The venue was set, the sandwiches, tea, coffee, water was all fixed, the projection on stage, the sound from the laptops, the presenters/clickers were tested, the WiFi worked finally after a couple of hours of tinkering.
After around an hour of attendees walking in, collecting their goodie bags, and walking in to the auditorium after getting something to munch on & sip, we were ready for the talks to start.
WordCamp Mumbai 2016 was open!
This is my fourth ever WordCamp. I was an attendee at the first one (Mumbai 2014), a speaker at the next (Mumbai 2015), a sponsor at the next (Pune 2015), and I’m an organizer/volunteer/<localhost> at this one.
I was looking forward to this WordCamp eagerly, for the quality of the planned talks if not for anything else.
And this is the first WordCamp which was duly attended by the whole 13 Llama Studio team.
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In the chronological order, here’s my take on what I liked about what went on today:
- Shilpa Shah (@IdleGazer, HWS) told us what customers want. It’s been a recurring theme in WordCamps, and rightly so. Developers have been known to not fully understand the importance of dealing with customers with empathy and a kind word. Shilpa delivered the message in her disarming fun way. A great start to a great WordCamp.
- Nirav Mehta (@niravmehta, StoreApps) had delivered this session at a WordPress meetup a few weeks ago, which I had missed. Later I heard many good things about it from those who hadn’t. Today I found out what I had missed then. Various insights into the WordPress plugin universe and what an aspiring plugin developer should focus on made this a must go.
- Bryce Adams (@bryceadams): I had heard Bryce for the first time in WordCamp Mumbai 2015, and was just blown away with the way he built his case for the famous “decisions over choices” principle. This time he spoke about building Freemium plugins, and how it follows from looking at The Bigger Picture.
- Sam Hotchkiss (@HotchkissWeb): Same as Bryce, I had heard Sam last year, and he showed us a very cool picture of the admin panel of the future. This time around, he took us through the best practices for Plugin development. Very thorough, and very enlightening.
I want this printed, framed, and hung on every developer’s desk every where - Karthikraj Magapu (@KarthikMagapu, HWS) in his inimitable style, took Nirav Mehta, Rohan Thakare (@rohanthakare, Wisdm Labs), and yours truly, along with a member from the audience on a panel discussion – the topic being how can growing WordPress based companies get to their first million. As much as it was fun, it was thought-provoking, forcing us to look inwards, and learn from each other. The learning opportunity for me was immense, since both Nirav and Rohan have been in business longer than I, and run larger companies than I.
Photo courtesy: Harshaja Ajinkya - Rahul Bansal (@rahul286, rtCamp) is the god of scaling, speed, reliability, and taking off from his previous talk at Mumbai 2015, he taught us how to make WooCommerce scalable. Entertaining and educative.
- Raghavendra: though I missed a major part of his talk, whatever I heard moved me to the core. As a developer, I have always insisted on the
alttag, and warned against the indiscriminate mixing ofaltwithtitleinimgs. Today I got validation for this seemingly pedantic practice. But the alt is only one of the things we developers need to take care of while making the web accessible to those with disabilities. And WordPress is the only platform which focuses on accessibility. Yet another reason to be proud of using WordPress and being in the community. - Kshitij Patil (@thekshitijpatil, kshitijpatil.com) is an entrepreneur who has sold web design services for years. And he shared his techniques and principles with the audience.
- Saurabh Shukla (@actual_saurabh, hookrefineandtinker.com) delivered one of the most fun, engaging, and moving talks of the day, where he shared his numerous stints with a development career, the failures & struggles, and finally simplified talent retention through the famous Maslow’s Hierarchy of human needs.
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