Special Episode
In this special episode, Michelle talked to eleven different WordCamp US attendees about their WCUS experiences, their hopes for the future of WordPress and their hopes for their products.
Mentioned in this episode:
- WordCamp US
- WordPress Community Summit
- Mindspun
- Inpsyde
- WooCommerce
- Hostinger
- viewSource
- Termageddon
- WS Form
- Multidots
- Barn2 Plugins
Episode Transcript
Intro 0 00:00:02 Welcome to WP Constellations, a podcast exploration of the WordPress universe, brought to you by StellarWP.
Michelle 00:00:12 In this episode I spoke with eleven different members of the WordPress community and asked them about what they do with WordPress as well as their hopes for the future of WordPress and their products.
Because it was day 3 of WordCamp (and day 5 including the Community Summit) my voice was hoarse, but I don’t think that takes away from the highlights our guests shared. Enjoy the episode. We’ll be back next week with our regular content.
Michelle 00:00:14 Good morning. We are here at WordCamp US and I am grateful to Matt Laue to be here this morning, this, and talk to me a little bit about how Workcamp is going. So, Matt, first tell us who are you, what do you do with WordPress, and maybe why you decided to come to WordCamp US this year?
Matt 00:00:32 Yeah. Um, so I’m Matt Laue, as you said, and, uh, I’m a founder of a company called Mindspun. We’re a small boutique development company, and we’re releasing a product that, uh, takes payments for Stripe. So it’s recurring subscriptions for your, you know, that space. So, um, I’m here at WordCamp with very few sort of hard, um, goals just to meet people and, and talk to everyone, which, which has been a lot, which is why neither of our voices are particularly great right now.
Michelle 00:01:03 You sound way better than me.
Matt 00:01:04 So it’s, it’s been great. I mean, just meeting a lot of people. So I’m relatively new to the WordPress space, but it’s still, even, even, even being as new as I am, I’m seeing people again and again that I’ve met. You know, it’s, it’s like I’m seeing old friends. Yeah. So it’s fantastic. Yeah. Um, people I’ve met at Phoenix this year, such as you and me. Yeah, exactly. And, um, it’s, it’s been great. And then it’s a beautiful venue. This is a, a lot of fun. I haven’t been to DC in like 20 years, so it’s exciting to be back here. I’m gonna do some touring, uh, after this, which will be good.
Michelle 00:01:38 Very good. Um, what do you think of the conference so far?
Matt 00:01:42 It’s been really good. Um, I’ve been like networking so much that I’ve missed a lot of the talks. Uh, but I’ll definitely pick those back up after, after the conference.
Michelle 00:01:51 Thank goodness, they record them,
Matt 00:01:52 Right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s so much stuff I wanted to see and so many talks I wanted to hear, but you just start having a conversation and, and, and there goes the time and there’s, there’s an hour that’s passed, right. It’s amazing. It’s
Michelle 00:02:04 Easy for sure. Uh, what do you think of the food here? Like, that has been the talk of, um, this WordCamp is that the food has been awesome. I think it has been. What is your opinion?
Matt 00:02:15 It, I, I agree. Of what I was able to get. Again, I like almost missed lunch yesterday, like I hadn’t eaten for a while and it, it was, um, it was been, it’s been fantastic. I just haven’t been able to take lunch .
Michelle 00:02:30 I understand. Yeah. Um, what do you think is important in WordPress when we talk about the community, we talk about software, um, how is it for your business? Maybe what do you hope to see, um, to continue to develop in the WordPress, the software and the community?
Matt 00:02:46 Let me take that in a little different direction. Here’s a, here’s a topic of conversation that’s come up a couple times. Here is the, and it very much from a technical perspective. And it, it’s, um, one of the great things about WordPress traditionally has been that people, people can, like, even hobbyists can build businesses out of it. You know, it’s, it’s really easy to get into. You can build things easily with it. And we’re kind of moving to a new direction where, um, block things are block based. Um, it’s a, it’s React based, which is much harder to learn from a technical perspective than just like learning PHP. I mean, you can actually learn PHP inside of WordPress. Sure. It’s a good way of doing it, frankly. I did. And, um, but React does not work like that. So one of the things we wanna make sure is that we don’t create such a barrier to entry for people creating new things that they, um, that we end up like changing that culture. Sure. Um, I mean, big companies, you know, like the masses and all that who are fantastic. I mean, it, it does a lot of really things, but we also want that to be from everyone from the like one person agency up to the biggest, you know, government organization. And even just bloggers, right. People who just wanna put their thoughts out on the Internet. Exactly. Right. Yeah. And, um, I use the term agency, but it, like, it’s, it really is just anyone who wants to build, you said digital creator, really. And so it’s easy for us, um, in the industry to think about the business of WordPress, but, um, I love the motto or tagline or whatever of, um, that WordPress is democratizing publishing. Yeah. Making it easy for people to put their thoughts, their business and, and build a life around what they do on the internet.
Matt 00:04:24 And as we evolve techno, as you know, WordPress evolves in technology. Um, we wanna make sure that it, that’s still possible. We want don’t wanna change the culture. And, and by the way, I, I am a total, uh, believer in the direction that WordPress is going. Sure. I just wanna make sure that that gap is filled. I mean, and maybe that’s done by training some, you know, some making, some things offered there. Yeah. It’s, but it’s just a hard problem and something to be aware of. Sure.
Matt 00:04:48 And the culture of drag and drop do it easy. Um, apps on your phone, we wanna make sure that we don’t lose a gener the next generation coming in and make it possible for my mother at 76 or my kid at 15 to be able to do what they want with WordPress.
Matt 00:05:06 Absolutely. Yeah. And, and to, um, but it’s also good to have like, new, new technology that’s exciting to a, a, a next generation one, one, like the one behind us, essentially. Yeah. Because it, it, I mean, every, every, every group needs new, new people,
Michelle 00:05:20 Right. We no longer use eight track tapes. Yeah. It’s, but when I was growing up, I was like, I try to record things on the radio and with cassette tape, right? Mm-hmm. and now we have like streaming music and things like that. We need to make sure that WordPress grows in the same kinds of directions and continues to adopt, um, technologies that will incorporate the future.
Matt 00:05:42 Absolutely. I mean, we’ll have a new, a new generation to explain why the save icon looks like it does. Exactly.
Michelle 00:05:47 Exactly. Like what is that box?
Matt 00:05:49 Yeah, exactly. What, what’s a floppy disk?
Michelle 00:05:52 What’s the future for Mindspun? What are you looking forward to with your company in the next year?
Matt 00:05:56 Yeah. And um, more WordCamps for sure. And what I really want to do, um, is be a more of a participant, especially at the, at the like more regional level. And, and, um, it is like, I really enjoyed Phoenix because it was easier to maybe communicate with people at a, like one-on-one basis. Mm-hmm. , um, I mean, this is 2,500 people. I probably haven’t, I probably haven’t talked to half of them. You know, , you probably have…
Michelle 00:06:29 Where’s home for you?
Matt 00:06:30 Uh, Vegas, Las Vegas. Yeah.
Michelle 00:06:32 That made it a lot easier for you to attend, in Phoenix, right?
Matt 00:06:34 It did. It did. Yeah. And, and we, um, most of the WordCamps that have come back so far have come back on the East coast, but although Omaha’s coming. Yes. Yeah. So, but, so that’s, that’s changing. And I think there’s gonna be a lot more in 2024. I’m really looking forward to attending.
Michelle 00:06:48 I think so, too. Post pandemic WordPress has taken a little bit of time to get back into in person, but it’s really starting to roll now and it’s gonna be something else.
Matt 00:06:57 Next year I think. So we can all, like, we learn how to talk to people again. Yeah. . Exactly.
Michelle 00:07:02 Thank you for taking some time to, to talk to me this morning. Any last words before we sign off?
Matt 00:07:07 No, that’s it. Thank, thank so much for having me.
Michelle 00:07:10 I appreciate you so much. Thank you.
Matt 00:07:11 Thank you.
Michelle 00:07:17 I’m here right now with Tammy Lister. Tammy, thank you for joining me. So tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do with WordPress.
Tammie 00:07:24 Yeah. Hi, my name’s Tammie Lister. Um, I work at Inpsyde as a WordPress developer. Um, and I also work within, uh, core as a contributor as well.
Michelle 00:07:36 Fantastic. And I appreciate all that you do, for sure. Thank you. How are you finding the conference this year? What do you think about WordCamp US 2023?
Tammie 00:07:44 I think it’s really great. Um, there’s something about a conference in a hotel, so it’s nice and kind of that, uh, I think it’s, uh, really expansive, which is great. Um, the talks have really varied as well, which I think is nice. Um, the pace of it’s nice as well. Um, I’ve been to some super interesting talks. The location has, uh, meant some very, uh, diverse, uh, speakers and, uh, some conversations as well. Um, and there’s certainly been some great, uh, social events as well. I think we’ve had all the social events
Michelle 00:08:17 What do you see in the next year? What do you hope for in the next year for WordPress and as we go forward?
Tammie 00:08:28 I hope we pace ourselves. I think that’s the biggest thing. Um, I think the change of technology at the moment means we also have to remember to learn the change of technology and not just adapt without thinking. Um, I hope we also nurture each other and, um, don’t wave each other out along the way. Um, I hope that we don’t just adopt the new shiny thing without thinking about what we’re doing. There’s a lot of like hopes and things there. Um, we’ve got a great release in 6.4. It’s one of those ones at the end of the year. Um, uh, we’ve had, we’ve had one before. That just really means we can start mentoring some people that can go on to really set the tone going through the next year. So I hope for some different faces and voices within the project that we haven’t heard. We’ve just had the Community Summit as part of this as well, which, um, that always brings me with to the point of wanting different people to be in spaces where other people were taking up before. So that’s what I said.
Michelle 00:09:37 And what’s in store for you for the next year?
Tammie 00:09:40 Learning lots about development, um, uh, and trying to pace myself. I think that’s really important. It’s, it’s very easy to, when you are learning something, just go, oh, I need to learn everything. Um, but something I’ve learned the past few years is I can’t do all the things all at once, even though I want tp, because I don’t have a time machine. Um, so trying to do that, um, trying to not attend everything but attend the right things. Um, and I think everyone should maybe try and do that. You know, the pandemic meant we couldn’t attend anything. Um, and now what we can do is we can choose what we attend. Um, so I would encourage everyone to try and, and take that approach. So we, we kind of wanted to attend everything now. Right. Um, uh, so I hope, I hope for that. Um, yeah, just pacing, yeah. And learning and uh, really trying to use some of the new things, but also trying to make some of the older things better and, and iterate is important.
Michelle 00:10:40 Can we ask you too, so in a few years back we had all women non-binary release squad and we’re doing that again. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that?
Tammie 00:10:49 I think it is critical, um, for a number of reasons. One for the mentorship. Um, I don’t think we did the mentorship as much the last time due to the situation, you know, uh, a whole world happened. Um, uh, and no one can see that. No one can see the time and everything. Um, and I think if we do this time the way we’re doing it, there’s so much with the cohorts, some of the groups, there’s so much potential for planting the seed for learning. Um, that is incredibly important. I don’t think we need to it for every group, um, and go round like a checkbox and doing it. Um, I would like to see a point, we don’t need to do it. Right. Um, because if we don’t need to do it, it means that we have managed to include everybody. Exactly. Um, so I would love to see, we get to obsolescence of it.
Tammie 00:11:47 Um, but I think it’s great. I think what we have to remember, and I think think this time round, I will just note that some people have maybe not stepped back as much. And I would encourage if you feel you are taking a space as someone who would come under that, if you can step back and be mentoring them, even if you do come under that, but you have been a long time contributor, but you could be a mentor, do that move to the position of mentorship of someone who is newer would be really beautiful for you to do rather than taking up that space. Um, it’s something I’ve tried to move to a different role, but also in any area that I know I’ve tried to move to a mentorship role because, uh, taking up less space in those roles means that people can move into those as well, which is really, really important.
Michelle 00:12:34 And that’s important for the future of WordPress. Yeah. To bring in the next generation. Yeah.
Tammie 00:12:38 If, if like, it’s kind of interesting, you know, when you were a kid and you lick all the ice creams or you lick all the cakes ’cause you’re like, mine, mine, mine. I know that’s not good in COVID times to say that, but Yeah. Um, but it’s that approach, right? Like if you feel that you, you need to like put your name badge on everything or own. And I think it’s really important to make space and have visible space for people. We panic about vacancies in our project because we’re like, oh no, someone’s not fitting these vacancies. Vacancies can actually be really beautiful and good because then people can think, oh my goodness, I can see that I could do something for myself. So seeing that is really important.
Michelle 00:13:18 Well. I love that. Um, any other thoughts that you wanna share today?
Tammie 00:13:23 I would just encourage everyone to be really gentle with themselves. Um, and yes, uh, you might be kind of going out into the world a little bit more with the community, but, uh, remember that those that you meet have had a lot of life going on since we last met them. That’s been something that I’ve reminded. Um, anyone who’s an introvert is probably an introvert plus plus now. Um, anyone, you know, people’s lives have changed. You, you are meeting someone with years on their life, their, their abilities may have changed. Um, their physicality may have changed, uh, what you might see, um, maybe an invisible illness now that they may have that they didn’t have before. Sure. Um, there is so much difference to get to know the person that you thought you knew before, um, at that if you see them physically at work camp again. Um, there’s been a lot of that, like rediscovering, re getting to know people when I went to work, camp you from when I’ve gone here. Um, and I would encourage people to do that, like reintroduce themselves to everybody.
Michelle 00:14:21 I think it’s really, I love that. Very good advice. Thank you so much for taking some time to talk with me today.
Tammie 00:14:25 Thank you.
Michelle 00:14:26 Um, and I look forward to continuing our friendship after this.
Michelle 00:14:30 I’m joined by Patrick Rowland. Patrick, thank you for joining us today.
Patrick 00:14:31 Thanks for having me.
Michelle 00:14:32 Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Patrick 00:14:44 Uh, so yeah, my name is Patrick Rauland and I am obsessed with e-commerce. I’ve always liked e-commerce, WooCommerce, Shopify, just put everything. Um, and recently I’ve been doing some marketing stuff. I’ve been doing some product stuff, and I’m thinking about getting back into WooCommerce development.
Michelle 00:14:58 I love that. What do you love about WooCommerce?
Patrick 00:15:01 Uh, I love owning your own business. Uh, at every other platform on the internet. At some point they can change their terms and services and just like kick you off. And there’s something so powerful about WordPress. And with WooCommerce, especially e-commerce, you own that and you can just build your little empire and you start adding plugins and customizations and themes and you can kind of do anything. So it’s the ultimate build your own empire tool. Yeah.
Michelle 00:15:26 I think back a lot on the tagline that we have in WordPress about democratizing publishing, and I think it also democratizes e-commerce and commerce in general.
Patrick 00:15:36 Absolutely. We, when I was at WooThemes, we definitely talked about that and I, I don’t remember if we directly stole that tagline, but we definitely liked democratizing e-commerce. Yeah. Yeah. It’s very powerful.
Michelle 00:15:45 Absolutely. I think one of the things that really is cool about it is that no matter where you are in the world, you have the ability to build a future Yes. And then and an in public for yourself. Yes.
Patrick 00:15:55 And a lot of people make things in the world, and it’s just nice to be able to get those to people who want them. Um, I, I have, as an example, I have a friend who makes like resin dice as a, as a hobby, but she like can put ’em on her website for 70 bucks and sell them to whoever wants them. I mean, absolutely. I love that people can just do that with the technology out of the box.
Michelle 00:16:13 I’ll tell you that Resin TikTok is an amazing, fun thing to watch. Yeah.
Patrick 00:16:18 Yes. Yeah. Yes. People who are watching this. Yes. All the little dice makers are crazy. It’s very, very cool. It’s wild.
Michelle 00:16:24. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Um, what do you hope to see? Well, first let me ask you, what did you, what do you think of the conference so far? We’re in day two, if anybody is, if you’re, if you’re watching, um, day two. And so we’ve had a little experience so far. What are your thoughts?
Patrick 00:16:37 So, I’m a conference snob. Let me start that at the top. I’m a conference snob, so take this with a grain of salt. Absolutely. Yesterday I did go to a talk and there were like huge technical problems and we actually didn’t get to the talk and I was really, or didn’t, didn’t get to the meat of the talk. And I was really sad about that. But today, this morning, the keynote was excellent. It was very inspirational, and I think those were very hard. I’ve organized WordCamp Denver in the past and other, uh, word camps. It’s very hard to find a good inspiring speaker. And I think Ken Liu, I can’t remember if that that’s the, the correct name, but he was great. So I, and I, I’m, I’m a little skeptical of, I don’t know if I’m gonna like this. And I went there and I enjoyed it and I loved it. And it was, uh, motivated me to find work that is playful and fun. And I’m curious about, because that is when you make the, that’s when you do your best job.
Michelle 00:17:20 Absolutely. Are you making good connections here?
Patrick 00:17:23 Yes. New connections and old connections. It feels like a good mix of both. I like, you know, I, you know, you walk around and you see some people that you know and you say hi. And then, you know, at lunch yesterday, I didn’t see anyone. I knew one. I just talked to random people and also and had a good time. And, uh, that’s very cool. I, there, just so you know, I don’t like doing it, but I, I like having done it . Right. I don’t like approaching a new group of people, but once I say hi and chat and sit down and have lunch with them, I’m like, oh, that was really fun. It’s
Michelle 00:17:52 Like, I don’t like traveling, but I like to be there, I like, it’s the flight, the drive. Yes. I get it. But being there is awesome, right?
Patrick 00:17:59 Same idea. The flights, ugh.
Michelle 00:18:01 Exactly. Exactly. So, um, you know, as we look for the next year, up until maybe the next WordCamp US, what are you excited about or hopeful for at WordPress?
Patrick 00:18:13 Um, I, there seems to be, um, maybe I, I wanna see just more change and more progress and I, I, and WordPress is, uh, it’s slow moving. Mm-hmm. and I, I just wanna see a little bit more change and a little bit more movement. I, and I think we’re getting there. And I, and I love the, I heard from some contributors that there’s the community summit. They, they made a whole list of issues to address, and then the very next day they started addressing some of those on contributor day. And that to me feels like progress. That yeah. That format. I was at a community summit many years ago, and that was not the format that we had. And it feels like that just went into the ether. Yeah. And when you collect feedback, you should act on otherwise, what’s the point of collecting it? So I think there is good movement and I’m hoping that that turns into real progress.
Michelle 00:18:59 I love that. What are you hopeful for yourself? And WordPress over the next year?
Patrick 00:19:03 I, I wanna find something new. I’ve had, uh, I just finished up a six month contract with a client, which is really good. And we had really good results. And then, you know, sometimes things just don’t work out and you’re like, oh, okay. I, I thought I was gonna, we were gonna keep doing, working together. Okay. I thought we were great. So now I’m looking for something new and I’m, I’m actually not sure if I want it to be part-time and I can do some online courses or full-time. There’s pros and cons to each. Yeah. Right now I’m excited about either doing marketing or doing WooCommerce development. Um, that’s what I’m hoping to get back into.
Michelle 00:19:35 Maybe a little combination of both.
Patrick 00:19:36 A little combination of both. That’d be great.
Michelle 00:19:38 Looking for your next great thing. Yeah. I love that. Thank you so much for taking some time to talk with me today, even though my voice is terrible, but, um, yours sounds great. So thank you so much for taking the time, uh, love getting to know you a little bit more and looking forward to seeing you at future conferences.
Patrick 00:19:53 Thank you for chatting with me. But can I ask you one question before we sign off? I wanna know what you’re excited about for the next year for yourself.
Michelle 00:19:59 I’m excited about the work we do at StellarWP and the things that are coming down. Yeah. Um, and incorporating AI.
Patrick 00:20:05 Yeah.
Michelle 00:20:06 To make our customers’ lives easier. Yeah. So that’s pretty cool. And then also cloud, we’re working a lot with, um, Kadence Cloud,LearnDash Cloud, and those things are super exciting.
Patrick 00:20:17 Oh, learn Dash cloud. I love the sound of that. Very cool. Yeah,
Michelle 00:20:20 It’s pretty cool because you can have a WordPress, you can have a non-WordPress website mm-hmm. and then have your e-learning on LearnDash Cloud.
Patrick 00:20:28 Very cool. I like that. I like the things you’re excited about. And I, I look forward to seeing people at the next conferences as well.
Michelle 00:20:31 Perfect. Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. We’ll talk to you soon.
Michelle 00:20:48 I’m joined by Emma Young from Hostinger. Good morning. How are you?
Emma 00:20:46 I’m good. My voice is almost as raspy as yours, but it’s good’s.
Michelle 00:20:50 We hould have done this on day one when we all still had voices. I know, right? What was I thinking?
Emma 00:20:55 . It’s okay.
Michelle 00:20:55 Thank you for joining me this morning. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do with WordPress.
Emma 00:21:01 Okay, great. Yes. So I, um, head of content at Hostinger. Uh, so we work a lot with WordPress because, well, I mean, we use WordPress to publish on our blog, uh, but we write a lot of content about it, but more with contributing. I am, of course on the docs team. I love documentation, I love consistency. I love a style guide. So anything writing, editing, um, you know, just changing things from, uh, title case to sentence, case and headings. Uh, and yeah, so I’ve started playing around a little bit more with marketing and with, um, community and, but, uh, but Docs is where my heart’s at. Yeah.
Michelle 00:21:34 That’s awesome. And tell everybody if they don’t know what is Hostinger?
Emma 00:21:36 Hostinger is a web hosting provider. Uh, so it, what, what helps you get your website online? Uh, so if you have, um, I don’t know, a CV type of portfolio or if you wanna sell something, um, yeah, we provide managed WordPress, uh, fully managed WordPress hosting, um, for really affordable prices, to be honest. Yeah,
Michelle 00:21:56 I love that. That’s awesome. Um, what do you hope to see, or what do you expect to see either one, um, over the next year for WordPress for us, between let’s say now and next WordCamp US?
Emma 00:22:07 Yeah. Uh, so I was lucky enough to go to the summit, so, um, it’s been a long week for me, , but, um, but it was, it was crazy. Like I, it’s my first one crazy in a good way, right? Um, the discussions and like the topics that came up, uh, were all things that I’ve always just wanted to talk, but maybe don’t know, like who to talk to about or how to make it happen. And it was just nice to see like so many people, so passionate about the same thing. So main thing was, uh, cross al operation. So how can we kind of cut out redundancy, especially in documentation? Sure. So, um, like getting stuff from the hosting or devs and like changing those use case straight into documentation and then straight into learn WordPress. Uh, so people, because work sometimes we don’t get the docs out, uh, like right. With every release. Um, but, uh, yeah, that could, could really cut down the time and people can just use it and have the information on how to use the new update so much faster. Right. So, but I would really, it would be really cool to see all of that happen. Yeah.
Michelle 00:23:07 Yeah, for sure. I love that there are people who are passionate about things that I am not passionate about , because we need people who are passionate about all parts of the project, and if I had to be passionate about documentation, that would be difficult for me. So thank you for being somebody who’s passionate about Docs. What are you hoping to see for the next year at Hostinger?
Emma 00:23:30 Oh, man. So we just, uh, so we have managed WordPress like fully. You don’t have to pay anything extra for it. So, um, and I would love to see that, you know, with all of the hooks and companies. But like, I’m, we’re very proud about that. Um, you get a long list of everything just because you wanna use WordPress and, uh, I mean, like, we’re all big advocates. We all contribute. So it’s, uh, so I would like to see more people use it. I mean, like, uh, know about it, I guess, you know, and, um, be able to utilize all of these tools that we’ve set up for them. Uh, that would be awesome. Yeah. So by maybe, and also, you know, to be honest, like, because we’re kind of new to the word camp, uh, area thing, um, people to be like, what’s, so not, not to say, oh, what’s hosting her? Like, you know, so, uh, yeah, they would actually like, recognize our name. Um, that would be really cool.
Michelle 00:24:15 Nice. Yeah. And are you finding the conference good? Enjoying it?
Emma 00:24:18 Yeah. Yeah. Um, that Woodrow Wilson Hall is massive and I vol and I’m a volunteer, uh, again, uh, so I did the help desk yesterday, which was fun because my jokes are landing a lot better here in the States. Sometimes when I made like jokes as volunteer in like Europe or Asia, it was, uh, they were like, huh uh, but here it’s like, everyone’s okay with my like, really bad dad jokes, . Um, and, uh, I love that. Yeah. So I’m gonna maybe attempt some of ’em. Um, I’ll be MCing the next track, but, but it, I would, I’ve peeped in like inside to see it and I was like, oh man, this is like, uh, there’s no, there’s a lot of lighting. And I got a little nervous. I was like, oh, I’ll be okay. Um, but, uh, yeah, no, the, the conference overall is great, you know, like, the food’s good. And I’ve also been here since Monday, so , so the, the summit, same contributors day, and then, uh, now volunteering. It’s just been, it’s been awesome. Yeah. It’s wonderful.
Michelle 00:25:13. Well, thank you so much for taking some time to talk to me today. Yeah. And, uh, looking forward to continuing our relationship in the future. And be able to see you at future conferences.
Emma 00:25:23 Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
Michelle 00:25:24 My pleasure. Thank you. I
Michelle 00:25:35 I’m here with Estela Rueda. Hopefully I said that right? I’ve known you long enough, I should say it right now. Um, and I am excited to be here with you at WordCamp US. Thank you for joining me.
Estela 00:25:40 Thank you for inviting me. Um, so what do you want me to say? Yeah, introduce myself?
Michelle 00:25;45 Yeah, introduce yourself. Tell us what you do with the
Estela 00:26:00 Okay, so I, well, yeah. I’m Estela Rueda. I contribute to, uh, WordPress to the documentation and the docs team, oh, sorry. Documentation teams. Um, probably, you know, in the next year or so, I’m gonna be dangling with Pollylang and Meta for us very special project. And we are working on exciting. Yeah. Very good.
Michelle 00:26 15 How do you, um, are you finding work camp you asked this year? Are you enjoying it? I’m enjoying it, yeah.
Estela 00:26:17 Very interesting. I’ve been meeting, um, a lot of people that I’ve known online for a while, so it’s, that’s been exciting, you know, putting like, they’re like real people a lot. No, I cannot keep on saying like, oh, my friends are in my computer. I’ve been meeting them. So That’s good. That’s always good. That’s always a great experience. Yeah, for sure.
Michelle 00:26:50 And you were an organizer for WordCamp Europe?
Estela 00:26:52 That’s correct. Yeah.
Michelle 00:26:58 And are you on the team here at WordCamp US also?
Estela 00:27:00 No, no, no, no, no, no. Can’t do just one, one workout , one flagship workout at a time. It’s impossible to do that. It’s a lot of work. So Yeah. Anybody who’s, who is doing a flagship, you know, organizing a flagship event, uh, this workout’s like pops the house off to them because it’s a lot of work. It is.
Michelle 00:27:05 Yeah. I have to say WordCamp Europe accessibility was amazing. You worked very, very hard to make sure that I was able to access everywhere. Yeah. But that it made it accessible for everyone else as well. And I wanted to thank you publicly for all that you did and the constant communication we had to make sure that everything, that I was aware of everything. And that you were able to, um, make things accessible.
Estela 00:26:35 I know, I, I know I, I asked you a lot of, um, not easy questions. That’s okay for it, because we needed to, but that’s also part in my background. I have to say that my mother is, uh, she’s been into, uh, accessibility all her life as she worked with, uh, when she started working with, uh, kids with special needs. And then she moved with kids with, um, that had physical, uh, issues, you know, to move around mobility and all of that.
Estela 00:27:58 And, uh, and then, so I, I just had it throughout my whole life. Yeah, you gotta look for this, you gotta look for that. You gotta make sure, you know, this is available. This is not available. And so I’m just used to it. Yeah, that’s wonderful. And then I have, and the other thing is that in Europe, the rules for that, the laws are like really, really there. It’s not in here. Like you can get away with it. And if somebody says you, then you go ahead and mix it. No, not in Europe. In Europe, it’s just that It is. Yeah. And people follow it more. I was very amazed when I moved back to Europe how the cities have adapted, even though, you know, the old constructions, all the buildings and everything. Uh, it was, it’s amazing. So yeah, I will, we’ll always try it, and whenever I can, I will push it to make sure that, you know, people can access places.
Estela 00:28:46 Because people need to be, you know, everybody, we all need to have the same, you know, we all have the same rights to the same type of life. Yes. And I appreciate so much the work that you do. Yeah. Thank you. What are you looking forward to for in, in the next year, not only in WordPress, but for yourself? Ooh, for myself, well, I’m moving, I’m moving from Slovakia , but I’m not gonna say where yet. Oh, I’m looking forward to that information later. That is gonna be, that is gonna come soon. Um, that’s one thing. Um, we’re moving countries still in Europe or just moving countries. Okay. Um, in work France, I’ll continue working. Um, in my school, it’s not project that was about ization of the, uh, help, help have the, um, end user documentation, uh, that was done. And then I, you know, I had this modest idea of saying like, well, what if we did this?
Estela 00:29:42 Let’s pass it along and translate it to knowing as many languages I can. So, you know, I said that out loud and somebody said, yeah, but I want this also for my team. And then somebody else said, yeah, but I want that also for my team. And, you know, it just kept on echoing. And that’s what we are working on. Uh, we’re working on a proposal on how to translate the con the full content on the.org into the Rosetta sites, um, with, you know, we have just is behind this, you know, she’s been up to date with everything. We’ve been meeting after meeting with a lot of people, not so the proposal already, he gave us, you know, a few pointers and here we go. And we’re still in pre, pre, pre-proposal, you know, the final, final, final draft for the, for the final, we call it the early stages ?
Estela 00:30:37 No, no. When we just skip that, those we’re like in the mid to every place, . And, um, at the same time, I am collecting, um, experiences from the, from the local teams, you know, all the issues and the pain points that they’ve been having. When it, when it comes to translation, uh, we’re talking about before translating, because we know the big, the big problem we all have is the lack of contributors. So we are conscious of that, but we wanna know before we get to that point, all the, you know, all the rivers that we need to cross before that, that are way too many. So that’s what we’re focusing, that’s what I say, like, we’re in the final, final, final draft, for the, you know, I love it. But yeah. But, but yeah, that’s what’s gonna be probably in the next couple of years, it is all facing.
Estela 00:31:27 And it won’t all big coordinated with the development WordPress because we need the collaboration part and we need the, the multi-language part. So we are getting there. Very good. Is there anything else you’d like to share with us today? Uh, just have fun, . That’s right. Contribute and have fun. We’ll, doing it. And just remember, if you wanna contribute, uh, you don’t think that you have a lot of time or you have a lot of experience, one hour a month, one meeting at a time, that’s good enough. It helps a lot.
Michelle 00:31: 35Absolutely. Perfect advice. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for taking the time to talk to me today.
Estela 00:31:50 Thank you for inviting me. My pleasure.
Michelle 00:32:13 Good morning, Aurooba. How are you?
Aurooba 00:32:14 Morning. I’m really good. How are you?
Michelle 00:32:17 I’m good. I’m a little, little horse. So I’m gonna let you tell us about yourself and then and I won’t talk as much. So, um, we’re here at WordCamp US and I’ve been talking to some amazing people today. Yourself included. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do with WordPress?
Aurooba 00:32:33 Yeah. Well, I’m, you know, a WordPress developer. I’ve been in WordPress for almost a decade, maybe a little longer.
Michelle 00:32:39 Is that crazy?
Aurooba 00:32:40 I know, I know. Someone was asking me today, and I’m just like, yeah, I guess I’ve been here for a while doing WordPress things. Um, yeah. But I’m a developer. I’ve freelance sometimes I work with some agencies and it’s, uh, I just love building things for nonprofits, especially, you know, empowering other people to be able to create stuff on their own. Yeah.
Michelle 00:33:02 And you also have a podcast?
Aurooba 00:33:04 Yes. I have a development podcast called ViewSource with a really great friend and excellent developer, Brian Coords, ViewSource.fm. And yeah, it’s really, really fun to add sort of that developer perspective a little bit more into the community space because, you know, we all know about it, but it’s fun to talk about it in public too.
Michelle 00:33:24 It’s fun for certain nerd types to talk about building .
Aurooba 00:33:28 Yes, yes. Well, we definitely geek out, but it’s fun. I love it.
Michelle 00:33:31 I love it for sure. And, uh, you guys do a great job.
Aurooba 00:33:34 Thank you. Thank you.
Michelle 00:33:36 Um, so looking at the next year in WordPress, what are you hoping, maybe expecting to see?
Aurooba 00:33:42 I think for me personally, I’m really excited about this admin redesign that’s happening. And I really wanna make sure that we’re advocating for that extensibility and openness and making sure it’s gonna work for all the kind of people who are already established in the space. And, but also how can we open that up and make even more things possible that maybe people have never imagined, but can become possible because of all of this happening. Yeah. And I’m really hopeful that 6.4 being this un you know, released with underrepresented people Yeah. Is going to encourage even more people to get involved so that we don’t necessarily have to do one that’s called that. It just happens, you know? Right. It happens. I think that’s something that I’m really hopeful about. And then I feel like there’s a lot of awareness and, you know, you’ve been really awesome making sure that, you know, speakers are showing the diversity of our community mm-hmm. , and I want to see more of that more loudly, but without having to shout about it, if that makes any sense.
Michelle 00:34:44 It’d be nice if diversity just started to happen naturally. Yeah. And I think part of that comes from empowering people Yes. In the community Yeah. To understand that their voice is just as powerful as everybody else’s.
Aurooba 00:34:55 Exactly. And sometimes they’re so powerful that they use them for a podcast episode, my goodness. Because we all know you have a very powerful voice and all appreciate that.
Michelle 00:35:04 I really try to use it for good. For sure. So what are you hoping to see for you in WordPress for the next year?
Aurooba 00:35:12 For me, honestly, I wanna continue, uh, advocating for the block editor and for this modern WordPress development. I wanna do some education. I’m hopeful to release a course about it and, you know, do what I can to contribute even more, because it’s been a little bit hard, but I wanna make sure that I’m also like walking my talk, you know? Yeah, so that’s kinda what I’m looking, looking to do personally.
Michelle 00:35:37 And in the past you’ve been a really good advocate for self-care.
Aurooba 00:35:42 Yes.
Michelle 00:35:42 Especially within a community that’s so busy with so much going on. Yeah. And I appreciate that, so thank you.
Aurooba 00:35:48 Yeah. I mean, you know, I’m trying to take my own advice and sometimes that’s hard.
Michelle 00:35:52 It is.
Aurooba 00:35:52 But yes,
Michelle 00:35:52 Trust me, I know I should be drinking tea and eating soup today, so…
Aurooba 00:35:57 Yes. No, totally. But yeah, that’s, uh, I’m really excited for not only having that better balance, but still like having the balance, but even being able to do a little bit more because you’re able to be rested and taking breaks the right time and yeah. Being self-aware and having the community, you know, support each other in doing so. Yeah.
Michelle 00:36:15 I love it. Any one of us disappearing, disappearing, taking a step back any period of time shouldn’t impact the future of workplace. Yes. We’re all important. Yes. And our roles are important. Yes. But we should have enough redundancy built in. Yeah. That it’s not reliant on any one person.
Aurooba 00:36:32 Yeah. We wanna reduce that plus factor of one. Exactly. Know in any part of the project, especially when it’s something that, you know, powers so much of the web. It’s pretty, pretty critical. Yeah.
Michelle 00:36:43 Anything else you’d like to share with us today?
Aurooba 00:36:44 No, thank you for, you know, sponsoring, uh, WordCamp US and I. It’s, it’s been such a great time, you know, and that’s really lovely seeing you, and I hope that the rest of it goes Awesome.
Michelle 00:36:55 Likewise. And I look forward to seeing you at future events.
Aurooba 00:36:57 Yes, thank you. Likewise.
Michelle 00:36:59 Thanks for taking the time today.
Aurooba 00:37:00 No problem. Have a good rest of your day.
Michelle 00:37:06 We’re here at WordCamp US, and today I am joined by my friends, not just people I know in WordPress, but friends, uh, Hans and Donata from Termageddon. So tell us a little bit about what you do, who you are, what you do with WordPress, and uh, yeah. Give us a little rundown.
Donata 00:37:23 Sure. Um, so I’m Donata I’m the president and legal engineer behind Termageddon. Um, I’m also an attorney licensed in Illinois and a certified information privacy professional. Um, so my job is to basically, uh, create all the questions needed to create the policies, create all the text, and then also keep our clients’ policies up to date with changing legislations.
Michelle 00:37:45 Just a few things just about that
Donata 00:37:46 That. Yeah,
Michelle 00:37:46 She, she’s
Hans 00:37:47 The smart one, . Um, so yeah, my name is Hans and I, I run, uh, agency partnerships at Termageddon, excuse me. Uh, Termageddon is a website policies generator built for web agencies and their clients, uh, helping agencies mixing recurring revenues while helping their clients get protected with auto updating website policies. Um, so I work with agency owners, um, helping them understand why it’s important to educate clients about privacy rights and like, and the importance of complying with laws. Um, and prior to that, I ran a 12 person web, uh, WordPress web design agency in downtown Chicago.
Michelle 00:38:21 I love that. And as a customer of Termageddon, I can attest to how wonderful it is not to have to worry about updating policies and knowing that no matter where somebody is in the United States and, and or wherever, that I don’t have to have a fear about what’s on my website policy wise. So thank you for all the work that you do. That’s awesome.
Hans 00:38:41 Yeah, a great example at the time of this recording, in five days, Quebec or the people of Quebec get extra privacy rights under Quebec’s new privacy law. And that’s such a good example of like, we just try to monitor this stuff, keep our customers up to date, and hopefully take care of them with like the added disclosures.
Michelle 00:38:57 I love it. It’s wonderful. So thank you for all that you do to keep us all compliant.
Hans 00:39:01 , we’re trying.
Michelle 00:39:02 , how are you finding the conference so far? What are some highlights for you?
Donata 00:39:05 Really, really fun. Um, so for me, my personal highlight, I’m Lithuanian. Um, so Lithuania is a pretty small country with, you know, pretty small population. Uh, but I met like over 20 Lithuanians here. That’s cool. And we got to speak Lithuanian. Um, so that was really, really cool. That was the highlight for me.
Hans 00:39:23 Their eyes popped out of their
Donata 00:39:26 They were so surprised to see, to know, you know, very unexpected.
Hans 00:39:30 . Um, yeah, that’s really cool. Um, for me it is the standard, which is I’m getting to see all my friends that I haven’t seen. You know, we, we, we form all these relationships for years over emails, over support, over, you know, video calls and everything. And then you get to see what I say, 3D we get to see each other in 3D , um, which I think for everyone else is in real life, but for, for me it’s 3D. So old friends and making new friends. I mean, that’s just, that is why I love it here. So Yeah.
Michelle 00:39:58 I’ve heard people say to others, you’re so much taller than when you’re just in that little box on my screen.
Donata 00:40:04 Yeah. I’ve been told at this conference that apparently it looks significantly different in person, and I don’t know if that’s better or good, so,
Michelle 00:40:11 What, what do you hope to see, or what do you expect to see either one, um, in WordPress over the next year?
Hans 00:40:22 So I would love to see, um, uh, agency owners helping other agency owners that I think that is the, I think the industry’s very excited about AI and like, giving end users the ability to build websites, um, as efficiently and effectively as possible. That is wonderful. But I also, knowing what it’s like working with small business owners and how busy they are, that I think there’s always gonna be a place for agencies. And I think, um, just encouraging agencies to learn from one another, that that’s something that was extremely, extremely beneficial for me when I first joined a work camp. I was just like, oh my gosh, there’s other people that like, know my pains and like, know my struggles and also know my wins. And like, um, I, I just don’t want to ever lose that. And I would say it would be great forward for us to continue focusing on helping agency owners as well as, uh, single website owners be successful
Michelle 00:41:12 Agencies of one
Hans 00:41:13 Agencies of one. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Donata 00:41:15 Yeah, I’m really hoping to see more WordCamps come out again. Um, you know, we were shut down for a while. Um, so I’m really hoping for more Word Camps because it’s so fun to go. It’s so fun to see everybody. So I’m really hoping it doesn’t stop again. I’m really hoping we can continue this.
Hans 00:41:30 Uh, yeah, the smallest word camps are our favorite. Like Jackson, Michigan. That was such an awesome one. Like,
Donata 00:41:35 So hoping to see the smaller ones come back to you as well as the bigger ones.
Michelle 00:41:39 Excellent. For sure. What’s on the horizon for Termageddon, and what do we, what can we expect in the next year?
Donata 00:41:44 Well, we have a new interface launching. Um, so we have completely redone pretty much everything . Um, so we have a new interface launching later this year. Um, really taking into account all the feedback that we’ve gotten from our partners, all the calls that we’ve had with our customers, um, and kind of creating a new flow, a new way to create policies, um, that’s hopefully gonna be easier for both agencies and clients, um, and more efficient. So we have a lot of new features planned. Um, looking very forward to that.
Michelle 00:42:15 Fantastic. Anything else you’d like to share with us today?
Hans 00:42:19 Uh, if anyone’s listening, um, you know, and you plan to go to a WordCamp or if you have any questions about attending a WordCamp, please email me, [email protected]. I would be more than happy to share my thoughts with you.
Donata 00:42:31 Yeah, same. Same.
Michelle 00:42:33 Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day here, just to share some thoughts with us. I appreciate you both so much.
Donata 00:42:39 Thank, thank you. Yeah. Thank you for having us.
Michelle 00:42:45 We’re still at WordCamp US. And I am joined by my friend and, uh, WordPress developer, business owner,
Mark 00:42:54 day husband
Michelle 00:42:55 day husband, WordPress community member extraordinaire, Mark Westguard from WS Form. Hi Mark. Thanks for being here.
Mark 00:43:00 Thank you for having me.
Michelle 00:43:01 Absolutely. Um, so tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Mark 00:43:04 Um, so my name is Mark Westguard and I run the WordPress form plugin called WS Form. And, uh, we’ve been around for about, I wanna say five years now. I’m excited to see lots of growth and meet lots of, um, customers at the event. Yeah, I mean five years ago we were telling people who we are and now people are coming to us and telling us what they’re doing with our products. So that’s, yeah, it’s been great.
Michelle 00:43:27 That is definite momentum. Yes, for sure. Um, one of the things that I’ve been asking people here today is how are you finding the conference? What are some highlights for you? And you are sponsor, so yeah. You might have a little bit of a different answer than others.
Mark 00:43:39 Yeah, so, uh, the first two days I was just meeting people and, um, it was great to see some people that I’ve been working with over the years and they were finally able to come to the event. So we firm those relationships up over a beer and . And then, uh, the event itself has been great. It’s been, um, good for traffic. We’ve met lots of customers and then a bit slower on day two. It always is. So we’ve been doing lots of networking and meeting other companies here and the opportunities to meet people and build relationship. This is the place to do it, you know? Absolutely. It really is great to do it in person. It’s difficult doing it offline, you know, you’ll send an email to someone, they dunno who you are, but when you just meet people through other connections that you’ve got, it’s really great to firm our relationships. So yeah, very, uh, very wor, very worthwhile.
Michelle 00:44:27 And you were somebody who sponsored WordCamp Asia. Yep. WordCamp Europe and WordCamp US. Yeah. And I’m not gonna ask you to contrast and compare them because they’re also vastly different. But it’s like the trifecta. This is the first year anybody could have done all three, because yeah, it was the first year of WordCamp Asia, so
Mark 00:44:43 Yeah. Yeah. Asia was incredibly busy. Uh, completely different crowd from here. Lovely people. It was really great to meet everyone there. I didn’t stop talking for two days, . It was, uh, and what was interesting is, um, I was hanging out with like, you, uh, Bob there and you and, um, it was like we were celebrities, you know, that was pretty awesome. It was, um, it was interesting to, to to see the, the different types of development groups that were there and stuff. Uh, they were taking selfies with us. It was so much fun. Um, and then Europe was just, its usual two day of, I didn’t stop talking again. Um, and it’s always great to go to those countries as well and, uh, enjoy the cities as well. So, yeah, it’s fun.
Michelle 00:45:26 Awesome. So in the next year, what do you hope to see, maybe even expect to see in WordPress?
Mark 00:45:32 Uh, more development in the, you know, full site editing and everything. We, we really wanna follow along with that and do a lot more on the starting side of things. So, um, I’m actually building a site right now for a client, which could be full site editing all the way through. So that’s been a, a good experience to kind of learn it a lot more and then incorporate that more into WS form. So that’s gonna be probably one of my biggest focuses over the next 12 months is, you know, looking at more ways that we can give users the ability to style stuff within full site editor. Yeah.
Michelle 00:46:00 Um, this year you launched, I, I, I told you I was gonna ask you what’s in the future for WS Form, but the recent past is pretty exciting too. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about what, what you’ve recently launched and maybe what a, a sneak peek into what’s coming.
Mark 00:46:15 So, a couple of big things we’ve done this year is firstly the AI integration. So we’ve integrated in with open AI, we’ve done some fun stuff there. We’ve got the ability to build a form just by typing what you want. I mean, literally you could say, make me a dog adoption form and it’ll build it for you. It’s quite crazy . It’s, and um, but then we’ve also integrated in with the other parts of open AI such as moderation. So you can use that to check the content that’s coming through on a form and check it for any kind of malicious, violent content, and then get rid of that stuff. ’cause we don’t like that stuff. So you can use OpenAI to do that. And then also like image generation, um, and the content generation too. People use that to create maybe an avatar for user or blog post image.
Mark 00:46:56 So that’s got some great applications. And then we’ve just done an integration with InstaWP, which has been great. So we wanted to redo our demo of WS Form on our site. Um, we got in touch with InstaWP and then instantly found that we could build an add-on together. So you can now spin up InstaWP websites from WS Form. Um, in the future, uh, we’ve got a few things up our sleeves, but, um, probably more integrations, more functionality, listening to our customers to see what they wanna do. Uh, we have a feature request base. We’re always, always running through that. We’ve got a new Mollie integration coming in for European payment. So, um, I’m excited to get that live as well. So yeah. All, all sorts going on. Um, fantastic. We’re finally at the end of our, um, work camp season, so , but may come to Rochester to come see you, so
Michelle 00:47:44 That would be lovely. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Anything else you’d like to share with us?
Mark 00:47:49 Not really. Oh, I think this, this event has just been, I think the most exciting thing for me has just been meeting those faces that I’ve been talking to forever. And, um, we’ve just sat down and got on, like we’ve known each other for years, you know, we’ve just been great. And then we’ve met each other. I feel like I’ve been drinking for four days. I mean, we’ve , you know, it’s been great fun. So, yeah. Fantastic.
Michelle 00:48:09 Well, thank you so much for taking time out from your table, your booth today Yeah. To share some thoughts with us. I appreciate you.
Mark 1 00:48:15 Thank you for having me.
Michelle 00:48:16 My pleasure.
Michelle 00:48:18 Grateful to have my friend Anil Gupta from Multidots here today. And Anil, thank you for joining us today. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do with WordPress.
Anil 00:48:32 Yeah. So, hey everyone, this is Anil. Um, I’m a CEO and co-founder of three different, uh, businesses and brands. Um, so Multidots is our agency business where we do a lot of, uh, uh, workplace migrations, uh, for enterprises and large publishers. Uh, MultiCollab is our, um, product business where it’s a, it’s Google doc style editorial, collaboration solution, um, that addresses to, um, large and, uh, medium sized teams and publishers. And then we have a third business called Store where we sell, um, WooCommerce premium WooCommerce, uh, plugins and extensions for, uh, e-commerce businesses. So yeah, those are the three brands that I’m looking into. And we started this, uh, 14 years ago. It has been 14 years of journey.
Michelle 00:49:26 Oh, that’s amazing. How are you finding the conference so far? What are some highlights for you?
Anil 00:49:31 Yeah, um, so I’m, I’m an introvert by nature, so whenever I have to go to any conference in general, like, you know, I’ve been to a lot of different conference out outside workforce. Um, but every time I have to go to the conference, um, I would feel like, oh, what I’m gonna do, you know, like as an introvert, like I don’t make that many plans. Yeah. And also it’s not something that I like looking forward to go out and talk. So I was like, oh, how, what am I gonna do? You know? And, uh, how I’m gonna give my time Yeah. And use my time. Um, but every time I come to the work camp specifically, I have experienced that, like time flies by, you know, and the moment I’m out, you know, like one per, like, I randomly just see different people here and there, and I will look in my, my watch and it’ll be like two hours I was talking to that person.
Anil 00:50:28 . Uh, so yeah, uh, WordCamp always surprised me, uh, challenges me in a really, really good way to go out and connect with the people. Um, yeah, everyone is very nice. So, um, so far my experience has been, I think, pretty particularly not planning anything, just walking in this building randomly and just running into a random person. Sometimes I know them, sometimes I don’t know them. Mm-hmm. . So it was really great feeling to just connect with the old people that I’ve been in touch with and meeting some random people. And, um, that second thing I would say, um, I find it, and that was one big thing that I put it on my note this morning, that every time I go to work camp, I feel much more inspired. I got learns and new ideas and inspirations, and I was like, that’s, that’s my big thing, you know, because the way, like a lot of time I, I am like running a, in a business or an agency and, um, yeah, when things are going good is they’re going good. Uh, but when, uh, you go out and meet new people and go to conference, like events like this, uh, and learn some new perspective here, so sometimes it’s, it’s not, yeah, it’s not an aha moment, but it just inspires you Yeah. To, to, to go and focus more and on, on your growth. So yeah, I think, uh, it has been definitely, um, definitely my big highlight is in last two days it has been a great time of learning, growing and getting inspired.
Michelle 00:52:08 I love that. I find our community very inspiring as well. Yeah. So it’s, it’s just, and when you come together with this many people Yeah, of course you’re going to do all those things. Yeah. Yeah.
Anil 00:52:19 It’s wonderful. Yeah, exactly. You’re not planning, you don’t have any, any structure, you just go out and things happen, you know? Yeah. At the end of the day it’s like, wow, I talked to 20 people, and I have this 20 new ideas and inspirations. So yeah, it’s just amazing. Fantastic.
Michelle 00:52:33 Mm-hmm. , what do you hope to see in WordPress over the next year?
Anil 00:52:38 Hmm. Um, I would say I, I would like to see more, um, topic specific focused. So let’s say there if there are talks or maybe meetups or gathering more on specific topic, because I feel like sometimes it’s hard to find the common interest within this big event. So let’s say if someone is interested in, um, enterprise workplace or someone gives, um, doing a workplace plugin business, but they have less than, uh, let’s say less than a hundred customer at this moment. So how to grow from a hundred to thousand customer, or they have like zero customer to go from zero to 10. So this kind of like little focused topic and focus to group. Um, if we have something on those lines, like maybe a topic, um, a track, um, something like a small group where we can connect and we know that everyone here has the same, uh, same situation or goal, like, you know, that would be great. Like, or agency with maybe like 50 people, agency with the less than 10 people. Like something where people have like something in common. I would like to see that more. Uh, yeah.
Michelle 00:54:00 I love that. Mm-hmm. What can we expect to see from you and Multidots in the next year?
Anil 00:54:05 Yeah, so we have been working a lot on, uh, a lot of, uh, especially in the, our agency side, you know, we have been growing a lot, uh, working with, um, a lot of enterprise clients and, and, and that, but product side, like MultiCollab and Store, we have been focusing a lot on making these two products even much more accessible to, to the wider audience. So MultiCollab specifically, we, it’s a collaboration and we launched some basic features like you can pretty much at this moment, you can, uh, replicate whatever you do in Google Doc, 80% of that feature that you can do. In our planning in the next few months, we are launching, um, the real time editing feature. We already need the beta of that three months ago. And we have I think more than like thousand, thousand people who signed up for the beta, the love update.
Anil 00:54:56 We got a lot of great feedbacks. So now we are bringing that feature in MultiCollab. So once I have that feature in MultiCollab, then it’ll be 99 or even a hundred percent to what, what you can do in Google Doc. So that’s a big thing. Um, yeah. And I’m also focusing on, um, creating more, um, content and value for the entrepreneurs. So I started new podcasts for Peaceful Growth, where I have started interviewing some of the workers, entrepreneur or outside entrepreneur, and then we talk about how they, uh, they’re growing their business, uh, or product, uh, but at the same time how they’re managing the, the balance of health, mental health, digital health and other aspect of the growth. So that’s what we are trying to combine together.
Michelle 00:55:51 Yeah, I love that. Thank you. Um, anything else you’d like to share with us today?
Anil 00:55:55 No, I’m just, uh, so great to be here and um, um, one little story that I tell that my first WordCamp was 2014 in San Francisco. That was my first time actually being in a conference and like seeing the WordPress community. Um, yeah. And people have been so nice, so warm, welcoming. And since then, uh, I just love going to the WordCamp. So yeah, huge, uh, uh, respect and love for the whole workers community and making me feel warm about him and appreciate
Michelle 00:56:28 That’s wonderful. Thank you for taking some time out of your time here at WordCamp US to talk with us. I appreciate you very much.
Anil 00:56:36 You’re welcome. And thanks for having me here.
Michelle 00:56:38 My pleasure.
Michelle 00:56:40 Keith from Barn2 Plugins has joined us. Thank you for being here, Katie.
Katie 00:56:41 Thank you for having me.
Michelle 00:56:50 My pleasure. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do with WordPress.
Katie 00:56:53 So I am the CEO and co-founder at Barn2 Plugins. We have about 23 plugins now, most of which are WooCommerce, but our bestselling plugin is actually not WooCommerce, it’s a document library plugin, which makes it difficult to describe what we do
Michelle 00:57:08 . I can imagine.
Katie 00:57:10 Yeah. We do a little bit of, we dabble, we do a little bit of everything.
Michelle 00:57:14 Yeah. But you do it all well. How are you finding the conference so far? Any highlights you’d like to share?
Katie 00:57:19 It’s been amazing. I think my highlight is spending time, um, with my friends that I’ve already knew, um, people from my mastermind group and other WordPress friends and getting to know everybody better as you do at every WordCamp.
Michelle 00:57:31 Absolutely.
Katie 00:57:32 Yeah. But also meeting new people, particularly, um, product company founders, um, um, the occasional customer as well, which is always lovely.
Michelle 00:57:39 Yeah, for sure. And you were at WordCamp Europe this year?
Katie 00:57:43 Yes. We sponsored it.
Michelle 00:57:45 It was your first time sponsoring a WorkCamp, I think.
Katie 00:57:47 It was. Yeah. It’s all a learning experience, isn’t it? Yeah. That was a really good experience. Yeah. And it brought my team together in ways I didn’t expect. I was thinking more about the brand building consequences, supporting the community, all that kind of thing. But actually my biggest, um, benefit that I got outta it was watching the team have a shared purpose in a way it made them bond more than if they were just attending together and going out for dinner or something. Exactly.
Michelle 00:58:15 And is your team a remote team?
Katie 00:58:17 Yes. We’re entirely remote. There’s 17 of us soon to be 18, and we never meet other than at WordCamps.
Michelle 00:58:24 Oh, so that really makes it special.
Katie 00:58:26 Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Michelle 00:58:27 That’s wonderful. What do you hope to see in WordPress over the next year?
Katie 00:58:33 I hope to see the block editor project continuing to move forward, um, towards what I suppose I see the ultimate goal for it as being to give WordPress a sort of really simple web builder drag and drop style experience, which anybody can just pick up without any technical expertise. And I don’t think it’s quite there yet, so I’d like to see it continue moving in that direction.
Michelle 00:58:55 Wonderful. And what can we expect to see from Barn2 Plugins on the horizon?
Katie 00:59:00 We have two new plugins in the works. One is a WooCommerce Discount plugin, and one is a WooCommerce checkout edit plugin, which lets you edit the fields on the checkout. Um, and both of those will work really well with our existing plugins, so we are looking forward to that. Uh, and after that we’re gonna kind of take a step back, do some like internal work automations and things like that. Yeah. And also add a lot more features to our existing plugins.
Michelle 00:59:05 Wonderful. I have had the pleasure of working with you on the WPSpeakers site. Yeah. You were kind enough to donate one of your plugins. It’s working beautifully. Can you tell us a little bit about that one?
Katie 00:59:15 Yeah. That plugin is Post Table Pro, which takes any type of content from your website, in this case, speakers, uh, and displays it in a searchable table.
Katie 00:59:48 So, um, you created a custom post type called speakers and used it to display that searchable directory of speakers. And it’s got cool things like filters, so you can choose, uh, what topic they speak about and things like that. Yeah. To really narrow down the list. Um, and people use the same plugin for all sorts of things like, um, listing and members directories, audio galleries, video galleries. It was initially designed to display blog posts in a kind of an index. So for a massive blog, um, they can, it can get very long just scrolling through page after page. Sure. So it was originally developed, um, to do that for a blog. I love it. And I’m so appreciative of the work that you do. Mm-hmm. WPSpeakers is, WP Speakers is great. And I’ve, I’ve had one inquiry from it so far. Oh, that’s wonderful. I think it’s gonna make a real difference to the community.
Michelle 01:01:00 Thank you. It’s, it’s been a labor of love for sure. Yeah. And watching the, the database grow has been really, really fun. Anything else you’d like to share with us today?
Katie 01:01:03 Um, no. Just thanks for talking to me. It’s been a great conference and I’m looking forward to the rest of the day.
Michelle 01:01:05 Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to meet with us. I appreciate you very much. Thank you. Thanks.
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