Simon Pollard has spent his career building WordPress communities in the UK, most recently with Illustrate Digital in Bristol. A Devon native, Simon helped turn a casual pub meetup into a formal, well-run group: regular monthly events with dozens attending, food sponsored by local companies, a bank account and Trello board for planning, and a welcoming team that made newcomers feel at home.
Early growth came through Twitter, Facebook, word of mouth and support from the wider WordPress ecosystem. Finding speakers was a recurring challenge, so organisers often presented themselves. What kept people coming wasn’t just the talks but the atmosphere—name badges, greeters, volunteers who connected attendees by need or skill, and unstructured conversations after the event where real relationships formed.
Then COVID arrived and in-person events stopped almost overnight. Many organisers, including Simon, didn’t have the appetite, time or technology to pivot to virtual meetups. Activity dwindled. For Simon personally, a new baby and family responsibilities changed priorities; he found social life in a local band rather than meetups. Attempts to pass the meetup baton had mixed results: some successors couldn’t sustain it, others revived it later. A recent return to a meetup revealed a smaller but still friendly crowd—proof the community contracted rather than disappeared.
A major post-pandemic challenge is fragmentation of online spaces. Pre-COVID, Twitter often acted as a town square for WordPress people and meetup organisers. Since then many have left or reduced activity on the same platforms and scattered across different networks. Simon now uses LinkedIn more than the networks his peers might be on, and finds invitations arriving on platforms he barely recognises. That fragmentation makes it harder to reach old contacts or promote events consistently.
This splintering links to how people now seek help and learn. Where developers once used public forums, blogs and Stack Overflow—places that created visible reputation and human connections—AI tools and private channels can now deliver immediate answers without attribution. That convenience risks substituting human interaction for anonymous text responses, removing social trails that lead to collaborations and referrals.
Simon and fellow organiser Nathan note that meetups and WordCamps provided vital connective tissue: informal chats, serendipitous introductions, recruitment, and a sense of belonging to a broader project. Those face-to-face moments—debriefing after talks, following up in private conversations—are hard to reproduce with asynchronous posts or AI replies. For freelancers and small teams especially, the network effects of in-person events translate directly into problem-solving help, leads and partnerships.
What can revival look like? The community is smaller and in flux, but not dead. Practical ideas to adapt include:
– Emphasise social warmth and accessibility: name badges, greeters and active introductions help newcomers connect quickly.
– Broaden content beyond pure WordPress technical talks: creative sessions on design, animation, soft skills or adjacent tech attract diverse attendees and spark cross-disciplinary conversations.
– Mix formats: socials, live music or short performances can make meetups feel more like an event you want to leave the house for in a world of on-demand entertainment.
– Maintain multiple touchpoints: keep meetup pages, mailing lists and at least one reliable social channel up to date so people know how to reconnect between events.
– Consider smaller, single-track WordCamps: a scaled-down conference can better match current attendance while preserving concentrated community time.
Simon points to examples that worked: inviting non-WordPress but highly creative speakers like Gavin Strange from Aardman, and bringing local musicians into events—many community members are musicians, and music adds atmosphere and a reason to attend beyond slides.
Both organisers agree that with no single town square anymore, reconnection requires intention. That means thinking about how to reach younger people who grew up on TikTok, and how to compete with the pull of streaming and always-on screens. The goal isn’t to recreate pre-2020 scale exactly, but to rebuild sustainable, meaningful in-person opportunities that offer unique value: real conversation, serendipity and the warmth of a room of peers.
Where to find Simon: he works at Illustrate Digital (illustrate.digital) and is most reachable via LinkedIn.