[00:00:20] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there, and welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast. You've reached episode number 446 entitled Inside Checkout Summit, reviving human connections in the WooCommerce and WordPress community. It was published on Thursday, the 20th of November. 2025. My name's Nathan Wrigley and some very short housekeeping.
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Okay, what have we got for you today? Well, today we are talking all about a new event. It's happening next year. It's called Checkout Summit, and as you might imagine, it's to do with e-commerce. We're talking to Rodolfo Melogli, and he has put this event together for next year.
And the idea really is born out of his sense that the WooCommerce community, perhaps the WordPress community more generally, has suffered from a sense of isolation, especially since remote work became the thing after COVID. AI, he feels is not really helping and so he wants to bring humans back together.
So we talk a little bit about that, and then we get onto his event and the challenges of working remotely. Also, where it is, what you can expect, it sounds like it's basically gonna be a nice venue with lots of holiday options as well, because of the location and where it is in Palermo, in Sicily. Looks really interesting.
Hopefully, if you're into WooCommerce or WordPress more generally, this will help you foster some genuine connections, help you collaborate, and get yourself back in with the community in a lovely, relaxed environment.
Check out the podcast. I hope that you enjoy it.
I am joined on the podcast by Rudolfo Meloy. Hello Rudolfo.
[00:03:31] Rodolfo Melogli: Thanks for having me.
[00:03:32] Nathan Wrigley: You are very welcome. I was introduced but to, Rodolfo by a good friend of mine, Steve Burge from Publish Press. And he suggested to Rodolfo that the pair of us should have a chat.
And so here we are. And and the typical process that I have when I get into asking people to come on the podcast is I asked them to submit. Some show notes and fill out the forms and what have you. And there's something really interesting in what Rodolfo has written down in his show notes, and we will get to that in a moment.
It's all about bringing back humans. Those are the three words. bring humans back, is the sort of the metaphor going on. But it's being done through various different mechanisms. So before we get into the content. In general, Rudolfo, do you just wanna tell us a little bit about who you are?
I know that's a really generic question, but you know who you are, what you do, how you are in the WordPress space, all of that good stuff.
[00:04:22] Rodolfo Melogli: Yes, I'm actually an engineer. So before WordPress, I was running a different life, back in Ireland. Then I was let go and one day I said, I'm just gonna do websites. So that was back in 2011. so I started my own business and since then I've been basically working from my house. And no matter whether it was in Ireland, in the US for one year or now back in Italy, and always been on my own, always freelancing.
And over the years I became a WooCommerce expert. So that's my kind of specialty. And now it would be, quite a well-known person within the WooCommerce space. A little bit more in the WooCommerce space, a little less in the WordPress space. But I just enjoy going to, meetups and when there used to be meetups, work camps, and trying to spend as much time as possible with people.
And that's because I've been working from my house for the last. What is it? 13, 14 years. And, COVID didn't change anything from my routine, Me neither. it was like, oh, that, that's exactly what I've been doing for the last few years. so getting out the house is actually a good thing. Whenever I can actually, I'm going to fly to Portugal.
this Friday for the WordPress Day for e-commerce 2025, which I think is a very good thing, for WordPress. So they're organizing this, these, events on top of work camps and meetups, and it looks really interesting and speaking there. whenever I can, I just get out the house and go meet people, speak if I can, attend if I can, and, try to be part of the community.
[00:06:26] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That's really interesting. I appreciate that. And, I'm gonna read into the record the, bits and pieces that you wrote in your, introduction to me and this podcast. we have this field, which is called podcast Discussion Subject. And I say, you know what it is, what? What would you like to talk about?
And the bit that's captured my attention is as follows, and I'll just read it verbatim if that's all right. So you've written over the past few years, most of us in the WooCommerce world have lived behind screens, buildings, selling, teaching, and collaborating online. And just when things were starting to feel distant enough, AI made it even worse.
We. Automated, optimized and outsourced so much, that genuine human interaction is becoming rare. Lately, I've felt a strong urge to bring humans back. Real conversations powered by humans, spontaneous ideas, the kind of energy you can't replicate via a chatbot. This is exactly why I rebranded and re.
Business bloomer. We'll get into that in a moment. And also why I'm organizing Checkout Summit. I'll get into that in a moment as well. both are why my way of Rehumanizing the WooCommerce ecosystem. Reconnecting, developers, agencies, store owners, and product managers meet, sorry, product managers meet, talk, and learn from each other again.
And there was a little bit more, but that's probably where I'll end it. So that really piqued my curiosity because it's not really a subject that we talk about much on this podcast. We talk mainly about the thing, the product, the code, the plugin, the theme, the block, the event, what have you. But we never really get into this whole thing of.
I, I'm going to sum it up in one word, isolation, and I'm guessing that's the, reason that you've couched it in those terms. I'm presuming that there's some sense of that in your life. You feel like we've staring at rectangular screens either in our hand or sat on a desktop all day long.
And it's entirely possible for us to become dislocated and un anchored, from the real world. So there's not really a question there, but. I'm just gonna throw it back to you and say, tell us more about what you were thinking, this sort of bringing humans back.
[00:08:35] Rodolfo Melogli: I think that's, the point I wanted to make. I have to say first that I'm a super flexible person. I lived in so many different places in my life. I spoke different languages. I traveled, I could leave. in the Nor Pole I could live on Mars. I could speak Chinese if I wanted to.
Like I am super adaptable, so I don't feel like I am frustrated or I feel I am on my own, or I'm actually feel very well in my room working by myself. And, I'm super productive. having said that, the last. WooCommerce conference. So if we want to speak about WooCommerce, but it's the exact same for WordPress in general.
It was like back in 2017 or 18, at the time there was a thing called WooConf. So it was organized by WooCommerce, and then they did. Two or three of them, and it stopped, for several reasons. Then COVID came and basically the WooCommerce world since 2017. So we're talking about the last eight years has been a hundred percent online.
There have been online conferences and there have been office hours on Slack. not. Many people hanging out at work camps, so I'm talking about WooCommerce. So pretty much we've been on our own from our rooms, building plugins and writing content and, designing websites. But we never had the chance to actually see each other like it feels like in the community.
And as an introvert is even more so we can extend that to the WordPress community. I tend to know those five or six people in person. But online, am I meet? Am I, I might know maybe 500, 1000 people, but I never get to actually talk to them. I don't know what they look like. I don't know, what they think about it.
I know about their hobbies. I know whether we could be friends or not. Like I just know them because we slack each other or we message each other or we tweet or whatever we do. But I actually never get to. Meet people in person and that's why I tend to, go to work camps and I used to organize meetups and I'm trying to, get more to.
get out the house and turn to look for communities because I need the sort of human interaction, especially now that AI has both killed my business and my little interactions that I had my business because I. I'm a blogger and have been basically relied on my blog posts for the last 10 years, in order to bring me business and clients and customers.
And, on the other hand also, now that you can chat to a bot and get a solution online, you don't need to. send a tweet out any longer or, send a slack message to someone, either. So we're gone even worse in the last couple of years. so my idea is right, let's go against ai if it's possible.
Let's find some ways to rehumanize. Myself, rehumanize, WooCommerce, rehumanize, WordPress Rehumanize, the community, which lately has been a little bit, missing, from in-person events. And I think we've seen Cloud Fest, we've seen Loop Conf, we've seen Press Conf, we've seen, so many.
Independent conferences as well coming up in the last few months slash years. I think that's a very great way of getting people to actually enjoy the time with other peers and, learn something new.
[00:13:30] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I've got quite a few bits to say to that. So the, first one is that, I think it's really curious, the industry that we live in. So I think many people listening to this podcast will go to an office, but there'll be probably more, I'm guessing. Who will be working in some capacity, in a distributed way, in a remote way.
Maybe they're working from home or they attend, I, I dunno, a sort of coworking space or something like that. But it, there's a real capacity in our industry to be by yourself. More or less all the time. you may have family around you, what have you, but equally, if you don't, there's a real chance that you are gonna be really isolated in the, real sense of the word.
there is no other human being in close proximity to you. So there's that, our industry definitely allows for that. if I were to work in a different industry, let's say I am, I don't know, a brick layer or something like that, every day I'm gonna be confronting. Other people. I'm gonna have conversations organically because of the nature of the work that I do and, the remote nature of our work. Allows for things to become isolated. So that was my first observation. The second one, which is really curious, and this is really curious, is that we want to hang out, not everybody, but there's a significant proportion of people working in the WooCommerce and the WordPress space who want to socialize.
With the people who do the same kind of work as them. So they wanna attend the conferences and they want to go to the talks. That's a given, right? But also, they wanna do the hallway bit. And I think there's something really unusual about that. Unusual in the best sense of the word, the fact that people who work on this open source project.
Wish to hang out with each other. Now, I did a variety of different jobs prior to working in the WordPress space, and I can tell you that didn't map, when the clock got to five o'clock and it was time for me to go home, I was going home, that I was leaving the workspace behind me.
I didn't necessarily want to hang out with those people. And so there's, that just this curious mixture of the desire. To hang out with people who are like-minded. I have never been able to grasp why that is. I've tried and I don't understand it, but I'm very glad that is a thing. So they're my first two observations.
And the third one is about AI and I, I. I'm completely with you. I think we're at the, we're at the beginning of a real shift in what the internet is, and so the consumption of content via clicking, I don't know, on a search engine link, which then drives you to a website where you go and consume that content, comment on that content.
I think we are definitely being pushed more and more into AI just giving us everything, the expectation that you don't need to go to our website because you get the answer straight away so that promotes that isolation a little bit more. Okay, so there were my observations off the back of everything you said.
Did you have anything you wanted to add based upon what I just said, or shall I move on to the events that you've got? the events that you've got going on,
[00:16:38] Rodolfo Melogli: Yeah. I wanted to add. when you said that at 5:00 PM you used to go home after a long day of work and you definitely didn't wanna socialize with anyone and just get back, doing your hobbies or whatever it was, or going for dinner, at your own place. I am the exact same. Like I used to go to university here in Italy while Rome when used to live in Rome, and like to me university was like, going to attend a lesson and then.
I run back home and get out of the, whatever university as, as fast as I could. And when I used to be an employee of my engineering firm there in, Ireland, I used to work nine to five, like a 5 0 1. I was already at home,
so I totally get that. I am the exact same. the difference though was that.
You spent hours with your coworkers at the place, so you already had the time to chat, or you already had the time to get bored because that's also a thing. And then all you wanted to do was, leave and go, home. Now we're talking about working from home by yourself and during those.
Four super productive hours that I have in the morning because then my kid comes back home and it's all over. I don't want to chat to anyone. I don't want to waste time. I just want to get, as much work done as possible. But then like you feel the need of saying, hold on, like I did something new today.
I wish, I could talk to someone about this. Or I wish. I could, talk to that person, which I know by looking on Twitter, LinkedIn, slack and everywhere, work on tv, whatever it is, that they are an expert, off that topic. I wish I had the time to, drop the phone or go somewhere and talk to them.
we're talking about hanging out with people and yes, the hallway tracks. Are probably the best place to, to meet, the people that you want to meet because they won't be listening at the, they won't be at the talks because they're probably too generic. they won't be at the coffee because they don't drink coffee, but they will be talking, in the hallway track.
so there is a need, I think for us word pressors, if we wanna call ourselves like that, to hang out and, work Camp Europe, work camp, US work Camp Asia. Usually they're the three flagship events. We are your definitely gonna meet, 3000 people or whatever it is. And you're gonna find someone.
But to me, 3000 people, and I keep using, I, I keep going to WC EU every year. 'cause I love it because I'm from Europe, because I like to learn new things, but I keep talking to the same 10 people every year. Like I get, too overwhelmed with 3000 people, too many people, like I need, a break.
Sometimes I, I go hide somewhere in the bathroom or I go outside for. I don't smoke, but just go outside for a while. I'm talking about, yes, you should have something in person, but it shouldn't be overwhelming at the same time. So that's why I'm saying, could be a meetup, could be a meeting, could be, hanging out with 10 people, whatever it is, with 20, but not 3000.
That's too much for me. People love it. I know that, but I, maybe
I don't.
[00:20:32] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I, think we've definitely, the, gears have shifted in the UK at least, anyway. The, events have, died off. There were lots and lots of meet ups prior to COVID. They went away because of COVID, obviously. And then they. On the whole didn't come back.
There's maybe a little bit of a, revival now, but it's much more muted than it was before. But, but you've taken matters into your own hands and you've decided that, okay, if, if I've got these thoughts in my head and I want to hang out with like-minded people and I would like to talk about WooCommerce, I could wait until somebody else. Got on with it and organized an event, or I could just do it myself, and that is exactly what you've done. So at this point, I'm going to, just mention Checkout Summit. Now you've got the perfect URL for that event. It's checkout summit.com as you'd imagine. Just. It's all as one word. Check out summit.com.
Maybe go and check it's out. Oh, dear. but tell us a little bit about the event. Are you hoping to, to capture a, global audience here? I can see that it's in Palermo in Italy, but, what's on the menu? What was the, thought behind it? Was it primarily just to get people in the room or is there a, real strong focus () on education as well?
[00:21:52] Rodolfo Melogli: a great question and, possibly a million dollar question. first of all. I am pretty well known in the community. we were talking about this at WCEU 2025, so we should be, organizing a conference or we're so looking forward for WooCommerce to get back into organizing its own conference.
And I say, you know what, I'll do it first. You never know. Maybe WooCommerce would also get back into organizing their own conference because they will see that. There is loads of value into getting back into in-person meetings and conferences. So I said I'll do it. That was June, 2025. We're in November, and I already sold one third of the tickets, and basically today I am announcing first few speakers and the headline sponsor.
So this is something that I really wanted to do that I've been talking about for the last. X years. Like you will find blog posts about me saying, let's get WooCommerce back, please. WooCommerce, please do it. It's so needed. I organized it myself. It's in Palermo because I live in Palermo, so it's easier for me to, go and visit venues and, set up the logistics and talk to the.
Printing people. It's just easier also. It's nice. So you were asking what's on the menu for checkout summit and on the menu there is great food. First of all,
we're in Sicily, right? Sicily, Italy. So food is gonna be great hopefully. And but on top of that, I tried to put up a conference, which is content first.
Because to me, work camps are not usually content first. So I wanted a few speakers, but great one. And I really want the 150 people who will be attending the conference to be at the talks at all and attend all of them. So I wanted to have, a, conference driven by content and second. People first.
So great content, great people. You put the two things together and it means that you're gonna get amazing networking. You're gonna get amazing connections. Why not partnerships? Why not acquisitions? And basically get 150. WooCommerce makers in the same room for a couple of days while also relaxing, enjoying having fun.
Maybe go for a swim if the weather's nice, 'cause there are swimming pools. And, and basically chat to each other for 48 hours and see what we can come up with. I've been dreaming about this for years and this year I said, listen, I'm gonna try do this and. It's real now, so I have to do it.
And, that's
[00:25:08] Nathan Wrigley: definitely real
[00:25:09] Rodolfo Melogli: We'll say if I survive
by April
next year.
[00:25:14] Nathan Wrigley: We'll get into the nuts and the bolts of it. I'll, but I'll just tell everybody there's a few sort of UVP bits and pieces on the homepage there. for example, the one thing people might be interested to know is that it's a single track event. So you won't be caught up between, okay, I've got four different tracks that I need to worry about, which one do I need to, think about?
It's, just one. if, there's a speaker on, who that speaker is, 12 of them. So 12 talks are being given lots of opportunity to network and, from the photos at least, it looks almost like it's, at a place where you would go on holiday. it's like a beach resorts, which is, really lovely.
if you, if you go to the event and add a couple of days on at both ends. And that's, that's all the better. But I have to ask, I know this has got nothing to do with WooCommerce. What's the weather normally like in April, late April? Is that, because my expectation is it would be warm in Sicily at that point, but not baking
[00:26:15] Rodolfo Melogli: Yeah. See it's. A hundred percent relative. on the homepage there is actually a link to a blog post which says, check out some in 2026 weather
forecast. Because I, I know that people like you would
be asking, what's the weather '
like? Do I need
to
[00:26:32] Nathan Wrigley: cause you
wanna co,
[00:26:32] Rodolfo Melogli: winter
[00:26:33] Nathan Wrigley: to combine the two things, right? You want to have a holiday aspect to it. If I'm gonna go to Sicily, wouldn't it be great to make use of that time, to, I don't know, go to some historical buildings in my ca. I love all that.
[00:26:45] Rodolfo Melogli: Exactly,
[00:26:46] Nathan Wrigley: you
[00:26:47] Rodolfo Melogli: so the weather forecast, it's late April, 2026. Usually for US Sicilians, not from Sicilian, from Rome, but for US Italians. It will be in the low
twenties like
[00:27:04] Nathan Wrigley: just the best.
[00:27:06] Rodolfo Melogli: but low twenties. I say low twenties for us, we will be there wearing winter jacket.
[00:27:12] Nathan Wrigley: No, I'm in shorts and t-shirts and
[00:27:14] Rodolfo Melogli: There you go. So UK people, and central Europe people would actually enjoy that weather so much.
I also added a little sun icon in the top bar, hoping that the weather is gonna be nice. you could get the odd, shower, the odd rain, whatever. But overall it's gonna be nice. It's not. Summer season yet. So the venue has a private beach as well. It won't be, You won't be finding umbrellas and some beds and stuff because it's not open yet for the summer season, which usually it's late May for us.
But you can definitely go for a walk on the beach. It should be nice and lovely. And the venues got three or four swimming pools as well, and some, soccer pitch, whatever, tennis, court as well. So it's a. A lovely venue where you would go on a holiday, as you said, with the family, like it's got three restaurants and big, but at the same time, it's not that overwhelmingly big.
Alright? So it's got rooms and spa, whatever. that's why I chose that place, first of all, because it's 13 minutes drive from the airport and. 99% of the people will be flying to Sicily. So I'm expecting people from Australia, from, west us, from north of Europe, and also now like Africa and India as well, which is amazing to me.
And so they would be flying from all over the world. And this is just the first few 50 attendees. There's still 100 to come. And I wanted to have a place which is close to the airport, which is easy to get to if you don't want to hire a car. And also where you could bring a plus one if you want to, and they could enjoy their time there and.
basically a place to relax if you really want to, because I find war camps, as I said earlier, sometimes overwhelming. I need a break. I need to get out of the venue for a walk or something on my own. And, in here you have lots of space and, you don't wanna talk to anyone, just go to, for a swim or for a
walk, on the beach.
And, should be nice.
[00:29:51] Nathan Wrigley: You are, you are living up to your motto of, bringing humans back. You've, put it in a, holiday venue. it's music to my ears. This is exactly the sort of thing that I would love. You open the door, there's. A swimming pool and a variety of restaurants and what have you.
And I know that kind of feels like window dressing around the edge of the event, but for many people that's like the crux of it really. the event's, the thing they're going for, the thing. But it's equally important, in in the weighing up of whether to attend or not.
That might represent 50, 60, 70% of the decision. what will it be like when I'm there? During the bits when I'm not there. And and obviously, lots of networking and what have you. So the opportunity to really relax and, it's taken place in, as I said in April, the date, the specific dates are the 23rd to the 24th of April.
It's in Palermo, Italy. You can Google map that and find out what. Have you, but, what's the cost of the event if we were to wish to buy a ticket? I don't know if the price is ramping up on the website. It uses the word early bird, so I don't know if the price is gonna change over time, but how much is it currently?
[00:31:00] Rodolfo Melogli: Yes, so early birds sold out, so I, as I said, I'm expecting 150 people, so I decided to sell the first 50 at a discounted rate, then the second batch at a. convenient rate, and then the last batch will be a full price, which is gonna be over, 350 euros. Anyway, so that would be the premium offer.
But early birds went out for 1 99. So overall we're used to, the 40, 50 euros for a work camp. Which is heavily thanks to sponsorships and, whatever it is, help from the foundation. So in this case, it's a little bit different. It's, an event that I've been, building on my own, that I've, created myself and, at the price point still, I think it's affordable because.
The prize includes basically lunch, dinner, drinks, two days of talks, networking, side events, the welcome party the day before the after. The day after day out, if we are enough people, we could, rent a bus and go around visiting historic places or whatever it is. because it's nice. once you come to Sicily, like you might also want to get out of the venue and go visit
someplace, if you're into that sort of thing.
they're nice. there's a lovely beach, just 10 minutes drive. Palermo City is like 20 minutes drive, so it's all close by and lots of things to see and visit once you're there. And, so I think. Except for, getting your flight and accommodation, all the rest, it's all inclusive. And also I'm very proud of one thing that I decided to include, which is the, sorry about the, word, the inclusion fund.
So basically some sponsors are helping me by putting money into this fund, and this can help someone from. Underrepresented or for, someone who couldn't afford the trip and the accommodation and the ticket to actually pay for the whole thing for
them
and allow them to attend because I, believe that there are so many people who could benefit.
From the conference, but also who could add up to the quality of the event, but maybe they can't afford it or maybe they don't feel comfortable in, coming. And this is a way to, get them to motivate them to apply for the grant, for sponsors to put money into the fund and hopefully to get them to Palermo in 2006.
And it's a
lovely thing.
[00:34:19] Nathan Wrigley: So presumably at some point on the website there will be materials that you can download or what have you to learn about how you may. apply for that should you wish to attend, but don't feel that well feel that you qualify under the criteria that you're going to set. So we know that there's gonna be 12 speakers.
We've heard a little bit about the fact that there's sponsors, by the way. at the moment we're recording this in early-ish, mid. November, let's say that there are still some sponsorship opportunities. If you go to the main menu, you'll see there's a sponsor's link. You'll be able to, browse the, the available sponsorship options, which you may wish to avail yourself of if you've got a product or service in the WordPress space.
And also tickets are available on there as well. Yeah. a bit of a sidestep here, and you may just close this down right away. in the WordPress space, we have a bunch of rival kind of WooCommerce if you like. We've got a, there's quite a few different e-commerce solutions. does three or four that I couldn't mention off the bat.
And I'm wondering, does this, would it, would this overlap in any way or is this definitely just like a woo thing, or could we more broadly encapsulate it? E-commerce, a WordPress e-commerce event.
[00:35:36] Rodolfo Melogli: that's an amazing question. on purpose. I didn't choose. And I, maybe I couldn't even, WooCommerce Summit or whatever it was gonna be. So it's checkout summit. These basically opens the door if we want to. if, it goes well, no one is saying that in years two, I couldn't have a Shopify truck or other WordPress e-commerce plugins, truck.
My take here, especially for the WordPress e-commerce plugins, fluent car sugar cart, nor Commerce, and you name it, easy Commerce. And now there is another one as well. They're popping up like flowers in April, speaking of witch. And I believe the more e-commerce plugins we have within the WordPress ecosystem, and the better it is.
If we want to compete against Shopify, WooCommerce alone is not enough. We need fluent cart. We need sugar cart. We need North Commerce. We need eCommerce. We need everything. that we have in the repo for free that can allow a single WordPress users to sell online. So I am super happy to see all these new plugins coming in.
I have nothing against them. I don't think there is ever gonna be overlap, between them. It's just they're contributing to make WordPress a great e-commerce, a potentially great e-commerce system
as well. I am of the idea that I shouldn't, we're not competing against each other within the WordPress ecosystem.
All the ecosystem within WordPress is competing against Shopify, Magento, whatever it is. and other e-commerce software. So we are working together to make e-commerce better for WordPress. So I am not. Excluding. I'm not saying that at the conference we shouldn't have other WordPress plugins specifically about e-commerce.
I'm not excluding. We should also have, we should also talk about Shopify. Why not? the concept of this conference actually get out and. Meet people. 50% of the WooCommerce people are now developing for Shopify as well. So we definitely need to cover that as well. I wanna know why. I wanna know, is it working?
I wanna know, did you change your mind or did you do the right? Was it the right choice? So we will be talking about Shopify as well. That's why the name is generic. That's why the name is about e-commerce in gen in general.
[00:38:36] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:38:37] Rodolfo Melogli: that's, my take.
[00:38:39] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's a, that was a good idea. I think with, the benefit of hindsight, that might well have been the, the cleverest thing that you did because Yeah, there's definitely, a rising tide carries all boats and WooCommerce is successful. These other things will no doubt be successful and there certainly are.
There is more in the WordPress space in terms of e-commerce than, Jo WooCommerce as well, so that's interesting. Okay. On a, more personal note, so you decided to do this event? I've done a few online events. I'm evolved in a, an in-person event every month in London, and, I know that they're never as easy to put on as they appear to be.
You show up to these events and, oh look, there's an event. It just kinda magically happened. Tell me about what you've learned. Is it more work? Less work? Would you do it again if, you had the chance, just tell us your personal journey in terms of the workload and what you've discovered on the way.
[00:39:37] Rodolfo Melogli: Yeah. see, I've been talking about organizing my own event for years and I never did it. And this year I said I'm gonna do it, and people wouldn't believe me and said, I'm crazy, but I'm gonna try this. And now that I've tried it, we're not in April, 2026 yet, but I've been working on it like nonstop since June, which was the day I decided to, go ahead with it.
But because I have more time available, and that's because my business has been killed by ai, I could concentrate. On this, I could build a website on my own. it's not beautiful. I'm not a web designer, but I did it no matter what, and it sold one third of the ticket. So it doesn't really matter like the quality of the website.
What matters is the objective, the goal of the conference. I have a big board here in my office with every possible thing that I need to look at in the next few weeks.
[00:40:47] Nathan Wrigley: I'm sure it's a big, bold
[00:40:50] Rodolfo Melogli: And I'm building in public,
which is helping me a lot because. Yeah, I've been doing this on my own, but I need to ask people like, should I do one track or two tracks? should it be a small event or a big event and, should sponsors be allowed to speak or not? So I've been basically doing polls on a daily basis on Twitter, during July and August, and I defined the conference based on the Twitter polls, results.
And, I got lots of people to help with the organization in this way, but I still, I'm still on my own, so it's tough. I work on it on a daily basis, on top of, working on my business as well. but it's fun. And I have this hashtag on Twitter called, road to Checkout Summit. And on a daily basis, I share the findings or the achievements, for that given day re regarding the checkout summit conference.
So today, for example. I have a speaker announcement to make, and the tweet will cover that. And I think if I Google, days remaining to April the 23rd, it's 162.
[00:42:18] Nathan Wrigley: fast get down into single digits.
[00:42:21] Rodolfo Melogli: Yes. So this also motivates me. the fact that I'm sharing daily things on Twitter motivates me to. Stay active to never get bored about it. to don't get frustrated. 'cause I said, oh, that's what I achieved today. And people are replying and saying, well done, very well done. And this amazing.
We're so happy. Definitely, I think we should be attending. so it, it's working also as a marketing thing, but mostly whatever I do is always for myself. Did I organize the conference because I needed to hang out with WooCommerce people? Yes, I did. the fact that other people are buying tickets, it's amazing.
But this is coming from my own need of getting back into human interaction. The sharing in public on social media, still that's motivating me. To get work done and never to get bored. And whatever I do is always because I have a need and I try to fulfill it in some way, and it seems to be Yeah. That's so nice. We've hit the sweet spot for the amount of time available to us. I did say at the top of the show that we were gonna talk about, your business bloomer, project. I think probably that's gonna have to wait either for another episode or for the people to go into the show notes, over on the website and click on the link over there.
[00:43:58] Nathan Wrigley: But it is business bloomer.com. We can talk about that another time perhaps. But, Rudolfo, thank you so much for chatting to me today all about. Your checkout summit once more. I'll read it into the record. If you go to checkout summit.com, whether you're a sponsor or potentially a speaker for future events, maybe you never know, or if you are just looking to buy tickets, that is gonna be your one stop shop for doing that.
and as we've discovered, Rodolfo is trying to bring humans back together so that they can collide and have interesting conversations and socialize and, have a swim. Who knows. But, thank you for putting the event on. Thank you for being one of the main glue, one of the, one of the people in the, community that is being the glue to keep the whole thing together.
Really appreciate it. So thank you for chatting to me today, Rodolfo.
[00:44:47] Rodolfo Melogli: Thanks so much, Nathan. as I said. And doing these podcasts helps me a lot getting back to the, to the topic of, doing things so I can
improve and I can motivate myself and this so we said before we hit the record bond, that just saying things out loud is, just a, it's a great mechanism for aligning your own thoughts and realizing, oh, okay. Yeah, there's that. I forgot to mention that and all of those kind of things, but thank you for chatting to me. It's been an absolute pleasure.
[00:45:17] Nathan Wrigley: And yeah, maybe we'll get you on the podcast after the event to see exactly how it went. Rudolfo. Thank you so much.
[00:45:23] Rodolfo Melogli: You're very welcome.
[00:45:25] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. I hope that you enjoyed that.
Very nice chatting to Rodolfo today. If you enjoyed that, and you want to make some commentary, please go to wpbuilds.com. Search for episode number 446 and leave us a comment there. We really do appreciate the actual comments on the website. That really certainly beats out posting things on social media that would be most welcome. But yeah, if you've got anything to say about that, leave as a comment and we will get to it asap.
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Okay, I'm gonna fade in some cheesy music. Say stay safe. Have a good week. Bye-bye for now.
