WordCamp Europe is of course the topic of the past week. The first reviews are also ready. One highlight of the event is for example the Q&A with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. Also, the beta version of the new Gutenberg editor is now available in the plugin repository.

That was WordCamp Europe 2017

2900 WordPress lovers followed the WordCamp Europe on site or via livestream. We were also there with the whole team. The topics of the sessions range from intercultural communication in the global WP community to design and WP security - so there really is something exciting for everyone.

One of the highlights of the event was the Q&A with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, who had to face some critical questions from the community. The question of the importance and role of inclusion and accessibility was one of the overarching themes of WordCamp and plays a central role in some very worth seeing sessions. On WordPress.tv in the coming days probably all session videos will be available for free.

Q&A with Matt Mullenweg

One of the highlights of WordCamp Europe 2017 in Paris was the Q&A session with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and moderator Om Malik. The Q&A session provides surprisingly good insights into Mullenweg's world of thought. For example, the 33-year-old assumes that despite the growing relevance of gestures and spoken language, texts will still play a key role for online content in the coming decades.

Also worth seeing is Mullenweg's response to a critical audience question regarding Automattic's acquisition of WooCommerce in 2015: "When you buy something in open source, you're not buying the code. [...] It was the people. 53 people joined the company, joined Automattic. It was the brands, the brand of WooCommerce. It was the integrations and the meetups and everything that they had built since then."

The main topic of the Q&A session was the presentation of the new Gutenberg editor. This will revolutionize WordPress "until everything is a block," according to Mullenweg.

The new WordPress editor Gutenberg

The future of WordPress is block based. At least this is the impression you get when you watch the presentation of the new WordPress editor Gutenberg .

The new editor is currently available as plugin in the official WordPress plugin directory and will be integrated into the WordPress Core after the 100,000th download.

Gutenberg is more reminiscent of a page builder than a classic text editor. According to Mullenweg, his block system will also replace widgets and many other standard elements of the WordPress core.

More news at a glance

WordPress TV
All sessions from WordCamp Europe 2017 are expected to be available for free on WordPress.tv in the next few days.

WordCamp Europe 2018
Next year WordCamp Europe will take place in Belgrade from June 14-16.