In October 2024, I ran a WordPress workshop for 400 students across four colleges in my city because our local meetup had no young faces. Two years later that format is WordPress Campus Connect, an official Foundation program that has reached over 6,000 students in 70 institutions on four continents.
This talk tells that story, and what grew around it. Campus Connect is now the first rung of a ladder: Student Clubs keep the momentum alive on campus, WordPress Credits lets students contribute to the project for academic credit, and the new AI Leaders micro-credential offers a paid pathway into WordPress and AI work. I will share the current numbers, what worked, what did not, and a few stories from campuses in India, Indonesia, Europe and Latin America.
Then the honest part: where the ladder has gaps, why India has quietly become the center of this movement, how AI changes what a first workshop should teach, and what the next two years need to look like.
Attendees will leave knowing how to bring Campus Connect to a campus near them, how their agency or company can plug into Credits and student clubs, and where the WordPress education pipeline is heading.
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