Two months after my first WordCamp, I landed in Phoenix, AZ, for WordCamp US to experience it again, this time in another part of the world but with a similar group of people equally passionate about open source.
At first glance, the Arizona desert seems simple, barren. But look closer, and there is an elegance in that simplicity that is art in and of itself.
Like good technology, everything has a purpose, nothing is wasted, and there is beauty in that. At WCUS this year that I saw art and technology converge.
A four-day family reunion
WordCamp US 2026 ran August 16–19 at the Phoenix Convention Center. Over 1,100 people registered, with thousands more watching the livestreams. There were over fifty sessions across four tracks. Contributor Day drew 425 participants — 29 of them contributing for the first time — who organized into 26 teams around goals they could achieve in a day.
So why make the trip when the talks are livestreamed, recorded, and recapped?
On the walk to the event hall, I asked Anne McCarthy the same question (yes, we braved the heat!). She nailed it: it’s a family reunion. In the age of screens, AI, and video-meeting culture, people are not only craving human connection but also their chosen family.
Others who believe in WordPress and what open source represents. Like-minded creators and builders making things that matter now, and hopefully for years to come.
WordPress 101 Workshop: Build a Website
I sat in on Jamie Marsland’s beginner session to build side by side with other WordPress users and see the customer experience with fresh eyes.
We started from a blank page. And there’s something genuinely exciting about stripping everything away and going back to the basics.
After we’d built a few pages and posts, Jamie showed us the Cover block (his favorite). Watching him use it felt more like designing than building.
On the topic of teaching and learning, the WordPress 101 session felt complimentary to the WordPress.com Student Plan we launched at WCUS. Students get to learn on a real WordPress site, not a temporary classroom project, and the work they create can stay with them after the course ends. Learn by making something real, then keep building on it.
Jamie’s enthusiasm for WordPress is contagious; in fact, halfway through his session, a pigeon flew into the room and settled in. It came for the air conditioning, stayed for the demo.
Sessions geared toward creativity, simplicity, and customer centricity
In line with the art and technology theme, WordPress 7.1 “Mary Lou” shipped during WordCamp – a release named after the pioneering jazz artist, packed with new styling tools, updated media flows, added notes functionality, and more.
The opening keynote, Dreaming with AI: Innovation Lessons from the Front Lines of Disney & Meta, was delivered by Loyal Pyczynski. His perspective: AI can help teams build products that are more useful and more distinctly human, but only if you bring creators, developers, researchers, and communities in early, let real experimentation drive decisions instead of assumptions, and keep human judgment at the center.
And his test for whether you’ve done your job? User attention. If the thing you’ve made is good enough, people won’t get distracted — they’ll look up and realize time has gone by and they want to keep going.
Nearly half of the sessions were AI-focused or AI-adjacent, the biggest showing at a flagship WordCamp to date. The program covered agentic development, AI-powered plugin pipelines, vibe coding for non-technical users, block themes and AI in agency workflows, WordPress readiness for the agentic web, and more.
The closing session with Matt Mullenweg and Robert Jacobi brought it back to simplicity. WordPress co-founder and CEO of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg, pulled out his camera and snapped pictures of the audience, saying he’s bringing back @photomatt – a playful nod to the handle he uses on Tumblr and X. During the fireside, he also spoke to the need for technology to get simpler. Over time we have a tendency to make things more complicated, but wisdom brings us back to simplicity. Matt’s stories and tech references are laced with poetic references that tie back to technology.
Which brought me back to the desert. Nothing wasted, everything with a purpose — perhaps the hardest thing to build and the last thing you arrive at.
WordPress Studio shines
At the WordPress.com booth, our agentic local development tool, WordPress Studio, drew people into longer-than-planned demos, with attendees gathering around the screens to watch sites being built and changed in real time.
Right alongside it, WordPress Agent showed another side of the same idea: AI that doesn’t just advise you, but can actually make changes to your site for you. We also demoed Guidelines, which gives the Agent a shared memory of your site’s voice, goals, and visual direction.
What interested me was how quickly the conversation moved past the demo itself. People were already imagining these tools inside the way they actually build, manage, and update WordPress sites.
WCUS played to our humanity
The tactical experiences, the emphasis on play, the prioritization of creators, and the endless photo opportunities are all part of what made this conference uniquely human.
It’s a tech conference, after all, but I was absolutely delighted by the way it transcended digital sameness and AI-driven standardization to stand out and speak to our humanity.
Here are examples in action:
- Code for the People private screening with stickers and swag
- Paint your own Wapuu – tactile, emotional, brilliant
- Booth giveaways that were Arizona-centric: water bottles, fans, sunscreen, along with bags and bandanas designed by local artists
- The WordPress Mercantile featured local businesses built on WordPress
- A focus on play, including a seating area with cornhole, an in-booth air hockey table, and multiple photo ops with delightfully creative backgrounds
- A creator studio staged with couches, plants, perfect lighting, and high end recording equipment designed specifically for generating great video. Free SD cards for those who utilized it
Even the Wi-Fi password was a nod to the convergence of technology and art…IYKYK.
As I climbed into my Waymo and headed to the airport, I reflected on how art connects people. It inspires people. It can also polarize — and that’s not a bad thing.
As businesses and as humans, we don’t have to be everything to everyone. We just have to find our people (like our WordPress community). Be uniquely you.
Find your customers, focus on them, and use technology to help you fuel that connection.
