hnology stack, allowing users to stay informed and adapt their outreach strategies&nbsp;accordingly.</li>\n\n<li>Datanyze seamlessly integrates with popular CRM platforms, enabling users to synchronize data and streamline their sales and marketing&nbsp;workflows.</li></ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pros:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Datanyze&#8217;s technographic data provides a unique advantage, allowing users to tailor their outreach based on the specific technology preferences of potential&nbsp;customers.</li>\n\n<li>The platform offers detailed lead profiles, empowering users with a holistic view of potential customers and enhancing the personalization of outreach&nbsp;efforts.</li>\n\n<li>Datanyze provides real&#8209;time data updates, ensuring that users have the latest information to make informed decisions and maintain accurate lead&nbsp;databases.</li></ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cons:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Datanyze&#8217;s pricing structure may be too steep for some small businesses, as more advanced features are only available in higher&#8209;tier&nbsp;plans.</li>\n\n<li>Due to its extensive feature set, it may take time for users to become proficient in using all Datanyze’s capabilities&nbsp;effectively.</li></ul>\n\n\n<p><strong>Ease of&nbsp;use:</strong></p>\n\n<p>The tool has a user&#8209;friendly interface, allowing people to navigate through its features with ease. Comprehensive documentation and responsive customer support contribute to a smoother onboarding experience, even with its advanced&nbsp;functionalities.</p>\n\n\n<p><strong>Pricing:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Nyze Lite is a free trial for 90 days and comes with 10&nbsp;credits.</li>\n\n<li>Nyze Pro 1 is $21 per month when billed annually and comes with 960&nbsp;credits.</li>\n\n<li>Nyze Pro 2 is $39 per month when billed annually and comes with 1920&nbsp;credits.</li></ul>\n\n\n\n<img width=\"1600\" height=\"808\" src=\"https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-7.png\" alt=\"HelloBar homepage with a link to preview the tool\" class=\"wp-image-283815\" />\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">8. <a href=\"https://www.hellobar.com/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA5rGuBhCnARIsAN11vgQbLo_l4oWIIVUb4XqPMvuXwu0_iIYlw5DhJn4mGKchvLGSQY_6BNwaAv0nEALw_wcB\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Hello&nbsp;Bar</a></h3>\n\n<p>Hello Bar is a versatile conversion optimization tool that empowers website owners to enhance user engagement, capture leads, and drive conversions effectively. With a focus on creating customizable notification bars and pop&#8209;ups, Hello Bar provides businesses with a user&#8209;friendly platform to communicate important messages, promote offers, and encourage actions that contribute to the overall success of their online&nbsp;presence.</p>\n\n\n<p><strong>Key Features:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Hello Bar allows users to create highly customizable notification bars and pop&#8209;ups, ensuring a visually appealing and on&#8209;brand experience for website&nbsp;visitors.</li>\n\n<li>Users can display targeted messages to specific segments of their audience, tailoring content to different visitor behaviors, demographics, or referral&nbsp;sources.</li>\n\n<li>Hello Bar facilitates lead generation by integrating lead capture forms directly into notification bars, streamlining the process of converting website visitors into&nbsp;subscribers.</li>\n\n<li>The platform offers A/B testing functionality, enabling users to experiment with different messages, designs, and placements to optimize the performance of their notification&nbsp;bars.</li></ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pros:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Hello Bar allows even users with minimal technical expertise to create and manage effective notification&nbsp;bars.</li>\n\n<li>The seamless integration of lead capture forms makes Hello Bar a valuable tool for businesses looking to build and expand their email subscriber&nbsp;lists.</li>\n\n<li>The ability to target specific audience segments with personalized messages enhances the effectiveness of Hello Bar in driving user engagement and&nbsp;conversions.</li></ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cons:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The free plan has limitations on features and branding, potentially restricting its use for those seeking a fully branded and feature&#8209;rich&nbsp;experience.</li>\n\n<li>Some users may find limitations in design customization compared to other more advanced website customization&nbsp;tools.</li></ul>\n\n\n<p><strong>Ease of&nbsp;use:</strong></p>\n\n<p>Hello Bar is designed with a user&#8209;friendly interface, making it accessible for people with varying levels of technical expertise. The platform&#8217;s intuitive drag&#8209;and&#8209;drop editor and straightforward customization options contribute to a logical user experience in creating and managing notification&nbsp;bars.</p>\n\n\n<p><strong>Pricing:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The Growth plan is designed for businesses that have about 50,000 views per month and costs $24 per&nbsp;month.</li>\n\n<li>The Premium plan is designed for businesses that have about 150,000 views per month and costs $41 per&nbsp;month.</li>\n\n<li>The Elite plan is designed for businesses that have about 500,000 views per month and costs $83 per&nbsp;month.</li>\n\n<li>The Enterprise/Agency plan is designed for businesses that have more than 550,000 views per month or operate multiple domains. Custom pricing is&nbsp;available.</li></ul>\n\n\n<p>All packages are billed annually and come with a 14&#8209;day free&nbsp;trial.</p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Frequently asked&nbsp;questions</h2>\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How do I know which lead generation tools to choose for my&nbsp;enterprise?</h3>\n\n<p>To choose lead generation tools for your enterprise, define goals, consider your target audience, assess integration with existing systems, evaluate scalability and budget, read user reviews, request demos, check customization options, ensure data security, and align with marketing strategies. Finally, take the time to seek recommendations from industry&nbsp;peers.</p>\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Can lead generation tools be customized to fit my enterprise&#8217;s unique&nbsp;needs?</h3>\n\n\n<p>Yes, many lead generation tools offer customization options to fit your enterprise&#8217;s unique needs. For example, <a href=\"https://akismet.com/enterprise/\">Akismet</a> offers a wide variety of features designed specifically for enterprise needs that can be further customized. Such tools often provide features for tailoring forms, landing pages, and workflows to align with specific branding and processes.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>Customization may extend to integration with existing systems, allowing seamless collaboration across platforms. It&#8217;s crucial to choose a tool that offers the flexibility required for your enterprise, ensuring a personalized approach to lead generation that supports your goals and&nbsp;strategies.</p>\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What are the benefits of using Akismet for lead generation&nbsp;purposes?</h3>\n\n<p>By integrating Akismet with a contact form or comment section on your website, you can greatly enhance the quality of leads by preventing spam submissions. By filtering out irrelevant or malicious entries, Akismet ensures that the leads captured are genuine and valuable. This helps in maintaining a clean database and focusing efforts on authentic prospects, ultimately saving time and resources in lead&nbsp;management.</p>\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What types of companies generally use&nbsp;Akismet?</h3>\n\n<p>More than 100 million sites trust Akismet, including household names such as Microsoft, ConvertKit, and Bluehost, for user&#8209;friendly spam protection that boosts conversion rates. You can see how Akismet works for <a href=\"https://akismet.com/blog/convertkit-customerstory/\">ConvertKit</a>, protecting the creator economy from spam and helping businesses generate valuable, trusted, high&#8209;quality&nbsp;leads.</p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Akismet: User&#8209;friendly spam protection that boosts conversion&nbsp;rates</h2>\n\n<p>Akismet stands as a user&#8209;friendly and reliable solution for spam protection, significantly enhancing the integrity of lead generation efforts. With its smooth integration and efficient filtering, businesses can ensure a clean and genuine pool of leads, saving time and resources. As a result, conversion rates are poised to rise, allowing organizations to thrive with an influx of authentic&nbsp;prospects.</p>\n\n<p>Elevate your lead generation strategy with Akismet&#8217;s robust spam prevention — the key to unlocking a more streamlined and effective approach. Take charge of your conversions today, and <a href=\"https://akismet.com/enterprise/\">experience the difference with&nbsp;Akismet</a>.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 20 Mar 2024 13:00:00 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:11:\"Jen Swisher\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:8;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:56:\"HeroPress: Tell Your Own Story – 說出自己的故事\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:56:\"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=6563\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:112:\"https://heropress.com/essays/tell-your-own-story/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tell-your-own-story\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:11260:\"<img width=\"1024\" height=\"512\" src=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/031824-min.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"Pull Quote: WordPress is an excellent platform and tool for learning content creation and SEO.\" /><p><a href=\"https://heropress.com/feed/#chinese\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">這篇文章同時有繁體中文版本。</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Buen Camino!&#8221; This phrase, which means &#8220;Have a good journey&#8221; in Spanish, is something I learned in the middle of the Camino de Santiago in Spain. It&#8217;s the equivalent of &#8220;Hello&#8221; for pilgrims. I became a pilgrim and joined the WordPress community at the end of 2023. Telling my own story was the motivation for me to start using WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading6563_8129c2-0d wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">What Would I Want to Do on the Last Day of My Life?</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Due to immense work stress, I fell ill. Because of a combination of issues, doctors could not cure my problems with medication or surgery. This ultimately led me to the biggest and most difficult question in life: What would I want to do on the last day of my life?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since I have always loved nature and hiking, my hiking friends suggested that I try the Camino de Santiago in Spain. I didn&#8217;t want to go on the more crowded French way, so I chose the oldest and original pilgrimage route: the Camino Primitivo. During my preparation, I couldn&#8217;t find much information about how to prepare the camino in Chinese. Travel guidebooks and online articles rarely focused on the Camino de Santiago. For someone who doesn&#8217;t speak Spanish and has never been to Europe, preparing a camino plan for the first time is truly challenging.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading6563_05088b-3f wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">How Did the Pilgrimage Change Me?</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>First, leaving the busy and crowded Asian cities allowed my soul to experience the long-missed serenity. I could walk for over five hours in the mountains and wilderness without encountering another person, with only the magnificent nature and wildlife as my companions. Briefly escaping from the Asian values and culture, in the faraway Spain, my heart found solace and rebirth.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most importantly, I gained countless stories and met all kinds of pilgrims:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Some were Spanish girls who told me: &#8220;<a href=\"https://buencamino.site/met-with-girls-in-camino/\">You don&#8217;t live to work.</a>&#8220;</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://buencamino.site/met-alcoholic-korean-in-camino/\">Some carried immense pain</a> and could not stop drinking even on the pilgrimage route.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://buencamino.site/met-nana-sue-in-camino/\">Some people kept separating from me and then unexpectedly reuniting</a>, becoming good friends.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>One night, I started in midnight due to insomnia, but <a href=\"https://buencamino.site/death-trap-in-camino/\">Google Maps led me onto an unlit highway, where I almost died under a truck&#8217;s wheels</a>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>This made me want to write down my own story. In this era, it&#8217;s not difficult to find a free platform and become a content creator. The real challenge is what tools to use and what content to create.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading6563_8b6d14-91 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">WordPress Helped Me Tell My Story</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Writing itself is not difficult. I published my first book: <a href=\"https://buencamino.site/book/\">How to start your first camino in 30 days</a> within a month. But I also realized that if I just kept writing without caring about factors like the platform and SEO, search engines would not allow my content to be exposed, which is equivalent to writing a diary.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>To let others know about my creations, I decided to join the WordPress community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Compared to other platforms, WordPress has a steeper learning curve. From choosing a host to themes and plugins, doing everything yourself is truly hard. Initially, I didn&#8217;t even know what margin and padding meant. It took me a month to complete the <a href=\"https://buencamino.site/\">first minimum viable product (MVP)</a> before I could start writing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the process of learning WordPress, I also got to know the Taiwanese community. From the community friends, I learned a lot that helped me become a better content creator!</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-let-me-summarize-what-i-have-achieved-so-far\">Let me summarize what I have achieved so far:</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>In the last 28 days, I got 700 clicks from search results.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>For several search keywords, I ranked in the top five, with some at #1:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Best month for Camino de Santiago&#8221;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;Camino de Santiago weather&#8221;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;Camino de Santiago seasons&#8221;&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;Camino Primitivo&#8221;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;refne vpn&#8221;</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading6563_28476b-64 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">Conclusion: Why Do We Need to Know WordPress?</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In this era of overwhelming video content, it may not be easy to get people to read an entire article carefully. However, for topics that require careful planning and thought, writing high-quality articles is truly important! WordPress&#8217; customizability and flexibility allow users to customize their own websites. At the same time, without a definable platform, it&#8217;s impossible to see if you&#8217;re executing the right SEO strategies while learning them. WordPress is an excellent platform and tool for learning content creation and SEO. Even if I create other types of content in the future, the knowledge gained from this community will always be effective and practical!</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/freecat/\">Header photo by José Antonio Gil Martínez</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n<h1 id=\"chinese\" class=\"kt-adv-heading6563_4410d8-07 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">說出自己的故事</h1>\n\n\n\n<p>Buen Camino! 這句話是我踏上西班牙朝聖之路後學到的，它就等於朝聖者的 Hello。我是 Juan 在 2023 年年末成為朝聖者跟加入 WordPress 社群。說出自己的故事就是我開始使用 WordPress 的動機。</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-什麼事情是我人生最後一天會想做的\">什麼事情是我人生最後一天會想做的？</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>因為極大的工作壓力我生病了，而且因為多個問題結合在一起，醫生無法用藥物或手術治好我的問題，這最終就得出了一個人生最大且最難的問題：什麼事情是我人生最後一天會想做的？</p>\n\n\n\n<p>由於我一直很喜歡大自然跟健行，與我健行的朋友建議我不妨去試試西班牙朝聖之路。我並不想前往旅人較多的法國之路，所以我選擇了最古老的第一條朝聖路線：原始之路。我在準備期間並沒有找到太多有關朝聖的中文資料，旅遊手冊跟網路文章很少以朝聖之路為主題。對於不懂西班牙文也沒有去過歐洲的人，第一次朝聖真的是非常困難。</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-朝聖帶給我什麼改變\">朝聖帶給我什麼改變？</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>首先脫離亞洲繁忙且擁擠的都市讓我的心靈感受到久違的平靜，我可以在山區與荒野連續行走超過五個小時都不會遇見第二個人，壯麗的大自然跟沿途的動植物就是我的同伴。從亞洲的價值觀跟文化短暫逃離，在遙遠的西班牙，我的心得到了撫慰跟重生。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>最重要的是我得到了許許多多的故事，遇到了各式各樣的朝聖者：</p>\n\n\n\n<table width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" class=\"ng-block-d0469b4c01287424 wp-block-newsletterglue-list ng-block\"><tbody><tr><td class=\"ng-block-td\"><ul class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-list\">\n<li class=\"ng-block\">有些是西班牙人，她們告訴我：<a href=\"https://buencamino.site/met-with-girls-in-camino/\">人活著不是為了工作</a>。</li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://buencamino.site/met-alcoholic-korean-in-camino/\">有些人心中有極大的痛苦</a>，即便在朝聖路上也無法停止酗酒。</li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://buencamino.site/met-nana-sue-in-camino/\">有些人與我不斷分開又偶然重遇，成為了好朋友</a>。</li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\">我失眠半夜就出發，但 Google Map 帶我走向沒有燈光的高速公路，<a href=\"https://buencamino.site/death-trap-in-camino/\">這讓我差點死在大卡車輪下</a>。</li>\n</ul></td></tr></tbody></table>\n\n\n\n<p>這讓我想寫下自己的故事，這時代要找到免費的平台，成為內容創作者並不難，難題都是在你要用什麼工具創造什麼內容。</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-wordpress-幫助我說出自己的故事\">WordPress 幫助我說出自己的故事</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>寫作並不難，我花了一個月就出版了自己第一本書：<a href=\"https://buencamino.site/book/\">30天出發西班牙朝聖之路</a>。但我也發現如果只是一直寫作但不在乎平台跟 SEO 等要素，搜尋引擎不會讓內容曝光，也等於是在寫日記。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>為了能讓別人知道我開始創作，我決定要加入 WordPress 社群。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress 比起其他的平台，學習難度是比較高的，從選擇 Host 到主題插件，全部都自己來真的很辛苦，我一開始連 margin 與 padding 是什麼都不知道，花費了一個月完成了 <a href=\"https://buencamino.site/\">第一個 MVP</a>，總算是可以開始寫作了。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>學習 WordPress 的期間我也認識了台灣社群，從社群朋友中我學到了許多，這都有助於讓我成為更好的內容創作者！</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-讓我總結了一下我目前做到的事情\">讓我總結了一下我目前做到的事情：</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>最近 28 天從搜尋中得到 700 次點擊</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>在幾個搜尋關鍵字中我拿到前五名的排序，有些是第一名</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>朝聖之路適合月份</li>\n\n\n\n<li>朝聖之路 天氣</li>\n\n\n\n<li>朝聖之路 季節</li>\n\n\n\n<li>原始之路</li>\n\n\n\n<li>refne vpn</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-結論-為什麼要認識-wordpress\">結論：為什麼要認識 WordPress？</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>這時代因為影音內容氾濫，要人們好好看完一整篇文章也許不是容易的事情。但是，如果是那種需要仔細規劃跟思考的主題，寫作優質的文章真的很重要！WordPress 的自訂性跟靈活度能夠讓使用者自訂自己的網站。同時，在學習 SEO 的時候，沒有可定義的平台也完全看不到自己是不是執行正確的戰略。WordPress 是學習內容創作跟 SEO 非常好的平台與工具，即便某一天我會創作其他的內容，但從這個社群裡學到的東西也永遠有效且實用！</p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https://heropress.com/essays/tell-your-own-story/\">Tell Your Own Story &#8211; 說出自己的故事</a> appeared first on <a href=\"https://heropress.com\">HeroPress</a>.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 20 Mar 2024 07:00:00 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:9:\"Juan Chen\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:9;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:53:\"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.5 Release Candidate 3\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17110\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:69:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/03/wordpress-6-5-release-candidate-3/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:8958:\"<p>The third release candidate (RC3) for WordPress 6.5 is ready!&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>This version of the WordPress software is under development</strong>.<strong> Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites.</strong> Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC3 on a test server and site.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 6.5 is the best it can be.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can test WordPress 6.5 RC3 in four ways:</p>\n\n\n\n<table><tbody><tr><th>Plugin</th><td>Install and activate the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/\">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).</td></tr><tr><th>Direct Download</th><td>Download the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.5-RC3.zip\">RC3 version (zip)</a> and install it on a WordPress website.</td></tr><tr><th>Command Line</th><td>Use the following <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/cli/\">WP-CLI</a> command:<br /><code>wp core update --version=6.5-RC</code>3</td></tr><tr><th>WordPress Playground</th><td>Use the <a href=\"https://playground.wordpress.net/#%7B%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20%7B%20%22php%22:%20%228.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20%7D,%20%22features%22:%20%7B%20%22networking%22:%20true%20%7D,%20%22steps%22:%20[%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata.wordpress.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20%7D,%20%22options%22:%20%7B%20%22activate%22:%20false%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D%20]%20%7D\">6.5 RC3 WordPress Playground instance</a> (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.</td></tr></tbody></table>\n\n\n\n<p>The current target for the WordPress 6.5 release is <strong>March 26, 2024</strong>. Get an overview of the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-5/\">6.5 release cycle</a>, and check the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/\">Make WordPress Core blog</a> for <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/6-5/\">6.5-related posts</a> in the coming weeks for further details. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you’re looking for more detailed technical notes on new features and improvements, the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/15/wordpress-6-5-field-guide/\">WordPress 6.5 Field Guide</a> is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What to expect in WordPress 6.5 RC3</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks to the many contributors testing up to this point, this release includes 10+ bug fixes for the Editor and around 15 <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&changetime=03%2F13%2F2024..03%2F19%2F2024&resolution=fixed&milestone=6.5&col=id&col=summary&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id\">tickets for WordPress Core</a>. For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC2, you can browse the following links:&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6.5?since=2024-03-13&until=2024-03-19\">GitHub commits for 6.5</a> </li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&changetime=03%2F13%2F2024..03%2F19%2F2024&resolution=fixed&milestone=6.5&col=id&col=summary&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id\">Closed Trac tickets</a> </li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to contribute to this release</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Get involved in testing</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Testing for issues is critical to ensuring WordPress is performant and stable. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/02/28/help-test-wordpress-beta-3/\">This detailed guide</a> will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.5. For those new to testing, follow <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/02/15/help-test-wordpress-6-5-beta-1\">this general testing guide</a> for more details on getting set up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you encounter an issue, please report it to the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/\">Alpha/Beta area</a> of the support forums or directly to <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket\">WordPress Trac</a> if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major\">known bugs</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/\">testing initiatives in Make Core</a> and join the <a href=\"https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/core-test/\">#core-test channel</a> on <a href=\"https://wordpress.slack.com/\">Making WordPress Slack</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Search for vulnerabilities</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>During the release candidate phase of WordPress 6.5, the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/security/2024/02/12/welcoming-2024-with-wordpress-6-5-beta-1/\">monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities</a> is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the <a href=\"https://hackerone.com/wordpress\">HackerOne page</a> and in the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/about/security/\">security white paper</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Update your theme or plugin</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.5 beta releases. With RC3, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the <em>“Tested up to”</em> version in your <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-your-readme-txt-works/\">plugin’s readme file</a> to 6.5.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/\">support forum</a>.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Help translate WordPress</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本? हिन्दी? বাংলা? You can <a href=\"https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp/dev/\">help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Release the haiku</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Another RC<br />We are getting really close<br />Have you tested yet?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/dansoschin/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>dansoschin</a></em>, <em><a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>audrasjb</a></em>.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Tue, 19 Mar 2024 16:19:30 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:12:\"Lauren Stein\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:10;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:67:\"Do The Woo Community: What March is Looking Like Here at Do the Woo\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:66:\"https://dothewoo.io/what-march-is-looking-like-here-at-do-the-woo/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:66:\"https://dothewoo.io/what-march-is-looking-like-here-at-do-the-woo/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1023:\"<p>But if you are listening to this on the day it came out, I am at WordCamp Asia along with a few of our hosts. In fact, today is Contributor Day which I am at enjoying my time with the Community team.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now the real reason I am giving a quick update here is that between now and the end of March our show releases may be a bit off and there may be some gaps. But rest assured, things are being recorded both at WordCamp Asia followed by CloudFest as well as some of my hosts kicking shows around while I&#8217;m gone. And when I have some moments I hope to get some quick post production done here at Do the Woo.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you don&#8217;t hear from us in awhile, watch us on X/Twitter or LinkedIn, to see updates throughout both of these events. And the fun part, you never know what shows will come out of March.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, tomorrow starts two days of the main event at WordCamp Asia, and if you happen to listen to this, stop by our booth.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s it for now and hope to see you around.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:15:28 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:11;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:84:\"Do The Woo Community: What You Can Expect from the CloudFest Hackathon 2024 Projects\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:83:\"https://dothewoo.io/what-you-can-expect-from-the-cloudfest-hackathon-2024-projects/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:83:\"https://dothewoo.io/what-you-can-expect-from-the-cloudfest-hackathon-2024-projects/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1682:\"<p>If you are attending&Acirc;&nbsp;<strong>CloudFest</strong>&Acirc;&nbsp;later this month in Germany, you may also be part of the&Acirc;&nbsp;<strong>CloudFest Hackathon</strong>.&Acirc;&nbsp;<a href=\"https://dothewoo.io/all-things-cloudfest-2024-hackathon-with-christian-carole-and-alain/\"><strong>You can learn more about what the hackathon is in episode</strong></a>, but today you are going to hear from some of the leads of the projects, letting you know what they are going to be doing and what you can expect.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>These include the Enable Mastodon Apps Project, which aims to make WordPress more social and interactive, and the Inclusive Language Checker for open source contributors, which seeks to make content creation more inclusive and accessible. Other projects include integrating Marie DB catalogs with PHP platforms, improving user interfaces of WordPress using J Schema, and creating a centralized resource for frameworks and accessibility. The transcript also mentions a project to make WordPress multi-site easier to use for multilingual websites, a project to make CMSs that run public sector sites transparent, and a project to improve tools for WordPress hosting providers. Lastly, the Hack the Hackathon project aims to create a platform for hosting hackathons with one click.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://hackathon.cloudfest.com/\"><strong>Learn more about the hackathon</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://hackathon.cloudfest.com/projects/\"><strong>Read about all of the projects</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://registration.cloudfest.com/registration\"><strong>Get a free standard pass to CloudFest using the code: DotheWoo</strong></a></p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:15:28 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:12;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:94:\"Do The Woo Community: Bringing DEIB to the WordPress Way Show with Birgit Olzem and Angela Jin\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:93:\"https://dothewoo.io/bringing-deib-to-the-wordpress-way-show-with-birgit-olzem-and-angela-jin/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:93:\"https://dothewoo.io/bringing-deib-to-the-wordpress-way-show-with-birgit-olzem-and-angela-jin/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:33867:\"<p>In her debut show co-hosted with BobWP, they have a chat with <strong>Angela Jin</strong>, head of programs and contributor experience at Automattic. And what a conversation it is.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It starts by discussing the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in the WordPress community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Angela highlights the need for a learning mindset and shared language around DEIB, especially given the global nature of the community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The conversation also touches on the challenges of burnout among contributors and the importance of creating a welcoming space for new contributors.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rounding out the episode, Angela and Birgit both express their excitement for the future of WordPress and its potential to be a role model for DEIB in tech.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Links and resources</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/session/panel-discussion-march8th-1pm/\">WordCamp Asia Panel Discussion &acirc;&#128;&#156;Shaping the Future with WordPress Women&acirc;&#128;&#157;</a></strong></li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://hackathon.cloudfest.com/project/inclusive-language-checker-for-open-source-contributors/\">CloudFest Hackathon Project led by Birgit Olzem &acirc;&#128;&#156;Inclusive Language Checker for Open-Source Contributors</a></strong></li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://www.cloudfest.com/agenda#/talk?id=68147\">CloudFest Panel Discussion &acirc;&#128;&#156;Sustainability and Inclusivity in WordPress&acirc;&#128;&#157; with Birgit Olzem, Carole Olinger, and Tammi Lister</a></strong><br /><br /><strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/01/15/thank-you-and-bye-for-now-jill/\">Farewell of Jill Binder</a></strong></li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/handbook/community-code-of-conduct/\">Community Code of Conduct</a></strong></li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://events.wordpress.org/\">Next Generation WordPress Events</a></strong></li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/\">Five for the Future Initiative</a></strong></li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/07/13/proposal-for-establishing-a-make-diversity-equity-inclusion-and-belonging-deib-team-within-the-wordpress-community/\">Proposal for Establishing a Make Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (&acirc;&#128;&#156;DEIB&acirc;&#128;&#157;) Team within the WordPress Community</a></strong></li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://wp-deib.org/\">DEIB Working Group unofficial Hub site (courtesy of Birgit Olzem)</a></strong></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\nShow Transcript\n<p><br /> BobWP:<br /> Well, here we are with a new host joining our team and bringing a new monthly DEIB featured episode on the WordPress Way show. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m honored to have Birgit Olzem as our new host. Welcome Birgit. And how are you doing today?<br /> Birgit:<br /> Thank you, Bob. Doing fine, even if I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m kind of feeling nervous because hosting a WordPress podcast show isn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t feeling natural to me in this certain point, so please bear with me when we are starting to kick off. But as Bob already mentioned, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s about a topic close to our dear hearts and my aim is to help everyone to understand more about how we can contribute to the WordPress community and feel also comfortable to do so.<br /> BobWP:<br /> Well, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to have you introduce your very first official guest and I, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to let you do it, but she is of course one of my favorite people in the world, but I would rather you introduce who you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re going to be chatting with today.<br /> Birgit:<br /> Yeah, thank you Bob. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m very pleased to introduce you to Angela Jin. Angela is the head of programs and contributor experience at Automattic where she also oversees the work of multiple teams dedicated to WordPress open source project, and these are community events, engagement, education and marketing teams. And her passion lies in building strong and inclusive communities. And please, Angela, tell the audience a bit more about you.<br /> Angela:<br /> Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on your show. I am very honored to be the first guest here. And yeah, I think you captured my bio very accurately. I am originally from the United States, but I currently live in Madrid and I have family from Taiwan, so yeah.<br /> Birgit:<br /> That&acirc;&#128;&#153;s very awesome. And we met each other for longer time on WordCamps, but we are also working closely together in the recently founded DIB working group. For all the listeners who don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t understand the term DEIB, it stands for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. And the WordPress community aims to be more inclusive as possible, but as we all know, we are all humans and there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s always room for improvement. And Angela, I would like to hear more about your thoughts about the DEIB working group. How did you perceive this going on after I published a proposal to establish a DEIB, formal Make WordPress team? And so maybe you can explain a bit more about this initiative from your perspective.<br /> Angela:<br /> Yeah, happy to. So DEIB work is something that is near and dear to my heart. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve been active in the WordPress community since 2018 but have worked on DEIB initiatives long before that in other communities and I think it is essential for any community to focus on the work that has been done in the community so far has largely been through Jill Binder&acirc;&#128;&#153;s, WP Diversity Speaker initiatives, which have had really wonderful impact and she earlier this year made the decision to move on to some other passion projects of hers, which is totally understandable. She has been doing this for a long time and so it was really exciting to me to see a working group come together to focus on DEIB more broadly across the project. It is a really hard topic because our project covers so many different spaces that, and we are a global community that DEIB looks so different from place to place. And so I think I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m really excited that there are people who are passionate about this topic and want to come together to see how can we be, how can we champion DEIB for WordPress? How can we be a shared resource for everybody and help everybody better understand what it looks like when we remove barriers for people to participate and when we really help people feel like they belong in this space. So yeah, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m really excited about it.<br /> Birgit:<br /> Yeah, this really interesting because the term DEIB didn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t came to me naturally before I started more researching about it. I only know the word term diversity, but learning more about what it entails to have the whole picture, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m a person who is really more into the bigger picture and in the whole that wholesomeness of a project or the community itself. And when you say about belonging, how can someone who is interested into contributing to WordPress join the community and feel included and belonging? As you mentioned, there are certain parts which is very complex in the whole WordPress project, even as long-term contributors like myself contributing to WordPress over a decade now, and I think I know a lot, but sometimes I feel I just know a little tiny bit of the whole project and you are one of the program managers of the whole project and you need to oversee a lot, but how do you perceive this for new contributors? Can you put yourself in a shoe of a new contributor?<br /> Angela:<br /> Yeah, I think there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a number of things in there. I often remind myself that our project is so big, it is impossible for anyone to know everything, and that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s challenging because I also find that WordPress contributors are people who like to know a lot of things and so there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s some self-reflection there that I always like to do when I feel like I am struggling to figure out where to go with this project. I also get lost in it and there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a lot that I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t know about this project and a lot more that I want to know about this project. So my reminder to everybody is that you don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t need to know everything and we have so many people who have different perspectives, different pieces of the information that getting all of us together really creates something really holistic and really beautiful. And so that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s regularly my approach when I come into my work.<br /> And for new contributors, it is really challenging to step into such a big space and see that it is very well established. There are practices and processes and very strong open source philosophy and there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s just so much to learn and so belonging and helping people really quickly find belonging is a big challenge. The first thing that we all can do is just create a really welcoming space, which I think is why DEIB is such an integral part of our work. We also find that connecting people to other people, other like-minded people and quickly to resources and where they can make an impact is also really helpful for bringing in new contributors. And so that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s one of the reasons I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m also really excited about the mentorship program and I see a lot of excitement around that right now because I think we can all remember when we first started contributing. I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t know that we all remember the exact first thing that we might&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve worked on, but we do remember the people who helped us get there and how they were super friendly helped us find our way, made us feel comfortable, made us laugh, made us feel friendship, and that is a huge, huge step towards belonging in there. I got so excited about the mentorship program. I forgot other parts of your question there.<br /> Birgit:<br /> No, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s absolutely fine because I had in mind the mentorship program leading to this question because I was one of the contributing members of the first initial cohort and also mentor and currently you and I, we are mentoring the mentors within the mentorship program who are assisting new contributors or already established contributors to find a new space to contribute to because for anyone who&acirc;&#128;&#153;s listening and isn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t familiar with the structure, WordPress a around WordPress.org, the software piece a community has built up and there are certain teams who are working on parts within the WordPress project.<br /> It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s called Make Teams and someone who contributed by answering support questions on the support forums, which is also a part of contributing to WordPress would like to start contributing with code on work on the core software or wants to provide their value, time and knowledge into content to educate other contributors or users how to use WordPress like on learn WordPress dot org. So this mentorship program support the shift from one make team into another or open the space and as you mentioned, it is really exciting to see how new contributors found their way into the project by a guidance one by one. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s not that overwhelming as we already talked about. It is really because it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s an established project and really big and feeling lost becomes very depressed and that is also why I love the mentorship program by myself. So I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m really glad that this is getting more traction currently.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wonder what would be helpful to nurture our contributors who are already contributing to WordPress. We saw a lot of contributors are more burning out or leaving the project because they were overwhelmed with too much work and less support can we do to nurture those. Maybe you can introduce a bit about the Five for the Future initiative alongside us.<br />\nAngela:<br />\nYeah, I do see a lot of burnout. A lot of it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a hard time right now. I think with so much economic strife and also geopolitical situations, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a really tough time in the world right now. And so I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m a part of some other communities outside of WordPress and I see similar things both in the WordPress community and in other communities as well. We have people who are very well-meaning with very big hearts and they are impacted by all of that. On top of that, many of us are very ambitious and hardworking and so we have so much that we want to do not just our daily jobs, but also hobbies and family. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a lot for any one person to juggle.<br />\nWhenever I see people are struggling, one thing that I know I can do as a fellow community member is just to check in on them and see how they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re doing. I never want to underestimate the power of just reaching out saying, Hey, how are you doing? I care about you and you mean something to me. I think that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a really powerful way for humans to connect with each other and I really appreciate that. The vast majority of contributors that I meet, they feel a strong sense of responsibility. And so if they are on the community team responsible for mentoring a WordPress event, they really want to make sure that they do the best job possible and stick with it. And I am also a firm believer that if you are struggling so much that you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re having a hard time keeping up with all of your personal things, that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s really, I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t want to ask you to help more than that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a really difficult position to put somebody in. And so one thing that I really love to see in our community is more of a culture of sharing the work and allowing people to more readily come in and out and pick up things that can be done like ad hoc and as people have time, I think it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a difficult thing in the WordPress community, but we do have a number of really impactful things that people can just pick up as they have time knowing that they&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll always be welcome back and that we have a culture that allows people to prioritize their own family things and their own personal things as need be. And so that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s one thing that I would personally love to see that I think would really both benefit WordPress contribution and benefit people who want to contribute, but also in a way that is respectful of their time as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You mentioned Five for the Future in there and I think that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a really excellent thing to touch on as well. So the Five for the Future program is very much about WordPress is open source software, and so it is available for anybody to take and use and build a livelihood on top of. And so the companies that have built their products, their companies, their enterprise on top of WordPress, we want them to contribute back to open source because that is how we sustain it and that is how they can also continue their business in the best way possible as well as enabling other businesses to be created with five for the future as well. Part of five for the future is sponsorship, and I think sponsorship is a really wonderful way to bring people who otherwise may not be able to contribute into this space. And so I think that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s another way that we can support people to contribute to this space.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nI was just going to interject something there because it resonated with me is I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve been probably involved in this space for at least 14 years. Then there was a bit before that I got into WordPress. And during all those years I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve never per se contributed to a team. I was always, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m a lurker, so I watch conversations, I love learning about things going on, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve contributed in my other ways that I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve done and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m not even going to go into all of that. But when you talk about the things you&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve just been saying, Angela, that and nobody should wait 14 years either. So I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to put that as a disclaimer too, but for me, it wasn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t necessarily even the time I had available, but when I saw the DEIB group and I started getting a little bit more into it and hanging around more and then I started participating a bit more, it was like finally, I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t want to say after all this time, but something just hit a nerve and it was all these other things that were going on in my life and the things I was doing with the podcast and the business and a lot of stuff just came together and it was like I thought that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s it.<br />\nThat&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the one I want to give my time to. And it took me a while. Again, I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t want to tell anybody to wait that long, but if you keep your fingers in enough and so I guess I&acirc;&#128;&#153;d just say to everybody, hang in there, watch, listen to people, get to know people, and you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re going to find that little sweet spot and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going to fit into everything and all the other aspects of your life, both probably personal and professional.<br />\nBirgit:<br />\nI&acirc;&#128;&#153;m really glad that you found a spot for yourself. And as you mentioned, it doesn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t matter how much someone is contributing, every contribution counts and especially for someone who maybe feels afraid in contributing to a software project, you don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t have to know any knowledge of coding or development. In any case, you can contribute, like Bob mentioned in participating into text chat meeting or conversation, bring in your own perspective into the project. And that is what I personally love about the WordPress community diversity and diversity is also allowing different perspectives, perspectives from life and culture backgrounds and even life experience and the generations which is spanning over the time. And when we think WordPress, a project itself turned 20 last year, turning 21 this year.<br />\nI&acirc;&#128;&#153;m kind of getting old, but I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m wondering, as you mentioned participating into the project, it reminds me of some discussion around we are getting older as a WordPress community and WordPress might be not that famous or interesting for the younger generations, but how can we say, okay, WordPress is open source and you can contribute to WordPress even if, but you can also use and create your own apps.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For instance with WordPress, there are so plenty ideas what you can achieve with WordPress and Angela, you mentioned the sponsorship part. How do you think will be when you are looking forward for the goals WordPress project published and was working on when you keep in mind younger generations but also the established contributors, what do you see in the future of WordPress looking for the next five year, for instance? Is it possible?<br />\nAngela:<br />\nYeah, that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a question I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve been thinking a lot about, so I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m glad you asked it and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to try my best to have a succinct answer because it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a hard question. Yeah, I think today we are so large and we are all getting older and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a really interesting time in tech right now where you have a lot of new innovations that are very attractive and I think Josepha had flagged two things that she is keeping an eye on for WordPress&acirc;&#128;&#153;s future. First is that our growth has become stagnant, and so how can we increase that? It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a huge thing for a project this big, but also a really important thing for us to keep an eye on. The second thing is are our events, which are a fundamental way that we bring people in, are they meeting the needs of what people want today?<br />\nAnd I absolutely love our events. I think they are wonderful and we have a lot of really good times at them, but undoubtedly we&acirc;&#128;&#153;re not seeing that younger generation come as much. And so when we put those two together, I do really think we need to think about how are we adapting WordPress and what we offer to meet people where they are. And so I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m a big fan of diversifying our events for one, to help people see exactly what they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re going to get out of our events so that they are more spread out. And therefore for people to get to the more events we have, the more varied opportunities that we have for people to participate. It is really, really difficult for somebody who is a brand new speaker to say, I am going to go to the WordCamp Europe stage and speak in front of 3000 people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is a scary, scary thing to do. I get nervous speaking in front of that many people and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve spoken on quite a few stages. And so the more we can provide different opportunities around topics that people are interested in, I think that is a really great way that we can reach a broader audience, not just the younger generation, but also people who we previously haven&acirc;&#128;&#153;t reached before. And because this is a vat, DEIB, I do think that we need to move into this next era of WordPress with DEIB at the forefront of our minds because this next generation really does care about that. And if we are not considering that as part of our practice, I think we will quickly outdated ourselves.<br />\nBirgit:<br />\nI am really glad that you mentioned that this was in my mind as well because the younger generation is really caring about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. And this also for companies who are interested into sponsoring to the WordPress project. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s also beneficial for them to get more talents and qualified talents, especially when you are hiring someone who is contributing to an open source project, even if it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s not only WordPress, but for any open source project. And someone who is contributing to a project like WordPress is also self-driven in most places and they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re interested and invested into something building for a bigger project. And this mindset is also nurturing and benefiting other companies. From my perspective, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m a mom of five children. I built my expertise while watching my kids and I was growing into from pure curiosity. And when I started contributing to WordPress, I was visiting a WordCamp beforehand, I was participating in the forums and I got aware about WordCamps in this forum, and then later on I was facing the opportunity to translate WordPress into my native language German. And this was my kickstart to really look behind the curtain and a person, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m always curious and I always want to look behind the curtain, how things are going, how things are working. And with this mindset, I am always moving forward. Sometimes I feel I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m kind of like a bulldozer.<br />\nAnd that leads me to my other question for you. In your role currently as a project manager, program manager, we had so many great initiatives beforehand. We had so many great contributors who are having talks about DEIB and WordPress several years ago before even this was kind of a buzzword. I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t want to limit it on this terms, but why does this now work? Is this the right time or how do you feel the, it was a shift maybe in the project? I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t know because I just put out a proposal idea because I felt the injustice in some places within a community. And I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m a doer person. I do and I cry out and I work on constructive feedback and moving things forward. But why now? I would love you to hear your thought on that.<br />\nAngela:<br />\nYeah. Well, you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re not the first curious person to come into the space and I sure hope that you are not the last one. Curiosity is one of my favorite characteristics. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m also a very curious person and tend to ask people a lot of questions. And so I generally encourage that. I think diversity is, if I had a magic wand and I could just wave it really quickly, I would make people understand diversity and the benefits of it and why it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s so integral to everything that we do and its importance and make a more equitable world immediately. But the reality of the situation is that we have had so many struggles, and I use we in this context as in the world. There are systems outside of much bigger than WordPress that we operate in, and those systems have been longstanding and inequitable. And so when we are faced with such a societal structure, the path to changing that is long and arduous.<br />\nAnd so I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t think that it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s, for me, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s not why now. I think this has always been an issue whether people realized it or not or whether it was in front of them or not. But I do think we have passed the point of enough is enough. And so there are a lot of people who want to see positive change and positive change is going to be really difficult. If it were easy, we would&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve fixed it Yesterday. We&acirc;&#128;&#153;re good at solving easy problems. And I realized that that is not an answer that many people like because they have been subject to injustice oppressed for a long time, and asking people to wait longer for justice is terribly unfair, which is all the more reason that we should be doing something today. And so yeah, I want us to keep going for it. I want us to create a more equitable world. And I guess we&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll start with a more equitable world for us for starters. But yeah, I think it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a hard thing. I also don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t want to ignore all of the excellent work that has been done to date. There have been many people who have come and gone in WordPress who have championed various diversity issues, who have been excellent allies, and all of that is impactful towards where we are today.<br />\nBirgit:<br />\nThank you very much for your insight in that as well because I feel even if I rallied and whas an ally for as long as I can think of, I wasn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t aware about, as I mentioned already about the terms itself and what it mean to someone, but also from my perspective, I am feeling I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m in a kind of a privileged situation because of my heritage, because I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m living in Germany. I was born and raised in Germany. I never experienced some tremendous issues someone else experienced, but I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m a great listener and I, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m really thriving to learn more about what is someone facing, which issue is someone facing on daily basis working with WordPress as a software, but also being part of a broad and global community. As we already know, global means different languages, different culture backgrounds, and it is also part of being inclusive, translating WordPress for instance. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s one of my core, but accessibility is also really, really important topic and I would love to see WordPress as a torch moving forward and being a role model for others to follow. What do you think about this as a global project? Can we achieve this?<br />\nAngela:<br />\nI agree. So one thing you asked earlier about my five-year plan for WordPress or what I would like to see in five years for WordPress, and we also talked earlier about how anybody can contribute to WordPress. One thing I would love for all WordPress to do to take on an all new incoming contributors is for them to have a learning mindset. None of us are going to come in here knowing it all, and especially when it comes to a global community and DEIB, we have to all be in a growth mindset. There is so much to learn about what DEIB looks like from even city to city in the same country and nobody is going to have the same experience as somebody else. And so it really behooves us to listen to each other, see how we&acirc;&#128;&#153;re being impacted and help each other, help each other grow in that I think that everybody is at a different point in their DEIB journey and I would rather bring people in and help them learn along the way, especially if they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re receptive to it.<br />\nWhat I fear sometimes is that we are so quick to call people out that it prevents a learning opportunity and that learning opportunity can over time build stronger allies. And right now we need every ally that we can get. And so that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s my hope for WordPress, that we also create an environment where we can learn from each other and better understand what issues we&acirc;&#128;&#153;re facing and how we can overcome that together because we are stronger together at the end of the day. And it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a hard thing when we are faced with so much struggle every day. But the people who it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s also not fair to ask everybody to do this, I do want to acknowledge that there are a ton of resources out there that people can educate themselves with. And so for WordPress, that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s what I want to see, that we have strong allies who can help people out of tough situations and that we really build a shared language around DEIB. I think that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s one of the biggest challenges with DEIB work in a global community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even the word diversity, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going to be different from place to place. I come back to there was was a study on colors and how the color blue was perceived from country to country, even something like a color, which I think the color blue we can all more or less understand, but that it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s perceived so differently across different cultures like a color. And compared to complex diversity terminology, that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s hard. And so wherever we can build shared understanding around the terminology that we&acirc;&#128;&#153;re using around DEIB, that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s one really concrete step that I think would be immensely helpful.<br />\nBirgit:<br />\nI couldn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t agree more. Thank you very much and thank you very much also for your time and your well insight into this. And I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m really looking forward to work more closely with you on reaching those goals and tangible outcomes for a better and more inclusive work WordPress community. So I can only say thank you very much. I really appreciate that You will find your time, find your time to be our guest on this show.<br />\nAngela:<br />\nThank you so much for your get it truly my honor. And I am really excited to keep working with you on this as well, so we could do it.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nAnd obviously there is a lot to be talked about and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m looking forward to having Birgit come on once a month here to at least do this show, do something now. I know we got to get going, but some people are hopefully maybe listening to this as they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re flying to WordCamp Asia, they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re driving, they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re on their bike, maybe they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re even jogging. I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t know what they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re doing. They&acirc;&#128;&#153;re getting there somehow or other once they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re, I just want to have Angela share just a little teaser about her panel she&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going to be on because that might be something you want to attend.<br />\nAngela:<br />\nYeah, so WordCamp Asia overlaps with International Women&acirc;&#128;&#153;s Day on March 8th, and so I am very excited to be hosting a panel about women in WordPress. So we have three rock stars who are going to be joining me to share their stories about their experience as women in tech and to hopefully inspire the crowd who&acirc;&#128;&#153;s listening and help us get more diversity into technology.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nGreat. And Birgit you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re going to be having a panel yourself, at CloudFest which follows WordCamp Asia. Why don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t you just give a quick little spiel about that before we go. In case any of our listeners are attending CloudFest.<br />\nBirgit:<br />\nWe will have a panel with two other tremendous guests and we are talking about inclusivity and also sustainability in WordPress and how we can be more sustainable with our human resources. For instance, as we mentioned, the burnout churn is really high currently and we are looking for we discussing ideas, how we can prevent those churn and be more inclusive, but also sustainable.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nAlright, cool. Well, I can&acirc;&#128;&#153;t wait to have you back on every month. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m sure we&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll have Angela come on again sometime. And I just want to thank everyone for tuning in and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m just going to do one quick little teaser. If you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re on your way to WordCamp Asia, make sure and stop by the Do the Woo booth. I have these really cool DEIB stickers to give out and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m not going to even tell you what they look like because you have to stop by the booth. So yeah, thank you both. Looking forward to having you on the hosting team Birgit and thank you Angela.<br />\nBirgit:<br />\nThank you Bob.<br />\nAngela:<br />\nThank you.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:15:28 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:13;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:90:\"Do The Woo Community: All Things CloudFest 2024 Hackathon with Christian, Carole and Alain\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:88:\"https://dothewoo.io/all-things-cloudfest-2024-hackathon-with-christian-carole-and-alain/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:88:\"https://dothewoo.io/all-things-cloudfest-2024-hackathon-with-christian-carole-and-alain/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:40253:\"<p>Guests <strong>Carole Olinger, Alain Schlesser,</strong> and <strong>Christian J&Atilde;&curren;ger</strong>&Acirc;&nbsp;talk about the upcoming events.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Hackathon, now in its seventh year, is expected to be the biggest yet, with around 140 attendees working on 11 different projects. The projects are all designed to serve the open source community, with a focus on collaboration between different CMS ecosystems. The Hackathon also includes a friendly competition, with awards sponsored by partner companies.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The money raised from these awards goes to the Groundbreaker Talents initiative, which supports female developers in Uganda. The podcast also touched on the first-ever diversity and LGBTQ+ event at CloudFest, Rainbow in the Cloud, which will support three different charities.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christian also touches on WP Day and how that evolved to be part of CloudFest<br />\n<a href=\"https://www.cloudfest.com/\"><strong>CloudFest</strong></a><br />\n<a href=\"https://hackathon.cloudfest.com/\"><strong>CloudFest Hackathon</strong></a><br />\n<a href=\"https://registration.cloudfest.com/registration\"><strong>Get your free ticket using code: dothewoo</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\nShow Transcript\n<p>Robert:<br /> Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Woo DevChat at Do the Woo. And we are having a great time today talking with the folks who are running CloudFest and the CloudFest Hackathon. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m very excited to have my guests here, Carole Olinger. Alain Schlesser and Christian J&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&curren;ger. Welcome everyone.<br /> Carole:<br /> Hi there.<br /> Alain:<br /> Hello. Hi.<br /> Robert:<br /> Thank you for having us. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s certainly our pleasure. I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t know exactly when this will go up, but we&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be close less than a month away before CloudFest and the Clou Fest Hackathon. And I guess in order of the activities, let&acirc;&#128;&#153;s kick it off with CloudFest and lead organizer, Carol Olinger.<br /> Carole:<br /> Yeah, my name is Carole and I am the head of CloudFest Hackathon, which is going to be our main topic today. And yeah, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m doing that for several years in a row and it is really one of my favorite projects during the year. And yeah, this year we are going to be celebrating also the 20th anniversary of CloudFest, so we are even more excited about what &acirc;&#128;&brvbar;<br /> Christian:<br /> Makes us old.<br /> Carole:<br /> What is expecting us during CloudFest and the days leading to the main event, CloudFest are all about the CloudFest Hackathon and the WP Day. So I am passing over the mic to Alarm who is one of the project mentors during the CloudFest Hackathon. So what are your thoughts on this year&acirc;&#128;&#153;s event?<br /> Alain:<br /> Yes, thanks. I am really looking forward to this year&acirc;&#128;&#153;s event. The CloudFest Hackathon has always been a fantastic event that highlights some of the creative problem solving of the open source community. It allows open source contributors to come together via the funds of the general sponsors, of course, to tackle some of the projects that can bring the open source CMSs and larger open source hosting ecosystems forward. And in the past we had some very influential projects that have gone on to really have an impact that came out of this hackathon. And so I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m looking forward to this year&acirc;&#128;&#153;s setup of projects that we have to see what will come out of it.<br /> Robert:<br /> That&acirc;&#128;&#153;s excellent. Really. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s interesting because as Carole mentioned, this is going to be the 20th CloudFest but Hackathon is relatively new. Christian, can you tell us a little bit about what got that CloudFest Hackathon going in the first place? Yeah, thank you very<br /> Christian:<br /> Much. The hackathon, the first edition I actually came to join was 2022. The first edition we did at CloudFest was 2019, Carole, is that right?<br /> Carole:<br /> Actually, I think there was a few previously, but that was even before I was involved. I think it started around 2016.<br /> Christian:<br /> See it says seventh edition. I should just look at our website. So 20 years of CloudFest, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going to be the seventh hackathon, the biggest one ever. And the reason why we do it is there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s actually two reasons. One of it, it opens for us as a conference organizer. It opens up or it builds a bridge to a totally different audience, namely the CMS contributors and also how to activate our typical attendees, which are cloud service provider to take a more active role in our ecosystem, namely by helping or supporting the hackathon, which is a project by the way, which is not run for profit obviously, but it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s to really enable the community to hack or contribute and really design new products. And if I may say, so the first edition 2022, I had little idea besides what Carol, of course told me what&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going to happen. So I thought it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going to be a room full of tech and geeky people eating pizza. And actually it was, but we didn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t have pizza, but we had that the German French equivalent, which is called Flammkuchen. But actually only after the event, I realized the enormous work and the value the hackers contribute. And not because I understood what everyone was doing, but I understood the impact it had for our core attendee group, which is called service providers. So I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m super happy I became a super fan ever since I attended, and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m really looking forward to the biggest one yet. Carole did an excellent job and along with the selection of projects, so really looking forward to it.<br /> Robert:<br /> It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s hard keeping track of everything Christian with being the CEO of CloudFest.<br /> Christian:<br /> We are trying hard, we&acirc;&#128;&#153;re a good team here.<br /> Robert:<br /> So Carol, last year was easily the biggest hackathon in my memory. How many folks did we have and how many projects?<br /> Carole:<br /> So we basically had around 120 attendees last year and we worked on 11 projects and that was also what we determined the good size for the event. So this year our attention was not to actually make it bigger, so we wanted to stay with the 120 attendees. But what is really interesting is of course we invite a little bit more people because plans may change and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s always a few people that are not being able to make it. Then sadly Visa arrangements cannot be realized. But this year we invited more people to end up with 120 and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s unbelievable. Every single person confirmed. So that is really a testimonial to the people that are applying to attend this event, do it because they know they will be there. So that being said, here&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the teaser. We are going to be 140 people for this edition.<br /> Robert:<br /> Oh boy.<br /> Carole:<br /> Still working on 11, obviously different projects. So this is for real going to be the biggest CloudFest Hackathon ever.<br /> Robert:<br /> Brilliant. Congratulations. Before we dive into this year&acirc;&#128;&#153;s projects and put Alight on the spot, who are the, well, let&acirc;&#128;&#153;s forward a little bit of the format because there are some winners and second place and third place, and how does that work and who were our champions last year? So we only have champions at CloudFest. Yeah, just want to say well said Chris.<br /> Carole:<br /> Yeah, so let me pick up this question. So basically we introduced last year based on the feedback that we got from attendees from previous years. So-called Friendly competition. We did that already in the addition of 2022, but in 2023 we brought it to a next level where we wanted to support a charity organization with the awards that we are basically select winners for. So what we did is we reached out to our partner companies and attendee companies and ask them to sponsor the different award categories that we defined for this year. So for example, we are going to have a future of the web award. We are going to have a social media master award, which is a really good one because it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s done at the award in the team that creates the most boss during the hackathon on social media. And there are three more categories and an overall hackathon winner.<br /> And all these awards are tied to a sponsorship from one of our dear partners for the event. And everything that we are going to be raising in terms of money is going to go integrally to the Groundbreaker talents initiative, which is really amazing and dear to my heart because it empowers and supports female developers in Uganda. So last year we managed to fund a whole year of scholarship for a CO developer. And with the help of CloudFirst, we invited that person to this year&acirc;&#128;&#153;s hackathon. So we will be able to all meet in person, our dear Vanessa, who already got certified with the Groundbreaker Talents program.<br /> Robert:<br /> It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s amazing. I saw the email from CloudFest earlier this week or was it last week? And that really is one of the great things about what happens at the hackathon, what happens at CloudFest in general, and Groundbreakers is really a fantastic organization. It is just so cool. I want to touch on a little slightly technical before we dive into the projects. This is primarily open source. I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t know if it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s exclusively, but it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s close to it. Would that be fair?<br /> Alain:<br /> It is all meant to serve the open source community either directly or indirectly. So there might be projects where there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s no actual code being produced, for example. So saying everything is 100% open source is difficult if there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s different ways that value can be produced. But in the end, all the value that is being produced will serve the open source communities and we specifically pick projects in that regard as well so that they serve a greater purpose and are not just a marketing vehicle or a product offering of a single company or so. So while not everything, as I said, will technically be open source, everything lives under the open source spirit.<br /> Robert:<br /> And I remember specifically that I think it was in 22, that the Joomla team that was there put together more of an open source specification rather than actual code to paper code to computer pet to paper code to computer. So yeah, there are some interesting opportunities. So yeah, let&acirc;&#128;&#153;s dive into the 11 projects that&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be going on at the CloudFest Hackathon, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll let you run through whatever order you want.<br /> Carole:<br /> Yeah. Then let&acirc;&#128;&#153;s start maybe. So I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t want to go into the profoundest details here because as far as I know, and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to tease, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to be teasing once more. There&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going to be an episode where the actual project leads will deep dive, dive deep, dive deep into their project themselves. So we don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t want to do that twice. But I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m just going to pick a project that is particularly dear to my heart, which is the inclusive language checker for open source contributors, which is going to be led by Birgit Olsen. So where the primary goal of the project is to standardize accessible and inclusive documentation guidelines across different WordPress teams. So this is also a project that is very much tied to the values that we as organizers want to share with and for this event. So accessibility and diversity and inclusivity are really important to us. And in order to have the attendees for this event really representing the industry and having them more diverse, it was also important for us to be on the lookout for projects that represent these core values for what they are aiming for as goal setting. So this is one example and I am also super proud to say that we have a female lead for this project and teaser again, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s not the only one. So that is one which I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m particularly excited about.<br /> Alain:<br /> Every project has a very special place in this hackathon, I guess. So yeah, let me preface this by saying that we had an overarching goal this year because last year we noticed that there was a bit of a separation between the different ecosystems, between the different CMSs. And so this time we added some active involvement to make sure that the projects are more collaborations between CMS and between ecosystems. So where last year for example, as you mentioned, Joomla did a project where they worked as a team on one feature for their open source offering. This time around we want the Joomla folks to spread over the spread along the projects. We want to have the CMS garden being involved area and so on and so forth. So there was an active effort that we did to make sure that we don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t have islands of ecosystems that all work on their own separate projects, but there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a lot of cooperation going on between the individual ecosystems.<br /> Carole:<br /> For example, we do have a project that is targeting different CMS at the same time, which is called CMS Health checks, which is led by Neil Lanner, where you do already have commitment from Joomla, Drupal and type of three communities together with WordPress one. So that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a really exciting one. We do have an accessibility project, which is also targeting all the CMSs and the industry at large because accessibility is important to all of them equally, right? This is called can Everyone Use, which is going to be led by Anika Bob. And then we do have a MariaDB project, which is also going to be equally important to different CMS project. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going to be led by Andrew Hutchings directly from the MariaDB Foundation. And the goal is to integrate MariaDB catalogs with PhD platforms. So that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s definitely projects like Alan said, that are targeting multiple CMSs and not only WordPress, while of course knowing that WordPress has the biggest market share and is according to its market share, also a little bit more represented amongst attendees of the CloudFest Hackathon.<br /> Robert:<br /> Yeah, it does look like there are two more specific WordPress projects for the hackathon, but it feels like it&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be less than last year, which is great, but it does, and I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t want to leave Chris out of the conversation being bombarded with technical information. Last year was also the first year for sort of the WordPress day. How did that come about<br /> Christian:<br /> WordPress or when I started in the business in 2011, and I keep repeating that sentence even though it doesn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t have to do something with WordPress is in 2011 everybody told me VPS is dead and shared hosting is dead. And now we are 2024 and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s still probably the two most compelling products for pretty much all mass market providers. Now there is of course a second incumbent and a new layer which is added to this equation, which is WordPress.<br /> Robert:<br /> So you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re saying WordPress that just like VPS and shared hosting,<br /> Christian:<br /> It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s like Exactly. WordPress, is that this is what I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m saying? No, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s actually as that as the other two. And the reason is that it became one of the anchors for many of our visitors. So they all either already have WordPress offerings or they are even now not concentrating on getting new customers in, taking over other hosting companies. More consolidation. No, they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re even looking into WordPress. They can integrate into their own offerings in order to say, well, I have this add-on which is exclusively available at my service. And that undermines a little bit the importance of WordPress in that particular case. And this is also the main motivation where we said, okay, there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s so much in here. There&acirc;&#128;&#153;s so many requests at the hackathon initially dealing with WordPress that we have to do something more. And this is when we were approached last year, Hey, wouldn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t you be able to do this start firsts earlier?<br /> We don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t need a specific content and we would rather like to share ideas. And it was a big success. The room was packed. We also had a few learnings from organizational point of view, and this is why we did it this year, even more professional. We made it part of the official agenda. So it starts basically a day earlier. People don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t have during CloudFest, they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re super busy with meetings and attending other sessions, but the Monday seems to be a good day where in the afternoon everybody&acirc;&#128;&#153;s already on site and has time to be invested into sharing the recent knowledge about WordPress. And this is why we said, okay, this is the perfect topic, the perfect place, let&acirc;&#128;&#153;s make something out of it. And this is how WP Day was designed.<br /> Robert:<br /> And since we&acirc;&#128;&#153;re on do the Woo, of course there&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be WooCommerce conversations as well. So it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s actually a very nice kind of lead in throughout almost 10 days of Europa Park Madness, I can&acirc;&#128;&#153;t think of another word except madness because it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s so intense, so productive and so valuable.<br /> Christian:<br /> You would see me on Saturdays super tired, but super happy hopefully. So the Saturday after the entire, I was going to say,<br /> Robert:<br /> So the Saturday after the event, I was going to say which Saturday, definitely not.<br /> Christian:<br /> If it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the first Saturday, then I made something wrong or the heck has really wanted me to party.<br /> Robert:<br /> A quick question. I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t think anyone&acirc;&#128;&#153;s ever thought of this. Can folks who arrive early actually take a look at what&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going on in the hackathon peek in, see the winners and sort of the closing ceremonies I guess, of the hackathon?<br /> Carole:<br /> Yeah, actually if they come find me, we can always arrange something, especially if I remember correctly, we did that with pleasure in the evenings so that there wouldn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t be too much of a distraction during the day. But yeah, everyone&acirc;&#128;&#153;s basically welcome to confine me and see if we can do a sneak peek. And it is also very, very good for us in terms of finding new potential partners for the additions to come. So yes, but what we cannot do is accept attendees on spot. So like I said, we are already at 140, so it wouldn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t be possible to just join on a Saturday and say, okay, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m specifically interested in this project and can I now start hacking here for the next two and a half days? So that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s unfortunately possible because of the success of the event, but if anyone wants to come by and say hi, we can certainly arrange that. And yeah, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m looking forward to meeting all of you in that case.<br /> Robert:<br /> Yes, I know a lot of travelers from us and maybe Asia we&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll also be coming a day or two early so that it might, first of all, just for time zones, trust me, I know that experience. So I get there a little bit earlier, you mentioned partners and the sponsors. I think it would be a shame if we don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t actually mention the hackathon sponsors since they are the folks that are facilitating, getting the spaces, getting the time, getting the hotel rooms for the hackers, I guess we can call them.<br /> Carole:<br /> Yes, let&acirc;&#128;&#153;s do that. So yeah, this year we do have 12 confirmed partners, and before naming them, we still do have one open slot for a partnership package two and one open slot for partnership package one. So in case anyone out there listening in is interested in getting a board to CloudFest hackathon, please reach out directly to me and you can do that via email carole@CloudFest.com. And like I said, very, very limited spaces. So hurry up.<br /> Robert:<br /> And that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s Carole with an English E at the end, just so people<br /> Carole:<br /> Oh, good one, very good one, very good one. Yeah. C-A-R-O-L_E@CloudFest.com. Yeah, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s amazing how I know how my name is spelled, but should be amazing.<br /> Robert:<br /> Before we get into that list, I just want to make a very funny aside. Literally everyone on this call has English as a second language. I may be the most native of the speakers, but it actually is a second language as well. So that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s where we&acirc;&#128;&#153;re having a lot of fun with Carole and Alain.<br /> Carole:<br /> But most importantly, let&acirc;&#128;&#153;s name our dear sponsors for the CloudFest Hackathon. So this year we have Intel, Ionos, Inpsyde, HostPress, Group One, Greyd, Codeable , Cloudron, BotGuard, Automattic, and the Alma Linux Open Source Foundation. Thank you.<br /> Robert:<br /> I mean it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s an amazing, amazing group of folks. Definitely some of these are hosting companies, WordPress focus, but even seeing some like Intel supporting the hackathon, that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a very, I think prestigious for the hackathon as a whole, that such a large organization is putting the money where the mouth is about open source development and all of that.<br /> Carole:<br /> And they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re supporting the hackathon for many years already. And because they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re doing that, I also want to mention that they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re organizing an AI Summit during the first day of CloudFest. So that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s also something I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m looking forward to because that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the new thing. Everyone wants to be up to date about what&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going on with ai. Even I, and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m not technical.<br /> Robert:<br /> If I hear AI one more time, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to start doing a J&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&curren;egermeister with Carole.<br /> Carole:<br /> Yeah, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s got to be the most important. If you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re going to do some Bingo competition with the buzzword that has to be in the middle somewhere,<br /> Robert:<br /> It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s like the center square because someone&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going to say it no matter what. So just block it out.<br /> Carole:<br /> Or the drinking game each time.<br /> Christian:<br /> It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s either that or quantum computing. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s like these two I hear every day.<br /> Robert:<br /> Oh, okay. So I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to test you on that because Quantum has actually, at least from an anecdotal perspective, taken a huge back side to ai. Is there anything, I know we&acirc;&#128;&#153;re talking about a hackathon, but it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s fun to get some little snippets about the CloudFest agenda as well in here. Is there going to be anything quantum related?<br /> Christian:<br /> No, actually we had Quantum last year and the year before, so this year we are really focusing a little bit more on ai. And the reason why is it why that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the case is not to get on your nerves, Robert, even though of course that could be an argument. But the main driver is we ask the audience what specifically they would like to learn. We do a survey called State of the Cloud, and there we collect the feedback of over a thousand cloud service providers, which have already replied. And there were two main replies, which we identified the first one being AI and how does it actually impact my business? Is there a business case for me being maybe not intercompany of the world? So what does it mean? How can I profit from it? Can I actually profit from it? And the second one was the takeover of Broadcom and VMware and whether there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going to be a partner program anymore.<br /> So another strange topic which is emerging right now. And then the last one is always about, and that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s interesting because it was the same last year, is about international collaboration. How can I learn from other market participants which are maybe doing business next to me or doing with me or maybe even competing? And that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s actually how we derive this year&acirc;&#128;&#153;s theme, which is uniting the nations of cloud because I mean obviously we could talk about nations in the sense where you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re from different countries, we have over 80 different countries attending, but nations could also mean the technological background an attendee has. So there could be a product manager, software developer could be a hardware producing. So these kind of nations. So the fields of interest or whatever you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re going to call it. And this international collaboration of these nations is what clouds is known for.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the hackathon is a perfect example because without knowing it by heart, there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s already people from all over the world. As Carole already said, we even have our talent from Uganda, which is flying in last year. We were able to finance five talents in total, one coming only out of the hackathon participants, which is freaking awesome this year of course I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m hoping for six. So we will do our part to make that a reality, but it shows that this collaboration part is so important to our audience and to our community and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s even ever increasing important. So it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s really cool we have the hackathon helping us to achieve that goal.<br />\nRobert:<br />\nYeah, I think that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a great point because I think we have folks from every continent except Antarctica. So I know yet, so I was going to say Christian and Carole next year we need to at least someone who&acirc;&#128;&#153;s maybe spend some time there.<br />\nChristian:<br />\nYeah, sure. Let&acirc;&#128;&#153;s do a local meetup. Antarctica.<br />\nRobert:<br />\nChallenge accepted now. There we go. The challenge for CloudFest 2025 Hackathon, someone who&acirc;&#128;&#153;s been not just a vacation but actually spent time in Antarctica. Okay, okay, that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s good. Folks listening to the podcast, can&acirc;&#128;&#153;t see the weird look Christians giving me like, okay.<br />\nChristian:<br />\nWas thinking about is the Linux Penguin actually from Antarctica? But I dunno,<br />\nRobert:<br />\nNice, but I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t want to, in fact, I want to even go deeper into this. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s great how almost like 10 days of a program really works out here because the hackathon gets I think new people who would not traditionally go to CloudFest to see what this global experience is like.<br />\nCarole:<br />\nWe definitely see a huge increase of people. So basically when they sign up we ask them, are you also applying to attend CloudFest? Or maybe do you have already made arrangements? And I can see a huge increase of people transferring their interest from maybe having attended the hackathon a few years back and not so much interested in CloudFest to shifting that. And I would say at least 50 to 60% of the people that are attending the CloudFest hackathon are now attending day one and beyond of the main event. So that certainly is a result of having this complimentary program elements like the WP Day and an AI summit. And so everything we built throughout the last editions, but it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s also a result of the hackathon projects and initiative itself because we built this connection between the deciders and the big companies of the industry and the open source world, the contributors to the open source project. So with that connection being built over the years, it is clear that that shift into the main event cloud first and that is really, really amazing to see. So that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s something I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m actually really proud of.<br />\nRobert:<br />\nYeah, I kind of see it in three parts. We have the hackathon, then we have WP Day and the Intel AI Summit and then really sort of that official get ready to meet, what are we looking at? 8,000 people at CloudFest now, plus or minus. Yeah. Even if we&acirc;&#128;&#153;re rock by 10 or 20%, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s still going to be a huge, huge event. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going<br />\nChristian:<br />\nTo be a full house. Please arrive early, bring some patients, especially on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, be ready for queuing. Very British but it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s going to be full house and be ready for getting in line.<br />\nRobert:<br />\nOn sort of a little fun note. How does one survive 10 days?<br />\nCarole:<br />\nYou find out, tell me.<br />\nChristian:<br />\nYeah, eating a lot of flammkuchen and some J&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&curren;egermeisters.<br />\nCarole:<br />\nAnd then there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s crazy people like Robert and me who are going to go to WordCamp Asia the weekend before, which isn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t Taipei, Taiwan for anybody who doesn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t know. So that is definitely going to be an interesting month of March for all of us.<br />\nRobert:<br />\nYeah, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m looking at about three weeks, not at home.<br />\nCarole:<br />\nI just also wanted to mention there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s something that we didn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t talk about yet about when we were mentioning the projects. What is really important for me to say is also something that we started doing a few additions back when we were trying to have more targeted goal-oriented, diverse and inclusive projects as already done. We were coming up with concept of having project mentors and offering guidance throughout the process of having an idea for a project and then having it set up for the hackathon goal oriented, having the right ed audience defined and making it a success. And in that context, I wanted to mention, so we have Alan here who is one of the project mentors that we have for the lost edition and for this one, but we also have Lucas Radke and both of them are doing such a brilliant work in guiding our project leads through the process and finding and determining the derived projects for our events. So I wanted to give a shout out to both of them and maybe Alan can say a few words more about how the process looks like on their end.<br />\nAlain:<br />\nOh yeah, sure. So yeah, I have been doing this already last year together with Lucas. So we are already a properly trained team on dealing with that. And this year we wanted to go through what we&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve learned last year. So last year we were very specific about what types of values we wanted to have represented in the projects and from the ideas that were submitted, we tried to actively shape those so that we could have some of those values represented. So we wanted to have sustainability, accessibility, things, big topics like that, that were represented through the projects. And then we made sure that the projects represented those values and that we had the right people to lead those projects to get a successful outcome. And this year we are still continuing down this trend, but also we learned from last year where everything as I mentioned was a bit too isolated.<br />\nSo this year it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s also we want to tie everything a bit closer together across the ecosystems. But what I wanted to mention is that from how I perceived this hackathon, it has started as just an annex to the cloud first. But we slowly, we actively worked on making this a more integral part so that we get a proper bridge between the open source communities and the businesses where the value is created and ultimately where the money is being generated. Because oftentimes those topics, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a bit of a taboo to mention them in the same sentence, open source and money, they tend to not go well together. And as project mentors we really try to get the general ideas of these open source communities but then produce the version of the project that makes the best use of this specific circumstance where businesses are funding this, where businesses are present at the main event so that the open source community gets proper access to these resources and then can bleed over into this business segment.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And also more importantly, and I think that is often the harder part to do, have the business topic bleed over more into the open source communities, they tend to isolate themselves from that business, but ultimately without required funding, all of these open source projects will ultimately have trouble succeeding. So this amalgamation between the open source spirit and resources that a business focused event and the participants at that event can provide that is just such a powerful happening that happens once per year as far as I know, I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t know of any similar event happening like this. And as project mentors we try to properly guide the project leads to make sure that they can properly tap into the resources of this specific circumstance.<br />\nRobert:<br />\nYeah, I think that is a great point Alain. And if we look at the sponsors for Hackathon, those folks are all sponsoring open source developers day in and day out, either as true sponsorships or as employees within their own companies. So and maybe some kind of strange perfect utopian open source world, everyone could just do what they want and it is critical to have small, medium, large organizations keep open source projects going. And that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s great to see. We are kind of running out of our podcast time before the mysterious man behind the curtain. Bob cuts us off. One little thing I&acirc;&#128;&#153;d like to mention on one of the days, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to let Carole talk to this because she&acirc;&#128;&#153;s done so much of the work we are having Rainbow in the Cloud. If you can just give a little, when is it, where is it and what&acirc;&#128;&#153;s it about?<br />\nCarole:<br />\nOh yeah, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m so excited about that. So this year CloudFest is going to host the very first diversity and LGBTQ plus event, which is called Rainbow in the cloud. You&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve got to love that name. Do you? Right? So Rainbow in the Cloud is going to happen on the second day of CloudFest, which is Tuesday, March 19th after the main concert concert in the hotel in the bar called Commedia dell&acirc;&#128;&#153;Arte, which is also known as the karaoke bar.<br />\nRobert:<br />\nYes, the karaoke bar.<br />\nCarole:<br />\nAnd not surprisingly there is going to the karaoke, but more than that we are going to have a few very colorful and glittery surprises for you during that event. And the main goal besides obviously raising awareness for having a more diverse and pride friendly industry and including that like showcasing this during CloudFest because that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the values that we all care for in the organizing team and as an industry, we also thought it would be really, really great supporting a few charities in that matter with the event we are organizing. So long story short, again, we reached out to our partners, so the partner companies of CloudFest, but also attending companies for CloudFest to sponsor this site event. And a minimum of 50% of all the money we connect toward this site event is going to go to three different charities that we chose. And one is a female empowerment company, which is called Anita B, the other one is out in tech and the third one is called Rainbow Railroad. So again, if anyone hears the call and feels like, hey this is so amazing and I want to support this, please reach out to me on Carol with an e@CloudFest.com and we can certainly make it happen that you are going to be one of the amazing sponsors for CloudFest very first diversity and pride event.<br />\nRobert:<br />\nPerfect. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m very excited about it. Yes, I am helping Carol with that as well. So I do have a vested interest in seeing Rainbow in the cloud be quite successful. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m thrilled that the CloudFest team has really put their full support and weight behind putting this together. Again, one of the many reasons folks should be attending Cloud Fest in Germany at Europa Park for Americans, Europa Park for everyone else. So we already know how to get ahold of you Carol, so Carol with an e@CloudFest.com. Also the hackathon at hackhackathon.CloudFest.com.<br />\nCarole:<br />\nYeah. So yeah, you can always reach us there and get more information and yeah, really, really looking forward to seeing you all there. I can&acirc;&#128;&#153;t wait and I cannot believe that one year has already passed since we were in Europa Park for the last time.<br />\nChristian:<br />\nI tell you.<br />\nRobert:<br />\nAnd I guess Do the Woo has a nice little coupon code for free standard Pass, which is dothewoo with two o&acirc;&#128;&#153;s of course. So we know how to get ahold of Carole at CloudFest. Alain how we get ahold of you, how can we make your life more difficult?<br />\nAlain:<br />\nI&acirc;&#128;&#153;m probably best reachable on Twitter X @schlessera is my nickname and per email if you want to reach me regarding the CloudFest, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s Alain.Schlesser@gmail.com.<br />\nRobert:<br />\nAnd Christian.<br />\nChristian:<br />\nHappy for everyone of the folks listening in to join our cloud festival and you can reach me cj@CloudFest.com and really I will be waiting with open arms at the gate Monday latest or for the hackathon on Friday and Saturday. Of course, really looking forward and appreciate the work Carole is doing and Alain are doing. And of course you are doing robot in making all these great community projects are reality. And that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s not only the hackathon, which I told you earlier, I became a super fan without knowing what I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m a fan of the first year. Now I know, of course. And then now we started this rainbow in the cloud initiative, which it shows that the community contributes actively. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s like an open source B2B festival we are doing in a way. So I really, really, really much looking forward to it. I<br />\nRobert:<br />\nI love that Christian. I think that is a great way of putting it open source B2B festival. We now know the tagline for 2025<br />\nCarole:<br />\nAnd that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s exactly what should happen. That is exactly what should happen. I think there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s so much potential in uniting those both worlds of mine and those both worlds of us and many of the people out there. And yeah, I am an advocate for doing that in the WordPress ecosphere and beyond. Let&acirc;&#128;&#153;s unite the open source and business world. Please.<br />\nRobert:<br />\nThank you all so, so much. I am so excited for another edition, seventh edition of CloudFest Hackathon, 25th edition of CloudFest. Everything starts really getting going March 16th and goes a solid week afterwards. So very excited. So you can check out hackathon.CloudFest.com or go directly to CloudFest.com to get more information. And I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m sure there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s some tickets left, but it is going fast and crazy people book this a year in advance. Thank you so much all. Can&acirc;&#128;&#153;t wait to see you in March.<br />\nCarole:<br />\nSee you. Bye.<br />\nChristian:<br />\nThank you very much for having us.<br />\nAlain:<br />\nThanks everyone.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:15:28 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:14;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:124:\"Do The Woo Community: WordPress Translation, Internationalization, and Documentation with Estela Rueda &amp; Pascal Birchler\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:115:\"https://dothewoo.io/wordpress-translation-internationalization-and-documentation-with-estela-rueda-pascal-birchler/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:115:\"https://dothewoo.io/wordpress-translation-internationalization-and-documentation-with-estela-rueda-pascal-birchler/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:108609:\"<div class=\"wp-block-group has-border-color has-light-gray-background-color has-background has-small-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p class=\"has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-910212adcee880ccea724dddf3e83d55\">Thanks to our sponsor&#8230;</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-vertical is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-3 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-1 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-2 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-base-background-color has-background wp-container-content-3 has-global-padding is-content-justification-left is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-1 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<a href=\"https://www.a2hosting.com/ecommerce-hosting/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img width=\"400\" height=\"400\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/a2_hosting_logo_squaretagline_400x400.png?resize=400%2C400&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-75152\" /></a>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-container-content-6\"><strong><a href=\"https://www.a2hosting.com/ecommerce-hosting/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A2 Hosting</a></strong>: A2 eCommerce hosting is your partner to help you keep your clients stores running 24/7 smoothly with their enhanced security. <a href=\"https://www.a2hosting.com/ecommerce-hosting/\">Learn more</a></p>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>They highlight the work of the Polyglots team in translating the software into different languages, making it more accessible to users worldwide. And also share about the upcoming improvements in WordPress 6.5, including a new translation system that uses PHP files for faster performance.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>All three of them encourage more people to get involved in the WordPress community, emphasizing that it&#8217;s not just about knowing the software, but also about understanding the culture and the people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And they end with a common love for a food dish that Estela and Pascal not only enjoy eating, but making as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Find them on WordPress.org</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/estelaris/\"><strong>Estela on WordPress.org</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/swissspidy/\"><strong>Pascal on WordPress.org</strong></a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>More links</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/11/13/wordpress-6-4-performance-improvements/\">WordPress 6.4 Performance Improvements</a></strong></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/playground/\"><strong>WordPress Playground</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.github.io/wordpress-playground/\"><strong>WordPress Playground on GitHub</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/docs/\"><strong>Make WordPress Documentation</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/\"><strong>Translate WordPress</strong></a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\nShow Transcript\n<p>Abha:<br /> Hello, and we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re here for another WordPress Way on Do the Woo. I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m Abha Thakor and we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re continuing our journey around the world, finding fascinating people who are doing the WordPress way, but also can tell us a little bit about the Woo too. So stick with us and stay on our journey. So today we have Estela Rueda with us, and Pascal Birchler, and we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re going to have a very interesting conversation about translation, internationalization, documentation. In fact, we might find a few other things that ending in Asian and talk about those two. So stay with us and let&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s see where we go. So welcome both of you. It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s so nice to have you here. Now, Estela, I never know where you are currently in which country. So tell us today, which country are you coming live from?<br /> Estela:<br /> Hi, Ava, how are you? Thanks for the invite. First of all, where am I located now? Today I am in Italy. I recently moved, last two months ago I moved to Italy. That&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s where I am living.<br /> Abha:<br /> But that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s not where you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve from, is it before? Where did you grow up?<br /> Estela:<br /> That&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s a different answer from where I am from. I really don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t like it when people ask me where I am from because it depends on what you want to know. It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s always a different, always a different answer.<br /> Abha:<br /> I tell you what, tell us some other countries that you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve hopped over to so that we can get a flavor of the international Estela.<br /> Estela:<br /> Well, let&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s see, Mexico, that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s where I was born. I grew up in the US in Mexico somewhere up and down. I went to college in Costa Rica. I got married and moved and lived in the Netherlands for a long time. Then I went back to the us. Then after that I moved back to the Netherlands and then Slovakia, and now I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m here in Italy.<br /> Abha:<br /> Love that. This is why you are one of the perfect people to be on here talking about internationalization, and I know that international background of yours also means that inclusion is a really important part of your work in the WordPress and the do the We community too. So thanks for telling us all that. Pascal, where are you coming in from today?<br /> Pascal:<br /> Hey everyone, thanks for having as well. It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s a bit more boring here. Born and raised in Switzerland and I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m still in Switzerland today.<br /> Abha:<br /> There is nothing boring about Switzerland. It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s one of my favorite places in the world. So whereabouts in Switzerland are you coming from<br /> Pascal:<br /> In Zurich?<br /> Abha:<br /> That is got to be one of my favorite cities. So I think it was last there for WordCamp Zurich seems a lifetime ago, but it was only just before Covid. So I had the pleasure of coming to speak at that. So it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s an amazing place to be right now. We all know it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s a really busy time because when we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re recording this at the moment, we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve just had beta one for the WordPress 6.5 release and all three of us in fact have been quite busy who had this release. So I wondered if we could just give people a little bit of an insight into why is it that both of you do give time to the release and you do give it in such an amazing number of teams from design, documentation, polyglots, performance and core. So why do you do that and why should people think about that?<br /> Estela:<br /> I think it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s important that you get involved with many of the teams, not just one and just focus on one thing because nothing that we do within WordPress, within Woo, is just focus on one thing. If you want to change the design, you need to talk to the developers, you need to talk to Core. And if you change something, you need to document it. You need to let people know what you did, whether it is documentation for developers, what is documentation on the features that is just for end users. So always, always have to talk among teams. So belonging just to one team sometimes makes most of the time I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m going to have to say that makes no sense.<br /> Abha:<br /> I love that answer. And in fact the blog I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m writing in my head now is just that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s going to start with that answer. And it is true. I work and volunteer in probably about seven different teams actively, but they all have touch points and my work tends to focus on actually where they touch and it really does make a difference. I don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t think I would&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve been a good docs if I hadn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t understood core and I certainly wouldn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t have been as good if I hadn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t understood training. And this time I was doing a lot of work in training too.<br /> But performance is the one that really I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve learned more most about being docs co-lead for the last release because it affects everything. I thought it just affected this little bit over here and this is like an add-on thing, but we look at before or maybe we look at after, but I did not realize until I worked with Pascal and Joe and all the wonderful people in performance that actually it affects every single thing that we do and probably should be more in our focus as people learn to use WordPress and it be something that when you start as a developer or you start making sites as a site builder, performance is right up there in the first things that you learn. And of course who better to ask that question to than Pascal?<br /> Pascal:<br /> Yeah, you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re absolutely right. I mean performance affects everyone and it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s not just you as a user of WordPress when you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re writing new continent WordPress or you use your site, but it also affects your visitors and that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s why it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s so important to improve performance across the board, both on the backend and front end. And yeah, I think in the recent years we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve done a pretty good job already, but there&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s of course always lots more to do.<br /> Abha:<br /> Pascal, do you remember offhand how many performance improvements they were in? 6.4? I should know I did the field guide, but I can&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t remember at this very moment. I know I was absolutely stunned by how many,<br /> Pascal:<br /> Oh, I don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t have a number in my head because there&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s so many, sometimes there&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s bigger changes, but there&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s so many smaller improvements as well if it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s some caching or some code optimization. So yeah, I don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t have a number, but it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s definitely a lot of improvements.<br /> Abha:<br /> I tell you what, we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll put it in the link in the show notes just so that people can read how many there were. I was looking at the piece right now and it was quite phenomenal and I think if you are thinking of that performance is an issue for your WordPress site or even that you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re debating working with Wu and WordPress because of performance, you need to check out this post on WordPress 6.4 performance improvements and look at the work that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s happening now because it really shows you that performance does not have to be a problem. In fact, the ability you have with speed with WordPress and Woo is phenomenal. Say Pascal, if you were suggesting WordPress and Woo to other people, what would you say to them if they were hesitant about performance with the software?<br /> Pascal:<br /> Don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t be because WordPress is known for powering some of the biggest WordPress, some of the biggest websites in the world and also WooCommerce. It can scale to super large sites and it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s definitely proven to be a robust and performant choice and there&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s performance plugins that you can use. There&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s always something that you can do on your hosting side of things as well. So yeah, it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s definitely, performance is definitely, you don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t have to worry about performance when you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re going with the WordPress and Woo.<br /> Abha:<br /> And I think sometimes it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s a misnomer and people have this idea what it is and it limits and actually it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s not. But that also brings me back to the value of documentation because especially in the work for the last few and in our shows here, we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve been explaining how important documentation is because if you understand what you need to do on your WordPress site to make it perform better, then you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve got more chance of it actually doing that because it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s not often the software that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s limiting, it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s how much you can read in terms of documentation, how much you can learn about how much you can learn from your peers. And to that, I have to go to Estella who&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s nodding at me going, yes, yes, yes, this is exactly what we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve been telling people. So Estela, you tell them.<br /> Estela:<br /> Well yes, documentation is very important, but documentation in all levels right now, WordPress dot org, we have many levels of documentation. We have the support forums which will give you the one off questions very specific. They also have articles and stuff that they&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve been recollecting from answering many things. Then we have documentation for end users, which are people that are non-developers that they want to know how to do the basic stuff on their side, make it look nice, look pretty working, that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s all they need to do. We have documentation for developers and they go all on the deep stuff, all the code, everything in the backend that not everybody understands, but that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s good for them. And then we have Learn which are longer tutorials, video or just reading that people can learn at their own pace. And these are good when they want to learn about one specific feature or how to create a specific feature, how to create a theme for instance, or how to create a plugin or how to run performance. It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s like very specific topics. That&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s what it is.<br /> Abha:<br /> And it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s all available for free.<br /> Estela:<br /> Yes, it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s all available for free and many of these things for the longest time, you have to go and look around the web, Google as much as you can to find it. And what we are trying to do nowadays is to have them inside WordPress dot org so that people know that this is, we we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re the ones that build it and we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re telling you how to do it, how to fix it, how to work in it, how to learn about it.<br /> Abha:<br /> And the beauty of course is that right now we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re going to be working on documentation for end users. That starts pretty much in the field guide as well as beta 1 comes in and if you are passionate about these things and you want to help other people or you wish something was documented but you can&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t find it, this is the time to come and volunteer. The same for performance because the core performance team have regular meetings, they&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re a fairly new team and they&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re pretty awesome. And I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve had Nini who&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s been helping me research for this show and she&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s just sent me a message to say that they were 64 tickets with a focus on performance in 6.4, which is pretty good. And that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s just main tickets. There was lots of other things as well in addition to that. So this is a happening team as of course this documentation and you get virtual cookies too. These are important things to get. They make you smile and being able to smile in a day is quite important.<br /> Estela:<br /> But if you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re at attend work camps and you go to contribute this, you get real cookies for the documentation.<br /> Abha:<br /> Now I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve missed out on these. I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve been at WordCamps and I haven&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t had the cookie, so I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll need to have a word with the development people and see if I can get some wonderful one sent across. So it 6.5 obviously has a lot of things in the release. And for our regular followers, we have got a show that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s coming to you in mid-March with a 6.5 and we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll be looking at all the wonderful things in that as well. So if you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve got questions that you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;d like to be included in that or that we can research for you, do send them in and we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll try and make sure we can follow those up too.<br /> So for 6.5 and beyond, what would both of you like to see as different in a release in terms of how can we get more of the translation understood, more of the need for internationalization understood. And also just a bit more, I dunno if understanding is a quite word, but there is a lot of work that our polyglots do, our polyglots or our volunteer translators for anyone who&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s not heard that term before because they have quite a short time to translate the release into their local language so that WordPress can be used in that latest software more easily in that locale. So Pascal, I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m going to go to you first of all, I know something that you feel very passionate about. What would you like to see if you had a wishlist that would make translations and their importance and all the perfect translations and all the internationalization work that you are involved with, what would make it easier and what would be your dream?<br /> Pascal:<br /> So one dream that actually already came true, which is that on translate WordPress dot org, you can now translate plugins or core itself directly inside WordPress. That is very important because sometimes you have a text that you need to translate but you don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t know where it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s used. But so you can just basically open WordPress and then you see the string in the necessary context and you can translate it right in there and then upload those translations. I think that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s an amazing change that happened. And the other thing, I think it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s just in general maybe for developers to translate their use WordPress in another language during development because just so often strings are not actually translatable and we have to fix that. That&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s always a bit annoying. It would help to use some plugins or just change the language to just use WordPress in another language to get that experience.<br /> Abha:<br /> So where do you think that would be the most effective during the beta testing the RC time? Or do you think that would be when we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve got a live release<br /> Pascal:<br /> Even before beta, I think especially when developing a big new feature, it can happen that things get forgotten, but beta is of course the ideal time because that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s where we start focusing on bug fixing. So especially during the beta period, it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s a good time to fix those translation issues.<br /> Abha:<br /> I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m just thinking about how we could make that workflow easier. Do you think something on Learn possibly might help with that if we showed people how to do that?<br /> Pascal:<br /> Possibly? Yeah, I think the worker&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s playground is already very helpful because it makes it easier for you to test WordPress with a different setup. You don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t have to change your main website to do that. So maybe making it easier to do this via playground would be helpful. But I don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t have concrete ideas right now.<br /> Abha:<br /> The beauty of this show is that we have a lot of people who come back after listening and go, actually, we could do it this way. And it also people we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve had guests before who&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve gone away to their teams and go, could we do this? And it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s great because we like that at Do the Woo, we like not only being about empowering and sharing the community, but also coming up with good ways of people working together. So I think we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll take that definitely to the next learn meeting as well.<br /> So it is really important just so we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re aware that when we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve got new things like WebPress playground, we will put that it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s in the show notes. If you listen to our show from last month, we had a whole section on WordPress playground as well. But if you not sure what it is, there are tutorials, there is help documentation on how to use it. And as Pascal said, it doesn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t have to change your current setup to be able to use it. And you can test WordPress too and be part of the releases in the making. We&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll share some of those in the cross link in the show notes too. Estela, okay, I need to know your dream now. What would be your dream to make it better for Polyglots internationalization and translation?<br /> Estela:<br /> My dream is almost coming true, almost coming true.<br /> Abha:<br /> I love this.<br /> Estela:<br /> So the GlotPress team has been working on improving the plugin to be able to take long tests, long text, and it may be they are planning on launching this new plugin in WordCamp Asia, which unfortunately I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m not going to be able to be there. But the people that are going to be there, they&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re going to see it and I am really, really looking forward to it. That is one. The other one is one that I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m still working on is improving the style guides for every language. This style guides have been written up while long time ago, I don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t know. Some of them haven&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t been updated in forever. In recent years, we have had many issues and changes in the language in all languages.<br /> And how do we address, we had the problem of gender, we have problems of how to address people. Yeah, sometimes it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s formal too informal or gender, the feminine and masculine like English is easy because it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s a neutral language, but Spanish, no, everything is feminine or masculine and there is nothing in between. So we need to learn how to address these things not only in the way we name objects because that grammar, we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re not going to change it. We cannot change the grammar, but we can learn and give tips on how to address things like the users. We always call them masculine, so maybe we need to find a different way of naming them this kind of thing. And Spanish is not the only issue with this, right? A lot of other languages have these problems. Also the integration of English terms that are non translatable.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A lot of languages just decided to keep the English term and not translated. So I think that improving the style guide that we have that will make it easier. And then using AI to translate with always, always finishing with a human review doesn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t go from chatGBT straight to blood press ever. You need to check, you need to read it and you need to make sure it doesn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t read like a robot. It needs to read like a human is telling you what to do and how do you do things right?<br />\nAbha:<br />\nAbsolutely. So yeah,<br />\nEstela:<br />\nThat&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s it.<br />\nAbha:<br />\nIt&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s almost coming true. I love it. So of course that means that next time we will have to find you a new dream so that we can work towards that as well. So for anyone who doesn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t know, can you just share what GlotPress is?<br />\nEstela:<br />\nGlotPress is the tool that is used by the polyglots team to review the strings, make sure that they are the same, that is the same terms, the functions. I don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t know if probably Pascal knows more about this because it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s used more in development or core than it is in documentation. So I dunno if Pascal knows more about how it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s or what it is, how to use it.<br />\nPascal:<br />\nSure, I mean GlotPress is basically a WordPress plugin and it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s what powers translate WordPress dot org. It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s used to translate not only WordPress itself but also all the plugins and themes in the directory and I think even the mobile apps and some other parts.<br />\nAbha:<br />\nAnd we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll find a way of linking that in transcription as well. So for anyone who&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s not come across it before, but those are really cool. There&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s a really good things that are coming up. Pascal, you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re also got a hit GitHub work that you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re doing on various things relating to translation, but particularly performance translations. Do you want to share a bit about how that makes a difference to WordPress and therefore also to what people want to do with Woo?<br />\nPascal:<br />\nOh yes, absolutely. So it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s always been known that the translation system in WordPress, how WordPress loads translations, et cetera, is a bit slow, but it never got attention it deserved. So last year we did a very thorough analysis on the performance of the translation system and as a result we built a completely new translation system that is more performant, uses less memory, but it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s backward compatible. So everything still works the same. And we put that into a plugin called Performance Translations. So everyone could just install this plugin and if you are using WordPress in another language, your site should be instantly faster. And the good news is we are now merging this plugin into WordPress 6.5.<br />\nSo technically you don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t need to plugin anymore. So just update WordPress and it gets faster. And the main thing that this new system does, it uses a new file format for translations. So if you have ever translated WordPress or dealt with translations in a way you might be familiar with those .po and mo files that are used by WordPress. And we are replacing that with PHP files. So PHP files that hold all the translations because loading a PHP file in PHP, which is the language that WordPress has written in, is much faster than having to load those binary mo files.<br />\nAbha:<br />\nAnd that of course not only improves performance, especially once it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s in core, but also makes that more available to more people who don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t have to do plugins because not everyone has that ability if they are having a site that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s been built for them, they can&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t always add plugins. But having that feature facility within WordPress core means that more people could use it. And of course that has a direct benefit for if you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re adding WooCommerce on top because you can already have something where you can translate it much more easily. With WordPress playground, as we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve talked about, you can test how your service that you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re having may appear in different translations as well. And I dunno about you two, but I definitely think that the understanding of why translation is important really has taken much firmer hold globally in the last two or three years compared to what it was like a decade ago. And I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m going to go to you first Estela on that.<br />\nEstela:<br />\nI think even five years ago, I think five years ago we were not still so sure about translating. It was one part, the core was being translated, that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s what poly gloves were doing mostly. And people locally were writing their own content, but nowadays we are translating even more. And I have insisted a lot on this and whenever I can I talk part of inclusion is giving WordPress to people in their own language, in their own culture, within their own culture. Why? Because there is this saying, there is this saying that says give a man a fish, feed him for one night, teach &Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;em how to fish and you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll feed him forever. It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s the same thing if we teach somebody how to use WordPress, that somebody may have a work for a lifetime, they have a job, they have skills that they can move on and there you go.<br />\nSo I think that that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s what we need to be doing now and we need to take away that part that says if you want to learn WordPress, you must learn English or speak English. I don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t think that that is true and that should never be true. We need to stop that, we need to avoid that and we need to go around that and say, okay, we want to include as many people as possible and we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re going to teach as many people as possible how to use WordPress, how to work with WordPress, how to create a life with WordPress, a business, anything that you want to do. And that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s why I insist on translating documentation from developers for end users. Because also is that thing, you do not need to be a developer to create a blog and with a simple blog you can create a business,<br />\nAbha:<br />\nRight? Definitely. And it is about empowering and it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s about having that empowering globally. And I know one of the questions that we did, part of the research for this podcast today was about well, but we was different. But actually there is for everybody out there who thinks that there isn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t a localization aspect of WooCommerce, I can tell you there is and there&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s lots of people actually involved with it and you can contribute to your localization to core and they maintain translations of the WooCommerce project on GL press. So you can translate it, you can take part in the teams who are working@webpress.org, the whole thing works together and that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s the beauty of it. It isn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t that, oh, I have to start again. The more we can translate to WordPress, the better that is for people using it for WordPress and all its different ways it can be used, but also for those using it for WooCommerce products, it really is about the future.<br />\nAnd we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re not going to go back to a place where everything just has to be in English. The world has moved on considerably from that and that is a good thing. So if you haven&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t thought of these things before or you thought a plugin was what was standing in your way, have a look at 6.5 and we will include in the show notes after it becomes into core, we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll get Pascal to write as little paragraph to go in it as well and a link so that people who think, okay, what do I do now? Where do I go? We can direct you because a lot of it is about education and education in a positive way because as we share, we learn. And that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s why we have so many hundreds of locales. We have so many people and in the shows on Undo the way we do try and get across different countries as well and to see what people are doing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So if you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re listening to this from a country we haven&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t featured yet, please let me know on NonstopNewsUK or Do the Woo on Twitter, or actually you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll find us, look us up and we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re there and better still subscribe to our do the Woo feed and you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll have lots of ways to be in touch. I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m going to move us slightly sideways and Estela, apart from living in lots of different countries and having just a huge amount of international experience and also probably a lot of dishes and foods that you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve tried, which I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll come back to. How did you first start using WordPress and feeling that actually it was the software that you wanted to invest your time, not only as a professional but also your volunteering time because that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s quite a commitment. When did you have that moment where you felt, this is what I want to do?<br />\nEstela:<br />\nYes. Let&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s see, I started long, long time ago. I think it was with 1.4, 1.7 something around there. I started building my websites, my first site just with S-D-M-L-C-S-S because that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s what we had back in the days because, and I had my first business as a virtual assistant. I needed to find something that would allow me to make money while staying home because I had a little child, I had a little boy and I wanted to make sure that I was there for him. Somebody recommended WordPress, I went to WordPress and then I made my enemy number one, the Codex. Okay, I hate the codex with everything that I can. I don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t think I hate anything else more. I just couldn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t understand that I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m not technical, I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m not a developer. So the codex always, always stop me. So I went back to CSS and TML, I took a class on WordPress and I learned how to use it and that was like three point something when I learned how to use WordPress and I loved it and I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m like, oh my God, you can do so many things with this.<br />\nAnd I started going here, going there and learning how to do things. And then mobile fast to nowadays, I went to work in Europe in Berlin, which was two 19 at a contributor day. I was sitting at the design table and I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m just going, we were beginning with Gutenberg, it was the beginning of the development of Gutenberg and everything was magical and nobody knew what we were doing, but everybody was there. And I told someone like, I don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t like this. Just reviewing tickets, giving, making comments on tickets and stuff. I think I need something more. I need a project. I don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t feel like I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m giving much. And they said, okay, that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s easy. And they sat me at the documentation table and then these people started talking about things. I had no clue that existed. It took me probably about three or four months to understand that they were talking about moving the codex into documentation, separating from the end user documentation and the development documentation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m like, oh my God, I love that. I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m all for it. Get rid of the codex. I don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t like the codex. Now I know that the codes has been useful, it had a lifetime, but I think that we have surpassed it, right? And yes, there are a lot of documents in there that are not being updated and we are little by little retiring it until it will go away eventually. The documentation that we have nowadays been it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s different. And I work in a special project with the documentation team for the end user documentation to everything. The articles give them an order, giving them a reason to be somewhere and they have a life or more a path. It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s like what is WordPress? Is this something the CMS good for my project? And then it teaches you requirements, maintenance, all the stuff that you will need before that teaches you what is WordPress, the parts of WordPress, the features.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then you have all the information you need, all the tutorials you need to make it look great in a way that a non-developer can understand it. And yeah, that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s it. That&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s where I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m stuck. I just love it. And I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve learned how to write technical documentation and I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve learned a lot. And that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s why you see me sitting at meetings at different meetings where sometimes I just say hello and I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m just sitting looking at Slack, just going like this, reading, reading, reading, reading. So that I learn what other teams are doing. Sometimes I understand the conversation, sometimes I don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t. But it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s okay because I have things in my head that tells me, oh, okay, so somebody was talking about this, so the topic is this, or they are working on this feature, they&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re working on that feature. And I can talk about it or at least I know about it. That&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s what I do.<br />\nAbha:<br />\nWell, if that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s not a reason to be inspired to join in and learn not only more about the projects and how to do the different things, but also improve your own abilities and knowledge so that you can use it in your own workspaces too. It really is. Thanks Estela. And it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s been an absolute pleasure to work with you now over, oh, I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve lost count how many years? But it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s been wonderful. We&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve worked at WordCamp Europe&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s and documentation Polyglots. I think core releases it goes on. But as Estela said, even if you don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t understand something straight away, observing is a great way to actually learn and there isn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t really a stupid question. So it is about working together because at the end of the day, we also want to encourage the next generation of people contributing to the project. And that doesn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t have to mean a younger generation. It can be just people who, at whatever time of their life may now want to contribute and not know how to start or need to see someone that they can relate to and who has skills that are similar to them or an area that they&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve always wanted to work in. So come along, get involved. And Pascal, I know you are just amazing. I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m going you to tell a little bit about what your day job is as well and just to show that you can mix the two.<br />\nPascal:<br />\nYeah, sure. So my day job right now is actually contributing, or for the most part it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s contributing to WordPress, especially WordPress performance. It wasn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t always that way. I used to work for a WordPress agency building websites for clients, but now I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m part of a team that is focusing on improving performance in CMSs like WordPress. So not just WordPress, but mostly because WordPress is powering 40% of the web or something. It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s pretty big. So yeah, main focus is performance. The performance team that you mentioned earlier. Right now I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m a co tech lead, co core tech lead for Repress 6.5. So I also have to make sure all the tickets are done and closed and fixed for the release and make sure all the deadlines are kept and things like that. It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s maybe a bit more project management in coding I would say on that part. But I also have fun fixing box. The performance translation thing was very dear to my heart because I started using WordPress also not in English, it wasn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t German. So performance translations has always been very important for me. We have so many contributors to performance team, but also 6.5 in general. So I try to make sure people feel welcome, guide them wherever possible, point them in the right directions.<br />\nAbha:<br />\nAnd Pascal, you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re a developer relations engineer in your day job working with Google. And do you feel that your work there is enhanced by the fact that you have been a contributor for so long and you have worked with people across the globe?<br />\nPascal:<br />\nOh absolutely. I think having contributed to WordPress before is why I was able to join Google to work on WordPress. It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s not about only about knowing the software, it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s about knowing the people, knowing the culture, knowing the community, how things work. When I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve seen people just arrive at WordPress and I dunno, proposing some change without knowing how things work, they usually get upset or frustrated and leave again because it doesn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t match their expectations. So yeah, being in the community for so long, it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s definitely made it easier to how to see how things work and go with the flow and go basically I changed from spare time contributor on my weekends to it full time, so it made the transition much, much easier.<br />\nAbha:<br />\nThanks, Pascal. I know both of you are very valued in the team and by many contributors valued to dear friends too because that is one of the things about the community is that you get to know people really well and you may not get along with everybody, but that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s okay. It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s such a big community that you can find people that you can work with and learn from and also learn different ways of thinking. And I think anybody who does join, I think particularly we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re focusing on translation today. If you get a reply and you think, oh, I don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t quite understand that, or it seems like maybe they don&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t want me there, it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s probably not the case. It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s probably just remembering that the person you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re writing to or write or is writing to you, English may not be their first language and sometimes it can come across differently than it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s intended.<br />\nAnd I think that&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s one of the big learning things. And I think the more you get involved in translation, the more you actually understand that. That is super important to know. And when we we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re writing and talking to think about, will somebody else who is not used to doing this day in, day out or to translate everything in their head as they&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re speaking or reading, is it easy for them to follow that? And if not, how can I make that a little bit easier? Because that all comes down to us as well. And of course more things join us together, then they do that separate us. So as people know who know me from for a while now, know that I have a thing about WordPress and food and recipes and as we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re particularly after Covid and during Covid, getting people to think about eating health relief for their wellbeing, but also as a cultural way of coming together, keeping in touch and for sharing cultures.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s a great leveler and a way of people to discover other people that they may not have contact with. So I was really surprised when interviewing people from one from Italy and one from Germany, and they came up with the same food that they love to cook when they&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re working. So I am intrigued. Did you two speak to each other before this broadcast? Because you both came up independently with the fact that you liked one particular food. And I did a quick look in. The trusted researcher in the background here has had a look at how popular this food was. Now I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve got a slight pause before I tell you what this food is and see if you can decide yourselves. So Estela, can you describe it without mentioning its name?<br />\nEstela:<br />\nLemme think, it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s a sauce. Some sort of sauce. Not really a sauce, but some sort of it you can eat it with. I actually eat it with Italian bread, which is amazingly delicious. Oh, I moved two blocks away from the best bakery that you have in Italy. So you see me, you find me there every morning at seven o&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;clock in the morning so I can get good breath. Recently coming out of the oven. There&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s also, it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s a Mediterranean dish, we like. Ingredients? I dunno, you can also add flavors to it. I like to eat it sometimes with extra olive oil, sometimes I put a little bit of chili on it. If I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m feeling adventurous I add extra garlic and yeah, I tried even one time with avocado now it&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s not good. Trust me. Do not mix it with avocado. It turns very weird. Green color.<br />\nAbha:<br />\nNo. I&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;m going to jump quickly to Pascal. Pascal, you have 10 seconds to describe this dish without telling people what it is.<br />\nPascal:<br />\nAlright, creamy, great for dipping goes well with pizza bread as well. Or I dunno, maybe cucumber for example. You can do it at home as well, or just buy it in store.<br />\nAbha:<br />\nAnd I think we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve given them enough time and thank you Nini, who&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;s just popped into the chat for me that the global market for this product is worth 2.62 billion in 2020 and it was projected to grow to 6 billion by 2028. Now I should tell them really why it is, shouldn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t I? Because they&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re going to want to be able to cook it. So the favorite item for these wonderful people, a developer relations engineer, in your case a UX strategist, is hummus. And I am going to want your hummus recipes so that we can pick some of the best ones to make live on our cooking show that we are going to have while we talk about Woo and WordPress. Because why wouldn&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;t you? And hopefully we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll see two of these people with us as well, sharing their recipes. And I told you we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;re going to have to cover food at some point.<br />\nAll that leaves for me to say is thank you very much to Estela and to Pascal for joining. Do the Woo and talking about WordPress and WooCommerce. We&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve loved being in Italy and in Switzerland today. If we can come to be your country, then let us know. I really want to cover as many continents as I can this year. Thank you for joining us. We&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll put everything in the show notes. If you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ve discover something that you&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;d like to know a bit more about, do let us know on our different, do the Woo channels and we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll make sure that we come and talk about those too. So thank you to both of you and we&Atilde;&#131;&AElig;&#146;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&iexcl;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&not;&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cent;&Atilde;&cent;&acirc;&#130;&not;&Aring;&frac34;&Atilde;&#130;&Acirc;&cent;ll see you soon.<br />\nPascal:<br />\nThank you.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:15:28 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:15;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:73:\"Do The Woo Community: WooCommerce Plugins for Portugal with Marco Almeida\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:72:\"https://dothewoo.io/woocommerce-plugins-for-portugal-with-marco-almeida/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:72:\"https://dothewoo.io/woocommerce-plugins-for-portugal-with-marco-almeida/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30075:\"<div class=\"wp-block-group has-border-color has-light-gray-background-color has-background has-small-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p class=\"has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-380f98dd49dba96eeafd212bfbe0483c\">Thanks to our sponsors&#8230;</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-vertical is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-9 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-2 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-6 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-base-background-color has-background wp-container-content-12 has-global-padding is-content-justification-left is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-5 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<a href=\"https://www.cloudways.com/en/?utm_source=dothewoo&utm_medium=Inlines&utm_campaign=dothewoopodcast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img width=\"693\" height=\"693\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Cloudways-.png?resize=693%2C693&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-78795\" /></a>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-container-content-15\"><strong><a href=\"https://www.cloudways.com/en/?utm_source=dothewoo&utm_medium=Inlines&utm_campaign=dothewoopodcast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cloudways</a></strong>: Managed cloud hosting from <strong>Cloudways</strong> gives you the assurance that your hosted site is fast, secure and backed by 24/7 support is important to you. <a href=\"https://www.cloudways.com/en/?utm_source=dothewoo&utm_medium=Inlines&utm_campaign=dothewoopodcast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Learn more</a></p>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-3 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-8 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-base-background-color has-background wp-container-content-18 has-global-padding is-content-justification-left is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-7 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<img width=\"1650\" height=\"1650\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/avalara-logo-_dtw.png?resize=1650%2C1650&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-75400\" />\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-container-content-21\"><a href=\"https://avlr.co/3EydDRH\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Avalara</strong></a>: Take the effort out of determining tax rates for your clients with automated tax management from <strong>Avalara AvaTax</strong>&acirc;&#128;&#148;now covering more VAT scenarios when you sell into or across the EU and UK. <a href=\"https://avlr.co/3EydDRH\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Learn more</a></p>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>Marco shared with us his journey into web development, his focus on creating plugins for the Portuguese market, and his involvement in the WordPress community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also touched on his recent decision to offer lifetime licenses for his plugins, explaining that while it may not be sustainable in the long run, it gives customers more options and allows him to test new ways to sell his products.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marco emphasizes the importance of giving back to the WordPress community and staying connected with others in the industry.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Connect on X aka Twitter</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://twitter.com/Wonderm00n\">Marco</a></strong></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/webdadospt\"><strong>Webdados</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/ptwooplugins\"><strong>PT Woo Plugins</strong></a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\nShow Transcript\n<p>BobWP:<br /> This is special because this is from my new home country. I mean, you&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve all heard me talk about how much I regret moving away from the us, which well, now I never said that, but I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m dope. But Marco, my friend, welcome to the show.<br /> Marco:<br /> Hi. Thank you for having me and welcome to Portugal. I think I told you this several times now, but now it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s official.<br /> BobWP:<br /> Marco&acirc;&#128;&#153;s been a big help in a lot of adaptations for both Judy and I here and stuff, and he even helped me get my cell phone. I have to say this, I couldn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t even get my cell phone working right, the right plan. So he actually took me to the mall and he talked to them, got it all figured out. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s like, yeah, I was a mess. Let me say that.<br /> Marco:<br /> Just helping a fellow WordPress person.<br /> BobWP:<br /> Yeah. So you do development, you do all sorts of cool things, plugins. We kind of focus a little bit on the product end of things, but why don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t you tell everyone who you are, what you do, all that good stuff.<br /> Marco:<br /> Okay, so my name is Marco Almeida, as you said. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m from Portugal. I live across the river from Lisbon since forever. And yeah, I got into the web development really soon. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m 44 now. I got into it around 20 and yeah, that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s what I do.<br /> BobWP:<br /> Yeah. All right. Okay. So you have your plugin site and then you have a development business.<br /> Marco:<br /> Exactly.<br /> BobWP:<br /> Can you tell us a little bit about both of those?<br /> Marco:<br /> So in 2005, so almost 20 years now, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve opened the typical IT company. I had a partner, we did IT support. We sold hardware, consumables, typical corner shop stuff, but we worked mostly with companies. And at the time, I already did some web on my previous jobs before I opened my own company, and I was working on my free time on a CMS, A content management system that we started using on this company web to build websites for several companies. I think most of the people my age in the WordPress world probably have a similar story of having built their own CMS at the early ages. And then time I took over the company myself alone, I didn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t wanted to do that. IT support selling hardware, consumables, all that stuff, and I focused more on web development. Well, WordPress was natural. It was a natural transition from the CMS that I developed and something that would be more flexible. And so it really went really natural. Funny enough, that CMS that I had, it was based on rows and columns, something that we now call blocks 20 years ago, which is really fun to see right now. But yeah, so I started using WordPress, I think around 2010. I published my first plugin on the repo in 2011. I think it was a plugin for open graph text to share your posts on Facebook and Twitter with the correct thumbnails. Funny enough, it was my first plugin and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the only one I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve sold so far. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve sold to WP experts around the time of WordCamp Asia last year.<br /> BobWP:<br /> So what got you into the plugin? I mean, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s like some of the stories we get from different folks we have on here is that the plugin often came from a need with a client. Yeah, same way.<br /> Marco:<br /> Exactly. Yeah, I think that that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a common for everyone. So yeah, this plugin I was talking about, it was a need that I had myself and I just published on the repo, and so I start publishing plugins on the repo really soon. In my WordPress journey, most of the plugins, as you said, were stuff that I had a need for myself or for customers of mine I was developing websites for. And I also, in the early ages, I got into e-commerce. So there were a lot of needs, specific needs mainly for the Portuguese market. And that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s why nowadays there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s several plugins, several free plugins and premium plugins that I own that I developed that are mostly focused on the Portuguese market. And yeah, that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s how I got on.<br /> BobWP:<br /> Yeah, I find that interesting because when we first met, and I remember looking at your plugins and stuff that, yeah, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s on the Portuguese market and I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t see a lot of, well, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve seen some developers do that, but there was, what made you mean obviously there was a need that needed to be filled and nothing was available. And so how many of your plugins are you specific to Portugal?<br /> Marco:<br /> Well, probably on the commercial plugins, I have 10 commercial plugins, and I think six or seven are focused 100% on the Portuguese market. On the free plugins, I currently have 20 free plugins and probably also six or seven focused on the Portuguese market. And you were saying about the specific needs, I can give you some examples. For instance, the VAT number, which is something that in most countries is something that it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s only for companies in Portugal, what we call a fiscal number, which is the same as a VAT number, but for a person, and that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s something that WooCommerce doesn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t have the fields too, so I created a plugin for that. Also, we have a payment method in Portugal that it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s exclusive of Portugal, and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the most, so it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the one people trust the most. And at the time there was no WooCommerce plugin for it. So I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve implemented it and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s now the most used payment gateway in Portugal. So there were really specific needs that someone had to do specifically for Portugal.<br /> BobWP:<br /> Yeah, that is really interesting. And the one you were just talking about, that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the payment gateway, right?<br /> Marco:<br /> Yeah, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a payment method that exists in Portugal, I think for more than 35 years now. So when you get your, for instance, your utilities bill, like the electricity bill or the water bill, if you get it on traditional mail, in paper, you normally get a reference, an entity and the value, an entity, a reference, and the value. And you can go to any ATM machine or your own banking service. You just put on the reference the value and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s paid for and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s all automatic. So people trust this for a long time way before online shopping was a thing. And so at some time I had a customer that needed that wanted to implement that on his website, and there were already some companies providing that service with an API, but they weren&acirc;&#128;&#153;t building plugins for shops. They were just providing the API and expecting for each and every shop owner to implement it. So I saw an opportunity there. It was funny because I called them and told them, so I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m doing this for a customer and I will probably publish on the public WordPress repo. And they told me, so the company is called If then Pay, and they told me at the time, yeah, you can do whatever you want, just do not. We have nothing to do with that. You are the one who has to give support. We just provide the API. And I was like, okay.<br /> Funny story, like six or seven months after they were the ones calling me saying, yeah, we got to talk. Because there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a lot of customers going in because they first go to the repo, they install the plugin, and then they see, oh, I need a contract with this company. And so of course we now have an agreement. Well, this was launched in 2013, so we are 11 years now, and we have an agreement for the last 10 years. And of course now they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re paying me to keep the plugin and support the customers. And so we have a commission based agreement. So each payment that goes to, yeah.<br /> BobWP:<br /> Wow.<br /> Marco:<br /> And it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s more than 7,000 stores, right?<br /> BobWP:<br /> Oh, I bet. Because I remember when I first, somebody explained to me about being able to pay this at the ATM I was somewhere and they said, well, you could just go and pay this at the ATM, I think it was at the hospital. And I had paused and I thought, because I&acirc;&#128;&#153;d seen it, but I didn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t really didn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t connect and stuff. So that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s amazing. How do you Now I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t get to talk. Most of the times it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s my host and I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t get to talk with a lot of the product makers. What makes you decide when you do a plugin, you&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll have some that are free and then some that are premium. What makes you decide to go to the premium route?<br /> Marco:<br /> So at first, as I was saying, so I started publishing plugins on the repo, so free plugins very early. Although that payment gateway, although it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a free plugin, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m still being paid to have it online. So it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s almost a commercial plugin, not for the customer side of it, but for me as a developer. And at first it was giving back to the community and also put on my name and my company name on in public, getting to be known as a developer, a WordPress, and specifically a WooCommerce developer in Portugal. And there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s probably not a lot of Portuguese online shops that don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t have at least one plugin. One of my plugins installed because I made them so specific for the Portuguese needs, and it was really natural. At some time, I got contacted from someone from Angola, the African country, they used to be a Portuguese colony, and they were also trying to implement, they have basically a copy of our banking system there.<br /> The payment methods are really similar, and so they wanted to implement that same payment method there. And so there was not a lot of potential for users, but they agreed on paying upfront to develop that plugin. And at the same time, I made a pro version, and that was my first commercial plugin. Actually, it was a payment gateway, not for Portugal, but for Angola. No, interesting. But it was really a test and I was not expecting for it to sell so much and didn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s not a commercial success for sure, but then the real first one that made me start with a premium. So for instance, another thing in Portugal, most countries of the world, if you have a PDF file or a piece of paper, you can call it an invoice that doesn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t exist. In Portugal, we, for several years now, every invoice must be issued by an IRS certified software.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you cannot just make a PDF file and call it an invoice. So for instance, on WooCommerce, on the right side, on the other actions, when you have that option sending invoice to customer, that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s not legal in Portugal. So for instance, in the Portuguese translation of WooCommerce that I work on, we remove the word invoice from that string. And so I was doing some integrations with an API to one of those certified softwares for some customers. And from the early stages, I thought that this could be a really good commercial plugin because the shops needed, but there were already two solutions on the market. One of them was from Marcel Schmidt that very well. And so at one time, Marcel decided to do something else and he reached out to me and he told me, Hey Mark, well I know you are working with the same API.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know we would like to have a product. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to do other stuff. Do we want to take this plugin? We can reach a financial agreement on this. And so I took it. There was a lot of stuff to do. We were around the time WooCommerce 3.0 was launched and there were significant changes that we needed to do to the plugin. And so I released a version 2.0 of that plugin after some months of, and that become the first profitable plugin that I had. Funny enough, the competitor was also a friend of mine that called me the day I launched my plugin say, oh, I have a great success. We are now competitors on this. And I ended up buying his plugin also.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nAnd I wonder how many other plugin developers, various parts of the world ever think of these more specific needs within their country? I mean, the couple of things there, for example, I didn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t realize with the multi bank that it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s Portugal specific, that nobody else does that at all. And yeah, that is really interesting<br />\nMarco:<br />\nAnd I think it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a good way to get into the plugin development because you have a laboratory, very small user bases that you can test your stuff with, your commercial practices and everything. And that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s what I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m doing right now. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m starting to do some plugins that are for the global market of course, but creating them for Portugal.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nI want to also touch a little bit on community and stuff with you because I know you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re really involved. But sticking with the product thing, I know that you recently went to lifetime licenses. I mean really recently. Don, your plug is like,<br />\nMarco:<br />\nI announced it today<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nAnd I saw it on X. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s always hard to say x, I still want to say Twitter, but I saw that and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve seen these discussions go on and on about that. What made you decide to do it? I mean, what convinced you to go that route?<br />\nMarco:<br />\nSo first of all, as I was telling you for instance, when I bought that invoice express plugin from Marcel and from the other guy afterwards, they were both on lifetime licensing, but it wasn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t sustainable because they were charging the same value that I charged today for an yearly license and they were charging lifetime license. And I think that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s why we saw a lot of lifetime deals completely disappear. Some of them, even in some strange situations where they don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t honor the previous license. So I bought a lot of lifetime licenses that I use still today, like a CF, like WPML. So I have a ton of lifetime licenses that I still use. And so when I started doing my plugin business, I always said no lifetime licensing. So it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s got to be yearly. You got to pay by year yearly because it needs to be sustainable of course, but you got to try stuff.<br />\nYou got to try new ways to sell your products and you shouldn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t be afraid of doing it. Even if you have to just take it down sometime. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s not a problem as long as you honor the customers that bought it on that licensing. And so what I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m seeing now that I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m selling plugins for some years now is that most of the customers that keep the licensing for a long time, they really just ask support for the first months. They really don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t need a lot of support afterwards. So even if I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m losing money on the long run with these customers that decide to buy the lifetime licensee, I think it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s just a way to give them both options and let them decide if they want to pay each year or if they want to pay a lifetime license. So I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m charging something between three and four times the price of yearly license for a lifetime. And so I decided to give them that option and let&acirc;&#128;&#153;s see how it goes. If it doesn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t go well, I can just turn off that licensing and just honor the ones that matters. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s just a test. Yeah, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m testing.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nInteresting. Yeah, I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t know if I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve ever bought a lifetime license. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve been given a few over the years, which has been really nice and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve been given them and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve used them for maybe as long as a decade. I can probably count on one hand or two hands how many times I maybe ask for some little help with support or whatever because yeah, and I imagine there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s some that are a lot more high maintenance or whatever depending on things. With the one with bank, is there a lot of, I mean, not on the side of the actual woo, which yeah, it updates, you got update or whatever, but is there a lot of updates on the other side when you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re using kind of a payment gateway like that? Is there a lot of things you have to keep on top of? But is there stuff pretty much set? Like you said, they&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve been doing this what for 30 some years and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s just done it .<br />\nMarco:<br />\nExactly. No, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s really stable what they have. So if then pay the company that the plugin works for, they are what is called by the Bank of Port a payment provider. They&acirc;&#128;&#153;re not a bank, they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re a proxy between the business owners and the banks. They&acirc;&#128;&#153;re certified by the Bank of Portugal authorized to provide payment services. And so multi-bank was not invented by them MB way. So the other methods, the other really use methods in Portugal is something that when you check out, you just enter your phone number, your mobile number, you get a push notification on your phone, you have that app installed and you say Yes, and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s paid for done. And so they are not the owners of these payment matters. They are just payment providers. And so what we&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve been doing during the last years is they normally get another payment methods into their portfolio and we just need to add it to the plugin. So right now it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s multi-Bank, MB Way, there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s another one which is called Pay Shop, which is actually a way to pay with real money. So you just get the reference from the website and then you can go to a local shop, like a newspaper stand or something like that. And they have a computer there just given the reference and the money and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s paid for.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nInteresting. So is that, are they paying for it after they received something online or are they actually getting it there? There no,<br />\nMarco:<br />\nNo. So just imagine you chose bank transfer on checkout, but instead of doing a real bank transfer and the shop owner has to go to check the balance on the bank to see if the payment is there or not, you just go to a shop or if it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s multi-bank or you just use the reference on the ATM or your own banking services, if it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s MB Way, you just say yes on the push notification on the phone. And if it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the pay shop, the one with money, you just go to the shop next door, make the payment, and automatically in one second the website gets a web service call like an API call. And you are the changes to processing after that.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nInteresting. Wow, that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s kind of cool. Alrighty. Well, okay, so products, we&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve talked about products, but knowing you, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve got to touch on community a bit, and you&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve been involved with meetups toward camps. Just tell us a little history of your community involvement then. I think a couple of things I might poke out there.<br />\nMarco:<br />\nSo my first WordCamp in Porto in 2013, so maybe around two years after I start using WordPress, I found out about this community that some of us already start calling like a cult or more cult than a community. So I went to Porto in 2013. It was my first world camp and then I went to Seville for WordCamp Europe in 2015. That was my first WordCamp Europe. I start co-organizing in 2019 in Lisbon. And then I was part of the organization team of Europe 2020, the one that didn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t happen in portal because of the pandemic last year. I was crazy enough to become lead organizer of WordCamp Lisboa in 2023. It was hard. But yeah, I do it with pleasure and to give back to the community and the meetups in Lisbon, they were not happening for some time now, and the pandemic didn&acirc;&#128;&#153;t help also. But now we are in about almost a year and a half of nonstop meetups in Lisbon and it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s not only me right now, I have two other people helping me with organizing. So we meet every month in Lisbon, Brisbane, and then there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the people of photo also. And I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going there next month to speak<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nAnd I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be there about WooCommerce, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be there heckling you and I will let out a secret about meetups in Portugal, meetups are only done for, they can have these long, long dinners right after the meetups. I think you said that once jokingly. Of course. But I did experience that. So you go to your hour meetup and then you have a two to three hour dinner.<br />\nMarco:<br />\nSo come for the meetup, stay for the dinner.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nYeah, exactly.<br />\nMarco:<br />\nSo last August here in Lisbon, Ant&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&sup3;nio Carreira, a friend of mine which is also on the organizing team of the meetup, we are trying to get someone to speak on the August meetup. And it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s not easy because everybody&acirc;&#128;&#153;s on holiday that month. And so we told yeah, we just do the dinner.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nHey, why not?<br />\nMarco:<br />\nThe meetup will be the dinner. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s okay. You only need two people and a glass of beer to do it.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nYeah, exactly. So what is it that keeps driving you to do, I mean I know you with the community, you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re always out talking to people, you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re doing meetups, you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re doing the WordCamp, and I know it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s probably a question everybody&acirc;&#128;&#153;s been asked and a lot of us have the same answer, but what really drives you to stay involved with the community? I mean, you got the business understand that part, but actively giving your time. And I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve seen you&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve done a lot of contributions through the different teams on WordPress. What drives you to do that?<br />\nMarco:<br />\nYeah, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s really the sense of community. I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t think most of the people that work in it and in development understands how special this community is. Of course with all these it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s problems and dramas that we have some time, it really is something that I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ve never seen in other areas of it. And so yeah, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the people, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s the community, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s giving back to a software. So 100% of the revenue at my place in my house, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s word for us. Me and my wife, we work 100% of the day with word for us, so why not give back?<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nYeah, really as simple as that, right?<br />\nMarco:<br />\nYeah, it is really simple. Also, being with the people, everybody works from home now since the pandemic. I work from home for 15 years now. I need to see people. So I need to go to meetups and work camps and stuff like that. And that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a way to be connected with the world. So for instance, as I was saying, I was part of the organizing team for WordCamp Europe 2020 in Porto. That only happened in 2022 that year a crazy American come to Porto and decided to stay. And then I was invited to be on the organizing team for the online version. That did happen. I was really glad to help, but it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s just not the same.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nYeah, I attended a couple online ones during that time and I just thought, yeah, there&acirc;&#128;&#153;s no comparison.<br />\nMarco:<br />\nExactly.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nAbsolutely. Well my friend, this was wonderful. I don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t get a chance to chat with a lot of people. I let my host do all that good stuff, but I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m glad I was able to sit down with you and catch up and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be seeing you in a short amount of time here in Porto at the meetup and looking forward to that. And that nice little bite to eat we&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll have afterwards.<br />\nMarco:<br />\nYes, we always have that really cool dinner with all the people. As we were saying, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s about the community, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s about the people.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nYeah, exactly. So where can people find you? Give me your website addresses, all your social, where you hang out in social and stuff where people can connect with you.<br />\nMarco:<br />\nOkay, so myself, you can find me on Twitter, that X thing, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m still wearing a Twitter shirt. People are not seeing this because it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s only audio. But yeah, my handle is Wonderm00n, but the last two ohs are zeros. And then you can find my company webdadospt and you can find my plugins brand. So I started selling the plugins and they&acirc;&#128;&#153;re the same brand as the company and then I decided to separate them. And you can find me at our plugins @ptwooplugins.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nAlright, well absolutely a pleasure my friend, and looking forward to seeing you soon. It<br />\nMarco:<br />\nWas an honor. Thank you.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nYou bet. Thank you.<br />\nMarco:<br />\nOkay Bob. See you.<br />\nBobWP:<br />\nBye.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:15:28 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:16;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:95:\"Do The Woo Community: The Collaboration of the Interactivity API with WordPress and WooCommerce\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:28:\"https://dothewoo.io/?p=79538\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:94:\"https://dothewoo.io/the-collaboration-of-the-interactivity-api-with-wordpress-and-woocommerce/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:39960:\"<p>In this episode of&nbsp;<em><strong>Inside Woo</strong></em>, BobWP chats with WordPress and WooCommerce developers&nbsp;<strong>Carlos Bravo</strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>Lucio Giannotta</strong>&nbsp;about the collaboration between WordPress core and Woo working with the Interactivity API, a new framework for WordPress developers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The API allows developers to create interactive blocks, providing consistency across the platform. It also solves the issue of front-end development in WordPress, which previously depended on individual developers or teams. The Interactivity API allows all developers to use the same tools, enabling plugins to be interconnected and share the same code base. The experts also highlighted the API&#8217;s benefits for WooCommerce, including improved user experience, server-side rendering of content, and more consistent, cleaner code.</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Take a deep dive into what the Interactivity API</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Learn the problems it solves for the WordPress community and WooCommerce ecosytem</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Discover what types of blocks are powered by it in Woo</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Find out the hardest part was in developing the API</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hear what the WordPress core team learned from collaboration with Woo</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Understand the implementation of the Interactivity API and it&#8217;s effect performance, accessibility, security and other aspects of Woo</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Learn about the ways that it facilitates custom block development and creativity for developers building unique WooCommerce experiences.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/mlgiannotta/?originalSubdomain=it\"><strong>Lucio on LinkedIn</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/c4rl0sbr4v0/\"><strong>Carlos on LinkedIn</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\nShow Transcript\n<p>BobWP:<br />As you know, you&#8217;ve been hearing a lot about the Interactivity API probably heard it on other podcasts. You&#8217;ve heard it on different posts around the space. And we&#8217;re going to throw in some woo with this one because everybody&#8217;s been talking about WordPress, but we&#8217;re going to talk about WordPress and Woo and I have two experts on the topic. Way more experts on it than me by 100% Lucio and Carlos joining me, how are you two today?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lucio:<br />Doing great. Thanks for having me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carlos:<br />Hi, I am really happy to be here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Alrighty, well let&#8217;s get right into this. You&#8217;re just going to have a conversation, so we need to start with the basics. What is the Interactivity API?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carlos:<br />The Interactivity API is a new framework for WordPress developers that allows them to write interactive blocks. Those are blocks that the user can click and something will happen on the site. And it does in a way that is the same way for every developer. We are trying to give consistency by writing some data attributes in the HTML that will be together with some JavaScript and will allow developers to create interactive blocks. That&#8217;s the main goal of the API to give consistency.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah. So from both of you, what is the solving for the community? What is this solving for the developer community or even the community as a whole?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carlos:<br />Regarding WordPress right now, the main problem in the community, it&#8217;s not a problem in the community, it&#8217;s problem in the software is that there is no guides about how to do the front end part in your WordPress site. I mean each project will depend on each developer or team working on it. Until now, you could use React, you could use plain javascript, any framework, but now you can also do that. But we are providing a way to do all, so all developers can use the same tools. And that&#8217;s great because that way we allow plugins to be interconnected. Like blocks can talk to other playing blocks, and also they are all using the same JavaScript library. So imagine you have to plugins one for bookings and one for the dealing with the payment process. For example, with this new API, they can both share the same code base instead of using one React and the other plain JavaScript or whatever library can use. That&#8217;s the main problem we wanted to solve here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lucio:<br />Right. So as per what concerns, Woo, I think a lot of what Carlos has just said applies. So if you think about traditionally how W has handled this kind of interactive well content in the shops, if you&#8217;re a developer, you know that, well, two things. I think first of all that Woo has somewhat fallen behind the curve of the modern e-commerce experience in a way. And the other you will know that sometimes the developer experience of adding such Interactivity to a shop was a bit inconsistent. So had traditionally we had things like just normal jQuery Ajax requests all sprinkled around various functionality like the add to cart functionality for example. So we had very kind of the first inkling of an Interactivity was that back, I dunno, more than when Woo started really that was there as well. But then when we started to get integrated a little bit more with Gutenberg blocks and start transitioning into a more block based paradigm, well frankly because of Gutenberg also was very young and Wu was an early adopter like we are of data Interactivity API.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now there was no clear direction. So everybody was developing blocks was kind of on their own. And the same applies to Woo. So we started developing blocks using React. Well that resulted in well us trying to move as fast as possible to implement this kind of experiences, but it resulted in a little bit of an inconsistent experience. So now we want to transition all our bets away from the classic themes as you are aware and more into block-based development. And there are a few downsides of the way we were developing blocks because again, we were in the early stages and we were experimenting. First of all, I would say I think the clearest downside was that our new blocks, for instance, if you have used the old products block, they were climb side rendered. That means that when the user will go to the page, JavaScript will need to load and then it would show a loading skeleton and then it&#8217;ll show the products.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That would mean that well search engines nowadays can deal a little bit better with client side engine stuff, but it was not the best SEO and it was definitely not the best UX As you are going to the store and you know how precious those milliseconds are. You want to see your products as soon as possible. You don&#8217;t want to see another loading indicator. So I think first of all, the Interactivity API allows us to do the server side rendering of all this content, which means that the server already renders the content that we have. And so the user sees it immediately and then on top of it add with, what&#8217;s it called? Hydration systems that Interactivity API is providing add the Interactivity in short. So before we had the situation in which classic teams would be service-side rendered, but then let&#8217;s say you want to switch pages in your catalog and then you get a full page reload, that&#8217;s not great experience.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then we wanted to do something a little bit more. So we had this client side navigations that was more snappy. But the problem is a CO and the problem is just user experience on first load for example. And now we have the best of both words thanks to Interactivity API, right? We service edge render. So that&#8217;s means the crawlers can find the contents very easily. You get it immediately without any flashing of content and also you get the Interactivity. So I would say there is a clear improvement for the user experience of WordPress users and merchants to get aligned more into what modern e-commerce platform, what you would expect from a modern e-commerce platform. So that&#8217;s I think the best contribution of the Interactivity API and the WooCommerce ecosystem. But to the ecosystem at large, you can also say there is a few more developer oriented improvements that have been made thanks to the work that the in interactive API guys have done, which is, well first of all, by using their framework, we remove a lot of low level plumbing kind of coding.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this way it means that the responsibility is handled by the framework. We don&#8217;t have to worry and it means that WooCommerce code base is more consistent, it&#8217;s cleaner, frankly, and we can rely on the expertise of the entire WordPress ecosystem to support us because we are using their framework. And so we also are able to things just much faster and they are more maintainable and they are more secure and reliable. And also wherever is building on WooCommerce, you&#8217;re not going to have this fragmentation of the whole ecosystem that everybody&#8217;s doing something a little bit differently. So we have all the same framework now and yeah, like Carbo said, you can still implement things like you wanted, right? But now we have a common ground where we all built and that means greater versatility. For example, developers can jump from one place of the code base or another or maybe build the extra blocks that are going to be shared among and across the community and the ecosystem and so on. So I would say these are just a few of the good things coming from the Interactivity API to WooCommerce. It&#8217;s truly something magical.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />I actually took this a little different approach because listeners are probably thinking, wow, these two really know what they&#8217;re talking about. So I&#8217;m going to step back and have you introduce yourself, who you are, what you&#8217;re doing with this project, what your experience and what has been your involvement with this so far. I&#8217;ll start with Carlos.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carlos:<br />Cool. Well my name is Carlos. I&#8217;ve been working as a full-time sponsor contributor of WordPress score for about two years and a half. Before that, I was working doing projects for another companies as a freelance and also as an agency developer. These last two years and a half, I&#8217;ve been full-time working in Interactivity, API, planning it, talking with another developers, starting working on the foundations of the API, doing lots of testings, lots of proof of concepts, lots of investigation, comparing with another frameworks, a lot of stuff working on that. And I will keep working on the Interactivity as long as the community needs it. I mean, I&#8217;m quite happy to be there. I remember one sentence that was when I joined them, it was like, do you want to help to do the frontend developers of 40% of the web? And it was like, yes, for sure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />And Lucio, tell us a little bit about yourself.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lucio:<br />Sure, my name is LuLucio and where to start? Well, I&#8217;ve, let&#8217;s start with my involvement with WordPress. I&#8217;ve been involved with the WordPress community since the early days of my development career. So it&#8217;s been more than 15 years. I think at this point. I think many of us developers have started somehow with juggling around things and playing with WordPress. It provided a really good platform and still does for starting out as a developer. Then I went on a long WordPress hiatus for several years. I didn&#8217;t touch any WordPress code. I started working on more AI automation related stuff actually.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then about same as Carlos, I think two years a half ago I got more involved into this and I&#8217;m now working for Automattic. I work for WooCommerce division and I lead a small team there who is responsible for everything which we call full store editing, which is our version of the full site editing that WordPress says. So we are really trying to spearhead very hard the transition, like I said before from the classic paradigm to the blocks paradigm. So we want to empower users and merchants specifically to customize their stores, to have their vision come to life. And we really think that the work which has been done in core and Gutenberg is the best way to go. And I think over the past two years and a half, I&#8217;ve seen so much progress in WooCommerce that I hardly can believe it actually, I&#8217;m trying to be objective here, not to be too biased, but I think it&#8217;s been incredible the amount of maturity that we have seen in the past and a half years. And we are basically not only willing, but we are committed to try to make this transition as seamless as possible for the users and just to get everybody excited about what blocks mean in the WooCommerce and leave our legacy classic paradigms behind. So that&#8217;s a little bit about my mission, let&#8217;s say.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />So what has been, you&#8217;ve both been involved with this for a while. What do you consider really the hardest part? What&#8217;s been the biggest challenge of actually the development of the Interactivity A p? I mean, is there anything specifically you can think of or something even more general?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carlos:<br />When we started investigating the best approach to deal with the problems we had before, I mean the first thing you do is to compare with another React frameworks providing the same Interactivity and the single page applications period. And most of them next swell kits, they are using the same language both in the server and the client. But WordPress is not like that. WordPress is built on PHP. That was the most difficult part to work with because as Lucio commented before, you need to be server side compatible. That was the most important part. And in WordPress there are hooks and those hooks are really powerful, but also allows third party plugins and developers to modify the HTML as they want. And that is a thing that is quite hard for new Java screen modern frameworks because most of them are working to only change the data that the user interacts to.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have a counter and you increase it, you only want to update the number for a product. If you want to add two pair of CT&#8217;s, I mean the number is the only part of that HTML that should be updated. The problem here is that when you compare what it comes from the server to what you have in the client, if those are different at the beginning you&#8217;ll see a flash on the side as a user or you need a loading bar as Lucia mentioned. So dealing with those hooks was the hardest part and to be fully compatible with all plugins backward compatible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also with block and classic themes and with anyone editing that HTML, the way to go we found was this directives thing. I dunno if we talked about directives before, but for people who are new to the Interactivity API, these directives are the core foundation of the Interactivity API. These are like HTML attributes. If you take alpine js that is quite common similar or for example HTMX that is also quite new and it&#8217;s approaching a similar way to do these things. We are adding attributes to that HTML to allow both the server and the client to know what to do with those user interactions. Imagine on click for example or text update or changing CSS classes or styles. That was for my point of view, the hardest part to deal with.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lucio:<br />Yeah, well I just want to echo what you said. Basically for us it&#8217;s also mostly the difference between the server side language and the front end language, which is I think a problem that still we have to kind of figure out a final solution if there will ever be a final solution, like a paradigm or sorts. Because obviously the advantage of having the single page applications of paradigm that we had before with the React components was that we only needed to care about the React code base, but now we have to maintain the same component in PHP and in JavaScript or TypeScript in our case.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that creates additional complexity for sure. It&#8217;s totally worth it, don&#8217;t get me wrong. But still I think that on my wishlist is a way to better handle this component reusability, try to eliminate this duplication of code and try to make sure that the component is in sync to make it more maintainable. And I think we don&#8217;t have a solution yet. And I don&#8217;t know, I also don&#8217;t know what the solution could be. I also know that we are not exactly the only one who faced this. If you think about Laravel has had similar problems because also they are PHP framework and they use view in the front end. But Laravel has different set of constraints or rather we have much more stricter constraints than Laravel. I know that something that, if I recall correctly, maybe you can correct me if I&#8217;m wrong here. I recall when I was checking on Laravel did it, is that they actually have a node emulator running on PHP to do the rendering or something of that sort, which I think we can&#8217;t do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was speaking with Lucio I think a couple of some months ago. I think we can&#8217;t do because we need to support all their versions of PHP and this is only a PHP eight thing or something like that. So obviously this is a problem that&#8217;s really hard for us because WordPress is deeply committed to backwards compatibility. So moving towards these kind of things is much harder. But the upside is that people can rely on us for future years, right? So yes, I would definitely say that for us as implementer of blocks on top of the Interactivity API rather than implementing the API itself, this was the hardest challenge. Trying to figure out how to optimize for removing as much as possible code duplication and using the components and making sense on how to architecture our code.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carlos:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s also on my wishlist. I would love in the future to see the Interactivity P in the editor in order not to do the react block for the editor and then the front end or the PHP plus the Interactivity API block for the front end. That would be cool. Yeah, we have been thinking in that. But as you mentioned, backward compatibility is a thing. If WordPress, we have to deal, I mean it&#8217;s a good thing to have this backward compatibility as you mentioned, if you have a WordPress site, it will work for years, but still you need to update it please and this cover for security. But we have been thinking about it. We have several options there like working on a templating system or we are still thinking about it. We are also on the front end we use, which is a lightweight kind of version of React.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There have been some people asking us to move react to the editor part in order to be lightweight. But still there&#8217;s a lot of work to do there. There&#8217;s a lot of things to stay there. We have some options. We are just making tests, but still it&#8217;s going to take some time because I mean WordPress is evolving quite a lot. We are also phase three with this collaborative workflow, the internationalization. I mean that part is, I mean we will receive more feedback of that kind of, I don&#8217;t want to repeat lots. We are working on that. We know we suffer from the same.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lucio:<br />I actually wanted to, you made me think about something I wanted to add to my previous answer, although I made it clear that it was just a limited set of advantages that I was talking about. But now you mentioned shipping React instead of react is also another thing that I think it&#8217;s particularly important for e-commerce experiences. To make it clear, we haven&#8217;t moved away from React yet, but it would be beneficial for performance reasons, obviously to ship the lightweight, the most lightweight code that we can. And also connecting to what you said about the directives and what I was talking about with removing a lot of the plumbing, for instance, state management, which is something very usually very complex and that everybody even in the same team sometimes tends to do in a little bit different way. Let&#8217;s not talk about different plugins in the ecosystem. I think that by abstracting the state management, the Interactivity API, this also is a huge advantage. These are my personal feelings of working with that. So take that with grain of salt.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />So you talked about performance, which is obviously talked about quite a bit here. Anything else as far as impact on performance you&#8217;d like to point out or are there other impacts, say accessibility that you want us to be aware of?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lucio:<br />Well, just what I mentioned is a tiny part of the performance impact that this has. Mostly, it ties in with what I was saying before, that the most important positive performance impact is the fact that everything is service side rendered. So users will see content mature, maybe have been exposed to those metrics as first paint and such metrics. These are just much faster. So not only performance is going to be faster because their browser doesn&#8217;t need to ship a bunch of JavaScript, then it needs to evaluate, then it needs to render the JavaScript and so on. But it&#8217;s also just including all the content needs to be rendered and it&#8217;s also perceived performance that matters a lot in these kind of scenarios. So instead of seeing a loading indicator, you see the content coming up immediately or like Carlos was saying, you don&#8217;t see the flesh of stale content and then everything is, it should be.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s I think as I was saying before, the best of both worlds between basic service-side rendered stuff, which is the classic, the real classic legacy kind of approach and the single page application that enables this more snappier interactions. So we get the best of both of those. As for all impacts like maybe accessibility, I mean you render HTML, so I guess it&#8217;s compatible much out of the box with most screen readers and things like that. We have big commitment on accessibility In any case, I know core even is even more diligent than we are most of the time. So I dunno, do you have stuff to add, Carlos?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carlos:<br />Yeah, regarding accessibility, we already did accessibility improvements to some core blocks with Interactive DPA like search and navigation. Cause it is much easier to work with keyboard Evan, for example. So now the navigation keyboard experience is much better than it was before. And also as we are editing the HTML, both in client with Interactivity API runtime and in the server with also using the attack processor, the new H TML processor, we are adding some area labels or indicators for screen readers and keyboard navigating for the sites. So it will be still a matter that the playing developer needs to work with. I mean we can provide the tools but we cannot help you with your plugin or make your plugin to be accessible. But we are providing a tool that will allow you to add those markup, those thermal attributes that you need to have a better experience for those people. But it&#8217;s that the main point is that we already improved some accessibility. For example, also with the new image Lightbox feature accessibility was quite important for us and we spend a lot of time working on that and this API allow us to be able to handle that expand experience for example with the keyboard. And I think that&#8217;s all the rest of you mentioned is great.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Very cool. So did the team at WordPress core learn anything through this collaboration working with Woo?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carlos:<br />Yes, for sure. We learn a lot of Woo. I mean when you start thinking about how to make a framework for developers, I mean the first thing we thought was, okay, let&#8217;s talk to them. Let&#8217;s talk to real developers. Because a problem for core developers may be that if you are all your time working only in core, you are only working with WordPress with nothing like a default WordPress installation with just one post, just one page gut number install and just that. And the problems usually appear when you need more difficult things. I mean, for example, our blocks to test was navigation search file and the most difficult was the query loop. But now you can change the pagination, you can paginate your posts without reloading the site. But the first time we talked with Woo, it was like, okay, how do you use it for the product collection, for product filter or for an add car button, which is more interactive than an e-commerce.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean WooCommerce was the best fit we could find at the beginning of the project. For example, there&#8217;s one directive that at the beginning where we were not planning on including it because we were not sure about if it would be necessary at the beginning of the Interactivity API life that was WP it that is used to render loops of things. And when we presented to Woo, the first thing they said was we need an each directive. And it was like, okay, we thought about that but we were not sure. And if you are telling us to do it like now the first or the second one, yes, go for it. And also they were the first giving us the real feedback and also giving us the main pain points that Lucio told before we are dealing with this issue. We have this problem using React on the front end. We are have this loading bar that we don&#8217;t really like and that&#8217;s it. We have had a lot of conversations with them. Their help has been great and also where they were, I think the biggest guinea pig we&#8217;ve ever had in a project because I mean Woo is in a lot of sites, woo is a really huge project and they even found the time to help us with the foundation of the API. I think without wool this project would&#8217;ve not been the same. Would&#8217;ve been different for sure, would&#8217;ve been worse.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lucio:<br />That&#8217;s great to hear. And I want to make it clear that we were extremely happy and honored to be the Guinea pig project and we have also maybe people are wondering how we&#8217;re talking about how did we use this since it&#8217;s not out for official use yet. So actually we did something quite really experimental and crazy in our WooCommerce code base. We have included our own forked version of the Interactivity API runtime while it was still in flux and in development. And we still do that actually right now. So the way we have done this collaboration and provided the feedback that Carlos has mentioned it because we literally copied their homework with their permission and just pasted the Interactivity API runtime into the WOO code base. And that has allowed us to kind of really be there while the development of the API was going on with hands-on, of course everybody in the community could participate obviously, but to have such a big buy-in from us, it was very important from us that this would work. So we had a lot of involvement with ecosystem as Carlos has mentioned, providing feedback but also providing contributions and so on. So that was a really amazing collaboration, which makes me think really, I&#8217;m really optimistic about the future with the blocks and the Golden instantiation of Gutenberg in WooCommerce. Basically</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />With what you&#8217;ve said there and kind of moving forward, what ways does this facilitate custom block development helping woo developers get more creative in building the future woo experiences? I mean is there other things you haven&#8217;t mentioned or things that you would like to talk to those developers specifically and say this is now the opportunities you have or will have?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lucio:<br />Well I think most of the things I have mentioned in passing at least I would say the biggest deal is basically removing the responsibility of this plumbing that I was talking about from the hands of the single developers and enabling them to build experiences instead of thinking about how to deal with state management hydration now what&#8217;s the best paradigm to use for templating and ding and all these sort of things that Interactivity API does for us. So removing the heavy lifting from the developers and also creating a base, like I was mentioning before, a shared understanding across the entire ecosystem. Not only WooCommerce but WordPress Gutenberg. So we know that our blocks are going to interactive blocks, this is the way they&#8217;re going to work moving forward. This creates also a lot of future proof to your custom blocks for example.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you can be faster, just more rapid development of this kind of dynamic components. You can be more future proof, you can get inspired by what&#8217;s going on in Gutenberg. You can see, actually one thing that we did again copying course homework is our product collection block that is soon hopefully coming out of beta is based on the query loop block that was done on Gutenberg. So at first actually we&#8217;re using a variation of the block and then we realized we couldn&#8217;t really use a variation, but we took a lot of inspiration from the work that very smart people have done on the query loop block on the navigation, on the gotchas of what kind of blocks you can put inside. There is a lot of stuff that we have taken inspiration from the work that&#8217;s going on in Gutenberg. So I would say these points maybe are a good answer to your question.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Well I know that listeners probably as they get through this show, they come up with questions and I actually did have a listener when they found out that I would be talking to you too, did ask a question around security. So I thought I would at least throw it out to you and I&#8217;m going to read it here. Verbatim said the proposal blog post mentioned security and their graphic as partially handled. He says he doesn&#8217;t have a lot of react knowledge, so he&#8217;d like to know more information on that. For example, is this the end of nonsense?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carlos:<br />We are not ending nonsense. I mean nonces are still there. We&#8217;ll be still there because it&#8217;s a great way to deal with intercommunication between the user and the site or saving data in the system. From there, I mean the most easily in the site, the most dangerous part is forms is allowing user input from outside that can be injected to your site or server site to your database. But what we mentioned there is we are providing a framework to create interactive blocks. So they will be secure, our directives are secure, the run time is also secure. The PHP server processing of all of that, because we are in PP is also processing those directives in the server. If you want to show a taps panel for example, and also the first step for product descriptions or productization data, all that part, if it is handled by the PHP with our Interactivity API will be secure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But also we are allowing the user to use their own JavaScript. I mean you will have a VJS file in order to write that interactions you want the blog to have and that java script will be written by the developer. So that&#8217;s the partial handle. I mean we deal with one part that is the API and the directive processing and the runtime that make that interaction. But the other part is handled by the own developer. So we cannot control that. I mean WordPress is secure. Yes, we try to be secure as always, but you as supply developer, you cannot, you need also to your clients to be secure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Alrighty, cool. Well I&#8217;m sure that was the answer he was hoping for. So getting towards the end here, is there something that we haven&#8217;t touched on? I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s a lot of things we haven&#8217;t touched on, but anything specifically from either of you or both of you that you&#8217;d like to add?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lucio:<br />Yeah, actually, I mean as you said, there is probably a treasure trove of things to touch upon. I&#8217;m very proud of saying that we have been experimenting with a lot of new things. And so people who have been following WooCommerce quite closely, they might have seen also a little bit of a mess maybe sometimes as we have included the new products beta and then it became the new products beta block was supposed to replace the old products block and now we have a new block which is the product collection block, which is supposed to replace the product&#8217;s beta. And maybe some people have questions about why we did this and I would say sorry, but not sorry. Also we have been experimenting and being a little bit more liberal. That&#8217;s why we for the first time introduced beta label on our blocks because we felt like we wanted to be a little bit more out there and experiment with this new API and make sure that we could move a bit faster than our usual commitment to backwards compatibility and so on. So I think one of the most exciting parts that we are implementing is this new way of displaying your shops catalog, which I guess is the core, the heart of the e-commerce.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So now you can display your products using this new product collection beta, which is hopefully coming out of beta in the next, I don&#8217;t know, maybe I shouldn&#8217;t say anything but soon tm. And so you will have all the advantages like I was mentioning before of service side rendering. So it&#8217;s very snappy, instant rendering and also incredible interaction and Interactivity like pagination and so on. And we are also in parallel developing the new filters block. So previously we were in this limbo zone. Well, in a classic experience, you select a filter in the whole page, reloads in a react experience, you select a filter and the block reloads. But there was a bunch of limitations about doing that that I&#8217;m not going to get into because it&#8217;s going to get a little bit too tedious. But now we are implementing this new filters block which will seamlessly integrate with the product collection and everywhere you can have multiple product collection blocks in your site and have different filters assigned to them and everything is going to be very fast in reloading and now people expect from the modern e-commerce experiences.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So this is I think one of the core things that we are working on, but there is much more, like for example, developers might be happy to know that we are moving away from our jQuery ways. So actually the first Guinea pig of the Interactivity API was the add to cart button, which still used jQuery in factories. I dunno how many people know this. There&#8217;s a little setting in WooCommerce in the WooCommerce preferences that you can toggle if you don&#8217;t want Ajax to happen on the clicking of the add to cart button. That&#8217;s probably a setting that came out, I don&#8217;t know, maybe 12 years ago. I don&#8217;t even know why that&#8217;s setting why anybody would toggle that setting. But we still keep that setting by the way, we didn&#8217;t remove it, but we have transitioned the jQuery way into Interactivity API. So the add to cart works with Interactivity API and then we are doing things like the product gallery that eventually maybe, we&#8217;ll thinking as I was saying before, to take inspiration from Gutenberg, we are thinking of perhaps trying to transition into the more light box behavior that Carlos was mentioning that Gutenberg is implementing right now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s not the API is not quite there for us yet, so we are doing other things, but eventually maybe the idea would be to once again try to leverage as much Gutenberg as we can. So we want to be to set out the example for the community that Gutenberg is really a solid framework that you can build the most complex use cases upon, which I think e-commerce is probably one of the most complexes and we have many other things down the line. You can imagine tabbed experiences in your single product template, a collapsible maybe your so many things on the roadmap. Imagination is the limit, let&#8217;s say. So I just wanted to give a little bit of sneak peek for people who haven&#8217;t used this new blocks you should get into them, try using the product collection. The new filters beta give us feedback. We are really keen, especially in this phase, to get as much feedback as possible. I know actually data that product collection is being used and it&#8217;s on the rise and that makes me extremely happy. I can&#8217;t wait for basically every e-commerce WooCommerce experience to be a block expert. So that&#8217;s my mission as I mentioned earlier.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Do you have anything we&#8217;ve left out, Carlos, that you&#8217;d like to add, that you like to highlight?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carlos:<br />I would like to highlight that the Interactivity API is stable. Okay. You can use it without hesitation. It was included in a private way also in 6.4 in the previous version of WordPress. And the navigation block, as I mentioned before, navigation, search file and query, and this light box feature that was included on the last version of 6.4 in WordPress were all powered by this Interactivity API that will now in 6.5 will be public.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Alright, great. Now for those developers out there that want to follow all the things that are going on with it and possibly propose suggestions to the roadmap or offer use cases or whatever, how can they do that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carlos:<br />I think Gutenberg repository is the best place to go. If you have any issue or a problem, then create an issue and let us know. You can ping Luis, David or me in Gutenberg and we will be happy to answer. And also there&#8217;s a panel there in GitHub called GitHub Discussions and there&#8217;s a bar just for the Interactivity. PI like attack for discussions where you can talk about it suggest improvements, you can also showcase your blocks or your projects and those are the main points. We also are in Slack, so feel free to reach out in coordinator Slack channel, and I dunno, maybe Twitter, well now colleagues, but some of us are there looking for Interactivity word, but the best place to discuss apart from make core posts. Also in the comments of core posts that are talking about the Interactivity PI think GitHub is the best place to go. GitHub and GitHub discussions</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lucio:<br />For our developments. You can always follow developers to know what we&#8217;re thinking about our roadmaps. We post design snaps very frequently. Kudos to the people involved in that. Our community Slack is also available and we are also on GitHub as well. But I think for Woo, you should keep an eye on developers woo.com and give us feedback on the repo and also on Slack. Ping us and give us feedback on the way you&#8217;re using the blogs on the limitations that you&#8217;re seeing. It&#8217;s similar to what Carlos was saying about Gutenberg working in a vacuum. Sometimes when we develop for e-commerce, we don&#8217;t know all the ins and outs of people&#8217;s businesses and what their needs are. So maybe we think we have covered all of them, but there are some niche, or even maybe not so niche, but things that just fly under our radar that people can just ping about. So ping to us about. So ping us the limitations that you find with the new blocks we are experimenting with. We are really, really hungry for feedback.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Very cool. So I just want to thank you both for taking the time. I know this is a hot topic right now. A lot of people are interested in it and hopefully we&#8217;ll get people in there asking all sorts of questions and also contributing and helping along the way. So again, thank you both for being on</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lucio:<br />Anytime. Thanks for having us</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carlos:<br />Anytime. Happy to be here.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:15:28 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:17;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:62:\"Do The Woo Community: Hear From 13 WordCamp Asia 2024 Speakers\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:61:\"https://dothewoo.io/hear-from-13-wordcamp-asia-2024-speakers/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:61:\"https://dothewoo.io/hear-from-13-wordcamp-asia-2024-speakers/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:19611:\"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/adam-silverstein/\"><strong>Adam Silverstein</strong></a> discusses the importance of user experience over the entire page life, not just the loading part.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/alex-kirk/\"><strong>Alex Kirk</strong> </a>talks about a tool that allows translators to run a plugin or theme in the WordPress playground.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/benjamin-intal/\"><strong>Benjamin Intal</strong></a> shares tips on using the site editor to transform the default 2024 theme.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/hannah-swain-lovik/\"><strong>Hannah Swain L&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cedil;vik</strong></a> discusses the concept of &acirc;&#128;&#156;Joy of Missing Out&acirc;&#128;&#157; and focusing on meaningful tasks.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/joe-a-simpson-jr/\"><strong>Joe Simpson Jr</strong></a>. will present on making all WordPress events accessible.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/miriam-schwab/\"><strong>Miriam Schwab</strong></a> shares her experience of building her WordPress career while raising seven children.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/paolo-belcastro/\"><strong>Paolo Belcastro</strong></a> will present on using AI to improve content creation.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/ricky-blacker/\"><strong>Ricky Blacker</strong></a> talks about the importance of website accessibility.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/jeanne-tan/\"><strong>Jeanne Tan</strong></a> will discuss on-page SEO techniques, highlighting how the order of words in a sentence can affect Google rankings.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/robert-li/\"><strong>Robert Li</strong></a> will give an overview of generative AI and a demo of a chatbot.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/wes-theron/\"><strong>Wes Theron</strong></a> discusses the creation of learning pathways on WordPress.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/perth-woratana-ngarmtrakulchol/\"><strong>Perth Woratana Ngarmtrakulchol</strong></a> will share how he monetized his WordPress development skills to create multiple income streams.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/nada-elsharkawy/\"><strong>Nada ElSharkawy</strong></a> will share her experience of starting a WordPress Meetup.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\nShow Transcript\n<p><strong>Adam Silverstein:</strong><br /> Hi, this is Adam and my talk for WordCamp. Asia is INPA new metric for interactivity. One tip for my talk. When you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re building a product or site and aiming for good user experience metrics, you need to consider user experience over the entire page life, not just the loading part, because user spend over 90% of their time on web pages after they load. So I invite you to attend my session to learn all about the new core web vital metric that helps you do just that. Interaction to next Paint or INP.<br /> <strong>Alex Kirk:</strong><br /> Hi, my name is Alex Kirk and my lightning talk is called Translate Live in Context Translation using WordPress Playground. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to talk about this tool on translate WordPress dot org that allows translators to run a plugin or theme in the WordPress playground alongside with a special version of Glotpress called Local Glotpress that adds inline translation capabilities. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll highlight text that can be or is already translated with a color shadow and translators can more easily find a good and fitting translation. Having the visual context of where the text appears allows them to easily make the right call of whether that text is a headline or a button. The tool is also useful for plugin creators as they can quickly switch between different language versions of their plugin to see how well it is translated. And here&acirc;&#128;&#153;s my tip for plugin creators. Make use of the new blueprint plugin preview functionality of the plugin directory. The blueprint that you provide there will also be used by translate live so that your translators don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t need to spend time configuring your plugin but can start translating right away. Thanks and see you at my talk.<br /> <strong>Benjamin Intal:</strong><br /> Hi, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m Benjamin Intal. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m the founder and lead developer of Stackable Pagebuilder Blocks for WordPress. Here&acirc;&#128;&#153;s my tip that I&acirc;&#128;&#153;d like to share with you. The default 2024 theme is a chameleon and you can mostly transform it to anything you&acirc;&#128;&#153;d like. Using the site editor is key here. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s your headed editor, photo editor, and template editor. You can use it to build completely bespoke templates, blog or archive pages to showcase portfolios or your bestsellers. Even the static pages like your 404 page you can fully build. Unlike before in the old days. There are a lot of innovations taking place in the block space, especially in the site editor, so if you haven&acirc;&#128;&#153;t checked it out for a long time now, try it out again. It may simplify a lot of your current block-based workflows. Join me in going more in depth on this topic. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be sharing more workflow and efficiency tips on my session in WordCamp Asia titled How to Achieve an Efficient Workflow with a Block Editor Insight Editor. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be on March 9, track three at 3:00 PM. See you there.<br /> <strong>Hannah Swain L&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cedil;vik:</strong><br /> Hi there. My name is Hannah Swain L&Atilde;&#131;&Acirc;&cedil;vik and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be at WordCamp Asia giving a lightning talk on From FOMO to JOMO. Discovering the joy of missing out our lives are relatively short. One popular book says that we have about 4,000 weeks if you live to be 80 years old. The emphasis is then often on using our time as efficiently as we possibly can. That generally involves productivity methods. After all, the more productive you can be, the more efficient you can be, right? The problem is that no matter how efficient you are, that time will just fill up with more work. No matter how many times you empty your inbox, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s just going to fill up again. Instead, think about what you really want to achieve, what is truly meaningful for you in these 4,000 weeks. Then do that, not the busy work of emptying your unending inbox. I know that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s easier said than done, recognizing that you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re operating from a checkbox mentality of just getting things done rather than thinking about what you truly want to achieve. That&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a first step. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be happy to tell you more about this at my session at WordCamp Asia. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m looking forward to meeting you there.<br /> <strong>Joe Simpson Jr.:</strong><br /> Hello, my name is Joe A. Simpson Jr. And I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be presenting Make All WordPress events accessible at WordCamp Asia 2024 in Taipei, Taiwan. I am so incredibly excited and honored to be presenting. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be joining you from cast California just north of Los Angeles in the beautiful Santa Clarita Valley. Often when we think of WordPress and accessibility, we think of websites, not the physical or virtual spaces where we gather. In this presentation, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to show you the community, how we can make all of our events as open and inclusive and accessible as possible. We&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll take a look at the history of accessibility in terms of the built world and how a group of teenagers who met at a summer camp made a movement that changed the world forever. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll share tips on how to plan accessible events. For example, what do you look for when you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re touring a venue?<br /> Are you touring that venue with someone that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s disabled? I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll also share a checklist on what to look for. We&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll also look at how to build organizing teams with an eye out for accessibility. We&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll talk about how to create welcome and meaning spaces, how to make wayfinding maps and other information to help people get around the venue and come and pass as easily as possible. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll show you tips on how to make your website and all of your communications as accessible as possible. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll give you tips also on how to make your live stream accessible. My presentations are always interactive. I love the give take between me and the audience. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;d love to hear what accessibility wins you have to offer and so we can have a great dialogue on how to move accessibility forward in our community. Join me, Joe Simpson, March 8th, 2:00 PM CST at WordCamp Asia. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m so excited to see you and can&acirc;&#128;&#153;t wait to meet you.<br /> <strong>Miriam Schwab:</strong><br /> Hi, my name is Miriam Schwab and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m head of WordPress relations at elementary. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to be speaking at WordCamp Asia in Taipei on the topic of How I Built my WordPress Career while Raising Seven Children. This is going to be quite a personal talk for me. I have mentioned here and there that I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m a mother of seven, but I haven&acirc;&#128;&#153;t really ever delved into it, at least not in a public setting, what it means and how I managed to more or less juggle a very intense and demanding personal life with a very intense and demanding career. Actually, because I founded two WordPress companies, first my agency and then Strati and sold both of them and building and developing a company and products is incredibly demanding, and of course raising seven children is also incredibly demanding. So in my talk, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to be addressing certain techniques and processes that I developed over the years that helped me be more efficient and manage these two aspects of my life.<br /> And also I am going to touch on why WordPress is a really great option for people who have demanding person lives and or just want to be able to give attention to their friends and family in the way that they need and deserve. That&acirc;&#128;&#153;s more or less what the talk is going to cover. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a very unique perspective, and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m not going to be speaking from the angle of this is what anyone should do. Not at all, but we all have our professional side to our lives and we all have our personal side, and it can look many different ways, but I think it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a challenge for most of us to figure that out. And so hopefully some of the things that I learned doing what I did under very intense circumstances can be helpful to whoever attends my talk. So I hope you&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll come and listen and of course, I love it when people ask me questions. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m not always going to have an answer to everything because some things just are hard to explain, but I love having a conversation about a lot of things and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;d love to talk to you about this topic. So I hope I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll see you there and I can&acirc;&#128;&#153;t wait to see you in Taipei at WordCamp Asia.<br /> <strong>Paolo Belcastro:</strong><br /> Hey everyone. Paolo Belcastro here, hailing from Vienna, Austria. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m incredibly excited to join you all in Taipei in March for Work, campe. I will be presenting their recession with the title You&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll Never Be Alone Anymore, Building and Maintaining Work Sites With AI. I will go over all the different ways that AI can be used to improve your craft as a content creator and a site creator, and particularly underline the benefit of using it as a tool to increase the diversity of opinions you consider when writing content. The idea is to use AI to become better at what we do and increase the quality of our content as opposed to the quantity of it. I am truly, truly looking forward to seeing you all there and invite you to come and meet me at 3:00 PM on March eight, for you&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll Never Be Alone Anymore, Building and Maintaining WordPress Sites with AI.<br /> <strong>Ricky Blacker:</strong><br /> Hi, my name&acirc;&#128;&#153;s Ricky Blacker and I am going to be doing a talk at WordCamp Asia 2024 this year, and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m talking about accessibility and the why, the when and how. So in my talk, I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m going to be sharing a lot of things from my perspective on why this is important and how to go about it. One of the interesting things with it is a time in my life where I really found out about this when I was designing WooCommerce sites and I found accessibility is one of the big things. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s more than just allowing people to see with disabilities, allowing them to interact with websites. It goes way beyond that. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s all about everyone being able to access the information on the website and little things like adding the alt tags on your pictures. This is not just for screen readers and or if the image can&acirc;&#128;&#153;t be seen.<br /> This is something that can be picked up by SEO and can really boost your SEO, making sure that those alt tags are properly inserted. Even beyond that. When I was doing the commerce sites, one of the things I found was that even the simple thing is renaming the file name to something descriptive about the picture was massively helpful. And this is accessibility on an even deeper level because I was finding, I was going back and looking for images that I&acirc;&#128;&#153;d maybe uploaded a year or two before and I had a hell of a time finding it because they were labeled things like Image 2000149, and if you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re going back and looking for that image, it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s very hard not knowing what it&acirc;&#128;&#153;s called. So I started labeling even my file names before I uploaded anything into the WordPress media file. I would rename them with something meaningful so it was easy to go back and find them in a year or two years time when I was doing a search because as we know, the media files can grow to quite a number on some of our sites and going back and trying to find it can be a very manual and time consuming task.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that&acirc;&#128;&#153;s a little hint for you. Hope to see you in Taipei at my talk. Come and see me talk about accessibility, the why, how, and when. And also if you see me around at WordPress, come and say, good day. Thank you very much.<br />\n<strong>Jeanne Tan:</strong><br />\nHi there. WordCamp Asia attendees. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m Jeanne and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m excited to share a powerful strategy that actually works from my lightning talk on how to outrank your competitors with easy on page SEO techniques. Did you know that something as simple as the order of words in a sentence can totally change how your content ranks on Google? For example, search engines interpret the statement, tourists flock to the beach during summer to be different from the beach is flocked by tourists during summer. The first sentence tourists flock to the beach means search engines focus on queries that involve tourists. On the other hand, the beach is flocked by tourists prioritizes content that respond to queries on popular destinations. Tiny tweaks like this make a huge difference, especially if you&acirc;&#128;&#153;re aiming for those featured snippets. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll reveal more secrets like this on March 9th to help your content climb the results page. Join me for my session. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be in room 101C for trap four at WordCamp Asia. It&acirc;&#128;&#153;s about time to get technical.<br />\n<strong>Robert Li:</strong><br />\nMy is Robert Li, but most people don&acirc;&#128;&#153;t call me Bob. My talk at work campaign of 2024 is called ChatWP Talking to WordPress Generative AI. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be giving an overview of the current and future state of generative AI and probably most interestingly for listeners, we&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be showing a demo of the chat bot that will rely on the content in your WordPress site with a CoLab notebook and all the resources that attendees can access and trap and sell. This will allow them to build an end-to-end production ready custom open source chat bot with their own WordPress site. I hope to see you all in Taiwan at the talk.<br />\n<strong>Wes Theron:</strong><br />\nHi, my name is Wes Theron and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m part of the training team, and I will be joining WordCamp Asia from New Zealand. The name of my session is called Learning Pathways on learn dot WordPress dot org. This is an informational talk about the work we are currently doing to create learning pathways that cater to learners of different roles and skill levels. If you are keen to learn more about this initiative and our plan to redesign the Learn website, join me on the last day to explore learning pathways. We all have WordPress origin and stories and are constantly acquiring knowledge and skills in diverse spheres of life. Our goal is to provide free learning material to empower folks while just starting out with WordPress or who are aiming to achieve a more advanced proficiency. As part of the training team, we are passionate about education. I will leave you with some food for thought. Lifelong education will allow you to banish boredom. And Henry Ford said, anyone who stops learning is old at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. I can&acirc;&#128;&#153;t wait to see all of you in Taiwan. Cheers.<br />\n<strong>Perth Woratana Ngarmtrakulchol:</strong><br />\nHi everyone, first of all, thanks to Do the Woo podcast for having me. My name is Perth. A quick one about me. I have been using WordPress for 15 years, and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m currently working as analytics engineer at Canva, the online design software company. In my lightening talk the title is Multiply Your Income Streams With WordPress Development Skills. I will be sharing about how I have monetized my WordPress development skills throughout my career and how I was able to create multiple income streams with these skills to support in my life circumstances. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll also give you multiple ideas on how you can also make a living or how you can grow your career from workplace development skills. You&acirc;&#128;&#153;ll be able to take away a list, a thing or two from this talk. For example, did you know that workplace development skills can lead to teaching job in WordPress or web development, which is highly rewarded too. Teaching job will also give you multiple options. You can do one-on-one training. You can do one too many offline training, or you can do the online course, which is basically one to infinity. So if you are a developer or keen to become one, come join me in the session. See you.<br />\n<strong>Nada ElSharkawy:</strong><br />\nHello. Hello, this is Nada ElSharkawy. I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m a senior marketing manager at GoDaddy and I&acirc;&#128;&#153;m part of the commercial strategy theme. So excited to be speaking at WordCamp Asia 2024. I have a lightning talk under the title, starting a WordPress Meetup, the Highs and Lows.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:15:28 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:18;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:74:\"Do The Woo Community: WordCamp Asia 2024 with Andy Saw &amp; Huanyi Chuang\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:28:\"https://dothewoo.io/?p=79532\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:67:\"https://dothewoo.io/wordcamp-asia-2024-with-andy-saw-huanyi-chuang/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:27045:\"<p>In today&#8217;s&nbsp;<em><strong>WordPress Event Talk</strong></em>, it&#8217;s all about&nbsp;<strong>WordCamp Asia</strong>&nbsp;that is just around the corner.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hosts Devin and BobWP have a fun conversation with guests&nbsp;<strong>Andy Saw</strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>Huanyi (Eric) Chuang</strong>, who are part of the organizing team.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They share the event&#8217;s highlights, including the speaker lineup, workshops, and a family-friendly room. And of course, we cannot go by without mentioning the after-party, which will feature different areas for various themes and activities.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And we cannot talk about a WordCamp without touching on the&nbsp; importance of networking and engaging with the community during the event, providing tips for first-time attendees</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Plus, most importantly, they all discuss the local food and transportation options in Taipei.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The organizing team for the event consists of 47 members from various countries, including India, Malaysia, Australia, Philippines, Nepal, Japan, and Singapore.</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/\"><strong>WordCamp Asia 2024</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/contributor-day/\"><strong>Contributor Day</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/speakers/\"><strong>Speakers</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/schedule/\"><strong>Schedule</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/organizers/\"><strong>Organizers</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/sponsors/\"><strong>Sponsors</strong></a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\nShow Transcript\n<p>BobWP:<br />Well, we are here to talk about a very exciting event. It&#8217;s exciting because I&#8217;m going to be there. No, not really. That&#8217;s not why it&#8217;s exciting. It&#8217;s exciting because actually I attended WordCamp Asia last year for the first one, and as many word camps as I&#8217;ve ever attended over 14 years. I&#8217;m going to say this and don&#8217;t anybody frown upon me. It was probably one of the best word camps I&#8217;d ever been to.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />Woohoo,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />And it just had a different flavor. I just absolutely enjoyed it and so looking forward to it. So I&#8217;m going to quit blabbing though and have my wonderful co-host Devin, say hello and also introduce our guests, which are very special.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />Thanks, Bob. Hi everyone. As Bob mentioned, the wonderful host co-host is here. Devin&#8217;s live from Jakarta. Well, not really life, but I kind of want to feel it&#8217;s life because so excited to be with Bob again and there&#8217;s my lovely, I want to say ex-teammates, but I guess with the community team, we are always a team and we are always community leaders who support each other. So yeah, I have Andy and Eric here with us, so I guess I&#8217;ll let you all introduce yourself, please, perhaps starting with Andy.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />Hey everyone. Andy here, one of the global leads for the WordCamp Asia 2024. It&#8217;s good to be here and having a chat with everyone about the exciting events that we are coming up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />Yay. Thanks Andy. And next Eric.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />Okay. Hello everyone. I&#8217;m Eric from one of the local leads of WordCamp Asia 2024, and as a local leads, we&#8217;re so excited to welcome all of you coming here and we can&#8217;t wait to see you in person.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />Yes, these lovely folks, I can tell you they&#8217;re really excited since we started working Asia back in 2020 and then we had the first one in 2023 when Bob attended and had a fantastic time, and we are going to recreate that fantastic time in Taipei. So yeah, it&#8217;s been a while. Andy and Eric, how&#8217;s everything, how&#8217;s the planning going? What are we expecting in the last couple of months? Is there anything that we need to be prepared? Let us know.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />Yeah, so events happens on 7th of March. Have everyone get the tickets already?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />Yes of course.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />If not, there&#8217;s still tickets available. Just go to the website to get the tickets so we can see you there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />All right. So yeah, I&#8217;ve got my tickets. I&#8217;ve got my accommodation book. I&#8217;ve got my Visa secured. So what else you want to share with us? What can we expect from WordCamp, Asia in Taipei? Would there be any differences? Like main differences from the one we had in Bangkok?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />Yeah, so year&#8217;s we have a special kind of arrangements, for instance of sessions. So it came up with the idea that we invited speakers. So among those that we already announced, Matt is coming. Joseph Jacks the founder from the OSS Capital. They&#8217;re also becoming so the other tools, they&#8217;ll also be joining us on the stage. Noel Tock from the Human Made. Then everyone knows that the executive director Josepha will also be joining us. And many more.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />Something that I really wanted to be because in Bangkok I was busy at the back end. I couldn&#8217;t go to any of the session. And then this time and Taipei, I really want to check out one of the invited speaker session and also other sessions. Is there anything else different? Is there any workshop or any panel discussion that we are expecting in Taipei?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />Yes, there will be a couple of workshops so that people can join and we&#8217;re also having a family friendly room this time so that if parents bring their children, they will be able to be in a family friendly room and during the conference stage.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />So this is different from childcare.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />Yeah, we are not going to hire childcare. We are just having that place. We are just going to have that room be children friendly, dedicated space. Yeah. And we are still going to have a volunteer there to watch everything, but it&#8217;s not a professional childcare center.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />So if somebody thought Bob needed a timeout and they wanted to put him somewhere, they could bring him over there too and put him in a corner with some toys and just kind of leave them alone.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />Yeah, because it&#8217;s not a professional childcare center. So we still recommend the parents being with their children, but we are going to prepare some toys so that they can play with.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />Nice. All right. Well that&#8217;s good to know. That&#8217;s something different from Bangkok because we didn&#8217;t provide childcare in Bangkok, but now we learn, we improve, we do things better. Great job everyone. Nice to hear. Not that I have kids that I will bring, but I&#8217;m considering taking my cats all. Probably not. Bob and I here are parents, and of course we&#8217;d like to have our fur babies everywhere with us, right, Bob?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />All right, what else? Okay,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />I have a question. Okay. Everybody that goes to any WordCamp, all they talk about, not everybody, but it&#8217;s always about food. So I have to personally ask both of you, what is your recommended dish? I mean, this is personal. This is what you really would recommend for someone to try while they&#8217;re there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />Okay, because I&#8217;m not local, I&#8217;m considered as a tourist with to the country. So the night markets, you typically have all the delicious food. So the two things that every time I went there I will have the fried chickens and the mobile tea. So these tools are very famous that it&#8217;s a mass that we have to have it,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />But what&#8217;s the difference between the fried chicken in Taipei and the other fried chicken we have?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />It&#8217;s local made then I mean, what do you call the ingredients? They have it. The taste is very different. Although that in Malaysia, where I see though the advertising is originally from Taiwan, but you eat it, the taste is very different. It&#8217;s just like when you have the, what do you call the na bar in Malaysia and the ones that have it locally, it&#8217;s different.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />It just tastes better when it&#8217;s sourced locally, made locally and eaten locally. Right? So you have to be Taipei to try this Boba tea and the fried chicken Andy&#8217;s recommendation. What about you Eric?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />So as a local, I personally, I&#8217;m a soup noodle person, so I would recommend beef noodles. Yeah, we have a lot of good beef noodles and I think we also have a lot of local restaurants which offers different kind of stuff, and it&#8217;s called, I&#8217;m not sure whether I should just use Mandarin. It&#8217;s called Real Top, which means stir frying places. Yeah, it&#8217;s the place we brought you before. That&#8217;s fried stir fry stuff. Yeah, yeah. The atmosphere there is super good and it&#8217;s a best place to have good time with your friends.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />Yeah, no, I wanted to add if I&#8217;m not also local, but I hang out with these folks in Taipei and I enjoyed the sweet potato ball, so it&#8217;s fried. Remember we were waiting for the vendor to come back because I really wanted to have that sweet potato bowl. So it&#8217;s the purple sweet potato and then also the orange sweet potato, and they&#8217;re so yummy and they&#8217;re so chewy. It&#8217;s hot, it&#8217;s just, but it&#8217;s really nice when you have it in your mouth. So yeah, I always go for it. I can&#8217;t go wrong. It&#8217;s something fried. It&#8217;s hot and it&#8217;s chewy, so I can&#8217;t wait to have that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />Yeah. So speaking of that chewy, speaking of that chewy texture, there&#8217;s a dedicated phrase in Taiwan, it&#8217;s called Q. Yeah, it&#8217;s Q, the alphabet Q, that texture, we call it Q. Yeah. So if you say, I want something Q, Q, we want something Q and they will give you something chewy.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />Yeah, today I learned. All right. Okay, so for those of you who like something chewy, then just ask for anything Q, is that correct? Yeah. Okay, let&#8217;s do that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />Yeah, all the other things that we can brought up is this year, because the events happens in the TICC areas, the convention also, we also managed to secure place media rooms that is dedicated, that we can have partners like media partners like Bob here to the rules. Two, if there&#8217;s any interview sessions we want to carry out, we can do it over there. Yeah, I think back in Bangkok, we don&#8217;t have the luxury of, they have professional green screens there and yeah, a lot of equipment we can use.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />All right. Do we have to secure media partners have to secure for the slot for using that room?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />Yeah, if you want to secure the time slot, you can contact our communication team. Yeah, we will reserve. We reserve the place for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />All right. Nice, nice, nice. All right, let&#8217;s talk about the contributor day, because I&#8217;ve received several emails about securing the attendance or registering. What can we expect? Is there anything new? How many teams are going to be there? Do you have any information about this?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />14.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />Yeah. Great.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />And this year I think we&#8217;ll also be doing the other one, especially the human library projects. So we&#8217;ll have a separate tables just for that. So it&#8217;s like 15 minutes of sessions, but we still, I mean the contributor team still trying to engage the books to come over so that we can confirm the slots for everyone to make reservations.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />We didn&#8217;t have that right in Bangkok human library. That&#8217;s interesting. Yeah, right. Is that something like happiness bar where people can go and ask questions?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />So happiness bar, we also have a delicate place within the sponsor areas that we try to gather together with the communities sessions. So that&#8217;s a place over there. So the human library is more towards, it happens on the contributor day itself, four to five tables separate, just dedicated for that sessions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />Excited. Anything else? I think I remember in Bangkok we have this battery pack charger. Do we have anything like that? Something like the attendees can use for free?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />Yeah, we are still managing the charging stations for our attendees to use, and I think these will be sponsored by our sponsors. Yeah, charging stations.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />Yeah, that&#8217;s a good approach. That&#8217;s one way to engage sponsors in a different way that they can contribute in a different form as well. I like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah. Yes. But the sponsor, speaking of sponsors, I&#8217;m kind of curious because I&#8217;m actually a sponsor this year for the first time</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />Your best sponsor.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, I&#8217;m a little sponsor. But anything about the sponsor area that you want to bring up? Anything special this year? The setup of it. I noticed that whether it stays this way, I&#8217;m strategically placed across from Woo, which is very nice for me because for obvious reasons. But yeah. Is there anything you want to add about that? I know that as a sponsor, just what you were mentioning, it was very cool because you had several add-ons and some of them were very creative instead of just the typical, you sponsor the coffee or something like that. So yeah, just tell us anything around that particular part that you might want to share.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />Yeah, so the sponsors, I think back in Bangkok we have because of also the place in the C icon, so all the sponsors are get joined together in one place. So this year, because of the TSCC area, we also learned from the 2023 Bangkok, we kind of separate the sponsors to two areas, first floor and the second floor. So that the idea mainly is to trigger the traffic for the attendees to move around instead of just fixing that on one places. Then having say that also that is a call online with the schedules or sessions, we try to change the topics of the categories on their rooms instead of one categories fixed on the second floor. So we move around it also in a way just to also drive the traffic for people to walk around the SCC so that they can engage the sponsors to meet up with other attendees to just communicate and just be social.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />So this time we&#8217;re going to have a room dedicated for some activities. So we&#8217;re still discussing some of the activities now, and one thing where we might have are the networking sessions so that people can go into the room and exchange their business cards and so on. Yeah, we&#8217;re trying to make to come up with some small activities in those dedicated rooms.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />I really like that idea of especially the networking part of it, having different places where you can do the different things and I don&#8217;t know if you actually ever get a chance to listen to the speakers, have the time. I&#8217;m guessing you probably are pretty busy, but can you give us a little insights on what we can expect from the speakers and what&#8217;s happening there?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />Having opportunities to sit inside, to listen, to catch up with those speakers coming from their own, from the other part of the world coming to share with us, I think that&#8217;s a very, very good opportunity because not many peoples will be able to join the flagship in Taiwan. That&#8217;s why also I think we brought the WordCamp flagship to the Asia and we have the first one last year in Bangkok. So I mean personally I would recommend that the attendees that came join us for this sales just sit in and then listens to the favorite speakers. And although I mean some of us may not be able to join, then we also be live streaming the entire sessions to the place so everyone can feel it and enjoy the sessions together.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />And speaking of the speakers, I think from this to encourage local speakers to join. So we also choose some local speakers who we think the topics might be interesting. So please come and share our local speakers up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />What about the first time attendee, especially to a large WordCamp? Any words of wisdom you can share with them? I mean, some people are a little bit overwhelmed. I found that from attending last year, everyone was so gracious and opened arm that it&#8217;s like you could talk to anybody anywhere, no matter if they were supposedly the big WordPress person or not. Anything a tip or a little bit of advice for that first time attendee to make them a little bit more comfortable as a join this community?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />I think the first thing is come early and get your badge. So to avoid the traffic because during the first day, most of the attendees will just come in. And then the queue, well, we have new vendors also coming in this year, so hopefully we&#8217;ll have a better sign in check in this year versus 2023. Because I mean, as you mentioned, we keep on improving for each friendship, learning from the past experience. So the tips is I think try to check because it&#8217;s an in-person events is very different from all the virtual events that we have. So engage with the communities, the friends that previously you have, maybe have a chat in the workplace, the off slack, then visit the sponsors because those are the sponsors or plugins or teams or solutions that you use. Probably you have in a chat with them in the live chat or emails. So they are here presently, physically here, visit their booth exchange feedbacks or your thoughts of how you use your products. Then for the speakers also as you bump into them, have a photo with them and yeah, and anything else.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />I would say yeah, try to chat with people, try to chat with people because like you mentioned, it&#8217;s a chance that you can meet all your plugins or things developing companies in the manual. And also if you feel the atmosphere in the venue is kind of tense or if you feel nervous, well look forward to the after party because it&#8217;s a place you can have casual talks with everybody. And this time personally, I would say our after party venue is going to be often and personally, I&#8217;m looking forward to that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Okay, so after party, you brought it up and you&#8217;re not getting away with telling us more about that. I know that de and she&#8217;s probably, if I hadn&#8217;t asked she be, I can see her smiling. You got to tell us more. Okay. After party, tell us about the after party.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />So for after party this time we&#8217;re going to have different areas for different themes. Yeah, so because just like back to Bangkok, people gather for different types of gathering. Some people like Sudan in the center of the menu and some people just enjoy their drinks in the other side. So this time we are trying to differentiate different kinds of people for different purposes. And also this venue is, it&#8217;s heavily open, so our attendees can also build connections with other people in Taiwan, like other local people outside the venue because it&#8217;s happily open. So yeah, if you think, okay, I want to change some atmosphere, you can just hop into local vendor, how do you call that? Get some local food outside, local food shop outside the venue. Yeah, it&#8217;s pretty close.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, it sounds like the best of all worlds because I know as many after parties I&#8217;ve been to and I did love it last year because I could enjoy the music, then I could go down the other end and actually visit with people and hear the conversation and stuff. So being able to have that different areas that you can go to for whatever mood, and I like how you&#8217;re integrating the local culture with it too. So if you just, you&#8217;re like, okay, I just need a break, I want to go over into this little shop or this little whatever vendor is nearby, you can experience that and then you can go back in and do your thing. So that&#8217;s fantastic. I love hearing that. So now on another side of this, I know on the site you&#8217;ve talked a lot about getting there, traveling, things that people should be prepared for. Is there anything you want to revisit and highlight as far as people traveling to Taipei?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />I think the most important part will be the documents. So if you are from the visa exempted countries, it&#8217;s fine, but for people who need visa, please be aware of the visa. And also there&#8217;s another law in Taiwan that pork products is prohibited in Taiwan for importing. So please, please be aware that do not bring anything pork, any pork things like sausage, edge or ham. I mean you&#8217;re coming to Taiwan, so just try to enjoy our food. Yeah, you don&#8217;t have to bring your own,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Thats the whole point of it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />Yeah, you don&#8217;t have to bring your own. And yeah, the food is pretty affordable in Taiwan.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />Taiwan sausage jersey is very famous</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />And we have some of the important regulations, but I think the most important thing to highlight is the pork because it&#8217;s strictly prohibited.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />So that&#8217;s really good to know. And next thing you said, there&#8217;s a lot of great food to eat there. We don&#8217;t need to bring our own food. So how do we get around to try out all this great food? What&#8217;s the transportation options option for everyone?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />So for Metro, I think Travelers can buy a one day card for the metro. You can just hop in and hop out for most of the metro stations. And I think the metro system in Taipei is pretty convenient. So you can go to any places you want to visit in Taipei City with Metro system. And as for the bus, you can also look up on Google Map because it&#8217;s pretty well connected. And if you want to call a cap in Taiwan, we use Uber rather than grab in Taiwan, we use Uber. So yeah, be prepared with your Uber app. And if you are a bicycle lover, we have a service called Ubi, you can register in advance and you can rent a bike in Taipei City and it&#8217;s really affordable. I think the first 30 minute would cost you five Taiwan dollars, which is like, I think, well, it&#8217;s like 0.16 US dollar kind of. Yeah, it&#8217;s pretty affordable.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />That&#8217;s great. It sounds like there&#8217;s plenty of options. I don&#8217;t know if anybody wants to deal with me riding around on a bike, but hey, it&#8217;s good that there&#8217;s the different ways to get around. Let&#8217;s talk a little bit about the organizers, the organizing team. How many of you are there? Just give us a little bit more around the organizing team.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />So we have total about 47 of us co-organizing events. So in between, there are some people because of the commitment, so they left, but we are also on board. There are some folks that join us as well. So today we are about 47 of them joining us, the teams from fries. This year, the changes we have done is that we kind of changed the names of the speakers team to the program teams because we thought about speaker team is kind of like the names can be better with the program because of the schedules and et cetera. So that&#8217;s why actually the change is there. The other new changes actually we brought in is we form operation teams. So the operation team actually they took over the items like the tickets, registrations, then others also we talked about the, and on the actual event by itself, we need folks that actually know most of the staff in the TCCS conference. So when something goes wrong, main stage or the food goes wrong, registrations go wrong, sponsors need some informations, where do we find all those pieces? So the operation teams, they are the big folks that actually helps to gather all these and answer questions because the local teams, if we are just relying on just one or two persons, it may not be sufficient example, like Eric will be running here and there, he cannot be on the stage. At the same time, he also sponsor taking care of some of those logistic issues. Yeah,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Cool. And what countries are actually represented by the organizing team?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />Yeah, we have folks from India, Maylasia, Australia, Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, Japan, Singapore, what else? Let me think. India.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />Yeah, Taiwan. I think there&#8217;s one more difference between this work camp Asia and Bangkok is that we try to separate our local team members into each global team. There are four team members and they are including the other local lead uni. There are four dedicated local team members and the rest of them support each team.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />Yeah, I think one thing to add is the entire events is just not, the organizing team members is also being supported by the volunteers that join us. So without them actually the organizing committee members, it&#8217;s just not sufficient resources on the ground, on the event itself to make all these event happens. So it&#8217;s very important because it comes from what everybody mentioned is a strong communities. So we love to see everyone.<br />So organizing, I mean all the organizers, we have shirts. So easy to recognize and then just came and say hi.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />So I think I want to share an important concept this time because this is from the whole local leads. So an important concept of this work, Asia is experiment. So try to make new friends, it&#8217;s also kind of experiments and try to explore the venue, try to explore our sponsors and other, try to build friendship with different people. I think this is also important in the community. We keep improving, we keep trying new experiments, we explore new things and I think I hope we can bring this kind of atmosphere to all our attendees.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BobWP:<br />Alrighty. Well this has been fantastic. It makes me even more excited now talking to the two of you about everything that&#8217;s going on. And yes, everybody out there, if you&#8217;re going to be at WordCamp Asia, find one of us, say hi, hang out a bit, go to the party. Just yeah, overall, just have a fantastic time and want to thank Devin for pulling this together and for both of you joining us, it&#8217;s been an absolute pleasure. So thank you. Thank you so much.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Andy:<br />Thank you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />Thank you Bob. Thank you Devin. See you in Taipei.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devin:<br />Thank you so much.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eric:<br />See you.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:15:28 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:19;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:65:\"Do The Woo Community: WordPress and WooCommerce at CloudFest 2024\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:28:\"https://dothewoo.io/?p=79527\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:64:\"https://dothewoo.io/wordpress-and-woocommerce-at-cloudfest-2024/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29041:\"<p>In today&#8217;s episode, hosts&nbsp;<strong>Jonathan</strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>Tammie</strong>&nbsp;move over from Woo BizChat to discuss&nbsp;<strong>WP Day at this year&#8217;s CloudFest in Germany</strong>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Throughout the chat, they highlight the growing presence of WordPress and WooCommerce in the hosting industry, and the opportunities this presents for product developers and hosts.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They also touch on the importance of diversity and inclusion in the WordPress community, and the potential for open source projects to address these issues.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>With both of them involved in WPDay, they give us a preview for the agenda, which includes panels on product development, AI, and sustainability and inclusivity.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And lastly, Jonathan introduces a new event called Pitch Fest which is part of his business, Guildenberg. At this event they are aiming to facilitate partnerships and collaborations in the WordPress space.</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.cloudfest.com/\"><strong>CloudFest 2024</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.cloudfest.com/wp-day\"><strong>WP Day at CloudFest</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://registration.cloudfest.com/registration\"><strong>Register for a free standard pass using the discount code: DotheWoo</strong></a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\nShow Transcript\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p>Jonathan:<br />Welcome to another episode of Do the Woo. I am your co-host, Jonathan Wold. And with me today is your other co-host, Tammie Lister. How are you, Tammie?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />I&#8217;m good, thank you. How are you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />Well, today we are talking about CloudFest and the WP Day, and I&#8217;m excited that we have the Do the Woo, a Strong Do the Woo presence this year at CloudFest, there are multiple hosts who are going to be there, and this, if I&#8217;m recalling correctly, Tammie will be your first time out to CloudFest, not the first time you&#8217;ve been invited though. What was your first impression when you first heard of CloudFest? It&#8217;s been a couple of years, right? Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />Yeah. I think my first impression was not really understanding how I would fit there, and I think that&#8217;s something in the conversations with you and with working through this has been, and you can kind of address that a little bit more, is seeing how it&#8217;s not just for the business conversations or hosting, and that has been really interesting. So I&#8217;d love you to talk more on that because just the way that you explained it to me has been really interesting as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />So for those who don&#8217;t know, let&#8217;s give some context. So CloudFest is an event that takes place every year in Europe. It&#8217;s in Europa Park, which is a little town in Germany, which you, you&#8217;ve been to the park before. You know the venue?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />Yes, when I was younger.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />And for those who don&#8217;t know, my impression as an American going to the park for the first time is like, this has a curiously, it reminds me of a Disney World.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />Let&#8217;s go with that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />Yeah. It&#8217;s quite interesting. I actually quite enjoyed my experience. It might be different as a child. I&#8217;m sure a lot&#8217;s changed as well since you were there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />Yes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />So this will be my third year attending. The first year I was a backup speaker and I spoke on WordPress as an ecosystem. And then last year we put together a WP Day at the beginning of kick it off, and this year it&#8217;s expanding further. My first impression, CloudFest has been going for a long time. The hosting industry is a big industry. There&#8217;s a lot of moving parts and pieces to it, and CloudFest has its own storied history For a while it was owned by GoDaddy and then ultimately the group of folks who have been at the heart of it for a long time, Soeren and Christian, and have a great team around them, took CloudFest several years back and have been growing it since. It&#8217;s a fantastic event. The team really knows how to put together an event experience. And the thing that I&#8217;ve personally loved about it over the past couple of years is just the growing WordPress influence in the programming and the attendees and the thinking and the reason is quite obvious.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress is a massive part of the hosting industry, and from my first time attending to each time since just the interest and the openness on the part of the hosting community and those who serve them to understand WordPress better, it&#8217;s been fantastic and it&#8217;s been great for me to see the growing number of WordPress community folks who&#8217;ve been making it out. So just before CloudFest, we have WordCamp, Asia, and Taipei. For some, it&#8217;s an opportunity to combine two trips into one for others it&#8217;s like, okay, that&#8217;s way too much. So it&#8217;s like an either or.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />Yeah. And I think it&#8217;s like you have to make decisions depending on your families, depending on what you&#8217;re doing, depending on whether you can drop your bag back home, get your change of clothing, and because it&#8217;s very different environments as well, right? March in Germany versus Taipei. But I think that that&#8217;s kind of the good thing. It&#8217;ll be different energies and different people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />And lemme just expand on that idea of difference for a moment. So one of the things that I love about CloudFest, especially if you&#8217;ve just been attending WordCamps, is the difference. Now if you go to a cloud fest, and for those who are just doing WordCamps, it may be a bit of a shock to go to an event that&#8217;s not volunteer driven. So there&#8217;s still volunteers, there&#8217;s folks like myself, Carole Olinger and others who are just helping out on the WordPress side of things, but there&#8217;s a professional team that runs this. It&#8217;s like a large scale event and it shows up in a lot of ways. When I&#8217;m describing this to folks who haven&#8217;t been to a WordCamp or to an event like this, it&#8217;s like there is a big difference with a WordCamp. What you get is very driven by the organizing team and what they bring to the table.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a passion and a heart to it, and your experience will vary. Some parts may be really good, other parts may be sort of underdone, and that can be daunting for folks coming to WordCamps for the first time who are used to professional events and with professional events, you have a much higher expectation. You see that in CloudFest. The other part of it though is that the team loves the WordPress space, so there&#8217;s also a lot of heart that they bring into it, and that shows up in the openness that they&#8217;ve had to inviting folks like myself and others to contribute and shape and influence the WordPress side of things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So last year, WP Day was on the Monday before CloudFest kicks off proper, and that was great. We had a couple hundred people there. We tried a mix of different things. This year we&#8217;re doing the same, but making it even more of just the proper launch to CloudFest. They&#8217;ve got some great meetup stuff, more community stuff happening in the morning and then WP Day kicks off in the afternoon. And yeah, I&#8217;m pretty excited. Now you and I are both going to get a chance to attend the hackathon this time around, but yeah, that&#8217;s something that I&#8217;m looking forward to. I&#8217;ve heard really good things about it. I know that Carole and the team do some fantastic work, but this will be my first time getting to see it actually in practice. And one of the projects you were connected with.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />Yeah, so I heard about it and I&#8217;m really, really excited about Birgit&#8217;s project, the inclusive language checker for open source contributors, and she&#8217;s actually going to be on the panel for a WP day. So there&#8217;s a lovely cohesion going through and I&#8217;m really, really excited about just, and that&#8217;s the kind of thing, having those kind of projects in the hackathon, I&#8217;ve always seen some of these projects come from CloudFest and then kind of come through into the project. I think it&#8217;s really important to, we have a lot of interesting perspectives inside, but we get really interesting perspectives when we start collaborating with people who are outside as well. And that is what I feel that you get from situations like this. A curious point, my last time I was in Taipei, I was actually at a cross open source conference, so those kind of cross conferences to me are incredibly delightful.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that is something that I am really hoping to get from this. And just those different voices that you are all trying to do a similar thing at different levels and just the idea that hacking on different things, the inclusive language, I&#8217;m really excited because it covers so many things. I mean, I&#8217;m going to read the project description because I think it&#8217;s worth reading, but the primary goal of the project is to standardize accessible and inclusive documentation guidelines of across different WordPress teams on the make WordPress dot org, the project aims to consolidate existing internal guidelines into a unified handbook and encourage adherence to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I always love that we have belonging in there as well. Principles in documentation and posts. So the whole idea is we have all this information in different places and it&#8217;s about bringing it all together. That&#8217;s kind of the too long don&#8217;t read of it. We often think of hackathons as one type of thing, but hackathons are really just like contribution days. They should be multiple different types of things. And this is exactly, so a lot of open source projects that aren&#8217;t WordPress do have incredibly good inclusion and diversity documentation. So been able to learn how they&#8217;ve done it, how they&#8217;ve done inclusion, and how they have language checkers. So yeah, I&#8217;m really excited to see what comes from this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />Look forward to that. And I think I&#8217;m glad you made the reference to contributor today. Again, there&#8217;s some important similarities between what&#8217;s worked well at WordCamps and what we&#8217;ve been doing over here and also what CloudFest does, and it&#8217;s doing it differently. It&#8217;s not the same yet. There&#8217;s influence between them. Let&#8217;s talk about the WooCommerce angle for a moment. So it was interesting for me for the past three years, so as WordPress has been a clear sort of backdrop and influence, WooCommerce comes up a lot and one of the big changes this year, so Automattic is an official sponsor and WooCommerce is going to have representation. We have Rosalyn from the marketplace team who&#8217;s going to be on one of the panels, which I&#8217;m excited about. So yeah, that&#8217;s one of the things that stood out to me in my conversations with hosts attending has just been the strong interest in Woo.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so I was really happy to see, so obviously we have great community representation, do the Woo will be there and Woo, as a sponsoring organization through Automattic will also be there. And I think that&#8217;s great. That&#8217;s a great connection of interest because for a lot of the hosts, they&#8217;re looking at the proprietary platforms and seeing what they&#8217;re doing. And WooCommerce today is one of the strongest allies and there&#8217;s been some confusion in the past where, okay, is WooCommerce focusing on hosting and what&#8217;s the deal? And I was happy to see Matt right before he went on sabbatical, make that move to try and clarify that firewall of interest, if you will, where it&#8217;s like, there&#8217;s the hosting team who&#8217;s going to do this, but WooCommerce is free to do whatever. And I think that&#8217;s a great backdrop for Woo coming into CloudFest to say, Hey, we&#8217;re here to work with the hosts. We&#8217;re here to connect these ecosystems better. And so that&#8217;s something, another reason why I think for folks who are in the Woo space thinking about CloudFest, there&#8217;s a high openness and a desire on the part of hosts to bolster their WooCommerce offerings. And I think working with product folks is one of the best ways to do so.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />And I think people need it. If you look at the example I always do is Etsy people just because it&#8217;s a real ground level example that people used to be able to start their small shop, knitting, crafting, whatever, put it on Etsy, and they can&#8217;t generally do it now because of the high fees. There&#8217;s very few opportunities because of high fees and scaling to do that. So you are more and more looking for how can you do it yourself and the scale of being able to do that. So the market for out of the box easy through hosting, being able to do it, just simplification of that process and just set it and go for these people because they want to be able to crochet hats or they don&#8217;t want to have to, or little animal goy creatures.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They don&#8217;t want to have to worry about are their plugins going to be compatible when WordPress updates and all these kind of things. That&#8217;s not going to work right. And that&#8217;s why they were with, again, another opportunity for shipping and all these kind of things. They can&#8217;t work out masses of shipping. That&#8217;s why they were with things like Etsy. Yeah, it&#8217;s really, I feel it&#8217;s like the artists, the crafters, the small businesses, they&#8217;re just getting squeezed out with that. So I&#8217;m hopeful that there&#8217;s a regeneration. I have a place in my heart for that. So I&#8217;m hopeful that we can do something for that because it&#8217;s a really important part of,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />So one of the themes for CloudFest over the past couple of years has been this focus on sovereignty and the importance and just better representing the global interests of the internet this year&#8217;s theme. And is this idea of, how would they describe it? The uniting the nations of cloud and this idea that the world is, there&#8217;s a lot of different interests. Internet&#8217;s this thing that brings so much of us together and at the same time to do it well, you have to recognize the differences. And I think the WordPress project, there&#8217;s such a good alignment with that because WordPress by its nature is incredibly diverse and there&#8217;s a resilience to that and a lot of complexity when it comes to recognizing the differences in cultures and the ways of working and thinking about things. And CloudFest to me, does a good job bringing together a lot of the best of that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And you have an entire week in a place where this is how I set the stage for those who are thinking of going, attend, get there for the hackathon. If you can make sure that you&#8217;re there by WP Day, and that&#8217;s a great start to the week. And then you&#8217;re going to have the entire week. They have good programming throughout the week and you&#8217;re in this large shared space where you have opportunity to connect. You can also go off on your own if you want peace and quiet. There&#8217;s a lot of space and a lot of flexibility. And I really enjoyed it and I think I&#8217;m quite excited about this year.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />I wanted to also say something where you were saying about the diverse, the other end from an end user perspective is being able to pay for your product. That is such a challenge depending on where you are, and that is a big part of access to these sites and the more closed platforms, access to them is really difficult depending on your location. So I think that is a big part. Diversity includes access to the content, includes access to the customers that are the right customers for you, includes access to be able to sell your thing that you make rather than having to go through a third party. So maybe you make something in a particular remote part, but you can actually sell it rather than having to go through someone that takes a cut of it. All of those kind of simple things that we can really empower, but just being able to pay using your currency that maybe isn&#8217;t accepted in certain payment gateways and all these kind of conversations I think is really interesting. When we&#8217;re talking about Woo and we&#8217;re talking about payment gateways and access, it&#8217;s not the part of diversity and inclusion that we always think about, but it really is the right to be able to sell and pay for your goods is really an inclusion and access</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />And hosts are in a great position to execute on that for the locales and markets that they serve in a way that a large proprietary sort of homogenous organization can&#8217;t easily do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s the right to access and the right to access is that if you limit access to someone, you limit their potential. So being able to have access on both ends, like selling and purchasing is really, really important. And so yeah, it&#8217;s all big conversations to have. I&#8217;m kind of really curious how we solve those. There&#8217;s no good answers because we get into politics and legal, but it&#8217;s also really good answers for open source to start looking at. I think</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />Let&#8217;s take a couple minutes to talk through the agenda. So it kicks off at 1:00 PM on Monday and once you get there it&#8217;ll be clear how to get there. It&#8217;s going to be at the Hotel Colosseo. It&#8217;s a great little spot I&#8217;ll be opening up and then introducing Kevin Ohashi who has the first keynote. His title is Can WordPress Save the Hosting Industry? Kevin, who I have the privilege of knowing for quite a few years, he runs ReviewSignal.com. One of the things that Kevin has done very well from the outset is be unbiased and objective. Obviously we all are. Kevin goes to great lengths to make sure that the things, the reviews that he&#8217;s doing, that it&#8217;s transparent, how it&#8217;s working, especially in a world where it&#8217;s really hard to, what can you trust? He did a bunch of work early on sentiment analysis in bulk to become a basis for, so anyway, he does great work.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He is not sponsored by any hosts, so he is going to be able to give his just candid perspective on the state of the industry and WordPress&#8217; connection to it. Really excited about that. Yeah. Then we&#8217;ve got WordPress by the numbers with Jan Loffler from WebPros. He&#8217;s the CTO. And so WebPros is one of the big sponsors. What I&#8217;ve loved, I&#8217;ve got to work with them directly on this, is they see this as an opportunity to share their insights and perspective. So this isn&#8217;t like people already know who WebPros are, they&#8217;re the guys with cPanel and Pluss and regardless of feelings, the prevalence of them is unquestioned. So they&#8217;re in such a good spot to be able to give a perspective on things and WordPress is a growing interest for them. So that&#8217;s going to be great. The next one is not announced yet. I think I know what&#8217;s going to be, but it&#8217;s not on the agenda, so I won&#8217;t reference it. And then we have our first panel, which you&#8217;re going to be leading, creating Products in an Evolving WordPress. What was your inspiration for the panel?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />So my inspiration was hearing stories of people like Beaver Builder who are working through how do you adapt and change in the space and letting product builders tell the story and people who are navigating that. We have a credible range from people who are supporting that to people who are doing that. So I am really excited. I caught out this specific story because it inspired me on that panel, but really just it&#8217;s not going to be like, here are the things that we are aiming for. It&#8217;s more just the stories and there&#8217;re going to be some challenges. There are, but what is it like? And also things like how do you take stacks? How do you take an existing product and adapt it? What decisions do you make? All of those kind of conversations I think are really important to start having and what ones do you not take is also really important to have. The panelists will have their own ideas, so I&#8217;m really curious how that shapes out in all these panels.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />That&#8217;s awesome. And next up we&#8217;ve got two sponsored talks. So WebPros is going to be talking about WP Squared and then Automatitc who&#8217;s a first year sponsor. We&#8217;ll be talking about what they&#8217;re doing with hosts and with both of those, I&#8217;m excited because they know the audience. They know this is their chance to put their best face forward and they&#8217;re going to do a good job. I&#8217;m excited about both those talks. Next we&#8217;ve got an AI focused panel that I&#8217;ll be leading. We&#8217;ve got Miriam Schwab from Elementor. She&#8217;s got a bunch of contexts. They&#8217;ve been doing some interesting things in the AI space. Sujay from Brainstorm Force. Jesse from Automattic will be representing some automatic interests and I&#8217;m excited to explore that. And panels is something I&#8217;ve always enjoyed and it&#8217;s just an opportunity to get a mix of perspectives and just bring different views together and have some interesting discussions. Panels can be, yeah, they can go either way, but I really enjoyed the process and we&#8217;ve had really good feedback from last year and I think folks are going to love this year. And last but not least, you&#8217;ve got this panel on sustainability, inclusivity in WordPress. What are your thoughts what we want to try and accomplish with that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />So we&#8217;ve got Birgit and Carole, and I&#8217;m really excited. I want to accomplish a space for them both to speak. I think that&#8217;s really what I&#8217;m hoping specifically. I think you can aim to want to achieve things, but sustainably do it. That&#8217;s what, hence the title is a different approach. So I think it&#8217;s going to be really interesting to hear their voices, particularly with Berg&#8217;s project in the hackathon and her recent initiatives. And Cowell is always doing that type of work. So it&#8217;s going to be really interesting to get those perspectives again with these panels. I think as part of it is we&#8217;re in that stage where we&#8217;re just finding out what the panelists want to say as well. You can have those intentions, but it&#8217;s also about what the panelists want to say, which is super exciting. So I am excited for both. I am learning how to do panels as well, so it is also super exciting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know, but it&#8217;s exercising that different part of your brain, so it is really good to learn different panels and you will be good too. So yeah, it is a good time to do it. I am very excited because I think these are maybe different panels too we&#8217;ve had before. We definitely are covering the product and then we&#8217;ve got the AI panel for doing some bingo check, but then having that, but having a sustainable inclusion panel I think is a good angle on it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />Yeah, I think so too. We&#8217;ve also got something that we&#8217;re doing on the Guildenberg side, which is going to be interesting on Wednesday. We&#8217;re putting together this little event called Pitch Fest, and I think it well represents a primary, I think, value for folks in the Woo space. So CloudFest to me is really all about making and growing strengthening connections between folks in this highly diverse ecosystem of ours. And what we&#8217;re trying to do with Pitch Fest that I love is create this space where people can bring their product. Our current goal is to have 30 products and give them 90 seconds each.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re going to see how it goes, but give them 90 seconds each to share their product and what they&#8217;re looking for in partnerships. And what we&#8217;re trying to do here is create an experience that facilitates the partnership because folks will come in and some folks are really good at introducing themselves and others are more, and it&#8217;s like we want to create something that just makes that process easier. It&#8217;s a free event. All folks need to do is register in advance so we know who we&#8217;re working with and we can coach them through. And I think, yeah, I&#8217;m excited about that. To me, at its heart is about facilitating those connections, expanding people&#8217;s perspectives, giving insights into how other people are thinking. And I&#8217;m excited to see how it goes. We still have a lot of work to do leading up to it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />And it&#8217;s going to be pitching your product, but also pitching where you might need something for your product and not just investment,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />What you&#8217;re looking for.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />Exactly. Yeah, and what I&#8217;m curious is would everyone just ask for investment? They could, but also maybe they won&#8217;t. And I kind of like that. If they don&#8217;t ask for investment, they might be asking for something very particular, like a particular partner in something or partnership, or maybe they want to partner in a particular area or they want to expand or have some mentoring. That is a really interesting angle, I think, to add to it, rather than just the investment which there will be there if they want to have that as well. So yeah, it&#8217;s kind of an interesting, and everybody should be able, sorry,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />I&#8217;m hoping that it goes, and this is such a good point because ultimately it&#8217;s about creating a space for people. Where I&#8217;m hoping it goes is to see products working more together where it&#8217;s like, oh hey, because we&#8217;ve had this conversation where two products will quite like each other but haven&#8217;t actually done anything yet. And say, okay, what can we do to help streamline that? And that&#8217;s for folks thinking about attending. I think what in particular about CloudFest is there is this expectation and looking for opportunities. So people are coming in with a, Hey, let&#8217;s work with each other. Let&#8217;s expand, let&#8217;s identify new opportunities, let&#8217;s try things. And then you have an entire week to explore and expand on these ideas. And it&#8217;s not about getting things done, it&#8217;s about the connections part. And that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re trying to do both with WP Day is facilitate more connections between the WordPress space and the hosting industry and then build on that throughout the week. So I&#8217;m excited to see how it goes</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />And you should be able to, in a very short time, pitch your product and what you do. And so it&#8217;s really good practice. It&#8217;s really difficult, but it&#8217;s also really good practice.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />I&#8217;m quite looking forward to it. And then on the WooCommerce front, yeah, we&#8217;re going to have folks from Wu there. I&#8217;m really excited about having Rosalyn from the marketplace team, Ronald Gijsel will also be there from the Woo team. So if y&#8217;all are coming out, please let us know. We&#8217;d love to connect with you in person. And it is not too late also for anyone wanting to register who hasn&#8217;t yet, you can get a free ticket using the code. So just put that in the registration and we&#8217;d love to see you guys there. Tammie, any final words? Anything that you&#8217;re looking forward to in particular?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />I&#8217;ve got a lot. WordCamp Asia and then CloudFest. Looking forward to knowing the differences and enjoying the spaces over the next few weeks. I think that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m going to go with. So I&#8217;m really excited to gain some energy from that and then process it all. So what about you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan:<br />I&#8217;m looking forward to seeing folks again. I&#8217;ve really just enjoyed the experience and just having a dedicated space to reconnect with folks, picking up conversations from the previous year. And I&#8217;m also excited to see WooCommerce&#8217;s presence expand and see what types of opportunities and conversations that opens up for folks there. So it&#8217;ll be fun. We&#8217;ll see how it goes. All right, Tammie, we&#8217;ll see you next time. Yeah,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tammie:<br />Bye.</p>\n</div>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:15:28 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:20;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:73:\"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 75: WordCamp Asia 2024 Unwrapped\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:53:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=17107\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:75:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/03/episode-75-wordcamp-asia-2024-unwrapped/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:12169:\"<p>WordCamp Asia 2024 was a dynamic three-day celebration of collaboration, diversity, and innovation in the WordPress project. This week, Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shares her insights and experiences from the event, which featured one of the largest Contributor Days in the region, a variety of speakers, engaging panel discussions, and workshops. Josepha offers her thoughts on the latest topics being discussed within the community and forming the future of WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Credits</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Host:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/\">Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a><br />Editor:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/\">Dustin Hartzler</a><br />Logo:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/javiarce/\">Javier Arce</a><br />Production:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/bjmcsherry/\">Brett McSherry</a><br />Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Show Notes</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/\">WordCamp Asia 2024</a>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/contributor-day/\">Contributor Day</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1pJFUVKQ7ETpYuALlCQPikuKEuihFsvU\">WordCamp Asia Playlist</a></li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Small List of Big Things</strong>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/category/releases/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">WordPress 6.5</a> is on target for release on&nbsp;March 26, 2024.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Get involved with WordPress events:\n<ul>\n<li>Find events near you on <a href=\"https://events.wordpress.org/\">events.WordPress.org</a> and <a href=\"https://central.wordcamp.org/\">WordCamp Central</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Learn more about <a href=\"https://events.wordpress.org/organize-an-event/\">organizing your own local event</a></li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/03/06/proposal-non-editable-footer-for-all-event-website-pages/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Proposal: Non-editable Footer for all Event Website Pages</a></li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Have a question you&#8217;d like answered? Submit them to <a href=\"mailto:wpbriefing@WordPress.org\">WPBriefing@WordPress.org</a>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Transcript</h2>\n\n\n\n<span id=\"more-17107\"></span>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:00]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong>&nbsp;Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:29] (Intro music)&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:40]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong> I have returned from WordCamp Asia and struggled my way through some truly aggressive jet lag, so that means it&#8217;s time for a little WordCamp wrap-up. I spoke with a couple hundred people at the event, and I came away with a few topics that seemed to be on everyone&#8217;s minds. Those topics are: making business in WordPress, the business of making WordPress, and how to communicate both sides a little better.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:01:04] <strong>Josepha:</strong> So first, let&#8217;s start with making business in WordPress. This comes up at every event, and that honestly just makes sense. WordPress is a tool that people use to power their businesses across our global economy, and sometimes the businesses are closely related to WordPress itself. They are creating custom themes or plugins, building WordPress powered commerce sites for clients, or offering any number of agency services. But there are also businesses that are a little less close: restaurants, museums, local governments, schools. But it was clear that they all rely on the software just as much as the other.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, it was nice to see some sessions that focused specifically on business matters in WordPress. And I heard so many people tell me about a conversation they had had earlier in the day with someone who helped them figure out their pricing or advised them on early errors they made in their business journey and generally helped them feel a little less lost.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I always love seeing this. Hearing how people are accomplishing their goals because of connections they made at one of our events, it&#8217;s enough to keep me coming back for years.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:02:10] <strong>Josepha:</strong> The next thing that came up a lot was the business of making WordPress. I don&#8217;t know if that came up a lot because of the sorts of conversations that people are willing to bring to me these days or because there was overwhelming interest in knowing how we keep all these trains on their tracks. But either way, it was refreshing to be able to have so many conversations about the invisible work that goes into a project like this. There was a Contributor Day that hosted over 600 people, if I recall correctly, which makes it the largest Contributor Day in the area to date. 35 percent of those people had never attended a Contributor Day before, so there were a lot of people who were discovering the WordPress community for the first time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And for folks who&#8217;ve been here for a long time, it&#8217;s so easy for us to forget how much there is to learn at first. Even if you happen to show up with a skill set that fits a contributor team&#8217;s needs exactly, you still have to learn where we collaborate, how distributed contribution works, and all these rules and guidelines about open source freedoms and copyleft.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:03:10] <strong><strong>Josepha</strong>:</strong> And then also you have to come to terms with the fact that we define and design all of our spaces and programs with belonging in mind. I mean, for every one question that you get answered, there are going to be six new ones that you didn&#8217;t know you had yet. So I came away from a lot of these conversations with the reminder that it&#8217;s important in so many ways for us to talk about the work that we do, even when it&#8217;s boring, even when we think it doesn&#8217;t really matter, because a lot of people have questions about how this works, how it runs, and how they can be part of making sure that it&#8217;s around for the long-term.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the final thing that came up all over the place last week was how to communicate these things better. It&#8217;s easy to forget that folks who listen to this podcast don&#8217;t actually make up like a hundred percent of the people using WordPress; that&#8217;s on me. So just cause I&#8217;ve said here that, you know, enterprise is our next big space for biz dev or that, our primary growth markets are APAC, or that events are our best tool for brand expression.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:08] <strong><strong>Josepha</strong>:</strong> Like, just because I said it doesn&#8217;t mean that everyone heard it. And we absolutely have to get those messages to more people, more frequently, and with more certainty. You&#8217;ll hear often from WordPress pundits that rising tides lift all boats, and the bigger the pie, the more the slices. We believe fully in the spirit of coopetition here, that we are all better together.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I can&#8217;t shake the feeling that we&#8217;re mostly just talking to ourselves about it. It&#8217;s hard to get outside our own little bubble, but I believe completely that doing so is the best thing for our project in the long term. Not only so that we can continue to grow and provide access to the opportunities we know we offer but also so that we can do more to dignify our profession.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress developers are not taken seriously, and yet you all are some of the smartest and most compassionate people I&#8217;ve ever met in my career. And I&#8217;d like to see how we can fix that perception together. And so that&#8217;s it. Those are the big, big, giant, old topics that came up a lot in conversation last week.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:14] <strong><strong>Josepha</strong>:</strong> Don&#8217;t forget that you can catch up on all the sessions via the live stream, or if you are feeling inspired to contribute, reach out to the community team and see what sorts of meetup events you can host.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:24] (Music interlude)&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:32] <strong><strong>Josepha</strong>:</strong> Which brings us now to our small list of big things. I have two big things and one slightly less big thing, but they&#8217;re all fairly big.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, the first thing on the list is that the latest version of WordPress, WordPress 6.5, is on target for release on March 26th. That&#8217;s, I think, a couple weeks from now. So keep an eye out for that. In the event, I mean, we have auto-updates everywhere, and probably you are on a WordPress-specific host and, so you won&#8217;t necessarily need to do anything. But if you have any desire or concerns about seeing the software a little bit ahead of time, you can always go and download the beta, give it a quick test or the release candidate, give that a quick test. See if there&#8217;s anything that&#8217;s not functioning as you expected it to function, and let us know if it&#8217;s not. But yeah, there are auto-updates. You don&#8217;t have to go out and proactively do anything if you don&#8217;t want to, that&#8217;s just in case you do want to. That&#8217;s coming up March 26th.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:27] <strong><strong>Josepha</strong>:</strong> The next thing is that I want to give everybody a general call-in for event contribution. So, WordPress events is where I entered the community. It is one of the most affirming and life-changing types of contribution I&#8217;ve ever done because you get to see a bunch of people succeed in their own goals because of something that you were able to tell them. It&#8217;s like teaching, but with people who elected to be there. So we have a lot of opportunities, for contribution by volunteering at events, either as volunteering at the event itself or to volunteer to organize it. We have small-scale, easy-to-do meetups, but we also have slightly larger WordCamps that can be done. If you have any hope for doing that or are just kind of interested. I&#8217;ll leave a link for you in the show notes.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:19] <strong><strong>Josepha</strong>:</strong> And then the final thing on here is that we actually have a pretty substantial proposal out at the moment. It&#8217;s for non-editable footers on all event website pages. This might not sound interesting to you, but it actually is kind of interesting. So, it&#8217;s been proposed to add a non-editable footer to all of the event website pages moving forward. So that&#8217;s everything that would be displayed on a WordCamp or on any of the new formatted event sites that we have. This proposal intends to meet two goals. One, it fills any legal requirements a site or country might have about displaying the privacy policy and other items. And two, it brings visibility to the new events.WordPress.org website, where a community member can find more events in their area.&nbsp;The last day to respond to that proposal is March 20th, which I think is two days from now. I think it&#8217;s on Wednesday and this is airing on Monday. So, I&#8217;ll have a link to that in the show notes as well in case you have any thoughts about it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:15] <strong><strong>Josepha</strong>:</strong> And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don&#8217;t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You&#8217;ll get a friendly reminder whenever there&#8217;s a new episode. And if you like what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you ended up with questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:43] (Music outro)&nbsp;</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 18 Mar 2024 12:00:00 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:14:\"Brett McSherry\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:21;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:132:\"Gutenberg Times: Build modern layouts, WordPress 6.5 Dev Notes, Gutenberg in Drupal, Block Bindings and more — Weekend Edition 287\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:35:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=27683\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:136:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/build-modern-layouts-wordpress-6-5-dev-notes-gutenberg-in-drupal-block-bindings-and-more-weekend-edition-287/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31684:\"<p>Howdy, </p>\n\n\n\n<p>What a great experience WordCamp Asia and Taipei, Taiwan was!  I went a few days early so I could do some sightseeing. The city combines the traditional, the unconventional with the 21st century high-tech vibe. I will share photos and details in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, you can browse <a href=\"https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMyuvtvybIj_CwDdW2VPIIe_z20ohY1CsNhSxAfWeTuhczLJmVokhcfdHDi60UvrQ?key=YU1RcnRPa0o2aHNJZV9ocWlhVlpmdFlrYUxUc1JB\">the official photo album</a> of the WordCamp. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>The WordPress  Community organizers of Asia did a fantastic job bringing all the cultures of the region together again. It was interestingly enough, marketed as the Premier Open-Source event for the Web. It&#8217;s a strong argument to be made that&#8217;s what attracted about 36% of local and first time attendees. It was again super well organized! It was heart-warming to see and hug so many friends and make new ones. I love the WordPress community. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, now the downside of me traveling was that I didn&#8217;t publish during my trip. This weekend&#8217;s edition is again huge. Get your favorite beverage, and let&#8217;s see what happened in between. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>\n\n\n\n<p>PS: I might have missed something awesome, please let me know and I add to next&#8217;s week&#8217;s edition. </p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ol><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/build-modern-layouts-wordpress-6-5-dev-notes-gutenberg-in-drupal-block-bindings-and-more-weekend-edition-287/#0-word-press-release-information\">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a><ol><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/build-modern-layouts-wordpress-6-5-dev-notes-gutenberg-in-drupal-block-bindings-and-more-weekend-edition-287/#wordpress-6-5\">WordPress 6.5 </a><ol><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/build-modern-layouts-wordpress-6-5-dev-notes-gutenberg-in-drupal-block-bindings-and-more-weekend-edition-287/#block-centric-dev-notes-for-wordpress-6-5\">Block-centric Dev Notes for WordPress 6.5 </a></li></ol></li></ol></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/build-modern-layouts-wordpress-6-5-dev-notes-gutenberg-in-drupal-block-bindings-and-more-weekend-edition-287/#gutenberg-plugin-releases\">Gutenberg plugin releases</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/build-modern-layouts-wordpress-6-5-dev-notes-gutenberg-in-drupal-block-bindings-and-more-weekend-edition-287/#0-p\">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/build-modern-layouts-wordpress-6-5-dev-notes-gutenberg-in-drupal-block-bindings-and-more-weekend-edition-287/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled\">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/build-modern-layouts-wordpress-6-5-dev-notes-gutenberg-in-drupal-block-bindings-and-more-weekend-edition-287/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press\">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor</a><ol><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/build-modern-layouts-wordpress-6-5-dev-notes-gutenberg-in-drupal-block-bindings-and-more-weekend-edition-287/#from-the-wordpress-developer-blog\">From the WordPress Developer Blog</a></li></ol></li></ol>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"0-word-press-release-information\">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>During the break, Joen Asmussen published two Design shares: <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/design/2024/03/11/design-share-feb-26-mar-8/\">Design Share: Feb 26-Mar 8</a> and <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/design/2024/02/26/design-share-feb-12-feb-23/\">Design Share: Feb 12-Feb 23</a>, where he highlights the work the WordPress Design team has accomplished lately. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a lot of work being done for the upcoming revamp of the Learn.WordPress.org site. You can see the exploration for Learn video thumbnails. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the editor, designers are working on placeholders, for the group and columns blocks. &#8220;Threading the needle on setup states that provide convenient shortcuts when inserted empty, yet still scale to very narrow contexts when they are inserted, for example, in a 100px thin column, is a tall order. &#8221; he wrote. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also visualized the work on Social Icons, Inspector controls (dev speak for options in the editor&#8217;s sidebar), a refreshed Select Mode and a new icon for the Metabox modal.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The team continued work on the redesign of WordPress.org.  Forums and pattern directory are next. </p>\n\n\n\n<img width=\"652\" height=\"430\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/forums-and-patterns-scaled-1.webp?resize=652%2C430&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-27862\" />\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>In the monthly roundup post on the Developer blog, <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/03/10/whats-new-for-developers-march-2024/\"><strong>What’s new for developers? (March 2024)</strong></a>, Nick Diego collected 28 developer relevant changes in this round-up post. You might want to reserve some time going through it. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"wordpress-6-5\">WordPress 6.5 </h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/03/wordpress-6-5-release-candidate-2/\">WordPress 6.5 Release Candidate 2</a> was released March 12, 2024. It&#8217;s really time test and make sure your plugins and themes are compatible. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Final release is scheduled for March 26, 2024. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>In her post <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/07/unblocking-wp6-5-font-library-and-synced-pattern-overrides/\"><strong>Unblocking WP6.5 – Font Library and Synced Pattern Overrides</strong></a> <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy</strong> explained the decisions on two discussions about Font  Library&#8217;s default upload directory and naming patterns for the Synced pattern overrides feature. TL;DR Font Library is still in the release, Synced pattern overrides was punted to WordPress 6.6 </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>With the release candidate, the documentation release leads collected,  published the Dev Notes about new features and updates and compiled <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/15/wordpress-6-5-field-guide/\">WordPress 6.5 Field Guide</a>. </p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"block-centric-dev-notes-for-wordpress-6-5\">Block-centric Dev Notes for WordPress 6.5 </h4>\n\n\n\n<table width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" class=\"ng-block-7f5e2b4e4d3bc762 wp-block-newsletterglue-list ng-block\"><tbody><tr><td class=\"ng-block-td\"><ul class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-list\">\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/06/new-feature-the-block-bindings-api/\">New Feature: The Block Bindings API</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/14/new-feature-font-library/\">New Feature: Font Library</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/04/updates-to-block-hooks-in-6-5/\">Updates to Block Hooks in 6.5</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/09/miscellaneous-editor-changes-in-wordpress-6-5/\">Miscellaneous Editor changes in WordPress 6.5</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/05/unification-of-the-site-and-post-editors-in-6-5/\">Unification of the site and post editors in 6.5</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/04/script-modules-in-6-5/\">Script Modules in 6.5</a>&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/04/interactivity-api-dev-note/\">Interactivity API in 6.5</a></li>\n</ul></td></tr></tbody></table>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Leonardo Nurugha</strong>, documentation co-lead of the release, offers a preview: <strong><a href=\"https://www.hostinger.com/blog/wordpress-6-5-preview\">What’s Coming in WordPress 6.5</a>.</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Carlos Daniele</strong> took a deep dive into the most important features for the Kinsta Blog: <a href=\"https://www.therepository.email/?mailpoet_router&endpoint=track&action=click&data=WyI1NTYiLCIxam9oNGRrYjZ2Zm84dzRvb293ZzRvczg4Z2swNHM0dyIsIjEwMTgiLCJkYjkzYzgwOWZlZmIiLGZhbHNlXQ\"><strong>What&#8217;s new in WordPress 6.5: Font Library, DataViews, Block Bindings, Interactivity API, and much more!</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Courtney Robertson</strong> published a <a href=\"https://www.godaddy.com/resources/news/whats-new-in-wordpress-6-5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>What&#8217;s new in WordPress 6.5</strong></a> walk-through and separated the updates for site builders and users from those relevant for developers. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>And if you want to drink from the fire hose about updates in WordPress 6.5, <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> has the ultimate <a href=\"https://nomad.blog/2024/03/13/wordpress-6-5-source-of-truth/\"><strong>WordPress 6.5 Source of&nbsp;Truth</strong></a> for you. In this over 10,000-word opus, you&#8217;ll find the updates tagged for each group of WordPress users they would be relevant to end users, theme or plugin authors, developers, site admins, and enterprises. For selective reading you could use your browser&#8217;s &#8220;Find on page&#8221; feature and search for these tags. She lists 15 priority items, with an array of 26 sub-items, and then another 23 additional items, and closes with information about items that didn&#8217;t make it into the release for one reason or another.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>You could also go the other direction and watch <strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf8w0xMNToY\"><strong>explain WordPress 6.5  in 250 seconds</strong></a>. </p>\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"toolbelt-video-wrapper\"></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"gutenberg-plugin-releases\">Gutenberg plugin releases</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Gutenberg 17.8 and 17.9 together comprised of 360 merged Pull requests.  </p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Joni Halabi</strong>, senior software developer at Georgetown University, and I chatted about the new features in Gutenberg as well as what&#8217;s coming in WordPress 6.5 in our 97th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog. As always, the latest episode will drop into your favorite Podcast app over the weekend. </p>\n\n\n\n<table width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" class=\"ng-block-19ff5927fbed65c0 wp-block-newsletterglue-image ng-block size-large\"><tbody><tr><td class=\"ng-block-td\" align=\"center\"><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-97-wordpress-6-5/\"><img width=\"652\" height=\"184\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-16-at-10.01.59.png?resize=652%2C184&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-27852 ng-image\" /></a></td></tr></tbody></table>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-accent-color has-light-background-background-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-elements-e8dede3a46d70e524111790d4754152e\">🎙️ Latest episode: <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-97-wordpress-6-5/\">Gutenberg Changelog #97 – WordPress 6.5, Gutenberg 17.8 and 17.9</a> with special guest Joni Halabi. </p>\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\">If you haven&#8217;t yet, you can subscribe to any of these services and apps: <br /><a href=\"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gutenberg-changelog/id1469294475\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Apple Podcasts</a> | <a href=\"https://castbox.fm/channel/Gutenberg-Changelog-id2173375\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">CastBox</a> | <a href=\"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9ndXRlbmJlcmd0aW1lcy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Google </a>| <a href=\"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9ndXRlbmJlcmd0aW1lcy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Podcasts</a> | <a href=\"https://pca.st/7O43\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">PocketCasts</a> |  <a href=\"https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/chi7j-9904a/Gutenberg-Changelog-Podcast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Podbean</a>  <br /><a href=\"https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/gutenberg-changelog-878239/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Podchaser</a> | <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/podcast/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">RSS</a> | <a href=\"https://open.spotify.com/show/620NwVKQJGdTupy36zYxvg\">Spotify</a></p>\n\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Grant M. Kinney</strong>, core contributor, sponsored by Automattic, lead the release of Gutenberg 17.8 and highlighted in the release post <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/02/28/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-8-28-february/\"><strong>What’s new in Gutenberg 17.8? (28 February)</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<table width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" class=\"ng-block-7e5fa67d2e228d8a wp-block-newsletterglue-list ng-block\"><tbody><tr><td class=\"ng-block-td\"><ul class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-list\">\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/02/28/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-8-28-february/#grid-layout-variation\">Grid layout variation</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/02/28/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-8-28-february/#bulk-export-your-patterns\">Bulk export your patterns</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/02/28/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-8-28-february/#browse-and-try-alternative-templates-in-the-sidebar\">Browse and try alternative templates in the sidebar</a></li>\n</ul></td></tr></tbody></table>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Andrew Serong</strong>, lead the Gutenberg 17.9 release. In his release post <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/13/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-9-13-march/\"><strong>What’s new in Gutenberg 17.9 (13 March)</strong></a> he highlighted: </p>\n\n\n\n<table width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" class=\"ng-block-3a9cb57e37594a64 wp-block-newsletterglue-list ng-block\"><tbody><tr><td class=\"ng-block-td\"><ul class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-list\">\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/13/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-9-13-march/#color-and-typography-presets-in-global-styles\">Color and typography presets in Global Styles</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/13/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-9-13-march/#indenting-list-block-items-via-the-tab-key\">Indenting List block items via the tab key</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/13/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-9-13-march/#shuffle-option-when-choosing-patterns\">Shuffle option when choosing patterns</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"ng-block\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/13/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-9-13-march/#replace-flow-for-template-parts-in-inspector-controls\">Swap Template Parts in the Inspector</a></li>\n</ul></td></tr></tbody></table>\n\n\n\n<table width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" class=\"ng-block-245c96a9ce04dc02 wp-block-newsletterglue-text ng-block\"><tbody><tr><td class=\"ng-block-td\" align=\"none\"><p>My &#8220;About-time-feature&#8221; in this round:  Using the tab key to indent list items. It has been so ingrained in my muscle memory from using Google Documents tripped my up every time, I wanted to indented list items. Anything you have been waiting for a long time? </p></td></tr></tbody></table>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"0-p\">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric Karkovack</strong> did a deep dive into <strong><a href=\"https://speckyboy.com/create-manage-block-patterns-wordpress/\">How to Create &amp; Manage Block Patterns in WordPress</a></strong>. It&#8217;s a fantastic tutorial explaining what patterns are and how you can create your own with the WordPress Site editor. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Paul Halfpenny</strong> introduced a new plugin called <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/personalizewp/\"><strong>PersonalizeWP</strong></a>, which allows you to use personalization features within WordPress. &#8220;The plugin can help you tailor your content for your website visitors using the Block Editor to define what appears for them based on the conditions you choose.&#8221; he wrote. Learn more about pro version and all the features <a href=\"https://personalizewp.com/\">on their website</a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jamie Marsland </strong>and <strong>Brian Coords</strong> discussed in this video <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehhmnpjc7Fc\"><strong>How to Fix WordPress Gutenberg!</strong></a> Specifically, they walk through some usability issues of Block themes and the Site editor. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>A similar discussion followed Anne McCarthy&#8217;s post about <a href=\"https://nomad.blog/2024/02/16/overlapping-problems/\">overlapping problems</a> from last month in a Hallway Hangout. McCarthy posted the<strong> <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/02/27/summary-of-hallway-hangout-on-overlapping-problems-in-the-site-editor/\">Summary of Hallway Hangout on overlapping problems in the Site Editor</a></strong></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>Did you know you can install and use the Gutenberg block editor, built for WordPress, in Drupal! This video on YouTube walks you through the steps: <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uI4jXT3FsA&t=4s\"><strong>Getting Started with Gutenberg (Block Editor) in Drupal (2024)</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Rich Tabor</strong> introduced his<a href=\"https://rich.blog/cards-block/\"> <strong>new block: Cards</strong></a>. &#8220;This block is technically two blocks: a “Cards” block and a singular “Card” block, which is repeated—reminiscent of the WordPress Buttons block. Even now, I find it incredibly helpful to look at the&nbsp;<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/tree/trunk/packages/block-library/src\">source code for official WordPress blocks</a>, which has all the tried-and-true methods for just about any type of block you’re looking to build next. Don’t reinvent, iterate.&#8221; he wrote.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>In his video <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0tyPAOcwDw\"><strong>You won&#8217;t believe WordPress can do this</strong></a>! Jamie Marsland shows off the Cover Block magic possible with the WordPress Core. He shows you five different effects: the magical Parallax, the Scroll Snap, the Font Reverse the animation, and the Rick Roll. </p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled\">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://twitter.com/pandulu\">Claudio Rimann</a> </strong>shared his latest article <a href=\"https://claudiorimann.com/git-going-with-fse-and-block-theme-development/\"><strong>Git going with FSE and Block Theme Development</strong></a> &#8220;Working with Block Themes and versioning in Git didn&#8217;t play together as nicely as I was used to. Here&#8217;s how we adjusted our workflow to make it work for us.&#8221; <a href=\"https://twitter.com/pandulu/status/1768649157097472375\">he tweeted</a>. It fits into a discussion that also happens in the Make WP Slack #outreach channel</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>The video of a workshop called &#8220;<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5ZQLNYxdPY\"><strong>Developer Hours: How to build modern web layouts</strong></a>&#8221; available on YouTube. In this one-hour workshop, Justin Tadlock made it all about learning to make website layouts with WordPress blocks. It was really helpful for anyone who wants to figure out how to put together different blocks to make cool and useful website designs. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tadlock also looked at some website layouts people had made without blocks and showed how to make those using blocks instead. In the later part of the workshop, he gave some helpful tips, like when to use your own extra styling, how to make blocks look special, and when to turn your design into a repeatable pattern. This is great for making your site look just right but also keeping it easy to use. The examples are <a href=\"https://github.com/wptrainingteam/dev-hours-web-layouts\">available for download from GitHub</a></p>\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2024&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: <strong><strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/\">2020</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2021/\">2021</a></strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2022/\">2022</a></strong></strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2023\">2023</a></strong></p>\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press\">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/keithdevon\"><strong>Keith Devon</strong></a> and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/wpmark\"><strong>Mark Wilkinson</strong></a> from Highrise Digital discuss <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUBpqesD63I\"><strong>WP Café #80 | New features coming in WordPress 6.5</strong></a>.  They cover the discussion around McCarthy&#8217;s overlapping problems post. Then they move on to  cover the Block Bindings API, Interactivity API, and some design tools coming in the new version. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mark Howells-Mead</strong> shared his <a href=\"https://permanenttourist.ch/2024/02/thoughts-on-the-wordpress-interactivity-api/\"><strong>views on the WordPress Interactivity API</strong></a>, pointing out that while there are simpler methods to create interactive interfaces, such as using plain JavaScript or React, learning a framework like the WordPress Interactivity API entails understanding both the core concepts of JavaScript and the specifics of the framework itself.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>In this episode of the Do the Woo &#8211; Inside Woo show, <strong><a href=\"https://dothewoo.io/interactivity-api-collaboration-wordpress-woocommerce/\">The Collaboration of the Interactivity API with WordPress and WooCommerce</a>,</strong> BobWP (Bob Dunn)  chats with WordPress and WooCommerce developers&nbsp;<strong>Carlos Bravo</strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>Lucio Giannotta</strong>&nbsp;about the collaboration between WordPress core and Woo working with the Interactivity API, a new framework for WordPress developers.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brian Coords</strong> reported for the WPTavern on <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/the-block-bindings-api-brings-dynamic-data-to-blocks\"><strong>The Block Bindings API Brings Dynamic Data to Blocks</strong></a>. &#8220;As the block editor continues to evolve its content management capabilities, the lack of support for custom fields has been one of the key roadblocks for users and developers. While custom fields in WordPress are still widely used, in the block editor they’ve been relegated to a drawer at the bottom of the screen, and haven’t been as deeply integrated as many would like. With the coming Block Bindings API, things are about to change in a very good way.&#8221; he wrote.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Eric Karkovack</strong> explored <a href=\"https://thewpminute.com/why-keeping-up-with-gutenberg-is-a-challenge-for-developers/\"><strong>Why Keeping up with Gutenberg Is a Challenge for Developers</strong></a>. &#8220;Let&#8217;s say you have a #WordPress block plugin. What do you do when WP core offers overlapping features? I spoke to some developers about the challenge of keeping up (and adjusting) with Gutenberg.&#8221; Karkocack <a href=\"https://twitter.com/karks88/status/1768703739710337379\">tweeted</a>. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nick Diego</strong> invites you to the next <strong>Developer Hours on March 26, 2024, at 14:00 UTC (9 am EDT).</strong> He <a href=\"https://twitter.com/nickmdiego/status/1768307806799790432\">tweeted</a>: &#8220;While Block Hooks were introduced in WordPress 6.4, I&#8217;m very excited about the upcoming enhancements in 6.5. So many more tools for plugin developers. Join me and Bernie Reiter for <a href=\"https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/299677581/\"><strong>Developer Hours: Exploring Block Hooks in WordPress 6.5</strong></a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernie Reiter also wrote the Dev Notes about the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/04/updates-to-block-hooks-in-6-5/\"><strong>Updates to Block Hooks in 6.5</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"from-the-wordpress-developer-blog\">From the WordPress Developer Blog</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In his latest post, <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/03/14/how-to-register-block-variations-with-php/\"><strong>How to register block variations with PHP</strong></a>, <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> provides a step-by-step walk-through of how to register block variations using PHP in WordPress 6.5.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nick Diego</strong> posted <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/02/29/an-introduction-to-block-based-mega-menus/\"><strong>An introduction to block-based mega menus</strong></a> and explored how to build a Mega Menu block that integrates with the Core Navigation block using new features coming in WordPress 6.5.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> posted <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/03/06/introducing-block-bindings-part-2-working-with-custom-binding-sources/\"><strong>Introducing Block Bindings, part 2: Working with custom binding sources</strong></a>. The second tutorial in a two-part series that introduces the Block Bindings API in WordPress 6.5. Part 2 focuses on registering and using custom binding sources.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><em>Never miss any WordPress Developer Blog post again. <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/subscribe/\">Subscribe </a></em></p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/subscribe/\"><img width=\"652\" height=\"343\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/subscribe-thumbnail.png?resize=652%2C343&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-27854\" /></a>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/\">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now also available via <a href=\"https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json\">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href=\"mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com\">Email me </a>with your experience</p>\n\n\n\n<p><img alt=\"GitHub all releases\" src=\"https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge\" /></p>\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size\"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? </em><br /><em>Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href=\"mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com\">them via email</a> or</em><br /><em> send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size\">For questions to be answered on the <a href=\"http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast\">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, <br />send them to <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n\n<p><em>Featured Image: View of Taipei, Taiwan from the Elephant Mountain, Photo by Birgit Pauli-Haack</em></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>\n\n\n\n<form class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait\" action=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/\" method=\"post\"><div class=\"ngl-form-container\"><div class=\"ngl-form-field\"><label class=\"ngl-form-label\" for=\"ngl_email\"><br />Type in your Email address to subscribe.</label><div class=\"ngl-form-input\"><input type=\"email\" class=\"ngl-form-input-text\" name=\"ngl_email\" id=\"ngl_email\" /></div></div><button type=\"submit\" class=\"ngl-form-button\">Subscribe</button><p class=\"ngl-form-text\">We hate spam, too, and won&#8217;t give your email address to anyone <br />except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition</p></div><div class=\"ngl-message-overlay\"><div class=\"ngl-message-svg-wrap\"></div><div class=\"ngl-message-overlay-text\">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"ngl_list_id\" id=\"ngl_list_id\" value=\"26f81bd8ae\" /><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"ngl_double_optin\" id=\"ngl_double_optin\" value=\"yes\" /></form>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide\" />\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Sun, 17 Mar 2024 12:15:28 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:18:\"Birgit Pauli-Haack\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:22;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:83:\"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #97 – WordPress 6.5, Gutenberg 17.8 and 17.9\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:53:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?post_type=podcast&p=27884\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:72:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-97-wordpress-6-5/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:35058:\"<p>In this episode, Joni Halabi and Birgit Pauli-Haack discuss WordPress 6.5, Gutenberg 17.8 and 17.9</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-69-gutenberg-releases-wordpress-6-0-1-the-create-block-theme/#shownotes\">Show Notes</a> / <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-69-gutenberg-releases-wordpress-6-0-1-the-create-block-theme/#transcript\">Transcript</a></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Music:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://soundcloud.com/xirclebox\">Homer Gaines</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Editor:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-reed/\">Sandy Reed</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Logo:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://markuraine.com/\">Mark Uraine</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Production:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://icodeforapurpose.com\">Birgit Pauli-Haack</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-larger-font-size\" id=\"shownotes\"><strong>Show Notes</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Joni Halabi</strong>, senior developer at Georgetown University</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-design-systems-and-theme-json/\">Live Q &amp; A: Design Systems and theme.json</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/02/static-vs-dynamic-blocks-whats-the-difference/\">Static vs. dynamic blocks: What’s the difference?</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Book:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://jhalabi.com/book/\">Sweet Little You by Joni Halabi</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>X (former Twitter)&nbsp;<a href=\"https://twitter.com/jonihalabi\">@jonihalabi</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>WordPress&nbsp;<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/thatdevgirl/\">@thatdevgirl</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/03/10/whats-new-for-developers-march-2024/\">What’s new for developers? (March 2024)</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/299677581/\">Developer Hours: Exploring Block Hooks in WordPress 6.5</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">WordPress 6.5</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/03/wordpress-6-5-release-candidate-2/\">WordPress 6.5 Release Candidate 2</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/07/unblocking-wp6-5-font-library-and-synced-pattern-overrides/\">Unblocking WP6.5 – Font Library and Synced Pattern Overrides</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/15/wordpress-6-5-field-guide/\">WordPress 6.5 Field Guide</a>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/06/new-feature-the-block-bindings-api/\">New Feature: The Block Bindings API</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/14/new-feature-font-library/\">New Feature: Font Library</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/04/updates-to-block-hooks-in-6-5/\">Updates to Block Hooks in 6.5</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/09/miscellaneous-editor-changes-in-wordpress-6-5/\">Miscellaneous Editor changes in WordPress 6.5</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/05/unification-of-the-site-and-post-editors-in-6-5/\">Unification of the site and post editors in 6.5</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/04/script-modules-in-6-5/\">Script Modules in 6.5</a>&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/04/interactivity-api-dev-note/\">Interactivity API in 6.5</a></li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.therepository.email/?mailpoet_router&endpoint=track&action=click&data=WyI1NTYiLCIxam9oNGRrYjZ2Zm84dzRvb293ZzRvczg4Z2swNHM0dyIsIjEwMTgiLCJkYjkzYzgwOWZlZmIiLGZhbHNlXQ\">What&#8217;s new in WordPress 6.5: Font Library, DataViews, Block Bindings, Interactivity API, and much more!</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Gutenberg plugin</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/02/28/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-8-28-february/\">What’s new in Gutenberg 17.8? (28 February)</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/03/13/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-9-13-march/\">What’s new in Gutenberg 17.9 (13 March)</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\">Stay in Touch</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<ul>\n<li>Did you like this episode? <a href=\"https://lovethepodcast.com/gutenbergchangelog\"><strong>Please write us a review </strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ping us on Twitter or send DMs with questions. <a href=\"https://twitter.com/gutenbergtimes\">@gutenbergtimes </a>and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/bph\">@bph</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>If you have questions or suggestions, or news you want us to include, send them to <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. </em></li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Please write us a review on iTunes! <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/itunes/\">(Click here to learn how)</a></em></li>\n</ul>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\" id=\"transcript\"><strong>Transcript</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Hello, and welcome to our 97th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog Podcast. In today&#8217;s episode, we will talk about WordPress 6.5 is about to release, and then we have Gutenberg plugin versions 17.8 and 17.9. I&#8217;m your host, Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times, and a full-time core contributor for the WordPress Open Source Project sponsored by Automattic&#8217;s Five for the Future program.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m thrilled that Joni Halabi made the time to join me again on the show. Joni is a senior software developer at Georgetown University and a regular guest at the Gutenberg Times shows. It&#8217;s so wonderful to see you again, Joni. How are you today?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi</em>: I&#8217;m doing great and I&#8217;m thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me back. I&#8217;m really excited about what&#8217;s to come in WordPress 6.5. It&#8217;s going to be a good one.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Announcements</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, it&#8217;s coming out in 11 days. If we do it again, this is March 15th. We are recording this March 15th, 2024, and I&#8217;m fresh back from WordCamp Asia, and I brought back marvelous memories of the city because I did some sightseeing and memories of the Asian community where a lot of selfies were taken by WordCamp Asia. It was, again, a wonderful WordCamp and I enjoyed meeting all the friends again that I made last year, or that I have been communicating all these years in the WordPress community and met for the first time last year. It really felt more like a family reunion around the purpose of the open source project.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So from there I brought two announcements. I&#8217;m happy to report that this year&#8217;s State of the Word will be on December 16th, 2024, and it will be brought to you from Tokyo, Japan. It will be, again, an event in location, but of course, live-streamed and live translated from there. We will maybe have some time issues if we want to watch it live in the United States or also in Europe, because Japan has a different time zone. That&#8217;s probably half around the world.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Yeah. I think they&#8217;re possibly 12 hours off from the East Coast of the United States, which is where I am.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> So if it&#8217;s at 3:00 in the afternoon, then you watch it at 3:00 AM in the morning. But it&#8217;s the second time that the State of the Word is outside the American audience, and as Matt Mullenweg in his AMA at the WordCamp explained, &#8220;It&#8217;s a tribute to the first community outside the US that sprung up early on. The WordPress community in Japan was the first one to translate the software into a different language, and back then they didn&#8217;t have all the tools available. They had to fork the full software and go in and translate every string in the code base. I also heard that 86% of all Japanese websites are built with WordPress. So the community is huge and strong and has been for almost two decades. So the first translation, I think it was in 2007 or something like that, I am sorry, I don&#8217;t have the exact year there, so it&#8217;s pretty cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then the second announcement that came out of Taipei, Taiwan was that the next WordCamp Asia will take place in February, 2025 in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. So that&#8217;s the announcements that I have. There were great talks I saw, and many that I missed because I was chatting in the hallway and lost track of time. And apart from the workshops, you can catch them all on the so-called rerun on the live sessions, and I leave in the show notes, the link to the schedule of the sessions as well as to the YouTube live stream recordings, so you can catch up on the talks as well, dear listeners.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> I love learning that. I had no idea that the Japanese community was the first to localize WordPress, and that is so exciting to me that they took that on themselves because I don&#8217;t know if you know this, in a past life I worked as a translation manager for a software company, and we translated into so many languages, and the hardest thing to do is translate something into that second language because it sets the stage for localization in all of these other languages. So they must have done so much heavy lifting. I&#8217;m so impressed by that. I love that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. Well, I didn&#8217;t know that you were a translation manager. And you&#8217;re right, they were the pioneers of that, and out of that collaboration came the prodigal tool that now&#8230; So WordPress is translated into a hundred languages, and there are, I think, something between 3,000 and 5,000 translators now working on translating 6.5 into the languages. So when it came out that someone in Nepal or someone in India, or I think there are translators for seven or eight languages in India alone or in Arabic, can use their software with the new features within their own language. So that&#8217;s so cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Community Contributions</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi</em>: Very cool. Yeah, it sounds like a lot has happened in the last four weeks, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> I imagine. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> So now we&#8217;re just going to catch up on all the details, including all the new features that are coming out. In WordPress 6.5, which comes out, we mentioned this before, on March 26th, so 11 days from when we&#8217;re recording this, and we&#8217;re just going to catch up on all these features in this latest monthly roundup. There&#8217;s a new post on the developer blog that was published this month. Nick Diego collected 28 developer relevant changes in this roundup post, and this post lists all of the new resources that are available for developers. I highly recommend checking it out. It&#8217;s a really great post,</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And he has all the links to dig deeper into whatever comes out of WordPress 6.5. They also cover some of the things that we are going to talk about in 17.8 and 17.9 of the Gutenberg plugin as well.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What’s Released &#8211; WordPress 6.5 RCV2</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So when we come now to the section of what&#8217;s released, we are already in the middle of it actually. We have three releases to cover. That&#8217;s the 6.5 cycle and two Gutenberg plugin versions. So the WordPress 6.5 release candidate two was published, and the testing team collected notes on how best to test this version. And you don&#8217;t need to use it if you don&#8217;t want to. You don&#8217;t need or go into the debug code stuff, developer stuff. You don&#8217;t need to use a hosted test site or local WP, you can just use WordPress playground and run WordPress in your browser. That&#8217;s the new cool feature that came out quite a bit, but we are now all the things that can be previewed or tested, we try to make this work with WordPress Playground. So the release candidate and the developer documentation were also published.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>First one, sad news, my favorite feature, the sync pattern overrides was pulled just before the last release candidate as a few contributors felt it needed to simmer a few more months before it can be released to millions of users. So that has to wait to 6.6, which is scheduled when&#8230; The release schedule is not out, but I think about mid-July or so. So it&#8217;s only two, three months. No, four months. And in the show notes I will have for you the developer notes that are very heavy leaning to developers, hence the name about all the new cool features. It&#8217;s Block Bindings API. That is pretty much the coolest feature we&#8217;re waiting for, for the block editor extension to extend the block editor, and a lot of people have been waiting for and they&#8217;re really gearing up to it, using it and using the heck out of it, so to speak.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Block Bindings API allows you to connect a block with a data point. That could be post meta, that&#8217;s the usual custom fields, but you can also, and that is also explained in the def notes, register your own data sources, so it could be something from a different table from a different action or something like that. So that&#8217;s one thing that we&#8217;re all excited about. What do you think about it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> This is my favorite feature, hands down. I&#8217;m in love because it is not even borderline, it is turning. It gives the developers the ability to turn a static block, for example, a paragraph block into a dynamic block. So it&#8217;s mapping this content that somebody can update in a meta field or really anywhere else on the site, and it&#8217;s mapping that data to a static attribute in one of these blocks, and it is so cool. I see so many applications for it. There&#8217;s some examples in the new feature post that&#8217;s on the blog, and I&#8217;m really excited. I&#8217;m very excited to see how developers are going to use it. I really want to see how we can use it on our team at Georgetown. I&#8217;m just kidding.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, Justin Tadlock on the developer blog, was also quite excited about it and he wrote a, I think it&#8217;s about 5,000 words about it and has a great example. He has part one and part two introducing the feature, and that is really, really important for developers to look into, but I think you will find it fairly easy to figure it out. And on the Gutenberg Times, actually, there&#8217;s also a post that is an almost no code way to use this, and I walk you through with little videos on how you can use the old meta boxes on the bottom of your screen and also add it to a template or something like that, so you have additional ideas that you could have as a site builder who is using not so much code, but more is on the no-code side or low-code side, so I was quite excited when I saw it too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another feature where has a lot of people excited is the fund library, and we have been waiting for it quite a bit because it was actually slated to be in 6.4, but then was pulled also in the release cycle that it needed to simmer a bit or have more testing done, but it&#8217;s now coming in 6.5. Then there is another API that came into 6.4, but it now has some update. That&#8217;s the Block Hooks API, and then we also have now public, and we talked about it for a year and a half on this show, on the Gutenberg Changelog, is the interactivity API is finally made public and in WordPress core. So that&#8217;s another feature where developers can actually build some great websites with it. It&#8217;s almost like there&#8217;s no reload on pages if you have interactivity pieces in there, and it replaces the reliance on jQuery quite a bit. A lot of it happens in PHP if you want to and of course also JavaScript. Have you played with it or tested it? I say play, but I mean tested the interactive API?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> I use play too. Unfortunately I have not. I&#8217;ve been reading a little bit about it, but I just haven&#8217;t found a good case for it on our team just yet. We tend to shy away from interactivity, but I wonder if this will help us get into some more interactive elements on our sites.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> I had a hard time coming up with examples, but the developers who worked on it, they built a great movie demo application and of course made the code also available to that. So I can share that in the show notes. And then we have two people writing about. So Magdalena is writing an introduction into the interactivity API, and then Seth Rubenstein, who also has been on the show on the Gutenberg Live Q and A from the Pew Research Organization. He has done quite a bit of using the interactivity API for some of his voting and quizzes, and he&#8217;s writing a case study about some of his examples. So we&#8217;ll all get much more information about that in the following months, I would say. So the next two to three months or so might not be all ready for the release, but it&#8217;s here to stay, so there&#8217;s some great stuff going.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What else? Oh yeah, Steven Lin documentation co-lead for this release 6.5 has published the WordPress 6.5 field guide, and Carlos Daniele has published a great post on the Kinsta blog, who walks this through all, not only the user facing, but also the user facing changes that are coming down the pipeline. I can name it. We talked about them here on the podcast when they were all coming into the Gutenberg plugin, but it&#8217;s just to remind us all. It&#8217;s the robust revisions for style and template changes and the integration into the style book. Then of course the fund management system and then the background image support for the group block. I like them and you can have tiles or you can have them in a different aspect ratio. Speaking of aspect ratio, there will be support for the cover block and then shadow support for three more blocks. Button blocks had them already, but with 6.5, it also comes to the columns block, and the single column block and images.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The site editor gets plenty of quality of life updates where things get a little bit smoother and then the list view, but everybody&#8217;s friend is your list view. When you have longer posts, it&#8217;s a little bit more complicated and nested blocks that are even more powerful with a right click menu. And then also you can now change names in the block view, so when you have five group blocks together, you can name them and then manage them much better. Speaking of management, pattern management has also gotten some updates there and drag and drop support enlist you and editor canvas. I think those are the most important ones, but there are small little things that make life so much easier in all of these releases.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Yeah. I was just going to say I really love the list view changes because I think, especially changing the names of the blocks, it&#8217;s going to make it so much more intuitive for people who, perhaps they just have a page and list view before, it would just say paragraph, paragraph, paragraph, list view. You really don&#8217;t know where you are in that list view, so if you can change it to paragraph about puppies, paragraph about kittens, paragraph about whatever you&#8217;re writing about, I think that&#8217;ll help people a lot on those longer pages.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. So as we said, release is March 26th, and I know that the design team is working on some featurettes. That&#8217;s what they&#8217;re called. Short videos to show off the biggest new features. So watch the space and I&#8217;ll probably have more in the weekend edition of the Gutenberg Times in the next two weeks leading up to the release and afterwards.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> We could probably spend another two plus hours talking about WordPress 6.5 because it is such a robust release and I really recommend, because we are in release candidate too, definitely check it out. You can check it out via the beta tester plugin or the WordPress playground like we had talked about before.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Gutenberg 17.8</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>But it is time to move on to the Gutenberg plugin release 17.8. 17.8 was released just a couple of weeks ago, on February 28, 2024, and it included 164 pull requests by 45 contributors, and there is a blog post up that was published the same day, February 28th that runs through everything that&#8217;s new in Gutenberg 17.8. So I think it&#8217;s time to run through some of the key features.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> The first up is that you can now bulk export patterns because that&#8217;s now added to the data views on the pattern list view. So go to the site editor and you click on patterns and you see on the patterns, you can now check some of the check patterns and then have a bulk action for export, and you get them in the JSON format. That&#8217;s a JavaScript Object Notation. With that, you can then import it into another website through the same system where there is, I think by the patterns, there is an import JSON button on top of the list view.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Oh, nice. Another new feature is in the template editor or inspector where you can show and select related patterns. So if you show a template or a template part, it will now show similar or related templates in the sidebar, so you can very, very easily in that sidebar switch to a different template or a different template part if you want to just play around with your design and see how something similar might look. I think that&#8217;s a nice interactivity feature.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. And somebody who builds websites definitely needs that to gauge how it is going to look and have switched faster through that and not have that, &#8220;Oh, change it, save it, see how it looks.&#8221; But the preview helps out to curate all that, the list about it. On the grid block variations, that&#8217;s another new feature. There&#8217;s a toggle for the various grid types, so auto-generated or manual or rows or columns and all that. So you can play around with those grid block variations some more. It&#8217;s good to have. You can also change the minimum column width so you know how those columns distribute on your canvas in the front end as well as on the backend and also in mobile view because it&#8217;s intrinsically responsive. And that also is a feature. So for the grid children, so inside the grid, you can also specify rows and columns and change the column span and the row span. So even more to play around for all the designers out there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Yeah. That gives you so many options for different layouts, alternate layouts, and I&#8217;m very happy that accessibility and responsiveness is also taken into consideration here because I think that&#8217;s going to be really important, especially when you start playing with all of these spans. And there&#8217;s some great screenshots in the pull request that give a really clear idea about what&#8217;s going on in the grid block right now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And Justin Tadlock and Ryan Welcher, they had a Developer Hours on how to build more on web layouts with WordPress blocks, and they talked about some of the grid features, but also some can be done with CSS, and so you might want to check those out. And Justin shared all his code to use that in a repo, so I just wanted to make a shout-out for that. It does not cover these grid layout features yet because they weren&#8217;t out yet, but he&#8217;s preparing another show for that for sure, because he&#8217;s very much into grids.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Moving on to some enhancements, the script modules API got a new deregister option, so you can use that to override script modules if you want to de-register a module. There&#8217;s now an API hook into that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And that is actually part of the WordPress 6.5 script modules, API that comes as a new feature. And this was, although it was outside of that, was one of the last Gutenberg plugin releases, it was back boarded to the release candidate, so it will make it into 6.5 when it&#8217;s finally released. And the same with the next one is the block bindings to actually lock the edit of the blocks that have block bindings, so a user can override that if it has a block binding. It also comes with a visual indicator in the toolbar that this block actually has a block binding connection with a custom field, so it&#8217;s much more visible what kind of block this is. So I&#8217;m glad that they found this. This also has been back boarded to the release candidate, so it will come in 6.5 as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Nice. Another new feature that I&#8217;m particularly excited about is when an editor is editing a block in content only mode. So it means that the block inspector is usually unavailable, but now there&#8217;s a new feature that allows editing of an image blocks alt and title attributes when you&#8217;re in that content only mode. And I think this feature is so important because, at least in my experience, a lot of content editors, sometimes they&#8217;ll forget to add a title or alt text to an image, and this just makes it much easier to remind them and give them access to write that content because that&#8217;s content, it&#8217;s content for screen reader users and people who need that. So I&#8217;m very excited about this one.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, glad you pointed that out, yes. I&#8217;m looking through this. There is also an update to the theme JSON schema to actually include the background support that came in with previous versions of the Gutenberg. So you get now support if you use the VS Code or something like that, you get support for the code inspector for the background support. It&#8217;s for settings, and in the settings part, also, it&#8217;s used for the block JSON for custom blocks, so it&#8217;s in the support background setting in the JSON files. Very important.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Gutenberg 17.9</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Moving on to Gutenberg 17.9. 17.9 was released on March 13th, and it included a total of 196 pull requests by 59 contributors. And this is what I&#8217;m excited about. Four of those contributors were first-time contributors, so that&#8217;s very awesome. March 13th, there was also a blog post about what is new in 17.9, so I definitely recommend checking that out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. Go ahead.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Sorry, I was just going to run into the features, but if you wanted to say something before I did that, go for it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> No, go ahead.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Okay. So the first feature that I wanted to call out was that now color and typography presets have been added to global styles. So this was something that was really popular in classic themes where users were allowed to change the color palette and the families in the customizer. So now this is available in global styles.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Excellent. Yes. So it&#8217;s not only the privilege of the theme developer to offer presets for color and typography, so that&#8217;s really good. Another feature is a shuffler option for the pattern category. So if you have a category on your patterns that it&#8217;s maybe call to action, you can press that button, that shuffle button, and it shows you all the call to action at different order. So it makes it easier to select things and not always have to scroll past the same patterns that you saw before. So it makes it a little bit more surprising.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Yeah. Another new feature is in the inner blocks component, there is now support to insert before block and after block actions when you&#8217;re using a lot of blocks. So basically what this means is that if you are a content editor and you have selected a child block inside of some parent block, in the toolbar, there are now options that say add before and add after that will allow you to add child blocks before or after whichever child block you have selected. So it just makes it a little bit easier to add these child blocks as you&#8217;re editing. So I think it&#8217;s a really nice UI feature here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yes, absolutely. And I think it makes it also in combination with the block hooks, API makes it much more versatile for extenders to use that feature as well. Another feature is something that I personally have been waiting for since I saw the list block in Gutenberg, which I think was right from the beginning, but is to allow the tab key to indent a selected part. So up until now, you needed to use the click on the block toolbar to indent a set of list items. So the child parent kind of thing. Now you can use Tab, and that is much more&#8230; For me, it&#8217;s much more intuitive because I spend a lot of time in Google Docs and that&#8217;s how it works there. So I&#8217;m really glad that it finally made it to the block editor.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Yeah, that&#8217;s a really nice one too, because I use my keyboard more often than I use anything else.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, absolutely.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> The next feature that I want to talk about is connected to the block binding API, and this adds a visual indicator if you&#8217;re in the editor and you&#8217;re looking at a block, and that block is connected to a block binding source. So, for example, if you have a paragraph block and the content of that paragraph block is bound to some external source, a meta field, for example, in the editor in the toolbar, there&#8217;s a special icon that will just give the content editor a clue that, &#8220;Hey, this paragraph block, you can&#8217;t really edit this paragraph block because the content here is bound to some other external source. So this is not something that you can edit by yourself.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And before that feature came in, there was no way to find which blocks are actually connected to something else. So it removes the wonder and mystery of things, and I like that it&#8217;s purple.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> I love that. I love that it&#8217;s purple, but also a different icon design because that means even if you&#8217;re colorblind, you can&#8217;t see the color purple, you can still see, &#8220;Hey, this is not the paragraph icon. What&#8217;s going on here?&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Right. Correct. Yeah,</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Very nicely done.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. And I just want to point out, if you are looking for documentation, there have been a ton of updates in the documentation sector, and they are all already live on the Block Editor Handbook, especially for the interactivity API docs and the other theme, JSON schema we talked about, and some of the core block references have been updated, so check them out. There are so many. We are not specifically calling them out, but just wanted to point that out for you. And I think we are done, are we?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> I think so. I didn&#8217;t see any others in the list, but just a reminder, there are so many changes in WordPress 6.5, but also the latest two Gutenberg updates, 17.8 and 17.9. So I definitely recommend checking out those blog posts that are up on the blog, just especially if you&#8217;re interested in seeing what else is out there that they all link to the pull requests and it&#8217;s just a wealth of information.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What’s in Active Development or Discussed</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, absolutely. But now that we are at the end of the show, I wanted to point out that on March 26, that&#8217;s the day of the release of 6.5, Nick Diego and Bernie Reiter will explore block hooks in WordPress 6.5 in a Developer Hour. So that is on March 26th, 14:00 UTC, that is 8:00 AM Eastern, and they will explore the changes what happened with the block API. Bernie was also the developer who wrote the developer notes, so come with your questions on it, and I of course, share the link in the show notes so you can register for that. There&#8217;s also an April workshop on April 9th that&#8217;s also on what&#8217;s new in WordPress 6.5 with Bud Kraus. And Bud Kraus is a long time WordPress educator and he shows you some of the features that you, as a user, can see with 6.5.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And on March 26, there&#8217;s actually also a workshop on untangling templates with Kathryn Presner demystifying the templates and how to put this piece together. So there are great things coming on the WordPress online learning workshop as well, and we have the links in the show notes later on. All right, so what are you working on right now or when we are done with the show, it&#8217;s the weekend, but next week, what are you going to first check out on the 6.5?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Well, since the field guide just got published today, I saw the email come in this morning in my inbox, my plan for today, and probably early next week, is to pore through that field guide and see what changes affects our team at Georgetown because we have a very heavily customized set of themes and plugins that we use for the university. So it&#8217;s always exciting to see what new features are coming up, how we can leverage those, and what features are being released that affect our existing code. So that&#8217;s my plan for the next few days.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Oh, wonderful, wonderful. And as always, the show notes of this episode will be published on gutenbergtimes.com/podcast and this is episode 97. And if you have questions or suggestions or news you want us to include, send them to <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a> or ping me on the Make WordPress Slack or on Twitter. And when people want to connect with you, Joni, how would they do this? Where do they find you online?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> I am just about everywhere @jonihalabi. That&#8217;s my handle in most places. I&#8217;m also on the Make WordPress Slack, so just come find me there. Feel free to shoot me a DM or send me a tweet or a Mastodon message. I&#8217;m on Instagram.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> All right, so this was it, dear listeners. Thank you for being with us and we&#8217;ll see you or hear you. Not see you, but hear you in two weeks again.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Joni Halabi:</em> Thank you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Take care. Bye-bye.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Sun, 17 Mar 2024 11:19:45 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:18:\"Birgit Pauli-Haack\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:23;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:35:\"Matt: Paul Davids and Jacob Collier\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=112443\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:52:\"https://ma.tt/2024/03/paul-davids-and-jacob-collier/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:493:\"<p>I know I share a lot of Jacob Collier content, but this one is particularly interesting because you can see him learning things in real-time, exploring an instrument that is not his native tongue but he&#8217;s already world-class in. It&#8217;s so interesting to me the polymath musician friends I have who can play so many instruments how they bring the technique and language across their learning, and this video illustrates it well.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Sun, 17 Mar 2024 04:36:24 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4:\"Matt\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:24;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:24:\"Matt: Hugo on Vision Pro\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=112436\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:41:\"https://ma.tt/2024/03/hugo-on-vision-pro/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:723:\"<p>Many of my friends are ridiculous overachievers, and Hugo Barra is no exception. In response to <a href=\"https://ma.tt/2024/01/birthday-gift/\">my birthday blog post present request</a> he has published a <a href=\"https://hugo.blog/2024/03/11/vision-pro/\">magnus opus of over 10,000+ words on his thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro from his perspective having been present for some foundational moments for Google, Meta, and Xiaomi</a>. This is my dream, to get people writing more. We need more of this stuff on the internet! It&#8217;s fun to go down rabbit holes with experts. Cool that it&#8217;s on Hugo.blog, too. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/1f642.png\" alt=\"🙂\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /></p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Fri, 15 Mar 2024 23:38:57 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4:\"Matt\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:25;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:75:\"WPTavern: Inside DE{CODE} 2024, WP Engine’s Upcoming Developer Conference\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=155005\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:80:\"https://wptavern.com/inside-decode-2024-wp-engines-upcoming-developer-conference\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:10592:\"<p>If you ask a WordPress builder or developer to list the most important tools in their toolkit, chances are that at least a few will be <a href=\"https://wpengine.com/\">WP Engine</a> products and possibly their managed hosting platform itself. Plugins like Advanced Custom Fields have a pretty passionate fanbase, so it shouldn’t be a surprise the WP Engine’s employees are just as passionate about their products too.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of that passion goes on full display every year when WP Engine hosts DE{CODE}, their popular developer conference, now in its fifth year. DE{CODE} 2024 will happen March 19th &amp; 21st, with the one-day-long agenda repeated across three global regions. The online conference is free to attend, and <a href=\"https://events.wpengine.com/event/f5972890-64b0-4934-9b39-2e704bf34725/websitePage:7b184ebe-3411-489f-bc0c-f76fe90d1ce5\">registration is now open</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I connected with some of the team members behind the conference, and behind WP Engine’s products, to get a (quite candid) behind-the-scenes look at what many would consider a fairly unique approach to a conference in the WordPress space.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Giving Tech Conference Vibes&nbsp;</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the tech industry more broadly, the idea of a company-centric conference is pretty standard fare. I’m sure your inbox is full of invitations from AWS re:Invent and Stripe Sessions, though I think a more apt comparison might be something like <a href=\"https://conference.convertkit.com/\">Craft + Commerce by Convert Kit</a>. In the WordPress community, it’s not as common.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lexi Mostek is the Lead Event Manager at WP Engine helping to bring this vision to life. I asked her about the background of the event and how they think about the balance between company and community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“We started this virtual event before Covid even existed,” she told me, “because developers a lot of times don&#8217;t have the budget to travel and we don&#8217;t want to charge for this event. We want to make it free. We definitely started out heavily promoting a lot of our own products and having a lot of internal speakers, which I think you can expect from a company putting on a conference. What we have tried to do is grow our roster of other people in the community, other speakers and other topics that support that. So I think we just added on our 46th speaker. And roughly half of those are external.”&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is WordPress after all, so I’ll be clear now that this is not a WordCamp. That said, alongside WP Engine product updates and tutorials, you’ll get to hear about WordPress 6.5 from the core Editor Triage Release Team and about AI from Zack Kass, the former Head of Go-to-market at Open AI. If it’s anything like years past, the sessions don’t feel like a sales pitch, they more often take the shape of hands-on tutorials and best practices.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rob Stinson is a Product Marketing Manager at WP Engine whose domain includes Local, Advanced Custom Fields, and many of the other developer tools they’ve added from deals <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/wp-engine-acquires-5-plugins-from-delicious-brains\">like 2022’s acquisition of plugins from Delicious Brains</a>. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>“One of the sessions I’m involved in is an ACF Blocks deep dive,” said Rob. “We&#8217;ve seen this feature really emerge as a hero of ACF over the last few years and we&#8217;re doing more and more in the product itself to improve that feature set. So myself and Liam Glady (Senior Engineer at ACF) will go through four different custom blocks, the first one being a very basic one to showcase the nuts and bolts of it for anyone who is not familiar with how to do custom blocks with ACF. But then we sort of progress and showcase some more interesting ideas that really leverage interesting features.”&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That sort of practical approach is key to many of the sessions. For WP Engine, the return on their investment into the conference comes by being seen as the hosting company who is most focused on providing value to developers. The goal is brand awareness more than immediate conversions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“WP Engine obviously has a long history in the Managed WordPress space,” he said, “offering WordPress solutions at scale. Something that we have learned &#8211; and it does seem obvious when you&#8217;re in the midst of it &#8211; is providing value through developer and builder tooling is just immensely impactful. There’s value to our customers and there’s value for the broader WordPress ecosystem.”&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clearly being the company behind WordPress’ most popular local development tool is helpful, otherwise Automattic wouldn’t be <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/automattic-doubles-down-on-the-developer-community\">bringing their own competitor to market</a>. Even outside of WordPress, you can see other open source platforms working to own the comprehensive developer experience, from coding to deployment.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Most Unusual Format</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>One interesting feature of DE{CODE} is that the conference is streamed live, but sessions are all pre-recorded and presumably polished ahead of time. Then the conference happens &#8220;live&#8221; three times in three distinct time zones, making it more accessible to a global audience. One side effect of this approach is that the speakers and panelists are often in the live chat engaging with the audience and answering questions during their own talks. I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;ve really seen this approach before.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Imran Pervez, the Global Head of Event Marketing at WP Engine, talked to me about the thinking behind this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“When I go to a conference,” he said, “I personally don&#8217;t enjoy watching a thirty-minute session with only a 5 or 10-minute Q &amp; A at the end. That’s hardly enough time for a meaningful discussion. So with the approach we take, if a session is 40-minutes long, you can be asking Q &amp; A the whole time and make full use of the subject matter experts. If a speaker isn&#8217;t able to attend a session–given the range of timezones we’re serving–then we have a mix of subject matter experts per session on hand to interact and respond on chat.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first time I attended this conference, I was definitely confused that the person on the screen was also responding to me in the live chat, but I have to admit it really makes for a more collaborative experience as an attendee. It&#8217;s one of the more engaging live chats I&#8217;ve seen at a virtual conference, and conversations can continue on in virtual “hallways” between sessions.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">AI is Kind of a Big Deal</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The keynotes of the event, as you’d expect in the Year of our Lord 2024, center around AI. Before you wind up that massive eye roll, it is worth thinking about AI in the context of WordPress and maybe looking at some of the names on those panels.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rob drew the connection between generative AI today and the WordPress landscape:</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“If you think about the last 24 months, you know, AI has become a thing, right? The three areas where the best use cases have emerged are code, text, and images. Interestingly, the best technical representation of those three things in the world is actually WordPress.”&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I would add a fourth dimension to AI’s current skillset, which is finding answers from massive amounts of content. In other words: search. If you&#8217;ve been responsible for a large-scale WordPress site or WooCommerce store, then you might know how tricky it is to get search right. But &#8220;search&#8221; as an internet concept has been evolving this last year as AI tools are changing the game, both around data indexing as well as user interface expectations.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“And so it&#8217;s just interesting and exciting,” he continued, “to see the broader WordPress ecosystem figure this out. Ask ourselves ‘What does this look like?’ Experiment with things. As these use cases are evolving and starting to mature, I think the implementation of AI through WordPress in the coming 12 months, 24 months is going to be really impactful.”&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If that does sound interesting, there are a number of AI sessions, including one on AI search, the Zack Kass keynote mentioned above, and another keynote panel featuring Jason Cohen, WP Engine’s founder with a group of notable community members.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“What we decided to do with our keynote,” Lexi explained, “is bring in some external people like Amber Hinds, David Dicamillo and Lucky Gobindram, who are doing things and actively working on WordPress projects in different areas of expertise. Because this conference isn&#8217;t only about us and our products, it&#8217;s about the community.”</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There’s interesting agency teams and product owners throughout the agenda. The third keynote panel focuses on the business of WordPress and includes Sujay Pawar of Brainstorm Force, Miriam Schwab of Elementor, and Lesley Sim of Newsletter Glue. Beyond business and AI, there are sessions covering marketing, performance, SEO, and ecommerce.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">More than WordPress &#8220;Developers&#8221;</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Looking at the topics listed, you might be wondering why it’s called a “developer conference.” In the WordPress ecosystem, we can often take a broad view on who we consider developers. More than just developers, WordPress is a community of builders and extenders.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“It is developers,” Imran said, “but actually it&#8217;s those that have a technical interest in what&#8217;s happening. We also welcome marketers, business leaders and those that wear multiple hats in their businesses. We make sure there is technical content, but a lot of it isn&#8217;t necessarily hardcore- it&#8217;s applicable for someone that could also be less technically advanced.”&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“Do you log into the WordPress admin at least once a month?” added Rob. “You&#8217;ll get something out of it.”</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even if you&#8217;re not a developer, I would encourage you to <a href=\"https://events.wpengine.com/event/f5972890-64b0-4934-9b39-2e704bf34725/websitePage:da1bec15-c84c-4f09-b103-71d8ae90b856\">browse the agenda</a> and see if anything looks interesting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>DE{CODE} 2024 is on March 19 (North America and APAC) and March 21 (EMEA). Registration is free.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 14 Mar 2024 15:13:31 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:12:\"Brian Coords\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:26;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:58:\"WPTavern: Reflections on My 2 Weeks Writing for The Tavern\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=154968\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:69:\"https://wptavern.com/reflections-on-my-2-weeks-writing-for-the-tavern\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13778:\"<p>As my 2 weeks as a guest writer at The Tavern wind down, I thought y’all might be curious to hear some of my reflections on the experience.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>As James wrote, bringing 7 writers in for 2-week stints is <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/wptavern-launches-writer-hunger-games\">kind of like The Hunger Games</a> &#8211; many go in, two get the job.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That “Hunger Games” analogy seems to have stuck &#8211; many of the people I conversed with for stories over the past two weeks asked me a variation of the, “How is The Hunger Games treating you?” question.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The truth is that every interaction I’ve had with one of my fellow writers has been a combination of productive, nice, charming, and helpful.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>When fellow writers finished their trials, I mostly felt sadness. Not only will I miss our conversations on The Tavern Slack channel, but I’ll also miss the energy and reporting they brought to The Tavern.&nbsp; This version of The Hunger Games has been a ray of sunshine to my eyes.</p>\n\n\n\n<ol><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://wptavern.com/reflections-on-my-2-weeks-writing-for-the-tavern#how-did-i-decide-what-to-write-about\">How did I decide what to write about?</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://wptavern.com/reflections-on-my-2-weeks-writing-for-the-tavern#emotions-emotions-emotions\">Emotions Emotions Emotions</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://wptavern.com/reflections-on-my-2-weeks-writing-for-the-tavern#what-did-i-learn-in-these-2-weeks-of-writing-for-the-tavern\">What did I learn in these 2 weeks of writing for The Tavern?</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://wptavern.com/reflections-on-my-2-weeks-writing-for-the-tavern#i-hadn-t-applied-to-a-job-in-decades\">I hadn’t applied to a job in decades.</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://wptavern.com/reflections-on-my-2-weeks-writing-for-the-tavern#what-is-it-like-working-with-matt\">What is it like working with Matt?</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://wptavern.com/reflections-on-my-2-weeks-writing-for-the-tavern#how-would-i-improve-the-tavern\">How would I improve The Tavern?</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://wptavern.com/reflections-on-my-2-weeks-writing-for-the-tavern#what-s-next-for-me\">What’s next for me?</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://wptavern.com/reflections-on-my-2-weeks-writing-for-the-tavern#would-i-do-it-again\">Would I do it again?</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://wptavern.com/reflections-on-my-2-weeks-writing-for-the-tavern#comments\">Comments ↓</a></li></ol>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"how-did-i-decide-what-to-write-about\">How did I decide what to write about?</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I was surprised by the different types of content each of us writers produced for The Tavern.&nbsp; One of us did long-form video content, some of us were curious about reporting on new and interesting things in the WP community, some of us shined a light on long-underreported people in our community, some focused on tech, others focused on humans, etc.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>As you likely noticed, I am, personally, curious about how the WP community changes and rolls with the times. For example, you saw me writing about <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/you-dont-need-to-know-code-to-build-a-successful-wp-plugin-business\">how small businesses are taking on the big dogs</a>, an <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/which-wp-theme-is-best-fun-with-theme-download-stats\">analysis of popular themes on wp.org</a>, and <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/certain-wp-form-plugins-make-accessibility-easy\">how plugin shops have integrated accessibility best-practices into their day-to-day jobs</a>.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"emotions-emotions-emotions\">Emotions Emotions Emotions</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>While I felt very prepared to do the work that would be required, I was unprepared for the whirlwind of emotions that would flood my body during these two weeks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost everyone I spoke with for my articles was exceedingly professional and helpful.&nbsp; In fact, some people went out of their way to help me find sources and to cajole quotes out of people.  </p>\n\n\n\n<p>And yet, at times my discomfort with waiting for email/Slack responses to my inquiries left me an emotional wreck (“Are they ignoring me? Did I offend them? Were my questions stupid?&#8221; etc.).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then there were times I accidentally manufactured discomfort &#8211; like when I pushed to get a straight answer about a difficult topic out of a PR person at a big WP plugin shop.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was the scary time when an online accessibility forum misunderstood my line of questioning and came after me with pitchforks (for the record, my articles highlight people who are making a positive difference on the accessibility front).&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think the waves of emotion I experienced are part of starting something new and challenging.&nbsp; I hadn’t written articles with this intensity for decades &#8211; it makes sense that I would be forced to deal with my internal emotional issues.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"what-did-i-learn-in-these-2-weeks-of-writing-for-the-tavern\">What did I learn in these 2 weeks of writing for The Tavern?</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the past couple of weeks writing for The Tavern, I learned so so so much.&nbsp; Here are some of the many lessons I learned since Feb. 29:&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>I learned that people appreciate being part of a good yarn. My articles on plugin businesses and people doing great work on web accessibility seemed to be appreciated by both the commenters and the people featured in the articles.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>I learned that hitting “Publish” can be scary.&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>I learned off-the-record conversations are oftentimes more fun than on-the-record ones.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Related, I learned that off-the-record conversations build trust that a reporter can leverage into more compelling <em>on</em>-the-record interviews and articles later.&nbsp;<br />For example, one of my off-the-record conversations led me to a curious string about a sensitive topic &#8211; I pulled that string, and before you know it, we agreed to put that part <em>on</em>-the-record and included it in an article.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>I learned the hard way that you’ve got to be careful about how and where you tell people you are a journalist.&nbsp; That lesson cost me a lot of heartburn and sleep.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>I learned that I need to help people help me.&nbsp; One person I interviewed early on asked, “What’s your angle?&nbsp; I want to give you a quote that’s relevant.”&nbsp; That question saved us from a lot wasted of back-and-forth time.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>I learned that some people want The Tavern to be hard-hitting “gotcha” news source. <br />(Fwiw, I see The Tavern’s role in the community a little differently &#8211; It needs to be a trusted source of information and a hub for conversation in the WP community.)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>I learned (to no surprise) that the writers at The Tavern truly do have the editorial freedom to cover topics that are critical of WP power brokers, including the people paying our paychecks.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Interacting with the other 6 writers led me to believe that any of us 7 would make great next-generation leaders of The Tavern.&nbsp; Seriously &#8211; I’d trust any of them with leading my beloved Tavern moving forward.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>I learned that reporting on WP stuff is not an easy job.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>I learned that the 2-week timeframe was both a positive driver and a limiter of output. Deadline pressure in journalism is real any way you slice it.&nbsp; Deadlines force you to get creative &#8211; to say&nbsp; “good enough”, hit the “Publish” button, and move on to the next challenge.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>I learned that not as many people read The Tavern as I thought.  \n<ul>\n<li>When I told my mom and sisters that I was picked to write for The Tavern, they were like, “Uhh huuuh.&nbsp; That’s nice, sweetie,” and more or less patted me on the head before returning to their respective days. </li>\n\n\n\n<li>I was surprised to learn that even some of the WP pros I quoted in my articles did not check wptavern.com to read the articles.&nbsp; When I spoke with them a week after one article posted, they said, “Oh! Is that article live?”</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n\n\n<li>I learned that, based on The Tavern’s Jetpack stats, these articles do have an extremely wide reach by my standards.&nbsp; For example, one article I posted has garnered over 2,000 views on the web, over 2,000 email opens, and 70 clicks from email.  (I joked that I had 300 million impressions and 4,070 conversions &#8211; that’s a conversion rate of .0013%.&nbsp; Not great if it was a paid ad campaign, but, personally, I was thrilled with the numbers!)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>I learned that constructive criticism I received on my article drafts from my fellow writers made my writing better.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"i-hadn-t-applied-to-a-job-in-decades\">I hadn’t applied to a job in decades.</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>One thing I found personally fascinating was the application process &#8211; because I have no idea how to apply for a job.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The last job I applied for was a student life position at the University of Minnesota in 2004. I quit that job in 2006 to become a <a href=\"https://themightymo.com\">WordPress consultant</a>, which has been my primary job since.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Writing for The Tavern is a dream job for me.&nbsp; In my application, I wanted to communicate my vision for the job, my unique life experiences that might make me a great fit, my view that the news is a critical component of our democracy, as well as my quirky personality (didn’t want to surprise anyone there).&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>My application was a long email highlighting my experiences reporting the news, blogging, and contributing to the WP community.&nbsp; It also mentioned my respect for The Tavern’s history (I’ve been reading The Tavern nearly every day for 10 years or so).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I didn’t hear back after a short amount of time, I got antsy and sent this follow-up:</p>\n\n\n\n<img width=\"1920\" height=\"2560\" src=\"https://wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/hire-me-or-not.jpg\" alt=\"A piece of crumpled up notebook paper with \" />When I didn&#8217;t hear back on my original application after a week, I sent this follow-up email.\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"what-is-it-like-working-with-matt\">What is it like working with Matt?</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the more popular questions people asked me over the past two weeks was, “What is it like working with Matt Mullenweg?”&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Matt was true to his tongue-in-cheek word from <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/whats-next\">his Nov. 2023 post</a>: “You can ask previous writers how much I was in their hair.”&nbsp;&nbsp;I had very few interactions with Matt or the Automattic/Audrey team.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I felt prepared to do the work of The Tavern, and I saw the lack of interactions with Matt as a sign that he trusted me to do that work.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I felt like Matt was available via Slack if I needed him, however the only time I needed him was when I needed access to the X.com account.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also, I had read <a href=\"https://scottberkun.com/yearwithoutpants/\">The Year Without Pants</a>, so I was expecting this trusting, hands-off approach to leadership.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, with all that in mind, it was great working with Matt!</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"how-would-i-improve-the-tavern\">How would I improve The Tavern?</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I have a great love in my heart for The Tavern.&nbsp; Regardless of who takes over the reins, I hope they continue to pursue a deeper connection to the WP community.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Tavern is a hub of our community &#8211; a place where people go to learn and to be heard. The format and history of The Tavern communicate an openness that has proven tough to replicate elsewhere on the web.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the end of the day, wptavern.com is the humans who write, run, and interact on the website.&nbsp; I hope whoever takes over continues to push those traditions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I see an opportunity to have the Tavern community provide more input into what gets reported on. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>I can see the next leader reimagining the WP Tavern Forums, doing more outreach on other platforms, and looking for other ways to increase engagement on-site.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"what-s-next-for-me\">What’s next for me?</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I don’t know what’s next.&nbsp; I feel like I could add some very positive and subjective direction to The Tavern based on my unique experiences in the WP community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>To be honest, I would love to be involved with The Tavern in any capacity that it needs me.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"would-i-do-it-again\">Would I do it again?</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>It’s been a thrilling couple of weeks, and I’ve gone through a rainbow of emotions and learnings.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I would absolutely 100% do it again.&nbsp; And who knows &#8211; maybe you’ll see this smiling face at The Tavern again someday!</p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-post-author-biography\">Toby Cryns is a freelance CTO, WordPress consultant, and teacher at <a href=\"https://themightymo.com/\">The Mighty Mo! Design Co.</a> in Minneapolis, MN, USA.</div>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"comments\">Comments ↓</h2>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 13 Mar 2024 23:29:39 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:10:\"Toby Cryns\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:27;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:98:\"WPTavern: #111 – Josepha Haden Chomphosy on Navigating WordPress’ Evolution, Growth and Change\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:48:\"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=154957\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:108:\"https://wptavern.com/podcast/111-josepha-haden-chomphosy-on-navigating-wordpress-evolution-growth-and-change\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:54095:\"Transcript<div>\n<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, how WordPress is managed and directed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice. Or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea featured on the show. Head to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash juke box and use the form there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So on the podcast today, we have Josepha Haden Chomphosy.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Josepha is the executive director of WordPress, a role she&#8217;s held since 2019. She&#8217;s been contributing since 2012, and has a special fondness for brand new to WordPress learners.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the episode, Josepha shares her insights on overcoming the challenges posed by the pandemic. She talks about the positive strides made within the Gutenberg project, and the need for improved change management during its implementation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also explore the significant achievements of WordPress, reflecting on its growth to power 43% of the web. This gets us into the objectives for future WordPress expansion. Despite some current stagnation, Josepha explains her ambition to reach 51% market share. She talks about the potential in the enterprise sector, and the importance of reshaping walled gardens into community gardens. A metaphor for an inclusive and participatory ecosystem.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also discussed the semi anarchic nature of participation in WordPress, acknowledging the diverse perspectives of for profit motives, and those who contribute for nonprofit motives.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We contemplate increased diversity and restructured WordPress events, with aspirations of up to 160 word camps a year. And we discuss recent experimentation in the event space.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Expressing her journey from hands-on community management, to her executive role, Josepha explains her optimism for WordPress, with passion and authenticity. She emphasizes the responsibility of aligning contributions with strategic roadmaps, ensuring that each initiative within WordPress delivers meaningful impact.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Towards the end, we discuss how the success of WordPress can be measured. This is focused upon metrics like attendance, engagement, and community contributions as a way to gauge the vitality, and sustainability of the WordPress ecosystem.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in the WordPress project as a whole, and how it&#8217;s run and directed this podcast is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to find out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading over to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A quick note, before we begin. This was recorded live at WordCamp Asia. There was quite a lot of background noise to contend with, and I&#8217;ve done my best to make the audio as easy to listen to as possible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Josepha Haden Chomphosy.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Hello.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:00] <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy:</strong> Hello. How&#8217;s it going, Nathan?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Very, very good. We&#8217;re in the, I actually don&#8217;t know the name of the venue, but we&#8217;re in the venue.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:06] <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy:</strong> I know it by its acronym, which is TICC.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. That&#8217;s where we are. We&#8217;re in the media room. It&#8217;s Word Camp Asia. It begins today, we had the contributor day yesterday. As I said at the beginning, I&#8217;m joined by Josepha, but I think probably for the community who don&#8217;t know you, could you just tell us who you are? Give us your bio, what your role is in the WordPress project, because it&#8217;s quite a significant role.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:29] <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy:</strong> Yeah. I&#8217;ll give you the mini bio, so that we have a little bit of extra space for the what I do, because it is significant. So I&#8217;m Josepha Haden Chomphosy. I&#8217;m the executive director of the WordPress Project, and I came to this work kind of through marketing and other ways.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I learned about WordPress in 2000 and like 10, 2011. Made my way, over the course of my career, through marketing, and data analysis strategy, and then wound up here in the WordPress project. I did some community stuff first, and then took over some core work, and then did what I do now, which is as the executive director.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so what I do as the executive director is I, for one, make sure that all of the bits and pieces, that are working across the project, are kind of aware of each other. It&#8217;s very hard to see how everything is interconnected. But I also make sure that we have some focus and effort around specific projects. Things like making sure we have volunteers coming in, and contributors that are trained, and some way for new attendees to figure out how to learn WordPress, or learn how to contribute, however that goes. And making sure that we have time and attention, funding in the project as a whole. So it&#8217;s a bit project management, it&#8217;s a bit funding and resource management, and quite a bit of strategy as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It really sounds like rather a lot. Do you find yourself working a regular shift? You know, do you begin at nine in the morning, and finish at five at night? Or are you 24/7, having to wake up because people in, for example, Asia are doing things at certain times?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:54] <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy:</strong> Yeah, so when I first started doing the work, I would work anytime, and kind of just let my day fill up as it would, because it always does. As we ended up with more contributors, and for my teams at Automattic, as I ended up with more and more people there, it became really clear to me that, like a goldfish, it&#8217;s just going to grow to the size of the container you have for it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so I do really try now to fit it into set times. And, you know, I&#8217;ll get up early, work a bit late if we have synchronous talks that have to happen. And when I go to WordCamps, I just, you know, work 16 hour days, because that&#8217;s how you do at a WordCamp.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But yeah, for the most part, I really try to make sure that I guard my personal time pretty jealously, and that when I am working, try to make the best use of my time, and everyone&#8217;s time that&#8217;s working with me. Because we all have finite resources in that space. Like, we all have the same number of hours in our day, and my time isn&#8217;t more important than anyone else&#8217;s. And if I consider my time important, I should treat everyone else&#8217;s time as important too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You must have had a great sense of optimism when you began in 2012, to have risen in the way that you did. You must have enjoyed it, threw yourself into it I&#8217;m guessing. Do you still have that same sense of optimism about the project in 2024, that you did in the 2012, 2013, 2014, or is your role, the nature of the role that you have, mean that you view it from a different angle?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:14] <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy:</strong> So, to answer the question specifically, to answer that particular question, I do really still have a lot of optimism. Like, there&#8217;s so much that we can do for the project to get it moving faster in specific directions, and kind of get everyone in here and working on it in a way that is impactful for them, but also is valuable to our CMS and our community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I wouldn&#8217;t say that my career progression was because of optimism, right? Like, I try to be a realist. Pragmatic optimism is kind of how I like to really hone in on that. But I continued to see the need for someone to come and do the work that I am specifically skilled at doing, and also was really prepared to take on the responsibility.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t necessarily like, I&#8217;m optimistic, and therefore I will do this forever. It was, I see the importance and the value of having this available, long after any of us want to stop working with it. And so I have the skillset, I have the attention, I have some of the connections, and I accept the responsibility to help move this forward, and keep it moving in a good direction, for as long as they&#8217;re willing to have me. So I guess it was less because of optimism I did, and more of a, because I can accept that kind of responsibility, I will.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> At WordCamp Asia you&#8217;re giving a talk, and the title of that talk is converting walled gardens into community gardens. And I&#8217;m just going to read a little bit of the blurb that goes with that. You mentioned the fact that WordPress is this giant CMS, and you say that it&#8217;s grounded, it&#8217;s got an ethic, it&#8217;s got maybe some morals in there. But there&#8217;s obviously some point of concern in your mind, because you say the following, how are we managing our distractions and feeding the opportunities around us? What are the distractions that you are thinking of when you put this talk together? What are the distractions that the community is experiencing?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:09:01] <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy:</strong> Yeah so, firstly, I have to acknowledge that sometimes when folks work closely with me, they see that I am highlighting potential risks in a plan. And I never do that because I think that it&#8217;s a bad plan, I do that because I believe, probably, it&#8217;s the right way to go. And if we don&#8217;t know what is in the landscape for us, we can stub our toe on rocks. Like, I&#8217;m just trying to find the rocks we are going to stub our toes on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I do have some questions around that. I think the last time that this came up, this question of what is going to distract us from doing the things that help us move faster, or move better, or be more relevant? It&#8217;s always the question of, are we contributing things that are specifically related to the roadmap?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is, for open source, this basic philosophy of contributors are here to contribute without the expectation of reciprocity, and without an agenda. But I have always really felt like the without an agenda part, is not as nuanced as it should be. Because everybody does have a plan. They&#8217;re trying to do things. Like, people are contributing some functionality, because it fixes a problem they had.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so that doesn&#8217;t fit with the idea of no agenda. And also, we don&#8217;t want aimless contributions. When you support 43% of the web, it&#8217;s so difficult to move that number of people in any sort of direction. That if people show up with kind of aimless contributions, you aren&#8217;t able to have a clear direction for where the software&#8217;s headed, or the community&#8217;s headed. And it&#8217;s not a good contribution experience either.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They don&#8217;t feel like they have a clear impact. It&#8217;s not clear how their project gets into the CMS over time, or gets rolled into our event series. And so I just, I don&#8217;t have any concrete examples at the moment, because they will all belong to someone, and I&#8217;m not going to have them experience this on a podcast.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But like, you&#8217;ve always got to watch out for those things where, this project that we were working on, it worked really well when TikTok wasn&#8217;t where everyone was. This worked really well when Reddit was in its heyday, or whatever. Like, it was stuff and communication processes, and methods that made sense for the context of the time. And I just want to make sure that everything that we&#8217;re doing makes sense for the context of now, where it&#8217;s reasonably possible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So, what&#8217;s your guiding principle? What&#8217;s your North Star? Because I&#8217;m guessing that maybe you speak to Matt, Matt Mullenweg. In the pyramid of WordPress and organisation, you are right near the top.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where do you get your inspiration, for what the project should be doing? Where do you find that? Do you come up with ideas? Toss them around between the people that you work with? Or is it really a process of getting in the Slack every day, and just listening, and percolating, and filtering the ideas out?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because it feels like, if WordPress were a blue chip company, and it was a for-profit organisation, you&#8217;d have this hierarchy, wouldn&#8217;t you? And right at the top would be the CEO, and they would make the decisions with the board, and those decisions would then trickle down, and everybody would have to obey.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that&#8217;s not the way it works. So I&#8217;m genuinely curious. Where do you get your intuitions, as to what we should be doing? And how do you sort of shepherd that conversation, so it doesn&#8217;t feel like, well, we&#8217;re being told what to do, more we&#8217;re being guided, here&#8217;s some things we could do?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:12:06] <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy:</strong> Yeah. I&#8217;m going to try to answer them sequentially and do my best. And if I get lost, you&#8217;re going to have to bring me back. So the first question you had was, what is my lighthouse? What is it that I&#8217;m aiming for? So I do kind of have this dream of like WordPress being the thing that secures the future of the open web. And it is literally a dream, because we actually don&#8217;t have that much agency. Like we, even if we get to 51% of the web, will not actually have the ability to just say, and now the open web is here forever. Like, that&#8217;s not within our control. So it is a bit of a dream.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there is, for me and my decision making, an overarching vision of what we can offer as a project. And a lot of my decisions are based on that. So I believe that the WordPress project and ecosystem should be able to offer an excellent open source alternative to every tool that is required to get a business started online, to get your project started online.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that feels attainable, right? Like, the CMS, done. Open source CMSs, in place of proprietary CMSs, that&#8217;s good. But also things like Openverse, and the photo directory, and how that can compete if we figure out a couple of provenance issues, and maybe like micropayments. How that can compete with Getty images.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I think that that&#8217;s a really compelling offer and opportunity, especially because, as people are coming into this community, so much of what they&#8217;re looking for is kind of a more equitable access to a network. To not only succeed at their learning and connection to their local community, but then also to succeed with their business goals, however they are.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so that is my guiding principle from just like what we have to do here standpoint. And then there are the philosophical principles that we all kind of hold in the WordPress project, which is the four freedoms of open source, those are in there. The five good faith rules of community that we have.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so we&#8217;ve got the ethical principles that are in there. We have the pragmatic things, like always decisions, not options. And I feel like they all ladder up into this concept of like, we could be the primary open source alternative to make a business happen. To make your dream happen. To make your story known online. So there&#8217;s that. And immediately, I forgot the 17 other questions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It was really about what is your North Star, and how do you decide what&#8217;s important?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:23] <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy:</strong> Okay, so for one, there are a lot of like literal decision making tools that I use. But I know that&#8217;s not the question you&#8217;re actually asking. The question you&#8217;re asking is, how do I keep track of the information that comes in, and where do I find the best guesses about the future? So that we can choose the right product choices. We can make the right event and ecosystem decisions. And fortunately, I have the incredible good fortune of having my own leadership team inside Automattic.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve got three people who work directly with me. Héctor Prieto, Chloé Bringmann and Angela Jin, and probably everyone will recognise all three of those names, work with me to help keep track of everything that&#8217;s happening across the ecosystem, and the programs, and the CMS.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there are also about 10 people that I really rely on in the community, and they are from across different companies, and different disciplines, they have different roles. We have people who like specialise in product or project management, and people who are core developers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so like I have a lot of people who are helping to flag issues, and flag potential future opportunities that I otherwise wouldn&#8217;t have seen. And I rely heavily on them to talk through like, what is the essential pros and cons of this discussion that&#8217;s being had here? What is the relative impact to like performance in the CMS? What&#8217;s the relative impact for attendees, if we make this change versus that change?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so I do a lot of discussion with a lot of people and, yeah, it&#8217;s based on like stuff that&#8217;s happening in Slack, and Post Status, and Twitter, and kind of all around. I am just one person, and it has been probably more than a decade since one person could know everything that was going on in WordPress. And so I&#8217;m very lucky to have probably a good collection of 12 to 15 people that are helping me do that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:16:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> If you were the CEO of a blue chip company, I&#8217;m guessing that the metric for success would be profitability. Are we in the black? Are we in the red? What did we do to go into the red? What did we do to go into the black? What&#8217;s the guiding principle there? When you look back over the last, let&#8217;s say, couple of years, what do you see as the moments that were successful? You know, it doesn&#8217;t have to be specific, it could be more of a general question in terms of, what does success look like? What are you looking for there?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:16:33] <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy:</strong> It&#8217;s different in different places. So there are kind of four big focuses in the WordPress project. You&#8217;ve got the CMS and related software elements. You have our programs and event series, which are WordCamps, meetups, and then also all of the things that keep volunteers feeling like they are included in our project.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also have the ecosystem, which is like the marketplaces that we have, with the plugin directory, and the theme directory, things like that. And then we kind of have a fourth that is our communications and operations side of things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so for each four of those, there is a different metric. We don&#8217;t have a lot of early indications. All of what we can look at is primarily just like a result, as we are working through things. And so we can&#8217;t make a lot of early course correction, just because we don&#8217;t. take data for anyone to have WordPress. We have instituted auto updates, and so like we can&#8217;t really follow downloads as a proxy for how many people are using WordPress, like things like that. And so the indications, the metrics, if you want to call them that, are different for different things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But ultimately, I really believe that our best proxy for understanding how vital WordPress is to our own ecosystem, is seeing how many people are still trying to learn WordPress. How many people are attending our events? How many people are showing up to help build it? Although that is a very long tail kind of thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It can take anywhere from, you know, five months to five years for somebody to go from using WordPress to finally contributing to WordPress. And so that one has a really long latency period.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But also there are normal things like, how many new followers do we have on our social media channels? How many new users do we have in Slack that are participating actively? How many contributors do we have, as we are just kind of running through our annual milestones of flagship events, or WordCamps overall, or major releases?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a bunch of things. I think that once a year at State of the Word, kind of point all those out. So we don&#8217;t like have dashboards or anything that keeps track of it. But I do have a general sense for where things are over the course of the year.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:18:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> If we were to go back to 2012, I don&#8217;t know what percentage of the internet was using WordPress, but it certainly wasn&#8217;t 43%. At the moment, 43 ish, thereabouts, 43%. It&#8217;s highly improbable, I would&#8217;ve thought, that looking back 10 years, you would&#8217;ve said approximating half of the internet would be using WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it&#8217;s had this really unprecedented growth. Monumental growth. So if you were to look back at any one of those years, probably the numbers tick up each year, and let&#8217;s just use that one metric, the percentage of the internet. Do you have any intuitions as to whether that 43% is in a state of ascendancy still? Are we looking into 2024, 2025, are we looking for it to be 44, 45, 46? Has it plateaued? Is it maybe going down? Do you have any expectations of where the project will be in a year, two years?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:20] <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy:</strong> So, for one, one of my big success indicators would be for our percentage to get to 51%. Because that approximates out to like 75% usage, which is a ton. I realise 51% is a really big percent of the web. And it&#8217;s like, you know, eight percentage points away.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now the question of, are we still growing? Do we expect more growth? Do we expect like incremental, or another big spike? We do. I think we all can see that we currently have a little bit of a plateau. But also, in my big picture goals post for 2024, I called out very specifically, like, I see that this is something that we all kind of started talking about in 2022.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s the first time that we all sort of had a question around like, is this plateauing? Is it an unlimited plateau? Do we think we can do something to change it? And I do think we can do something to change it. But I also think what has to happen will really take a lot of concerted effort, for two reasons.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For one, because in order to do any last mile work, like the last mile of a delivery is always the most expensive. That is going to be our hardest work, to get from 43% to 51%. Just because you have kind of sold to everyone who already knew they needed you, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then the second part of the problem is that, everyone else that is available to, quote unquote, sell WordPress to, are companies and business deciders, who maybe don&#8217;t know that they need a CMS. Which is a different proposition than companies or business deciders, who know they need a CMS, they know they need a website, they&#8217;re just trying to figure out which one. We can certainly make a strong case for why WordPress is the best long-term solution for them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But if they don&#8217;t agree that they need a website, or that if they do need a website, that it needs to have enough functionality for them to grow, or whatever reason they have, that&#8217;s a different sales proposition. And getting into that enterprise space, getting into that corporate area, as you mentioned, there&#8217;s a bit of a shift that you have to make in your mind.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s a feeling of open source means everything&#8217;s free, because it says it right there, free and open source software. But free in this context means, you know, about speech, and freedom, and copy left, right? And less about no money.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>No one ever said that you should not be able to make money in an open source project, or using open source software. Like, it is seen all over the internet right now, that you can build a business on top of open source technologies.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so that is a big shift in mindset. WordPress has always been very pro business. If you look at our plugins, it&#8217;s not a bunch of plugins that are like, here&#8217;s how you paint on WordPress or something. Like, that&#8217;s not the plugins we have. We have plugins that are like, we want you to be able to convert into your contact form better. We want your contact form to be easier, and more enticing, so that you can have those contacts, so you have the opportunity to pitch your product, or pitch your service.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you look at what we have around, we do want people to accomplish business tasks, on top of any other sort of thing that they&#8217;re wanting to do here. And so I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s as big a shift as we worry that it is. I think it&#8217;s always been there, and we just are a little scared of the idea of it. It feels like we kind of have to lose that original ethos, and I don&#8217;t necessarily know that that&#8217;s the case.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:22:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You mentioned in the blurb for your talk, you were talking about distractions, and we covered that off a little bit. But you talk about the sprawling nature of the future of our projects. And I&#8217;ll just quote, in your talk you are going to look at what the sprawling future of the project could be, as we continue to convert walled gardens into community gardens. What do you mean by that? What are the walled gardens that you&#8217;re talking about, and what are the community gardens that you wish to have?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:07] <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy:</strong> You&#8217;ll have to come to my talk. Nathan! But also, I will give you an elevator pitch of it. So there&#8217;s a concept of walled gardens in technology. It historically, or in recent history anyway, has referred to marketing platforms. And a good proxy for that, if that doesn&#8217;t make immediate sense is, you know, like Facebook, and Instagram, Twitter, things like that. Where the audience is contained in the platform.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so if you enter the platform, you have an audience, and you just have to say compatible things to get the audience to you. That&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s what&#8217;s considered a walled garden right now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And community garden is actually not something that people use when they&#8217;re talking about software, but I want us to. And so that is also a big part of my presentation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But a community garden is, you know, in the US it&#8217;s a plot of land, generally in a city, that&#8217;s broken up into smaller pieces, where anyone who&#8217;s in that local community can come and garden in it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> We call it the commons.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:01] <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy:</strong> Right. People say that often. But I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s a very accessible term for anyone anymore. I have found that when we talk about that and we&#8217;re like, people putting sheep in the fields. Like, it&#8217;s a very cute idea, but it&#8217;s not the visual thing, in my experience, hasn&#8217;t kept up with what people understand now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A lot of us might understand a community garden, where you have small plots, you can do your gardening. If there&#8217;s anything left over, the entity, the community that is managing the larger group can redistribute that, and make it available to other people in the community. If that&#8217;s what they&#8217;re trying to do, they can donate it to community food banks, or sell 