[ad_1] Esai ini juga tersedia dalam bahasa Indonesia. It is not that hard to fall for WordPress if you have a chance to experience WordPress. For me, it took a WordCamp. To make it fancy, in 2016, I was volunteering impromptu at WordCamp Denpasar in Bali, the island of Gods. To note, Bali is a tiny island in a country called Indonesia. Yes, it’s where I’m from. So, if you read this, you know how powerful WordCamp is. It may bring people who will give back to the community, even if they don’t get anything from WordCamp. (Well, perhaps a t-shirt, a lanyard and free hotel meals) My journey with WordPress started from one WordCamp to the next. It gets fancier. The next one was WordCamp Ubud, still in Bali. This time, I was organizing. Ubud is one of the hottest hotspots for digital nomads in Asia. A beautiful place, especially if you are also into nature, yoga and some enlightenment. I’m not kidding. If WordPress does not enlighten you enough, go to Ubud. You will feel some kind of strong energy to connect to everything. Bali is magical, so is everything in it. It is a perfect environment to meet with new people who share the same interests, especially at a WordPress event such as WordCamp or Meetup. Volunteering at WordCamp Denpasar 2016 with Kharis Sulistiyono (volunteer) and Niels Lange (organizer). Photo Credit: Rocio Valdivia Then, I started attending WordPress Meetups in Ubud and Jakarta. I also organized more WordCamps. WordCamp Jakarta in 2017 and 2019. But only later, I made a new commitment as a Meetup organizer in Jakarta and Ubud. Before Covid happened, I was travelling back and forth between Jakarta and Ubud. Whenever I went to Ubud, organizing Meetup was the first thing on my list. I was also taking part in organizing WordCamp Asia 2020. Hopefully, it will eventually take place after everything in the world with Covid gets safer for us to travel and meet in person. At WordCamps and Meetups, you heard stories about how WordPress powers the web. How it changes the lives of so many people. How it helps dreams come true. I was thinking. If WordPress was that powerful, why are there not many people in Indonesia using websites, and why don’t they use WordPress. Why are there not many people who use WordPress in Indonesia contributing to WordPress? Why are there not many talented Indonesian WordPress users, developers, designers, business owners taking part in WordPress.org projects. Why? My guess is one of the many reasons, a language issue. I believe, the more content translated into Indonesian, the more Indonesian WordPress users see WordPress as more than just a blogging platform or a CMS. Instead, it’s a huge open source community that work together to make the web a better place. The more plugins and themes translated the easier the work of the developer and designer will be with WordPress. The more people see how WordPress can benefit their life, the better the business ecosystem for business owners becomes. Organizing at WordCamp Ubud 2017 with Pramana Adi Putra dan Wahyu Taufiq. Photo Credit: Hubud After several asking around and discussions about translating WordPress, suddenly I made a commitment to revive the polyglot project in Indonesia. I was lucky, there was a community member who came forward to help. Then, with a lot of promotion, the team got bigger. It’s good to know I am not alone. There are WordPress users interested in translating. I didn’t stop there. I noticed that there are not many women involved in the WordPress community in Indonesia. I did meet a few women at WordCamps or Meetups, but the number is too small. And most of the time, I was the only woman. Perhaps I overlooked the fact that Indonesia is still highly patriarchal despite the economic boom. The WordPress community in Indonesia feels almost like a male-dominated community. Organizing at WordCamp Jakarta 2019 Then after some discussions with a couple of community members, I initiated Perempuan WordPress. There are two words for women in Indonesian, ‘wanita’ and ‘perempuan’. I chose ‘perempuan’ as I like to think that it is not merely referring to women sexually but more importantly about the role that the female human can have. It feels more empowering to me. Don’t ask me about the formal translation of ‘perempuan’ in Indonesian though. It’s pretty sad. A community member also came forward to help. She wanted to organize an online meetup on Telegram. It is open for everyone to join but we prioritize women to speak, although our first speaker was a man. It was quite challenging to look for female speakers, even using Perempuan WordPress as a platform. I could not even convince my co-organizer to speak! WCAsia 2020 Organizers in WCEU 2019. Photo Credit: WCEU 2019 I once had a chat with someone who spoke at WordCamp Jakarta and was a successful business owner. I asked why she was not active in a WordPress forum on Facebook, perhaps answering a question, as she is listed as a member. Facebook and Telegram are the two platforms where most Indonesian WordPress users go to ask for support. She said that it was too scary to receive condescending replies from the male members. She was afraid the comments would bring her down. To date, I am still looking for Indonesian WordPress users who share the same interest in building Perempuan WordPress. But, what did I actually do with WordPress before I started contributing? If you mean whether I code? No, I don’t. I suck in math. I’m super slow in getting my head around code. Well, in 2014, I signed up for a free account on WordPress.com. I was commuting for work and when I was on public transport my mind wandered. I thought of keeping a note about whatever I see and let the public read it. I was not aware it was called blogging. I did subscribe but the blog
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