Is COVID over? Looks like it! Maybe? Well, almost! Right?
In any case, in-person events are back, and specifically, WCEU 2022 is here and I couldn’t be more excited to get back out there to hustle on behalf of Atarim, meet you all face to face and hang out with my WordPress peeps!
My WordCamp Journey
When we first created Atarim, as the WordPress plugin WP FeedBack back then, the first launch was at WordCamp London and the real push was a month later at WordCamp Europe in Berlin.
That was my first WordCamp EU and I was amazed by the openness and welcoming nature of this event. Frankly, I was hooked!
And over the next few months that followed, I attended, sponsored, and spoke at as many camps as I could afford to go to – As well as met some amazing friends that I stayed in touch with regularly throughout the past few years in lockdown and to this day – Out little WP Clique if you will.
I even got to meet Matt, The man behind WordPress, and had the opportunity to thank him for dramatically changing my life ?
Then, when COVID became a thing, my team and I were already scheduled to have our first company retreat, 6 months after we launched the company, at WordCamp Asia.
This was supposed to be a full week of hanging out with the team at a resort on an island in Thailand, talking about the vision, the roadmap for the year, and heading over to Bangkok for the event over the weekend, where we were also sponsoring.
Everything was good to go, including all the flights the hotels, loads of swag to give away, and very little money left in the bank account.
That’s when, a week before, the whole thing was canceled and I remember the lump in my stomach, getting the news.
We were still a brand new company and I had a lot riding on this event, so I had 2 options there:
- Ball up and cry for a few tens of thousands of dollars that were lost (We did manage to recoup most of the investment over the months that followed, but I didn’t know that at the time).
- OR, step up and do something for the community.
Fortunately, I chose the latter and this is what inspired the first Web Agency Summit, which to our surprise became the largest event in the space.
As well as become our yearly celebration of the community with more than 100 speakers that graced our stage so far, along with the top companies and publications in our industry that are supporting the event year after year, and of course, tens of thousands of attendees throughout the years.
And Now, We’re BACK! #WCEU 2022
I’m thrilled to announce that we’re continuing our support of WordCamps this year and sponsoring the event.
Even more exciting, is that this year, I’ll also be speaking – After attending WordCamp Berlin in 2019, I set a goal to speak at WCEU and I can’t wait to take the stage and share my thoughts on why a 5-day build becomes a 4-6 week project when a client is involved.
We’re taking this opportunity to celebrate a few milestones:
Celebrating our 3rd Birthday
I can’t believe it’s been 3 years already!
It’s been an incredible journey from where we started – Here’s the first video that was uploaded to our YouTube channel – Version 1.0 ?
Looking back we managed to build something pretty special and build a team around Jehrome and I that is dedicated to the vision and working extremely hard to serve thousands of our users every single day.
And we’re just getting started – I’m looking forward to the next few years.
To celebrate this milestone we’ll be running a special campaign and we’re releasing our biggest update EVER:
Launching Version 3.0
This huge update has a few key components to it along with a bunch of bug fixes and UI upgrades, here are some of the highlights:
Collaborate on ANY website in the world
You no longer need to install a plugin on the website. I mean, you still can and we’ll keep supporting and advancing the dedicated WordPress plugin as the deep integration for collaboration.
But you can now just drop in a URL, any URL, and get to work with 1 click.
This was a HUUUUGE undertaking and I believe this feature alone is going to take our entire platform to the next level!
Project Stages
For the first time ever, allow you and the clients to be on the same page for project deadlines.
You can set up the different stages within your dashboard, set the due date and a timer will appear for the most immediate due date right on the interface.
No more excuses for delays!
Native Integrations
At the beginning of the year, we launched our first integration with Zapier, Integromat, and Webhooks and have been listening closely to feedback from our users to learn what we can do next.
We started with ClickUp which was the most requested integration and leveraged this first native integration to learn how to deliver on the next batch.
And now it’s time to go deep with our Native Integrations.
With version 3.0, you will be able to seamlessly integrate to Asana, Jira, Pabbly, and TeamWork to push/pull tasks, time entries, status updates, and more.
We even built a pretty powerful Slack bot that allows for commands directly inside the Slack chat.
There’s More
These are just a few highlights, but I will keep a few things up my sleeve to build a bit of suspense around the release.
Our Agency Track at WCEU
While I’m pretty excited about this upcoming release, we can’t forget that WCEU is not about us, it’s about the community!
And we wanted to do something special for our booth this year to add some additional value to those that are attending, so we decided to leverage the big screen we have at our booth and replay some of the most powerful sessions from the Web Agency Summit Vault.
Here’s what happening and when at WCEU 2022:
Come Say Hi!
I’ll be at our booth (or somewhere around it) for most of the event and I would love for you to stop by and have a quick chat!
I welcome you to come on over, hang out and learn with us and of course, get some cool free swag (that is actually useful for your day-to-day).
See you there!