Last week we had the pleasure of attending Web Summit 2016 in Lisbon, Portugal. This is one of the biggest worldwide tech conferences, and we were happy to see more startups and attendees that are also part of the WordPress community.

We met the guys from GenerateWP; it was good to meet them and learn about their work and the WordPress scene in Israel. The WP Engine stand was also well manned by Fabio Torlini and Edmund Turbin, two good friends of ours. WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner also spoke at this event. We also met a good number of people who are using WordPress as the platform for their startup; it’s always reassuring to know that WordPress has ventured well beyond its blogging days and we can look forward to more innovation now that the REST API is in place.

The biggest highlight of the event for us was Gary Vaynerchuk’s talks. He is really inspiring and funny at the same time. I’ve followed him for a long time since his Winelibrary days and so it was great to finally see him in person.

Of course, there were loads of other great topics covered, with an impressive speaker list. There were more than 50,000 attendees in all, which gives you an idea of the massive size of this event. Luckily, Lisbon rose to the occasion and the event went by without a hitch. This was impressive considering the city was hosting the event for the first time.

For the next 2 years at least, Web Summit will also be held in Lisbon, and we look forward to returning to this lovely city next year. We also hope to meet even more people from the WordPress community there in 2017.