Naoko has been involved in the Japanese WordPress community since 2003. She has helped translate software, written books, and either organized or spoke at several WordCamps (8 Japanese cities hosted total of 13 WordCamps so far) — mostly while living in Michigan. She now calls Tokyo her home, and works for Automattic as a Happiness Engineer. Naoko will be sharing tips for successful localization and growing local community.

Behind the success of WordPress as a popular CMS in Japan, there was an effort by the user community. This talk is for anyone who is interested in growing their own local open source communities, localizing their products, or expanding the fan base for their services.

I will share my mistakes and learnings from the experience.

Some of the areas I want to talk about are:

• emphasis in core activities (translation / documentation / forums)
• helping other community members to have their own roles
• focusing on centralized information (event calendar across Japan, codex documentation, official blog) instead of just writing up blog posts on your own site
• learning from US and other communities
• collaborating with other businesses
• creating localized experience by listening & putting your idea into actions