Category: Work

WordCamp Mumbai 2016 Day 2 Wrap

Post author By Amit
Post date March 13, 2016

WordCamp Mumbai 2016 Day 1 Wrap

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My favourite talks of day 2 at WordCamp Mumbai 2016, in chronological order:

Naoko Takano (@naokomc) came all the way from Japan (and brought really cool WordPress tattoos for us – you saw a sample in yesterday’s post) to talk about how WordPress became successful in Japan, capturing 78% of the website share. A relevant talk for anyone interested in internationalization and localization.
Michael Eisenwasser (fb/eisenwasser) is the co-founder of BuddyBoss, a company which build products for the BuddyPress ecosystem. Great talk to help us build user engagement using “social tools” on WordPress.
Sakin Shrestha (@sakinshrestha) came all the way from Nepal, where he heads various companies and also manages to host WordCamp Nepal. He introduced the audience to different approaches to developing themes for WordPress, ranging from modifying an existing theme, to building one from scratch, including using frameworks and starter themes.
Darshan Sawardekar (@_dsawardekar) is a Lead Web Engineer at 10up, and a vim enthusiast – to the extent that he is the author of a vim plugin called WordPress.vim. He explained why URLs are important, how pretty URLs/permalinks work in WordPress, what Rewrite rules are, and how we can leverage them to our advantage.
Mahangu Weerasinghe (@MahanguW) is a Happiness Engineer at Automattic, and like Bryce & Sam, I had met him and heard him speak on stage for the first time at WordCamp Mumbai 2015. This time he shared how he, a non-programmer, taught himself to write code on WordPress that lets him do things one step at a time, using action & filter hooks. But beyond just the technique of it, his deeper message was that programming is not only for the math-minded toppers in school – essentially, programming (at least algorithms and high-level programming languages) is language, and similar to any language we speak in with each other – so any person who can communicate well can also code well.

Thus ended my fourth WordCamp and the volunteer stint with it. In the process I had the chance to discuss with great people, some of whom are employees at Automattic, others are business owners in India, some developers, and every one of them a WordPress enthusiast.

Photographs courtesy: Bigul Malayi (@mbigul)

Until the next WordCamp!

Tags 2016, Mumbai WordCamp, WordCamp

Business Product Technology WordPress Work

WordCamp Mumbai 2016 Day 1 Wrap

Post author By Amit
Post date March 12, 2016

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.

—
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 alt tag, and warned against the indiscriminate mixing of alt with title in imgs. 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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WordCamp Mumbai Day 2 Wrap

Tags 2016, Mumbai, WordCamp

Business Work

Success

Post author By Amit
Post date September 20, 2015

Just last week 13 Llama Studio went on a team lunch to Jughead’s at Marol. Much eating, drinking, and merrymaking ensued. The team talked, bonded, took selfies, groups selfies, chugged whatever liquids each one pleased, and ravaged through plates and plates of delicious food. In short, we had fun.

But there had to be some serious discussions as well along with the fun.

I have been thinking for the past few days about how I would define success for 13 Llama Studio. And I have finally settled on five metrics that will define if we are doing well.

Volumes: the most obvious metric. Quantum of business. Amount of sales. Top line. Revenues. How much money we were able to extract from all our clients combined within a said period of time.
Community: being known and appreciated in a product/developer community. With Prasad and I speaking at the Mumbai WordCamp, 13 Llama hosting quite a few WordPress meetups at our office, and sponsoring the Pune WordCamp, I think we have made a good beginning here.
Clientelle: by design or by happenstance, we are strong in three verticals: Education, Healthcare, and Media. In September, we were able to say that we are working for a marquee name in each of these three verticals. We’ll expose these relationships later on when the time is right. 🙂
Product Success: our key point of introduction when meeting someone new is that we are a product development studio, or more accurately a product development team for hire. We have tried our hands at projects which had the potential to be great products. Some of these were launched, and some of these could not be, for various reasons. Right now the team is working on three new product ideas, and we are gung-ho about making each of these a success.
A Kick-Ass Team: And finally, the key ingredient that will make each of the above four a possibility. A team which is competent, dedicated, dynamic, always learning, always improving, and always ready for a challenge. I can confidently say that each of our team members has the potential to be a superhero that such teams comprise of, but there is still a journey ahead of each one of us before we can with full honesty say that we are superheroes. Also, the team isn’t complete yet. We are looking for superheroes, or potential superheroes who can take 13 Llama Studio to the heights we have dreamt of. So if you think you are someone who fits the bill and would love to work with us, 13 Llama Studio’s Careers Page.

Here’s to a bright and exciting future!

Tags 13 llama studio, celebrations, lunch, team

Work

jQuery tip: all ready?

Post author By Amit
Post date December 14, 2011

I came across this post about a common jQuery mistake by Michael Tran, and found it interesting. Yes, you need to load your jQuery library before you load your jQuery-specific-scripts or they would not work.

But here’s a mistake I commit often, of treating the event binding declarations as function declarations. Often I write code like this:

<script>
  $("#button").click( function() {
    alert("clicked!");
  });
</script>

And then wonder why nothing happens when I click on <input type="button" id="button" value="Click me!">. Well, that is because the $("#button").click(…); code never gets executed!

Executed? Exactly. As I said it’s not a function. The function is already defined as function() {…}, right? We need to execute the jQuery event binding. When? As soon as the document is ready. How? Nine ways to skin the cat, three (as far as I know) to tackle this problem.

In the body tag
Simply put,

 <script>
  function loadingRoutine() {
    $("#button").click( function() {
      alert("clicked!");
    });
  }
</script>
<body onLoad="loadingRoutine();">

But this means contaminating your markup with behavioral code. I, never!

Using a jQuery event
The onLoad event has a different name in jQuery: $(document).ready();. You use it thus:
```
 <script>
  $(document).ready( function() {
    $("#button").click( function() {
      alert("clicked!");
    });
  });
</script> 
```
This way you don’t have to put any javascript in your body tag.

You can also use jQuery(document).ready(…); instead, but $(… is shorter and faster, innit?

What really happens here is that the moment the HTML document is ready the $(document).ready(); event is triggered, much like the body’s onLoad event, and it binds all your jQuery behaviours to the events as you wanted.
jQuery shortcut
It’s the same $(document).ready(); event, but this time it’s way shorter, cuter and faster. It is $(…);. The usage:
```
 <script>
  $( function() {
    $("#button").click( function() {
      alert("clicked!");
    });
  });
</script> 
```

There’s another way to call the $(document).ready(…); event: $().ready();, but the jQuery documentation advises against it. And who needs $().ready(); when you have $();?

Tags javascript, jquery, tips, webdesign

Work

Jigrr

Post author By Amit
Post date April 1, 2008

Here’s a video of our Jigrr I found on Youtube today.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ-lkZgqhsA&hl=en&w=425&h=355]

Jigrr is the mascot of Commonwealth Youth Games Pune 2008. The mascot along with the other identity and overall look & feel of the games is designed by Elephant Strategy+Design, Pune.