Wordpress developer lauds RP blogging community

By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net MANILA, Philippines â A Wordpress lead developer has described the Philippine b logging community as "impressive and very organized," admitting WordCamp Philip pines is one of the biggest Wordcamp he has attended About 400 Filipino bloggers attended the WordCamp Philippines 2008 on September 6 at the College of St. Benilde, which is considered a landmark event for the country since it was the first WordCamp in Southeast Asia. Visiting the Philippines, Matthew Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPres s, said the Philippine version was comparable to WordCamp events in San Francis co. WordCamp is an annual event where users of the widely popular, open-source blog ging system Wordpress, talk about the latest technical aspects of Wordpress and the global blogging community. During the Wordcamp Philippines, Mullenweg gave the local community a preview o f the Wordpress 2.7, codenamed "Crazy Horse." Visiting the Philippines for the first time, Mullenweg said he has been learnin g more about the Filipino blogging community. "I'm here to see the Philippines. I've always wanted to go here," he said. Aside from the Philippines, Mullenweg said he will be flying to Beijing and Sha nghai in China to attend other Wordcamps being organized. Japan is also in his sights and hopefully an event there will happen before the end of the year. Mullenweg admitted that he did not expect Wordpress to become a huge hit among bloggers and open source software users worldwide. He believed that Wordpress' user-friendly graphical interface and ability to in tegrate third-party applications attracted users worldwide. Mullenweg said it is the active development community of Wordpress users that w ill ensure the application's future. "I get suggestions from people everyday on how to improve Wordpress. It's commu nity driven. I synthesize [suggestions] and erect communities for Wordpress fut ure releases," he said.