This year's WordCamp Asia was held in Taipei, the vibrant capital city of Taiwan. Members from WordPress.com joined other Automatticians, as well as around 2,000 other attendees from across 70 countries to connect, learn, build, and give back to the platform that powers millions of top websites across the internet.
The event kicked off with Contributor Day, an opportunity for anyone in the WordPress community, from newcomers to seasoned experts, to get involved and contribute to WordPress. Contributing can mean contributing to code, but it can also mean sharing your expertise in design, offering support in forums, translating content, and much much more. This year's Contributor Day had a fantastic turnout and it was amazing to see so many folks show up and participate!
As always, there was a variety of informative and inspiring talks. Some of our favorites included talks about the future of WordPress, the multifaceted nature of design, building and maintaining WordPress sites with AI, achieving efficient workflows with the site editor, and the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the tech and WordPress communities. If any of these topics pique your interest, you can take a look at the livestream recordings for these and all other WordCamp Asia 2024 talks here.
While our colleagues from the WordPress Project, Woo, and Jetpack participated in the event, folks from WordPress.com were also present, contributing, networking, and engaging with the community.
This year we were particularly interested in connecting with developers so that we could better understand their experiences with WordPress.com. Our hosting infrastructure, powered by WP Cloud, is best-in-class, yet the benefits aren't as well-known in the developer community. To help get the word out about all of our developer-focused features, we've recently relaunched our developer site at developer.wordpress.com. Check it out to learn about staging sites, WP-CLI access, and Studio, our upcoming local development environment.
During the anticipated closing Q&A session at WordCamp Asia 2024, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, opened up about his dreams for a web that's both open and accessible to everyone. He shared how the core principles of open source are not just shaping WordPress but also knitting together a worldwide community of contributors.
That sense of community is something you can definitely feel at WordCamps. Thirty-six percent of attendees at this WordCamp were first-time participants—a testament to the event's growing appeal and the ever-expanding WordPress community.
During the closing remarks, Matt revealed that State of the Word 2024 will be held in Tokyo, Japan. The lead organizers also revealed the next WordCamp Asia location: Manila, Philippines, in February 2025. With Manila's rich tapestry of Spanish, European, American, and Asian influences, we're in for a vibrant mix of culture, cuisine, and community!
But you don't have to wait until 2025 to start getting involved. There's a huge number of local and regional WordCamps happening year-round. Head over to https://central.wordcamp.org/ to find one near you. Whether you're looking to develop your skills, learn something new, network with the community, there's something for everyone. We hope to see you out there!
