Why you should attend WordCamp Mumbai 2016

WordCamp Mumbai is great way to meet other local talent from in and around Mumbai, share your experiences and knowledge and most importantly it’s about bringing people with a common interest together. It’s one of the only conferences in the world where you’ll meet both hobbyists and professionals.

We understand that WordPress means different things for different people and this is your chance to learn a little bit about those other things. WordPress means the business of theme or plugin or website building for some. Some use it to create, share and promote to the world. While for others it’s a tool to build and foster a community. WordPress means code to some while it means moving away from coding to others. We’ve got all of you sorted while being a fun and casual learning experience.

In the end it is also about the people. I’ve personally made a ton of friends who’ve helped me in my personal and professional life. You’ll get to meet people from all walks of life, from different parts of India and from different parts of the world.

We know that you have a passion for WordPress – and we want to invite you to come share that with us. Book your tickets right now.

If you are registered already  – thanks for being awesome – and make sure you’re registered for updates to this site using the form in the sidebar.

Volunteers for the Word Lounge at WordCamp Mumbai

(Post content contributed by Disha)

At WordCamp 2016, not only will you interact with bloggers, designers and developers, but also sharpen your writing skills at the Word Lounge. The Word Lounge is a place where writing workshops will take place along side the sessions that happen in the main auditorium.

This is a space where you can explore different aspects of writing. Word Lounge will be conducted by the members of Alphabet Sambar – an experimental writing project, that nurtures and supports writers.

RamyaRamya Pandyan is Chef de Cuisine at Alphabet Sambar. A Bombay girl by birth and spirit, she had a storied career in the corporate world before she struck out to make a new way in words. She works as a digital storyteller, and was Grand Poobah for the first edition of Word Lounge held in Pune.

Aditya BAditya Bidikar thinks in panels and pixels. This Puneri man of letters writes fantasy fiction and also letters comic books for a living. His project ‘Daily Fiction’ had him turning out one weird idea a day, disguised as flash fiction for a year. Aditya brings the sweet union of words and pictures to Word Lounge this year.

SwaminiSwamini Deshpande is an engaging presenter of the written word. She is known for theatrics in her performance, which keeps her audience hooked to every word. Approachable and grounded, you will be surprised at what this foodie can whip out and churn out; worthy of the literary Michelin star.

AnishAnish Vyavahare is a branding consultant, teacher, and a writer. This biker boy has a funny take on everything. When he is not busy sharing exciting anecdotes with his students, Anish likes to spend time trying his hand at cooking and reading poetry. His writings are characterised by slapstick wit and quick humour.

PuckPuck is an irrepressible bundle of pure and unadulterated energy hurtling towards you. She of the infectious laughter, awkward antics, and delusions of grandeur that would put Darth Vader to shame. When she isn’t getting bitten by mosquitoes or being attacked by furniture, she can be found bundled under a thick blanket, cackling away at the latest Wodehousian concoction.

AmeyaAmeya Sarda is an avid black coffee-fuelled sleep deflector. Having never quite grown out of the kindergarten behaviour of teasing the people he likes, Ameya now spends most of his time playing board games and procrastinating writing. A younger sibling ensured an uncanny ability to stave off blame. He can usually be found Feeling the Bern or sniggering at Laurie & Fry.

janviJanvi Mahnot refers to herself as a ‘chocolate dependent’ life form. She is a Liberal Arts student, so jack of all trades, master of none. Loves quiet cafes and not-so-quiet book stores. An aspiring librarian; she has already got the glasses. In her spare time, she gets eccentric photographs clicked of herself. She is also a professional to-do list maker.

FairyFairy Dharawat is not a tale, she is a storyteller. She is versatile as a writer. But can anybody beat her at writing comic performance pieces where she takes the onus of representing the witty nuances of having pets like cats, dogs and cockroaches? I don’t think so.

RajashreeRajashree Gandhi aka Raju wins you over with amusing pocket size poems which you have got to hear. Her poems are a delightful mix of wit and charm just like her personality. This chirpy gal with a curly crop is an enthusiastic writer, who loves to ramble on how absurd some of the daily prime time television shows can be. And we couldn’t agree more with her.

FebinFebin Mathew is an engineer by the day and a writer at all times. He takes precision to a whole new level with his critique. His writing flows like a breeze but at the same time, you will be left holding on to your seats, for you don’t know when the next twist will leave you wanting for more of his wit and genius.

DishaDisha Khemchandani’s writing always takes off in new and interesting directions. Her quill is moody but when aflutter, it paints fresh canvasses with beautiful dreams and words.

Her verse is the echo of the soul.

VarunVarun Garg is a mechanical engineer and a nutrition advisor by qualification, writer by profession and a poet by nature. He writes in Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and English. Often his work captures nostalgia in its various forms and leaves the reader aching with a feeling for a home that was. He released his first book of poems titled ‘Visarjan’ at the World Book Fair, New Delhi in February 2014.

AditiAditi Maddali is currently pursuing freelance web related work in Mumbai. She is a city person and is interested in images, moving and still.

She is Alphabet Sambar’s official photographer for Word Lounge.

The Alphabet Sambar community spans fifteen cities and seven countries. Come say hello on Twitter or their Facebook group.

Email: AlphabetSambar[at]Gmail[dot]com

Unveiling the Word Lounge by Alphabet Sambar

WordLounge_WCMumbaiWriters, wordsmiths and spinners of yarns everywhere! Lend us your ears. For we present to you the 2016 edition of the Word Lounge! Replete with writing workshops, storytelling games, Twitter fiction, and many other adventures of the literary kind.

As you well know, writing is not just about stringing pretty words together, but it is about characters, dialogues, settings, story, genre etc. At the Word Lounge 2016, you will get to fine-tune these nuances.

Curious to know more? Read on.

Think you know your cinema? How about writing stories incorporating some of the most iconic dialogues in movie history? Better still, how about getting inside John’s head and getting him to do what you want, all to achieve your own nefarious goals. If being evil and manipulative is not your cup of tea (difficult as it is to believe), why not just relax with our fellow writers for a taste of some Alphabet Sambar?

We’ve all sung the wrong lyrics to a song. And in that moment when the terrible, traumatising truth dawns on us, we find ourselves standing our ground, adamantly protesting that our lyrics are better than the original (They fit better, for heaven’s sake!). Well, what if that could be true? Just this once? Come! Wield your pens and be delightfully wrong with us! The famous writer Oscar Wilde once said, “The heart was made to be broken.”

Let’s pick up the pieces in style at the Word Lounge. Tell us about the raised toilet seats. The missed appointments. The unpaid bills. The snoring. The nagging. The forgotten anniversaries. Tell it all!

And that is not the end of it. Here at the Word Lounge, you will learn about the jobs that aren’t out there, the jobs that only exist in a parallel universe.

Come visit us at the Word Lounge on 12th and 13th March! Wield your pen, flaunt your imagination, and awaken the writer within!

(Blogpost contributed by Disha)

Share your Support for WordCamp Mumbai 2016 with these Official Badges

Hey let everyone know you are participating in WordCamp Mumbai 2016 with a fresh badge.
Here are few badges that you can share on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, WhatsApp or Set this badge as your Profile pic or mention it in your tweet with our Hashtag #WCMumbai to support WordCamp Mumbai 2016.

I’m Attendee

Attending-Badge-WCMUM-2016

<a href="https://2016.mumbai.wordcamp.org/?utm_source=wcm16-badge-att"><img src="https://2016.mumbai.wordcamp.org/files/2016/03/wc_attendee.png" alt="I am Attending WordCamp Mumbai 2016" title="I am Attending WordCamp Mumbai 2016" width="150" height="175" /></a>

I’m Sponsor

Attending-Badge-WCMUM-2016

<a href="https://2016.mumbai.wordcamp.org/?utm_source=wcm16-badge-spo"><img src="https://2016.mumbai.wordcamp.org/files/2016/03/wc_sponsor.png" alt="I am sponsoring WordCamp Mumbai 2016" title="I am Sponsoring WordCamp Mumbai 2016" width="150" height="175" /></a>

I’m Speaker

Attending-Badge-WCMUM-2016

<a href="https://2016.mumbai.wordcamp.org/?utm_source=wcm16-badge-spe"><img src="https://2016.mumbai.wordcamp.org/files/2016/03/wc_speaker.png" alt="I am speaking at WordCamp Mumbai 2016" title="I am Sponsoring WordCamp Mumbai 2016" width="150" height="175" /></a>

I’m Organizer

Attending-Badge-WCMUM-2016

<a href="https://2016.mumbai.wordcamp.org/?utm_source=wcm16-badge-org"><img src="https://2016.mumbai.wordcamp.org/files/2016/03/wc_organizer.png" alt="I am Organizer at WordCamp Mumbai 2016" title="I am Organizer at WordCamp Mumbai 2016" width="150" height="175" /></a>

Learn from Sakin Shrestha on approaches to WordPress theme development

While developing any theme, choosing the right approach can make or break your theme. Taking a particular approach that suits your theme development goals, will not only increase your chances of making a great theme, but also have a good time doing it.

At WordCamp Mumbai 2016, Sakin Shrestha will tell us more on taking these approaches to WordPress theme development.

About Sakin

Sakin has developed and reviewed themes since 2012. He has experimented with various approaches including starting from scratch, parent and child theme, using starter themes, or using a framework. He will shed light on when to use each of these approaches, drawing from his own experience.

Join this session if you want to get started with WordPress theme development, or are a developer looking to get some tips on choosing the right approach.

You can tweet him @sakinshrestha

10up is our latest Sponsor

We are happy to announce our latest Bronze Sponsor – 10up.

A little about 10up.

10up is a full service digital agency with a passionate team of 120+ full-time strategists, designers and engineers working around the globe. 10up focuses on making content management simple through its premiere web design & development consulting services, by contributing thousands of hours and dollars every year to open platforms like WordPress, and by providing tools and products that make web publishing a cinch. 10up works with clients across diverse industries including media, non-profit, education, government and retail, at the scale of medium sized businesses to enterprise organizations. From beautiful pixels to beautiful code, the team engineers elegant solutions and delivers high quality digital experiences, applying their passions to clients’ projects and goals. For more information, please visit 10up.com.

You can follow them on facebook and twitter.

Raghavendra will speak on WordPress accessibility features

raghavendraOne of main issues with making themes and product accessible on WordPress is a lack of discussion around it. It is a major topic that should be addressed at every WordCamps where designers and developers are present.

Raghavendra Satish Peri will cover the basics of accessibility & how designers & developers can leverage the tools out there to make their WordPress themes more accessible.

Raghavendra will tell his own story and will show a few demos.

About Raghavendra

Raghavendra brings more than 5yrs of experience to the table in the niche area of Digital Accessibility; has worked with various clients ranging from travel & hospitality, e-commerce, entertainment & media, banking & finance and more.

He currently works with Deque Software as Digital Accessibility Consultant.

When he is not busy with his day job He spends his free time blogging,
training for marathons, listening to audiobooks, traveling & attending
conferences/local meet-ups.

Currently he is focusing his energy on enabling the wider design & developer community in India to understand why digital accessibility & digital equality is important.

Ramya Pandyan on “The Community Manager – the future of a blogger”

At every WordCamp there are many bloggers who attend and wonder, what exactly is the future of blogging. One future that can be imaged is the role of a Community Manager.

The role of a community manager is not very clear at times. They are responsible for but not dictators of the communities they manage. There are all kinds of people issues that come up and questions of security, access, control etc.

Ramya Pandya (aka Ideasmithy) as a content creator, sees her communities as the people who read and engage often with her content, some of them content creators themselves. Hear her talk about how these communities collaborate merging communities or even new communities being created at WordCamp Mumbai.

Ramya has been a long time blogger. She battles obscurity, slays boredom and keeps a lot of people entertained with her stories about Mumbai, men, books and life at large. She blogs, tweets, Insta’s, FB’s, +G’s and Goodreads.

Tweet-bomb her at @ideasmithy.

Darshan will show you the magic behind permalinks

darshan sawardekarURLs are the means we use to view and share content in WordPress. In this talk Darshan will talk about the URL architecture of WordPress. He’ll review the various permalink tags provided by WordPress and how to choose which ones to use. Finally we’ll look at different approaches to further customize these URLs to best match our content.

Darshan Sawardekar (@_dsawardekar) is a full stack software engineer with a keen interest in Test Driven Development. A relative newcomer to WordPress having only started out a few years ago with the 3.1 release he particularly enjoys working with the Plugin architecture of WordPress.

He is currently a Lead Web Engineer at 10up where he works on some amazing projects and helps scale very High Traffic WordPress installations.

Darshan is also an avid Vim user and plugin Developer. He built the WordPress.vim plugin which brings advanced IDE functionality like Auto-Completion, Syntax Highlighting, WP CLI integration to Vim.

WisdmLabs is our third bronze sponsor

This year we set out to raise more funds compared to the last few, in order to increase our capacity at the event, at first we thought it was too much of challenge to raise about 2-3 times the amount we raised in the last few years.

But we have exceeded our own expectations and have been able to raise enough to even afford a full house event, thanks to sponsors like WisdmLabs who are coming forward to help us.

We are glad to announce that WisdmLabs – A popular local WordPress Agency joins us as Bronze Sponsors.

Here’s a little about Wisdmlabs:

WisdmLabs believes in using Web weaving Technologies for all our endeavors, as it helps us to create great user experiences and provides our client’s business with commercial scalability.
Our Vision is to create great applications through innovation for universal web access
We aim to:
  • Leverage the power of web-based technology for our clients benefit
  • Build sustainable careers for all our colleagues
  • Create value for our overall community.
With 25 premium plugins and counting, we are a Products-focused services company. We are a team of quality-centric, target-oriented workaholics dealing in state-of-art business solutions and future-friendly web developments.

WordCamp Mumbai 2016 is over. Check out the next edition!