WordPress Photo Festival 2024, A Five Part Retrospective, Part 1, Organizers

From February 3-10 the Kerala, India WordPress community hosted an International Photos event, to both boost the number of photos at https://wordpress.org/photos as well as increase the number of contributors.

In this series we’ll talk with organizers, volunteers, and participants about how the event went as well as the community team, about how this event is a model for the second generation WordPress events.

In this particular we’ll meet organizers Bigul Malayi and Ajith R N.

This article is available in Video, Audio, and transcribed text.

Audio Edition

Transcription

[00:00:00] Topher: Hello! My name is Topher DeRosia. This episode begins a five part series on the WordPress photo festival, 2024 that took place February three through 10. We’ll talk to organizers, volunteers, and participants about how the event went as well as the community team, about how this event is a model for the second generation WordPress events.

Before we get started, I’d like to provide some background for the event. At the State of the Word 2021, Matt announced the WP Photos project. A project to have the WordPress community submit photos for use by anyone in the world for any [00:01:00] purpose. As of today, there are over 15, 000 photos available in the Photos repository.

The 2024 Photo Festival was an attempt to both boost the number of submitters as well as the number of photos. We begin our story talking with Biggle from Kerala. Biggle, can you tell me your full name and where you live?

[00:01:27] Bigul: Hi, good evening. I’m Bigul. My full name is e. Malai is my family name.

I’m from, South India, southern part of India. I live in a state called Kerala. And my city name is Kozhikode, Calicut. It is one, in the olden time it is very famous for, what to say, spices. So many European traders came here for trading spices in the past. [00:02:00]

[00:02:00] Topher: Were those, were those the Portuguese? Like I know the Portuguese would go up.

[00:02:04] Bigul: Yes, yes, yes. Exactly. He landed here. He was, then he started the colonization of India. Uh, okay. So the Portuguese came here and before, Portuguese, we were in trade with Arabs and Chinese, traders. So, my city, has been in touch, direct contact with the, foreigners, different traders from the world.

For more than 800 years.

[00:02:32] Topher: Wow. That’s really impressive.

[00:02:34] Bigul: And, if you, yeah. And for rest of the, my, state Kerala is in touch with the spice spreading and tea, lot of, commodity spread here since the time of Greeks and Romans. Hmm. Maybe you can find, the, some ships of Ella Malabar coast in, so, the Solomon episode of Bible also.[00:03:00]

[00:03:00] Topher: Oh, yeah, I’ll bet. Yeah. Um, so we’re here today to talk about the WP photos event that happened there Uh, tell me about it. What is it for somebody who doesn’t know?

[00:03:13] Bigul: Okay. Um photo festival, as everybody know, We have no way to contribute back to weight plus since last two years and many people are involved in that project uh, because uh nowadays everyone carry good camera or Mobile.

So we were able to click nice shots wherever we go. So we have a lot of contributors to the, wait portal directory. There are thousands of contributors and, uh, from our in Kerala, we have five meetup groups. And most of the time we organized the meetups and where camps together m took at that. So, uh, we noticed many people from, our community.

We have a, uh. We have [00:04:00] three active with, with, WhatsApp group and we have, five meet groups also. So from there we noticed many, people in our communities, actively contributing to WebPress photo directory. And few of them, the photos were selected in, in our associated newsletters and uh, also some other websites related to it.

Press. Uh, especially like a good number of times, zero press, et cetera. So, as a token of appreciation, people love to contribute more back to the WordPress photos. So, as per the, current status, many, bedcams. Uh, or waitress meetup groups are organizing a photo walk. So be impressed from, waitress Tokyo group.

And they, they used to do photo walks very often than other meetup groups. So [00:05:00] we decided to go, something similar, but they did so, A few months back last year, we went to a botanical garden nearby in Calicut, that is hardly, 10 kilometers from my native, I used to go there in the childhood, because that botanical garden has a lot of, plants.

where it is more than thousands of plant varieties, especially they have a garden for ginger and bananas. Uh, it sounds like

[00:05:33] Topher: an ideal place for a photo walk.

[00:05:35] Bigul: Yeah. Yeah. Photo walk. So we’ve been there and also they have, they have a very good pond for lotus and, um, water lilies. So And we were able to take a lot of photos there.

And the funny thing is that actually we were only allowed to stay there for three hours, but that day we went there on a Sunday and that day was very rainy day and we were not able to [00:06:00] walk sometime because of the heavy rain. Thankfully, there were some, kind of a shot, uh, that way to understand.

What to say? Some kind of a hut. Yeah. A shed hut, hut, hut, or roughly shed there. So we, we were able to sit there and we were able to talk about WordPress and general web development things. So it’s like extended a WordPress day. And we were 15 people and, um, Then, we took more than six hours, to, Rob around botanical cat

And uh, thankfully that day there were a coffee bar nearby, or there is a coffee bar. Actually, they were serving food also in the working days, but Sundays are day for them, so we were able to only able to drink coffee until four evening . Nice. So, but, the, at. Most of the year was very chilly, because it is very cool and rain was most of the time it was raining and we were able to take very good [00:07:00] photos.

And I think more than 200 photos from that walk is already in the photo directory by different people. And a few are still remaining to upload those photos. Oh yeah. But still, it is very nice. After seeing, that in those years from the, and we also created few reels and . Sure. So it was very successful.

Ah, yeah. When we shared it in the, our community groups, meetup groups and uh, WhatsApp group, we got very good response then, from the people and they want to be part of that. But, in, so we thought that if we had taken 20 or 30 people to. Or a botanical garden, because the photos will be similar, because there is a limitation.

There will be many photo duplications. Not sure. Yes. Yes. There are a lot of chances for that. So, we started to think about how we can have a photo contributed day [00:08:00] and how we can differentiate from a photo market. Then we came with the idea about it. Uh, it was a half day for the contribution day. And we organized it in last year after 23 weeks after the photo book.

Uh, and it went very well. Uh, it it was in last November, and it went very well. We were able to contribute another 200 photos from and most of the participants were different part of Kerala. Uh, so more than 60 people attend that event also. So, that was a very interesting, feedback from the people.

And, but, we, there were a lot of positive feedbacks and one of the negative feedback was, they’re not getting much time to contribute the photo. As we ah know. Uh, we can only upload, five photo at a time and Right. We have to wait for the moderation. Uh, so we were looking for, an option how we can, uh.

We can make a remedy for this and [00:09:00] what will be the exact solution for this when we are organizing a photo walk or photo contributor day. So people want to contribute more than 10 or 15 photos. And we have to, we have to consider it as a part of the event, these photo sessions. So we were thinking about different models and Finally, we came up with the idea that still few people don’t know what, why we should contribute the photos and what are the methods we have to follow, what are the things we have to take care of.

So we decided to have a different format. Uh, we plan to organize a photo festival and it’s fully dedicated for the contribution of WordPress photo directory. And we decided to. Run it as a one week program on the first day, we organized two orientation, one in the, Asian morning time zone and one in the hour evening time.

So the people from different [00:10:00] parts of the globe can attend even, uh, the people from the American side also can attend because it will be early morning for them. So we organized two meetings. One is in the early morning time, time and evening time. So, more than a hundred people attended both of the meetings, all in one.

And they, at, they came to, know more about how we can contribute to the photo directly and what all are the things we have to take her about. What is the relevance of a CCO license, et cetera. Sure. We had a very interactive discussion, on the both sessions. And people started to contribute and the interesting fact that our goal for this photo festival was 1000 photos to the photo directory in a one week time.

On the first day itself, there are more than 400 photos submissions. And that is the first time the photo directory is facing that much load. Actually the moderators was busy. For the next one week, [00:11:00] because whenever you look to the photo directory, there will be more than 200 to 50 photos in the queue.

Even on the last day, there were, we spent a lot of time on Friday and also Saturday morning. And then also there were more than 60 photos, submitted for our photo festival. So that was an immense response. Our goal actually, as like I mentioned before, our goal was thousand photos, but we were able to.

I mean the pupil sub contributor more than around two, 2000 photos. But as you know, we cannot, there, there are few of the photos around 400 plus photos. Were not up to the mark. They have. Yeah. It always happens. They were matching tower guidelines, so it happens. So we were, we had to reject those photos because they, most of them were not up to the market because of different issues like clarity paid, et cetera.

So, in, uh. After that also, even we [00:12:00] rejected 400 plus photos, there were, thousand 544 photos contributed the WordPress photo directory as a part of that. And, it is contributed by, more than 160 contributors from different parts.

[00:12:16] Topher: And that’s, that’s just within one week.

[00:12:17] Bigul: Right. Yeah, within one week.

Actually, the funny thing is that, more than 300 people registered for the event, but thankfully only 170 people contributed. Otherwise, it will be a big, big, big, big, delay will cause that to monitor the photos and moderate the photos. It will take a lot of, lot of time. It will not be possible to sort all the things in a one week time.

So overall, we get a very good feedback and. It is, it’s a nice way of contributing back to WordPress.

[00:12:53] Topher: Yeah. Uh, I do know the moderator struggled to keep up because they came in so quickly. Um, at one point [00:13:00] there was, I think a thousand in the queue. Um, I watch personally, I watch every photo go by in an RSS feed just for fun.

And, there’s usually 40 or 50 in a day. And I got up over 2000 in my reader before I could start catching up. And so that was crazy. Um, I personally was ill during that time. So I wasn’t able to moderate or even attend. And so, and I’m one of the moderators. So, that put extra weight on some of the others.

Uh, Marcus Burnett is a moderator and he was at a word camp. And so, it was, it was a pretty stressful time. I don’t think anybody expected that volume. Um, and it was. It was pleasantly international. Uh, you know, it was India heavy, but that’s okay. It’s that was. That’s your home, your home base. But I saw people from all over the world contributing, and that [00:14:00] was very encouraging.

Um, I’m excited to see other cities, other States around the world, pick up the mantle and. And do something similar, um, sort of like the Olympics, you know, where, it’s, it’s international, but it’s really about the city.

[00:14:25] Bigul: Yes. Yes. We can consider, because, after this, when we can conclude the photo festival, most of the participants were checking when will be the next event.

So of course we have to think about a bigger vision, maybe next year, in a bigger manner.

[00:14:46] Topher: Um, tell me about the future. Have you, have you already thought about, doing another one yourself? Have you thought about, or has anybody approached you and said, Hey, we’d like to do this [00:15:00] also.

[00:15:01] Bigul: Yeah, we got a very good feedback from the community because community, because few approach, I mean, a few community organizers in touch with us, they, they.

told told us that they will be doing something similar as a part of their webcam. Uh, not in a bigger, bigger manner, but a kind of a smaller version of this. Uh, so I, I hope, it will be followed by, many other communities and people want a bigger version of this. Uh, so maybe, next year we can, we can plan a bigger one.

Yeah, I, in a sense, what I mean that, actually that, many people contributed more than 30, 40 photos and they want to contribute more. And also the thing is that. They were not getting enough time to contribute as they, they want because, many, [00:16:00] uh, participants conducted us through different social media channels, even a few of them contacted us directly, directly because they have our, phone numbers or WhatsApp numbers.

So they, they ping me directly and say, why my photo is spending queue for last two days. I have tons of photos with me. I want to contribute. I want to contribute. What, well, when you will be moderate. Okay.

[00:16:25] Topher: Uh, so that’s, that speaks to some of the logistics that we need to take care of. Yeah. Particularly around moderators.

[00:16:31] Bigul: Yeah. So yes, please carry on,

[00:16:36] Topher: but we have enough moderators for daily submissions. It’s working fine. Yes, exactly. But so that’s not going to scale. So, yeah, points that out. This is a good stress test for the for the system.

[00:16:51] Bigul: Yes, exactly. So, but we can do that. Uh, we can, we can in touch with moderators. Uh, in advance.

If this time [00:17:00] we only pinged them, um, just around two weeks before the event. Next time we can make a, a long plan and we can ping them in advance, two, three months advance. So they can be ready. They can devote some time on that particular two, three weeks. And we can give people, more than a week or 10 days or 15 days.

Contributing to the WordPress photo directory. So everybody will get enough time to contribute their good photos to the photo directory. And also, uh, so there will not be any hurry. So we will get enough submission also. And also as a moderator, we will get enough time to moderate it. And, for, for us, it will get enough.

time to sort out the photos and announce the winners rather than we keep doing in a one or two days. Uh, so, that is our plan. And also, many people, be discussed in person multiple [00:18:00] times. Many people want to contribute to the WordPress photo directory, but they’re not willing to create an account in WordPress.

org or they are not willing. Submit the photos one by one and when we, when we were, sharing this group in a few of the professional photographers we know and they shared it in their WhatsApp group about this. Uh, so immediate response is that, is it possible to send the photos, send the photos via email?

Uh, so that is the normal practice. Yeah. Normal practice here. Uh, some, when a online media or a, regular media conduct the event for the photo festival like this, for example, nature for the festival or, by wildlife photograph festival. There are a few photo festivals happens here most of the time.

Uh, by conducted by some organizations or online, uh, agencies like that. They will only ask them to send the [00:19:00] photos we have made. So they were expecting the same from us. So, we expect a few, professional photographers participations, but unfortunately we only get less than 10, from our state, because of this.

So next time we will think of a way to include them also. Uh, so we have to work on that. Uh, we need, if we get one or two volunteer to monitor this, we will surely consider this.

[00:19:28] Topher: Yeah. I know, I know that there are develop professional developers in the world who became professional developers because of WordPress.

I’m going to be really curious to see if we get professional photographers. Grow out of this program. Yes, exactly. That would be really great.

[00:19:49] Bigul: Yeah, we are hoping for that also. But there is also another problem is that, they, they are ready to share a few of them are ready to share, but they are not willing to [00:20:00] share in a license.

[00:20:02] Topher: Right?

[00:20:03] Bigul: Yes. That is a difficulty. Yeah, that’s a difficulty. And so at least we missed a few great photos because of that, but we can compromise with that, because we, that’s one of the most important thing in our guideline. Sure.

[00:20:21] Topher: Yeah. Um, I’ve given some thoughts to that and we, I think we as a community need to do a better job of communicating why it’s worthwhile to, for a professional to submit some photos.

Uh, under the CC zero license, um, they never want to give anything away. It didn’t make sense. It it’s their culture. Um, but I think, I think we can convince them that it’s, that it’s worth it in some ways. Um, so that’s, that’s something we can learn from this project.

[00:20:56] Bigul: Yes. And also, a few of [00:21:00] the, Professional photos submitted in our, Event as a part of this event get wider recognition.

One of them is, selected as the 15, 000 photo. Yeah. There was a tweet from Waitress, Twitter handle about, 15, 000 photos and one of the professional photos submitted as a part of the event is selected for that. Ah, that’s great. The one, maybe you remember the blue one, um, of uh, Kingfisher, blue Kingfisher?

Yes, I do. It’s, yeah, it is selected as one of the, best photos of, our photo festival.

[00:21:40] Topher: Ah, that’s great. Um, I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes about, organizers. I noticed you have a lot of them. Mm-Hmm, . Um, my, my local work camp usually had four. What did you have 20 or something like that? [00:22:00]

[00:22:00] Bigul: Yeah, I actually, as I told you before, we conducted, I mean, we organized this event as a, on the band banner of it, the Scarlet community.

Uh, we have, uh, for community with respect to community here. So, all these organizers from that group. Okay. And they are part of our, last two, three bedcams also. And we worked as a team since we started. So all of them were part of this event in a different, different way.

[00:22:32] Topher: So what kinds of, what kinds of different things did they do?

I mean, okay. So it’s not a, it’s not a word camp, so you’re not getting a venue. You’re not, you know, all that stuff. What, what did they do for this event?

[00:22:47] Bigul: Um, actually, most of us were in the part of, in the initial process itself. So, as, as I described before, a few minutes before we started it as a [00:23:00] photo walk in the first, then we organized as a photo direct, I mean, a photo contributor after they contributed dates.

Then we decided to go for a photo festival. So all this idea came when we sit together, in different Zoom calls. So all of them has their own suggestions and we were discussing about the, the, so it took three, four meetings, That will from a photo up to photo festival. So everyone was part of the discussion and they were sharing their idea in our group.

So, so we have a WhatsApp group and telegram group for this. And also we have a slack group. So we were discussing a lot of things, how to, how to execute in a better manner. So, a lot of suggestions came from all of these people and, and also they, they shared about this event in their, all, all possible ways, like, they’re in between their friends and [00:24:00] family in between their colleagues.

Okay. In a different way. So that is why we get a wider, spread of this event in a short time, actually as a part. As a part of our budget, there was, 250 allocated for online campaign, especially for the Instagram ads. Uh, but, in the, on the first day, we, our plan was to execute it on, after we, we organize the first orientation, the first day orientation and to wait for the response, how will be the response.

And thankfully, we got a very good response on the first day itself because of this, indirect collaboration with the people like friends, family, colleagues, et cetera. So that helped, that helped a lot. Uh, so we were able to, do the promotions in a very short, short time because of this wider [00:25:00] base.

[00:25:01] Topher: Right.

I really like that. Um,

I’m accustomed to a lead organizer deciding what the tasks are and then assigning them to as many contributors are as needed, which might be four or five or whatever for an event, or at a very large event, maybe, you know, a dozen or so. But I really like the idea of people coming to the meeting and saying, I think we should do this, and I’m willing to do the work.

And so now I’m an organizer, you know, um, that’s very, very, open source, you know, to come to the group and say, I’m going to do this work for this project.

[00:25:47] Bigul: Actually, we always tell one thing, we always tell one thing here. Uh, we, we are trying to execute that. Like there is a famous verse from Three Musketeers, one for all, all for one.

[00:25:59] Topher: [00:26:00] Yes. Yeah, that’s really great.

[00:26:04] Bigul: Okay. And also, uh, the important thing is that we also get a very good support from other Indian community, like, for example, maybe you have noticed that, Sadie has created a. video also pinged us to, join us a volunteer. Uh, okay. So she created, she created a article, she write, wrote an article in our, event, event site about how to contribute to web water directly with a good video.

So people were able to, if a people, if a person reading that article, he or she will be able to, get a clear understanding of how to contribute to a web photo directory. So,

[00:26:46] Topher: uh, that was translated too as well, right?

[00:26:48] Bigul: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, so be conducted. So, in our internal discussion, this idea came that, we can translate this, the article to different Indian languages.

Then we [00:27:00] conducted, some of our, I mean, most of our community here, and we were able to, um, Translated to multiple languages like Tamil, Canada, Hindi, Marti, Gujarati, Bengali, Nepali. Okay. Uh, we have translated these master languages, so, that’s really great. Yeah. So it, it, it gave. , it, it, it helped us to get a, uh, wider recognition e even in the community, and people were able to read, read the article in their languages and they were able to, contribute to the, photo directory without much hassles.

So, it helped a lot.

[00:27:43] Topher: Yeah. That’s, that’s pretty cool. Um, I interviewed Sadie and, in a couple of days he’ll be able to watch. Okay. Nice. The interview about her making that video. Okay. Um, I think that’s it [00:28:00] for today. Okay. I really appreciate your time. Okay. Thank you very much. Um, you’ve been very patient throughout the entire interview process.

[00:28:09] Bigul: It’s been a journey for both of us. It’s a pleasure to talk to you because you are one of our men in the photo. I thank you very much. Actually, we, we, we started to contribute after seeing the efforts you have taken for the photo directory, especially you, Michelle and Marcus.

[00:28:31] Topher: Uh, well, thank you very much.

We really appreciate that. It’s nice to hear.

[00:28:36] Bigul: Okay. Thank you very

[00:28:37] Topher: much. Bigul was not the only organizer by a long shot. There were quite a few. I also interviewed Ajith. So tell me your whole name and where you’re from.

[00:28:49] Ajith: Yeah. My name is Ajit R N. So I’m from Cochin, Kerala. It’s a Southern state of India.

[00:29:00] So yeah, basically I live near. Uh in the middle of the sea and the mountains so Okay, it’s

[00:29:08] Topher: uh, yeah, it’s on the uh, it’s on the Western shoreline, right? Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, I know I kind of keep track of things by by their relation to mumbai and I know mumbai is about halfway down on the west And so you guys are like, so halfway between the bottom and Mumbai, right?

[00:29:30] Ajith: No, actually South actually we are, no, no, actually we are way below that. So we are the bottom part of the India on the left side. Okay. If you see Yeah. the hot part. . Yeah. . Yeah.

[00:29:45] Topher: So, yeah. Okay. So, tell me what you did with the WP WP Photos event that happened recently.

[00:29:54] Ajith: Okay. Uh, basically my role was to take care of all the [00:30:00] website and all the design side of things.

So I did most of the website and all the facilitated all the things for the registration. And also we did some small apps to display the live feed of the photos. Oh, nice. Yeah. Right. Yep. Yeah. Also we got some leaderboard too. So anyway, since the event is over, I think that’s finalized. So yeah. Okay. So basically my role was to mostly doing all the technical stuff, I guess.

So, yeah. Yeah. That’s it.

[00:30:38] Topher: Yeah. Your title was organizer. Yeah. Yeah. That’s correct. I was surprised. There are quite a few organizers. What was it like 10 or something like that?

[00:30:46] Ajith: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. So we basically, we are a group of organizers. So, whenever there’s an enemy, we call a meeting and everyone will [00:31:00] input,

[00:31:00] Bigul: uh,

[00:31:02] Ajith: we will do their parts.

So that’s it. Yeah, since this was a, we didn’t get enough time to prepare all. Uh, prepare for the event. So like we just got approval and in the next one week or one and a half week, we just, there’s, there’s only a short amount of window. So most of us didn’t have free enough time to go through the whole process.

So a bunch of us came together and we did, and yeah, it’s, that’s basically. Okay.

[00:31:43] Topher: Um, Bigger mentioned he was the main point of contact. Well, okay. So I asked him if he was lead organizer and you’d not say yes. He said it was main point of contact. Was there a lead organizer? Was there one person or was it just like main point of [00:32:00] contact was by default?

Yeah, actually,

[00:32:03] Ajith: uh, he was, yeah, actually we didn’t, specifically any lead organizer, so, because. Actually, initially he came up with this idea, so we all communicate through him and he really, yeah, if, if you say, if you, if he can be said, who is the leader, I think it’s, we can tell it first, so, yeah, that’s right.

Anyway, we didn’t get into that conversation, so we,

we work as a group.

[00:32:33] Topher: All right, that makes sense. Have you, um, organized, been on an organizing team for a WordCamp before?

[00:32:46] Ajith: Yes, I did. So actually I was part of the two editions of WordCamp Cochin. Okay. And one edition of WordCamp Kerala we conducted last year.

[00:32:58] Topher: So my question related [00:33:00] to that is, how is this different from an organizer standpoint?

[00:33:05] Ajith: Yeah, since this is a purely online event, so there is no interaction with people physically. So basically that was a challenge. In some way, or maybe we can say the, we can cut out a few of our teams. Like we don’t need to organize a venue or, and all things related to that.

So basically, yeah. So anyway, the reason we choose to go for an online event, because since it was basically a contributing photos to the photo directory, and if you do it on one day, we. May not have get enough photo contributions. So if it was a [00:34:00] longer event or an online event, then everyone can participate.

So with their own time.

[00:34:08] Topher: Okay. So would you say it’s easier, harder or just different?

[00:34:16] Ajith: I think it’s just different. So it’s, not an easy path. So, yeah, so,

[00:34:23] Topher: yeah, I can imagine some parts would be easier and some parts would be harder.

[00:34:26] Ajith: Yeah, yeah, some parts would be harder. So the organizing the talks and all the things, the interaction between the, attendees.

So that was a bit different from an in person event. So I’m not sure if we get enough, networking experience or networking opportunities. With these online events, so Sure, yeah. That, yeah, that’s an issue. So, but the easy parties, like I mentioned before, we don’t need to worry about the venue and the core setup for [00:35:00] the speakers and all sort of things related to that.

So, yeah, that’s, that makes sense.

[00:35:07] Topher: Yeah. That, yeah, that. Um, let’s talk about the future a little bit, um, specifically for a photos event, not just virtual, but specifically for a photos event, what would you do differently in the future, especially from your standpoint is as the tech guy, what would you build differently?

How would you come at it?

[00:35:30] Ajith: Uh, so I think, the easiest way is to, we can build a efficient. A system to, I mean, display the photos. So currently we have some limitations with the API, how we get the photos and display them. So sometimes it’s harder to get all the info we need in one go or something like that.

And [00:36:00] the other thing we might need to change is, if we can accept more photos from a user, but that’s a Uh, I think it’s different. So if you get more photos from one person, I think it’s a bit harder to moderate. So I think the other thing, the one thing I would do differently is, the, if we can serve first come first, uh, maybe we can approve the photos of the person who submitted it first.

So maybe that way everyone will get a decent chance. So. Right. Something like that. So, yeah, I think, I know some of the, photos from the users. So since the Q and the admin is random, so maybe some of the photos of, from a user will come to us to moderate regularly. So, yeah. And I think, also in the recent update, [00:37:00] they fixed the sorting issue with the date.

So maybe that will help in the future. So, and the other thing, maybe. Uh, we can, this, this time, I think we didn’t get enough time to plan things perfectly. So yeah, we did in the short amount of time we got. And so maybe next year, if we are, planning to do this kind of event, mostly I think prefer a hybrid kind of event, maybe.

Some if anyone can anyone wanted to attend the event in person, they can and also if it’s going to be a longer even like this, maybe at one week or something like that. So sure. Yes. Maybe the initial day we can [00:38:00] just gather like a regular webcam and we all have the token. Or the opportunity to do the networking and or some of those things.

[00:38:08] Topher: So, um, you mentioned more time to prepare. How much did you take? How much did you have? Just one week?

[00:38:17] Ajith: I think less than two weeks. So that’s

[00:38:19] Topher: okay. So if I wanted to do one of these myself, I should plan on three or four weeks preparation.

[00:38:28] Ajith: Yeah, that would be perfect. So I, the main reason is we need to prepare the site and the contents.

So once it’s ready, I think, the rest is, spread the spreading the information around the community. So what we did was we just reach out to all our friends in the community and they share the or the social media post. So that’s the, right, that’s how we get all the attendees. So we didn’t [00:39:00] do any like, a promotion or social media advertisement Right.

Or anything like that. So it’s, it’s mostly, I I heard that word of mouth, so yeah. That’s it.

[00:39:11] Topher: Yeah. That was very impressive. And it worked well. It got me, I mean, Yeah, that’s, that’s why I was there. Yeah, pretty great. Okay.

[00:39:21] Ajith: The, the other thing we did differently is we, translate the how to post in different local languages.

Right. So, yes. So that way we will get more inclusion from different part of the region. So in India, there is Officially 26 or 30 or something like that. Language is this standard.

[00:39:47] Topher: So, right. Yeah. And you personally translated all of them, right? No, no, no, no.

[00:39:56] Ajith: I think I only can read one or two of the languages.[00:40:00]

Some I can, understand and some I can speak. So maybe only I can read and write.

[00:40:08] Topher: So, yeah. What are your main, what, what are those two that, you know, are really well?

[00:40:13] Ajith: Actually, my, mother tongue is Malayalam, so. Okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, the other, I can talk in English, so. Great, yeah. It’s not an official language in India, anyway.

But we all speak, communicate in English, since everyone knows it. The other two languages I speak, Tamil. Yeah. So it’s, yeah. That’s nearby. And the other is Hindi. Yeah, it’s nearby. Oh, yeah. And also, yeah, Hindi, so I know a little bit of Hindi. And so, and also I know some Canada or something like that.

[00:40:48] Topher: Um, I have, I have my translation badge on wordpress.

org. I have, I have translated WordPress [00:41:00] into Canadian, Australian, and British. Okay.

That’s how far multilingual I am.

[00:41:13] Ajith: Okay. So, all right. So from English. Yeah.

[00:41:19] Topher: Yeah. Well, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate

[00:41:23] Ajith: it. Okay.

[00:41:24] Topher: Um, and, I look forward to talking to you, talking to you again. Okay. Good. Sure.

[00:41:31] Ajith: Thank you. All right.

[00:41:32] Topher: Bye bye. And that’s our story for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to stop by tomorrow.

We’re going to talk to some volunteers from the event and find out what it’s like to work at an event where you don’t really interact with the attendees. Or the organizers or anyone else. What’s it like to run, not just a virtual event, but a photo walk like

[00:42:00] this. I’ll see you tomorrow.