Tag archive for WordCamp

Last Saturday and Sunday (17-18 January), I attended an amazing event called “WordCamp Indonesia ″, the 1st Annual Conference for WordPress Enthusiasts, which was held at Erasmus Huis, the Netherland Embassy, Jakarta. I have been waiting to attend this event to thank Matt Mullenweg personally for creating such a wonderful blogging platform: WordPress. I was so fortunate that I finally got the chance to meet him, thank him, and luckily be one of the panelist on a talk show about WordPress Business Forum with him.

WordCamp Indonesia was held in Erasmus Huis, the office of the embassy of The Netherlands for Indonesia. The conference itself was held inside an auditorium, attended by approximately 150 attendees, including developers, designers, bloggers, sponsors, and media representatives. It’s totally my rough guess, I didn’t check the guest list thoroughly.

It was clear to see that they who attended this event really appreciate the development of WordPress and seemed curious about how it all started, the mastermind behind it, and everything related to it including the codes, the plugins, the themes, the user interface, and everything. Everyone seemed so passionate to be there, them who are newbie users and even them the PHP/CSS freaks. A blogger community (Anging Mamiri) even tried so hard coming all the way from Makassar to attend this event.

The first day was started with an opening speech by Valent Mustamin, the organizer, and Matt Mullenweg. We then continued with a presentation by Nanda Ivens, a representative from IndoPacific Edelman, who told us some interesting facts about the digital influence in the current society. There was also a WordPress Free Forum, a talk show that discussed about WordPress from the user’s point of view. Ryan Koesuma, a friend from Bandung Blog Village is one of the panelist there.

It’s Romi Satria Wahono who started the second day. He gave us some valuable insights about personal branding. In the afternoon, Nukman Luthfie from Virtual Consulting presented us a hilarious presentation about himself, wrapped with an elegant topic: Corporate Blogging. Hahaha. And the funny thing with these two guys is that both of them acted as if they were the “fairest among us all”. No wonder they succeeded well in building personal and corporate brand.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to join a talk show with a topic: WordPress Business Forum, that was held just before the lunch on the second day. The talk show was moderated by Deden Purnamahadi, and Matt Mullenweg was the main panelists, accompanied by Nadiah Alwi and me.

Just before the end of the second day, there was a presentation from the finalists of Paperless Mading Competition (Mading Online Bandung Blog Vaganza): SMUN 20 Bandung, SMKN 4 Bandung, and SMKN Informatika Bandung. One of the team presented a wonderful idea relating WordPress to paperless school magazine: “Using WordPress for school magazines means helping the world to survive from the Global Warming.”

These are some screen shots of their wonderful works. They are using WordPress MU and the Arthemia Premium theme.

Bottomline, it was such a once in a lifetime experience to meet wonderful guys there. I saw famous people like Enda Nasution, Ndoro Kakung, Christian Sugiono, and of course Matt Mullenweg. I met new friends: Simon Lim, Septi Yulia Sari, Cynthia Rahayu, Erick Mainaky, and many others.

I totally look forward to attending WordCamp Indonesia. And I can’t stop thinking: he is only 25-year-old, he didn’t finish his degree at his university, but he was named to be the 16th most important people on the Web by PC World. Amazing, huh?