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I come from a transitional generation, and somehow, I’ve ended up as a hard core non-tech person in a heavily tech-driven space. Fitting into a box has never really been my thing.
And perhaps, that has been the point.
How often do you think you’re lost?
We often mistake not seeing a path for being lost.
We grow up believing that a meaningful life comes with a roadmap: choose a direction, follow it, and eventually arrive somewhere. But what happens when you can’t see the road ahead?
Sometimes, the path doesn’t exist yet.
My own journey has rarely looked linear. I started blogging on WordPress at 16 because I wanted somewhere to put my thoughts and my poetry. I studied law, organised events alongside it, and while pursuing my passion for public speaking, discovered my love for community building.
And eventually, through a rather topsy-turvy turn of events, I found myself turning my legal background into entrepreneurship.
From the outside, these may look like a lot of deviations. Even to me, there were moments when the future looked bleak and hazy. I wondered whether I was falling behind while people around me seemed to have “figured it out,” found their direction, and were already excelling.
I found myself feeling lost.
Regaining control by finding a pattern
But looking back, and eventually connecting the dots, I realised there was a constant. A pattern I kept coming back to: people, ideas, purpose, and the desire to contribute.
The mediums kept changing. The underlying pull did not.
And that’s when it hit me:
Sometimes, not fitting into the box isn’t the problem. Rather, it is the answer.
Who am I and where it all started
So, let me start again.
My name is Astha, and I discovered the WordPress community back in 2023.
I was a law student who happened to stumble upon a WordPress anniversary meetup, where conversations were already underway about WordCamp Bhopal happening again after quite a while.
I started as an organiser, partly because of the sheer joy of doing what the job demanded— the knack for managing things… and people.
We had two broad purposes: reignite the WordPress ecosystem in town and show attendees a glimpse of Bhopal in the best possible way.
And then, WordCamp Bhopal happened.
WordCamp Bhopal felt like a family reunion, except that you’re meeting those people for the very first time.
Read my experience as an Organiser at my first ever WordCamp | WordCamp Bhopal 2023
What next after organizing the first WordCamp?
I had an incredible time, but also, I had no intentions of dwelling any further.
But credit to the people I met here— WordCamp Mumbai happened.
And somewhere between Bhopal and Mumbai, something shifted.
The fire these two events ignited in me was insane. By 2024, I found myself thinking much more consciously about the gap I saw between my own field and the technology ecosystem, and between technology and the larger society around us.
I started looking for ways to bridge those gaps wherever I could.
I began seeing community events differently.
Not just as events.
But as opportunities to bring people together around something that could potentially make a difference.
I think community events are a great way— a stage from where you could bring a change. It’s an opening for you to utilize, to serve a purpose.
Outsider to Builder
I was supposed to be an outsider. I was one.
But the cordial, welcoming, “just a smile away” setup of this community had me, for good.
I think the give-and-take in my case sums up as perspective.
Witnessing grandeur of the OG Camp
And then came the ultimate, Crown of Jewels, Camp of Camps: WordCamp Asia.
I had an opportunity to emcee at WCAsia. Absolutely loved the energy. That’s probably the least I can say, because words still don’t quite justify how I felt at that moment.
Exposure is so important— culturally, professionally, and in all the other ways possible. For me, WordCamp Asia was exactly that.
Some people knew of my presence there. A majority did not. The people I knew helped me connect with the people I didn’t. But there were also those who came by without knowing me at all— just a smile or a kind word away.
I can’t seem to get over from WordCamp Asia!
It reminded me, once again, how simple yet profound human connections can be.
I came back apart from a sore throat, with a rejuvenated sense of self, and perhaps a little more courage… which led me to lead EmpowerWP Bhopal 2025.
Shifting focus from What → Why : EmpowerWP Bhopal
This time, the question wasn’t simply what event can we organise? It was who are we organising it for?
This was the time when Women In WordPress were organising women’s day event across the globe. We wanted to bring women in Bhopal into the conversation who weren’t necessarily already part of the ecosystem— homemakers, women looking to upskill, women on career breaks, small business owners, and women who had, for one reason or another, found themselves somewhere outside the active workforce.
When we envisioned EmpowerWP Bhopal, we knew it had to be inclusive— not just for the conventional attendees, but also for the very women who have shaped our lives. Trying to make digital opportunities feel a little closer to home. It went beyond our expectations in the best possible way.
Read about EmpowerWP: A journey of Growth and Inclusion
And then came the WP Build Tour.
Touring across the State: Igniting the fire amongst students
If EmpowerWP was about creating a bridge for women, WP Build Tour took the idea of access beyond the city.
We went across Madhya Pradesh, our state with 55 districts but just one active WordPress chapter, reaching more than 1,700 college students and helping them build their own websites in a day.
WP Build Tour 2025 was never just about code or content. It was about confidence. About potential realised. About futures being built— one student, one website, one breakthrough at a time.
The idea was rooted in something I had been thinking about for a while— the gap between what the industry needs, what students are taught, and what students actually get an opportunity to do.
So we took WordPress to them.
Bhopal Hosts WP Build Tour 2025: Empowering 1700+ Students Across Central India
The WordPress community had given me the space to try these things— to experiment, to bring in ideas that perhaps didn’t fit the conventional definition of a tech event, and to push boundaries.
And for that, I remain deeply grateful.
Organising events is one thing, and adding purpose to them takes it to another level. For us in Bhopal, organising events has never been just about the “event.” It’s about going a step further and sparking change, no matter how small.
The realisation at WC Pokhara
WordCamp Asia had felt like a peak, and I was quite happy simply soaking in its afterglow.
Then, out of nowhere, I heard whispers of WordCamp Pokhara happening in Nepal. And just like that, something stirred again.
I had no plans. But this one felt like it had plans for me.
There was another thought that kept ringing in my mind:
When I’ve had the privilege of being on both sides– non tech in tech, why not support the people who are still somewhere in the middle? So I wanted to talk about what we can do for the community and also how the community supports us.
Packed up and flew to Nepal. And what did I find? My alter ego, perhaps.
I didn’t go looking for a community this time. But by the end of it, I knew— I belong here.
Read about WCPokhara: People and Purpose
The Ultimate. The Calling. The Answer.
Just made me realise how our calling is not always something we discover at the beginning. Sometimes, it is the urge that keeps bringing us back, again and again, even when we try to walk somewhere else.
And how a community can make that uncertain journey possible: giving us people who encourage us, opportunities we couldn’t have seen alone, and sometimes simply the reassurance that we are not the only ones without a map.
Thanks to constant supporters in this journey including (but not limited to) Aditya Shah, the WP Bhopal community, the global WordPress Community at length, and Yoast! From celebrating WordPress anniversaries together to honoring WP Bhopal’s decade long journey… It’s been worthwhile to grow along.
It got me friends, and somewhere along the way, it got me a life!
What’s up with me now?
Now, I am a lawyer turned entrepreneur, in the tech space. Building Ariham, a people-first agency, with WordPress at its core.
And when I look back at the 16-year-old who simply wanted somewhere to put her thoughts and poetry, I realise I couldn’t have possibly mapped this journey out. I don’t think I was supposed to.
To so many firsts… first time making a website for somebody else, to the first international trip to the Philippines, to first time being a speaker at a foreign land… the WordPress community has taken me places, and I am so excited to see what we’re gonna be up to next!
A lesson I would like to pass on
Maybe the unconventional path isn’t a lack of direction.
Maybe it’s a different way of finding direction.
Maybe your calling isn’t always something you recognise immediately.
Maybe it’s the thing that keeps pulling you back.
The idea you can’t let go of.
The work you keep returning to.
The thing that, even after you’ve tried to walk away, somehow finds its way back into your life.
Because sometimes, the road not taken doesn’t look like a beautiful path waiting for you.
Sometimes, it looks like there is no path at all.
Maybe you’re not lost. Maybe you’re early. Or maybe you are the one building the road.
The post How a Law Student Ended up with WordPress appeared first on HeroPress.
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It’s OK to put Treg Taylor back in the governor’s race despite a finding he violated state campaign law because the vast majority of candidates in all Alaska races this year also have questionable filings.
That response was offered by Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom during a press conference Monday focusing on her controversial decision to restore Taylor and a state legislative candidate to the ballot on Friday, reversing her disqualification of them four days earlier.
Dahlstrom and Gov. Mike Dunleavy sought to redefine the issue by declaring as suspect the information provided by 91 of 121 statewide candidates to the Alaska Public Offices Commission, citing a Department of Law review conducted during the past week. The list includes all four candidates for governor, and most of the candidates in state House and Senate races.
The review was “limited and expeditied,” and it’s not yet known if any of the questioned filings are valid or a violation of Alaska’s campaign disclosure laws, said Rachel Witty, the Department of Law’s top civil attorney, during the press conference.
“This was done over the course of a day and a half,” she said. “So I can’t emphasize enough that this is a preliminary review. We didn’t have time to contact candidates.”
The department’s investigation was characterized by the Alaska Beacon as “unusual, if not unprecedented,” since the agency “typically operates on a complaint-based system, with most actions taken when a member of the public alerts the commission to a potential problem.”
Dahlstrom said many of the challenged filings may not be deliberate acts.
“It could have been a comma left out, or a number turned around, or something more,” she said.
APOC recommended Taylor, a former state attorney general, not be certified as a candidate because he reported more than $1 million in rental income, but did not disclose the full names of his tenants as required by Alaska’s campaign laws. Dahlstrom said Aug. 31 she would follow that recommendation, then reversed herself in an annoucement late Friday night.
In that announcement she also reversed her disqualification of Jose Anthony Tagle, a Republican seeking the Anchorage state House seat held by Democratic incumbent Ted Eischeid. APOC recommended Tagle not be certified after he filed a blank Public Officer Disclosure Form.
When asked if a missing comma or clerical oversight should be given the same characterization as deliberately omitting a significant amount of required information, Dahlstrom said the comma reference “was a poor example on my part.” She said more typical examples would be “if someone forgot their address, or if somebody forgot something that they owned, or a place that they lived, or something like that.”
Dave Bronson, a Republican candidate for governor and former Anchorage mayor, questioned the nature of the Dunleavy administration’s findings in a statement Monday night.
“There is an important difference between ‘substantial non-compliance’ under AS 39.50 that was the basis for Lt. Governor Dahlstrom’s original non-certification of 2 candidates, and a technical disclosure question, accidental omission, or information put out by Department of Law that is factually incorrect,” Bronson wrote in a post on his campaign’s Facebook page.
Both candidates in Juneau’s only competitive legislative race for the House District 3 seat — incumbent Democrat Andi Story and Republican challenger Annette Kreitzer — are flagged in the Department of Law’s review. The entry for Story states “Possible business affiliation with Juneau School District,” while the one for Kreitzer states she “appears to have a current interest in a property located at Lot 2, Block 5, Young Subdivision, Plat 74-3, which is not dosclosed[sic] on her POFD.”
Kreitzer, in an interview Tuesday, said the flagged property is her primary residence, the address of which does not have to be disclosed under the state’s campaign disclosure laws. She said she did disclose she owns the property and its ZIP code to establish it’s located in her hometown of Haines.
“I felt that I had complied with what APOC required,” she said.
Story, on Tuesday, said she has no known business ties with the Juneau School District.
“To me this just seems like it’s distracting everyone from the main issue, and that’s the (election) division’s decision to not enforce what seems to be purposeful violations of campaign disclosure laws from some of the main candidates,” she said.
Unopposed House District 4 candidate Sara Hannan, D-Juneau, is not flagged in the report.
Because the administration’s press conference was held on the Labor Day holiday, APOC officials could not be reached at work for comment.
The agency has long been underfunded and short-staffed, with nine currently funded positions compared to 14 in 2014. Dunleavy said during the press conference a group of former election officials should be formed to investigate “all the laws, the regulations, the processes, the practices, the remediation, the whole list of everything involved in APOC.”
“There’s, I think, a strong overdue review of not just APOC — I don’t want to leave people with the impression that APOC is ‘the problem,’” he said. “It’s just updating everything from resources to laws to regulations to practices and so forth, so that going forward we make things better.”
The Dunleavy administration has taken a number of controversial election-related actions over the past several months, including providing confidential voter data to the Trump administration, removing more than 3,000 people from voter rolls and asking them to verify their citizenship, and using unprecedented ballot tactics to distinguish U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan from Petersburg challenger Dan J. Sullivan after an attempt to disqualify the latter was rejected by the Alaska Supreme Court.
President Donald Trump, in the meantime, is seeking to restrict mail-in voting and other election-related measures to counter his frequent and unsubstantiated accusations of widespread fraud.
Dunleavy on Monday said he wants to shift the current focus to the upcoming election that will choose his replacement since he cannot run this year after serving two consecutive terms.
“We think people need to get on with campaigning,” he said. “The people of Alaska need to get on with understanding what the candidates want, what they intend to do while they’re office so they can vote for them, and we just have to be able to navigate through our election system here in November.”
Kreitzer, when asked about the decision to put Taylor back on the ballot, said the situation exists because of the state’s open primary that puts up to four candidates in each race to compete in a ranked choice general election.
“I think that ranked choice voting has encouraged all of this,” she said.
The Anchorage Daily News, in an editorial published Saturday, criticized a candidate certification process that “can be reopened and settled behind closed doors on a Friday night, on the say-so of (Dahlstrom) alone.”
“Three wrongs don’t make a right. Treg Taylor should follow the law. Dahlstrom should release the Department of Law’s review in full,” notes the editorial, which was published before the review was released Monday. “APOC — not a lieutenant governor acting alone — should immediately notify the public that it is conducting an emergency review of all candidates’ filings, and that it will give each candidate five days to correct any deficiencies. After that it will recommend removal of any candidate that doesn’t follow the law. Only then can the public trust that the game is being played fairly.”
This story was originally published by the Juneau Independent.
The post Story and Kreitzer flagged in Department of Law’s review of campaign filings appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.
Spencer Cox: America’s political divide is destroying families and friendships
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