After missing the first Wordcamp India (Delhi) in 2009, last year I got an opportunity to attend the my first Wordcamp at Pune. I got introduced to a whole new set of like minded junta (yet the ones who would blow me away with their talent, creativity & lightheartedness). I also travelled to Baroda to participate at Wordcamp earlier this year and when WC finally arrived to hometown Mumbai, I couldn’t wait to see how the participants mix here would be.
From what I saw, this was one of the only events in Mumbai with more developers than non techies (success or failure?). Wordcamp by its nature attracts a lot of community folks from across the country and that is something I really love. People traveling from Kolkata, Lucknow, all parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra for an event = wow. The Mumbai organizers surely did great by keeping the ticket pricing at Rs 300 (or pay whatever you like over 300) – cheers to Gounder, Kane and the team!
I loved the GPL session by Karthik (of hbwsl) and while a lot of talks were technical which is hard for me to understand, I can safely say that I learnt a bit more about the world of WordPress and the world of tech. Ideasmith’s talk on ‘An Analog In a Digital World’ [Video] was a refreshing start to a primarily dev heavy conference with storytelling. There is plenty to learn from how the real world works and tie the same to the digital world. [See All Speakers]
I absolutely loved delivering my talk on No SEO at WCMumbai. Not only is it a topic that I deeply think about, but it also turned out to be a session where I didn’t think of the setup as a conference or a room full of strangers. Seems like a lot of people loved the interactions, though feedback for me is to use Hindi only when everyone in the room understands it (or translate when needed), speak a bit slowly and clearly (grasping my unclear & rapid speech is tough) and to keep my talk relevant to the theme of the event, in this case WordCamp (WordPress).
Action Item: Join the Wordcamp India community on Facebook.
Slides from my No SEO talk, photos and some tweets from WCMumbai below:
It sure is tiring!
Lots of shirts 🙂
Nice to see Brajeshwar after a long time
Awesomesauce, Annkur! I thoroughly enjoyed your talk, of course. Also, thank you for introducing me to WordCamp. Apart from the fun I had delivering my own talk, it was really good to get a peek under the hood and see what the people who create the technology think.