On 17 May 2025, my city, Johor Bahru, held its first ever WordCamp conference, and I had the privilege of attending WordPress Johor Bahru 2025, including its afterparty.
I first heard of WordCamp Johor Bahru (WCJB) in late 2024. The conference piqued my interest, because not only would be the first WordCamp in my city, but also I was working as a WordPress developer at the time, so I subscribed to WordCamp Johor Bahru's RSS feed.
Came 2025, when WCJB's blog started to announce more information about the conference, I realised that the venue where the conference was held was none other than 42 Iskandar Puteri (42IP), the local campus of 42 the computer science school that I am attending.
A week before WCJB, the campus staff of 42IP gave away two tickets to WCJB to those of us who attended 42IP's bootcamp, named the Piscine, and I was lucky to be able to win the ticket giveaway. This allowed me to attend WCJB at no cost. While I had left my previous job, which was also my first developer job and where I worked in WordPress development, I still would not refuse the chance to connect with the WordPress community, and wanting the chance to connect with my local tech scene was one of the reasons I attended 42IP, so I participated in 42IP's ticket giveaway to attend WCJB.
Coincidentally, WCJB 2025 took place one day after the day when those of us who attended 42 Iskandar Puteri's Piscine got informed if we passed the bootcamp and are qualified for 42's core curriculum. I succeed in passing the Piscine, which certainly helped giving me a morale boost to attend a tech event held at 42ip's campus. During WCJB 2025, it turned out two other fellow participants of 42 Iskandar Puteri's bootcamp had also attended, with one of them being another person who won the campus staff's ticket giveaway, and they both passed the bootcamp too.
Both attendees and speakers of WCJB 2025 include not only Malaysians, but also people from other countries. It was quite the experience to witness how the WordPress community expands across the world. I got to meet fellow students of 42 Iskandar Puteri and new people at WCJB, and I appreciate the experience of attending a conference, and the opportunity to learn what is going on with the WordPress community in my area.
WCJB 2025 was also when I started to actually learn about Wapuu, the WordPress mascot. WordPress Johor Bahru had published a blog post about the design of the Johor-inspired Wapuu. I am a sucker for adorable mascots, so I also appreciate being able to collect Wapuu goodies, including a tote bag and stickers, along with WordPress and WCJB 2025 goodies, including a T-shirt, stickers and pins.
Just a few days before WCJB 2025, Salma Alam-Naylor published a new blog post about treating attending conferences as an experience, "The experience is enough", which was a good advice that came timely, as WCJB 2025 would be the first in-person tech conference I attended.
During WCJB 2025, the talks I attended included Mayuko Moriyama's "The Real WordCamp Happens Off the Stage: How to Build Connections and Seize Opportunities" and Dan Gabriel Tabifranca's "Growing in a Community That Builds You", both of which made me reflect that just being present at a community event can open up doors for growth and connections, both for yourself and your community. While those talks focused on the WordPress community, the sentiment could be applied to other communities too.
All in all, I am glad that I got to experience what is like to attend a tech conference through WordPress Johor Bahru 2025.