomla! and the trusted Update Framework, so another open source project. So that was really, really cool. And everyone one was really me knee deep into them. Then there was a GPG keys distribution project.

Jonathan: Ah, like a security thing?

Robert: Correct. And then there was another one that was around. I’m trying to remember what it was, something around crypto. I can’t remember exactly what that entailed.

Jonathan: And there was a whole contest, right? There was the Hackathon itself and then there was a judging.

Robert: On top of just the actual work getting done, yes, there was a core group of judges. I was actually one of them. As well as, let me see if I can find that list of all the judges. Who are all the judges, now? There was Carole Olinger from XWP, who else? I’m going to miss some people. And that’s very bad. Where’s that list of judges?

Jonathan: Lindsey from Post Status.

Robert: Lindsey from Post Status, Alain Schlesser, who else? I’m missing like two other ones. And someone’s going to yell at me when they hear this.

And the winner of the Hackathon…

Jonathan: Well, so let’s jump to the juicy part though. Didn’t a Joomla! project win?

Robert: So there were three winners and three categories that were being judged. One was like, what was the most efficient team? So we’d walk around to see how all the teams were working together. Were they really getting stuff done? Were they taking on a uniquely challenging aspect to their project? So that project was the performance testing environment for WordPress Core, so they won the most efficient team category, with team leads, Jérôme Vieilledent and Paul Gilzow from platform.sh.

Then there was, this was an interesting category, the most social media engagement, and the winner, we didn’t even bother counting anyone else’s social media engagement, it was so over the top crazy, and that was Joomla! And they did a great job of really getting the Joomla! community to get the word out. And it was magnitudes above anyone else. So we weren’t even looking at second and third place, it was just like, Joomla! got this one.

And then an interesting one, which was the best presentation. So that was, how clearly did the team present to everyone at the Hackathon, and obviously the judges, what they wanted to accomplish? How they accomplished it? What was actually finalized? And what was done? And, full disclosure, the team lead from that was Aleksandar Savkovic from Cloudways. And Cloudways won for best presentation with securing press with the WPCLI.

Jonathan: Oh, that’s awesome. And what I like about the nature of those like categories, if you will, is that, it’s clearly not the point of the Hackathon, because we’re here to do some cool projects. But those are a nice backdrop, where it’s like something extra you can work towards. How do we draw attention to it? How do we present what we’ve done? How do we work together effectively?

Robert: And it was nice because you didn’t have to be a super techy. It allowed for folks who were not PHP rock stars or whatever coding platform rock stars to have heavy involvement and make a difference. From those three categories, an overall winner was selected. And that’s the lead you busted, and of those three Joomla! won. Because not only did they have great engagement, but they tackled an interesting problem that has a lot of future applications as well. And open source, which I’m an open source guy, so I really wanted to focus on open source for anyone to be a winner in this. There’s a little bit of love to Joomla! for me anyway, but they really did a great job on setting up their mission, accomplishing it, and actually making it extendable to other platforms. So that was what was really cool. It wasn’t just that they solved a Joomla! problem. They solved a trusted update framework problem that could be utilized by any other project.

Jonathan: Well so let’s talk about our impressions of CloudFest overall, because that right there is one of the things I love about this context. Because really, to me, it’s about that broader open web. And that’s the reality that we know, those of us who love open source. We talk about WooCommerce primarily, but WooCommerce is part of WordPress, which is massive open source project.

And we know, those of us who’ve been in the space for a long time, it’s like, we all benefit from like the progress that other projects make. And it’s not a competition between like WordPress and Drupal and Joomla!, there’s trade offs of each as individual projects. But in the grand scheme of things, we want to see the open web winning, and it requires diverse, open source projects. And I think this well exemplifies that.

Robert: Yeah. Joomla! really nailed that one. It was cool. And I was very happy for that team. And you mentioned WooCommerce not to figure out about, but the stuff that was done with WPCLI completely applicable to WooCommerce. The stuff that Joomla! did, completely applicable to WooCommerce. Performance testing environments, completely applicable to WooCommerce. So even if it wasn’t just a WooCommerce specific project that anyone tackled, so much of the work will benefit WooCommerce going forward. And, again, to your open web point, I mean, that’s exactly what we like to see.

Impressions of the event… CloudFest vs. WordCamps (apples and oranges)

Jonathan: So impressions of the event. For me, I’ve been to a number of the bigger WordCamps, and I’ve been to like larger events, but I’ve definitely never been to something quite like CloudFest. And I loved it for a lot of reasons. The venue was great. It was interesting to, like you said, have this place where this is all that you’re really doing. But I think the thing that really stood out to me was walking the exhibit hall and seeing this convergence of hardware and software all within this open web context, seeing Intel and AMD with booths and others.

There’s hardware manufacturers there, showing off the latest processors and hard drives and the capabilities, and then all the software around them, hosting companies, of course. And for me, it just, I had this distinct feeling of like, oh, this feels like home. In this sort of broader, open web context, it’s like, wow,. And then what was awesome is seeing all the WordPress references throughout. More and more people investing time and energy into WordPress, which makes a lot of sense. There’s this strong alignment with the space.

But I was really impressed. It’s a well done event. WordCamps will always hold a special place in my heart. I love it. Part of what I love about WordCamps is, how do I put this kindly, the less professionalism.

Robert: There’s a casual intimacy.

Jonathan: Yes.

Robert: You generally know, at least, if you’ve gone to more than three already 10% of the people who are going to be at the next WordCamp.

Jonathan: Well, and you know what it is too. It’s the difference between, because WordCamps are led by volunteers, so you end up getting some really special experiences, and you get some that are kind of mediocre, and you don’t really know what you’re going to get. CloudFest is professionals.

And to be clear, there are many professionals who volunteer at WordCamp, but you just don’t know what you’re going to get. And it’s part of what I love.

Robert: I mean, they finished on that Friday and I know that following Monday, they were already full steam ahead for CloudFest 2023.

Jonathan: So all that’s to say, if anyone is curious, highly recommend going next year. I’ll start with that. It’s something to experience.

Robert: And there is a huge WordPress audience in Europe. So for a lot of folks, if you’re not going to go out to WordCamp US, for example, definitely drive out to CloudFest, general admission is free, so those tickets are free. So that’s a no-brainer, I mean, you pay for room and board, but that’s about it. There are VIP tickets. Frankly, and I’ll probably get yelled at by CloudFest, there are not many differences between a VIP and general admission. The biggest difference is there is a VIP room to kind of relax and chill out. But, okay, it’s a huge park, and I guess almost routinely, it’s perfect weather. It’s 60s, 60s, for the broader audience, it’s around 20 Celsius every day, and people are hanging out outside.

Thanks to our Pod Friends Yoast and Mindsize

Comparing CloudFest 2018 and 2022

Jonathan: Now, how did your experience compare? Because you’ve been twice, how did the 2018 compare to this year?

Robert: 2022 was smaller. It was smaller, less dense. So the expo hall, where, I mean, there are tons of hosting companies, so you have a like IONOS, InterNetX, HostingPL, Cloudways. And then cPanel and Plesk, which helped run a whole bunch of hosting infrastructure anyway. Virtuozzo, KVM, there was a bunch of folks there. But in the past, that expo area is jam packed. They would typically fit in more vendors or sponsors. And I mean, people are actually hanging out there. The problem with 2022 is a lot of COVID protocols. So they limited the amount of vendors that could participate in the expo hall. And a lot of people just didn’t want to be hanging out there, walking around with their mask all day, when they could hang out outside and still network and meet people, or go to the sessions. And so it was less traffic. Normally it’s like wall to wall, think huge concert density, everyone’s rubbing shoulders and elbows. That was not the case.

Jonathan: What did you think about the content itself or how much time did you spend with the talks?

Robert: Oh, boy, there was one I spent a lot of time with. I think it was something about WordPress panel, I don’t know.

Jonathan: We did a panel together along with Chris Lubkert, I think it is. Sorry, Chris, and our friend, Jean-Baptiste, from WP Media, where we talked about, the four of us, the value of the WordPress ecosystem. I really enjoyed that. I got to moderate that, and we had a good size crowd there, and covered a lot of ground in a short period of time. I enjoyed that a lot.

Robert: I love it when one of the biggest complaint is, we wish we had time to ask questions.

Jonathan: I know. Yeah.

Robert: That’s a great way to leave them wanting for more for, hopefully, next year.

What about WordPress? Did I hear someone say WooCommerce?

Jonathan: Yep. And there was more that we held back, a lot we could have gone into, but it was a good one. And it was a good indicator. Some of the MCs were making reference in between of like, “Wow, there’s a lot of WordPress this year.” And we’re like, “Yeah, there is, and going to be a lot more.” I got to do a talk on the main stage on offering an overview of the WordPress ecosystem. Quite enjoyed that. I just overall really enjoyed it. Now when you think about WooCommerce, what’s your sense of how often you saw references or how much was it on the mind of folks there?

Robert: So that’s an interesting observation. I know you didn’t make a statement, but that question in and of itself is an interesting observation, because there wasn’t much, specifically, about WooCommerce. If things were touching WooCommerce, it was on the payment hosting in general or security side. When folks would talk about Word something, Woo something, it was really more about the overall backbone of the infrastructure.

So it is still a more infrastructure driven conference than any kind of WordCamp, for sure. I anticipate a lot more WordPress forward topics next year. And specifically WooCommerce. Because it’s interesting, because you don’t, unless I missed it, I didn’t see Shopify or BigCommerce or any of those guys there.

Jonathan: No, and why would they, right?

Robert: Why would they? Exactly.

Jonathan: Well, and Shopify specifically. BigCommerce is in a bit of a different category, because they’re more platform agnostic. But Shopify, why would they go? It’s very antithetical. It’s like they do all of it, right?

Robert: Well, they do, but there’s still a developer ecosystem around those platforms. Not that I want them to show up, but I think they’re being shortsighted in not taking advantage of a very diverse community at such an event.

Jonathan: Yep. There were a couple of things that stood out to me. Well, so first thinking about WooCommerce broadly, I think you’re right, I think we will see a lot more WordPress. And what’s interest me about WooCommerce is that, at least in my mind, it presents unique challenges for hosting companies as well as unique opportunities. I would say on an average, WooCommerce customers are going to be more valuable to a hosting provider than… there’s also potentially more risks involved in them, but, overall, they’re more reliant on a strong hosting relationship.

And at least in my experience having worked at Woo, they’re less price sensitive than your typical WordPress folks. So they’re willing to pay a lot more for good service. So they present, back when I was working at Woo, I noticed a lot more hosting companies reaching out and saying, “Hey, we’re looking at doing Woo specific offerings. How do we do this? How do we do that?”

And I think that’s an indicator of what we expect to see a lot more of, where hosting companies will say, “Okay, so WordPress is no longer this thing that you can just throw like page cashing at and be done with it. If you’re doing WooCommerce, you have to deal with these things. You have to consider a lot more.” And I think we’re going to see more of that more hosts looking like, “Oh, okay, there’s a lot of opportunity here. How do we ride that proverbial wave?” And anyway, I’m excited to see it.

Robert: Completely agree. I mean, I always think about the commoditization of hosting anyway. I wake up every morning thinking, what do we do when peak performance, peak security, peak hosting is all metaphorically free and ubiquitous? What is that thing? WordPress, in and of itself, is already there. It is that same commodity, because it’s free in every single way, and it’s available everywhere. It’s like air, I can breathe in WordPress, and there it is. But WooCommerce has, I’m going to say, some challenges.

And that’s great because that’s where the opportunity lies. How does WooCommerce get more impressive, more performant, more valuable to folks? And because there is so much money happening in WooCommerce that price sensitivity is less of an issue. Because, yeah, I’m happy to pay 10 times as much for WooCommerce hosting or whatever we want to call it, then WordPress, because I’m making a thousand times more money. So, yeah, it makes sense to have the best performance, the best security, the best usability, the best ecosystem for a cart abandonment and email funnels, and all those things that make an e-commerce experience more successful for both sides, for the owner and the consumer.

Jonathan: I was just thinking, WooCommerce should definitely be there next year. They should have a booth. Because I think WooCommerce, and to give them like full credit, I think they recognize this, it is in their best interest to have strong relationships with the hosting ecosystem.

And to have clear like, hey, what do you guys need? How do we help you succeed in this? Right. So, yeah, let’s hope we see them out there next year.

Robert: I mean, that’s why WordPress is ubiquitous. It made smart decisions, and let’s just say, Matt made smart decisions in the early years to get grounded with some hosting companies. And when you have DreamHost and BlueHost as your anchor hosting partners, with hundreds of thousands, millions of users and sites, well, shoot, I mean, that needs to happen with WooCommerce as well.

For Woo product creators, there’s opportunities

Jonathan: So one of the things I think about for the WooCommerce product creators, going to CloudFest presents you with some pretty incredible opportunities to meet future partners. Especially, you might find a hosting company, for instance, that’s experimenting with a new line or a specific offering. Just the networking alone, because a lot of executives, a lot of decision makers make it out to CloudFest. And how did you feel about just the quality of the networking and the conversations that you were able to have?

Robert: That’s the magic of CloudFest, that really is. There are so many C-level folk from really important companies that are there, and they’re insanely accessible, because you’re going to run into them on the floor, to the networking, a lot of them have meetings set up from 9:00 till 5:00. I know that experience well, but there’s still times where you’re just going to be jumping into a conversation, then realize, oh, he’s the CMO of such and such, or the CEO of this and this. And I mean, it’ll blow your mind who you’re meeting and who you’re talking to.

I had an opportunity to meet up with the founder of Jelastic. That was great. And that was completely accidental and ad hoc. That was not planned. An hour conversation later, just standing in front of the hotel, actually, waiting for a car to take us back to the airport. And that was crazy. That kind of bumping doesn’t happen in virtual conferences. And in deference to most WordCamps, it’s not going to happen at most WordCamps. It’ll happen at US or Europe as the giant regional ones, but you’re not necessarily going to be rubbing shoulders with folks that can change the direct of your business and your professional career.

Jonathan: If you’re in the WooCommerce space, especially in the product space, it’s definitely worth going. Even if you don’t have a specific agenda, I think there’s a lot of things you can do to prepare. But, yeah, it was fantastic. I’m excited about next year.

Robert: I can’t wait. It is a fave.

CloudFest on their sponsor game

Jonathan: Well, and one of the things that I love about it, too, it’s like, especially if you’ve been in the WordPress space for a long time and haven’t been to a lot of others, it’s really good to get perspective. I know, for me, I’m on the WordCamp us like organizing team this year, helping on the sponsor front. And I’m like, seeing what CloudFest did on their sponsor game, it’s like, okay, we still have our WordPress way of doing things. It’s also great to get perspective and to get input from like, okay, what else is being done in other places? Ah, it was excellent.

Robert: CloudFest is pretty funny. They’ll sell you anything. You can buy sponsorship, because it’s in a theme park, to have your company on a reel in the monorail.

Jonathan: Yes. I was so impressed. The signage everywhere as you went throughout, I’m like, the logistics of setting this up, like you’re walking, doing a little hall under like the train on your way to the hotel. And it’s like, I was really impressed and well done. It was a lot, but I don’t know, at least for me, it’s like, and it wasn’t too much.

Robert: Well, because it’s such a big area, you don’t feel overwhelmed. But they have figured out how to monetize on so many different ways at a conference level, it’s interesting. When I was at Perfect Dashboard, that was my first CloudFest in 2018, we had a booth, the regular. But we wanted to do something that would stick out, so we actually sponsored a morning run.

And the best part about doing that, wasn’t that we had however many people join us for a little morning run, because we did that, it was slotted in the agenda every day. And because it was the first event, if you went to the agenda every day, the first thing you’d see was the Perfect Dashboard run every morning. So, I mean, and they’re geniuses about being flexible on their end at CloudFest. So you could throw them an idea like, “Hey, we’d like to do this,” and they’re like, “Yeah, okay. We can do this.”

Jonathan: It was also quite interesting, you and I both, we spoke at WordCamps, and a lot of other venues, to see like the production values of like, okay, micing us up, makeup, the production crews, and we’re like, “All right.” And again, it’s just interesting to observe the difference between what you get with volunteers versus the professionals. And they’re not necessarily better than one or the other, but in this case, the CloudFest folks, I was so impressed. They were on top of it. They seemed to really know what they were doing. And I drew a lot of inspiration from it, man. Well, any other highlights for you? Anything else that you think we should touch on?

CloudFest, WordPress community and next year

Robert: I will keep hammering that people should go to it. And I do think there’ll be a stronger WordPress presence. We had Josepha speak at the end, not live, unfortunately, but she gave a good stirring charge to the CloudFest community to look at how they’re contributing to the WordPress community, and getting involved for Five for the Future, and all of that. So that was really nice to see. I would hope that she or Matt could be there next year. I think that would make an interesting and resounding statement about where WordPress sits in, frankly, core internet infrastructure.

Again, because it runs so much, it just, WordPress is now infrastructure and you expect to have it. You may not want to use it. That’s fine, but you can’t go somewhere and not have that as an option. And hopefully, over the next five years, WooCommerce becomes equivalent on that side of the universe. And I think it’ll take about five years to really get that kind of traction. Because there are so many options and people are trying to build walled gardens around e-commerce platforms. But I think WooCommerce can do that and have that same kind of penetration in the next five years.

Jonathan: Let’s see them there next year. And that’ll be fun. We can do a recap next time, and maybe pull someone from Woo into it. Well, it was excellent.

Robert: I really do like it. It’s one of my favorite conferences. To be completely transparent, we’ll see what you do this year with the US, but my favorite conferences so far have been CloudFest and WordCamp Europe.

Jonathan: Yep. Actually, I really like WordCamp Europe as well. I mean, US will be great. Us is going to be kind of small this year.

Robert: I know which I’m not quite understanding why

Jonathan: Our venue options were limited. That’s what it ended up coming down too. So it’ll be great, but it’s going to be small. So WordCamp Europe is the big one. And then it looks like WordCamp Asia is next year.

Robert: Yes.

Jonathan: Yeah. I was really excited about going to that.

Robert: Did they secure a time yet? I know it’s 2023.

Jonathan: Yeah. I think it’s in February.

Robert: Perfect.

Jonathan: All right, Jacobi. See you next time, Robert.

Robert: Awesome. Thanks so much, Jonathan.