Updates

Meet our next speaker for WordCamp Kochi 2017, Nagesh Pai.

A Happiness Engineer at Automattic, Nagesh started his WordPress journey as a freelancer, by building, and tinkering with WordPress websites between 2012 and 2016.

Nagesh comes with a rather diverse career track-record. With a strong background in Banking & Finance, Nagesh has worked in the roles of Digital Marketing at Technology, as well as in Media houses. He has also served as a Media Planner in quite-a-few agencies. The interesting part about his story is that, despite his diverse background, Nagesh’s WordPress journey kickstarted from a unique vertical: by setting up and running a community website that he built, without having any prior knowledge of programming. – RadioIdli.net. He started it on blogger, and, migrated it to self-hosted WordPress. This journey, introduced him to a career in digital marketing, helped him learn to create beautiful websites, and eventually led him to Automattic!

Nagesh will be speaking at WordCamp Kochi on the topic – Build your own Medium using WordPress.com

In today’s fast-paced world, it is essential for every individual, or institution, to ‘own’ their place in the World Wide Web, through a custom website in their own name. Whether one is a journalist or a teacher, an artist or an observer, having an own medium of communication with the world – through a website is exciting, to say the least. Through his talk, Nagesh will guide the audience on how to create a website through WordPress.com . Platforms like WordPress.com extend the functionality of the open-source WordPress software, and make it significantly-easy for anyone to create their own website, and to gain popularity, with quality content, and by sharing unique ideas.

Nagesh feels that a medium to express one’s own ideas through a unique website will be very relevant for the audience of WordCamp Kochi – considering the fact that Kochi (located in Kerala), known for its progressive socio-economic and cultural indicators, as well as its argumentative and democratic culture. Intended for all audiences, Nagesh will explain the ease, and convenience of making one’s own website, through his talk, by drawing references from how he made his own community website, with zero starting investment as programming knowledge. He will also share some quick tips and tricks on how one can create their own medium of communication on WordPress.com, and then popularize it towards making it a well-read destination.

Wanna learn more on how to blog, and set up your own WordPress website? Come, grab a ticket for WordCamp Kochi at the earliest!

Introducing our second lady speaker for WordCamp Kochi 2017 – Keerthana Krishnan

Keerthana K is a developer based in Cochin, India. She was a participant in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2016. She’s an avid FOSS enthusiast, and a passionate contributor to quite a few open source projects. She loves to tinker with gadgets and technology, and to write about her coding escapades. She was also a speaker to DebConf16, the official Debian conference in 2016 held at Cape Town, South Africa.

She will be speaking at WordCamp Kochi on the topic – Demonetisation for Developers, How Technology Heals the Digital Divide

In her talk, she’ll cover how the world’s largest democracy woke up to demonetization, which gave a hard push into using digital transactions in everyday life, and she’ll examines its consequences on developers who have to now come up with fool proof ways so that India can pay it’s bills.

Dethroning the USA for the largest user base for Facebook with 195 million users, only 35% of the Indian population still has access to the Internet in 2016. However, with demonetization, the cash crunch has forced many people to migrate to digital transactions and e-wallets, giving a boost to the Internet infrastructure and consumption. This talk is a necessary big picture conversation, long overdue, on how everyday developers can build safer and more accessible systems for public use without compromising on security.

Her focus will be on Web development and User Experience. It will take on examples and observations faced in the digital landscape of India, where illiteracy, the language barriers, access to steady Internet and many other factors create complex problem solving challenges for developers, similar to many other developing countries. This talk is especially meant for Front End Developers and Content Creators who are looking to expand their user base into South Asia and other emerging economies, and will be in a beginner level.

Wanna meet our speakers in person, and participate in these interactive sessions to grab some food for thought? Grab a ticket for WCKochi at the earliest!