Episode 12
In this Episode Michelle and Jeff chat with Juan Francisco Aldosoro about The Events Calendar’s Events Tickets add-on, the check-in app, and the exciting features in The Events Calendar that make event scheduling on your WordPress website so easy.
Mentioned in this episode:
- The Events Calendar
- The Events Calendar on WordPress.org
- Events Tickets
- Event Tickets and Registration on WordPress.org
- Juan on Twitter/X
- Juan on GitHub
- Juan on LinkedIn
Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Michelle: Welcome to WP Constellations, a podcast exploration of the WordPress universe, brought to you by StellarWP.
Welcome to the next episode of WP Constellations, where Jeff Chandler, my wonderful co host, and I get to explore the WordPress Universe. Oftentimes You’ve heard us talk to people from outside of StellarWP, but today, we’re inside the StellarVerse, speaking with Juan Francisco Aldosoro, who works with The Events Calendar. So welcome, Juan. And welcome, Jeff. How is everybody today?
[00:00:40] Juan: Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be having this conversation with you, and everything good here. Jeff, how are you?
[00:00:48] Jeff: I’m doing quite well.
I think it should be illegal to be up at this time of day, but it’s 03:00 P.M. Where you are. That’s pretty cool.
[00:00:57] Juan: Yeah, sorry for that. But yeah, what can we do?
[00:01:02] Michelle: It’s 09:00 A.M. Here. It’s usual work time. It’s not six.
[00:01:05] Jeff: Yeah, it could be worse.
[00:01:10] Michelle: It could be worse, for sure. So, Juan, thank you so much for joining us today. I’m very excited not only to learn more about the product that you work on, which we’ll get to in just a minute, but because I’ve recently had experience using it. So it’s kind of nice to kind of get that look under the hood, talk to people who manage the product and get a little more insight into what it is. So tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do as a project manager, product manager for Event Tickets at The Events Calendar.
[00:01:39] Juan: Well, first of all, my pleasure. It’s great to be sharing this time with you. And yeah, as you mentioned, my name is Juan Francico Alasoro. Some people kind of call me Juanfra, which is kind of like the nickname because there’s many Juans in Spanish speaking countries. So kind of like the Francisco and the FRA. It’s kind of like my differentiator. I’m originally from Argentina. During the pandemic I moved to Spain, to Barcelona, and that’s why this is kind of, like, so complicated for Jeff because it’s 03:00 P.M. here, but it’s early for him. And yeah, I have a longtime relationship with WordPress. Started in 2007, had a small boutique agency working remotely for America and for Australia and the UK. Then I founded my own theme shop. And in 2018 sorry, I joined what it was at that time, Modern Tribe, and started working with The Events Calendar and Event Tickets in the middle. I started the WordPress community in Argentina. We made some work, so I’m kind of like some sort of veteran here of the community.
That’s pretty much my background with WordPress, what I do as a product manager at Event Tickets, we have two teams that we call them internally by color The Events Calendar, which is the blue team, in charge of The Events Calendar, Events Calendar Pro, and the green team, which is mainly in charge of Event Tickets. Event Tickets Plus, basically, I’m product manager on the green team. And what I do there is come up with new ideas, new features, and present them to leadership.
I kind of define the roadmap of the product, kind of like in consultation with leadership under approval and we plan what’s coming next for the product. And at the same time we also have to maintain the product that we have. So I work on prioritization for the current bugs that we’re having, the main struggles for people, and we prioritize that and work accordingly depending on the resources that we have and the needs of our customers. So it’s a bit of balancing out past, present and future in the sense of like we’re planning what’s coming next for the future without kind of like not attending the needs of the present that are kind of like a result of the past and what we have as a product.
Because as you may know, maybe one of the main challenges when it comes to WordPress products is that products in general that they have to be backwards compatible. You need to kind of support past features, you have to deprecate things in particular ways and you have to cover kind of like your user base and at the same time just make them happy with fulfilling their needs with the projects that are coming next in line.
So that’s pretty much what I do. I must say that I had a natural transition from well, I did everything like design, engineering, and I was a business owner.
So kind of like when I joined originally Modern Tribe, I started working as a software engineer and then I transitioned to product management.
So I must say that in that regard, I can have a bit more of notion of kind of like the lift of the things that are coming or kind of like how we can get creative on providing some solutions for customers without unattending other things. So I’m kind of like a product person, but with the background more in engineering and also a bit on design.
[00:05:59] Michelle: You mentioned the compatibility issues and I think that that’s a really interesting thing. We’re going to talk a minute about some of the main features in The Events Calendar and specifically Event Tickets. But when you create a SaaS product, you really just worry about yourself, right? When you create a WordPress product, you don’t just worry about yourself. You have to think how do we fit into WordPress as it is now? How will we fit into the upcoming iterations of WordPress? But also for all of those customers who haven’t updated their WordPress in three or four years, how do we make sure that the Event Tickets doesn’t stop working for them? So there’s a lot that goes into your job. In particular, I get to just market it like, hey, this is the newest feature, right? But you have to worry about past, present and future, which is a lot of juggling for sure.
[00:06:48] Juan: Yeah, not only that, but also that with open source software it’s kind of like the software can be executed in different environments. Although it’s kind of like WordPress is kind of like giving an umbrella of versions and stuff. I don’t know. For example, with PHP seven versus eight, there’s a lot of things and a lot of problems that can come up. And yeah, basically it’s not only kind of like backwards compatibility, but different setups and different things because WordPress in the end can be executed in different types of service and stuff and that’s also another consideration to have in mind. For sure.
[00:07:28] Michelle: Absolutely. So in speaking about this product in particular, can you tell us a little bit about the main features of The Events Calendar, especially how it pertains to your product, Event Tickets within The Events Calendar?
[00:07:42] Juan: Yeah, for sure. So The Events Calendar, I think we were lucky with the branding that Shane and people from Modern Tribe decided a while ago because it’s pretty self explanatory. It’s like a calendar that serves in a way that you can create events and that it’s free to use and it’s in the WordPress.org repository.
So what you can do with The Events Calendar, it’s basically create events, create organizers, create venues and you can maintain a calendar of events and activities for your site. And this applies to many use cases, it can be churches, bars or you name it. It’s like a lot of people are running events and that’s the core functionality. So The Events Calendar has about 800,000 active installs according to the WordPress.org repository. So that’s our free offering which is coming with some views that you can just show not only a calendar, but you can show your events on a list view and so on and so forth. And then for that we have Events Calendar Pro which is a premium offering which comes with kind of like extra features that are particularly more than anything related to events creation, which is recurring events. That is something that a lot of people are using when they’re managing events, they just have events on a regular basis and the recurring Events functionality from Events Calendar Pro allows them to do that. At the same time, on Events Calendar Pro there are some different views and there are some other extra functionalities. So that’s that with The Events Calendar, when it comes with Event Tickets, we also have the free version on the WP.org repository and it has around like 70K active installs.
And what it allows is not only to connect with The Events Calendar, but you can use Event Tickets as a standalone, but it allows you to sell tickets for events and for posts and for whatever you need and manage confirmation or on attendance via RSVPs.
The main features of Event Tickets as a standalone or as a free offering is the ticket management with our proprietary ecommerce solution that is called Tickets Commerce. So on our free version, you can use tickets, commerce, and you can create and sell tickets and do it with PayPal or Stripe, which are our two main connections to, say, some gateways.
And you have attendee management orders. Management. And then we have our premium offering on top of that, which is Event Tickets Plus which allows you to sell tickets, with other types of ecommerce solutions such as WooCommerce and it allows you to create attendees registration fields. So, for example, if you’re selling a ticket for an event where you’re going to be handing out T-shirts, that you can create a field where people can select the T-shirt size that they’re going to be just using or if they are vegan, that they can just select the type of food that they’re going to have at the event, and so on and so forth. And the QR code functionality so that people can get the ticket with the QR code and they can also download the admin can download the app so that whenever people are showing up at their events with the QR code, they can use the app to check them in and just check. I don’t know, for example, which T-shirt size is that they’re eating or if they’re going to be eating, I don’t know, vegan food or I don’t know if they’re omnivore or whatever.
In a greater scheme, that’s what the two products do with their main free offering and their main premium offering. We have other premium offerings for different niches such as community events, community tickets, more things on automation on the event side, virtual events and so on and so forth. But those are kind of like the main offerings.
[00:12:19] Michelle: I recently used both The Events Calendar and Events Tickets. Not just me.
Our company did at WordCamp US for an event that we were hosting there. And I was on the front desk for the first hour of the event, checking people in through the app. And I felt like the person at the symphony as you come in and you read your QR code or at the badass concert or all of those kinds of things, and we quote, unquote, sold tickets for $0. So you don’t even have to sell tickets for revenue. You can use this even if you are a nonprofit giving away tickets to an event and you just need to make sure that you’re staying within your capacity, knowing who your guests are, things like that. So it was really cool and as people were coming through and I was like oh yes, this is our Event Tickets, this is part of The Events Calendar. And kind of talking all about it, people were pretty impressed that we had apps that went with our events tickets to be able to use that. So that’s one example of the kinds of organizations that can use the Event Tickets. I mean, really, anybody could, but who are some of your primary customers, what types of organizations do you see using not only The Events Calendar, but specifically Event Tickets?
[00:13:44] Juan: Yeah, well, first of all, that’s great that you had that experience. That’s what we’re looking for when creating products. So it’s great to know it firsthand.
So, yeah, kind of like our main audience, I would say. I don’t know, people that are having more events on a recurring basis, such as a church. There’s a lot of nonprofits, there’s a lot of these type of organizations that are kind of like managing hosting events on a regular basis due to the pandemic. Also that switched more into, I don’t know, there may be some people that are just selling sessions online or stuff like that. And that also we saw some improvements or some kind of like different opportunities there during the pandemic.
But I would say that and we are also working on kind of like improving the way that the ticketing solution works with recurring events. And that will be kind of like a really good solution for, I don’t know, studios that are providing yoga classes or gyms or you name it.
Once we have that sorted out, it’s more like the sky is the limit. But when it comes to the main audience, I would say that a lot of those types of businesses and nonprofits.
[00:15:11] Michelle: Yeah, I love that. I think it’s just brilliant. So thank you for making a product that was so easy to use and that I was so proud to be able to talk about. That was pretty cool.
[00:15:21] Juan: Well, thanks. It’s really fulfilling to hear that, actually. Yeah, thanks.
[00:15:28] Jeff: But Juan, I know that when we talk about Event Tickets, there’s emails that are involved. And I know in the past people have had to go through and edit specific template files, but that’s no longer the case. What can you tell us about the new options that are available to edit the way email templates look in events tickets?
[00:15:46] Juan: Yeah, for sure.
Emails are kind of like a central part of because if you think about, I don’t know, I’m from the generation where, when I bought my first ticket to an event, I just remember saving that ticket and having it in a box and that’s no longer a thing. And kind of like the digital representation of these things nowadays are kind of like emails, PDF, Apple wallet passes and stuff like that. So the first thing that we wanted to improve, well, it kind of was one of my main goals when I started working as a product manager at Event Tickets, was to kind of improve the experience of kind of like the digital in replacement of what we used to know as a physical ticket. And starting with the emails, we thought and we saw that there were many people trying to configure stuff on how their emails look and work and adding and removing things and stuff like that. So at some point, we thought that the best idea in order to kind of fix this thing, quote unquote, to some customers, was to provide more like a no code solution for configuring emails, particularly the ticket and RSVP emails, which are the ones that maybe as a business owner, you want to brand and you want to just make it look the way you want. Let’s say, I don’t know, I run a club and I’m just like hosting concerts or whatever. It’s more like I want my logo to be there, I want my brand colors, I want maybe, I don’t know, to add some additional information with the placeholders and this and that. So this year we ended up taking up the challenge kind of like with what I was mentioning before about balancing different priorities and stuff. We said like, okay, this is the moment to do it and we move forward. And we successfully released some months ago this new option which is part of our free offering, so that anybody that is using Event Tickets can basically configure and brand their ticket email so that they’re more personal and the attendees are receiving something that is more relatable to the place and the type of event that they’re going to be attending to.
We feel that that was a great improvement for many site owners in the sense that they also didn’t have to just worry about, I don’t know, just getting dirty. They’re getting their hands dirty with code and template replacement and stuff like that and they can do it with a node code option and just with a few clicks.
So we are excited because this is not where we are just stopping and we’re planning to improve this and to add more mediums and stuff like that so that you can not only have an email, but you can just have some ticket portability and hold your digital tickets. What I mentioned my Ramon’s ticket in some other mediums, so yeah, I still had that from 1996, was my first concert and it’s a great reminder that we should be doing something similar so that the people in the future can still have that in a digital box.
[00:19:25] Jeff: Yeah, they’re doing that a lot for baseball games, sporting events here too, where they’re getting rid of the physical ticket which to the old timers, they’re not very happy about that because they have just like you, they have a collection of tickets and that ticket means something. And to not have something to physically hold is the feelings around that. They don’t like it. Yeah, the future of WordPress is no code. I mean, as we look at the block editor in the various ways of what’s going on with themes, the future is no code. So to be able to go in and edit email templates without having to touch PHP files or anything of that nature is wonderful. It’s awesome. I’ve had a chance to edit a couple of email templates before and it works wonderfully right out of the box, just like you’d want it to.
What does the pricing look like for The Events Calendar and Events Tickets?
[00:20:17] Juan: Yeah. So events, calendar and Event Tickets are both free to use. You can find them in the WordPress.org repository and you can go to TheEventsCalendar.com to just get links because there’s many conversations around searching for things on Google. So you can either go to the repository or you can go to our site and get the proper links to download the free versions. And then each one of the main products being The Events Calendar, Event Tickets have their Pro and their Plus functionality. So Events Calendar Pro starts at $99 a year for one site to get support and updates. And then there are different pricing tiers if you have like three sites and more Event Tickets Plus also has this pricing tier, so it’s $99 a year and with the same kind of like thing with three and more sites multi-site. And there’s some difference in the pricing tiers that you can check our website, TheEventsCalendar.com and then the other offerings on top of Events Calendar and Event Tickets, which are Virtual Events Filter Bar, for example. Filter Bar is an add-on for The Events Calendar that can just provide these basically a filter bar. I think that the branding was on point for all the products, so they’re super self-explanatory, but it basically gives you a bar with filterable items on top of your event. So there are some of our products that have a different pricing tier, if I’m not mistaken, filter weights in the $69 a year pricing tier for one site.
But for sure anybody who is listening to this, feel free to go to TheEventsCalender.com and check the proper pricing.
But yeah, we have these two main offerings at $99 a year and then the satellite offerings have some at $69 and others at $89.
[00:22:32] Michelle: Right. There’s different bundles and things, so you basically can find the bundle or the specific product that fits your needs. I love that and I love that we have it in the repository also so that you can get started for free and maybe that’s all you need depending on your organization. So there’s lots of opportunities for anybody to be able to use The Events Calendar and Event Tickets depending on what they need to do.
[00:22:57] Juan: Exactly.
[00:22:58] Michelle: I do want to circle back because that QR code thing is super inspired, especially because there are very few, at least in my experience with WordPress, very few products that also have an app associated with them. And our QR code doesn’t just generate a QR code, it’s specific to that person’s ticket so that you can check them in. It’s not a generic QR code for the event, for example, but there’s app development that went into this that’s different than just WordPress. So how did that even come about? Who thought we really need to do this. And what was that process?
[00:23:36] Juan: Yeah, sure.
In the end it’s kind of like QR codes. They’re just like text translated into pixels. So to be honest and fair, I wasn’t part of the initial development of the app. So back in the day, Modern Tribe, we used to have these team trips and during these team trips we had these activities that were called hearts and crafts where people could work in kind of like a project that you can just create an MVP in a couple of days. So in one of those trips, what they ended up doing as part of the initiative was to create a simple react native app that could work with, I don’t know, you have an attendee, then you can just translate the information of that attendee with the attendee ID, some security measures and stuff. It’s, in the end, just a line of just text. And you translate that into a QR code. And on the other hand, what you can do with the app is read that and through the Rest API, validate the redundancy apart from the validity of the attendee and mark them as checked in. So that was the original story of the app, which was great because it was kind of like something that came from the heart and from a really kind of like hackathon experience. So it was great.
And it’s, in my opinion, one of the things that closes the circle of being an event manager and selling tickets and being an attendee and having something that can just confirm the validity of what you’re holding and just getting you into an event.
So we had that and then well, during the pandemic, before the pandemic, we had plans to kind of continue improving the app. But it kind of like this Mr. COVID came and it ended up switching the priorities all over the place and for a bit we ended up switching a bit focus and working more on virtual events and stuff like that. But once we thought, like, okay, things are starting to look normal again, we ended up pushing for making some improvements to the app, meaning that you can now kind of have actually to be fair, we released version two of the app last year, which came with a lot of features and the story is super fun because we ended up working with Modern Tribe, which is also part of the same umbrella these days on the app.
And, well, this new version, version two, ends up like adding attendees.
You can basically check in attendees on demand. You can filter the attendees, you can just search for an attendee on the given event. You can manage different events and you can have all the information of the attendee when you’re checking them in. So that was what we could do for version two. We had to leave some things out because of scoping, but we’re ready to continue growing there and continue adding some enhancements. We also released a new version a couple of weeks ago with some enhancement and we plan to do way more things to make it more robust and more that’s also not only kind of like something that just allows you to scan a QR code and read attendees. But maybe, I don’t know, in the future, a point of sale or kind of like something that can work offline because many times in some venues, you don’t have a lot of WiFi connection. We have identified a list of different problems that are common to these type of these use cases. So we have a lot of things in the backdrop there that we want to work on. But at the same time, it’s like what I mentioned before, we’re balancing out kind of like past, present, future, and we’re trying to attend things in a way that makes the most sense in terms of priorities.
That’s the story of the app and we’re excited to continue kind of like enhancing that so that next time that you’re using it, you’re more happy about it.
[00:28:20] Michelle: It’ll be even better. I do love the fact that you never want to argue with somebody who’s trying to check into an event where they say, I didn’t get the email, where, you know, they probably did, right? Or they’re like, I can’t find my QR code. So being able to look for them manually and check them in manually very quickly was a beautiful thing. So that you’re not saying to them, well, you have to have the QR code to come through the door. So it was really inspired to be able to do check ins either way. I had a backup copy on paper like I had downloaded and printed off just in case. And we only turned it over and made notes on the back of the paper about the event itself. We never actually had to look at the paper at all because the app did everything we needed it to. So thank you. Thank you for continuing to work on a product that works so well.
[00:29:12] Juan: Yeah, well, thank you. And if you have any suggestion, just feel free to reach out.
[00:29:18] Michelle: Sounds good. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with our audience today?
[00:29:23] Juan: No, that I’m thrilled to be here and that we’re planning to make great improvements to our free and premium offerings.
It’s like working in products.
It’s sometimes hard because you have to deal with the frustration and you have to empathize and understand the frustration of many people that they’re trying to do things. But it’s more like, okay, we’re trying to help you, but we cannot kind of move things immediately because of the things I mentioned before about you have to deal with some other stuff. And in the end, it’s just the art of balancing out what’s important now, what we can handle now, what we can handle with the resources that we have.
So if you’re a user of our products, be sure that we’re just doing the best to cover everybody and that we’re happy with what we’re planning and we’re working on. So just stay tuned that there’s way more good things to come. And secondly, I’m thrilled to be here, and it’s great to have a conversation with you guys.
[00:30:35] Michelle: Well, thank you. Thank you for being here. Our audience, I know how to find us, of course, but how does our audience find out more information about The Events Calendar, Event Tickets? Where can we find the website? Online? And if people are interested in connecting with you, how can they do that?
[00:30:51] Juan: Yeah, sure. So TheEventsCalender.com is our website.
That’s the place where you can learn more about our products, where you can just if you’re part of our user base, you can get support, you can read about our products. And we have guides, we have knowledge base articles.
Jeff is doing some magic there updating and adding some more information.
So that will be the main hub to say something, because from that place, you can go to the WP.org listings where you can also kind of check more in depth about some topics. So those would be the main places for information about The Events Calendar and about me. You can just I don’t know if you’re into code, just go to my GitHub my WordPress username. It’s J-U-A-N-F-R-A So, Juanfra, both on GitHub and The Events Calendar sorry, The Events Calendar, no wordpress.org. And then on Twitter and LinkedIn, I’m the same username, but with an extra A at the end because of my last name. So it’s Juanfra with two A’s.
[00:32:15] Michelle: Yeah, perfect. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. It was great to learn more about the history of and the future of The Events Calendar, specifically Event Tickets. And I just truly appreciate your time today. Anybody listening to the episode, all of those links that we’ve talked about will be available on the show notes. So all you have to do is go to StellarWP.com/podcast and find this episode with Juan, and all of those links will be in there, as well as the transcript for this episode. Jeff, thanks for being the co host today. Juanfra, thank you so much for spending some time with us. Our morning, your afternoon really, truly appreciate you. And we will see everybody else on the next episode of WP Constellations.
Bye.
[00:33:03] Juan: Thanks.
[00:33:09] Michelle: WP Constellations is a production of StellarWP, home of The Events Calendar, LearnDash, GiveWP, Kadence, Iconic, SolidWP, Orderable, and Restrict Content Pro. Learn more about the StellarVerse at stellarwp.com.