WordCamp Tokyo 2009: Takayuki Miyoshi – Introducing WordPress Regional Community “WordBench”

Good morning everyone.

Good morning everyone.

I'm Takayuki Miyoshi

I make plugins.

Contact Form 7. Some of you uses it, I think.

I do that kind of things.

What's topic?

A project called "WordBench" started recently.

Let me talk about it.

I have questions.

Who came from outside of Tokyo?

Raise your hands.

Quite a lot. Half of you.

Outside of Kanto area?

A lot.

about 1/5

From Kyushu area?

No one indeed.

Hokkaido?

A few.

So, I was at WordCamp Tokyo November last year

We talked at the after party.

Some opportunity like this WordCamp

where you can communicate with users and developers

It's fun.

We thought we could be more active about it.

If it's as big as this WordCamp,
it's not possible for everyone

especially if you are in country side.

You don't get this much people.

I'm from Fukuoka, I came from Fukuoka today,

We get together in Fukuoka too.

But this big thing is difficult.

We want to actually meet people, not only online.

It's important.

It doesn't have to be study group
or very formal ones

simply a casual party maybe.

Knowing each other, what they do and so on

You could work together for example

We need more of this kind of opportunity.

That's what we talked
at the last after party.

Who came to the last WordCamp?

Raise your hands.

around 1/5

It maybe the first time you hear about it.

Introducing a project named "WordBench"

What's WordBench?

Local community
for WordPress users & developers

For me, Fukuoka.

Why don't we have our own local ones.

Let's have a hub where we can make
and share the communities.

It's just what I'm personaly saying.

It's not something official.

I just think that it's good to have it.

That was what I called for at the last WC afterparty.

It's been around half a year

without big annoucements,

The stats for now is...

So it's Map of Japan,

we have 12 areas.

Okinawa is the most south,

my home town Fukuoka in Kyushu.

Kagawa in Shikoku, Okayama, Kobe, Nagoya, Shizuoka, Nagano, Kawasaki, Tokyo, Saitama

We have those 12.

If you are from these areas, can you raise your hands?

We have a few.

Is it the first time you hear about WordBench?

You already know about it.

I want you to bring the groove of WordCamp

to your local town,

let's spread smaller local communities
in everywhere in Japan.

We haven't announced that much so,

now we have 42 members.

We want it bigger.

If interested, from here or from home,

go to WordBench website and join us.

The system we used until recently was

WordPress MU, Multi User

to be honest some issues didn't work well

It's been difficult to have people
getting involved

So we tried this and that,

Finally we came to BuddyPress.

There might be more about BuddyPress later but,

it enables you to create a platform of
social network on top of WordPress

WordBench looks like this.

It's Fukuoka group

and we create this kind of groups.

We get people in Fukuoka or interested people joins.

You can message each other in the network.

You can build relationships with your friends

Simply, it's a plugin working on WordPress MU.

Development is going on right now. It's RC1. We use this.

We installed 1 week ago and we are already here.

If you want to know what BuddyPress is like, you can join here.

Who knows BuddyPress?

Raise your hands.

Not much.

It's going to be very interesting. Please join.

We have a logo too.

We had a competition and this got the first prize.

I want to introduce the activities in each locations,

today we don't have many from each locals,

only 2 but you'll know what the community is like.

First, my home town Fukuoka. For now the biggest members of 15.

Those who live in Fukuoka, and near Fukuoka such as Saga also joins.

Even those who lives in Tokyo and are from Fukuoka.

It's local community but not only for local people.

Feel free to join.

After half a year, I didn't have enough time to be active to this,

We haven't done anything specially.

But on 26th April, there'll be the first study group in Fukuoka.

I often make plugin so

I will talk easily how to make plugin then.

It calls attendance at WordBench

You can register RSVP at WordBench groups.

She is Yuriko from Kawasaki (pass mic to Yuriko)
次、川崎の百合子さんから（百合子さんに代わる）

I'm a Yuriko Ikeda, an organizer of WordBench Kawasaki.

Now we have about 6 members

We just enjoy the party for the moment.

We also want to have a meetup someday.

But for now we just get together about 3 people for drinking.

We are busy and haven't scheduled it on April.

We are considering we hold it on late April or May.

You might see the schedule at WordBench.org

Thank you. (Pass the mic to Miyoshi)

12 local groups are registered but I'm sorry here are only 2 groups today.

When we have WordCamp again,

since there haven't been groups like in Hokkaido, Tohoku,

It would be nice if someone had an interest and could join.

This is the URL of WordBench.

I'll show it again at somewhere, feel free to go there.

It might look complicated with English UI but there are no tricky thing to sign up.

You can join your local group. If you can't find it, I can build it.

It would be nice if we could make small local network more and more with like that way.

That's all today.

Thank you.

At a free café, no charge.