Multidots at WordCamp Mumbai 2017: The City of Dreams taught a lot to Our Team!

I just came back from Mumbai WordCamp and it was rocking!

Weren’t you there? Well, I am going to write about my fabulous journey here so just take a virtual tour with me  But, don’t forget to meet us on the next tour.

Multidots has previously attended many WordCamps and Mumbai WordCamp was third of them in the same year, i.e. 2017. Every one of us loves to contribute in technological advancement and has special interest in WordPress. The team was, therefore, excited to attend the event.

In case, you are Curious about WordCamp’s History: First WordCamp was organized in 2006 by Matt Mullenweg in San Francisco, inspiring the local communities to follow the same path.

From the general users to technology geeks – everyone is allowed to attend the WordCamp conferences. Bloggers, consultants, developers, professionals leveraging the WordPress’s potential comes together in these camps to discuss. Our main domains of work are Mobile applications, PHP, e-commerce and of course, WordPress.

Glimpses of the Host City Mumbai

Ahmadabad is around 500 kilometers from Mumbai, so taking flight was a wise option we chose. Mumbai is a beautiful city, with awe-inspiring architectures, fascination destinations, attractive landmarks (and unlimited dreams).

As everyone else, I reached Mumbai with some aspirations (ah, that zeal of learning is incomparable!). I was so excited to attend the camp and meet the fellow participants that I started thinking of the décor, food, people and sessions as we landed.

And, it started!

It was a two-day conference, comprising of multiple events. We started our journey towards Mumbai by early morning flight along with the WP Ahmedabad Community team members (Chetan Prajapati, Anand Thakkar, Parth Pandya).

We reach the venue on time. After wandering out in hot weather of Mumbai, it was a cool place to spend the rest time (thank god!). As registration was started, we headed to get our ID cards and then for the breakfast. Idli-Chutney and Tea – it was a perfect combination to refresh the brain before filling it with WP knowledge.

Our Experience at WordCamp

The WordCamp was filled with the most diverse audience this time. There were bloggers, students, developers, entrepreneurs, marketers, and Quality analysts attending the tour. We reached the auditorium and it was really huge. First session started at 10:30 AM. (The events, described below are not arranged serial-wise. So, pardon the human brain’s capabilities)

 1."Know your customers" By Shailee Sheth –

The event started with an in-depth talk on customers and business by Shailee Sheth, the Founder, and CEO of New Variable. She explained about how to understand the thought process and likes of the customers, we deal with. Their expectations and perceptions play an important role in the delivery of a satisfying end product or service.

The vast stage and new faces were there to make us curious, and we weren’t in mood of lessening the joy of this camp. So, we met and talked with some new people in the middle of session.

We also learnt about tackling the clients and considerable points before committing to their tasks. She spoke about her journey from a developer to a business person, and the decisions which she took to reach here (right & wrong).

2. "Importance of Marketing & Content Writing for Plugin Developers" By Vishal Kothari

Vishal Kothari, from Tyche Softwares, was excellent at explaining his viewpoint. His focus was to brief us about how to organize and write the content to enhance the reputation and sales. The writing flair, about us page, and other pages of the website should clearly convey the functionality of the plugin, we have created, as Vishal said. He also introduced us with the content marketing strategies they use at Tyche.

3. Exchanging our thoughts, about our vision & planning for the WordCamp Ahmedabad with Rocío Valdivia.

Rocio gave us the instructions, ideas, and tips for organizing the WordCamp at Ahmadabad (that’s where Multidots is based in) on the first day of the event.

How can we arrange the WordCamp Ahmedabad 2017 and what should be the areas of focus in that event were some common points we discussed.

4. "Developer tools that I use to increase my productivity as a WordPress developer" By Sudar Muthu –

This was the favorite part of camp for some of our team members (the developers). Sudar Muthu, working at 10up, came up with excellent ways of productivity enhancement for developers. His 8+ year experience, dozens of WordPress plugins were clearly telling that these tools helped him a lot.

In this session, he discussed different tools like IDE (PhpStorm) WP-CLI, Xdebug,

PHPUnit etc. which can be helpful to increase the productivity as a WP Developer. Apart from this, he also gave ideas to enhance the performance, useful for everyone in the camp.

5. "Why Business Writing is important?" By Fairy Dharawat

The session was focused on business writing specifically. As everything begins with the first interaction with the clients, learning to impress them through the official way of writing is necessary.

I was hungry but things were getting into mind very smoothly (thanks to Fairy for being so clear all the time.)

What to write, how to write, the degree of politeness, word selection, sentence structure, the precision of content, grammar and way of putting up the main point – everything matters in business writing. Fairy Dharawat, a technical writer by profession, was very clear in her talk and that’s the cause why our team learned what to consider while writing a proposal or response to the client.

6. "Adventures in Entrepreneurship" By Nirav Mehta

The session was focused on business writing specifically. As everything begins with the first interaction with the clients, learning to impress them through the official way of writing is necessary.

I was hungry but things were getting into mind very smoothly (thanks to Fairy for being so clear all the time.)

What to write, how to write, the degree of politeness, word selection, sentence structure, the precision of content, grammar and way of putting up the main point – everything matters in business writing. Fairy Dharawat, a technical writer by profession, was very clear in her talk and that’s the cause why our team learned what to consider while writing a proposal or response to the client.

7. "How to get (more) involved with WordPress" By Rocío Valdivia

Rocio was again with us this time. After the first interaction, we were more interested in listening to her ideas and she didn’t disappoint us. This time, she was putting his thoughts forward about how to get more involved with WordPress.

The session was a complete coverage of something, we never discussed. We learned multiple new ways of getting involved with WP. The talk went on, adding more and more new worth exploring things in our mind. Contributing in Polyglots, WPTV, Marketing Channel, etc. was some of the points got our attention during the talk. The Slack’s capabilities, she talked about, were not in our knowledge yet.

8. "Productivity: Chance or Choice" By Mridula Harshvardhan

Mridula told us that we have to use our best skills in our daily work routine to get the maximum productive output from them. Making the work our normal task will add more potential and prevent us from getting bored.

One of our team members noted the inputs from this session very dedicatedly. So, here are the highlights –

• Replace Should with Could

• Blame vs. Responsibility

The latter is more impressive as it made us learn the value of taking responsibility and avoiding blaming others. To sum it up, we can’t agree more with the speaker’s thought above the ways of increasing productivity. And, implementation of those ideas worked well (Yes, I tried).

9. Vibha’s Panel Discussion

Panel discussion event was carried out on the second day of WordCamp Mumbai 2017. One of our team members, Vibha Tiwari, got the chance to participate in the group discussion.

The title of the discussion was Manual Vs Automated Testing, which is a subject of debate for sure. She was accompanied by other valued people like Bigul Malayi, Ankit K Gupta & Khyati Gala. The discussion was moderated by Sudar Muthu from 10up.

This group discussion gave us a perfect opportunity to talk with other people, who were the part of the event. Everyone likes making new friends, and these friends were the amazing WordPress lovers like us (doubling up our joy). Multidots cherishingly invited people to visit our Ahmadabad agency to relive the camp days again.

10."Glimpse of WP-CLI" By Anand Thakkar:

It was a great and last session of the event (and I think that it was kept to end the WP Camp in the most influential way). Anand has shared his knowledge about what is CLI & WP-CLI, How to use WP-CLI, Basic syntax overview of WP-CLI. The concept of using command line interface to leverage WordPress capabilities was never that clear to us.

After WordCamp:

The WordCamp ended after this event, giving us enough time to explore the fantastic city of Mumbai. The exotic climate and free time tempted us to plan short visits to Siddhivinayak Temple & Juhu Chowpati.

Siddhivinayak is the most popular temple of Lord Ganesha in Mumbai. So, it was obvious to pay a visit to the beautiful temple and see the Ganapati with his four hands. Juhu Chowpati beach is the favorite destination of many and we had a deep zeal to see the vast peace-giving ocean after a long thought-provoking camp.

Finally, we moved back to the airport and took the flight to Ahmedabad.

Why WordCamp Mumbai 2017 was amazing for us?

Multidots loves to attend every (possibly) WordCamp organized in the country. The reason is the exposure it gives to our team members and the knowledge it adds to our professionals. Giving chance to new professionals every time, we let everyone enjoy the WordCamp experience. The team which visited Mumbai was too happy to share their experiences which the fellow mates.

WordPress has immense potential. It can change the world, businesses, blogging and society with its powerful publishing mechanism. Making online businesses easy is the main task of our company and WordPress can do it effectively. The plugins, considered the more revolutionary part of WP, have the latent to enhance website’s capabilities to any limits (well, practical limits!). It lets the naïves manage their business without any specific knowledge of technological complications, isn’t it miraculous in itself?

In all the ways, WordPress community and technology attracts us to explore more and learn more. So, see you in the next WordCamp!