Magdalena is a skilled WordPress developer from Poland with more than 11 years experience. After hours she is organizing WordCamps and local WordPress meetups in Poland.
What was your motivation to become a speaker at WordCamp Prague 2020?
I wanted to share my experience about building my first website with custom Gutenberg blocks and then I saw that WordCamp Prague was looking for the speakers, so I decided to apply. I’ve been to Prague a few years ago and really loved the city, so I thought this could be a perfect opportunity for another visit.
What will be your talk about? Who can benefit the most from your session?
My talk is most suited for WordPress developers who build websites with ACF fields or blocks but would now like to start exploring the new way of building custom websites – with Gutenberg blocks in JavaScript and React. I will talk about what you need to learn to be able to start building custom blocks, what challenges to expect when you decide to build your first website with Gutenberg blocks and I will also show a few examples from the Gutenberg project I’ve recently been working on.
What are a few takeaways that attendees will get from your talk?
That Gutenberg is so much more than just „another page builder“ and it will have much bigger influence on the future of WordPress than everyone seem to anticipate. But also that building custom Gutenberg blocks is not a rocket science and you don’t really need to know JavaScript deeply to start with it.
I see you’ve been very active in the WordPress community in the past few years, and you’re part of the organizer team of WordCamp Europe for the second year in a row. Can you tell us more about this experience?
It’s been a very enriching experience for me. It never ceases to amaze me how a group of people, coming from different countries, from different backgrounds, that oftentimes are strangers to each other when they join the team, can come together and organize such a huge and proffessional conference. I think it really shows the power of WordPress community.
What should bring developers and agencies to consider developing with Gutenberg, and for Gutenberg?
I don’t think the agencies and developers have any choice here if they want to stay in the WordPress business for many more years. From what I understand reading the Gutenberg team’s notes, the long term plan is to rebuild most of the WordPress admin area (if not all) with JavaScript and Gutenberg components. So I would imagine, that in a few years, it will be impossible to develop custom plugins or generaly build anything custom for WordPress without JavaScript and React & Gutenberg skills. Not to mention the front-end, where we’re already seeing a huge interest in headless solutions, built entirely in JavaScript, instead of using a WordPress theme. So I think it’s a smart idea to start sharpening those JavaScript skills to keep up with the JS revolution that is happening now in webdevelopment. And Gutenberg is here to stay. There’s no coming back from it.