WP_Contribute()

Christina Workman

There are a lot of people contributing to WordPress in a variety of ways. This podcast aims to tell their stories.

Episodes

  1. 2020-05-19

    Birgit Pauli-Haack

    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.

    40 min

  2. 2020-05-05

    Adam Warner

    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

    44 min

  3. 2020-04-21

    Sandy Edwards

    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.

    51 min

  4. 2020-04-07

    Episode 9: Bud Kraus

    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. I

    53 min

  5. 2020-03-24

    Episode 8: Malcolm Peralty

    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 t

    33 min

  6. 2020-03-10

    Justin Ahinon

    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 mo

    1 hr

  7. 2020-02-25

    Episode 6: Mervin Hernandez

    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, C

    41 min

  8. 2020-02-11

    Episode 5: Allie Nimmons

    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

    47 min

  9. 2020-01-28

    Episode 4: Miriam Goldman

    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 Ji

    49 min

  10. 2020-01-14

    Episode 3: Ken Gagne

    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

    40 min
  • 10 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

There are a lot of people contributing to WordPress in a variety of ways. This podcast aims to tell their stories.

Information

  • Creator
    Christina Workman
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2020
  • Episodes
    10
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    WP_Contribute()