#WPLDN - June 2026: Our 150th Event! Owning Your Why & WordPress 7.0 Abilities
Details
Join us for our 150th #WPLDN event! It's a milestone we're quietly proud of: 150 free, community-driven WordPress-focused events, and we'd love to share this one with you. This month, we're looking at WordPress from two very different but complementary angles. First, Raquel Manriquez asks the question most of us avoid: Who are you really, and why does owning that answer make you a steadier, sharper business owner? Then Paul Halfpenny digs into what WordPress 7.0 and its new Abilities API mean for how we build, and why this quiet change might matter more than the headlines suggest.
📅 Date: Thursday, 25 June 2026
⏰ Time: 6:00 PM BST
🎟️ Cost: Free (Registration Required)
---
Session 1: Owning Your Why: The Only Constant in a World of Change
🤝 Speaker: Raquel Manriquez (PressConf)
The only constant in your business isn't the strategy, the stack, or the team; it's the why underneath them. In this candid session, Raquel moves from the question most of us avoid (who am I, actually?) to the business case for answering it: the boundaries that hold because you know what you're protecting, the decisions that come quickly because you're not weighing other people's opinions of you, and the steadiness of being someone, not just doing things.
Raquel is the founder of WonderlandCurious, a tech event consultancy focused on people-first experiences, and previously founded and led the WooCommerce agency Mode Effect for a decade before exiting in 2020. Today, she channels that community experience into PressConf, a conference built around candid, unrecorded conversations among the leaders shaping the WordPress economy.
---
Session 2: Abilities, not chatbots: how WordPress 7.0 changes everything
🤝 Speaker: Paul Halfpenny (Filter)
WordPress 7.0 shipped on 20 May with the Abilities API in core. Quieter than the real-time collaboration headlines that got pulled, but more consequential. Abilities turn plugin capabilities into something AI assistants and automation tools can discover and invoke, with permissions intact. Paul walks through what changed, what it means for how we build plugins, and what's already running in production across Filter AI, Filter Abilities, and PersonalizeWP, plus a quick aside into whether AI assistants can find your site at all, and how to find out.
Paul is the CTO and co-founder of Filter, a UK digital agency. He builds products including PersonalizeWP and Filter AI, leads technology transformation for a major UK brand, and speaks on practical AI, personalisation, tech strategy, and running an agency.
---
Schedule:
🔹 6:00 PM – Doors Open & Networking
🔹 6:30 PM – Welcome & Session 1: Raquel Manriquez
🔹 7:30 PM – Short Break & Networking
🔹 7:45 PM – Session 2: Paul Halfpenny
🔹 8:30 PM – Social & Wrap-Up
---
📢 RSVP Now!
Don't miss this one. Whether you come for the honest conversation about why you do what you do, or for a clear-eyed look at where WordPress and AI are heading, there's plenty here to take away. Bring your questions for the Q&A, and stick around for the post-event social to raise a glass to 150 events. Secure your free spot today, and we'll see you there!
---
Venue Information
The Bridge is a charity supporting women to make positive choices and encouraging improvements to fitness, health, and wellbeing. The venue features a plant-based café (supplied by Girls Who Grind Coffee) and is just a 5-minute walk from London Bridge Station.
---
Massive thanks to our sponsors who make these free events possible:
Filter, Kinsta, Mollie, and PodcasterPlus.
---
If you're interested in being a featured speaker at an upcoming event, we'd love to hear from you at https://wpldn.uk/speak.
🎥 - Media Release Terms
By attending, you understand and accept that portions of the event may have audio/photo/video-recorded and/or live-streamed and may be used by the organisers. You agree that the organisers have the right and permission to use and publish such media for any purpose in any format, including online and offline, now and ever after, without further compensation, permission, or notification. You understand that all official recordings from the event are the exclusive property of the organisers, available under the Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike license for general use, and you do not ask for nor expect compensation or notification of the use of official recordings or photographs in which you appear or speak. Please inform an organisational team member at the event's start if you do not wish to appear in photos or videos.
