WordCamp Austin 2020 Online
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October 09, 2020
WordCamp Austin is on the 9th of October 2020. It is an online WordCamp and a one-day conference.
Austin is the Live Music Capital of the World. So, they are performers from the WordPress community that delight the day with their musical talents between sessions.
Table of contents
Live site reviews
Our awesome SEO experts Joost de Valk, Willemien Hallebeek, and Annelieke van den Berg are going to be there too. They are going to review live site reviews at WordCamp Austin and share some practical tips with you. Do you want us to review your website? Send an email to community@yoast.com.
Francesca Marano is speaking there. Her talk is about The Ultimate Newsroom QA: how to manage your editorial workflow like a boss. She will share the challenges encountered over the years in creating an effective workflow for the growing number of authors. She will share her experience in keeping the quality consistent while maintaining a schedule relevant to the audience’s expectations.
Schedule
Note: Times mentioned are US Central Daylight Time
| Cactus Cafe | |
| 9:00 am - 9:45 am | Live Site Reviews: Joost de Valk, Michiel Heijmans, Willemien Hallebeek, and Annelieke van den Berg |
| Broken Spoke | |
| 10:00 am - 10:45 am | The Ultimate Newsroom QA: how to manage your editorial workflow like a boss: Francesca Marano |
WordCamp Austin Online recap by Jimmy
Our colleague Jimmy attended his first online WordCamp, here is how he experienced it:
Not your usual WordCamp
As everyone knows, COVID-19 has seriously impacted the way WordCamps can be attended. Instead of meeting in a large conference center, visitors now attend from their home or office. Luckily, WordCamps seem to be very well-suited for such a setup and I was surprised with how smoothly it all went.
Something that was a bit different at WordCamp Austin, compared to other online WordCamps that Yoast has been present at, was that it mostly took place on Slack, instead of Zoom. This was an interesting approach, but also made it easier to answer questions and attend a few talks as well.
Let there be music
A nice addition to this WordCamp, which was new to WordCamp Austin, was the introduction of musical intermezzos between talks. For about 15 minutes, people would be able to enjoy live music performances from members of the WordPress community. This was definitely a nice change of pace and it also made clear how much musical talent exists within the community!
Attending in VR
Another cool aspect of this WordCamp was the ability to attend the conference in 3D or VR, all from within your web browser. In this 3D space, people could 'wander' around and watch the presentations in different rooms, or hang out in the hallway track and chat with one another. To me, this seemed like a good way to allow people that don't have the budget to attend WordCamps in general, to still experience a bit of the ambiance that these events have.
The presentations
After the opening remarks, I watched Annelieke, Willemien and Joost analyse three different websites and do live site reviews. The people, who submitted their sites, seemed to really appreciate the feedback that was provided and it sparked some conversations in our Slack channel.
Next, it was time for our new colleague Francesca to talk about 'The Ultimate Newsroom QA: How To Manage Your Editorial Workflow Like A Boss', in which she shared her approach and findings after managing a large group of authors for an Italian, all-female blog named C+B. It was definitely interesting to hear how she dealt with the various aspects that exist when running a large project like that.
The last talk I attended, was from David Zimmerman about 'Things Well-Meaning WordPress Developers Do That Hurts SEO in 2020' in which he discussed some common pitfalls that (theme) developers tend to fall into, which may impact your SEO and rankings. While talking about the importance of Schema, Yoast SEO was mentioned as being at the forefront of properly implementing this in WordPress, and thus was one of his recommendations to use.
Hallway track
After all this, I spent time with a group of people in the hallway track, talking about the setup that was used by the organizers and to hear how people were enjoying the event. Some interesting conversation topics that came up were things like the Austin skyline (which apparently always contains at least one or two cranes) and the origin of the dish 'Kapsalon'.
Final thoughts
All-in-all, I had a blast attending this online WordCamp and I feel that the virtual aspect is something that could become a permanent fixture for future events, allowing even more people to attend, make new friends and gain more knowledge on all things WordPress.
Zoom backgrounds by Yoast
Right-click the image, click Save Link As and download your background!
Instructions to set your zoom virtual background here.
