WP Campus Connect With Pooja Derashri and Anand Upadhyay  ## Metadata - Author: [[Open Channels FM]] - Full Title: WP Campus Connect With Pooja Derashri and Anand Upadhyay - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/f88f1d11-2d6b-4a43-909a-fa5659924e70 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - 1min Snip Transcript: Anand Upadhyay Hey, Bob WP here, and welcome to WordPress Event Talk, a Do The Woo podcast show. This episode is brought to you by Weglot, an official partner with Woo, which means going multilingual is even easier. You can now find their integration live on the WooCommerce Marketplace. Tell you more about our sponsor later in the show, but let's get right into WordPress event talk. Devin I'm great. I'm feeling top of the world right now. Right. That's awesome. What about you, Anand? I hope I get your name right this time. Anand Upadhyay Yeah, that's right. ([Time 0:00:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3c1f1e78-4fc4-43ef-841e-194002c2d3be)) - **Ajmer Community Growth** - The Ajmer WordPress community was small, with meetups rarely exceeding 15 attendees. - A recent event significantly boosted the community's growth. Transcript: Anand Upadhyay If you talk about how big is the community, if you have asked me this question a couple of months back, I would have said it's very small. But the recent event ([Time 0:04:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/646d497c-074d-49fe-8933-6a34045e88a4)) - Note: WordPress - **Do the Woo's Quick Sponsorship** - When Pooja Derashri asked BobWP for sponsorship, she expected some pushback. - However, after a quick email exchange, BobWP immediately agreed to sponsor the WP Campus Connect event. Transcript: Pooja Derashri The woo was also i just when i must say first when i was we were starting about the sponsorship i just reached out to few people and do the woo bob was the first of few people whom I approached For sponsorship. And he said, oh, I like the idea, but I need to check my budget. And I thought, that will not give you a burden on your pocket. It was a small in budget. ([Time 0:09:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7a5e714b-dc81-480d-8357-81019fa68e88)) - **Do the Woo Sponsorship** - When Pooja Derashri sought sponsors for WP Campus Connect, Do the Woo's Bob Dunn was among the first she approached. - He quickly agreed to sponsor the event after reviewing the proposal, demonstrating the community's support for the initiative. Transcript: Pooja Derashri The woo was also i just when i must say first when i was we were starting about the sponsorship i just reached out to few people and do the woo bob was the first of few people whom I approached For sponsorship. And he said, oh, I like the idea, but I need to check my budget. And I thought, that will not give you a burden on your pocket. It was a small in budget. And once I said my proposal to him, emailed him, and he was just, in just five minutes, he said, yes, count me in. And I'm one of the sponsors. And that kind of love and support we received from our community. Devin So I see that your event proven the idea of to have a meaningful and impactful event. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be resource intensive. ([Time 0:09:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/165e172b-9bde-40ce-8022-01fc36d2b3b8)) - **WP Campus Connect College Outreach** - WP Campus Connect initially approached six colleges to host WordPress events. - They secured partnerships with four colleges, facing some rejections in the process. Transcript: Anand Upadhyay And then we go through that channel and just convince them. And not everywhere we are successful. We also face rejections as well. Devin So how many schools, how many colleges did you go to? Because I remember the idea was to run the event in one month and it's one college every week so i assume that you don't just go to these four the at the moment i'm looking at your website And there's like partnered colleges there are four of them i assume you didn't go to all of them these four and then just got a yes from them so you probably went to see more right Yeah, we Anand Upadhyay Approached six colleges. Devin How many? Anand Upadhyay We approached six colleges. ([Time 0:15:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c87672da-c028-4fa9-be0d-80ecf0feaf7d)) - **WP Campus Connect Workshops** - Anand and Pooja initially planned four workshops for WP Campus Connect. - A college principal told them students lacked WordPress knowledge, so they wouldn't be motivated to just sit and build. Transcript: Anand Upadhyay Yeah, so there are a lot of things that were happening apart from workshop as well. Because initially that when we got the event approval, we just mentioned that we are going to do four workshops. But that's not the only thing that happened. We started pitching the colleges we just got a kind of feedback answer and the students don't know about wordpress so if you ask them to come and sit in the workshop and start doing something They will not be motivated enough because when they don't know anything oh so they actually gave you feedback the principal that had? Devin Yeah, ([Time 0:23:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bae8ddb8-26fe-48d8-97b4-aa669b16a5c7)) - **Workshop Preparation** - Prepare website content in advance (images, text) to speed up the workshop and create a sense of accomplishment. - The goal is to inspire students, not teach them everything about WordPress. Transcript: Anand Upadhyay Yeah. So I want to add one more thing. How we actually implemented it? Because we wanted, we have a sample website created. And we just showed them at even our website during the seminar. So that you are going to build something like this is looking good and but we also have a little time we also already have four to five to six hours to complete that so it is not possible practically It is not possible to do all these things in the five to six hour so we decided to think about how we can reduce the time that we usually based so on our website, there is a kind of homepage, Services, about us page, and then a blog section with 10 blog posts and a contact us page. So we cannot ask them to create all these data and waste a lot of time. So we prepared a lot of data, like we compiled all the images that will be used on a website in particular folders, and we provided contained as well and also for the blog post we provided We exported a blog post and i found and also created the examine file in that folder so when at the when we were starting the workshop we just told them to download all this stuff that you're Gonna need to in the work in during the course of building the website and that really helped us to speed up the progress because the students don't have to go anywhere and look for the Images that they can put on the while designing the page they can just choose the images and they can get the same kind of feeling otherwise they will be choosing a random images and they Will not be encouraged like this is not something looking like what you have shown us so we don't have what to give them that feeling because the goal of workshop was not to tease them everything About wordpress because that is not possible the goal of WordPress workshop was to give them a kind of feeling of accomplishment like this is something that we can do if we and this is Something we can go on learning further and we can excel in this so that's the goal of the workshop so we try to reduce every friction that we can so that they, by the end of the workshop, They should have something good created and they could get a sense of satisfaction as well. ([Time 0:37:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5ec47870-2798-457f-972d-295597a60e63)) - **Gaining New Users** - Events like WP Campus Connect can introduce new users to WordPress and address the challenge of user growth. - They act as a bridge between the WordPress ecosystem and students. Transcript: Pooja Derashri Right thank you Anand Pooja what's your last word yes WordPress campus connect event is something solving another problem we are facing some problem like we are not getting new users To WordPress. But these kind of events can solve this problem as well because we are touching the students. 400 students will be going to choose WordPress. Not all 400, but if 100 students will be going to choose WordPress as their career and they are going to next professionals they will build a website and they will build website in wordpress So that will also gain new users as well so that is something that we we are trying to solve problem and we are also helping students to choose their career paths not all students are that Much wise to choose on their own. So we can guide them. We can be between a licensing between WordPress ecosystem and the students. So we can say we are building a bridge between them. And if anyone want to replicate this similar kind of event, please feel free to reach out to us. We are more than happy to help you, support you in any way where we can. ([Time 0:43:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6db3114a-bc2a-4710-851c-f0f9d28d5f6c))