Tag: WordCamp

WordCamp Asia 2020 “Recap”

Naoko Takano7 Comments

WordCamp Asia 2020 is over — before it started.

We as the organizing team have a lot more to do before we can close the books for this year, but the anticipation for the actual event has now ended.

First, I want everyone to know that the cancellation decision was not made lightly. I want to make sure to emphasize this part of the announcement.

[…] there are too many unknowns around the health issues unfolding right now in the region to explicitly encourage a large public gathering bringing together over 1,300 people from around the world.

While I’m comforted to know my fellow local organizers are safe in Bangkok, that’s a completly different story from holding a large international gathering at this point of time.

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Chao Phraya River, August 2019

 

For me, I can truthfully say I have no regret in putting my past 9 months organizing WordCamp Asia 2020 as a global lead. It has been a pleasure to be working closely with Nok, our awesome local lead, and the whole team of very resourceful and smart organizers. We learned from each other, made mistakes and solved difficult issues together. I knew it was going to be great, but the actual experience exceeded what I expected.

Still, it’s super bittersweet. Reading all the caring and thoughtful messages from the global WordPress community make me happy and sad at the same time. And they remind me of the reasons why I started this adventure in the first place: I wanted to help connect more people through this event.

So my wish is that this event that never happened can still somehow trigger you to “meet” (online or offline) someone new, get to know them, help them out, and build a trusting relationship. We always have Twitter, Slack, and blog to help us do that! You can even just leave a comment here to share your story 🙂

Thank you for all those who supported us through the way to WordCamp Asia. It looks like we need a little more time to get there, but I’m sure we are just taking it slow to make it a real good one.

My WordCamp Europe 2019 #WCEU

Naoko Takano2 Comments

Here are some of my highlights of WCEU 2019 in Germany.

Contributor Day & Contribution Area

I’ve already written about Contributor Day, but again I very much enjoyed that day! Contribution Area on other days was also a nice space to have.

Meeting WordCamp Asia Organizing Team

14 of 41 team members were at WCEU. I met seven of them for the first time in Berlin. Thanks to Abha from Marketing Team, we got a nice group photo.

Some of the members were volunteering and others had a busy schedule with appointments, but we got to hang out in between sessions and after hours.

Getting Involved Table

I only spent 2 hours at the table, but the experience there as well as at Contributor Day made me realize something: there are still some hurdles for getting involved for the first time.

I really like what Training Team is doing to make it easier for everyone to participate. It’s my homework to review the flow for new Polyglots Team contributors and make some improvements.

Thanks to Mayo’s call on Twitter, I had a good conversation with Anyssa & Allyson from São Paulo about growing community.

WPCafe & Sessions

WPCafe was like a mixture of lightning talk & casual meetup. For the one I attended, Afsana opened the session with about 20 minutes of talk, and then the mic was passed around to the participants.

I’m glad that there was a full session dedicated to the multiligualization feature in core.

Picnic

I didn’t have time to explore Berlin during this stay, but thanks to Ellen & Manuel I had a chance to experience a little bit of the life of Berliners. It was nice to stay outside on a long summer day with colleagues and friends.

See you next time… online & at WordCamps!

To all the people who made the event happen – thank you for a great time.

Now it’s my turn to help make WordCamp Tokyo a place attendees feel sad to leave. And of course, WordCamp Asia too!

WCEU 2019 Venue
Get Involved table
Jetpack booth
Bluehost booth
Polyglots stickers at GoDaddy booth
Closing session
Jenny Beaumont at WCEU stage
WooCommerce booth
WordPress test booth

WordCamp Europe 2019 Contributor Day: Polyglots Team

Naoko Takano

As a polyglot, WordCamp Europe Contributor Day has always been one of the most exciting WordPress events to attend since I had experienced it for the first time.

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This year, I came back to WCEU (my last time was Vienna 2016) and the day was as great as I remembered, if not more.

At the Polyglots Team table, there were at least 60 volunteers. I was lucky to work with several experience translators and GTEs, as well as many brand-new contributors.

What we did:

  • Translation of core/plugins/themes/meta projects in Maltese, Serbian, German Informal & Formal, Portuguese, Arabic, Serbian, French, Japanese, Dutch, Persian, Hindi, Gujarati, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Catalan, and Afrikaans.
  • Translation review request documentation in English, Italian, Japanese, and Polish.
  • 12 translator interviews in collaboration with the Marketing Team.
  • Discussion on support & community documentation internationalization.

It was also great to catch up with WordPress Translation Day 4 organizers & local event hosts, and other polyglots contributors who are active in other teams.

Looking forward to continuing collaborating with polyglots on the Make Polyglots P2 and WordPress Slack #polyglots channel!