As WooCommerce continues to shape the future of e-commerce, there’s growing excitement around the people and conversations moving the platform forward.

In this episode, we recap Checkout Summit. A focused gathering in Palermo, Sicily that brought together Woo’s makers and builders for fresh insights and real connections. Join hosts Katie Keith and James Kemp as they are joined by organizer Rodolfo Melogli and attendees Patrick Rauland and Remkus de Vries as they share what made this event stand out, the ideas and practical lessons that emerged, and how these summits help the WooCommerce community thrive no matter your role in the ecosystem.

Takeaways

In-person WooCommerce Events Foster Stronger Community Connections: After years without dedicated in-person WooCommerce conferences, gatherings like Checkout Summit are essential for building relationships, having candid conversations, and sparking collaboration between merchants, agencies, builders, and the core WooCommerce team (Rodolfo Melogli, James Kemp, Katie Keith 04:07, 05:13, 15:59).

Smaller, Focused Events Encourage Quality Interaction: Smaller targeted events (100-150 people) create an environment where valuable conversations occur, attendees can reconnect and continue discussions, and core contributors are easily accessible for feedback and networking, which is often lost in larger conferences (Remkus de Vries, James Kemp, Katie Keith 08:48, 09:27, 10:19).

High-Quality, Curated Content Drives Engagement: Purposeful curation of speakers and insistence on relevant, story-driven presentations (covering everything from business systems to AI and SEO) maximized audience value, provided actionable insights, and gave attendees memorable takeaways to implement in their businesses (Rodolfo Melogli, James Kemp, Patrick Rauland, Katie Keith, Remkus de Vries 17:10, 18:40, 19:49).

Face-to-Face Interaction Surfaces Unfiltered Realities: Attendees leveraged the event to ask direct, honest questions ranging from business performance to technical strategy—getting nuanced input that’s often unavailable online, and crowd-sourcing practical data (e.g., SEO performance, product sales trends) (Patrick Rauland, Katie Keith 31:07, 31:33).

Actionable Business Benefits Are Valued: Many attendees, particularly business owners, highlighted the practical impact of the event: list-making for actionable changes (from pricing tweaks to strategic shifts), team-building, and exposure to new ideas they could immediately bring back and use (Katie Keith, Remkus de Vries 26:06, 28:06).

Collaborative Feedback Loops Improve WooCommerce: Direct feedback from the WooCommerce community to core team members like James Kemp is critical for prioritizing improvements. In-person events allow nuanced discussions about PRs, feature requests, pain points, and future direction (James Kemp, Remkus de Vries 32:49, 33:14).

Iterative Improvement for Events: Attendees noted exciting successes but also shared areas for event development—such as beverage variety, managing hotel noise, and balancing session times with enjoying the beautiful host location—demonstrating a willingness to evolve based on community feedback (Remkus de Vries, Rodolfo Melogli, Katie Keith 35:41, 39:13).

Desire for More Merchant Participation and Themed Tracks: While plugin developers and agencies are well-represented, there’s interest in attracting more store owners and focusing on specialized themes to enrich the content and breadth of perspective (Patrick Rauland, Remkus de Vries, Rodolfo Melogli 46:26, 51:09).

Hybrid and Remote Options Expand Access: To address travel and budget barriers, the conference introduced “Checkout Summit Reloaded” (a remote, interactive version) so those unable to attend in-person can still participate and gain value, recognizing the ongoing need for flexible knowledge sharing (Rodolfo Melogli, Katie Keith 24:35, 25:46).

The Importance of Recurrence and Global Reach: A single event isn’t enough to serve the WooCommerce ecosystem; there is explicit demand for recurring and regionally distributed events to strengthen connections, catalyze learning, and ensure inclusive participation across the globe (Rodolfo Melogli, Patrick Rauland 42:16).

Questions This Episode Answers

Q: What made Checkout Summit different from larger WordCamp events?

A: Checkout Summit was intentionally limited to about 100–150 attendees, creating a more intimate and focused environment specifically for WooCommerce conversations. This allowed for deeper, ongoing discussions, easier networking, and greater access to speakers, which can be difficult at the much larger and more general WordCamp events (Remkus de Vries 08:18, James Kemp 09:47).

Q: How were the talks at Checkout Summit curated and what made them stand out?

A: Rodolfo Melogli specifically curated the talks, prioritizing content quality and relevance by asking speakers to focus on WooCommerce and to use personal stories to make their points memorable. The talks covered a range of topics like plugin business management, AI, SEO, and automation, and were designed to foster both learning and further conversation (Rodolfo Melogli 04:07, 16:34).

Q: What were some actionable business or strategic takeaways for attendees at Checkout Summit?

A: Attendees gained actionable insights ranging from pricing strategies to implementation of strategic changes in their businesses. The direct interactions with plugin builders, merchants, and WooCommerce team members led to practical ideas that attendees could immediately consider and apply (Katie Keith 26:35).

Q: How can WooCommerce events like Checkout Summit encourage more participation from merchants and store owners?

A: The panelists agreed that more merchants should be encouraged to attend, as their feedback and perspective are valuable for developers and agencies working with WooCommerce. Tailoring event content specifically for merchants and having talks that directly address their challenges may help attract this important audience (Patrick Rauland 46:43, Rodolfo Melogli 51:09).

Q: What are the benefits of attending smaller, specialized conferences versus large-scale tech events?

A: Smaller conferences like Checkout Summit provide more meaningful networking opportunities, more relevant talks, and an environment that’s less overwhelming than large tech events. Attendees can engage more deeply, follow up on conversations, and get direct responses from speakers and fellow participants (Remkus de Vries 53:49, James Kemp 55:07).

Q: Will there be an online version or future editions of Checkout Summit?

A: Yes—due to high demand and various travel constraints, Rodolfo Melogli announced “Checkout Summit Reloaded,” an online rerun of the event where the same talks will be presented live, with some additional guest speakers and interactive sessions. Additionally, plans are underway for future in-person events, possibly in new locations (Rodolfo Melogli 23:28, 42:16).

Q: What improvements were suggested for future Checkout Summit events?

A: Suggestions included offering more beverage options beyond coffee, finding ways to reduce hotel noise at night, involving more event managers to oversee various aspects, and optionally integrating more outdoor or fun activities. All agreed that feedback will help make future editions even better (Remkus de Vries 35:41, Rodolfo Melogli 37:06).

Q: How can first-time attendees make the most of large events like WordCamp Europe without feeling overwhelmed?

A: The advice is to plan your goals and focus on smaller groups or side events, such as curated meetups or sponsor hall interactions. Limit the number of talks you attend to the ones most relevant to you and set up meetings in advance to give your experience structure and reduce feelings of overwhelm (Remkus de Vries 53:49, James Kemp 57:10, Katie Keith 56:07).

Mentioned Links and Resources

• Business Bloomer (WooCommerce Blog & Event Organizer) – Founded by Rodolfo, Business Bloomer is a popular WooCommerce-focused blog and organizer of Checkout Summit. https://www.businessbloomer.com/
• Checkout Summit Reloaded (Upcoming Online Version of the Conference) – Attend or re-watch the talks from Checkout Summit virtually, with additional guest speaker sessions online. https://checkoutsummit.com/reloaded/
• EOS/Traction (Business Book/Roadmap Referenced in Talks) – Cited by James and Patrick as foundational reading for entrepreneurs and organizing plugin businesses. https://www.eosworldwide.com/traction-book
• Remkes de Vries’ The Guild (WordPress Community & Education Resource) – Remkes is launching an online community called “The Guild” for leveling up in WordPress. https://remkusdevries.com/announcing-the-guild/

Timestamped Overview

• 00:00 Meeting the WooCommerce community
• 10:19 Woocommerce community event excitement
• 15:42 Discussing WooCommerce topics
• 21:16 Speaker line-up and feedback
• 27:22 Gaining insights through conversations
• 31:42 Importance of feedback for Woocommerce
• 38:28 Hiring managers for conference tasks
• 43:13 WooCommerce events and engagement
• 47:47 Event planning and attendee goals
• 54:48 Networking at WordCamp Europe
• 57:55 Organizing and attending conferences

Episode Transcript

James Kemp:
Hello. Welcome to do the Woo, the podcast where we talk about all things WooCommerce. I’m James Kemp. I’m the core product manager for WooCommerce.

Katie Keith:
And I’m Katie Keith, founder and CEO at Barn2. And James and I, well actually all of us have just returned from Checkout Summit in beautiful Palermo, Sicily, where James and I were both speakers. And Patrick, today we’re going to talk about Checkout Summit and what we learned from it.

James Kemp:
Indeed. You said Rodolpho has returned from Checkout Summit, but he has stayed in the same place because that is where he lives.

Katie Keith:
Yeah, he returned a few miles.

James Kemp:
We’ve returned, yeah, 15 minutes or something. So yeah, we’ve invited three of the people that we know and met this past week at Checkout Summit, which is, you know, Rodolfo, Remkus and Patrick, if you wouldn’t mind taking a minute and just introducing yourselves. Should we start with Rodolfo?

Rodolfo Melogli:
Sure. Hello everyone. So I’m Rodolfo. Not gonna say my second name because it’s a little bit complex, but you would know by. Know me my by Rodolpho. I’ve been working as a WooCommerce freelance for about 14 years. Founder of Business Bloomer, the popular WooCommerce blog, and now founder of Checkout Summit. So. So the finally in person conference that just ended three days ago in Palermo and I’m so happy that we did whatever we did.

James Kemp:
Amazing. Patrick, do you want to go?

Patrick Rauland:
Yes, my name is Patrick. I like to joke that on everything in WooCommerce. In E Commerce. Most recently I’ve been working at Zero Shoes. It’s a huge large enterprise e commerce sites and I love fixing the bugs and fixing them in core. So that’s what I’ve done recently with Wu.

James Kemp:
Go ahead, Remkus.

Remkus de Vries:
Do I, do I need to do the introduction Woo related or.

James Kemp:
Because however you want to introduce yourself.

Remkus de Vries:
Adam and I do a lot of different things with WordPress and specifically Woo, mostly around scaling and optimizing WooCommerce.

Katie Keith:
Nice. Well, thanks to all of you for being here. For those of you watching live, please ask us your questions and leave comments or any feedback about Checkout Summit. Just to scare Rodolfo in the comments wherever you’re watching this.

James Kemp:
Yeah, I think a great place to start would be to talk about what is Checkout Summit. I know we had, I can’t recall when it was maybe March, we had a session with Rodolfo about Checkout Summit and that was kind of pre, pre Checkout Summit before all everything kicked off. I’m sure Rodolfo was very stressed at the time. Hopefully is a lot more relaxed now or stressed starting to plan the next one. But Rodolfo, did you want to give us a quick overview of Checkout Summit and kind of set the scene for what its goals were?

Rodolfo Melogli:
Yeah, I mean that’s, that’s a great question. I think there are a couple of points that we should be covering here. First is that the last official WooCommerce in Person Conference was back in 2017. So that was the third edition of WooComms and I actually never went to them because they were back in us at the time. I wasn’t really, you know, able to travel that much and there was a huge need to get back into in person conversations. I mean we’ve had work camps, we’ve had meetups and everything. But I really wanted something that was WooCommerce only. And the second thing is that, you know, it’s been a two, I mean plus years that we’ve been dealing with AI. So we all tend to be in our room slash offices, whatever it is, co working spaces, cafes, getting work done. But then we never have a chance to talk in person. We never have a chance to ask the difficult questions that maybe you can ask on social media or in a Slack channel. So meeting in person when WooCommerce and with the WooCommerce community, it’s something that I always wanted to do or something that, you know, I’ve asked WooCommerce to do in the last few years. So I said, you know what, let’s do this, let’s start again. And maybe this would mean that there would be more events, more chances to learn from each other, more chances to connect within the community, the more chances to take, talk about woo and talk to woo and hopefully we achieved some of this.

James Kemp:
Yeah, I think the risk is now that you’ve Done it so well that it’s. It’s down to you now.

Rodolfo Melogli:
Oh, lots of room for improvement, always.

Katie Keith:
Yeah. Well, I thought it was really great being, like, in a room with loads of people that are interested in WooCommerce, which I’d never done before, actually. I’m. I’m actually really liking the small events that are targeted. Like, there’s Press conf, which is more about, I don’t know, the leadership and side of things and that. And now there’s Checkout Summit as well for the WooCommerce side of things. So I really like that. How about you, Patrick? What did you think of the vibe overall? And what was it what you expected?

Patrick Rauland:
I really liked it, and I’m a little biased because I helped run the first WUCONFs, but I really like to check out summits. I guess I thought that everyone there wanted to be there. Like, no one’s boss sent them there because they had to be there. And I just appreciate that every single person was there and wanted to learn and wanted to engage. And there was a lot of, I think, what Rodolfo was saying earlier, there was a lot of moments of serendipity to meet the right people or meet the plugin vendor that you’ve worked with or just form connections that you couldn’t have otherwise have formed. So I loved the vibe.

Katie Keith:
What about you, Remkus?

Remkus de Vries:
It’d be weird if I said I didn’t like the vibe, now, wouldn’t it? But go for it.

Katie Keith:
We want controversy.

Remkus de Vries:
No, no, no. I think the. What Rodolfo said in terms of the size of the audience. No, you said that, Katie. You said it. But there’s a shift when a crowd, when a gathering of people becomes a crowd, and that’s not necessarily bad, but the dynamic of the conversations just shifts. You start a conversation with somebody, somebody else comes along, and then the conversation goes in a different direction. But you haven’t finished the original conversation. Now, Checkout Summit was a perfect example of where you have that situation. You get to meet the person again, and you pick up that conversation and you continue throughout the. What was it, three, four days that we were there. That, as a. As a core principle of how a smaller event works, is I think, exactly what we need in these types of scenarios for. For. I mean, I think the same goes for. For Press conf. And I’m. I’m. I’m working on an idea similar to this where there’s a sort of cap, maybe 150, 170, 175. That’s sort of it above 200. I know it feels already this is a lot of people, and to have this situation where you have access to the people doing the presentations. We have James in the background fixing everything that we mentioned on the fly, which was perfect. But to have that sort of dynamic is, I think, incredibly valuable to have. And hats off to Rodolfo in how everything was organized, considering this is basically him doing this solo and his first time. So I have nothing but positive feedback.

Katie Keith:
Well, that wasn’t very controversial, was it?

Remkus de Vries:
No, I mean. I mean, it’s controversial that I’m not controversial. How about that?

Katie Keith:
Fine.

Remkus de Vries:
Yeah. We should have more of these.

James Kemp:
Yeah, I. I completely agree. The. The size of the event was, to be fair, most of the conferences that I’ve been to have been wordcamps, which are, I guess, 10 times the number of people typically at a good one.

Remkus de Vries:
WordCamp Europe is about 2000 plus.

James Kemp:
Yeah. So WordCamp Europe is 20 times, I guess is that if. If my maths is working for me. Yeah. And it. It can even feel, you know, quite overwhelming to constantly be, you know, greeting new people, even just remembering conversations that you’ve just had and you started a new one, like you say. And. Yeah, I feel like Checkout Summit didn’t feel overwhelming at all. I imagine it helped that the space was quite large as well, so we had fewer people in a larger space where you could kind of break out into smaller groups to just chat. And also everyone there felt very. It felt very passionate about WooCommerce in general and, you know, wanting to see WooCommerce succeed. And I feel like it generated a lot of buzz, you know, among the people there of just thinking and just generally understanding that, okay, WooCommerce is, you know, on the right track. There’s. There’s stuff happening and, and this is a great way to kind of showcase all of the things that people are doing within WooCommerce and actually just talking about it and having some visibility into that, which leads quite nicely into talking about some of the talks that happened. So, Rodolfo, correct me if I’m wrong, but there were 12 talks that happened over the two days.

Rodolfo Melogli:
Yep.

James Kemp:
My talk was my first talk. If. If we’re not counting the. The Q A that Katie and I did last year, which opened the. The event, which was, you know, very, very much appreciate you allowing me to do that. I tried to. I think one of the things you get with the smaller sized crowd as well is that you can. It. It feels appropriate to be, you know, more open More honest because it’s such an intimate crowd. And, you know, as I was talking through some of the stuff that I was talking about, it felt like I was actually engaging with the audience that was there. You know, questions happened during the talk. Even that, that felt, you know, natural and not out of place, which you wouldn’t be able to do at a, at a larger event. I don’t think so. Yeah. Patrick closed the talks, right? You were the last talk on the second day. Yours is one of the ones that really stuck with me. I told you at the event that the way it was framed, I felt like, you know, it kind of led with a lot of storytelling and, and really kind of set the scene. I think of the comparisons that we often get, WooCommerce vs Shopify. And I really liked the analogy used, and it definitely stuck with me that session. But I’m interested to know, Remkus, maybe if you want to tell me what your favorite talk was and why it was mine.

Remkus de Vries:
Cocky. I like it.

James Kemp:
Favorite or which one stuck with you?, I think all of them were very good.

Remkus de Vries:
So, yeah, I, I think that. So I should probably start saying that I’m probably not the average audience, so I listen with a different ear. Some talks to me were good as a, as a conversation starter, and some were really good to start thinking. And I think Patrick’s for sure is one that made everybody think. And you could tell because it was happening during your presentation, Patrick, people on the left and right started asking questions like, what do you, how you know all these, these. Oh, hold on. That. That means I need to think about my assumption here, and that’s that sort of stuff. I really enjoyed your opening as well, because it gave us a good insight into what’s actually happening behind the scenes at Woo. How large the organization is, what the. What, what it consists of, that sort of thing. I don’t know. I think the, I think it’s hard for me to pick one, but because I think there’s a few conversations that I went like, huh, interesting that, that I hadn’t thought about that angle just yet. I mean, Katie had stuff in there where I went like, oh, that’s interesting. I, I, I specifically asked her for a copy of one of her slides because I was like, I, I want to think about this a little bit more with my good friend Chatty. It, it, it’s again, it’s hard to pinpoint one thing. The, I forgot who did the talk about the. Oh, Remy. Remy Corson. I really enjoyed that one as well. Because it’s a very different angle to all things Woo. It’s about how does Woo and Woo based sites how they survive in this AI world that we are just sinking in deeper and deeper. So yeah, long winded answer to say. I don’t really have a favorite. Favorite. There’s quite a few talks that just really made me think about things. I’ve written down a lot of notes and I was decompressing Monday and Tuesday as I was driving back Saturday and Sunday just processing the last two days of things to check out and learn more about. And I’d say all of the talks had some elements of that and maybe some more.

James Kemp:
Yeah, for sure. It felt like there was a good coverage of topics as well. I think like we were all talking about WooCommerce in some way and there was some overlap in the discussions we were having and I think that kind of helped the conversations as well. I know there was two talks that were back to back and overlapped a bit and we kind of stuck around. We didn’t take a break in between and that was, that was really cool. Rodolfo, I’m interested to know, obviously you chose the people to talk and you kind of had a, you were involved a lot during the, the planning process of people actually creating the talks. And I’m wondering how you felt those talks turned out and what stood out to you, even on a general level.

Rodolfo Melogli:
Yeah. I have to be honest with you. I’ve always tried to get work camps to get back into being content first. And I think content is the reason why people should go to work camps or events in general. Yes, it’s about connections. Yes, it’s about the hallway track. Yes, it’s about, you know, chatting to people and even myself, you know, going back there every year, work computer, just to see my friends. But content is such an important thing. So being content first was my, my first goal. And you know, out of 12 speakers, I can fairly say also looking at the, the survey that I sent out, I mean people have been pretty happy with it. I mean we had, you know, business talks. You know, Katie and Josh as well was excellent from, you know, coming from Australia to, to share his system for, you know, running a plugin business, actually multiple plugin businesses. You know, we had SEO, we had, you know, two, three, maybe AI talks which were very relevant. We got. What is really important is that I asked people for two things. One was to have the WooCommerce keyword in the title, which is something that I always go look, searching for whenever I Go to a work camp. And second, I asked them to use a story because a story is what people then remember. I mean, if we say Coke, Pepsi, I don’t want to. I didn’t want to mention brand names, but we already know that we’re talking about Patrick’s great presentation. If we talk about someone burning out and not getting a day off for three years, we know that that’s Josh before it put its system into place. If we know about building in public, we know that that’s Katie’s with her amazing Shopify story and so on. So I think stories and then being on target are the two most important things for talks. Then loads of information, lots of great things, but then people come to you and ask you the questions that they want to ask you. So those were my two key requirements, if we want to use that word.

James Kemp:
Yeah. And I think being story based and being quite personal in, in many cases opens the door a bit to allowing people to come up to you and, and ask, you know, more, I guess, personal questions or, you know, you can connect a bit more. I think it’s less, less of a business transaction and more of a, you know, actually meeting a person and talking about this world that we all work in. Patrick, did you have any takeaways from. From the talks? And I did.

Patrick Rauland:
So first of all, thank you guys for saying nice things. I was finishing my slides on the plane, so I’m really happy that it came across the finish line because it was a little later than. Than I normally am prepared. I really like Josh Kobox Talk. I’m already a fan of Eos. If people have read that book Traction, I just think it’s a phenomenal book for entrepreneurs. There was one set. Sometimes though, it’s like one sentence sticks in your brain and then you walk home. And the one sentence from that talk was good enough is not good enough. And that was about hiring people. And I was like. Because I’ve been in some situations where we, you know, where we’ve hired someone to do a thing and then you spend more time training the person than they give you time back. And so that for me was a really big unlock of, like, when you hire someone, they need to. They need to save you time, otherwise it’s. It’s not really worth hiring them anyways. That was. That was just like one section, one slide of his talk. That just really hit me. So I love that part.

Katie Keith:
Yeah, I’ve been reflecting on that particular bit as well. One reason I think the talks work so well was because Rodolfo really curated and planned them to the extent of publishing a blog post of your ideal speaker lineup, which, which covered a range of topics and so on. And even though not all of those people ended up attending, I think that curated approach can make a real difference, which is actually not allowed at wordcamps. Is it because they have to have people submit and then choose based on what comes in? It’s a bit of a different process, yes.

Rodolfo Melogli:
I mean, I guess that. But also, you know, we had a call for speakers, so, you know, I had a list of people I really wanted to hear from. But also, I definitely wasn’t expecting someone to, you know, flying from Brisbane or someone else coming from Denver or, you know, someone else like Marty Cohen coming from South Africa and so on. So, I mean, I was really impressed by the level and the quality of each talk and I’m pretty happy with that. Of course, you know, one can do always better. I mean, I was talking to Remkus a few days ago and he said, you know, what would really work in here is to have a yearly team. So you select something within WooCommerce that you want to cover. I mean, this year could have been automation or WooCommerce and AI or running a WooCommerce plugin business in the age of AI. Could it be something like that? And you know, all the talks would have been around a certain topic and you could have put together, you know, a better audience or something super relevant. But you know, this is all food for thought and there is room, you know, to improve. But you know, I think I did a good job with selecting the people, with following up with them. I mean, we all had a one to one call if possible. Or by the way, loads of email exchanges too. Take a look at the slides to see what they could cover, to agree on an actual title and an outline. I think that was an amazing thing to do that you can only do when you only have 12 speakers. I mean, if I had 60, I could have never done that.

Katie Keith:
Yeah, I think this is probably a good time to mention Checkout Summit Reloaded in case anybody is watching this and thinking, well these talks sound great but I missed them, so what can I get out of this? So I suppose one purpose of this wrap up is so that if people do feel like they missed out on a talk that sounded good, there is a way for them to watch it still. Do you want to discuss that a bit, Rodolfo?

Rodolfo Melogli:
Yeah, I want to start by saying that this wasn’t meant to be. I mean the Conference or checkout Summit was designed not to have a live stream and not to have recordings. I really wanted to give 100% value to the people who would be showing up in person over the last few months. I mean, everything happened, I mean, you name it, the wars, the whatever, the flights cancellations, people couldn’t get the visas, people really wanted to be there. I don’t know what else happened. Like I can probably, you know, list a few things like people cutting budgets and you know, everything’s so expensive. I don’t know what’s going on in this time of the year. So I just basically almost changed my mind and I said, you know what, I’m going to retaking, redoing, rerunning the conference this time remotely after a couple of weeks. And this is going to be on May 7th and May 8th. So I’m going to bring back all the speakers, but we’re going to redo the presentation with a redo, retake them live. It’s not a recording, which I tend not to like because a recording of an in person conference is not the same. I mean if you watch it online, an online presentation is different, shorter, it goes straight to the point. While an in person conference, as James said, is more personal, it gives you more time to interact with the audience. But I wanted to do this for this time and hopefully only this time and give the chance to people to re watch these amazing speakers and listen to this amazing content. So that’s the plan. We will have the same 12 plus some additional guest speakers as well in between sessions. So we’re never going to get a break. There is not a coffee break, but there will be some fireside chats in between the, the 12 keynote speakers and we’re gonna have fun for a couple of days.

Katie Keith:
Yeah, looking forward to it. Well, when I attend events, I always expect, I’m quite strict with this. I want some actual business benefit that I can implement when I get back. And so, and I even write lists of what I got out of these events and publish them because I think people need to know this side of things. So for me, I got a lot out of it. I got to spend time with my team who we don’t see each other in person very much, meeting other members of the Woo community of course. And I got a lot of, well, small, medium and big ideas, a really long list surprisingly of things that I’m already putting into practice, right from pricing changes to big strategic things to consider. So I want to know what the rest of you got out of Attending. Should we start with Remkus?

Remkus de Vries:
I didn’t have a specific goal like that. The, the premise was I get to see and talk to people deep into the WooCommerce ecosystem. That to me was essentially enough for me to say, okay, let’s, let’s, let’s go here. Obviously Sicily and driving through Italy and all that was also pulling. But so for me, the thing that I got from the event itself is probably, well, I already mentioned the, the bits and pieces of, of, hey, I hadn’t thought about that angle. Or that’s an interesting thought. Or I think it was Josh who referenced a couple of books that I was like, okay. And I, I love reading. So my list of books that I still have to read is, is, is still growing, but there’s always room for more. I think for me, the, the biggest thing that I got from it is understanding the various angles that are, that are not agency related there. From, you know, that’s my perspective. So all the plugin builders, that sort of angle, I’m aware of it. But hearing from, from you guys, what’s actually happening, getting my questions that I had for them into conversations is for me the most valuable part in part of something that I’ve been preparing, which I launched yesterday. And I don’t want to hijack it in that direction, but I had questions and I’m asking those questions to get a better gauge of what the community wants, needs and how I can help with that. So yeah, I had a lot of small and big interesting bits of information essentially. I don’t think there’s a huge, big chunk of oh, this is what I got from it, but it’s the conversations and you know, the questions being asked back and forth and just getting a bigger and better insight into all things.

James Kemp:
Woo.

Remkus de Vries:
That’s a lot larger than people think. It’s a lot, lot larger than people think. And I think understanding that when you are in those rooms and getting to talk to the people, that in itself just opens up your mind in terms of different angles, different ideas, different. And you know, we, we need, I certainly need those little, oh, I don’t know what the English word is, but the, the, the, the, the little pinpoints that trigger you into. Huh, okay, interesting. You know, those types of aha moments. That to me is the biggest takeaway, like the whole connectedness and all that you can learn from everybody.

James Kemp:
Feel free to plug your launch. I know you’ve launched something yesterday. You’ve also, you’re launching something else very soon.

Remkus de Vries:
Well, I announced that I am you’re referring to the Scanfully thing. And I’m. Yesterday I announced that I’m going to introduce the within WordPress guild, which is an online community with the sole goal of helping you level up in all things WordPress. So from WordPress builders to devs to agencies, there’s a lot of education that is just flat out wrong and there’s a lot of room for proper education. And I have a whole bunch of ideas on how to help that particular angle and I’m calling it the Guild. And if you go to Remkusdefries.com, you can find my latest blog entry.

James Kemp:
Thank you, Patrick.

Patrick Rauland:
So Remkus, that was a wonderful answer. That was very noble. I’ll share something a little selfish maybe, and I think it’s okay to go to a conference and be. To have something that you want to get out of it. So I’m the person at Zero Shoes who is closest to SEO. And I basically asked every single person at the event how good their SEO is. And it was just really valuable to hear from business owners and agencies and people who run store owners that they’re all struggling with SEO. They’re all down between X and X percent. And it was just, you know, I don’t always read everything. You shouldn’t trust everything you read online. And so it’s really helpful to go to an event and really get a, I guess, crowdsource that data. So I crowdsourced some SEO data and that was, that was really helpful for me and, and what I’m sure I’m going to be doing at Zero Shoes in the next couple of weeks.

Katie Keith:
Yeah, I did exactly the same. I asked all the product people, their sales, and in person people are more likely to answer. So that was interesting. Also to analyze what categories of products are doing better and worse based on their type of products and their market channels and things like that. So I did get some insights from being able to ask these personal questions in person. What about you, James? What was the most valuable bit for you?

James Kemp:
Yeah, I think for me and I kind of touched on it in, in my talk, actually is something that I’ve always done when I was running Iconic before. And then something I wanted to bring to WooCommerce was to just be very open about what we’re building and also open to receiving feedback and, you know, talking to people about what they want. And there’s so many people using WooCommerce that there’s, you know, tons of feedback and often conflicting feedback that comes through about how people want to use the platform, but I find those conversations really helpful, really good. And I think this was the ideal place to have those conversations. You can do some of that at wordcamps and things. But like we were saying, the feeling of being able to be a bit more open and honest with your feedback, I think is essential if we want to actually implement the right things and make decisions based on the feedback that we’re getting. So for me, it’s just a really great opportunity for WooCommerce to have a presence. You know, it’s essential for an event like this for us to be there. And I think I really enjoyed how people were just happy to come up to me and, you know, ask a question or, you know, tell me to look at a specific PR that they submitted and hasn’t gone through yet. And, you know, being able to come back now and actually make sure that we’re actually looking at these things. And there’s so much feedback that I need to kind of summarize into a better frame of writing than my, you know, notepad on my iPhone. So, yeah, I think that’s my biggest takeaway is just making those connections, making people aware that you can talk to me. Like I’m fully receptive to any feedback that comes through and I guess, you know, setting the scene about what we do with that feedback and why it. Why it might, you know, take a while for us to actually get to implementing that feedback and how we’re planning to change that. Say

James Kemp:
I think we’ve spoken a lot about the positives of Checkout Summit. And in fact, I’ve. I’ve not heard anyone say anything bad about Checkout Summit. So I’m wondering what we feel could be improved. I reached out to Rodolfo the other day to say the one thing that I would have liked is to spend a bit more time on the beach because we’re in this, you know, lovely place, and I feel like we spent a lot of it inside. So it’s. It’s the experience, I guess. Yeah. You did so much so well that I’m interested to see. I think, Remkus, you have a. Either two points or you. You’re just raising your hand.

Remkus de Vries:
No, no, I have two points. I have two points. Italy is known for its coffee culture. For those of us not drinking coffee, I mean, I did. I mean, for the record, I tried my first espresso ever.

Katie Keith:
You did.

Remkus de Vries:
And that’ll be the last espresso ever. Having a coffee break with other beverages included would be very nice. And again, I get it from a cultural perspective and wanting to educate people on, you should drink coffee. I get it, I get it.

Rodolfo Melogli:
No, but that’s.

Remkus de Vries:
That was one I. That I was missing my son as well. He doesn’t drink too much coffee. And I think the. But this is entirely outside of your control. But there was a lot of noise in the hallways for the hotel, which I know from a few people were mentioning they were having broken nights just because people were just socializing at 3 o’ clock at night right outside your hotel door. And I sleep light, unfortunately, so I was awake a lot. But again, that’s. That’s not really in your control. But if I’m honest, it’s one of the things that is standing out in terms of this could be better.

Rodolfo Melogli:
Of course, everything is fixable.

Remkus de Vries:
I suppose if I drank coffee, the problem would be less of a problem. So maybe

Rodolfo Melogli:
like tea and something relaxing before you go to bed. So you’re not gonna. You’re gonna. Not gonna listen to the noise. Let me, Let me add anything, one thing to this, James, if you. If I can. So as. As you all know, I’ve built these on, on my own basically for the last 10 months. I mean, I didn’t even, you know, overwork or, you know, get stressed. I mean, everyone is saying, oh, you must have been stressed. I mean, I was fine. I was just tired on day one because it didn’t sleep much the day before. But I was fine. I’m still fine. I managed to do everything on my own. And this was like a test for me, like an experiment, like a beta conference. Right. So the other day I sent out the survey to the attendees. 100 anonymous. And I’m kind of Looking at the things, I mean, of course there are things that one has to fix. I mean, even a work camp with 3,000 people after 15 years still get, you know, some feedback that, you know, you might want to adjust the, the year after. So that’s totally fine. I’m totally okay with that. I slept after reading all those reviews, so nothing, you know, major. Everything is fixable. The most important thing that I will be trying to do for sure is to get more managers. I will, I don’t like to call them volunteers because they definitely didn’t volunteer. I mean, I, I like to pay people. So I want more managers to help me, like to, you know, to fix each aspect of the conference. And if people want to have more fun activities, more beach activity, more side events, we’ll have a manager for the fun. We’ll have a manager for the coffee and the food. We’ll have a manager for, for social media and we’d have a manager for, you know, lightning and noise and all that kind of stuff, management. So all I have to do now that I know that the format works, that the size works, that the content works, I just need to fix the rest and only with the help of amazing people, which, by the way, I mean, you all helped me in some way or the other during these 10 months and even showing up, I mean, that was the, you know, the best help you could give to me. So I just need to figure out, you know, what’s fixable and come up with some solutions on edition number two. Hopefully, for sure.

James Kemp:
I would say fun is less fun when it’s managed. But yeah, having, having maybe even just an idea of like, these are the things that you can do in the area. Like, it doesn’t need to be. This is the time that we’re going, but just. Yeah, I think, I think that’d be great because the location was, you know, incredible. So. Patrick.

Patrick Rauland:
Well, yeah, let me get up my giant list of things for Rodolfo here. No, it was, it was very, very well organized. Rodolfo picked me up from the airport, which I, I think is, has happened zero times. Maybe one time at a previous conference, but really stellar. No feedback, really. If I, if I, if you force me to have feedback, I will say have a version of this in the US that’s the, the only feedback I can give.

Katie Keith:
Well, we have a very serious complaint from Ian Meisner from Kestrel, who says it was too sunny and the landscape was too beautiful. Too much free food too. It was very disappointed there. But he does also say the Coffee machine in the breakfast area was actual garbage. And if you ask him for a co, least they brought you a real one instead. I’m in Remkus’s camp here. I wouldn’t know. And I think James is the same. So you had a weirdly low proportion of coffee drinkers actually.

James Kemp:
Yeah. Matt Cromwell actually said that near the breakfast area they had like one of the best coffee machines that you can have, but it was out of action.

Katie Keith:
Well, this was the only conference that he didn’t bring his own coffee making equipment to because he was confident that in Italy it would be okay. He is a coffee drinker.

Rodolfo Melogli:
So as long as you’re all complaining about coffee and noise, like, I’ve done a great job. Like, no one’s complaining about content. No one has complained about side events. No one has complained about, you know, you know, going to a beautiful place and, you know, eating proper food was good. I’m good reviews. Can we stop it here? Like, I don’t want to hear anything else.

Katie Keith:
Well, let’s move on. Should you go next year or attend Reloaded, the online version? So, Rodolfo, you’ve already talked a bit about Reloaded. I’d love to know a bit more about your plans. I know it’s early days and you’re probably still evaluating and reflecting on what you’ve just done. So what are the thoughts at the moment about what might happen in the future? Which we will not hold you to.

Rodolfo Melogli:
Right. Let’s say one thing, and the one thing that I want to say is that one WooCommerce in person event is not enough. I mean, Patrick already said it. You know, bring it to us. Someone said bring it to Iceland. So people say take it to Japan. I mean, people have huge need to get back into in person conference. Conference. Just, just about WooCommerce. Whether it’s merchants, developers, you know, owners, I mean, you know, product owners, makers, founders. I mean, people want to meet, right? So I basically have no choice. I mean, now I have to redo it. So it’s not even. Oh, I’m stressed out about. No, I basically am required to do it because it worked out. You know, you don’t do anything with one conference. You have to do it five times, 10 times, 15 times. Right. So on my end, we’re done. We’re gonna redo this next year also, like, you know, we’ve been, you know, asking WooCommerce forever to be doing more events and, you know, they’ve been showing up at meetups, they sent out their developers theme to, you know, Croatia and some other places as well. You know, over the last few months, WooCommerce is, you know, pushing, you know, themselves to build more in public. You know, I really see, you know, the ideal scenario where we have two, three, you know, in person events, where we have two, three online events per year. I mean, and where we have more touch points with the WooCommerce team. Because first of all, we need to put a face on the WooCommerce team. It’s not a software, it’s a bunch of amazing people and we need to know who they are. We need to have a chat with them, which is not a slack private message. And second, we need the community to work together. And the only place where the community can work together is at a conference, at a workshop, at an online meeting, in a webinar, in a, you know, podcast. I mean, we need the community to realign with the WooCommerce software managers and product owners and core managers and whatever and make sure we all grow together. Because if WooCommerce grows, we grow. So we want to help WooCommerce grow as well because of that.

Katie Keith:
Yeah, absolutely. We’ve got a comment from Elliot Sowersby who says couldn’t attend this time, but check out Summit look great from what was posted online. Maybe next year. Well, hopefully you’ll be at Reloaded anyway, so you won’t miss this year’s talks either.

James Kemp:
Yeah, I wonder, Rodolfo, is your plan next year to do it in the same place or is that a secret?

Rodolfo Melogli:
Well, let’s say that that’s a secret. I mean, I, I’m a person who likes to see data. So I’m also a person who, as I’ve probably shown you, showed you in the last 10 months, I like easy things at the same time. So the only way not to get stressed out or not to waste time because I mean, I have a life as well and you know, I have a business as well to run. So I want to take a look at the data. If the data is reasonably good and is decent enough and you know, the majority of people are happy and they tell me I will come back, then we’re going to do it in the same place.

James Kemp:
I don’t assume that anything you did for that was easy. Patrick and Remkus, I wonder who, if you were to Recommend checkout summit 2027 to people, what kind of people would you recommend it to?

Patrick Rauland:
Sure, I, I two things. If you’re hungry to grow your business with WooCommerce, this is the event for you. So that’s just generally, broadly anyone who’s interested in just growing. And then the second thing is I would love to see more store owners there. Like, I always want to hear from the merchants directly, like, what are their actual problems? What are they trying to do? What. What have they tried and has not worked. So I would love to see a few more merchants go next year because I think there’s value to be had there, but maybe merchants just don’t realize that there’s value. So I would love to see more of those next year.

Remkus de Vries:
Well, I’ll second that. That’s. That’s certainly the crowd that I would like to see more as well. But also there’s, there’s tons of agencies out there that are really, really good at delivering really solid, solid WooCommerce sites and everything that goes with it that I think just should have been there. And I’m calling out, for instance, Jimmy Rosen out of Sweden with Angry Creative. He or one of his team members. They should have been there and I know the, the reason why they weren’t, but I like calling them out anyway. But that sort of angle is if you have more of that in the mix and so have the. How many people were there? 110 or so. Let’s have the next one be 150 people. And that 40 makeup of that crowd where you really have the people working with it. So it’s quite different from Katie, what you’re doing. You’re building extensions on top of WooCommerce. That’s a very important angle and we need that. But actually working with your end product as well as whatever Woo is doing and allowing us to do potentially, if you, from the hosting angle, that can, can really, I think, bring the better and more complete mix. And it kind of goes in line with what Rodolfo was referencing that I said to him, if, if you set a little bit more of a theme for the event, you, you. That. That works as a magnet, right? Attracts people in a specific way. Now, the talks were good, but they were all over, which isn’t a bad thing. But there’s a potential for a bit more focus when you have, let’s say, I absolutely want to highlight the agencies more because the feedback that we can get from them and you, James and Brian and anybody from Woo being there, you’ll get better and more complete feedback. And that’s essentially what you need as well as what we need as an attendee. Having questions and seeing other people struggle with the same thing or having Solutions for the same thing. That’s the best answer I have for now.

James Kemp:
It’s a good answer. Yeah. There’s kind of four distinct audiences. I think we have like the plugin developers that build on top of WooCommerce. We have maybe five audiences. We have the agencies, developers, builders that create the websites for people. We have the merchants that actually are in the system day to day you know, taking orders and their counterparts who might be, you know, shop, shop assistants and, and store staff. There’s also the, the people that shop on a WooCommerce website. So the customer, the merchant’s customer, which we’re not going to find them necessarily. Maybe there’s some people out there that are very passionate about shopping on WooCommerce websites.

Remkus de Vries:
Well, we can turn it around. The better we do our job, the more people will be on Woo, the more will be customers of Woo, because everybody knows this, the shop experience. Right. And how smooth that works. So if more people talk about how wonderful that works in the WooCommerce context, we’ll have them just be up.

James Kemp:
Yeah, I guess the difference is branding, like Shopify. People are okay with Shopify things being branded, whereas typically if you’re using Woo, you, you try and strip away all the branding. But yeah, I think there’s a good mix of audiences that, that we could, we could get to these events. I think typically we do see more of the plugin developers and builders. I would love to hear from more merchants. I, I think it’s, I haven’t seen like, even at, you know, Word Camps, I don’t tend to talk to people that just use WordPress. Maybe they’re there, but I, they don’t talk to me.

Rodolfo Melogli:
A content problem. So yeah, if you had a full track or a team on merchants or users, trust me, you will get those people. So I guess it’s, it’s only a matter of finding the right angle to the conference or the event or whatever it is. I mean, we always have to deal with different audiences. And it could be even an event where you have both, as Patrick said. I mean, go and let the merchants meet the agencies. Why not? I mean, WooConf, if I don’t remember badly, it used to be something like that or one year was for developers, the second year was for merchants, and the third year, you, Patrick, can say that.

Patrick Rauland:
Well, I’ll just say that I have this job now because I met the merchant at WooConf Austin in like 2016. So just so like there are, there are always merchants at these events. There’s Just all usually in small numbers. We did try to make WooConf more for merchants, but it’s hard to find them and you and where you have to have content for them.

Katie Keith:
Yeah. You know, I can’t decide whether the location is a positive or negative in terms of getting people to attend because it was a beautiful location, but it did require multiple flights for most people and wasn’t on a major hub. And I think particularly when we’re talking about smaller agencies, freelancers, merchants, they are probably less likely to come. Like Patrick, you just mentioned Austin. Well, that’s a hugely populated area. And my guess is that the merchant you met lived locally to that area. No. Really?

Patrick Rauland:
No, he lived in Denver.

Katie Keith:
Okay. So within a one hop flight. But they did fly to it. Yeah.

Rodolfo Melogli:
Yes.

Katie Keith:
Yeah. So I can’t decide whether a more central location would get more people or fewer. I suppose a central, beautiful location would tick all the boxes if such a thing exists.

Rodolfo Melogli:
Well, let’s say that if Checkout Summit was not the only event, then it would be totally fine wherever it is. And then you have one or two more somewhere else.

Katie Keith:
Yeah, that would make sense. So we’ve got some. A couple of comments before we finish. Following on from our response a minute ago, Elliot said he is signed up to Reloaded, so that’s great. Dennis says that he hopes he can make it to the summit next year. And we’ve also got a question from Elliot who says WordCamp Europe will be my first WordPress event. Hopefully not too overwhelming. Would you say you prefer the smaller events over large ones like WordCamp or do they both have their own benefits? Anyone got any answers or advice for Elliot?

Remkus de Vries:
They both have their own benefits. They’re. They’re quite different in audience, but you, you know, the amount of people will be the amount of people. But you can treat a larger event similarly to a small event if you just focus on I’m keeping my circle small. I’m, you know, there’s people who just really don’t like the whole engaging with 3,000 people. And I get that. So it doesn’t need to overwhelm you. There’s ways of, of doing that. But the value you’ll get from both are whatever you set out to want to get out of it. You really need to think about what do I want to get out of these types of events. I play it kind of loosey goosey, but I, you know, I’ve been going to work camp since 2009, so I kind of know how to navigate around that. But if it’s Your first one, you’ll have fun at both, just different, for sure.

James Kemp:
I think one of the biggest differences for me, based on Checkout Summit, is that I actually attended the talks where when I go to WordCamp Europe, I spend a lot of time actually out in the hallways networking and talking to people. And you know, at the bigger events like WordCamp Europe, you have the whole sponsors area, which is. Is typically like half the size of the venue, which is. Which is always nice. So you get to meet, you know, a lot of people. You get to speak to people from the companies that you work with and maybe haven’t met before. There’s a much broader range of topics at a WordCamp Europe, so I think you will find that maybe you want to go see four or five talks and actually a lot of the time you spend with people. So for me, the bigger events are much more about networking, I think, and the smaller events are a bit of a mix. I think specifically check out Summit. Like every talk is relevant to me at that event, so it makes sense to see them all. But yeah, I think that’s one of the biggest differences.

Katie Keith:
Yeah. My advice for someone that might be feeling a bit overwhelmed at a big Word Camp is one, if there is a Freemius makers meetup and Elliot is a product person, so that would be relevant. The Freemius parties are always my favorite thing. Think about Word Camps when they happen. I don’t know if there will be one this year because of the whole Israel situation. I don’t know if freemius will be able to travel, but they generally do a party at WordCamp Europe, which is invite only, but they, you know, allow you to go if you’re a product person, basically. And that is a bit more like checkups out Summit in a way, isn’t it? In that it’s tailored. Every person you meet will do something very similar to you and it’s much smaller. And even if that doesn’t happen, look at the other side events. And also the sponsor hall, which James mentioned is. Is an easier way to network than just wandering around randomly because you can walk up to any sponsor and start a conversation with them, which you can with anybody in the corridor too. But it’s easier in the sponsor hall, I think.

James Kemp:
Yeah. And I think maybe go with some intention of who you want to speak to. Like they. They tend to publish the attendees if you choose to be published. I’ve. I’ve found that the last Word Camp, I did it the other way around where I, you know, made my calendar available to people to come and speak to me. But that kind of gave a bit of a purpose to. To those meetings and a bit of structure to them. So that was. That was a good way to do it.

Katie Keith:
Yeah, that is good. Either publish your own calendar or book onto other people who have published their calendar, and then at least you know who you’ll be talking to at different times. And they’re a bit structured.

James Kemp:
Exactly. Well, unless anyone has any additional thoughts that they want to mention, now is your.

Rodolfo Melogli:
Your chance to mention that say, check Out Summit is like my baby. So I designed it based on all the things that I like about conferences. So definitely the 100, 150 people’s mark was by design because I tend to be overwhelmed by 3,000 people. Having said that, I keep going back to Work Camp Europe because it’s the closest to where I live every year. And that’s because I know that, you know, I want to see my friends. I want to have those two or three chats. I want to talk to that one or two sponsors, and maybe I want to speak, which, by the way, I’m speaking at World Camp Europe, finally, about WooCommerce, which is amazing. Finally, every year at Work Camp Europe, we also try to have either an official WooCommerce meetup of WooCommerce, we’ll do it again as a couple of years ago, or an unofficial meetup, which, by the way, it’s a good way to meet WooCommerce people. Product developers and plugin developers, I meant. And at The WooCommerce meetup one year ago is where the checkup summit idea was born. So, I mean, if I never went to Work Camp, you probably would have never come up with this. And that’s a fun story.

Katie Keith:
In that meeting last year, when we talked about it, I had no idea what you would turn it into. You’ve taken it so, so much further than I think anybody in that meeting anticipated in a positive way.

Rodolfo Melogli:
Awesome. Thank you. I hope I delivered. If.

James Kemp:
If I haven’t said it already, just on behalf of WooCommerce and the community, I think, you know, we. We owe you a massive thank you. I think the event shows what’s possible with having a WooCommerce meetup, and it’s super, super valuable.

Rodolfo Melogli:
So, yes. And if one person can figure this out and organize this, I bet some other people can do too. So, Remkus, you’re super welcome to organize your own conference. Some other WooCommerce people, agencies, merchants, everyone is very welcome to, you know, trying to come up with something and you know, have more meetings, have more conference, more events.

James Kemp:
100%. Well, thank you everyone for joining us. It was awesome to see you all last week and hopefully we’ll see you soon. But yeah, thanks for. Thanks for coming on.

Katie Keith:
Yeah. And if you don’t already, please subscribe to do the Woo. We’ve been going about three months now. So wherever you’re watching this, then subscribe. And you can also see all the places you can subscribe on dothewoo.com thanks for watching. Bye.

James Kemp:
Thank you.