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filed under WordPress
Last week, Faguni, a WordPress contributor from Dhaka, asked if I was writing a post about my experience as an organiser for WordCamp Asia 2026. We were catching up on WordCamp Asia and professional updates. One of my biggest regrets is that Faguni and others couldn’t attend in Mumbai due to visa problems.
This post has been in draft for about three weeks. As a lead of WordCamp Asia, I had a unique perspective. The event ran smoothly, and even a month later, I’m still tagged on various LinkedIn posts about it.
I’ve read hundreds of social media posts sharing their experiences from the event.
I’m unsure how to articulate my takeaways or leadership lessons. Each experience is unique, making much expert advice seem like survivor bias.
But I do like capturing some feelings, thoughts as personal artefacts on this blog.So make a long story short, this is not really a post about leadership and all that jazz around WordCamp Asia. It is more of a personal one!
Day One, Family Photo at WordCamp Asia 2026.
Can you find me? Hint: I am actually smiling!WordCamp Asia in Mumbai!
Last year I visited WordCamp Asia in Manila. Folks from the WordPress community team only weeks before the event had reached out to me and asked about organising WordCamp Asia in India.
My first fears were how people from Pakistan and Bangladesh travel to India, and those fears did materialise. These fears were not unfounded. Finally I do not think anyone from these two countries could manage to get visas to visit the event. It is one of those regrets I have and won’t go away!
But in early 2025, there were no other cities in the fray and the outreach to Mumbai was a bit of a SOS. So I said “YES” and off I was on this wild journey called WordCamp Asia 2026.
One important reason to sign up for this role was I really wanted to see if I could lead and manage something that just had so many moving parts, so many passionate and talented individuals.
Open source work is a bit like getting used to being under the sun. It can sap your energy, can make your feel uncomfortable. But once you are used to life under the sun, a lot of magic will happen.
This edition was happening in Mumbai, the first flagship event ever in India. There was some negativity around it at the beginning. Regardless, the organisers, all 79 of them started the journey off, excited and happy!
The year of organising this event not easy at all. We lost young Zeel Thakker, an organiser from Ahmedabad, we dealt with production delays, with visa issues, operational costs, sponsors pulling out at the last minute, stretching out budgets, and if that was not enough challenge! A freaking war broke out, which reduced participation further, speakers and some sponsors pulling out.
Several times the thought did cross my mind, that this event is jinxed and maybe it just won’t take place.
But it did!
We had one of the highest turnouts (2400+ Attendees) ever at a WordCamp and the largest ever Contributor Day (1600+). I still feel that we could have had a bigger turnout.
One of my main goals I set was to make WordCamp Asia, unapologetically Asian! This meant making editorial and other choices that reflect this. We managed to have the highest number of speakers from Asia, and I think many more in ratio than previous editions. I hope that continues in future versions too.
The energy was high, at least the feedback from attendees was everything from sessions, to the venue to the food to the after party was fantastic.
I am incredibly proud with all of everyone involved in the organising team. Here is a group photo at the Organiser Dinner!
We just looked a bit rowdy here, but we were quite nice actually! Friendships
The one thing that invariably happens at projects like flagship WordCamps, is that you become friends with people from different countries. I now have friends from Uganda to Russia, from Japan to Sri Lanka.
One of them who almost did not make it was Moses (Cursor) Ssebunya. He travelled all the way from Uganda. His visa application for India was rejected twice!
But his positivity, support and friendship is truly infectious. Both of us got on several calls and several more Whatsapp messages, and figured out how to make sure his visa application does not get rejected a third time!
Some extra paperwork, documentation and digitally signed letters later, Moses applied again the third time. I am not the most expressive person but when he got the visa and sent me a text, I punched the air as in victory for about 3 and half times. Then I noticed I was staring at the screen and no one was around. The window was open and some neighbour might have thought I was finally losing it!
Moses and I learned so much about visa applications, I semi-seriously joked that the two of us should become travel consultants! Moses has spent countless hours vetting applications for meetups and WordCamps around the world. People like him are why the community team keeps chugging along!
And here is Moses and I, eating some Dosa in Mumbai
Moses had his first taste of dosa at Mumbai. The dosa was just about okay! But since it was his first one, he seemed to be happy! Another friend I made over the last year was Regan Khadgi from Nepal. It was so good to meet someone who shares the same values and grace about the community.
I had a great time traversing through Colaba and Girgaum in Mumbai in November, with Regan. It was quite interesting to discover Mumbai through a first time visitors eyes.
During WordCamp Asia, he stayed over at my place in Mumbai. It was fun to hang out with him after the event and take him to an extremely crowded Malad station, to eat unhealthy and delicious wada paavs along with jalebis.
I suspect Regan was a bit overwhelmed with just the number of people he saw. I have made him a promise to visit Kathmandu someday and walk through his city with him as my history guide.
The other big influence on me came from Japan! One of the coolest people I know is Junko Nugaka from Japan. She lives on a small island and takes care of a library. I think people who enjoy libraries have an innate sense of internal calm and an appreciation of the commons.
While I have known Junko for several years, I only became friends with her this year. We have spoken often about the project,style of leadership and sometimes even art and culture.
This was in Pune, after the event. Junko struck a pose at the Kelkar Museum. Junko travelled with me to Pune along with her friend Shoko, after the event. I showed her and re-discovered Pune, seeing it through the eyes of a travellor. I think that will be separate post next week.
Mumbai, Pune, Mumbai!
Mumbai
WordCamp Asia is a big deal. We expected a lot of people to visit Mumbai. Mumbai’s WordPress community is one of the oldest in Asia (along with some in Japan). I have known a lot of the WordPress-ers from these two cities and for over a decade now.For the event I got to work with friends from Mumbai starting with Alexander, Meher, Vachan, Saaheel and so many more.
Alex participating was special for me. He has been visiting my house in Mumbai, planning WordCamps in Mumbai, back when both my parents were around. It was pretty cool to hangout with him sometimes and sometimes just being in the moment.
PuneWhen I moved to Pune in 2017, and I made friendships in the city, mostly with people from the WordPress community. Sheeba, Amit, Joel are all folks I have known since forever in Pune. There was also Yogesh, a good friend from Bangalore. Not only were they organisers, I personally felt they were my main support system in a way. Many of them took time out to help me tackle some things often without me needing to ask for help. They were in a way, my main support system.
That I would end up organising this thing with long time friends and collaborators, was something that was something I could imagine happening. I am very thankful and very privileged to have got to do this with them!
What I did not ever imagine happening was to work with my younger sibling Arundhati.
Mumbai
Arundhati knew some of the organisers from Mumbai but she really started to get to know the WordPress community when she attended some of the meetups in 2022.
Arundhati joined the Communications Team for WordCamp Asia last year.
I make websites, she is a therapist. Our paths never really cross professionally. So even though I know her for a good 40 odd years, it was the first time we were working together.
It was really enjoyable and pleasant to see her doing well, holding her own and bringing along her own brand of calmness and creativity to the project. She even designed the official Wappu mascot for WordCamp Asia, called Wapuulika.I am thankful and glad we both were together on this journey!
Arundhati and I – pleased as punch, posing with Kazuko Kaneuchi the creator of Wapuu from Japan. Photo taken by Junko. For me WordPress feels like Mumbai
Mumbai is a city I have lived much of my life. My childhood, my school years were all in this city. My parents have lived and died in this city. The city is changing, sometimes too fast but if I sit still for a moment, I recognise it even now and never feel like a stranger.
I remember a couple of years ago, while writing a letter to a friend, I described Mumbai as a place that feels like a place I could simply never feel lost.
In that sense, over the years WordPress is like Mumbai for me. A place where I never will feel lost, a place I could never really feel like a stranger!
I got to pose at the photo booth.
Photo taken by Junko
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filed under Personal
The year was 1998. I was just out of high school and was in Pune. This was the first time I was living in any other city than Mumbai. It was also the first time I was living away from my parents.
October arrived and it was my father’s birthday (17th October). Papa as both my sister and I would call him was nice, gentle with a calm personality. This calm and stoic personality would be cast away during his birthdays.
He would be extremely excited about his birthday. His excitement could rival that of a six-year-old child. It might have something to do with him being the youngest of all his siblings. 🙂
His birthday in 1998, I got a good peek into what he was probably like as a young boy of twelve or thirteen. My father grew up in the 50s and 60s. For some reason, as a kid he loved the character of Zorro. Zorro was a swashbuckling sword-fighting acrobat with a trusty horse called Tornado. He had managed to read a lot of the comic books about Zorro. Even when I was a child, he would tell me about this comic character. It made no sense to me.
In 1998, the Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins starrer, Mask of Zorro was playing at Sterling Cinema. And being Diwali holidays, I was in Mumbai during his birthday.
So a plan was hatched on how to celebrate his birthday between father and son.
We started on a local train to Churchgate station and then walked around that part of Mumbai. We stopped at a restaurant for some sandwiches. Papa had a Thums Up. I wanted to not do what my dad was doing as a teenager. So, I opted for a Pepsi.
I vividly remember walking around Churchgate. Crossing through Azad Maidaan and stopped to watch the green Bombay Gymkhana cricket ground. There was a match going on and we watched for a while.
He described in a very imaginative way how the Bombay Gymkhana had temporary stands put up. It hosted the first test match played by India in 1933.
England’s captain was Douglas Jardine (from the infamous bodyline series) and India’s captain was CK Nayudu.He set up the game excitedly.
India lost the match predictably. However, Amarnath went on to score a fighting hundred. This was in 1933.
Fifty years later, Amarnath’s son Mohinder stood with Kapil Dev outside Lord’s balcony in England. They held aloft the World Cup. He could be a pretty good storyteller when he wanted to be one.
My father was a cricket romantic. He was also a bit of the history buff. He did pass that along to me.
Then onto watching Mask of Zorro at Sterling. On the way back, we decided to get into a taxi for the long way back home to Goregaon.
He told me about the comics he would get on his birthdays and how some of them were about Zorro. He then launched into adjacent explanations. Some Zorro stories were set in Spanish California. Others were set in Mexican California. Now that I think of it, it was no surprise he was a fan of western action films.
That birthday was a good one for Papa. He had watched a western action movie at one of the great old cinema halls of Mumbai. Then he took a good walk through Mumbai maidaans and watched some cricket. Finally, he went back home for cake and dinner.
After my mom passed, it affected him severely. I could see it, sense it. Generally not very expressive, he opened up a lot to me those final years. He would call me almost every evening. I still miss recommending a cool movie or talking at length with him about a cricket game. I miss his ability to remember random factoids about history, geography, culture, movies and cricket.
I got my first car ever 4 years ago. I bought it mainly to visit my father in Mumbai during the pandemic. The first long trip in this car was on his birthday in 2021. I am grateful, I managed to do that as he did not make it to the next one.
Today he would have turned 75. ♥️
Tags: family
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I have been listening to interviews of Rory Sutherland a lot these days. Sutherland is the Vice-Chairman of the Ogilvy & Mather group of companies. He often shares some really great examples of advertising, behavioral psychology, marketing and design.
I came across this gem from an interview.
What actually happens instead is that 10 people misunderstand it, express their outrage. In the old days, newspaper reporting actually involved getting out of the office and going and visiting people to canvas their opinions, and therefore, mad people with extreme opinions were difficult to find, because there weren’t very many of them.
On Twitter, if you want to create a scandal, all you do is go, there’ll be some bad people here, oh, look, here they are, hashtagblah, blah, blah, Cut and paste, put it in the newspaper… too easy.
Too easy. And it’s the mainstream media, not the social media, that are most to blame, because they take what is a totally minority whack job opinion, and they make it seem a mainstream opinion
The reasons why outrage is expressed are obviously more nuanced. This quote is a good filter to remember.
I am one of the organisers of WordCamp Asia this year. It will take place in Mumbai. I do come across a lot of unkind mentions about me, the event, and even India for that matter.
I usually handle criticism well, but not everyone can react calmly. Offering a quick solution seems helpful.
People who often have the most social capital, can make their criticism look cataclysmic. People with the most social capital can also tap into others with with similar social capital. This can quickly become a cycle. Rewarding with attention by reacting to outrage more than reacting to contribution. Eventually, everyone starts to believe that the best way to be get noticed is to outrage.
Contributors are often trying to find a happy place and feel a sense of belonging. Many of them do not wish to raise a ruckus on social media to simply attract attention. These folks simply walk away never to return or reduce their involvement drastically.
Speaking up is important, but if you are the listening type, then being able to separate noise from signal is far more important.
If you lead a community, you might need to engage those who generally do not speak up more proactively.
The full interview is pretty cool. It is a lot less about what I wrote above but the quote I shared is around the 4:30 mark.
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I have been traveling to Bengaluru, once or twice every year. Today, a friend mentioned she was traveling to Bangalore. I told her I will share a few places she can visit.
There are obviously a million other places. But I am including the ones I remember fondly. These are the ones I recommend to my friends.- Blossoms Books – Iconic bookstore. I always visit it once at the least whenever I am in Bangalore. There are three outlets on Church Street.
- Higginbothams – Another book store. On MG Road, and walking distance from Blossoms. I love buying stationary from this place.
- Tom’s – Toms Restaurant seems to have been built in the 1970s or 80s. It has a old charm to it. The food is nice, the clientele seems to be regulars generally. I loved some of the authentic Mangalorean cuisine there.
- Cubbon Park – Get into the metro and travel to Cubbon Park. I love strolling through this park by myself. I enjoy sitting on a bench and catching a few pages of a book.
- Lal Bagh – If parks and trees are your think, take another metro and check out Lal Bagh Botanical Garden. It is fantastic. Bonus points for climbing a two billion year old rock and sitting happily over it. (check photo above)
- Cafe Saanchi – If you want to meet a quirky Farsi guy, this is the place for you. You can eat Persian food and sip on saffron tea here. You can tell Keyo who runs the place, Nuwruzji Aditya sent you. He might break out in a toothy grin!
- Indian Music Experience Museum -If you love music, this is the place you really need to visit. I can spend hours there. I wish we have more of such places in every major city in India.
While Bengaluru has several infrastructure issues, I love walking around the city, observing. The older part of Bengaluru around Trinity Circle to Cubbon Park has some excellent architecture. Some of the older inside lanes are great to walk through. They allow you to take in the city and understand it a little bit.
The weather in Bengaluru is a big win! It is always pleasant for a walk!
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filed under Writing
A few hours ago, I spoke to my friend Joel about blogging. One reason for catching up with Joel from time to time is we can talk about blogging. We wondered if blogging will make a return, or something like it will make a return.
One thing we agreed on is this: It is a great delight to follow along with someone who blogs regularly. They share about seemingly different things in their authentic voice.
If you follow such a blogger, you almost feel that you know that person. If you follow long enough, sometimes you also find them changing, evolving.
For me, blogging is therapeutic. I do not even really check my visitor stats regularly. I do not really try to build an audience either.
I just like to write and share things via blogging. As if I am putting out messages in a bottle and throwing them into the sea.
Sometimes I am lucky to get a comment, or two. Sometimes I am told by someone at a local meetup that they liked reading something I wrote a while ago.
Such interactions feel like meeting a good friend after a long time.
This year, I have been blogging a lot more regularly. This will be my seventh blog post in about 5 weeks. Usually, I at best have averaged one post every month. So what is helping me hit publish more than ever?
I got rid of some of my mental friction on what should be a good or bad blog post. I try to remind myself how I feel after I publish a post and send it out in the open.
I feel calm and happy. And that is enough!
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filed under WordPress
For the past year or so, I have been building themes for some clients. They are usually built using the full site editor, native to WordPress. Nothing fancy but something I am enjoying is working with basics and minimal use of anything too customised
Some freelancers who I sometimes meet at our local meetup often ask how to start with FSE. I generally share some of my own starting points, some tips and some guides on how to go about it. I thought it be helpful to share some of these as links.
I started my journey creating a FSE theme thanks to this really cool plugin called Create Block Theme. I usually install it on my Studio App. That is how I run WordPress on my local computer. Then, I would start a new theme from scratch!
I also have some handy plugins. I use them for creating some blocks or doing some things quickly.
Some of these handy plugins I use are
- Create Block Theme – obviously.
- Gutenberg – helps with a lot of blocks or features which might not be in core
- Jetpack – it ships with some nifty blocks – I think in all 49 of them
- View Transitions – helps your page load really smoothly thanks to caching
- Icon Block – Nice plugin to use custom SVG files to use as icons on the website.
Now that I have some experience with theme building, I prefer to use a clone of Twenty Twenty Four. I then use it with Create Block Theme. I would like to graduate to Twenty TwentyFive as a base theme – or maybe Twenty Six directly!
I used this workflow by Anders Norén’s. It helped me a lot to customise my own workflow for a new theme.
Type Scale Generator by Baseline is a nifty tool to create type scale generator for consistent typography.
Learning
I do learn a lot about Full Site Editor using a couple of resources. There is Gutenberg Times and also FullSiteEditing.com
I also learned a lot from Jamie Marsland and his video tutorials. He is really good at using core blocks on WordPress and creating beautiful layouts.Chase down a win
The best way to go about it is to pick a project and build something. It allows the brain to chase a target down. The end goal being, to ship something rather than learning something in theory.
It’s like playing a sport, like chess or cricket. You can learn and practice all you want but the best learning happens while chasing down a win!
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I have used ChatGPT for some email drafts and creative ideas. So I decided to have some fun and see what ChatGPT can synthesize for me.
I shared some of the copy that I have written in the past couple of months. Some from social media, some from this blog and other places.
I asked it to come up with some quirky careers options for me in an alternate universe.
While it gave me more or less some ideas around open-source, community leadership and even teaching.
But these wildcard careers suggestions were quite funny!
- Professional Captionist
- Temporal Experience Curator
So ChatGPT can imagine me as some retro futurist who has a satirical sense of humour. Not bad!
PS: The featured image obviously was generated with AI. I am not that good at illustrations. Not yet!
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filed under WordPress
I have been playing around Telex AI by Automattic for the past few hours.
As a starting point, I asked Telex to create a block. This block allows a text box, a button, and an output. The output looks like a retro Telex print out.I can’t believe I made this in less than 5 minutes. This is AI application done right!
Try out Telex if you into WordPress. Definitely work on this if you are a developer.
Link: Telex AI by Automattic
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filed under Bookmarks
I came across this really cool embroidered circuit board by Anuvad, while catching up with a friend. The conversation shifted towards something I had read a while ago.
How some Novajo women weavers were assembling state of the art integrated chips. These chips were for the Navigation system of the Apollo missions.
I came across this information first, when I listened to this podcast series called 13 minutes to the moon. It is brilliant for anyone who wants to understand the project of getting the first humans to the moon.
Speaking of moonshots, I never really thought I would be good at design or make themes on WordPress. The dev part usually stumped me. Okay, the design part too has stumped me!
But I have been making progress. I have started to create WordPress themes for clients using this cool workflow by Anders Norén. The workflow is pretty nifty.
Speaking of design, I have taken to drawing some sketches. I found this thread on X, very useful to learn from.
credit: got the idea of parking links on my blog from this post.
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filed under Ruminations
Last year I wrote about Cafe Saanchi and how I loved its quirky authenticity. So on a recent trip I revisited it with Ritvi and Yogi – two good friends from the open-source world.
The cafe is on the 3rd floor. My friends had settled in and I was on the 2nd floor. As I approached the table, the thick mustached owner of the cafe was chatting my friends up.
Great place to sip some tea, eat something and maybe read a book As I pulled up the chair at the table – he called me “Nawruzji Aditya“
Confused, I was, but it was later explained to me that Yogi visited the cafe with his family on 21st March. This day is Nawruz, the Iranian / Persian New Year. They mentioned that 21st March is also my birthday. I am not sure who mentioned this fact.
But the cafe owner, a cheerful friendly Persian was happy to suggest to me my new name.
As I was done with lunch and some delicious tea. I told the owner I had blogged about my earlier visit. I asked him if he would like to read the article.
He agreed and we exchanged numbers.
I did not hear back from him for a couple of days. I was already back in Pune and he reached out, again calling me Nawruzji Aditya.
I promised to write again about his cafe.
So if you are in Bangalore, check out Cafe Saanchi and tell the owner “Nawruzji Aditya” recommended the place. You might get a good conversation! Who knows, maybe even a new name or title!
I will recommend some of the kebabs and naan, saffron tea. But best is ask the owner and get recommendations. But yes, try the saffron tea.
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The year 2025 has been quite dramatic professionally. It started with leading WordCamp Pune in February. Then I traveled to Manila for WordCamp Asia 2025.
Now for 2026, I am co-leading WordCamp Asia 2026 which will take place in Mumbai. I have also had the good fortune to meet interesting people. Artists, musicians, chefs and restaurant owners.
I thought I will share 4 things I want to get done before 2025 runs out.
Learn Block Development
I want to finally get into some level of Gutenberg block development. With the announcement of AI assisted WordPress block builder called Telex, I feel it is time to learn this. I want to get started and make some progress on this finally!
Starter Kit
I am getting a lot of queries these days about building portfolio websites. I found that I usually end up creating a WordPress theme with Twenty-Twenty Four. It is based on this tutorial by Anders Norén, shared on Gutenberg Times.
The idea is to have default settings, default blocks for notifications, forms, cards in the form of a Starter Kit. Then I can just spin up for a new site using WordPress Studio. This should allow me and my collaborators to create new themes quickly.
Learn Figma
I am not planning to become a full-fledged desinger. But I want to learn a lot more how the tools works. Mainly Figma design for websites is what I want to get started with. So planning to finish some courses by Rafal Tomal.
New theme for the blog
Last year, I made a new theme called Studio Bombay for this website. I plan to create a new one with all my learning for this blog. Maybe just an upgrade but not a full revamp. But this will be a fun project.
PS: How did I do?
So how did I do? I am writing this update as a postscript on 11th June 2026.
- Learn Block Development ✅
- Starter Kit ✅
- Learn Figma ❌
- New theme for the blog ✅