Episode 152 – Aditya Kane

A Conversation with Aditya Kane

Aditya hails from Pune, India, and has been working in WordPress for more than a decade, as well as being a WordCamp organizer multiple times and volunteering at other events.

Show Notes

Website | WordFest.Live

Website | BombayPirate.com

Twitter | @adityakane

Episode Transcript

Topher: Hey, everyone. My name is Topher.

Cate: And my name is Cate.

Topher: And this is Hallway Chats. We’d like to thank our sponsor Nexcess, a Liquid Web brand, and their cool new product, membership sites with WP Quickstart. If you’re thinking of building a membership site like we are, check it out. Our guest today is Aditya Kane [pronounced Kah-nay] from Pune, India. Welcome.

Aditya: Thank you.

Cate: I still read that and thought it was “kayne”. This is terrible.

Topher: This is not Mr. Kane, the famous wrestler. It’s Aditya Kane.

Aditya: Yeah, I’m not a famous wrestler.

Cate: YET. You’re not a famous wrestler YET. There’s still time.

Topher: There’s still time. And then that guy will be like, “Oh, curses! He changed my name.”

Aditya: This is a very weird introduction.

Topher: Wow, this is not a tech talk.

Cate: And we’re very weird people. So we’re good that way.

Topher: So I met you many years ago, and actually traveled to Pune to meet you. Are you a Pune native or did you move there?

Aditya: I moved to Pune, actually, the same year we met in 2015.

Topher: Oh, yeah. Oh, I remember you were in Mumbai before that, weren’t you?

Aditya: Yeah, I was in Mumbai. I was born in Pune but I’ve lived all my life, my school and college, everything in Mumbai. I moved in 2015, towards the end of it, I moved to Pune and became a Punekar or Puneite which is a Pune native.

Topher: It’s been six years now. Which one feels more like home?

Aditya: It’s difficult to say that. But since I’m married and I’m living here, I guess, Pune feels like home but… yeah, I mean, Mumbai is the place where I grew up, so there’s a lot of childhood memories. My dad still lives there. He still lives near my old school and the neighborhood I grew up in. So that sometimes feels like home too.

Topher: That’s cool. Do you go back often?

Aditya: Not since the pandemic started.

Cate: Oh, yeah.

Topher: Oh, right.

Aditya: I haven’t been there since my dad has certain health issues. So we didn’t want to take the risk. But I used to visit every few weeks.

Topher: Oh, that’s cool.

Aditya: It’s not very far from Pune.

Cate: I was wondering, how close are they?

Aditya: About four hours by road. Three and a half, four hours by. And it’s very well connected by train and transport.

Topher: Yeah, they’re both pretty big cities. So how did you get into WordPress? What’s your story?

Aditya: The first time I heard about WordPress was when a friend of mine shared the WordPress zip file with me saying that, “Hey, this is something interesting.” And I said, “What do I do with this?” Very common story. That was I think back in 2007… yeah, 2006 or 2007. I read to find out what WordPress was and I didn’t really find a lot of information that time understandably.

And then the first time I actually started using it properly and a lot was in 2009 when I joined this company called rtCamp just based out of Pune. I was hired to take care of the blog network. And that’s when I first started using WordPress.

Cate: Did you say that was ’09 that you joined rtCamp?

Aditya: Yeah.

Cate: Wow.