Two months ago, in October I was lucky enough to attend the most recent BarCamp in Phnom Penh.

What is BarCamp?

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BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

Recently, BarCamp Phnom Penh 4 was celebrate at the University of Puthisastra, which is located in Phnom Phenh. It was a 2 day event for computer enthusiasts, technologists, IT professionals, mobile & web developers, bloggers, translators, entrepreneurs, and especially social media specialists.

Kinyei was invited to participate, share some experiences and learn about the latest innovations of technology, from applications software to operating system, wired networking to wireless technology and from offline to online business.

My experience at this great event

A Social Media in Cambodia session was run at this BarCamp

In the BarCamp event, I joined some workshops on topics such as Why we need more courage for ourselves by Soluy Loeurt, Social Media Cambodia by Melina Chan, and Travel with no money by Rithy Thul. I got some good ideas such as how to communicate better through Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail; and about how to travel without any money to spend on food, accommodation or anything. Life is struggle sometimes, but we can survive.

I especially remember one quote that the leader of the workshop said: “life is improvement”. This made me realise that even though life is a struggle, I should keep trying to solve the problems I face. And by attending BarCampPP, I now have more knowledge of technology and and communication.

On Monday 13th June Kinyei commenced its first session of a 4 week open workshop series on WordPress with Alexandra Roberson and Seavyi Yonn as the facilitators. It took place at Street one and half Cafe Shop. Many people from NGO organizations, schools, and myself joined the workshop series for four weeks every Monday from 5:00 to 6:30pm.

I think the WordPress workshop helped me improve and learn many things such as, new and up to date technology, blog designs, web site for the Kinyei organization and my own blog posts.

There are many reasons why I attended the WordPress Open Workshop Series:

1. I can know and learn the latest technology
2. Create my perfect WordPress blog
3. Upload images and video
4. Learn the importance of widgets to attract people who read your blog. Widgets make it easy for viewers to quickly look at the right of page and navigate to most recent post etc.
5. People around the world can use WordPress and blogging platforms to share their information, stories and activities via text, photos and video.

These are just some of the many important points I learned at the WordPress workshop series.

The Most interesting point that I found at the Workshop

Learning how to upload pictures to your website was the most interesting point for me in the workshop so I’m going to share how to do this with all of you. Uploading pictures is very important for my blog or and organisation’s website. I think that the reader can understand the activity by just seeing the picture and the text description. It enables the reader to make sense of what you’re talking about easily and quickly.

Here are the steps to uploading pictures to your blog:

First, you need to re-size your picture using Irfan view, Photo Shop or other image editing programs.

Second, save it for ‘the web’ to reduce its file size – (this optimises your images for your website by reducing the time it takes to load your image when a user visits your page).

The participants practise uploading pictures and video

Third, I click on insert picture in WordPress and chose the picture I want to upload. I upload picture which I have already re-sized.

Fourth, I select where I want the image to go by aligning it either to the left, centrel or right of the blog post.

Fifth, I like to tell the readers or audience (including Google as it cannot read images so you need to describe it to Google using descriptions) about my picture by adding alternate text, image title and caption to describe my picture.

Using pictures with text description in our blog or website helps attract and hold viewers attention.

What makes for a good workshop learning environment?

Learning is not only dependent on your instructor but also your classroom environment. I think that Kinyei is a good environment for learning through workshops. For example, at the WordPress workshops they had equipment such as a projector, computers, tables, chairs and a white board  that the facilitator could use to present their workshop. Moreover, Kinyei is a warm and friendly place because it has snacks and drinks for when we had break time. They also asked the participants to complete a feedback form at the end of the series so they can learn how to do it better for the next one. I really like this activity because Kinyei can know about the points they need to improve and the positive points of things they did well. Kinyei always pay attention, take care and are friendly to everyone in their workshops and other projects.

Learning WordPress at Kinyei was a great time for me. I learn many things about WordPress. It also gave me the chance to interact with both Khmer and Foreigners through English language. It’s good time for me to practice English and share ideas about Cambodians and Westerners.

First things that I found at the Kinyei Cafe Shop

Cappuccino at the Kinyei Cafe Shop

Kinyei cafe is a social enterprise where the profits go towards Kinyei’s Community Based Organisation Open Workshop program and other community initiatives. I have worked at Kinyei Cafe since early May 2011. I saw a job announcement at the University of Battambang. I felt interested so I applied for a job at Kinyei. After I have worked there, I got the cafe skill that i can run my own business and have developed other skills such as English, communication, the ability to interact with different cultures and work experience in making coffee. I think that the cafe shop at Kinyei is a good place for Cambodian people and foreigners learn about eachothers cultures. We will learn together and share the education. Because Kinyei opened the shop and other programmes, I get more education to develop myself. I share this learning with young people in the community who don’t have a job to do. I use my salary for my studying and social living. It’s a good idea that the managers pay some English school fees for the staff here. So, there are many wonderful things to do at Kinyei Cafe Shop.

Kinyei Cafe shop located in Battambang city, Cafe opens from 7: 00 am until 7: 00 pm, Monday to Sunday. We serve the espresso coffee drinks , tea , baked goods and others such as fresh spring roll, hommade yogurt, fruit, honey milk….We also provide free fast speed Internet.

I have learnt to make a lot of things both drink and snack. The drink I most enjoy making is the Cappuccino. “Cappuccino is very popular for the customers here like to drink it” said by Mr. Sean who is the supervisor at Kinyei Cafe. Here is a video of how we make Capuccino at kinyei. So if you want to try a delicious drink and snack which is served by us, we welcome you to come and pay us a visit!

Sean teaches new staff how to make a cappuccino at Kinyei Cafe from Kinyei on Vimeo.

Kinyei Cafe’s characteristics and specific policies are a very important part of my work. I think that if we don’t have good characteristics, it is hard to work as a team or group. Today, I work at the cafe with Sean, Palla, Utac, Sakana, Sakhey, Sothearak, and Chenda. Our characteristics have similarities which are:

• Friendly and welcoming,
• Hard working,
• Attention to detail,
• Taking initiative,
• Willingness to learn,
• Happy to share what we already know and
• English competency.

Staff celebrate Khmer New Year at Kinyei Cafe Shop

My colleagues and I have an idea about the policies and that is to provide excellent espresso coffee drinks, fast professional service and high quality products. So the cafe team really enjoy taking care of our customers with delicious coffee, fast service and friendly smiles.

Working at the Kinyei Cafe shop is a good place for me to learn, share education and culture between Cambodians and foreigners, access learning work shops,and develop my skills. Kinyei bring me brightness life in the future!