On April 5th, a notification popped up in the Kolkata WordPress group about our upcoming meetup. As usual, I promptly signed up for it. I’ve been an active member of the WordPress Kolkata Community since 2018, having been a user of WordPress since 2015. Over the years, I’ve contributed in various ways to the community. At Pixelvise, we rely on WordPress for our websites, so these events hold significant importance for me.

Some time ago, I applied to be a speaker at WordPress, and on April 12th, Subrata Sarkar, the host and organizer of WordPress Kolkata, reached out to me out of the blue to congratulate me. I had been selected as a speaker for the next WordPress meetup. I was thrilled about it and couldn’t wait.

However, I also experienced a mix of excitement and anxiety, considering it had been a while since I last did a keynote. Despite feeling slightly under the weather in the days leading up to the event, I managed to write my script, plan, and design the presentation over the weekend.

Given my busy schedule, I rarely find time to practice, but the day before the event, I decided to record a YouTube version of my keynote, scheduled to launch at 11:30 AM on April 27th, following my live presentation at Webel Bhavan.

As I write this on May 9th, Kolkata has finally found relief from the heat waves that plagued the city since March, with rain and thunderstorms providing some respite.

Coming back to the topic, on April 27th, accompanied by Andrea, I made my way to Webel Bhavan, where I met Anirban. Despite feeling nervous and anxious, I composed myself and began the presentation. Despite technical issues with the projector and HDMI cable, we managed to resolve them and proceed smoothly.

I thank Anirban for photographing the entire event for me! He carried his camera to photograph me! Andrea sat through the whole thing and although it was very technical, stayed awake and recorded the whole speech of 30 minutes! Thanks to her, it’s on YouTube!

Once done, we had a round of questions, there were some good questions that came my way. I think I did a good job handling them. 

Afterwards, we discussed plans for the next WordCamp in January 2025 and I networked with new acquaintances seeking guidance. Later, Andrea, Anirban, a new friend named Joydip, and I went for lunch at Kareem’s – the biryani at this outlet outside Webel Bhavan is not good, we then travelled to Exide and went to have ice cream at My Froyoland, although I refrained due to a cold. We then watched “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” at Forum Mall, Kervin joined us for the movie, it was a good watch.

Overall, it was a fantastic day, exceeding my expectations, and I received warm wishes from family and friends. I am grateful to the Kolkata WordPress Community for this opportunity!

If you’d like to download a PDF of the presentation, click the button below:

If you’d like to watch the full length video of the keynote on 27th April, 2024, you’ll find it here on YouTube.

There’s also a seperate YouTube version recorded with clear audio.

Here’s some photographs from the day!