Nirav is called the entrepreneur geek. One who likes technology as much as businesses.

He’s built a rather eventful track record over the last 17 years. To summarize: he started at the age of 13, launched India’s first electronic magazine, a thriving web agency that went down in 2009, was asked to exit the company, made a heroic return and recovery, then a string of seven businesses, doing multiple product businesses in parallel, authored two – actually three – books, spoke at various events and conferences, contributed to open source and community, wrote some fancy code and got gray hair at early age.

He is a “parallel entrepreneur” leading multiple technology businesses and adventures. You can learn more about his WordPress solutions from: StorApps, Icegram and WPMeta

But hey, numbers and all the claim-to-fame apart, what’s most important about him is that he loves to contribute. He is easily approachable and has a lot of experience. So if you have any questions about WordPress, WooCommerce; starting up, running or scaling a tech business, he’d love to help!

Insights on Nirav’s talk: “Winning With WooCommerce”

WooCommerce has become the most popular e-commerce platform in a quick five years. But can it solve your business needs? If you are already running WooCommerce, how can you amplify your results?

If you are new to WooCommerce, this fast paced session will get you up to speed with the basics. Then you will discover neat techniques to grow your sales, increase customer engagement, effectively managing day to day tasks and make your dreams come true!

Whether you are evaluating WooCommerce or already using it, this information rich talk will fill your mind with new ideas that you’d want to go out and implement right away! It’s based on extensive experience so you will get no-fluff practical solutions.

You will also get ample opportunity to ask your questions – until the organizers go wild. And after that, we can always go off stage, outside the hall and answer your remaining questions.

Because it’s all about winning with WooCommerce!

Come prepared!

Start with following him on Twitter @niravmehta!

Shivam is a Senior Software Engineer with BlogVault. He spends most of his time glued to a computer writing codes directly/indirectly related to WordPress.

He has been using WordPress for 7 years now, and has authored popular plugins and a private theme. One of the core organizers of Bengaluru WordPress Community, he adores the idea of a strong community and never misses an opportunity to contribute. His contributions include – writing for the WordPress Handbook, blogging his experiences, and contributing questions/answers on StackOverflow. Helping people at Happiness Bars is his favourite WordCamp thing.

At BlogVault he has had the opportunity to lead a number of development projects which have further helped shape his understanding of WordPress. Inspired by the ‘State of the Word 2015’, he spent the better part for his last year learning and creating web applications on ReactJS.

When not online, Shivam may be found riding his bike, hiking and photographing a new trail or sleeping.

Insights on Shivam’s talk: “State of WordPress Security: Today and beyond”

WordPress is huge. One of the greatest things about WordPress is that it’s open source; which also means that it is really well understood. WordPress powers more than 25% of the web and it’s steadily moving towards the 30% mark. Thousands of third-party plugins and themes are available. All these points that make WordPress great, also make WordPress extremely vulnerable to hacking. Also, the scale and complexity of WordPress provides for a large attack surface.

The WordPress team is invested in maintaining the integrity of the application, and all core related security issues are quickly addressed. However the same cannot be said for thousands of plugins/themes out there which makes WordPress vulnerable.

Being in the backup business, Shivam and his team have spent a lot of time helping customers restore and clean their hacked sites. All this experience and learning was later translated into code that empowers their new product.

Shivam will be sharing some important takeaways from this experience in his talk.

• Why will anyone hack you?
• What are the common hacks?
• How to prevent one’s sites against them?
• Analyzing security related data collected from over 100K WordPress sites.

The talk will discuss what these data mean to the WordPress ecosystem in current times and what can it lead to in the future.

Meet Dinesh Jain, Dinesh is a Certified ScrumMaster® and has been a part of Organizing team of Pune WordCamp 2015.

Dinesh began leveraging WordPress right after graduation in 2012 and he has not looked back since. The manifold features of WordPress and the flexibility it provides has had Dinesh firmly glued and his attachment to the WordPress CMS is growing stronger with time.

From a novice level to acquiring expertise, he has evolved his skillset to also managing large scale projects in WordPress. Dinesh has been a vibrant part of the WordPress Community and has contributed to its open source community in myriad ways.

Dinesh was a speaker at Wordcamp Mumbai 2012 and also was a member of the Organizing Committee of Wordcamp Pune 2015. He is an enthusiastic attendee of WordCamps. At present, he is the VP of Services in Armentum, which is a full service digital agency and an emerging player in WordPress and based out of its Bangalore Development Center.

His Areas of expertise are:

• WordPress Development
• Project Management
• Agile Methodology

Highlights on Dinesh Jain’s talk: OSCAR – A growth driven methodology for managing WordPress projects

• Currently there are scores of project management methodologies available but almost all of them are either built for enterprise level or are difficult to manage. Hence the intuitive need to have a simple methodology which follows Agile and easy to manage for all genres whether they are freelancers, start ups, small or large businesses.
• Why look into another one when there are a plethora of Project Management Methodologies present. The main purpose behind OSCAR is that it unifies user experience, development and customer acquisition. By leveraging OSCAR, an agency or a freelancer is able to de-commoditize their offering and continue to earn revenue for a client on a retainer basis that goes beyond support.
• OSCAR helps companies build a revenue engine with no overhead costs as well as using the project management methods in an effective manner for smooth execution of the projects.

The Talk includes:

• Why Project Management Methodology is essential for a WordPress project
• Existing Methodologies and hindrances caused.
• Understanding each phase of OSCAR methodology:
  • Objective
  • Strategy
    • Building a Baseline
    • Understanding “Why”
    • Defining “What”
    • Defining “How”
  • Create
    • User Experience and Interface
    • Code Wrangling
    • Content Development
    • Marketing and Sales Automation Engine
  • Analyze
    • Performance Measurement
    • Performance Analysis
  • Refine
    • Update based on performance measurements and analysis
    • Implement Product Roadmap Features
    • Follow Content Calendar For Content Development
  • Tools for each phase of OSCAR methodology
  • Advantages and Derivatives of using OSCAR for Freelancers and Agencies.

  
  How it will help the audience:

  • Non-Technical (Business Owners, Business Analytics, Business Development Managers)
  • Technical (Developers, Freelancers)

  Linkedin Profile: https://in.linkedin.com/in/dineshjain2911

Meet Jayman Pandya, With an experience of over a decade, Jayman has worked in lead roles of Design with companies like Bhujbal Knowledge City, Zee Entertainment, ICICI, J.P. Morgan, Leo Burnett. He has also worked with companies like Roche Pharma, Abbott Pharma, Boehringer Ingelheim, Johnson & Johnson, Axis Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Mahindra Agri, Godrej, Legrand, EndemolShine, 9X Media, HDFC Bank as independent consultant on their various projects.

Jayman has been working with WordPress since 2008 when he pitched it for the first time to his client “9X Media” for a portal. Today he has more than 40 sites under his belt built of WordPress (with the help of a development team) and have built things like Twitter Consolidation App, Lead Management System on top of WordPress.

After attending a few WordPress meetups and talking with some seasoned WordPress developers, he decided to apply to talk at WordCamp Nashik.

Apart from this, Jayman has an experience of taking UX/UI, RWD workshops with his clients.

Highlights on Jayman Pandya’s talk: “The BuzzWord ‘UX’, Why it is so Important?”

His Lightening talk, will move on explaining what experience and how the empathy is to the core to have a good User Experience. To support his statements, he will walk through with 3 examples

• Angry Person
  • This example will iterate about hexadec error codes or white screen of death in WordPress.
  • He will also introduce programmers to the concept of empathy, talk about the psychological importance of the same and why they need to be empathetic.
  • WordPress Example: WordPress now lets you to select the language before installation is an amazing example of empathy. They analysis on what users are doing with the product and how WordPress acted to make it better.
• User is like your GrandParent
  • This example will highlight on how assumptions are major culprits, when it comes to destroying the usability of any product.
  • A real world example would be like helping an old person cross the road and then move to tech examples like giving coach marks to user on how to use a product.
• User is a Kindergarten student
  • This example will emphasize on the importance of making the product more playful, while focusing on function with an example of how Kindergarten’s use games and play activities to teach kids. He will follow this up with an example of gamification by Apple Watch to make you more active over a period of time.
  • He will also talk about Customizer in WordPress as a beautiful example of gamification and Visual Composer as a bad example of gamification.

Linkedin Profile: www.linkedin.com/in/jaymanpandya

Fairy Dharawat is a writer by profession who has dabbled in stand-up comedy and performance poetry, She believes in focusing on little details when it comes to writing impactful tales which could move your readers.

After conducting workshops on stories, and being part of a story group called Katha Kosa for more than 2 years, Fairy Dharawat is convinced she has barely scratched the surface when it comes to writing remarkable stories ready to dominate the world.

She recently started Stories4hire,a space dedicated to documenting her tryst with stories. Mumbai WordCamp 2016 was her debut where she did a talk on – How to write humor. The response was fantastic!

Glimpse on Fairy’s talk: “Engage your readers via Stories”.

Humans understand stories better. A useful tool to impart knowledge as its visual, stories also helps us bring clarity in our communications. While the blog is a front face, technical talent handles the background show. It becomes important for them to see what is the end product. Their expertise in the background coupled with working knowledge on how to write will give them a competitive advantage.

For Bloggers, writers, She’ll share fundamentals of stories, and how it can be incorporated into their writing to make their blogs more interesting which can help them get a higher reach, and bring engagement with their users. For beginners, She’ll introduce tools to help them in writing. She’ll also share a bit on SEO, which can guide them to write for users, keeping in mind certain key points.

So the talk is going to focus on;

• How to write a story. A brief on stories. A beginning a middle and an end. A formulaic approach, and follow the rule. Understand the rule thoroughly and then break the rule by knowing about characters, story arc, plot, conflict, and resolution.
• How to write a blog. The topic of your blog. Writing posts related to your blog. Topics for your posts. How to choose image/s. Tools to use for your Images/URL/SEO
• How to add a story into your blog. Narrate it in the first person. Add anecdotes. Tie it up together.
• How to make your story more engaging. Using action words. Experimenting with chronology. More moments. Character back stories. Conflict and resolution.

Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fairy-dharawat-88435a20

Anand Thakkar is a Senior Developer working with Hidden Brains Infotech Pvt. Ltd. An Ahmedabad based Web & Mobile Apps Development Company.

He is associated with the WordPress development from last 5 years. He even started his career as a WordPress Developer and now works on multiple Web & Mobile technologies. Apart from WordPress Development, he holds a great command over Core php, Codeignator, CakePHP, Angular JS too. Anand also holds a Zend Certification for php 5.3

Anand is a Traveler. He travels to different destinations on the name conferences. He simply looks for a reason to get away and explore a new city. Apart from traveling, he likes to watch movie and is a big time foodie. It is quite possible that you encounter him on a food stall next to the WordCamp.

Anand will be providing a lightning talk about the “Automated Testing in WordPress Eco System”

As all we know that WordPress business has transformed widely from Only Service Centric to Product Centric approach. With changes, it will be challenging to provide quality in the Product Based Industry as always. Anand will quickly explain stuff regarding the “Automated Testing”; why it is useful to adept TDD [ Test Driven Development ] approach and how it can impact your Product/Service Quality?

• Types of testing involved in WordPress Development
• Short intro about the QUnit and PHPUnit
• Setup the basic test case for your WordPress Plugin and/or Theme
• Where to get started further
• Pros and Cons involved with the TDD.

Linkedin Profile: https://in.linkedin.com/in/anandthakkar

Saurabh is the Chief Strategy Officer at Yapapaya and Chief Mentor at BaapWP.me. He understands freedom as having control on one’s own life and hence is fascinated by the GPL. He really feels that open source morality and the internet can solve a lot of India’s problems, especially the ones related to education and livelihood.

WordPress as an open source, democratic, self-controlled publishing system is very important to him and he writes, talks about, teaches and works with WordPress in various technical and non-technical ways.

Saurabh will share his experience in the WordPress ecosystem, in his “Marketing Lessons I learnt from the WordPress community”. talk.

He still likes to be called a WordPress developer but his role has increasingly tilted towards marketing and strategy in the past few years. He has managed products and dabbled at marketing before he took up development full-time.

In 2014, he started getting active in the WordPress ecosystem and eventually led the organizing of WordCamp Pune 2015. In this period, he was able to create successful, non-intrusive promotional campaigns for various WordPress related activities (especially WordCamp Pune).

He has been Working since he was 18, so he has been Working for 16 years now and have seen different sales and marketing tactics in his career in different executive and managerial roles in multiple industries.

Highlights on Saurabh Shukla’s talk: “Marketing Lessons I learnt from the WordPress community”.

Saurabh will be going to compare and contrast concepts behind some commonly prescribed marketing tactics/strategies with some proven engagement strategies that He learnt from the WordPress ecosystem.

While the topic is definitely business oriented, it will have insights and examples that are useful both for individuals and organizations. The concepts are simple and can be grasped by anyone with zero marketing skills as well.

Outline:

• Introduction.
• Contextual Conversations vs Sales Funnels.
• Cultural Transparency vs Self Promotion.
• Resource Entities vs People.
• A note on Goal Orientation.
• Conclusion.

WordPress.org Profile: https://profiles.wordpress.org/saurabhshukla

WordPress is handy tool for startups and small businesses looking to quickly launch new media products. Hari Shanker will help you, on how One can start his own Startup on WordPress in his “WordPress for Startups” talk.

Hari Shanker is a passionate WordPress enthusiast, Hari is currently employed as a Happiness Engineer at Automattic (The company best known for WordPress.com & more).
Hari’s association with WordPress dates back to 2007 – when he first discovered it as a college student at Government Engineering College, Trivandrum.

Little did he realize that the association would grow into a lifelong passion! This exhorted Hari to pursue WordPress development and support as a career after college, as WordPress Project Manager for a startup, where he oversaw the design, development and deployment of nearly 50+ WordPress websites for diverse clients including Fortune 500 companies.

The passion for WordPress eventually led him to Automattic, where he currently engineers happiness for customers using WooCommerce – the eCommerce plugin for WordPress from Automattic, which powers 39% of all eCommerce stores. Even though Hari is familiar with WordPress theme and plugin development, his expertise lies in providing WordPress support & consulting, which also happens to be his day-job.

A seasoned public speaker, Hari has delivered several talks about WordPress, Blogging, Open Source Software at different venues including National Institute of Technology Calicut and at NASSCOM-supported events.

A runner-up of the 2011 Mindful Leadership by the University of Dayton, Ohio, Hari is also a Stringer with the national newspaper – The Hindu, where he contributes features on topics Technology, Startups and Youth, among others.

Glimpse on Hari Shanker’s talk: “WordPress for Startups”

India is currently undergoing an entrepreneurship boom of sorts – with special emphasis on Technology Startups. Any technology startup requires a set of powerful technology products – both as a tool to build the startup, and as a means to an end, to provide services to bring revenue to sustain the startup; something that only WordPress can achieve.

With its extensive presence (26% of the web is currently powered by WordPress), and an-ever growing community, not to mention its easy learning curve and extensibility, WordPress offers a melange of solutions for business-owners. The talk assumes a two-pronged approach; viz to explore diverse realms of offering WordPress services/setting up a WordPress agency and to use WordPress as a tool to build your company and/or your software tool. I intend to do the same through case studies of successful companies who have achieved this, to display the true power of WordPress, through an interactive session.

Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harishanker

Meet Sandeep Kelvadi, He will talk about “Website/Product Positioning – The Why, What and How?”

Sandeep is a marketing strategist at Pixelmattic a WordPress agency that crafts intelligent websites for smart businesses. He help clients navigate the digital landscape by helping them develop an online strategy for the website with the content at its core.

He is Co-founder at DreamNotion Innovations since 2010 where we developed their first product, a gamified social learning platform called XPlore, Wide-ranging experience in a dynamic, growth stage start-up company as a Manager for Sales & Marketing Operations designing and developing sales workflows on Salesforce CRM.

Sandeep also run’s Slidetap an app design studio under the DreamNotion umbrella, that aims to bridge the gap between technology and design by creating designs that are beautiful and practical.

He handled Customer Support & loyalty at various points, assisted in marketing campaigns and conducted product training for customers and staff.

Insight on Sandeep’s talk: “Website/Product Positioning – The Why, What and How?”

• What is Positioning – It’s not what you do to a product, but what you do to the mind of the prospect.
• Why is it important – Differentiating yourself from competition, standing out in a crowd, simplifies marketing/sales conundrums.
• How do you position a company/product? – Choosing the right name, marketing tactics, case studies and looking at a WordPress specific examples.
• How do you position yourself and your career? – How building a personal brand can help your career and business prospects.
• How does positioning help a blogger, WordPress developer and a WordPress company

Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandeepkelvadi

Photo Courtesy: Fotocitzen

Please Note: Our Call for Speakers is now closed. If you have any questions about WordCamp Nashik, please contact us or tweet us at @wcnashik.