Looking at the calendar, it’s been almost nine years since I last attended a local WordPress event (WordCamp Belgrade back in 2017). Between diving into projects, daily work, and life in general, I somehow fell completely out of the habit of attending meetups, or maybe never had that habit at all. 🙄

But this past Tuesday, I finally broke the streak and made my comeback.

The Belgrade WordPress community gathered at its old/new venue, the Tribina Hall at Dom omladine Beograda. It turned out to be a great turnout with an awesome crowd.

Instead of the usual slide presentations, the organizers went with an AMA (Ask Me Anything) format. No classic lectures, just straight-up Q&A with Lana Rafaela Cindric and Maciek Palmowski from Patchstack.

Because it was an open floor, the conversation naturally steered toward a topic that’s on every developer’s mind right now: AI and “vibe coding.” Hearing an open discussion about how developers are handing parts of their codebases over to AI, incorporating it into their daily workflows, and, more importantly, keeping those fast-generated solutions secure was easily the highlight of the evening for me.

After the official part wrapped up, we headed over to the afterparty, which was generously sponsored by Patchstack.

This was honestly the best part of the night. I took the opportunity to reconnect with the Serbian WordPress community, and it felt great to catch up, share a few cocktails, and have some great conversations, especially with Nemanja Cimbaljević, Predrag Zdravković, Milan Ivanović, Ivana Ćirković, and many others.

I also got to hang out with the Patchstack crew. Maciek is a genuinely down-to-earth guy and the kind of person you can talk to about almost anything. We ended up spending quite a bit of time discussing cycling routes. We even grabbed a quick photo together after a few drinks, although looking back, I’m fairly sure he was sticking to the non-alcoholic options. Oops! 😅

It felt incredibly good to step out from behind the monitor, grab a drink, and realize just how much I missed it. Belgrade has a fantastic WP crowd, and I definitely won’t be waiting another nine years to show up to the next one. 🤞