A Look Back at the WP Engine London Summit

At the end of September, we held our 2018 WP Engine Summit in Austin, Texas. Last week, agencies, brands, and digital innovators from EMEA came together in London for the WP Engine EU Summit. Attendees discussed the future of digital experiences, Gen Z’s perception of the Internet, and the best way to breakthrough online.

We hope you enjoyed our Summit events this year and we thank you for attending, speaking, and contributing to the conversation. We continue to be inspired by our customers every day. Let’s take a look back at last week’s events.

James Dowell, Enterprise Account Executive at WP Engine kicked off this year’s Summit with an inspiring introduction, encouraging the audience to combine their entrepreneurial minds and the knowledge acquired during the day to help fuel breakthrough ideas and innovations.

Chief Marketing Officer, Mary Ellen Dugan, talks about the current expectations of our younger consumers, Gen Z. For a generation that has never known a time without the Internet at their fingertips personalization is not a hope for the future, it’s today’s expectation. Dugan’s talk posed an important question for the audience: are you keeping up?

Oliver Franklin-Wallis, Editor at WIRED, leads a thought-provoking talk on how societal shifts impact current and future digital trends. “Digital experiences are so individualized, you and I don’t live in the same world anymore,” Wallis said.

WP Engine Founder and CTO helped bring WordPress into the conversation. WordPress now powers 1 out of every 3 websites, he said, Gutenberg will help WordPress developers move quicker.

Andrew Dobson, Head of Technology at Poke, David Gyertson, Director of Digital at Zest The Agency, and Jack Harper, Web Architect at Johnston Press offer unique ways that their companies are providing breakthrough digital experiences.

Gianfranco Chicco, European Marketing Director at The Webby and Lovie Awards talks about the positive and negative impacts of granting the Internet the power to inform all of our decisions.

Scott Friesman, Global Product Partnerships at Google, talks Accelerated Mobile Pages and Progressive Web Apps. “Start looking at performance as a product,” he said, “a one-second delay in mobile page load can decrease retail conversion by 20%.”

Attendees got a taste of the possibilities when innovating with Headless WordPress from Gabe Karp, Europe Director at 10up and Al Cattell, Director of Platforms & Innovation at Candyspace.

Dr. Chris Brauer, Director of Innovation at University of London, talks driving performance and productivity via artificial intelligence. “UK companies investing in AI are already outperforming others by 5%,” he said.

Sat Dayal, Senior Director at Edelman, talks fostering trust and the state of brand loyalty in a post-GDPR world.

Alex Cruz Farmer, Security Product Manager at Cloudflare, talks about the intersection of security and brand, and the emerging ways you can protect your company from brand-killing cyber threats.

Karina Hollekim, Keynote Speaker at Haugli & Hollekim left the audience inspired with advice on finding your own personal breakthrough when faced with any obstacle.

See you next year!