M Asif Rahman is an entrepreneur and WordPress enthusiast. His motto is “I do Code, I Write, I Dream and I make them Real.” He spends part of the year in Dhaka, Bangladesh, part of the year in Florida, and the rest of his time is spent travelling in places like California, Europe, Australia, and Singapore.

Getting Started with WordPress

His first experience of WordPress was in 2004 when he had to make a website at University. He tried Blogger first but, disappointed with how it looked, he switched to WordPress.

Asif’s first WordCamp presentation was “Best practices in WordPress from a Webmaster point-of-view”, presented at WordCamp Melbourne. His biggest challenges was his accent, which some people struggled to understand, but he slowed down and the audience gave him a warm round of applause at the end.

Asif has attended WordCamp San Francisco four times. One of his fondest memories is meeting Matt in person.

Though I wrote to him and we communicated in social media for long time, but meeting in person was superb. We talked for awhile and he showed keen interest on learning how people interacted with WordPress back in my country, Bangladesh, and how we could bring that community closer.

WordPress in Bangladesh

WordPress’ growth in Bangladesh was slow to begin with, competing in its early days with Joomla. Since 2010, WordPress has had a big impact on developers and small businesses. A large number of people are builing themes and plugins, and some design firms and consultants a focusing purely on WordPress. “You will be astonished,” Asif says, “that the rates of adoption of WordPress among mid to large company is way higher then US or other market.” In Bangladesh, WordPress enthusiasts gather around a community called WordPressians which has 12,500 member on Facebook alone.

WordPress became the touch point, the starting tool for a young nation with about 100 million people under 32yrs old: it’s massive. You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you but WordPress is more well-known among normal Bangladeshi people than from here at US.

Asif’s presentation

At WordCamp San Francisco this year, Asif will talk about his story with WordPress.

I want to show people how WordPress changed my life, I want to show how this community, this open source eco-system, helped me to dream big. How does a very simple boy from Bangladesh without any prior web programming experience try to make a real difference. This is real honor to me and I really feel privileged to be able to speak in Central WordCamp on such an emotional topic. I hope to inspire others and give them hope.