Posts /
Event recap: WordPress Campus Connect KUAS 2026
On 4 July 2026 the KUAS Open Source Circle hosted WordPress Campus Connect — the second one held in Japan, and the first at our university. From 10:00 to 16:00 at the Uzumasa Campus. Most students had no prior experience.
The full details are on the event website.
What is WordPress Campus Connect?🔗
Campus Connect is a global WordPress event built specifically for students to learn about WordPress.
You do not need web development experience. You do not need to have used WordPress before. Several people in the room had never registered a domain of any kind, and that was entirely the point.
The morning: individual lectures🔗
Three community members from different companies took turns explaining what WordPress actually is and how it affected their career.
“That site might actually be WordPress” — Hiroshi Sato. A tour of where WordPress already turns up in the wild: corporate sites, hospitals, media outlets. He revealed that the university front website actually runs on WordPress!
“WordPress and open source” — Shohei Tanaka. Tanaka covered what open source actually means in practice and how contributing builds a network and a career, using WordPress’s Five for the Future as the worked example.
“Building a career through WordPress” — Kaito Hanamori. A personal account of going from hobby projects to Automattic, and on to Japan Partnerships Manager. Concrete career paths out of something you started for fun tend to land well with a student audience.
Accounts, domains, and lunch🔗
Before breaking, everyone set up a WordPress.com account — Automattic provided each participant with a year of premium access — and chose a domain name.
That turned out to be an important part. Picking a name is the moment the thing stops being an exercise and starts being your site, and the atmosphere changed too.
Lunch was catered with a range of options, including halal meals for our international members. Since some people couldn’t attend, we distributed the lunchboxes all around campus afterwards!
The afternoon: building the website🔗
The second half was hands-on. Students worked on their own projects. There were recipe sites, club pages, sites for whatever hobby they had turned up with, using WordPress.com’s AI builder, with staff circulating to help people individually.
Thank you🔗
To Hiroshi Sato, Shohei Tanaka and Kaito Hanamori for the talks, to Automattic for the accounts, and to the WordPress global sponsors for making the entire event possible. Also to everyone in KOSC who helped with the event but couldn’t attend.
Come to the next one🔗
See the events page for what is coming up, or the join page if you want to join us.
Event recap: WordPress Campus Connect KUAS 2026
On 4 July 2026 the KUAS Open Source Circle hosted WordPress Campus Connect — the second one held in Japan, and the first at our university. From 10:00 to 16:00 at the Uzumasa Campus. Most students had no prior experience.
The full details are on the event website.
What is WordPress Campus Connect?🔗
Campus Connect is a global WordPress event built specifically for students to learn about WordPress.
You do not need web development experience. You do not need to have used WordPress before. Several people in the room had never registered a domain of any kind, and that was entirely the point.
The morning: individual lectures🔗
Three community members from different companies took turns explaining what WordPress actually is and how it affected their career.
“That site might actually be WordPress” — Hiroshi Sato. A tour of where WordPress already turns up in the wild: corporate sites, hospitals, media outlets. He revealed that the university front website actually runs on WordPress!
“WordPress and open source” — Shohei Tanaka. Tanaka covered what open source actually means in practice and how contributing builds a network and a career, using WordPress’s Five for the Future as the worked example.
“Building a career through WordPress” — Kaito Hanamori. A personal account of going from hobby projects to Automattic, and on to Japan Partnerships Manager. Concrete career paths out of something you started for fun tend to land well with a student audience.
Accounts, domains, and lunch🔗
Before breaking, everyone set up a WordPress.com account — Automattic provided each participant with a year of premium access — and chose a domain name.
That turned out to be an important part. Picking a name is the moment the thing stops being an exercise and starts being your site, and the atmosphere changed too.
Lunch was catered with a range of options, including halal meals for our international members. Since some people couldn’t attend, we distributed the lunchboxes all around campus afterwards!
The afternoon: building the website🔗
The second half was hands-on. Students worked on their own projects. There were recipe sites, club pages, sites for whatever hobby they had turned up with, using WordPress.com’s AI builder, with staff circulating to help people individually.
Thank you🔗
To Hiroshi Sato, Shohei Tanaka and Kaito Hanamori for the talks, to Automattic for the accounts, and to the WordPress global sponsors for making the entire event possible. Also to everyone in KOSC who helped with the event but couldn’t attend.
Come to the next one🔗
See the events page for what is coming up, or the join page if you want to join us.