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Welcome to Within WordPress. With me today is Juan Hernando. Welcome.
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Thank you. Thank you for having me. Nice to be here.
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Yeah. Well, here you are. You're, you're in Spain and I'm here in the Netherlands, but yeah, I feel.
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So close to you.
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Oh, this is getting scary really fast and we've done that within the minute. That's cool. You and I go back quite a while, but let's assume nobody knows who you are and could you please introduce yourself?
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Sure. So I'm Juan Hernando. I'm living in Pontevedra in Galicia, northwest of Spain. And I work on WordPress community engagement at Wiglot and I'm also a program manager at the Global community team at WordPress and I've always been a front end web developer but then I found the events and all the community stuff and I'm doing less and less work on websites and more on getting people together.
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So you're evolving.
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Yes, I'm moving away from clients.
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That's, you're probably not alone in wanting to do that type of move and potentially, you know, focus on different things. I, I, I, it's, it's funny that we, we start with this, with this. It's a trend that I've been seeing for the last, I don't know, two, three years. There's a change, there's certain people who go like, you know, I've done this client work for 15 years. I'm kind of, I'm okay with it for, to move on to something else. Is that something, is it, is it something like that for you or.
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Yes, I've been working with clients for, I don't know, like I made my first website with, from page 98, something like that. So it's been a long time and at some point you decide like this is enough because you are worrying like being a freelancer also it's like you're worrying about so many stuff all the time and yeah. And you find clients that sometimes they are not like the nicest ones and all those experiences end up like, I want to do something different at some point and if you have like some opportunities and you are making like a good network of known people and all that, it's easier after a while to try to change stuff. And as I always say, you can always come back to making websites. But it's a good moment for trying.
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New stuff provided you keep up with the new technologies because, you know, it's always been a fast moving world, but it's most certainly a fast moving world. Now, yes.
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And for example, and talking about WordPress, I saw that when I started, I usually make a WordPress theme and I used underscores and then you do all the work. And in the last years everything has changed so much that even when you start a new project, it's like, I need to think a lot about how are we going to do this, what's going to be the structure, what tools are we going to use and all that. It's a lot of things to do to keep up on the pace of the change. It's not an easy thing to do when you're a freelancer.
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No, I get that. I get that very much. You said you are working at Weglot. I know what Weglot is, but maybe tell a little bit more about the company you work for.
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Well, Weglot, it's like magic for me and for the clients we've got. It's the way of the solution for translating websites without any technical effort. So it's like a software as a service and it works with any CMS, even if there is no CMS. So it works in WordPress, but also Webflow, Squarespace, Shopify. And it's a way to mix machine translations and also human translations to get the best result. SEO optimized and a way to focus only on localization and your strategy and not having to think about the technical stuff. So it's like press a button and you have your website translated and now it's time to do the rest of the work.
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It's one of the solutions out there for translations that I've always recommended because it solves a problem without introducing new problems. There are, and we shall not name it, but there are translation solutions out there that are just. They're never stable, they're always buggy, they're always causing problems. I see them in my performance reviews a lot. And then there's translation solutions such as Weglot that just work. I have a few clients running on Weglot and what I like about it, that even in some outlier languages, because my native language is Friesian, not a lot of people speak that maybe 350,000. And it just works, it translates, it does the thing. And for the clients that I have, it's perfect because they're as non technical as it gets and they rely on me to give them a solution that, you know, doesn't introduce headaches. What I've noticed and what I'm quite curious about, because I don't know how much you've listened, dear listener, to a previous episode or you, Juan. But one of the topics that keeps popping up a lot is AI. And especially for a translation plugin, the topic of AI is super relevant because in my opinion, the quality of, you know, the correctness of the actual translation. And again, I'm using a niche language, so it's even easier for me to gauge how effective is because, you know, from French to English and from English to Spanish. I don't suspect there to be a lot of issues because it's a wide use language on both ends. So. But I see so much improvement in there that I go like, how like, is this a challenge for Weglot or is Weglot entirely embracing it?
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Yeah, it's super important part because we have to make like a differentiation. Like sometimes people think about translating. Like it's like putting your website in Google Translate or DeepL and then extract the words there and put them in your site. And it's a totally different thing. I mean, of course the basic is that. But there are so many things going now with AI that for example, we've launched a few weeks ago, like a content model, a language model based on AI that helps you improve the voice of your translations. Because for example, one thing I find it because I speak Spanish and I'm living in a Galician region. And my website, it's also in English and I have a very personal voice. And when I write a blog post, it's not easy for any translation, automatic translation thing to find the right tone or the jokes or the style. And now with this language model, I can teach Weglot, hey, this is my style. So take this into account of everything I'm going to write. It's like when you translate, don't do it like a professional thing or a very serious thing, like, I'm half joking, you need to make this sound well in English too. And those are things that we are using from the power of AIs that people are getting used to ask ChatGPT or whatever, like write this in a very professional, serious way or something like that, or write this email for my boss, those kind of stuff. And we are doing that also for the translations, like, hey, this website is this and that, or use this glossary and it also learns from all the translations you've already done. So it's like a lot of things going together to try to find the best translation and the best output in there.
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I like that. That's an interesting approach. So instead of going like, here's AI and we don't know what to do with it. You're going very specifically, let us fully embrace AI, but we also are going to tackle the issues that you have there. And I get the tone of voice thing. I think we have, you and I, if we ever look at a default WordPress installation that is United States English now there's a lot of howdy and whoopsie and you know, cheating a type of stuff that maybe that works in American English, I can't really judge, but it's for sure does not work in Dutch, it does not work in Frisian. Those it comes across crass even. I, I'm. I'm assuming this is the same in Spanish or Galician or, or whatever. And to then. So for instance, for the. I'm part of the polyglots team for the Netherlands and one of the things we've decided, and this is years ago, one of the things we decided is that we're going to change the tone of voice of the translations as well. So it's less of a direct translation, it's more of a what are we trying to say here? Type of translation. Are you saying that that's the type of stuff that Weglot now does automatically or allows to fine tune and ultimately automatically does?
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Exactly. It's. In the end we are using AI as a tool for helping us and the same as we do it in any other like writing content or emails or whatever. It's also what we want with translations. Of course, for any website or any project, the human touch is what is most important. And we've talked about that a lot. Weglot. And the translation part is only the first step of an internationalization strategy because localization is very, very important. And when we are talking about websites like a shop or E commerce and all that, it's super important if we are moving to other markets that we adjust our message to every different so it's not just a language thing. And with this kind of improvements from AI, we are also making this easier for the user. Of course you are going to have to touch things and review. But if you instead of doing it like for every translation you can set some instructions like you said to this model. Okay, we are using this and that and that. Let's do it from now on. For all the translations that's going to be a time saving, a lot of time saved for your clients. So it's like using a tool to improve. And in the end what we want is that the clients don't have to spend so much time in their website because probably their business is Another thing. And thinking about the strategy.
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Safe assumption.
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Yeah, yeah. Thinking about the strategies and making it happen. It's really, really important. When we are talking about internationalization and localization and all that.
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How do you look at. So I can only speak from personal experience. Right. So if you look at a language that has a specific way of expressing itself, does that in. In the website, it does that with language itself, but also how the text is presented, the type of images are used, you know, the general layout, design, all of these things. If you, if you're not bilingual, you're probably not aware, but there is a difference in how certain things are done in certain cultures. Slash, locale, slash whatever. How does Weglot look at that? Because that's an interesting thing. If we're, if we're looking at optimizing for the locale. Is. Is that something that's on your radar or.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Or is it fully manual?
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No, we can. Well, there are a lot of tools inside our dashboard to try to modify the images or the text, or this has to be translated or this not. Or this has to appear or this not. Because as you said many times, it's a totally different target. The people from another language or another place or another country, even in the same language. I see that a lot when people make websites in Spanish, but it was done by someone in Argentina and it's a totally different language from Spain. It's the same words, or not even the same words. Yeah, but we understand that, but it's not. You only have to read like one sentence to know that that website is not talking to you. So, yeah, we are focused on these kind of experiences and offer all the tools to make these things as easy as possible.
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What is the biggest challenge there? Because I think from a technical standpoint, the tools that we have available, I mean, like, in general, what AI can do is just mind blowing. And we're just getting started here. But what are the things that are still challenging to solve?
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Well, as a freelancer that have worked with clients for so many years, probably letting the client know what they need, and that's the most difficult part. I mean, I'm tired. Like, one of the best things of this solution for me, not talking as part of gwyglot, but as a person that have dealt with lots of clients in the past, I was so tired of doing multilingual websites where the only blog post or the only news that was translated was the welcome to our new website. And that was in Spanish, Galician and English. And that was the only one and then if they wrote more in their news section, it was only made in Spanish, for example, no other translations, because they weren't going to spend time on our effort or on learning how to do that or translating that and all that. So most of the time, it's not the technical part of it, but the willingness to do it and to have a clear view of why we are doing this and where are we going with this and getting real results from that. Sometimes people do only that because there is a law that it makes it mandatory or something like that. And it's like. And they are missing on a lot of money that they are living on the table because they are not seeing how. For example, where I live, we are very close to Portugal. Like, it's one hour from here. I'm there. And of course, Portuguese people can buy in a website in Spanish the same as I can buy in a website in Portuguese. But if the translation is well done and they have a website for me, I would totally buy more there. And of course, this is just an example. We have lots of examples and numbers and reports about this kind of stuff, but still, many people are not seeing the possibilities out there. So for me, that's the biggest challenge. To make them know that for a. Of course you have to do an effort and you have to make an investment in this, but it's really worth it.
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But you're saying the challenge, as always, is the people.
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Yes, totally.
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Yeah. I can't say I'm surprised by that answer.
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I mean, I would say, like, no, but this is like how this works and to do a better. I don't know, like. Like, technically, there are very intelligent people making awesome solutions and they are improving it, like, day by day. So of course there are things that are still challenging. And of course there are. I mean, of course in the future, it would be great to just say, hey, as we were talking about the instructions, like, this is my tone of voice. I want to use these words. You are not going to translate this and this and that and press the button. And you don't have even to review it because you know it's going to be done perfect. Right now we're in the middle of doing that. But I assume that in the future, with the better models, we can be closer to a really good personal translation here, because we don't want. I mean, it's the same authenticity and sounding as you are or as your brand are is super important in this case.
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That is the ultimate challenge, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see that as well. The authenticity is probably the biggest thing you need to be concerned about for any web presence, whatever way you do it.
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Yeah, the same as you don't want.
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Speaking about authentic.
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No, I was just going to say that the same as you don't want a photo on your website with a person with six or seven fingers. You don't want anyone to read your content and say, what's this like? This was made by a machine and no one review it or something like that.
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Yeah, yeah, I was going to say, speaking of authenticity, you have a specific role at Weglot. Tell us a little bit more about that.
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Well, I'm doing like, I have two different hats in Weiglot, and the first one, which is why I'm here, it's like to improve the, let's say then the knowledge about Weglot and the involvement of weglot in the WordPress community. So I'm also helping them. Like, Weglot is a small company, French company, 50 people. It's growing a lot. But they don't have, like, the resources to say, okay, we are going to have a team focused on communities or the WordPress community and all that. So they decided to, like, get someone that was already there, which was me in this case, after I met them, probably in work in Europe, in Berlin. I think it was the first time I went there and say hi to them. And yep, 2019, I'm going as I'm already part of the community. I'm doing like this kind of ambassador or talking, connecting people. That's what I would like to say. Because I don't feel like I'm. I'm not good at. Well, not good. I'm not a commercial person, so I'm not like, I'm not gonna sell you the product, but I would like also to always to connect people from different parts of the whole community or the ecosystem. And it's like, hey, maybe this is good for you. Or I know someone that can be helpful for this or for that. So I feel like a connector inside the community for them. So it's also a way to open the door for partnerships or for different needs they have so they don't have to start from scratch. And I already have the contacts or know the people. And the second part, it's. They are sponsoring my time in the community team. So I started a long time ago. Well, not nine years ago, not that long. You were already a veteran when I started. I started with a small meetup where I live, went to my first WorldCamp, met some people. They Told me, hey, you should start a meetup. So I started a meetup. Then I started a local work camp. I had so much fun. I started traveling, I went to work in Europe. I said, woo, this is super fun. I want to be part of this.
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Which one was your first?
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It was Berlin 2019.
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Okay. Yeah, yeah.
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People think that I've been here for long, but it's all because of the pandemic. Because after 2019, I said, I want to be part of this. So I started, I said, I want to be organizer for 2020. It's going to be in Porto. It's one hour and a half from where I live. Best opportunity ever. I love the Portuguese people. But then something happened in 2020 and organizing that event took three years. So that's why people think I've been there forever, because I was three years for organizing one event. And then I started the. I was leading a team and at some point it's too much. I'm sure we will talk about this, but it was a lot of time I had to spend organizing things and at some point I said, okay, this is not sustainable. I cannot do this if I have to spend all my free time doing things for the community. And then Weglot came and said, okay, we can sponsor you some hours so you don't have to spend all your free time in this and you can get less of your work. So that's how it started. And then years has passed and I started getting more responsibility inside the community team. And in the last months, I'm spending half of my life in the slack and helping people with their events all over the world and all that. And it's thanks to their support. And it's great that there are some companies that they are not only sponsoring people inside their people, but also sponsoring others out there that they are already doing things, they are already contributing. And the impact of those contributions is super high. So that's what I do with Weglot. Like half of my time it's helping them and half of my time it's like helping the project.
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Yeah. I'd like to emphasize the importance of the sponsoring of people working on the WordPress project that are not working on just Core. Because for a lot of people contributing to WordPress, a contribution is seen as. I changed some code. I offered it, it was accepted, I contributed. But it's so much more. Obviously there's things like translation, but yeah, there's organizing events, there's. I mean, just go to make.WordPress.org and see all the teams that are there and that's not even covering everything. There are so many opportunities to contribute to WordPress and having companies out there that sponsor people that specifically do not work on core, as important as that is. But I applaud that a lot.
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Yeah. My first contact with contributing was the Polyglots team and I remember we translated WooCommerce to Spanish because it was like half done and it was super exciting. We had a little competition inside who has more strings translated and all that. And it was super powerful to realize that what we were doing was helping thousands of Spanish speaking people out there to have their websites and their admins and everything translated to their own language. And that's super important in every language. I know Weglot is also sponsoring Pedro from the Portuguese community and I remember the first time I talked with him a long time ago. It's like I'm the only one translating everything to Portuguese and I don't have time for doing that. But the whole community depends on that person that is doing that. And then it's like, hey, let's find some support for you. It really works and it's super important and people don't realize and maybe this is something we are always talking about English and people from the us this is a discussion that everyone in local communities has and probably in Europe is very significant. Sometimes the project has this view that's US centric view and that's why we always have this question in worldcam Europe about when are we going to have the multilingual WordPress and all that kind of things.
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Yes.
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And you realize that there are so many people contributing to make the tool available in every language. Like I don't know what's the count of languages that we have now in Glotpress, but it's a lot. And it's super important that people can use the WordPress in their own language. And there are hundreds of volunteers doing that contribution and yeah, we should celebrate them.
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Yep. I think it's the easiest way to get into contribution actually. If I look at myself, I started using WordPress in a more professional way in 2006. I was annoyed by how bad the Dutch translations were. One and two, how you know, two, three, maybe four months later after release. That's when we would see an updated version and I'd be like, aha, that's annoying. So I started looking into how did this work. I found out there's a translations team sort of got involved, didn't move fast enough. So I offered to take over how that worked. I did. And, you know, one of the first goals that I had is Whenever the next WordPress release is there, I want to have it translated within 24 hours. So you would start translating as you were doing it, and we would have the same type of competitions, who was there faster and all that sort of stuff. But the end result is, A, I got to know WordPress really well, B, I got to know people really well in the community, and C, I got to understand there's so much more that I can do or contribute to and help with and play with and do all that sort of stuff. So I. For me, that was really the catalyst. I. I was already using WordPress, but the catalyst into doing much more with WordPress is. Yeah, so I think took about two years. So in 2008, I started becoming the. The. Yeah, let's call it the Dutch. Whatever you call it, I'm sure there's a word for it. Yeah, local editor translations, the forums, the. Yeah, but also. Also the forum, also the releases and all that sort of stuff. At the time, that wasn't automated. Yeah, but, yeah, that. That's how you get involved and. Because I was essentially solving my own problem. Right. Yeah, I just wanted to have better.
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Translations, to be honest. My first translation, like. Like the moment where I decided I need to understand how this works, it was a very, very stupid thing. Like, in the main navigation bar, like you have when you're in your dashboard, there is this thing that said visit site. And if you have WooCommerce installed, it said visit shop. And in Spanish it was translated. The visit site, it was okay, but visit shop, it had capitalization in the second word. And that's not how we write here. We only put capital letter, first word. And it was driving me mad. Like, why do I have the visit site? Okay. At the visit shop with two capital letters? And it's like, I need to find how to change this. And I did. I really did. And that was the first one. I said, okay, now let's translate another 5,000 strings. But you see that for the rest of my life, every month, you start solving your own problem and then you help others. And you see, I really like that from the translations or from the events, like the impact you can make with, I'm not going to say a little effort, but hey, you don't have to be. Because I understand that for dealing with core and those kind of things, you need to know and you have to be a developer and you have to know the tooling and everything, but for making a translation or helping in an event. I mean, it's easier, way easier. You just need a keyboard and some willingness to do it or someone to push you.
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Yeah, yes. But yeah, yeah, I, I, I do the same thing when there is a translation currently. So some plugin I'll use for a client and I'm in their dashboard fixing, looking, whatever, and I find a translation. I go, who approved this? Now I can find who approved it, sure. I can find who translated, sure. But, you know, I'm not going to shame them, but what I am going to do is fix it. And if it's something that's of importance, then I'll change it in the glossary as well. So, you know, the next one translating something similar will have better input in how it's supposed to be translated. But I'd say I, you know, quite regularly do I find strings that I go, no, no, no, no, no. This is not how we say it in Dutch. There is a way where you can translate it very literally and it's technically correct, but there's not a single soul on the planet in the whole of the Netherlands speaking Dutch that would say it like that. So, you know, we don't translate it like that.
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And we are seeing that that's a problem of people abusing AI for these kind of things. So we come back to the beginning because we are seeing in many translations, like people are throwing the strings into an AI, getting the, the translated output, and that's not up to the standards of good translation. And it's becoming a problem for some of the reviewers and the local editors and all that, because they are finding thousands of strings that they are only wasting their time. So I know they are working. We see that too, proving that process and all that. But it's the kind of thing that sometimes people believe, okay, I need something translated. I will just use this. And that's, I mean, they are words and there are words in that language, but they are not doing their work. It's not usable for anyone. So it's where the manual part and the localization part comes again.
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Y. It's again, the people that make it break or fail or succeed, thankfully.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I say that in jest, of course, but. So you, you mentioned 2019 being your first work camp Europe. You mentioned you got really excited and wanting to do more. You ended up doing a whole hell of a lot more. Even I know what that is. But instead of me introducing it, why.
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Don'T you say, well, this ends up last year in 2024 in Torino. Going on stage on the opening remarks and talk in English to. I don't know how many people were there, but almost 2,000 people. I've never been in front of.
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Yep.
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Such a crowd, speaking in English. And it's like, what's. I remember that morning thinking, what have I done to be here?
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Why did I say yes?
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At what point? I said, okay, let's organize a small meetup in the city where I'm going to live now. And I end up in leading a team of 90 organizers, making an event in a city I didn't know, and I had traveled three times that year and, and making an event for 3,000 people. It's super cool. Of course, it, it's, it's not going from one point to the other directly. I, I was, in 2020, I was a regular organizer. And then for 2022, I think 2022, it was. Well, 2022 was Porto in Greece, and 2023.
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Yeah, 22 was Porto, 23 was Greece.
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So those two years, I was a team lead, I was part of the budget team. So I was also known as the no team because we were the ones responsible to say no to all the crazy and expensive ideas.
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Because first of all, you're, you're. That's a great, great, great question. But the answer is no. Next.
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Because, well, you know, it well. Like, you were in the first work in Europe and you've seen how it's been growing and it's.
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Yeah.
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I mean, if, if you take a look at the current budget of work in Europe, in comparison, what it was.
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10, 12 years ago, it's gone exponentially high.
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So at some point, and I think it was more or less at that time after world grade, everything went like, okay, this is going to be a super event. And I don't know if there wasn't the pandemic, I don't know where we were because it was growing and growing. And in Berlin, it was a huge attendance and a huge event.
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Yeah. So Berlin was up towards three and a half. Right. So what I've learned over. So, you know, having organized the first as a lead, you have full insight into what's going on. And at certain point the teams become more dedicated, so you had less insight into what the separate teams were doing. But as we were growing, we were growing consciously, so not doing wild stuff, but, you know, trying to get most for our bang for our buck as they. As they so eloquently say in the US and at some point, and I think the, the tipping Point is probably Vienna, the venue, because. Became so much higher. The attendance became so much higher. And it's not a linear. It's not a linear thing. It's more like the more amount of people, the double. Almost double more the amount of money you need for various other things. Because at some point you're. You're forced into thinking about childcare. Yeah. You're forced into thinking about, you know, all the extra facilities that you may need. Maybe bigger events insurance, maybe bigger availability for the event team themselves. Right. The. The venue where you. Where you. Where you rent the space and everything. So the costs go up way higher than the attendance. And I think kind of from. From that point on, it started becoming more and more challenging. The last one I organized, I had less insight into it even, which was Porto. But I ended up not being in the final team because I made a decision to, you know, after 15 years of organizing work camps, it's. It's fine. Somebody else can take over the baton. But the challenge certainly for the last, you know, 20, 20, 22, 3, 4 and 5 now for sure are much higher in terms of the impact, the budget, the quality of talks and everything. Everything is under way. More scrutiny, everything is under more pressure.
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And the good thing. And that's when I started doing this, apart from improving my English, which more or less I've done it. But it was to learn.
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You're quite understandable.
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Thank you. But it was to learn also new skills that I didn't have as a freelance developer.
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Yeah.
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So when you start working with a team of 70, 80, 90 people and you start getting responsibility as a team lead or as the lead organizer, you have to trust people a lot. You have to learn how to work with volunteers, which is very different from working with in a. In a company.
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Yeah, Employees.
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And you have to learn how to deal with the unexpected, which also happens a lot. And all those things are super important for. For anyone. And dealing with conflict and trying to help people, because we become a family, we work together for nine months to create a thing that lasts two days and a half. And it's an amazing experience. But as I said, at some point you need to find a balance between what you want to do and what you can do and what they are. And how is the money entering your home, because people get really excited about this.
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True words.
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But of course we even need to. I have friends here. We have a very active local community in Galicia. And I have friends here that I know they would do an amazing job at work in Europe. But I Tell them please don't do it now because you are also a freelancer and it's going to be a lot of hours of your time.
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It's a challenge.
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You're going to do it once.
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Yeah, yeah. The challenge then.
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And then you will burn out and you will stop because you cannot do it in a sustainable way.
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Yeah, it's quite different from the early days in terms of, I mean it was very time consuming the first four or five that I did. Sure. But there, you know, there's that you make a way that it works and with all the extra teams and the, all the extra stuff you need to take care of, there's, there's a certain limit. You go like now it's costing me money, time, not just time. Now it's costing me money. And up to a very large point I was okay with that because I was doing okay. But it's a very valid question that if you're doing this for the first time you, you. It's very difficult to predict beforehand how much time is going to go into the thing because let let alone the meetings and stuff because there's way more meetings and all that sort of stuff. But there's also the mental time. Yeah. Like in your downtime you're still thinking about it. So how much rest are you getting? And you know, for me that was ultimately after so many years of like that's fine, I started it, I set it up, I contributed more than my fair share I think. And it, like I said it's fine for other people to take over but the realization is it's more, more like sponsored people. People who are in one way or another helped by their employer or an outside company. The reality is that that's the ones who can continue to finance these events, these non profit events. And it's good that we actually touch on this topic because that I think it's important for people to understand how that has changed and how much of an impact it has on both the positive and the negative. Don't get me wrong. But it's for sure not just positive.
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And sometimes small contribution like. And it's good we are seeing that more and more like some big companies sponsoring people like two hours a week and that's.
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Yep.
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I mean many big companies maybe spend more in coffee capsules in one morning than paying these two hours a week to a person and for that person can be a huge help for them.
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To say, okay, it can be life changing.
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I can help here and there and I don't have to take all this time from my free time and it really, it really works well and we are seeing more and more companies and. But I don't think they are. And we have all these conversations about, you know, five for the Future and all that and the visibility that the companies get. And we should talk more about the companies that are already doing that because it's something very unknown in the community. And there are, thankfully there are more and more people getting this kind of, of external sponsorship, let's say that way. And that's what makes the difference. Because in, yeah, a local work camp, we all been there and we can, of course, it's a lot of own responsibility, like we want to welcome everyone and all that. But for flagship events, it's. Right now it's totally different. There are a lot of specialization and everyone wants to do their best and say, hey, I've been part of this. And each team, they want to be the best at their thing and all that. So even what we were talking, like what I've been learning these years, because right now, last year, well, this year, in 2025, I was one of the mentors and I will be one of the mentors also for 2026. One of the things is to talk with the organizers and try to tell them, okay, it's nice, it's great what you are doing, but don't feel so much pressure because most of the time it's from themselves and it's like no one, we don't want anyone to feel indispensable. And it's like, hey, if at some point you or me or whoever of the team says, okay, I'm leaving, it's totally fine, the event will happen even without you. And that's why we have such big teams. Because even if we have many other details, as, as you said in the beginning, you were a small team. And I'm totally sure that right now a small team with the production company can make the event happen. But we decide to go and have bigger teams so there are more people that learn the job. The job. More people learn what has to be done.
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That's the job.
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More people get the skills and nothing happens if one or two or three from that team disappear at some point. Because life happens. So it's. And also it's good to get more people involved from many different communities from all over the world. So, yeah, it's a great experience. Challenging, but it's great.
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It is. And on that bombshell. Not a bombshell, on that note, it was great for you to come on the podcast. Thank you for sharing your experience and information there. Thank you, Weglot, for sponsoring you, because I think that's something we should start emphasizing more. Thank you so much, Juan.
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Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to be here and yeah, anytime. And I will see you in the next work on Europe, for sure.
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Oh, for sure. Possibly even sooner.
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Great. SA.
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Welcome to Within WordPress. With me today is Juan Hernando. Welcome.
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Thank you. Thank you for having me. Nice to be here.
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Yeah. Well, here you are. You're, you're in Spain and I'm here in the Netherlands, but yeah, I feel.
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So close to you.
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Oh, this is getting scary really fast and we've done that within the minute. That's cool. You and I go back quite a while, but let's assume nobody knows who you are and could you please introduce yourself?
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Sure. So I'm Juan Hernando. I'm living in Pontevedra in Galicia, northwest of Spain. And I work on WordPress community engagement at Wiglot and I'm also a program manager at the Global community team at WordPress and I've always been a front end web developer but then I found the events and all the community stuff and I'm doing less and less work on websites and more on getting people together.
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So you're evolving.
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Yes, I'm moving away from clients.
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That's, you're probably not alone in wanting to do that type of move and potentially, you know, focus on different things. I, I, I, it's, it's funny that we, we start with this, with this. It's a trend that I've been seeing for the last, I don't know, two, three years. There's a change, there's certain people who go like, you know, I've done this client work for 15 years. I'm kind of, I'm okay with it for, to move on to something else. Is that something, is it, is it something like that for you or.
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Yes, I've been working with clients for, I don't know, like I made my first website with, from page 98, something like that. So it's been a long time and at some point you decide like this is enough because you are worrying like being a freelancer also it's like you're worrying about so many stuff all the time and yeah. And you find clients that sometimes they are not like the nicest ones and all those experiences end up like, I want to do something different at some point and if you have like some opportunities and you are making like a good network of known people and all that, it's easier after a while to try to change stuff. And as I always say, you can always come back to making websites. But it's a good moment for trying.
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New stuff provided you keep up with the new technologies because, you know, it's always been a fast moving world, but it's most certainly a fast moving world. Now, yes.
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And for example, and talking about WordPress, I saw that when I started, I usually make a WordPress theme and I used underscores and then you do all the work. And in the last years everything has changed so much that even when you start a new project, it's like, I need to think a lot about how are we going to do this, what's going to be the structure, what tools are we going to use and all that. It's a lot of things to do to keep up on the pace of the change. It's not an easy thing to do when you're a freelancer.
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No, I get that. I get that very much. You said you are working at Weglot. I know what Weglot is, but maybe tell a little bit more about the company you work for.
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Well, Weglot, it's like magic for me and for the clients we've got. It's the way of the solution for translating websites without any technical effort. So it's like a software as a service and it works with any CMS, even if there is no CMS. So it works in WordPress, but also Webflow, Squarespace, Shopify. And it's a way to mix machine translations and also human translations to get the best result. SEO optimized and a way to focus only on localization and your strategy and not having to think about the technical stuff. So it's like press a button and you have your website translated and now it's time to do the rest of the work.
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It's one of the solutions out there for translations that I've always recommended because it solves a problem without introducing new problems. There are, and we shall not name it, but there are translation solutions out there that are just. They're never stable, they're always buggy, they're always causing problems. I see them in my performance reviews a lot. And then there's translation solutions such as Weglot that just work. I have a few clients running on Weglot and what I like about it, that even in some outlier languages, because my native language is Friesian, not a lot of people speak that maybe 350,000. And it just works, it translates, it does the thing. And for the clients that I have, it's perfect because they're as non technical as it gets and they rely on me to give them a solution that, you know, doesn't introduce headaches. What I've noticed and what I'm quite curious about, because I don't know how much you've listened, dear listener, to a previous episode or you, Juan. But one of the topics that keeps popping up a lot is AI. And especially for a translation plugin, the topic of AI is super relevant because in my opinion, the quality of, you know, the correctness of the actual translation. And again, I'm using a niche language, so it's even easier for me to gauge how effective is because, you know, from French to English and from English to Spanish. I don't suspect there to be a lot of issues because it's a wide use language on both ends. So. But I see so much improvement in there that I go like, how like, is this a challenge for Weglot or is Weglot entirely embracing it?
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Yeah, it's super important part because we have to make like a differentiation. Like sometimes people think about translating. Like it's like putting your website in Google Translate or DeepL and then extract the words there and put them in your site. And it's a totally different thing. I mean, of course the basic is that. But there are so many things going now with AI that for example, we've launched a few weeks ago, like a content model, a language model based on AI that helps you improve the voice of your translations. Because for example, one thing I find it because I speak Spanish and I'm living in a Galician region. And my website, it's also in English and I have a very personal voice. And when I write a blog post, it's not easy for any translation, automatic translation thing to find the right tone or the jokes or the style. And now with this language model, I can teach Weglot, hey, this is my style. So take this into account of everything I'm going to write. It's like when you translate, don't do it like a professional thing or a very serious thing, like, I'm half joking, you need to make this sound well in English too. And those are things that we are using from the power of AIs that people are getting used to ask ChatGPT or whatever, like write this in a very professional, serious way or something like that, or write this email for my boss, those kind of stuff. And we are doing that also for the translations, like, hey, this website is this and that, or use this glossary and it also learns from all the translations you've already done. So it's like a lot of things going together to try to find the best translation and the best output in there.
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I like that. That's an interesting approach. So instead of going like, here's AI and we don't know what to do with it. You're going very specifically, let us fully embrace AI, but we also are going to tackle the issues that you have there. And I get the tone of voice thing. I think we have, you and I, if we ever look at a default WordPress installation that is United States English now there's a lot of howdy and whoopsie and you know, cheating a type of stuff that maybe that works in American English, I can't really judge, but it's for sure does not work in Dutch, it does not work in Frisian. Those it comes across crass even. I, I'm. I'm assuming this is the same in Spanish or Galician or, or whatever. And to then. So for instance, for the. I'm part of the polyglots team for the Netherlands and one of the things we've decided, and this is years ago, one of the things we decided is that we're going to change the tone of voice of the translations as well. So it's less of a direct translation, it's more of a what are we trying to say here? Type of translation. Are you saying that that's the type of stuff that Weglot now does automatically or allows to fine tune and ultimately automatically does?
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Exactly. It's. In the end we are using AI as a tool for helping us and the same as we do it in any other like writing content or emails or whatever. It's also what we want with translations. Of course, for any website or any project, the human touch is what is most important. And we've talked about that a lot. Weglot. And the translation part is only the first step of an internationalization strategy because localization is very, very important. And when we are talking about websites like a shop or E commerce and all that, it's super important if we are moving to other markets that we adjust our message to every different so it's not just a language thing. And with this kind of improvements from AI, we are also making this easier for the user. Of course you are going to have to touch things and review. But if you instead of doing it like for every translation you can set some instructions like you said to this model. Okay, we are using this and that and that. Let's do it from now on. For all the translations that's going to be a time saving, a lot of time saved for your clients. So it's like using a tool to improve. And in the end what we want is that the clients don't have to spend so much time in their website because probably their business is Another thing. And thinking about the strategy.
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Safe assumption.
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Yeah, yeah. Thinking about the strategies and making it happen. It's really, really important. When we are talking about internationalization and localization and all that.
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How do you look at. So I can only speak from personal experience. Right. So if you look at a language that has a specific way of expressing itself, does that in. In the website, it does that with language itself, but also how the text is presented, the type of images are used, you know, the general layout, design, all of these things. If you, if you're not bilingual, you're probably not aware, but there is a difference in how certain things are done in certain cultures. Slash, locale, slash whatever. How does Weglot look at that? Because that's an interesting thing. If we're, if we're looking at optimizing for the locale. Is. Is that something that's on your radar or.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Or is it fully manual?
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No, we can. Well, there are a lot of tools inside our dashboard to try to modify the images or the text, or this has to be translated or this not. Or this has to appear or this not. Because as you said many times, it's a totally different target. The people from another language or another place or another country, even in the same language. I see that a lot when people make websites in Spanish, but it was done by someone in Argentina and it's a totally different language from Spain. It's the same words, or not even the same words. Yeah, but we understand that, but it's not. You only have to read like one sentence to know that that website is not talking to you. So, yeah, we are focused on these kind of experiences and offer all the tools to make these things as easy as possible.
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What is the biggest challenge there? Because I think from a technical standpoint, the tools that we have available, I mean, like, in general, what AI can do is just mind blowing. And we're just getting started here. But what are the things that are still challenging to solve?
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Well, as a freelancer that have worked with clients for so many years, probably letting the client know what they need, and that's the most difficult part. I mean, I'm tired. Like, one of the best things of this solution for me, not talking as part of gwyglot, but as a person that have dealt with lots of clients in the past, I was so tired of doing multilingual websites where the only blog post or the only news that was translated was the welcome to our new website. And that was in Spanish, Galician and English. And that was the only one and then if they wrote more in their news section, it was only made in Spanish, for example, no other translations, because they weren't going to spend time on our effort or on learning how to do that or translating that and all that. So most of the time, it's not the technical part of it, but the willingness to do it and to have a clear view of why we are doing this and where are we going with this and getting real results from that. Sometimes people do only that because there is a law that it makes it mandatory or something like that. And it's like. And they are missing on a lot of money that they are living on the table because they are not seeing how. For example, where I live, we are very close to Portugal. Like, it's one hour from here. I'm there. And of course, Portuguese people can buy in a website in Spanish the same as I can buy in a website in Portuguese. But if the translation is well done and they have a website for me, I would totally buy more there. And of course, this is just an example. We have lots of examples and numbers and reports about this kind of stuff, but still, many people are not seeing the possibilities out there. So for me, that's the biggest challenge. To make them know that for a. Of course you have to do an effort and you have to make an investment in this, but it's really worth it.
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But you're saying the challenge, as always, is the people.
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Yes, totally.
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Yeah. I can't say I'm surprised by that answer.
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I mean, I would say, like, no, but this is like how this works and to do a better. I don't know, like. Like, technically, there are very intelligent people making awesome solutions and they are improving it, like, day by day. So of course there are things that are still challenging. And of course there are. I mean, of course in the future, it would be great to just say, hey, as we were talking about the instructions, like, this is my tone of voice. I want to use these words. You are not going to translate this and this and that and press the button. And you don't have even to review it because you know it's going to be done perfect. Right now we're in the middle of doing that. But I assume that in the future, with the better models, we can be closer to a really good personal translation here, because we don't want. I mean, it's the same authenticity and sounding as you are or as your brand are is super important in this case.
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That is the ultimate challenge, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see that as well. The authenticity is probably the biggest thing you need to be concerned about for any web presence, whatever way you do it.
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Yeah, the same as you don't want.
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Speaking about authentic.
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No, I was just going to say that the same as you don't want a photo on your website with a person with six or seven fingers. You don't want anyone to read your content and say, what's this like? This was made by a machine and no one review it or something like that.
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Yeah, yeah, I was going to say, speaking of authenticity, you have a specific role at Weglot. Tell us a little bit more about that.
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Well, I'm doing like, I have two different hats in Weiglot, and the first one, which is why I'm here, it's like to improve the, let's say then the knowledge about Weglot and the involvement of weglot in the WordPress community. So I'm also helping them. Like, Weglot is a small company, French company, 50 people. It's growing a lot. But they don't have, like, the resources to say, okay, we are going to have a team focused on communities or the WordPress community and all that. So they decided to, like, get someone that was already there, which was me in this case, after I met them, probably in work in Europe, in Berlin. I think it was the first time I went there and say hi to them. And yep, 2019, I'm going as I'm already part of the community. I'm doing like this kind of ambassador or talking, connecting people. That's what I would like to say. Because I don't feel like I'm. I'm not good at. Well, not good. I'm not a commercial person, so I'm not like, I'm not gonna sell you the product, but I would like also to always to connect people from different parts of the whole community or the ecosystem. And it's like, hey, maybe this is good for you. Or I know someone that can be helpful for this or for that. So I feel like a connector inside the community for them. So it's also a way to open the door for partnerships or for different needs they have so they don't have to start from scratch. And I already have the contacts or know the people. And the second part, it's. They are sponsoring my time in the community team. So I started a long time ago. Well, not nine years ago, not that long. You were already a veteran when I started. I started with a small meetup where I live, went to my first WorldCamp, met some people. They Told me, hey, you should start a meetup. So I started a meetup. Then I started a local work camp. I had so much fun. I started traveling, I went to work in Europe. I said, woo, this is super fun. I want to be part of this.
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Which one was your first?
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It was Berlin 2019.
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Okay. Yeah, yeah.
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People think that I've been here for long, but it's all because of the pandemic. Because after 2019, I said, I want to be part of this. So I started, I said, I want to be organizer for 2020. It's going to be in Porto. It's one hour and a half from where I live. Best opportunity ever. I love the Portuguese people. But then something happened in 2020 and organizing that event took three years. So that's why people think I've been there forever, because I was three years for organizing one event. And then I started the. I was leading a team and at some point it's too much. I'm sure we will talk about this, but it was a lot of time I had to spend organizing things and at some point I said, okay, this is not sustainable. I cannot do this if I have to spend all my free time doing things for the community. And then Weglot came and said, okay, we can sponsor you some hours so you don't have to spend all your free time in this and you can get less of your work. So that's how it started. And then years has passed and I started getting more responsibility inside the community team. And in the last months, I'm spending half of my life in the slack and helping people with their events all over the world and all that. And it's thanks to their support. And it's great that there are some companies that they are not only sponsoring people inside their people, but also sponsoring others out there that they are already doing things, they are already contributing. And the impact of those contributions is super high. So that's what I do with Weglot. Like half of my time it's helping them and half of my time it's like helping the project.
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Yeah. I'd like to emphasize the importance of the sponsoring of people working on the WordPress project that are not working on just Core. Because for a lot of people contributing to WordPress, a contribution is seen as. I changed some code. I offered it, it was accepted, I contributed. But it's so much more. Obviously there's things like translation, but yeah, there's organizing events, there's. I mean, just go to make.WordPress.org and see all the teams that are there and that's not even covering everything. There are so many opportunities to contribute to WordPress and having companies out there that sponsor people that specifically do not work on core, as important as that is. But I applaud that a lot.
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Yeah. My first contact with contributing was the Polyglots team and I remember we translated WooCommerce to Spanish because it was like half done and it was super exciting. We had a little competition inside who has more strings translated and all that. And it was super powerful to realize that what we were doing was helping thousands of Spanish speaking people out there to have their websites and their admins and everything translated to their own language. And that's super important in every language. I know Weglot is also sponsoring Pedro from the Portuguese community and I remember the first time I talked with him a long time ago. It's like I'm the only one translating everything to Portuguese and I don't have time for doing that. But the whole community depends on that person that is doing that. And then it's like, hey, let's find some support for you. It really works and it's super important and people don't realize and maybe this is something we are always talking about English and people from the us this is a discussion that everyone in local communities has and probably in Europe is very significant. Sometimes the project has this view that's US centric view and that's why we always have this question in worldcam Europe about when are we going to have the multilingual WordPress and all that kind of things.
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Yes.
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And you realize that there are so many people contributing to make the tool available in every language. Like I don't know what's the count of languages that we have now in Glotpress, but it's a lot. And it's super important that people can use the WordPress in their own language. And there are hundreds of volunteers doing that contribution and yeah, we should celebrate them.
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Yep. I think it's the easiest way to get into contribution actually. If I look at myself, I started using WordPress in a more professional way in 2006. I was annoyed by how bad the Dutch translations were. One and two, how you know, two, three, maybe four months later after release. That's when we would see an updated version and I'd be like, aha, that's annoying. So I started looking into how did this work. I found out there's a translations team sort of got involved, didn't move fast enough. So I offered to take over how that worked. I did. And, you know, one of the first goals that I had is Whenever the next WordPress release is there, I want to have it translated within 24 hours. So you would start translating as you were doing it, and we would have the same type of competitions, who was there faster and all that sort of stuff. But the end result is, A, I got to know WordPress really well, B, I got to know people really well in the community, and C, I got to understand there's so much more that I can do or contribute to and help with and play with and do all that sort of stuff. So I. For me, that was really the catalyst. I. I was already using WordPress, but the catalyst into doing much more with WordPress is. Yeah, so I think took about two years. So in 2008, I started becoming the. The. Yeah, let's call it the Dutch. Whatever you call it, I'm sure there's a word for it. Yeah, local editor translations, the forums, the. Yeah, but also. Also the forum, also the releases and all that sort of stuff. At the time, that wasn't automated. Yeah, but, yeah, that. That's how you get involved and. Because I was essentially solving my own problem. Right. Yeah, I just wanted to have better.
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Translations, to be honest. My first translation, like. Like the moment where I decided I need to understand how this works, it was a very, very stupid thing. Like, in the main navigation bar, like you have when you're in your dashboard, there is this thing that said visit site. And if you have WooCommerce installed, it said visit shop. And in Spanish it was translated. The visit site, it was okay, but visit shop, it had capitalization in the second word. And that's not how we write here. We only put capital letter, first word. And it was driving me mad. Like, why do I have the visit site? Okay. At the visit shop with two capital letters? And it's like, I need to find how to change this. And I did. I really did. And that was the first one. I said, okay, now let's translate another 5,000 strings. But you see that for the rest of my life, every month, you start solving your own problem and then you help others. And you see, I really like that from the translations or from the events, like the impact you can make with, I'm not going to say a little effort, but hey, you don't have to be. Because I understand that for dealing with core and those kind of things, you need to know and you have to be a developer and you have to know the tooling and everything, but for making a translation or helping in an event. I mean, it's easier, way easier. You just need a keyboard and some willingness to do it or someone to push you.
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Yeah, yes. But yeah, yeah, I, I, I do the same thing when there is a translation currently. So some plugin I'll use for a client and I'm in their dashboard fixing, looking, whatever, and I find a translation. I go, who approved this? Now I can find who approved it, sure. I can find who translated, sure. But, you know, I'm not going to shame them, but what I am going to do is fix it. And if it's something that's of importance, then I'll change it in the glossary as well. So, you know, the next one translating something similar will have better input in how it's supposed to be translated. But I'd say I, you know, quite regularly do I find strings that I go, no, no, no, no, no. This is not how we say it in Dutch. There is a way where you can translate it very literally and it's technically correct, but there's not a single soul on the planet in the whole of the Netherlands speaking Dutch that would say it like that. So, you know, we don't translate it like that.
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And we are seeing that that's a problem of people abusing AI for these kind of things. So we come back to the beginning because we are seeing in many translations, like people are throwing the strings into an AI, getting the, the translated output, and that's not up to the standards of good translation. And it's becoming a problem for some of the reviewers and the local editors and all that, because they are finding thousands of strings that they are only wasting their time. So I know they are working. We see that too, proving that process and all that. But it's the kind of thing that sometimes people believe, okay, I need something translated. I will just use this. And that's, I mean, they are words and there are words in that language, but they are not doing their work. It's not usable for anyone. So it's where the manual part and the localization part comes again.
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Y. It's again, the people that make it break or fail or succeed, thankfully.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I say that in jest, of course, but. So you, you mentioned 2019 being your first work camp Europe. You mentioned you got really excited and wanting to do more. You ended up doing a whole hell of a lot more. Even I know what that is. But instead of me introducing it, why.
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Don'T you say, well, this ends up last year in 2024 in Torino. Going on stage on the opening remarks and talk in English to. I don't know how many people were there, but almost 2,000 people. I've never been in front of.
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Yep.
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Such a crowd, speaking in English. And it's like, what's. I remember that morning thinking, what have I done to be here?
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Why did I say yes?
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At what point? I said, okay, let's organize a small meetup in the city where I'm going to live now. And I end up in leading a team of 90 organizers, making an event in a city I didn't know, and I had traveled three times that year and, and making an event for 3,000 people. It's super cool. Of course, it, it's, it's not going from one point to the other directly. I, I was, in 2020, I was a regular organizer. And then for 2022, I think 2022, it was. Well, 2022 was Porto in Greece, and 2023.
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Yeah, 22 was Porto, 23 was Greece.
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So those two years, I was a team lead, I was part of the budget team. So I was also known as the no team because we were the ones responsible to say no to all the crazy and expensive ideas.
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Because first of all, you're, you're. That's a great, great, great question. But the answer is no. Next.
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Because, well, you know, it well. Like, you were in the first work in Europe and you've seen how it's been growing and it's.
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Yeah.
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I mean, if, if you take a look at the current budget of work in Europe, in comparison, what it was.
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10, 12 years ago, it's gone exponentially high.
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So at some point, and I think it was more or less at that time after world grade, everything went like, okay, this is going to be a super event. And I don't know if there wasn't the pandemic, I don't know where we were because it was growing and growing. And in Berlin, it was a huge attendance and a huge event.
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Yeah. So Berlin was up towards three and a half. Right. So what I've learned over. So, you know, having organized the first as a lead, you have full insight into what's going on. And at certain point the teams become more dedicated, so you had less insight into what the separate teams were doing. But as we were growing, we were growing consciously, so not doing wild stuff, but, you know, trying to get most for our bang for our buck as they. As they so eloquently say in the US and at some point, and I think the, the tipping Point is probably Vienna, the venue, because. Became so much higher. The attendance became so much higher. And it's not a linear. It's not a linear thing. It's more like the more amount of people, the double. Almost double more the amount of money you need for various other things. Because at some point you're. You're forced into thinking about childcare. Yeah. You're forced into thinking about, you know, all the extra facilities that you may need. Maybe bigger events insurance, maybe bigger availability for the event team themselves. Right. The. The venue where you. Where you. Where you rent the space and everything. So the costs go up way higher than the attendance. And I think kind of from. From that point on, it started becoming more and more challenging. The last one I organized, I had less insight into it even, which was Porto. But I ended up not being in the final team because I made a decision to, you know, after 15 years of organizing work camps, it's. It's fine. Somebody else can take over the baton. But the challenge certainly for the last, you know, 20, 20, 22, 3, 4 and 5 now for sure are much higher in terms of the impact, the budget, the quality of talks and everything. Everything is under way. More scrutiny, everything is under more pressure.
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And the good thing. And that's when I started doing this, apart from improving my English, which more or less I've done it. But it was to learn.
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You're quite understandable.
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Thank you. But it was to learn also new skills that I didn't have as a freelance developer.
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Yeah.
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So when you start working with a team of 70, 80, 90 people and you start getting responsibility as a team lead or as the lead organizer, you have to trust people a lot. You have to learn how to work with volunteers, which is very different from working with in a. In a company.
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Yeah, Employees.
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And you have to learn how to deal with the unexpected, which also happens a lot. And all those things are super important for. For anyone. And dealing with conflict and trying to help people, because we become a family, we work together for nine months to create a thing that lasts two days and a half. And it's an amazing experience. But as I said, at some point you need to find a balance between what you want to do and what you can do and what they are. And how is the money entering your home, because people get really excited about this.
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True words.
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But of course we even need to. I have friends here. We have a very active local community in Galicia. And I have friends here that I know they would do an amazing job at work in Europe. But I Tell them please don't do it now because you are also a freelancer and it's going to be a lot of hours of your time.
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It's a challenge.
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You're going to do it once.
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Yeah, yeah. The challenge then.
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And then you will burn out and you will stop because you cannot do it in a sustainable way.
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Yeah, it's quite different from the early days in terms of, I mean it was very time consuming the first four or five that I did. Sure. But there, you know, there's that you make a way that it works and with all the extra teams and the, all the extra stuff you need to take care of, there's, there's a certain limit. You go like now it's costing me money, time, not just time. Now it's costing me money. And up to a very large point I was okay with that because I was doing okay. But it's a very valid question that if you're doing this for the first time you, you. It's very difficult to predict beforehand how much time is going to go into the thing because let let alone the meetings and stuff because there's way more meetings and all that sort of stuff. But there's also the mental time. Yeah. Like in your downtime you're still thinking about it. So how much rest are you getting? And you know, for me that was ultimately after so many years of like that's fine, I started it, I set it up, I contributed more than my fair share I think. And it, like I said it's fine for other people to take over but the realization is it's more, more like sponsored people. People who are in one way or another helped by their employer or an outside company. The reality is that that's the ones who can continue to finance these events, these non profit events. And it's good that we actually touch on this topic because that I think it's important for people to understand how that has changed and how much of an impact it has on both the positive and the negative. Don't get me wrong. But it's for sure not just positive.
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And sometimes small contribution like. And it's good we are seeing that more and more like some big companies sponsoring people like two hours a week and that's.
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Yep.
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I mean many big companies maybe spend more in coffee capsules in one morning than paying these two hours a week to a person and for that person can be a huge help for them.
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To say, okay, it can be life changing.
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I can help here and there and I don't have to take all this time from my free time and it really, it really works well and we are seeing more and more companies and. But I don't think they are. And we have all these conversations about, you know, five for the Future and all that and the visibility that the companies get. And we should talk more about the companies that are already doing that because it's something very unknown in the community. And there are, thankfully there are more and more people getting this kind of, of external sponsorship, let's say that way. And that's what makes the difference. Because in, yeah, a local work camp, we all been there and we can, of course, it's a lot of own responsibility, like we want to welcome everyone and all that. But for flagship events, it's. Right now it's totally different. There are a lot of specialization and everyone wants to do their best and say, hey, I've been part of this. And each team, they want to be the best at their thing and all that. So even what we were talking, like what I've been learning these years, because right now, last year, well, this year, in 2025, I was one of the mentors and I will be one of the mentors also for 2026. One of the things is to talk with the organizers and try to tell them, okay, it's nice, it's great what you are doing, but don't feel so much pressure because most of the time it's from themselves and it's like no one, we don't want anyone to feel indispensable. And it's like, hey, if at some point you or me or whoever of the team says, okay, I'm leaving, it's totally fine, the event will happen even without you. And that's why we have such big teams. Because even if we have many other details, as, as you said in the beginning, you were a small team. And I'm totally sure that right now a small team with the production company can make the event happen. But we decide to go and have bigger teams so there are more people that learn the job. The job. More people learn what has to be done.
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That's the job.
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More people get the skills and nothing happens if one or two or three from that team disappear at some point. Because life happens. So it's. And also it's good to get more people involved from many different communities from all over the world. So, yeah, it's a great experience. Challenging, but it's great.
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It is. And on that bombshell. Not a bombshell, on that note, it was great for you to come on the podcast. Thank you for sharing your experience and information there. Thank you, Weglot, for sponsoring you, because I think that's something we should start emphasizing more. Thank you so much, Juan.
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Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to be here and yeah, anytime. And I will see you in the next work on Europe, for sure.
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Oh, for sure. Possibly even sooner.
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Great. SA.
