Episode 22: The WP Community Collective

WEBVTT
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Hey, welcome back to Community & Code,
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the podcast about the human beings behind
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the commits.
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This episode is a little bit different.
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The timing is different.
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This is coming out on a Friday and
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we just had an episode last week on
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Wednesday.
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So FYI,
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the next episode will be in a week
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and a half instead of next week.
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And I've got not one,
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but three guests on the show today.
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And full disclosure,
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I'm not really just the host this time.
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I'm also one of the people we're talking
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about because this episode is happening in
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the context of Podcastathon,
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a global event where podcasters release
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episodes to raise awareness for nonprofit
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organizations.
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and the nonprofit I'm spotlighting today
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is one that I'm personally involved in,
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the WP Community Collective.
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The WPCC is built around a pretty simple
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premise, the way WordPress or, honestly,
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all of open source...
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has funded, or maybe more accurately,
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hasn't funded its contributors, is broken.
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And someone needed to try and fix it.
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So Say Reed and Courtney Robertson started
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talking, and the WPCC was born.
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In this episode,
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you'll hear from my fellow members of the
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WPCC Board of Directors,
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Courtney Robertson,
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who you might know as a developer advocate
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at GoDaddy,
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and one of the most dedicated contributor
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advocates in the ecosystem, Sae Reed,
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CEO and co-founder,
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who's been doing this work since before
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the org had a name,
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And Jono Alderson,
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a technical SEO and web performance nerd,
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former Yoast,
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and someone with a gift for saying
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uncomfortable true things out loud.
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We get into the origin story of the
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WPCC,
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the structural problems that made it
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necessary,
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some personal war stories from the
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contributor trenches,
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and what the WPCC is actually trying to
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build.
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If you care about the future of WordPress,
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this one's for you.
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Welcome to Community & Code,
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the podcast where we talk to the human
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beings behind the commit.
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I am here for a, I don't know,
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Community & Code first,
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because I have more than one human on
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the screen today.
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Allegedly.
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Allegedly.
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This is a bit of a different show
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today because we're doing it during the
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week of the Podcastathon.
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Podcastathon is a sort of global
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podcasting event where
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uh podcasters can talk to nonprofits or
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about nonprofits to raise money for said
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nonprofits and i just happen to know some
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folks uh that are
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involved in a nonprofit, including myself.
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So I'm here today with the WPCC,
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the WP Community Collective.
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And I'm just going to go...
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We're also collected.
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We're collected here.
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So I'm just going to let you all
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introduce yourselves rather than giving
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you an introduction.
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I'm going to go down around in the
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circle and then I'll introduce myself last
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because I don't know.
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I'm also on the screen and I'm also
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in the board of directors.
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So starting at my top right,
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I see Courtney Robertson.
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Hello, everybody.
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I am indeed Courtney Robertson,
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CourtneyR.dev.
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These days,
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you'll find me as a developer advocate at
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GoDaddy, a longtime WordPress contributor,
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one who is active in multiple open source
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communities,
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and I really care about sustaining the
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open source communities and the pipeline
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of contributors.
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Yes, yes.
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And then we have Say.
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Say, introduce yourself.
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Hi, I'm Say Reid,
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and I am the CEO,
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part-time CEO of the WPCC,
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also board member as a CEO.
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And gosh, I don't know.
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That's all I got for the intro.
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I feel like you have the more storied,
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at least podcasting career than some of
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the rest of us on this show.
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Yeah, I had that podcast for a while,
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but you know.
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Here we are, no podcast, but all podcast.
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Yes, all the podcasts.
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And then directly underneath me, Jono,
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introduce yourself.
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Hi, yeah,
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I'm increasingly concerned about
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identifying as a human.
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Like every time I have to do a
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capture and it asks, I'm like,
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at what point am I sufficiently augmented
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to cross the line?
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Anyway, yeah, hi, I'm Jono.
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I'm a technical SEO and web performance
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nerd and a deep, deep WordPress nerd.
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Um, yeah,
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I've got a background in all sorts of
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kind of WordPress stuff and consultancy
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and enterprise spaces and worked at Yoast
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for a little bit, um,
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give or take five years.
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Yeah,
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and recently joined the WPCC as a board
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member to try and work out how on
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earth we wrangle this ecosystem to make
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it, I want to say,
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functional as a kind of aspirational
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starting point.
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I'm sure we can get into more of
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that later.
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And I'm Chris.
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I'm the host of this podcast.
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In the hat that I'm wearing today,
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I am also the interim president of the
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WPCC.
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I have been in WordPress for twenty-ish
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years, I guess.
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I have done all sorts of things in
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the WordPress ecosystem.
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I freelanced for a long time.
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I did online developer training.
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I worked at agencies and now I'm a
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developer advocate at Pantheon.
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Courtney and I share the developer
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advocate hat among the hats that we wear.
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So we're here to talk a little bit
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about the WPCC and I mean also like
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about ourselves and how we got involved in
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our own paths here,
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but because we're doing this special
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thing uh with all the board of directors
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on uh I kind of want to talk
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about the WPCC and so uh I will
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turn it over to probably Courtney or say
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or perhaps both of you to talk about
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sort of the origin story of this community
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collective like what was sort of the idea
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uh besides shit be broken yo um
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that led to the organization.
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I didn't say it quite like that.
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Say,
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could you take us back to WordCamp US
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in San Diego?
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Well, once upon a time,
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there was a thing called WordCamp.
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Once upon a time?
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Oh, no.
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What happened?
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So the problem of...
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sponsored and volunteer contribution has
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been on my mind for a very long
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time, pre-founding the WPCC.
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Basically,
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ever since I was involved in WordPress,
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there was a power imbalance.
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All the volunteers were always bringing
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their passion,
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but they could never be
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the leaders in the community that the
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people who were being paid to be there
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could be because they just had another
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job.
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And it was it was difficult to watch
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volunteers who were there with their own
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for their own heart,
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for people to be
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not not totally sidelined but just be a
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little bit diminished versus the folks who
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were being paid to show up there not
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that those folks were not also full of
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passion a lot of times they were but
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it's uh just that that it's it's a
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weird tension the other issue that was
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clear, even at that time,
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was the issue that other than companies
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who are strictly basically WordPress
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companies, they have normal rules.
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And in the capitalism rules,
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you have employees and you have those
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employees work on things that make you
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money.
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Generally, that's the general idea.
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So hiring an employee to then go send
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them off to work on something that you
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don't really have any control over,
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that you can't really judge.
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There's no metrics.
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We don't know how productive people are
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being.
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There's no standard there.
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I saw company and I talked to a
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lot of companies who couldn't contribute,
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who couldn't find a way to contribute.
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And even this week,
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there's been just a lot of talk about
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the will to contribute.
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And I think that it is difficult to
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say definitively that there is no will to
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contribute or people don't want to
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contribute when there isn't a clear way to
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contribute.
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If there was a clear way to contribute
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and no one was contributing company-wise,
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then that would, sure,
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make that conclusion.
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But until we make something that makes
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sense,
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it's not the conclusion that I would draw.
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So this is something that I tossed around
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in my head for a long time.
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Courtney and I, of course,
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have known each other for a long time
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in the WordPress world and would talk
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about this.
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Courtney's worked for the big companies
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and has seen firsthand that struggle of
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contribution versus the business model of
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the actual business.
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And I was really of the mindset that
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there was a nonprofit organization that
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could do this.
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I've worked in nonprofit for basically my
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whole career with nonprofits.
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So I know that they're capable of
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managing a space, hiring staff, et cetera.
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So in that WordCamp, San Diego in,
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I think it was, yeah.
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We were at a Q&A,
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Courtney and I were at a Q&A with
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Matt, who was doing, Matt Mullenweg,
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who was speaking.
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And someone asked a question.
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I actually don't recall at the moment who
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asked that question.
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It wasn't me.
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And they said, you know,
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what's something something the foundation
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going to do about this?
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And Matt said clearly and without any
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qualifications that the WordPress
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Foundation was never going to hire
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someone.
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They were never going to fund the
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contribution.
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And up until that point,
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I had been reluctant to do anything about
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this problem because I thought that would
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be overstepping,
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that would be stepping on the boundaries
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of where the foundation was.
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Learning this,
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that it was not going to happen,
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basically after that meeting,
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Courtney and I were like, well,
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I guess someone needs to do it.
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Yeah,
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I was on the flip side of this.
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Yeah.
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I had asked Matt a different question kind
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of related to this.
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I should go back and look at that
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video.
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It was one of the first camps right
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after pandemic lifted travel regulations
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and things.
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And so, you know, on my end,
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there is a challenge.
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GoDaddy does sponsor several individuals.
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We have two full-time staff.
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We have one engineer that puts ten hours
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a week into the plug-in review team.
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And then we also sponsor two other folks,
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one of them being Joe Dolson,
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who
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part-time,
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just for a certain amount for contract
00:11:18.277 --> 00:11:18.598
hours.
00:11:18.718 --> 00:11:19.839
And I was looking at all of this
00:11:19.859 --> 00:11:22.119
from the internals of how hard is it
00:11:22.160 --> 00:11:25.242
to explain exactly why we need to do
00:11:25.262 --> 00:11:26.202
this, how to do it.
00:11:26.363 --> 00:11:27.562
And then at the end of the day,
00:11:27.704 --> 00:11:29.984
I can't shove money into envelopes to get
00:11:30.024 --> 00:11:31.266
it to people to do the work.
00:11:31.745 --> 00:11:34.106
We need to have a proper process that
00:11:34.186 --> 00:11:35.907
accounts for things, I don't know,
00:11:35.927 --> 00:11:36.528
like taxes.
00:11:36.589 --> 00:11:36.768
Yeah.
00:11:36.829 --> 00:11:36.928
Yeah.
00:11:39.149 --> 00:11:41.152
Can't put cash in envelopes to give to
00:11:41.172 --> 00:11:41.672
contributors.
00:11:42.613 --> 00:11:43.272
Also,
00:11:43.694 --> 00:11:46.055
wanting to make sure that the funding went
00:11:46.095 --> 00:11:48.998
to specific areas in particular.
00:11:49.697 --> 00:11:51.178
What are the spots?
00:11:51.199 --> 00:11:54.681
We have two different needs going on in
00:11:54.701 --> 00:11:55.582
the WordPress space.
00:11:56.603 --> 00:11:57.803
I've done some looking beyond the
00:11:57.824 --> 00:12:00.066
WordPress space to see how others solve
00:12:00.085 --> 00:12:01.487
for this and different projects have
00:12:01.507 --> 00:12:02.066
different ways.
00:12:02.567 --> 00:12:04.970
But we have people that are really
00:12:05.029 --> 00:12:06.490
passionate about doing a thing,
00:12:07.580 --> 00:12:09.922
that can't get the funding to keep doing
00:12:09.984 --> 00:12:10.123
it.
00:12:10.244 --> 00:12:13.808
And it may not be critical to what's
00:12:13.849 --> 00:12:16.893
coming in the next release or what's good
00:12:16.932 --> 00:12:18.335
for the entire community.
00:12:19.016 --> 00:12:23.922
And also a struggle to perhaps see
00:12:24.903 --> 00:12:26.946
what is going on throughout the project
00:12:26.965 --> 00:12:29.327
that needs some funding like if we spot
00:12:29.427 --> 00:12:31.430
that the docs team i just saw that
00:12:31.529 --> 00:12:33.151
very recently i was so glad to see
00:12:33.171 --> 00:12:35.452
this that the uh parser tool was broken
00:12:35.493 --> 00:12:38.375
to get dev docs done so being able
00:12:38.396 --> 00:12:40.157
to spot what are the big needs of
00:12:40.176 --> 00:12:41.697
the project you're not happy to see that
00:12:41.718 --> 00:12:43.779
the parser tool was broken right no no
00:12:43.820 --> 00:12:46.942
no i was i was happy to see
00:12:47.003 --> 00:12:48.403
it got fixed right and
00:12:49.364 --> 00:12:50.865
And so being able to spot some of
00:12:50.906 --> 00:12:53.326
those areas across all the teams and
00:12:53.407 --> 00:12:53.988
identify,
00:12:54.368 --> 00:12:57.008
and what does having the dev docs mean
00:12:57.048 --> 00:13:01.492
to devs, mean to contributors, mean to AI,
00:13:01.532 --> 00:13:03.373
mean to general search results?
00:13:03.714 --> 00:13:05.175
It's kind of an important feature,
00:13:05.254 --> 00:13:05.715
I would think.
00:13:06.095 --> 00:13:08.095
But it wasn't deemed a priority enough to
00:13:08.136 --> 00:13:09.576
get fixed in a timely manner.
00:13:09.637 --> 00:13:10.917
And so we're sort of going back and
00:13:10.937 --> 00:13:12.058
playing catch up on these things.
00:13:12.538 --> 00:13:14.860
So these are bits of the project that
00:13:15.421 --> 00:13:16.802
or critical infrastructure,
00:13:17.223 --> 00:13:17.824
one would argue,
00:13:18.425 --> 00:13:20.988
and clearly needed some reinforcement and
00:13:21.008 --> 00:13:22.388
some advocacy work of like,
00:13:22.509 --> 00:13:23.490
who can do this part?
00:13:25.978 --> 00:13:26.738
Interrupted by Doug.
00:13:26.758 --> 00:13:28.239
Sorry.
00:13:28.418 --> 00:13:28.998
No worries.
00:13:29.079 --> 00:13:30.960
Just kind of interruption.
00:13:31.519 --> 00:13:33.801
I want to take a step a little
00:13:33.821 --> 00:13:34.880
bit back and talk about,
00:13:35.961 --> 00:13:37.801
say you were talking about the things that
00:13:37.821 --> 00:13:40.082
the WPCC stepped in to fix.
00:13:40.442 --> 00:13:42.763
For people that are outside the WordPress
00:13:42.783 --> 00:13:45.244
community who might not know what the
00:13:45.305 --> 00:13:47.005
contributor model that we all,
00:13:47.046 --> 00:13:49.566
because we've been in this place for a
00:13:49.627 --> 00:13:51.186
long time, do know,
00:13:51.527 --> 00:13:54.928
what does it look like for... How does...
00:13:55.548 --> 00:13:58.431
How does the existing status quo really
00:13:58.691 --> 00:14:01.834
work in... I'll toss it to you, Courtney,
00:14:01.854 --> 00:14:02.514
because like you said,
00:14:02.734 --> 00:14:05.518
you have some folks who actually are paid
00:14:05.557 --> 00:14:08.460
staff who work on core.
00:14:08.899 --> 00:14:10.262
There's some other organizations,
00:14:10.301 --> 00:14:12.123
some agencies and stuff that sponsor
00:14:12.143 --> 00:14:12.704
development.
00:14:13.584 --> 00:14:15.406
But really, like you said earlier,
00:14:15.906 --> 00:14:19.248
that's like we have somebody on staff
00:14:19.268 --> 00:14:21.011
who's doing this thing, but like...
00:14:22.042 --> 00:14:23.081
It's basically like they're not an
00:14:23.122 --> 00:14:24.143
employee anymore, right?
00:14:24.162 --> 00:14:25.582
They're just working on this other thing.
00:14:26.763 --> 00:14:28.084
It kind of depends.
00:14:29.283 --> 00:14:32.085
So in our context, Kira Schroeder,
00:14:32.325 --> 00:14:35.724
who has been with the project, oh, gosh,
00:14:35.805 --> 00:14:36.205
I want to say,
00:14:36.245 --> 00:14:39.605
twenty years and almost as a sponsored
00:14:39.625 --> 00:14:41.627
contributor at various organizations.
00:14:42.267 --> 00:14:43.969
She has done amazing work,
00:14:43.989 --> 00:14:45.710
but her work is often hidden because it's
00:14:45.750 --> 00:14:48.672
security work or it's research work that
00:14:48.692 --> 00:14:50.874
involves reading over really old track
00:14:50.915 --> 00:14:52.696
tickets to understand why people came to
00:14:52.737 --> 00:14:55.540
conclusions they did and use that as a
00:14:55.580 --> 00:14:56.941
decision maker moving forward.
00:14:56.980 --> 00:14:58.682
So it's not obvious work,
00:14:59.082 --> 00:15:00.364
but it's important work.
00:15:01.325 --> 00:15:02.766
I believe that came about when Aaron
00:15:02.786 --> 00:15:04.806
Campbell was still at GoDaddy at the time,
00:15:05.027 --> 00:15:06.608
and Aaron was able to express to
00:15:06.687 --> 00:15:07.268
executives,
00:15:07.667 --> 00:15:09.408
here is the real need and what and
00:15:09.469 --> 00:15:09.888
why.
00:15:10.128 --> 00:15:12.090
And Kira and our other contributor,
00:15:12.129 --> 00:15:13.191
George Mamadashvili,
00:15:13.250 --> 00:15:14.511
goes by the handle Mamaduka.
00:15:15.331 --> 00:15:17.093
George works on specifically Gutenberg
00:15:17.133 --> 00:15:17.572
projects.
00:15:17.912 --> 00:15:19.594
They both live in nations that GoDaddy
00:15:19.614 --> 00:15:19.834
doesn't
00:15:20.153 --> 00:15:23.716
actually even technically hire in so in
00:15:23.777 --> 00:15:25.878
both of their cases they are contracted
00:15:26.157 --> 00:15:28.660
staff which is slightly different if you
00:15:28.680 --> 00:15:30.600
get into human resources and knowing our
00:15:30.641 --> 00:15:32.242
companies can be open so that's another
00:15:32.282 --> 00:15:36.345
headache um there are plenty of them and
00:15:36.886 --> 00:15:38.806
what budget does this go to and who
00:15:38.846 --> 00:15:40.287
are they reporting to and what are they
00:15:40.307 --> 00:15:41.949
doing but one of the things that we're
00:15:42.128 --> 00:15:44.691
actively doing um i had the chance
00:15:44.970 --> 00:15:46.672
It was almost two weeks ago now,
00:15:46.873 --> 00:15:48.894
Matt Mullenweg did a tour of the
00:15:48.935 --> 00:15:49.936
walkthrough on WordPress,
00:15:51.356 --> 00:15:53.359
and specifically mentioned GoDaddy and
00:15:53.378 --> 00:15:54.781
Bluehost in that.
00:15:55.460 --> 00:15:57.022
It was in the context of testing on
00:15:57.062 --> 00:15:58.543
collaborative editing.
00:15:58.663 --> 00:15:59.244
Of course,
00:15:59.364 --> 00:16:00.845
we're going to be testing on collaborative
00:16:00.886 --> 00:16:01.206
editing.
00:16:01.647 --> 00:16:02.787
George came back and said,
00:16:03.228 --> 00:16:04.228
we would like to do this.
00:16:04.348 --> 00:16:06.428
And so part of my role has been
00:16:06.548 --> 00:16:07.788
internally to facilitate.
00:16:08.210 --> 00:16:10.210
Let's talk to our hosting folks that can
00:16:10.249 --> 00:16:11.870
do load balance testing.
00:16:12.051 --> 00:16:14.951
And that piece of the performance puzzle
00:16:15.032 --> 00:16:16.513
is what does this look like in our
00:16:16.912 --> 00:16:19.574
Pagely plans down to our shared hosting
00:16:19.614 --> 00:16:20.133
plans?
00:16:20.494 --> 00:16:20.714
You know,
00:16:20.793 --> 00:16:23.014
everything from an enterprise agency to a
00:16:23.075 --> 00:16:25.156
small individual person that may or may
00:16:25.196 --> 00:16:25.375
not
00:16:25.995 --> 00:16:26.936
be a business owner,
00:16:27.056 --> 00:16:29.257
even building out their websites and who's
00:16:29.297 --> 00:16:30.138
going to use this.
00:16:30.258 --> 00:16:31.317
And what does it look like when we
00:16:31.338 --> 00:16:33.798
have a thousand people at the same time
00:16:34.119 --> 00:16:35.840
on many different websites,
00:16:35.899 --> 00:16:38.840
but two people actively trying to edit a
00:16:38.901 --> 00:16:40.022
thing at the same time,
00:16:40.422 --> 00:16:41.622
what does that do to the hosting
00:16:41.662 --> 00:16:42.143
environments?
00:16:42.522 --> 00:16:43.422
So in a sense,
00:16:43.442 --> 00:16:45.224
there are feedback loops and mechanisms,
00:16:45.283 --> 00:16:47.484
but what is the struggle is that they
00:16:47.524 --> 00:16:49.806
really are primarily dedicated just to the
00:16:49.845 --> 00:16:50.225
project.
00:16:50.705 --> 00:16:52.306
So being able to say like, okay,
00:16:52.367 --> 00:16:55.148
now have them provide us with what we
00:16:55.168 --> 00:16:56.310
should be testing and doing,
00:16:57.290 --> 00:16:59.652
facilitate those meetings across strange
00:16:59.711 --> 00:17:00.893
time zones as one does.
00:17:01.412 --> 00:17:02.293
And on top of that,
00:17:02.334 --> 00:17:05.014
then ensure that we're providing the
00:17:05.056 --> 00:17:07.076
relevant feedback of our experience,
00:17:07.456 --> 00:17:08.978
not just what's to do for our own
00:17:09.018 --> 00:17:09.577
customers,
00:17:09.618 --> 00:17:11.499
but also if we need this to be
00:17:11.540 --> 00:17:12.399
something that changes,
00:17:12.440 --> 00:17:13.360
here's the results.
00:17:13.821 --> 00:17:14.422
Let's tell...
00:17:15.101 --> 00:17:16.964
core team what we can.
00:17:17.043 --> 00:17:18.825
Let's tell the hosting team what we can
00:17:18.906 --> 00:17:20.446
about that experience as well.
00:17:20.868 --> 00:17:22.609
Not giving out proprietary information,
00:17:22.628 --> 00:17:23.990
but giving out things that would help the
00:17:24.031 --> 00:17:25.811
future of the release, right?
00:17:25.872 --> 00:17:28.595
And so there's logistics that can be had
00:17:28.634 --> 00:17:30.556
to sort of interoperate between those.
00:17:30.997 --> 00:17:32.359
And I think it's up to each company
00:17:32.439 --> 00:17:33.960
and perhaps there may be seasons where
00:17:33.979 --> 00:17:35.220
there is more of that
00:17:35.821 --> 00:17:38.143
feedback mechanism happening between the
00:17:38.162 --> 00:17:39.984
sponsored contributors and the host
00:17:40.163 --> 00:17:41.965
themselves or the plugin,
00:17:42.004 --> 00:17:42.744
the theme company,
00:17:42.764 --> 00:17:43.864
whomever is sponsoring them.
00:17:43.884 --> 00:17:45.386
There can be some of those seasons where
00:17:45.406 --> 00:17:48.086
you have a lot of internal collaboration
00:17:48.127 --> 00:17:48.527
as well,
00:17:48.726 --> 00:17:50.027
and then other seasons where there's not
00:17:50.088 --> 00:17:50.968
much of that going on.
00:17:51.067 --> 00:17:53.449
It just depends on what's going into the
00:17:53.489 --> 00:17:54.810
release and where things are.
00:17:55.772 --> 00:17:56.734
Speaking for myself,
00:17:56.873 --> 00:17:59.617
I'm not paid to be a sponsored contributor
00:17:59.637 --> 00:17:59.917
to Core,
00:17:59.956 --> 00:18:02.580
but obviously as somebody who works at a
00:18:02.660 --> 00:18:03.421
hosting company,
00:18:04.101 --> 00:18:06.484
things that go into WordPress matter very
00:18:06.523 --> 00:18:08.787
deeply to the things that we work on.
00:18:09.326 --> 00:18:12.330
And my recent, or not so recent anymore,
00:18:12.950 --> 00:18:14.493
but a claim to fame that I wear
00:18:14.532 --> 00:18:15.753
as a badge of honor is that I
00:18:15.793 --> 00:18:17.134
was able to single-handedly,
00:18:17.556 --> 00:18:18.476
mostly single-handedly,
00:18:19.181 --> 00:18:23.244
punt the font manager out of a version
00:18:23.283 --> 00:18:24.764
of WordPress to a later version of
00:18:24.805 --> 00:18:27.266
WordPress because I raised the question,
00:18:27.386 --> 00:18:30.388
hey, what does this do if,
00:18:32.709 --> 00:18:33.369
how does this, like,
00:18:33.548 --> 00:18:36.250
I need a way to tell the file
00:18:36.291 --> 00:18:37.391
system that where you're storing these
00:18:37.411 --> 00:18:38.851
files is actually someplace different.
00:18:39.731 --> 00:18:41.613
I need a way to put these files
00:18:41.633 --> 00:18:42.854
in a different place because
00:18:43.553 --> 00:18:45.974
Pantheon as a host has a read-only file
00:18:45.994 --> 00:18:47.215
system on our production sites.
00:18:47.316 --> 00:18:50.638
You can't just write files to WP content.
00:18:50.657 --> 00:18:51.738
The way that we do that is we
00:18:51.777 --> 00:18:53.439
map it to a writable directory.
00:18:53.839 --> 00:18:55.300
And then the other part of that was
00:18:56.279 --> 00:18:59.261
that there's database references that are
00:18:59.302 --> 00:19:00.602
made to all those fonts.
00:19:00.941 --> 00:19:02.662
And we have three different environments,
00:19:02.742 --> 00:19:03.564
dev, test, and live.
00:19:03.584 --> 00:19:05.485
So which one is the canonical source of
00:19:05.525 --> 00:19:06.045
truth, right?
00:19:06.065 --> 00:19:07.566
If we were to say, oh,
00:19:07.605 --> 00:19:08.986
we're going to put those in the file
00:19:09.006 --> 00:19:10.787
system and commit them in the dev
00:19:10.806 --> 00:19:11.267
environment,
00:19:11.587 --> 00:19:12.067
then it would be
00:19:12.668 --> 00:19:15.029
committed files up through the chain,
00:19:16.010 --> 00:19:17.672
but the production environment wouldn't
00:19:17.711 --> 00:19:19.873
know about the existence of those files
00:19:19.893 --> 00:19:21.134
because they're not in the database.
00:19:21.255 --> 00:19:23.556
And we don't want to be playing with
00:19:23.635 --> 00:19:27.078
database backups from a dev environment
00:19:27.098 --> 00:19:28.120
into a production environment.
00:19:28.160 --> 00:19:29.101
That seems dumb.
00:19:30.200 --> 00:19:34.505
So because I said that this was possibly
00:19:34.525 --> 00:19:34.845
a problem,
00:19:34.904 --> 00:19:35.845
it would be a problem for us.
00:19:36.085 --> 00:19:37.967
and anyone else who might have a similar
00:19:38.007 --> 00:19:39.868
sort of infrastructure,
00:19:40.149 --> 00:19:42.790
like other AWS platforms would fall into
00:19:42.810 --> 00:19:43.451
this category.
00:19:44.793 --> 00:19:46.193
More discussion was needed,
00:19:46.473 --> 00:19:47.535
more stuff happened.
00:19:47.634 --> 00:19:49.536
I didn't do anything other than raise my
00:19:49.575 --> 00:19:51.438
hand in Slack and like put some comments
00:19:51.498 --> 00:19:55.361
on a Gutenberg ticket in GitHub,
00:19:55.700 --> 00:19:57.662
but lots of other people that were smarter
00:19:57.682 --> 00:19:59.483
than me came in and then came to
00:19:59.524 --> 00:20:01.404
a conclusion and basically said, hey,
00:20:01.444 --> 00:20:02.206
does this work?
00:20:02.226 --> 00:20:03.787
And I'm like, yeah, honestly,
00:20:03.826 --> 00:20:04.648
all I need is a filter,
00:20:04.688 --> 00:20:05.528
but that's great too.
00:20:06.308 --> 00:20:09.049
Um, so, but, but outside of that too,
00:20:09.110 --> 00:20:11.591
like it's like, again, I'm not sponsored.
00:20:12.191 --> 00:20:14.771
There are companies or agencies that do
00:20:14.832 --> 00:20:17.333
have a paid staff member on,
00:20:17.613 --> 00:20:18.273
on their staff.
00:20:18.813 --> 00:20:20.413
The problem that, that, that,
00:20:20.594 --> 00:20:22.335
that potentially introduces,
00:20:22.874 --> 00:20:25.296
I'm thinking very recently of, uh,
00:20:25.355 --> 00:20:27.355
Google had some sponsored open source
00:20:27.375 --> 00:20:28.757
contributors that were contributing
00:20:28.816 --> 00:20:29.556
directly to core.
00:20:30.037 --> 00:20:32.297
And recently Google decided that they
00:20:32.337 --> 00:20:34.278
didn't want to have
00:20:34.679 --> 00:20:36.861
open source contributors pay that are just
00:20:36.881 --> 00:20:38.402
doing open source work that are not
00:20:38.502 --> 00:20:39.663
actually doing Google work.
00:20:39.883 --> 00:20:42.006
And they kind of got rid of that
00:20:42.105 --> 00:20:42.546
team.
00:20:42.866 --> 00:20:45.709
So like there is this economics of like,
00:20:45.748 --> 00:20:47.290
does it make sense for this company?
00:20:47.371 --> 00:20:48.431
Google's a really big company.
00:20:48.451 --> 00:20:49.912
They could throw money around like crazy,
00:20:50.012 --> 00:20:52.275
a lot more so than than my company
00:20:52.295 --> 00:20:53.276
or your company, Courtney.
00:20:53.677 --> 00:20:56.679
And but like if it's not matching up
00:20:56.720 --> 00:20:57.739
with those those
00:20:58.421 --> 00:20:59.861
I don't know, success metrics,
00:21:00.842 --> 00:21:02.862
then it's a pretty easy thing to say,
00:21:02.941 --> 00:21:03.241
yeah,
00:21:03.362 --> 00:21:04.823
we're going to reallocate you to something
00:21:04.902 --> 00:21:07.043
else or we're just not going to have
00:21:07.063 --> 00:21:08.264
you do this anymore.
00:21:08.963 --> 00:21:10.804
It's it's not even just economic.
00:21:10.883 --> 00:21:12.545
It is obviously that's a huge part of
00:21:12.585 --> 00:21:12.704
it.
00:21:12.745 --> 00:21:12.964
Like,
00:21:13.065 --> 00:21:15.045
is this this person who's working like,
00:21:15.365 --> 00:21:16.825
you know, marketing is not usually,
00:21:16.905 --> 00:21:18.066
although I think that it is,
00:21:18.105 --> 00:21:20.027
but people look at marketing as the first
00:21:20.047 --> 00:21:21.447
people they fire because they're not
00:21:21.487 --> 00:21:22.507
producing something.
00:21:22.527 --> 00:21:23.948
They're not like making the money.
00:21:23.988 --> 00:21:24.188
Right.
00:21:24.728 --> 00:21:26.790
um again i argue that that is untrue
00:21:26.970 --> 00:21:30.314
but that is the general take right um
00:21:30.495 --> 00:21:32.876
and i think that so obviously the
00:21:32.937 --> 00:21:35.319
economics of you know paying someone to do
00:21:35.360 --> 00:21:37.041
something that's not producing a product
00:21:37.082 --> 00:21:38.923
or working on something is one thing but
00:21:38.963 --> 00:21:40.706
there's also hr
00:21:41.246 --> 00:21:43.687
like how do you govern that person like
00:21:43.767 --> 00:21:46.066
how do you like what if that person
00:21:46.106 --> 00:21:48.688
has an issue within wordpress that never
00:21:48.728 --> 00:21:51.488
happens um and you know do they go
00:21:51.527 --> 00:21:53.368
to their company hr or what's the deal
00:21:53.389 --> 00:21:55.229
because they're a contractor and not a
00:21:55.248 --> 00:21:57.370
company and do they go to the company
00:21:57.390 --> 00:21:59.809
meetings like it and do are they included
00:21:59.870 --> 00:22:01.770
in all hands right like even though they
00:22:01.810 --> 00:22:03.671
don't know what those projects are because
00:22:03.691 --> 00:22:05.352
they're not even working on them so it
00:22:05.451 --> 00:22:06.731
really cr it creates
00:22:07.471 --> 00:22:09.373
It's just a difficult situation when you
00:22:09.412 --> 00:22:11.212
have like basically someone in a bubble
00:22:11.633 --> 00:22:13.433
that works full time for a company,
00:22:13.774 --> 00:22:17.035
but that company has no like really say
00:22:17.095 --> 00:22:18.255
over what they're doing or anything.
00:22:18.315 --> 00:22:20.816
So I think it's that tension that is
00:22:20.935 --> 00:22:23.237
really the problem that we have
00:22:23.376 --> 00:22:23.876
identified.
00:22:24.056 --> 00:22:24.156
And.
00:22:27.959 --> 00:22:28.960
One of the values,
00:22:29.019 --> 00:22:30.741
one of the greatest values in my mind
00:22:30.961 --> 00:22:32.823
of the community is exactly what you just
00:22:32.863 --> 00:22:33.383
said, Chris.
00:22:33.423 --> 00:22:35.285
Like you weren't working on this
00:22:35.305 --> 00:22:36.185
particular issue.
00:22:36.266 --> 00:22:37.826
You weren't doing the coding for it.
00:22:38.127 --> 00:22:39.127
You just looked at it.
00:22:39.209 --> 00:22:40.589
And because you're coming at it from an
00:22:40.690 --> 00:22:41.630
outside perspective,
00:22:41.931 --> 00:22:43.271
you have a different use case.
00:22:43.531 --> 00:22:45.794
You have different needs for your company
00:22:45.893 --> 00:22:46.654
and for your clients.
00:22:47.575 --> 00:22:48.596
You were able to say, hey,
00:22:49.136 --> 00:22:50.217
I can look at this in a different
00:22:50.237 --> 00:22:50.477
way.
00:22:50.797 --> 00:22:52.699
The people who were working on it,
00:22:52.758 --> 00:22:54.579
they have one of those like blinder
00:22:54.600 --> 00:22:56.380
things, of course, blinders like this.
00:22:56.700 --> 00:22:57.841
And you're focused on your stuff.
00:22:58.441 --> 00:23:00.102
When we have the community,
00:23:00.902 --> 00:23:03.044
we're bringing in all of those use cases.
00:23:03.084 --> 00:23:05.144
It's like the many eyeballs or many hands
00:23:05.184 --> 00:23:06.466
make light work.
00:23:06.726 --> 00:23:08.927
And more eyeballs on something means you
00:23:08.947 --> 00:23:09.906
can see more things.
00:23:11.762 --> 00:23:15.524
That value is, to me,
00:23:15.903 --> 00:23:20.545
what has created the juggernaut that is
00:23:20.604 --> 00:23:21.365
WordPress.
00:23:21.766 --> 00:23:23.685
I do not believe that it is because
00:23:23.905 --> 00:23:27.267
of a single person's vision or the paid
00:23:27.527 --> 00:23:29.408
contributors who have been coding.
00:23:30.607 --> 00:23:32.629
It's been much more than that.
00:23:34.368 --> 00:23:36.729
that is a value that is really intangible.
00:23:37.249 --> 00:23:39.470
But even like what you said, you, you,
00:23:39.510 --> 00:23:42.491
you probably saved like hosts the world
00:23:42.592 --> 00:23:46.473
over from mass chaos because you brought
00:23:46.574 --> 00:23:49.134
in information and sort of an innovative
00:23:49.214 --> 00:23:50.595
idea or an out of the box way
00:23:50.614 --> 00:23:51.095
of thinking.
00:23:51.415 --> 00:23:52.615
I don't even know what the right word
00:23:52.655 --> 00:23:53.115
for it is,
00:23:53.155 --> 00:23:55.957
but it's just a different perspective and
00:23:55.997 --> 00:23:57.797
it turns out it's valuable.
00:23:57.817 --> 00:24:00.118
Isn't that fascinating with it?
00:24:00.399 --> 00:24:00.639
Yeah.
00:24:01.220 --> 00:24:02.181
And an off chance,
00:24:02.300 --> 00:24:04.541
somebody who happened to be already inside
00:24:04.582 --> 00:24:06.864
that ecosystem caught something that
00:24:06.883 --> 00:24:07.525
would,
00:24:07.604 --> 00:24:08.745
in the grand scheme of the universe,
00:24:08.765 --> 00:24:10.266
fairly minor, but yeah, consequential,
00:24:10.306 --> 00:24:10.566
right?
00:24:10.606 --> 00:24:11.187
There would have been issues,
00:24:11.207 --> 00:24:12.008
there would have been overheads,
00:24:12.027 --> 00:24:12.748
there would have been support,
00:24:12.768 --> 00:24:13.649
there would have been time, blah, blah,
00:24:13.669 --> 00:24:14.088
blah, blah, blah.
00:24:14.489 --> 00:24:16.351
And then you look at the two examples,
00:24:16.550 --> 00:24:16.750
Courtney,
00:24:16.790 --> 00:24:18.531
and say you've raised that on one hand,
00:24:18.572 --> 00:24:20.814
you've got the enthusiastic,
00:24:21.094 --> 00:24:23.316
practical individuals who just want to do
00:24:23.355 --> 00:24:23.756
the thing.
00:24:24.195 --> 00:24:26.678
And yet there is no clear route as
00:24:26.698 --> 00:24:27.899
to how they can do that.
00:24:28.770 --> 00:24:30.832
So they're functionally blocked from
00:24:30.912 --> 00:24:32.312
contributing in a meaningful way that's
00:24:32.332 --> 00:24:32.893
sustainable.
00:24:33.232 --> 00:24:34.393
And then say at the other end of
00:24:34.412 --> 00:24:34.672
the scale,
00:24:34.692 --> 00:24:36.354
you've got one of the biggest companies in
00:24:36.373 --> 00:24:37.233
the world, Google,
00:24:37.274 --> 00:24:39.595
who are for a thousand reasons,
00:24:39.815 --> 00:24:42.456
obviously incentivized to influence and
00:24:42.496 --> 00:24:43.716
shape this thing for whatever reason,
00:24:43.816 --> 00:24:45.056
even if it's something as simple as,
00:24:45.076 --> 00:24:45.876
I don't know,
00:24:45.916 --> 00:24:48.458
if we can shave two kilobytes off every
00:24:48.537 --> 00:24:49.557
WordPress homepage,
00:24:49.817 --> 00:24:51.179
that saves rainforests.
00:24:51.518 --> 00:24:52.558
And yet simultaneously,
00:24:52.940 --> 00:24:54.160
they can't develop
00:24:54.771 --> 00:24:56.873
a business case of an argument or clarity
00:24:56.913 --> 00:24:58.315
around how that should work and why they
00:24:58.335 --> 00:24:59.575
should do it and what does success look
00:24:59.635 --> 00:25:02.337
like so every every step and every angle
00:25:02.357 --> 00:25:04.460
and every approach to this thing there is
00:25:04.499 --> 00:25:06.141
no infrastructure there is no framework
00:25:06.161 --> 00:25:08.863
there is no standardization and the only
00:25:08.902 --> 00:25:11.725
thing that keeps us going and yeah even
00:25:11.825 --> 00:25:13.206
even keeps us moving forward which maybe
00:25:13.246 --> 00:25:15.248
masks some of how hideously broken this is
00:25:15.668 --> 00:25:17.088
is the enthusiasm of the people who are
00:25:17.189 --> 00:25:19.191
already inside that bubble and ecosystem
00:25:19.510 --> 00:25:20.872
catching things spotting things and being
00:25:20.892 --> 00:25:22.834
willing to continue but i don't see
00:25:23.566 --> 00:25:25.067
I don't see a way forward where we
00:25:25.107 --> 00:25:27.047
maintain that current enthusiasm and
00:25:27.087 --> 00:25:29.629
resourcing without improving the
00:25:29.709 --> 00:25:31.130
onboarding, the facilitation,
00:25:31.170 --> 00:25:31.769
the governance,
00:25:32.089 --> 00:25:33.591
all of those other words around how do
00:25:33.631 --> 00:25:36.331
we encourage, invite, sustain, support.
00:25:36.471 --> 00:25:36.791
And yeah,
00:25:36.852 --> 00:25:39.393
so hugely excited that we might try and
00:25:39.412 --> 00:25:40.093
address some of that.
00:25:40.252 --> 00:25:42.193
Those are all my favorite words,
00:25:42.254 --> 00:25:42.754
I just want to say.
00:25:42.774 --> 00:25:46.015
You just like blitzed them.
00:25:46.035 --> 00:25:48.075
Onboarding and like inclusion.
00:25:48.095 --> 00:25:48.895
It's amazing.
00:25:50.095 --> 00:25:52.277
I want to shift gears and go into
00:25:52.376 --> 00:25:56.477
your origin story into the WPCC in a
00:25:56.556 --> 00:25:58.978
second, Giano, but what you just said,
00:25:59.117 --> 00:26:01.618
we are recording this the day after two
00:26:01.699 --> 00:26:03.538
very influential members of the WordPress
00:26:03.558 --> 00:26:05.739
community have publicly announced that
00:26:05.758 --> 00:26:07.559
they're stepping back from the FAIR
00:26:07.620 --> 00:26:08.019
project,
00:26:08.039 --> 00:26:10.400
which is Federated and Independent
00:26:10.440 --> 00:26:11.081
Repositories,
00:26:11.101 --> 00:26:13.980
a project that started largely last year
00:26:14.220 --> 00:26:16.441
as a package manager for WordPress that is
00:26:16.461 --> 00:26:17.701
an alternative to the
00:26:18.582 --> 00:26:21.643
essentially single point of failure that
00:26:21.823 --> 00:26:24.923
is everything that is on the WP WordPress
00:26:25.123 --> 00:26:28.245
org infrastructure the idea being that if
00:26:28.644 --> 00:26:33.006
there are disparate sources of where stuff
00:26:33.105 --> 00:26:35.625
comes from then it it spreads the load
00:26:35.645 --> 00:26:37.727
and it means that if WordPress org goes
00:26:37.767 --> 00:26:40.627
down or if the maintainer of WordPress org
00:26:41.047 --> 00:26:41.748
heaven forbid that
00:26:42.133 --> 00:26:47.817
does something to a plug-in, for example,
00:26:47.958 --> 00:26:50.299
that affects everybody that is a consumer
00:26:50.339 --> 00:26:55.623
of that plug-in, then there's a buffer.
00:26:55.723 --> 00:26:57.486
That's a supply chain issue, right?
00:26:57.806 --> 00:27:00.047
And so the idea was we can create
00:27:00.067 --> 00:27:02.350
this federated list of servers that then
00:27:02.390 --> 00:27:06.053
create some distance from that supply
00:27:06.093 --> 00:27:08.074
chain security vulnerability.
00:27:09.488 --> 00:27:11.851
and the they're stepping back because they
00:27:11.891 --> 00:27:14.613
spent the last year going to various
00:27:14.652 --> 00:27:17.776
people a lot of them hosts looking for
00:27:17.997 --> 00:27:19.758
funding so they could form a board so
00:27:19.777 --> 00:27:21.339
they could fund the development of this of
00:27:21.380 --> 00:27:23.802
this infrastructure package uh and
00:27:24.583 --> 00:27:26.384
basically the answer they got was we don't
00:27:26.424 --> 00:27:28.007
have an appetite for it because of the
00:27:28.047 --> 00:27:29.547
status quo because of all the things so
00:27:29.587 --> 00:27:29.708
like
00:27:31.031 --> 00:27:31.953
In many ways,
00:27:32.614 --> 00:27:36.720
the WPCC to me represents like okay that
00:27:36.760 --> 00:27:38.903
was that was the old model that's like
00:27:38.963 --> 00:27:41.287
the old way of thinking about how
00:27:41.347 --> 00:27:43.771
contribution works and how Community
00:27:43.812 --> 00:27:45.815
projects work, perhaps.
00:27:46.278 --> 00:27:49.980
perhaps the WPCC is a new way or
00:27:50.040 --> 00:27:52.441
something different that could happen
00:27:52.981 --> 00:27:53.482
instead.
00:27:56.584 --> 00:27:57.184
That's the plan.
00:27:57.285 --> 00:27:57.985
Yeah, that's my plan.
00:27:58.364 --> 00:27:59.966
That's the theory of change that we are
00:27:59.986 --> 00:28:00.645
working under.
00:28:00.665 --> 00:28:00.746
Yeah.
00:28:02.687 --> 00:28:03.387
But Jonna,
00:28:03.787 --> 00:28:06.068
mostly because we've heard a lot from C
00:28:06.209 --> 00:28:06.670
and Courtney,
00:28:06.769 --> 00:28:08.430
I'd like to hear from you about like
00:28:08.509 --> 00:28:12.972
how you, like what attracted you to this,
00:28:13.452 --> 00:28:16.736
community collective to this project and
00:28:16.956 --> 00:28:19.056
made you want to get involved in it
00:28:19.096 --> 00:28:19.698
to begin with?
00:28:20.459 --> 00:28:21.358
Well, that's big, isn't it?
00:28:21.379 --> 00:28:21.538
Yeah.
00:28:23.026 --> 00:28:26.066
i i think the short version is i
00:28:26.306 --> 00:28:32.089
am driven by hope for a better web
00:28:32.249 --> 00:28:35.111
a better humanity a better world etc in
00:28:35.151 --> 00:28:36.672
the broadest possible sense as i'm sure
00:28:36.691 --> 00:28:39.512
many of us are and as one small
00:28:39.692 --> 00:28:41.614
and probably quite inconsequential human
00:28:41.913 --> 00:28:43.954
the one small surface area that i can
00:28:43.995 --> 00:28:47.477
affect is the web where i work and
00:28:47.517 --> 00:28:48.457
i consult and i
00:28:48.961 --> 00:28:50.681
try and help businesses to take their
00:28:50.822 --> 00:28:51.742
terrible, slow,
00:28:52.123 --> 00:28:53.543
unhelpful websites and to make them
00:28:53.583 --> 00:28:55.363
marginally better in the hopes that in
00:28:55.442 --> 00:28:56.883
aggregate that has some kind of positive
00:28:56.922 --> 00:28:57.243
impact.
00:28:57.264 --> 00:28:58.943
So I've been doing that for a long
00:28:59.004 --> 00:29:00.804
time, started out in web development,
00:29:00.864 --> 00:29:02.623
in agencies, in SaaS platforms,
00:29:02.864 --> 00:29:07.944
and was continually frustrated by how poor
00:29:07.964 --> 00:29:08.845
a lot of the tech was.
00:29:08.865 --> 00:29:10.766
So they're on content management systems
00:29:11.566 --> 00:29:12.046
that break,
00:29:12.085 --> 00:29:13.306
that don't have basic functionality,
00:29:13.325 --> 00:29:13.685
et cetera.
00:29:13.746 --> 00:29:14.806
I spent most of
00:29:17.012 --> 00:29:17.293
I don't know,
00:29:17.412 --> 00:29:20.194
enterprise CMSs that were doing versions
00:29:20.235 --> 00:29:22.996
of what WordPress had done ten years ago
00:29:23.336 --> 00:29:23.797
badly.
00:29:25.018 --> 00:29:28.739
And I think of all the things we
00:29:28.779 --> 00:29:30.059
could be doing on the web and all
00:29:30.081 --> 00:29:30.941
the things we should be doing,
00:29:31.020 --> 00:29:32.701
I see the idea of WordPress as the
00:29:32.781 --> 00:29:35.383
operating system really resonating.
00:29:35.703 --> 00:29:36.504
I think this is,
00:29:37.004 --> 00:29:38.424
as a piece of tech and a platform,
00:29:38.464 --> 00:29:40.787
the right way to build the right kinds
00:29:40.806 --> 00:29:41.267
of things.
00:29:41.774 --> 00:29:43.015
for what we need as a society,
00:29:43.035 --> 00:29:44.316
as businesses, as individuals.
00:29:44.556 --> 00:29:46.577
I think the idea of democratizing
00:29:46.617 --> 00:29:48.739
publishing, yeah, super nice,
00:29:48.759 --> 00:29:50.081
but there's a much bigger impact here
00:29:50.141 --> 00:29:51.461
about democratizing the web.
00:29:51.862 --> 00:29:52.623
Anyway, all of that.
00:29:53.083 --> 00:29:56.226
So I joined Yoast SEO to try and
00:29:56.246 --> 00:29:57.185
do a bit of that,
00:29:57.206 --> 00:29:57.767
to try and go,
00:29:57.826 --> 00:29:59.367
how do we make every site one percent
00:29:59.387 --> 00:30:00.929
better in a way that meaningfully impacts
00:30:00.969 --> 00:30:02.470
the world and helps people and helps
00:30:02.510 --> 00:30:04.011
businesses and makes money and fuels the
00:30:04.392 --> 00:30:05.113
engines of capitalism?
00:30:05.152 --> 00:30:06.254
And saves them.
00:30:07.161 --> 00:30:08.842
Yeah, yeah, that's a meaningful impact,
00:30:09.021 --> 00:30:09.221
etc.
00:30:09.682 --> 00:30:10.783
And that was must have been around.
00:30:10.823 --> 00:30:12.203
Twenty sixteen ish, I think,
00:30:12.223 --> 00:30:12.824
maybe even earlier.
00:30:13.164 --> 00:30:14.305
And it was the first time that I'd
00:30:14.325 --> 00:30:15.726
gone from being a WordPress developer to
00:30:15.766 --> 00:30:17.566
really meeting and understanding the
00:30:17.586 --> 00:30:18.908
community and the ecosystem.
00:30:19.188 --> 00:30:20.848
So I've been building WordPress sites
00:30:20.868 --> 00:30:22.650
since maybe two thousand six ish,
00:30:22.749 --> 00:30:24.991
but I hadn't even discovered the community
00:30:25.031 --> 00:30:25.352
at all.
00:30:25.991 --> 00:30:26.593
And as a result,
00:30:26.613 --> 00:30:28.713
having come from a background in agencies
00:30:28.733 --> 00:30:29.334
and capitalism,
00:30:29.393 --> 00:30:31.935
I felt found the whole space really
00:30:31.976 --> 00:30:32.375
strange.
00:30:32.796 --> 00:30:33.016
Like,
00:30:33.356 --> 00:30:35.337
what is this product and where is the
00:30:35.377 --> 00:30:35.797
roadmap?
00:30:36.575 --> 00:30:38.197
And where's the governance?
00:30:38.498 --> 00:30:42.299
And WordPress.org is weird, right?
00:30:42.380 --> 00:30:43.121
Operationally,
00:30:43.161 --> 00:30:44.602
like this thing that sits in the middle.
00:30:44.741 --> 00:30:47.703
And WordCamps as event, weird.
00:30:48.004 --> 00:30:49.305
Very friendly, very pleasant,
00:30:49.325 --> 00:30:50.226
little bit cultish.
00:30:50.506 --> 00:30:52.187
Don't behave like any other normal
00:30:52.227 --> 00:30:53.228
conference that I've been to,
00:30:53.248 --> 00:30:54.608
which I've been to hundreds and spoken at
00:30:54.629 --> 00:30:54.909
hundreds.
00:30:55.209 --> 00:30:56.410
And this doesn't look and feel like the
00:30:56.450 --> 00:30:56.790
same thing.
00:30:57.010 --> 00:30:58.511
Fire for the future, a bit weird, right?
00:30:58.912 --> 00:30:59.873
Everybody is lovely.
00:31:00.671 --> 00:31:01.972
But underneath all of that,
00:31:02.433 --> 00:31:03.816
all of these things seem to be just
00:31:04.217 --> 00:31:07.362
powered by feeding more humans into the
00:31:07.402 --> 00:31:07.702
boiler.
00:31:08.432 --> 00:31:10.495
And we burn people out.
00:31:10.535 --> 00:31:11.757
We upset and offend them.
00:31:11.797 --> 00:31:13.158
We alienate them.
00:31:13.198 --> 00:31:14.139
We confuse them.
00:31:14.159 --> 00:31:15.220
We don't support them.
00:31:15.279 --> 00:31:16.562
We don't blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
00:31:16.582 --> 00:31:16.761
blah.
00:31:17.102 --> 00:31:19.104
And even over the five years I was
00:31:19.143 --> 00:31:19.805
working at Yoast,
00:31:19.845 --> 00:31:22.587
the churn I saw in core contributors,
00:31:22.627 --> 00:31:24.569
in documentation, in event attendees,
00:31:24.610 --> 00:31:27.393
in people I spoke to multiple times a
00:31:27.412 --> 00:31:29.255
day about projects they were passionate
00:31:29.275 --> 00:31:30.556
about who then just disappeared.
00:31:31.268 --> 00:31:32.968
because they couldn't handle the
00:31:33.129 --> 00:31:34.108
ecosystem, the politics,
00:31:34.129 --> 00:31:35.868
the processes of the lack versus such.
00:31:36.548 --> 00:31:38.670
And increasingly, it feels like to me,
00:31:39.670 --> 00:31:40.411
the tech is great.
00:31:40.671 --> 00:31:41.990
Like there's some there's some interesting
00:31:42.030 --> 00:31:43.431
questions about direction and strategy and
00:31:43.450 --> 00:31:45.372
roadmap and whether Gutenberg was insane
00:31:45.511 --> 00:31:47.533
or visionary or both fine.
00:31:47.972 --> 00:31:49.633
But underneath all of that,
00:31:50.412 --> 00:31:51.913
it feels like we're cooking at the seams
00:31:51.973 --> 00:31:53.493
because we pretend that we have an
00:31:53.633 --> 00:31:56.035
infinite talent pool and that we can just
00:31:56.075 --> 00:31:58.355
keep feeding more humans to the boiler.
00:31:58.796 --> 00:31:59.996
And I don't think that's true.
00:32:00.585 --> 00:32:03.248
I think that if we want to survive
00:32:03.307 --> 00:32:04.189
and thrive,
00:32:04.569 --> 00:32:06.790
and build this incredibly important
00:32:06.991 --> 00:32:08.972
platform and framework that powers the
00:32:09.033 --> 00:32:09.534
open web,
00:32:10.133 --> 00:32:12.456
that fuels societies and economies in a
00:32:12.496 --> 00:32:14.637
way that none of the alternatives come
00:32:14.678 --> 00:32:16.299
even close to, like,
00:32:16.660 --> 00:32:18.220
show me a Wix site that even has
00:32:18.240 --> 00:32:19.402
a correct XML sitemap.
00:32:20.222 --> 00:32:20.824
No, like,
00:32:21.104 --> 00:32:22.986
there is nothing else close despite all of
00:32:23.006 --> 00:32:23.526
these flaws.
00:32:23.905 --> 00:32:24.326
And yet,
00:32:25.144 --> 00:32:27.747
the fuel that we need to make this
00:32:27.767 --> 00:32:29.488
thing work in a much nicer sense of
00:32:29.768 --> 00:32:32.670
a stable sustainable community of
00:32:33.070 --> 00:32:34.931
volunteers and contributors and people who
00:32:34.991 --> 00:32:37.093
are actually rewarded for their time we
00:32:37.133 --> 00:32:38.493
don't have any posters for that we don't
00:32:38.514 --> 00:32:39.555
have any frameworks we don't have any
00:32:39.575 --> 00:32:41.056
platforms and that terrifies me
00:32:41.095 --> 00:32:43.077
existentially not least of which because
00:32:43.158 --> 00:32:45.860
my my livelihood is tied very closely to
00:32:45.880 --> 00:32:49.021
this thing and my identity as somebody who
00:32:49.661 --> 00:32:52.142
firmly believes in understanding what good
00:32:52.181 --> 00:32:54.123
looks like in tech is very closely tied
00:32:54.143 --> 00:32:56.265
to this thing and i'm very very keen
00:32:56.485 --> 00:32:57.825
not to look like a hypocrite and to
00:32:57.865 --> 00:33:00.166
be proven wrong so yeah i'm keen that
00:33:00.187 --> 00:33:01.428
we try and work out how do we
00:33:01.827 --> 00:33:03.489
reinforce not even reinforce how do we
00:33:03.669 --> 00:33:05.970
construct the underlying foundations
00:33:06.329 --> 00:33:08.151
underneath this thing because they don't
00:33:08.210 --> 00:33:11.212
exist and we've just pretended that human
00:33:11.333 --> 00:33:13.193
capital is an infinite resource and that
00:33:13.233 --> 00:33:14.995
goodwill is an infinite resource and
00:33:15.154 --> 00:33:16.175
recent events have
00:33:16.867 --> 00:33:18.249
I think to everyone outside that
00:33:18.549 --> 00:33:19.852
demonstrated that's not the case,
00:33:19.991 --> 00:33:21.192
yet we continue to pretend it is.
00:33:21.493 --> 00:33:22.575
So yeah, step one,
00:33:23.056 --> 00:33:25.158
let's work out how we get people engaged
00:33:25.198 --> 00:33:26.058
and how we reward them.
00:33:26.319 --> 00:33:27.681
And then we gradually unpick all the rest
00:33:27.720 --> 00:33:27.922
of this.
00:33:28.720 --> 00:33:30.481
Yeah, let's talk about that,
00:33:31.823 --> 00:33:33.264
even before recent events,
00:33:33.304 --> 00:33:36.488
that assumption of infinite human capital.
00:33:37.788 --> 00:33:40.270
I will tell my own personal experience.
00:33:41.132 --> 00:33:42.492
There was a period of time when I
00:33:42.512 --> 00:33:44.695
was really involved with the docs team,
00:33:45.757 --> 00:33:47.998
and one of the projects that we,
00:33:48.419 --> 00:33:50.500
basically, this was back in the day,
00:33:50.800 --> 00:33:53.203
WordPress used to have the concept
00:33:53.764 --> 00:33:56.006
of feature plugins as a way of like,
00:33:56.466 --> 00:33:56.947
oh, if you want...
00:33:57.126 --> 00:33:59.367
You mean canonical plugins, don't you?
00:33:59.547 --> 00:34:02.190
No, no, this is before that.
00:34:02.350 --> 00:34:04.271
The idea was that if you had a
00:34:04.892 --> 00:34:07.393
cool idea for something to be put into
00:34:07.433 --> 00:34:07.814
core,
00:34:07.834 --> 00:34:09.075
you could start it off as a feature
00:34:09.114 --> 00:34:10.635
plugin and put all your development there
00:34:10.655 --> 00:34:12.357
and then the feature plugin gets evaluated
00:34:12.398 --> 00:34:15.839
and then someone from the core maintainer
00:34:15.860 --> 00:34:17.040
group or someone somewhere
00:34:17.797 --> 00:34:19.400
decides, yes, this is good or no,
00:34:19.440 --> 00:34:19.860
it's not.
00:34:20.761 --> 00:34:23.225
I just want to point out,
00:34:23.325 --> 00:34:24.346
at that same time,
00:34:24.666 --> 00:34:27.091
there was also a theory that the things
00:34:27.111 --> 00:34:29.294
that go into core, those feature plugins,
00:34:29.314 --> 00:34:31.596
should apply to eighty percent of the
00:34:31.636 --> 00:34:32.719
people who are using that.
00:34:32.939 --> 00:34:33.539
So those features
00:34:33.600 --> 00:34:36.402
plugins were used to sort of map out
00:34:36.461 --> 00:34:38.764
that use case and be like, yes,
00:34:38.784 --> 00:34:39.924
we're testing the code and everything.
00:34:39.964 --> 00:34:40.384
But also,
00:34:40.525 --> 00:34:42.846
is this something that eighty percent of
00:34:42.866 --> 00:34:44.368
the people who use this software are going
00:34:44.389 --> 00:34:45.528
to use or should it stay in a
00:34:45.568 --> 00:34:47.411
plugin because it's only twenty percent?
00:34:47.431 --> 00:34:49.112
So I just that has gone far by
00:34:49.132 --> 00:34:49.613
the wayside.
00:34:49.672 --> 00:34:51.873
But I it was that same era of
00:34:51.933 --> 00:34:52.495
feature plugin.
00:34:53.216 --> 00:34:54.596
That seemed reasonable to me.
00:34:55.037 --> 00:34:57.358
Like that seemed like a reasonable way to
00:34:57.399 --> 00:34:58.339
test new features.
00:34:58.999 --> 00:34:59.881
I liked that era.
00:35:00.341 --> 00:35:02.942
So so the project that I was working
00:35:03.083 --> 00:35:05.785
on was to try to solve the problem
00:35:06.325 --> 00:35:09.748
of WordPress users being overwhelmed by
00:35:09.948 --> 00:35:11.768
all the stuff when they log in,
00:35:11.808 --> 00:35:13.610
like new user experience, basically.
00:35:14.950 --> 00:35:15.552
And like,
00:35:15.872 --> 00:35:17.633
the thing is that there are all these
00:35:17.692 --> 00:35:19.554
things that are built into WordPress,
00:35:20.934 --> 00:35:22.615
that already exist,
00:35:23.017 --> 00:35:25.277
that could be tools to help people out
00:35:25.297 --> 00:35:26.098
with that problem.
00:35:26.479 --> 00:35:27.199
for instance,
00:35:27.379 --> 00:35:29.700
like there is a help tab that appears
00:35:29.880 --> 00:35:31.101
on pages in the admin,
00:35:31.441 --> 00:35:33.981
but nobody clicks on that because nobody
00:35:34.021 --> 00:35:35.402
knows it exists because it's just hidden
00:35:35.422 --> 00:35:35.642
up there.
00:35:35.681 --> 00:35:37.283
There's a screen options tab up there.
00:35:37.662 --> 00:35:40.223
I knew about those things myself because I
00:35:40.243 --> 00:35:42.243
had recently recorded a course for
00:35:42.304 --> 00:35:43.985
Pluralsight that was literally going
00:35:44.005 --> 00:35:45.546
through every screen in the WordPress
00:35:45.645 --> 00:35:46.006
admin.
00:35:46.206 --> 00:35:47.566
And one of the things that I noticed
00:35:47.585 --> 00:35:48.687
when I was doing that is there's these
00:35:48.727 --> 00:35:50.106
tabs that you can click on and they
00:35:50.187 --> 00:35:50.906
do stuff.
00:35:51.508 --> 00:35:55.108
So our theory was how can we
00:35:55.669 --> 00:35:58.111
bring people bring more awareness to the
00:35:58.171 --> 00:35:59.853
stuff that's already there the little tab
00:35:59.873 --> 00:36:03.195
in the corner to get to maybe help
00:36:03.215 --> 00:36:04.936
people out or maybe there's like some sort
00:36:04.976 --> 00:36:07.499
of like guided tours that things pop up
00:36:07.559 --> 00:36:10.561
on the screen or whatever so that was
00:36:10.601 --> 00:36:12.222
the feature plug-in that I was involved in
00:36:12.284 --> 00:36:14.646
working on it involved learning about how
00:36:14.686 --> 00:36:17.327
to like add stuff into those pages and
00:36:17.867 --> 00:36:21.210
And it's kind of janky code because
00:36:21.229 --> 00:36:23.672
nobody's looked at it in probably fifteen
00:36:23.711 --> 00:36:24.052
years.
00:36:25.592 --> 00:36:29.034
And building out this plugin that tried to
00:36:29.074 --> 00:36:29.914
do something better.
00:36:30.795 --> 00:36:32.976
We actually did user research.
00:36:33.838 --> 00:36:36.239
We did a number of...
00:36:36.258 --> 00:36:39.021
There's a usertesting.com or something.
00:36:39.041 --> 00:36:40.481
And we had an account that was paid
00:36:40.521 --> 00:36:42.342
for probably by the foundation or someone.
00:36:42.722 --> 00:36:44.644
Someone, not me, that allowed us...
00:36:45.885 --> 00:36:48.005
that allowed us to like actually get real
00:36:48.045 --> 00:36:50.606
human beings that are just random folks
00:36:50.626 --> 00:36:52.726
that apply to to do this thing and
00:36:52.766 --> 00:36:54.106
i think they're like compensated five
00:36:54.146 --> 00:36:55.447
bucks or something to go through the thing
00:36:55.467 --> 00:36:56.686
and we asked them to go through and
00:36:56.827 --> 00:37:00.688
do a like go log in uh make
00:37:00.728 --> 00:37:02.909
a make a blog post start writing stuff
00:37:02.929 --> 00:37:05.648
whatever and uh and then we would watch
00:37:05.688 --> 00:37:07.269
these videos and we would try to figure
00:37:07.329 --> 00:37:08.849
out like oh is this more helpful and
00:37:08.869 --> 00:37:09.849
then we would make a little bit of
00:37:09.869 --> 00:37:11.570
a change and we'd do another round of
00:37:11.670 --> 00:37:12.590
user testing and see if
00:37:13.130 --> 00:37:14.532
to see if it would get any feedback
00:37:14.552 --> 00:37:15.532
so we put a lot of work and
00:37:15.572 --> 00:37:18.572
time into this thing um and then when
00:37:18.592 --> 00:37:20.614
it did come time to like actually present
00:37:20.673 --> 00:37:22.614
on the thing that we did uh it
00:37:22.633 --> 00:37:24.594
was like nope nope we're not gonna we're
00:37:24.615 --> 00:37:25.675
not gonna do this we're not gonna pursue
00:37:25.695 --> 00:37:28.856
this and probably no path for it was
00:37:28.876 --> 00:37:31.297
just a dead end right like exactly let's
00:37:31.356 --> 00:37:33.458
tweak it or maybe this way just like
00:37:33.838 --> 00:37:37.820
just a unilateral no um and chris related
00:37:37.860 --> 00:37:38.300
to that
00:37:39.496 --> 00:37:40.936
I never knew that one of your early
00:37:41.316 --> 00:37:43.077
onboarding routes was a new user
00:37:43.157 --> 00:37:46.400
experience model because Serco,
00:37:46.440 --> 00:37:47.621
when I joined,
00:37:48.021 --> 00:37:49.943
contributing to the training team in
00:37:50.003 --> 00:37:51.083
twenty fourteen,
00:37:51.664 --> 00:37:53.744
Drew Janes had been leading a NUX
00:37:53.885 --> 00:37:55.925
exploration for what you see when you
00:37:55.985 --> 00:37:56.726
first log in.
00:37:56.807 --> 00:37:58.568
And this was the days before we had
00:37:58.688 --> 00:37:59.128
Slack.
00:37:59.568 --> 00:38:00.809
We were all in IRC.
00:38:01.208 --> 00:38:03.811
I was a very intimidated contributor.
00:38:04.652 --> 00:38:07.353
And that project also just still sits
00:38:07.412 --> 00:38:08.293
right where we left it.
00:38:09.378 --> 00:38:11.340
That's when I met Morten.
00:38:11.420 --> 00:38:11.601
Yeah.
00:38:11.920 --> 00:38:12.121
Yeah.
00:38:12.641 --> 00:38:16.383
Um, that, I mean, they're the good,
00:38:16.563 --> 00:38:17.784
I will say that came out of that.
00:38:17.844 --> 00:38:20.007
I mean, uh, was that I was,
00:38:20.206 --> 00:38:21.827
because I was involved in that project and
00:38:21.847 --> 00:38:23.028
because I was involved in the docs team,
00:38:23.068 --> 00:38:24.931
I was invited to the community summit in
00:38:25.211 --> 00:38:27.612
at WordCamp San Francisco in whatever,
00:38:27.713 --> 00:38:29.554
twenty fifteen, twenty fourteen,
00:38:29.574 --> 00:38:30.155
something like that.
00:38:30.755 --> 00:38:31.936
Um, and I got to meet,
00:38:31.956 --> 00:38:33.097
meet Kim Parcel.
00:38:33.396 --> 00:38:34.137
And so,
00:38:35.978 --> 00:38:37.818
I love her and rest in peace.
00:38:39.139 --> 00:38:40.179
She was one of the first people that
00:38:40.199 --> 00:38:41.820
greeted me in the community summit.
00:38:41.880 --> 00:38:43.081
This is total tangent.
00:38:43.920 --> 00:38:44.820
She was one of the first people that
00:38:44.860 --> 00:38:47.041
greeted me and she said, hi, I'm Kim.
00:38:47.161 --> 00:38:48.061
And I said, hi, I'm Chris.
00:38:48.403 --> 00:38:51.804
And I knew who she was because I
00:38:51.844 --> 00:38:53.304
knew her handle because her handle was
00:38:53.364 --> 00:38:54.624
probably her name or something.
00:38:55.405 --> 00:38:56.646
and mine was jazz sequence.
00:38:56.907 --> 00:38:58.248
And she kind of like gave me a
00:38:58.287 --> 00:38:58.728
look and she's like,
00:38:58.867 --> 00:38:59.449
what are you here with?
00:38:59.469 --> 00:39:00.208
And I'm just here with the docs.
00:39:00.269 --> 00:39:00.749
Oh, she's like, oh,
00:39:00.829 --> 00:39:01.670
I work on the docs team.
00:39:01.690 --> 00:39:03.711
Like, oh yeah, I know I'm jazz sequence.
00:39:03.771 --> 00:39:04.773
And she's like, oh,
00:39:04.893 --> 00:39:06.534
and she immediately gave me a hug.
00:39:07.034 --> 00:39:10.278
And like to speak to Jono, like,
00:39:10.537 --> 00:39:13.139
your comment and everybody like here knows
00:39:13.260 --> 00:39:15.181
like the community is amazing.
00:39:15.260 --> 00:39:16.922
Like the people here are amazing.
00:39:18.162 --> 00:39:19.903
And that was really that was sort of
00:39:19.963 --> 00:39:22.146
my introduction to the broader sort of
00:39:22.186 --> 00:39:22.965
contributor community.
00:39:23.106 --> 00:39:25.548
But the flip side of that is after
00:39:25.648 --> 00:39:28.389
sort of that project kind of got dead
00:39:28.449 --> 00:39:28.749
ended,
00:39:29.510 --> 00:39:31.972
that really killed my
00:39:33.083 --> 00:39:35.724
desire to ever contribute anything to core
00:39:35.804 --> 00:39:36.324
ever again.
00:39:36.483 --> 00:39:39.744
Like I have zero interest since then.
00:39:40.124 --> 00:39:42.505
And so even, even if it's not like,
00:39:43.106 --> 00:39:45.186
like the onboarding process for
00:39:45.226 --> 00:39:46.827
contributors or like getting,
00:39:46.907 --> 00:39:49.088
like working up this, like Matt likes to,
00:39:50.048 --> 00:39:51.510
talk about mr mullenweg likes to talk
00:39:51.530 --> 00:39:53.614
about how it's a meritocracy but it can't
00:39:53.653 --> 00:39:56.559
even be a meritocracy if we are kind
00:39:56.599 --> 00:39:59.282
of stopping people at the gate and and
00:39:59.523 --> 00:40:02.168
preventing them from feeling like they're
00:40:02.208 --> 00:40:03.249
invited through the gate
00:40:04.731 --> 00:40:05.893
Yeah, I mean, and the rules don't...
00:40:05.952 --> 00:40:06.233
It's like,
00:40:06.673 --> 00:40:07.894
this is how you get through the gate,
00:40:08.014 --> 00:40:09.255
but then you follow the rules to get
00:40:09.275 --> 00:40:10.635
through the gate and you're not anywhere
00:40:10.675 --> 00:40:11.215
near the gate.
00:40:11.235 --> 00:40:12.715
So it's actually...
00:40:13.277 --> 00:40:15.338
It's not even just that it's like a
00:40:15.398 --> 00:40:16.599
blocked gate, right?
00:40:16.659 --> 00:40:18.360
It's that you're told that there's a gate
00:40:18.380 --> 00:40:18.639
there.
00:40:18.940 --> 00:40:20.641
You're told that if you build this feature
00:40:20.681 --> 00:40:21.922
plugin and you do this stuff...
00:40:22.222 --> 00:40:24.722
And this has been sort of the problem.
00:40:25.684 --> 00:40:28.485
To bring it back to the WPCC, it's...
00:40:31.197 --> 00:40:33.278
The individuals who experience this,
00:40:33.338 --> 00:40:35.179
like you said, Jono, and you were like,
00:40:35.280 --> 00:40:35.380
oh,
00:40:35.440 --> 00:40:36.440
I hit that and I hit the wall
00:40:36.460 --> 00:40:37.519
and I was like, done, right?
00:40:37.961 --> 00:40:41.461
That's the human churn that we've talked
00:40:41.501 --> 00:40:43.422
about, that we've all seen amazing,
00:40:43.802 --> 00:40:44.503
intelligent,
00:40:44.802 --> 00:40:46.662
creative people leave the community,
00:40:47.923 --> 00:40:49.284
ethical people leave the community,
00:40:49.885 --> 00:40:53.166
because they aren't just going to work
00:40:53.206 --> 00:40:53.365
for...
00:40:54.146 --> 00:40:55.586
They're already working for nothing in
00:40:55.628 --> 00:40:57.249
terms of financial compensation.
00:40:57.508 --> 00:41:00.092
So to also work for work that on
00:41:00.152 --> 00:41:01.753
something that then is just literally
00:41:01.793 --> 00:41:03.536
futile and completely negated,
00:41:04.356 --> 00:41:05.657
there's no benefit there.
00:41:05.778 --> 00:41:07.719
There's like no one's coming in for that.
00:41:08.518 --> 00:41:10.438
And the issue is, you know,
00:41:10.458 --> 00:41:11.099
when you treat,
00:41:11.820 --> 00:41:14.862
I think this is an entrepreneur tech bro
00:41:14.963 --> 00:41:15.762
issue, right?
00:41:16.324 --> 00:41:19.186
And really more like even just big
00:41:19.226 --> 00:41:19.806
corporations.
00:41:19.845 --> 00:41:21.766
You start to treat your employees as if
00:41:21.786 --> 00:41:23.608
they're interchangeable cogs in a wheel,
00:41:23.769 --> 00:41:23.989
right?
00:41:24.588 --> 00:41:26.271
And this is why I actually said a
00:41:26.331 --> 00:41:28.172
comment yesterday about how the community
00:41:28.231 --> 00:41:30.353
is not valued in the way that it
00:41:30.373 --> 00:41:31.074
should be valued.
00:41:32.119 --> 00:41:33.521
Even when we're talking about AI,
00:41:33.981 --> 00:41:34.742
everyone's like, oh,
00:41:34.762 --> 00:41:36.242
AI is going to do everything.
00:41:36.603 --> 00:41:39.103
AI is not going to pop into that
00:41:39.804 --> 00:41:42.626
font manager conversation and be like, oh,
00:41:42.646 --> 00:41:43.266
you know what?
00:41:43.706 --> 00:41:45.568
I have this use case over here that
00:41:45.588 --> 00:41:46.889
this is going to cause a real problem
00:41:46.909 --> 00:41:47.208
and whatever.
00:41:48.008 --> 00:41:50.090
AI is not going to innovate.
00:41:50.510 --> 00:41:52.311
AI is not going to
00:41:52.972 --> 00:41:56.853
make those connections of this use case
00:41:56.893 --> 00:41:58.434
versus this use case and how those might
00:41:58.474 --> 00:42:00.894
interact because it's not being fed that
00:42:00.954 --> 00:42:03.516
information because it has to come from a
00:42:03.556 --> 00:42:03.916
human.
00:42:04.295 --> 00:42:06.816
And if the human isn't there to feed
00:42:06.856 --> 00:42:07.836
it that information,
00:42:08.557 --> 00:42:09.938
it's not going to innovate.
00:42:10.018 --> 00:42:11.757
It's only going to use what it has
00:42:11.798 --> 00:42:12.338
in the past.
00:42:15.661 --> 00:42:17.365
across the tech industry right now,
00:42:17.445 --> 00:42:18.306
I think it's so funny.
00:42:18.325 --> 00:42:19.608
Everyone's like, AI, AI.
00:42:19.628 --> 00:42:21.452
And I'm like, what happened to innovation?
00:42:21.652 --> 00:42:24.496
What happened to creating new things?
00:42:24.516 --> 00:42:25.878
Because what we're doing right now is
00:42:25.898 --> 00:42:26.460
we're just going to
00:42:27.653 --> 00:42:28.072
you know,
00:42:28.092 --> 00:42:30.235
just like AI and then copies AI and
00:42:30.255 --> 00:42:31.075
then copies AI,
00:42:31.095 --> 00:42:32.297
you get the copy of a copy of
00:42:32.316 --> 00:42:32.757
a copy.
00:42:32.936 --> 00:42:34.719
And then, you know, it's like,
00:42:34.758 --> 00:42:36.961
it's almost like inbreeding at a certain
00:42:37.001 --> 00:42:37.240
point.
00:42:37.280 --> 00:42:40.503
Like you need, but I mean, it's genetics,
00:42:40.563 --> 00:42:40.784
right?
00:42:40.864 --> 00:42:42.666
If you have even like an animal
00:42:42.706 --> 00:42:43.025
population.
00:42:43.045 --> 00:42:43.766
Open source genetics, yep.
00:42:43.786 --> 00:42:44.387
Yeah,
00:42:44.447 --> 00:42:46.548
if you have an animal population that's
00:42:46.588 --> 00:42:47.670
just breeding within itself,
00:42:47.690 --> 00:42:48.490
like it's a contained thing,
00:42:49.450 --> 00:42:53.394
it has problems because you need diversity
00:42:53.755 --> 00:42:54.695
in order to,
00:42:55.416 --> 00:42:57.277
have new ideas, new genetics,
00:42:57.316 --> 00:42:57.797
new whatever,
00:42:57.856 --> 00:43:00.577
come in and create the new things.
00:43:00.896 --> 00:43:02.498
And without that input,
00:43:04.818 --> 00:43:06.619
you are stuck with just the soup that
00:43:06.639 --> 00:43:07.159
you have.
00:43:07.818 --> 00:43:12.199
And because of the way that we've survived
00:43:12.260 --> 00:43:13.641
is by doing what Jono said,
00:43:13.681 --> 00:43:15.380
which is just feeding more humans into
00:43:15.400 --> 00:43:15.700
there.
00:43:16.200 --> 00:43:17.242
And then when they've given their
00:43:17.262 --> 00:43:18.862
innovative ideas, they're gone,
00:43:18.902 --> 00:43:19.402
they leave.
00:43:19.822 --> 00:43:21.543
More humans come in with innovation,
00:43:22.023 --> 00:43:22.222
you know,
00:43:23.639 --> 00:43:25.541
we want to do something here about that
00:43:25.621 --> 00:43:27.545
like and then the humans leave part and
00:43:27.604 --> 00:43:29.407
also the the empowering of like what
00:43:29.427 --> 00:43:30.367
you're doing but
00:43:31.273 --> 00:43:34.095
that not only is that not an inexhaustible
00:43:34.175 --> 00:43:36.757
source and, you know, goodwill has been,
00:43:37.358 --> 00:43:40.760
has been spent mightily, but we, you know,
00:43:40.840 --> 00:43:43.742
we, this, it's not done.
00:43:43.922 --> 00:43:45.583
Like we're not done building the internet.
00:43:45.603 --> 00:43:46.963
We're not done building the web.
00:43:47.003 --> 00:43:47.124
Like,
00:43:47.144 --> 00:43:50.345
are we just like perfecting this one thing
00:43:50.365 --> 00:43:50.786
that we have?
00:43:50.825 --> 00:43:52.186
We can't even do that with AI.
00:43:52.226 --> 00:43:54.289
So the humans are,
00:43:56.441 --> 00:43:58.302
are what even drives the AI.
00:43:58.362 --> 00:43:59.003
It's like, you know,
00:43:59.063 --> 00:44:00.945
a car might be sitting there and I
00:44:00.965 --> 00:44:02.226
guess this is a bad example now with
00:44:02.246 --> 00:44:03.867
like Waymo and the self-driving cars,
00:44:03.907 --> 00:44:06.568
but still like the self-driving car still
00:44:06.608 --> 00:44:07.289
needs a human.
00:44:07.570 --> 00:44:08.329
Like that's just all it.
00:44:08.650 --> 00:44:10.090
Otherwise it's literally just sitting
00:44:10.130 --> 00:44:10.351
there.
00:44:10.532 --> 00:44:12.153
Like the car's not driving itself around
00:44:12.193 --> 00:44:12.612
for fun.
00:44:13.153 --> 00:44:14.934
I thought we found out that all the
00:44:14.974 --> 00:44:15.795
self-driving cars,
00:44:15.874 --> 00:44:17.235
all the Waymos were actually controlled
00:44:17.295 --> 00:44:18.476
remotely by some dudes.
00:44:18.597 --> 00:44:19.498
Oh my God, them too?
00:44:19.577 --> 00:44:20.338
In the Philippines.
00:44:20.539 --> 00:44:21.139
Yes.
00:44:21.438 --> 00:44:22.159
Most of them are,
00:44:22.179 --> 00:44:23.501
but I didn't know it was the Waymos
00:44:23.541 --> 00:44:23.840
too.
00:44:23.860 --> 00:44:23.940
Yeah.
00:44:24.240 --> 00:44:25.521
Yeah.
00:44:25.601 --> 00:44:25.661
Yes.
00:44:25.780 --> 00:44:27.262
Oh, my God.
00:44:27.282 --> 00:44:29.764
This is... I just found this out.
00:44:29.784 --> 00:44:30.985
This is, like, Sage's shocked face.
00:44:31.005 --> 00:44:31.146
Like,
00:44:31.206 --> 00:44:32.266
I knew there was a lot of the,
00:44:32.286 --> 00:44:34.108
like, person in the box, you know,
00:44:34.168 --> 00:44:35.008
doing the AI,
00:44:35.289 --> 00:44:36.809
but I didn't realize that the Waymos were
00:44:36.849 --> 00:44:37.510
also part of that.
00:44:37.851 --> 00:44:39.012
I've never been in a Waymo.
00:44:39.032 --> 00:44:40.273
I'm never getting in a Waymo.
00:44:40.393 --> 00:44:41.554
Like, I don't... I'm sorry.
00:44:41.813 --> 00:44:42.374
Just not doing it.
00:44:43.376 --> 00:44:45.097
But the point is here is that we
00:44:45.637 --> 00:44:47.199
all... All the powers that be are like,
00:44:47.378 --> 00:44:47.838
AI.
00:44:48.199 --> 00:44:49.760
Even the companies are like, AI.
00:44:50.141 --> 00:44:50.681
And it's like...
00:44:51.441 --> 00:44:54.315
that's just not going to be where the
00:44:54.374 --> 00:44:55.318
innovation comes from.
00:44:55.478 --> 00:44:56.704
It's just not.
00:44:57.150 --> 00:44:59.110
It's a desperate push for efficiency,
00:44:59.130 --> 00:45:01.132
which means removing humans and squeezing
00:45:01.173 --> 00:45:03.114
margins, et cetera, which yeah,
00:45:03.173 --> 00:45:04.854
you could make an archie for, and there's,
00:45:04.894 --> 00:45:06.195
there's economic presence, blah, blah,
00:45:06.215 --> 00:45:06.536
blah, blah, blah,
00:45:06.755 --> 00:45:09.237
but it completely sidesteps the underlying
00:45:09.278 --> 00:45:10.358
problems that yeah.
00:45:10.499 --> 00:45:12.920
Where is the pipeline of contribution and
00:45:12.999 --> 00:45:15.501
new ideas and resources to do stuff?
00:45:15.521 --> 00:45:17.322
Otherwise what gets built and where are
00:45:17.342 --> 00:45:18.804
these new feature plugins coming from?
00:45:19.124 --> 00:45:20.465
And if all we end up with is
00:45:20.664 --> 00:45:22.387
AI that summarizes the other stuff that
00:45:22.407 --> 00:45:23.967
the AI built, uh,
00:45:23.987 --> 00:45:25.268
maybe Wix is the better choice.
00:45:25.309 --> 00:45:25.849
That's not cool.
00:45:27.815 --> 00:45:30.836
We've talked a lot about the problem
00:45:30.876 --> 00:45:34.338
space, why WPCC exists.
00:45:36.219 --> 00:45:37.880
I'd like to shift focus a little bit
00:45:37.940 --> 00:45:40.340
into, okay, so what is the solution?
00:45:40.760 --> 00:45:43.523
So by shifting into this gear,
00:45:43.782 --> 00:45:47.144
I'd like to ask, say, Courtney,
00:45:47.523 --> 00:45:49.124
probably say, because you...
00:45:50.195 --> 00:45:51.217
talk about this all the time.
00:45:52.739 --> 00:45:56.182
I think a lot of people assume or
00:45:56.242 --> 00:45:58.505
put a lot of things like you do
00:45:59.385 --> 00:46:03.070
onto the WPCC because they expect it to
00:46:03.110 --> 00:46:04.532
behave in a particular way or expect it
00:46:04.552 --> 00:46:05.673
to work in a particular way.
00:46:06.686 --> 00:46:07.706
And then it doesn't,
00:46:07.726 --> 00:46:09.307
because we're actually trying to do
00:46:09.347 --> 00:46:10.347
something new and different.
00:46:11.347 --> 00:46:15.269
So for everyone who has now heard about
00:46:15.508 --> 00:46:16.688
why the WPCC exists,
00:46:16.708 --> 00:46:18.449
maybe you've gone to the website and
00:46:18.469 --> 00:46:20.389
scrolled through a little bit while we
00:46:20.409 --> 00:46:21.309
were having this conversation,
00:46:21.329 --> 00:46:22.610
or maybe you clicked pause, gasp,
00:46:22.931 --> 00:46:23.690
and now you're coming back.
00:46:24.590 --> 00:46:29.412
How does the WPCC try to solve this
00:46:29.452 --> 00:46:29.713
problem?
00:46:29.753 --> 00:46:32.653
How does it work?
00:46:32.693 --> 00:46:33.454
You are muted, say.
00:46:35.764 --> 00:46:37.150
It works by being on unmute.
00:46:37.170 --> 00:46:39.778
The, you know,
00:46:41.277 --> 00:46:42.858
Our organization,
00:46:42.918 --> 00:46:44.519
I could talk philosophically about how we
00:46:44.559 --> 00:46:47.521
work or about literally like our output,
00:46:47.641 --> 00:46:49.181
like what we are creating.
00:46:49.601 --> 00:46:52.003
But just for a touch on the philosophical
00:46:52.043 --> 00:46:53.063
part,
00:46:53.583 --> 00:46:55.025
we've built and we are building an
00:46:55.065 --> 00:46:56.945
innovative model across the board.
00:46:57.405 --> 00:47:00.287
And the foundation of that is a member
00:47:00.407 --> 00:47:04.309
organization where the members are not
00:47:04.329 --> 00:47:06.271
just invited, but encouraged, requested.
00:47:07.110 --> 00:47:07.851
We need them to,
00:47:07.891 --> 00:47:09.833
we want them to come and participate.
00:47:10.193 --> 00:47:12.976
come and have a mechanism for giving their
00:47:13.016 --> 00:47:15.498
opinion for approving new board members
00:47:15.757 --> 00:47:18.059
for approving changes so that it's not
00:47:18.079 --> 00:47:19.961
that they have to do the the day-to-day
00:47:20.001 --> 00:47:22.204
work of the organization but they are
00:47:22.423 --> 00:47:24.325
participating in the direction of the
00:47:24.385 --> 00:47:27.349
organization and that is in and of itself
00:47:27.668 --> 00:47:30.452
an innovative model because that doesn't
00:47:30.492 --> 00:47:32.472
exist especially in tech um
00:47:33.293 --> 00:47:34.275
It does exist, obviously,
00:47:34.536 --> 00:47:36.117
in some other nonprofit worlds,
00:47:36.157 --> 00:47:37.280
but not in this tech one.
00:47:38.782 --> 00:47:41.226
But in terms of our output and what
00:47:41.266 --> 00:47:42.186
we are creating,
00:47:43.329 --> 00:47:45.411
what we have essentially established are
00:47:45.552 --> 00:47:46.472
two main...
00:47:48.536 --> 00:47:51.416
two main sort of like paths for that.
00:47:51.936 --> 00:47:55.137
One is off of the sort of more
00:47:55.257 --> 00:47:58.219
academic and nonprofit model that exists
00:47:58.258 --> 00:47:59.639
in the world of fellowships,
00:48:00.059 --> 00:48:03.400
where someone is paid full-time,
00:48:03.440 --> 00:48:04.400
part-time, whatever it is,
00:48:04.681 --> 00:48:07.081
but paid to work on a topic,
00:48:07.302 --> 00:48:08.402
to deepen their knowledge,
00:48:08.623 --> 00:48:10.282
to work on a specific project,
00:48:10.742 --> 00:48:14.144
where they are trusted as a fellow with
00:48:15.405 --> 00:48:15.925
autonomy.
00:48:16.365 --> 00:48:18.666
You know, they're part of a team,
00:48:18.947 --> 00:48:20.728
but they are not having to report,
00:48:21.048 --> 00:48:22.369
you know, their metrics.
00:48:22.871 --> 00:48:24.592
We're not analyzing their work based off
00:48:24.771 --> 00:48:25.572
ROI, right?
00:48:26.233 --> 00:48:29.195
This model exists, again, in other fields,
00:48:29.275 --> 00:48:30.197
usually in thought fields,
00:48:30.516 --> 00:48:32.978
but we're bringing that model into
00:48:32.999 --> 00:48:33.539
practice.
00:48:34.260 --> 00:48:35.581
into WordPress, into tech,
00:48:35.621 --> 00:48:36.422
into open source,
00:48:36.762 --> 00:48:39.985
because that model fits so much better
00:48:40.264 --> 00:48:42.347
than the paid employee model for what
00:48:42.367 --> 00:48:43.407
we're talking about doing.
00:48:43.648 --> 00:48:45.409
Because contributors, one,
00:48:45.489 --> 00:48:47.670
are usually extremely knowledgeable and
00:48:47.791 --> 00:48:48.231
expert.
00:48:48.672 --> 00:48:51.293
They are in a very diverse sort of
00:48:51.353 --> 00:48:52.094
weird field.
00:48:52.175 --> 00:48:53.155
And those things can't be
00:48:54.128 --> 00:48:55.909
put into tiny metrics that can then be
00:48:55.949 --> 00:48:58.630
handed to a board to then judge if
00:48:58.650 --> 00:49:01.552
their employee production is enough,
00:49:01.612 --> 00:49:01.853
right?
00:49:02.132 --> 00:49:06.835
So that model gives some freedom with also
00:49:07.094 --> 00:49:08.496
some guidelines.
00:49:08.655 --> 00:49:10.237
And I think it's just a really valuable
00:49:10.257 --> 00:49:13.438
model for open source.
00:49:14.358 --> 00:49:16.039
And then the other model is projects.
00:49:16.400 --> 00:49:19.081
And projects are essentially anything that
00:49:19.382 --> 00:49:20.222
people need to work on.
00:49:22.342 --> 00:49:24.764
time constrained with deliverables.
00:49:25.045 --> 00:49:26.365
Because a lot of the things that we
00:49:26.425 --> 00:49:28.787
see in WordPress are passion projects.
00:49:29.287 --> 00:49:30.588
And I understand that.
00:49:30.969 --> 00:49:36.253
But you can't fund something just forever,
00:49:36.432 --> 00:49:36.632
right?
00:49:36.673 --> 00:49:38.014
Without some sort of, it just,
00:49:38.894 --> 00:49:39.856
it gets exhausted.
00:49:39.956 --> 00:49:41.137
The funding gets exhausted.
00:49:41.157 --> 00:49:42.077
The people get exhausted.
00:49:42.396 --> 00:49:44.898
So by having time constrained projects and
00:49:44.918 --> 00:49:46.400
the goals of each project is that the
00:49:46.440 --> 00:49:48.382
people who work on them are paid.
00:49:48.621 --> 00:49:50.342
So it's not an individual person being
00:49:50.382 --> 00:49:51.043
paid to sort of
00:49:51.644 --> 00:49:53.164
have overview of the field,
00:49:53.465 --> 00:49:55.325
but instead it is people working on a
00:49:55.365 --> 00:49:56.987
specific project with specific
00:49:57.027 --> 00:49:59.548
deliverables, specific compensation,
00:50:00.088 --> 00:50:01.849
specific clear expectations.
00:50:02.170 --> 00:50:02.889
So at the end of that,
00:50:02.909 --> 00:50:03.811
we can be like, okay,
00:50:03.970 --> 00:50:04.932
this is that project.
00:50:05.251 --> 00:50:06.711
And now everyone can, we can,
00:50:06.813 --> 00:50:08.012
maybe we do another project,
00:50:08.353 --> 00:50:10.574
but we have these tangible things that
00:50:10.594 --> 00:50:14.036
we're able to understand and complete.
00:50:14.297 --> 00:50:15.918
I think completing those things is really
00:50:15.938 --> 00:50:16.358
important.
00:50:16.898 --> 00:50:19.344
And ideally, even if we had like,
00:50:19.383 --> 00:50:20.566
say we had a project like the one
00:50:20.586 --> 00:50:21.269
you were working on,
00:50:21.409 --> 00:50:23.012
the onboarding one you were talking about,
00:50:23.052 --> 00:50:23.974
Chris, you know,
00:50:25.159 --> 00:50:27.460
ideally our vision here is that if someone
00:50:27.499 --> 00:50:28.121
worked on that,
00:50:28.601 --> 00:50:31.001
if it wasn't being worked on with core
00:50:31.141 --> 00:50:31.561
or whatnot,
00:50:31.882 --> 00:50:33.103
that we would have this project.
00:50:33.222 --> 00:50:36.485
And then the WPCC, not one person,
00:50:36.945 --> 00:50:38.005
the organization,
00:50:38.445 --> 00:50:40.166
the leadership and the membership would
00:50:40.186 --> 00:50:41.427
come and be like, you know,
00:50:41.447 --> 00:50:43.269
then we are working as a collective
00:50:43.389 --> 00:50:45.510
together to be like, we want this thing.
00:50:45.849 --> 00:50:46.809
We are doing this thing.
00:50:47.391 --> 00:50:49.072
And the sort of
00:50:49.871 --> 00:50:51.733
relationship between,
00:50:51.793 --> 00:50:53.132
and this is where the theory part comes
00:50:53.193 --> 00:50:54.213
in, because this is, you know,
00:50:54.233 --> 00:50:55.474
you never know how this is going to
00:50:55.494 --> 00:50:55.653
go.
00:50:55.713 --> 00:50:57.514
But in theory, if we have, you know,
00:50:57.534 --> 00:50:59.675
an entire group of people who are
00:50:59.815 --> 00:51:00.974
advocating for a thing,
00:51:01.014 --> 00:51:02.295
who are bought into a thing,
00:51:02.356 --> 00:51:04.735
it's a lot easier to move that thing
00:51:04.815 --> 00:51:07.237
forward than it is for just one person
00:51:07.697 --> 00:51:08.938
to sit there and be like,
00:51:09.177 --> 00:51:10.757
I really believe in this and have to
00:51:11.358 --> 00:51:13.338
rally an entire group of people around
00:51:13.398 --> 00:51:13.579
them.
00:51:14.039 --> 00:51:16.581
in this frame with the organization we are
00:51:16.601 --> 00:51:19.005
that group of people the members have
00:51:19.085 --> 00:51:21.086
already said yes we like this project we
00:51:21.106 --> 00:51:22.508
want this project to go forward and
00:51:22.528 --> 00:51:25.791
succeed um and then when it's done then
00:51:26.213 --> 00:51:28.374
we all are bought into that we all
00:51:28.456 --> 00:51:29.996
are the project is part of the
00:51:30.057 --> 00:51:31.739
organization's um
00:51:33.041 --> 00:51:34.182
just what we're doing.
00:51:34.282 --> 00:51:37.045
And it doesn't, it's not at that point,
00:51:37.184 --> 00:51:38.606
then we have to make a case for
00:51:38.666 --> 00:51:38.766
it,
00:51:39.027 --> 00:51:40.487
or we have to explain to our members
00:51:40.508 --> 00:51:41.028
what it's doing.
00:51:41.409 --> 00:51:43.271
So this is a different model.
00:51:43.891 --> 00:51:46.235
And I think it's been difficult for people
00:51:46.275 --> 00:51:48.257
in our space to sort of understand that.
00:51:48.797 --> 00:51:49.958
And that's okay.
00:51:50.559 --> 00:51:52.541
We will be demonstrating a lot of that
00:51:52.561 --> 00:51:53.342
this year.
00:51:53.481 --> 00:51:55.124
Yeah, I'm really excited about it.
00:51:55.773 --> 00:51:58.836
So because this is a podcast during a
00:51:59.057 --> 00:52:01.079
particular podcast-a-thon that is trying
00:52:01.099 --> 00:52:02.481
to raise money for these nonprofit
00:52:02.521 --> 00:52:03.262
organizations,
00:52:04.503 --> 00:52:07.566
how can people either contribute or become
00:52:07.626 --> 00:52:10.731
members or where do people go to give
00:52:10.911 --> 00:52:11.391
us money?
00:52:13.239 --> 00:52:14.400
um well if they want to give us
00:52:14.440 --> 00:52:17.440
money great um people are can donate
00:52:17.499 --> 00:52:20.181
that's fine um it's not a tax write-off
00:52:20.240 --> 00:52:21.400
we're not a five oh one c three
00:52:21.420 --> 00:52:23.941
we're not a public charity um so they
00:52:23.961 --> 00:52:25.382
would just you know be giving us money
00:52:25.441 --> 00:52:27.623
not getting a tax write-off which is fine
00:52:27.923 --> 00:52:29.824
but the way we really want to interact
00:52:29.844 --> 00:52:32.443
with people is either as members so they
00:52:32.503 --> 00:52:34.124
join as a member and they can make
00:52:34.184 --> 00:52:34.764
any amount of
00:52:35.144 --> 00:52:38.027
membership donation they want um and then
00:52:38.347 --> 00:52:41.190
we also work with people as partners so
00:52:41.289 --> 00:52:44.132
if someone wanted to you know get
00:52:44.172 --> 00:52:45.612
something done or wanted to work on a
00:52:45.653 --> 00:52:47.675
specific project we would want to work
00:52:47.715 --> 00:52:49.396
with them to do that and work with
00:52:49.436 --> 00:52:51.537
them to fund it they can fund it
00:52:51.978 --> 00:52:54.400
we can work on finding sponsors to fund
00:52:54.440 --> 00:52:56.722
it we can crowdfund for it and be
00:52:56.802 --> 00:52:59.923
the financial repository for that project
00:53:00.043 --> 00:53:00.624
and be the
00:53:01.264 --> 00:53:03.206
the authority on that project.
00:53:03.427 --> 00:53:04.668
We hold the money and, you know,
00:53:04.688 --> 00:53:06.449
make sure that the metrics are being met
00:53:06.469 --> 00:53:06.889
and whatnot.
00:53:08.170 --> 00:53:11.472
So it's not so much really that we
00:53:11.512 --> 00:53:12.333
want to be like, hey,
00:53:12.353 --> 00:53:14.374
just go donate money to the WPCC.
00:53:14.434 --> 00:53:15.775
What we really want is, hey,
00:53:16.255 --> 00:53:18.737
come join the WPCC, first of all,
00:53:19.199 --> 00:53:21.019
and participate as a member.
00:53:21.099 --> 00:53:22.420
Right now it's five dollars.
00:53:22.541 --> 00:53:23.922
You can come on and just, you know,
00:53:24.001 --> 00:53:24.923
a year, not a month.
00:53:24.963 --> 00:53:25.662
Everyone's like a month.
00:53:25.722 --> 00:53:25.923
Right.
00:53:25.983 --> 00:53:26.324
I'm like, no.
00:53:26.744 --> 00:53:27.124
just a year,
00:53:27.485 --> 00:53:29.086
the members will probably be changing that
00:53:29.146 --> 00:53:29.447
fee.
00:53:29.507 --> 00:53:30.327
But it's going to be up to the
00:53:30.389 --> 00:53:31.889
members to change.
00:53:32.391 --> 00:53:33.552
The members are going to decide.
00:53:33.592 --> 00:53:34.974
We're not being like, OK, well,
00:53:35.014 --> 00:53:36.434
now it's a hundred dollars to join.
00:53:36.795 --> 00:53:38.458
But if the members decide that that's what
00:53:38.478 --> 00:53:40.159
they think is relevant and important,
00:53:40.499 --> 00:53:41.740
then we'll go in that direction.
00:53:42.182 --> 00:53:44.284
So we want people to join as members
00:53:44.545 --> 00:53:46.106
and we want people to join as partners
00:53:46.186 --> 00:53:46.867
and sponsors
00:53:47.548 --> 00:53:48.610
to work on things.
00:53:48.911 --> 00:53:51.617
So it is a that that is also
00:53:51.657 --> 00:53:52.320
a different model.
00:53:52.581 --> 00:53:54.865
We're not just saying hand us cash and
00:53:54.885 --> 00:53:55.869
then see you later.
00:53:56.409 --> 00:53:56.570
We
00:53:58.159 --> 00:54:01.101
It's really in the name of the collective
00:54:02.621 --> 00:54:03.882
that we are a collective,
00:54:03.943 --> 00:54:06.465
but this is operating with the idea that
00:54:06.545 --> 00:54:09.487
we are better together and not that a
00:54:09.666 --> 00:54:11.528
unilateral direction is the right thing.
00:54:11.807 --> 00:54:14.249
Valuing the diversity of our community and
00:54:14.269 --> 00:54:17.851
the innovation and intelligence that that
00:54:17.891 --> 00:54:18.311
brings.
00:54:18.833 --> 00:54:19.132
I mean,
00:54:19.693 --> 00:54:21.434
you have all these AI agents talking to
00:54:21.454 --> 00:54:22.094
each other, right?
00:54:22.175 --> 00:54:23.376
And it's like, oh, they're so smart.
00:54:23.396 --> 00:54:24.255
I was like,
00:54:24.295 --> 00:54:25.816
have you ever seen a group of humans
00:54:25.858 --> 00:54:26.617
work on something?
00:54:26.637 --> 00:54:27.818
Because it's pretty cool too.
00:54:29.599 --> 00:54:29.719
Like,
00:54:29.780 --> 00:54:31.380
if people are excited and passionate and
00:54:31.400 --> 00:54:32.561
they're bringing ideas, like,
00:54:32.581 --> 00:54:33.461
that's amazing.
00:54:33.822 --> 00:54:36.543
And it is much faster than AI, actually,
00:54:36.764 --> 00:54:37.124
turns out.
00:54:37.523 --> 00:54:39.726
To bring it sort of full circle around,
00:54:41.547 --> 00:54:43.648
in the example of, like,
00:54:43.688 --> 00:54:45.869
partnering or sponsoring WPCC,
00:54:46.528 --> 00:54:48.590
we were talking before about, you know,
00:54:48.610 --> 00:54:49.851
companies like GoDaddy,
00:54:49.891 --> 00:54:51.871
companies like Google or agencies like
00:54:51.911 --> 00:54:53.153
Tenup that are actually, like,
00:54:53.213 --> 00:54:54.713
have a paid contributor on staff.
00:54:55.740 --> 00:54:57.121
instead of that model,
00:54:57.141 --> 00:54:58.141
which is the existing model,
00:54:58.161 --> 00:55:00.443
which our hypothesis is that is a broken
00:55:00.463 --> 00:55:03.465
model, the solution,
00:55:04.566 --> 00:55:07.309
the thing that is offered instead is
00:55:07.949 --> 00:55:09.851
rather than having them on file,
00:55:10.251 --> 00:55:12.735
partner with the WPC or on staff,
00:55:13.014 --> 00:55:14.376
partner with the WPCC,
00:55:14.675 --> 00:55:16.757
you can still have your name associated
00:55:16.778 --> 00:55:19.260
with a contribution level for whatever
00:55:19.320 --> 00:55:19.681
thing.
00:55:20.061 --> 00:55:20.702
It's now just,
00:55:20.822 --> 00:55:21.963
you don't have to worry about
00:55:22.503 --> 00:55:24.083
like directing them you don't have to
00:55:24.324 --> 00:55:26.224
worry about them being an employee of your
00:55:26.284 --> 00:55:29.345
company like they are you're funneling
00:55:29.385 --> 00:55:31.347
your money essentially funneling is
00:55:31.367 --> 00:55:33.228
probably a bad word but you're you're
00:55:33.248 --> 00:55:36.449
directing your money through the wpcc to
00:55:36.608 --> 00:55:39.070
that particular thing because you want to
00:55:39.090 --> 00:55:40.970
see that done it's the wpcc that then
00:55:41.010 --> 00:55:43.271
says hey who's the best person to solve
00:55:43.291 --> 00:55:45.492
this problem and then that also means that
00:55:45.893 --> 00:55:46.092
You know,
00:55:46.133 --> 00:55:47.416
you don't have to put out a job
00:55:47.976 --> 00:55:50.420
posting for a role that is going to
00:55:50.440 --> 00:55:52.344
be a staff role for something that's
00:55:52.423 --> 00:55:53.985
really not going to be providing value to
00:55:54.005 --> 00:55:57.271
your company if that's how you perceive an
00:55:57.351 --> 00:55:58.574
open source contributor on staff.
00:55:59.235 --> 00:56:02.476
The alternative is having an open source
00:56:02.496 --> 00:56:03.157
contributor on staff.
00:56:03.338 --> 00:56:03.978
Oh,
00:56:04.057 --> 00:56:06.760
I think that there's this idea that if
00:56:06.780 --> 00:56:08.481
you have a core contributor on staff,
00:56:08.501 --> 00:56:11.603
they can direct the direction of core in
00:56:11.662 --> 00:56:13.523
whatever direction benefits the company
00:56:13.563 --> 00:56:14.164
that you work for.
00:56:14.585 --> 00:56:16.726
But the reality is that's not always true.
00:56:17.706 --> 00:56:20.168
They are alone because they don't have the
00:56:20.289 --> 00:56:21.329
business behind them.
00:56:21.369 --> 00:56:24.891
So even that single contributor who's in
00:56:24.972 --> 00:56:26.653
theory sponsored and has the weight of
00:56:26.673 --> 00:56:27.733
their company behind them,
00:56:28.494 --> 00:56:29.615
is in those meetings alone.
00:56:29.655 --> 00:56:31.378
They don't actually, they're just,
00:56:31.458 --> 00:56:32.599
it's just them.
00:56:32.659 --> 00:56:34.141
Unless they're not alone,
00:56:34.200 --> 00:56:36.543
unless you have a critical mass of paid
00:56:36.865 --> 00:56:37.686
contributors.
00:56:38.507 --> 00:56:40.469
And membership behind you, supporting you.
00:56:40.608 --> 00:56:41.269
Exactly.
00:56:41.789 --> 00:56:42.030
Yes.
00:56:42.170 --> 00:56:43.932
We are together and,
00:56:44.436 --> 00:56:46.436
backing these things and it's not just
00:56:46.456 --> 00:56:48.998
we're all out there fighting individual
00:56:49.018 --> 00:56:50.478
battles that are all the same battles
00:56:50.539 --> 00:56:53.641
which is like let's work together in all
00:56:53.681 --> 00:56:55.802
of human history i just want to point
00:56:55.941 --> 00:56:57.943
out it's when humans work together that
00:56:57.983 --> 00:57:00.945
things get done it's like not actually
00:57:00.965 --> 00:57:03.065
that crazy of a model it really isn't
00:57:03.146 --> 00:57:04.807
it's just in this weird times and
00:57:04.847 --> 00:57:07.487
especially in tech we all get very siloed
00:57:07.588 --> 00:57:09.088
we're all at our little computers alone
00:57:09.208 --> 00:57:11.871
and we all feel alone but you are
00:57:11.891 --> 00:57:12.311
not alone
00:57:13.043 --> 00:57:15.083
Well, thank you all for coming on.
00:57:15.624 --> 00:57:19.486
This is sort of an historic Community &
00:57:18.525 --> 00:57:18.766
Code.
00:57:19.005 --> 00:57:21.746
It's an historic thing for the WPCC
00:57:21.766 --> 00:57:24.349
because I don't think we've been on a
00:57:24.728 --> 00:57:26.809
podcast at least all together at the same
00:57:26.849 --> 00:57:27.130
time.
00:57:27.210 --> 00:57:28.771
We're still missing one of our board
00:57:28.791 --> 00:57:29.891
members.
00:57:29.970 --> 00:57:31.371
We are missing one of our board members,
00:57:32.233 --> 00:57:32.612
Katie.
00:57:34.094 --> 00:57:34.954
But even so,
00:57:35.514 --> 00:57:37.534
this is a big deal for all of
00:57:37.574 --> 00:57:37.775
us.
00:57:37.894 --> 00:57:39.735
It's a big deal for the podcast.
00:57:39.896 --> 00:57:40.916
Thank you all for coming on.
00:57:41.677 --> 00:57:45.019
Where can people go to find out more
00:57:45.119 --> 00:57:48.603
about the WPCC?
00:57:48.623 --> 00:57:48.822
Well,
00:57:48.923 --> 00:57:49.322
you can go to
00:57:49.802 --> 00:57:51.965
thewpcommunitycollective.com.
00:57:53.246 --> 00:57:53.746
Awesome.
00:57:54.949 --> 00:57:58.429
and uh yeah i'll i'll i'll put everyone's
00:57:58.469 --> 00:58:00.950
sort of social stuff in the show notes
00:58:01.311 --> 00:58:03.191
uh in there uh we've got a lot
00:58:03.231 --> 00:58:04.871
of people so i don't want to belabor
00:58:04.912 --> 00:58:06.992
the the time but uh thank you again
00:58:07.012 --> 00:58:08.633
for everybody for coming on thank you jono
00:58:08.833 --> 00:58:10.835
thank you courtney thank you say uh thank
00:58:10.854 --> 00:58:13.235
you chris uh and thank you all of
00:58:13.554 --> 00:58:15.936
all of the people that are watching this
00:58:16.075 --> 00:58:19.237
uh in the future uh and uh we'll
00:58:19.257 --> 00:58:21.157
see you all on the internet come join
00:58:21.237 --> 00:58:23.579
us let's do it together