wceu

WordCamp Europe 2016 Slides & Photos

Last Friday, I presented a talk about the Japanese WordPress community at WordCamp Europe 2016 in Vienna.

The video will be published on WordPress.tv at some point. Meanwhile, here are some points for those who had missed it:

  • Japanese is the most widely used non-English WP locale (12.3% of non-English locales)
  • WordPress is by far the most popular CMS in Japan today (78.5% share – higher number compared to 59.5% for English sites)
  • Meetups are held almost every weekend somewhere in Japan. We make it easy to see events across Japan through the WordBench website and the event calendar. Many of the chapters create unique banners for each event.
  • The online community is also active, with many contributors on translation, documentation, support, bug fix & report, and Wapuu too!
  • Show others how to get involved, recognize their hard work, and help out.
  • Your own contribution can be multiplied if you help others to contribute. It’s necessary to grow the community for WordPress to succeed.

It was a pleasure to have had an opportunity to share what I’ve seen in the local community for the past 13 years. As I said in the talk, my goal is to help others contribute to WordPress so the “small steps” of more people can build up to form a long stride. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

Day 0 (WCEU Picnic) Photos

Francesca and I hosted a picnic at Burggarten near the venue on Thursday.

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#wceupicnic #wceu #wceu2016

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Day 1 Photos

Petya’s opening remarks
WCEUBall wapuu
Event venue
MuseumsQuartier
Giant wapuu
Closed caption typists
Sergey
Wapuu stickers & coloring book
Matt & Brian
Kel

Day 2 Photos

The childcare support at WCEU this year was really great.

Francesca Marano on Italian Community
Child care room
WCEUBall
WCEU banner at night

Photos: Contributor Day

Having discussion face-to-face was the best part of the Contributor Day.

Polyglots rooms
Local coffee
Polyglots wapuu
Bego
Bego and Birgit

Taking a Sabbatical

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For the next three month, I’m taking the first sabbatical in my life.

When I first heard that I can take a fully paid sabbatical every five years at Automattic, it was about a half year after coming back from my 3-month maternity leave. My sixth year started a couple month before then, but I didn’t feel like going away for an extended time again – even though the fact is that the company encourages us to take one.

Even when I seriously started thinking about the time off for this summer, I wasn’t 100% sure if this is going to be a good idea for me. 

I like my work, and there are so many things I want to get done!

One of my teammates who shared some of the tasks with me is no longer around, maybe I should wait.

Won’t this create too much extra work for others in my team?

But now that I have passed over my work to Andrew who will be backing me up, I feel both relieved and ready. 

From today, I’m taking a 10-day trip with my husband and daughter to Vienna. I will be speaking & volunteering at WCEU (that may sound like work but I’m doing that as just someone involved in the WordPress community 🙂 )

I plan on taking some more trips, reading books, organizing WordCamp Tokyo, and working on some other projects I have in mind.

Learnings from Growing Local WordPress Communities #wceu

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Today I gave a talk about WordPress communities in Japan at WordCamp Europe at Stadsgehoorzaal Leiden in Netherlands. Here’s my slides:


Learnings from Growing Local WordPress Communities

It was great to get feedbacks from community organizers all over Europe – Netherlands, German, Finland, Switzerland, France… This WordCamp has been one of a kind where I got to meet so many WordPress users who are passionate about i18n, translation, and helping local communities from so many different countries.

I thought it was cool that my conclusion on why WordPress community (in Japan and elsewehere) had grown so much coincided some of the comments by other speakers; the answer was enabling continuous small efforts by many contributors.

The video will be posted on WordPress.tv later, but please feel to contact me (or tweet to @naokomc) if you have more comments and/or questions about the slides.