Hello, and welcome to the WordPress community interview series.
My name is John Parkinson
and my guest today is Naoko Takano
and she is located in Japan
Naoko, first of all, I would like to say "Konbanha"!
Konbanha!
Thank you so much I hope I did that correctly.
Yes, sounds good.
Fotgive my poor language skills.
No, no, no.
If you don't mind, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
OK
So I'm Naoko from Tokyo.
I've been involved in the WordPress community for about 13 years as long as WordPress went around.
I first got involved into this, by a controbutor who is a Japanese who created Japanese version of WordPress.
So since then, He had a web site,
and he had his own distribution,
It was a fork, it wasn't a currently setup,
So, I helped him, create a forum, documentation,
and also translated several things,
And that we've done for years,
And then also, meanwhile, I was a developer,
I was making themes for my clients,
and I wrote Japanese WordPress books couple of them in 2005 or 6, I guess,
and then, a few years on, I helped WordCamp Tokyo and several other WordCamps in Japan,
and then, I got hired by Automattic to do support and Japanese community arrange,
so, and now
I'm still doing translation for Japanese,
and documentation and
a lot of WordCamps' staff these years.
so, that's about it.
That's fantastic,
Is your background design or development?
Yes, I studied graphic design in college
And I got involved in web design
So in the beginning, I did a lot of design and cleaning
That was my professional design
I note you recently just return from WordCamp Europe
Yes
And if you could, tell us a little bit about your experience there
and also about your presentation.
OK.
That was my second WordCamp Europe
And WordCamp Europe on event to twice, the first one in this one,
But it's by far, one of my favorite one to go to
Yeah,
You had a huge crowd.
Yes, They had like a ...
almost 2,000 people
and even still they haven't lost community feeling
or in the wonderful work by the organizers
and I get to meet many many polyglots who are tlanslating for other languages
especially in Europe, and some other countries also.
I had some friends come from India and Nepal and also from Japan.
So it's really nice,
It's very different one than the local ones like the one we have in Tokyo
but yeah, they had wonderful childcare system
Yeah
Fantastic!
and your presentation
was about the Japanese WordPress community
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
OK, they had what's called community truck
Within that, there were four people on the same day
and I got about Japanese community
How it's growing and unique things we do
and yeah, they had very nice things
And next date is, some other community members' talk on stage too.
Oh, great!
And I know that
There is WordCamp Tokyo,
There is WordCamp Kansai,
Yes, that is comming up this weekend
Oh, Great!
Fantastic!
And are there any other WordCamps in Tokyo?
In the past event doing every year is 2008
One year we did in Yokohama which is also near Tokyo
In the past, in Fukuoka,
Nagoya,
Kobe,
Osaka,
Osaka and Kobe are closed,
so they are doing Kansai together now,
Good
Yeah
So they might change things around in the future,
I hope to see more smaller WordCamps and
You know, unique WordCamps in Japan
But Tokyo and Kansai are very strong communities here.
Fantastic!
So,
As a country, Japan has very strong community sounds like
a lot of volunteers, probably a lot of local meetups,
OK, let me ask you this
There is a lady that is involved with
WordCamps, Andrea Middleton.
Do you know her?
Yes
Great!
I heard her said on a podcast a few weeks ago,
WordCamp is the annual showcase,
for the local WordPress community groups
I thought that was just the spot on,
that is great statement that the local groups
get together and put on the WordCamp, of cource
you really don't have any bad experience there's always something good comes out of a WordCamp
At least one big thing,
At least to me,
So, let me ask you this,
as far as your globalization,
Do you get involved in...
I'm not sure the phrases.
but make people more aware,
just, you know, there is a worldwide community,
if they need it
they can find help almost anywhere that they are.
So, speaking of WordCamp,
is one of that,
I don't think many people aware that
WordPress is used by many people,
in the World and only I guess about half of it
in English.
and you know, translating by making by website,
High traffic in other languages, I think people,
make plugins authors, you know core contribute
aware, that we use it we have to be involved in
like bug reporting
not just translating,
I think every thing that WordPress does,
We want to use it,
on environment and we need
to talk to people who are already involved in the
English community,
to make WordPress better,
Yes
If you don't mind,
let me ask your thoughts on WordPress.tv
We have some Japanese Videos also,
Sometimes, too late uploading, so
It's our fault having every videos in the past
WordCamps, but I think it's very nice that
we have a place to host our recordings,
every time they emphasized recording every
you know possible,
session is very important,
because people can watch it later, right?
Right!
Yeah! We learned it
It can become a great resource even after WordCamps.
People that can make it
maybe went to WordCamp Kansai but one of the hero speaker at WordCamp Tokyo
That's the great resource to go back
and try to learn something new,
A lot of people try to watch English sessions too,
to they can see how they talk in what kind of things are popular in other WordCamps.
So that's good
I didn't realise that. Fantastic!
Well let me ask you if you have any add to this time
I think that is all questions I have, but is there you would like to add before
we wrap things up here.
WordCamp Tokyo is coming up in September and WordCamp Kansai
probably for people watching this it's too late, but it's coming up in every year we have WordCamp
I want to see many people in Japan
also we try to have English sessions and trucks
also to meet more people from different parts of the countries,
I think meet the Japanese community some of the people
go to WordCamp US and Europe and other WordCamps too.
so, talked them, say "hi!".
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's all I had. I do certainly appreciate your time,
I'm glad we get together this evening.
It was very nice metting you
so if you didn't have anything else, I think that's all I had and
I would say "Sayonara!"
"Sayonara!"
Thank you John.
Thank you so much.