One of the perks of my job is that I get to travel to the flagship WordCamps we sponsor. Last year in Porto, even as I was lying in my hotel room with COVID, missing the second day of WCEU 2022, wondering if it had been a mistake to agree to a business trip, when Athens was announced as the location for 2023, I perked up at the idea of getting to see Athens.

The WordCamp itself was so busy I barely got out of the Nexcess booth, but some highlights of the trip included:

• Making my first commit to documentation on Contributor Day (after 19 years of using WordPress!) and having it merged.
• Doing live tech support in the booth for a developer who had just picked up a client who hosts with us.
• A trip out onto the Aegean Sea with my colleagues before things really got rolling
• Eating the best gyro OF MY LIFE from just some random place around the corner from my hotel.
• Getting into a spirited-but-friendly debate with a cab driver about the way the US economy is arranged vs. the way European countries tended to do it (he is a bigger admirer of the American system than I am).

And of course the big WordCamps are always fun for seeing old friends and colleagues, making new friends, and coming home full of new ideas to apply at work.

Charlie was very jealous that I was going and couldn’t take him with me, since he still had a few weeks of school (and we had pulled him out of school for several days to go to Barcelona in the fall). But next year, WCEU is in Torino, and it just so happens to coincide with the end of school, so maybe the family will get to come along next time.