Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to within WordPress, the podcast about people inside and a little bit outside sometimes of the WordPress community. Today we have somebody who's not necessarily in the bright stage light, but most certainly has a bright smile. If you're watching. Welcome to the show, Roger, or should I say Mister Williams? What do you prefer?
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Roger's fine. Okay.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, we would love to know what is your connection with WordPress?
[00:00:32] Speaker B: So, I mean, if we go all the way back 2003, I got a job at GoDaddy and doing support, which is also sales. And you know, I'd been digging, playing around with websites for, since college. So like 96, 97 and you know, like hand coding HTML and just like struggling. Oh, just struggling with that because I hate code. I mean, I'll be honest, I've tried many times to think maybe I'll be a developer. I started digging into code, it just. No thanks. So I was trying to figure out a way to do websites, but not have to code and started playing around with different content management systems. This was back when movable type was like the number one thing. And then I found this thing called WordPress and I really liked it because it was super simple to install it and set up, and then it was even more simple to use and that kind of took off from there.
As a non developer, non designer, I never dug super into WordPress at that point. And I was much more focused on career, just working and learning about DNS and hosting and being able to work at GoDaddy well.
So that kind of kicked around for a little bit. I kept working in hosting, I worked in telecom, selling content delivery network services. Before you could just plug and play it, you had actually call like a big company. Limelight Networks was the company I worked at, and it was a very convoluted process to get that stuff set up. Then I got kind of tired of the corporate game and started up doing freelance work, building people websites for their businesses, lawyers and things like that.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: What zero are we talking?
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Oh, gosh. So now we're like, to 2000, 920, ten.
Exactly. So now, like pages were now a thing and you could do more than just a blog. And so I built people's websites and got into doing SEO, pay per click social media work for a little bit, unfortunately. And then why unfortunately? Oh, I mean, social media, I'm just burnt out of social media at this point. I think 2016 election like a knife in me.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: About the US election.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: Yes, before, yeah, the US election, this was.
Trump won the election, and that's all we need to say about that. But please let to me the veil of this idea that social media was just a good of a society was completely yanked off. And anyway, in 2018, I kind of started winding down my work doing freelance stuff, mainly because I'm just not a designer. At the end of the day, excuse me, I'm recovering from a little bit of a respiratory thing, but at the end of the day, I'm just not a designer. And that's something I always have to keep reminding myself is like, I can appreciate good design, but the work and grind of coming up with design is truly an art and I have massive respect for people that can do it.
So in 2018, I transitioned away from doing independent work and got back into hosting, worked at pressable for a little bit, doing some support work, and then moved in 2020, the magical year to Kinsta.
And I've been at Kinsta since then. Currently I'm in a sales role just working on evangelizing Kinsta to WordPress community and beyond. Now that we're doing additional services with application hosting and database static sites.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: What does evangelizing mean in this context?
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Talking to people and getting them to understand that hosting is more than just a place to dump your files in your database, especially in a managed hosting solution, which is what Kinsta offers. We've got built in backups, staging environments, the ability to change your PHP very easily, and then now we're even tell.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: You on sales now.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Yeah, so just, you know, I think people take a lot of things maybe for granted with their hosting and they're just not aware that maybe there's more out there that can help them with their workflows and their business in general. So yeah, that was, that's kind of the quick overcap right there. I've been involved with some different wordcamps I spoke. The first wordcamp I spoke at was Wordcamp B Phoenix 2014. That's the only time I've been able to speak at one because I haven't submitted to any others, but I've been.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Is that the first one you went to as well?
[00:06:01] Speaker B: I want to say yes. Yeah, that sounds about right.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty neat that the first one you went to, you actually spoke at. So not only did you see the advantage of going there, you also got to spread your knowledge, which is, I think always, like most people, don't really realize how much time a speaker has to put in in terms of effort and in terms of all of these things that you have to do to prepare for that presentation. It's generally also not just that presentation, you get a lot of questions afterwards and all of that, and you do it for free.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I just went to work Camp Phoenix this year, 2024. I was at the beginning of this month and it was the first Wordcamp I've been to in four years, I think since 2019. And it just reminded me how unique the Wordcamp experience is. I think, especially in terms of other conferences, it's all volunteer. The people that are organizing it are volunteers.
The people that are there working it that day are all volunteers. And then everyone speaking there are all volunteers.
And it's amazing, though, to see the breadth of presentations given. Right. There's people doing it for the first time and it's obvious, and it can be a little bit tough because it's the first time that they've spoken publicly, but I think. And then on the other hand, you've got the people that have been speaking for a long time and they've got, their speeches are down and they're really in sync. But I get excited about the first time presenters for myself, I am terrified of speaking in public. Just so many fears and phobias and things happen. And so to see people get up there and go through that and then know, hey, now you've done it. You've gotten your first time speaking in public out of the way. Now you're just going to get better and better.
It's encouraging to see people in those situations.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: I've mentored people who were going to speak for the first time at a wordcamp. I'm not going to name names, but there have been occasions where the person had to go on stage, like now, and just yank me and my arm said, where's the bathroom? Because anxiety can get that high.
That person has done a lot of presentations afterwards and the first one went very well because the knowledge is absolutely stellar. But the type of tension that is there, I think that's a good thing for you to mention because most people don't realize that nine out of ten people there are, on average, what we would call introverts. So getting yourself out there is a step in itself. And then putting yourself on a stage and then acting knowledgeable, it's no small feat. It's no small feat.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: And.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: The ease that people sort of glance over that, I like to remind them of the effort that it actually takes and the mentoring that I did, it's very rewarding to see that they just start to shine as soon as the presentation is done and the questions are done and they go, how do they go? How did they go, okay, great, you went this, you know, you did that and you had this. And then, you know, there's people in line still having questions for you. It's wonderful to be able to share information in that way.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: Agreed. Agreed. I think. I think also it's important for people in the audience at wordcamps, especially the smaller ones. Right. I mean, the tent pole, wordcamps at Wordcamp us and all that, that's a different story. But the regional word camps, the smaller word camps, you know, I think it's important for the people in the audience to have empathy for the presenters and understand, you know, first of all, they're not getting paid. Second of all, this probably isn't directly related to their work. You know, this is. This is a hobby in a lot of cases, and so show some empathy, you know, be patient with people. And then when it comes to Q and A, have some good questions. And, you know, when the Q and A.
When the Q and a session comes up and there's no questions or the questions are just kind of really general, you know, I kind of cringe at that.
You know, really pay attention to the. While they're talking and, you know, come up with something, you know, insightful or, you know, ask them why. Why did they come up with this presentation? Like, just basic things like that? And I think it's important for the community. Right. Is we're taking it out of the screen and it's actually in three d at these word camps. Right?
[00:11:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: And so get involved and enjoy it.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: I think the best tip that I can give in this particular context of Q and a and questions and, you know, helping somebody make, you know, feel at ease at the questions that are being bombarded at them or the lack of questions? Both. It helps. Both is to have a list of three questions prepared when they're done. Nobody asks, you have a question. Now, it shouldn't always be me asking the question. I can share that question with somebody else, and I've done that, like, dozens of times, and it just. You see them relax because they know the answer already and it just becomes easier and easier. But, yeah, the whole going to work camps, organizing work camps. How many have you organized?
[00:11:59] Speaker B: So now I've been involved with two. So I helped organize Wordcamp Phoenix, helped to wrangle sponsors and get the messaging out about sponsors, and then I'm doing kind of the same thing for Wordcamp Montclair, helping with sponsors there and then.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: So for Phoenix, you had to work with Raquel?
[00:12:17] Speaker B: I did. And that's a tough job.
Oh, yes. No, no, it's a tough job because you're constantly going, hey, can you stop and let me do some work for you and stuff?
[00:12:31] Speaker A: She's been on one of the previous episodes and she's a gem in every single way.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Absolutely. In a force of nature. But there's a ton of other people at the Wordcamp Phoenix in terms of organizing, and everybody was amazing, you know, again, it's one of these things where this is all volunteer for the majority of people, it's not directly related to what they do for work. So there's not that immediate like, oh, hey, I'm going to do this volunteer stuff and it's going to help me with my work somehow. No, there's very little of that. The majority of people are passionate about WordPress and enjoy the community aspect of it, and so they're involved.
It's really exciting to see that because when you go to most conferences, that is not the case. Right? Like, most conferences are very professional, there's a lot of money involved and you lose the community aspect of things. The conversations are all business, as opposed to just talking about some cool new thing in the block editor or, or if the block editor should even be used. You know, the timeless debate is occurring.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Five years in and we still have that conversation. I'm like, maybe it's time to get over it and get with the program.
I actually posted something on x a couple of weeks ago, something along the lines that if you're not now seeing where the project is going and you're aligning yourself with it, maybe you're a little stubborn. Maybe you're a little too set in your ways, because it's inevitable now. It's going to only do more and more. If the first thing you do when you install a WordPress site is install the classic editor, you haven't gotten the memo.
I know change is hard for people. Don't get me wrong. I'm not diminishing the whole change is difficult and adaptation. We all do our adaptations in different and various ways.
Five years in, come on.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: You know, I agree with you in a lot of ways.
I think obviously this is where the project is going.
The problem is when the rubber hits the road for people who are professionals, who are making money and relying on WordPress so that they can do their work, it's a little more nuanced. And, you know, and you brought this up in your previous episode with Jamie, right? Is.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Editor is still pretty glitchy. You know, I was just recently working on a site trying to recon, trying to convert it from a classic theme and another editor to the block editor. And I'm working on this stuff. And it wasn't overly complicated. There were some rows and some columns, and I'm working on the homepage. And after like, I don't know, 20 minutes of work, everything suddenly went super narrow and vertical in the editor, but on the, but on the live site it looked fine, but in the editor side, it's just not usable and I couldn't figure out how to like convert it back. And so anyway, that's a whole thing going on. But for, for people who are professionals and like, you know, they need to project done in x amount of time so they can pay their mortgage or whatever, I can sense the frustration. And, you know, I had some great conversations at Wordcamp Phoenix with some designers who are, they're still, they're using Divi and they're not, they're not planning on changing anytime soon because it's, they, they know their workflow. It works. There's very little glitchiness to it.
And these are people that have been working in WordPress for well over ten years. And so there's a roadshow that needs to happen for the block editor.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Still, I agree. I think there's two things here I'd like to comment on because, yes, there are different ways of building a site within WordPress.
Divi is one, elementor is another, bricks is another, and there's more. So if that's your way of working with it, I have no quarrel with that. I mean, that makes sense to me.
My comment is mostly geared towards, you know, the block editor is there. At least get acquainted with it so you understand what it can and cannot do. And yes, there are glitches, and yes, there are weird things in there. Command Z, by the way, just works perfectly fine. Just rolling, stepping one step back. But there's a lot of stuff that we still need to fix. Having said that, there's also plenty of add ons to the block editor for both the site editor and the actual block editor that are just elevating the whole experience to a tremendously high degree. Cadence. For instance, Cadence pro blocks is a good example of if and when you activate that, you have a whole bunch of extra tools that you'll also find in bricks, elementor, and divi. But yeah, I think the more difficult thing is, how do you educate people that that is the way they can extend it and improve it and all of those things. It's certainly not something we have solved yet?
[00:17:58] Speaker B: No. And, you know, and I think, you know, I think it just goes to the nature of open source projects and software in general is, you know, there's always more than one way to do something. Um, and, and then also, like, once people are in their way, it can be very hard to change. Um, especially when your profession and your livelihood is.
Yeah, that's, I have a lot of sympathy. I have a lot of sympathy, but.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: I mean, more sympathy than me, I guess.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: Well, you know, it happens. Coming from America, I think maybe, right? I don't know, possibly.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: But I think the, the fact that you've worked extensively in support also is a large contributing factor here because I, I mean, I do support as well for my clients, but that's stuff I've built. Right.
If you are doing support for stuff you haven't built, you hear the pain points much quicker.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: No, absolutely.
Yeah. I think, you know, I'm excited about the project. I think WordPress, you know, it's still absolutely amazing. For over 20 years now, I've made a living in one way or another, indirectly or directly from this project. And that's just amazing.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: It is, yeah. I started my agency at the end of 2005 proper in 2006. So that's 18 years in. Is my math even somewhat accurate? Yes, it is, sure. But that's an amazing long stint for a world that is ever changing.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Definitely, definitely.
You look at the options out there that are outside of WordPress and it's immediately terrifying to me that you don't have access to the source code, you don't know where those projects are going.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: You don't own data.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: Well, now, in the world of AI, data is, is proven to be that much more important and ownership of your data is that much important.
You saw the headlines about Tumblr and therefore WordPress.com.
Are they looking at how to sell the data from those posts? And we're seeing a lot of cross communication in the general press because WordPress.com versus.org is the endless debate that will never go away until I think your, your, what is your recommendation is they should change.com to just call it jetpack? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: I've been saying that for at least ten years and I've actually said it to people who technically would have a say in this and they haven't said no to me. So that, I mean, this is years ago, but it could have changed. But I suspect that.com benefits from.org being as big as it is and if.com benefits from it, then automatic benefits from it. If there's investors in automatic, then it's not hard to trace that train of thoughts.
And I don't mean this necessarily in a negative way, but I think that's kind of by design. And the, the other side of the coin is that because that is the way it is. A lot of stuff, innovation, people working on the project, and all that from automatic is also flowing back. So yeah, you give a little and you let a little.
I don't have a specific opinion. I'm plenty opinionated, but I don't have a specific opinion on whether this is a good thing. I like the journalist to be correct, and I will go out and say, and comment on stuff saying WordPress, and then it's actually.org and they are attributing it to.com dot. I will correct that.
Many of my suggestions have been corrected in articles left and right.
Thank you, sir.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Thank you for your work.
So we can get sidetracked on that conversation. But I think the bigger point is owning your data and as an individual, as a company, as an organization, understanding that this is something that I've talked about since 20 years, talking about, hey, you should really have your own website in addition to all the social media work that you're doing, because you don't know what's going to happen. I mean, what happened to MySpace? Where's all the data that you put on MySpace? But if you've had a website since then, especially when using WordPress, you have all of that data, the database is right there and you can do with it what you want. And I think as we're moving into this AI world, and I want to make sure that I preface to everybody, I am not an expert on AI or any of these things, but what I am understanding from the conversation is owning your data is going to be essential if you want to move forward in some sort of a capacity of determining what your brand is saying as we move forward into this, because all the AI stuff, I mean, yes, there's these algorithms and llms and all this stuff, that's great. That's the gravy on top, but it's the data underneath that all of these things are referencing that is really worth the money.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: I've said this in a few episodes where we talked about AI, that people mistake the AI with artificial intelligence like it is truly intelligent. It's not. It is the data. And the LLM is essentially the language model, understands the data and can, based on that data, predict other stuff.
When you, you know, in a nutshell.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: I think there's even a caveat there. When you say understands the data, it doesn't understand.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: Like, it doesn't, but understands the structure of the data. Maybe that's the.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, and, you know, in. Not to get too deep into all of that, it's. But it's the data that's important that makes the difference between whether it's nonsensical or there's some sort of, um, usefulness to what is happening.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: If you would feed it my shit posts on, on x, it would give a different result than, for instance, somebody like James clear.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: 100%. 100%.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: And, um, maybe the AI is smart enough. I don't know. Probably not. But that's. But that would be a huge effort from the algorithm to make me sound like James clear based on my data and James's data. I don't know. There's a possibility there, I guess. But the fact that AI is just seen as this magic thing, not really taking into consideration where that data comes from. Ownership of data is, I think, an overlooked thing that the discussion of this week, and this is recorded on Wednesday, February 28. The Tumblr and jetpack reference you made earlier, it's also mentioned in my newsletter for this week. That is something that we're only now starting to think about it because, oh, wait, did I actually choose this? Do I want. This is a question that now is being asked.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: And I think this is where it's important we go all the way back. I mean, South park used to make fun of, right? They had that whole episode about the end user licensing agreement, and these are those boxes that we've all been checking. And half the time we don't even have to check them anymore. You just sign up. They said, oh, yeah, well, you signed up. Now you've assumed all of this legalese in has been, yeah, we own your data, not you.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Well, the same thing goes for anything you post on X, anything you post on Instagram, anything you post on LinkedIn, Facebook, WhatsApp, all of that data does not belong to you. Like, you are giving them indefinite rights to do whatever the hell they want with your data.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: I find that mind blowing, that people have absolutely no clue. Like, no clue. Yes, they check the checkbox on the, on signing up, but who reads that?
[00:26:28] Speaker B: No, nobody reads it. And I think there's also, you know, there's an issue of people not really being aware. Right. Like when you're posting this stuff onto Facebook, it's now Facebook's.
And what does that actually mean? And I think a lot of it comes to people discounting what theyre saying and theyre just like, well, im not important.
Im just talking about a vacation or where I ate or something. These arent important for me. So its not that big of a loss.
But in the meantime, the term that has been thrown around for a long time is digital sharecropping.
We've all been working on Facebook's land or Tumblr's land and building their amazing dynasties. I mean, Tumblr maybe not so much, but Facebook, absolutely. And they're making a ton of money.
At the end of the day, if you want all of that data, I mean, you might be able to get some of it, but it's not going to be easy to parse through. You're not going to be able to easily import that into a WordPress site or something.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: You can, but you can't. It's certainly not as straightforward as it probably should be. Out of curiosity, how much of these types of data ownership and stuff that is related to this are you seeing at Kinsta support?
Do people have questions in these directions? Because I know for some hosts, support only covers very technical stuff or maybe some application stuff, but that's it. I know from experience that you can drop a lot of more types of questions at Kinsta. Is that, do you see these types of things at all?
[00:28:21] Speaker B: You know, I haven't been in the support chat. Well, you know, I, Kinsta, I never worked in support. I was in migrations, which was like an arm of support.
And then I did client experience where we did a lot of surveying and stuff. And so as far as like what's actually happening in the support chats right now, I'm not super privy on that, but what I can say is that usually these questions come up before and.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: We froze with us right when they're.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: About secure SoC two certification.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: Yar, I'm sorry you froze. You say usually these types of questions. So if you can repeat that sentence.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: Oh, I'm sorry about that. We'll blame starling. So usually when people are concerned about privacy and security and data and stuff, they're asking before they've come to Kinsta in a lot of cases. And so I'll see those in the sales conversations for sure. GDPR comes up, SoC two certification, which we have, comes up. And that's with the SoC two. That's a question not only of how we're storing your data, but how everybody at Kinsta is interacting or not interacting with your data, who has access to.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: What, how are we have absolutely no clue what SoC two means. Could you give a TDR?
[00:29:42] Speaker B: I again disclaimer, I am not the expert on SoC two.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: I'm not a lawyer and all of that, sure.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: But my basic understanding is it's a process that it's a certification that you achieve by meeting certain thresholds of security practices. Third party that comes in and audits you after you've said, okay, we're all set up, they come in and they check everything, and then there's, I'm pretty sure, regular audits.
But it's to make sure that we do things like when I log into my company machine, I'm using the highest level of security to access the machine. And so that way I'm not becoming potentially a security issue when I related.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: To ISO, I guess.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: Yes, yeah, yeah. There's isos also in there. Then when I'm accessing different aspects of Kinsta's information, customer data and things like that, I'm handling it in the correct way and just following the best procedures. And so that's why SoC two is definitely an important one for people to be aware of. It goes beyond just the storing of your website files and database information and really into how the entire organization operates to ensure that your data is secure.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm familiar with it. And it's a very important thing that needs to be, whether you do it within ISO or specifically Soc two, there's, what it brings is a guaranteed guarantee of, I'm taking care of the data that I interact with in the most appropriate way.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. And now that we've got GDPR and, you know, California passed a very similar law, you know, these things are even that much more at the forefront as they should be.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: I mean, how un american? I'm tempted to say.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: What's that?
[00:31:49] Speaker A: California passed a similar law. I was going to say how un american?
[00:31:54] Speaker B: Well, you know, I mean, it depends on which american you ask is if California is american or not. But I think, I think it's. These are all things that we need.
We need to be protecting individuals as much as possible, because we're just not aware of how much data there is out there about us and how it's being transferred around. There was a study I saw recently where on average, Facebook taps into, for each individual on Facebook, right. When you sign up and you start interacting with Facebook, Facebook goes and mines information about you from at least 2000 companies per person and in some cases much higher. That article, I think it came out a couple of weeks ago.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: Um, they even do it if you don't have an account.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, they're just. They're hoovering up. And so, yeah, I mean, we need to just be aware that I think that these are. These are good practices in general. And, you know, it's a lot of work for companies to do this stuff. There's money spent on software that has to be implemented. Individuals at the companies, their sole job is to make sure that, you know, we're compliant with these things. There's training that everybody at the company has to go through.
And so it is a lot of work, but it's totally worth it to me at the end of the day.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: I agree. I think pretending this isn't the thing is probably one of the most hurting things now in this day and age. Going back to the whole owning your data and where is my data? Is then the second question, if I don't own it, who does own it and who is actually operating with that data?
I remember working in an HR department of a large, very large company with about 15,000 people, and because I was a project manager, but I also had access to the DHR system, which has all data, like, literally everything about everyone in the company now. And, you know, how many years was that thing recording? The amount of paperwork I had to sign just to get access was ridiculous. But it had been weird if they hadn't asked me, like, no, no, no, here, here's the login. Go do your thing. Yeah.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: Yeah. I think you would be shocked and terrified in the United States because, yeah, access. Access is given to a lot of things quite flippantly. Not Kinsta, but at companies I've worked at in the past, it's been shocking to just see, like, how easy it is to access. You know, you can just look at everybody's salary, you know, when. When you're talking about our data. Right. Like, at least in the US, like, the biggest thing is, oh, what's everybody making? And stuff like that. Well, at least.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: At least your culture is open about it. Mine isn't. Well, mine is absolutely not. Dutch people do not share what they make, like, period.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I would say in the last ten to 20 years, it's eased up a little bit here. But people are still very reticent to talk about their salary and money in general.
It's an interesting thing that we've kind of developed to hide from each other.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I've always found it very curious that it was not being hidden. I have a question about the wordcamps and the organization a bit, because something just crossed my mind in terms of stuff that is being done that is not being done in the best way.
Have you seen over the years how much more mature the wordcamp organization has become? Because I remember you saying something about professional versus non professional for some reason that just pinged back in my head, like, has that changed over the years? Like, if the first 2013, which is more than a decade ago, would you say the professionalism has only hit the flagship port camps, or has that changed the better? In general?
[00:36:18] Speaker B: I think in general, rising tide has lifted all boats from what I've seen. And again, you know, I've only been an organizer for a few, so, you know, if I, if I say something wrong, I'm sorry to everybody.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: You don't need to.
[00:36:36] Speaker B: You know, what I've noticed is there's, there's a central organization for word camps and they, they work with everybody at the regional camps and help them, you know, with the website, you know, a lot of the very basic level things just so that they can then start working on the rest of it. It seems very well done. I think there could be some more templating offered, maybe. For instance, when we're working on sponsorship stuff, there's global sponsors, and so those should be automated, kind of included. And so be nice to see things like maybe some templated spreadsheets that just help the organizers understand. Okay. Hey, if we're going after sponsors, you know, it's a sales process, right? We need, like, the global sponsors are easy, right? They just, boom, the money's there. But for every sponsor, there's outreach required, maybe some convincing of people of why they should sponsor and what are the, what are the benefits of that? And then once they've signed up, okay, great. Here's now communication to help the sponsor understand how they should prepare for the event and really critically how the sponsors can help promote the event. Because obviously as a sponsor, you can get more people to come to the wordcamp. More people are going to see your logo. If you have a booth, they're going to go to your booth. So there's a great symbiosis to it. So I think from an organizational perspective, you know, I think there's a term, the mothership has been thrown around. I don't know if that's, I don't mean that derogatory. I hope nobody takes it that way, but.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: Sounds good.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: Where there's, there's all these different word camps and they're all kind of figuring it out a little bit in their own ways. And I think there could be a benefit of just like with the WordPress project, the word camp project could benefit from more collaboration across the word camps of hey, we did this way and we were able to raise way more than we needed, which is always what you want. This is how we did it. And share that with everybody else. I think there could be some growth in that area for sure.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: Just think. But yeah, not a but yeah, I agree. What I'm realizing now that I don't think I've ever had. So my first work camp I went to was the one I organized in 2009. So from 2009 to today, I don't think I've ever received an email from a company that was sponsoring a Wordcamp saying, you should go here because we'll be sponsoring it. Introducing the concept of a Wordcamp. And there's a lot of products, a lot of WordPress products that I own a license to in some shape or form that would have benefited from actually saying, look, we're going to be there, you should be there as well. That's a, that's probably the best tip so far of this 2024 whole year winning.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: You know I think there's, there's, there's a, with the WordPress and the word camp communities there is definitely kind of a line, right. Like we don't want to be over commercializing the word camps. Yeah, I, because we still want, I.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: Don'T see that as over commercializing and I agree.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: But I think, you know, it's easy to become a spammer, right. Even unintentionally.
And so, and again, I think this is where having some guidelines, right. Like telling the sponsors like, hey, here's what you can and do, here's how we would like you to act so that everybody has a good experience at the word camp as a sponsor. Because I've gotten a sponsor and I want us to keep sponsoring.
The more clarity we have as far as what's appropriate versus not appropriate, I think is great and will just help everything more and more. I, you know, circling back to what you're saying about promotion. Yeah. I think we need, we need more people, more companies helping to promote these events and get more people to go to them and just make them better.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Well, especially now after the two blip years, attendance or even, let's start even with the number of work camps organized and meetups is nowhere near where it was. There's a few exceptions. Countries like Spain are doing phenomenally well. Um, but, and you know, in, in the Netherlands there are a few meetups that have started again workamp Netherlands, obviously is still, uh, still rocking. But if I look around, you started at events dot wemp.org. There's not that much happening versus, uh, before the blip. I'm just going to.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah, you know, and we saw this a little bit at work camp. Phoenix is, um. You know, I'm not. I don't live in Phoenix anymore. I used to live there for a bunch of years, and then we left about ten years ago, shortly after I gave my first presentation.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: You gotta get out of Dodge.
[00:42:01] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, it's Phoenix. It gets a little hot there.
But it was interesting when I was at the work camp because I still know a lot of people there and I'm talking with everybody and, hey, what's happening? What are people doing in terms of the community?
There's a lot of participation online. Right. When we all went and hid from the virus, we switched to meeting online, and so the participation went up there. But now that we're meeting in person again, there's definitely a reluctance. Reluctance. Sorry, this cold is. And I think also this circles back to your comment earlier on, is there's a lot of introverts in this community. And I mean, I want. Right. I mean, I might be in sales and I might come off gregariously, but at the end of the day, like, I love sitting at home and just kind of chilling out.
So, you know, we've got a group that's already kind of skews towards not wanting to meet in person.
And then, you know, we gave everybody the excuse, like, hey, actually, we don't want anybody to meet in person for a couple of years there. Yeah.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: And they took it.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: Absolutely. And now we're coming back out of that. And when I talk to people about word camps, I did get a lot of people going, oh, do people still go to those?
And so I think we've got some undoing to work on in terms of getting people to come back out and meet each other in person. And, you know, and it's so amazing. Like, the spontaneity of conversations when you're meeting in person is just so much more beyond. I mean, this is great talking to you right now, but when we met at Wordcamp us in 2019, we had more fun and we just talked about random stuff. Right.
And then we met, and then there were so many different people there that you knew that I met, and then I knew people that you met, and just excitement of live events just can't be matched.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: I agree. So I've said this quite a few times. But the, so the online events, I don't thrive with those. No, because I can do a presentation on them, but don't ask me to watch them, because I can't. I just can't. I get no feedback, I get no energy.
It's all an energy drain for me. I for one, need that direct contact.
I don't consider myself an extrovert, but I'm a very comfortable introvert. Meaning for some people I come across as an extrovert, but I'm not. It's more of a, like, after a wordcamp, I'll go crash for a week and just don't talk to anybody. I need that. But that week or weekend or whatever, I interact with folks because I like that, because that's how I learn stuff, learn people, learn new things and all of that.
That to me was the biggest thing I missed during the blip. I also just come to realize that I'm the exception because most people, like you just said, are you like, you know, it was a big deal for us to get out of there and be at these events and, you know, two years of no events kind of make me want to never go to event again.
I mean, I see that happening. We've organized two workham Netherlands here, this, no, sorry, last year and the year before.
I don't think I've seen.
[00:45:51] Speaker B: A lot.
[00:45:51] Speaker A: Of the old familiar faces, the ones we would see. So the last workem Netherlands we organized was 2015, 2016, I forget. But that was a very different crowd. Like, very different crowd. And it's. And it kind of feels like we're rebuilding, but it's all, it's, for some reason already in a different direction. No intent in that to do that, but that is what's happening. I've seen it to work camps back to back now where I go, like, huh. Very different crowd. Yes, there is some familiar faces, but certainly not as familiar as a couple of years back.
[00:46:28] Speaker B: Short, you think.
What do you attribute that to, besides the blip? So.
[00:46:34] Speaker A: Well, I think that is a large factor, being kind of forced out of your comfort zone. And then once you don't have to anymore, you're not going to go through the whole, oh, I need to break myself out of my comfort zone again. I think that is a very large portion. I also think there's some sort of fatigue going on.
I think there's the interest. I wonder if the beginner group is as curious as they were five years ago.
The more experienced people they are, and you'll see them, maybe not all the we've had in the Netherlands, we've had quite a few work camps from 2016 to 2019 that was forced upon us because we needed to see if the diversification of Workham. Netherlands were a super tiny, small country, but they asked us to do city based, which makes no sense in our context. For reference, the Netherlands is about the size of New York City.
[00:47:38] Speaker B: I've seen them. I've seen them. Yeah, it's a little bigger than that.
[00:47:42] Speaker A: But no, I mean, maybe New York, but the US is almost 230 times larger, just for good measure.
So we certainly have fatigue.
I hear the same thing from community members in Germany, France. Who else did I speak to? So I think that is something that is happening across the board, and the rest really is kind of a guess for me. I don't really know. We're not doing exit interviews.
We're not constantly communicating with the people subscribed to our meetup groups. There's no newsletters going to them, there's no questionnaires and stuff like that. So there's a lot of information we just don't know. So I have to kind of fall back to the first two reasons as sure that the things that I see and I know that, that are just contributing to folks not joining as much as they previously did.
[00:48:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I hear you. And I wonder if we need to change the approach for the smaller word camps.
It seems like we've kind of just restarted things as they were before.
[00:48:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Without realizing nothing was like before.
[00:49:02] Speaker B: I mean, you know, I mean, it's so weird to think about 2020 and 2021, and I feel like I blanked a lot of things out.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: I'm calling it a blip for a reason. You and I met in 2019. Yes. Now, consciously, we know that's five years, but does it feel like five years?
[00:49:21] Speaker B: Maybe like 20?
[00:49:22] Speaker A: Yeah, but whatever happened during the blip, there's a. There's a time distortion going on. I don't know. I can't put my finger on where it is, but something changed.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: What?
[00:49:32] Speaker A: And I hear this from a lot of people that the.
How they experience time over the last blip period is just different. They don't, like, they need to calculate better, like, 2019. How long is that? So they need to think about it.
Like, you can go like, three holidays ago, which is three summer holidays ago, which would. Oh, that is.
Okay.
[00:50:00] Speaker B: You need.
[00:50:00] Speaker A: It's not an automatic given because a lot of folks didn't go on vacation because, you know, lockdown and weird stuff.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: I wonder how much the change. So one of the big changes, right. That happened is everybody started working from home because of the. During the blip, and now we're seeing some return to the office work happening. But for a large percentage of people, they're still working from home. And I wonder if we need to take that into consideration when we're planning these events and understanding that when people worked in an office, they would see all these people, and then they were like, hey, let's go to Wardcamp Phoenix this weekend or something like that.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: That is maybe that as well, you know?
[00:50:52] Speaker B: And now that we're all remote, you know, I know personally, like, I just don't have, like, yeah, we have slack. Sure, I can. I can type and put pictures into slack and stuff, but it's not the same as just sitting at the water cooler or, you know, a cafeteria or whatever and just being like, hey, what are you doing this weekend? And so I wonder if there's an adjustment we need to make there in terms of promoting these events. And then when we're at these events, do we need to change something to the structure?
I don't know. I'm throwing this stuff out there. I don't necessarily.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: We did make a change to the Wercam Netherlands structure.
We had longer breaks. Like, the default break between atalk was already longer. The lunch break was very much longer. And on the second day, we had, like a whole section, like a session section that we didn't plan anything consciously. Like we said, we're not going to. So we had lunch, we had two talks, and then we had another break, and then we had another.
Just so people could mingle again, just so people could have a different type of experience, not feeling rushed to the next talk, get to know each other better. And we saw it because we had a large foyer. We saw the conversations happening, like, okay, this is what we wanted, right? So people just kept interacting. And I think that is a great thing to add to any work camp. If anybody listening is organizing them, taking the pressure off sort of type approach, it really worked well. We got a lot of positive feedback on that as well. Like, it felt nice to. Not being rushed into the next session. Like, we. We could use more time to talk about the previous session, get to know the person you're talking to, learn new people. All of that just made it easier. So I think that spot on observation on your end. Oh, thank you.
[00:52:50] Speaker B: Thank you. Yeah, no, I think that's great. I think the more breaks, that is definitely something that happens where you almost feel like you're back in university. Right? Like oh, shoot. You know, this class, I need to get to the next class.
[00:53:05] Speaker A: Yeah, kind of.
[00:53:06] Speaker B: And so having more time and really building in that, you know, they call what the hallway track. Right? Like my favorite.
It's great. I like it a lot.
[00:53:18] Speaker A: So I want to end on a very positive note. This is supposed, this is technically already positive, but I.
You see WordPress from a multitude of different facets, right? You use it, you build sites with it, you sell the hosting. You have a very broad perspective on what WordPress is, what it does, how it's helping people. What are you most excited about for where WordPress is going? And feel free to say, replace that with WordPress with WordPress community or WordPress project. Whatever. Whatever tickles your fancy. But what are you excited about for the future happening?
[00:54:01] Speaker B: Honestly, I'm really excited about word camps, like fully back into flow. I know it's been a couple of years that they've been happening again, but this, I mean, for me specifically this year, I'm going to go to a whole bunch. I did. Phoenix, New Jersey is coming up. It looks like I'm green lighted to go there. Looks like I'll be coming to Wordcamp EU.
I want to work camp a. I don't know if you've picked up on that.
[00:54:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:54:31] Speaker B: I love it. I love that they did that with acronym. So awesome. And if anybody doesn't know what I'm talking about, that's Wordcamp Canada.
[00:54:38] Speaker A: James did a wonderful post on WP Tavern introducing the whole, not just there's a Wordcamp Canada now happening, but like the whole why we're different and they are Canadians and Americans.
[00:54:53] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. No. So I'm excited about. I'm really excited to just get out and meet everybody, you know, people that I know, like yourself and then new people. And it's just always fascinating. Every time I go to a word camp, year we met in 2019, I went to, I think, three word camp here, Atlanta, us and Seattle. And each one there were so many unique conversations that I would have never had about WordPress, about the industry that, I mean, immediately I'm like, okay, yeah, there's value in going to these things. So I'm really excited about that. At the end of the day, WordPress is all about the community. Literally. The open source project is completely dependent on volunteers.
But what I think is exciting that non developers and non technical people need to understand is there's a place for them in the WordPress community as well, whether it's helping with documentation, translations, you know, a ton of non technical things coming to events and encouraging people, encouraging their friends to come to the events. Yep. And learn more about WordPress and how to use it and extend in just all these amazing things. So, absolutely the community side.
[00:56:16] Speaker A: Excellent. That is a very positive note. And thank you for that. Thank you for this conversation.
[00:56:21] Speaker B: You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
[00:56:23] Speaker A: Certainly. And I look forward to shaking your hand. Well, probably give you a hug if you. If you'll let me. Yeah. In Torino.
[00:56:34] Speaker B: Yes, yes. I'm excited. I'm starting to already dig into the city and, like, learning about it. I think I'm going to start writing some posts about the city and so that when people come to the event, there's a lot of stuff to do. I think that's the other exciting thing about these events, is it allows you the opportunity to travel to some place you may have not gone and give you that cornerstone of WordPress to fall back on. Right. If you're not sure what to do, you've got the word camp, but oh, my goodness, there's, you know, these amazing cities.
[00:57:08] Speaker A: So much more to discover. Yeah.
Agreed. So on that, on that note, see you soon, my friend. Absolutely.
