As every year, the biggest European WordPress conference takes place in a different city. I attended every single one since 2016. After I thought the one in Turin in 2024 would be my last, to my surprise, a Swiss city won the selection, so there’s no way I wouldn’t make it to the WordCamp Europe happening in my own country, especially since I was quite active in the community with local WordCamps and meetups all over the country. But for me, it was clear, I want to volunteer and help out wherever my knowledge is useful. I ended up applying to be a photographer for the event. This made perfect sense after I led the video team at the local WordCamps. WordCamp Europe are just another level when it comes to attendees, budget or volunteers. So it was nice to see behind the scenes of such a big conference and to help take some nice pictures. We were a team of almost 20 photographers covering every talk on stage, socialising areas and more sessions off the main tracks.
So the conference was held in Basel, one of Switzerland’s major cities, on the border with Germany and France. That was also a big reason why the city was chosen. A conference of that scale in another Swiss city would not be feasible, as many attendees would struggle to find affordable accommodation. WordCamps are community-driven, and diverse people from all over the world and industries are joining. The tickets are priced at 50 euros per person, and the costs are covered by sponsorships. This is huge compared to other conferences on frameworks that cost 400 euros or more. So in Basel, attendees can cross the border to Germany to find cheaper accommodations, while still staying close to the venue. Public transportation is free when booking a hotel in the area, and the local airport offers many connections to European cities via budget airlines such as EasyJet. So, it’s a good match.
I just returned from South America on the weekend. Arrived at my parents’ place, swapped my big backpack for a smaller one, changed clothes and headed to Basel a couple of days before the official start of the conference to get to know the venue, the photographer’s team and prepare for the upcoming conference.
Accomodation & Community Events
I stayed at a hostel close to the venue. A place that was recommended to me once, and I wanted to check it out. It’s an old industrial building that was renovated and turned into a hotel. Quite an artistic architecture now, and interesting to see. The rooms were very modern and comfortable. There were obviously a couple of more attendees staying over there, which was nice. Although I didn’t spend much time at the hostel since there were so many events going on, even beyond the conference organised by sponsors or the community.
Contributor day
Before the actual start, we had a lot of community events happening. Also, a volunteer’s dinner at the local team’s famous football stadium. They have a nice lounge with a great view over the stadium, where we could dine and get to know other volunteers and speakers. The next day, the contributor days were happening. It’s a full-day event ahead of the actual two-day conference, where team leaders, developers and translators come to talk about issues, work on features or onboard new people. Everyone is welcome and can help work on this open-source project.
Conference Day
Then the big day has come. The opening ceremony of WordCamp Europe 2025 in Basel took place, followed by many great talks. I like the big WordCamp because the quality of talks is way higher than at local WordCamps, and there’s also way more happening, with 3 talks running at the same time. So there’s something for everyone depending on interests.
I was quite busy with my volunteer work, covering all the talks in shifts and delivering them to our “office”. We delivered live pictures to the social media team for up-to-date posts, and every half day we published a couple of hundred pictures taken by the full team to Flickr, the official WordPress photo library. Feeding great memories and allowing everyone to use those pictures to share online, on social media, or on their blogs.
We worked in groups of 3 people. One photographer was a real-time photographer who sent a minimal selection of pictures of the talk to the social media team right from the room, while two others covered more of the talk from different perspectives and with greater creativity. We usually had one photographer with a telephoto/zoom lens, while the other took wider shots. In that way, we had less movement from photographers during the talk and also a wider variety of perspectives. Then we were instructed to go through the pictures on our camera and right away delete the variations of the ones that were not good, to speed up the upload process. This worked quite well, and we were efficient.
We also made sure beforehand that the profile picture and, therefore, the look were similar across the different cameras. We didn’t shoot in raw and uploaded the pictures right out of the camera. Also, we had to make sure the camera time was synced with everyone’s to ensure a proper flow in the library on Flickr later. Lastly, we had a couple of ways to figure out which pictures were taken by whom, apply metadata, such as the photographer’s copyright, to the files, and upload them accordingly.
After Party
At the end of the two-day conference, there was, as usual, an after-party happening. It was held at the same venue as the conference, with food and music. A great environment to connect and talk with more people. Especially for me, as I was busy photographing during the conference, which meant I wasn’t able to socialise that much. At the after-party, this was possible, and I enjoyed it. We also had some fun gatherings at our photography team’s “office”, which was right next to the party with less loud music.
