Category: Speakers

WordPress has more than 50,000 public plugins. Should you build the next one? Will it be worthwhile maintaining it over the next five years? How will people discover your plugin? What activities can suck you away from building great plugins? How do you land up with great reviews for your plugins? Does it make sense to listen to customer feedback? How do you run a business around WordPress plugins and make money?

Those are some of the questions you will get answer for, in Nirav’s session.

Nirav is on an entrepreneurial journey for last 17 years – creating a series of successful (and impactful) businesses on the way. He started India’s first electronic magazine – while still in college, founded a top notch web services company, localized Linux and OpenOffice to Gujarati, authored two books, and took a business from 0 to six figures in two years. And then he ventured into WordPress. This session is going to highlight some of the biggest lessons he’s learned facing the ground realities of building a business around WordPress plugins.

Hailing from Colombo, Sri Lanka, Mahangu first found WordPress when he stumbled upon 0.70 in the dark recesses of #wordpress on Freenode. He has used and provided support for every major release of the software, and is excited about the impact the platform can have on South Asia.
Though once a high school English teacher, his desire to help make online publishing more democratic led him to Automattic, where he now works as a Happiness Engineer. He sincerely believes that stellar support will play a pivotal role in helping WordPress power the next 25% of the web!

Over the past year, Mahangu went from 0 code contributions to 50+ commits. In this talk, he hopes to draw on his experiences getting there and debunk several myths about WordPress programming.
This talk will assume a basic knowledge of HTML/CSS, but nothing further, and will look to draw non-technical people down the rabbit hole of theme and plugin development by showing how you can make WordPress do a lot of cool things without a very deep understanding of PHP or programming in general.

Saurabh will explain how to create a culture that keeps developers stimulated and satisfied, especially in the view of international players with deeper pockets.

Key points that will be covered:

• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and satisfying basic needs (physiological & security)
• Satisfying needs of love & belonging via culture and organisational structure.
• Satisfying self-esteem needs via training, 360 degree feedback and recognition.
• Satisfying self-actualisation needs using the WordPress community.
• Deepening your shallow pockets by recognising your organisation as an entity and satisfying its needs.

Saurabh writes code and other stuff (insert your preposition here) WordPress. He also likes to talk about it. A former teacher and developer, he’s recently shifted his focus on WordPress education and education with WordPress.

You can follow him on Twitter @actual_saurabh

Modern websites like Facebook and Youtube keep you hooked all day, while you visit most WordPress blogs only on occasion. What’s the difference? Social sites allow you to participate in the creation and sharing of content, so of course you stick around! Learn how to use BuddyPress to turn your own visitors into highly engaged participants, who regularly log into your site to produce content. With this power, you can build sites for collaborative education, social blogging, social commerce, social portfolios and more, all on WordPress.

Michael is a BuddyPress enthusiast, with experience designing and building themes and plugins.

He is co-founder of BuddyBoss, a company that helps entrepreneurs to create successful BuddyPress communities. He previously managed the development and growth of SongLyrics.com, one of the most highly-trafficked websites in the world with over 100 million annual visitors. He has spoken at WordCamp Pune, WordCamp Miami, BuddyCamp Brighton (UK) and several universities about BuddyPress and web design.

Vijay has built a bustling online community for the bipolar disorder afflicted in India. He’s (literally) written a book on his experiences on how he managed to break the stranglehold of stigma & isolation associated with bipolar disorder. This community has also led to him writing a fortnightly column on Mental Health on DNA Online.

In WordCamp Mumbai Vijay will talk about WordPress for Social Cause and his work on how he has guided people to medical professionals or has motivated them and made them believe in themselves and their ability to deal with the dreaded condition.

Vijay Nallawala (@VijayNallawala) is a digital storyteller who helps people build their personal brands. He’s also the author of ‘A Bipolar’s Journey ~ From Torment to Fulfillment”, Speaker and a Mental Wellness Facilitator.

According to W3Techs research, WordPress is the most popular CMS among the Japanese with a 78% market share.

Naoko’s talk will show you important key factors that made this happen. You will not only learn how to flourish your local WordPress community, but also get inspired to spread the word for your own product or service that you love.

A Globalizer at Automattic Naoko Takano is a part of Team Global, which facilitates internationalization and localization of WordPress.com and other products.

She has been involved in the Japanese WordPress community since 2003,
contributing in the areas of translation, documentation, community including  meetup and WordCamp organization.

You can follow her on Twitter @naokomc