WordCamp Netherlands Felt Different  ## Metadata - Author: [[Remkus]] - Full Title: WordCamp Netherlands Felt Different - Category: #articles - Document Note: ```markdown --- tags: [wordpress, community, events] author: Remkus source: remkusdevries.com reference: [https://remkusdevries.com/wordcamp-netherlands-felt-different/] date created: 2025-12-02 12:00 --- # 🏷️ Title: WordCamp Netherlands Felt Different ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - Official post: [WordCamp Netherlands Felt Different](https://remkusdevries.com/wordcamp-netherlands-felt-different/) - Scanfully (mentioned as a focus project): https://scanfully.com - Within WP courses: https://withinwp.com - WordCamp Netherlands (event series): https://netherlands.wordcamp.org ## 📝 Summary - What happened. - The author attended WordCamp Netherlands purely as an attendee for the first time in ~15–16 years, after years of deep involvement in organizing. - Why it matters. - Stepping back revealed both emotional distance and pride, and created room to focus on new WordPress-related projects and teaching. - Key stakeholders. - The author, the Dutch WordPress community, event organizers, and learners/customers of Scanfully and Within WP. - Risks and tradeoffs. - Emotional dissonance from stepping away; potential loss of institutional memory vs. healthier personal focus and sustainability. - Bottom line. - The community is thriving without the author’s direct organizing role, and that distance enables renewed energy for products, courses, and newsletters. ## 📖 Main Content - Explain the core arguments in plain language. - The author describes the joy of reconnecting with the WordPress community at WordCamp Netherlands and the strange feeling of not being responsible for organizing. Old habits—like scanning for problems—persist even after stepping back. Yet the distance underscores how much effort went into previous years while showing that the event is now in good hands. - This step back has an upside: more time and clarity to build Scanfully and expand Within WP courses, which is “energizing in its own right” and would not have been possible if still organizing. - Add sourced context and define terms. - WordCamp: community-organized WordPress conference focused on sharing knowledge, networking, and contributing to the project. - Scanfully: the author’s product/company focused on building faster, more secure, and reliable WordPress sites. - Within WP: the author’s WordPress education platform and course library. - Note uncertainties or contested claims. - This is a reflective, personal narrative with minimal factual controversy. The piece assumes but does not quantify the positive impact of shifting time toward Scanfully and Within WP. ### 🗒️ Notes - The author “just got back from WordCamp Netherlands” and emphasizes the joy of “seeing familiar faces” and meeting new contributors, reinforcing the ongoing vitality of the WordPress community. - This year felt “different” because, for the first time in roughly 15–16 years, the author had “absolutely no involvement in organizing anything,” highlighting a major personal transition in community role. - Habitual organizer instincts remain: their “brain kept slipping into old rhythms,” looking for issues to fix or people to support, showing how deeply ingrained long-term volunteer roles can become. - The author experiences a “mix of pride and distance”: pride in new organizers and strong community energy; distance from no longer being central to the event’s operations. - The upside of distance is clear: it frees time and focus to work on [Scanfully and new Within WP material](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kbft0yst3nygn1aeq5g9ww8p?endLexposition=0000E_00000-002d&startLexposition=0000C&emphasizeText=Not+being+involved+gave+me+the+space+to+focus+more+intentionally+on+Scanfully+and+on+developing+new+material+for+my+courses+at+Within+WP.), which is framed as energizing. - The author closes feeling “grateful” for the event, “nostalgic” about shaping it for a decade and a half, and “more excited than ever” about current projects. - The article ends with a soft CTA into two newsletters: one on professional-grade WordPress sites (tools, plugins, practices) and one personal newsletter for posts, ideas, books, tools, and opinions. ## 📚 References - Remkus de Vries — “WordCamp Netherlands Felt Different”: https://remkusdevries.com/wordcamp-netherlands-felt-different/ - Scanfully (WordPress performance/security tooling): https://scanfully.com - Within WP (WordPress training by the author): https://withinwp.com - WordCamp central (context for WordCamp events): https://central.wordcamp.org ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - Paragraph A paraphrase. - After returning from WordCamp Netherlands, the author reflects on how good it felt to reconnect with long-time community members and new contributors, underscoring why the WordPress community still matters so much. - Paragraph B paraphrase. - This time, attending only as a participant felt strange after many years of organizing, but the distance also brought pride in the new organizers and created space to focus on building Scanfully and expanding Within WP courses. ## 📰 Newsletter WordCamp Netherlands just wrapped, and long-time organizer Remkus attended for the first time “just” as an attendee. That shift revealed something powerful: the community is thriving on its own, and stepping back can unlock new creative bandwidth. If you’re working in WordPress professionally, this experience is a reminder to: - Invest in succession so events and projects outlive any one person. - Protect time for deep work—whether that’s building a product like Scanfully or creating course content like Within WP. - Stay plugged into the community even when your role changes. Worth checking out: - Performance & reliability tooling: https://scanfully.com - WordPress education & courses: https://withinwp.com - Upcoming WordCamps and meetups: https://central.wordcamp.org/schedule/ Sometimes the healthiest contribution you can make is to hand over the reins and focus on building the next layer of value for the same community. ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Developer advocacy: - Capture this “step-back” story as a case study for sustainable community leadership; propose a talk on role transitions at future WordCamps. - Education: - Turn the lessons from organizing vs. attending into a Within WP mini-module on “career arcs in open source.” - Developer experience: - Use feedback from WordCamp hallway conversations to refine Scanfully onboarding and documentation. - Developer marketing: - Run a WordCamp follow-up campaign highlighting real-world performance/security wins enabled by Scanfully. - Community management: - Document an organizer succession guide based on the author’s 15+ years of experience. - Internal/external/cross-project: - Align Scanfully, Within WP, and community initiatives around a shared “healthy contributor lifecycle” narrative. #### OSPO - Policy & Governance: - Encourage written charters for community events that explicitly support leadership rotation and succession. - License Compliance: - Use education programs (e.g., Within WP) to lightly reinforce open-source license basics for plugin/theme developers. - Security Management: - Partner with products like Scanfully to surface best practices for vulnerability management in WordPress environments. - Software Inventory: - Promote SBOM and plugin inventory awareness in WordPress enterprise teams via talks and workshops. - Developer Support: - Offer consultatio - Summary: I just got back from WordCamp Netherlands, and as always, it was great to be there. Seeing familiar faces, catching up with people I’ve known for years, and meeting new folks who are contributing in their own ways reminded me why this community continues to matter. But this year carried a different weight. For the […] - URL: https://remkusdevries.com/wordcamp-netherlands-felt-different/ Background pattern I just got back from WordCamp Netherlands, and as always, it was great to be there. Seeing familiar faces, catching up with people I’ve known for years, and meeting new folks who are contributing in their own ways reminded me why this community continues to matter. Milana Cap, Karim Marucchi, myself, Xaver Birsak But this year carried a different weight. For the first time in about fifteen or sixteen years, I had absolutely no involvement in organizing anything. No preparation, no behind-the-scenes problem-solving, no mentoring, no guiding decisions, no nothing. I walked in as a regular attendee, and I didn’t expect how disjointed that would feel. My brain kept slipping into old rhythms, scanning for things that needed attention or half-expecting someone to ask for help. Those instincts don’t disappear just because you step back What surprised me, though, was the mix of pride and distance. Pride because the event was in good hands and the community energy was strong. Distance because stepping away leaves a little echo behind, a reminder of how much of myself I poured into these events for so many years. The upside of that distance is very clear to me, however. Not being involved gave me the space to focus more intentionally on [Scanfully](https://scanfully.com) and on developing new material for my [courses at Within WP](https://withinwp.com/courses/). That shift has been energizing in its own right, and it’s something I wouldn’t have had the bandwidth for if I were still tied up in organizing. Walking away, I felt grateful for the event, nostalgic for the decade and a half I helped shape it, and more excited than ever about the projects I’m building now. #### Stay in the Loop Whether you’re here for personal reflections or deep WordPress insights, there’s more where this came from. I write two newsletters worth your time. Each serving a different part of my brain (and maybe yours too). If you’re serious about building faster, more secure, and more reliable WordPress sites, this newsletter is for you. I focus on the news around tools, plugins, and practices that power professional-grade WordPress sites. This is my personal newsletter where I share things I blog about, ideas I’m exploring, books I’m reading, tools I’m testing, and the occasional strong opinion loosely held., WordCamp Netherlands Felt Different, Remkus, 01kbft0yst3nygn1aeq5g9ww8p.