Aaseesh Marina is a WordPress enthusiast from Hyderabad, India. He has been a member of WordPress community since around 2008. He is a part of the Search Quality team at Google and is primarily responsible for educating webmasters on various tools and resources Google provides to help make user-friendly websites. At WordCamp Pokhara 2018, he talked about –‘Managing Your Online Presence on Google Search’. We got to talk with him right the same day.
How and when did you start your journey with WordPress?
I started by WordPress journey back in 2008 when I joined college. I created my first WordPress blog in the same year. For testing purposes, I created some sites and posted them just to see how things work.
What excites you the most about WordCamps?
This is my first time in a WordCamp. And, I think it’s the people that make WordCamps interesting. It is amazing how WordPressers from different communities come together in a WordCamp and share their knowledge.
What do you hope attendees will take away from your talk today?
One of the biggest hope for me is that whether the attendees can improve their website or not, I hope they at least understand how the Search engine works and especially how Google search works. Once they understand this term, I am hoping that they can get a good idea of how to create a better content.
Are there any challenges you faced that you’d like to share with us?
No, not really. I spend a lot of time providing tutorials which have helped a lot of people. And doing this does not really require any heavy tasks. So, for me, I haven’t faced any sort of challenges yet.
What are your thoughts on the WordPress community of Nepal?
I just came to Nepal today! This is my very first WordCamp here in Nepal. The WordPress community of Nepal is very vibrant. I had no idea that the WordPress community in Nepal to be this big before I came here. I was treated very kindly and everyone is very friendly and lively.
What do you think about female participation in WordPress?
I can also see that the female participants have increased by quite a lot. The female participation in such events is around 10% to 12% in almost everywhere. But here, I don’t have exact numbers but it looks more than that, which is very good. It is really good to see women being this comfortable attending such events and learning.
How do you stay updated on WordPress?
Generally, not just for WordPress, I have Google alerts set-up for the topics that I follow. Apart from Google alerts, I also follow the regular websites like Techmeme, WP Tavern, and more.
Gutenberg editor is a hot topic nowadays in WordPress, how do you think it is going to affect the WordPress ecosystem?
I am hoping that this new update makes things easier for beginners because a lot of beginners depends on plugins and what not. So, if they can do the small things themselves, it will surely help them understand this system better.
What can we find you doing when you’re not WordPressing?
In my leisure time, I play basketball or go swimming. Apart from that, I also play DOTA or watch Anime.
And lastly, WordPress 5.0 is releasing soon with Gutenberg Editor as the default editor. How excited are you about it?
I am very excited because they have a lot of security-related features. I am concerned in a way because I am wondering whether people will take an initiative to update all the CMS. If they do, that is very good because there will be a lot of vulnerabilities that will be fixed.
You can get in touch with Aaseesh Marina and learn new things through his Twitter.