WordCamp Sylhet 2026 Recap: Contributions, Connections & My Panel Highlights

WordCamp Sylhet 2026 was different.

There was no mountain of swag to carry home. I wasn’t there representing a sponsor. And instead of giving a traditional talk, I found myself moderating Contributor Showcase: Representing Bangladesh, a panel about the people helping Bangladesh leave its mark on the global WordPress community.

Some experiments worked. One definitely didn’t. 😅

We helped get 60+ photos published in the WordPress Photo Directory, tried to crowdsource questions before the panel, brought rapid-fire fun to the stage, celebrated more Bangladeshi contributors beyond our panel, and somehow my little girl Aurora became an unofficial panelist.

But the event also left me thinking about something much bigger: As AI reshapes the WordPress economy, what will happen to WordCamps and what do we actually want WordCamps to be?

So, here is my WordCamp Sylhet 2026 story.

Read more: WordCamp Sylhet 2026 Recap: Contributions, Connections & My Panel Highlights

Back to Sylhet, Back to WordCamp: Highlights of the WordPress Event

There is something about Sylhet. The rain. The green tilas. The tea. And, apparently, a WordPress community stubborn enough to keep bringing everyone back together. ❤️

In October 2026, it was also the city of WordPress. WordCamp Sylhet 2026 was the second WordCamp in Bangladesh this year, the first time we have had two back-to-back in a single year. That is common in neighboring countries like Nepal and India, so Bangladesh is finally catching up. It was also the third time the local Sylhet community has organized one.

Read about another attended WordCamp experience: WordCamp Rajshahi 2026 Recap.

The organizers made a bold announcement before the event: “There will be no swags.” The focus would be learning and networking. Spoiler: it worked.

I had applied to speak about how AI can help contributors submit plugins. The organizers had other plans and offered me a panel instead. So I went as a speaker, which turned out to be the best seat in the house.

Let’s learn more about WordCamp Sylhet through my lens.

Contributor Day: Still My Favorite Day of WordCamp

If you ask me which day of a WordCamp I love most, the answer is always Contributor Day. It is relaxed, there is no pressure to look smart on stage, and you actually get to sit beside people and build something together.

New Milestone: 60 photos for the WordPress Photo Directory

This year my friend Liam and I rallied a group of young contributors to submit photos to the WordPress Photo Directory. By the end of the day, 60 photos from multiple contributors had been published. Sixty! For many of them, it was their very first WordPress contribution, and watching that “wait, my photo is live?” moment was the highlight of the whole event for me.

The day wrapped up with a group photo and a welcome dinner for speakers, sponsors, volunteers, and organizers. Good food, better company.

Conference Day: AI Everywhere, Something for Everyone

Conference Day took place in the Central Auditorium of SUST, one of Bangladesh’s most renowned universities. The schedule was packed with talks, panel discussions, and three hands-on workshops, and AI showed up in almost every one of them.

Sessions for every kind of WordPresser

The lineup had something for marketers, support engineers, coders, and learners alike. Talks covered AI agents in customer support, plugin security, feeding your content to LLMs, and how product marketing is changing in the AI era. The three workshops focused on SEO and marketing, designing better products with AI, and product development.

The talk I keep thinking about

If you watch only one recording, make it “The Last Programmer: The Future of Software Development” by Shah Ali Newaj Topu. It made me laugh, then made me think, and I am still thinking about it days later. More on why below.

Moderating Panel “Contributor Showcase: Representing Bangladesh”

Now for the part I was nervous and excited about in equal measure. I moderated the panel “Contributor Showcase: Representing Bangladesh” with four brilliant Bangladeshi WordPress contributors:

• Ahmed Kabir Chaion
• Anzuman Ara Chowdhury
• Md Noruzzaman
• Huzaifa Al Mesbah

Back in 2024, I was part of a panel on diversity, equity, and accessibility featuring four women in WordPress. This time, the spotlight was on contributor life: how to get started, the struggles nobody posts on LinkedIn, and how to balance contribution with work and family. Our target audience was new contributors and students, the people who will be on that stage next.

The Experiments I’ve Tried

I wanted this session to feel like a conversation, not a lecture, so I tried a few things.

A pre-session question form. To make the session more inclusive, I created a form and shared it in our community ahead of time. People could send questions for the panelists and about WordPress contribution in general. The post got engagement, but we received exactly zero questions. Lesson learned. Maybe it works next time, but not this time.

A rapid-fire round. To keep the energy up, I threw quick questions at both the audience and my panelists. Nothing wakes up an auditorium like the threat of being asked something.

A shout-out for everyone else. The topic was “Representing Bangladesh”, and Bangladesh is represented by far more than four people on a stage. So at the end, we called out the names of 10 more Bangladeshi contributors who were in the room or watching online, invited them up, cheered for them, and took a big group photo. That was my favorite moment of the panel.

My co-moderator, Aurora

The real star of the session was my baby girl, Aurora. Throughout the panel, she was on stage with me: stumbling around, munching her biscuits, lying down, fixing my shoe, and whatnot. Basically doing everything except respecting the formal dignity of a panel discussion. She entertained herself enough that I could keep the conversation moving, listen to the panelists, and moderate the session.

Thankfully, she was happy playing by herself, which made it much easier for me to keep the session going. Work-life balance, demonstrated live. There was something beautifully WordCamp-ish about it.

Open-source communities are built by actual human beings. And sometimes a moderator has a toddler crawling around her feet while she is asking questions about the future of WordPress contribution. Life doesn’t disappear when we walk onto a stage. And maybe it doesn’t have to.

Our Community Panel Session Feedbacks

This was the part I couldn’t measure while standing on stage. But the reaction afterward was overwhelming. The cheers. The applause. People coming up to talk about the panel. Messages afterward. People watching the recorded stream after the event.

And then seeing someone write an entire blog post about how that session made him feel. That meant a lot. A community session works when people recognize a little bit of themselves in the conversation.

And I think, somewhere between the serious contributor stories, the rapid-fire questions, the shout-outs, the audience, and Aurora’s biscuit adventures, we managed to create that.

Mehraz Morshed, one of the contributors we called on stage, wrote a lovely post about the session. Read his experience here: A Memorable Contributor Showcase at WordCamp Sylhet 2026. As he puts it, “Hearing my name and standing on that stage alongside so many amazing WordPressians was an incredibly special moment.”

Reading that made all the planning worth it.

Learnings & Thoughts About Attending WordCamp Sylhet 2026

Overall, this was a great WordCamp. It was less crowded than usual, which meant more chances to talk, pull someone aside, and actually connect.

The No-Swag Experiment: Did It Actually Work?

With no swag on offer, attendees spent their time talking to sponsors instead of collecting freebies. And who said you need t-shirts to make your booth engaging? People were chatting at booth after booth, knowing full well they would not leave with a bag full of t-shirts. That made my heart happy. Meaningful conversation and connection matter more than physical gifts.

Hiccups, handled with heart

The event had a few hiccups, including electricity problems. Still, the organizers, volunteers, and everyone involved did their best to give us a great experience. Thank you to the Sylhet WordPress community for putting together such a beautiful event.

The Sponsor Question Nobody Could Ignore

We heard from the lead organizer that collecting sponsors was a real struggle this year. That is not just a Bangladesh story. I think it reflects the whole WordPress ecosystem right now. With AI changing how people build sites, WordPress product sales are going down, and for two days almost every conversation came back to the same questions: how do we survive, and how do we rise again?

That is why the title “The Last Programmer” stuck in my head. It could be the last WordCamp, too, at least in its current form. If WordCamps rely only on sponsors from WordPress product companies, keeping them going may get harder every year.

So, Are WordCamps Still Relevant?

This is where my WordCamp Sylhet 2026 recap becomes a little less nostalgic. Because underneath all the happy conversations, there was another conversation happening.

The WordPress business ecosystem is changing.

AI was everywhere; not just as a shiny topic, but as something actively changing workflows, roles, products, and business models. We also heard about how difficult sponsorship had been to secure.

And that matters. WordCamps are volunteer-run, nonprofit events, and sponsorship helps keep ticket prices accessible while funding the event experience. WordCamp Sylhet’s own sponsorship material explicitly describes sponsor funding as central to making the event possible.

If WordPress-focused companies face tighter budgets, sponsorship naturally becomes harder. So a question kept circling in my head: What happens to WordCamps if the businesses that traditionally fund them can no longer support them in the same way?

Could This Be the Last Programmer or the Last WordCamp?

One session title stuck in my head: The Last Programmer. Not because I believe programmers are suddenly disappearing tomorrow. But because the title captured the uncertainty hanging over many conversations.

What will our jobs look like?
What will WordPress businesses look like?
Which skills will remain valuable?
Which business models will survive?

And extending that thought:

Could the way we currently organize WordCamps eventually become unsustainable too? I don’t know. And I don’t think pretending to know helps anyone. But I do think this is a conversation worth having.

So, Do We Still Need WordCamps?

For me? Yes. Maybe even more than before. But perhaps we need to keep questioning what a WordCamp should deliver. If the business opportunity becomes less predictable, maybe the value of WordCamp needs to lean even harder into things AI can’t easily reproduce:

Human connections.
Learning together.
Local communities.
Mentorship.
Giving newcomers somewhere to begin.
Building friendships across borders.

Maybe the WordCamp Model Will Need to Evolve

That doesn’t mean everything should stay the same. Maybe sponsorship models will evolve. Maybe events will become leaner. Maybe funding will become more diverse. Maybe communities will experiment with different formats. Maybe we’ll focus less on spectacle and more on participation.

WordCamp Sylhet 2026 itself was already a small experiment in that direction: fewer extras, no swag, and a stated focus on real sessions, conversations, and connections.

Perhaps the future of WordCamps isn’t about recreating what worked ten years ago. Perhaps it is about protecting why WordCamps worked in the first place: people.

Less Crowd, More Conversations

This was my third time attending WordCamp Sylhet. And this one felt different personally, too. Some of my old WordPress buddies, the people I was used to seeing at almost every WordCamp, weren’t there this time. I noticed their absence. But events have a funny way of refusing to let you stay alone in one corner.

I met new people. People full of energy. People curious about WordPress. People eager to contribute. People I probably wouldn’t have met outside an event like this. The event felt less crowded than some previous experiences, and strangely, I liked that.

There was more breathing room. More time to stop. More time to talk. And that might be my biggest takeaway from WordCamp Sylhet 2026.

Wrapping up Until My Next WordCamp

WordCamps have never really been about stages. Or T-shirts, or booths, or even WordPress itself. They are about people gathering around something they collectively care about. At WordCamp Sylhet 2026, I saw that in many forms.

✅️ I saw it when new contributors submitted photos.

✅️ I saw it in our Contributor Showcase panel.

✅️ I saw it when Bangladeshi contributors joined us on stage.

✅️ I saw it when people talked to sponsors without needing giveaways.

✅️ I saw it in the feedback after our session.

✅️ I saw it in a toddler happily playing on stage while her mother moderated a WordPress panel.

And I saw it in all those conversations about an uncertain future. Because uncertainty isn’t necessarily the end of a community. Sometimes it is when communities become most important. Here are more glimpses of the event.

Until the Next WordCamp…

I have another little dream. One day, I would love to see WordCamp Bangladesh happen in a bigger gathering where WordPress communities from across the country can come together under one roof.

Maybe we’ll get there. Until then, I’ll keep collecting these smaller moments. And perhaps a few more WordCamps where Aurora quietly steals my stage. 😛

To everyone behind WordCamp Sylhet 2026, thank you for the experience. Also, everyone who attended our panel, cheered, shared feedback, watched online, or joined us on stage; thank you for making Contributor Showcase: Representing Bangladesh much more than a panel discussion.

Until my next WordCamp journey, ta-ta for now!