WordCamp Seoul 2012 banner at the venue

Though my trip was short, I got to meet many Korean WordPress users and enjoyed it a lot. Here’s a quick report on the event day:

There was a big aquarium at the Posco Center lobby

WordCamp Seoul 2012 venue was Microsoft office at Posco Center in Gangnam.

Name tags and stickers for the attendees.

Not only the name tag and stickers, they gave me a WordPress-log embroidered T-Shirt and a cute mug from one of the sponsors.

The event schedule translated by Hana.

Chris’ cousin Hana, who is  fluent in Japanese, interpreted for us and she was super helpful. She even translated the handout for us – I was so impressed.

Except for the morning and last sessions, there were 3 tracks. To describe them in general those were 1) non-programmers/PR personnel track, 2) hands-on lectures and workshops, and 3) advanced development categories.

Full house with men, women, the young & old

Seokwon Yang (@Ejang) talked after my session, on “WordPress by Numbers”.  He is a owner of CO-UP coworking space in Seoul, and an active member of social entrepreneur & developer community. He even has his own startup accelerator program through his coworking space. From what I could gather with the slides and Hana’s interpretation, he seemed really knowledgeable about WordPress and its ecosystem.

As you can see on the picture above, the room was packed. 150 people attended but about the same amount of people were on the waiting list. I asked people a few questions during my speech, and most of the attendees were self-hosted WordPress software users, not WordPress.com. There were some who has never used WordPress too.

Slide by the Seoul official

The biggest news around WordPerss in Korea recently is the migartion of City of Seoul official web site. There was a very detailed case study session about this migration effort by a team member of the project titled “The Reason Seoul City Chose WordPress”. The project started in 2010 and they did a lot of research in finding the right CMS to replace the current web site as well as system. The reason he showed on the last slide was that “Because WordPress was there” — WordPress was a perfect solution in terms of higher efficiency, usability, SEO, integration with various social media, and their long-term goal to become an open and sharing government.. The migration is still in process, but their 300 sub-sites will be trimmed down to 100 and all hosted under a single install of WordPress multisite when it’s finished.

With Bora from Bloter.net. Her typing speed was amazing.

During the lunch and in the afternoon, I talked with many WordPress users. Bora from a Korean tech blog Bloter.net interviewed me, Seokwon told me about his projects, and the business director from en.korea.com showed me their popular entertainment site and iPhone app powered by WordPress.

In Korea, NAVER Blog is hugely famous, just like Blogger.com or WordPress.com in the U.S. WordPress is gaining popularity with brands and services that have overseas divisions. Of course the migration of City of Seoul web site is drawing attention to the open source software. This year, the very frist WordPress book in Korean was published; second one is coming in summer.

I also had a chance to talk with @devssay, who has been working on WordPres Korean package translation. It’s not always easy to keep up with the development if there aren’t enough contributors, but I hope this event will connect more users though real events and online communication.

WordCamp Seoul staff credit: longtag on Flickr

A group photo with the organizers. I taught them the WordPress “W” sign we often do in Japan

I highly recommend traveling to a WordCamp to meet users outside of your community whenever possible. It’s easy to connect with WordPress users though a common interests and that can be a lot more fun than a regular travel and sightseeing alone. Check out WordCamp Central’s upcoming WordCamp list and find out about the next WordCamp near you.

Related Post

• Event report article on Bloter.net (in Korean)（Google Translate link）
• My Slides “WordPress: 9 Years and Beyond“
• Photos（My Flickr set、Chris’ Set）
• My Japanese blog post (same as this one, translated)

Handpresso Outdoor Espresso Kit

Last step of brewing espresso with Handpresso

I made a 3-minute video of @cognitom‘s 2nd try. The process should take less time (~2 minutes) if you get used to it after some practice. The narration is all in Japanese but I hope you enjoy the video demo to get a feel for how it works.

My overall impression:

• It’s simple. You just need to do some hand-pumping then press a button.
• Super convenient for making espresso outdoor.
• Makes decent coffee for the minimal setup and portability.

If you are into going outdoor and brewing coffee, this is a good alternative to instant coffee or single-serving coffee packets. The machine is a bit heavy compared to other methods, but the nice thing about Handpresso is that it’s very easy to use and clean up.

You can find out more about this at Handpresso.com or buy it on Amazon.com (or, try it at Shimokitazawa Open Source Cafe!).

I went to the pre-opening party at the neighboring Tokyo Soramachi mall and had a quick look around. Although I didn’t get to go into the tower it was great to visit the new structures on a day before the opening day.

Tokyo Soramachi on the left, and the Skytree on the right.

Here’s the inside view of Soramachi. I read that they are expecting 200k people (!) on the opening day alone. Compared to that it was not crowded at all. We joked and said we were pretty much assigned to do a stress test for their operation team

I found several stores I want to go back. This one is called “TOKYO10月 H.P.FRANCE”.

Skytree Tower entrance – They got everything ready now, looks like.

We had some craft beer and food at a restaurant called “World Beer Museum”. The name is cheesy but I did like the food & their selection of beer. My favorite from tonight is the Belgium beer called Bruges Zot (not the one pictured below – I liked the hedgehog mascot on this one).

If you are visiting from outside of Tokyo or Japan, I think it’s a good place for looking for interesting gifts. Their selection of shops was really nice – it’s focused toward tourists but that meant recent Japanese product design trends were well reflected. The overall spatial design in the Soramachi building also felt very modern.

View from the 31st floor of Soramachi.

For more photos, visit my Flickr set.

Taken at 7:33:05 a.m.

Taken at 7:31:21 a.m.

What I saw with my eyes were much clearer than these photos – I didn’t expect it to be that clear, so it was a nice surprise.

Takashimaya Times Square in Shinjuku

There were kids from Nagoya – they were on a school trip and staying at the same hotel with Rachel & Warren. The teacher and kids were so nice that they let us borrow their screens and special glasses for seeing the eclipse. We were lucky to have met them because without the screen or glasses it just looked like this:

A bit of reflection on the building wall too

The kids were excited to have pictures taken with Warren and their photos posted on his blog He kept signing his blog address on their student handbooks (生徒手帳). Good PR!

Warren writing down his WordPres.com blog address

It was a fun morning with a very beautiful view of the sun and an unexpected encounter.

Warren & Rachel looking at the annular eclipse!

To check out the details of my blog’s customization info, you can go directly to this theme details page.

As shown there, I’m currently using free Chunk theme with Custom Design upgrade with FacitWeb Typekit font. My custom CSS is minimal – mostly for margin tweaks and some color changes.

There are many other creative customization examples on the showcase, all of them hosted on WordPress.com. “Customize your blog, be inspired!”

When I think of Japan I tend to think of beautiful design. Zen gardens, temples, shrines, tea ceremonies, manga, anime, wabi-sabi… the list goes on and on. Yet for some reason Japan just can’t put any of this together to make a decent looking website. Where did they go wrong? What in the world happened? Time to find out.

In response to the article, a summary of Japanese anonymous bbs thread was posted on a blog. The comments are in Japanse but going through the screenshots is worth your time if you’re interested in this subject (note the linked blog itself is kind of… chaotic).

Shinjuku – in the morning (by pictinas; cc: by-nc-nd)

In general I liked Tofugu’s post, but I’m not sure just wabi-sabing the current design is the solution to the chaos. Because I believe both chaotic Tokyo neon signs and minimalistic shrine architecture are reflecting the beauty and interestingness of this culture. Living in Japan today can naturally exposes you to many aspects of traditional Japanese Aesthetics as well as modern ideas and products.

I could be biased but I am seeing a lot of great web designs coming out of agencies that embraces cultural diversity within themselves (e.g. I love works of AQ). We don’t need to stay stuck with zen, miyabi, or even kawaii. I look forward to more innovation in Japanese design that come out of unique situations that people are living today.

First we got some spicy breakfast at Thai Festival in Yoyogi Park, and ate it while getting suntan at the lawn of WIRED CAFE <> FIT.

Thai Food Stall at Yoyogi Thai Festival 2012

My Breakfast.

Group Photo!

We walked through the park and went to Meiji Shrine – saw three wedding groups. Then sat down to have coffee at Roots & Beat in Yoyogi.

Ordering Coffee. Arigato!

Roots & Beat Coffee

While we were chatting there Warren showed us Monocle magazine. The special edition booklet he had listed things to do in Japan and it said you should go to the food market at Isetan department store.

Japan: Monocle Travel Guide

So that’s where we decided to go next! We had some samples of food & drink and were thoroughly entertained by a guy at Saza Coffee shop!

I love discovering new things in town with guests

My Stats:

Location:

Ōhori Park (Fukuoka, Japan)

Course:

5 laps around the pond

Time:

58 minutes 3 seconds (for 10k; 28:28 for 5k)

I used to run around the same course as a junior high student. This park now has a well-paved jogging path around the pond.

The view at the end of my 5k run:

I took a shower at a fitness club nearby. They have yoga and running classes called “way”, the same kind of classes that I am going in Tokyo. I love their red lockers!

I started running regularly around this time last year — I could not have ran 10k like this a at that time. Also, I did not announce this event on WordPress.com Japanese blog last year because I didn’t know if people can feel safe or motivated to go running while the earthquake and tsunami in Tōhoku was still fresh in everyone’s memory. The public transportation schedule was in unstable state and aftershocks were frequent.

The fact I was able to participate in the event this year doesn’t mean the situation for those who affected by the earthquake has improved or anything like that. I just know that one year can change a few things for myself. Only the collective effort and changes we make every day will affect what tomorrow will look like.

So start running, blogging, or doing whatever if you want something changed, instead of hoping or wanting.

I took all of these with my iPhone 4S and used Camera+ App to tweak them around. I also played with other iPhone camera apps — Pixlr-o-matic, Snapseed, and MagicHour — but ended up not keeping any of the modifications with them. Maybe it’s just I’m so used to using Camera+, but I can’t think of any better camera app than this at the moment.

Other photos are on Flickr: Cherry Blossoms 2012 – a set on Flickr

Touch one of the animal photos to make sounds. If you say the name of the animal (in Japanese ) after pressing the microphone icon, Google speech recognition will tell the app which one was selected.