Category: Schedule

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

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

What is the Open Conference Space about?

WordCamps are about WordPress which is the most recognisable representative of the Open Source, hacker ethic. However, the curation at WordCamps is a controlled and supervised activity. No matter how true to the cause and transparent the speaker selection is, it’ll always have an organiser bias.

So, as an experiment and a homage to BarCamps that originally inspired WordCamps, we’re bringing the spirit of openness to WordCamp Pune 2017 in a limited sense in the form of Open Conference Slots.

So, if you have applied as a speaker but didn’t make it into the official program, use this space. If you couldn’t think of a topic in time but think of something on the day of the event, maybe while attending someone else’s talk, use this space. If you don’t agree with a session and would like to present a counter-point, use this space. If you just want like minded people to discuss something together, use this space.

A lot of people have asked us what this means and honestly, not many know of Barcamps and open spaces, so a post explaining things was in order! 🙂

Basics

  • Four rooms with four 20 minute slots each; total 16 slots.
  • No pre-decided sessions or schedule.
  • Anyone can walk in and pick any of the 16 slots on the day of the event.
  • The slots will be allotted on “first-come-first-serve” basis.
  • The topics will only be vetted for 100% GPL compliance. Other than that, they can be about anything.

For Potential Speakers

  • You pick any available slot on the day of the event.
    • There are only 16 slots. No one will regulate or control how spots are assigned and to who, so pick one before someone else does.
  • You get total 20 minutes. A volunteer will be timing your session. No extra 5 minutes, not even one. If you don’t finish in 20 minutes, you are free to take the discussion forward anywhere on the premises.
  • You can speak about anything as long as it is 100% GPL compatible.
    • In principle, you could even speak about non-WordPress related things but do remember that the audience is here for and because of WordPress and speaking about other things may translate into an empty room and a wasted slot.
    • There’s usually a lot of debate and disagreement on what is related to WordPress. That’s why we leave this decision to you instead of deciding if the topic is related to WordPress.
  • You don’t have to lecture.
    • Host a discussion on a topic that you care about.
    • Demonstrate your product or website.
    • Conduct a quick Workshop, DIY tutorial about a common WordPress thingy.
    • Have a fiery debate on a topic of your choice.
    • Conduct an AMA or a QnA around a topic where audience members throw questions at you and you answer them.
    • Anything else you can think of.
  • Read this for more clarity on how open spaces work, in general: http://www.mindviewinc.com/Conferences/OpenSpaces.html

For Audience Members

The talks will be added to the schedule at the event. This will be a massive flex print-out like the last time:

You pick and choose to attend any of the sessions available at any given time, just like the rest of the program.

Cover Photo Credit Linux User Group, Oregon State University

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

  1. 4 tracks in 4 rooms: User, Developer, Business & Community.
  2. 12 regular (30 min) sessions and 8 micro (20 minute) sessions.
  3. 2 rooms for Session Overflow for speakers from regular tracks to take up if they run out of time.
  4. 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.

WordCamp Pune is over. Check out the next edition!