WebExpo is the event of the year for me, and I always look forward to it accordingly. Last year’s edition saw a change of venue, moving from the CZU in Suchdol to the VE in Žižkov, and it was definitely a step forward. So I figured that this year the conference would iron out a few more wrinkles and thus give attendees an even better experience.

That didn’t happen.

Even though it was in a better venue, in terms of organization quality WebExpo moved a few years backwards. A cold lunch, packed halls, a fight for refreshments during the coffee break, and the traditionally disastrous buffet, where they even ran out of soft drinks. At the ticket price, which cost me two thousand, I don’t consider these things all that crucial, but people who paid six thousand will already have a different opinion.

But there’s certainly plenty to praise too. The lineup of Thursday workshops was top-notch and I wanted to be at about three of them at once. In the end the choice fell on Honza Řezáč, who was excellent and over a couple of hours initiated us into personal branding, with a broad reach extending almost all the way to the meaning of life.

I also thoroughly enjoyed all the opportunities for networking - the hour-long Thursday workshop with Jeanne Trojan, the warm-up party and the Saturday after party. I met lots of familiar faces and new people, and it was great.

The quality and value of the talks fluctuated. Going to John Vanhara, David Grudl and Jirka Knesl is always a safe bet. I was also pleased by the joke-packed talk about node.js with Lukáš Linhart and the chat about the redesign of Annonce by Štěpán Doubrava. I was dreading the block of talks about Windows 8 (Microsoft’s sponsorship could be felt all the way from Sherwood), but Honza Cibulka talked about mobile applications so generally that a lot of the principles could be applied to iOS and Android as well.

Sebastian Bergmann, whom I’d been really looking forward to, disappointed me. He’s evidently touring conferences with a single talk; his PHPUnit Best Practices are for absolute beginners, and judging by the reactions on Twitter I wasn’t the only one who found it so boring. From such an icon of the PHP world I expected a show.

The next WebExpo is supposed to be international and entirely in English. I don’t know whether that means that Czech speakers will also be forced to speak English and we’ll thus have to listen to czenglish, or whether only international guests will be invited. It doesn’t automatically mean better quality.

And the vote during the closing presentation on whether we’d go to WebExpo in Dresden or in Brno was, in my view, meant to hint that it doesn’t have to be held in Prague at all. I’ll definitely go for the community, but I’d rather not expect quite so much from the talks anymore.