Pekka Kortelainen

Get to know Pekka 🎙️

Can you start by painting a picture of what a typical day looks like for you? What fuels your passion for the work you do, and how does it tie into your involvement with WCEU?

My typical day involves different tasks with a very wide scope – in general they are about keeping up with the health of our server infrastructure, responding to alerts from customer sites that may have raised any issues, debugging and testing both internal tools and customer sites as well and so on. Heavily focused on very techy Linux and WordPress stuff. Once I started tinkering with WordPress I began to understand the principles of open source and what kind of communities those can start around a specific piece of software. I’ve learned so much in my current job and I want to bring this expertise to others who may e.g. be intimidated by a command line. In other words, by giving a talk I want to encourage everyone to try out new things that are out of their comfort zone – I think this as a good method to give back to the community.

What sparked your interest in becoming a speaker at WCEU? Was there a particular moment or experience that motivated you to share your insights with this community?

After witnessing so many interesting talks on five different WordCamps in 2023 (Lisbon, WCEU, WCUS, Germany and Finland) at some point I got a “spark” or a thought that I want to share my expertise on those stages as well. By giving a talk gives me an opportunity not only to share my knowledge but also to grow as a professional. 

For those awaiting your talk, could you give us a preview of what we can expect to learn from your talk? Any sneak peeks?

I’ll be presenting a real-life example case from WordCamp Lisboa 2023, where we clean up a site from tens of thousands of spam comments using Linux tools and WP-CLI, efficiently,

Is it your first time at a WCEU or WordPress event? Any standout memories or lessons learned that you’d like to share?

This is going to be my 7th WordCamp. Talks by Milana Cap from XWP on WP-CLI and Oliver Sild from Patchstack on WordPress security have been so far the greatest talks I’ve witnessed. I think those are available on WordPress TV.

Looking beyond the scheduled sessions, what do you hope attendees will take away from their overall experience at WCEU? How can they leverage the event to enhance their professional development or personal growth? 

I hope the same for every attendee that I’ve experienced myself on WordCamps – the community. Nobody is asking for your credentials – you can be a part of this amazing worldwide family whether you are a seasoned developer, a beginner or just interested in WordPress in general. Welcome!