 Welcome to the next speaker. It's Bebe. And so we're going to have a let him speak for about 30, 35 minutes. And then we're going to have a quick Q&A when, if for some reason you think of questions after, you can always tweet, or X, whatever it's called, at YVR WordCamp. So here we go. Good. Hi. Good morning, everyone. My name is Bebe Sapkota. So I'm representing WordPress community, Nepal. So I just want to mention it in the beginning. English is my secondary language. So if you have any confusion or if you want me to slow down so that you would understand better, you can just let me know. So I have bachelor's of science in computing from London Metropolitan University. And I work as a chief business officer at Arumba IT Research Center, Nepal, back home. Also, I run a blog called ATJernal.com. It is basically mindfulness and spirituality magazine. So I run it with my girlfriend. So I am actively involved in WordPress community since 2014 as a community builder, organizer, speaker, and mentor. So as a matter of fact, so far I have organized five WordCamps. And I have spoken to four WordCamps. And I have organized more than 60 meetups and then a lot of community gathering and related activities back home. So today I shall be talking about our success story of building, growing, and sustaining WordPress community in Nepal. So not a lot of people know about Nepal because we are a very small country all the way from global south. So Nepal is officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. So it is landlocked country in between Tibet and India. So northern part is high Himalayas. And then the southern part is connected with India. And Nepal is home to eight of the highest peak in the world. Like, there are 14 highest peak over 8,000 meters. And like, eight are in Nepal, including Mount Everest. And like, Nepal is home to Lord Buddha as well. Like, it is birthplace of Gautam Buddha. And he was a Nepali prince. So talking more about Nepal, Nepal is a multilingual, multicultural, multi-racial, and multi-religious country. And it is a country of living goddess Kalkumari. So we have a living goddess. So she is called Kumari. So in the background, you can see the peace stupa. So it is stupa located in Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal. So we call it Boudhanath stupa. So you can just go there, pray there, stay there for a while. Like, they have very peaceful surrounding and everything. So you can learn a lot about Buddhism and then like teaching of Buddhas. And then you can pray there. You can like, yeah, buy around there. So before getting into WordPress community, so I would like to talk a few things about IT service export industry we have in Nepal. So since I have already mentioned, Nepal is a tiny landlocked country. So we have very limited access to trade across the globe. And then like, mostly we rely upon agriculture and tourism industry. So lately, we have been exporting like significant amount of IT infrastructure and IT services. So last year, we exported around $515 million worth of IT services. Given that we have very limited access to infrastructure, like we have very limited universities. In fact, we just have five universities mostly related with political science or democracy or agriculture or something like that. But then like, it was quite unexpected result, like pleasantly unexpected result that although the government and like, related sector has invested very less amount on the tech and innovation sector, we were able to export services worth $515 million given that our economy is very small, very like our like total budget GDP and everything is very small. But then like, this was a significant contribution and it contributes around 4% to our GDP. So yeah. And like it was done by 160 IT expert services companies, 14,728 IT freelancer in software development and technology and 5,175,51100 I'm sorry, 51,781 IT freelancer engaged in exporting IT services through various digital platforms. So from Nepal, like we have industries like companies which provide customer service and like a troubleshooting stuff and all two the other companies abroad. So it was the other stat it showed and like since 2021, our growth was 64.2%. That's like big, big achievement after like COVID crisis because during the time of COVID. So everything was closed and like we are quite introduced to like digital world and like people who are doing freelancing and like it opened the like COVID crisis opened the door for people to look out for alternatives. So people were looking for job opportunities and everything online. So that might be the other reason for this exponential growth. So now I'd like to get into WordPress community in Nepal. So we have five major communities in five major cities of the country, five metropolitan cities. So that's WordPress Kathmandu, that's capital city of Nepal. The other one is WordPress Pokhara, that's my hometown. And then the other one is WordPress Barakpur, WordPress Birat Nagar and WordPress Butol. So altogether we have more than 20,000 people using WordPress in Nepal professionally. But then like if we consider bloggers and like those people who use for other purposes, the count might go 50,000 plus. And we have 5,000 plus community member, active community member who we involved into like work camps and meetups and everything. So five WordPress communities as I have already mentioned about it. So we do 60 plus meetups every year within like five different communities. And we have five word cam every year. And on top of that we do word cam Nepal once in every year. So last time we had, we organized word cam Nepal. So we had like participants more than 600 people participated in that event. And like we are organizing next word cam in 2024 January and we are expecting around 1000 people to attend the seminar from all across the world. So like I have already mentioned, we have very limited access to infrastructure, technology, innovation, research and everything. So these three people were the one who started WordPress in Nepal. So they are like late Ujjal Thapa. So we lost him during the time of COVID but his contribution and like efforts and everything made our community grow in this exponential way. So the person who was under Maharjan and Sakin Shrestha they started WordPress community in Nepal during 2007 just after three years of, just after four years WordPress was created. So I just have like a little timeline to show the figures how we started and how we are continuing the community in Nepal despite having very less people, very limited resource, very small economy and global south very far from like latest technology trend and everything. So in 2003 WordPress was released and then in 2004 Sander started using WordPress because he was residing in America. So he got into WordPress and like he got familiar with a blogging tool and everything. So he was the first person to use WordPress and it is documented like there might be other person as well but then so far we know in our community he is the guy who started using WordPress back in 2004. And during 2007 there was like digital Mac solution is like one of the first IT company from Nepal and it was from like early 2000. Like IT community was started in Nepal during like beginning of 2000. So in 2000 digital Mac solution started commercial use of WordPress. So they started using WordPress for their clients with Ujjal Thapa, Sakin and Chandra, the three guys I showed in my previous slide they were working as an employee there. So in 2011 Chandra and Sakin attended two different WordCamps. So it was like their first ever WordCamp. So Chandra attended WordCamp San Francisco 2011 and Sakin attended WordCamp Melbourne 2011. So that is where they got the idea about WordCamp like how they can organize the event and then like benefits and everything about WordCamp. So they decided to permanently form WordPress Nepal community and it was formed in 2011. So they went to different schools, institutions and like different companies and like gather people who were interested in like contributing to the community and like to make it a platform to learn. So it was in 2011. So after that in 2012, first ever WordCamp Nepal was hosted in Kathmandu city, the capital of Nepal. Over 130 WordPress enthusiasts attended the event and there was a surprise online visit from Matt, the co-founder of WordPress and Flip was there from automatic. So he went there to address the community there since it was like our first ever WordCamp event happening in our country. So 2013 on Word, multiple WordCamp Nepal, WordCamp Pokhara, Kathmandu, Bharatpur, Birat Nagar, Bhuttole has been organized. So we organized, as I have already mentioned, we organize at least five WordCamps every year. So companies like Them, Greel, Them Palace, they are operating from Nepal and they are making revenues in millions of dollars. So ultimately benefiting developers, users, stakeholders, designers from Nepal and ultimately contributing to the growth of community. And like this is the other way we are sustaining our community because whenever we organize some event and like whenever we do meetups and everything. So companies like this, they come forward and sponsor us so that we can arrange stuff. So we have WordCamp deputies. We have a member from our community working as a WordCamp deputy and like WordCamp mentors, WordCamp Asia organizers as well. So like every year we have four to five people in organizing committee of WordCamp Asia. So we consider that to be the growth as well and we are looking forward to WordCamp 26 or 27 if things goes good or is expected. So in the present days this is the guy who is leading WordPress community in Nepal. He was expected to visit WordCamp Vancouver but because of some visa issue and all like he couldn't make it to it. But then he has been doing a great job. So he has been mentoring WordCamps across Asia, WordCamp Thailand, Islamabad and Bangalore and like he has been mentoring five WordCamps simultaneously. So he, till now he has organized many WordCamps, many events and like he have visited a lot of WordPress communities around the globe. So that was all about the size and like the distribution and the people behind for WordCamp community in Nepal. So we have been using WordCamp community in Nepal for the platform for knowledge sharing. So I have mentioned time and again that we have limited resource and like limited people and limited skilled resource in fact. So WordCamp has been, WordPress community has been knowledge sharing platform for like people coming from every background not necessarily just the WordPress like some designers, some content writers, small business owners or maybe we can say like but lately we have been collaborating with Flutter community and even other communities as well so that we can grow together and like sometimes it is very tough to get quality education in excess to take colleges because we have very limited colleges and education is privatized in my country. So not every time we get to, not every time everyone get to go to school because it is very expensive. I was lucky enough to afford it. So I'm sustaining my life through the skill set I got from tech but then like not everyone is lucky enough but then we have been using our community as a free resource center where everybody can come. We have a meetup location. So once in every month we do rotation among IT companies. So I have IT company with my friends and one of my lecture. So we have a conference hall. So for a month I sponsor food and a venue. So that way like everybody can come there like new students from tech colleges like any enthusiast they can come to my office and use the space and like have coffee, tea or like meet with professional people so that they can learn stuff. So we have been volunteering in that way. So you know the word WordPress Community Nepal is a platform for knowledge sharing. So people can share whatever they know and like it's a part of core learning stuff. So other thing is networking opportunity. So we use WordPress Nepal as a networking opportunity because as I have mentioned earlier not only people doing WordPress but also the other platform as well. So they come to our community and we visit their community. So it's been a networking platform and networking opportunity as well. So skill development obviously. So every time we organize work camps so we do multiple days work camps so all the time we make sure to have contribution day whenever we organize work camps. So people contribute in translation and like people respond to forum questions and like a team review, plugin review and everything. So all the time we make sure to have contribution day so that people can feel ethical obligation and I would love to say it ethical obligation or ethical responsibility. Given that we have been making living and we have been using the platform for business purposes and like for growing our skill set and for going out to the competitive market. So WordPress has given us a lot. So it's our legal obligation to give back to the community. So I'll talk about that later on. And support and troubleshooting obviously. So whenever somebody is working in a project and like they need some sort of support and troubleshooting so people will come out and like those who have expertise in support and everything they will come out voluntarily and they support each other so that we can grow together. So that has been very successful in our community as well. And promotion of open source obviously. So I have already mentioned about limited access again. So open source would be a very good scope for people and like countries struggling with innovation and everything because it might be very weird. It might sound very weird and very strange that we don't even have digital payment gateway yet in Nepal. So I can buy anything online from outside the country. We don't have visa. We have visa but then within debit only. So which is applicable only in Nepal. So if I want to purchase something there is no way I can purchase it. And like because of economic issue while I visited here I was allowed to carry only $200 with me. So yeah, while I was paying $200 to Sandman in I forgot the name, the area. So for one night it was $200 but my government permitted me to carry only $200 because it's our financial policy. You can take money outside the country because we are struggling with the money and we have very small foreign currency drop because of pandemic, because of earthquake, blockade and like inflation and everything going on war and everything going on. So we are really struggling with our finance. So yeah, so that's the scenario because whenever I need to buy some course from Udemy or Coursera or something I just rely upon financial aid. Like sometimes they'll luckily approve it but not every time. So yeah, we have very basic resources. Like I have been making websites since my high school so it's been like while I was in class 10 so I built a website using Waves platform. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar about it. It was before WordPress and then I made a site for my school and then that is how I started and later on I switched to WordPress because I love the community and it was very accessible. So yeah, every time I would call my uncle living in America to pay some amount for me so that I could buy some course or sometime maybe buy some plugin or that is how we have been doing and like luckily a lot of people they live abroad and like remittance is one of our major source of income in the country. So almost everybody they have somebody living abroad, uncle or like cousin or something. So that has been really helpful as well. So yeah, so till now till the date we don't have paper is illegal, bitcoins is illegal and like we don't have access to digital payment gateway. That's the other reason we have very limited. That's the other reason what I was trying to say is like we have very limited access. And then like job opportunity, obviously we have a lot of companies operating from Nepal. So mainly I have already showed you the figure about total IT expert industry. So people are being able to trade their knowledge and his skill set abroad to get better payment and like better income. So that is ultimately helping community members to sustain themselves and then maybe give back to the community so that other people can learn stuff as well. And then entrepreneurship obviously. So whenever somebody is lucky enough to go to take school and then get a degree and then like we don't have a lot of companies hiring people. So we have like job scarcity obviously. So sometimes WordPress has been a really effective platform to start your own business sort of thing. Like if you are good enough, like you might end up having a good client and like since it is open source and very accessible and it has community which backs you up whenever you need any help or assistance. So like for entrepreneurship also it is really, really helping in Nepal. Community engagement obviously. So whenever we organize events and like seminars and everything. So we don't just talk about technology or advancement. Like sometimes we just talk about mindfulness, mental health, supporting each other, helping some people in need. So the guy I showed earlier, late Ujjal Thapa, so he was running a campaign called Bebexil Nepali. That's like Bebexil means wisdom. So it was some sort of wisdom forum for Nepalese people where they can learn things and like meet people. So now every year we organize different campaigns and events to sustain his campaign, to donate his campaign. So we are continuing his campaign although he left us. So that is how also like the community comes in action. So that's the other benefit of having a community and closed circle, closed circle open to everybody. So challenges like with every opportunities and every scenarios, there comes challenges. So limited infrastructures. So I don't think I need to explain further about it. I have said enough about having very limited infrastructures. So urban rural, digital divide because majority of Nepali population, more than 70% Nepali population, they are from rural area where people are still struggling with clean drinking water, like a latrine and like everything. So urban area has very limited people living there with very high income and like high business opportunities. So there is a very big gap between urban and rural population. So that's a big digital divide. Like while urban population is having really good high speed internet and access to technology, latrine and everything, like rural people are still struggling with having telephone connection and something like that. So that's the other challenge we have to, like we have to overcome jointly. So regulatory challenges obviously, given that we have very limited policies, law and rules, since there has not been really a good breakthrough in innovation. So obviously we have very limited regulatory challenges. So cybersecurity concerns obviously, it will connect to the limited infrastructures. Like having said that we have limited infrastructure, cybersecurity is the other concern because it needs really good investment and like authorities who can regularly monitor the situation and like if somebody is found guilty or like similar situation. So they have to deal with this stuff. But then we don't have that sort of bodies. So language barrier obviously. So Nepali language is our primary language. More than 90% people, they speak Nepali language and rest of the people, they speak other 60 languages. Like ethnic, we have a lot of ethnic groups. So we have indigenous people, we have different ethnic people. So English is secondary language. And like since I went to private school, I had like a better approach to English language because we used to have my mathematics science in English. So I could learn better. So since every tech updates and everything is in English, but then WordPress is the like other technology which has a lot of plugins like multilingual plugin and everything. Whenever we organize WordPress, we do a Contribute Sunday where people will translate WordPress to Nepali so that people can use it freely. Like if you have language barrier also, you'll get to use it. So ultimately making it more accessible and more inclusive. So political instability. I don't think I need to talk a lot about it because this is a global scenario now. And like even that we are still struggling with good education, infrastructure, roads, breeze, towers and all. So I don't even feel like talking about it because we have had enough of this. So digital payment gateway. I have already mentioned about it. We don't have like very lazy digital payment gateway. So access to capital. So capital is in like funding. So we have very limited access to funding. I'm sorry. Funding because people are able to explore about the possibilities of investing in tech industry and like there has been some trust issue. Yeah, so people are struggling to find some people who can invest on their initiative or enterprise because they have already spent a lot of amount of money to go to school and everything. So once they are out of school either they have choice to find a job where I have already mentioned they have a very limited job available. So if people want to start something on their own so not everybody is willing to invest on them later on the government bodies and authorities or institution. So that has been the other challenges. So yeah, so like every time I go and meet people from WordPress community I always want to like I always like to talk about giving back to community. WordPress has given us a lot of things. Like I am here today because of WordPress. I have been communicating with you people because of WordPress. So that is the connecting dot. And like it is open source and a lot of like millions of people are benefited using this. People are doing their business depending upon this. We ever can't afford like big websites and webpages. They can just go to WordPress and like make something on their own very easy, very accessible. It has a multilingual services. You can access it using your own language. If you have language barrier and then like WordPress has been investing in communities, building events just like what can meetups and everything. So it is our legal, sorry, it is our ethical obligation to give back to the community so that it can be the better platform. It can grow more exponentially so that more people can get benefited from it. And then like we can get a better version of WordPress every year. So whenever we talk about getting better version, getting new updates and everything so it will come to our responsibility. If we contribute, if we regularly answer support questions, if we regularly write review for themes and plug-in, it will oblique them to make a better version. If we find out bugs or anything about the platform, so it will make more safe space for having very secure infrastructures and everything. So totally it is our responsibility to give back to the community and like that is what I do whenever I have free time. So I also hope you guys are doing the same because that's our responsibility and that's going to benefit us ultimately. So that is all for me. So if you have any questions, you can ask me, okay? Okay, I have one. Are online courses, I don't hear, you know, if you take WordPress courses online, it's kind of certified by the people or companies here. And it's all about also opening for today's work. So if you're more, you have to force in university for it to be... For credits. Normally like we have limited universities, but then like even my degree, it is from London Metropolitan University. So we have a college affiliated to LMU, so I went to that school. But then our government bodies, they want us to make that equivalent to Nepal's universities degree. That's 3-1 university. That is our government university. So I had to give certain examination and like get the license and make it equivalent. But then like online course creation, like we don't have a lot because they don't recognize a lot of online degrees. But then sometimes if we look out for job and like if somebody are looking for it, they consider it. But obviously we have like very limited scope on getting certified whenever we have online certificates or online degrees. Do you are restricted, are you allowed to build our site, the whole commerce site, for a client outside of Nepal? Like are you allowed to operate, are you allowed to build it basically and set it up and you set up strength and set up all that? Yes, we are allowed to do that because whenever we receive payments, we can receive it through wire transfer and it counts to the remittance or like foreign income and it goes through taxes and policy. So we are allowed to do that. Do you have to buy something within Nepal with using it, is that artificial? Within Nepal we can buy because we have payment getaways like ESEWA, Khaulti and a lot of other mobile applications running within the country. So if I want to purchase within the country, I can do it easily. But whenever I want to buy services and like goods from outside the country and whenever the transaction is in dollar, the currency, that is restricted. So like hosting and stuff? Yeah, hosting and stuff, yeah. So you have to host it? We have option to host outside Nepal as well. The way I mentioned earlier about getting help from your cousin or uncle living abroad, but then we also do have local hosting companies, but ultimately it is more like resale or hosting. So somebody manages to pay something outside and then they register the company within the country and they resale it. Even I used to do that. Yeah, a couple of years ago. It was easy for the manager to come in. It was very challenging to go out. Yeah. So yeah, yeah. If somebody manages to, as long as money is not going out, so that's not a big concern for my government, I guess, because instead of growing resources, they are quite interested in saving the resources. Yeah. So in that case, this is my hometown, Pokhara Valley. So this is Fewa Lake. That's the biggest lake in my city. So you'll have panoramic Annapurna rains reflected up on the lake. So if you ever visit my city, so we are hosting World Camp, Nepal, 2024, 12 and 13 January. The first day will be the contribution day and the second day will be main event day. So site is live, but tickets are not out yet. So within a couple of weeks, we'll start selling tickets. So you are more than welcome to attend the event as a speaker, as a sponsor, attendee, or if not, then you can just visit our country and you'll get to see a lot of Himalayas and you'll get to try a lot of authentic food and you'll get to explore the then hippie trail where a lot of celebrities went during 1970s. So when the weed and everything was legal, now it is illegal. So you can even visit Frick Street in Kathmandu. So people like, I forget the name, a lot of celebrities. Yeah, Bob Marley and like Gonsen Roses, they used to be spotted in that Frick Street in Kathmandu city in their Mercedes Vans. So back in 1970s, if you are interested about that, you can find the resources online. So yeah, so thank you. Everybody, they are thanking people. So you can reach me to Olabibic.com. So it doesn't link to me any Spanish language or something. I was just finding alternative for HelloBibic. So it was already taken. So I just used Olabibic and everywhere, my email address, my social media, everywhere you will find the same name and same photo mostly. I like to keep it simple and identical. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you Vancouver. Thank you community for having me here. I'm really enjoying talking about the community and it is my humble request, please give back to the community because it has given us a lot. Thank you.