Speakers

WordCamp Kathmandu 2017 would not be possible without its Speakers. We have almost completed the selection of International speakers, and still in the process of finalizing National Speakers. We will be publishing each finalized speakers on daily basis. Stay Tuned and do not forget to hit the SUBSCRIBE button.

Sakin Shrestha

Topic: Let’s make WordPress better together!

Topic Description: The session will touch on how anyone who is associated with WordPress can help to make it even better. The session will cover something that we have been missing in our WordCamps.

Bio: Sakin Shrestha is a technology entrepreneur and an avid WordPresser from Kathmandu, Nepal. He is the founder of Catch Internet Pvt. Ltd and Catch Themes, LLC,  co-founder of Theme Palace, LLC  and  a co-owner of ThemeReview.co.

Having got his first taste of WordPress in 2007, he was inspired to build a career on it. Ever since, he’s been contributing to the WordPress Core, Theme Review, Community, Accessibility, Polyglots, Themes, Plugins and TV teams. He is also among the founding members of WordPress Nepal and is actively involved in the WordPress community in Nepal and abroad.

You’ll easily recognize Sakin’s friendly smile in the crowd. So, make sure you go and say “Hi”. When you don’t find him working on WordPress, he is mostly busy blogging, biking, taking photographs, traveling or playing his guitar!

 Intended Audience: Everyone who loves WordPress is welcome

Ram Chaudhary

Topic: Kickstart WP REST with VueJS

Topic Description: This will be a Workshop, where we will learn to integrate WP REST API and VueJS inside a theme module.

Bio: Ram is a web designer/developer specializing in WordPress. He has been in the WordPress scene since a little more than a year. He works at Code Pixelz Media and loves working on projects that are challenging and push his limits.

Intended Audience: Plugin/Theme developer with basic knowledge on REST architecture and basic JavaScript.

Sadip Bhattarai

Topic: WooCommerce – The Best Alternative

Topic Description: The session will be about why to choose WooCommerce as a best alternative and how to develop WooCommerce compatible WordPress themes. It will also cover the comparative study of WooCommerce with other eCommerce platforms.

Bio: Sadip has an expertise in PHP MVC frameworks, CI and Magento. He used to build themes and extensions for Magento before switching to WordPress. From last 2 year, he is leading a team to developing WooCommerce based themes for WordPress at 8Degree Themes. Apart from this, he also provides training to new IT starters in order to work, enhance their skills and understand the flow of real time projects. He is also a passionate football lover.

Intended Audience: WooCommerce Theme Developers and eCommerce starters.

Rohit Bajracharya

Topic: Kickstart WP REST with VueJS

Topic Description: This will be a Workshop, where we will learn to integrate WP REST API and VueJS inside a theme module.

Bio: Rohit is a WordPress developer currently working for Code Pixelz Media Pvt. Ltd. He has been working on WP plugins and themes development for over 2 years.

Intended Audience: Plugin/Theme developer with basic knowledge on REST architecture and basic JavaScript.

Abhishek Rijal

Topic: Smart Development – Happy Clients

Topic Description: This session will cover different approaches of developing websites in WordPress for divergent clients. He will be sharing his experiences as a WordPress developer and freelancer, working with client’s website in WordPress. With some briefing on common mistakes that developers tend to make while working on custom WordPress sites and tips and tricks to avoid them, he will be sharing some ideas on delivering WordPress sites faster maintaining the quality output.

Bio: Abhishek is a new face in the WordPress community, who has been working with WordPress for about a year now. Currently he is working as a WordPress Developer, Theme Reviewer and Customizer at WEN Solutions. An IT student and learner, he also has an experience of active participation as a Volunteer at the WordCamp Kathmandu 2016. For the upcoming WordCamp 2017 he tends to share some of his knowledge / experiences as a speaker to the WordPress community in Nepal.

Intended Audience: WordPress Developers / Designers and freelancers

Alok Shrestha

Topic: Kickstart WP REST with VueJS

Topic Description: This will be a Workshop, where we will learn to integrate WP REST API and VueJS inside a theme module.

Bio: Alok is a Web Developer and an IT Enthusiast. He has been working in web development on WordPress platform for over 2 years. He is currently working at Code Pixelz Media Pvt. Ltd. which focuses in website development for clients overseas and products like freemium themes and plugins. He has worked in several projects and got the opportunity to explore working in a technical and design-focused projects providing high level of motivation and dedications that are required to meet deadlines.

Intended Audience: Plugin/Theme developer with basic knowledge on REST architecture and basic JavaScript.

Vishal Basnet

Topic: Kickstart WP REST with VueJS

Topic Description: This will be a Workshop, where we will learn to integrate WP REST API and VueJS inside a theme module.

Bio: Vishal is a full-time computer programmer working with WordPress for more than 4 years. He currently works as a WordPress developer at Code Pixelz Media a Web Agency which focuses on making the web better with WordPress as a primary tool.

Intended Audience: Plugin/Theme developer with basic knowledge on REST architecture and basic JavaScript.

Alina Kakshapati

Topic: Project Management & How do we do it!

Topic Description: Project Management is often taken as a very complex job. While it is one, it can be simplified to meet needs as well and what else would be better than WordPress to give that flexibility? Alina will be talking about how her company uses WordPress to manage projects and how even the company as big as Automattic uses WordPress for the same and keep things simple.

Bio: Alina is Product Manager at Code Themes. She likes to call herself a Proud WordPresser rather than a Web Developer. It’s been more than 7 yrs that, she has been involved in the IT sector and is still going great. As a WordPresser, she has been Speaker in WordCamp Nepal 2014, Panelist and Organizer of WordCamp Nepal 2015 – managing content for the whole event, and she also is a active Theme Reviewer. As a Product Manager at Code Themes, she puts her full experience to develop WordPress themes and plugins not only with lots of various functionalities but also, that is awesome to the eyes and are easier for the brain.

Intended Audience: Everyone

Narayan Koirala

Topic: How Secure is WordPress?

Topic Description: WordPress is very popular with a majority of stake in the global CMS (Content Management System) market, however, many web sites developed in WordPress have been compromised at times creating a window of uncertainty among few of its users. In his presentation, Mr. Koirala will be discussing the reasons why some web sites get compromised and its potential solutions for enhanced security. He will try to familiarize the areas where site owners, developers and hosting companies need to be careful for a secure operation. Finally, his presentation will try to create trust among the users of WordPress in terms of security.

Bio: Mr. Koirala, Founder/ Director of Eminence Ways Pvt. Ltd, is a Software Engineer and an MBA holder with certification in IS0 27001:2013. He is an Information Security Enthusiast, who aims to create an environment for secure IT developments and its implementation in Nepal. He is engaged in various platforms as IS Auditor/ IT Consultant/IT Security Presenter.
He previously appeared as speaker at the Word Camp 2014, and has presented before varied audience at other events and seminars including Security Fest, CAN Federation, ITSERT etc. He is also involved in creating awareness to use technology safely by organizing and participating in various IT awareness programs at schools and colleges.

Intended Audience: Developers and Deployers of WordPress

Prithu Singh Thakuri

Topic: Quality Content – The Game Maker

Topic Description: She’ll be speaking more on the current context of Free and Premium WordPress themes market. How quality of products along with their online visibility/impressions are helping authors to better position in the market, increase revenue etc. How/why quality SEO content is important along with the quality products, what are the basics / challenges of writing quality content, what are the myths and how to overcome them. 

Bio: Prithu is one of the youngest CEOs in WordPress World. At her 19, she has been leading one of the fast growing WordPress online resources websites – WPAll.Club based in Nepal. Along with her few colleagues, she writes contents, online promotion plans, SEO plans and makes strategies to put Wpall.club at the top of WordPress content business. It has just been a year that, she started loving WordPress and working on it as a career being an author at Wpall.club. She still believes that she is learning and exploring many aspects of WordPress, SEO contents, online and social media promotion etc. Sometimes she also writes for AccessPress Themes, 8 Degree Themes and a few other theme stores. Besides WordPress she loves travelling, reading books and browsing new things/ideas on internet. Follow her at Twitter: @preethyu

Intended Audience: SEO copywriters, SEO and online strategist, Themes/plugins developers who need help/ideas on promoting their great products.

Sunil Bajracharya

Topic: The Power of Support and Product Ratings

Topic Description: This session will focus on way of dealing with product customers, appropriate support channels and providing proper solutions for different type of customers. I will also talk about converting customers’ issues into a positive rating for your product and using the rating to have a positive impact on your product sales.

Bio: Sunil Bajracharya, a computer engineer from Tribhuvan University, is currently working for Access-keys. He began his journey with WordPress by providing support for AccessPress theme products. He provided general and technical support and was the support lead. Now, he works with plugin development for the same company developing free and premium plugins.

Intended Audience: Support team members, entrepreneurs

Kat Christofer

Topic: How WordPress Made My Dreams Come True

Topic Description: Eleven years ago I was working as an editor for almost no money, living in an apartment with no Internet or hot water, and had less than 1500 rupees a week for food and no idea what a DNS was. In 2007 I discovered WordPress, and everything changed. I pulled myself out of poverty, and today I work for Automattic and travel the world. Learn not only my story but also how I did it while helping thousands at the same time. I’ll outline a strategy with free or low-cost resources that anyone can use to make their dreams a reality.

Bio: Kat is a fourth-generation Californian working for Automattic, writing and editing documentation for 400+ WooCommerce products. Previously a journalist, her WordPress journey began 10 years ago at dot.com, then moved to self-hosted and building e-commerce stores for private clients. A digital nomad for two years, she travels full time and is in love with the sea but surfs badly.

Intended Audience: Current and future WordPress/WooCommerce users, entrepreneurs, developers

Siddharth Ashok

Topic: Optimizing WordPress for Speed & Performance

Topic Description: The most common complain we hear from a WordPress user is “My WordPress site is slow!”. And really, who doesn’t want their site fast ? if it’s already fast, we want it faster.

Fast loading pages not only improve user experience, increase your page views, but also helps with your WordPress SEO, yes google loves fast sites. Every millisecond literally makes a difference.

In my talk I would be discussing how to optimize your WordPress site, that would include some tips for basic server-side optimisation, best practices to follow that would make a site fast, optimizing images and files, tools to measure and optimize site’s speed, and avoiding bad practices that make a site slow, etc.

Bio: Siddharth Ashok is currently working with Indian-Swedish Web agency WebbDesinger (http://www.webbdesigner.se/) aka Next Big Thing, as Front-End and WordPress developer.

He have been using WordPress for almost a decade and have followed its journey from being just a blogging platform to CMS. Operating from Goa, India, he work with several Scandinavian clients developing custom themes and plugins.

Find him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siddharthashok/ and Twitter: https://twitter.com/siddharthashok

Intended Audience: Beginner/Advanced Developers

Muhammad Adnan

Topic: Getting started with React

Topic Description: This talk will solely based on React integration within Plugins or themes. I will demo a sample plugin and show React usage/integration. 

Bio: Adnan has been a Software Architect, Programmer, Speaker and Entrepreneur. He is currently running a Startup on Analytics as a Google Analytics Technology partners. He is enrolled in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) as a Student in 2010 where he contributed for phpMyAdmin Open Source Organization and got 5,000 USD upon completing his project by Google. After then he became mentor in Google Code-in program as GCI Mentor (2011,2012,2013) and GSoC Mentor (2012,2013,2014). He is coding since 2000 and his coded projects have been featured at TechCrunch. In 2013, he became Google Student Ambassador in South East Asia and travelled to Google SEARCH Summit in Indonesia. He was nominated as an Innovation Hero in Pakistan by PITB and Google.

In WordPress world, Analytify and LoginPress are his top products & he is coding WordPress projects since WordPress 2.2 version.

Intended Audience: WordPress themes and Plugin developers

Harshad Mane

Topic: Unit Testing for WordPress

Topic Description: No one writes a Perfect code, We all create bugs while writing the code. If anyone disagree with it, we’ll gladly hear why? PHPUnit testing in WordPress can definitely help one to fix the issues. The talk will cover :
1. What is PHPUnit testing.
2. Why unit testing is important?
3. Difference between Unit and Acceptance test.
4. Introduction to PHPUnit,
5. How to setup PHPUnit using WP-CLI.
6. Assertion Methods.
7. How to write test cases.

Bio: Harshad Mane is a PHP Programmer and a WordPress Enthusiast. He’s passionate about WordPress, and using it to develop modern and impressive websites. He has been working in the web industry for over 11 years. Starting as a PHP Progammer, He soon moved his way into WordPress development, and to this day he still loves doing both. When away from computer Harshad enjoys doing yoga, listening to music and thinking about going back to the computer!

Intended Audience: Developers

Rich Collier

Topic: Coding With Jetpack

Topic Description: Jetpack can do many valuable things right out of the box – but if you’re not afraid to dig into the documentation and write some code, Jetpack can be even more powerful. I’ll talk about how theme and plugin authors can leverage the power of Jetpack and the WordPress.com API to make custom analytics views, do exciting things with Related Posts, create custom image galleries, and more. 

Bio: Rich has been building websites since the beginning of the web. He discovered WordPress in it’s early years and has made many core contributions and authored several plugins. He worked as Director of Engineering at a major publisher in the United States and has now settled in at Automattic, building the next generation of Jetpack and VaultPress. After hours, Rich is a proud husband and father, and enjoys fishing and boating in the Atlantic.

Intended Audience: Beginner/Intermediate Developers

 

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WordCamp Kathmandu, 2017 is over. Check out the next edition!