Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to within WordPress, the podcast about all those wonderful people making up this wonderful community of people who work with WordPress. With us today is Emma.
Welcome, Emma.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Hello. Thank you.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Hello.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Emma Young, not everybody knows you, I'm guessing. I don't know, maybe. Do they know you?
[00:00:25] Speaker B: I think your first answer looks more correct.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Well, then my first question to you is, please introduce yourself. Who are you and what do you do with WordPress?
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Yes. So, hello, I'm Emma Young. I am the head of content at Hostinger. And although I didn't start as the head of content, I had quite the journey there. A lot of it had to do with WordPress, working with WordPress, with daily things, but I also had quite a few adventures with it in my personal life. Um, it was, you know, a failed blog here, a failed blog there, and then had to use it a lot, just in day to day activities. And I think that's what kind of resparked my interest and love for WordPress. Both my parents were like computer engineers, so they both worked a lot with open source platforms and so that was always kind of around, that wasn't a new term that I was when I heard it related to WordPress. And so, but I think what was a new term and how I got related to the WordPress community was more about the fight for the future and the contributions that way. And I was like, wait a second, I can work but also have fun at the same time. Like, okay, I'm going to kind of go down this path. But so I kind of, Hostinger was a nice way to bring me back into open source and specifically WordPress. And then I think more in my personal life, who is Emma? Is like a good way to sum it up is maybe like an accident prone adventurer. Like if like a baseball was supposed to go flying through a Met probably hit me, I was supposed to get pinged by a car. It's probably me laying on the sidewalk and some good to have around, I guess. Cause you're safe. But it also makes for some really good stories and yeah, also gives me like a really good mindset and like how I just treat life because like what? Like it's just what you got next. I really like chaos and organizing it, which works really well for a fast paced company and WordPress.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: So yeah, that's a wonderful intro and it pops. There's so many questions that are popping up in my head, I don't even want to start.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Where do you start? Yeah, I don't know where to start. So good luck.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: We'll come back to the accident prone thing because I think at least how you're presenting it is hilarious. Probably isn't. It isn't when you are experiencing it?
No. First question I kind of wanted to ask is growing up in a household where the concept of open source is a known thing? That's interesting. I mean, WordPress obviously is open source and with that a whole mindset comes the part of contributing, the part of it's from, you know, it's owned by everybody and it's owned by nobody at the same time. What was the, what was the concept of open source mostly before you in your mind as you were growing up that differs from how you've gotten to know it actually working in the open source project?
[00:03:33] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. So growing up, both my parents met in Silicon Valley.
My mom was more in the creation of all of the pieces in computer architecture. My dad was more in the programming afterwards. So my mom ended up stopped. She stopped working and stayed at home and took care of us. But my dad, whenever I looked at his computer it looked like the Matrix back in the day because when he first came to the States it was, he got in really early with the computers system and then kind of growing up with it, I remember in the middle of the night just being in a server room. It's not something like a normal dad's on call. His pager gets off. So then get to go in this freezing cold room with air vents everywhere and don't touch this computer because you're going to break the system and then we can all guess what happened there. Yeah, so, yeah, but like what really piqued my interest was just like, you know, like the way my dad would be with like the programs that he was working for, whether it was for the bank or for a hospital or for IBM. And the way he like approached it and was like, this is what I do for work, but this is what we do for fun, like with his mates after work and, but we don't get paid for this. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, but it helps us at work so we're helping ourselves at work. And so I kind of always had that concept that like, oh, if you contribute to something before, I guess even using that word contribute, but like you work on something that helps more parts of your life, then it's something like, it's a very good return on your investment, I guess. And it's just a good mindset to have. Like you don't always have to just do one thing for one outcome. So, like, always looking at many different areas you can get from doing this one thing. And so that was just kind of always around, like, I don't know, like, specifically what they would be working on. Sometimes they were building a computer, sometimes they were building. Sometimes they were all just, like, link, like, their old ass laptops, like, links to each other and all working on coding some project, and. But I just remember it always being like, oh, no, this is our hobby. This is for fun. But it pays off in this area, in this area, in this area. And so without understanding, like, what they were doing, because they tried to explain it to me so many times, something to do with storage. I don't know. I still don't know. Like, that concept of it stayed with me, and so. But I forgot about it, I guess, like, when I was in my twenties, and, like, it was like, you know, I'm gonna just rage and, like, party. And then when I started hearing it again, because going back into the tech industry, I was like, oh, shit, I remember this was, like, actually something that was very nice, and it was, like, something I grew up hearing. And I was like, I'm going to explore this and actually try to see where, like, my principles and values lie. That can also help me and help everybody else, but also help, like, where I'm working. So I think that's kind of, like, the gist of, like, a good mindset, I guess, to have good teaching moment. Go, dad.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's an interesting one. I'll give you a kind of what my example of early upbringing is. I've learned a lot of different things, and mostly that if you can help out, you should. The examples that my parents gave me, none of them were like, yeah, I got to do that. Like, my mom worked in the library and helped out and this and that, and my dad did other, let's just call it generic community stuff. And that never really appealed to me in that sense. But once I learned about open source and that there's another mechanism where I'm more than happy to devote my free time, my hobby time to help, whatever I'm also using in my work time, it entirely changed how I actually. Because it's volunteer work in one way or another. Yeah, but with the goal to actually better not just the project or whatever, but society as a whole. Which was a funny realization, because years into this, I celebrated my company having a company 20 years a few days ago. And years into that, my mom said, look at you volunteering I'm like, not volunteering.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: Take that back.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
Like, no, no, that's. I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess you're right. But no, but that's. That's an interesting approach. Not approach. That's an interesting path that you followed, sort of rediscovering it and then also having that same sort of. Oh, yeah, I am.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, everything kind of. It didn't just have. Didn't just have to have, like, one reason for it. Like, you should relax. The better words milk it for all it's worth. Like, but for what works best for you. And my mom also, like, she stopped working for. I can't even remember the manufacturing company, but. And ended up doing more actual, like, community volunteer work, like, for a korean community in New Mexico. And it was interesting because it was like, it's the same exact thing that my dad was doing, but just painted in very different, like, with different words, a different terminology, but like, she was doing the exact same thing, volunteering to work on all of these things that would actually better all of our lives in a different way than my dad was. So.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Yeah, interesting. So when you. In your introduction, you said something else that made me curious. You said you started a couple of blogs and stopped and then started and then stopped and then started. What's that about? Is that you trying to find your voice? Or was that like. Like, what kind of blogs are we talking?
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. Because now I work in content.
I never realized. I never in a million years, if you asked me as a kid, I was like, astronaut, vet, doctor, never something to do with words. I've never been somebody that likes grammar or English was my favorite class, and it was always, like, math. Actually, that's probably it. Just math. Like, everything else kind of sucked, but, like, maybe it was trying to do that, but also, like, it was like, storytelling, more like, I liked to. I had really funny encounters, and so I wanted to share that with people. So the first one that I started was the first time I went to university and I did an HTML five and CSS class.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: And, like, building a website from scratch, and.
But we were like, we need to fill this content with something, so why don't you make your own blogs or do it with whatever you want? And I worked at Starbucks at the time, and, you know, customers are just something else. So I felt like everybody needed to relive as best they could some of the experiences that we had as baristas there. They were just too good not to share. And like, we were sharing it on like MySpace, but like, that's. What kind of reach did that have back then? So it was like a blog. It is, you know, and just shared the link with friends and family. And we have this thing in Craigslist in the States and they had this missed connections area. And it was like this place where you could post and be like, I saw you at the Starbucks on 528 and Lowe's, you're in your green apron. And I like. And all of the stuff. And we used to love reading those on Sunday mornings and then trying to figure out which person they were talking about because we were always working at each other's stores. And then we would like, do a big reveal on my blog.
But I stopped after that year of that class.
I started it in that class while building it, building the site, and then moved on to just working and kind of filling it in a little bit. And then, I don't know, I don't even remember it stopping. I just never updated it and then eventually stopped working at Starbucks. So that was the first one.
I can't find that one actually, too. And I'm wondering if it's because of the way that I created it in school. Maybe it was tied to one of the school servers or something. And then eventually we don't get access to that. But the second one that I started was when I moved to Korea, when I decided advertising and marketing in the states was just not for me as a kid, I was like bi. I quit my job and moved to foreign country and created a blog to kind of fill people in on my life, like an online diary, I guess, for them to know what was going on and just read about my adventures and mishaps. But that also didn't last very long. That lasted like maybe a year. And then we had Facebook by that time and that kind of took over and just shared it there.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: Yeah, then you let Facebook, Facebook suck up all of your content, which presume.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Yeah, but I can find this one. I actually read through some of them not long ago and I was just laughing with, like, I had no shame. Well, to maybe nothing's changed, but like everything, I was just sharing you probably too much information, but like some funny stories that I completely forgotten about.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: So how did you go from sort of laid back working with a version of content to then?
Actually, yeah. What do you do exactly at hosting? I mean, you gave us your title, but what does that actually mean?
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Yeah, that's like a good story in itself. So I'll backtrack a little bit, yeah. After traveling for a bit, meeting my husband in Korea also, and then deciding like, oh, we're going to backpack a while. While we were traveling, I was in New Zealand working at Skydiving Place as a video editor, and I started playing around with script writing. Not like writing video, like speaking scripts, but like scripts for video editing so I could cut them and render them a lot quicker. And, yeah, it was like, really addicting. Cause it took some stuff that I had learned from my parents or from school way back when. And I just kind of got obsessed with, like all of the free learn, like C, C, Python, like, all of that, and working with the programs that we had on, how can I make this assembly line so much faster? And so I wrote like twelve scripts, and then after that it was just like, game over. All my free time was like, try to hack me and then just try to get through, make calculators, and then, like, in how many different languages? And so I was like, maybe this is something that, like, you know, I decided to go more creative in the past when I went to university. Maybe I should have just done what my parents were thinking and been an engineer. So I started looking for schools for that and I didn't want to go back to the states. And so school's expensive there. Oh, we went to, I found a place in Estonia, Tal tech, and the goal was, well, the plan was to go there. It wasn't until like maybe a month and a half before that I found Vilnius University in Lithuania and was like, this is way cheaper. The same program. Let's go there instead. And so, yeah, ended up there. And the plan was like, I'm not going to work. I'm just going to focus on this and maybe some cyber security. And like three months in, I was like, this is so boring. You guys need something else to do. And so I saw hostinger was searching for customer success agents, and I was like, I could do that. You know, you get, I don't really know all that much about hosting, but it goes perfect with my degree. And then maybe I can transfer, like, risk.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Your degree?
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Engineering. Computer engineering, yeah. And then I have like, an emphasis on cybersecurity, so I was like, I could go to the risk team or cybersecurity or something like that once I graduate, you know, my first degree is in marketing and communications and, yeah, the next thing I know, I was like, interviewing. And by the end of my interview process, I was offered the job as an editor instead. And they were like, why didn't you apply for this position.
Your cv looks great for this. And I was like, because I've never done it and I hate English, maybe those two really good important reasons. Yeah, they're like, just give it a go. So I did, and it was actually a lot of fun. I didn't realize how much fun it is to delete things. Like, yeah, it's now my passion. I just, but yeah, so that was four years ago. I started as an editor. The team was very different. It was very like hands on, everybody does everything. So we weren't just editors. We wrote a little bit. We did all of the SEO parts, like creating an SEO strategy, creating, linking strategy, thinking about keywords to briefs, and then how we can like scale and grow our team. And while the team was growing, I was also growing. You know, I started taking, I became a team lead for writers and then from there I became just the content team lead and taking on different, like more SEO related tasks. And then now I'm, well, when it happened, I don't know when a couple of years ago became head of content. And so we handle the content, everything. For hostinger, our main thing is SEO content. So tutorials, when you search something and you're like, why do I have a 404 error? We tried to answer that while keeping you can't calm. And also, of course, how to use all of our products and make a website successful for you online. And yeah, now we have like quite a nice big team. We have parts of it, SEO, we do also branches of it, there's like a YouTube team. Now we help with writing the scripts for that, normal scripts and newsletters, everything.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: So it truly is everything.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Yeah, a little bit of everything. So it's nice you never get bored.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to say that's going to help with not getting bored, but you beat me to it. So how do you, because you went from traveling the world, I guess. Are you somewhat stationary now or.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: No.
Yeah, Lithuania was a bit of a shock for me, I guess you could say. Even though I lived in places that were cold and gray, I moved there right before COVID And so I had one good, like Christmas, went to the UK, saw some family, and then, and then it was like, you cannot leave your tiny shoebox apartment or you get a fine. And I was like, this is going to be fun. But like, in a foreign country, in a too small apartment where you're going to school and working from the same computer, I got like a little stir crazy and, yeah, you know, like two years of that didn't seem so bad. I still had that excitement, that adrenaline going for living in Europe for the first time, the Baltics for the first time. But then it was, it was like around like this three year mark graduating, and I was just sad for no reason. I think everybody that is.
Yeah, there was seasonal blue and lack of vitamin D. And I grew up in the desert, so I'm used to heat and sunshine. And I didn't realize that it was affecting me.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: Of listening and watching who have no clue where.
No. New Mexico, but where exactly you lived.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. That's a good thing. Yeah. Lithuania in Conus.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: And where is Lithuania?
[00:19:23] Speaker B: It's in the Baltics. It's like if you know where, if you start from the top and go kind of Finland down to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania is there kind of near Poland and quite northern. Yeah. And like, great place. Like now when I visit it, I welcome it a lot more, but I think I just needed a little bit of a break where there was just sun always shining. So I went to Tenerife and Spain.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: I can imagine, certainly coming from New Mexico, that finding yourself in Lithuania is a challenge. Just pure minutes of sun compared.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Yeah. I think what really got to me was the January before I left in the summertime, there was an article about like 6 hours of sunlight in all of January. And like, no, I gotta go. No less.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's. Yeah.
I'm not necessarily somebody who embraces the sun as much as, you know, anybody living in southern Europe or southern parts of the US or whatever, but 6 hours is very, very limiting.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: And I remember your sunburn picture from one of the first times we met.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that was horrible. Yeah, it was me in the shade and I was pretty bad burned to a toast. Yeah, that was horrible. And if anybody's listening now going like, I want to see that picture. No, no, you don't.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Yeah, you do. Actually, it's pretty good. I didn't know if somebody could get so pink.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's only happened like two or three times in my entire life. So it's not that I easily burn that much, but I fell asleep under the umbrella and I thought I was fine. Turns out I wasn't. I really wasn't. So. Yeah. But understanding that the lack of sunshine is certainly something that you need to accustom yourself to, and then in a foreign country not allowed to get outside, I get the frustration. So when you do all of the content planning and stuff, how much of WordPress is, you know, how determining is WordPress in how you do things pretty.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Big like especially with hostinger, you know, like at least half of our clients use WordPress, so that kind of goes back to, you know, like my what? I kind of started this podcast off with like if we can help make WordPress better, it's better for us and it's better for our clients. So we always kind of keep that in mind when we're deciding certain keywords or when we're deciding like which articles to update, what kind of products we're working on and creating. But yeah, so I think at least from our client base it gets 50% of it. We all, we obviously have other like products and focuses that don't go around it, but it's, I think it will always be one of our focuses and one of mine. I have a nice squad in the content team but also in marketing that just focus on WordPress. So like Leo is a good name to mention. He also contributes quite a bit and is which Leo? I know a few Leonardis. So he's from Indonesia. He's on his second, actually third release lead. He's doing it for the first time, for the third time for Docs and yeah, it's been really fun to kind of go on this journey with him as well because we kind of joined it at the same time and we're on the same team and so it's always nice to be like, did you see that joke around with him?
[00:22:56] Speaker A: So, and do you, do you write in WordPress a lot?
[00:22:59] Speaker B: No, I delete, I think. Yeah, I am more of the review and edit stage. I tried to write actually when I first joined in Hostinger, I was doing all the PHP update updates. Like anytime there was a. But yeah, no, I feel like if somebody else is better at it and they are encouraged to do it, then they should do it. I don't need to be part of this. I can just review it and give my intake, my perspective afterwards. But a little writing here and there, like if somebody needs some copy that's like they don't want to go through the normal requesting process or it's urgent, then I'll dabble with it. But no, I'm definitely more of like, I like to see the whole thing, all of the context and look at the article as a whole or the landing page or something.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: That's me with code essentially. I mean, I kind of grew in that sort of same thing. I don't particularly enjoy writing from scratch anymore, but I'm happy to look at the big picture and delete what's needed.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: So the thing that I find funny is that you have a very interesting, different approach to where home is. Right. So you've been all over. You're currently, if I'm not mistaken, in Portugal.
Do you interact a lot with the local workers communities at all?
[00:24:26] Speaker B: So in Spain. So I just got to Portugal a couple weeks ago, and when we were in Spain, like, went to ward camp Madrid for the first time, and that was different. It was really nice, actually, because I had met a lot of the spanish community in, like, flagship word camps, but I'd never just gone to a word camp, not as, like, a sponsor or as a volunteer, but just as an attendee. Yeah. Also, my Spanish was not good enough to be there.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Promise you, it's better than mine.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: Yeah. I was like, this is not the same Spanish I learned in high school, but everybody was super kind and it was nice to see them. It's very different than obviously, a flagship. And how their interactions and seeing how many people I met in that community was pretty eye opening. And I'll go to Porto in a bit.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I was gonna say, is that next month, next weekend, or next weekend?
[00:25:26] Speaker B: No, I think, like, chiclana in Spain is this week.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Vienna is this week.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: Ordinals, I think next week. Yeah. So, because, like, at Spain, in Spain and at WorldCap Asia, like, I met a lot of, actually, the portuguese community, because I was like, oh, I'm moving there. Well, traveling there. Where do you recommend? And then they introduced me to somebody else, and so now. And they all invited me to word camp Porto. So, like, you kind of have. Yeah, like, now I really want to too, as well, so, yeah, I'm looking forward to that, actually.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: So in terms of meeting different communities all over the world, is there anything that stands out in the positive or the negative? Like, is there a difference?
[00:26:07] Speaker B: It's interesting, like, you know, because I haven't been part of the community that long. Like, my first wordcamp was Wordcamp Asia Bangkok, which was just over a year ago, and that was like, ah, you know, like, information overload. Like, I wanted a little piece of everything. And then, you know, Europe was very different than Asia, and then us was, like, very different from previous two. I don't know what the local ones were like in any of those places because I hadn't had an opportunity to go there yet. But then going back for, like, the second time and seeing, like, after seeing the Spain wordcamp, the local one for Madrid, and then having word camp Asia, I had, like, almost a different perspective. Like, I didn't realize how big the spanish community was in wordcamp and how, like, everybody knows everybody and, like, everyone just says their name or they're whatsapping someone or like, you know, we're working on Wordcamp Europe. I'm on the content team for the organizing team.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: And they're like, oh, we need to talk to this person. Don't worry, I'll just message him. And I'm like, wait, what? Like, we don't have to go through like the, like an email or be.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: You know, Spain especially is highly, highly connected, I think by far the most active country in, at least in Europe in terms of stuff that they are organizing. It feels to me like there's a wordcamp every month.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: There's a lot, like, and we get like, you know, pitches for to sponsor it. So I can only imagine, like, how many they actually have. Like, it's incredible to see. I don't know. But then at the same time it's like, okay, so I don't know what it's like five years ago. Is it the same? Are we still innovating? Are we iterating or pivoting at all? Or is it like the same people from the same. Yeah, the same people from the community just the next year, like, it would be interesting to see the new people that are coming in, new people that are challenging, at least in these, like, already kind of connected and established communities versus, like, there's no, like, baltic really community.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: No. And there's, there's more countries where the communities are at least haven't come back to the state of where they were before the blip. I think at least, you know, I've been to a fair share of spanish work camps, certainly in the beginning 2000, 920 ten. And I've met, oh, I work in Bilbao.
I'm going to get roasted if I don't mention Bilbao. But the thing that you highlighted is the same thing that always stood out for me as well. The connectedness of the spanish WordPress community is just absolutely awesome. There is not a single soul, you get the feeling there is not a single soul working with WordPress in Spain that does not go to a wordcamp at one point in the year. It kind of feels like that. And what you said, like, if you know somebody and you need to know somebody else, they're just a message away.
So that's where the connected is. I'd love because, you know, I don't know if, you know, I was one of the co founders of World Camp Europe and one of the goals that we had, because at the time, this is 2012, when we started this. At the time, there were quite a few communities that weren't just not active, like country communities were. Either they didn't recognize themselves as such, or they were just not in contact with each other. So there was little islands, maybe in the northern part of the country and in the middle somewhere, and that's about it. One of the goals we had was that the communities in the country started to see, recognizing themselves as a community, organize, and then, you know, create meetups and work camps and whatnot. And Spain at the time was already quite active. The third work camp Europe we organized was in Sevilla. And like, the support from the spanish community was tremendous. Like, I don't have the stats in my head, but as far as I remember that, you always look at how much of the local community is there and how much people from the outside are coming in. If I remember correctly, at least the spanish one, I think the Belgrade one as well, in Serbia, both had incredibly high local community. I think that's a good sign, and I wish we would find ourselves in that direction more. You already mentioned you're relatively new to the community.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: Yeah, but I feel like I also noticed a similarity with the italian community. It's like, give me same vibes as, like, the spanish community of, like, every being tight knit, having. And I think this word camp Europe and Torino will be interesting to see, like, exactly what you're saying. Like the local versus.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm very curious about that. I haven't been to an italian word camp just yet. I was about to go to Verona, but that didn't happen. But, yeah, the whole local community versus who. Who else is here. It's one of the effects that we saw when we started organizing boot camp Europe. Like the poll, I guess you can call a pull. The poll we had as an event to basically people from all around the world was just. I didn't imagine it to be this big. Like two and a half, 3000 people. The last couple have been. That's amazing, the amount of people. And I know there's larger events, you know, Cloudfest, we've just been there, that was 11,000 people. And I get that there's larger, but that's a different type of event. But to have that many people, that many enthusiastic people about essentially a piece of software, is crazy.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: And then the dedication that comes with it and the ideas that are.
It's interesting to see how much of an impact such events have, which is why I was curious if you see any difference between various parts of the world and the communities you go to. But I guess Flagstaff, meaning we're camp Asia, we're camp us, and we're camp Europe. They're a little bit the exception to the rule. It is the local ones that really bring out the local crowd.
How many you've been to?
[00:32:30] Speaker B: So only one local one. And then Porto will be the second one.
I'll come back to you on that because it will be definitely. Madrid was very. Just a completely different experience for me. I had no responsibility as well, which was nice and, like, getting to go to all the talks with my Google translate and, you know, just getting to talk to people. Like. Like, I recognized Nilo, but I never knew his name before. And he was like, oh, yeah, I remember you. And next thing I know, I knew like 100 people and I don't remember any of their names besides maybe Paco and like. But like, just that, like, that happened within an hour. Somebody was, hey, I got you a churro. And I'm like, I love this place. Like, somebody brought me wine, like, later on, and like, it was just like, that's. That was like a very community feeling. Like community, as in, like a family almost. Like it was very comfortable. They knew that I was new to them. Like, I even think I had a sticker on my badge that was like, this was my first, like, Spain word camp. And everybody that saw it was like, approached me and it was. It was very welcoming.
[00:33:44] Speaker A: That's. I recognized this.
My first.
Was it first? Yeah, I think my first. The first work camp I went to, this is the one I organized in work Camp Netherlands in 2009, which is weird because you have no idea what you're doing and you just kind of, you know, rolled yourself through the days and then hopefully you end up with a. With a good feeling at the end, and that's kind of how that experience was. But my first one was outside of the country. I think if I, if I'm. If I'm not mistaken, was Sevilla 2009, and I had a very similar experience. Like, everybody came up to me, talked to me, brought me food, even. Yes, yes.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: Yeah. It was like, oh, you look lonely. Here, eat this.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: I think they mostly thought I was looking hungry, you know, but it's fun to see how the similarity in people just happens to coincide with a common field of interest, which is, again, just a little piece of software.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Yeah, the culture was definitely showing through as well, so maybe that's also what helped it make it feel a lot more comfortable. Like, I remember that, like, I had nervous, nervous anxiety, butterflies the first word camp in Bangkok. Yeah, that was like, I want to be. I want to be here, but I also want to volunteer. And then I was like, but what am I good at? And I was like, I like to chat, so I'll be an interviewer. And I was like, I haven't done this in a hot minute, so now I'm going to be on WordPress TV. What are the rules? And the guy was like, I just talk to the people. And I'm like, I don't know why. He's from Brooklyn as well, but he was definitely not. But I was like, oh, yeah, sure, it's fine. And then I kind of had the same vibe, you know, like, I remember I must have looked like I was like, anxious, like sitting or standing in a corner. And I think it was like, milan. It came up and was like, hey, Mile. And like, took a picture and then just like, took me with him.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: Milan.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: And it was like, milan. Yeah, I think it was him, but I'm not sure.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Milan Ivanovich. From Serbia.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: From Serbia, yeah. And he also had the same vibe. You know, everybody, this is, he's like, what's your name? Yeah. And like, but like, if you like me, though, do that times like a hundred in like a tiny little space where you could only meet 100 people. That was Madrid.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Good vibes everywhere.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: They. I don't think I've been to a Wordcamp or even a WordPress meetup where there was not a good vibe. I don't think I can.
So in terms of WordPress and following it, do you keep up to date with where the project is going? New features and stuff like that? Is that something that's on your radar?
[00:36:34] Speaker B: Yes and no. I like the updates, like the 6.5. I was really looking forward to the font library. That's probably my most excited thing, just because, I don't know, I think when they announced that they were finally going to be, that it was finally being possible, I went on this whole side quest on fonts. Tell you a lot about your personality.
Who's a comic sans person? Who's those psych. No, just kidding. But you know what I mean. When people use default fonts on their Google Docs, is it because, like, that's just, they're used to it or like, the people who change it to another one? It's like, I feel like you give me a little peek into your life. And so I think it's, I don't.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: Know if the connection to the Google Doc is the one that's, that meaningful, but most certainly on a website. Yes.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And like, it'll be interesting now that people have no limitations to see what exactly like, what are they going to choose from? Are they going to go like defonts.com and kick pick some like gangsta looking something and then all of a sudden like, like, I don't know. So that one I was really looking forward to. I personally like to edit, like, our updates for WordPress because it keeps me like updated as well without having to like follow everything because, you know, you have WordPress Slack and then you have the organized monthly post status. It's like hard to keep up with like every single thing.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: There is a wonderful newsletter.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: I do follow a lot of newsletters. Those help me a lot, actually.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: Yeah. I was going to say if you just read my newsletter, that's all you need to know.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: Okay. All right. I'll prioritize yours then from now on.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: Thank you.
In terms of. You beat me to my next question, which is going to be, which is your favorite feature of 6.5 and that is fan's library. I think for most people it is, because not only has this feature been queued for, I don't know how old the ticket is, but it's been years, there's been previous attempts of adding it.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:47] Speaker A: Now finally have it. And as much as I love it, my biggest concern is probably similar to yours in terms of now that people can just click that button, connect, or allow Google fonts to be connected to my site. And now I have infinite fonts.
[00:39:06] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:39:07] Speaker A: Like, my lord, what's going, what's that going to do for the performance of the sites?
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I didn't even think about performance. I'm just thinking about like how crazy people are going to go. But that's a very good perspective. Yeah.
[00:39:19] Speaker A: If they want to create something that has per paragraph different fonts, you know, have at it. I'll be the last person to say something about creative freedom. But in general, you would want to say two, maybe three fonts, but stick to that and you're good. But then there's fonts and then there's the variations of the fonts. There's a lot of stuff that needs to be loaded. It's not necessarily helping in making your site super snappy and performant. And there's still some room for improvement in performance as is. But yeah, like I said, you already answered the question, like what is your favorite feature?
[00:39:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I'm just kind of, now that I'm considering performance as well, it'll just be interesting to see how it plays out and who's going to jump on it, even though we've all been kind of bitching about it for this whole time. Like, oh, wouldn't it be nice if we had this, this and this, and now that we have it, like, are people actually going to use it as well?
[00:40:13] Speaker A: So currently it's only available if you have a full site editing theme activated.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:40:19] Speaker A: There are ways to make it available for classic themes, relatively straightforward even. But the majority of clients just generally working with WordPress are only going to see it if they have a, you know, if they're running 2024 or Ollie or Frost or rock base or any of the, or any of the other full site editing themes. Block themes. So I'm imagining it's not going to be incredibly wild in the things we see because it's. You also have to click a few things before you actually end up at the place.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: You have to go to styles and then you have to go to, what's it called? I don't even know, probably fonts, but then you have to select them, then you have to assign them, upload it.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: Put it into the library.
[00:41:12] Speaker A: There's a few steps. I'm like you, very curious to see where this is going to go if indeed we're going to see a lot of abuse because that we have the potential there.
[00:41:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, like, I think they also did an upgrade to patterns, or am I remembering the wrong one? Because when they introduced patterns, I was really excited about it.
I think when Tammy Lister was on the chatting with me about telling me about it before it was live, I was like, wait, what? You can do this? We're gonna do this. Like, I had had no idea, like, like the potential and the, like the connections or where we could replace it from like a reusable block or something like that. And when they, I think they merged it in like one of the previous ones. 6.46.3, I don't know.
[00:42:06] Speaker A: But yeah, reusable blocks are no longer a thing. Everything is a pattern.
[00:42:10] Speaker B: Pattern. Yeah.
[00:42:11] Speaker A: Or it is not synced. But the feature that overriding something. Yeah, still a confusing name to me, but that's a feature. I don't think it got into 6.5 fully.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: I think we have to wait for 6.6 to properly inject a pattern and have certain things always stay the same, but the rest of the content is fully flexible, I think. But I could be mistaken quickly.
[00:42:40] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe also if they added that, the feature where you could like you know, override everything or just detach one of them if that was also an option. But. Because that would have been very.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: Yeah, as far as I know, that is not fully part of the current release. But dang, I was looking forward to that.
I think the most important thing here is to realize that it is incredibly hard to build something that is meant to be used by everybody. And I fully understand that there is tons, millions of people working with page builders and that they are in their own ecosystem and they have their own settings and all that. And for the vast majority, all of those page builders work better than full site editing currently does. But what you're adding to full site editing needs to be so thoughtful and paced slowly, slowly, because you are developing for millions, which every decision you make is large. Right. We're still doing this backwards compatibility thing. So I've been using site editor themes for 18 months, close to two years now, essentially from day one that you could play with it inside of Gutenberg at the time.
And I see the progress and I see the changes and I see what I can do with it. And does that mean I think there's a.
A lot to improve? Yes, absolutely. But I'm also very conscious of the place we are at and the time that's being allotted because other people will go, oh, it's been five years, why is it still not. Yeah, well there's a comma there. There's a whole bunch of other stuff that so needs to be taken into account. So in that regard, I get why just uploading fonts was just not something we just, you know, here it is. How about it?
[00:44:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:27] Speaker A: Need to think about what we're doing here because it has consequences and we need to support it forever.
[00:44:32] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very good perspective. We have to support it forever.
[00:44:36] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, currently that's how we are still treating WordPress. I don't see that changed.
I spoke to recently on the podcast, I said something about it'd be great if we'd have not a fork, but say whatever we have now and turn that into an lts and we support it as long as needed, but we're shifting the way it's being built for anybody who starts a new site and that is breaking backwards compatibility. And I don't see that happening. But sort of a mini fork. It would create a room for a lot of improvements to be merged into core without about. Are we breaking stuff?
[00:45:22] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:45:23] Speaker A: And certainly from a hosting perspective, I think you can appreciate the carefulness that is currently as we go from version to version and stuff, not breaking.
[00:45:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh yeah.
[00:45:34] Speaker A: Last question for you.
What are you most excited about for the future of WordPress?
[00:45:40] Speaker B: That's a good one. I'm actually kind of, because I'm in like the middle of it, this a newish generation of people coming in and seeing their ideas while still, I don't say paying tribute, but also respecting the way that everything that we just talked about actually. So like staying true to what the point is of open source, the point is of WordPress and the community, but also challenging it, you know, like keeping it up with, with these, these modern days. I wanted to say this digital era, but I get so mad when I read that in an article that I did it. Keeping up with the digital era and.
[00:46:20] Speaker A: Digital era has been here for quite a while.
[00:46:22] Speaker B: I know, and the 43% of online users that use WordPress or whatever the percentage is these days, but yeah, it's interesting. Every time I was a new person a year ago and thinking about all the ideas that I've had and just shared with people, community summit or a word camp or something like that, or just somebody talking on slack and then seeing it like somewhere else happen, it's like, oh crap, I have the power, you know, like, and I would wish that more people were empowered to do that. Like, to actually be like, not keep your thoughts to yourself and to just like, shoot the shit and see what happens if it gets shot down, whatever. Maybe it'll happen in five years or maybe it'll not happen ever, but it's okay, you know, somebody else can take that and snowball and in some cases.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: Maybe you even have to wait ten years. But, but yeah, share your stuff. I like that. That's a good one.
[00:47:14] Speaker B: And I think this, this like newer generation of kids, some of them don't share anything, but some of them have big mouths. They should use them. Like, go for it.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, when you say kids, are you referring.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: My last name is young, so I will always be a young un. But no, I met somebody at like work camp. They were like, I was like, I've had my life since longer than you've been alive. Great. I think everyone just thinks I'm maybe a bit younger than I am.
[00:47:45] Speaker A: But you want to set the record straight.
[00:47:48] Speaker B: I am 33, okay? I am not 23, but I will take it as a compliment to all you kind people out there. I will forever be 23.
[00:47:57] Speaker A: I know I've passed that phase for sure.
[00:48:00] Speaker B: 34, that was bullshit.
I can't even keep a straight face. My bad. Please invite me back.
[00:48:09] Speaker A: I'm full on 50, so.
[00:48:11] Speaker B: Okay. I wouldn't have guessed 50.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. You're so kind. And on that kindness, thank you so much for this podcast. Was enjoyed it.
[00:48:20] Speaker B: It was a lot of fun. Thank you for having me.
[00:48:22] Speaker A: Sure, thanks.
