Posted in 2009 …

Nov 15 2009
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WordCamp NYC "WordPress Community in Japan"

I spoke at WordCamp NYC on Saturday morning. In my session, I talked about blogging in Japan and how WordPress is doing there.

WordPress Community in Japan

View more documents from Naoko McCracken.

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

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Nov 04 2009
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Japanese Community Talk at WordCamp NYC 2009

On November 14th, I’ll be speaking at WordCamp NYC. My session will be about how WordPress Community is doing in Japan. Here’s the description from the site’s session page.

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.

I'm Speaking at WordCamp NYC 2009This 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)!

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Nov 04 2009
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WordCamp Kyoto 2009 Report

I was at WordCamp Kyoto 2009 on Oct. 17th. I don’t think there is any other English blog about it so I’ve written a report to share information with other WordCamp organizers and future attendee (better late than never; I was waiting for the survey results but that will be coming later).

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”

Venue for the first 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”

Panoramaic WordCamp Kyoto 2009

Photo by waviaei on Flickr


We made event polo shirts for the staff & as door prizes. This is because of the time/price constraints, but everyone got a bag with the WordCamp Kyoto logo :)

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.

It was good to have this kind of mini-presentation (Ignite/lightening talk) open for everyone. Attendees and speakers felt they are welcomed in the community.

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.

After-Party

Photo by odysseygate on Flickr

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?).

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Oct 06 2009
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WordCamp Kyoto 2009 Information

Since I came back from my trip to Japan last month, I’ve been working on WordCamp Kyoto 2009 planning with other organizers in Japan.

WordCamp Kyoto 2009The 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!

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Jun 24 2009
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Blogging while Brown Conference: Slides & Thoughts

Last Saturday, I had a chance to attend and speak at Blogging while Brown Conference in Chicago. This was my first time speaking at an event like this in US – to be honest, I was quite nervous when I was asked to do this.

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:

Growing Your Blog with WordPress

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:

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