Earlier this week we interviewed Muhammad Kashif about the phenomenal growth of the WordPress community in Pakistan. Kashif organizes the local Lahore meetup, which started with a few dozen attendees three months ago and grew to more than 500 this past weekend. His team has been working hard to bring WordCamp to Pakistan, and today their application was approved by the WordPress Foundation.
The event will officially be called WordCamp Lahore. Kashif said that they originally proposed “WordCamp Pakistan” but were asked to keep it local to the city. The Foundation’s reply to their request was as follows:
We stay away from labeling WordCamps with the country name rather than the city, because we have found that doing so discourages local organizers from doing additional WordCamps in the country. We had some problems with this in the past, where because there was a “national” WordCamp, no other WordCamps ever happened in that country. When we changed the naming convention to be city-focused, that country developed stronger local communities and several WordCamps per year.
The application proposed September for the event but the dates have not yet been finalized. WordCamp Lahore organizers will have an orientation meeting with WP Foundation representatives tomorrow to begin the planning process.
Kashif told the Tavern that they are looking at the Lahore International Expo Centre as a possible venue, since it has an 820 seat capacity. The team will be meeting with a few different venue providers to find a good fit.
As Pakistan is a multilingual country, most of the Lahore meetup sessions are conducted in English. This means that the WordCamp will likely be accessible to a wide range of people outside of Pakistan as well. If the Lahore meetup attendance numbers are any indication, the first WordCamp in Pakistan has the potential to be one of the largest first WordCamps in history.
See you in Lahore! :D