News

WordCamp Jinja 2022 was held on Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd Sept 2022 with several sessions happening (1) at The Innovation Village [TIV] Jinja main hall, (2) at The Creative Tribe co-working space inside TIV, (3) in the TIV Training Room, (4) at Jinja City Hall, (5) at Jinja College School Computer Lab and finally (6) at the Source of The Nile. In total, over 200 participants attended the various sessions.

Below are some of the captured moments.

The Innovation Village TIV, Jinja hall was the main venue where diverse speaker sessions were held.

Jinja City Hall was the venue for the beginners track, which mainly targeted teachers and students.

The Creative Tribe co-working space inside TIV hosted the Website Hackthon

Jinja College School Computer Lab hosted the hands-on practice session for teachers and students

The TIV Training Room hosted diverse speaker break away demo-sessions

And finally, The Source of The Nile, Jinja hosted the After Party!

Check out more photos in the drive at this link: bit.ly/wordcampjinjaphotos

We couldn’t have made WordCamp Jinja 2022 possible – at such a low price for attendees – without the generosity of our sponsors listed below.

• Bluehost

  

  Bluehost has been a WordPress partner since 2005, and powers over 2 million websites across the world with reliable hosting and personalized guidance. By leveraging the power of WordPress, Bluehost provides the fast website creation methods coupled with intuitive management tools. From secure automated WordPress installations to advanced marketing tools and services, and access to specialized WordPress experts, Bluehost is the best place to build, grow, and scale an online presence.

• Cloudways

  

  Cloudways is all about simplicity and freedom for agencies and online businesses. From the choice of five industry-leading cloud providers to 1-Click platform operations, Cloudways ensures that your visitors do not have to face slow loading websites and security issues.

  Just like you, we live and breathe WordPress! Cloudways is proud to sponsor WordCamp Europe 2022. Our managed hosting for WordPress and WooCommerce takes away cloud server-related learning curve so you can scale your website the way you want.

  Connect

  • Website: www.cloudways.com
  • Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cloudways
  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cloudways

• E-zone Web Services

  

  Ezone Web Services (EWS) is a creative and dedicated ICT solutions provider with a portfolio in Web Design & Development, Hosting and Digital Marketing. EWS specializes in solutions that meet your online needs to suit and build your brand. EWS was started by teachers and works most with schools.

  EWS has offered free hosting server space for beginners and for the website hackerthon to be held during the WordCamp.

  Connect with EWS:

  Website: https://ezonewebservices.com/

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/ezonewebs

  WhatsApp: +256706060740

• ICT Teachers Association of Uganda

  

  ICT Teachers Association of Uganda (ITAU) is a network of teachers of ICT across all levels of education in Uganda. ITAU exists to promote ICT literacy and Integration in all subjects in Education and other spheres of daily life.

  ITAU Mission is “to be the lead engine in uniting, organizing and empowering teachers to share, innovate and advocate for ICT integration in education.” ITAU Vision is “a society in which ICT Teachers are empowered to pass on relevant skills to all learners and support other teachers to effectively use ICTs in teaching and learning.” The motto of the Association shall be “Together Against Computer illiteracy”.

  ITAU is supporting WordCamp Jinja by mobilizing teachers from allover the country to attend and learn WordPress. There will be a special workshop track focused on WordPress training and learning resources and approaches teachers can use to teach it to their students for web design exam purposes, projects, elearning and business generally.

  Connect with ITAU:

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/ictteachersug

  Facebook: https://facebook.com/ictteachersug

  Website: https://www.ictteachersug.net/

  Email: info@ictteachersug.net

• Jetpack

  

  Safer, faster WordPress. Jetpack is a powerful collection of security and performance tools made for WordPress sites by the WordPress experts.

  • Proven security tools keep your site backed up, online, and hack-free.
  • Fast-loading pages mean happier visitors.
  • Everything in a single package — so you can focus on your business.

  Learn how Jetpack helps you secure and speed up your site at jetpack.com.

• MRK WP

  

  MRK WP is a company that offers WordPress development, marketing and consulting services for your digital journey. With over 20 years in web industry, MRK WP are certified SEO specialists as well!

  Whether you are a marketing agency, a web developer, or a business owner, MRK WP make it easy to create great experiences for your customers on the web. Get in touch with our team today to discuss your digital requirements – and discover how you can be helped outperform your competition!

  Connect

  Website: https://www.mrkwp.com

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrkwordpress

  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO2GcBObiCDXq_NOaCGiHWg

• Nexcess, A Liquid Web Brand

  

  Nexcess provides a fully managed, high-performance, and best-in-class cloud solution built to optimize WordPress and WooCommerce sites and stores. For over 20 years, our holistic, hands-on approach to managed products and solutions has provided users with tools that help them create better websites and e-commerce stores along with expert, on-demand support. By removing the stress of managing the day-to-day operations of their site or store, we afford our customers the ability to PRESS forward and focus more on what inspires them.

  Whether you’re a small business owner, designer, developer, or a small to medium-sized agency, Nexcess has a solution to help you and your business succeed.

• TechRT

  

  TechRT, which stands for Technology, Real Time, aims to be a holistic space for all things tech. We talk about anything and everything that comes under the umbrella of ‘tech’ and ‘science.’ Do you want in-depth tutorials and how-to guides on the internet? Do you want to know about the recently launched smartphones? Do you like to stay up to date about the top tech companies? Well, TechRT has got you covered.

• The Innovation Village – Ideas to Life

  

  The Innovation Village (TIV) is a destination entrepreneurs call home. TIV purposes to deliberately grow innovation by putting in place a platform that challenges assumption, ignites thought and questions status quo. As a launchpad for innovators, TIV brings together partners, startups, investors and researchers to act as one force for good.

  When TIV spread its wings to Eastern Uganda in 2020, Jinja was chosen as its host city. Located on Plot 5, Main Street in the heart of the industrial town, the innovation ecosystem which is home to entrepreneurs from a region with approximately 33 districts, is also ushering the region into the Fourth Industrial Revolution through merging network, talent, capital and physical assets. The end goal is to create a destination that grows businesses that matter and are centered around solving the biggest industry and community challenges.

  Read more on TIV website

  Follow on @TheVillageUG Twitter

• Weglot

  

  Weglot is a WordPress multilingual plugin to translate and display your website in multiple languages. It provides a fast, first layer of automated translation which you can easily edit yourself or by adding teammates, or collaborate with pro-translators through the Weglot dashboard. Trusted by more than 50,000 website owners and developers and with a 5-star rating on the WordPress directory (1000+ reviews) – you can have a multilingual website up and running in minutes. Key benefits include:

  • Simple and quick set-up
  • Multilingual SEO best practices (translated URLs & metadata)
  • Compatibility with any Themes and Plugins (incl. WooCommerce)
  • Automatic and human translations
  • A unique dashboard with an ‘in context editor’, easily edit translations & invite teammates to collaborate on projects
  • Expert support: a fully dedicated technical support team at your disposal

• WooCommerce

  

  WooCommerce is a free, open-source commerce platform built on WordPress. We empower anyone, anywhere, to sell anything with truly unlimited extensibility, flexibility, and control over how they build and evolve their business.

  WooCommerce is developed and supported by a distributed team at Automattic, creators of Jetpack and WordPress.com. For more, go to WooCommerce.com.

  • 5+ million active installations
  • 84+ million downloads
  • Options for new, growing, and enterprise-level stores
  • 450+ official extensions to add features and functionality

• WordPress.com

  

  WordPress.com offers managed hosting — a service that is 100% dedicated to hosting WordPress open source software for optimized performance. Managed hosting is a great option for people who don’t want to deal with the backend technical operations of running a website.

  You get all the power of WordPress, professionally managed and hassle-free, including:

  • Speed: WordPress.com earned Top Tier status in the WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks review with perfect 100% uptime on both monitors, zero errors across both load tests, and the fastest WP bench of any company in any price tier this year.
  • Powerful, built-in SEO: All of our themes are optimized for search engines, which means they are designed to make it easy for the Googlebot (and other search engines) to crawl through them and index your content.
  • Ironclad security: Our systems and security teams are vigilant about protecting your site and personal data. That’s why we’re trusted by some of the most high-profile sites on the web.
  • Hands-on support: Get world-class dedicated support from our happiness engineers, educational courses, and webinars.
  • Peace of mind: We make it easy to get started and maintain your site with automatic version updates and real-time silent backups, so you’ll never worry about losing your site content.

• Yoast

  

  About Yoast
  Optimizing your site for the search engines can be difficult and is often time-consuming. At Yoast however, we want to make SEO available for everyone. Because everyone should have equal chances to rank in search engines! For those who want to save some valuable time and get the most out of their website, there’s the Yoast SEO plugin! To this day, our Yoast SEO software is active on more than 12 million websites!

  How does the plugin help you?
  If you want your site to do well in the search results, readable content is incredibly important. To make improving readability easier, Yoast SEO offers a readability analysis. Next to that, the plugin supports you by handling technical stuff in the background, like building a solid linking structure, and automatically generating a lot of structured data for your site.

  There’s more!
  But hey, that’s not all we do! In addition to Yoast SEO, we developed a few other plugins that help you manage your SEO. And if you always want to keep on top of the latest SEO news, then our free monthly SEO news webinar is worth checking out! Want to know more about our company or our community involvement? Read on at yoast.com.

WordCamp Jinja 2022 (Fri 2nd– Sat 3rd Sept 2022) will be a major community event in Jinja City, Uganda, where WordPress developers, website designers, online publishers, students and teachers will converge to share comprehensive knowledge and experiences, and to meet other WordPress users. Its going to be a great networking event that will also attract guests from all over Uganda and beyond. The main host venue will be The Innovation Village, Plot 5 Main Street, Jinja City.

There will be something for everyone – beginner’s training, inspirational talks, showcases, best practices, latest trends, plus an after party with lots of fun and camping at the Source of the Nile in Jinja!

`

Planned Activities

1. Diverse Speaker Presentations will be delivered on various topics ranging from what’s new in the WordPress ecosystem, show cases, website optimization (SEO, security, performance), developer tools and best practices, contributing to open source and the WordPress project, web business and professionalism, digital marketing, etc.
2. Web Design Hackathon will connect volunteer developers with local startups in need of websites. There will be a dev challenge for Websites to be setup and a showcase of work-done be presented on the last day of the WordCamp! The Hackathon will also serve as an opportunity for meeting and working with new people! More details about the hackathon in this tweet.
3. Teachers Workshop will explore the integration of WordPress in the local education curriculum. Teachers will be trained on how to introduce WordPress to their students for web design topic in O-level computer studies exam, for project work and world of work assessment. Vital teaching and learning resources such as the lesson plans at learn.wordpress.org will be shared. Teachers will also be inspired to take on Web Design as a side business to earn extra income alongside their school salaries! Registration of teachers and students is being done by the ICT Teachers Association via this link: bit.ly/wordcampjinja.
4. A visit to the Source of the Nile – Jinja city is nestled on the shores of Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake, and is deeply rooted in colorful history. The city is home to the source of the Nile, the longest river in the world. River Nile is one of the major geographic superlatives on the earth and from time immemorial, and it has been an outstanding natural land feature worth mentioning in historical books including the holy bible. The New Iconic Nile Bridge is the gateway to Jinja City. WordCamp Jinja will be wrapped up in style with a group photo and fun at the Source of Nile!

Full schedule of activities will be published soon.

Accommodation For those coming to Jinja for their first time, there are several hotels and guest houses where you can reside. Check though this listing by booking.com: bit.ly/jinjahotels. You can also contact the WordCamp team on jinja@wordcamp.com for more inquiries and guidance.

Get Involved

There are several ways to get involved! Check out details below:

• Purchase Attendee Tickets: https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2022/tickets/
• Call for Sponsors: https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2022/call-for-sponsors/
• Call for Speakers: https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2022/call-for-speakers/
• Call for Volunteers: https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2022/call-for-volunteers/

Join the discussion via #WordCampJinja hashtag on Twitter

Looking forward to a wonderful WordCamp at the Nile Source! For real time updates, you can join the WordPress Jinja Meetup WhatsApp group through this link bit.ly/wpjinja or call/inbox +256706060740 / +256772111223

This is your opportunity to engage with a vibrant Community! WordCamp Jinja 2022 brings you a diverse audience, from website designers, developers, online publishers, to students and teachers from Jinja and all parts of the Country. Spread your brand out there by being part of it through your kind sponsorship.

Sponsorship Packages

Gold Sponsor Package – Price $1000

	Four Tickets to WordCamp Jinja
	Thank you blog post about your organization w/option for video message to attendees
	Booth space in the Gold sponsor section. Opportunity to have special events happening at specific times at your booth announced to attendees in pre-camp email and by our session emcees.
	Largest logo size on website/sessions slides between speakers.
	Acknowledgement by name in opening and closing remarks Link to digital swag ( Can include coupons, sign up links for free guides, ebooks, links to register for raffles and giveaways, etc.) included in pre-camp and post camp email to all attendees, and listed on Sponsor Hub webpage..
	Social media shout outs. Follow us @WordPressJinja #WordCampJinja
	Logo featured on LCD screen.

Silver Sponsor Package – Price: $500

	Two Tickets to WordCamp Jinja
	Thank you blog post about your organization.
	Booth space in the Silver sponsor section.
	Second largest logo size on website/sessions slides between speakers.
	Link to digital swag ( Can include coupons, sign up links for free guides, ebooks, links to register for raffles and giveaways, etc.) included in pre-camp and post camp email to all attendees, and listed on Sponsor Hub webpage.
	Social media shout outs. Follow us @WordPressJinja #WordCampJinja

Bronze Sponsor Package – Price: $260

	One Ticket to WordCamp Jinja
	Inclusion in thank you blog post covering all Bronze sponsors
	Opportunity to leave swag/information on shared swag table.
	Third largest logo size on website/sessions slides between speakers.
	Link to digital swag ( Can include coupons, sign up links for free guides, ebooks, links to register for raffles and giveaways, etc.) included in pre-camp and post camp email to all attendees, and listed on Sponsor Hub webpage.
	Social media shout outs. Follow us @WordPressJinja #WordCampJinja

Microsponsor Ticket – Price: $100

WordCamps like to keep their prices low to provide access to as many people as possible. Thanks to our generous sponsors, we are able to do that. The actual cost of a ticket is $100. If you would like to be a MicroSponsor to cover the full cost of your ticket, we would be happy to list you as such on our website and your attendee badge. If you would like to become a MicroSponsor, please buy a MicroSponsor ticket and our team will be in touch for further details.

Please read more about the WordPress Community Event Sponsor Guidelines

Are you ready to be a sponsor? Kindly fill in the form below:

For any inquiries, please contact us via email jinja@wordcamp.org or call / text the organizers on Tel: +256776960740. WhatsApp: +256706060740.