I still took the time to highlight and record all the main highlights, impressions, and progress that our team experienced by visiting the annual massive WordPress event – WordCamp Asia, which began in the middle of February 2023.
We connected with other people in the WordPress market and learned from experts in the industry. Also, we wanted to see our potential as sponsors for future events. In this blog post, we will share our impressions and highlights from this experience.
I must say that up to this point our team has never participated in WordCamp events, and for us it was the first experience.
The purpose of our visit was, first of all, to connect with partners in the WordPress market, establish contacts, meet new people, listen to the speakers, and also understand for ourselves whether we need to rise to a higher stage (become a sponsor) in the next events.
So I will try to briefly describe how this event went for us. Here I mention all our partners, which we have met in WordCamp Asia 2023. Hope you will enjoy it.
Content Outline
- What is WordCamp?
- Bangkok – The Pearl of the Far East and the Venue for WordCamp Asia
- List of Official Sponsors
- Day 1 – Contributors Event
- Day 2 & 3 – Speakers and Swags Distribution
- Freemius and WordCamp After Party
- Conclusion
So What is WordCamp?
WordCamp is an informal conference or gathering organized by the WordPress community, primarily focused on sharing knowledge and experiences related to WordPress, the popular open-source content management system. WordCamps are held in various locations around the world and typically span over one or more days.
WordCamp gathers developers, influencers, journalists, bloggers, entrepreneurs, and all of these geeks from around the world. Usually, each event runs in different cities all over the world. And participating in the event becomes more interesting because it is a chance to plunge into the culture and atmosphere of another country, albeit for a short time.
This year, WordCamp took place in February in Bangkok, Thailand. It’s a magnificent city with a rich history. A lot of participants had never met each other before and got to connect with new faces.
A significant feature of this conference was that this time a huge number of participants came to this event that had never met anywhere before.
Bangkok – The Pearl of the Far East and the Venue for WordCamp Asia
This year, Bangkok took on the role of organizing WordCamp Asia under the thorough leadership of three WordPress community enthusiasts, true professionals in their expertise, and simply nice people:
Many other collaborators participated and each contributed in their way. Whether as speakers, sponsors, volunteer wranglers, website designers, marketers, etc.
The venue for WordCamp was on the upper floor of ICONSIAM.
It is one of the world’s largest malls. It’s so big that it would take several days to explore the whole building. There is even a stunning artificial waterfall inside the mall.
List of Official Sponsors
There were 44 sponsors, both true gurus in the WordPress community and new companies.
The organizers grouped the sponsors based on the amount of funds they contributed. Then they provided sponsors with space for presentations and contests. The more prestigious the sponsorship group, the larger the space provided.
Google, WooCommerce, Elementor, Cloudways, Jetpack, Bluehost, and GoDaddy sponsored the event. There were also notable sponsors, Weglot, Stackable, BuddyBoss, ThemePark, Atarim, and many more.
Day 1 – Contributors Event
Briefly speaking, the complete event can be divided into 4 days.
On the first day, all participants had the opportunity to voluntarily take part in a group session focused on WordPress development, and sharing experiences and skills with each other.
Participants can choose from several WordPress development groups:
- Accessibility
- Community
- Core / Core Performance
- CLI
- Design
- Documentation
- Hosting
- Marketing
- Meta
- Mobile
- Openverse
- Patterns
- Photos
- Plugins
- Polyglots
- Support
- Test
- Themes
- Tide
- Training
- TV
Both my colleague, Lawrence Ladomery, and I personally joined the Marketing group since that is our specialization.
Day 2 & 3 – Speakers and Swags Distribution
During these days, sponsors, participants, volunteers, and WordPress enthusiasts gathered together. We met amazing people like Elementor, Stackable, WPRocket, Weglot, and more. We also enjoyed delicious food and explored different stalls.
We had the opportunity to meet many of them in person, which was a fabulous experience.
Let me introduce with whom we had the great chance to meet in person.
Elementor
We were thrilled to meet the Elementor team. As we already had a strong integration with their page builder in our plugins. This reinforced our commitment to using Elementor in our Motors demos.
Stackable
Partnering with Stackable was a major achievement for us at the event. Their plugin enhances Gutenberg with unique widgets. So we agreed to integrate it with our MasterStudy LMS. Users can enjoy the benefits of Gutenberg alongside Elementor, WPBakery, and Divi.
Benjamin Intal, founder and CEO of the plugin, and Liana Crisostomo, Partnership Member are pleasant guys who are always ready to establish a strong partnership.
WPRocket
We had a pleasant interaction with the friendly partners from WPRocket. They are famous for their fast and efficient cache plugin.
Weglot
Weglot caught our attention with its powerful multilingual plugin. It can seamlessly integrate with WordPress. The plugin makes translation and displaying content in many languages easy.
Siteground
We learned a lot from Siteground. They are a reliable hosting company from Bulgaria that specializes in WordPress hosting.
WPManageNinja
These guys are known for their line of Fluent products which includes CRM, form builder, and many other projects.
rtCamp
A diverse team of WordPress specialists came to WordCamp as a sponsor to offer the vacancies.
I don’t think this company needs any introduction. Here they performed with their products specifically for WordPress, including Site Kit and their branded image format – webp.
All-in-One WP Migration
Probably the most advanced plugin for migrating just about anything from one site to another in WordPress.
Kubio
Another developer of an exclusive editor for WordPress sites.
ThemePark
A development team from Japan who were dressed very originally in Wapuu hats.
Yuan Jhen
A hosting company from Taiwan that has unique offers for the establishment and development of WordPress sites.
In addition, I need to mention the WordCamp volunteers who have done a great job and assisted with the organization of such a fantastic event. All of them, without exception, are very friendly people.
In addition to visits to different stalls from sponsors, we could also listen to the speakers in separate halls and conference rooms.
At lunchtime, we were treated to a variety of dishes to choose from. Any participant could take a set of dishes according to their preferences, whether they are a vegetarian, a fan of light meals, or seafood. Food, in Bangkok, by the way, is super yummy and is widespread everywhere at every corner.
Didn’t I mention the dining where food was served? So, it is truly a massive room with high ceilings and burgundy walls.
Freemius and WordCamp After Party
We had a great time at the after-party, meeting friends from Freemius and other developers.
They invited us to their own small yet cozy party where some developers met each other and hung out. The place is called Save Our Souls Craft Beer Bar.
We had a couple of nice photos.
Meet the founder and owner of Freemius – Vova Feldman.
And their Content Writer – Robert Nolte.
I also met Sujay Pawar and Vijay Devkar from Astra at this party.
But the most memorable was undoubtedly the party right after the official ending of WordCamp Asia.
We even had a photoshoot with Naoko Takano, the leader of WordCamp Asia 2023.
And with many other people, developers, and attendees.
The party was absolutely fabulous and went on until and beyond midnight. There was live music, tasty snacks, and a lot of fun. Overall, it was a fun-filled evening!
Conclusion
Attending WordCamp Asia proved to be a mind-blowing opportunity for us. We got to meet new people and strengthen relationships with our current partners. Also, we did introduce ourselves to a fresh audience.
The next month of March, after attending WordCamp, was the most profitable for us and characterized by record-breaking sales of our plugins (especially for MasterStudy LMS and Cost Calculator), which indeed makes us proud and happy.
We’ve decided to take part in future conferences like this, even as sponsors. Being involved in such an event is an incredible honor for any WordPress developer.
A big thank you to the organizers and attendees of this spectacular gathering. Stay tuned for more updates on our blog!