Category Archives: Speakers

Lightning talks in Sinhala and Tamil, presented by Asith and Prasath

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Our WordCamp will bring in a pure Sri Lankan flavor in the form of two lightning talks in Sinhala and Tamil, delivered by Asith Wijenayake and Prasath Nadarajah. These speakers are an addition to our existing array of confirmed international and local speakers.

Sinhala is spoken by nearly 16 million people as a first language in Sri Lanka, and an additional 4 million people who learn it as a second language. Tamil speakers in Sri Lanka number nearly 4 million. Source: Department of Census and Statistics, Sri Lanka.

Both Sinhala and Tamil are ancient languages, and with WordPress’ core principles of inclusivity and respect for local cultures, we are proud to have Asith and Prasath speaking at the event to help boost the platform’s adoption in Sri Lanka.

Asith’s topic in Sinhala will be “WordPress ජීවන වෘත්තියක් ලෙස”, which means “WordPress as a Career”. In his own words:

WordPress ගැන පෙර අසා හෝ නොඅසා තිබිය හැක. කෙසේ වෙතත් WordPress වනාහී අද වන විට ලොව තිබෙන විශලතම සහ ජනප්‍රියම Content Management System( CMS) එක ලෙස වගේම දැනට ලෝකයේ ජනප්‍රියතම බ්ලොගින් මෘදුකාංගයක් ලෙස හැදින්විය හැක. සංක්‍යාත්මකව ගතහොත් දැනට ලෝකයේ ඇති වෙබ් අඩවි සංඛ්‍යාව බ්ලියනයක් පමණ වේ යැයි ගනන් බලා තිබේ. එයින් සියයට 25 කටත් වැඩි ප්‍රතිශතයක් WordPress ඇසුරු කොට සාදන ලද ඒවාය.
එසේ ගනන් බැලුවගොත් ඔබ දයිනික අන්තර්ජාල භාවිතයේදී ඇතුල්වන වෙබ් අඩවි වලින් හතරෙන් එකක්ම WordPress මෘදුකාංගය භාවිතාකර නිපදවා තිබිය හැකි වැඩි ඉඩක් පවතී.
ලොව පුරා මෙලෙස පැතිරී ඇත WordPress කියන්නේ නිකම්ම නිකම් තවත් එක් මෘදුකාංගයක් පමණක් ම නොවන බවට මෙම සංඛ්‍යා දත්ත සාක්ෂි දරයි.
මෙවර WordCamp කොළඹ දී WordPress ජීවන වෘත්තියක් ලෙස භාවිතා කරන්නේ කෙසේදැයි කතා කිරීම මම බලාපොරොත්තු වෙමි.

— අසිත් විජේනායක

Prasath will speak in Tamil on the subject “WordPress இல் உங்கள் வலைப்பதிவு”, which translates as “How to use WordPress to start your online blog”. In his own words:

இன்றைய விஞ்ஞான உலகில் இணையத்தில் எமது பிரத்தேயேக வலைத்தளம் மிகவும் அத்தியாவசியமாகிவிட்டது. எமது தனிப்பட்ட கருத்துக்களையும் சிந்தனைகளையும் இணையத்தில் பதிவு செய்யும் இடமாக அது மாறியுள்ளது. அத்தகைய வலைப்பதிவு கருவிகளில் WordPress மிக முக்கிய இடத்தை வகிக்கிறது. எமது இந்த உரையாடலில் நாம் WordPress ஐ பயன்படுத்தி எவ்வாறு எமது வலைப்பதிவை மேட்கொள்ளுவது பற்றி விரிவாக ஆராய்வோம்.

— பிரசாத் நடராஜா

 

 

Himash Tehan will guide us on using WordPress as a mobile backend

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Our next speaker is Himash Tehan, a software developer from Colombo with over three years of experience designing and developing mobile apps. Himash’s topic is using “Using WordPress as a Mobile Backend”.

Himash Tehan

Himash has developed mobile apps using both native and hybrid mobile technologies for various domains i.e. airlines, sales and hospitality.

WordPress is a great choice to use as the backend technology for a wide variety apps, be it a weather app, or a CRM app. You will be amazed at the functionalities that come out of the box — like media management, user management and a sophisticated templating engine. What’s more, there are amazing plugins available in the public repository to choose from, and many of them are REST API enabled too!

With Himash bringing his knowledge and experience on this subject to the event, you should be able to rapidly build your next mobile app powered by a WordPress backend!

Karen Will Help us Bridge the Gap Between Developers and Customers

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We have all faced it at some point in time. If you are a developer, you might have looked for the path of least resistance to get your project up and running. But on the other side, customers are frustrated when a user interface doesn’t turn out to be intuitive enough, or after sales support is falling short of promises.

The fact is that developers wouldn’t exist without customers! We need to empathize deeply with customers, and Karen Arnold is going to help us deal with precisely that subject.

Karen’s talk is titled “Great Support Matters: Bridging the Gap between Developers and Customers”.

Developing software without giving support to customers is like building a house without a foundation. So you have created a plugin or a theme for WordPress. Awesome! It doesn’t stop there.

Karen will give us simple ways to get a reputation for excellent support without increasing our time or effort.

Karen leads the Happiness Engineer Hiring team at Automattic, the team responsible for hiring support staff for Automattic’s products. She has worked remotely for Automattic since 2012. Karen has spoken at a number of events including SupConfNY 2016, WordCamps in the United States, Nicaragua, Argentina, Colombia, and Peru, and various WordPress meetup events.

Prior to Automattic, Karen ran a business creating WordPress sites for small businesses. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the United States, with her husband and four children.

 

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!

 

 

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.