Kolkata WordPress Community is one of the most interactive and active communities of the country. Although the presence of this community was there before, it started to speed up from the year 2017. At that point, this community was not an official chapter of WordPress.
Before July 2017, only one meetup happened back in Dec. 24, 2016 by the community. But a group of WordPress enthusiasts thought in a different way and regular meetups started to happen from the middle of 2017.
One of our community members, Arun Singh announced a meetup for July 15, 2017. Our venue was City Center 2! It was long back, but I can still remember every bit of it! We were only four persons present in that meetup. During that time, we used to meet every Saturday! In the beginning, we had no specific venue for the meeting. We used to organize our meetups in various places like Shopping malls, Coffee shops, and Parks.
Saturday, July 15, 2017
Slowly but steadily we started to gain into strength. When I joined this community there were about 200 members. Today the community is running with 1300+ members. Since July 15, 2017, the community has conducted meetups almost every month and to date, we have a long story of conducting 30 meetups.
The belief in the community was so strong that by mid of 2018, we applied for official status and eventually got it! It was party time for Kolkata WordPress Community.
After the community got its official seal, the next step was to go for the first-ever WordCamp in the city and a long due one for Eastern India.
None of us had any experience of organizing such a big event of any kind. But Josh was too high and we showed the courage of applying for it. Trust me, it was something we will never forget. I still remember the moment when our mentor Aditya Kane told us that the first WordCamp in Kolkata has been approved! The feeling that time was out of the earth!
There were some areas we did some mistakes and was a bit worried too. But this is the magic of WordPress! Everybody told us that we did a great job.