I was at WordCamp Philippines 2012 in Manila last Saturday. I went along with 2 coworkers who were also speakers, and some Japanese WordPress users who experienced WordCamp outside of Japan for the first time.
The venue for this year was Asian Institute of Management in Makati City. With 3 rooms enough to host 200 people or so, they had very reliable Wifi and plenty of power outlets.
Philippines Government Initiatives Using WordPress
Manuel L. Quezon III, Editor-in-Chief of Official Gazette online, gave an opening keynote. As the Undersecretary of Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office (PCDSPO), he shared comprehensive approach to CMS usage in a large organization.
Mr. Quezon said it was a “natural evolution” for their office to start using WordPress (Similar reason why the City of Seoul chose WordPress as their CMS, heard at WordCamp Seoul). He covered multiple topics that need to be addressed when choosing a tool for a governmental organizations, such as accessibility, interoffice adaptation, and infrastructure. Also:
- Official Gazette works as the office’s media portal, where they present an unified organizational identity & connect social accounts.
- Government’s official information need to circulate well and have a solid continuity (permanent location).
- PCDSPO is publishing infographics as an entrance way to more detailed data / resources. It’s an advantage of CMS to be able to create a data archive.
- Their future challenge is to make their archived information (institutional memory) more findable using better taxonomies and custom search.
- They chose WordPress so the system will stay updated & maintainable by anyone even if the adminsitraton staff change in the future.
His slides can be found as a PDF on PCDSPO site: Philippines Government Initiatives Using WordPress
Session Roundup
The event was scheduled with 1 or 2 tracks depending on the slots. In addition to the one I described above, there were talks on social media, SEO, theme development (by @philip_arthur), Mozilla’s web dev tools, how to write stories that reach your audience’s heart, blogging ethics and standards, and @chexee ‘s closing keynote on WordPress evolution followed by her Q&A. During lunch time, Yasuhiro Horiuchi from AWS Japan did an ad-hoc presentation about cloud hosting on Amazon Web Services.
Different Location, Same WordCamp Spirit
WordCamps differ from location to location. This time I noticed they made sure we were well fed with made-to-order espresso bar & donuts services from the sponsors. There was even a pizza-eating contest!
I thought it was interesting that the registration started really early at 7:30. The day went on really smoothly, thanks to the organizers and friendly & hard-working staff 🙂 They all did a great job making everyone feel welcomed. Overall it was a very successful community event where attendees were able to enjoy the whole day & learn together.
Thank you WordCamp Philippines!
Comments
3 responses to “WordCamp Philippines 2012 Report”
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こんばんは！
I came across your blog when I was looking at the features of CHUNK theme. I loved it. It was my first theme but I am totally new to lay-outing and formatting and was never able to tweek the chunk theme to my heart’s desire. I am currently using a 3rd theme, Forever. Then I saw your blog and was impressed the possibilities of the chunk theme. I like how simple yet beautiful this layout is.
It’s nice to know you spend time in the Philippines. AIM is just few minutes away from where I stay. I didn’t know there is such a thing called WordCamp. Hope you enjoyed your stay!
じゃ、またね。
Hi Eri,
Thank you for complementing my theme customization! The base theme is pretty nice so I didn’t have to do much really. If you are interested in how I’ve done it you can read my post here.
I wish I had written about going to WordCamp Philippines before getting there! It was a really good event for bloggers and WordPress developers. I’m sure there will be more in the future. Hope you can make it there next time (and me too!).
ありがとうございました！