Yoast Care fund: An interview with Rai Jibran

Another week, another interview with someone who received our Yoast Care fund! And this week’s recipient is Rai Jibran, who was nominated by Usman Khalid for his work in the community. For the past 2 to 3 years, Rai Jibran has organized WordPress meetup Karachi. But that’s not all! He has also helped organize WordCamp Karachi and is looking forward to leading the next WordCamp in Karachi as soon as it’s possible with the current situation. Let’s find out more about him by asking him some questions!

How did you know about WordPress?
Back in 2015, I needed to build a simple site for my university project. So, upon my friend’s recommendation, I opted for WordPress because it was easier to manage, and I didn’t have any technical expertise. So, my part was to upload content and images.

Why and when did you start contributing?
It started in 2016 when Waseem Abbas started WP meetups for the Karachi community and being his close friend; I attended my first meetup to support him. My first experience as an attendee was awesome because every person was welcoming and eager to learn from other attendees and looking forward to building meaningful connections. Thus that inspired me to become part of the WP Karachi community and contribute to the community.

As a volunteer, my first contribution was to manage backstage and take feedback from the attendees. It allowed me to connect with people and encouraged me to contribute more. It even helped me get my first job as a content writer for WordPress themes and plugins. Since I didn’t have any technical expertise, I was looking after event promotions, speaker coordination, and organizing tasks.

After various contributions to local meetups and WordCamp Karachi, I am now honored to lead the WP Karachi community.

Who is your WordPress hero?
I consider Joost de Valk to be my hero because, during the early stage of my career, I struggled with learning SEO. But thanks to him for Yoast SEO plugin and well-written guides and community answers helped me to learn and enhance my SEO writing skills.

What would you love to do in the future?
With my team’s assistance, I would be working on breaking stereotypes, like WordPress is just for beginners and has no career scope.

I would also put more effort into the accessibility and sustainable growth of the WP Karachi community. So that all members stay connected and learn more about WordPress

Where can people find you? Online, WordCamps, other meetups?
You will find me contributing to WP Karachi Meetups and WordCamps. I am a friendly person and always looking forward to connecting with new people and learning from them. You can connect with me online at WordPress, Facebook, LinkedIn, on WordPress Slack as @Rai Jibran.

Thank you for this interview, Rai Jibran! And for all your contributions to the community. If you’re reading this and know someone who contributes lots to the community, nominate them for our Care fund! It takes you about 2 minutes and the nominee gets an interview and a gift of $500,- for their contributions! You can nominate someone on our Yoast Care fund page.