Category: Updates

Let’s contribute to the WordPress Project

Almost everyone is aware of the pride associated with contributing to the WordPress project. Those who do contribute will also tell you how amazing it feels to be able to give back, even if a little, to the community that is the scaffold for our careers and businesses.

How about you?

If you were wondering how you could be one of those contributors, you need not be a developer or programmer and you need not just contribute to the code. There are many ways of contributing and each of them is recognised with a nice little badge on your WordPress.org profile. For eg, see Samuel Wood (Otto)‘s profile:

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Or even our own Gagan Deep Singh‘s profile. Aren’t we proud of these two!
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Developer?

Sathish NagarajanWant to start contributing to the WordPress project? WordCamp Pune is a great place to start. Sathish Nagarajan is a core contributor, expert WordPress developer and a great speaker and master falicitator. Join him at WordCamp Pune for a Workshop/Session on Contributing to the WordPress Software.

Not a Developer!

Andy ChristianDon’t know how to code, fret not. Andy Christian from Automattic, one of the leading members of the community and another master speaker and facilitator is flying all the way from Australia to guide you when you start Contributing to the WordPress Project.

Contributor’s Day

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The weekend after the WordCamp (12th September), we’re hosting a Contributor’s Day. You can join us in an attempt to put the knowledge we gain from Andy and Sathish to good use, by contributing as much as we can to the project in one whole day!

Transparency Report 1: The Organiser Selection Process

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L-R: Dinesh, Umesh, Premanshu, Gagan, Amit, Sheeba, Joshua, Saurabh, Ganesh, Swapnil, Rahul

In a series of posts, we lay bare our processes and list the tools that we use. For the sake of absolute transparency and so that other events may pick up a few, since we’ve already tried and tested them. We’ll be revealing the organiser selection, speaker selection and volunteer selection criteria and processes.

“How does one become a WordCamp Pune organiser?”, is also a form of “How do I become a WordCamp Organiser?”

  1. We started with the three organisers of the local Meetup group called Pune WordPress Knowledge Exchange (Pune Wordex in short), Gagan, Umesh and I.
  2. Over a couple of meetups, we saw members who were proactive and attended almost every meetup.
  3. They even attended meetups that were of no personal or professional benefit to them.
  4. We kept inviting members to the discourse at every meetup but there were only a few that started helping with ideas and planning the meetups.
  5. They helped the other members out whenever or in whatever way they could.

Finally, we hosted an open meetup for people who were interested in becoming WordCamp Organisers. Guess who came and became organisers? The exact people we described above.

We didn’t look for people with skills required for organising a WordCamp or a conference. We didn’t look for people with a lot of contacts or extensive networking skills. We also didn’t look for people who have experience organising any such event before. We definitely didn’t look for people who wanted any fame. We had some problems because of that, but nothing too major.

We looked for people who were genuinely interested in having a throbbing vibrant community of WordPress enthusiasts and that worked out very well. We made up for our lack of skills by our determination and our lack of contacts by reaching out to everyone and till now we’re doing pretty well. Meet us.

Siddharth Ashok will host a QnA on User Experience for your blog

User Experience is important. Your visitors’ impression of you is based on their experience with your website. As much as it is important, it’s not easy to figure out what’s good and what’s bad and it is such a vast field.

To make our lives easier, Siddharth Ashok is going to answer all your questions in a QnA session on User Experience best practices for WordPress Blog. You can ask your questions beforehand as well using #WCPuneUX on Facebook and Twitter.

He is a Front-End and WordPress developer working with the Swedish web agency Next Big Thing and lives in Panaji, Goa.

He’s been using WordPress for almost a decade and has followed its journey from being just a blogging platform to CMS.  Along with WordPress, he’s deeply interested in questions like ‘What makes good User Experience?’ and ‘What constitutes good design?’, and likes to play around with User Interaction components and the interaction itself.

He loves Open Source and tries as much as he can to contribute to the community. Find him on twitter @siddharthashok

Join us for a Functional Workshop on Starting with WordPress

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The meetup group that organises this WordCamp also organises regular activities, sesions, workshops etc in Pune. This Saturday, 1st August 2015, join us for a Functional Workshop on Starting with WordPress.

Functional: of or having a special activity, purpose, or task; relating to the way in which something works or operates.

So, instead of showing you how to use WordPress, this workshop focuses on how WordPress or even content management works. Once you know how and why something should work, it is easier to understand why it works in a certain way. Then we show you how WordPress works and you’ll be amazed how awesome it is!

From an absolute novice who’s itching to discover WordPress to an expert who’d like to see WordPress in a new light, everyone is invited!

More details here: http://www.meetup.com/Pune-WordPress-Knowledge-Exchange/events/223896325/

Thank you for covering us – Call for Sponsors closes on 6th August

We’re covered!

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Thanks to the overwhelming response from all you awesome sponsors, WordCamp Pune 2015 has almost covered it’s budget!

While we’ve already announced most of our sponsors, a couple will be announced as soon as we complete the formalities.

Call for Sponsors closes on 6th August

Now, that we have awesome photographers, volunteers, sponsors and speakers on board, we want to divert all our attention to preparing the actual event down to the last detail.

This means that we don’t want to spend a lot of time in all the formalities and documentation. Also, there’s only so much space on banners, slides and for setting up stalls. We don’t want it to be a crowd!

If you wish to join the bandwagon, hop in fast because the sponsorship train leaves the station on Thursday, 6th August, 2015.

What happens to the surplus?

If we collect surplus amounts, it is sent to WordCamp Central and used to fund a WordCamp that maybe has difficulties attracting sponsors. It is also used to fund other community initiatives like meetups.

We still want to help sponsor WordCamps

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You sure can! There are many things you can do:

  • Sponsor in kind. How about picking up a couple of bills directly? Or maybe just give 500 useful gifts to participants of WordCamp Pune!
  • Sponsor the long haul. You could sponsor the local meetup group that organises this WordCamp so that they can help strengthen and evolve the community and do a better job next time!
  • Sponsor another WordCamp. Check the international WordCamp schedule and look for any upcoming WordCamps in India. Sponsor them! There’s one already there, 😉 😉

Now that we’re free from worrying about funds, we can completely focus on giving you the most awesome WordCamp experience ever! Make sure you don’t miss out.

See you at WordCamp Pune 2015!

 

This Panel of Experts will Show the Way to a Career in WordPress Development & Support

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Do you know how you can build a highly successful and lucrative career building and supporting WordPress and it’s plugins and themes besides building websites with it? Do you wish that an expert guided you to a great career in development and support? Then you would be at the right place at WordCamp Pune. We have six experts from around the country and the world in a Panel Discussion on Careers in Support and Development with WordPress!

Expect a breadth and depth of information, knowledge and advice. Ask your questions and raise your concerns. Our expert panel will get you the insight you are looking for.

Karthikraj Magapu

Founder, CEO, Startup Guy, Hummingbird Web Solutions

(Moderator)

Puneet Sahalot

Freelancer, Theme developer, Entrepreneur, Teacher, Ideabox Creations

Gagan Deep Singh

Freelancer, Plugin developer, Support guy, Tinkerer, Self

Rahul Bansal

Founder, CEO, Blogger, Developer, rtCamp

Jeremy Herve

Happiness Engineer, Remote worker, Automattic

Joshua Abenazer


Developer, Stack Exchange hero, Remote worker, 10up

and many other experts in the audience right beside you! Read more about our panelists on the speakers’ page.

When we just started thinking of having a WordCamp in Pune, the first thing we decided on was that we should have a session on career prospects with WordPress by an expert.

Then we thought, why have one expert when we can have a whole lot! They could also guide, advise and answer questions from the members in the audience. Make sure you’re there to benefit from it by getting tickets before they are sold out!

Priya Florence Shah will help your Blog Flourish with Content Marketing

Priya Florence Shah is our first speaker on Content Marketing (and in fact, marketing in general). She spoke at the Wordex Conference – II and we had a wonderful informative session. From experience, we can now say that when she speaks about Content Creation and Promotion in 2015 and beyond at WordCamp Pune, you’ll be more than ready to promote your content successfully.

Priya Florence Shah has been an online publisher since 2001 and an active blogger since 2003. When WordPress emerged as an open-source CMS, she became a passionate advocate for using WordPress as a blogging and publishing platform. As Founder and CEO of Blog Brandz, she uses the power of blogs and social media to help her clients build communities and nurture loyal customers online.

As an online publisher, with a passion for blogging, content and social media marketing, she publishes Naaree.com™, an online magazine for career and business women in India. She is also a published author on Amazon.com and Flipkart.com.

To listen to and interact with Priya and other awesome speakers and facilitators, get your WordCamp tickets fast. They’re going steadily and may just run out before you notice.

Dream, Dream, Dream. Dream transforms in to thoughts. And thoughts result in action.

00-FB-Share-Pic5Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam

1931-2015

As the nation mourns the passing away of our beloved Scientist, President, Thinker who inspired a whole generation into action, this site will be paused for a day in reverence.

The action won’t stop; we resume tomorrow.

10 Reasons Why you should give a Lightning Talk/Demo at WordCamp Pune

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  1. A lightning talks is brief (5 minutes) which requires the speaker to make his or her point clearly and rid the presentation of non-critical information. This causes the audience to be more attentive to the speaker and gain a broader array of knowledge from the presentations given. It’s like Youtube vs full length movies! (src)
  2. Lightning talks originated and evolved in the tech world. They are also known as Data Blitz, at times! Makes sense you should so one at WordCamp.
  3. Delivery is considered more important than content of a lightning talk. (src)
  4. It is a well known antidote to Death by PowerPoint.
  5. At many conferences, lightning talks are the second most popular presentation type, after the keynote presentation. (src is also a great article)
  6. It’s a great format to showcase your website, blog, plugin or theme that you curate with love and form meaningful connections with interested readers and users.
  7. It’s a great way to start for first time speakers because it doesn’t require a lot of formal preparation except practice, practice and practice!
  8. It is especially great for first time speakers of WordCamp Pune because yyou don’t have to think of a “topic”.
  9. Similar short and fun formats are Ignite talks and Pecha Kucha. So, you could create crossovers that could be more fun! For eg, you could talk about 20 best posts from your blog in 5 minutes. Maybe next WordCamp! (src)
  10. Speaker applications are now closed so this is the only way to get a slot officially!

If you are convinced, why not apply now, bloggers and developers?

Those who have already applied, please have a little more patience, we’ll get to your applications very very soon! 🙂

Shrikant Joshi Is a Radio Jockey Who Will Help You Podcast Better!

Creating good quality, useful and interesting podcasts is very difficult. That’s why we have an expert in the house. Shrikant Joshi is someone who broadcasts a radio show daily, has blogged for a long time and even developed WordPress themes. Who better to help us podcast better (or even start, if you haven’t done so yet) with a workshop on Podcasting with WordPress.

After a long day at work, college or school, when Pune heads home, the one person who ALWAYS accompanies them, without fail is apna “Pune ka Raja” Shrikant. Born with a sense of punny, tongue-in-cheek humor, Shrikant is a lovable know-it-all about anything and everything weird happening in Pune and across the world. He loves technology and is constantly trying to learn all things new.

His show, MH935, is a light-hearted and fun-filled journey between 5 pm and 9 pm on weekdays. Shrikant fills the show with lots of information and entertainment while you return from a long day at college, work or ahem anywhere else! Armed with smart one-liners and funny parodies rap-ishtyle on the topics-du-jour Shrikant lives life by the mantra: Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

PS: You can find him in the Limca Book of Records, too! 😉 😉

WordCamp Pune 2015 is over. Check out the next edition!