Author: Joel Abreo

Paging all bathroom singers for the WCPune After-Party! 🎙

Where: Classic Rock Coffee Co. (Maps)
When:  7:30PM onward
Tweet: #WCPune #WCKaraoke

Get your WCPune name badge along!

WordCamp is going to be a day full of sessions, networking and Fun! After all that mental workout, you’ll want a place to relax. The WCPune After-Party  is that place 😀

We have tied up with Classic Rock Coffee Co. yet again to bring you a great venue with tons of space, great music and a dance floor.

Most importantly, they have agreed to set up a karaoke playlist with popular Hindi and English songs for all our pocket pop stars!

Use the #WCPune & #WCKaraoke hashtags to show us that you are having a great time! 🎤

First round’s on us!

That’s right, if you are a WCPune attendee, your first drink (alcoholic / non-alcoholic) is on us! All you need to do is get your WCPune name tag along.

The Venue

Credits: Zomato listing

Classic Rock is only about 20 minutes away from the venue, though that can depend on the traffic on North Main road.

Maps link: https://goo.gl/maps/GQZgok1Ugdy

Auto rickshaws should be available outside the venue. Taxis from Uber and Ola should also be available. (Remember to carpool!)

Image credits: https://www.zomato.com/pune/classic-rock-coffee-co-kalyani-nagar

Careers for non-developers in WordPress

Are you a designer, communicator, or other non-coder? Do you wonder if and how you can fit into a WordPress agency? Are you a student looking for a career path that excites you?

Each of our panelists have made successful careers in WordPress agencies, while having core responsibilities other than writing code. They will provide insight on the possibilities and paths that you can take towards a career in WordPress.

The session will be informal and conversational, with sufficient time devoted to audience questions.

Shilpa Shah (Moderator)

Shilpa Shah is co-founder, Hummingbird Web Solutions and primarily focuses on CyberChimps, a WordPress Themes Store.
She was bitten by the travel bug pretty early on and was lucky enough to have a job (in her earlier corporate avatar) that took her to various countries, meeting some truly wonderful people everywhere! She enjoys dancing in the rain ( or anywhere actually) , trekking, camping outdoors.

Shilpa on Twitter: @IdleGazer

Nitun Lanjewar

Nitun started his career trying to dabble in PHP and started using WordPress back in 2009. His curiosity with WordPress more or less got him communicating with clients more than actually write code. He has communicated with over 200 clients projects. He loves the process of handling a client project and enjoys giving support to WordPress products.

He works as VP – Products for rtCamp.

Nitun on Twitter: @nitullanjewar

Parth Gohil

Parth is working as a Community Manager at Axelerant. His work focus is to help with open source community efforts, managing social media profiles and online marketing campaigns, and confirming analytics.

A tech enthusiast by heart and open source evangelist, he has been known to escape from work by giving time to his personal entrepreneurial goals, to Cha-Cha Productions, and by indulging in sports like football, table tennis, swimming and billiards.

Parth has acted in 6 short films and he also knows how to pilot a single engine aircraft.

Parth on Twitter: @parth_gohil

Alexander Gounder

Alex is an SEO / SEM, Internet Marketer with a wide variety of work experience across industries and domains like Films, TV Production, Customer Service, Politics, Government Operations, Press Relations, Graphic & Web Design to finally Internet Marketing & SEO.

For the last four to five years he has been involved with the Indian WordPress Community which has helped him use WordPress for his clients at Ink my web better.

He’s often seen ranting about politics on Twitter.

Alex on Twitter: @gounder

Nancy Thanki

Nancy Thanki is a photographer, filmmaker, and Happiness Engineer. Whether she is tinkering on the web or editing a film, she’s enjoys introducing users and storytellers to visual design and how to avoid the pitfalls of “en vogue” to create products that can withstand the test of rising and falling fashions in typography, photography, moving images, and design.

Nancy on Twitter: @NancyThanki

Our panelists will try to solve your Product vs Service dilemma

One of the fundamental questions that all business owners need to answer at some point is the age-old “Do I pursue a Product or a Service model?”. More than just a decision, the answer defines an organizational mindset that helps shape the personality of the agency.

Our panel of experts have experience in successful product- and service-based companies over the years. The session will be informal and conversational, with sufficient time devoted to audience questions.

Karthik Magapu (Moderator)

Karthikraj is Co-Founder and Chief Explorer of Hummingbird Web
Solutions, which builds and supports products for Web developers and Web Designers. WordPress is a big part of what Hummingbird does – www.hbwsl.com/wordpress
He also teaches Yoga, enjoys solving variants of the Rubik’s Cube and loves Open Source.

Karthik on Twitter: @KarthikMagapu

Devin Walker

Devin Walker is the creator of Give, the top-rated WordPress donation plugin and founder of WordImpress, a San Diego based WordPress plugin company. He has been working with WordPress for 8 years and has extensive experience developing and supporting popular plugins such as Google Maps Builder, Yelp Widget Pro and WooCommerce Quick Checkout. In total, his plugins have more than 100,000 active installs and hundreds of 5-star reviews. Outside of the WordPress world, Devin enjoys traveling, going to concerts, and playing golf.

Devin on Twitter: @innerwebs

Nirav Mehta

Nirav is called the entrepreneur geek. He likes technology as much as business.
He’s built a rather eventful track record over the last 18 years. He launched India’s first electronic magazine, a thriving web agency that went down in 2009, made a heroic return and recovery, then a string of successful product businesses in parallel. He’s authored three books and speaks at various tech and business events.
But hey, numbers and all the claim-to-fame apart, what’s most important about him is that he loves to contribute. He is easily approachable and has a lot of experience. So if you have any questions about WordPress, WooCommerce; starting up, running or scaling a tech business, he’d love to help!
Start with following him on Twitter @niravmehta! You can learn more about his WordPress solutions at: http://www.storeapps.org and http://www.icegram.com
Nirav on Twitter: @niravmehta

Rohan Thackeray

Rohan is the Founder of Wisdm Labs and directs their overall strategic and management functions. With an experience of over 10 years in technology, sales and product marketing across IBM and Convonix, Rohan continues to develop long-term value for the company’s stakeholders. He is an avid trekker and a foodie at heart.

Rohan on Twitter: @rohanthakare

Premanshu Manghirmalani

Premanshu is a website designer at heart, a PHP programmer by chance, an entrepreneur by passion, a law graduate by qualification, a biker and an avid Reader.

He runs a web development firm – SunnyZ World and has been doing lots of WordPress websites especially for SMEs and MSMEs.

Premanshu on Twitter: @unsharpme

WhatsApp WCPune Helpline

Announcing the quickest way to seek any WCPune assistance- our WhatsApp Helpline. Feel free to use this group for any questions related to the venue, travel or accommodation.

WCPune WhatsApp group link post

Please note that due to the way that WhatsApp works, your number will be visible to all those present on the group. If this is an issue, we suggest you use Twitter to get in touch with us.

Thanks to the WCUdaipur team for introducing us to the idea!

Looking for your next gig? Check out the job board at WCPune!

WordCamps are a great place to network and meet new people who have similar passions as you. Attendees not only include freelancers and interesting individuals, but also representatives from different companies in the ecosystem.

People who attend WordCamps potentially already have a lot in common. This makes it so much easier for freelancers to find future collaborators and organizations to find talent.

With this intention, we will be setting up a job board at WCPune. We invite you to post job listings and opportunities for collaboration.

And we don’t mind you getting creative with your listings either!

Image credit: https://twitter.com/PerfectDashbrd/status/805091287590379520

As with any element of community, the board is dependent on collective goodwill. It is not meant to be vector for affiliate or product marketing.

Look for the job board in the common networking area of WCPune. All the best!

Meet our awesome Agency Sponsors

Yapapaya

Yapapaya is a group of reliable experts from India, passionate about building great WordPress solutions. They were founded with three core values:

  • 1. Excellence should be the default, not an exception.
  • 2. Transparency should be the default, not an exception.
  • 3. Freedom should be the default, not an exception.

Yapapaya believes that great customer service is in getting things done, letting you focus solely on your business.

You can follow Yapapaya on Facebook and Twitter

Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder is a powerful and flexible drag and drop design system. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned professional, you’re going to love taking control of your website with Beaver Builder. What you see is what you get! Beaver Builder’s intuitive page builder works in real time on the front end of your page.

Beaver Builder’s page builder plugin can be used with any theme and you can switch themes without losing your content. Even if you decide to stop using Beaver Builder, your content gets ported right back into the WordPress editor. Beaver Builder has variety of presets that automatically update the theme settings to create dozens of different styles with the click of a button. You can then modify these presets to your heart’s content with the Beaver Builder child theme.

CybroGeek

BUILDING THE ERA OF THE CYBER GEEK.

CybroGeek is a global provider of end-to-end Information Technology services, based in India. They provide web design, app development, web security and hosting services.

Their dedicated Research & Development cell and training courses are designed to benefit budding Engineers.

Their 4 sister companies O9L Networks, Imhosts, Cybrogeek IT Academy and ZamZam Computers run under one roof.

CybroGeeks are hiring!

Leapswitch are our final Silver Sponsors

Leapswitch Networks was founded in 2006. Leapswitch provides fully Managed shared hosting, virtual private servers, cloud servers ( http://leapswitch.com/pune-india/managed-vps-hosting/linux.php ) , dedicated servers, domain registration and colocation services. Leapswitch hosts over 60000 websites and web applications, majority of which are powered by WordPress, for 12000+ customers and resellers.

Featuring pure SSD, Pune DC location and a super-fast Tier-1 network, Leapswitch is the fastest and most reliable host for WordPress in India.

Leapswitch operates out of 19 worldwide locations across 3 continents in 10 countries. Leapswitch has been awarded as India’s Top 100 SME in 2016 and their CEO, Ishan Talathi, was featured in Economic Times Now as an Emerging SME.

Leapswitch offers true 24×7 Phone, Helpdesk and Live chat support from offices in Pune and Bangalore.

You can follow Leapswitch on Twitter ( http://twitter.com/leapswitch ) and Facebook ( http://facebook.com/leapswitch )

HostingDuty are our Bronze Sponsors

HostingDuty was the brainchild of Mr.Nenadd Chandorkar which began with the development and management of cost effective severs.
Eventually partnering with his engineering classmates at the time; Mr.Pranav Chitanand and Mr.Vipul Modak, they decided to push HostingDuty to take the form of an organisation.

With Horizontal expansion in mind HostingDuty soon stretched its wings into Web Development and Android Development and today has taken form as an organisation that provides complete IT Solutions with Service as a priority.

Their’s has been a journey of an year so far but HostingDuty has designed more than 300 Websites, more than 60 Mobile Applications and currently manages 195 Servers and 3 cloud infrastructures across the world.

Their Mission is to deliver a strong backbone infrastructure to small and medium level businesses and nurture them with cutting edge technology at affordable prices.

They work towards:

1) Providing Servers and Cloud Infrastructures to the remotest parts of the world at the most affordable prices.
2) Encourage Creativity and Innovation for their employees to promote groundbreaking optimum solutions.
3) Supporting Open Source Software Development.
4) Delivering Cutting Edge Technology and Development Solutions.
5) Prioritising Service.

Product Development:

Along its Journey HostingDuty has worked on the lines of Product Development and considered it as an important part of business expansion.
Clozio Cloud, an idea planted as an Engineering project was transformed through months of efforts into a full scale Product Developed by Team HostingDuty.
Clozio Cloud is basically a one stop solution for organisations to own its own Private Cloud with industrial standard security deployed in its own premises. It also works as an inter-enterprise social network with optimum security and convenience.

After months of efforts HostingDuty today comprises of a Strong Team of 40 members in a matter of six months. They are based in Kothrud, Pune.

Announcing the Session Schedule for WCPune 2017

With WordCamp Pune just around the corner, we are excited to release the official session schedule. Head over to the Schedule page and have a look!

WordCamps have more to offer than sessions, though, and WCPune is no different. Here are some points to help you navigate the event.

The WordPress Lounge

Just like last year, we’re hosting a WordPress Lounge in the central Networking area of the venue.

In case you are not familiar with the concept, the lounge is an informal area designated for discussion about anything WordPress. You can seek advice for your WP site, discuss your next great blog post or gush about why you love a plugin.

Lots of activities!

Our Buddy Program, Photography Contest, Sponsor Bingo and Speaker Quiz will give you a bunch of opportunities to have fun, meet new people and maybe even win some goodies.

Keep your eyes (and ears) open for more information!

Multiple tracks

We are expecting >400 participants this year, with varying levels of expertise and background. It would not be fair to have a single track with a one-size-fits-all approach to topic selection.

WCPune2017 will have four parallel tracks for most of the day:

User – For individuals who use and work around WordPress for any amount of time.

Developer – This track is for all the code poets out there!

Business – Are you looking to start your own agency now or in the future? Unsure about which business pastures are greener? This is track is for you!

Community – Giving back to the WordPress community. Ways to improve events and more!

Choose where you want to go

With anywhere between 2-4 sessions running in parallel, we suggest you attend sessions that interest you the most. You are free- and encouraged- to jump between sessions in different tracks at any point.

Don’t worry, your track selection when buying your ticket does not commit you to any session. That was just so that we could make an initial estimation while working out the logistics.

Links: Schedule page | Photography Contest

WordCamp Pune is over. Check out the next edition!