WordCamp Kuala Lumpur 2017

WordCamp KL took place this past 25 November at Royale Chulan Bukit Bintang. It was a long 7 year wait for the official WordCamp to return to Malaysia, so I was eagerly anticipating the event.

Between the first WordCamp and this one, anyone could have organized another WordCamp. Unfortunately our local WordPress community appears to be very scattered and isn’t actively meeting up. I regret not taking a more active role too.

So you might expect that this WordCamp be a rather small and muted affair. In fact, this WordCamp was pretty big. 16 speakers, 14 talks and almost 200 delegates from 10 countries around the region. Hats off to the organizers, especially Sam Suresh for making it all happen in the first place.

We filled up the grand ballroom

Despite a few hiccups at the start of the event, WordCamp KL was a success. There was a good balance of different talks. I enjoyed IDOSPA’s talk about how they launched their startup with WooCommerce and a handful of extensions, Eric Tracz’s talk about Peepso, the panel discussion on running a WP agency and Niels Lange on the Gutenberg project. The most popular talk by far was from Cherry Prommawin from Google, who talked about modern SEO.

Niels inspired me to finally try Gutenberg. I’m writing this post in Gutenberg now, despite the warning to only use it on dev sites. The ride has been a little bumpy, but so far I’m enjoying it, and cautiously excited about the future WordPress.

Edit: Gutenberg crapped out on me and couldn’t publish ๐Ÿ™

I gave a talk too โ€“ Why Your WordPress Website Is Slow (and How To Fix It). I think I’m the only guy who used car analogies and took a selfie from the stage.

Stage selfie!

The best part of WordCamp for me was meeting people. I finally met up with Suraya Zainudin and Leo Koo in person after knowing them online for a while now. I also enjoyed and hanging out with Jerry from WHSR and Jonath Lee from iPoh. Robert Sim is a co-organizer of WordCamp SG and he traveled here to help with ours. Purnendu visited all the way from India and even brought me a gift. And of course, the dynamic duo behind WordCamp KL โ€“ Sam Suresh and Rindy Portfolio.

I thoroughly enjoyed WordCamp KL and am looking forward to the next one. I promise not to just be a participant and take a more active role, not only in WordCamp but also in helping grow our local WordPress community. I’ve been looking for venues in Subang and Kota Kemuning for informal meet-ups. If you know of any suitable venues or would like to get involved too, please join our Meetup group and contact me. See you at our next meetup!

Some photos from WordCamp KL 2017. Most were from the official event photographs.


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