Trip to WordCamp Netherlands

Last weekend was my first WordCamp of 2012: WordCamp Netherlands. Utrecht was a great place to visit, and is a picturesque city of sun, canals, and cyclists. Only a forty-five minute flight from London, it’s a short hop into Europe, so I wasn’t surprised to find some fellow Brits who made the flight, too — Tammie Lister, Siobhan McKeown, and Jon Cave (aka duck_).

If I had to say one thing about Utrecht, it’s that I was more worried about being hit by a cyclist than a car! The weather was fantastic, and the colours of the light illuminated the old, compact buildings in a friendly glow. The Dom Tower dominated the skyline, and doubled-up as a handy landmark for me (my hotel was next to it).

If you live on the other side of the Atlantic, and were thinking about a WordCamp holiday into Europe next year, look no further: WordCamp Netherlands has you covered.

There are tons of photos of the WordCamp around the interwebs, and all the talks were recorded on video, so I’m looking forward to reliving the event through them. Here’s a teaser (I’m in green at about 11 seconds):

I was invited by the event’s organisers to talk about BuddyPress, so I shared information about the new 1.6 version of BuddyPress, and the core team’s ideas for future versions. My presentation’s slides are on slideshare, and the video of it should be up online in the next couple of weeks.

One of the most exciting things for me was to meet Bowe Frankema, Peter Hofman, and Stas Sușcov, all long-term BuddyPress contributors / developers / designers. With those three and Tammie, and myself, we had the most BuddyPress that I’ve ever seen at a single conference. Very cool.