Last week, we attended the inaugural WordCamp Asia in Bangkok. This event was supposed to take place in February 2020 but got postponed due to COVID-19 concerns.
We had several rtCampers take part in the event as sponsors, volunteers, speakers, and an organizer of the event.
Here’s our recap of one of the biggest WordCamp!
Touchdown Bangkok
Along with being a host country for the WordCamp, Thailand is a destination on many peoples traveling bucket lists. So rtCampers arrived and departed in chunks, combining their vacation with WordCamp. Our travel policy is flexible enough to allow people to choose in and out dates when they are traveling for work or conferences to allow side exploration.
Experiencing local cuisine to going out on city walks, it’s a whole experience in itself. We also took the famous tuk-tuk ride – obviously.
Prior to the main WordCamp events, we attended a bunch of side events hosted by some of the sponsors and community members.
Contributor Day
It was a great sight to find people from across the globe coming together to contribute to various teams. Kudos to the contributor table leads, on onboarding several first-timers, and diligently making sure everyone who needed help/direction was attended to. We contributed in the areas of Gutenberg, documentation, and training, among others.
Speaking
On Day 1, we had two rtCampers take the stage.
Prasad Nevase who is the Director of Client Delivery talked about Using WordPress.org APIs for the community. It delves into using publicly accessible APIs, for addressing a very common pain point in the ecosystem. The WPPC is a tool that helps compare plugins in a single table, without the meticulous back & forth that it usually takes.
This is a SaaS-like platform that we have developed and if you need something similar, let’s get a conversation started.
Rahi Prajapati who is an Engineering Manager presented his thoughts about the intersection of design and development – in the age of Gutenberg. He highlights some foundational areas that allow designers to be well-informed about Gutenberg constructs.
Our Sponsor Booth
We are grateful to get the opportunity to sponsor WordCamp Asia.
At our sponsor booth, we thoroughly enjoyed speaking with attendees about the several career opportunities within WordPress, career development, and our rtLearn training platform and student hiring program that we have initiated.
We also put out some OG Indian chocolates, at our sponsor booth which were nostalgic to some & surprising to others!
Ask Matt Anything (AMA)
There was a last-minute change in the Ask Matt Anything session, so Matt Mullenweg had to attend it virtually instead. Nevertheless, it was accommodated quite skillfully.
The highlights to us were the conversations that opened up around Gutenberg Phase 3, how open-source thrives in recession, making WordPress immune to the tragedy of commons & funding the WordPress documentation team for premium products.
Getting Together
As we are a remote team, WordCamp also presented an opportunity to meet many of our team members. We managed to meet many rtCampers.
The Afterparty
The afterparty was one for the books, hosted at the riverside retreat Lhong 1919, with live music, dance, and a night filled with laughter and conversation.
The theme “share your culture”, was appreciated for championing diversity. Here are some rtCampers in their Indian attire and the overall joy is evident from the ear-to-ear smiles.
The event design was fantastic and meticulously planned. Little things like having several food counters to avoid crowding really caught the attention of several attendees.
We headed back home after the event with a lot more memories and bags overflowing with swags!
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