Category Archives: News

Here’s Our Final List of Confirmed Speakers!

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Our second round for speaker selection is done, and our selected speakers have confirmed their availability for WordCamp Colombo 2017.

Here is the final list, along with the subjects of their talk:

  1. Takayuki Miyoshi — Lessons Learned from Ten Years of Plugin Development
  2. Rahul Bansal — Selling WordPress to Enterprises
  3. Karen Arnold — Great Support Matters: Bridging the Gap between Developers and Customers
  4. Himash Tehan — Using WordPress as a Mobile Backend
  5. Harshadewa Ariyasinghe — How Design Thinking can Change everything
  6. Dwain Maralack — How WordPress Taught me to be an Engineer
  7. Samantha Pathirathna — WordPress for Sustainable Development
  8. Chathu Vishwajith — Hardening WordPress is an art
  9. M Asif Rahman — Making Millions in WordPress Plugin Business But Not Being Evil

Every talk will begin at the top of the hour, followed by ample time for Q&A, and then open networking until the next session. With this exciting speaker line-up, we just can’t wait for 23rd September!

 

 

After-party in paradise, at WordCamp Colombo 2017!

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We’re excited to announce that the WordCamp Colombo 2017 after-party will be right on Colombo’s famous Mount Lavinia beach, at La Voile Blanche.

At the end of a long day of WordPress, you’ll be able to sink your toes into sand, sip on a drink and enjoy a variety of Sri Lankan food with your friends, both new and old! After parties are often the highlight of a WordCamp, and we’re sure that this one will be no different.

The best part?

This fully-catered after party is absolutely free when you purchase a WordCamp Colombo ticket.

 

Date and Time
September 23, 2017 – 8:00pm onwards

Location
LVB is located right on Mount Lavinia Beach, at the bottom of College Avenue. Google Map below:

NOTE: please be careful when crossing the train track at the bottom of College Avenue.

Walk out on to the beach and then turn to your right. Keep walking. LVB will be on your right, in about 200m.

If you have trouble finding the place, you can contact:

Dasun (+94771357111 )

Asith (+94779691135 )

Naweed (+94772358935 )

Rahul Bansal Will Inspire WordPress Agencies to Sell to Enterprises

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Are you the owner of a WordPress web design and development agency? You surely can’t miss this one!

Rahul Bansal is going to speak on the subject “Selling WordPress to Enterprises”.

Rahul is the founder and CEO of rtCamp — the only WordPress.com VIP Partner from Asia.

His WordPress journey began in 2007 when he was looking for ways to customize his blog. Later on, he moved from professional blogging to freelancing, and from freelancing to starting his company rtCamp in 2009.

At work, Rahul plays multiple roles, switching between sysadmin (his favorite), to sales and everything else his company demands from him.

Over the years, Rahul has contributed to the WordPress community in many ways — as a WordCamp speaker, organizer, volunteer, polyglot, theme/plugins developer. Outside of WordPress, he loves spending time with his son and is a self-proclaimed foodie.

Rahul did a lengthy interview with us on the subject of WordPress adoption, need for a community and more: https://2017.colombo.wordcamp.org/2017/04/05/interview-with-rahul-bansal-founder-and-ceo-of-rtcamp/

From Small to Enterprise — Know the Formula For Success

Rahul’s WordPress journey started with small projects, with total budgets under $100.

Nine years later, he has grown to reach the other end of the spectrum, regularly handling enterprise WordPress projects with budgets of over $100K per year.

At this scale, the rules for “selling” WordPress to a client change. WordPress’ traditional advantages don’t necessarily apply anymore.

He will start by addressing the two largest apprehensions that enterprises have- security & scalability- and cover other pain points like:

  1. Integration with existing systems
  2. Ownership and responsibility
  3. Extensibility and long term viability
  4. “Free” and “GPL” concerns

We are confident Rahul’s talk will help bust the various myths surrounding the use of WordPress at the enterprise level. We hope to use his advice to spread the message about WordPress being a great platform for enterprises.

Announcing Our First Speaker: Takayuki Miyoshi from Japan

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Takayuki MiyoshiIf you are a programmer and have been introduced into the world of WordPress, you may have wondered, “Should I develop plugins? And how? Is it going to be a tough ride ahead?”

Takayuki Miyoshi, the author of Contact Form 7, is going to answer just that, and much more. Contact Form 7 is one of the most popular WordPress plugins ever developed. Many WordPress sites cannot live without it!

At WordCamp Colombo 2017, you will hear Takayuki in his own words, and get to ask questions straight at him too. The subject of his talk is “Lessons Learned from Ten Years of Plugin Development”.

Takayuki’s career in WordPress plugin development started way back in 2006. It was the age of Web 2.0, mashups, and Ajax fever, and 2.0 was the latest version of WordPress. At that time, WordPress didn’t even natively support widgets, menus, or shortcode API. The WordPress Plugin Directory didn’t exist yet. Since then, Takayuki learned a lot of important things through the experience of plugin development.

Some of these lessons include:

  1. How to design a WordPress plugin.
  2. How to add a feature.
  3. What user feedback is like and how to react to it
  4. How to write an FAQ.

….and many other interesting and entertaining examples.

Takayuki did a short interview with us on his WordPress journey, productivity as a programmer and his words of advice for young professionals. Click here to read it: https://2017.colombo.wordcamp.org/2017/05/30/a-conversation-with-takayuki-miyoshi/

It’s time to grab a ticket for WordCamp Colombo 2017!

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Ticket sales are now open for Sri Lanka’s first ever WordCamp, a not-for-profit event that brings together WordPress lovers from local and global communities. We are already excited by the line-up of confirmed speakers, both from Sri Lanka, and those who will be flying in to Colombo from around the world — United States, South Africa, India and Japan.

Are you considering a career in website or web application development? Are you a business analyst and have thought of WordPress for some of your projects? Or, do you want to witness the secret behind one of the world’s biggest open source success stories?

If your answer to any of these questions was ‘Yes’, WordCamp Colombo is for you.

WordPress is an extremely popular choice for content driven web solutions or eCommerce websites. This event is a wonderful place to listen to memorable talks by some of the biggest influencers in the WordPress world, and then meet them in person. It’s not just WordPress in the event — we have tasty snacks, Sri Lankan food and great swag too.

And if you need to grow your professional network, WordCamp Colombo 2017 won’t disappoint you either. So, do keep your visiting cards ready!

Looks interesting? Visit this link to buy a regular ticket or a micro sponsorship.