Conferences offer a blend of targeted education and networking opportunities, a combination that can advance your skills and career. They can be expensive to attend, though. Between the ticket prices, travel, and time away from work, it’s important to make sure the conferences you attend are worth your time. Virtual conferences provide many of the same benefits, but at much lower cost. In this article, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best online conferences for WordPress developers to attend in the first half of 2024.
Networking: Physical Vs. Virtual
Virtual conferences frequently offer one or more networking events, but they’re usually not as exciting as the hallway track at a big event like WordCamp US. Most people find face-to-face interactions more memorable and meaningful than the virtual kind, but it goes beyond that. Physical conferences have “accidental” networking. There’s nothing quite like a chance encounter at the buffet or bar, or meeting two new people because you overheard them discussing something you’re passionate about.
WordPress has a long tradition of in-person meetups through annual WordCamps, but there are many other physical conferences taking place in 2024 that are worth the investment. Riley Cullen looks at the physical WordPress conferences for 2024, along with some virtual events like WordPress for Enterprise and the WP Career Summit
On the other hand, virtual conferences are accessible to a larger and more diverse audience. Your next networking connection may be someone who faces barriers to attending in-person events. Virtual conferences also allow for faster feedback and lead generation, as you have access to all the tools you normally would in your office.
Even if you’re a regular attendee at physical conferences, supplementing them with virtual events can increase your educational opportunities and networking circle.
DE{CODE} 2024
Hosted by WP Engine, DE{CODE} is a virtual event dedicated to helping WordPress developers build smarter, maximize conversions, and modernize the user experience. It’s one of the biggest WordPress events in the world in terms of attendance, with last year’s conference drawing together thousands of WordPress developers from around the world, with sessions on how to master migrations, use new and lesser-known features of ACF, improve your Core Web Vitals, and much more. All sessions from DE{CODE} 2023 are available in the WP Engine Resource Center .
DE{CODE} 2024 takes place March 19 for the Americas and APAC, and March 21 for EMEA.
This year’s conference promises to be even bigger and better, packed with presentations and conference tracks on the next generation of WordPress, how to level up your workflows, emerging technologies transforming the WordPress ecosystem, product innovations, and much more.
Register for DE{CODE} 2024 here.
Online Conferences in 2024
SymfonyOnline
January 16-19, 2024
https://live.symfony.com/2024-online-january/
The seventh edition of the international online Symfony conference kicks off January 16th with two full days of online workshops, followed by two online conference days. The workshops are interactive experiences, so no playback will be provided. Presentations during the conference were pre-recorded during SymfonyCon Brussels 2023, but presenters will be available during the sessions to answer questions.
phpday
May 16-17, 2024
A hybrid conference, phpday 2024 is organized by GrUSP, a community founded in 2003 as a PHP User Group. The physical component of the conference takes place in Verona, Italy. Online tickets provide access to the conference broadcast and recordings, but does not include access to workshops.
International PHP Conference
May 27-31, 2024
https://phpconference.com/berlin-en/
First held in 2016, the International PHP Conference shifted to an online format in 2020, shifting to a hybrid model in 2021. The physical component for this year’s event takes place in Berlin, Germany.
The conference program is extensive, with separate tracks for PHP core, general web development, testing and performance, and more, plus keynotes, workshops, and other events.
Open Source Day 2024
March 7-8, 2024
The third edition of Open Source Day goes bigger than previous events, with two full days devoted to the conference. A hybrid conference, the physical portion of the event takes place in Florence, Italy.
Naturally, Open Source Day 2024 is itself an open source project, hosted on GitHub.
WebDev Day
March 20, 2024
https://www.wearedevelopers.com/event/webdev-day-march-2024/
Presented by WeAreDevelopers, WebDev Day is an online-only event dedicated to exploring everything from HTML, CSS, and UX/UI design to JavaScript and its frameworks.
Front End Performance Day
June 5, 2024
https://www.wearedevelopers.com/event/front-end-performance-day-june-2024
Front End Performance Day is devoted to exploring techniques like responsive design and interactive animations, as well as how to optimize your code with performance profiling, lazy loading, and caching strategies, and boost user experiences through intuitive interfaces, smooth transitions, and accessibility enhancements.
Both Front End Performance Day and WebDev Day are part of WeAreDevelopers LIVE, a free virtual event series with tech talks, coding sessions, and workshops.
Wrapping Up
That’s at least seven conferences you can attend in 2024, and we’ve just covered the first six months of the year! We’ll make sure to update this article as more conferences become available.
What online conferences are you looking forward to in 2024? Let us know in the comments.