WordCamp Israel

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For the English speakers among you that have strayed here by chance and don't understand the meaning of this bizarre language you see here, It’s Hebrew. This is actually the official blog of WordCamp Israel 2007. Wordcamp 2007 is following an already established tradition of conventions for users of the wordpress platform and anyone interested in it. You can find more information about WordCamp here.

The story behind the creation of the Israeli affiliation of Wordcamp is actually quite funny but not unheard of in internet terms. After a blog post asking why there is no Wordcamp Israel, Tal Galili decided to start this blog and invite wordpress users and efficionados to join him in making that randon thought a reality.

If you build it they will come. Very quickly a thriving community was summoned to decide how to bring this idea to fruition (actually all of this happened less than 3 days ago). Since then, this blog was set up, a community encapsulating a mass of almsot 400 messages was created and a wiki documenting everything was conceived. Two English-speaking sites (the blog herald and ring of blogs) have already announced the event and a respected Israeli business news site reported on it as well. All of this is kind of peculiar since some of the most basic things like the time and place are yet to be decided.

As discussed in all of those discussion board messages (that kept some of us riveted in place, missing bathroom breaks and lunch!) the intention is that WordCamp israel 2007 will be a one day event, focusing on blogging and wordpress as a blogging platform. We hope to get enough sponsorship to make the event free for all, or at least for no more then a symbolic fee. As we speak sponsors and do-gooders are actually lining up to help.

Some of the presentations already agreed upon include: Norms of freedom of speech in the israeli blogosphere, Business related blogging, SEO for blogs, Marketing with blogs and Blogs as information sharing medium in organizations. The wordpress experience will also include a presentation about the platform and an hands-on installation of wordpress, themes and plugins.

If you were wondering, here are some non scientific facts about Wordpress adoption in Israel:

Thanks to the work of several people which have done a great job in localizing the platform hunderd’s of blogs (at least!) migrated to the platform alongside many others that modded their own Heb-WP blog. Many themes and plugins have already been localized and adopted as well. Wordpress is now the blogging platform of choice for most self hosted Israeli blogs. Less then a year after its inception Blogli, a wordpress.com style MU based blogging site, has already had about 2000 blogs opened, which makes it the third largest blogging provider in israel

So, much has already been done but there is still much work ahead to make Wordpress (and blogging) as big in Israel as it should be. Hopefully, Wordcamp-Israel will push Israeli blogging further ahead.

If you wish to follow the developments, please subscribe to this RSS feed. We will have all news and itineraries available in English as things unravel so hang tight.