I got to go there along with Mark and Noel from Automattic.

WordCamp Fukuoka T-Shirts

The main hall presentation opened from a talk by Ned Watson. He was funny and really enthusiastic. He’s already planning for WordCamp Fukuoka 2011 I liked what he said: “Bring a friend, and we’ll have 400 people next year”

I went to watch Yasuhiro Yamada talk about the difference between WordPress and Movable Type.

In he afternoon, I presented on a topic about the power and appeal of WordPress, covering its openness, expansibility, and community. My slides are in Japanese but it’s on Slideshare.

Presentation by Contact Form 7 Author Takayuki Miyoshi

I really enjoyed Takayuki’s presentation a lot. It was only for 30 minutes but I wish he kept talking! It was about how he got involved in WordPress and how his plugin Contact Form 7 grew to become one of the most popular ones. It was nothing about big promotion or even a well-planned strategy. He just kept making it better for users, and provided a way for others to help him in areas like translation.

Later on, I got on the stage to interpret Noel’s “Directed Design” presentation and Mark’s lightening talk on the official Plugin Directory. I heard a lot of good feedback about both of their talk.

There was an after-party with 100+ people at a nearby hall. There were some mini-presentations, sushi, beer, shochu and WordCamp cake

WordCamp Fukuoka Cake

Local bakery Strawberry Fields did an amazing job with the logo. Tasted great too…

WordCamp Fukuoka seemed to have inspired many people in Fukuoka as well as visitors from all around Japan. I was certainly impressed with the WordPress user & web developer community in Fukuoka. Now the organizers of WordCamp Yokohama (scheduled for May 29th this year) are getting busy planning for an even better one!

Awesome organizer/facilitator/babysitter Masanori Hashimoto of Nulab had written a report w/ photos: WordCamp Fukuoka 2010 finished!

You can see more photos on Flickr tag #wcfukuoka2010.

The speaker includes Contact Form 7 plugin author Takayuki Miyoshi (takayukister), P2/Monotone/Duotone theme author Noel Jackson, Time, Inc. consultant/developer Ned Watson, Frogman Office designer Yuki Yamaguchi, and paperboy&co. engineer Manno Junji (ecogrammer).

The idea for this WordCamp started from last year’s WordCamp NYC. Masanori Hashimoto, attendee & sponsor of WCNYC was so inspired by the event that he decided doing a WordCamp in Fukuoka. I’m excited to see such influence from one WordCamp to another, because that’s how I got involved in organizing WordCamps myself after attending one in San Francisco in 2007. I’m sure a lot of good things will come out of this event too.

Some Facts:

• This WordCamp is the 4th one in Japan (hopefully followed by more in other cities later in the year!).
• Almost 200 event attendees & 100 after-party signups at this time. Largest attendance for WordCamp in Japan so far.
• The “Genius Bar” will be held at a Japanese tearoom. I’m sure that’s the first time ever

You can follow their Twitter account @wcfukuoka2010 or #wcfukuoka2010 hashtag.

I don’t think it’s a well-known fact outside of Japan but blogging is pretty big over there. As seen in one of the slide, there are more than 27 million hosted blog accounts across 68 services, according to a research [ja] done by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. WordPress userbase is growing too – especially in the past year.

The reason in short is that it’s a free and open platform to build upon. For example, a lot of people in Japan choose WordPress because of the availability of plugins that enables mobile device more accessible. And the strong community through WordCamps and meetups in addition to online interaction is helping it a lot as well.

I’ll write more about this topic and other presentations that followed (also on internationalization of WordPress) later. Now, I’m off to another day of WordCamp NYC!

Related:

WordCamp NYC 2009 Blog: WordPress Community in Japan

WordPress Community in Japan

Japanese use of WordPress is growing fast. The number of downloads has quadrupled in a year and half, and the number of local user groups has grown to 27 since April. This presentation will cover the blogging trend in Japan, how they use WordPress, WordCamps and meetups in Japan, differences and similarities to the U.S. community, and more.

This WordCamp is going to be huge! Not only it’s held over 2 days (14th & 15th), there will be over 50 sessions in 8 tracks. Sessions include hands-on workshops, advanced topics, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A sessions, CMS/BuddyPress/MU related presentations, and many more.

There will be a hacker room where you can “just code” with core developers (2.9 Bug Hunt will take place here).

I’m really excited to talk about Japanese WordPress community in a WordCamp outside of Japan. Blogging has grown to be a pretty big deal in Japan, and WordPress is growing steadily. Even if you aren’t exactly sure if you want to know about WordPress in Japan, I think you can learn a tip or two for expanding your open source project / business / blog internationally.

WordCamp NYC “regular” registration ends today! If you want to make sure you get a special event T-shirt, make sure to get your ticket before the end of day (EST)!

Quick Facts:

• WordCamp Kyoto was the third WordCamp in Japan, first one outside of Tokyo
• 150 attendees total + about 15 staff + 15 sponsors
• Kyoto is the 7th largest city by the population, and is close to Osaka (3rd)

This event was organized in a month or so (which isn’t all too bad – I found that the more time you have, the longer it takes). Kyoto Research Park (KRP) hosted the 1st day & gave a pretty good discount for the venue on the 2nd day. Having sponsors also helped covering the cost. Many of past WordCamp Tokyo volunteers helped out preparing and as staff on both days.

Day 1: “Business Day”

Photo by yorozu2009 on Flickr

• Ktai Style (mobile plugin) presentation by Yuriko Ikeda was highly anticipated and appreciated as always.
• Contact Form 7 author Takayuki Miyoshi talked about using WordPress as a customer support tool (he’s working on a new plugin called Support Tickets).
• There was an instruction of real-time collaborative drawing tool “Cacoo“, which just opened up for closed beta testing. It lets you create charts and wireframes. Its WordPress plugin is coming soon.
• “WordPress Business Community” WPbiz was also introduced. It’s going to be as site with business directory & forums for Japanese business users.

Day 2: “Community Day”

Photo by waviaei on Flickr

I did a presentation on brief history & current state of WordPress. Other topics: DB backup, search/content filtering plugin, Thematic theme framework, GPL commercial theme, server optimization, and Q & A session.
We tried to pick topics based on the past WordCamp survey (Organizers: after-event survey is important! You can get a better bigger picture from this than random feedback).

We did a “video letter” of Matt on both days (Thanks to Matt, Michael P & Ryan M!).

Lightening talks

Each speaker had 5 minutes to talk about various topics: NPO & WordPress, backing up WordPress files with uuenview + Gmail, introducing new WordPress book (by the author), CakePHP & WordPress integration, & Generating Flash xml using custom fields.

Photo by odysseygate on Flickr

After-party

We held the after-party at a banquet hall in the same building. That was a good choice because people had time to hang out at the lounge after the main event & didn’t have any trouble finding the place. It was easy for the staff as well. Everyone seemed to enjoy the layout of the hall.

You can check out Flickr photos for WordCamp Kyoto (for some reason, Japanese WP users also love photos & cameras. This seems like a worldwide trend?).

The 2-day event will consist of a series of talks on Friday (targeted for hosting companies and other businesses) and a larger conference & after-party on Saturday.

I will be the keynote/opening speaker for the “Community Day”. I’m going to cover the overview of what’s happening around the WordPress world in Japan and worldwide.

I know it’s so late to blog this but here are the details in English.

WordCamp Kyoto 2009

Location

Kyoto Research Park (KRP)

Date & Time

Business Day: Friday, October 16th (15:00 – 16:15)
Community Day: Saturday, October 17th (10:00 -16:15 / After-party: 17:00 – 19:00)

Fee

Free (Business Day) / 1,000 yen (Community Day) / 4,500 yen (After-Party)

Speakers

All of the presentation will be in Japanese, except for WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg’s subtitled video message. Speakers will gather from all around Japan, including Yuriko Ikeda (Ktai plugin author) from kawasaki and Takayuki Miyoshi (Contact Form 7 plugin author) from Fukuoka. Please visit the schedule page for more details.

Registration

Go to the sign up page. Registration will be closing at 23:59 (JST) on October 10th.

You can follow the updates on the event’s official web site, kyoto.wordcamp.org, or on Twitter (@wordcamp_kyoto and #wckyoto09). No live streaming is planned, but videos will be uploaded to WordPress.tv afterward.

Please feel free to leave a comment & contact me if you want to ask questions in English!

But I somehow always have an incredibly good luck when it comes to anything to do with WordPress
A lot of the attendees were excited to talk to me & ask questions, and I felt really welcomed as a representative of Automattic/WordPress.

The host of my panel, Cheryl Contee of Jack and Jill Politics and another speaker Dirck Hargraves from VOX Global were super nice, so I was able to relax a bit. Cheryl’s achievement as a political blogger is really impressive, but besides that seeing her speak (off stage, too!) was one of the best part of the event.

In my presentation “Growing Your Blog with WordPress”, I talked about WordPress mobile tools including iPhone app, upcoming Blackberry app, and posting through email. Everyone was really interested in import tool to move from another blog system, as well as building a community web site using BuddyPress.
Here are my slides:

Coincidentally, my client Hajj Flemings was there as a speaker. I missed his BrandCamp event last year (delayed flight back from Japan!), so I finally got to see his presentation in person.

I’m not an African American, which 99% of the attendees were, but I could relate to being a minority (= Asian in Michigan, woman in an IT field). During the Q & A, there was one question about how I think about being a woman in male-dominated techie world. I think the definition of majority/minority is different online, it has less to do with how you look, but more about what you do and how you think. So in a way blogging is especially great for less empowered group of people in the society. You can be a powerful force online solely based on your ability to get things done (writing, organizing, promoting, etc).

Being a bloggers event, there are a lot of great reports written about it. I’ll let them illustrate the atomosphere:

• Blogging While Brown 2009: A Conference for People of Color with Lessons For All Bloggers (Megan’s Minute)
• Oops We Did It Again: Blogging While Brown 2009- Chicago-First Video (What About Our Daughters)
• Blogging While Brown Rocked! (Awesomely Luvvie)
• Blogging While Brown (Hot Time in the Old Town)

WordCamp SF 2009

It was nice to be at WordCamp SF after missing it last year. This was my first time since I organized two WordCamps in Tokyo (+ an event in Osaka), so I was even more impressed with how smoothly the whole thing went. I know it wasn’t easy but seemed effortless… great job!!

I helped at the Genius Bar answering some questions; it was different from answering question over help desk tickets and email… but I enjoyed it.

I feel like I’m always repeating myself, but meeting people face-to-face is very powerful thing. People are excited about real-time communication (i.e. Twitter, Google Wave) but nothing is more real than actually being there. I’m happy to be able to realize that fully because of WordPress, which is kind of ironic since it started out to be totally virtual project across people in different countries. It all circles back I guess.

WordPress 2.8

My favorite thing about 2.8 so far is the speed (of the admin panel). I’m not the one to switch themes/widgets all the time but those features are neat, too. Being able to browse through many themes gives me some idea for future redesign… though I have no idea when that will be

Ferndale WordPress Meetup

Created yet another WordPress site for the Ferndale WordPress Meetup. But during last meetup, I just realized taking notes on text editor and writing a post later is so old school! I’m going to use P2 to live-blog next time. This way, we can share URLs much easier across the table too.

I just started working with Automattic (the company behind wordpress.com and many other cool products and services) on a contract-basis. I’ll be doing user support, aka Happiness Engineer, with special focus on Japan.

Here’s my story in case you’re intereted.

I’ve been using WordPress for a while on my Japanese blog site. I had a Movable Type blog since May 2003, then switched to WordPress in November of the same year. Does anyone remember when the template was a single index.php file?

Many Japanese WordPress users had been using WordPress ME (Multilingual Edition), a fork project of WordPress. I was mostly helping out with documentation and other translation (which lead me to write WordPress books in Japanese).

Then in March 2008, the lead dev of ME (Otsukare-san) announced that he is quitting the development altogether, along with the documentation & distribution sites that he had been maintaining.

Around that time, I finally realized that WordPress isn’t something that just magiacally happens. It was our responsibily to keep it going. Had we showed more appreciation to Otsukare-san for doing what he was doing and offered more help, maybe things were diffrent. But the fact was that we were losing the main WordPress distribution site in Japanese at that time.

We launched the official Japanese WordPress site (ja.wordpress.org) soon after, then forums and documentation site. Yuriko even took the lead to set up a WordPress ME support site & forum for those who need help migrating to core WordPress install.

Since then, the localization team and the community have been very active working on WordCamps, WordBench (Miyoshi-san’s brainchild). The plugin distribution project team was even interviewed as one of the most active projects on SourceForge.jp.

There is no doubt WordPress has played a big part in both my professional and personal growth.

So I had no other way but to say yes when Matt asked me (after this month’s WordCamp Tokyo) if I’d be interested in working with Automattic.

I think it’s a good news that they are putting more resource into places like Japan. I’m really excited to have this opportunity to help bring WordPress to more people.

WordCamp Tokyo 2009 took place on Sunday, April 12th at Kasai Kumin Kaikan in Edogawa-ku, Tokyo. We had reserved the venue because it was one of a few affordable choices we had for 100+ seats hall. Last year, all 80 tickets were sold out in a little more than 24 hours. We didn’t want that to happen again, so we picked a place where we didn’t have to worry about the same situation.

This year we had about 180 registrants; 150 attendees showed up (excluding about 20 staff + speakers). Although we didn’t fill the 450-seat room, we were very pleased with the growing interests. The length of the event was also extend to full-day from only having afternoon sessions last year.

The sessions consisted of 8 regular (10-30 minutes) speakers and 4 lightening talk (5 minutes) speakers. Matt Mullenweg came to Japan for the first time to speak. Michael Pick from Automattic, who spoke last year in Tokyo, talked about WordPress.tv. Other speakers’ topics included tips on plugin & theme development, dissection of Japanese language support plugin, Ktai (cell phone/mobile) blogging, and advantage of using WordPress in web dev businesses.

I thought it was interesting that there were so many questions submitted (we asked people to turn in written questions after the lunch break) for Matt’s Q & A time. We ended up adding some more time for him to answer questions on stage because of it. Some of the questions made me realize that we as a localization team need to be communicating better with Japanese users. That is, some things we take for granted are not necessariy well understood among other users. I hope to make an improvement on that through blogs and documentation in the future.

After-party was literally packed! Seemed like people had a lot of fun meeting old friends & new acquaintances. It’s a rare occasion for us Japanese localization team to get together all at once, so that was nice as well.

Now a week after the whole thing, WordBench.org (local WordPress fan community site using BuddyPress) added about 100 more users. I hope it’s an indication that people at WordCamp realized how fun it is to meet others in person to talk & learn about WordPress.

I want to thank everyone who came, spoke, and helped this WordCamp Tokyo. I also want to say thanks to all those who have been contributing to WordPress project; WordCamp will not exist without everyone who is making WordPress an awesome software.

Photo credit: odysseygate. You can find more WordCamp Tokyo 2009 photos on Flickr.