Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to within WordPress, your favorite podcast. I hope it should be your favorite now, but maybe even more so after this one, because today we have with us Jessica. Welcome, Jessica.
And I say this because I think you have a very interesting story from the world of WordPress. You do not do one thing. You do, actually, quite a few things.
You're from Germany.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: And we most recently met at work Camp Germany itself.
What were you doing there? Let's start with that, because I have a few questions about the different roles you have within the community and the things that you do. I'm quite curious of how everything came to be in your world, but please introduce yourself.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Yeah, sure.
Hey, everyone.
As Remcus already said, my name is Jessica. My last name is Lucik. Often people don't know how to pronounce it. So here you have an example.
Yeah, I'm a WordPress developer from Germany. I have recently started working with grade A Munich based agency product company within the WordPress field. And yeah, I've been contributing to WordPress for quite some years.
I actually started my community journey, let's say, in 2014, actually at work camp.
And, yeah, never looked back. And over time, I just tried out different things, like how can I contribute? And like you said, most recently was Worldcam Germany, which was one thing. And then there was their latest Weber release, 6.4 was also involved.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: I have a question lined up about that as well.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: But let's start with webcam Germany, because you already teased everyone into this. And, yeah, it was the first word camp since four years. So the last word camp in Germany happened before the pandemic kicked off in November 2019. Yes.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Which one was that? The previous.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: That was Votkamp Dusseldorf.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: I had Dusseldorf. Yes, I remember. I think I was there. Was I? No, I was in Col.
Oh, I don't know.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: It just happened three weeks earlier. We had Virtkim stodd. So there was quite a busy month for WordPress people in Germany.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Would you say that? People.
So Germany obviously has the wonderful and world famous autobahn.
Makes it easy to travel through.
Mean, I live next to Germany, so whenever I go on vacation, I pass through Germany and I always enjoy driving through it. But would you say that Germans are accustomed to travel a lot, maybe easier than other countries when it comes to going to work camps and stuff like that? Like, if it's a work camp, Hamburg, will you see people from Stuttgart or Munchen everywhere?
[00:03:37] Speaker B: It's like we have this. I would say, like, core people who you can meet at every word camp.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: I think I know, you know, probably.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Most of when you're, when you're attending german work camp or even wordcamp Europe, a lot of people travel.
Yeah. Usually you don't have that.
People only go to the events in their little area of their country, but in Germany, we pretty much have a nationwide community, actually.
So, yeah, that's pretty fun, actually.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: And it looks like that. So you mentioned there is a core group going from work camp to work camp, and I see those.
I think that's mostly because I'm also up to most of these wordcamps.
The very first german work camp I went to was technically not a word camp was WC curren in 2011. I think it was 2010. 2011.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Eleven.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: I think eleven. So that's the first one. And from that one, every single one going forward, you would meet the same group, essentially.
And it strikes me as that the german community loves to travel because you see them everywhere. I was kind of wondering if that indeed is my bias of seeing the same folks or is that indeed a thing that happens? Because I know, for instance, it happens in Spain as well. People love to travel in Spain and you see the same inner crowd, so to say, from Barcelona to Madrid to Sevilla to all of those.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's fairly easy to get around in a country either by bus or by bus might be not the best example, but by train, if the train arrives actually, or somehow not oftentimes or as you said, going by car is probably the most convenient thing you get around by.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
This is the first work camp you organized, or did you organize previously as well?
[00:06:01] Speaker B: I was also the lead organizer of Wordcamp Osnabric, which happened in March 2019. So this was my first Wordcamp I organize.
That kind of led to in combination with all what happened in the remaining of 2019 up to early 2020.
Because previously, when I started out in 2014 in the community, there was just one work in a year.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: So that was fairly easy because, of course, everyone traveled there because it was just the only event that happened that year. And over the years, there were two word camps, then there were three word camps. And in 2019, we had the situation that there were actually four word camps in Germany, three of them being local and one being word camp Europe in Berlin.
And I think it was the beginning early of 2020, like January or something, where people came up. And as I said earlier, there was Virtkim Bisseldorf at the end of November. And like three weeks earlier, we had Wordcamp stripguard happen. And then it was also that some people said, I'm just going to one of these camps because I do not want or cannot afford to travel to two within three weeks. That doesn't make sense. And the problem here was that the community did not talk to each other. So there was like the one organizers did not know that the other organizers made an event basically at the same time.
And in early 2020, it was like in slack popping up, hey, we want to do a webcam. And then another local community, hey, we want to do a webcam too. And we too. And we too. And it would have ended up with, I think, five or six word camps within twelve months, just within Germany in.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: 2020 if stuff hadn't happened.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: And that's when I kind of wrote a rent look post on my blog where I went through all of this, like, hey, we have doing this work camps, and we have been struggling already at OS network with getting enough sponsors in to actually make the work camp happen. It was a really tough thing. We had to cut off a few just. That would have been nice to have, but you would not have needed it.
And that continued with other webcams too. It's like everyone was trying to make an event of the similar size with the similar features like food and venue costs and everything, and it wasn't very.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Sustainable to be agree. I agree. We were, in the Netherlands, kind of forced in a similar situation where we just had to have, I think it was said four or maybe three, but we needed to have three city versions of wordcamps before we were allowed to call ourselves Wordcamp Netherlands. Again, that's a separate discussion. We thought it was just, I know, just bullshit that we were forced to be cities because have you seen the size of us? We're like a tiny country.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: And I totally agree with you because the situation, Germany is very much the same like it is in the Netherlands. We're not that of a huge community. Yes, we have more people living in Germany, but the community is, I guess, the same size WordPress community, possibly.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: So the similarity with the Netherlands and Germany there is that the exhaustion of volunteers, speakers, sponsors and organizers just became too much. And this is something we knew that was going to happen way before we were forced. It's not technically forced because you can do it or you don't, but yeah, that was a weird situation to be in. And it's interesting to see that the same thing happened in Germany.
So when you started volunteering there, you were already quite active in the community, helping out left and right. What made you decide, hey, why don't I try organizing as well.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: I think we should start with work in Bosnabrook, which then led to what happened at work in Germany, let's put it like that. So at work there was basically the organizing team came from the local meetup that wins the Osnabrook meetup, and it was basically just the, I think were ten people at that time organizing this.
I cannot remember for sure.
I wasn't forced into it. It was open, like, hey, would you mind doing this as an organizer? And I was like, well, maybe I don't mind.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: They tricked you.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Well, kind of, but yeah, it became a very well received work camp. I heard great feedback of it from people attending.
That was kind of nice. Although we had a few issues within the team back at the time, but stuff happens with people.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to say people are going to people, so there will always be issues in one way or another.
Sorry, go ahead.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
Then basically the year happened, as I just explained, with the two word games in November, and then the blog post I wrote, and then we had a few years of pandemic and no events at all.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: Calm down.
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Exactly. And at work camp Europe in Porto in 2022, a couple of folks came together and said, let's, hey, let's do a work camp Germany, finally, because now make it a work in Germany and don't have to do city based workcamps anymore. So let's try.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: I think, from a branding perspective, just simple. The branding perspective is already, for me, the biggest persuader of calling it work camp whatever country.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: I'm kind of surprised that you said that the community as a whole in Germany is not as big.
Do you have any idea why that is compared to other countries?
I mean, is everybody hooked on typo three still?
[00:13:40] Speaker B: Well, I hope not.
Well, that's a good question. I think when I say the community is rather small, I would say like the core community. So the people who actively organize the meetups, the local meetups, and when we have, like, I don't know exact number, but between 20 and 30 local meetup groups. So there are quite a few.
But everyone, or a lot of meetups have trouble finding new people that actually want to commit contributing to organized meetups. So there are, of course, attendees and everything, but I guess most of them do not identify as being part of the WordPress community, to a point where you can say they also come to a work in.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Is there a reason for that you, like, I'm trying to figure out.
So we're seeing some of this behavior in the Netherlands after the two weird years everybody sort of reset back to, okay, I'm not doing anything.
Us organizing work from Netherlands last year and this year. So between last year and this year, it's slowly starting to ramp back up. But meetups are still not even close to where they were.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: It's the same hue.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Okay, so then I guess that's more related to the two year reset.
That's interesting because there are other countries where the opposite is happening. Like, for instance, whatever's happening in India, in Pakistan, I think there's another country.
I forget now, but activity is soaring there versus what's happening with us. That's interesting to see that there's a difference between enthusiasm to pick up community stuff.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it actually is. So we have that problem across almost all meetups in Germany that there were no people. For example, Meetup Nuremberg, where I'm currently the co organizer in, what was it, September? I was alone. No one came for 30 minutes, and I just wanted to leave and go back home because what's the point of sitting here all alone? And then one person came, and that was my meetup for the month of September.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Interesting.
Does that become disheartening or are you just like, okay, it's a reset. We're picking things back up.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: I think we're picking things back up. It's the new thing. So in October, it was me and the co organizer. So there were just two people at the meetup again, but now in November.
So we went ahead in October. We created like, a schedule for the next coming meetups and decide on what topics do we want to share as a talk. So I did this month, of course, I did a 6.4 and a 2024 default theme, and suddenly there were ten people.
When you make it interesting enough, I guess people still will come over. But it is definitely not this kind of community feeling you had before the pandemic when meetups had, like, regularly between 20 and 50 sometimes. Dosseldorf was a massive meetup. They had. I had our talk once there about Gutenberg some years back. I think it was 2019 or something. They had 80 people there at the meetup.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So again, I think this is a trend that's more, I don't know, not global, but certainly in this part of the world, Europe, where the meetups in the Netherlands. So the first meetup I went to was in 2008, and that was roughly, what was that? 20 people every single meetup. And over the years, that slowly grew. And then we had a meetup in Naim, which would have 125 people. If I'm not mistaken. So there were some really large meetups, mini work camps, almost proper schedules, like two or three speakers, snacks and the whole thing. And the level of enthusiasm and professionalism was just very catching, very engaging. You wanted to be there, and that sort of is gone now because.
Yeah, the last meet up here in Lewadon where I live, I think there were 1112 people and nobody really knew.
It's a different world for sure.
But I'm very curious about another topic you already touched on a little bit.
You were giving a talk about what it was like. I'm, I'm presuming, but please correct me what it was like to be part of the release squad for WordPress 6.4, where 2024, the default team was a part of.
I'd love to hear more about that because I think that's a great initiative.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
So I've been part of the 5.6 release already.
There was also the first underrepresented general release, as it's called nowadays.
And I think it was the beginning of the year.
No, it was last year at state of the world, where someone asked in the Q A if there will be such a release again from underrepresented genders. And, yeah, I think Matt said, of course, yes, we can do it again. So Josepha was again preparing all of this, and once the call for release members was out, I was immediately like, okay, let's do it another time because I think this will be fun because you can see it there. It's actually the 5.6 gift that I got from the release.
And, yeah, I wasn't expecting, like, I had not particularly chosen any specific position. I think I was just like, put me somewhere in that squad. I'm fine with doing various stuff, but with my work on 2021. So for the 5.6 release and also doing a style variation for the 2023 default theme that was also accepted, was kind of clear that my path would be like, default theme lead somehow, I guess.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: Yeah, cool.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: And, yeah, that's where I ended up with, together with Maggie Cabrera. She's from automatic, and we boss together. We're the default theme leads for 2024.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: And does that mean you do the design part as well then, or how does that work? How does a default theme start to become a thing?
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Well, there was a slight problem. Neither me nor Maggie were designers. Or are designers. Like, I can do things, but I would not consider myself a designer. So that was actually kind of an issue because we were there, like, well, we can do a theme, but someone has to design their theme, and that is none of us. So we got in touch with Giusepha and Chloe from the release coordination and told them this exact issue. And it took a while until it was figured out that we were joined by a designer, Beatrice Fialjo, and she did the designs for 2024. And we had an initial call with her and it was all a bit late in the process. It's quite like that.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Just in time.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I wish we had more time, to be honest.
Yes, she did the great design zone.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Are there things not in 2024 that you wanted to have in there?
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Plenty.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Okay, name me a few if you want.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: I wish that the functionality to swap out complete templates would have been much more visible in another part of, for example, the dark side bar you have when you're in browse mode. It would have been perfect there, but it was moved to a very hidden contextual menu somewhere. And that is, unfortunately, that's something that I had not on my radar for too long. Unfortunately, that work has to be done in the Gutenberg repository and not for the default theme. But there was so much to do in so little times. Like this was some of things that unfortunately not made it into it into 6.4.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: I've seen that setting that is way too hidden. Yeah, especially considering the amount of click throughs that you have to do to access all the settings as it is already in the site editor, combined with color styles and the palettes that you pick, and then you change and then you overrule.
And I'm saying this because I built quite a few over the last couple of weeks, quite a few themes.
The amount of clicking through that you have to do to get all the settings is already quite high. And then to have stuff in there that's sort of hidden, that's a shame.
Having said that, it's been years that I was enthusiastic about a default theme. How it works and how it looks and the functionality that is in there. I think the last one I got somewhat excited over was 2013 because I liked that it was different and more geared towards blogging.
It had the focus with post formats as well, from a blogging perspective. I set up a site for it for my mom. She still uses it.
And then this 2024 is, I think, the first one that I like. Yeah, it has opinions.
There's stuff in there that makes you okay, so this is how you do it, but it's also flexible enough for you to make it into something entirely different. And for me, that's what a default theme should be.
I've missed that over the last couple of years.
Too opinionated.
I get it because I build stuff like this, but end users who have no clue what they're doing with their site and just click on it and they are greeted with a screen that's 50% black and a bird flying through and 50% some text that doesn't make any sense to them.
So yeah, congratulations with that one because I think that one was knocked out of the park.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I think was kind of. So when Megan and I met first time at work in Europe this year, just like a few days after it was announced, the squad was announced for 6.4 and I was already thinking, so, okay, maybe I will just share what I have as a vision for a default theme. Because as you said, the previous default themes, they were like, yeah, okay, but what can I do with it?
Mostly just a blog. And this is, in my opinion, that's what WordPress isn't anymore. It's not just a block system. It can be so much more. And I thought default themes of the previous years just never reflected that.
And basically I told that Maggie and she was on fire for minute one. And I was like, okay, I think this is going to be good at some point. And then we had Beatrice joining us as a designer and we had an initial call where we exactly told her what we would expect from a default theme. And she did an amazing job on creating these designs.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: She did, absolutely.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: And yeah, that's from where we started off because of course it had to go through, I guess, a few iterations at automatic because at the end of the day, the default theme still has to be decided by Matt. If it's a yes or a no.
Well, luckily we got a yes and could start working.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: Did you get any no's before you got the yes or how does that work?
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Well, I remember from 5.6 there were three different designs that I saw. So the designer provided three different designs and Matt chose one.
But now I'm not sure if there was anything else in the background, but what I saw is like, we just had that one suggestion and that was basically it. So there wasn't very much of a choice at the moment.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: But yeah, it's not too bad. And I think it's just a great showcase of what you can actually do with WordPress, how you can make it your own. And it really shows off the vision that I had for the default theme. And I'm very, very happy that it's been received so well across many people. So many people have given me that.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Feedback that you just gave me, I think you should be more than happy. I think you should be proud.
I know it's more than you doing it, but I don't think it can be overstated. The power that the default theme has in terms of showing what WordPress is capable of.
We're at the end of 2013. That means we're 13 years in from no longer exclusively being a blog.
Custom post types were introduced in 2009, 2010. And yet this is what we continuously hear, right?
Just a blog? No, it can still power a blog, but it's way more than that. And I think we have responsibility as release leads in terms of showing off what the possibilities of a theme are. And I think, again, and I'm just going to give you the same compliment again, but I think it's just a perfect example of what a default theme should be. How does that feel like, knowing that all these people are using the theme that you held oversight on? That's got to be a special feeling, I think.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: I'm still not at the point where I have processed that, to be honest, because there's been so much going on simultaneously, even. I mean, work in Germany, we had that before. It just happened a month ago, and that was shortly after the release candidate. The first release candidate.
And then, well, book in Germany happened. I started in a job. The release happens like there was so much. And I still have a backlog of things to process.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: It'll catch up with you. It'll catch up with you.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: I hope so.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: I have a few very small, minor contributions to core. One of them is inside the 2010 theme, if I remember correctly.
It was a nothing change. But it all starts with that.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: It all starts with the nothing change.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: Exactly. But the idea that because I did or contributed to that change, the thought of the impact that that had, when you start calculating how many sites are affected and how many sites are using the theme, okay, that's pretty cool.
And for you, that's quite a few levels up.
But you mentioned a very busy period that you're sort of wrapping up.
You started working for grade.
You already mentioned you work as a developer.
Can you share a little bit more about that particular side of Jessica?
[00:32:10] Speaker B: That particular side of Jessica being a web developer for 17 years.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: Yeah. I was going to ask, so how long have you. But there what is.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been a long time already. So I started out when there was no social networks where we had forums and guest books. I don't know if they were a thing in the Netherlands too, but they were definitely a thing in yeah, they and yeah, that's when I started of. When I think about it, it's like it has been a while.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: The amount of years that fly by in this particular line of work are quite different than anything else that I've done before.
I'm 50, I've been working for 35 years, I guess in total switched to this type of work when I was 31, 32.
So the last 18 years, what I find interesting about the period of learning and the period and the years that fly by is that every single year there's like two or three major things that you have to refocus on. If you're doing the type of work that we're doing, would you say that's the same thing happening for you?
[00:33:43] Speaker B: Not sure if it would be two to three, two or three things a year, but definitely you cannot allow yourself to not learn something new. That's what happened to me. And for a long time I ignored like a new Javascript world with react and everything I still do and it caught up on me, but I got around. So I am now feeling a bit more comfortable with doing so and I still feel like there's a bit more that I can learn about. But I have definitely made some progress on this. But it's definitely true that you should always follow what's new, what changes, or maybe where you can just have a fun project or something. Because I didn't do that for a couple of years and I felt like when I had to catch up and look for a new job, it's not that easy anymore.
[00:34:44] Speaker A: No, it's a quite different world now.
Which is when I jokingly said I haven't caught up with the react side of things in Javascript. I don't plan to either.
I'm like, okay, this is fine if it passes me by, I want to focus on other things anyway.
But you are working for grade now. That's an interesting company, because they do two different things and that's quite rare.
They are of an agency, I think you mentioned in the intro, they are an agency and they have a product.
Yes. My curiosity is, what made you decide to want to work in such a mixed environment? Because for most people working in the WordPress community in one way with code, it's usually you're either on the agency side of things or you're building products and services. And this is clearly something else. So kind of curious for your motivation here.
[00:35:49] Speaker B: I think overall the main motivation for me was not to have this mix, to be honest.
So what I did for the first 15 years of my professional career was I was basically doing agency work. And by the time of late 2021, early 2022, I hit a point where I was just so bored of it, I couldn't find any fun in it anymore. I still like coding, but for me, when you have, you have all sorts of clients. You have clients that are amazing to work with, which you totally enjoy, but then there are also clients who are just where you wish that project would be over finally.
And I felt like even though there were some projects with good clients, I felt like it was not exciting anymore because it was the same thing over and over again. And that was kind of boring to me. And that's when I did a little break from working. Some people call it sabbatical.
It didn't feel like a sabbatical to me, to be honest. Now and then I reflect back on it.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: Why not? Did you end up doing too much?
[00:37:22] Speaker B: I don't know. I feel like all the things that I wanted to do, I didn't do. It sucked a bit, but that was my own fault.
But it was still a good thing to not work for a while.
So, yeah.
And I think now I lost it.
So for me, the part when I was again looking for a job in summer of 2022. Yes, two, I really wanted to go away from the agency side because I had a break for a couple of months, but no, I want to see something new.
Yeah. I ended up at extendify, which was a very great experience to working full time on a product, and I just enjoyed that.
You usually do not have any pressure on how fast you need to do things, because sometimes when you have clients, it needs to be done, like yesterday.
And when it came time this year to look for another job, I was still like, agency. Yeah, I could, but I do not want to.
And the thing with great is I was particularly curious about their product. So I've seen and watched them before, like what they're doing and what's on there.
And when I was in conversation with them, I really liked the human side of the business as well as what they were doing. And for me, I saw that I could actually work on WordPress again with the blog editor and the site editor. And that was actually the main reason why I decided to go there and join them.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: So are you working on their agency side more or on the product as well?
[00:39:47] Speaker B: Currently on the product.
[00:39:49] Speaker A: Okay, cool.
[00:39:50] Speaker B: Maybe I will join a client project, but for now, they do not have many client projects at the moment. They have quite a couple, but it's now that they're so much of them and they're well taken care of so I can dive into the product and that's a lot of fun at the moment.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: So for those listening that have no clue what that product is, can you explain it? Because it's a very interesting product.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So the great suite is like a combination of different things, actually, hence the name suite.
It has some features that are interesting for people or like enterprise, the enterprise area of WordPress. So you have things like global content, which means you can have content at multiple sites. It has a lot of different multi site features, but also they provide additional blocks that enhance the blocket way more than the core blocks do.
And it has various different features and all combined together makes it a very versatile product to work on with a.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: So I've seen a demo of it at workem, Germany. It is an extremely versatile solution, solving problems that you need for multiple sites in a very different way.
It was refreshing to see, but the switch from agency to products I get.
I did a sabbatical myself for the sort of similar reason I stopped working at Surfbolt and then kind of went like, so what do I want to do now? I want to do just the agency side of things again, but I want to.
What excites me.
I've always enjoyed the performance side of things and I've always done that, but I've never advertised it.
So I understand the reboot and the need for sort of a fresh approach to the same topic because ultimately it's still code, right?
[00:42:29] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:42:30] Speaker A: You're writing the same type of stuff.
[00:42:32] Speaker B: And I'm still enjoying it. Coding, but the environment is just different what you're doing, but the code.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: Exactly. But it's funny because I think I hear that you say the same thing, but writing the code is not the thing, it is the environment and the purpose that you're writing the code for. That makes it an interesting day, at least for me. And by the sound of it, for me too. That works for you as well. And I know developers who just go like just give me heaps and lines of code that I just need to refactor and I'm happy. It doesn't matter what it needs to do, just let me do that. I know developers who go, I don't care what I need to build, just tell me what I need to build.
[00:43:15] Speaker B: That's not me.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: And then me neither. But I go like, that's amazing that you have that ability, because I do not have that. I need to have purpose.
And there's so many different ways that motivate different strokes of people to build new cool stuff or even not even new stuff, just refactor stuff.
I'm always amazed at the variety of motivations that people have to work. And I guess it's not limited to code in of itself, but coding is a good example of where it's essentially the same thing. But it depends so much under which, in which environment, under which stress, for what purpose, all of those things.
There's one thing that I'm also curious about. So you have been working in this line of field for 17 years. You said you've contributed to a great many different parts of WordPress. I've seen your profiles, WordPress.org site, so profile page, I should say there's a whole bunch of stuff that is checked off for you.
What is the thing you're most proud of?
[00:44:39] Speaker B: Well, now I can say 2024, I.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: Guess I would expect so, but it can be the small and the different and little things that are just happening somewhere along the line.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: I think.
Now this year has been quite an interesting year in contributions of course for 2024, for the 6.4 release, being the lead organizer for Kim Germany, because I think I meant, I forgot to mention this earlier because the german community that was like coming together and saying hey, we want to do overcame. They trusted me and I was asked to do the lead organizer. So it wasn't me that was pushing forward and being there like, hey, I'm going to do it.
I was asked by the community to do so.
[00:45:33] Speaker A: That is a huge compliment.
[00:45:36] Speaker B: Thank you. And another thing that is probably not well known by many people is that I helped making the default themes, the older default themes. GDPR ready by removing the Google funds.
[00:45:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:45:57] Speaker B: I was involved in this.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: So the whole of Germany thanks you even more.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: Well, the whole of Europe I guess, because we all have that prep.
[00:46:10] Speaker A: From, from my experience in Germany, the privacy laws are followed up a little bit more meticulously than the rest of Europe. I think the Netherlands is doing fine there as well. But it's noticeable how much more the Germans care about it.
[00:46:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean we had this, it popped up somewhere. I cannot remember when it was. Was it this year or last year already? I think last year already. And then it took a couple of months until I had to neck a few more people like hey, what's going on? What can we do here to finally make that happen? Because it was like laying around for a couple of months.
And what happened was actually that someone got sued because of their website because it was using Google phones, they had to pay like $100. But, okay, it could have been avoided. And the reason was because the person used a default theme and didn't know that there were Google funds being loaded.
[00:47:15] Speaker A: And then it makes perfect sense.
I'm not trying to take away or bring any negativity to the privacy component. I think it's something we need to be. We should all treat it the way I perceive Germans treating it. But again, that's a very nice, unknown, but impactful thing to do.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think it's such a.
Because I'm german or because that came around. Because of course it happened in.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: Germany. Sorry, the lawsuit was in Germany.
[00:47:55] Speaker B: Yes, in Munich, actually.
And we all know that privacy isn't a focus in WordPress. No, sadly, actually. And that's why you have to, someone has to step up and actually do something about it. So I wrote the issue back then, and Henry Gleursen added some pull requests for it, but it got stuck somewhere in the middle. But then you had to feel, hello, there is still this issue going around. What can we do to finally make it happen?
[00:48:30] Speaker A: Was the trigger that litigation had started or was the trigger that it needed to be fixed? And hey, here's an example.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: We felt it just needed to be fixed because Hadlake and I were both pretty much annoyed that this was still the case. And eventually someone was sued just because of using a default team, which shouldn't be for open source project like WordPress.
[00:48:57] Speaker A: So if I understand this correctly, if we want to get stuff done, we need to get either you or Henrik annoyed. Is that the road?
[00:49:07] Speaker B: No, I don't think so.
But it's usually a good trigger. It's unfortunately not everything is done, but I don't know how to say that.
There are many things where people are not happy with WordPress in some way and want to fix it, but don't know how to fix it or doesn't get too much attention. And I think the key here in that case for the Google fonts was because I went into the core Devchats and asked people, what can we do here to make that happen, to make that pull request getting merged?
And I think oftentimes people just make a ticket and maybe even do a pull request, but it gets lost somehow because everyone else working on the releases is just so busy with other things that have a higher priority, which is kind of sad, but it's such a huge project at the end of the day, so you have to be.
[00:50:16] Speaker A: It's also life and planning of your life running right through stuff like this, right?
[00:50:22] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:50:25] Speaker A: So what is the final advice you can give for anyone being annoyed? Because I do like that trigger anyone being annoyed with something currently happening in WordPress and it's something that can be fixed in the direction you would like it to be. So I'm not looking for the people who go like, oh great, let me see if we can get the classic editor back. I'm not looking at those types of things. But what is the best advice you can give for people wanting to find a solution but don't know where to start or don't have the skills or what should they do?
[00:51:11] Speaker B: That's a very tricky question because there is not an easy answer to this.
[00:51:16] Speaker A: I'll go for the easiest one you can find.
[00:51:22] Speaker B: Well, I would just ask you a question. What is the one sentence that a doctor, a lawyer and a developed posthiers is the most favorite?
It depends.
[00:51:43] Speaker A: I think I did know and I.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: Think that's the case. It depends on what kind of issue it is. And I think generally you need some kind of knowledge how WordPress works, how the releases work, how the people involved, what is their job actually like? Their contribution job, not their job, where they earn money.
And it took me years to understand how WordPress works and how the contributions work in different areas, whether it be the community team or the core team.
And I think you need an open mind to see that. Of course, things could have, could be done better than they are done now, but they go like a certain way and you have to understand that.
And the best thing is, I think when you have a special question or regard is to join one of these meetings, like the dev chat, there's always an open floor at the end when the agenda is basically done, you can raise your hand and ask a question there.
And I think that's maybe a good way to get started because then it a, raises awareness for those people who are around and b, might even have someone doing a follow up task or someone else gets notified about this and then you just have to.
After that, you have to go back there every now and then when you see that there is no progress being done and ask again, but stay friendly. I think that's the key, because most people do it in their free time, their contributions. And it's supposed to be a fun thing, but it can be also a not so fun thing maybe sometimes for some people. So just be kind. Generally when you reach out, I think.
[00:54:14] Speaker A: That'S the best advice you could give. Just be kind.
Thank you so much for being on the podcast. I appreciate it. Learned a lot.
[00:54:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
[00:54:27] Speaker A: Thanks a lot.
