Why, after countless JoomlaDays and one unforgettable trip to Rome, I'm not skipping the Joomla World Conference this October.

Me at the Joomla World Conference 2017 in Rome - holding a sign I wasn't yet sure I'd earned.

There's a photo of me from the Joomla World Conference in Rome, back in 2017. I'm holding a handmade sign that reads "I am a Joomla Volunteer," smiling for the camera - and, if I'm honest, feeling like a bit of a fraud.

Because at that point I wasn't really in the global community yet. I'd never worked on an international team. I was "just" an attendee, and holding that sign felt like claiming a title I hadn't earned. What I'd conveniently forgotten, standing in that hallway, was that I'd already spent years helping build the Austrian Joomla community and speaking at JoomlaDays. I was a volunteer. I just hadn't caught up with myself yet.

That, it turns out, is exactly what a world conference does to you.

The comfort of home turf

I love JoomlaDays. I've been to more than I can count. There's something wonderful about a local event: you meet people from your own corner of the world, you speak the same language - sometimes even the same dialect - and you come back year after year until the acquaintances have quietly turned into friends and colleagues.

A world conference is a different animal. And yes, the differences are exactly the things that give people cold feet:

• The talks are in English.
• The journey is usually longer.
• You might not know a single person when you walk in.

Let me take those one at a time, because none of them are the obstacles they look like.

About that English

Here's the secret: for almost everyone else in the room, English isn't their first language either. Nobody is grading your grammar. The vocabulary is refreshingly ordinary, and honestly, half the fun is fumbling toward the right word together and picking up new ones along the way.

There's also a real advantage to sharing a physical room. When you lose the thread mid-sentence, people can see it - a puzzled look gets caught instantly and someone jumps in to help. That's a lot more than you can say for a muted grid of faces in an online meeting.

"I'll make a little holiday of it"

Everyone says this. You're traveling to another country anyway, so why not add a few days before or after - see the city, turn it into a workation in some cosy co-working space, or finally visit that friend who lives nearby and whom you've been meaning to see for years?

It sounds wonderful. I have failed at it every single time.

Mostly because I usually end up helping to organize, and by the end we're all just relieved to go home and collapse. But every time, I watch the people who stay on for another two or three days with a small, honest pang of envy. So - learn from my mistakes. Book the extra days. I'll be cheering you on from the airport queue.

Go, even if you go alone

If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: I meet the most people when I travel alone.

That's not a rule - you don't have to go by yourself. But don't be afraid of it either. I'm far more open when I'm on my own. I strike up conversations faster. And by day two you've inevitably bumped into someone from day one, and suddenly you're comparing notes on how the hotel bed was, plotting the optimal lunch-buffet strategy together, or getting the recap of the one session you couldn't attend because the competing talk was simply too good to miss.

The pasta bridge and the iMac in hand luggage

Some memories just stick.

The theme of JWC 2017 was all about building bridges - fitting, since the whole point of holding the world conference in Italy was to connect the huge Italian community with the rest of the world. So of course there was a group challenge: build a bridge. Out of pasta. In Italy. It was as gloriously chaotic as it sounds.

There was also a grand prize from one of the sponsors - a brand-new iMac - which the very happy winner then had to somehow wrestle home as carry-on luggage.

And at J and Beyond in Barcelona, I sat in on a working group about automated testing, which is where I first met Phil Walton. To this day we still laugh about it: Phil walked into that workshop with a perfectly functioning Joomla test setup - and walked out without one.

The real reason I keep going back

Here's the thing that ties all of it together.

Almost every person I still work with in the Joomla world today, I met face to face at a conference at some point. That's not a coincidence. Something happens when you share a room, a coffee break, and a slightly disastrous pasta bridge - something that a thousand online calls never quite manage.

The people I haven't met in person yet? I'm hoping to meet them in Potsdam. I already know of at least one: after a whole string of online meetings, we'll finally shake hands this October - or even hug when saying good-bye again. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it.

A world conference only comes around every few years. After the long gap since Rome, this one feels like a rare open window - the kind you don't want to look back on and realize you let close.

So come to Potsdam. Bring your questions, your half-remembered English, and your willingness to talk to a stranger over lunch. And if someone hands you a sign that says "I am a Joomla Volunteer" - hold it up and smile.

Trust me: you've earned it more than you think.

See you there.