WordCamps being an integral part of WordPress Community, we at Tyche Softwares always try to be a part and attend as many WordCamps happening in the country. We recently attended WordCamp Nashik with 10 members from our team, that was held on 16th October 2016. We were Silver Sponsors for the event as well.
As we had heard about WordCamp Nashik happening, our first thought was to attend it for sure. Upon that our team head, Vishal Kothari thought of being a Silver Sponsor along with DevriX being Bronze sponsors & being a speaker. So, he emailed the committee members for the same, gladly they replied back with their details.
He also applied for being a speaker at the event, interviews were taken for the same on Hangout by the WordCamp organizers. But, unfortunately, he was not selected, but fortunately, he was selected for a panel discussion on How to Build a Business on WordPress, which was a first for him! It was an unsaid honor for him being in the panel discussion, as only successful CEOs get selected to be in such panel discussion. It was a proud feeling for the whole team.
He was also interviewed at the venue which you can watch on central.wordcamp.org once it is uploaded.
My experience:
That being said about our team’s excitement, I was super excited after attending WordCamp Singapore 2016 last month. This would give me a chance to meet all the people who were also attending the event from Mumbai, Pune, make new friends and also learn from people’s experience.
We had arranged for a traveler bus for commuting to the venue as we were a team of 10 attending the event. We all were super excited for traveling by road to Nashik. This was the first time for many of us to visit Nashik for the first time. From 10 of us attending the WordCamp for 3 of our team members, WordCamp Nashik was their first ever WordCamp. At 5 in the morning we were all set to commence our 3 hour journey to Nashik. Took a small halt for morning breakfast.
Tea break..on the way to @wcnashik pic.twitter.com/GUaAvuDY0Y
— khyati (@galakhyati) October 16, 2016
We reached NEC, Nashik on time, registered ourself and went ahead to setup our booth at the venue and get ready for the event to get started.
Our Booth:
This was the first time we had sponsored a WordCamp. We were Silver Sponsers. We were given a booth where we could display our products and people could come and meet and know about our products.
There was a constant rush of people coming to meet and know us as a team as well as to know what business we were in. Being sponsors was a big win for us as a company. Many people came to know about our company and our products. We had arranged for some goodies & chocolates to give away to attendees. The response was very well indeed!
Adding to it, from the 10 of us there were 4 of us who were Jain and thanks to Harshad Mane, who is a core committee member of WordCamp Nashik, arranged for Jain food for us. This again was a first for WordCamps I have been to, to arranged for Jain food on special request. Kudos to Harshad Mane!
The sessions I had attended were quite explanatory and to the point. I attended some sessions as well as spent some time networking with some attendees, sponsorers, and crew (volunteers of WordCamp). The sessions I attended were:
Winning with WooCommerce – Nirav Mehta
The BuzzWord ‘UX’, Why it is so Important? – Jayman Pandya
How to build a Business on WordPress – Panel Discussion Panel Discussion
Automated Testing in WordPress Eco System – Anand Thakkar
WordPress APIs: Do more with less code – Harshal Limaye
Contribution to WordPress – Panel Discussion
Marketing Lessons I learnt from the WP community – Saurabh Shukla
Here is a live stream of the panel discussion taken by me on Twitter Live:
LIVE on #Periscope: wcnashik https://t.co/kZAvSnXSDd
— khyati (@galakhyati) October 16, 2016
Got to meet many of my friends Alexander Gounder, Aditya Kane, Meher Bala, Vachan Kudmule, Sahil Majethia, Vivek Jain, Bigul Malayi and many more.
Got introduced to many people as well. Also, got to explore more about how to make the best use of WooCommerce in your business(Session taken by Nirav Mehta).
Being a tester I was excited about the Automated Testing session. The session was quite small but was a good introduction for Automated Testing. I catched up later with Anand Thakkar after his session to discuss the issues I was getting in setting up PHPUnit on my machine. His guidance was a big help. Thanks, Anand Thakkar!
Both the Panel discussions were nice as well. We got to know about the way people were growing their business with WordPress, etc.
As a Sponsors for WordCamp, we were given a token of thanks from WordCamp Nashik:
WordCamp Nashik had also arranged a fun competition where every hour a 2 tweets with a hashtag #wcnashik was selected as the best tweet of the hour. Surprisingly I won for two of my tweets. These were the tweets for which I was awarded:
Baby steps with baby clothes e-shop with @WooCommerce @niravmehta talk! #wcnashik
— khyati (@galakhyati) October 16, 2016
and..
Our customer support is handling juniour atendee at #wcnashik always ready for help!
In all WordCamp Nashik was one of the best WordCamps I have been at. The number of interactions with so many people, the amount of response at our booth, the talented people that I got to meet was immensely overwhelming.
Thank you WordCamp Nashik Organisers, Volunteers, Sponsors, Speakers & Attendees for this awesome experience.
All good things have to come to an end. Thank you all @wcnashik organisers. #wcnashik pic.twitter.com/sBJ7ifWmRv
— Tyche Softwares (@tychesoftwares) October 16, 2016
After this full energy pack day, there was an After Party arranged by the organizers. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend it due to other commitments.
Luckily, Vishal was able to attend it and enjoyed with a bunch of the attendees. Here is a sneak peek of the party. There were some food, drinks and dancing, Full too fun!!
In all, it was a very interesting day and a Sunday well spent!! Soon we left around 7pm the same day to go back to Mumbai with sweet memories of the day. Thank you WordCamp Nashik to make our day worthwhile.
Let me know your experience of any of WordCamp Nashik if you were there too..
