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Birgit Pauli-Haack started building websites in 1996 and runs Pauli Systems, a web development agency since 2002. Apart from building web apps for small business and nonprofits, she contributes to the WordPress project as Community Deputy and on the Documentation team. For the last three years, she also curates news and community contributions about the WordPress block editor on the Gutenberg Times website and is a co-host on the Gutenberg Changelog podcast with Mark Uraine, design lead for the Block editor. Birgit is a native German. When not in front of a computer, she runs, plays tennis, or hangs out with friends. She and her husband of 28 years love to travel and visit city art museums Twitter: @bphSlack: @bphTeams: Community, Documentation, Core, MetaWebsite: https://gutenbergtimes.com/Gutenberg Times Podcast: https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/Favourite Wapuu: Community Wapuu Links Apply to be a guest or nominate someone Follow the podcast on Twitter Subscribe in iTunes/Apple Podcasts or in your favourite podcast app The post Episode 12: Birgit Pauli-Haack appeared first on Christina Workman.

Adam Warner builds communities and connections. He is a true WordPress software evangelist in spirit and personality. Today, he is the Global Field Marketing Sr. Manager for GoDaddy, bringing his experience and knowledge of the web and online business to the WordPress community. Adam is also passionate about his family, robots, and of course Life, the Universe and Everything. Twitter: @wpmodderSlack: awarner20Team: CommunityWebsite: https://adamwwarner.comWebsite: https://godaddy.com/proGoDaddy Pro Community: https://www.godaddy.com/events/wordcampFavourite Wapuus: GoDaddy WCUS 2019 editions, Gravity Forms Astronaut Moon Wapuu, Spex Transcript Click here to open transcript Christina: Hello and thanks for listening to wp_contribute. Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Adam Warner. Adam builds communities and connections. He’s a true WordPress software evangelist in spirit and personality. Today, he’s the Global Field Marketing Senior Manager for GoDaddy bringing his experience and knowledge of the web and online business to the WordPress community. Adam is also passionate about his family, robots, and of course Life, the Universe and Everything. Welcome, Adam! Adam: Thank you very much! Happy to be here. Christina: So, Global Field Marketing Senior Manager for GoDaddy, please explain for those of us who need to understand that better. Unknown SpeakerYes, that’s a quite a long title. But what that translates to is I am the one who is managing all of the events in the WordPress space and the WordCamp space and the WordPress specific event space, which aren’t WordCamps. Also managing our WordPress global sponsorship that we do for the last six years. Deciding what events to go to in person when we went in person deciding what, how we’ll staff what we’ll do there. All of that stuff. Christina: Excellent. And speaking of in person events and how they are no longer currently happening, there have been a couple of online events already and GoDaddy has been participating in those. Right? Adam: That is correct. So I am on the GoDaddy Pro team and as sponsors we are, we’re sponsoring under the GoDaddy Pro brand. And then since February when WordCamp Asia was postponed, as we know that was the start of the domino effect for all of the events. We, I had done such a great job of utilizing my time after WordCamp US last year, up until WordCamp Asia, we scrambled to put that one together, and then planned out six or seven different events, fully staffed, travel booked, everything and then everything changed. So it took until let’s see what was the day it was WordCamp San Antonio was the first official WordCamp to go virtual. And we participated. We had a virtual sponsor booth via a Zoom Room link that we supplied to organizers. No one knew how this was going to work or pan out. But it turned out to be pretty fun. We we had a little fun with our with our Zoom Room, we had, I think, four or five people on staff kind of rotating throughout the weekend. We all used the same virtual background, which was our an image of our physical booth. We wore our GoDaddy Pro Makers of the Web t shirts. So we were all very on brand and matching. And the experience was was was was interesting, and it was mostly really great. The conversations that we had with participants who joined the Zoom Room, tended to be a little bit deeper in scale than you would typically get at a physical booth. Because most of the time with a physical booth after registration, you get the big wave of people and people are trying to get through and, and grab some swag from everybody, which is not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. You want to do that first thing to make sure that people don’t run out. And then from there opening remarks and sessions start, and then you know, the ebb and flow of physical events starts. But with the virtual event, people were coming in at all times during sessions, after sessions in between sessions, and if we ended up having more people in the Zoom Room than was conducive to a conversation without interruptions. We could always use zoom breakout room and go have a one on one conversation. So it was it was pretty interesting. Now, compared to a physical physical event, the actual flow of attendees through, to our sponsor booth was less than what we were hoping for. But because San Antonio was a first time event, I think we all learned a few things. And then the second one WordCamp Santa Clarita Valley, organizers change changed things up a little bit where they were mentioning the sponsor zoom booths a little more, so we had a little more traffic and I think attendees were also a little more used to it, and more willing to kind of pop around into different zoom calls and things. So, so far, so good. Since then, there have been a few other virtual events that we’ve done. And it’s interesting that everybody is doing things a little bit differently and we’re all learning together. And but the beauty of it all the silver lining of it all is that everybody from organizers, volunteers, sponsors And even attendees are dead set on making this as best as it can be. Because what we all want at the end of the day is to be together. Christina: Yeah, Adam: it’s the intrinsic human thing. And in this WordPress and WordCamp community specifically, I think it’s even more so than than a typical event. Christina: It’s the way of the WordPress community, right? We strive for greatness. Adam: Yes. In the words of the Mandalorian This is the way Christina: my thought just left my head cuz that’s funny. So teams that you contribute to. Adam: Yes, so my WordPress journey and my my contribution journey has been an interesting one, at least to me. Maybe not to anybody else. But if you’re listening to this podcast, Obviously, you’re interested, I found WordPress in 2005, I was working full time for an audio book publisher, doing phone and web sales and also running a side business, doing photo to DVD memorials, which then I had to have a website for that. So I did and I was updating content there, you know, little 10 second MOV movies and things. And I had heard about this thing called blogging to advertise your business and I had partnered with a local funeral home for this business. So my thinking was, well, I need to franchise this. So I need to get the word out that this exists. And maybe I can do remote stuff. And I found WordPress. After testing out a few different platforms, started learning about it have started interacting in the wordpress.org forums. Learned so much from so many people all around the world. It was it was quite amazing to me and reminded me of my my experience back in the mid 90s when I first saw a bulletin board system, and I was chatting with people from all over the world, so I was hooked. And I started to give back into the forums and answering questions because I had asked so much. It was almost, I guess I almost felt guilty that I was taking and not giving. But also Maybe it was because I learned about the open source software philosophy of, you know, many hands make light work, and we should all give back in any way we can. So that was the way I could get back was answering questions on the forum. And then I started writing WordPress tutorials. And putting those out, blogging those for free. And then fast forward to 2016. I had given a couple of WordCamp talks, but I started working full time as a community evangelist Which I don’t like that title anymore. But that was the kind of the first title that that existed in our space for a different brand, which brought me to many a WordCamp. And also provided me the ability to do a lot of speaking sessions. So most of my contributions, I would say, our community based are in the community. Christina: Right So you got a start in support, which is common for quite a few people, I think. Adam: Yeah, I think that it makes sense, right? It Christina: Yeah. Adam: People who knew more than me, helped me so why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I? Christina: Yeah, it’s sort of the epitome of the WordPress community spirit. That’s how a lot of us think from what I’ve seen. Adam: Yeah. Christina: Nice. So I guess your contributor origin story, you kind of just told us as well right starting off with the support and Sort of the progression of how everything is carried on for you. What would you say is your proudest contribution so far? Adam: Oh boy. Well, in 2011, I was working full time for an HVAC manufacturer, I had taken on their HTML website and moved it to a WordPress multi site installation and started to grow that but I was working in WordPress full time, every single day for this for this company. And in 2011, I ran into having to having the need to have custom plugins created for this platform that I had built. And I had tried to be a theme designer back in the day and learned that my design skills are non existent. No one wanted to use my themes. I had tried to be a plugin developer and white screen of deathed many sites. So I was on the Gravity Forms forum. And I was trying to create this Gravity Forms extension and was running into trouble. So I was asking people on the forums, this guy named Brad helped me out and I said, Can I just you know, can we just work together and get this done? We did. And then we kept the conversation going. I said, Hey, Brad, I have all these ideas for these plugins. And obviously, you’re a developer I’m not Would you like to partner up so in 2011, we partnered up and released a plugin called FooBox, which was a an image lightbox plugin. And the whole idea behind it was when an image opened up in the light bl light box. Then you could append social sharing icons on to that image, that’s it. So we released that for free in the.org repo. And that was the beginning of my proudest moment of giving back and contributing was being able to provide not being a developer provide a free plugin for use. So between that FooBox and then there’s a Foo Gallery plugin, and I’m no longer involved with Foo Plugins. We started this, wellI fast forwarded there didn’t I? So, long story short, Brad and I created an and team created a few plugins FooBox and Foo Gallery, the two most popular there’s a few hundred thousand installs of each. And that’s pretty proud to be able to be part of a team that gives back a useful plugin and tool for other people to use but whether they’re just getting started with WordPress or they’re full on agency level hardcore developers that need a fast solution, Christina: Right. And those plugins still exist in the repo? Adam: Yes, those plugins still exist. I think they go first submission was in the.org repo was in 2012, I think. But I left a Foo Plugins, the company we had started shortly before I came on with GoDaddy about a year and a half ago. Christina: Okay. And you said that was sort of the beginning part of your proudest moment. Is there. Another piece there? Adam: Hmm. Not so much. Just the fact that I was able to be part of, again, a team that created a solution that a lot of other people use, but I think my my proudest contribution would be my community work. I’m very cognizant of the fact that community means more than just showing up. It means mostly to me, it means listening. It means listening to individual people within the community, or at any event or even outside of, you know, quote unquote, the community. Christina: Right. Adam: And, and translating those the needs of those people that they’re communicating and in terms of building websites and solutions, listening to those and translating those back into actual products for people to use. So I think I don’t think I know that my proudest moment is contributing to the community and, and hopefully making it better and more inclusive of all people of all ilks and backgrounds. Yeah, Christina: excellent. And I can say from experience that you definitely do make people feel included. Adam: Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate that. That means more than you know. Christina: Happy to say it. I don’t think I checked. You are in Florida. Am I right with that? Adam: I am, yes. Christina: Okay. And what area of Florida are you? Adam: I am in Orlando now I’m originally from Michigan from West Michigan. I moved to Florida in 2002. Okay. And spent a couple of years there had some family stuff happen actually, it was the I’ve told this story before so forgive me if you’ve already heard it. But the reason I moved back to Michigan one of the reasons were, was well, the main reason was that my brother passed away. So I moved back to be with family and that was the the impetus of the photo to DVD Memorial business. So I had made one for his funeral. Family liked it. I started making copies, funeral director etc, etc. So we’re talking about silver linings. Christina: Yeah, Adam: there is always a silver lining in anything. And if I if he wouldn’t have passed away, and I wouldn’t have made that DVD for his funeral, I wouldn’t have had the website for this business, which I wouldn’t have found WordPress. Christina: Yeah. Adam: Or maybe I would have but not in the Christina: a different way Adam: the way I did. Yeah, Christina: yeah. I have fun trasing all those little connections in my life as well on how things affect different things. And absolutely, there’s always a silver lining you just, it may not be obvious right away. But it’s there. . Adam: Yeah And that’s I have a talk where it’s loosely titled, well, it’s titled WordPress from passion to profession. But in that talk, I talk about the moments that matter and looking back Of course, hindsight is always 20/20 I look at all these kind of at the time, they didn’t seem pivotal at all, but these these moments that that turned out to be pivotal in my path to finding my way in with the software and with this community and and life really. Christina: Yeah. Adam: So WordPress has been with me for a long time, and I intend to stay with it for as long as I can. Christina: That’s good to hear. Have you ever been to a contributor day in all of your WordCamp dealings and outside of WordCamp Adam: interesting story. So I feel as though I am a contributor to the WordPress project, through my support forum through providing plugins through my community work, and I have been to several contributor days, but I’ve never actually sat down with with my laptop and contributed, and the reason there are reasons for this, Christina: and that’s okay. Adam: Well, thank you. I appreciate that Christina: as an organizer of contributor days, I still think that that is valid. I’ll let you tell your story, but I’m sure it’s still a valid form of contributing. Adam: Well, I hope so. And thank you for saying that because I do have a fair amount of guilt and quite frankly, imposter syndrome about that very subject. So, I’ll, I’ll just give you an example of a typical event schedule when we were at physical events. So you I arrived the day early, make sure all of our booth and swag and stuff shows up. I’m up typically at 5am every day, going to set up the booth and standing on your feet all day for two days, two full days in a row. If contributor day’s is the third day, and then contributor day happens and I am exhausted from an entire weekend from traveling. And I typically always show up at contributor day but what happens is I end up having conversations with people and the hallway track is where you’ll find me. And it’s not because I don’t want to, you know, sit down on a marketing team or community team and actually contribute in that way. It’s that there are typically a lot of follow up conversations that need to happen after having talked to attendees and organizers and things throughout an event. But to be quite honest, it’s also it’s, it’s a little less responsibility for me because I had been at this location at this time to make sure we were set up for this and you know, all of this very rigid scheduling. I like to have a bit of a break and a free flow after an event for sure. Christina: I think that’s fair. And absolutely, you know, having organized, being part of the organizing team for WordCamp US and as the contributor day organizer, one of them part of that team. That is a long event, when you’re involved in it from the back end, right, which as a sponsor imagine, well, you all you do you like as a sponsor as well, is what I’m saying because yeah, we’re all there. You know, we have those responsibilities, and so brains turn to mush by the end. But I think that there is a lot of value in that hallway track, as you call it, which I’ve never really thought about contributor day is having a hallway track, but it absolutely does. And those conversations that happen outside of sitting down at the various different team tables and participating in whatever their projects are for the day. Those conversations still result in people growing, doing new things, new initiatives sometimes come out of those. So that’s still growing the community growing the project, which, to me is what contributing is all about whether you’re on an official team or not. So that’s why I say there’s still absolutely value in what you’re doing and it still counts as contributing. Adam: Well, I appreciate that so much. And, you know, another part of this is that I have the part that doesn’t make me feel guilty and that doesn’t give me imposter syndrome is that I do feel we are contributing because I am encouraging our team and our staff. I mean, if you look at the wordpress.org, Five for the Future and look, look up GoDaddy. You will see many many people within the company who contribute to WordPress in various ways. And if I can help facilitate the growth of the contributor world by asking our staff, hey, contributor days happening, we would love for you to to be involved in that and then just let them know to pick and choose where they want to be. So facilitating that, I think is important to encouraging people to do that. And then on the flip side, well, not on the flip side, but in addition to that, we are always very active on Twitter during events. So we are promoting contributor day to attendees who may have never heard of one don’t know what it is always touting the “you don’t need to be a developer to contribute” mantra, because it’s so important. So yeah, Christina: exactly. And I think there’s also value just to having representatives from the sponsors at contributor day as well showing that the sponsors don’t just care about the time that they have their booth set up. Adam: Sure. I think we’ve seen that I think probably Christina: Yeah, Adam: we’ve we’ve seen sponsors swoop in five minutes before the event starts and then as soon as it’s over or before sometimes they’re they’re out of there and and to me, you know, to each their own but there’s not real community value in that. It’s it’s, it’s that’s typical sales and marketing trade show line of thinking which in an open source community and in the WordPress community specifically. That doesn’t work. Christina: It’s like in in the movie Office Space, those sponsors only have the seven pieces of flair. They’re not putting the extra flair efforts in. Adam: That’s Right. And and I mean it, you know what it It shows. To me it signals a lack of authenticity, which I think authenticity is probably the most important thing in building any community or being involved in any community. And along with that vulnerability, being able to say this is where my limitation is and which really has nothing to do with what we’re talking about… Christina: We go off and all kinds of tangents it’s all good. All, good. Let’s see. you’ve answered a lot of my questions all at the same time. So I got to go through my list and see where we’re at. I’m gonna ask you, although you’ve kind of already answered this, but in case it’s changed from your origin story, Why do you contribute these days? Adam: Why do I contribute? I would say it’s a few different reasons. The first one is completely and utterly selfish. And that is I want this software and the software project in this community to continue to exist. Christina: Nice. Adam: And I want to continue to be a part of it and exist within it. Okay, so let’s be honest, that’s why. I mean that that really is one of the major reasons because I have found so much personal value in it. But aside from that selfish reason, looking at the larger scope of I’m going to bring it all the way to the human experience. Anything that exists that pulls people together rather than pushes them apart is something I want to be a part of. And something I want to continue to exist and to grow and to. And to morph into, into iterate to in my furniture, manufacturing days continuous improvement. And that really comes into play quite a bit. Christina: Nice. I like that. Christina: Okay. Good! Christina: And I would even. I even kind of want to say I don’t think your selfish reason is entirely selfish. But Adam: well, if you can see it from both ways, right? Christina: Yeah. Absolutely Adam: Essentially, I would love for this. You know, Christina: you want it to be around for you for your reasons. Yeah Adam: but but I want it to be around for all the reasons in why The WordPress software project is so valuable and that is, again, because it brings people together. And I think we have a long way to go to make this a truly inclusive experience but like anything in life, it’s very, very difficult to do that. But I think as a community, we’re, we’re, we’re miles ahead of where other projects may be Christina: I think so. I think we have some pretty amazing people in our community. Adam: That is true, including you, Christina: and you. Adam: All right, now that we propped each other up Christina: all right, Yay us. Um, do you have any advice for people who are wanting to contribute? What maybe Is there like a pep talk you give to Team staff team members that if they’re feeling kind of not so sure Adam: Yeah, again with, you know, the easy answer is continuing to communicate that you do not need to be a developer, you do not need to be a designer. You do not need to be a marketer, you don’t need to be a writer. You don’t need to be a polyglot, you don’t need to be any of the contribution teams definition of a contributor. If you are someone who wants to spread the value of the software in this community in some way, then you are a contributor and that you are valuable and that your just showing up to a contributor day just showing up to any of the number of community team recurring meetings. Even if you’re only observing and learning is contributing. And so that and then also, as individual people, I really focus on trying to trying to have people realize their own personal value. Right. And we we all deal with self doubt and imposter syndrome and a bunch of different ways and, and I’ve just recently as a matter of fact, had to recognize that I had hit an emotional and physical wall with the amount of tasks I was doing the workload, the teaching our children now at home, working the weird hours, but becoming physically and emotionally unhealthy and then recognizing that, that I needed to take a break. So I just took a week off of work in the midst of a lot of chaos, but the point in communicating that to you Is that when we’re at events and the people that I work with and who are who are working within the community and staffing, our, our booths, I, I really, my, I don’t know how to say this, I’m going around the circles. My goal not just within WordPress and community, but in life is to try and help every person recognize some part, at least of their value of their personal value. And I think maybe a lot of this comes from when my brother passed away, he committed suicide. So he had, and he was 34. And he had been dealing with the ups and downs of mental illness since he was 16. So I think maybe part of that comes from that experience that I had as a very close observer, and a very close supporter of someone who had a lot of self doubt. So yeah, I don’t know if that answers the question, but There we are. Christina: Yeah. Excellent. So and I fully agree with that, that you don’t, you don’t need to be any thing in particular and I air quoted thing there for people who can’t see, but whoever you are, whatever you are, there’s a role for you in community. I mean, we need testers and users and because every part of the WordPress ecosystem, if you will, is influenced by how we contribute. And so if you’re even just a visitor to a website, you know, what, how you want to use a website and can help provide information and user testing, right, like, there’s there’s no end to ways that people can contribute. Adam: Yeah, and you know, just jumping off of that for a moment when I was talking about my my trying to be a designer of the theme creator Trying to be a plugin developer and failing epically. And then having this moment where I, you know, who am I in this space before I found while I can contribute back with with knowledge and tutorials and things, it was around that time or maybe it was probably after Tom McFarlin coined the phrase Implementer. And previous to him coining that phrase Implementer as a description of someone using WordPress, I had called myself a web solutions architect, which thinking back now it sounds, I’m embarrassed, but when he came up with the term Implementer it really fit very well because being in the space and knowing you know, what, what the latest theme frameworks were the latest plugins and these kinds of things, being able to to be aware of those things and put those pieces together. It made complete sense and I was an implementer I would implement certain tools. So even if you’re you’re listening to this and you’re feeling like, you’re still feeling like you can’t contribute, please push those thoughts out of your head and just get involved in any way you can. Christina: Yeah. Reach out to one of us if you need to Adam: there you go, absolutely Christina: need a friend in the space. Adam: Absolutely. Christina: Awesome. All right. Is there anything else about contributions that you want to talk about that we haven’t talked about? I think we’ve covered… Adam: Well, now, I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I do think it’s, it’s important to note the Five for the Future initiative. And in short, that is a request from Matt Mullenweg to companies utilizing WordPress the software to contribute back to the project or the community with 5 percent of their time. And there are some great companies doing that. WebDevStudios is one. GoDaddy is another. Bluehost is another. And there are, there are many others that contribute back from a company and a corporate level. Christina: Right. Adam: And I think that other companies could benefit from doing the same. Not only do you benefit, obviously you get a little, you know, pat on the back, hey, we contribute to the software. But what it does is it gets you closer to the project closer to the community closer to the decisions that are being being made on a daily basis about the changes that are happening, most recently, the WordPress editor and Christina: right Adam: it’s just happening there or that have happened there. So I would just add that If you’re listening to this, and if you work for an agency, or any company that isn’t actively contributing to WordPress, suggest Five for the Future. Christina: Yeah, and there’s just like contributing itself. There are a variety of ways for that to be implemented. Right. So it doesn’t have to be a fixed way that doesn’t work for your company. You know, like, I know some companies do, where they have people who are specifically designated their jobs are to contribute and be part of that Five for the Future. At WebDevStudios we do Five for the Future Fridays, so the last currently the last Friday of every month, we all contribute somehow we spend that whole day contributing. Adam: And I love seeing those those those tweets. Christina: Yeah. Adam: Because what it what it usually is, is that someone is tweeting that they’re working on their Five for the Future Friday. And they’re working on learning something new, or implementing something new. And Christina: yeah. Also valuable. Adam: And like you said, companies like GoDaddy actually have people on staff that they’ve hired specifically to contribute to the software. Christina: Yeah. Adam: Which is great. Christina: I think it’s amazing. And so yeah, and and even if you are an individual, you can still play along at home. Adam: That’s right. You can. Christina: And I know we do like, because we use the hashtag on Twitter. 5FTF. Yeah. And we encourage people to join us on our Five for the Future Fridays. Adam: So if you’re listening to this, look up that hashtag on Twitter. You’ll see some fun stuff. Christina: Yeah. Excellent. All right. My favorite question of the episode. I don’t know why I get so excited about this every time but really, you know what, I need to have like a little intro. Adam: Yes a little kazoo. Christina: That’s next on my list. Which Wapuu is your favorites? Adam: Well, I’m glad that you gave me a little lead time on this question. Adam: Because I have a few favorites. Christina: All right. Lay ’em on me. Adam: Okay. So I’m going to tow the company line here a moment. There are several GoDaddy Wapuus. The most recent ones were at WordCamp US last year. We had developer designer, agency and maker of the web, maker of the web…there’s the fifth one, I can’t remember. But we had those pins made and those turned out really nice. I was very proud of that. But I think long term, there are two that jumped out at me and for different reasons. One is the Gravity Forms Astronaut Moon Wapuu. Okay, and I’d like him because I am a definite space nerd. I like all things space, space travel. And that Wapuu has a spacesuit on. And he’s holding a moon. So very nice there. And then the second would be from Green Geeks, their official Wapuu named Spex, and he’s a bit of a nerdy Wapuu. He’s green, with dark glasses with a little tape in the middle and a pocket protector. And the reason I like him other than he’s pretty unique looking, is that Green Geeks have focused over the past year or so on providing children’s size t shirts at their booth. And so, my two boys six and eight have a few different Spex Wapuu t shirts that I enjoy seeing when they’re running around the house. When I’m not able to be with my WordPress people. Christina: Yeah, that’s nice and can I just say I love and I’ve noticed this before not just in you mentioning the Green Geeks and Spex and that I love that the sponsors within our community don’t treat each other like rivals. Christina: Hmm. Christina: From what I’ve seen, you know, like I’ve at WordCamp US. I remember seeing Green Geeks people wearing the GoDaddy hats and GoDaddy was wearing something Green, GoDaddy and Green Geeks especially I think but but I’ve seen it among other other sponsors as well, even when they’re sponsors in sort of the same. I’m going to say general space because I know that there’s absolutely differences in in the hosting that each company provides. But at its core, Green Geeks and GoDaddy are both hosting companies. Adam: Yeah, you know, I’m really Christina: But you all get along. Adam: Yeah, and I’m happy you brought that up. Because, you know, from my perspective, I’m a community member first. Now I’m a sponsor representative. You know, and that is something that we have heard multiple times from attendees new to WordCamps Actually, I it’s so interesting to see all the different hosts here all getting along, as if they were expecting us to be, you know, mean to each other or pulling pranks on each other. Well, we do pull pranks. Christina: Yeah. But that’s part of the fun. Adam: But listen, you know, we’re, we’re all people, right? And there that’s goes along with the open source philosophy and I think the WordPress philosophy in and of itself is that there’s no need to, to push any one person or any brand or anything down in order to rise up. This truly is the, you know, cliche, a rising tide raises all ships. So it’s typical that I’ll be commiseratiing with Bluehost or Green Geeks and you know, the people that are making decisions there and talking about some of the challenges and hurdles that we all face and brainstorming ideas and how we might, you know, surpass those things. And it’s a very collaborative experience. There. It’s funny though, because we are all friends and you you have this collaborative experience, but there always comes a point where, where you have to just you have to hold back that one great idea that you have, Christina: right Adam: that you know, that others could implement in an instant. But No, I’m just kidding. But not really. But it does happen. But it’s not. It’s not typical. So yeah, that is something really interesting and, and I think important to point out in the community. Christina: Yeah. Again, I love our community. I can’t say it enough. Adam: I I truly I don’t know where I would be without WordPress the software. I know where I would be without WordPress, the community. And that would be a much more narrow minded person, I think. I mean, that’s kind of a dig on myself because I’ve always prided myself as being an open minded person, but getting involved with the community and interacting with people from all over the world has really helped shape my my view of the world over the last 15 years. It’s been really, really important. Christina: Excellent. So speaking of community if somebody wants to be part of your community, how can people find you online? Adam: Well, these days I am most active on Twitter. My handle is @wpmodder That’s w p m o d d e r. And it’s a terrible name that I wish I would have chosen differently but it stood for WordPress modifier or modification because I was modifying WordPress in the early days. Christina: I thought maybe you were a moderator Adam: No, but maybe I should start telling that story. Now, so wpmodder on Twitter. And then I believe we’ll have a link to the GoDaddy Pro Community WordCamp landing page on this episode, but yeah, those two places are the best place to find me. And my DMS are open. So if you have anything that you want to discuss, WordPress related, human connection related, community related, please feel free to send me a message. I’m happy to chat with you. Christina: Wonderful. Thanks so much for talking with me today, Adam. It’s been great having you. Adam: Oh, thanks so much for having me. I feel truly honored to be here. Christina: Well, likewise for having you. Thanks. Links Apply to be a guest or nominate someone Follow the podcast on Twitter Subscribe in iTunes/Apple Podcasts or in your favourite podcast app The post Episode 11: Adam Warner appeared first on Christina Workman.

Sandy Edwards is the Youth Event Working Group Leader, which is part of the community team. Sandy is a project manager and developer at her company Data Driven Labs and she has a passion for educating kids and teens in technology, especially WordPress. Twitter: @sunsanddesignSlack: sunsand187Teams: CommunityWebsite: https://sandyedwards.me/Website: https://datadrivenlabs.io/Favourite Wapuu: Sonny Manapuu Transcript Click here to open up transcript (coming soon) Links Apply to be a guest or nominate someone Follow the podcast on Twitter Subscribe in iTunes/Apple Podcasts or in your favourite podcast app The post Episode 10: Sandy Edwards appeared first on Christina Workman.

Bud Kraus is the creator of 2 online WordPress Courses. With over 50 videos he’s helped beginners from around the world learn WordPress at no cost. Bud is a regular at WordPress MeetUps in New York City and Northern New Jersey. He has presented talks on web site security, Gutenberg plugins and local development. In addition to speaking at WordCamps along the Eastern seaboard, he has served as Speaker Wrangler for the past two WordCamps in New York City. When he’s not creating videos for beginners or writing for his WordPress Big 3 newsletter that comes out every Sunday morning he’s building and working on web sites for small businesses and organizations. Twitter: @joyofwpTeams: Community, TrainingWebsite: https://joyofwp.comFavourite Wapuu: Original Wapuu Transcript Click here to open up transcript Christina: Hello, and thanks for listening to WP_contribute. Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Bud Kraus. Bud is the creator of two online WordPress courses. With over 50 videos he’s helped beginners from around the world learn WordPress at no cost. He is a regular at WordPress meetups in New York City and northern New Jersey and has presented talks on website security, Gutenberg plugins, and local development. In addition to speaking at WordCamps along the eastern seaboard, he has served as Speaker Wrangler for the past two WordCamps in New York City. When he’s not creating videos for beginners, or writing for his WordPress Big 3 newsletter that comes out every Sunday morning, he’s building and working on websites for small businesses and organizations. Welcome, Bud! Bud: Christina, thank you very much for having me here. I really appreciate the opportunity. Christina: It’s great to have you. Is there anything else you wanted to add to that as way of introduction? Bud: No, I mean, that pretty much sums up my life over the last couple of years anyway. So that sounded pretty good. Christina: Awesome. So tell me how long have you been contributing to WordPress? Bud: Well, I think it goes back to 2016. And we actually made it a little bit before that. But it was at the point where I realized, hey, there’s this thing called the WordPress community, which I call the best thing about WordPress. And so there wasn’t really any sense of, until you feel that sense of community, you won’t really feel or I didn’t really feel the sense to contribute and to be really blunt about it. Sometimes, it’s just things that I do naturally, I don’t think like I really got to contribute today. It’s just part of being a part of an awesome group of people that are, you know, smart, interesting, funny, and I’m just lucky to feel and be a part of it. Really. Christina: Awesome. That’s great. So you say like, it’s just sort of what you do anyways, you don’t really necessarily think about it. Are there any particular teams that you contribute to? Bud: I can’t really say that I’m good on that score. But what I am pretty good at is being a regular at all the meetups in our area, I certainly show up to one of the meetups and will do presentations and encourage other people to participate, show up, help you know, we have help desks in New York and in the city and in Brooklyn and elsewhere. And I do go to the Help Desk quite a bit and help people with their WordPress problems. So, in that sense, I contribute, but I just feel that it’s for me and I think a lot of other people, it’s just a natural way of doing things to keep to give and you’ll get back. I sort of look at the Matt Mullenweg approach to things which is, you know, he gave away the software and still does and look what happened to him and many people around him so you know, it’s a good it’s a good thing to give you, you will get something back in return one way or the other. Maybe it’s monetary, maybe it’s psychic, whatever it is, you know, if I can say real quick, I really get a kick out of the fact that my videos have been seen in many countries around the world and I always think like, this is really cool. My voice has been heard around the world. And I know that I have such a great voice I understand that. But if I can help, and I have helped people around the world learn WordPress, you’re empowering the new skills that they would otherwise not have a chance to do and I’m doing it for free. And I just like, you know, is that the only reason why I do it? No, I get people. My website is used as a lead generator, I get people to sign up for my newsletter, I get business and get all. But that’s all part of the deal, you know? Christina: Yeah. Bud: So I don’t mind giving away lots of stuff. Again, I look at the Matt Mullenweg model, just give away a lot of stuff and maybe a lot of good stuffs gonna come back to you. Christina: Yeah, and I like to think… Bud: I take a lot of inspiration from that. Christina: That’s, that’s great. And I like to think that when you are having that much impact around the world, like you are with your videos, you are potentially inspiring more people, not just to use WordPress, but then as they start using it and getting to know it in the community anymore, then potentially helping to grow the community of contributors as well, Bud: yeah, I never really thought of it that way. But yes, you, You. I mean, I probably have had some effect on people saying, or getting connected to WordPress in a way that like, you and I are connected to it around the world. So maybe I have. But my primary, because let’s face it, not everybody’s going to have that sense of WordPress, community like we do Christina: sure Bud: And that’s okay, that’s fine. You know, Christina: yeah. Bud: My thing is, you know, I’m an educator, I guess by nature. And if I can help you understand something, so that you can solve a problem to do something to better your life to get ahead to make money, whatever the goal is. Well, that’s all to the good. That makes me happy. Yeah. So that’s my reasons why I do it. Christina: I hear ya. Bud: Yeah. Christina: So let’s talk about you mentioned a bunch of different meetups in and around your local area. You’ve got quite a lot that are considered local to you. So, I know we’ve had Mervin has talked to us a little bit about the New York City ones, um, the help desks that you mentioned and the main sort of main one, I guess what other meetups do you have around you that you want. Bud: One had been really popular and was revived about two or three years ago was the WordPress meetup in Montclair, New Jersey. So Montclair, New Jersey is about 15 miles or so west of New York City. Most of them Montclair it’s sort of economically very diverse. It’s very affluent, and not so affluent and less than not so affluent. And we meet now that meetup or those group, that group actually meets three to four times actually every Monday. They have help desk on one Monday they have a presentation on another Monday they have they have a professionals hangout on another Monday, and then on the fourth Monday, they do Montclair WordCamp meetup I WordCamp Montclair planning so I got about three out of four because I don’t want to be involved in their their WordCamp planning because I do WordCamp New York. So that’s enough. And it’s the nice thing about it is that the guys who, can I mention their names? I don’t see why not. Christina: Yeah, absolutely. Bud: Yeah. I don’t want to mess him up. One is a Cameron I forgot his last name. Mike Auteri and Jason I forgot his last name. Those three guys really came about they too something from the ashes of three or four years ago and really built this up into a very self sustaining meetup where they get a pretty good turnout. Now unfortunately, we the location isn’t very good isn’t really the best location. But people come out and we do our meet up kind of stuff. And the I think the best night of all of them is the help desk. We actually get people this is very interesting, I think from that will travel to this meetup over an hour away an hour and a half away. You know, that’s really interesting. You come from Central New Jersey, they come from Connecticut, they come from all over. Whereas the meetup in New York, they generally are like the five boroughs, you know, or maybe close by New York City like me, in New Jersey. But I think those guys have done a really great job and from from building that meetup, they were able last year to launch their first WordCamp Montclair, in which they got about 150 people to attend. Christina: That’s pretty good. Bud: And they for some reason chose me to speak. And they did was it was fine. I, you know, I had no hand in it. I just applied like everybody else. They said, you know, they picked me, which is nice. Christina: Yeah. Bud: And so yeah, that was the first one but I give those guys a lot of credit because it’s hard to build something like from really Nothing. And now they have a nice little thing going which is really great and also speaks to the fact that this particular part of the United States was really hungering, hungered for this kind of WordPress, experience service, whatever you want to call it. Christina: That’s really great. Yeah. Awesome. You mentioned to me before we started recording about women WordPress meetup group. Bud: Yeah, yes. Don’t let me forget. Winstina Hughes and Lisa Lied. I don’t know if I said her name correctly. L I E D. Particularly Lisa has had a big hand in organizing the WordPress women in WordPress. I’m not exactly sure. But it’s, it’s predominantly and I’ve been to a couple of them. Predominantly designed for women. Although, you know, I guess like I say I show up. I don’t ask if I could show up. I just end up showing up. So far, they haven’t thrown me out. In fact I am. It’s interesting. I am going to be doing a presentation for them in early May called website security for the solopreneur. But it is all going to be online due to the current crisis that we’re in. So I find that a lot of meetups This is we didn’t talk about this before, but a lot of meetups now are turning into of course online. And I am about to reach out to a bunch of them around the country and people that I know and say, Hey, can I present x, y, z? Because when it’s a little bit, of course, the whole the whole meetup experience is local. But when you put anything online, local, the concept of local vanishes. Yes. And so why can’t it be opened up for everybody? So Christina: yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can still have even when we are doing in person, you could still have somebody video conference in but when you have everybody sitting in a room, staring at he screen even though there’s interaction going on, it’s still not quite the same. But yeah, when when we’re all separated and on our own computers anyways, it just feels a little bit easier to bring in people from non local areas. Yeah. Bud: I know, I know. I’m gonna ask if I can do it, but I don’t know. I don’t know. You know, I also like to introduce speakers to some of our meetup leaders here, who I think are going to be really good too. For example, in April, we’re going to have his name is Bhanu. And I don’t know his last name, but one of the founders are cofounders of Rank Math. The new hot SEO plugin. He is going to be speaking to our meetup in New York. But of course, he’s it’s all gonna be online, and he’s going to be doing this from India. So our meetup starts at seven o’clock at night and he will be getting up at 430 in the morning. Christina: Yeah, Bud: To do, to do the presentation. Because, you know, it’s good for his business, but he also is making a contribution. You know, I find it really interesting. Look at all the people that will speak at WordCamp. And they they don’t get paid their expenses unless they work for a company are not getting paid. Yeah, they’re making contributions. You know, I find it inspiring, you know, I mean, I find, so what I know what I’m doing it, I just say, Hey, everybody else is doing it. It’s good. And we all do this, and we don’t do this for commercial gain. But if commercial gain comes your way, that’s good. You know, money’s, okay. Christina: Of course, Bud: you know, but we’re always so careful. And we should be that when we do our presentations, they’re not you know, with all these commercial payloads and commercial messages and stuff like that. Look, if you’re good, people are going to say, hey, I want to hire this person or I want to know more about what this person is or does. Christina: Yeah, Bud: that’s it, Christina: and they get a sense for who you are anyways, right? Bud: You know, and I find the meetup and WordPress community to be a very natural kind of community. You don’t have to, you know, wear suits and ties and be, you know, something that you’re not, you know, Christina: I wish more communities in my world were more like the WordPress community. For so many different reasons, Bud: you know, and I don’t I know what you mean, but since I don’t, and I’m not really tied to thinking if I am to communities, I am to WordPress, you know, I came from a totally different background, because I’m not a kid. So, you know, there was a I had a life before WordPress, and it really wasn’t well suited to me. So I looked back at that and goes, well, thank God. You know, I migrated to the internet when in 1995. I did and thank God WordPress came about because, you know, I mean, I really, my problem is because of my age. I say it was born 20 years too early. What are you going to do so Christina: I can imagine Bud: It happens, you know, and many ways I was born 20 years too early. So Christina: that’s all good, though. Yeah. So you mentioned that you figure you probably started contributing in around 2016. Do you have a particular event or incident that happened that sort of kick started that? Bud: oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. So I think I’m like a lot of people in that I didn’t even know there was a thing called the WordPress community and I was using WordPress and making websites and teaching I did a lot of teaching it. Fashion Institute of Technology Pratt Institute, and stuff like that in the days where I would be in class teaching the good old days but somebody mentioned, or though I actually attended a, my first WordCamp was like in 2009 10 11, something like that. I went to a couple of them in New York. And for some reason, though, this is a long winded answer, but for some reason, in 2016, I applied to speak at a WordCamp New York. And I had really I put, I didn’t have a presentation. I mean, I told him I did, but I didn’t have it done. It was called, oh, this is a great story. I just you never know why I like the story. So it’s called lessons learned as something about teaching. Lessons learned how to teach your best ways to teach your clients WordPress, and it was picked. The purpose of it was to help developers studios, agencies, whatever, talk and teach their clients WordPress, and I had a lot of experience because, you know, being a teacher, I sort of knew all this stuff. And so one of the guys who was who was on the selection committee, just loved the topic. He just thought this was we have to have this as the best thing I ever heard of. I didn’t know that guy, but he and I became very good friends, and he’s no longer involved with the WordPress community all that much. He sort of dropped out deliberately about two years ago, he was a tremendous community builder. He really built community in whatever he did. I mean, it was just, it was just tremendous. And he really took me in. He was one of those, like, early people that just said, Come on to this, and that’s how it all got started for me. So he was one of, you know, community needs magnets like people that aren’t, you’re just attracted to, Christina: yeah, Bud: I got to see XYZ, I’m going to be with XYZ, and he or she is so you know, energetic, enthusiastic, whatever it is. And so he was like one of those kinds of people. And they’re a couple cool things. One or one thing I just like, so I was picked and they told me right away this was for this was a July WordCamp and they told me right away, we’re gonna let you speak at 10 o’clock on Saturday morning. First day of WordCamp I go Oh my God, that’s like prime time. Like, how great is that? That’s when you want to speak. And but a week later, I got an email that said, No, we’re going to change your slot. We’re going to put you on at Sunday at like 330 Oh, who am I going to be talking to? How many empty chairs do you have at Sunday at 330. I mean, I knew enough You know, so I was furious. I wasn’t gonna go I was gonna say I’m not doing this. I did I went I went and if I had done that, oh my god, I my life would have been totally different somehow I got I get coaxed off the ledge and you know came to my senses. And you know, I said okay, I would do it. And then they gave me all the reasons why they decided and I understood why they why they made the change in the time slot. But what was really cool about it or started cool was it was the first only and last time WordCamp will ever be held at the United Nations. Christina: Oh, wow. Bud: So yes, I spoke at the United Nations I actually did. So of course, I had a photo shot of me standing in the General Assembly giving a big speech. And we didn’t talk at the General Assembly. There was there were some conference rooms that we used. The problem with that WordCamp was what was universally. I mean, it was fun. From the standpoint it was a WordCamp, but talk about social distancing. This was social distancing, before there was social distancing. Oh, really, I hear me out here. So the these huge conference rooms now where all these diplomats would gather and talk, and they had these chairs spaced out from each other for whatever reasons of it. And then behind each chair would be your interpreter would sit behind you. Well, I don’t need an interpreter. In a WordCamp, I mean, who needs an interpreter? So, so we’re all really spaced out. So that’s what made it bad. You don’t want to social distancing at WordCamp. Christina: Right. Bud: And so it was really an And not only that the security was insanity. I mean, so you really couldn’t. It just wasn’t a relaxing, fun kind of place. We have we have it now in a place called we’ve had in a place called Convene in midtown, New York, which is perfect. The UN was horrible, but at least I get to say I spoke at the UN. Christina: That’s pretty cool. Bud: That was fun, that was, that was kind of fun. But from that point forward, I from that moment on, I was cemented into the WordPress community in New York City. And from there I just gradually branched out to where last year I spoke at three WordCamps on the east coast and got to know a whole lot more people and been to a couple WordCamp US’s and actually got to was picked to speak at WordCamp DC and WordCamp Chicago this year. We know what happened to those. I applied to speak at WordCamp Kent, Ohio, now, I always wanted to speak at WordCamp Kent because that’s almost near where I grew up. So you know, feel like coming home. But this year, it’s all going to be online. So I don’t have to travel. I could just do it right from where I am now. And we’ll see. Because I used to get really angry. It’s funny when I would apply to speak at WordCamps thing I get picked. I used to get Well, why don’t I get picked? But now I have, like, certain topics that there’s just no way they’re not going to pick me. So if they don’t pick me, it’s all right. It’s all good. I won’t. Generally I won’t go to a WordCamp anymore unless I talk. But that’s because I’ve been to so many of them enough, you know? Christina: Sure. Yeah. Especially if there’s travel involved, right. Bud: Yeah. And I always sort of, it’s now become like highschool reunions. So even though everybody’s most everybody’s younger than me, I still think that’s it’s like a school reunion. And that you don’t spend any more time anymore. The thing about people who have been around in the community is that what I find a negative and I know I’m rambling out here is that I find myself not meeting as many new people anymore. You just see your friends and you talk shop and you do this, you do that or whatever. And then you’re not reaching out anymore. And I’m, I now find myself having to make an effort to do that, because it’s too comfortable to talk to this one and that one so, you know, I want to know what How are you? You? You know, I used to and I still do go up to people. What do you do with WordPress, like, you know, have you been using this for a long time. You know, and away you go before you know it, you know, you can make a new good friend. So, Christina: yeah, and that helps put a lot of people at ease that don’t know people yet too. Bud: I think so you know it. And it’s just so funny. You know, you get the software and you start making websites, you learn about child themes and you have no really idea with this with underneath all of this the community You could be doing this like I did for three or four years until I had a student Tell me Hey Bud, you know about the WordPress meetups in New York City and I was saying what’s that. I went to mine four or five years ago. He’s long gone and I’m a regular. Christina: Yeah. Bud: That’s kind of how I got started. Maybe he’s not there anymore because I am a regular. Who knows. I don’t know. Christina: Do you have a proudest contribution that you’ve made to WordPress or to Bud: a proudest contribution? Hmm, I think I’m gonna fail this question here. Christina: There’s no failing. Bud: Okay. Christina: Anything that you’re proud of? You must be proud of something, Bud: It’s like everybody gets a trophy. All right. I like that idea. Christina: Some are bigger than others. That’s all. Bud: No, but I have to say a long time ago. It was about five years ago. I I broke the ice I stepped into the world of helping out in accessibility you know that make WordPress group accessibility. So I looked at my profile the other day at wordpress.org and it actually said like teaching accessibility whatever. But I find this maybe a little bizarre, I guess. I don’t know precisely where or not, you know, I I’m visually impaired, I’m actually legally blind. And so you think well wouldn’t you be really interested in accessibility? No. I mean, it just doesn’t really interest me Do I think websites should be accessible but do I know a lot about Of course I do. Christina: Right? Bud: But as a thing for me to devote my time and attention to, not really let Rachel Cherry do it. She’s doing a great job. I mean, thows all the people at wp campus they do a great job, they don’t me. So I if I’m not interested, because it’s not something that for whatever reason, it’s just I guess it’s because it’s something I live. Christina: Mm hmm. Bud: So it’s sort of see I’ve always thrown like talking about it I equate this to being like right handed like, I don’t really find it interesting that I’m right handed? Well, I don’t really find it interesting that I’m legally blind. Okay, now I know. Remember before I said, I know topics that I could, you know, so this is a topic that I can apply to when I speak at WordCamps. You know, if I couldn’t ,I want to talk about being legally blind. Oh! We wawnt you to talk about being legally blind. But you know, because because they tell it’s not a coding talk. It’s just about the experience of being legally blind working with WordPress and working with technology. Oh, yeah, we want that. So, um, so I find it to be sort of a dead ringer to get asked to speak. I really don’t want to because I don’t really like it. Christina: Yeah, Bud: I like to talk about things about site security and child themes and stuff, like like everybody else talks about. So Christina: I think that makes sense. And that’s. Bud: It does? Christina: I think so, I’m trying to think of a good analogy, and I don’t really have one, I have some sort of weak ones. I mean, I know. To some extent, sometimes people who spend their day working on a particular thing, whether it’s in marketing, or if it’s development, and they want to contribute back, they don’t want to do the same thing that they do all day long. They want to do something different. Right. So I don’t know if that’s kind of, you know, the same and then I’m trying to think like, I don’t know like, I have I really bad knees. Bud: Okay, Christina: I don’t want to talk to people about what it’s like to have bad knees all day long. Bud: Okay, Christina: right. And the Bud: right Christina: things are the ways that that impacts me like, Sure, I might talk about it, but I don’t want to like, figure out how to really make the world better for me. I want someone else to do that for me because I got to deal with it all the time. Bud: Yeah. It doesn’t really interest you to talk about this. It’s not something you won’t talk about. Christina: Yeah, Bud: that’s the way I feel about my situation. Like, it’s not like I won’t talk about it. But Christina: you’d rather talk about other things. Bud: Yeah. I mean, now, can I I in WordCamp Boston, I had somebody named Eric, I forgot his last name. And he was a really smart guy. He worked at a design studio in Boston, we had a really nice talk about, he knew more about accessibility and vision impairment basically than I did, which I’ve thought was, So if that’s the case, then I will talk. Yeah, but other than that, it’s like, like I say, it’s like talking about being right handed or left handed. Christina: Yeah. And just because you might benefit from like, I don’t know if you use any different tools when you’re navigating the web, but just because you need if you’re using them doesn’t mean that you want to know how to code them so that they work. Bud: Right. And Christina: You just want them to work! Bud: although I may know about the coding behind it, I really don’t care all that much I mean, you know Christina: Yeah. Bud: Well, I have to say, though, one of the cool things that I I know this is a little bit off, but is that one of the great, I think, developments of the 20 or so years, 25 years, that I’ve been involved in this in one way or the other, because I used to teach web design. I used to teach something called accessible web design, in 2000, at Pratt Institute in New York City, and nobody knew what I was talking about. They thought it was out of my mind. Well, that’s just mainstream web design today based on the principles that I talked about. And I knew they were eventually going to be because there was no other way. So it wasn’t like I was making anything up, even though all the designers looked at me like I was mad, you know. I mean, I had an understanding of the medium that they did not understand. And, like, you know, it’s sort of gratifying that I was right. They were wrong. I guess just the way, you know that all the brilliant minds that have dabbled at the Ethan Marcottes and they’re really smart. You know that, you know that I just the Jeffrey Zeldmans, they really brilliant designers and people that I was swimming in their stream when they were too you know, and that was really cool. Christina: Yeah. Bud: Yeah. So I mean, I mean, it’s just because like I said, well, it’s just the nature of the medium that I understood it, Christina: you know? Yeah. Bud: And I think partly because of my situation helped me understand it a little faster than other people. Christina: Right. Bud: Anyway, Christina: fair enough. Bud: I think I went off the beaten path there. Christina: That’s all good. It’s what we do. I yeah, it’s all good. Let’s see, what about Do you have any advice for people who are interested in contributing for the first time to WordPress? Bud: Well, I think if I think really the best, most immediate way that if you want to contribute is go to these meetups, go to the help desks and sit there and help people solve problems because you may not, you know, feel that you’re contributing it. I have to say, I don’t associate myself with a contributor, but you know, I come on now. I mean, I’ve made these courses that took hours to make that’s not contributing. I mean, excuse me, it’s not like Yes, it can. No, it does. But I guess it’s sort of like the blindness thing, I don’t really think of it that way. But from another perspective, Yeah, you do. Anyway, getting back to your question. I think really the best way is you can make some real immediate impact in helping people by going to a help desk and helping them and you know, you could be you don’t have to be coder, okay. I mean, you know, you could be SEO, SEO people, I mean they love you, or SEO, or you could be an expert in or you could have some knowledge on marketing. You know, so many people come to me and say, Can you tell me what’s wrong with my website? You know, why does my website suck? You know, I mean, why? Why doesn’t anybody sign up for my newsletter? Why is you know, odds are they know, sometimes they don’t know. But any, what I’m saying is that if an individual wants to help others, the place to do this is to do it on a real one to one basis, and that is to go to meetups and help them when they have helped us because most cities do seem to have these WordPress meetup help desks and that’s the way to do it. That’s, Christina: yeah, Bud: I like doing it too. You know. I tend to like just talk too much, but I do more talking than help I think. But that’s the way it goes, Christina: That’s Okay. And I’ll throw out too that, you know, being that we have times as they are with all of this social distancing, and all that so many things are going online and a lot of meetups are as well. So if the being in person is an anxiety factor for somebody, now might be a really good time to try to dip your toe in, because you can join virtually instead. Bud: Yeah, but I don’t know how. You know, that’s one of the problems with where things stand today. We can’t do help desks Now, obviously, because if you do help desks, you have to be with people. There’s no way to do this. I don’t think anybody’s figured this out yet. Christina: I think there’s ways maybe some things not so much, but I think there’s still ways to help people. Bud: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, there’s everybody you know, there’s also some people look here, I mean, here’s another thing if you want to, you know, let’s say I was 30 years old. Okay, I am 30 years old. So, and I wanted to get better at public speaking. Well, maybe I would, you know, say I want to do a talk from my local meetup, whether it’s online or it’s in person and hone your skills in, you know, I’ve seen 30 year olds be really good at it. Some that need a little bit more work, but really get good at it. And then before you know, you’re gonna be speaking at WordCamp. Wherever. Christina: Yeah, Bud: maybe I’ll pick you to speak at WordCamp New York, who knows? Christina: Yeah. Bud: So which is a speaking of contributing? Can I say that? I’ve spent a lot of time organizing the speaker side WordCamp New York last year and the year before, and they take a lot of time. These things take up a tremendous amount of they’re big time sucks. Christina: Yeah. For people who don’t know what, what’s involved in being a speaker wrangler for WordCamp, Bud: okay. I guess everyone’s a little different. But you know, our WordCamp’s really big. We get about 400 people, which I think is not big enough, quite frankly. But let’s we do get we got 400 or so the last two years. And we had in last few years, we have over 40 speakers. So in both cases, we had a selection team, I was on the selection, and both. Yeah, both for both years of selection team. But before you get to select it. There’s a whole process, of course, the call for speakers, which is the traditional, where people go to the website, and they apply to speak, and they put in some very brief information like, you know, what’s the title of the topic and describe their description, bio, maybe a couple other things, and if they’re allergic to peanuts, things like that. So, and then they submit the topic. And then, of course, you have this team that selects and it’s a local group, you know, in my case, the last two years because I was a speaker Wrangler, I was the only one who actually would so when you do the voting You have to do it in such a way that it’s blind. You don’t want everybody to know the names of the people who submit. I was the only one that knew. And in the case of last year’s WordCamp, I decided I got sort of like, Bud’s Choices. In other words, I picked 10 people right off the bat. I don’t care like what everybody votes, this is the way I’m going to do it. I know because they’re really good. And there’s no way we’re not going to say no to these people. So they get an automatic buy, right, everybody we have so we have 34 other slides that we voted on. And you know that the trick for me now, and that’s why this would be my last year doing it is I don’t want to pick my friends. Okay, I just I can’t I can’t say no to them. But you know, you know, so that there’s a conflict of interest. So that’s why I’ve sort of this is it for me, all right. But there is a process and every WordCamp works a little bit different how they do their process. I’ve talked to other speaker Wranglers WordCamps, just to see how they do it. I am the Bud way of doing it. And the bottom line though, is you want to make this as fair, unbiased, you want to make it. In our case, you want to have different kinds of talks, you don’t want to have, like 15 talks on, like, one year was GDPR or 15, right? Gutenberg 15 talks on, you know, you really want to spread it out and think about your audience. Or you know, depending on the type of work some WordCamps are like just really developer heavy, which we’re getting pretty developer heavy. So my feeling is to make it broad based. And and then you announce and then as the speaker wrangler, you’re the one that’s gonna send out the email and sort of control the whole process are all the all the communication without the speakers, a lot of speakers have spoken WordCamps in the know the deal, some of them are new. Sometimes you’ll have a, you know, a slack meeting to go over things. You’re just there to and then then the day comes when you have the WordCamp, and it’s the most fun. I just love this because I, I’ve made it my point to make sure I go to each. So we have three speakers at one time, right? And I run around to the different rooms, I thank each speaker for coming, you know, and I address them by their name and all that stuff and try to say, I know you came in from San Diego, thanks for coming whenever it is. Yeah. And just to make them feel extra special that somebody from Word from WordCamp, New York, thanked them for doing this. So that’s my thing. And I really, that is like the most fun so I’m running around like a maniac for a few minutes every hour. And I make sure that we have MCs in every room that read out loud the bio, and, you know, introduce the speaker and try to control the room and the microphones and stuff like that. But I’m sort of like managing all this from you know, high above to make sure it works. And so this will be my third year if all goes well in October. And like I said, that’s it I’m done. I have I just way too connected now to look at to people, you know, and I just, I don’t want to bias this. And I just, you know, that’s it, you know, I can’t do it anymore. But if last year was a lot of fun, because, you know, I’ve sort of perfected the whole process of doing this. And so the amount of time I spent that last year was about a third of what I did the year before, Christina: right Bud: So and this year it’ll be even faster. So I, you know, I know how to do it. But Christina: now, have you documented this for the next person? Bud: No. So that’s why I’m looking for a trainee. And it really cuz Mervin and I talked about, like, we got to find people to replace us this year, for next year, because he doesn’t want to do it, you know, he’ll be done. And I’m done. And the great thing about our team is that we’re very experienced, we, you know, this is for most of us, it’s a second and third WordCamp. So it’s pretty good experience. And that’s not going to go on forever. We’re going to have to find other people to do this. And You can only do it if you’re really into it. If you’re not into it, you know, you this is a real contribution of your time energy. This is you know, these are phone count conversations, emails, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. So again, this is one of those things I know it is a contribution. I just think it’s fun. Christina: Yeah. Bud: And I just think it’s just a blast. So I don’t really think it’s like, you know, when you say the word contribution, sort of has, in a way a negative connotation to me. It’s a burden. And this is not a burden, Christina: right? . This is fun. Yeah, Bud: this comes from the heart. You know, this comes from your love, you know, this is we in New York, you know, we want to put out the best work and we look at all of our attendees and our speakers and our sponsors as like gold, and we want to give them the best possible WordCamp. We work really hard at it. And sometimes, you know, like last year, I think we gave him you know, well I think they’re all pretty good. But you know, I’m too close to it to know. And of course everybody comes up to you. So this is the best WordCamp I ever was at. Christina: Every one is the best one, right? They just they just get better. Bud: Right and no one’s gonna come up to you though, you know, Bud this was terrible. I mean, the speakers were awful this year. You know, they’re not gonna tell me that. So it’s fine. It’s good. It’sit’s interesting in our conversation right now I realize the word contributor has like that. Like a mandatory word to it. I look at it is just turning around for like, joy, you know, and fun and whatever. And it’s not a burden, hardly we are whatever the opposite of burden is. That’s what it is. Christina: That’s what it is. Well, I would hope so. I I would hope that anybody who feels that it’s a burden, what they’re doing, reconsiders what they’re doing and Bud: I agree Christina: Find something that that makes them joyful, right? There’s life’s too short to, to not, Bud: you know, no one’s compelling. You know, I always believe if you’re going to do something, do it all the way, you know, don’t just do it, because somebody else is telling you to do it, if you’re gonna do it because somebody else told you to do this. And this is really all about being a contributor, you’re probably not going to do it. You have to find your own each person has to find your own little I love this, you know, and speaker Wrangler was I never when I when we were at WordCamp. The first one and it was Nashville. And I said to Winstina Hughes, I’m going to be your speaker Wrangler. I want to do this, I always wanted to do this. And I was, you know, and it was fun, and you know, so everybody has to find that little thing where they say, I want to do that and do it. And that’s making a contribution. Although, like I said, I don’t like it. You know, I don’t want to I don’t, I don’t give myself a big pat on the back. You know, all of us. I think people who are in the WordPress community are feel that they’re fortunate to be a part of this. And there’s no reason to give themselves a pat on the back. Hey, enjoy it. You know, this is a really cool thing you and you know it. You know, so? Christina: All right. Here’s a question that I already know the answer to, but I’m still gonna ask it. Bud: Do I know the answer to it? We’ll find out. Christina: Yes. So because I ask it of everybody, have you been to a contributor day or participated in a contributor hour or any other kind of contributor specific event? Be honest, Bud: I I’m going to be 100% honest, I don’t want to even say the answer because you know, I just got an F. Christina: And that’s okay. Bud: Yeah. Well, it has to be. Never, unless you want to stop this right now, Christina: if it wasn’t an okay answer, I wouldn’t have asked the question. Bud: Yeah. I know I know. Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to. You knew the answer. I just never felt for whatever reason. Now, you never know, I’ve never felt the need to go to any contributor day activity or anything like that. For one thing, it’s never been like really convenient. Let’s say if I’m out of town, Christina: right Bud: That’s usually a travel day or I left the day before. Christina: Right Bud: So it should be so that’s one of the that is one of the problems where I don’t go it’s because I’m not there. I left. Christina: Yeah. Bud: If you know, but I know sometimes. You know, they have contributor day let’s say at the end of a day or whatever. We see all kinds of different configurations for it. But there’s never really so like, you know, I’ve never felt. It’s really funny of all the WordPress things I’ve never really felt compelled interested or anything like that, for what it’s worth, maybe this is really instructive because I know that you’re very involved in this. I’ve never felt really motivated. Christina: Right Bud: interested now. This is me. Okay. You know that I don’t speak for everybody hardly, I speak for me. Christina: Yeah. Bud: But if you’re looking to see if you’re looking to expand and draw people in, like a me who’s already engaged to the WordPress community, then then if I’m from your perspective, you have to figure out how do we get good crowds to get motivated, interested to go on contributor day? And I don’t know the answer to that. Christina: We might have some converstaions later Bud: If I did know the answer, I’d probably be going. Christina: I may pick your brain offline later, Bud: okay. What’s left of it, Christina: It’s all good. But that’s, I mean, that’s completely fair. And to your point before too, if If contributing feels like a burden, then you’re not going to contribute in that way. And if and I’m not saying that contributing feels like a burden to you necessarily somebody who maybe that’s, you know, there’s because there are so many other ways to contribute as well. Bud: Yes. Right, Christina: that that just may not be the right way for some people, right. Bud: You know, and maybe if you renamed it something, you know, I don’t know. I mean, maybe that sounds crazy, because it’s always been called contributor day. It’s sort of like, you know, I think I said which is, like, contributor day, I mean, excuse me, I contribute enough. And I’m not complaining, this is no complaint. But what? you know, I mean, my goodness, I mean, I don’t you think I’ve done enough and the answers. I’ve done what I’ve done, and I’m not making I’m not apologizing for it. So maybe the name, the branding and the name needs to be rethought. Just a thought. Christina: That’s it. Good thought that I will continue to have. I’ll think about that. Bud: Well, if I notice in, like two or three years ago, they don’t call contributor day anymore. Mark this day down. Christina: You never know. Bud: You don’t know, Christina: stranger things have happened. Bud: I know. Yeah. Christina: All right. Um, I want to ask you one more thing before we get into the final sort of wrap up questions. Bud: Sure. Christina: Um, just briefly, I heard that you were featured on Hero Press recently. Did you want Bud: Oh, you did now Who told you that? Christina: Oh, I don’t know who told me that. Bud: It was, you know, the beginning of the article starts out saying like, wow, what am I doing here on Hero Press? Because I’m no hero. I heard of Hero Press. I don’t know. It’s like one of these things that sometimes you just don’t know how you heard of it. Christina: Mm hmm. Bud: Maybe was in WP tavern. Maybe it says that, sometimes you just don’t know. Christina: Yeah. Bud: So I got a hold of Topher, I forgot his last name. And I said, here’s my story. Are you interested? Oh, yeah, yeah, we, write it out. So, but three weeks later, it was published. So that’s how I got into Hero Press. I read, I read a couple of the other posts essays, as he calls them, because they are more like essays. And you know, I though tlike, you know, some of these were really pretty astonishing stories. Mine is just sort of, because we all think our stories astonishing until somebody else tells you it’s not I mean, we all think our story is ordinary, until somebody says, Well, actually, it’s kind of interesting. In fact, I personally think that most people’s stories are really interesting. You know, mine is just sort of ordinary, everybody else’s sort of astonishing and extraordinary but yeah, so Yeah, it was fun to I don’t know, it’s kind of an honor to to think of yourself as a hero. I think it’s a great title too, Hero Press. When I first heard what is it mean Hero Press sounds like a some kind of software maybe has something to do with, you know websites that every page is a hero, you know? Christina: Oh yeah, right. Like a hero image Bud: I couldn’t figure out what is the theme? You know? Christina: Yeah. Bud: Anyway. So that’s the Hero Press. Christina: Excellent. We’ll make sure I get the link for that so I can include it in the show notes. Bud: Okay, fair enough. Yeah. Christina: Excellent. Okay, well, now is my favorite question. Bud: Oh, Christina: talking about our yellow, I think he’s furry, friend Bud: Yes, yes. Christina: If you had to pick a favorite Wapuu which would it be? Bud: I don’t know. Maybe this generic Wapuu, the original Wapuu the I don’t follow Wapuu all that closely. I have one in my office Christina: Mmhmm Bud: I know there’s a million of them now you know there’s different kinds I see different illustrations of different Wapuu I saw one the other day it was I don’t know where I saw it, a different Wapuu But no, I’m not really being into what does Wapuu stands for is or does it mean something? Christina: I don’t it’s not like an acronym. Bud: WordPress… Christina: I don’t think so. I know that the original was created by somebody in Japan for one of their WordCamps. Bud: Right? Christina: I know the story. The history of it is online. I can’t remember what made them name it Wapuu Bud: you know, and I think you could buy them not that I would but at the word is a WordPress shop. Christina: Yep. Bud: Which I actually use bought a word beautiful I should have worn it tonight. WordPress hat which you cannot get at WordCamps. These are really nice. Christina: Yeah, Bud: for like $25 you should get something really nice so I have a WordPress hat that no one’s ever stopped me in the street Hey, is that WordPress? I’ve never had that happen, you know, but so I, as I mentioned earlier before we started I’m very fussy on my WordPress attire and paraphernalia because once you go to enough of these WordCamps and stuff like that, you know in the early days I was like absolute pig you know, I grabbed every sticker every pen every every whatever every if Go Daddy was giving it out. I would get whatever they gave out, right? In those days they used to give out a million things. Today Oh no, it has to be very important, useful. Whatever. Cool. It’s got to be somebody that I really need. Christina: Yeah, Bud: of course, I have to have a new t shirt for my wardrobe. And that’s it. I really am very fussy about what I take home from WorkdCamps now. Christina: Yeah, Bud: I mean, I’ve just got a stop. Let’s face it. I’m a WordCamp snob. coffee snob WordCamp snob. Christina: Fair enough. So we’ll say you’re more Wapuu Classic. Bud: Yeah, Christina: stick with the original. Bud: Yeah. Christina: No need for all the bells and whistles. Bud: No jewelry. I don’t need nose rings. I don’t need Christina: a Wapuu nose ring, somebody is gonna do that now. Bud: Are you sure it hasn’t been done already? Christina: I am not sure. And I guess in theory, if you…Yeah, I’m sure what tattoos have been done. I’m sure you guys even you know, washable ones, I’m sure it’s Well, Bud: yeah, I’m just a regular bread and butter kind of guy. Boring. Christina: Alright, you’re not boring. Bud: Alright, Christina: But fair enough. Bud: Yeah. Christina: All right. So how can people find you online if they want to connect? Bud: Okay, Christina: Or see what you’ve been up to Bud: so my website is joyofWP.com that’s J O Y O F W P dot com. not WordPress, in case you’re wondering because you can’t we know. Christina: Yeah, Bud: some people don’t know that they sometimes say joy of WordPress and I immediately correct them. And the nice thing about my site, it does have over 60 free videos now where you can learn WordPress and you can sign up for my newsletter. It comes out every Sunday it’s called the WordPress big three where I give you three ideas to make your WordPress website better. It could be all over the place. I tend to be more a little bit more for beginners but I gotta say that people are a little more advanced in their knowledge and understanding of WordPress. I don’t do a lot of code stuff you know in my WordPress newsletters because it’s like I say it’s generally for site owners, nonprofits and stuff like that. Oh, Twitter is @joyofWP. So that’s pretty easy to remember. And that’s about it. Really. Yeah. So you and if you want my email address, bud @ joy of WP.com so I’m strictly joyofWP. If you remember that put my name in front of it. You’re good. Christina: Sounds good. Bud: All right. Christina: Well, speaking of joy, it has been a joy talking to you today about WP and contributing. Thanks so much for coming out and talking to me today. Bud: Well, it was a pleasure and good luck with your project. I think this is really great. Christina: Thank you. Links Apply to be a guest or nominate someone Follow the podcast on Twitter Subscribe in iTunes/Apple Podcasts or in your favourite podcast app The post Episode 9: Bud Kraus appeared first on Christina Workman.

Malcolm Peralty is the co-founder of PressTitan, a WordPress services company for small to medium sized businesses, and joins me from his home office in Kingston, Ontario Canada. Twitter: @findpurposeSlack: @Malcolm PeraltyTeams: Plugins, SupportWebsite: https://peralty.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmperalty/Favourite Wapuu: Server Titan Wapuu, Gravity Forms Astronaut Moon Wapuu Transcription Click here to open up transcript Christina: Hello and thanks for listening to WP contribute. Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Malcolm Peralty. Malcolm is the co-founder of Press Titan, a WordPress services company for small to medium sized businesses. And he joins me from his home office in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, a fellow Canadian. Welcome. Malcolm: Thank you so much for having me. Christina: Do you want to tell us a little bit more about yourself? Malcolm: Well, my story with WordPress is pretty long. I’ve been using it since version 0.72, which came out about 17 years ago. I graduated from a computer networking community college program right at the height of the tech crash. And so I was like, Okay, well now what do I do? Because I’m definitely not getting a job. And anyone that knows Canada or especially Ontario Nortel was a pretty big company in Ottawa. Right. And they had basically just sacked a whole bunch of people. And I remember going in and putting my resume down and saying, you know, they have all these Nortel engineers who have been doing this for years. So I had to find something else to do. And I decided to start writing online and kind of stumbled into WordPress, as I you know, tried to build my own CMS that was horrible. I don’t recommend doing that. And then yeah, I fell in love with WordPress and I’ve been using it ever since. Christina: Wow, that is a really long time. You are my not my you are the person that I’ve interviewed who has used WordPress the longest. That’s the right way to say that. Awesome. So have you been contributing to WordPress for a long time? Malcolm: So yeah, I would say that early on I wrote for blogging pro which was actually on the WordPress news dashboard for a while. Christina: Okay. Malcolm: Back when it was first sold to Blogging Network the company I was working for I got to write stuff with that I used to co host the original original in quotations, original WordPress podcast with Charles Strickland, way back in the day and then I co hosted a bunch of episodes of WordPress weekly with Jeff Chandler and I have contributed to some plugins I developed some themes back like before WordPress 2.0. I was the support technician for rocket genius for Gravity Forms for a couple of years. I’ve spoken at some WordCamps back like I don’t know a long time ago now. And and also some like new media events about WordPress. So… Christina: Okay. Malcolm: Yeah. Christina: That’s neat. What kind of new media events? Malcolm: So there used to be Blog World and New Media Expo in Las Vegas in kind of the mid 2000s. And I was lucky enough to speak on a few different panels there for that. And then there was Northern Voice was out in BC, and I got to speak at that event as well. So yeah, Christina: That’s pretty interesting. I don’t think I’ve heard of those. Malcolm: I think they’re both dead at this point. Christina: Yes. Malcolm: I’m not too surprised. Christina: Yeah. And then you said you spoke at some word camps, any recent or just all from quite a while ago? Malcolm: Quite a while ago, for most of them. Yeah. Like between 2006 and 2009. Yeah, Toronto, and I did Ottawa, and a few others. And I’ve attended a lot more than I’ve spoken at. And I think attending them is much more fun than speaking at them, in my opinion. Christina: Less prep work involved, right? Malcolm: Well and you get to really interact with people. I find that when you have a presentation on your mind, there’s very little else you can do except, like, get ready for that moment. Christina: And then if you’re like, if you’re first thing, then that’s good, because then you’ve got time to relax. But if you’re kind of in the middle or towards the end, it’s just always on your mind. Right? Malcolm: Yeah. Christina: Absolutely. So you’ve mentioned a lot of different things there. So you said you like you did, you’ve done some themes way back when and some plugins. So in terms of the teams that sort of exist now, which ones would you say you contribute to? Currently? Malcolm: Um, I spend a lot of time on the community forums answering questions. I think that’s probably my favourite thing, jumping on the support forums. Yeah. Christina: Yeah. Awesome. And so I guess, I thinking like with all the things that you mentioned, too, is there is there one particular thing you can kind of pick or think of point to that would be considered your contributor origin story or is that kind of too too far back now. Malcolm: I think in terms of kind of the the WordPress dot.org community, I’d have to say that, you know, working on the podcast with Charles Strickland would probably be pretty high up there. Like I mentioned, one of the things I did was work on a lot of WordPress themes back in the day. Two funny things with that one was, I don’t really consider myself a designer by any stretch of imagination. So my things were all kind of ugly. But I enjoyed the process of trying to figure out the coding aspect. And there was there was actually a number of users using it, and it was kind of a weird, selfish thing back then. There’s so many more rules about WordPress themes now than there were back then. Back then it was very wild, wild west… Christina: Right. Malcolm: And the reason that a lot of different companies and a lot of different people releasing themes were not because they were altruistic and you know, it was like, Oh, I really love making themes and so I’m gonna release these, it was actually like for like search engine stuff, right, you had your link in the footer of all the sites that were using your theme and give you a huge boost, right? And it’s horrible to think about now, but at the time, it was like, the way to get attention was to release these themes. And so I got paid like a fair bit of money to just keep, like, you know, trunking these out there for these different companies and for myself to really kind of, you know, develop all these different themes for these organizations and for myself, and you know, the funny part is people come back to you, and they’re, like, so grateful for what you did. And at the time, you’re like, No, I was just doing it. So I could have a business and yeah, they, they don’t necessarily see it that way. Like a funny thing. It’s actually I just got an email yesterday that someone is using the Phoenix Blue theme from like, over nine years ago, they still have it on their site, but Dreamhost recently contact them and said, You have to update this because like, it’s not secure at all, like into the modern web. Yeah, you can’t keep using this anymore. You have to get rid of it. And the email me like, what theme Do you think I should go with now and I’m like, You know, use any of the 20 whatever’s right that WordPress releases, they’re, they’re pretty safe themes are going to be updated for a while. But yeah, it’s it’s funny how these people continue to reach out and have dialogues about things that you did decades ago. Christina: Crazy. Is there any particular theme that you’re especially proud of that you had done? Malcolm: No, they’re all now compared to today they’re all garbage like it again, it’s such a such a different way of doing things now than it was back then. I mean, we’re in a transition period again, right, as we, as we move to kind of this block mentality are these these these, you know, Gutenberg blocks to kind of design sites or even, you know, the advent of page builders, it’s different again, then than what it was even just a few short years ago. So, you know, I, at the time I was, I was happy to work with some really great designers to build some, you know, really nice and kind of quick and easy themes, but, you know, I just I kind of wish they would all just disappear At this point that’s kind of embarrassing. It’s like looking at like a little kid you know photo of yourself with like your hair sticking up at odd angles, right? Like you don’t want anyone to see that photo and yet, right it’s out there on the internet for everyone to see. Christina: Do they still exist in the repository? Malcolm: No, thank goodness. Christina: Okay. Malcolm: Oh, no. Yeah, they I don’t think they were actually ever in the WordPress theme repository. Most of the themes that I developed, were actually pre theme repository. Christina: Oh, okay. Malcolm: Yeah. Christina: Interesting. I’m post theme repository in general so I wouldn’t know. But once online, always online, right. So wherever they still somehow you can, you can find them. What about plugins? You mentioned plugins that you’ve worked on too. Malcolm: Yeah. So Gravity Forms is the biggest one that I worked on. Again, I was doing mostly support and documentation, but it’s also helping with kind of like bug testing and things like that. They have amazing developers there. And I know their developer team has grown a lot since I left but my goodness, the work that I got to do there was some of my most fulfilling in the WordPress world because I was just working with such a great team. I also am listed, I think on the wordpress.org site as one of the contributors to a Vimeo plugin. No, Vimeo, video related plugin. Christina: Okay. Malcolm: Yeah, I was working for 10 Up and I was the project manager of the of the team that developed the plugin. And so I got listed in the credits, which, I mean, yes, I guess but also that seems kind of weird to me. I’m not I’m not a developer by by role in any way, shape or form these days. Christina: But that’s the whole thing, right with contributing, there’s so much more than just developing that needs to go into all the different aspects, whether it’s the plugins and themes or the core code itself. They still need testers and designers and marketers and support people and all that kind of thing. Right. So you’re still involved. Malcolm: Yeah, and that’s, that’s only grown. It’s it’s hard because in the early days and kind of middle time of WordPress, it definitely felt very developer centric. You know, developers, we’re doing a lot of the help guides and tutorials and you know, most people that are reading them are just like, I’m just gonna go hire someone. I have no idea what you’re saying. Christina: Right. Malcolm: And so I think we’ve come a long way from that, which is nice. Christina: Yeah, that’s, that’s pretty good. So what would you say is your proudest contribution? You’ve been doing this for quite a while. So… Malcolm: Yeah. Some of the more recent stuff that I’ve been doing has has me really pumped. I’ve been working on a learning management system for a like, for-good company called One Million Teachers. And their goal is to teach a million teachers in third world countries like Africa and India and Pakistan, because there’s a huge shortage of teachers. And originally the founder Hakeem wanted to, like set up schools and then he realized that like educational centers, and all these things are great, but have a shortage of teachers. So if there’s no one there to teach these kids Sorry, if there’s no one there to teach these kids, then what’s going to happen? Right? And so he pivoted his idea. And I’ve been working on the LMS system, in partnership with Queens University here in Kingston, to really kind of, you know, help train these people. So I’ve been using Lifter LMS. And, you know, we’ve been using our hosting platform that’s like, a layer on Digital Ocean. And it’s been really great. And I’m learning so much and it’s just such a great cause. So, yeah. Christina: And what, what types of teachers like general education teachers or any specialists? Malcolm: Yeah, mostly just elementary teachers, elementary, junior high, things like that. Yeah. Christina: Just to get them doing, getting some educators there. That’s really great. Nice. Um, have you been to WordCamps lately? Malcolm: Uh, no. I go to kind of the local WordPress meetup sometimes, but haven’t been to one lately. Yeah, I keep being tempted to go to them, but I keep traveling for other reasons. So I don’t know I would love to go to like WordCamp Miami sometime but every time I’m in Florida, it’s not when it happens. Christina: Right. Malcolm: And yeah, I don’t know it. Toronto and Ottawa just don’t have the same kind of community, I guess, in my opinion as like, you know, Detroit, Chicago, you know, some of those other US locations Christina: And Toronto really hasn’t had, they’ve been sort of spotty with WordCamps lately from what I understand. Malcolm: They have, yeah. Christina: And Ottawa is really, Ottawa’s trying and I know they’re planning again for this year. I want to say it’s going to be in July again, if I remember correctly. But I can’t remember. But I know that they are planning if you had interest in trying to make it that way. Yeah. What from the times that you remember going to the Kingston meetups, what are they like? Malcolm: They’re a mix. So I mean, as WordPress has become more popular and more people have been introduced to software, the like stratification of the user base is just kind of expanded over time. It’s led by a couple of local developers who are very interested in kind of discussing programming and programming techniques. And like, you know, the changes and transformations that are happening in WordPress in terms of the code base and the database structure and schema and all these things. Right? Christina: Right. Malcolm: And you’ll see like the eyes glaze over of half the people that are going, I just want to know how to replace my logo on my web page. Right? So it’s, it’s a huge gap and a huge divide. And it’s because we’re such a, you know, we’re not a huge community here of like WordPress developers, WordPress users. And so it’s usually like maybe a dozen or two dozen people, and not necessarily enough to kind of split up into kind of unique groups. And I don’t know if any city has really done that yet where they’ve, you know, they have like the advanced WordPress meetup and the non, you know, non developer WordPress meetup. But I almost think that that should be the case here, because there is a huge divide between the two audiences and not not much in the middle. Christina: Yeah, I think that’s the case in a lot of places. I know, we sort of have that. We don’t get as many of the developers come out because there are so many people coming out that have more how to use questions that that’s kind of been the way that we’ve gone. And so we don’t get as many of the experienced developers coming out for that. But we’re trying to do some, rather than having it split because again, we don’t have as big a contingent coming out all the time to split it either. But we’re trying to offer some sort of workshops or extra special events that are geared towards more experienced developers to try to bring them back to our community and, and entice them that way. So. Malcolm: It’s hard, right? Because a lot of WordPress developers kind of work in isolation, whether they’re remote employees off site employees, you know, freelancers, so finding those opportunities for collaboration and mentorship can be can feel quite difficult sometimes Christina: Yeah, although I know I mean, I’ve benefited a million times over. I mean, I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for starting off going to the meetups. But then again, I also wasn’t like a super experienced developer when I started going to the meetups. Not that I am now either. So I guess. Yeah, that’d be nice to kind of get some of those people out, more in general. And yeah… Malcolm: I agree. Christina: Keep trying. Have you been to a contributor day at all? I know it. It’s been a while since you’ve done a WordCamp. I don’t know. Malcolm: Yeah. They weren’t a thing back when I did WordCamps initially. Christina: Yeah. Malcolm: I attended a couple of WordCamps where they’ve happened. But you know, a lot of the times when I have done a WordCamp over the last few years, especially, it’s been kind of like sponsored by the company I was working for. So my schedule was kind of out of my hands, so to speak, in certain ways. So I haven’t really had an opportunity to. When I did WordCamp Toronto in, I wanna say, like, 2016 2015. Something like that. I did. Attend a contributor day at that point. And it was it was pretty lightweight. I had a couple of other people from 10 Up there. And you know, they had some interesting ideas of programming things they want to do. And I just kind of, you know, did flow control over the things that they were contributing more than I was contributing myself. Christina: Right. Was it a pretty big contributor day for what you remember? Malcolm: Ah, no, maybe like, under three dozen people for sure. Christina: Okay. That’s pretty decent. From just from what I’m what I’ve seen of what WordCamp Toronto does they seem the last time I looked, I think they only had a one day camp and maybe don’t get you think they would have a much bigger more active community. But.. Malcolm: Yeah, for sure. And especially compared to, you know, you think about out west where you are, or even further out west. Some of those WordCamps have much larger, longer camps and like, Vancouver is like a Drupal hub. more than a WordPress hub, and yet it has like multi day camps sometimes. So I don’t I don’t really understand why Toronto isn’t more into that. Christina: Yeah, although I guess I don’t know maybe sometimes because I know Montreal doesn’t really have a meetup, an active meetup community either. So maybe sometimes with these really big metropolises in Canada anyways, because it doesn’t seem to be an issue down in the States. But they, I guess they’re having a hard time connecting with each other. Malcolm: Someone should look into that. What’s up with that, what’s up with the Canadian mindset that we can’t all congregate and just kind of make things happen? I don’t know. Christina: I know, we need to, maybe we’re just too polite to ask if something’s happening. Or if we can lead something. Maybe that’s it. But this is our challenge. Toronto, Montreal, get some meetups and WordCamps going and… Malcolm: Yeah, I think it would be nice to if they went and stole a little bit more kind of from the BarCamp model. I don’t know if you remember those events, but they were technology events that are a little bit more freeform. Christina: Okay. Malcolm: So you didn’t necessarily have to, you know, do a whole big presentation and speech and know exactly what room you’re going to be and all this stuff you on the day of, they’d have a block of time, you know, that you could sign up for and say, you know, I would like to have a discussion with other people that are interested in X. Christina: Okay. Malcolm: And you would lead it and, and things would happen relating to that. And I kind of wish there was a little bit more of that opportunity at WordCamps going forward where, you know, maybe not, you know, a little less rigidity in the schedule, I guess, would be what I mean, and a little bit of opportunity for people to kind of congregate based on shared interests, rather than having a singular person responsible for leading the entire conversation, Christina: Right. I think we’ve had, we had something sort of similar as an aspect a few years ago, I think, at our WordCamp in Calgary where we had some sort of more freeform time slots, where we did some different things like fishbowls, and I forget what else. But yeah, nothing where you like sign up or, or do anything like that or but were BarCamps were those independent or were those supported by the WordCamp and WordPress foundation as well. Malcolm: No, they were independent and they they were pre WordPress. So they were like general, like web technology events. So… Christina: Oh, okay Malcolm: You’d go there and people would do speeches or like presentations or like little impromptu sessions about like, you know how to set up a MySQL database, or you know, everyone would come there. And we’d all do like speed tests to compare what the different hosts are doing. And the person would like write down all the notes. And you know, week later, you’d see an article about how, you know, 40 people tested their sites and different hosts and here’s what we got. Christina: Oh neat. Malcolm: Yeah. Christina: You’re giving me ideas for a meetup now. Thanks. It’s hard coming up with stuff all the time. Malcolm: Hmm. Christina: Awesome. Um, the deep question of the podcast. Why do you contribute? Malcolm: On my LinkedIn profile, I say, you know, at this point, I have to have WordPress in my blood. And, you know, I’ve had points where I’ve been immensely frustrated with this piece of software, where I’ve completely disagreed with the direction that is going in. And yet, I can’t help but admit that, you know, it has found ways to lower the barrier for entry. And it has found ways to bring more people to the software year over year over year. And that has, you know, sustained my employment for pretty much the entirety of my adult life. And, you know, I’m extremely grateful of that, and I try to find ways to, you know, involve myself and give back because of that, because I’m grateful for that opportunity to support my family and myself. So, at this point, it’s it’s the cyclical relationship that I can’t escape from. And I don’t really want to, you know, I don’t really want to but it is we are kind of tied together. At this point. Christina: Right. Yeah, a symbiotic relationship I just learned about I read about sloths, this is so off topic, but kind of not it just made me think of the whole sloth thing, I was, I really like sloths, but only for like superficial reasons right now. And I’ve been getting all these sloth gifts from my family. So I was looking up, you know, the differences between two toed and three toed and all this stuff. And I read about how they have this algae in their hair that like provides nutrition for them. And then, but also like this whole, like bug culture and moths and stuff and that they, they live in one tree and they they do their business at the bottom of the one tree and then that helps like the moths lay their eggs in there. And then it’s like this whole like ecosystem of the sloths and the tree and the bugs and the just kind of all being stuck together and rotating around each other. And that’s kind of what it reminded me of because that’s in my head lately when you’re like… Malcolm: Yeah, and that 10 years from now, we’re gonna look back on this and you’re gonna have your doctorate in something relating to sloths, and we’re all gonna laugh, because you just kept on going deeper and deeper and deeper and you couldn’t escape it anymore. Christina: Yeah. So we get stuck into things. Yeah, maybe I’ll make a WordPress blog about sloths. Awesome. Um, what was I gonna ask? Oh, the podcasts that you mentioned before too, from way way back, I think you said was Jeff Chandler. Tell us a bit more about that. Like what? What was the sort of…it sounds horrible? I hate sometimes the way that my mind comes up with the words and then I can’t think of it… what was the point of your podcast? Malcolm: Yeah, so the first ones that I did were with Charles Strickland, and it was very much kind of, we played very specific roles. He was, you know, very positive about WordPress and I was much more critical about WordPress and we just kind of looked at what was happening in the community was much smaller at that point. Christina: Okay. Malcolm: And like commenting on different people. And then when I was doing WP Tavern with Jeff Chandler. He needed that. He was very early on in WordPress, he was very excited about WordPress. He had hearts in his eyes whenever he thought about Matt Mullenweg. And he needed someone to kind of rein them in a little bit and help him kind of look at it a little bit more critically, but also to kind of give a differing opinion on the news of the day with WordPress. And yeah, I really enjoyed doing that. I think, you know, J Trip has done an amazing job as the co host and I’m very hopeful, you know, when Jeff Chandler’s secret project, or Kwazii secret project comes up soon that he’ll revive his podcast series, and I hope to be able to co host a few of those episodes at some point if you’ll have me. Christina: That’s nice. Do any of those episodes still? Gosh, my brain is not functioning, exist. Do they still live on like the podcast like on iTunes, say… Malcolm: WordPress Weekly definitely does and it’s still on the WP Tavern website as well. And the old ones with Charles Strickland, I, I found a couple of them but he put them on this old service called Talk Shoe, which was like a podcast hosting website back in the day. And when he sold the WordPress podcast rights to Joost of Yoast. Yeah, yeah, Joost de Vale. Christina: Yeah. Malcolm: He like kind of reset that whole thing. And I don’t know if much of it exists anymore. But I still talk to Charles and I still talk to Jeff and those relationships when you’re on and it’s really nice. Christina: I’ll have to see. Look it up and see if I can find some of the old ones with you on them. And listen to those. That would be cool. Awesome. How what advice would you give for new contributors trying to get into I don’t know, you pick, usually, usually I say for people trying to get involved in whatever, you know, team that you’re holding, but you’ve been involved in so much, so I don’t want to narrow it down. Malcolm: And I think, you know, because it’s such a big project now, you can really get involved in a facet that you’re interested in. Right? If you have a very specific interest in like font kerning right, like you can go as myopic as you want and there is a group there are some people that will be interested in your opinions on that and I think that’s the most powerful part of how big this has grown right? Any any interest that you have, no matter how mundane there there is reasons for that to be part of this project going forward and how we can kind of build a better version of WordPress. So if you’re if you’re good at video, do video if you’re good at audio, do audio if you love ripping apart documentation do that I think you know, people don’t spend enough time on the support forums. And one of the things for someone like myself or the developers that are like, you know, 50 levels ahead of me or above me, they forget some of the easier things that people still have issues with. And they forget how to answer those questions because they never even run into them, or they don’t even think of it. It’s not top of mind. And so even if you’re new to WordPress, you might already have the solution to some other person’s problem that, you know, someone like me or someone with more experience might not even necessarily think of anymore. Christina: That’s a really good perspective to put out there that people don’t think about enough. I think you’re right, as the more we get, you know, we sort of focus on the areas that that we mostly deal with. And so anything that’s come before that, not only isn’t top of mind, but because things change so much the way that we maybe would have answered the question might be wrong now too, because the interface has changed or, or whatever have you. So yeah, that’s a great point. So anything else about contributing that we haven’t touched on yet that you want to talk about? Malcolm: I think another thing that people don’t do enough in WordPress, and I think this is a type of contribution that’s not valued enough is feedback and reviews. I know so many plugin and theme developers, that would just have the best day ever if you took a moment and just let them know what you thought of their product. You know, you downloaded a free plugin or a paid plugin or free theme or what have you. Take a moment, let them know what you thought. Christina: Yeah, that’s really important. Absolutely, I would, I would definitely be one of those people. I’m the kind of person any kind of extra little, especially unexpected right? Kind words or knowing that that what you set out to achieve actually helped somebody. And even sometimes even better, if it helped them in a way that you weren’t even expecting, right, can also be really great. Malcolm: For sure. Christina: to know, that’s great advice. Awesome. Okay. Let’s see here. We seem to have gone through questions quickly, but so well, too. So we’re at my favourite favourite question. It’s Wapuu. So if you had to pick a Wapuu and if you’ve been listening, you know that I don’t think anybody yet has just picked one. So feel free to pick a couple. If you had to pick a Wapuu as your favourite, who would it be? Malcolm: Alright, so, recently, we actually had one designed for Press Titan. Thanks to Terence Dale for that. It’s just like a Wapuu hugging a computer, right? And I like that one. But my absolute favourite is the Gravity Forms astronaut, the moonwalk who that they have? Christina: Right. Malcolm: It’s, it’s my absolute favourite. And I don’t know if anything’s ever gonna replace that. Christina: Can you describe it a bit more for us. Malcolm: So it’s is a Wapuu in like a full NASA uniform with like a, you know, respirator backpack hugging the moon in front of him. Christina: Yeah. Malcolm: And it just looks so cute. I love that one. Christina: Cool. I will definitely, is the is the Press Titan one available somewhere for me to grab or… Malcolm: I’ll have to double check. I’ve submitted it to some of those like Wapuu like libraries or gardens or Christina: right Malcolm: zoos or whatever you want to call them. Christina: Yeah. Awesome. I will have to find those and add them to the page. I love showing off all the Wapuus. Soon eventually, I’ll be the I’ll be the their most comprehensive, archival system for Wapuu because I’ll get all the ones that everybody’s mentioned. Malcolm: At least all the favourites. Christina: Yeah. They’re all great. They’re all great if you have one that we haven’t mentioned before and doesn’t get mentioned. I’m sure I’ve seen it at some point. I hope and I love it. They’re all fantastic. Malcolm: What a great addition to the community. It’s such a you know, it’s a cute graphical representation and, you know, your previous interview that you had with Allie, you know, the discussion that she had over, you know, the person in like the Wapuu costume or whatever the stuffed Wapuus and stuff like that, it’s just it makes my my heart you know, grow three sizes or whatever, about this community because we need more positivity like that, and they’re so great. Christina: We do and I love and I love. I love the whole idea of the collectibles of the pins, right? I mean, if I could have a million stuffy Wapuus I would have those too, I have a couple of them at least being able to have something collectible so that we could have all the Wapuus and I love Wapuu. Malcolm: Super smart. Christina: Thank you to the first person who ever created Wapuu and of course, their name is not an on the tip of my tongue at all. But I do know it was in Japan. Thank you to that person who probably had no clue what they were about to start worldwide. Malcolm: So true. Yeah. Christina: All right, talk about a contribution. Awesome. Well, how can people find you online if they have questions or want to touch base or Malcolm: So I have my personal blog at peralty.com, which is my last name, good luck spelling it. I have a Twitter handle which is @findpurpose. And of course you can feel free to contact me through the company website, PressTitan.com. Christina: Okay. And since we have a little bit of extra time, I think do you want to tell us a little bit more about Press Titan? Malcolm: Sure. So, you know, one of the things that I think people have found very difficult going forward is that a lot of the manage WordPress hosts, you know, they they manage the hosting environment, and maybe they’ll do some WordPress upgrades, but they don’t necessarily hold the hand of the user to be able to do anything with these sites. And as much as we’ve lowered the barrier to entry for WordPress, a lot of the like small businesses especially that I’ve run into, you know, they end up either spending too much money, having a developer do some very basic things or they just kind of leave it stock and hope it’s good enough. And so I saw a little gap there. And I was talking to a long term friend of mine. And we said, you know, let’s, let’s make a go of this, let’s try to help these people and hold their hand and give them that, you know, that premium service where they can always just contact us to do anything, right. If they want their logo changed up on their theme will do that. And that’s not something necessarily that a lot of other people in the space are doing yet. And, you know, we’re getting there. You’ll see more and more of that as this becomes a competitive niche. I think that’s a great thing. Christina: Yeah. That’s really great. Thanks. Thanks for talking about that. And thanks for joining me tonight. Malcolm: Thanks for having me. Christina: This has been fantastic. And I hope that you continue continue to use WordPress and contribute for another what did we say 17 years? Is that how long? Malcolm: Yeah, something like that. Christina: Let’s hope it’s around for another 17 years, and going strong and yes, perfect. Thanks so much. Malcolm: Thank you. Links Apply to be a guest or nominate someone Follow the podcast on Twitter Subscribe in iTunes/Apple Podcasts or in your favourite podcast app The post Episode 8: Malcolm Peralty appeared first on Christina Workman.

Justin is a WordPress developer and core contributor based in Cotonou, Bénin. He currently works at Seme City Development Agency, an innovation and knowledge hub launched by the current government of Benin. Twitter: @justinahinon1Slack: @justinahinonTeams: Core, Documentation, TranslationWebsite: https://segbedji.comFavourite Wapuu: Tuktuk Wapuu, Wapuu Lagos Transcription Click here to open up transcript Christina: Hello and thanks for listening to WP_contribute. Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Justin Ahinon. Justin is a WordPress developer and core contributor based in Cotonou, Bénin. He currently works at DASC, an innovation and knowledge hub launched by the current government of Bénin. Welcome, Justin. Justin: Hey, Christina. I’m happy to be here. Christina: Thank you for being here. And please, can you say your name properly so that people don’t have my horrible pronunciation to go by? Justin: So I’m Justin Ahinon. Christina: Okay. Justin: I live in Cotonou, Bénin. Christina: Right, and the full name of the company that you work for? Justin: So it’s a Development Agency of Seme City, DASC, Christina: Okay. Because you were nice and gave me the short form. Is there anything that that you want to tell us before we get going about who you are and your, your experience in the WordPress world? Justin: Sure, I would say that the I think the most interesting fact I say to people, is that, I’ve I was not, like, prepared to work in WordPress field something like three or four years ago, I was totally going to take another path. And I found myself in the WordPress space, in the WordPress space and I’m still here today so. Christina: Nice. So that’s lucky for us. What we’re going to do instead of WordPress? Justin: so I was studying Applied Statistics. So my intention was to pursue in data science and other fields related to the die in informatics. Okay. But then I discovered WordPress almost four years ago and I’m here now. . Christina: Yeah That’s great. That sounds like something my son might be interested in. He likes math a lot. So you’ve been working with WordPress for about four years, how long have you been contributing back to it? Justin: So, I would see that I start contributing towards WordPress something like 2 years ego. Christina: Okay. And how did you get started? Justin: After one year and a half I start with WordPress, so I have spent one year and half working with WordPress but knowing absolutely anything about contribution. Actually, I didn’t even know that there’s there’s something that was called contribution. Christina: Right Justin: And, Yeah, so I remember I was like browsing internet looking probably for a tutorial and then I found the website make.wordpress.org. That’s the kind of house of WordPress contribution. Christina: Right. Justin: And that’s how I discovered that is I can contribute to WordPress. So I remember that when I started, I was maybe a little bit lost between all the among all the different, I mean the different parts of contribution. And so I just start with the, what I found the most easy at that time. That was translation. Christina: Right Justin: So I natively speak French, so it was enough pleasure for me to traduce, translate WordPress from English to French. So yeah, that’s how I start contributing with translation. Christina: So then how does that work when you do translation for WordPress? Justin: So, as I saying, I was first very lost among the different paths, but I was also lost in how contribution works so. So I was not understanding very well the idea behind contribution. That it’s volunteer work. And it’s also collaboration work. So maybe our assumption was that when it was someone, I mean, it was something punctual, but actually it’s not the case. It’s a whole collaboration work. So I found translation first interesting, but confusing, because I didn’t know what to translate. Christina: right Justin: because I have, they had in translation, there are many paths like translating WordPress, translating themes, translating plugins so I was translating make I mean WordPress website itself and I was very lost and I didn’t know at that time a group of translators or a group of people that I can trying to talk with to ask for advises. So yeah I just listen, I just jumped into translation in that translating as as things come to me Christina: You just dove in headfirst. That’s great! So what other teams do you contribute to? Because I know you don’t just, you haven’t just contributed to translation. Justin: So, after I contribute to translation I start exploring other themes. So as I explore a little bit documentation of the translation. And this was at the beginning of Gutenberg because they will need have a lot of documentation for Gutenbert. And so it was at that time that the WordPress community have start migrating from Codex to the new HelpHub, that will host all the WordPress documentation. Christina: Right. Justin: So I have done some work, they helped me in writing some new articles for Gutenberg and migrate one or two Codex page to HelpHub. So that was a very short passage at the documentation team at that time. And after that I’ve joined the core team. That I have directly loved. I was a developer, so the idea that I can help on with, with code or with anything related to WordPress core was very nice to me. So I mean, the core team was like the thing that was that was for me. So after I trained the core team I have I stayed there time till now. But… after contributing to core I’ve noticed ithat teams work together.Contribution teams of WordPress work together so when start contributing to core I can say definitely you notice that you would have to do some contribution to documentation. You have to do contribution to meta, or whatever. So they work very closely together. And so they see that I have done translation documentation and core. And then a mix of them. Oh, I think I forget something. I also contribute just a little bit to the themes review team. Christina: Yeah. Okay. Justin: It was when I was about to submit some themes, so to wordpress.org. So, I was wanting to know how the review team worked, how people evaluate the themes and how, how they are accepted. What are the criteria? So I did a little passage in the themes, themes team. Christina: And did your theme make it through? Justin: So yeah, Christina: yeah. Justin: That’s a funny story, because I think I’ve been rejected up to, what, four or five times? Maybe more actually, because of Yeah, I was not like really aware of the process of the criterias. So one thing is you have to mention any assets, any third parties that are using in the themes in the license, those things, so that’s one thing that I was not really aware of and because of just very little things my theme got reject. A lot of times, but finally, yeah, Christina: yeah. Got it all figured out. Justin: Yeah. Christina: That’s great. And is it still in the repository? Justin: Yeah, the name is Do It Simple. Christina: Okay. Justin: Actually, I have not updated it for more than one year. But it seems this one websites on … is running it right now. But yeah, it was my lesson my first year and Yeah. I love it. I don’t think I will remove it from the repository whenever I find time I’ll maybe improve it. Yeah, Christina: yeah. Awesome. That’s, I think you’re the first person on the show to have something in the repository. In any of the repositories. That’s cool. Justin: Oh. Christina: So, uh, let’s see, where do we want to go? Let’s, I want to know, what’s your proudest contribution, because you’ve kind of told us about a lot of the different things you’ve done. What would you say is the proudest contribution you’ve made so far? Big or small? Justin: So, the biggest was probably when I was in the release team of 5.3. But the proudest for me would probably be the WordPress Translation Day 4. Christina: Okay. Justin: That’s that I attend online and I gave a presentation about internal, international Christina: internationalization. i18n Justin: Internationalization. Yeah, i18n of themes and plugins. So yeah, this probably the proudest moment for me, actually, it was not, when I, but it was much too cool because the video quality was very horrible. I was at a WordCamp in another country. Christina: Yeah. Justin: I was having difficulties to find a reliable internet connection. Yeah, it was really. I mean, the video itself for it was horrible but the experience was great and I’m very proud. Christina: Yeah, that sounds really great. So that was for World Translation Day you said right? Justin: Yeah. Yeah. That was in May 2019 I think. Christina: Okay. Right. So they do that every May, if I remember correctly. Justin: Each year. I think that varies a little bit from year to year. Christina: And what do they typically, it’s all online right? Justin: Yeah, it’s a it 24 hours event online. Christina: Okay. Justin: Where people from every part of the world living in very different time zones, they gather to to, each of us have something like a time slot, depending of the location, the time zone, and then for 30 minutes to one hour. They speak about a topic and if they have time, or if the attendees are interest, they self select, and this change about the topic you have discussed. Christina: Okay. Justin: It’s a very nice event. Christina: So basically an online conference in 24 hours, all about translation and internationalization. Justin: Yeah. Christina: That’s awesome. So that’ll be coming up in a couple of months. We’ll have to keep an eye out for that. And tell us more about what you said was your biggest but not necessarily proudest moment with working on the release team for core. Justin: Yeah, that was clearly the biggest moment. Actually, I’ve helped on the release team of WordPress, a minor version before. It was 5.2.2. Christina: Okay. Justin: And yeah at that time this was obviously my my biggest moment but after that came 5.3. And when I where I lead documenation and I’ve also been the focus lead, so I would say that things come really not planned for me when it come to releasing in WordPress version because the first, my first version that I was release lead for I didn’t really plan to be release lead for the situation but when, as a core chat so core chat had happen on Wednesday, so at the core chat, we were like talking about the next session in we were like forming a team or a release team. And yeah, I just raised my hand and said, I like to contribute. And yeah, here’s how I found myself. Can you believe it? Actually, I didn’t know anything about releasing any version. So I start learning at that time, browsing the handbooks, seeing what what’s it mean to do. Yeah, so that was the first experience, but like, the second one was more, let’s see more cool for me because I already had an experience in releasing the WordPress version and yeah so I was also very absolutely interest in the documentation part of WordPress. So, when they will be looking for different roles for the release group and so the the world of documentation for the editor is kind of new. Christina: Okay. Justin: Because we it’s just for, if I remember well three, two or three major versions that there have been a documentation lead for WordPress so yeah, so I just like to say jump into this role. Christina: And what does that role do? Justin: So basically, the main purpose of the role is to ensure that everything that’s new in new version is well documented. So because new major version introduce new things, maybe new functions, maybe new hooks, new filters, and new features also, that’s the that’s the maybe the most important part that needs to be documented so that people developing themes or developing plugins can be aware of the new features that come in …, maybe new deprecation of features that can come in WordPress version so it’s very important that all these things get documented correctly. And so the documentation core team work for closely with the conflict maintainers, because those are people who define or head to define the scope of a commit for a particular release. So, documentation coordinator was very closely with them to gather of all the new things or everything that needs to be documented. And make sure that people who for instance if a contributor work on a feature, a new feature for a new version of WordPress, he can decide to write a documentation notes, that we call, sorry, a dev notes for this version. So the documentation coordinator have to make sure that all these notes are worded correctly in time, so that they can get shipped on a differnet place may be the core blog or version page or something like that. Basically, the purpose of the role is making sure everything is very well documented. And actually, it’s a very important role in it also plays our work closely with the marketing team, more related to new features because that’s what I noticed after working as documentation coordinator, for instance, when some new features came to version 5.3 for instance, the feature of big image threshold so with 5.3 the very big image that I upload to WordPress, I kind of resize automatically. And so I have wrote the dev notes for this feature. And whenever they have been something like, I don’t remember maybe 200 or 150 comments about the the feature of people who maybe disagree or people who don’t understand. That’s why the documentation coordinator have to work very closely with the marketing team to ensure that any new documentation is let’s say, I mean, people are very well informed people who use WordPress are informed about what’s coming, what could eventually break the website or change how the website is functioning. So that’s, that’s what the ad for. So it was a long release. I think it took two months or more. It will be long and very interesting release. Christina: So two months is long. Justin: Yeah. Minor release took, maybe three weeks. Three weeks to one month. Christina: Okay. Justin: But the planning of this core, of the release. Christina: Right. Justin: of how many new features are coming. Major release took maybe two, two and a half months? That wasn’t the case when since of the last release was coming right now. 5.4. Who is features I’ll say which will be maybe a little bit shorter than the precedent. Christina: Are you working on that release too? Justin: So, no, not closely. I’m not working in the release team. Actually, it’s so one of my one of the things that I don’t find not too much cool for me very personally when I was when I contribute to core is about the time zone. So most of the time, for instance, the dev chats happen on Wednesday at what 10pm my time. Christina: Okay Justin: So I’m probably about to go to sleep at that time. Christina: Right. Justin: So when I was working in the last two release like 5.2 to 5.3, I took on me to be I mean, to be there like, every I mean, every time my my help was needed. So for dev chats, I was the at maybe from 10pm to 11 to noon. Then also after the dev chats everything that’s about bug scrubs, and but triaging tickets. They used to happen in US time. Christina: Right. Justin: So yeah it’s maybe it’s hard for people living in maybe European GMT to to attend these if you don’t have maybe something like passion or dedication for that right but I am very happy that the core team decided to organize some bug scrubs in European time. Each week they’ll say bug scrub at eight or 7am in my time for me, I’m in GMT plus one. Christina: Okay. Justin: So yeah, these are like a bug scrub each week or each two week in the morning. So that’s kind of interesting for people who can’t attend the activities in the nights due to the time zone. Christina: Right, interesting. I think, what am I, GMT minus six or seven, depending on the time of year because it changes. Justin: It’s a very large time difference. Christina: Yeah, I can imagine I’m on I’m not even on the West Coast but some of the people that I work with are two hours behind. No ahead of me. I’m two hours behind them and even that can get sometimes not problematic, but inconvenient, let’s say. Justin: Yeah, yeah. Christina: So having eight or nine or 10 hours. Justin: Yeah, yeah. Christina: It gets tricky. Justin: Actually it’s interesting that one of the main contributor or one of the main core contributor in France, we also we live in the same time zone actually, I will say that I’ve stayed in core contribution because of this person. He is like very involved in the WordPress community and in WordPress contribution. And he we also live in the same time zone and he’s very dedicated to contributing to WordPress core and I’m kind of maybe following his example. So yeah, I try to keep up and yeah. Christina: Sounds good. That’s a good reason to, to keep doing it. Motivation, right? Justin: Yeah. Christina: What would you say is the reason why you continue to contribute and give back to WordPress? What’s in it for you? Justin: So, I will say that the first reason, probably the main reason is like, it’s all in the motto, giving back to the community. Because when I have started working with WordPress at the first time, it was like, by pleasure or by passion, it was because I really loved it. I adopt it because I really loved it and later when I found a job as WordPress developer or whatever, actually at that time I was not even thinking that it’s possible to. So I used to see people hire, I have been a web developer. But I was I was not aware that it was possible to be hired to be a WordPress developer. The first time I’ve start a job as WordPress developer, I found it very amazing. And I found that this tool this software already gave a lot to me. So I just found natural to help making it better. Christina: Right. Justin: Help making more people aware of it. Because like, maybe five or five years ago, I didn’t even know that there are some things called WordPress. Christina: Yeah. Justin: At that time, I would say that I was very interested in everything about, I was already developing, like, maybe the clasic way. And I was lucky where that there was something called WordPress so, I found very natural to help people who don’t know about WordPress, know about it and, see what they can what they can make with WordPress. Christina: Right. Justin: And yeah, making it better. It’s also important to me because I’ve been a user, and I’ve faced some maybe frustrations. I had some expectations that WordPress didn’t satisfy at that time. And I was not understanding that there was this was the work of volunteer people that way, dedicating their time to make it better so, yeah. Being the fact that I have been a user of WordPress before being maybe a developer or whatever, make me understand the importance of contribution of helping people where maybe I’ve personally failed or where maybe I’ve been frustated. Yeah. Christina: Right. Sounds good. Justin: I really love like, giving back to WordPress. Christina: Yeah, it gets it’s, it’s addictive and people who contribute a lot continue to contribute a lot. I think they like it. Justin: Yeah. Christina: A lot. Justin: Yeah. It gets more interesting and yes, sometime I personally think that I personally expect that one day at a time, I will be able to contribute some more. Because like, right now, I contribute, maybe in my spare time or when I’m not at work or whatever. But I really expect to be able to give more to WordPress to contribute for to all the teams to explore new things, too. Yeah. Yeah, I really expect that one day will come where I may be be contributing. Maybe do half of my work in time. Oh, yeah. Christina: That would be good. How can people get involved with the core team, if they’re new, if they want to start getting in. Justin: So. So, the first thing is to so I love to refine this point is that contributing the in to WordPress first doesn’t mean contribute with codes and also contribute to the core team doesn’t need to contribute just code. In the core team itself there are many things that are not code related. So for people with first contributing, they don’t have to be may be afraid of to deal with code at the first time because they are many paths. And I would say that the maybe the easiest way I found to start contributing to WordPress core, it’s to help on, how they call it, they’re in our Trac, our ticketing system. Christina: Right. Justin: Yeah. Some tickets that are tagged, I don’t recall exactly first contribute or something like that. These are tickets that are very easy. And maybe you just need to change a CSS line, CSS, or acutally even commenting tickets, this its contribution so you can comment a ticket, maybe giving your opinion or giving, giving what you think about the feature that’s in the ticket. That’s a form of contribution to core. You can change the CSS line or you can just write the PHP or correct a PHP function, that’s contribution, you can maybe write the documentation of a feature of a function that’s not in the code base. That’s also contribution. So I think the easiest way to start contributing with WordPress core is looking at first contributor tickets in the Trac system and see where you can help. And also there is a meeting that happened at the last Wednesday of the month. I think. It’s a first time contributor meeting that happened just before the dev chat. So it happens at 9pm UTC plus one. And, yeah, there there are people that are dedicated to help new contributors to get involved in WordPress core. And they are very helpful. They’re very. Yeah, they’re very helpful to new contributors. They can guide people into core core team into what they can start with. And yeah, they give a lot of information about contribution. So one important, maybe one thing to do when you start contributing to core, is probably attend these meetings. So… Christina: That’s really great. Justin: And the meetings are on make.wordpress.org/meetings. So they the people can find other meetings that happen in the slack and yeah, the first contributor meetings, a very interesting maybe step in contributing to core. Christina: That’s really great that they’ve got that first time meeting. You don’t feel like… Justin: Yeah. Christina: …you’re jumping into something and don’t know what you’re doing and yeah. Justin: Yeah, that’s very true. Because when you’ve start if you are starting contributing and you attend directly the dev chat, maybe get a little bit lost, cuz Yeah, because people probably start talking about next release don’t need anything else and you will probably get confused.But the first time contributor is very, very nice place to be, or even me. I mean, people who attend this meeting are new contributors. Very, very, very ancient contributors that are here to help. Yeah. And so I particularly I’m particularly grateful to these people who commit their time to help new person that are willing to contribute, because it’s a very huge work. And yeah, I’m very grateful to these persons to the to these people. Christina: That’s great. And what about for the documentation team? What’s the best way for people to start getting involved there? Justin: So, I’ll say that the documentation team is currently one of the most active team in make WordPress. And so I think, to start contributing for all the teams, in general, for all the teams, the I mean, the normal way or I will say Yeah, the normal way would be first to go to the make WordPress page of the team. So for instance, if documentation: make.WordPress.org/documentation, and then read the introduction about the team, what they do, and what are the projects they are working on now and check what what at what time they are meeting, Christina: Right. Justin: so most of the team meets once a week, some of them. So at the meetings, everybody is like welcome to say, Hey, I’m a new contributor or how things happen here, whatever. There will always be someone who will be there to help. So you just have to read what the documentation team about and if you are interested in attending the meeting, you attned then say, Hi, I’m a new contributor here. What can I do? how things happen here? And yeah, there will always be someone who is ready to help. And… Christina: There’s no shame in admitting that it’s your first time. Justin: Yeah. Yeah. But actually, I personally, I think that many people that are starting contributing will probably be shy of speaking in meetings, but you don’t have to be shy actually. Because everybody there is there to help there to make WordPress better. And if you are here, like attending meet a meeting, it’s probably because you want to learn something or because you want to help, WordPress to be better so like, you don’t have to be shy to talk to people to introduce yourself. So to introduce yourself to 10 people what you are doing or what part of contribution you are interested in? Because I know it can be very, you can feel intimidated when you attend for the first time a meeting. Because before before I attend the meetings, I mean, before the first time I was attending meetings, maybe core or maybe documentation, I used to research on internet, what are the people working there? And I was seeing like people using WordPress for what 15 years?! And, I started in Slack, and I was like, oh, how can I talk there, and I was like, all of them are very cool, very nice. And that’s one of the most maybe the most the greatest thing about the WordPress community is that everybody is open at least for people I have met they are all open in that they are all willing to engage to help to… Christina: That’s been my experience, too. Justin: Yeah yeah. I think everybody who is I mean if, WordPress is something like among all open source project to which I have contribute I found WordPress as one of the most inclusive and most open because for instance in for dev chats where, you may think that so when we start dev chat, most of them the person who is like leading the chats used to say something like, Hey, this is the weekly dev chat about WordPress core. Everybody’s cool here. We don’t make decisions, every decision happened on make make blog posts. So that’s something that’s really emphasized the openness of the WordPress community, because you may feel that at the dev chat, people will gather and decide what WordPress will be in the next days, but that’s not the case. Whenever there is a decision to be made, like we used to write it, people publish it, in blog post, and then people can give them their opinion and even people who were not able to attend the meetings. They so they can give their opinion about what’s going on in WordPress. Yeah So what I would say to every new contributors is, don’t be shy. Everybody here is there to help. And you’re more than welcome to say hi. So it’s very difficult to say Hi, this is so you’re more than welcome to say hi. Christina: Sounds good. And if they’re feeling shy, they can say hi to you. Justin: Yeah. You just have to raise your hand to like, put the hand emoticon there. Yeah. So we know that you are here in. Christina: Yeah. Those emojis are good. Have you ever been to a contributor day? Justin: Yeah. So I’ve attended only one WordCamp til now. It’s WordCamp Lagos. That’s in Nigeria. That’s just near near near like where I live. So I’ve been at the contributor day of WordCamp Lagos last year. Christina: Okay. Justin: And yeah, that was nice. Christina: And then what team did you work with that day? Justin: So I lead the translation team, Christina: okay, Justin: because Nigeria speak oh, an English that’s called Pidgin English and they have started a WordPress locale of pidgin. So I’ve helped on to show new contributors or people that are interested in translating WordPress to pidgin how they can start. How they can translate, WordPress core, themes or whatever. So yeah, that was really cool. And actually, I’ve learned a lot at these, these contributor day because they were things that I was not currently aware of off about starting a locale because I was when I start contributing to translate WordPress and later to core one of my it’s still one of my dream it’s to start the local in my in my language so I speak a language that’s called Fon-gbe and I’m really willing to start a locale in this language but before attending the contributor day I was not aware of all the work that was needed to start the locale all the information I need to gather all the documentation I need to prepare because this is what just like you want to start a locale at in just Yeah, because there are a lot of information that I needed to start a locale so I also learn a lot to this contributor day and, I hope. Yeah, I hope that I’ve helped people to to learn also, and I am happy to see that the pidgin locale is getting more people involved. And yeah, probably in a good way to maybe reach the 100% of coverage translation coverage. Christina: Yeah. That’s really great. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about, about contributing that I haven’t asked you? Justin: Um, maybe meetups and WordCamps. I think for people who start contributing, it’s also interesting to attend local meetups or local WordCamps, because there you can meet people you know, or people you hear about in your community that work with WordPress. You can meet them and meet other people that are interest in WordPress and then talking about WordPress so I found meetups very interesting. So for me it was probably more difficult because until six or seven month there were not a WordPress meetup in my country so I have, so they were no meetups and they were not obviously WordCamps. So I’ve just attend one word WordCamp in Nigeria and just after that, we have had WordPress meetup here in Cotonou and so I I found meetups also a very interesting way to learn about WordPress or to learn about contribution. Same thing for WordCamp. WordCamp I also like I found WordCamp, I mean the only one WordCamp I’ve attend. I found it so much interesting that. Yeah, I hope for everybody who is dealing with WordPress or is working, or with contributing to WordPress to attend a WordCamp one day, even if it’s just a local WordCamp the spirit. Yeah, the spirit of the event is, yeah, it’s very nice. Very nice to see bunch of people gathering to talk about WordPress with happiness. Yeah. It’s very cool. Christina: Was the WordPress WordCamp in Nigeria? One day or two days? Justin: It was… Christina: Or more. Justin: is three days. Christina: Oh right, because two, so did they do like two days? And then the third day was contributor day, or? Justin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there was two talk and presentation… Christina: Right. Justin: …and the third day was contribution. It was contributor day. Christina: That’s a pretty decent size WordCamp, sounds like nice. How many people show up at your, your meetup now? Your local meetup? Justin: The two first I’ll say an average of 20 people and the next meetup is so we have Friday it’s tomorrow. And we have something like 42 people that are registered. And so if I find it very interesting because we are just starting and so since they were no meet up before, it’s a it was maybe a little bit hard to, it’s still a little bit hard to the maybe the communication path. Yeah, to talk about the meetup to yeah to I mean, to introduce it to companies that may be be willing to participate or sponsor. Christina: Right. Justin: And also to enter this. It’s to participants that will be interesting, interested. And yeah, so it’s also maybe a little bit hard to find topics that people will really be willing to learn. So we just like two weeks ago we just did a survey into the participant asking them what they’re willing to learn at the WordPress meetup.Yeah, It was very, I think it something relevant to to ask people what they want to see at the WordPress meetup what they want to learn. And the responses can be very surprising because us as as, as people working daily with WordPress, there are some things that we may be seeing obvious but for someone who is starting it’s not obvious at all, and maybe be thinking that hey this stuff is too much obvious we can’t do it at the meetup. But we probably be doing things more advanced, but people want to understand because they haven’t. Or they haven’t been aware of the basics. Yeah, it was really great doing this survey. Christina: Yeah. Justin: And Oh nice. We have been like, one week ago approached by a company who is willing to sponsor us. Yeah, it’s really nice actually because we didn’t talk to any company apart from those who are hosting the meetup about sponsoring so someone for the company approached us and say hey we really willing to contribute to sponsor your meetup. Yeah. Christina: That’s really great. Sounds like you have a pretty good community that’s we don’t Yeah, that’s that’s a good size to start out with, I’d say. Yeah, cool. Yeah. Awesome. Okay, so now it’s time for my favorite question. I don’t know if people dread it or not but I love it. If you had to pick which Wapuu would you say is your favorite Wapuu? Justin: So, I’ll say that. My my favorite Wapuu is definitely the one of WordCamp Asia, Tuktuk. Because I saw all the, I mean everything about WordCamp Asia I found it nice, very nice. First of all, the website that was very nicely designed with the background colour and everything that I really love, and also the Wapuu, the story I mean the the story of the designer behind the Wapuu also found very interesting that they have decided to share what are the stories behind the logo? What are the stories behind the Wapuu and whatever so yeah, I will say that is my favorite Wapuu. Christina: Cool. Justin: And I don’t know if I dare, I had the right to say my second favorite. Christina: Yes. Tell us another Wapuu Justin: So, so I as I say it as I came to WordCamp Lagos in they have done something like a very local Wapuu with like the Wapuu is holding a drum. And like, it’s like playing the drum. And yeah, this one and Asia are my favorites Wapuu. but yeah, the WordCamp Asia is definitely the first one Christina: and what’s remind me What does the WordCamp Asia one look like? I can’t remember. Justin: It’s like, he is like a Wapuu is holding, he’s hugging a virtual person or a virtual thing. Christina: Okay. Justin: And it’s like a little bit in I mean, it’s fun. It’s like a not so much habitual usual. Christina: Okay. Justin: But it’s still a very nice one. Actually what I love about the Wapuu is the color as I said, I found it very well designed. And yeah, actually all the design behind WordCamp Asia I love them all and I’m a little bit sad of the cancellation but I do understand. Christina: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but that’s a nice little shout out to their Wapuu on the day that is today while we’re recording is when WordCamp Asia was supposed to start I think right today or tomorrow. Saturday? Justin: This today we have 14. Six or five days. Christina: Is it still? Okay Yeah, but it’s coming up real soon. Yeah that much I know well it was coming up real soon now it’s not of course but yeah nice that you picked WordCamp Asia and I will find as always I will find those two word. Those two Wapuus and put them on the show notes page. So they’ll be there. Justin: Yeah. For the one of you just have to search for WordCamp Lagos Wapuu Christina: And I can find it perfect. Awesome, speaking of finding things how can people find you online if they want to reach out? Justin: So I think the easiest way to find me online is on Twitter because I think I interact interact there more than on orther maybe social media and so, search for my handle that’s Justin Ahinon. And one at the end. JustinAhinon1. Christina: Okay. Justin: So yeah, I’ve saw my story with Twitter is kind of weird because I’ve discovered Twitter maybe seven years ago, and when I came on Twitter, I didn’t At the first time love it. So I abandoned for maybe three years. And then I came back and I found it. Amazing. And I’ve met some interesting people on Twitter and later in real life and I found very interesting as a social place to engage and. Yeah. So I’m more, more willing or more able to talk on Twitter than on other social. Christina: Right. Do you have a website or anything that people might check out? Justin: Yeah, I have a website – segbedji.com. So it’s like s, e, g, b, e, d j i dot com. It’s one of my name. Okay. And yeah, and that’s where my website where I talk about me and everything. And I used to write daily notes when I, where I share things about maybe what happened or interesting people I met. But it’s changed a lot so people who used to come on my website, may notice change like or all the themes because I use it also for testing purposes. So I run like the testing version of WordPress… Christina: Right. Justin: And I used to test themes and plugins. It’s my lab. It’s my WordPress lab. Christina: Sure. Excellent, so people can see as you play around with things. Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks for chatting with me today about all of your contributing. Justin: Yeah, thank you for having me. Christina: Thanks for finding a time. That worked with the whole timezone difference. Yeah, it’s good to It’s nice. There’s the whole great thing about the world wide web and being able to talk to people all over the place, right? Justin: Yeah, yeah, totally. Christina: Awesome. Well, thanks again, Justin. Justin: Thank you and yeah, I mean, let’s see, I mean, thank you for hosting the podcast. Christina: My pleasure. Justin: I really love podcasts and this just my second podcast I’m talking on and I was like, happy to Yeah. excited to talk in the podcast because I listen to podcast almost all the time and to find myself participating in one is always a very interesting moment. Christina: Yeah, I hear ya, thanks again. Links Apply to be a guest or nominate someone Follow the podcast on Twitter Subscribe in iTunes/Apple Podcasts or in your favourite podcast app The post Episode 7: Justin Ahinon appeared first on Christina Workman.

Mervin Hernandez is a WordPress enthusiast turned professional from New York City. He’s been an active member of the WordPress New York City Community since 2011, has attended more than a dozen WordCamps and has been an organizer and volunteer for meetups and Camps as well. Mervin is presently managing a Meta project tackling WordPress admin notifications workflow upgrading. And he is the director of client solutions for rtCamp USA, which is one of the WordPress VIP gold partner agencies. Twitter: @hrmervinSlack: hrmervinTeams: Community, CoreWebsite: https://mervinhernandez.comWebsite: https://rtcamp.comFavourite Wapuu: NYC Wapuu Transcript Click here to open up transcript Christina: Hello! and thanks for joining us. Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Mervin Hernandez. Mervin is a WordPress enthusiast turned professional from New York City. He’s been an active member of the WordPress New York City Community since 2011, has attended more than a dozen WordCamps and has been an organizer and volunteer for meetups and Camps as well. Mervin is presently managing a Meta project tackling WordPress admin notifications workflow upgrading, and he’s going to tell more about that in a minute. And he is the director of client solutions for rtCamp USA, which is one of the WordPress VIP gold partner agencies. Welcome Mervin! Mervin: Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Hello, everybody. Christina: How are you today? Mervin: I’m doing fantastic. Christina: Alright, I have a lot of questions for you just from your intro. But first, I really want to know more about this meta project. Mervin: That’s a great place for us to start talking about contributing. Christina: Awesome. Mervin: So let me try to do the project justice and we are still forming quite a bit of it ourselves. So we’re, we keep revising the goal and the vision of it. So Here’s where we are today. Christina: Alright. Mervin: In short, everyone that has been around WordPress for even a little while, you have inevitably come across some kind of a WP admin notice that is just a little too persistent. It’s either trying to tell you to review a plugin. It’s trying to tell you to update Jetpack or add some kind of an add on to WooCommerce. Or if you were lucky enough to get it in Black Friday, this past year in 2019. You saw the Yoast upgrade notice for Black Friday sale. So the WP admin notice vocabulary hasn’t really changed in many, many versions. So we’re trying to do something about that. That’s a really big, hairy, audacious goal. There’s so many people that the WP admin notices touches. And it would require plugin developers, theme developers, users to define with how many notices, what kinds of notices and how they want them delivered. So we’re trying to we’re trying to set the groundwork for all of that, for a better way to deliver notices to the right people in a more in a more pleasant way that is less obtrusive, and a lot more efficient. So moving forward, we want to give developers the tools that they need to just take care of admin notices in a much nicer, much nicer way. So we’re working on that whole project. Christina: That sounds good. Mervin: Hopefully that hopefully that explains it better. Christina: Yeah, that sounds pretty good. I know I’ve signed into some dashboards. And the whole screen is just covered with notices. Mervin: Oh, me too Christina: Some I can delete and some I can’t. And yeah, so that’s good to know somebody is working on it. Mervin: I have friends who tell me “Oh, I keep all those notices around because they remind me that I have something to do”. I could not do that. Because like that is half the real estate of my screen that is just taken up by one notice after another, right? Christina: And if you just do it, then you don’t need the reminder anymore, cuz it’s done. Mervin: Right. Well, different philosophies. They’ll get to it eventually. Christina: Yes, exactly. So what is that an official team project? Mervin: That is it’s just a make WordPress meta project. It’s alive. It’s in the make channels. We’ve had meetings since Oh, gosh, what was it? I think August or September is when we started gathering feedback from the community at large, so it’s available for everyone to follow, chip into, comment, make requests or recommendations of what they wish this feature to do. If you go to make.wordpress.org, you can search for my name, I think it’s also under the hashtag of “feature notifications”. Christina: Okay, Mervin: you can take a look at what we’ve got going on with the get the requirements gathering document and also the comments that are brewing in the in the make track. Christina: Nice and that’s under the meta team then. Mervin: Yes, it is under core core. Christina: It’s under core. Okay. Mervin: Yes. Christina: Okay, good. Good. Sometimes the teams get confusing. Mervin: Yep. Christina: Great. All right. Now, you also mentioned or I mentioned in your intro, which you gave me so technically you mentioned you are an active member in the New York City WordPress community for meetups Mervin: yes Christina: and Camps right? Mervin: That’s right. I think my first volunteer Camp for NYC was 2014 or 2015. And since then I’ve been involved in some small or big capacity: helping with the organizing team, volunteering on the Camp itself. Certainly in the meetups on a regular basis, you know, funny. I have never spoken at a meetup. But I’m I’m a frequent flyer as a helper at the help desk, Christina: right Mervin: So, yes. Just been quite involved in NYC in one way or another. Christina: How big are the WordCamps in New York City? I’m assuming it’s just one. Mervin: Yes, once a year we do the the WordCamp NYC and they typically run in the three to 400 person attendance Christina: That’s pretty good Mervin: I think that’s, that’s been pretty consistent for the years that I’ve been involved. It’s been around around that many. And we’ve got some we’ve got some ideas of how to hopefully grow it and offer some creative opportunities for professionals to perhaps have maybe a half day or full day, right before the potpourri of sessions comes in for the weekend. Christina: Nice. When do you guys have a normal time of the year that the New York City Camp goes? Mervin: Yes, we have been holding NYC Camp in between August and September over the last few years. And I think that early fall dates tend to do well for us. We try to navigate all many of the other Camps that are happening. I know Philly, kind of beat us to the punch to one of the dates that we like, which is like mid late September, but we’re we’re looking at those dates here for this year in 2020 as well. Christina: Okay, great. And the meetups. I’m guessing New York City’s pretty big, although I’ve never been there. But I’m guessing there’s more than one Word- WordPress meetup in the whole area. Mervin: Yes, we have the general WP NYC meetup. We’re very fortunate to have a partnership with Microsoft. So they allow us to host our big meetup at their learning center, right by the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Really, really nice venue. Sometimes they throw in some treats. Christina: Always nice. Mervin: That’s always fun. So that’s the general meetup. We have sessions. Like, like the other meetups, some of them cover development, some of them cover content. Many of them talking about business and how to leverage WordPress and various contexts. So that’s that’s the, I guess that’s the big meetup. We also have a Manhattan Help Desk. That depending on venue availability, because office space and event space in Manhattan is quite expensive. Christina: I can imagine Mervin: So depending on availability of a venue, we have a Manhattan Help Desk once a month, often. And then we have a Brooklyn Help Desk. It’s quite got quite an active following. And I participate as a helper there pretty often as well. Christina: And I’ll bet, pardon me how big to those usually tend to be person wise? Mervin: Sure. So both of the help desks run in the 20 to 30 people average and I’d say about three or four helpers. So myself and a few friends from the NYC community, Victor Ramirez, Timothy Jacobs, Ali Lyons are among the frequent helpers. So we float between the Manhattan and the Brooklyn Help Desk and those that’s our average attendance. And then for the general meetup, we have a bit more capacity. So because we have it at one of the really nice classrooms at Microsoft, we can accommodate between 40 to 50 ish people. And the rsvps always fill up to this. That’s, that’s always a good thing. And we’re always we’re always trying to accommodate more if we can just try to squeeze in from that waitlist. Christina: mm hmm, that sounds pretty great. All right. So how long would you say you’ve been contributing to WordPress? Mervin: To WordPress in some capacity I’d say that that those 2014 2015 Camps was when I really started to get plugged in. I’ve been around WordPress, since about 2009. I was working with a nonprofit that was using WordPress at the time. And that’s when I started to really get familiar with the tool, start to see its potential, you know, started breaking things as I went through the, the typical learning curve and experimenting and breaking things as Christina: Yeah, Mervin: as is how you learn. Christina: That’s the way you do it Mervin: But it wasn’t until maybe 2016 2017 that I really started to get involved with learning about ways that the community and how to really help organize and help on a regular basis at the meetup and then start to get more responsibility with planning Camp, Camp NYC and then start to be on the organizing team and have a more active role in making this amazing and really fun Camp happen on a regular basis. Christina: Awesome. And so we’ve talked about community team because that’s the Camps and the meetups and core team. Are there any other teams that you contribute to or have contributed to in the past? Mervin: I think that about covers it. I’ve been, I’ve been somewhat selective because I’ve I’ve many of the things that I put my name to and that I say that I’m going to do things I’m I try to do a really good job. And of course, I often drop the ball and miss deadlines and adjust expectations but I’ve been pretty selective in things that I think I can be helpful I I think I have some experience or a perspective, that’s that that’s kind of worthwhile to plug into what’s been going on. There’s a few areas that I still aspire to contribute more into: accessibility, both the make team and also that topic at large in the community. And I think I’m, I’m working on what it is that I can bring to the table from what I’ve learned, what I’m learning, and what I’m working on on a day to day basis, both professionally and, and personally because I, I still do a bit of developing on my own. And that allows me to keep my keep my hand on the on the pulse of WordPress really, really actively not just from a management perspective and just kind of working in the flow. So those are those are really the areas that I felt I’ve I’ve enjoyed, and I’ve brought some thing really valuable to the teams that I’m working on, especially now with this core team. I’m like facilitating the project management aspect of it. And I’m really taken to that side of business, that side of delivering solutions for WordPress. And as I as I have the time as I have the desire to expand my my, my role in various areas of WordPress, I’ll, I’ll keep looking for opportunities of where I can. I can really plug myself into, into what’s going on and make a good difference and in whatever I do. Christina: Sounds like you’re being smart about it. You don’t want to spread yourself too thin and burnout, right? Mervin: Oh my goodness. I’m not in the in the risk of burning out but I’m definitely spreading myself very thin. Christina: Which unfortunately, a lot of us do, because we just want to do all the things. Mervin: I know and all of all of the things are the people that are involved in all these things. I mean, it’s really their fault that I get involved in all this stuff. But it’s, it’s really fun. And it’s really challenging because I’ll tell you briefly about this. This core project is like I’ve never led a core project before. And Jon hasn’t an either Jon Bossenger who’s kind of the lead for the project. And so, the both of us are, are bantering, it’s like, Okay, well, we we want to do a good job. We want to keep gathering the insight and the perspectives that we need from everybody. And I’m glad I stepped up to the plate and said I would get involved in something like this because it’s such a different way from my day to day, both in my independent projects and also working at rtCamp and delivering, you know, big big projects with many stakeholders and many critical decisions that have to be made. I’m thinking differently. Still in the WordPress context, I’m thinking differently on a day to day basis with what I’m doing professionally. And what I’m doing for the community. It’s, it’s still all coming into the bigger picture of WordPress and making it better, supporting the platform supporting the people around it. But managing and being involved in a core project, it requires a different set of skills and a different set of perspective and mindset, than, okay, this is the solution that we need to deliver, when I’m talking to enterprise clients on what it is that they need done on a timely basis. You know, put in service tested QA right away, kind of okay, kind of an approach. Mervin: Yeah, so are you learning as you go a little bit? Mervin: Oh, a lot. quite a bit. And, and, and as I, as I’m learning how to contribute into a mergeable solution for WordPress as part of the core project, I’m talking to people and I’m telling him like, I feel like I have too many cooks in the kitchen in terms of wanting to build this, this plugin this feature, in a good way. But then they told me he’s like, well, maybe it’s not too many cooks in the kitchen. Maybe you have the right number of cooks in the kitchen. And that’s what the recipe calls for. It’s such a different it’s such a different mindset and in, in in the most positive way I can I can say, it’s, it’s taking a different part of my brain to do that stuff. I like that. Christina: Cool. That sounds really great. Well, I think it sounds like you were the right person for the job and I’m glad you’re working on it. Mervin: Yes, we’ve got many people that are involved and pouring into it as well. So it’s gonna take, it’s gonna take a lot of different a lot of different stakeholders to, to really bring about the the way to do notifications well. And that’s going to get accepted not just in the core but accepted in future plugins, future themes, future integrations with WordPress, and it’s going to touch a lot of people. So we’re, we’re taking our time with it, we’re trying to do it right. And it’s, gosh, I don’t I don’t, I have a rough goal of 6.0. But I think that that might be too soon. Christina: I was just about to ask if you had a timeline for it. Mervin: I, I’ve been throwing around 6.0 kind of haphazardly but I think 6.5 might be more, more reasonable for an MVP, Christina: Right. Sounds good, at least it gives you a goal to reach for right? And if you have to adjust, so be it. Mervin: Exactly. What is it a aim for the stars and settle for the moon? Something like that? Christina: Something like that. That sounds right. Where are we here? So your contributor origin story, I think you kind of started talking about this anyways, was the first WordCamp that you went to, would you say? Mervin: Yep, Oh, absolutely. It may have started out with me finding a way to get into Camp for free. Christina: Been there, Mervin: which is a great perk. Anybody who’s considering coming to Camp, that’s that’s the way to get a free ticket is if you have the opportunity to volunteer and if there’s an area of helping make Camp happen that interests you certainly do that apply to volunteer and we’ll let you in at no cost. But, Christina: We’re almost all started struggling to get enough volunteers. Mervin: Of course, Christina: we rarely say no. Mervin: I know we accepted. Gosh, I don’t know what we accepted it was like something like 30 or 35 applications for New York City. And I think our volunteer organizer, Lisa Leid, she did a great job of like giving everyone an orientation. And it really takes the pressure off of like the organizers who’ve been involved in planning it for a few months at least, and really takes the pressure off of them to have more volunteers then we perhaps really need just in order to make it run smoothly, and for nobody to feel like Oh, they have to do everything. Christina: Yeah, less stress. Mervin: Yes, absolutely. I can speak for myself leading for the very first time in 2019. I felt like I had a great organizing team. But on the day of we had just the right amount of volunteers. No, there’s always a moment or two where it’s like, Okay, well, we need one extra person here or there. But overall, it flowed really, really smooth. So, I’d say that was a very good entry for me was to find the opportunity to volunteer at Camp to be a frequent attendee at the meetups and see what ways I could help put that together and social events and, and kind of just participate in some small capacities and other Camps. So yes, the happiness bar was was probably where I really started to get my footing and starting to talk to people. Mervin: Great. Have you been to a Contributor Day with all of those WordCamps that you’ve been to? Mervin: Not all of them but yes, I’ve been to a few. I know US had a Contributor Day this past year in St. Louis. Christina: Yeah, we did Mervin: we’ve had we’ve had like Contributor Hour at Camp NYC. Christina: Oh, that’s great. Mervin: Um, so yeah, we’ve had a few opportunities where I’ve had the chance to go learn about the different teams. And if I haven’t been able to really dig my, my teeth into something at the time, it certainly was, was presently in mind when the opportunity came around for me to get involved with this core project. Christina: And how would one of those Contributor Hours work? Mervin: So in NYC because we are so strapped for space and time, we didn’t quite have the wherewithal and the capacity to host a whole Contributor Day. So what we did is we had a Contributor Hour and we gave everyone an overview of the make channels. Here are the different areas that you can contribute into WordPress, way beyond code. You do not have to be a coder to chip into the community. Yeah. So everyone I was I lead that Contributor Hour a couple of years ago, and I was the whole Camp. I was like, hey, do you know about make WordPress, um, the whole Camp, I was recruiting for the for the Contributor session, and I was able to give the overview and then we were able to answer a couple of tickets, support tickets, kind of on the fly together, just as an example. But speakers sponsors like everyone that had not known what it meant to contribute, and to be a part of the make channels. They were able to come get an overview, see how to answer a ticket if they can do that. And get plugged in if they wanted to get involved with one of the channels, Christina: right, so kind of a bit of a recruitment in general. Mervin: Absolutely. Christina: That’s awesome. I’ll have to keep that in mind. All right, here’s, here’s a big question. This is like, what’s the meaning of life? Why Why do you contribute to the WordPress community and project? Mervin: All right. Yes, that’s a that’s a, that’s a very deep question. Mervin: I like before I even felt it was kind of a duty as a as a professional in the WordPress space. Because that did come into into my motivation. Once I started to be successful in delivering good solutions and started to talk to companies about jobs in WordPress. I saw that it was an opportunity to learn by doing by actually being involved in making something happen around the community. So for me that was, that was a reason to, to really get involved, get to networking with folks. And in however I could, given my skill set at the time, start to help with the meetup here. And that opened up a lot of doors, it opened up relationships that are still growing today. business relationships in both directions. I mean, I’ve got colleagues here in New York City that refer projects to me and I have projects that are over my head that I work with them on. And I came about because I was I was involved. I was available to help host I was available to record sessions at a meetup because I was helpful and thoughtful in how I approached working with with clients and doing the business of WordPress. So those that all came into what allowed me what motivated me to to contribute and now as a professional in the WordPress space, I feel really lucky to be a member of the rtCamp team. Because so many of our, our engineering and developing team members contribute in to core on a regular basis I think for the last 16 or 18 versions of WordPress. rtCamp has been among the contributors into into the WordPress core. So my company makes it a point to have a culture of giving back into the platform that we love that we’re passionate about that we see enables so much business success for us and for our clients, so that that brings about kind of the duty aspect of it is like if we’re able to be subject matter experts for our clients and do innovative things and RND new ways of, of doing something with WordPress or around WordPress, then we need to bring that back. If it’s able to help the core if it’s able to help some satellite part of WordPress, I think we need to, it’s our role to bring it back. Christina: I agree. And it’s nice when you have that culture in the company that you’re working with. We have Mervin: Oh totally. Christina: Yeah, that’s one of the things I really like about working with WebDevStudios. We have that same thing. And actually, this Friday is our Five for the Future day. So I’m really excited. Mervin: There you go Christina: There you go Christina: Cuz I have a lot to do! Mervin: I when when Matt mentioned that it’s like whoa, whoa, hey, listen, Matt. We donate a lot more than 5% we just got to start tracking it. Christina: Yeah. Mervin: Yeah, Christina: it’s good. It’s nice that they’ve got that company page now where you can, can get your company out there and show all the people that are in your company that are helping contribute. And it’s a it’s a good step to take. And it also helps showcase that not everybody is a coder, a developer needing to do code. Mervin: Yep, I will, I’m still probably a few years away from contributing into core. And I’ve got some great role models, core contributors here, right here in New York City, who are are good friends and good colleagues. And I treat them like rock stars because it’s really cool to, to kind of know those people and to see the rigor that they that they put into reviewing stuff but I’ve forgotten lost my train of thought, yes. It’s really great to be a member of a company that has that as a as a big value of what we do. It’s, hey, we’re working in this platform. Let’s poke at it. Let’s make it better. And let’s bring back what we what we’ve learned about it. Christina: Yeah, exactly. And it just, everybody’s better for it. Mervin: Absolutely. Christina: All right. Now you get to brag a little, what is your proudest contribution? Mervin: Well, because I really enjoyed it. I’d say my proudest contribution was leading NYC this past year 2019. I was incredibly lucky that the community here in New York City has some outstanding members. And it was it was a real pleasure to lead Camp and I think we had a really good one. Both from the feedback I got from my fellow organizers, from so many of the speakers and past organizers who came and enjoyed the event and said everything felt really smooth. Nothing felt rushed or no fires looked terribly out of place. Christina: That’s always good to hear Mervin: and I fooled them all. So yeah, I I’ve heard how, how big of a job it is to lead and it is and I take it very seriously. But having a great team made it made it fun. So yeah, I was I was really proud that we put on a great Camp. A lot of people from out of town had a great time. And and yeah, that’s what That’s why I’m very excited to be leading it again for for 2020. It’s because I had such a great experience. I hope I, I did the job justice. And I hope to have all of the same team and a few more new people to come join our organizing team this year because it really jelled. It worked really, really well. And I hope I can do a great job again. Christina: I’m sure you will, I have confidence in you. All right, getting towards the end here. We talked, I guess you’ve mentioned a couple of ways that people can get involved with either WordCamps or going on the make, but what advice might you have for new contributors? Mervin: For new contributors? I would say don’t be shy. There are so many things in the community. at large that folks in any capacity will likely find a group that they can get plugged into. And for all of the reasons that I’ve mentioned it, it’s going to help you grow as an individual that uses WordPress, either professionally or as a casual blogger, you’re going to get so much out of being a contributing active member of the community. So if your passion is to create content, design, pick out fonts, you’re going to find a team in design. If, if you like to put together social events. Look at getting plugged into the meetup you can create you can create a Camp organizing team, you can create a special meetup around a social event or tag along some kind of a technology related activity that’s happening in your area and bring WordPress to that to that venue. So there’s, there’s a place for everyone. And there’s a lot of opportunities for you to pour into a community that’s going to give you so much back. So I’d say if you’re thinking about WordPress, if you like, any part of WordPress, you can certainly get plugged into into the community in some way. Christina: And to your point about if you’re shy, still try to jump in. Most of us are introverts and have our shy moments. So we all understand. it’s a good community for that. Mervin: And and if you if you only talk to one person and just talk a little bit, as like Hey, what’s your favorite theme? You know, there’s, there’s there’s no pressure. It’s such an open and welcoming community. Across the board. I I’ve been very fortunate to talk to people of many different walks of life and I’ve never felt out of place and hopefully I’ve never made anyone feel intimidated or, or anything like that by being, you know, a little bit a little bit not shy and trying to talk to everyone and make them feel welcome. So yeah, it’s just, it’s just fun. It’s a good social and professional activity to do together. Christina: And you already have something in common that you know, because it’s WordPress. Mervin: Exactly. Like if we have nothing else I was like, Okay, so what what’s next for WordPress? Talk Talk something tech. Christina: Yeah, exactly. Is there anything else that That we missed so far, but you want to talk about in regards to contributing. Mervin: Did you want to ask me about my Wapuu collection? Hanging up on my wall. Christina: That was my next question. Yeah. No, you know, I’ve got to ask. It is my favorite question even though it’s unrelated to contributing. So what is which Wapuu is your favorite Wapuu and you’re allowed to have more than one if you want. Mervin: So I the name is escaping me right now. But I met someone in St. Louis, who had three or four lanyards full of Wapuus. And I’m I’m pretty much got my one lanyard. That’s that’s filled up. And yes, I’m going to be totally biased. There was a Wapuu. One of those early years I mentioned I got involved, and it’s a Wapuu with the Empire State Building. That is my favorite. There are some fun ones. But that one, because I’m from New York City holds holds a special place in my heart. Actually, I’ve got a mental note to, to put it in the budget with Central this year to hopefully have this one of the swag items this year is to design a new Wapuu for 2020 New York City. So I don’t know what landmark we’re going to pick or how we’re going to design it. But I would really like to bring a new Wapuu from NYC this year. Christina: Nice and get some pins? Mervin: stay tuned. Christina: Is it the pins that you’re planning to get with them too then? Mervin: Yeah, yeah. Why pooping? Yes. Christina: Awesome. Save me one. Mervin: Hopefully you get to come. Christina: Yeah, that would be awesome. Mervin: I’ll buy you a bagel Christina: but I’m more I’m closer to the west coast and all of the east coast ones. It’s just so far away and harder to get to. Mervin: WebDev isn’t WebDevStudios based in Philly? Christina: Well, in a way, that’s where the CEO lives, but there’s no actual head office, we’re all remote. So yeah, although I guess that means do we have somebody in New York? I’m not sure. I can’t remember now. But yeah Mervin: I think I’ve met a few team members that were in Pennsylvania. So that’s what I thought that Christina: Yeah, there. There’s a couple others that live in, in there in and around there, too. So it’s very likely, Mervin: Chances are our date is going to fall, either the week before or after Philly camp in 2020. So maybe dog ear those two weeks. Christina: I will consider that Oh, that I see what you’re getting at there. Two camps for the price of one trip. Mervin: Exactly. Christina: I like the way you think. If my video hadn’t shut off, you’d see the wheels turning in my head right now. Mervin: I try. Christina: All right, the final final question, how can people find you online if they want to get in touch? Mervin: Awesome. So I am on Twitter a lot and that’s where, gosh, so much of the WordPress community just socializes and has these off the beaten path conversations on Twitter. So my my handle is hrmervin. I also have mervinhernandez.com and that’s a that’s a passion project for Mervin this year. I love WordPress. I use WordPress in so many contexts with clients. I do not blog on a regular basis, but it is. It is one of my big, big goals this year is to put up a couple of sentences a week, and it’ll probably be something like a little mental review for me is like, Okay, I’m working on this. I’m learning this. You know, I wrote 10 lines of code this week. That might be the extent of Mervin’s blogging, just giving you fair warning. So mervinhernandez, mervinhernandez.com. And you can find me on Twitter and there’s I’m really active on Twitter a lot. So that’s, that’s the best one. Christina: Okay, great. And we’ll have the links for those in the show notes. Mervin: Awesome. Christina: Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Mervin. It was great getting to talk to you and know you a little bit. I think I saw you in passing at WorkCamp US this year. But I never got a chance to come up and meet you. Mervin: Alright, there’s a lot of people Christina: there are. And I will meet them all one day No probably not. Mervin: Well, it’s been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you giving me the chance to chat and brag about all the different things I’ve been involved in and I invite anybody that’s, that’s been listening and been thinking about getting involved in any, any and all of this. We need contributors in so many ways in WordPress. So whether you get involved with this project in your local area, just take a look around and connect with folks. So glad to have you. Christina: And thank you for everything that you do in the community, Mervin. Mervin: Welcome. Thanks. Links Apply to be a guest or nominate someone Follow the podcast on Twitter Subscribe in iTunes/Apple Podcasts or in your favourite podcast app The post Episode 6: Mervin Hernandez appeared first on Christina Workman.

Allie Nimmons is a Tech Support Team Member at Give WP and a GoDaddy Pro Speaker Ambassador. She owns Pixel Glow Maintenance where she provides WordPress maintenance services to growing businesses. Twitter: @allie_nimmonsWordPress Slack: Allie NimmonsTeams: CommunityWebsite: allienimmons.comWebsite: pixelglowmaintenance.comWorkshop: Creating a Welcoming and Diverse Space Part 1 Part 2Favourite Wapuus: Mascot Wapuu, Headless Wapuu Transcript Click here to open up transcript Christina: Me too. Christina: Okay, so I’m gonna do my five seconds of silence again. Christina: Hello and thanks for listening to WP_contribute. Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Allie Nimmons. Allie is a Tech Support Team Member at Give WP and a GoDaddy Pro Speaker Ambassador. She owns Pixel Glow Maintenance where she provides WordPress maintenance services to growing businesses. Welcome, Allie! Allie: Hi, Christina. Thank you for having me. Christina: Thanks for being here. So is there anything else you wanted to touch on in that introduction, other than what we’ve already said? Allie: No, I think I think you really touched on all the things that take up most of my time in any given day. So that’s a good representation of who I am and what I do, particularly in the WordPress space. Christina: Excellent. I’m curious if you can tell us more about what it means to be a Speaker Ambassador. Allie: So I like to joke that I am a I’m a GoDaddy employee, but they pay me in plane tickets to WordCamps. Because basically, I am an advocate for the GoDaddy Pro product, not necessarily GoDaddy as a company or any of their other you know domain or hosting products, but specifically for GoDaddy Pro, which I use to maintain my sites and my client sites as well. And yeah, they, they send me to Camps, that they are, some camps that they are sponsoring, not all of them. But they sponsor a Camp, they send me they usually send a couple of other people as well. And I get to be there as an ambassador for the product. And a lot of times my talks are kind of geared so that they are appealing or helpful for people who might also be interested in the GoDaddy Pro system. So people who are managing multiple websites and need to backup multiple websites and you know, those sorts of people and so I get to have a lot of really, really cool conversations with people who either use GoDaddy Pro or are interested in GoDaddy Pro and I get to connect them with this really, really neat tool that I really love. And I get to travel, like this past year I’ve traveled. I’ve never been to Boston before I got to go to Boston. I’ve never been to Seattle before and I got to go to Seattle. Next weekend, I’m going to Phoenix for the first time I never been to Phoenix. I never been to St. Louis. I get to go to WordCamp US last year thanks to GoDaddy. And so it’s really a pretty sweet gig. I don’t know how I how I lucked into what I did, but it’s kind of my dream because I really really like speaking and I really really like traveling. And I’ve met like people like yourself through those experiences and so it’s really opened up the, the world of WordPress as far as the people to me, which is pretty fantastic. Christina: That’s amazing. That sounds really great. I wouldn’t mind doing something like that at some point down the road. I’m not as a big speaker yet though. This this podcasting is sort of that’s my limit right now. Allie: Well, if you ever if you ever want some some advice or help or anything like that I’ve been speaking in some way shape or form in front of people since I was five. Christina: Wow. Allie: So being up on stage and having people pay attention to me is like nothing. Christina: That’s impressive Allie: Yeah, I find it really fun. Christina: Yeah, I’ve spoken at our local Camps and, and, and at our meetups, but that’s sort of the extent of it and certainly not confident in that area. At this point. Yeah. So anyways, um, so how long have you been contributing to WordPress? Allie: um, I guess, I guess it depends on what, what we define as contributing, right. Um, I’ve not yet contributed to WordPress in kind of the way that people think about immediately, like contributing code or participating in, like a contributed contributor day or any documentation or any of those kind of really direct things that you can like, look at and be like, I wrote that or like I did that, you know, I think I’m more of a community contributor, which I think is still pretty great and pretty awesome and really fun and helpful. Christina: Very important. Allie: Thank you. Um, I do my best. I feel like since I’ve since I’ve become more active in the community, meaning since March of last year, which is really when I met like everyone that I know now, I met for the first time starting in March of last year. I’ve had just a lot of conversations with people. And I’ve tried to have a lot of conversations with people about the nature of community and what it means to be a community member and what it means to be a helpful community member and impactful community member. I talk a lot about diversity in this space. That was the the talk that I gave at WordCamp US with Jill Binder and Aurooba Ahmed and David Wolfpaw. We all did a workshop on making more diverse and inclusive spaces. And that really began from conversations that I’ve had with lots of other people about how do we make our WordPress space more diverse and inclusive. So if I can, if I can leave this planet, having contributed something to WordPress, hopefully it will be making it a more diverse and inclusive space. And so that’s the way that I try to contribute it is one of my goals for this year to contribute in a more physical sense, like contributing code or contributing documentation or something, something along those lines. I do really want to do that and you’ll get that little badge thingy, right? Yeah, as of right now, it’s a lot of community stuff, which I find to be really really rewarding. And it’s it’s like easy for me to have these conversations. It doen’st feel like like work or an inconvenience or anything like that, to have these conversations and that’s one of the things I like the most about going to WordCamps and going to meetups is talking to other people, which I never thought I would say because I’m very much an introvert and like I’ve said a bazillion times like I do not like people I don’t like talking to people and hanging out with people in social situations, but WordCamps are just different for me. Christina: I agree Allie: There’s so like, if you talk to any anybody else that knows me outside of the WordPress space, they’re like, yeah, Allie doesn’t, Allie doesn’t go to like parties or networking events or you know, I’d much rather stay at home in my pajamas and drink tea and read a book. But when it comes to WordCamp it’s like, ya! I’ll spend three solid days talking to people. Christina: There aren’t enough hours in the day. Right? Allie: There are not! Yeah, like, WordCamp US was fantastic. I got to talk to an inordinate amount of people that I never would have gotten to meet before. And it was so unbelievably gratifying and interesting and fun. And yeah, that’s, that’s what I really like doing right now. And I hope that every camp I go to I can have more, more of these talks with different people as well. So yeah, I think I think that’s the that’s the main way that I feel like I contribute to WordPress. Christina: Right. Awesome. And if I remember correctly, you are an organizer for WordCamp Miami? Allie: Um, I started to organize WordCamp Miami. And it wasn’t really the right fit for me, which I think was really interesting because WordCamp Miami is my home Camp. I live in Miami and it was the first Camp that I ever attended. I went to 2017. I’m sorry, 2015 and 2017 2019. And then I started to go to lots of other Camps. So with that is the Camp that got me into the WordPress community. It’s the Camp that got me into WordPress in the first place. And so I was really, really, really eager to join the organizing team. And this is this is something that like, I have to just make sense, like, I have to do this. And I realized that I didn’t really like organizing. And that’s not anything against organizing or against that team or against anything. It just wasn’t the right fit for me. And that was a really interesting lesson that I had to learn, was that just because I love this space, and I love this event. And I like these people and I want to spend time with them, it doesn’t mean that I have to do everything, right, it doesn’t mean that I have to take on every single responsibility that that’s put out there to me. And I can expend my energy. Christina: And you can’t. Allie: Yeah, exactly. And I could spend my time and my energy and my focus, doing something that I would rather do and as a result can do better. Like, I think that when we like something that we’re doing and when we feel passionate about it, and we feel confident, we do a better job than if we’re kind of struggling through it, you know, and I realized at a certain point, like I’m a volunteer, and if I’m struggling here, I don’t have to do this. I can give this position to somebody who would probably be much better at it than I and so I made that decision. And it was a weird decision to make because it kind of it was that moment where it was like am I failing at this, is this a bad thing? Like, did I fail? Am I giving up? You know, like, everyone always says like, don’t give up when things get hard, but, you know, sometimes it’s not the right decision. And so Christina: Yeah, it’s not giving up. Allie: it is kind of a weird thing. Yeah. And I eventually got around to that way of thinking and it is a weird thing because I was super super gung ho about it and like told everyone like, I’m going to be an organizer, or Miami, this is so great. And so I still to this day, people will like DM me with a question and I’m like, I’m actually not doing that anymore. But I can tell you who is and they definitely help you. Christina: Yeah, which is still helpful. Allie: Yeah, it was. It was a interesting experience. I did learn a lot about not only myself but about the process of organizing the WordCamp, which is not a small feat in any way, shape or form. It is a lot of work. Christina: And Miami is one of the bigger ones right as far as the local ones go Allie: if not the biggest, I think it’s the second largest in terms of attendance. Christina: Yeah. Allie: And, you know, for people who are doing this as volunteers in their free time, you know, in between work, family, kids, self care, all of that stuff, like, hug your organizers everybody. If you go to a WordCamp find every organizer you can and just give them a hug and say thank you because it is it is a gift. What, what, what people do, and I don’t Christina: Yeah, Allie: I don’t take that for I didn’t want to, you know, knowing that I wasn’t really a right fit for it. I kind of felt weird at a certain point continuing to try to power through because I was like, um, I’m not kind of like living up to what in my head a WordCamp organizer does, like the amount of work that they put into it and how much they love doing it. Like I’m sure there are so many organizers who are like, yeah, it’s a lot of work, but I really really, really love So it’s worth it. I never really felt that way. And so, it just didn’t work out. Christina: That’s all right. That’s, and that’s something like you said it took you a little while to sort of come to terms with it. That was okay. And a lot of people still struggle with that. Right. And it’s not giving up. It’s not quitting. It’s making a smart decision and prioritizing. Cuz, like you said, you can’t do everything. Allie: And I’ll still be there. If If I don’t, I’m not sure when this is coming out. But if this comes up before, February 28, I will, Christina: It might, Allie: okay, Christina: close to, or close to it? Allie: Got it. I will definitely see people there. If this goes out after I will have seen you there. I actually bought my ticket, which is the first time I’ve ever bought a ticket to WordCamp, I realized because all of my other tickets were either I was speaking so my ticket was comped or the very first time I went I went, um, because my boss at the time was speaking and so he brought me with him. So he paid for my ticket. Christina: Right Allie: Um, so it felt it felt kind of cool. Like, this is the first time I’ve ever actually financially supporting WordCamp and I was like this is, this is nice, this is good. This is what should happen. But I’ll still be there. I’ll actually be there. Give my actual job not my GoDaddy job but my actual paycheck job. They are going to be sponsors. So I’m going to be at their booth probably for a lot of the time helping out and being a Give ambassador too. Christina: awesome. Can you tell us a bit about what WordCamp Miami is like? Like, how many days is it? How many tracks? what kind of stuff goes on to the best of your experience? Allie: Yeah, so the best of my experience in the best of my knowledge as far as this year goes. Typically it’s three days, a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Saturday and Sunday are full track days. So as far as I know, we don’t do Contributor Day at WordCamp Miami. The Friday is typically workshops. Christina: Okay, Allie: um, like, for example, last year, we had a freelancers workshop, I believe we had, excuse me, beginners workshop. I don’t remember what the third one was, but primarily the workshops on the Fridays. And then there’s usually a kind of advanced developer workshop on the Sunday. And so in previous years, we’ve done JavaScript, I think in this this year. Last I heard so this is not a promise this is what this going to happen. But last I heard when we were chatting about it was we were going to move a little bit away from JavaScript and more specifically into like, blocks and Gutenberg and, you know, all of these things that are very, very topical right now as far as the WordPress community goes, because for a long time, that was JavaScript when people were really really everyone wants to learn JavaScript, which you should. But Gutenberg is the new thing. And so I believe a lot of those talks are going to be on blocks and Gutenberg and and the advanced levels of like how to build all of that stuff. And that’s going to be really cool. That’s all I know for sure about this year versus like previous years. In previous years we also do a game show, which Christina: I’ve heard. Allie: Yeah, the game show’s awesome. I’m pretty sure that WordCamp Miami is the only Camp that’s done the game show. At least it’s the first Camp to have done it. Christina: They ran it at WordCamp US Allie: They did. Yeah, it was really fun Christina: And I was doing a workshop for contri-, for contributors, for Contributor Day and contributing at the same time so I couldn’t go, Allie: it is pretty fun. We use an app called I think it’s called Kahoot something like that. And you can preset the questions and then everyone’s on their phone and you have a certain amount of time and you pick the answers. And it’s incredibly, incredibly fun. Especially because, at least in Miami, David Biseet writes all the questions. And if you spend five minutes with David Bisset, like, you know, these questions are going to be funny and they’re going to be silly, and they’re going to be clever. And he’s going to trick you. And it’s, it’s incredibly fun and like, I love it because it’s so indicative of the like, essence to me of a WordCamp. It’s like, yeah, it’s a conference. Yeah, we’re talking about like, work related stuff and professional stuff where people are networking, and you have job boards and sponsors, but it’s fun. Like, that’s always the primary goal is like, how can we make this fun and enjoyable and make sure that people have a good time? And yeah, it just, it makes me really, really happy that things like this exist, you know? Christina: Yeah. I love that. That that exists. Like you said, Yeah, and hopefully, more Camps will start to do it. I think we should try to do it. Allie: I hope so or else finding other ways like finding other finding other other things other ideas, other concepts to, you know, bring some fun and some levity, especially when you have a KidsCamp. I know WordCamp Miami, at least last year. We did it like right before closing remarks and so all the kids from the Kids Camp came over. They also participated in it and it just it brought everyone who had been separated and into all these tracks all day long, it brought everybody together to play this big game and laugh together And yeah, it’s incredibly fun. Christina: Yeah, we started a selfie scavenger hunt last year Allie: that’s cute Christina: to try to get people to interact with different people a bit more you know, things like Like you said, hug an organizer or high five a speaker or, you know, talk to somebody that that has never been to a WordCamp before to try to help get some of that going and still have some fun and we had things like dress up as a Mountie or something like that, because fo the location where we were, that was something you could do or lock yourself self in the jail, things like that. So yeah, like have a little bit of fun. Right. Allie: Yeah. Christina: Cool. So I think you mentioned you started contributing kind of last year ish. Is that what you said? Allie: Yeah, I think so. That’s about right. Christina: Cool. And did you say exactly how you started? Isn’t this hard? Like it was five minutes ago? I’m sorry. So Allie: yeah, I think. Yeah, as far as like my community contributing. It definitely did start last year at WordCamp Miami last year, because that was when I met Adam Warner. Who I give him complete credit of just changing my life entirely. He works at GoDaddy and he was the one that offered the GoDaddy Pro Speaker Ambassador gig to me, Christina: right. Allie: And so it was through him that I’ve been able to go to multiple Camps and talk to multiple people and he’s always been super duper supportive of like me, using me and my personality and my interests and the things that I’m passionate about as a way to connect with other people and, you know, make GoDaddy look good and all that fun stuff and so that really kind of sprouted my ability to contribute and the way that I contribute sprouted out of his support and his encouragement, his friendship. Christina: Nice. Allie: Yeah. Christina: Pretty good guy. Yeah. Allie: Great. Christina: And what makes you want to contribute? Like, why? What is the deeper meaning of contributing to you? That’s my deep question Allie: Oh, man, that is a deep question. Um, there’s a lot. There’s a lot to that. I think that the I’m in a fairly unique position, being a female person of color, who is queer in the tech industry. I’m a little bit of a unicorn. And there are definitely other people out there who I’ve met. They definitely exist. They’re fantastic people. But by and large, the community is pretty homogenous as far as you know, what people look like and what their backgrounds are, and, and sometimes even the way that they look at the world. And so, it’s been interesting to be part of a community like WordPress, because we’re very privileged in that this community is a lot more welcoming, and a lot more open minded than a lot of other tech communities can be. Christina: Yeah, Allie: and so even though this, this community can be homogenous, most of those people are very, very susceptible to the idea of, you know, you’re different from me and that’s valuable rather than You’re different from me and that’s an inconvenience or that makes me uncomfortable or, you know, whatever the case may be and so the the reason I think I really like having these conversations is because they’re easy because people want to listen to me and they encourage me rather than saying like, well, you shouldn’t talk about race, this is WordCamp. We don’t need to have these kinds of conversations, we need to talk about JavaScript like, Allie: I’ve had so many conversations about race at WordCamps, it’s insane. But I think that the way, the way that we treat each other and the way that we see the world and all of these larger issues like race, they affect us, they affect everybody, especially in the country we live in the in the kind of time period that we’re going through right now, where things are very tenuous and stressful. If I can, if I can make somebody think about those sorts of things a little bit differently or open their mind to a concept that they never really thought of, or, you know, convince them that hey, you should try not to say guys, you should try and say everyone or friends or folks because it is a nice thing to do like that makes me feel good. That makes me feel like I’m putting positivity and kindness and and, you know, good vibes out into the universe in an actionable way, you know, not just singing Kumbaya, but actually saying like, hey, they’re actionable things that you can literally do every day to make your immediate space better and healthier for yourself and for other people. Like, what a privilege to be able to do that. And people are asking me to do that. Christina: right, Christina: I think a lot of people, I mean, myself included, because I am I mean, obviously, nobody can see us, although if you check us out online, you would, but being a straight white female, the only box I took is female, which is not as big of an issue. I mean, it’s still we have some, some gains to make, but you know, it’s sort of the I’m as close to a white male as you can get without the male. Right? Allie: Right. Christina: And, and so I know from, from my experience, there’s things that as much as I don’t want to be walking around acting all privileged or anything, there’s just things that I’m not aware of, because I haven’t thought of because I haven’t experienced it, right? So being able to talk to somebody like you and or other, you know, I’ve had conversations with other people where it’s really interesting and helpful to understand situations that you wouldn’t have otherwise experienced. Allie: Yeah. And I, I tried to be very mindful of the fact that, you know, it’s not, it’s not a bad thing. If I meet somebody who is in the best way to use the word ignorant of Christina: right, Allie: you know, a situation or, you know, maybe saying this is not the most sensitive thing to say, you didn’t know. And if you can say, I didn’t know, thank you for telling me I’ll try to do better. Like, I can’t get mad at you about that. You know, I don’t fault people for not knowing I fault people for not being flexible and not being willing to learn or even acknowledge that, you know, there’s room to learn. You know, I mean, I don’t mind having disagreements I like having disagreements with people, I want to understand where other people are coming from and why they think the way that they think. And I’ve definitely had those conversations where it’s kind of like, we’re not going to agree on on this particular topic. And so I’m going to walk away because I’m just not really here to get into arguments. All right, there’s some people who can who can handle that, I can’t really do that. Um, but I remember kind of getting back to like the deeper meaning I remember being in the first grade. And for some reason, my teacher looked up all of the like, kind of Latin meanings to our names, like I guess the origin for our names, and my full name was Alexandra and she told me that Alexandra is derived from Alexander because obviously it is, and but Alexander means helper of man or helper of people, Christina: right? Allie: And I remember being like six years old thinking like, wow, like, that’s thank you for telling me my purpose in life, like my purpose on this earth is to help people, cool. And I’ve always carried that with me. And so I’ve always derived a lot of joy and satisfaction from helping other people and being able to contribute to WordPress in this way of feeling like I could help somebody even just to get a more clarified idea of how to how to move about their their immediate space is very gratifying to me. Christina: Yeah. And I think I hope that just as you know, you’re, you’re sharing all this information and helping to, what’s the right word, de-homogenize the WordPress space Allie: I’ll take that. Christina: That just like it starts with one person. If we as we have that happening more and more in the WordPress space, then the WordPress space being a small part of the tech space, the more it happens with WordPress, the more it will start to become the norm elsewhere hopefully right like it kind of hopefully will continue to that whole thing. Allie: I hope so too. I hope that there is definitely a ripple effect. I mean, WordPress is 35% of the internet and so if if I can make 35% of the internet more diverse like that is that is definitely a that’s definitely great. And and what’s what’s even better is that I know that there are other people in the space who are actively doing the same thing. Like I I’ve never had to feel like oh, well I’m the only black girl in the room and so this is entirely my job. Like there are tons of other people who in in their own ways, are also doing this kind of contributing. I mean, Jill and Aurooba and David, we all did that presentation at WordCamp US together, because those are the kinds of conversations we like to have. And so knowing that I have a little kind of support system of other de-homogenizers is really, really nice. Christina: Yeah. And just for anybody who’s interested and wishes that they were at that workshop, I do believe it is on WordPress.TV. Allie: It is. Christina: So I’ll try to make sure to include that in the show notes. Allie: It’s split in half, Christina: Right. Yes, because it was a longer workshop. Awesome. We talked you mentioned that Miami, you don’t think had a contributor day but have you been to a contributor day with all the WordCamps that you’ve gone to? Allie: So I’ve been to one and that it’s also another one of my goals this year is to go to more contributor days, but I went to contributor day at WordCamp US. And um, that was an interesting day because I remember starting the day thinking like, I’m going to go to contributor day, and I’m actually going to contribute and I’m going to do stuff that’s going to be great. And so I went, and I ended up in a tiny, like mini workshop with Cami Kaos and a bunch of other people. And Cami was talking to us about organizing because at that point, in my mind, I was like, Oh, I’m going to be a WordCamp Miami organizer, I should go to that. And so she gave us like, this immensely efficient crash course on being an organizer, all of the things that you need to know, all of the things you need to be aware of. It was amazing like she had, everything came out so smooth and so quick and like this, this, this, this and this, everybody get it. Cool. Let’s move on to the next this. You’ve done this before. So that was really, really handy and really, really useful information. A cool view on how the these events are actually put together and how they’re built. And I remember every time I tried to sit down in front of the computer and like try to start working on something, I would find like somebody wanted to talk to me or I want to talk to somebody else. And there were all these conversations going on. And there were there were kind of things happening at that point for me, like professionally that I was like, Oh, I wanted to talk to this person about this opportunity. And I remember getting pulled away to talk to the guys from WP and Up because I was doing a raffle where I was raising money for themselves. I gotta go talk to you guys. And so I kept jumping up to go talk to people. And then before I knew it, it was time to go. And so I felt like I had done everything under the sun and talked to so many people and I hadn’t actually gotten any like contributing done. But that was, I guess, me doing my community contributing. Christina: I was going to say I would challenge anybody who thinks that that means you didn’t contribute to re-examine what it means because all of those conversations I’m sure that you had, in even in small ways have helped move things forward. Right? Allie: I hope so. Yeah. Christina: Yeah, you contributed. Allie: Well, next time I want to contribute digitally. Christina: Okay. That’s a good way to put it. One of the things. One of my goals with this whole podcast is to sort of dispel that myth that some people have that contributing is only doing something with core, doing the code, contributing with developing and that kind of stuff. There’s so many different ways that people contribute. I mean, like you said, 35% of the internet, that’s huge, which means this whole project, this whole community, everything about this is huge. And there’s so many different moving parts to it. So there’s a lot of ways. Allie: Thank you for doing this because I’ve definitely always had that mentality that contributing is a very like the definition of contributing to WordPress, WordPress is very strict and very specific. And you’re totally right. It’s not. And I think we will all be better off thinking about it that way and realizing that we can contribute in all sorts of different ways. And we probably already are and not even realizing it. Christina: Yeah. Right. I mean, like taking the example of you talked to WP and Up they’re helping with people with, like, the whole idea around mental health, right. And so, if you just think about that, if if the people in our community who are doing the core contributions, if they’re struggling with their mental health, then they can’t contribute the way that they would like to, as well as they can, or maybe at all, and so then that starts to fall off, right. So like, going back to your ripple effect before, it’s a whole ripple effect. And so every little piece helps and it’s there’s so many, so many different ways that people can contribute, Allie: you’re totally right. Christina: Cool. So with that being said, Do you have a proudest contribution? Allie: Oh boys Christina: that you’ve made so far? Allie: I have a lot. There’s a lot of things I’ve done in the past year that I’m really proud of. Christina: Pick a couple. Nothing is strict on this show. Nothing has to be just one. Allie: I Okay, last year, some point last year, I don’t remember when exactly. um kind of jumping off of it was kind of when I first started contributing and started going to Camps and meeting people. And I was really kind of taken aback by all these conversations that I started having, because it wasn’t ever really a conscious decision that I was like, I need to have these conversations. They would just sort of happen. They would just kind of come up like I felt like people for some reason were just really comfortable to ask me tough questions about what it’s like, for somebody like me to occupy a space like this? And so I kind of felt like okay, if this is what the universe is putting on me. I need to I need to kind of figure out a way to to organize this. And so I wrote a blog post. And I still have a, it’s right here up on the wall. From WordCamp, Jacksonville. Me and Christie Chirinos were sitting and we were having ramen. And we outlined this blog post together she helped me plan it. And it’s about how to be an ally in the WordPress space and why it’s necessary and what it means and why having privilege is a good thing and you should use it to help other people and the actionable things that you can do to help other people. So I wrote this post and it was it was a like within our you know, little community like on Twitter kind of went viral and Christina: right Allie: tons of people read it and I got tons of great feedback from it and it’s kind of like my Magnus Opus like, it’s it’s this little, like, what do you call it like a like a thesis that I wrote on what it means to be an ally. So yeah, that’s something that I’m really proud of, because people have told me that it really helped them and that it helped them to see in a objective but kind way what they were doing wrong or where they could improve and where they could find improvement and all of that sort of stuff. And so that made me feel really good to know that I could kind of condense a lot of these conversations that I had into this, you know, shareable piece of media that people could refer back to and things like that. Um, that was pretty that was pretty excellent. Um really anytime somebody reaches out to me which has happened a good handful of times and half a dozen times. When people reach out to me like on Twitter and in Twitter DM and say, I’m struggling with this issue that has to do with diversity. Um, can you please help me? Because I don’t, I don’t, I’m afraid to ask for help. Because I don’t want to come off as ignorant or racist or something like that. And that always makes me feel so good because I’m like, wow, I’m, I’m the person that somebody can trust to be a safe ear. And they trust what I have to say. And like, that makes me feel like I’m really doing something right. Um, so yeah, there’s a lot of little moments that of course, I’m blanking on right now. But I’d say like, that post is something I’m really really proud of and those conversations that I’ve had in private with those people where I can tell them you know, yeah, what you what you said was insensitive, or this this mentality that you have is tainted by XYZ reasons dating back to you know, 1965 whatever. But here’s how you can move forward and take it or leave it. And, yeah, that’s a very gratifying thing for me to be able to, to experience. Christina: That sounds like something to be very proud of. Absolutely. So one of my questions is usually about any advice that you have for new contributors, but I’d like to modify that today and sort of put the slant on it of what advice do you have for people wanting to get into contributing, who do fall into that minority, some sort of a minority that maybe you’re feeling afraid or held back somehow? Allie: It’s a good question. I guess my advice is, don’t necessarily think of it as contributing Think of it as I feel passionately about something. And how can I how can I use that for good? How can I turn that into something good, that will affect other people? And I mean it that that at the core is contributing, but I feel like thinking about it that way, it takes the pressure off. And I feel like you know, if last year somebody had said to me, Hey, we need community contributors who are going to go to WorkCamps and talk to people about diversity, I would have been like, that sounds intense and a lot. And that’s scary. And I don’t want to do that. But the fact that it happened for me so naturally, and I could pick and choose what I wanted to have those conversations and I could pick and choose who I wanted to talk to. And, you know, it’s it’s, it’s mine, it comes from me, it’s not anything that anybody asks me to do or told me to do or anything like that. And if tomorrow I decided I don’t want to have these conversations anymore then you know, The world’s not going to fall down. Christina: right. Allie: So yeah, that’s, that’s what I’m saying is focus on how you can kind of make something good inside yourself that you can give to other people. Because a lot of these conversations that I have, and a lot of the community contributing that I do, came from me doing research, like lots and lots of research about. So for example, a while back, somebody asked me, you know, why is racism still such an issue in this country when we are so far away from slavery? Christina: Right. Allie: And I knew a little bit about post slavery America, but after having that conversation, I was like, I don’t I can’t speak on this as well as I feel like I should. And so I ended up doing a lot of research about why is race still such an issue in this country after we’ve abolish slavery? Christina: It’s a huge question Allie: It’s a huge question. There’s tons of answers. And so for me to grow that piece of my internal knowledge so that I can use it to help others is way more. Not to say easy, but it there’s not as much pressure involved as if you think about it like, Well, I have to contribute, if I’m going to be a part of this community, like how am I going to do that? Blah, blah, blah, find what find the thing that you want to go off and research or the thing that you want to make better about yourself and then give it to other people. That’s what I would say. Christina: That sounds good. And I’d say that kind of answers a bit of my question on how people can get involved with whatever they want to contribute to. Look at that. Two questions. One answer. Awesome. Is there anything else you want to talk about in regards to contributing to WordPress that I haven’t asked you yet? Allie: I don’t think so. I feel like we touched on a lot of stuff. I really like I’m getting used to thinking about what I talk about being contributing. It’s, So I’m still kind of getting used to shining that kind of a light on it. Christina: Right? If you ever need a reminder, you know where to find me. Allie: Absolutely, definitely. And I’m really glad that the, the community that we have is so receptive to it. And like, every podcast that I’ve been on, or every interview that I’ve ever done is talk about this and so I’m just kind of like, right this is, this is my, my lot in life. This is my place in the community. I’m very, very happy with that. So, yeah, play to your strengths, play to the things that you’re passionate about, and people will people will see that, you know, people, like I feel like even though I do want to contribute digitally, so at some point this year, that’s, that’s something that I want to do. Like, that’s a goal for me, Christina: right? Allie: Um, whereas people have sought nobody’s asking me Hey, you You’re a great developer, we need you to contribute. I’m not a great developer. But people are actively asking me to have these conversations. And so I’d say a large part of like, if you’re nervous or or you’re not sure how to contribute, what are people already asking of you? Like, what have other people recognized as your strengths and follow that. Like, I tried to be one of the people who are like, I don’t care what everyone else thinks about me. But I think there is value in understanding the way that other people see you. Because a lot of times other people see your strengths before you do. Christina: That’s true. Allie: And that’s a that’s a good way to kind of get out of your head and get out of your ego and be like, yeah, I’m, I’m good at this. And so I can do XYZ with this skill or this passion that I have, you know, Christina: Nice. All right. Now, my favourite question of the episode, I’ve stopped trying to pretend it’s not my favourite question. But it is, which is your favourite Wapuu? Allie: Alright, so I have, it’s a tie. Christina: Yeah, nobody ever has just one. Allie: Yeah, it’s a tie because one of these Wapuus doesn’t technically exist. I made him up, but he’s still one of my favorites. Christina: Okay. Allie: My first favorite is the giant life size Wapuu that we had at WordCamp US this past year. Christina: Yes! Allie: Because that was one of the highlights for me of that weekend. It’s like, I think we were having dinner and all of a sudden, everyone starts yelling and I look to my left and there’s this giant 6 foot tall yellow thing that’s ambling down the hallway. And I just remember absolutely losing my mind like I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. I’m Christina: complete with tail Allie: complete with tail and just seeing all these grown adults acting like elementary school kids at Disneyland seeing their favorite like cartoons character in real life like, yeah, it was, it was again, it was just one of those things that make WordCamp so special and fun and silly. And so I think I think real life Wapuu is is is my favorite. But tied for my favorite is headless Wapuu because. Christina: Oh, ah yeah yeah. Allie: Yeah, get it. Christina: Yeah, Allie: get it. Christina: But in case anybody doesn’t Allie: Yeah, so Christina: Carry, on. Allie: I don’t actually fully understand what headless WordPress even means, but it’s a it’s a thing that I’ve been hearing a lot about in the last few months is is headless CMS are headless WordPress, and it’s a it’s a technical development term. That’s Christina: Yeah, I think it’s when WordPress powers the backend, but what people actually see isn’t is generated from something else. Okay, something like that. I know I’ve got I’ve got like that little idea about it as well but not 100% I couldn’t lecture on it by any means. Allie: Yeah, but I just remember hearing that a lot and kind of being mildly curious about like, oh, that kind of sounds, it sounds creepy, right? It sounds like somebody walk around without a head. And so it just kind of I don’t remember when I first thought about it, but I was like, wouldn’t it be really funny if there was like a Halloween headless Wapuu that didn’t have a head and so I have a sketch of it. It’s also hanging up on my wall behind my desk. I sketched out this little headless Wapuu which is disgusting looking. It’s horrifying! And I think I sent it to, to James who, who’s kind of the resident Wapuu fairy, and I don’t think he ever like even acknowledged it. It’s just horrible. But it just makes me laugh, and I’m really proud of him. So yeah, those are those are my two favorite weapons. I think. Christina: I like it. Those I have to say are the most unique Wapuu answers that I’ve had so far. Allie: I win Christina: all right, so as we wrap up, why don’t you let people know how they can find you online especially since it sounds like people do like to reach out to you. And so if people have questions and want to know more Allie: Absolytely. So you can find me. You can find all the stuff that I’ve written in the lot of the talks that I’ve done at allienimmons.com, all one word no spaces. And my, my how to be a WordPress ally post is up there as well for you to read. And if you want to reach out to me and have a conversation or ask me a question, I am on twitter 24 hours a day, seven days a week at allie_nimmons. And, yeah, I believe my inbox is set to like open so you can just send me a DM if you want, Christina: even if you’re not both following each other. And those will be in the show notes so people can just click and Yeah. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today about all this, all this great stuff. I love it. Allie: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was really fun. Christina: Yeah. And hopefully we’ll talk again soon. Allie: Oh, definitely. Christina: And you need to come to Calgary’s WordCamp. I think you were already. Allie: Yes. I need that’s you and Aurooba work on that WordCamp. Oh, of course. I have to get up there. Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You’ve got to, I think Allie: Count me in. Christina: Definitely. All right. Well, then hopefully we’ll see you at the end of May. And if anybody is or was depending on when this comes out, and when they’re listening at WordCamp Miami, hopefully they look for you or did look for you. Allie: Oh, please do Christina: and then maybe if not this year, maybe next year at some other WordCamps cuz you get around to a couple of them. So awesome. Well, thanks a lot. Have a great night. Allie: You too. Christina: Great, thanks. Links Apply to be a guest or nominate someone Follow the podcast on Twitter Subscribe in iTunes/Apple Podcasts or in your favourite podcast app The post Episode 5: Allie Nimmons appeared first on Christina Workman.

Miriam works for Kanopi Studios as a WordPress Engineer. Outside of her coding life, she is heavily involved in the WordPress Community team: lead organizer for WordCamp Ottawa 2020,co-organizer of the Ottawa WordPress meetup,and is the team lead for the Train the Trainers sub-team of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#wpdiversity). She also speaks at various WordCamps across North America. Not being content to just that, she’s also a 3rd degree black belt in karate, a competitive ballroom dancer, and a clarinet player in a local community band. She’s working on how to do all three at the same time. Twitter: @mirigoldmanWordPress Slack: miriamgoldmanTeams: CommunityWebsite: miriamgoldman.caInstagram: dancingsenseiDiversity Speaker Training: take the training or plan a workshopFavourite Wapuus: Pondstone, Ottawa, Wapoutine, Wahoo Wapuu Transcription Click here to open up transcript Christina: Welcome to wp_contribute(). Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Miriam Goldman. Miriam works for Kanopi studios as a WordPress engineer. Outside of her coding life, she’s heavily involved in the WordPress community team, lead organizer for WordCamp Ottawa 2020, co organizer of the Ottawa WordPress meetup, and is the team lead for the Train the Trainer’s sub-team of the Diverse Speaker Training group, #WPdiversity. She also speaks at various WordCamps across North America. Not being content to just, that she’s also a third degree black belt in karate, a competitive ballroom dancer, and a clarinet player in a local community band. And she’s working on how to do all three at the same time. Well Miriam. Miriam: Thanks for having me. Christina: So how’s that going? Working on all three at the same time. Miriam: I think I’ve got the clarinet playing and the dancing going down pretty well but the karate is, and maybe the karate and the dancing but I haven’t incorporated all three. Christina: You’ll need like a karate dance kind of.. Miriam: My teacher and I are working on that for next year. We’re trying to incorporate a karate into one of my dances. So Christina: That’s really cool. Now, how do you do all that stuff with a WordPress twist? That’ll be the ultimate challenge. Miriam: Get them to dress up as a Wapuu? Christina: Oh my god, I love it. Could you imagine the Wapuu mascot dancing around? Miriam: Well, I saw the videos from WordCamp US and I saw the big Wapuu was there. So and I saw Raquel Landefeld got a rhumba in. Christina: Oh right? Miriam: So, Christina: yes, Miriam: I gotta work on that at WordCamp US this year. Christina: I had the honour of having my picture taken just standing with the WordPress or the Wapuu mascot, and it is very big. Miriam: I can’t.. Christina: Round around the middle. And for anybody who hasn’t seen any of those pictures, if you go to the WordCamp US Twitter feed and website I’m sure there’s pictures there of the Wapuu mascot. First time, in North America anyways. It was awesome. Christina: So let’s get back to you though. Is there anything that you want to touch on other than what we’ve already talked about, just briefly in in the introduction, anything else by way of introduction to you or is that a pretty good sum up of you? Miriam: That’s a pretty good sum up of me. I’m involved in some other tech groups here in Ottawa. One of them is a Ottawa ladies coding group which I help run events so I did an impromptu WordPress 101 which was supposed to be how to extend WordPress but nobody knew PHP. So I ended up doing a off the wall on the spot Intro to WordPress 101 and how to develop locally. And I’m also a mentor for a local Women in Communication and Technology Group here so Christina: Nice are those both on the meetup.com platform as well? Miriam: One of them is and the other one is just because of the people I’ve known through my career here in Ottawa. So. Christina: Cool. That’s, that’s really awesome. So you contribute not just to WordPress, but to all kinds of things. Miriam: Pretty much not just technology, but I firmly believe in giving back if you are in an opportunity to give back. That is I guess one of my tenants of life is I feel that you should give back to others who are just coming along or even those who’ve been established because it’s important to keep the cycle going. Christina: That is a good way to think. I like it. Awesome. So how long have you been contributing to WordPress? Miriam: Not that long, really. I’ve only been speaking since 2016. Christina: Mm hmm. Miriam: And I joined the organizing team for WordCamp Ottawa in 2017. And that’s when Jill Binder started the Diverse Apeaker Training group. Shortly after I joined the organizing team, so really only a little over two years, two and a half years that I’ve been contributing. Christina: Okay, I was doing the quick math now. It’s like it’s 2020 and 2016. That’s four years. That’s like a lifetime in tech. Even two and a half years is still still a decent amount of time. Do you remember how you started contributing? What your first, first time was? Miriam: I would say was I’m content, I count speaking as contributing Christina: Absolutely. Miriam: That would be speaking at WordCamp Ottawa, in 2016, doing a lightning talk because my manager at the time said that I know my stuff, so I should speak. And they accepted me. And then it’s a story for another time. But I went through a whole thing about how I didn’t want to speak again the next year, but I like helping out. So Shawn Hooper and Meagan Hanes brought me onto the organizing team. And the it just went through there that I did just social media and web stuff that year, and I just ended up taking on more and more and really, really liked it. And then I just found different ways that I could contribute and not do it through code. Christina: I don’t have any tattoos but I like to liken contributing to WordPress especially working with meetups and and WordCamps and speaking to getting tattoos: it becomes very addictive. Miriam: Yep. Christina: And it just starts to snowball. Miriam: Yep, no, I can see that. Christina: Yeah, so it sounds like yeah, you you drank the Kool Aid, too. Miriam: Yep. Tasty Kool Aid. Christina: It is tasty Kool Aid. Do you remember what your talk was about? Miriam: I do it was um, us being in Canada, we build multilingual websites. So at the time, the company I worked for we used two different plugins for doing multilingual sites we used qTranslate X and Polylang. So I did a case study of called the Battle of the Plugins and I highlighted the two different plugins that we use as alternatives to WPML which I had no experience with at the time. Christina: Neat! And I’m sure it went over really well. And I imagine you do, I don’t imagine, I know you know your stuff. And the very fact that you can pull out a WordPress 101 talk out of your pock- back pocket on a moment’s notice is proof of that. Um, let’s see here. So you mentioned speaking and WordCamp organizing and the training. But the training is actually part of the Diverse Speaker Training group, which is like a sub-team of the community team, right? Miriam: Yes. Christina: So you’re you’re contributing, basically, essentially falls under community Miriam: Correct Christina: if we were going to label it. Awesome. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about the Diverse Speaker Training group in general, and then also about what you specifically do with that. Miriam: So the Diverse Speaker Training group came from a it’s a brainchild of Jill Binder who is out in Vernon BC. And Christina: Yay. Miriam: So essentially, it started as a way to try and get more women to speak. Christina: Right Miriam: Because a lot of women especially felt imposter syndrome. And it was it was very, very male skewed at for WordCamp speakers. And if I recall correctly, Jill, at the time, was part of the organizing team and she wanted to help change that. So her passion is women, like helping women speak so that’s where it came out from, but then over time, it turned into being more to help those who may be in under represented group, so those who might be queer, those who might be of a visual minority, immigrants who may not have English as their first language and in Canada, pretty much all our WordCamps except for Montreal are English only. Christina: Right? Miriam: And around the world, they’re usually primarily one language sometimes two. So that’s where that came from. And so it’s basically workshops to help overcome the imposter syndrome to brainstorm how to come up with a talk idea how to come up with a title, writing your bio, so it’s tools to help equip those who may be nervous to speak, Christina: right, Miriam: to help get them feel that they, if it’s something they’re interested in after this workshop, there’s no commitment to saying that if you attend this workshop, you must speak. Kind of a way to pique their interest and to show that it’s not scary. And my role is actually, as name implies, train the trainers. So I train those who are going to be running these workshops. Christina: Right. Miriam: So basically, we have video calls and we watch a workshop. And I encourage the trainers to participate because I feel that if they’re running the workshop, they should have an understanding of the material. Christina: Absolutely. Miriam: So I’m there kind of as a resource to help them go through the workshop, help them understand how to run it, it’s not an in depth one, it’s more so that they feel comfortable. And then we give them resources afterwards to get in touch with either myself or Jill Binder or Angela Jin, we’re the three main I guess, training people. Christina: Okay. Cool. And I have done the training. Miriam: Yes, I believe you were on one of mine. Christina: You were my trainer. Miriam: Yes, I believe I had you and Aurooba, who else did I have? We had other people. Christina: Yeah, there were I think there are people Oh, do you know what JC was another? Or no, wait. Miriam: JC was on the video, Christina: JC was on the video. And I remember because now I work with JC and so it was just like this whole everything was connected, you know? Miriam: Exactly. And AmyJune was on the training that I ran then, and now I work with AmyJune. Christina: Yes, it’s a small world. It’s so wonderful. Miriam: Exactly Christina: And all of us women doing all of these great things. That is most excellent as Bill and Ted might say. Miriam: Yes. Good reference. Christina: Well, they’re making a new one, I think right, so Miriam: Yeah I’m excited for that. Christina: Speaking of party on dude, have you ever been to a contributer day? Miriam: I have. I’ve been to…I think the only official one that I’ve been to was Seattle 2017. Christina: Okay. Miriam: Yeah, it was more of a contributor track rather than a contributor day. Christina: Okay. Miriam: So that was just basically a room in Seattle where you could come in and out and help contribute. So that is before I really joined the diverse speaker training group. I was definitely interested in community. So I believe at the time I was going to become a community deputy. I put that on hold for now. And but I remember talking with Andrea Middleton and her helping me, getting me to help by like reading over the handbooks and making sure that they made sense to somebody who has no prior knowledge of the WordPress community. And I was still pretty new to the community at the time because I just started leaving Ottawa, I mean, Seattle, Ottawa, they’re not exactly neighbors, so Christina: No. Seattle’s one I hope to get to at some point because it’s a little kind of south-ish. Miriam: It’s a great community. If LA ever starts up again, out of the US ones that I’ve went to, Christina: Mm hmm. Miriam: On the west coast, those are the two that I enjoyed the most. Christina: Yeah? Miriam: Rochester is another one of my favorites, but Michelle Frechette is involved with that. So I mean, yeah, Michelle. Christina: I know. I know. Most of the ones I hear about are the ones that are bigger. Oh, you have to go. They’re all they’re all either on the East Coast, and I’m in Calgary. So more West Coast-ish, but not quite coast. Or if they are kind of West, they all happen at the same time as either our local Camp here in Calgary or WordCamp US which I’m involved in and so it just doesn’t work. Miriam: Yeah, it’s so hard to get to all the ones that you want to get to. Christina: Yeah, I know if all my magic wands and such right. Miriam: Star Trek transporters. Christina: Yeah. Or what’s that thing in, in. Maybe that’s where I was in Harry Potter that Hermoine gets to turn back the time and that that Miriam: Time turner. Christina: Yeah. Yeah, all of those things would be great. So you said that’s the official contributor day that you went to. Does that mean there’s unofficial ones that you went to? Miriam: The unofficial ones have just been not too much days, but just seeing something on Slack like they like the community team meetings that I sometimes, well, now I participate, but before I would lurk in them, so kind of just I don’t I don’t say this in a negative way, but kind of worming my way and insane ways like in slack that I could contribute. And so Christina: Getting a feel for the lay of the land. Miriam: Exactly. Yeah, I like that. Christina: Yeah. I know what you mean, I’m a lurker too sometimes. Christina: Cool. So you did some of those sort of participating in the Slack staff. And that’s pretty cool. Oh, I wanted to ask you about the one in Seattle, because you said it was sort of you, you drop in and you can go in and out and that so was it happening at the same time that presentations were happening in another track? Miriam: Yes. From what I can recall, they had, I believe they had workshops, a contributot track and regular talks that day. Christina: Okay. That’s pretty neat. Miriam: So that was the second day because I remember I did, I moderated the Women in WordPress panel on the Saturday and this was the Sunday. Christina: Right. Okay. And so it was a two-day. That’s good to know. I’m always curious how other contributor days run, because that’s one of the things I’m starting to do. So. That’s awesome. What would you say is your proudest contribution in these last couple of years? Miriam: I would say, I can’t really pinpoint it to one. Christina: Mm hmm. Miriam: So I will pick my top three. Christina: Okay. Miriam: So my top one would be seeing how successful the Women in WordPress panel is. Christina: Uh huh. Miriam: And I did that because I didn’t want to do anything with slides and I wanted to allow others to talk and not just me. Christina: Yeah, Miriam: So that’s where that idea came from. And it went over so well, when I first did it in Ottawa in 2017. That’s when I’m like, I want to travel. And then I saw how successful it was in the other cities that I did it in and then I’m like, Okay, this is just amazing. I’m letting others’ voices be heard, but yet I’m still contributing in a big way. Christina: Absolutely. And again, you did that in Calgary with us last year, which was phenomenal. Miriam: Second would be the Diverse Speaker Training group, because not only am I helping to equip others, I get something out of it every time I run a Train the Trainers because I take notes, and I kind of follow along with the workshop, and it’s helped me evolve as a speaker. Christina: MmHmm. Miriam: And so, just having that dual, I guess, positivity that comes out of it. Christina: Yeah. And I have to say, when I did the training with you, I came out of that with a topic and was all like, All right, let’s go and, and we’re going to be running that workshop in Calgary in February 2019 [editor’s note: should be 2020]. And I am expecting to come up with another idea even though I’ll be helping others, but Miriam: That’s so great Christina: But yeah, I know what you mean you when you’re going through it at the same time you’re still experiencing it and then you with that the whole idea of community, you’ve got other people there and you know, you can bounce things off of and get inspired by other people. Miriam: Exactly. I first started doing it to try and I guess prompt others to do it. But then now I genuinely want to do it every time I watch the video. So I’m very proud of that. I’m involved with that. And the third is how successful WordCamp Ottawa was in 2019. We were on a very tight timeline. Christina: Uh huh. Miriam: But we pulled it off. And the fact that David Bisset in Miami acknowledged and said that he heard that WordCamp Ottawa was fantastic. He just said that to me in response to something I replied to him and Allie Nimmons on Twitter. Wow, I’m proud that I did way more than I should because I was speaker lead, social media lead, website lead and onsite volunteer coordinator because I stuck by the registration desk. So the volunteers would naturally come to me instead of trying to find our volunteer coordinator who was either in a room or attending a session at the time. Christina: Right Miriam: So I’m like, Okay, I’m still sane after that summer, Christina: yeah. Miriam: And I’m Lead next year. So I’m proud of the evolution of my role with the WordCamp Ottawa. And especially with WordPress, the local meetup. I only became a co-organizer the summer when we got in on the Foundation program, right. And already one of the other co-organizer there’s like, checks with me. He doesn’t just run with it and goes He’s like, “hey what do you think of this speaker?” and I’m like “Okay.” I like to say that I’ve helped him grow himself because he tended to just kind of like hoard it himself and do it by himself and now he has a team. Christina: And it’s helpful because I I joined helping out with our meetup when it was just one person as well and you could see the burnout happening right like it’s a lot to do all by yourself Yeah, um, the good thing with being a team lead, because I was a team lead a few years ago, is you can delegate anything and everything Miriam: That’s what Cami said Christina: That’s what she told me too. She’s like “Delegate. You are the delegator because you’re gonna get everything else dumped on you at some point.” Miriam: She’s like, “you will be fantastic as a lead because you are doer. But you have to start not trying to do everything yourself.” Christina: Yes. Miriam: So, it’s she’s like, just because you’re there to help pick up the pieces, but don’t jump at it. Encourage your team to do things. So Christina: yeah, and if you have a good team and, I suspect you do. Miriam: We do. We have a fantastic team here in Ottawa. We have the core of us who have been doing this for a while. And we have a few eager people who approached us this year who want to join the organizing team. So, I’m excited to really kick off with it, like in the second week of January and try and get our venue nailed down. Christina: That’s awesome. I know. So you mentioned that you had a short timeline. And I remember this because you had come to our WordCamp in Calgary, which was at the Oh, it was kind of the middle of May last year, I think. Miriam: May 10th and 11th, it was Mother’s Day weekend. Christina: Yeah, and your WordCamp was in July? Miriam: Yes. Christina: That’s, and you, and and it had not. You guys didn’t have a venue yet, at our WordCamp, right? Miriam: I think we were waiting on the official contract to be signed at that time. I know we hadn’t announced it yet. Christina: Yeah, so you still had to do like the call for speakers, and the call for sponsors and like everything in a less than three month window, Miriam: Exactly Christina: which is 100% a really short timeline for a WordCamp. Christina: Gettin’ it done Miriam: I think we had like, it was either a three week or four week window for speakers and I was just like, okay, I checked with our … like nobody’s allergic to dogs right? Okay, we’re coming over to my place we’re doing this speaker selection at my place Miriam: and I will do that and so there’s a picture I think on Shawn’s Instagram, and somebody’s Instagram of myself, Meagan, Shawn, Christie Witt, and my dog just after the speaker selection. But we got it done. Christina: That’s how you get it done. Miriam: Having said that, it was fantastic. So, I’m trying to nail down that venue as soon as the university will give it to us. So that way we’re not running on four weeks speaker… Christina: Yeah, it’s definitely you can get it done really quickly if you need to. But you don’t want to do that every year. Miriam: Exactly. I want to have a bit more breathing room this year. Christina: Yeah. I think there was a team at that one of our Calgary ones a few years ago. I think they pulled it together in like two months or something like that. Miriam: That’s even tighter than we did. Christina: Yeah, it’s, I wasn’t involved back then. I just heard about it. But I know that that’s that’s a lot of work to do in a short amount of time. And yeah, it’s one of those you do it when it’s necessary. And absolutely something to be proud of. And I really wished I could go to that one. But, Miriam: Well maybe this year, we’re looking at mid-July Christina: Perhaps Miriam: so as soon as we have more information, I will be able to speak more of it. Christina: Excellent. Well, we will all look forward to that. That’s WordCamp Ottawa. Miriam: Yes, Christina: 2020. Perfect. Talking about the Women in WordPress panel. How many times, do you know how many times you’ve ran it? Miriam: Let me think. So 2017 I did it in Ottawa, New York City, Seattle, Rochester, and then 2018 I did it in Miami and Los Angeles. And then I did it in Calgary this year. So seven? I want to say seven because Montreal I’ve never done it. And I did not do it in Rochester this past year because I had already done it before. Christina: Right. That’s, Miriam: So seven times. Christina: that’s impressive. And again, it was amazing here. I assume it was there as well. How many people do you usually have on stage with you? Miriam: It all depends on if I’m trying to, if I am responsible for getting my panelists, I try and get four people. So five of us total. And so the most I had is I did have New York City, the speaker, the organizers, put it together for me. They got me five panelists and they want, and other people still wanted to be on it. So I had to say no, because nobody would have time to speak. Christina: That’s a sign of success. Miriam: Oh, and I had good panelists, but I had Helen Hou-Sandi, I had Sandy Edwards, I had Christie Chin… I don’t know how to say her last name. Sorry, Christie! Christina: I know who you mean, and I will try to look up and fill in in the transcript who you meant to say [editor’s note: Christie Chirinos] Miriam: and then Angelica Yarde I believe her name and she’s a local New York City woman, Christina: Hmm Miriam: Oh, she’s fantastic. So they did a really good job in bringing it together. So as I’ve gone on, I try and work with the organizers to get local women, or at least at least half of the panel should be local in my opinion. And I’m trying really hard to get diverse. So it’s not just a bunch of white women up on stage. Christina: Right, because that’s as close to a bunch of white men as you can get without the men part. Miriam: Exactly. So I’m really was trying to work hard on getting diversity, not just in experience but in for lack of better words how they look? And my next time I do it, I really want to get somebody who English is their second language. So that, like they have enough English that they can hold the conversation but I want to show people who has English as a second language said, like, okay, contribute you, I don’t have to worry about this. Christina: Yeah, cuz I mean there’s nothing of course neither of us is saying there’s anything wrong with a bunch of white men or a bunch of white women as people. But the more diverse we have panels like this, the more people we’re speaking to, and showing representation that they too can do these kinds of things, right? So Miriam: My biggest thing that I want to try and do in 2020 and now this is going to be hard because I don’t know how many trans women or non-binary folk are involved. I would love to have either a woman who is trans or a non-binary individual on the panel to basically really show the diversity Because I really think that’s important because I have a lot of people close to me who are queer I know of non-binary folk. And so I really want to help elevate them and make them feel that they’re not. Christina: Mmhmm. Miriam: That they are recognized, essentially. Christina: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s for Ottowa or in general? Miriam: In general, like, hopefully we can get that as speakers in general, but especially if I do a panel. Christina: Mm hmm. Miriam: I really want to see that and I know as a cis white, heterosexual woman. That’s like, people might think it’s overkill, but I’m like, No, I really think it’s important to have I’d rather have a non-binary voice be heard over mine so if I’m ever applied to speak and I have somebody who is non-binary, who has the same topic, I will gladly give my spot up to the non-binary individual because they need their voice too. I can just go anywhere. I’m established in this community. Christina: Yeah. That’s it. I like that. I imagine it would be easier in some cities, than others, Miriam: The bigger cities, yes. Yes. Smaller WordCamps that it would be very hard to see that. But you never know. Christina: You never know and baby steps, right? Even even just getting it making that happen and be a reality in the bigger camps helps it then trickle down Miriam: Exactly Christina: to the smaller camps as well. So it all works out. And hopefully Yeah, and hopefully one day we won’t have to try for things like this because it will just be normal Miriam: Hopefully it will just happen. It’s like Okay, cool. Christina: Yeah, exactly. Christina: Ah, let’s see here. Have, do you have any advice for new contributors? Miriam: I would say is find your passion. Find something that you’re passionate about. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be tied to what you do for your job. I am a developer. I’m a senior developer. I’m being trained right now to be a tech lead. But I very rarely do talks about code and I don’t contribute to code. My contribution is to community because that is something very, very passionate to me. Because not only do I try and help out in the WordPress community, I’m a karate sensei. So I believe very much in teaching like my Sensei, is like, I’ve offered to go in on days I don’t have class. And he’s like, Oh, no, no, you don’t have to come out. I don’t want you to come in when you don’t have class and I’m like Sensei I’m offering. I don’t mind, I wouldn’t be offering if I didn’t mind. I go, we have some young teenagers who are dancing. So at our last dance competition, I could have easily just been like, Oh, I’m done dancing, I’m going to go find the shuttle and go explore downtown Toronto. No, I went and I went and supported them at the dance competition. So I very much believe in contributing and supporting people and finding what you’re passionate about. And also, don’t be scared. It’s a big community. But 99% of us are friendly, you’re always going to have those people. Let’s be real. You’re always going to have those people who are not welcoming to newcomers and everything but I would say 95 to 99% of us are welcoming and we will gladly accept new voices and we welcome it. So Christina: I would agree with that and to the extent that our community is is more welcoming than your average community. Miriam: I agree. Christina: Yeah, we’re a great community. Miriam: Yeah. Christina: It’s how I meet people like you. Miriam: Yeah, and I’m like this is I pretty much say it’s like most of my friends now are through the WordPress community. It was funny, um, I posted a picture from the after party at Rochester this year. My former manager is like, Hey, I didn’t know you knew Mike Jones and I’m like yeah, I’ve known him for like three years. And he’s like, I didn’t know you knew Colin Smillie. I’m like, he was my manager four years ago. Christina: Yeah, and you know, and part of it is, you know, like you said, like, a lot of the people I consider friends now there’s a majority of them are WordPress people. And it’s because the people in the WordPress community are, just so gosh darn likable. It just sorta happens. How would you if somebody was looking to get into contributing, and they’re looking to get involved in some of the things that you contribute to, So speaking, organizing WordCamps, and probably the lesser…that’s not the right word. Um not as well known, because I think you guys are still kind of up and coming although I think you’re very well known, but the Diversity Speaker Training group within community, how would people start other other than lurking Miriam: other than lurking. Well for speaking, I would say is approach an organizer of either your, first start at a meetup is what I would suggest. I would not suggest starting unless you are very, very confident, and you already feel confident as a speaker Christina: right Miriam: Start at your local meetup. They usually happen once a month in most cities. And I know for a fact that in Ottawa, we are looking for a more diverse roster of speakers because right now, it’s just been the organizers. Christina: Uh huh. And I think that’s very often the case. So that would save meetup organizers a lot. Miriam: Yeah. And just be like, I have this idea of something that I want to talk about. And the meetup organizer will either say, Sure, what are you available or will be like, okay, maybe that topic isn’t the best for our group, but do you have any other topics that you might be passionate about? Or do you think you can maybe put it more to a developer slant or a beginner slant? Christina: Right, depending on what their Meetup group Miriam: exactly Christina: needs are, right? Yeah. And that tends to be a safe space, especially if you’re new. In my experience. Miriam: No, I agree. For organizing WordCamps, I would suggest just starting out as a volunteer. We always need, you and I are both organizers for WordCamps. You always, the volunteers are essential to making the WordCamps run. And even if it’s something as simple as being there at the registration desk and highlighting people off as they come in and giving them their badge. Christina: Yeah, Miriam: That helps us so much. Christina: Yes, Miriam: Even if it’s so much as putting the lunch orders out at lunchtime. People need to eat. Christina: Yeah, it’s not, the volunteer tasks typically are not very difficult. And anybody can do them and we’re always short of volunteers. Miriam: Yeah. And then for the Diverse Speaker Training group is I would suggest is attend one of the Train the Trainers first, so you can and watch the video. I believe. I’ll make sure that it gets into the show notes, but we’ll get the link out for the form to take the training. So right. I would say attended training. Christina: And those are online, right? Miriam: They are online. They’re on Zoom calls. And right now there are two of us who are the main trainers. There’s myself, I’m on the eastern time zone in North America. And we have Angela Jin, who is in Spain, so she’s an hour past UTC. Christina: Okay. So there’s options for everybody. Miriam: Exactly. So attend a training, get a feel for what it’s like. We equip you with our Slack channel if you want to join and that’s where you could join it and we need people to do everything. You don’t have to be a trainer. You can join the marketing, you can join translations. We have some people who are translating to some of the Indian languages. Christina: Smart. Miriam: I know we have the marketing team, and I’m sure Jill has a lot of ideas percolating in her head. Christina: So it’s almost like a whole WordPress WordCamp project itself, you have all of the same kinds of needs. Miriam: Exactly. And sometimes it’s just like, small things like we have bi-monthly meetings on Slack. Even if it’s something that you can only on the days we have our meetings in our Slack channel, send out the one hour and five minute reminders. I’m doing that currently, but even if I had somebody else who was able to do that, I wouldn’t have to be like, Oh crap, it’s 11am my time I need to hit pause on my timer for work. And then jump back to work because I’m online 95% of the time for it. But there have been times I haven’t been able to make the meeting. And it’s just nice to know that somebody else has your back for that. Christina: Yeah. And reminders are helpful, especially when we’re all busy doing other things and, and you get that ping saying, oh, you’re supposed to do this. Miriam: Exactly. Christina: Yeah. So that’s really great. because like you said, there’s lots of even just little ways that can help. You don’t have to dedicate hours every week and, and jump right in. You can start small and, and still make a difference. Miriam: Yeah, there’s some weeks that I only do half an hour of contributing. There are some weeks I do more, so Christina: There might be some I do none. But then other weeks make up for it. Yeah. Christina: Everybody needs some time off. Miriam: Exactly. Christina: Awesome. Is there anything else about contributing in general, or things that you contribute to that you want to talk to talk about? Miriam: Not so much in the WordPress community. But I really think now, that it’s important to get involved outside your WordPress community, especially if you’re involved in tech. In the WordPress community is fantastic. But there’s a lot of correlation between it. So I’m a mentor for Women in Communication and Technology. Christina: Right Miriam: So I’ve been asked to do a virtual mentorship rather than an in person one. So I have a woman here in Ottawa, and I have a woman in Toronto, and we meet once a month and I just answer their questions. And I think mentorship too if there’s a way that you can find if you’re experienced enough, I would say become a mentor because it’s amazing the amount of questions those who are just coming up in the field would have for you. And if you are just coming up, find a mentor. It will, it’s something I wish I had more seriously when I was coming up, I did have it a little bit, but I was more just as a mentor getting to senior developer rather than junior to intermediate. So it’s something I wish I had had more of when I was a junior developer. And so because of that, I want to help equip others to succeed and feel comfortable, Christina: Right. And there are programs out there for things like that. But then sometimes, just I hate that word, not just, sometimes asking, is all you need to do if you know somebody, and you approach them. And the worst they can do is say No. Miriam: Exactly. Christina: But they might say yes, and you may develop this an amazing relationship and get a lot out of it. And so it’s a good idea to ask if you know somebody and you’re interested in them being your mentor. Miriam: Yeah, definitely. Christina: Yeah. So Women in Communication and Technology? Miriam: yes, WCT. Christina: Okay. So they’re not a local organization because you said you have somebody that you’re mentoring both in Ottawa but also in Toronto. Miriam: So they have different chapters across Canada. This is a Canadian organization. So but somehow this woman from Toronto ended up finding the Ottawa region one, which is fine. So that’s why the director of mentorship was like, Okay, we have somebody who is a UX designer and wants to be a mentee, but she’s in Toronto, would you be willing to do a virtual mentorship I’m like, so you basically want me to organize my meetings where I can sit on my computer instead of having to go out and pay for food and stuff? Yes! Christina: Yeah. Nice. It’s good when it works like that. Miriam: And this way my dog should be involved in the mentorship too. Christina: There you go. That’s awesome. And the other group you were talking about that was the women, Miriam: Ladies, uh, Ottawa Ladies Coding Club, I believe is the official name. I just joined that on a whim and we have that I just went and we had a social event at a coffee shop and one of the co-organizers was like oh, would you be willing to talk about WordPress? I’m like, Yeah, sure. And then I organized this workshop which turned into a WordPress 101 thing. And after that, I’m like, hey, do you guys want some help? I can pitch in like an hour here and there. She’s like, Oh, yes, please. Christina: Nice. Miriam: So I’m like good. Okay. So I’m on Discord with two other ladies and in the new year I’m going to try and maybe not just always WordPress, even though that’s my heart and soul passion, maybe some PHP and pure programming things and just, Christina: yeah, Miriam: And maybe I can learn some stuff too because I want to continue to learn. I want to learn Ruby. Christina: Cool. And what you just said about how you asked or said that you could help out and they practically jumped at you and said, Yes, is another example of how desperate we all are for volunteers. So if you’re interested in something, offer to help. Miriam: The worst that can happen is somebody will be like, thank you so much for offering but we’re good. Christina: Yeah. Which is very rare. Miriam: I don’t think I’ve ever heard that. Christina: Awesome. Alright, so now on to I don’t want to say my favourite question, but it really is my favourite question even though I love all this contributing talk. I love Wapuu and I think you do too. So if you had to pick a favourite or two, I feel like Dr. Seuss all of a sudden? Who would it be? Who? Miriam: I love it. Reminds me of Michelle Frechette and Michelle Butcher-Jones with their whole Christina: Oh, right! Miriam: Yeah. Fantastic. Christina: And that is one of the ones that yeah, that was Michelle’s one of hers. And so that’ll be on the site. There’ll be a picture of of that Wapuu. Miriam: Well, I wouldn’t be a good Ottawa organizer if I didn’t say that ours was one of our favourite ones, Christina: of course. Miriam: And so very basic. Christie Witt did a great job with it. Christina: Mm hmm. Miriam: Tied with that is one my when I worked for Pondstone Digital Marketing my colleague Nick came up with a little Wapuu of Wapuu holding our logo like the stone. Christina: Yeah, Miriam: That was cute. Christina: Describe the Ottawa one for us. Miriam: The Ottawa one is basically it’s a ball with the City of Ottawa logo on it. Christina: Okay. Miriam: Kind of basic, but I mean, hey, we have one Christina: It’s just as good. It’s a Wapuu. Miriam: Exactly. And then the next one I would have to say is Montreal’s with the poutine. Christina: Mm hmm. I just got the pin for that this year. Miriam: Yeah. And then I actually have to say Calgary, it’s hard to say I think it’s the one with the stamp… with the Saddledome. Christina: Yeah, we got the Calgary Tower and the Saddledome in there. And he’s got the white hat on which is a symbol of our ambassadorship and Miriam: yeah, the hospitality that you see.. Christina: hospitality. Yes, thank you. Miriam: …at the airport all the time. Christina: Yes. So that is Wahoo Wapuu. Miriam: I love it. Yeah. No, I was very, very happy to see that when I came because it was one those that I was so happy I got up to Calgary this year because having graduated high school in Calgary, Christina: yeah. Miriam: I always wonder like, Okay, I have to go, I have to go. Part of me was like, I wonder if anybody from my high school would be here. I don’t think they were. But it’s so nice to be able to come to a city that I knew how to get around. Christina: Right. Miriam: I was not like there, living there anymore. Christina: Yeah, some familiarity but still still a visitor. Miriam: It was nice, it was different to be there like as a woman in my mid 30s than it was to be as a girl who’s 18 and just graduated high school. Christina: I hear ya. I can see that for sure. Awesome. Well, we were glad to have you I’m I was glad that you came out because look at all the steps that have happened since then. On the training together, we’re doing this and all great things. It’s fantastic. So I think that’s all the questions I have about contributing. Why don’t you let people know how they can get in touch with you, where they can find you. Any social links, website links that you want to throw out there. Miriam: Yeah, well. My website I don’t update that much, but I’ll throw it out there. It’s www.miriamgoldman.ca. My Twitter handle is where I’m not as active as I used to be but if people interact with me I’ll respond. That’s mirigoldman: M I R I and G O L D M A N. Christina: Okay. Miriam: And then the other social network I’m active on is Instagram. Miriam: And that is dancingsensei. As a dancer and Sensei, it makes sense, Christina: Okay, Christina: right Miriam: So forewarning that’s mainly pictures of my dog. But I also sometimes post stuff about dance, when I go to a WordCamp, I’ve been trying to post more, like especially the Wapuu and remarks, Christina: and I mean really, who doesn’t like a good dog picture? Miriam: Exactly. Or a cat picture? If you are more of a cat lover than a dog lover then Christina: Yeah, Miriam: That is totally okay too but I only have my dog and my brother is allergic to cats. So I cannot have a cat because my brother comes over like twice a week. Christina: So the dog it is Miriam: yes. Christina: Excellent. Awesome. Well, thank you for joining me today. Miriam. It has been a pleasure to have you and to talk about your contributions to the WordPress community and beyond. Miriam: Yes, and thank you so much for having me. It was a great time. Christina: Awesome. Okay. Bye. Links Apply to be a guest or nominate someone Follow the podcast on Twitter Subscribe in iTunes/Apple Podcasts or in your favourite podcast app The post Episode 4: Miriam Goldman appeared first on Christina Workman.

Ken is a podcaster teacher, freelance writer, digital nomad, and technical account manager at Automattic. Twitter: @kgagneWordPress Slack: KGagneTeams: Support, CommunityYouTube: https://www.gamebits.net/Blog: https://roadbits.net/Tumblr: https://kens.dog/Freelance Writing: https://www.computerworld.com/author/ken-gagne Podcast: https://www.polygamer.net/Podcast: https://transporterlock.com/ Magazine: https://juiced.gs/Favourite Wapuus: Grafuu & Permalink Transcript Click here to open up transcript Christina: Hello, and thanks for joining us. Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Ken Gagne. Ken is a podcaster teacher, freelance writer, digital nomad, and technical account manager at Automattic. Welcome, Ken. Ken: Hi, Christina, good to talk to you. Christina: Yeah, it’s good to have you here! So, is there anything else that you wanted to expand on, on any of those things that I just mentioned? Ken: Oh, gosh, Christina: Tell people a little bit about yourself. Ken: You could just add adjectives all day: vegetarian, cyclist, blogger, you know, where does it end, but I’m not Christina: You’re doing lots of stuff. Ken: I like to, I’m blessed with many interests, and I have the luxury and freedom to pursue most of them. Christina: And of course, one that wasn’t in there was contributor, which you are. Ken: That’s right. I’ve been using WordPress for gosh, since 2005, no, 2006 December 2006. I used to be a sysop on CompuServe. So these were text based forums that were back in the day of AOL. And after that, I was a sysop on GEnie and then Delphi, and then this very small one called Syndicom Online, which ran for about five years. And when that was shut down, I thought, I’m tired of building in other people’s sandboxes. And then having it shut down. I wanted to do my own thing. And so I looked around at what other people were doing for their websites. And I looked at three websites that I really liked. I emailed each of their webmasters and I said, what content management system do you use? Two of them wrote back and said, WordPress, one wrote back and said Movable Type. I’m like, Well, my host, Dreamhost, doesn’t support Movable Type. So I guess I’m going to try WordPress. And thank goodness, because if I gone with MT, this would be a very different story. Christina: Yes. So you’ve been using WordPress since 2006. How long have you been contributing to the WordPress project? Ken: That’s a good question. Could you describe or define for me what it means to contribute? Christina: That is also a good question. So I guess in terms of the way that I look at It contributing to the WordPress project is doing anything that helps move it forward. So I know that there’s like official teams on the make.wordpress.org site. But I know that there’s other things that people do outside of that as well. So some of those official things are like contributing to the core or reviewing the themes and plugins that come in for the repository. But then there’s all of the other efforts that help people become aware or people to learn how to use WordPress or use it better and then there’s like organizing WordCamps and meetups and then there’s people who just do other things, whether it’s creating their own plugins or I mean pretty much anything under the sun as long as it’s helping move WordPress forward in some way or another which is a pretty broad description. Ken: Sure. I have loved WordPress for over a decade. I’ve always wanted to contribute. And I always felt like doing it professionally, was not within my scope. Because I’m not a designer, I’m not a developer. My background is content editorial journalism. And I didn’t really see where that came into play specifically in the WordPress context. So the best I could do was finding other people who are having the same problems I was in which I had resolved and helping them so if you were to look at my wordpress.org account, it says joined January 15 2007. I don’t know how far my history of messages goes, but I was trying to jump into the forums, even back then to at first of course, asked my own questions, but after a year or two, to try to answer other people’s questions, and then I would also go to the Boston WordPress meetup every month, and they would have a happiness bar. I would sit at the happiness bar and try to help people. Sometimes the questions that they asked really showcased my own limitations. Somebody asked me, “Do you still recommend themes? Or are we going more in the direction of frameworks?” And I’m like, what’s a framework? Like, what’s Genesis? I’ve never heard of that. Christina: Yeah. Ken: But you know, if somebody came along with a simpler question like, so what’s the difference between a post and a page? Or what plugin do you recommend to do this? I’m like, I got you covered. I can answer those questions. Christina: Right. So you’ve been doing doing this for quite a while. Lots of contributing, it sounds like, Ken: Yeah, the contributions to the forum were at my own discretion. And I would certainly say that the deeper I got into WordPress, maybe I did it less, because there was just less opportunity or less time to do so. You know, like I started with a single WordPress blog where I reviewed movies. And the last time I checked, I now have 13 WordPress blogs. You know, eventually you lose time to support other people because you’re so busy supporting yourself. Christina: Right plus Tumblr. You’ve got a Tumblr which is also owned by Automattic, which is not necessarily WordPress, but is yes, Ken: that is true Christina: It gets confusing. Ken: Yeah, I started working at Automattic two years ago. It is a dream job. My last four jobs were a downward trend in personal satisfaction. And then I just hit the jackpot at Automattic. It’s the best job I’ve ever had. I’m so happy there. And this August two things happened. One is I found out that I was not going to be adopting a dog, which I thought I was. And second was Automattic bought Tumblr. I’ve never used Tumblr and now that it’s a first party product, I figured I should get to know how to use my company’s product. And secondly, I had already bought a domain name for my dog. The dog I thought I was going to adopt. I purchased kens.dog. I’m like what am I gonna do with this domain now that I don’t have a dog. And I’m like, Well, I’m also going to be setting up a Tumblr. Why don’t I marry the two and set up a photo blog on Tumblr where I post pictures of me with other people’s dogs. Christina: I love it. And I love the pictures that you’ve been posting there. But I love dogs. So not a surprise. Ken: Thank you. Christina: Those are the kinds of things we need out in the world. Ken: This is the content that we crave. Christina: Yes, it is. So you have a lot of experience, but it’s good to hear. You know, that’s one of the things that I’ve heard people advise. I can’t even remember who I even heard this from. But one of the things that I’ve frequently heard people say is if you want to get involved, even if you don’t know much, there’s always somebody on the support forums, who has a question that you might be able to help so it sounds like you figured that out really early on. Ken: I have. Message boards are not new to me. As I mentioned, I was on CompuServe, GEnie, Delphi and Syndicom. Those were almost strictly message boards, well message boards, chat rooms and file libraries. And what we have now on wordpress.org is a message board so you have it broken down into categories or specific plugins, and then you have threads. It’s the exact same format and infrastructure that we’ve been using for literally decades ever since H&R Block decided to time share their computers to start CompuServe. So I mean, I’ve been running forums and responding to people’s questions for decades. So the process was familiar to me, it was just a matter of, okay, the questions aren’t about video games or movies or the Apple II computer anymore. Now it’s about WordPress. But the process is the same where you go in and you make the person feel welcome. you empathize with their situation. You ask for more details, and then you point them in the right direction. Christina: So sounds like a really good formula. Ken: Works for me. Christina: Yeah. Awesome. So let’s talk contributor day. Have you been to a contributor day? Ken: Why yes, Christina, I have, how could you possibly know that? Christina: I’m not sure. Ken: So I went to my first WordCamp US in 2018. I was a volunteer. I worked at the registration desk, and then at the merch booth. This is something that Automattic, it doesn’t require, but does encourage its employees to do. Right. So I flew down in Nashville to do that. And then this year, I went to St. Louis to do that. You and I met last year. And this year, you and I started DMing. And you said, Ken, you should do contributor day. And I said, pretty much the same thing that I’ve been saying years earlier, before I joined Automattic. I was like, Well, I’m not a designer. I’m not a developer. What can I possibly do? You said, well, you can do any of these other categories and I looked and I’m like oh, support forums. Yeah, I’ve been doing that for decades. I know how to do that. Sign me up. Christina: Yeah. That’s awesome. So how did you feel going into your first contributor day? Because I know for me, there was a lot of mystery and uncertainty. And I’ve heard that from other people. Did you feel something like that too, or Ken: Maybe a little. There are certainly a lot of different teams I could sign up for some of them had names that by themselves were not very transparent, like meta. Somebody coming in who’s never contributed might not know what that means. I was told that if I didn’t like the group I was in, I could just move to another table. But I also felt like I wanted to try everything. And if I moved to a dozen different tables in the course of a few hours, I wouldn’t get to try anything really. Christina: Right. It just means you have to go to a lot more contributor days. Ken: This is true. You got me there. I also had to leave a few hours early to catch my flight back home to Boston. So that limited my participation to a degree. But yeah, I just went over, I grabbed my table. I wasn’t sure if there was going to be some sort of like official kickoff where we all went around, we introduced ourselves, there was some sort of a playbook where they said, here’s how you do today’s job. And there really wasn’t. So fortunately, since I had done support forms before I knew how to dive in without much, ironically support. But yeah, I can imagine that somebody who didn’t know what support entailed and was doing it for the first time, might have needed a little bit more hand holding. Christina: Okay, that’s good to know, because of course I am helping plan next year’s contributor day. Ken: That’s great. Christina: We always want to improve on how awesome they have been. So Ken: And it’s entirely possible that some other teams did exactly what I described. It’s hard to say. Christina: Yeah, but there might be a way to make it more general even and, and then we can talk to other teams too and see how they if they are doing that kind of thing, how they’re doing it so we can help encourage other teams as well. I have some other ideas too. So it’s gonna be awesome. If I do say so myself. So now that I’ve said that you have to go to a lot more contributor days because you have to try out on other teams. I should actually ask you, do you think you will attend some more contributor days? Ken: Well help me understand what the opportunities are. Is contributor day unique to WordCamp US? Christina: No. So contributor day is frequently done as part of a WordCamp, either at the beginning or at the so either the first day or the last day. I think WordCamp EU traditionally has done it as their first day and then there are some rare occasions where people do them as standalone. So in Calgary, we actually held our first contributor day as a standalone event in June, I think, this past year, because we had already had our WordCamp in the process of being organized and couldn’t add on and couldn’t do anything else to incorporate it, but we wanted to have something. So we ran it as a standalone day. So it could you could come across it at some other WordCamps. You could on on occasion, you could find a standalone like we did, but but there are there’s they’re not quite as known as WordCamps, but I think they’re starting to pick up a bit of steam. Ken: Where would I find those opportunities online is I subscribe to the RSS feed for the WordCamp. I think it’s wordcamp.org. Are are events that are solely contributor days listed there? Christina: No, they wouldn’t be. I know we ran ours as part of our Meetup group. So I guess you would basically have to keep an eye out on the WordCamps that are coming through and check to see if they were including a contributor day as part. Ken: Okay. I unfortunately have not had a lot of luck attending WordCamps in the last 10 years mostly do just to scheduling. WordCamp Boston, for example, almost always follow the same week as an Apple II conference I go to in Kansas City called Kansas Fest. Christina: Right. Ken: I’ve been to WordCamp Portland, Maine and spoke there. And that was a wonderful event. But now one of the challenges that as of last month I am now a digital nomad. I have abandoned my permanent address in the Boston area. I’ve put all my things into storage. And I now move to a different city almost every month. Christina: Yeah Ken: So I’ve seen the WordCamps being announced. There’s one coming up in the spring at Lancaster, Pennsylvania and other one in Washington, DC. And unfortunately, I won’t be in those areas when those events are happening. You know, I wish I could allow the WordCamps to dictate my travel schedule. But I have another agenda I’m following. So it requires that I be in the right city in the right month in order to go and if that were to happen, and I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for those opportunities, I would love to do another contributor day and try one of those other teams. One of the challenges I had with doing support on contributor day at WordCamp US 2019 was, it’s so similar to some of the things I do for my day job. Christina: Right. Ken: So I am not a Support Engineer. I’m a Technical Account Manager, which is another way of saying a Project Manager. But I do spend a lot of time in Zendesk respond to client tickets. And in fact, while I was doing support at contributor day, I was keeping an eye on my phone and an urgent ticket came in from one of our clients. And so I switched my web browser from the wordpress.org. forums, answering quote unquote tickets in there, to opening up Zendesk and answering tickets in there. I was like, Oh, contributor day just means doing my day job for free. Christina: Right And some people enjoy that, depending on what they’re doing. Ken: Well, yeah, I mean, it definitely capitalize on my experiences, but it also didn’t necessarily expand my experiences either. Christina: Yeah. Didn’t maybe fill you with joy. Ken: It was fun. I was glad to be able to help a few people out. But I would also like to expand the ways in which I can help people. Christina: That sounds good. Are there any particular teams that you are that are sort of on the top of your list? for checking out? Ken: Oh, gosh, that’s a good question. I haven’t thought of that. Christina: Or is there some, a task, not a task, is there, even if it’s not necessarily a team that you’re thinking of is there something in particular that you would like to, to dip your toe in, so to speak? Ken: I might try documentation. That’s one of the teams. Right? Christina: Yeah. Ken: So that is also a little related to my day job. And also my undergraduate degree is in technical writing. Christina: Okay. Ken: So I basically went to college and graduated thinking, Well, I’m now going to have a career writing documentation. What an exciting life I’m going to have. It didn’t work out that way. But it is something I have some experience with, and I would be happy to try to dust off that skill set. So yeah, Christina: sounds good. Awesome. With your range of experience, do you have a proudest contribution moment at all? Just something that over all of these years, maybe a particular problem that you were really excited to help somebody solve. Ken: Let’s see a specific problem. I can’t think of a specific situation off the top of my head, but I will say I really enjoyed speaking at WordCamp Portland, Maine. Christina: Oh, was that this year? A different year? Ken: That was in 2017. Christina: Okay, Ken: And the talk I gave was about the Blubrry PowerPress plugin. Christina: Oh, awesome. Ken: Yeah. So I’ve used it to launch all my podcasts. I’ve used it for six podcasts. And I already have these talks that I give. So some background. I am on the adjunct faculty or I was before I started nomading of Emerson College in Boston. I teach a required graduate course in the Publishing Department that is an overview of all forms of online publishing. So WordPress, ebooks, podcasts, crowdfunding. My students’ final project is to build a WordPress website. So basically, every week or two we’re doing a different topic in electronic publishing. I have broken out those units into standalone workshops, which I now offer at libraries and schools around the Boston area. And hopefully, as I nomad across the country. Christina: That’s great. Ken: It’s a lot of fun. I like it a lot. So for example, you can take my 90 minute workshop on How to Interview Somebody for a Podcast. And then if you want, you can take another 90 minute workshop on How to Edit Audio in Audacity, or another Christina: Guess what I’m going to be doing this weekend. Ken: I’ve been told I should offer these on Udemy or some sort of online service, but I also have a 90 minute one on How to Run a Good Kickstarter. So I have all these workshops and the talk that I gave it WordCamp was sort of an amalgam of those things. I don’t have a workshop that is that niche like here’s how to set up a specific plugin on WordPress. I do have a workshop on here’s how to set up WordPress. But it was nice to go more in depth because a lot of my workshops are very introductory and here was an audience who already knew what WordPress was, didn’t need to be explained any of that. We weren’t going into specifically how to edit audio. But I was like, no, here is the exact configurations that will optimize your podcast for WordPress. So that was a lot of fun to offer. And I do enjoy introducing people at schools and libraries to WordPress as well. That’s, I just love teaching really, doesn’t matter the topic or the context. Christina: Well, I will be looking for that on wordpress.tv. And paying close attention as I continue to set this new podcast up. Ken: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Feel free to reach out to me anytime. Christina: Thanks. Awesome. Um, advice for new contributors? Is there anything that you would say for people who are interested in getting started? Ken: Advice for new contributors? Well, I would tell them to just dive right in. You have more knowledge than you realize. And even if you think you don’t, you’ll have more of it after you finish contributor day. And you never know. I mean, no matter what your skillset is, it can be expanded. One of my co-workers is a Support Engineer. So she is in Zendesk every day answering very technical questions. She’s been doing this for years. And at WordCamp US 2019, she joined, I think it was the core team, and she submitted her first contribution to core. And so so I mean, that is, you know, a new ribbon in her collection of things that she’s accomplished. And that is really cool. And it’s not something that would have happened, if not for contributor day. So that was Shannon Smith, and she deserves accolades for going outside what might have been her comfort zone. I’m not sure I don’t want to speak for her but it certainly would have been outside mine. Christina: That’s awesome. And she’s a fellow Canadian. Ken: That’s true. Yay! Christina: Yay! Yay, Canada, we rock! We don’t usually say things like that. That’s very uncharacteristic. Ken: You’re usually too humble Christina: I should apologize. Ken: Sorry, Christina: Sorry. Speaking of sorry, though, um, I haven’t yet asked you. Why do you contribute? Ken: Why I contribute? Well, I mean, I guess it goes back to why I love teaching is because it empowers people with the tools they need to tell their stories. And that’s what I love about WordPress. It’s it’s a it’s democratizing publishing. You know, I, are you familiar with the podcast, The Moth? Christina: No. Ken: So I don’t mean to plug one of your potential contributors for your listeners; time. But Christina: It’s all good Ken: The Moth is a podcast and live event. It’s hosted by NPR so you can hear it on the radio as well. And people are encouraged to tell true stories from their own lives within five minutes that fit a given theme. So themes might be things like, caught in the act, or love hurts, or happiness or family. I love The Math. I went to my first one about seven years ago, and I’ve gone almost every month ever since. So I’ve been about 80 Moths. I just I just love hearing 10 strangers in a row, get up and tell the truest rawest stories from their lives. And I love that The Moth gives them the platform to do that, to examine themselves. And then enrapture people for five minutes where that’s all they’re thinking about, and that’s all they’re hearing. And they’re just so vulnerable and so true. WordPress gives people that same opportunity. It is a platform for them to tell their stories, and whether that is you know, sharing their own private journal as they battled cancer. Or whether it’s reviewing movies and video games or just sharing pictures of their dogs. Now I love all the things that you can do with WordPress. I’ve been using it for over a decade, I have 13 sites. I’ve used it as a blog. I’ve used it to as a basically a static website for a company. I’ve done an event calendar for a local nonprofit. I’ve done photo galleries for a local community theater. I’ve done another event calendar for a monthly dance that I run. I have an e commerce store. I have six different podcasts. Every single need I have ever had for online publishing, WordPress has filled and I love giving other people that same power, that same ability to do whatever they want online. Christina: That’s awesome. That’s really great. And thank you for sharing about The Moth. I have no problem with sharing other people’s podcastss if they’re if they’re interesting like that, because it’s all part of giving back to the community. Ken: Right. I’ve told a few more stories. None of them have showed up on the podcast or on the radio show yet. Even though some of them have been fan favorites. You can get you can find one on YouTube if you search for Ken Gagne Moth. Christina: Okay, interesting. I may have to do that, too. Um, is there anything else about contributing we haven’t really touched on yet that you wanted to talk about? Ken: Well we talked about contributor days and how they are often parts of WordCamp. What are some ways that you would recommend other than the support forums that people can contribute year round? Christina: Well, that’s a great question. If you wanted to contribute on one of the official teams, then the best way that I know how is to check out the make.wordpress.org site, and each of the teams is listed there, and they all have meetings either weekly or bi weekly. So you can, you can, and they all post their meeting minutes too. So you can read more about the teams and you can read their meeting minutes and see what they’ve been getting up to. And then there’s a Slack channel that you can join to actually start chatting with people. And that’s where the meetings take place is on Slack as well. And, and so that’s a good way for consistency throughout the year if you wanted to sort of be dedicated to something. I know for me, one of the things I do is help run our local meetup and our local WordCamp and that’s always a great way to give back and, and help people get on board. And, and then I like to poke people when they say they’re going places and go, Hey, are you going to contributor day? You should come! Ken: Well, as far as I go, it has 100% success rate. Christina: Yeah, yeah. So far. It’s It’s pretty good. I may have asked a lot of people leading up to WordCamp US 2019. Ken: And then when they all said, No, you had to scrape the bottom of the barrel and come to me. Christina: Oh, no, you were actually it was really great chatting with you about it to leading up to leading up to convincing you to come because you had a lot of great, great questions that made me think you know, because last year was my first contributor day. And so I remembered how I felt. But of course, I’m only one person. And it’s been a year now. So even my memories have faded to some extent. So it’s still good to know what kinds of things people are curious about, right? Ken: Yeah, one of the things I do when I teach is when class gets out, I stay in the classroom for 15 minutes, taking notes about everything that went right and wrong that night. So when I teach the same class a full year later, I have this love note from my past self that answers all those questions for me. Christina: Oh, that’s great. That’s, uh, yeah, it’s always good to do sort of a post mortem or debrief or whatever you want to call it, right? And then you’ve got that information. And especially if you have a team like we did, then to get other people’s perspectives, because you can’t be in all places at once. And I personally also, you know, we had a couple hundred people that contributor day for WordCamp US 2019. So getting feedback from the people who attended is always great, you know, we can’t please everybody, of course, all the time. But if we don’t know, if there was an issue, and we don’t know about it, we can’t account for it for next time. And also, if something went really well, it’s good to know so that we don’t accidentally not do that again. Ken: Well, kudos to you for stepping up after only having done this once before. That’s a huge jump. So thank you for taking the lead on that. Christina: Oh, my pleasure. You know, I I’m one of those people that just sorta I don’t know I just kind of when when there’s If somebody asked me to do I can’t say no, is that’s what it comes down to. I can’t say no. And if there’s no, that’s how I got involved in organizing our WordCamp was, or being the lead organizer, my second year after only barely doing anything to help the first year, because there was nobody stepping up to do it. And I didn’t want WordCamp Calgary to die. So I said, I guess I’ll do it if nobody else does. And of course, then nobody else says, okay, Ken: of course. Yes, I’m not sometimes there are situations where I tell myself, if nobody else does it, then it won’t happen. And you may, I may not have confidence in my own ability to do a thing. But I figure even if I do a crappy job, it will be better than it not getting done at all. Christina: Yeah. And then of course, one of the things that I love about our community is you’re not doing any of this alone, right? You have I mean, we had a team specifically for contributor day, but then we have the whole organizing team that was there to support us. And then of course, anybody that, that you would talk to, there’s always support within the WordPress community no matter what you’re doing. Ken: I mean, that’s one of the reasons I recommend people use WordPress as their CMS. It powers 34% of the internet compared to well, 34% of the web, I should clarify, compared to its next competitor, which is what one and a half percent. So when you use WordPress, you’re immediately joining this community that is not only vast and numerous and global, but also very passionate and very supportive. I’ve never met a community that is excited about their software. For example, when I was interviewing for a job at Computer World Magazine as an a full time editor, this was 13 years ago. I went into the interview and the editor who was the hiring manager asked me “So for our feature stories, the CMS we use is TeamSite. Have you ever used TeamSite?” And I said, No, I haven’t. And they said, “Okay, well for our blogs, we use Drupal. Do you have any Drupal experience?” And I said, No, I don’t. And this interview was not going well. And she said, “Well, do you have any CMS experience?” And this was two weeks after I started using WordPress. And I said, Well, yes, I do use WordPress. And her face just lit up. And she said, I use WordPress for my personal blog. Do you have any favorite plugins you can recommend? Like she was just so like, she did not have that level of enthusiasm for TeamSite or Drupal. She was asking me those questions because she had to. But as soon as we started talking about WordPress, like we both just lit up. If you if you go ask somebody, “what’s your favorite spreadsheet program?” They’re gonna say, Well, I use Microsoft Excel. I’m like, okay, you use it. But do you enjoy it? And they’re like, “Well, no, use it because I have to because it gets the job done. It’s a tool.” But you ask people about WordPress, and they’re enthusiastic and they light up the room to talk about it and they want to help other people engage in that same level of enthusiasm. Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Well, there’s, it’s amazing how wonderful the people are in the community. Like, I don’t know if it just attracts them or I dunno, but. I love the WordPress community. Ken: Me too. And I did get the job at Computer World. Christina: Oh, excellent. Yes, Ken: that was 13 years ago. I’ve since moved on, but I am still a freelance writer for them. And I actually have an article coming out next month. Christina: Oh, awesome. Ken: It was fun that one of the things I did when I worked there was I reviewed WordPress 3.0. And then after I left there, I was a freelance writer for them and I reviewed WordPress 4.0. And then last year, WordPress 5.0 came out and I couldn’t review it for them because I was an employee of Automattic. So Automattic says you can’t make money on WordPress outside your day job. And Computer World says you can’t write about your employer’s product and I was like, ah, I had a great thing going there. I was going to review WordPress every five years. Oh, well. Christina: Now you’ll just have to coach the next people. Ken: Well, you know, I think by the time WordPress seven or 8.0 comes out, maybe I’ll be in a different job. I’m not looking forward to that because I love my current job, but no job is forever. Christina: That is true. Ken: So, WordPress 8.0. I got my eye on you. Christina: Excellent. And of course, we’re always evolving, right? Ken: Yes. Onward and upward. Christina: Yes. Awesome. All right. This is one of my I shouldn’t say it’s my favourite question, but it is. Cuz I love Wapuu. So if you had to pick a favorite Wapuu, which one would it be? Ken: Oh, gosh, you know, I you’ve warned me this question was coming and I really didn’t do my research. I have seen so few Wapuus in person. I mean, the plush Wapuus are the ones I’m most familiar with? Christina: Okay, Ken: and I gave one to my nephew for Christmas last year because there was some leftover merch at the merch booth at WordCamp US. But, uh, you know, scrolling through the Wapuu website before this call, I did find a couple that stuck out to me Christina: Sure. Ken: Let’s see one would be Grafuu, he’s holding a can of spray paint can Christina: Okay, yeah, Ken: Like he’s doing graffiti. Christina: Yeah. Ken: And for some reason when I saw that it just reminded me of Miles Morales from Into the Spiderverse. Christina: Okay, Ken: Did you see that movie? Christina: No, but my family did. Ken: Fantastic film. One of Marvel’s best and I like that Miles is he doesn’t always play by the rules. He’s a bit of a rebel and the movie starts off with him doing some graffiti, and I was reminded of that, and but another the Jet Set Radio is another medium that includes graffiti. It’s an old video game for the Sega Dreamcast. I love video games. It’s one of my first WordPress websites was video game reviews. I have a YouTube channel as well. And so I really liked the Wapuu Permalink for two reasons. One, it’s based on link from the Legend of Zelda. And two his name is an actual word, permalink. Christina: Yeah. Ken: I don’t know how that’s necessarily a play on the word Wapuu like most others are, but Christina: Well they don’t have to be. Yeah. Ken: Well, I’m glad that they have that flexibility. Christina: Yes, they have a wide variety of names, I think our our two that we have in Calgary are, well the first one is called White Hat Wapuu. That’s it. And then the second one is actually called Wahoo Wapuu. Ken: I love it. I’ll have to look those up. Christina: Yeah. I don’t think they’re on the site right now, but we’ll have to get them up there. Ken: Good. I’m looking forward to it. Christina: Yeah. Awesome. Okay, sorry were you gonna say something? Ken: nope that’s it. Christina: Nope. Okay, I just didn’t want to cut you off Ken: Thank you. Christina: Awesome well let’s have you tell everybody how they can get in touch with you, where they can find you online. I know you have a few places that you that you sort of live online so feel free to share as many of them all of them Ken: Thank you. I will try not to be too comprehensive because that would bore your listeners But first of all, all the places you’ll find me online my opinions are my own including this podcast. I do not represent Automattic in any official capacity except when you’re one of our clients. So I would say the best way to reach me is on Twitter, where my handle is kgagne, k g a g n e. If you prefer prefer to pronounce my surname “gah-nyay” that is also acceptable but spelled the same way. So there’s still my Twitter handle. My YouTube channel is gamebits. And that’s where I do let’s plays and unboxing videos. I am launching a new WordPress website. It’s not up yet, but it’s going to be at roadbits.net. And that is going to be where I talk about being a digital nomad and moving to a different city every month. Christina: That’s cool. Ken: I also as I mentioned just launched my first Tumblr kens.dog, and I would say that those are probably the Oh, two more actually three more I’m sorry, I’ll make this quick. I have two podcasts one is polygamer.net where I interview diverse and marginalized voices in the gaming industry. My other podcast is called transporterlock.com. And that is co hosted with my friend Sabriel and we review Star Trek Discovery, which is a fantastic show on CBS All Access. Christina: Okay, Ken: and finally, if you like the Apple II computer which predates the Macintosh and was made from 1977 to 1993 well, I have the magazine for you. It’s called juiced.gs, j u i c e d dot g s. That is the name of the magazine and the website. because.gs is the TLD of the Sandwich Islands. And I am the editor and publisher of that quarterly magazine. We’ve been around for 24 years. And I would love to share with you some news, reviews, interviews and how to use about how to use this eight bit computer and it’s five and a quarter inch floppy drives to do things you’ve never imagined like going on Twitter. Christina: So would you say you’re creating an Apple II community contributor kind of thing there? Ken: I would definitely say I benefit from there being a very strong Apple II community. I’ve been going to the same annual Apple II convention Kansas Fest for 22 years. And every single year pretty much for the last decade, the attendance at that event has grown. You would think that as the machine the Apple II gets older, the people who were using it back in the day would I’m sorry to say be dying off. And you would have fewer attendees. But no, this thing is actually getting more popular as people have, they get to an age where they have the disposable income to engage in nostalga. And also where younger people are discovering it for the first time and think it’s hip and trendy, in much the same way that record players are now. Christina: That’s true. Yeah. And of course, there’s lots of movies that help support that, too, like that Ready, Player One. Ken: That’s right. Ready Player One. There were three at least three different Steve Jobs documentaries. Well not documentaries, but bio pics. Yeah, Apple has been pretty hot for the last 10 years or so. Christina: That’s pretty cool. But we can make that into a whole other podcast and I’m sure a few people already have Ken: That, in fact, was my very first podcast ever I co-hosted the Open Apple podcast. Christina: Cool. Ken: Yeah. on WordPress, of course. Christina: Of course. Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing all of those links with us. And I will make sure to get those into the show notes. Ken: Thank you. Christina: Anybody can just click on them. And thank you for coming and talking with us about contributing. And your experiences. Ken: My pleasure. It’s always a joy to talk to you, Christina. Christina: You too Ken. Thanks a lot. Links Apply to be a guest or nominate someone Follow the podcast on Twitter Subscribe in iTunes/Apple Podcasts or in your favourite podcast app The post Episode 3: Ken Gagne appeared first on Christina Workman.