WordCamp, Italy, and inspiration

I travelled to Turin, Italy for WordCamp Europe 2024 with Gaz last month. This was the first time we’d spent any meaningful amount of time together since our separation – not counting hourly taekwon-do lessons – and so I thought was going to be interesting. Turns out it was fairly uneventful, insomuch that it was very much like travelling adventures of old; apparently good friends can separate and stay good friends. Huh!

Anyway, potential relationship awkwardness aside, we did a pretty good job of balancing work-related nerdery with obligatory parties and tourism.

We managed to explore La Pista Fiat 500, the old Fiat 500 test track on the top of the Lingotto building. What was the Fiat factory is now a hotel, shopping centre and more; the roof now home to a large garden (I do love a garden) and collection of art weaving its way round the track which is still used to test electric vehicles.

We also visited the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile (national museum of the automobile), Museo Nazionale del Cinema (national museum of cinema), the Orto Botanico dell’Università di Torino (botanic gardens at the University of Torino), Museo Egizio (Egyptian museum), and the Shroud of Turin.

Whilst at the conference we actually spent most of our time chatting to people (and drinking prosecco) instead of attending talks. It was really great making new acquaintences but I’ll be honest, this was mostly because there wasn’t anything in the schedule that particularly stood out to me. The only exception was Siobhan McKeown and Dee Teal’s panel on Fixing the ladder: getting more women into leadership at WordPress businesses & even that, whilst enjoyable, felt far more targeted at mega-businesses than little teeny weeny agencies like mine. (It may seem silly attending a talk on getting women in leadership when I am literally a woman in leadership, but I’m keen to see my juniors eventually rise through the ranks too.)

I finally got to eat pizza in Italy, one of my 40 things before I’m forty challenges, although it wasn’t quite the pizza nor location I had in mind. Guess I’ll just have to go back before the big four-oh. Such a hardship. 😇

I came away from the trip inspired, but not in the way you might think. Whilst chatting to new people, Gaz and I met Florian Ziegler, introduced via Mark Howells-Mead, and got to hear about Florian’s daily photo blog. Another one of my 40TBIF challenge’s is to take part in the 365 project – a year-long photo journal – but I keep putting off starting it because a) it feels weird not starting on January 1st, and b) posting something like that to another platform. I came away wanting to start now & do it here… and although I obviously haven’t (yet) I can see it happening soon. My photography might not be as beautiful as Florian’s but taking regular photos is so meaningful to me and it would be a shame not to record that somewhere. So I guess… watch this space?