Celebrating 17th WordPress Birthday! & a First Time Virtual Meetup

The crisis of COVID-19 has caused a lot of changes in life. Lots of events, education, work, planning are canceled or have to postpone.

It has forced many Meetups/WordCamps/Event organizers to consider moving to online. But many other skills/activities which may not get to online and have to wait till the things get healthy again, let’s wish them to start their work asap as well.

We all love to join MeetUps/WordCamps, meeting number of new people, make new friends, help each other, and eating together. But due to the worldwide crisis, we have to go virtual.

Though we are missing that personal touch, we can more likely to get to enjoy our online events, with a video talk (Be Positive) 😉

It says “कुछ भी ना होने से कुछ होना बेहतर है” – means “Something is better than nothing”.

After all this, sometimes we are not able to join Meetups/events due to our personal or professional commitments. This happened to me many a time because being a married and a working woman that too still pursuing my education is not a cup of cake… 😀

I have missed Meetups or important events due to exams or personal responsibilities, and yes, these are the essential part of my life.

But at the same time, Contribution to WordPress and its community is my very first interest. I feel so happy when I am able to support people or get to contribute any way… So, I always get upset when I miss such events. But not this time… 🙂

Let’s have a look at some history about WordPress

WordPress is now 17 years old, with it’s amazing functionalities and features it covers over a 35% of internet world today! WordPress is used by developers, designers, bloggers, small/large business owners, content-writers, to get their content online and cost effective.

I would like to share my first Virtual Event Host experience:-

Though it wasn’t so great, of course, you learn things when you try for the first time. So, when one of our “Ahmedabad WordPress Community” members asked me if I can host the event… and I said yes, let us try… But trust me, I won’t tell it always comes with success but, it surely ends up with many new learnings, experiences and confidence to take more challenges like this in future… 🙂

However, the other two friends and I have decided to host this event. The event topic was “Celebrating WordPress 17th Birthday Anniversary”. Wow, “I remember the celebration of the year 2019” at a dinner gathering. So, here we are with the new opportunity to celebrate an online event this year.

As a first step:- We started thinking, what do we do, how many participants will be joining, accordingly which platform to use, the time and date. How about speaker arrangement, what if there’s a long silence…? You know sometimes, things get weird in such online events, when there is a big silence. So this time, we need is to get ready with the buffer….. 🙂

After such discussions, we finally decided to give it a try with “Zoom” as our online platform. Time:- Sharp at 7:30 pm (IST) on 27th May 2020 with almost 40+ participants.

And Live :- Meetup gets started with a short session by “Vineet Singh” from our local “Ahmedabad WordPress community.” You know, the best part is? We always try to contact a new speaker every month. Topic on “Scaling WooCommerce to a High-Performance Store.” Thank you @Vineet, it was a very insightful talk… 🙂

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All-time favorite fun:- “WordPress Quiz Time” – with a competitive challenge… Quizzes help to keep our mind active.

It went amazing, enjoyed with around 44 players, and got “Top Three Winners.” Three Cheers to the Winners. 🙂

But here, I would like to share my experience, and learning.

As soon as we finished with the Quiz, we moved to general talk and chit-chat. I was going to ask the audience to share their experiences, or how they have celebrated this WordPress Birthday with their community and how things going in this lockdown. Unfortunately, our Meetup Link Stops/Disconnects Suddenly. 😦 After checking, I came to know, it was set with the closing time by mistake, and we lose our audience as well.

At this time, I thought let me share my experience to help others. So guys, do not set your closing time; it may get longer for few mins that’s okay sometimes. 🙂 Here are some tips that may help you with your first virtual event (Click Here).

Overall, it was a fantastic day, full of learning and fun. I like to thank and congratulate my friends and a Meetup Hosts @mansi-trivedi and @chetan-prajapati for completing an event in a very short time. 🙂 Looking forward for more events in future.

Well, yes, WordPress is now 17 years old, with new functionality and features. It has upgraded a lot.

Last but not the least, though it was not the smooth or perfect event, but it was worth doing for the first experience.

“You will never learn anything if you do not try for the first place.”

Thank you, everyone, for taking your time. If you have made to get here, I would love to hear your Story: “How have you celebrated the WordPress 17th Birthday“. Write in a comment below… 🙂

Be Safe, Healthy, Happy and Keep WordPressing!!!