In July, I attended WordCamp Bengaluru 2024. A day before the conference, instead of a fancy after-party, the organisers did something quite innovative. They organised a photo walk.
The plan was simple. Walk about in one of Bengaluru’s flower markets, take photos to upload them to the official WordPress photo directory. Dulcea Suresha, a first time volunteer at WordCamp Bengaluru, vividly captures the experience of a photo walk event.
This photo walk was attended by 40 attendees.
The oddness of walking in and out of parks, stopping by obscure juice shops and looking at pretty flowers, where the only thing in common for all the attendees was a particular software was thoroughly enjoyable for most people partaking.
That particular photo walk activity was led by Bigul, who has been a good friend over the years and is a prolific contributor to the WordPress photo directory. At the time of writing this post, he has 1033 photos in the directory. All CC-0 licensed or as some would like it copyright free.
I remember he organised a nature walk at the Kozhikode WordPress meetup group about a year ago.
There have been other WordPress photo walks in Mumbai, Bhopal and Nagpur. This is not just an Indian phenomenon, I recently came across a nice writeup on organising photowalk meetup by Jos Velasco in Bogota, Colombia.
Back home in Pune the other day I suggested an idea of going on a trek to Vetal Tekdi and taking photos for the WordPress directory as a meetup activity. It instantly had people excited and interested.
All the photos on that directory are copy-left friendly – or more precisely CC-0 license.
Communities on their feet!
Communities around software or professional skill related communities quickly put people in boxes. The boxes of professional networking, brand building, learning, figuring out solutions to their website problems, career advice et al.
But let’s be honest, communities are places of belonging and people really dislike being boxed in. I suspect they want a sense of friendship and love from their community spaces that allow them to grow as people and not just as professionals or sometimes just exist as people and or feel seen.
So doing outdoor activities, talking about plants, hills, architecture, history of the city people inhabit, as a group activity is where a software community literally steps out of the constraints of the four walls to connect a bit aimlessly without an agenda and to live a bit.
I suspect all communities are really about people coming together and having fun.
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