Announcements – Page 3 – WordCamp Pune

It’s time to start planning your WCPune trip!

WordCamp Pune is less than a month away. If you haven’t made your travel itinerary yet, now’s a great time to start!
Below is a list of hotels around the venue. Booking your stay well in advance is a great way to knock a few bucks off the price. If you are travelling in a group, most hotels will make further allowances for multiple bookings.
You can hit us up on Twitter (@WordCampPune) if you need help planning your stay.

5 star ( ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ )

ST Laurn Hotel (2.5km)

15 A, Koregaon Road
Phone: 020 4000 8000
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 4,500

Vivanta By Taj – Blue Diamond (2.5km)

11, Koregaon Road
Phone: 020 6602 5555
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 5,525

Le Méridien Pune (3.1km)

Raja Bahadur Mill Road
Phone: 020 6641 1111
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 7,140

The O Hotel (2.8km)

North Main Road, Koregaon Park
Phone: 020 4001 1000
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 8,000

Conrad Pune (800m)

7, Mangaldas Rd, Sangamvadi
Phone: 020 6745 6745
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 8,499

4 star ( ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ )

Hotel Sagar Plaza (1.7km)

1, Bund Garden Rd, Sangamvadi
Phone: 096 5772 3858
Rooms start from‎ ( SPECIAL OFFER ): ₹ 2,800

Aurora Towers Hotel (2km)

No.9, Moledina Road
Phone: 020 2613 1818
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 4,000

Royal Orchid Golden Suites (4km)

Golden Nest, Opp. Cerebrum IT Park, Kalyani Nagar
Phone: 020 4000 7000
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 4,000

3 star ( ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ )

Hotel Woodland (2km)

B J Road, Sadhu Vaswani Circle, Near Pune Railway Station
Phone: 020 2621 2121
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 2,500

Hotel Phoenix (5.5km)

Shop No. B1/1,Opp. Satellite Tower, Koregaon Park extension
Phone: 020 6687 2000
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 2,800

The Central Park Hotel (1.5km)

Near Inox Multiplex, Bund Garden Rd, Agarkar Nagar
Phone: 020 4010 4000
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 3,200

Hotel Studio Estique (2km)

Amar Avinash Corporate Plaza, Near Inox Multiplex, Bund Garden Road
Phone: 020 4018 8444
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 3,960

2 star ( ⭐ ⭐ )

Hotel Meru (1.7 km)

Dhole Patil Road, Behind Ruby Hospital, Boat Club
Phone: 020 6560 1616
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 1140

Hotel Sapna (4.7km)

573/7, Jangli Maharaj Road, Next to Sambhaji Park, Opposite Shiv Sagar Restaurant
Phone: 020 6800 1455
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 2,000

1 star ( ⭐ )

Treebo Sahara (6.9km)

Sr No 106/3a, Opp. J W Marriott, Senapati Bapat Road, Shivaji Nagar
Phone: 093 2280 0100
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 2,294

Service Apartments

Hotel Shivam (1.4km)

12, Wilson Garden, Near Pune Railway Station
Phone: 020 2613 7593 For Query
080 3966 4713 For Booking Rooms
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 1,495

Hotel Madhav International (2.5km)

6 A, Ramabai Ambedkar Road, Near Pune Railway, Station Tadiwala Road, Agarkar Nagar
Phone: 020 2605 9118
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 2,000

Valencia Hospitality Service Apartments (5.5km)

Kalyani Nagar

Shree Balaji Service Apartment (5.5km)

Shastrinagar, Yerawada

Apple Tree Apartments (4.3km)

410, Dee Bee Tower, 1st floor, lane, 5, S Main Rd, Koregaon Park
Phone: 098 6036 7777
Rooms start from‎ ₹ 2,000

Other Options

Hotel Sudarshan (5km)

Plot No.18, Lane No.7, HDFC Bank Lane,Kalyani Nagar
Phone: Tel. 020 4004 6273 / 74 / 75
Mob.: 097 6222 2375 / 98 2265 0140

Hotel Lotus (4.2km)

Opp Rajat Rashmi Apartment, Lane No. 5, Koregaon Park
Phone: 098 2265 0141

Call for Volunteers

With 500 participants, 4 tracks and loads of engaging activities, WordCamp Pune 2017 is an ambitious project.

We need a lot of help to pull of an event at this scale and to make sure participants have a great experience. We need you!

What does a volunteer do at WordCamp Pune?

Help with pre-WordCamp events.
Man registration or swag desks.
Time sessions so that everything starts & finishes on time.
Help sponsors set up their tables.
Guide speakers to their sessions.
and a lot of other such micro-tasks. See last year’s call for volunteers.

What does a volunteer get?

Respect & credits in the community.
Heavily discounted tickets to #WCPune (~~₹500~~ ₹100).
Inside view & experience of organising the largest WordCamp in India.
An opportunity to work with and learn from leaders in the Indian WordPress ecosystem.
Special training sessions & workshops.
An opportunity to interact with leaders in the global WordPress ecosystem.

Volunteer Application Form

Call for Volunteers is closed now. Thank you for your interest though. We hope to see you at WordCamp Pune! :-)

Thank you for making the early bird experiment a success

The Organisers’ Problems

One of the problems that we, as organisers, find hard to tackle is ticket sales. For various reasons, ticket sales don’t pick up till the last few days. A lot of vendors can’t be confirmed and a lot of arrangements remain pending because we don’t know how many people will actually end up buying tickets.

Yes, the last WordCamp Pune was houseful but it can be considered a one off incident looking at the history of WordCamps and even this selling out happened very close to the event. It gets very chaotic towards the end and we end up spending more time worrying about how much to arrange instead of actually arranging for things.

In the organiser utopia, all tickets should sell out at least 2-3 weeks before the event so we can make the best arrangements and preparations without falling short or wasting important things like food and other resources.

An Experiment

So, when we went to the orientation hangout with a WordCamp Deputy, we proposed this idea of having discounted early bird tickets. We got a go ahead for this experiment in the hope that if it works out, other WordCamps around the world may try something similar, if they are up for it.

Due to the recent demonetisation and other problems with managing money at WordCamps in India, we ended up starting ticket sales much later than we had planned and our ticketing schedule ended up being tighter than we had hoped for.

Even then, within one week of opening ticket sales, we are happy to announce that we have sold 140 tickets. That’s almost 1/3rd of our total capacity. We’re hoping that this tempo continues and we sell out before the 1st of Jan and every participant gets a t-shirt.

T-shirts and T-shirtless Tickets

Any tickets bought after 31st December are not going to get a t-shirt because it takes at least 15 days to print and deliver t-shirts. 🙁

We want all our participants to go back with a wonderful WordCamp Pune t-shirt that reminds them of their experience and memories of this WordCamp for years to come!

So, this is a thank you to all of you who helped us organise things better by buying tickets in advance and not waiting till the last minute.

Special Thanks to Individual Sponsors

Alexander Gounder & Amit Patekar are two awesome community members who decided to go for tickets priced way above the regular tickets, just to support WordCamp Pune 2017 and help the organisers out. This idea of micro-sponsoring is something that we borrowed from WCUS and we hope more community members give as much value to the event as these two do.

More sponsors like them make sure that we cover costs and still manage to give scholarships and discounts to people who at times can’t afford a regular ticket or need a little extra encouragement/ help in attending a WordCamp. If you happen to bump into them at WordCamp Pune 2017, do give them a high-five on our behalf! 🙂

Tentative Schedule & Open Conference Space

We’re happy to announce the tracks and their schedule for WordCamp Pune 2017. This schedule is available at a public Google Spreadsheet here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11y8yI9WDqDgRt0Eam3ozC3J194Y-LH-SUzkHQr_cU30/edit?usp=sharing

We’ll update the schedule with sessions and speakers, as and when they are decided, so you can make your plans accordingly.

Highlights

4 tracks in 4 rooms: User, Developer, Business & Community.
12 regular (30 min) sessions and 8 micro (20 minute) sessions.
2 rooms for Session Overflow for speakers from regular tracks to take up if they run out of time.
No sessions after 3:30pm
- just two panel discussions in the Business & Community tracks.
- 4 rooms available for an open conference. These slots will be up for grabs on the day of the event on a first cum first serve basis at the registration desk:
  - Ideal for impromptu ideas for talks
  - Or, for speakers that didn’t get selected in the officially curated schedule.

Follow this blog as we announce the speakers and sessions over the next week or two.

T-shirt Design Contest

We know our participants love a good t-shirt and love to wear it long after the event is over.

So, here’s a contest to design a great T-shirt for WordCamp Pune 2017. We’ll make sure that the fabric is as great as a good store-bought t-shirt and that there are women’s sizes and fit available. It won’t be a cheap, transparent t-shirt that feels more like a baniyan (vest).

Your canvas– 500 wonderful WordPress lovers from around the globe who’d love to wear your work, long after the event is over.

Conditions:

The design should not be dependent on a white or black background. The t-shirt can be any colour except white. White is translucent. (We would also like to avoid black; too cliched for tech events.)
The design must include the logo or Wapsara, the mascot for WCPune 2017.
The logo or the mascot must not be too large, distracting or too promotional.
- We are not printing the t-shirts to promote or market WordCamp Pune 2017. We’ve seen that very few people like wearing such overtly branded t-shirts. They become sleepwear or are passed on to house-helps and such.
The t-shirts and their design must follow the guidelines here:
1. https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/wordcamp-organizer/planning-details/swag/#tees
2. http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/T-shirts
We’d also like to meet this challenge, irrespective of whether it is on now: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/T-shirt_challenge
The design must be submitted by the 20th of December, 2016.

Rewards

Credits, bragging rights and stardom. 😉
One free ticket to WordCamp Pune 2017.
5 T-shirts in sizes of your choice that you give your friends & family (+ 1 that you’d get for yourself, as a participant)
Love, chocolates, free drinks (alcoholic/ non-alcoholic) and other gifts personally from the organisers.

How to participate

Mail to us at pune@wordcamp.org. We’ll share the vectors in your desired format for both the logo and Wapsara to get you started.

Credits

Cover Image: WordCamp Sheffield 2014
T-shirt template: Freepik

Join the WordCamp Pune 2017 organising team

The organiser tag is a prestigious one and means that someone put in their valuable time & energy in organising the WordCamp and were completely responsible (from start to end) for something and made sure it was completed whatever it took.

Contributing to organise WordCamp Pune 2017, like contributing to WordPress itself, is an open and voluntary activity. Last year a lot of people came up to us after the WordCamp and asked how they could’ve become organisers and honestly, we could have done better with more helping hands.

An organiser ideally engages with the Pune community on a regular basis through meetups and other activities. However, if you haven’t been able to do that till now for various reasons, we’d like to present an opportunity – If you think you could give us your time and energy, now on and would like to contribute to an exciting WordCamp:

Get in touch with us using the following form.
Join the meetup group and attend the weekly organisers’ meetups: http://www.meetup.com/Pune-WordPress-Knowledge-Exchange/

If you do live up to the expectations in the first few weeks (by mid-December), we’ll be honoured to share organiser credits with you.

Call for Speakers

English | हिन्दी | मराठी | Application Form

Application Deadline: Tuesday, Jan 3, 2017 midnight (IST)

Hey beautiful person and fellow WordPress enthusiast!

You have thought about speaking at a WordCamp. That could be a reason you’re visiting this page.

It’s not about being an expert, it’s not about choosing an awesome topic, it’s not about beautiful slides and it’s definitely not about previous speaking experience. We don’t care for that.

You are unique. You have your own unique life experience. You definitely have your own stories about WordPress or working with it. Our attendees and the whole WordPress community (via WordPress.tv) would love to listen to your story.

If you are worried about effective public speaking, stage fright or things like that, we even hold speaker training workshops to help you get your point of view across in an effective and interactive manner.

We give preference to sessions in Hindi or Marathi. We’ll be very happy if you speak in Hindi or Marathi.

Multiple topics in mind? Not sure which one to choose? Why not submit them all? You just need to submit the form multiple times, once for each topic.

Come on, give it a try!

प्रिय वर्डप्रेस-संसार के सहचर,

तुमने भी कभी न कभी, वर्डकैंप में स्पीकर अर्थात् वक्ता बनने के बारे में ज़रूर सोचा है।इसीलिए शायद तुम इस पेज पर हो!

कोई बड़ा विद्वान होना ज़रूरी नहीं, ना ही किसी धाँसू विषय का होना। “क्या तुम अच्छे पावरपाइंट बनाते हो?”, और खास करके “क्या तुमने पहले कभी भाषण दिया है?” जैसे सवाल हमारे लिए फालतू हैं।

तुम अद्वितिय, निराले हो। तुम्हारा जीवन एक अनूठा अनुभव है। तुम्हारे पास वर्डप्रेस से जुड़ा कोई न कोई किस्सा भी ज़रूर है। हमारे श्रोता और समस्त वर्डप्रेस परिवार (WordPress.tv द्वारा) तुम्हारी कहानी सुनने को आतुर हैं।

अगर तुम सोच रहे हो कि “इतने लोगों के सामने कैसे बोलूँ?” तो हम वक्ता प्रशिक्षण कार्यशाला का भी आयोजन करते हैं जिससे तुम बिना संकोच के मंच पर प्रभावी संवाद कर पाओगे।

हिंदी या मराठी वक्ताओं को हम प्राथमिकता देते हैं। तो यदि तुम हिंदी या मराठी में बोलो तो हमें बहुत खुशी होगी।

मन में कई विषय हैं? समझ नहीं आ रहा कि कौन सा विषय चुनें? जितने मन में हैं भेज दो। नीचे दिए फार्म को एक से अधिक बार भरो, हर विषय के लिए एक बार।

अब तो फार्म भर ही दो!

मित्रांनो आणि सहकारी वर्डप्रेस उत्साही अहो!

आपण वर्डकॅम्प मध्ये बोलण्यचा विचार नक्की केला असेल कदाचित म्हणूच आपण ह्या पेजला भेट देत आहेत.

आम्हाला तज्ज्ञ पाहिजेत असे नाही, भारी विषय पाहिजेत असे नाही, सुंदर स्लाइडस पाहिजेत असे नाही तर अनुभभवी वक्ता पाहिजे असेही नाही.

आपण एकमेव आहेत. आपल्याला स्वत: च्या अद्वितीय जीवन अनुभव आहे. आपल्याकडे निश्चितपणे वर्डप्रेस किंवा आपल्या कामाबद्दल स्वत: च्या छान गोष्टी आहेत. आमच्या सॊबत संपूर्ण वर्डप्रेस समाज (WordPress.tv द्वारे) आपल्या गोष्टी ऐकण्यासाठी उत्सुक आहे.

आप्ल्याला प्रभावी सार्वजनिक बोलण, स्टेज फ्र्याइट किंवा अश्या गोष्टींची भिती वाटत असेल तर घाबरू नका, आम्ही स्पीकर प्रशिक्षण कार्यशाळा सुद्धा आयोजित करतो ज्यामुळे आपण एक प्रभावी आणि परस्पर रीतीने आपले म्हणणे मांडू शकाल.

आम्ही हिंदी किंवा मराठी सत्रांना प्राधान्य देतो. आपण हिंदी किंवा मराठीत बोलला तर आम्हाला खूप आनंद होईल.

मनात अनेक विषय आहेत? सुचत नाही कुठलं निवडण्याचा ? मग सगळेच का नाही पाठवत? फक्त खाली दिलेले फॉर्म प्रत्येक विषयासाठी वेगळा भरणे आवश्यक आहे, आपण कितीही फॉर्म भरू शकता.

मग वाट कशाची बगतंय, होऊन जाऊ दे !

Call for Speakers is closed now. Sorry.

Here comes Wapsara

वप्सरा आली

Presenting Pune’s official Wapuu and the first female Wapuu from India, Wapsara (वप्सरा).

Wapsara is a play on the Sanskrit word Apsara (अप्सरा), which means a celestial nymph or in common parlance, a very beautiful girl.

We recommend listening to this Marathi song in the background & repeating the chorus:

Why a girl?

We think a Wapuu is supposed to be a fun representation of the local culture. It’s almost patriarchal to imagine a representative Wapuu as almost always male.

Honestly, the gear and attire of men above the Vindhyas is more or less similar with some form of dhoti, a pagdi and a large curly moustache. Also, it’s mostly white.

Women of each region, on the other hand, have varied and way more colourful attire and accessories.

So, we decided to make Wapuu go feminine and dressed her like a cute and beautiful girl from Maharashtra with her nose-ring and earrings, typical dark green skirt-blouse with golden borders, and neat hair pleated and bound by a matching green ribbon. There’s the typical crescent bindi on her forehead too.

Wapsara is designed by Ganesh Kerkar, a WordCamp Pune organiser. Ganesh has previously designed the Pune Community’s logo that Wapsara is holding and a couple of other Wapuus.

How did you like Wapsara; let us know in the comments?

Call for Sponsors

Call for sponsors is now closed. Thank you for your interest. You can consider sponsoring other WordCamps such as WordCamp Udaipur and WordCamp Kochi.

WordCamp Pune is the largest WordCamp in India in terms of the number of participants. Last year, we had 500 participants from 6 countries and we are expecting the same number this year.

We follow the same format as last year with multiple tracks sprinkled with multiple short breaks to prevent fatigue so attendees don’t switch out. Long meal breaks will be opportunities to have conversations with each other and possibly you, the sponsor. In addition, we’ll place a little extra focus this time on networking as we plan more systematic interactive activities in the areas where the sponsor stalls are located.

We need help from friendly sponsors like you to deliver this experience and in return, you participate in a common environment of sharing, learning and networking.

In doing so you reach out to a massive community of programmers (Pune is developer dominated), bloggers, marketers, students and SMEs (lot of WordPress agencies) in Pune and an unbelievably large and fascinating global community as well.

However, do hurry up because we’ll close this call as soon as we reach our funding goals like last year. (We had to turn away quite a few sponsors.)

(Please note that the following doesn’t include service tax as it is collected as a reverse charge where the sponsor (you) are liable to pay service tax on your end on the sponsorship amount, not the service provider (us). Ask your tax consultant about this. See: http://www.cbec.gov.in/resources//htdocs-servicetax/st-profiles/sponsorship.pdf

If you are from outside India, we have mentioned the package cost in USD* right next to the cost in INR. It doesn’t convert exactly but we want to be covered in terms of Foreign Exchange laws and regulations)

Call for sponsors is now closed. Thank you for your interest. You can consider sponsoring other WordCamps such as WordCamp Udaipur and WordCamp Kochi.

What happened to WordCamp Pune 2016?

Last time we hosted a WordCamp in Pune, we did it in September. We realised how unpleasant the weather was then. In 2016, we started planning for November for this reason. Our venue options are limited and we weren’t particularly happy with the last one.

So, when we couldn’t organise a venue till mid-September, we had two choices. We could either organise a WordCamp in a rush and in less than optimal preparation time or we could postpone it.

Speaking to various venue options, we decided to postpone it to January. (Now you know why there wasn’t a WordCamp Pune 2016. This is the WordCamp Pune 2016, technically.)

So, now our venue is finalised and hence our date. Mark 15th January 2017 on your calendars and follow us in any of the ways listed in the sidebar.

Just like the last time, we are going to experiment a lot. Some good ideas that didn’t work out the last time, we’re going to retry. We’ll try some new ideas too. Also, like the last time, we’re going to borrow and fork ideas from WordCamps the world over. So, watch this space!