WordCamp Asia 2025: A Celebration of Neighborhood & Open Supply in Manila

I work at WordPress.com and have since 2014. It’s the longest I’ve ever stayed at an organization, and in so some ways, it usually appears like dwelling. However after I landed in Manila final Sunday night to affix a few of my colleagues on the first WordCamp Asia held within the Philippines, it actually was a homecoming. 

Born and raised in Manila, I can’t even start to explain the joys of seeing the worldwide WordPress group descend onto the busy, raucous streets of my hometown. Out of almost 1,800 attendees, a couple of third have been native, coming from all components of the Philippines, throughout the 7,107 islands that make up the archipelago. 

Filipinos love WordPress; on WordPress.com alone, they signify a whole bunch of 1000’s of recent signups each month, persistently rating the Philippines as one of many prime 5 international locations on the planet for brand new WordPress customers.

The Philippine Worldwide Conference Heart, a Seventies-era Brutalist behemoth of a construction, served because the official venue for WordCamp Asia 2025. We shared its huge halls, vaulted ceilings, and brilliant pink carpets with native college commencement attendees, however the sprawling advanced allowed for loads of room to unfold out. 

Matias Ventura, lead architect of Gutenberg, kicked off the official convention schedule with a considerate and provoking keynote sketching out an thrilling future for WordPress that facilities the consumer and delivers a friction-free, intuitive expertise. 

A jam-packed schedule of workshops and talks adopted, the place attendees might hear Elementor’s Miriam Schwab focus on the fundamentals of GPL, study from digital marketer Chiaki Kouno about what having a actually profitable “multilingual” WordPress web site actually entails, and decide up suggestions from Keiko Muto on the way to get began with constructing an accessible web site—plus a lot extra. 

On Friday night time, the WordPress.com workforce hosted a meet-and-greet pleased hour the place we had the privilege of assembly with native and regional WordPress.com customers. Particular because of Nicole King, Carlo Carrasco, George Buid, Ajit Bohra and his colleagues from LUBUS, Vivek Jain and his crew from rtCamp, Tom and Vicky Morton, and Dika and Diane Fei for spending the night with us. 

WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg closed out the three-day festivities with a Q&A in Assembly Room 1, an oddly generic identify for such an immense, elegant corridor. It’s often known as the Rizal Corridor, which appears extra becoming. 

Jose Rizal, after whom the room and one million buildings, faculties, streets, even whole cities within the nation are named, is our de facto nationwide hero. He was a Nineteenth-century author, physician, and polymath whose writings helped encourage and ignite the Philippine Revolution in 1896 towards the Spanish colonial authorities. What higher place to shut a convention devoted to the liberty and democracy of open supply than in a hovering corridor named after the person who devoted his life to pursuing freedom of speech and meeting for all? 

By the way in which, should you missed the convention, we’ve received your again! Most workshops and talks, together with each keynotes talked about above, are actually obtainable to view on the official WordPress YouTube channel. 

Suppose you would possibly need to be part of us for WordCamp Asia 2026? We’d like to see you! WordCamp is open to all, so whether or not you’re a developer, a marketer, a designer, a assist engineer, a blogger, or simply interested by what this WordPress factor is that you simply’ve been listening to a lot about, WordCamp was created for you. Try the WordCamp Central web site for extra details about native and regional WordCamps. 

And should you’re in Asia and need to expertise the joy of WordCamp Asia subsequent 12 months, begin planning now: we’ll see you in 2026 in Mumbai, India!