Checkout Summit: A Conference for WooCommerce Devs ft. Rodolfo Melogli

Brian Coords (00:00)
Welcome to webmasters.fm. got Rodolfo here with a checkout summit. I’m really excited to talk about this, but maybe you could all give everybody a little bit of a bio, how people might know you online and what you do in the WordPress space.

Rodolfo Melogli (00:12)
Thanks Brian, it’s pleasure to be here. Well, I think people know me as Business Bloomer, which has been around for many years. A website which has always been full of blog posts and tutorials and snippets for WooCommerce since, let’s say, I became very active in 2014. So it’s almost 11 years now.

And yeah, then over the years I specialized in WooCommerce. I tried to be very vocal about it as well on social and newsletters and you name it, videos. yeah, so what I planned now for 2026 is the first in-person conference since… What was it? Was WooConf…

back in 2018 was the last time. That was the official WooCommerce conference. It happened three times over the course of three years. then COVID happened and loads of things happened as well. So I said, this is the perfect time to go back to talk about WooCommerce in person. And that’s exactly what I want to do on a daily basis.

You know, the conference is just the, you know, one of the ways that I’m going to be doing that.

Brian Coords (01:38)
Yeah. And I’m, I’m a big fan of in-person conferences. think online conferences are nice. Like you get some content, you get some videos and stuff. And I think it would be cool to see a woo kind of like a digital conference or something, but I just, there’s just something about in-person conferences that just changes your relationship with everybody online, you know, like everybody becomes a little bit more real. Did you have a lot of experience with in-person other conferences like work camps or other things like that?

Rodolfo Melogli (02:06)
Yeah. So, I think I belong to you know, percentage of WordPress developers who spend 99 % of their time at home, on their own. And, you know, I always felt the need to, you know, go to a meetup or to travel to a work camp, whether local or national or international.

Brian Coords (02:19)
Yeah.

Rodolfo Melogli (02:31)
Like it’s something that we tend to need, like as developers or as users or as actually freelancers working from home all the time. needless to say, I spoke at many events, I organized many events, work camps, meetups and so on. I enjoy them a lot despite…

I’m a super introverted person. I still need to get out of the house and leave the laptop at home and then go outside and talk about, in this case, WooCommerce. But could be WordPress, could be tech, could be e-comm, could be anything. I think, first of all, putting faces on people that you always

know, chat it with online and Slack or whatever it is. Also, you know, you know, talking actually to people, see what’s going on, what the, you know, the roadmap is, or, you know, what they’re working on and what’s the new hot thing and what’s working for them. These are things that you can really get when you’re online. And why not? I mean, loads of networking opportunities.

loads of potential partnerships, acquisitions, who knows? So things happen with, you know, whenever you’re drinking a coffee, whenever you’re drinking a beer, if you’re into that, whenever you’re attending some actual talk and you want to go and chat to the speaker. So this is why I really value offline experiences. I love online conferences. I’ve spoken at them. I’ve been at them.

as an attendee as well, but there is no comparison. So my goal with this was to actually put a face on 150 WooCommerce people and see what comes out of two and a half days of conference.

Brian Coords (04:29)
Yeah. And I feel like the European community has been better about doing conferences. There’s not a lot of stuff around me. I mean, I guess there’s a lot of bigger tech stuff cause San Francisco is not too far. And there’s a lot of those kinds of big tech company conferences, but as far as WordPress and WooCommerce, it feels like there hasn’t been as much, you know, conferences coming back in the States. But when I look at like Europe and especially Asia,

Feels like everybody’s fully back into in-person conferences and stuff. wonder if it’s just a cultural difference or what it is, but, I’m glad it’s happening somewhere.

Rodolfo Melogli (05:04)
Yeah, I agree. I think what really works in Europe and probably in Asia as well is that the contributors and the community are huge. you know, I know so many people in Italy alone that, you know, work on translations and so many people who really put their heart and soul, in this case, into WordPress.

Brian Coords (05:14)
Hmm.

Rodolfo Melogli (05:26)
specifically, like loads of meetups around, very, very active community. like, you this conference is not only for Italian people, of course, but I feel like Europe really needed something like that, just to really show up and attend something in person. These, of course, will attract people from the US, from India as well. But

It would be amazing to do something only about WooCommerce in the Americas and in Asia as well, just to cover all time zones. Because I think there is a big need and you can see it online, like on Twitter, on LinkedIn, in Slack as well.

Like, lots of people want to talk about WooCommerce. Lots of people, you know, are wondering, you know, what’s next and what we should be focusing our time on and, you know, what’s, what the future holds and, you know, what’s the story with the, you know, WooCommerce versus Shopify thing. And, you know, it’s super important to talk to people. And in fact, the idea for Checkout Summit came after a hallway track.

conversation at WorkCamp Europe. So I was there with like 20 WooCommerce people and I said, hold on, what are we gonna do about this? And I said, you know what, if WooCommerce agrees and they’re happy about it, I’ll just organize an in-person conference because we need it and WooCommerce needs it.

I have to be super thankful to your company, by the way, which stepped up and said, we’re going to sponsor it and we’re going to speak at it. you know, this is amazing from, you know, amazing support from WooCommerce itself by valuing what I’m trying to build here. It’s not easy, but I’ll get there.

Brian Coords (07:23)
Yeah. And when I started at WooCommerce, it’s interesting because I’ve only been at WooCommerce like maybe a year. So every time I have these talks to people in the community, it’s like they have a decade of experience and I have, you know, maybe the least amount of WooCommerce experience, but I kind of came from the WordPress community. And one of the first things when I joined people said the WooCommerce community is not quite the same as the WordPress community. Like there’s some overlap.

but it’s almost like a different world. Do you think that that’s true or do you see like a big difference in people that are who commerce versus kind of like the general WordPress community?

Rodolfo Melogli (07:59)
I disagree on that. I think, I mean, at the end of the day, whenever there were way more courage about WooCommerce at war camps, used to get loads of WooCommerce people there because at the end of the day, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. So if you don’t know WordPress, you’re done. So I think there is overlap, but at the same time…

doing a specific event, a specific conference, like used to be WooComF back in the day, only about WooCommerce, it kind of makes sense because it’s time we, again, we show up, it’s time we talk about it, it’s time we know each other as well. mean, know, lots of times we always complain, we don’t know.

Who is WooCommerce? mean, who’s behind it? And, you know, there is no better way of actually talking to, you know, your colleagues than, you know, actually going to an in-person conference. But, you know, speaking of the community, I think WooCommerce people are, at the end of the day, WordPress people, but at the same time, they need something.

way more specific, way more focused, way more connected. And Checkout Summit is one of those ideas. Of course, I’m not saying it’s the only one. I’m not going to say I’m the first one, the best one, and the only one. I’m just saying I’m trying to do my best when thinking that we people in WooCommerce need to…

Brian Coords (09:29)
Mm-hmm.

Rodolfo Melogli (09:36)
you know, some time to talk to each other. And that’s the main goal.

Brian Coords (09:40)
Yeah. And one of the issues I always have for like one of the kind of hurdles that working on content for WooCommerce is that there’s so many different types of people. there’s agencies who are building sites and they’re building, they’re worried about the theming and how it’s going to look and some functionality and custom functionality. And then there’s extension developers who are building plugins integrations and they’re trying to sell, know, to the agencies, to the other people. And there’s the end users who some of them are just running their own store. have.

They’re not really developers, but they were able to put together their own WooCommerce store and maybe they’re looking for some code snippets or something like that. Like there’s just so many different groups of people all involved in WooCommerce that need different types of information and stuff. So how do you think about that as you’re kind of planning out the programming and the speakers and the content?

Rodolfo Melogli (10:30)
That’s a great point. In fact, back in the day, WooConf was like one year for developers and one year for merchants. you know, they were kind of alternating the, you know, object and the content as well. So I think the same applies to WordPress. Whenever you go to a war camp, over the years, except for the last couple of years, I must say.

we always kind of complained that the topics were too generic or weren’t really going deep and it was a waste of time and people used to come out of the rooms and talk outside and stuff like that. In the last two years, I must say the content way more interesting, but it’s always difficult and always a pain to define a specific target market because as you said, there are so many different people.

big agencies, small agencies, freelancers, merchants,

Rodolfo Melogli (11:28)
yeah, it’s very difficult to define a target audience and to make everyone happy.

So my thought for this very first checkout summit was to get as many developers and as many product owners as possible. know, DIY store owners are also very welcome because we’re going to talk about coding, we’re going to talk about AI, course, performance and, you know…

Brian Coords (11:46)
Hmm.

Rodolfo Melogli (11:56)
product management and the future of WooCommerce. But I think what I wanted to start with was a bunch of developers who, we all know each other. If you give me a name, I’d probably say, yeah, I know them from Twitter or know them from Slack, but I actually never talk to them. And not necessarily I want to talk to them about WooCommerce, it could be about Australia, about traveling to California, could be anything, but…

Brian Coords (12:23)
Hmm

Rodolfo Melogli (12:26)
At least I want to have the chance to network. I want to have the chance to make new friends. want to make the chance to, I want to have the chance to, you know, know where WooCommerce is going. And, you know, the only way to do so is by talking to developers and managers and marketers. And that would be the very first target for this very first checkout summit. Then who knows if it works very well, you can always have

You know, two or three different tracks and attract even merchants and, you know, and grow if I really want to. But, you know, for now the target is very much focused around developers, whether beginners or advanced, but still it’s going to be about, you know, anyone who is able to develop a plugin or, you know, write a tutorial or understand a few lines of PHP or, you know, manage.

Brian Coords (13:16)
Hmm.

Rodolfo Melogli (13:22)
a website and sell online their own services and products, then that would be the best target for this 2026 checkout summit.

Brian Coords (13:36)
Yeah. And I think like you were saying, it’s a lot of times people say, you know, the hallway track is kind of the most important thing. And I mean, I’m sure most people are maybe not most, but I think a lot of people in the WordPress space and the WooCommerce space are remote workers or like I work for a remote company. And sometimes you just get in the mode of, you’re a work person and we’re just, I’m only talking to you about work and we’re just sending work back and forth. And I don’t even know you, you’re just texting a box that I’m typing to all the time.

So like, I’m glad I work somewhere where we have a culture where we meet up in person on a regular basis. And then you just talk about, you know, your life, you kind of know each other as people. kind of maybe put work aside for a minute and just think like, Hey, this is just, you know, a community. all just people trying to do our best. And we all just, you know, want to get to know each other and just have a good time too. And then out of that, a lot of times I feel like good ideas come up, good things that you maybe wouldn’t have thought of.

partnerships or, know, you, learn who you maybe don’t want to work with, or you learn all sorts of different things about each other. Um, yeah, it’s just such a like valuable thing. And then I think you have the added benefit of, uh, it sounds like a really nice destination of where we’re going. Uh, which is not always the case for WordPress conferences. Sometimes they’re not, uh, that, so maybe you could, like, I’ve never been, um, to Italy. So maybe you can give me like a overview of kind of just the location.

the vibe. What are we what are we walking into?

Rodolfo Melogli (15:02)
Yeah, sounds good. By the way, 100 % agree with what you said about, you know, a remote company, you know, feeling the need of actually meeting in person, you know, once a year, whenever it is.

Brian Coords (15:11)
Hmm.

Rodolfo Melogli (15:16)
So, I’m… know, 3D is more like a retreat.

We’re in Sicily, which is a very touristy area in Italy. My goal was, want people to, first of all, have a nice time. Second of all, go to a nice place, enjoy proper food, if possible, and consider this as a vacation. And then, inside this vibe, we’re going to put 12 amazing speakers.

put lots of networking, we’re gonna put, you know, six or seven sponsors and side events and, you know, drinks and happy hours and whatever. And still, you have five minutes and you’re at the beach and you can have a proper walk if the weather is nice, I hope so. Should be, you know, in the low 20s at that time of the year, if we’re lucky. It could be raining, I can’t predict it, unfortunately, but…

It’s a nice time just to put on a hoodie and go for a walk on the beach as well. They’re possibly, you they will be opening the swimming pool for us and you know, it’s gonna be kind of a nice location. It’s like, you know, it’s a venue that opens up just usually for the summer, but in the low season they have lots of conferences like this one. So the vibe is gonna be…

Brian Coords (16:17)
Mm-hmm.

Rodolfo Melogli (16:36)
super relaxed. Everything is going to be about food and going to the beach and talking to people and maybe do some games, which I’m not going to spoil at the moment. And then we’re also going to have two full days of talks and speed networking, whatever we’re going to come up with and try to get the best within the…

the WooCommerce dev environment at the moment. Speakers coming from US, from Australia, from Central Europe, from Asia. And this is going to be amazing value. And because we’re in Sicily, it’s not that expensive either. So Sicily is probably one of the poorest, if you want, region in Italy.

Brian Coords (17:15)
Okay.

Rodolfo Melogli (17:23)
So it has everything but also has a history of being invaded by everyone because it’s in the middle of the sea so the Arabs were there, the Spanish, the Greeks and the Romans and it’s a mixed variety of different cultures and it’s interesting. At the same time for some people it’s not like beautiful Venice or it’s not like amazing.

Brian Coords (17:29)
the

Rodolfo Melogli (17:48)
you know, like Florence, but it has a lot of interesting spots. So I also chose to put the conference on a Thursday and a Friday because I wanted people to stay longer if they wish to and, you know, rent a car and go and drive around because it’s, it’s a nice spot. I live here and, know, I might be biased, but I kind of like it.

It’s still like 50 years ago, it’s not really well developed from a tourism point of view and it’s almost original as it used to be. So it’s kind of nice.

Brian Coords (18:17)
Hmm.

Yeah, that sounds nice. I’ve, from what I understand, I think the weather is kind of comparable to California, right? Like it’s a, that similar kind of weather. I’m excited about that because I’ve gone to enough like freezing cold conferences and like I’m spoiled with California weather and I, I’m, I’m always excited for anything Mediterranean that makes me happy.

Rodolfo Melogli (18:41)
Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

Yes, indeed. So basically the summer season in Italy starts around the first of June. So we’re late April, but I guarantee you that there will be people on the beach like walking or fishing or whatever.

Brian Coords (19:01)
Yeah, I mean, I’m just excited to also be near the ocean.

so you’ve announced some of the speakers and so maybe just like as a preview for what’s coming, um, who are some of the speakers are most excited about? Are there some names that you haven’t shared that you’re keeping secret that you can hint at or anything like that? And, and who are, who are some of the people we’re going to see on stage?

Rodolfo Melogli (19:22)
Yes, so my plan is to have 12 speakers and I’ve announced 7 of them and the last 5 should be announced in the next few days. And I’m really excited about all of them to be honest because I had to, you know, really pick just 12 of them and not 50 like for, you know, a European war camp or so. So it was really hard and…

Brian Coords (19:43)
Mm-hmm.

Rodolfo Melogli (19:51)
I have lots of people already lined up for year two of the conference. They okay, you can make it this one. You definitely need to come to, you know, 2027. But surely we’ve got Katie Kied from Barre 2. I’m super excited. I know her very well. We’ve been, you know, we spoke at many events together as well. She’s lovely and she’s very knowledgeable. I’ve got Josh Kolbach from RIMER.

Brian Coords (20:09)
Mm-hmm.

Rodolfo Melogli (20:17)
and coming, you flying from Australia and talking about his suite of, you know, WooCommerce plugins and, you know, especially, you know, about business and how to manage all these different products. Patrick Rowland, who used to work at WooCommerce, now works for Merchant. So it’s basically gone to the other side.

Brian Coords (20:17)
nice.

Mm-hmm.

Nice.

Rodolfo Melogli (20:41)
and he’s a great speaker and has done loads online as well. So it’s nice to also meet him in person. Nick McLaughlin from Skyverge, you another amazing person. It really value within the WooCommerce community. Jessica Rich from the Netherlands. So we’re talking about agencies, know, Remy Carson used to be a WooCommerce and now

Brian Coords (20:57)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Rodolfo Melogli (21:07)
has just been hired by SEO press. So we’re going to have, you know, SEO talks as well, especially this time around. And then we’ve got also Carolina Viscochilova, which, you know, would be a product developer and also freelancer. So basically we’ve got a nice mix so far because I can’t tell you the next five yet, but a super nice mix of developers and…

Product owners and you know, that’s what I really wanted to You know share during checkouts. I mean, this is what I really wanted to cover the very first Checkout summit so pretty happy about them. We’re gonna we haven’t basically published yet the topics they’re gonna be sharing about because and

Brian Coords (21:39)
No.

Rodolfo Melogli (21:55)
You know, I knew this since the very beginning. WooCommerce in the last six months, like has changed so much that it was pointless to pick a topic and an outline two months ago. So we’re going to start working on the topics right now. They already gave me some ideas and of course, and you know, I selected them because of the content, but also because of the…

Brian Coords (22:00)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

you

Rodolfo Melogli (22:19)
target audience because of the people, because of the quality of the speakers. And now we’re to start working on the actual talks. And I hope that these 12 talks will be amazing and people will go back home with some proper content.

Brian Coords (22:36)
Do you still have tickets available?

Rodolfo Melogli (22:37)
Yes, so I started with the early birds back in September 2025. Maybe it was too early, but I really wanted to shape the Summit as well as selling the first few tickets. So I did that. The early birds sold out, thankfully. And now we’ve got the second batch of tickets are available at checkoutSummit.com and

then there will be the last and final batch of 50 tickets once these will sell out. And the price is basically increasing batch after batch. But overall, I’m pretty happy. I’m glad that I started early to organize all this, to promote all this, and to build in public. I’m kind of copying WooCommerce a little bit by being very…

Brian Coords (23:25)
Mm-hmm.

Rodolfo Melogli (23:28)
transparent and you know honest about what I’m doing what choices I’m making and the fact that I’m building it alone it doesn’t really matter because loads of people are helping me online and you should do that and why don’t you do that and this amazing thing you should be doing and and so on so it’s like working in a team just myself and you know hundreds of people online who are super generous with their time like people you should hop on a call and

I’ll give you some tips for sponsors and you know, lots of people super helpful and I’m super glad about that. And who knows, maybe in year two, I will grow the team and, you know, turn this into an actual business. But for now, it’s just myself trying to, you know, get 150 people out there in the wild, in Sicily, on the beach, and basically have a nice conversation and also meet WooCommerce in person, which is one of the…

Brian Coords (24:01)
Nice.

Rodolfo Melogli (24:24)
reasons I also do that and did that and it’ll be nice to put a face on some of you and also ask you you know what’s next and what we developers and product managers should focus next and you know that’s million dollar questions but we’re there for these reasons.

Brian Coords (24:43)
Awesome. Well, I’m looking forward to it and I will see you in a few months. And for anybody that’s interested, it’s just check out summit.com. Correct? All right. Thank you, Rodolfo.

Rodolfo Melogli (24:52)
Correct.

Well, thank you, Brian, as usual. Same as in-person conferences, it’s nice to actually have these conversations because I spend, you know, 99 % of my time building and, you know, writing and stuff. And then, you know, with these conversations, actually you get to focus on what’s next. And okay, now I should take that note and adjust that thing. And it’s always good and helpful. Thank you, Brian, for having me.

Brian Coords (25:21)
Yeah, thank you.