Hello and welcome everyoneto WordCamp Connect.
Woo!
Thank you for joining us forthis last panel of the day.
And first a little bit of backgroundon what WordCamp Connect is.
So you all know that this format isa bit different from regular panels.
We are here with a panel of esteemedguests with unique perspectives
and ample knowledge on the topicto facilitate an open conversation.
You are as much speakers as we are.
No one here, uh, is more ofa speaker than anyone else.
This is a conversation for all.
You are not only allowed, but Encouragedto interject at any time if you have a
personal story to share on the topic.
If you have a question to ask, justraise your hand, you will get a mic
and you will be able to speak up.
This is an open conversation foreveryone to participate in on a
number of community related topics.
And the topic of the day is how wecan democratize opportunities and
make contribution available to morepeople within the WordPress community
to future proof the WordPress project.
And with us we have a panel ofesteemed guests, like I told before,
who have encountered this problembefore, in one way or the other.
And I will let them introduce themselves.
And we can start with Carol Olinger,who is partner manager at Yoast
and has a lot of experience withmental health and well being.
Carol, do you mind telling us a littlebit more about yourself and how you
came into contact with this topic andhow you developed an interest in this?
Yeah.
Uh, yeah.
First of all, thanks for me.
Thanks for me.
Thanks for me to have me on the panel.
Thanks to you for having me on the panel.
Um, I got involved withWordPress community in 2016.
As a non technical woman, andwhat I noticed, uh, in the very
beginning is that this communityhas a special kind of allure.
So I didn't look to be involved intech, I didn't look for new friends
in my life, but I just found them.
So this community is very inspiring,very passionate about what they're doing.
And, um, It attracts people not onlyto become a member of the community,
but also to become and to stay engaged.
Um, but what I also noticed is that insome way it can be a little bit, uh, yeah,
of, uh, in an intoxicating community, uh,where it's very hard to, uh, respect your
own limits and, uh, with all the passionand success stories and inspiring people
that you meet, um, Uh, you are easily,um, drawn too deeply into contributions
and maybe at some point not seeing thecost of those contributions for yourself.
And once you are engaged and onceyou develop your, your, uh, your
own passion, that is when, uh,you won't leave easily anymore.
So that happened to me at some point.
But I also draw a line, um, pretty earlyfor myself because I noticed that it had
tremendous effects on my mental health.
So I stepped back from, fromactive contributions in 2018 19.
So occasionally, I'm occasionallyspeaking, I am occasionally helping
in the background, but I am notactively contributing as much as I
maybe wanted to in the very beginning.
So that is my story, and since then I amadvocating for positive mental health.
Um, And inclusion and diversity andso many interesting topics that we
still can do better as a community.
So that's a little bit of my background.
Like I am, I am very passionate abouttrying to help people to find their
balance between their personal lives,their professional lives, because
invoices in the end of the month, right.
And, uh, contributing to,uh, such an amazing project.
Thank you for that and thankyou for the work you're doing
because this is something thatthe project is heavily reliant on.
We, we heard this earlier in thekeynote, in the opening keynote of
this very event and we have one ofthe keynote speakers, Juliet, with us.
Uh, this project is, uh, heavily dependenton personal contributions and we have
with us a business representative whohas a Completely different perspective
on sponsoring contributors andcontributing from a business perspective.
Karim, would you mind introducingyourself and telling us about how you
came into contact with this issue andhow you developed your interest in this?
Absolutely.
Uh, thank you.
Hi, everybody.
My name is Karim Maruki.
I'm very proud to have WordCamp Europecome to my original home country.
I hope you're all enjoying it.
So, I had the pleasure of discoveringWordPress in 2007, and I fell in love
with it instantly as a concept because foryears I'd been selling licensed content
management systems to the enterprise.
I spent my entire Existencein the enterprise space.
And, um, in about 2010 or so is when Ijoined the team that helped decide to,
um, transition all of the Walt Disneycompany from a closed source system
to WordPress enterprise wide globally.
And the architecturalchallenges were immense.
And at the time trying tofind enough experienced people
in the community to help.
Transition was a giant feat, which ishow I met Alex King and I got involved
working with crowdfavorite at the veryvery beginning, but it was a beautiful
thing just to see how the communitywas coming together as We progressed on
this project over the years There's beenmultiple efforts to bring the enterprise
back into contributing And there's beenall sorts of challenges, as much as it's
been easy for this group to get into thecommunity and to take charge and help.
Um, it can be very intimidating outside.
Now, I should, I should say the,the enterprise that I speak about
has to do with sort of a lot offortune companies and a lot of sort
of organizations with multiple, uh,Departments and business units, and
they have a hard time understanding howto approach this model of community.
Um, I I've seen a lot more successwith some of the universities, even
sometimes some of the, the, thepublishers and some of the nonprofits.
You see them more in this community,but if somebody is used to working in
some of the organizations that we dealwith a lot, it, it can be daunting.
Um, and we're justtrying to make it happen.
And you see this every day in yourcurrent role as CEO of crowd favorite.
Yes.
And you also co foundedthe scale consortium.
Yes.
Right.
Yes.
So this is right up your alley.
So exactly.
But especially because, um, we, wesaw a need with the scale consortium
to try and market back out.
to the enterprise, not from anengineering point of view, not from
a pure open source point of view of,but what are the benefits for the
different aspects of their organizationsof using WordPress and open source?
Because sometimes we get a littlebit too caught up in releases and
engineering and what's next and notfocusing on how are they going to use
it, not What are they going to use?
So we're trying to give them ahere's why and how you can use
it, not a here's what it is.
Thank you.
And with us, we also have awoman who wears many hats.
None today.
Not today.
Me neither.
Many imaginary hats.
Um.
Courtney Robertson, welcome.
Hello.
Do you mind telling us a little bit moreabout yourself and your current role?
Uh, roles.
And how you came into contact with thisproblem and what you are doing currently.
So I started using WordPress, uh, 2.
2, maybe?
There was a number in there in the 2.
that I, uh, That didn't exist and Icame into WordPress right before that.
Um, and then I wasteaching in a classroom.
High school business teacherwas teaching and needed a blog.
So I found WordPressafter a few other CMSs.
I then went to my first WordCamp in 2009.
I failed to buy tickets in time, sofrom the beginning I was a contributor
because the only way to get inwas to volunteer to do something.
So I was at the booth checking allthe people in and met a lot of people
that thought I knew something aboutWordPress, which was not true then.
Um, later started joining thetraining team, uh, in 2014.
Have contributed periodically to thetraining team throughout that time.
I, too, have needed to stepback from contributing for
balancing just life for a season.
So, I was returning tocontributing in, um, 2020.
I had worked for the events calendar ata plug in company, then I went back to
teaching in a boot camp environment, and Ineeded all the lesson plans that I helped
to write because we wanted as close to theofficial source of curriculum as we could
get at the boot camp where I was teaching.
Uh, fast forward to right now,um, what do you do with a teacher?
And somebody that understandsthe development life cycle,
well, they become a devrel.
So, these days at GoDaddy,I am a developer relations,
or developer advocate.
I, I, I focus on more than just WordPress,but obviously WordPress is a big part.
I look at open source holistically.
And so, the many hats that I wear haveme Telling my internal coworkers, Hey,
there is this thing that needs an update.
Please go look into that right now.
Or you, I need a commentover in the core channel.
Come on in and leave the commentshere about where the fonts
should go or something like that.
Um, but then additionally,I participate in releases.
I often am running tests when wehave a beta release coming out.
Uh, I contribute to the trainingteam some, but not much these times.
A little bit to meta, and latelythe sustainability team really
has my focus, which is veryrelated to what we're doing now.
The sustainability team isfocused on three areas, economic,
social, and, uh, environmental.
And so that social component specifically,I've been working on an initiative, uh,
getting data and metrics as much as we canto synthesize the amount of contribution.
You know, we go to meetings in Slack.
Gosh, wouldn't it be fun if that countedtowards when we're evaluating our, how
we're contributing, like any pointsof data about the work that we all do,
synthesizing that together, and then beingable to tell a story out of that data, um,
whether you are a team in WordPress andyou need to say, here is the work that's
being done and what needs to be done.
If you are an individual thatis sponsored, wants to be
sponsored, or does not want to besponsored, we have all of those.
Organizations like my employerwho do make it possible for us to
contribute to WordPress, helping toadvise on our strategy about further
contribution, uh, and then projectleadership and what data they need
to know about the contributor base.
And do we have the contributor baseso that the future of WordPress is
strong for the foreseeable future andhow are we growing The newcomers into
the community around contribution.
So, yes, I wear many hats, sometimes apirate hat, like in my profile photo.
Uh, just not today.
Right.
Thank you for that, Courtney.
And, uh, thank you for your expertise.
Uh, as, uh, every panelist here hasmentioned, we all have experience with
contribution in one way or the other.
And some of us come from a moreprivileged position than the other.
Thank you.
I'm one of them.
I'm fully sponsored by my employer aswell, and I'm very lucky to be sponsored.
But from what I understand, noteveryone has the same opportunity,
which we're here to discuss.
So what I would like to ask is, isthere anyone in the audience who has
experience with contribution, seekingcontribution, or not getting contribution
funding that you would like to share?
Yes?
We'll get into that.
Hi, um, my name is Birgit, uh,from Germany, and I'm also a long
term contributor to, uh, WordPress.
I had some opportunities to, uh, was, getsponsored by an employee, uh, employer,
but in the meantime, I'm freelancingand, uh, funding my time myself.
Uh, sometimes I felt lucky toget some travel assistance funds.
Um, but I had to apply to that.
Uh, but I'm working in a field in theWordPress community, which is not that
popular by companies to get interestinto sponsoring because I'm working
in the diversity, equity, inclusion,and belonging working group, and
it is really difficult to justifyexpenses or sponsoring for that.
Those types of works, which is not that,um, measurable for a data gathering,
because it contains a lot of conceptualwork and, um, brain work and, um,
talking to people, cross connection,and it's difficult even to find funding
on a part time, uh, amount, I'm notlooking for a full time sponsoring.
I'm just looking for some supportto work on, for instance, a
contributor to a handbook.
Just for the next couple of monthsto, to do my work without, um,
juggling my time around with maybegetting client projects or neglecting.
As Carol also said, I'm one ofthe person I'm so passionate.
I sometimes forget to, um, makea living with my work instead
of, um, and prioritizing my work.
So if there are any ideas.
Kareem, I would love to, tohear your thought on that.
Um, what does companies need to,to get the point to decide about
funding an individual contributor orlike Courtney, you're running the WP
community collective, what does it taketo get someone on board to find funds?
Oh, uh, go first.
All right.
Thank you.
Um, so.
It's been our experience that whenwe engage with some of our clients,
a lot of them say, okay, we havean army of people on staff already.
Let's test something out.
Baby step number one, how could somebodywe have already on payroll contribute?
There is no set process towelcome them at the moment.
This is a long answer, so I'm going tocut it short and I'll go into details
if somebody asks, but whether they'retechnical or they want to do any
sort of testing or anything else, um,content even, it doesn't appear easy
and there's no process to get involvedwhere the manager of a department within
a corporation can say, Here's an ROI,but not here's an ROI as in what are
we going to get out of it money wise.
Here's an ROI of how is that manager goingto tell their manager, the resource below
them, had time that was worthwhile, otherthan their contributing to open source.
One of the conversations we've beenhaving is that, You're going to hear
it in a second, but that dashboard,that idea, that reporting, another
thing is the cash contributions.
We'll get into that, but reallythe first baby step they said is
I'm not going to write a checkuntil I understand what's left.
And there's all sorts of conversationsthat different open source
projects and different teams aboutEspecially for the enterprise,
having a tithe back to the project.
I support that.
Um, But that also gets complicated.
So, it starts with this communityhelping, creating an easier path
and a clear path to somebody outsidethe community of how to do that.
You know, we joke about the onboardingof WordPress when you first turn it on.
What about the onboarding ofgetting into the community?
Right.
Yeah, so one of the hats I didn'tmention is WP Community Collective.
The website is the WPCommunity Collective dot com.
Today, I share with Birgit that thereis an incentivizing DEIB initiative
that was launched this morning.
Ta da!
Um, that will help get folks fundedin various forms and a lot of that
came about because I saw when Birgitposted, oh hey, I'm a table lead.
And here I am trying to findfunding to get, to lead the
table about the initiative.
And I know how important diversityis in the project because I was
one of four women at the firstWordPress conference that I went to.
And it matters to me to have morewomen visible in the project.
More diversity overall, right?
So as I look back at that experience,I was really timid at times.
Yes, I checked everybody in thatday, but I was really timid.
I think Brad Williams had hair andsat in front of me at the time.
Um, and if anybody knows Bradfrom web dev studios, you know,
he hasn't had hair in some time.
So, um, hi Brad.
Uh, but, but aside from that, you know,uh, this is the WP community collective.
Milana called it out last yearduring our Q and a time with Matt.
Um, contributors need to stop fundingeach other and we need to do more
to help contributors be funded.
So, I also looked around and part ofmy job is at GoDaddy, we sponsor some
people that are full time as staff.
Kira is here as one of those.
Thank you very much, friend.
Uh, but we have a couple ofother people that we sponsor,
specifically in the WordPress space.
And Kira and I had to go toour CEO directly, repeatedly.
Uh, not to say that ourCEO is not listening.
The fact that our CEO is not listening.
Cares enough to listen to us about thisis significant and to understand why
historically there were others beforeour CEO, other CEOs, before my manager,
other managers in similar roles in thiscompany and the challenges that we're
faced to try and get that unblocked.
It is in our developers levelingguide to even contribute to open
sources, a career progression.
That's the developers.
What about everybody else that's inthe division related to WordPress?
Or what about open source holistically?
Right?
Not just WordPress.
And so I then took, I, I adore Juliet,by the way, I, I took the situation that
was going on with WPCS, where this wasnot being maintained without funding, and
said, red alarm, and started escalatingthat, and then that snowballed into PHPCS,
which is, WPCS depends heavily, entirelyon PHPCS, and said, you know, it's not
just WordPress that's at stake, or thisplugin, that plugin, whatever, it is the
whole of Anything using PHP CS, and let'slook at what we're offering in our plans.
So I had to make a very clear businesscase for some of this, but I also looked
at the challenges where we can't justwrite as a company checks out to a
bunch of individuals that doesn't work.
Uh, it just, for when you get to a companyof that scale and size, it doesn't work.
Small companies I've worked in smallcompanies before they can do it and
they can pivot really easily, butwhen you start dealing with budgets
that are set a year in advance,you don't get that opportunity.
And you have to be very explicitabout where the money goes.
So putting money in an envelope andsticking it in the mailbox doesn't happen.
That's also part of the impetus to startthe WP community collective, because
with that, we can open it up so thatorganizations can contribute by means of
the WPCC through a nonprofit approach.
And it does not have to bejust my employer, though.
Thank goodness.
My manager supports me so thoroughly andmy employer is part of that initiative.
Um, through that, we're fundingspeakers at all of the flagship
camps for the next year.
Um, but there are other opportunitiesthat abound and part of what the WPCC
would like to do eventually is to help,uh, the organizations that struggle
with how to onboard their own staff.
So Kira and I have been mentorsin the WordPress project to
onboard new contributors.
But how do we onboard, when organizationswould like to send their staff
in, how do we onboard those folks?
And do they come in, in an ongoingway, or do they come in for a sprint?
If you're in the dev system, you mightcome in as a sprint and say, I'm gonna
do the thing, and then, when I know thatour schedule is slow, and then I'm out.
So there's a lot of considerationsthat go into this, I don't know if
that opens up more worms or not.
May I add one last thing thatI might not have been clear on?
Um, I did not mean to go around yourquestion about getting funded because
as you just said, if we can onboardthe organization and they start seeing
that ROI, then the next step is tosay, okay, my people are busy yet.
It's easier to write a check, right?
So there's different things on theagency level we're doing, right?
There's a few of uswith a scale consortium.
Part of our MSA, our master serviceagreement with our clients is they don't
have work product ownership over anything.
Therefore we are contributingback the actual libraries of
code from the entire project.
We're making it available so that ifthere is something that can be cherry
picked, it can be cherry picked, butthere's no way to right now to submit it.
A really cool project we might have donefor Megacorporation X and have it taken a
look at, so to speak, because we're on theticket system only at the moment, right?
And, you know, theroadmap, yada, yada, yada.
So there's all sorts of thingsthat could happen, but that first
step is getting that onboarding,which is why Birgit's work is so
important, why it's so important toget the communications out there.
Sorry, I didn't, yeah.
I'd like to add somethingabout onboarding.
I also think that it shouldstart with onboarding new
companies into our community.
So I, um, I've been seeing a lot of,um, minor or major issues with, with
companies that would show up for thevery first time at a word camp that
wanted to become involved and did nothave the right guidance, maybe, um, in
understanding what, what this communityis like and what community gatherings
are like, um, and then just made.
A mistake, which immediatelyturned out to become a big drama.
And then these companies already burnttheir reputation at the first try.
But there was maybe a big potentialfor them to become engaged on a
deeper level and maybe also becomeinvolved in funding contributors.
That's a big issue that I see.
And it also brings me to, I think themost important thing that I want to, uh,
that I want to say on this panel, there'sa noticeable gap between the community
that we all love and the business world.
And I truly believe that if wemanage to build those bridges between
these two major players, uh, ofthe WordPress project, there's so
much opportunity there to make allthe contributions more sustainable.
Um, And it starts with WordCamps.
Like, I personally, I wouldlove to have a business track.
So, all the people that are cominghere that are like, Hmm, I see this as
100 percent of a community gathering.
That's totally fine, so you don'thave to go to a business track if
that's not of interest for you.
But, if you have the opportunity tocome in touch with the big players
of this industry and to find out.
What and how they see the community andhow you can become involved with them.
And when we start having open andtransparent conversations, that is
actually democratizing opportunitiesbecause all these business conversations
are already happening, especially atflagship events only it's mostly the inner
circle that some of us are fortunate tobe a part of that are actively involved.
Going to speak tolooking beyond WordPress.
Uh, in the open source project,my employer GoDaddy sponsors and
was a founding sponsor of theJavaScript foundation, OpenJSF.
org, and that pulled together Node andjQuery and all of these sub projects
to be one foundation, uh, and thatsits within a Linux foundation entity,
and people don't know that about us,uh, it's really easy, or it was really
easy, when it was being created, formy employer to see the value of that.
It is very explicit on theJavaScript foundation what
you get for your contribution,whether that be labor or money.
It was very explicitly laidout what you get for that.
And I think that in WordPress, wewould do well to learn from other
open source projects that, um, havebeen explicit about the value of it.
I support the idea of Five for the Future.
Um, I may have a personal, um, Quirkabout calling it a tide that brings
up some connotations, et cetera.
But I support that idea that anyonethat is profiting off of this stuff
should look at and to Juliet'spoint this morning, uh, I support
looking back further in the chain.
You've got WordPress.
What is WordPress dependent upon?
It's got all of these other open sourceprojects that it depends upon to exist.
I think that WordPress, the project needsto do better at communicating with the
things we depend upon and fostering thatrelationship, but also learning from a
lot of those places where we say, well,why is it easier for organizations to
understand the value of contributing tothis, but yet it's muddy in WordPress
about why and how, and right, we needto be more, more detailed about that.
Juliet had a question, yeah.
Juliet had a question?
Oh, wait a minute.
You good?
All right.
We will come back to Juliet later.
Just a moment.
Yeah.
All right.
Uh, thank you.
And here we touched ontwo very important things.
We seem to see the problem the same.
And if you go to the communitybooth, for example, we have
a little experiment going on.
We asked people to, uh, marktheir location on the world map.
We gave them two colors of dots.
If you are a contributor seekingsponsorship, we ask them to use a red dot.
And if you are just an attendee,uh, please use a green dot.
The map is a lot more red than green.
So we do see the problems thesame, and we have touched on a
few, uh, important root causes.
So, uh, I'm happy that thereis, we're reaching more and
more consensus about this.
And To go back to these root causes,I would like to bounce it back to you,
Kareem, because we were talking aboutdifferent incentives for companies
to sponsor individuals, right?
Carol, you mentioned something veryimportant here with marketing incentives,
but if we look beyond marketing,what do we have, what can we do as
a community, what can we do, uh, inour individual teams, as individuals?
Or the way the project is setup right now, to incentivize
businesses to see the businessvalue of contributing to WordPress.
Okay, so, um, I love this morning'squote, of open source is not free.
Yep.
And, um, thank you so much, Courtney,for reminding me of that, uh, before we
got on stage, because, um, One of theprinciple slides that our organization
uses when we're, um, competing againstone of those monolithic platforms
or a publishing system out there.
Um, one of the slides is basically,um, how much less maintenance of
open source costs than licensingof monolithic systems, right?
We try to explain that to them becausewe're not saying that you install it and
you're done and we're going to move on.
Please.
The original quote, we onlyused part of it this morning,
is open source is not free.
You are just not the one paying the price.
I love it.
It's true.
So what we try to do is we, we tryto explain to them that part of
the process of the maintenance ofyour particular installation is to.
Understand what you're changing about it.
And through those ideas of whatwe do with the MSA and other
things, some of those things mightcontribute back to the project.
But, what could you do tocontribute to the project, right?
I'm not sure what the exact example is.
Um, I'm not, I, I know there's been a lotof, Success around trying to bring light
to it and some of the university projects.
Um, but it's, it's hard.
It's hard to figure out how do wewalk them from, they understand that
they have to pay for maintenanceto, if you add on a price.
Does that price go directly tofunding a freelance contributor?
Does that price go into how do we bringon board a, a existing resource a company
might have so they get a feeling for itbecause if that price go to paying for
tools, like the tools needed to collectall the data, that's a cost that the
project would have to absorb, right?
Well, yes, yes.
And, um, It's about showing success.
If we can show that first baby step ofsuccess of, Oh, look, they contributed,
uh, they contributed an edit to anopen document that beer get started.
And there was recognition of that, thatit doesn't have to be on social media, but
at the next release, there's a thank youfrom so and so at this company for this.
They can show that back to their manager.
Here's the key point.
And their manager showsit to their manager.
Because in these organizations,that's what it's about, right?
I would encourage us to alsonot only tie it to releases.
Certainly, if it's properlyrelease related, then yes.
There is so much work in this projectthat, for instance, the DEIB area, I could
see a little bit of relation to releases,but on the whole, maybe not all the time.
But I think just that acknowledgementto what you're saying, absolutely true.
And having that reporting mechanismback and forth would be really valuable.
Um, there's something I want to add.
It's just a question that I have inmy head for a very long time already.
And I feel that sometimes as a community,we are doing A terrible job when it
comes to setting the right expectations.
So for example, the D.
I.
B.
Initiative, it's right down my alley.
I deeply care, but I, I am also awarethat for many companies that don't,
that are really, really chasing thereturn on investment and Birgit already
mentioned it, it's not measurable.
So do I like that?
I don't.
But that doesn't change thereality that most of the businesses
out there have not understood.
But for example, Juliet said earliertoday that they should see investment into
open source in general as an insuranceso that their business can continue.
It means that they wantto see the numbers.
And at the moment, the reality is,if you wanna get like part time or
full time funding, For something thatyou are working on this project, your
chances are considerably higher whenit isn't an area that is more visible.
Again, I'm not saying I like that.
I'm not saying that is how I want thisproject to work, but it is the truth.
And I feel that we are not takingthe best care of ourselves and of
the people around us that we respectand sometimes have friendships with
by not telling them the truth, like.
Please do not continue to do thesame thing every day and expect
a different result at the moment.
The truth is it's hard to findfundings for invisible areas
and yeah, it's interactive.
Some of those invisible areas are thingswhich people don't realize are really
important to like security where peoplecan't even talk about what they're doing.
Oh.
That's a good call.
But how, um, how would you, uh, for, forthis specific example, like, do you see,
uh, do you see a solution there if theycan't talk about what they are doing?
Like, is there, is there anyway about raising awareness?
Would that be again, like, forexample, taxes, like what, what Yost,
uh, suggested that that would be asolution for that problem, wouldn't it?
Or do you see a different one?
It hooks into the, anything thatjust works only works because someone
puts a shit load of work in it.
When a project is invisible,when some role is invisible, it's
because people are doing the work.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And recognizing that is somethingwhich is not easy, but it is
essential to get the funding sorted.
And I think Aaron might want to to this?
Do you?
Please do.
Yeah, we're all helpingeach other, I love that.
I was dying to ask him a question earlier.
Hi, my name is Aaron Jorban, I'm acore committer, um, I've also led the
last, uh, handful of security releasesin WordPress, I'm an independent
developer, um, funded via GitHub,uh, Last month I made 25 an hour to
ensure that WordPress stayed secure.
Let's clarify, I'm funded by GitHub.
Who, is GitHub writing you a check?
Uh, GitHub sponsors.
Thank you.
Individuals.
Yes, uh, through individuals.
About 15 individuals arefunding my time right now.
Um, and my work In thisarea cannot be public.
And in fact, if I am doing a goodjob, it is incredibly invisible.
Um, and if I am not doing a goodjob, it probably directly affects
the bottom lines of two, if not allthree of your companies, um, how do
we make sure that this work is funded?
Oh, well, on the one hand, I will betaking, I, it's on me to take some
information back about what I did, whyit was valuable to send me to this event.
So I think sharing thereplay with a couple of key
stakeholders will be part of that.
And I've got my next two level of managersin the room with me, um, to help me make
the case for those instances for sure.
Um, I absolutely want tosupport furthering that work.
Yes, we're going to talk some more, Aaron.
If I, if I may, um, I've,I've known Aaron for years.
We've had a few conversations, but,um, here's a commitment I can make.
If we can put together a presentationof past, now non relevant instances
where that's made a difference, Ithink we I am willing to make that
part of the representation publiclywhen we are pitching WordPress
against these other systems.
and through her organization.
The, the, I'm sorry.
The WPCC.
WPCC, thank you.
Through the WPCC, throughconversations that many are
having about an enterprise tax.
Other things, those things canbe routed because I just want
to call out again one more time.
He said 25, not 250 an hour,25 an hour and as a year.
And that is not acceptable.
Mm-Hmm?
. Okay.
So as.
While as an agency, I can't write acheck at the 10 times rate directly
to you and sustain my bottom line.
It's my responsibility to helpwith that and so should the others.
So, finding out about that, understandinghow can we make that and communicate it
effectively because I don't have Accessto social media or TV commercials.
But I get invited to rooms where we'representation presenting against, you know,
the, the big, bad AEM and other things.
That's the perfect opportunity to say,look, let's explain the difference
one step further than what we haveon the difference between free
and somebody else's paying for it.
Right.
I support that.
So let's have a conversation.
I think.
Also, what I would like to call for inthe project, I know, um, Birgit is working
on, uh, a side project, a directoryof those that wish to be sponsored.
Um, and I know that Aruba, manyof us know Aruba in the room.
It's great to walk into a WordCampin a country that's not mine and
feel like you're all friends.
Yeah.
I can't tell you how great that is.
Um, those are some areas.
But honestly, what I reallywant to see is a way of notating
this in your WordPress profile.
I know that, um, a dear friend ofmine, Scott Clark, who is lead dev
at pods, opened up a place on theirGitHub profile to receive funding.
And one of the major car companies, Iforget which one, but just decided to,
to their funding of open source, justscattered their funding of open source.
And so.
Scott Clark receives, I think, 10a month from some organization.
Um, Scott could correct me on theexact details of this, but it's like
a, it's a minimal, but I would liketo, instead of having to know someone,
instead of me having to continually gofind, and I, I love to do this, please.
No, I love people.
I love to know people and to helppeople in all of the things dev rel.
Uh, so.
I also would like something at theproject level, maybe on our profiles
that you could opt in and say, Iwant full time or I want part time.
Here's the area that I'm doing.
And then I would wantyou to have some data.
What could be available?
So for those that can't have hard metrics.
I'm still proposing along the way as webuild out these dashboards of manually
logging some things and it doesn'thave to be like, here's the security
bug that I was in the group chat with.
No, but just like security work,da da da, and then sort of tally up
for things that can't be tracked.
Things that must be hidden for reasons.
Or it's just simply that your job isto read and research and think a lot.
You know, to be able to have some trackmetrics like that so that when you want
to go make the case, maybe toss thatbehind your, your individual five for
the future listing so that it will beprivate enough, but you would have a
source of data for your own purposesto be able to then go to individuals
and say, and then also call in.
The five for the future companiesand say, here are the ones you either
need, here's what the teams need.
And, or here are the people that arealready doing the work and saying
that they're open to be sponsoredand do that within the project.
So a lot of what Courtney said goesback to that inner circle also that I
mentioned, because it makes a differenceif you can, for example, show up at word
cams, or if you are in the right timezone, that for a specific Slack channels,
you are able to show up when decisionsare being made, which reminds me of one
of the principles that I am not so mucha fan of in this project with, which is
decisions are made by those who show up.
I said it on several occasions already.
I.
I'm not so certain that this ishow decisions are made in this
project to start with, but theother thing is how privileged has
one to be to be able to show up?
Like there's so many factors, uh,that, that, that, that, that come in
that, yeah, like, for example, you haveto earn a life besides contributing.
You might have a family, you mightbe neurodivergent or have language
barriers, which makes it so muchmore difficult to, uh, to make sure
that you are going to be heard.
And what, what if you can't show upor what, if you feel that you have
to show up when you actually can't,because the time that you're spending
on that is just, uh, uh, not goingtowards your house or your family.
So, um, yeah, this, so that's why Ilove the, the, the, the project that,
that Courtney is currently working onand what Birgit is doing, because in
the end, uh, democratizing opportunity,uh, democratizing opportunity.
Means that, uh, we have to haveaccess, um, to those and open and
transparent conversations that gobeyond, uh, the privileged ones that
can actually, um, show up in person oronline when it seems to be important.
Can I share a personalstory in the process?
Aaron, I think it was NewYork 2014 contributor day that
I joined the training team.
I have a photo that's really blurry.
I wandered across town, thenpregnant with my second.
I had already lost a baby.
I went home later and found outthat I was losing that one too.
I was intimidated as all could bewith a lot of personal stuff going on.
And I was sleeping on the couchof a friend where I had to take
a train an hour to get intothe city to get there that day.
I used to be intimidated to not knowanyone that was talking about core things.
Um, I think I got the gutsup when I saw you wearing a
hockey jersey to say hi once.
I've only worked atGoDaddy for three years.
I've loved those three years.
When I was contributing,I had three miscarriages.
There was a lot of personal toll.
I'm grateful, somehow, for All of theseexperiences, because I will never forget
why it matters that we fund contributors.
Why it is that we do the work that we do.
Why it is that I'm really glad nowthat I'm not intimidated to say hi to
Aaron and admit, here's how much codeI do or don't know, but you know more.
So please help, um, codesa little bit of my job.
I need to speak enough aboutit to know what I need to know.
Um, But it's the people thatmakes this all possible.
And we're the people that arepowering 43 percent of the web.
And I saw this week that it's growingagain, just a little bit, but it's growing
again, according to the same source.
So it really matters.
And I will do everything I can, asyou can see, but there will come
a point where I can not do it all.
And yeah, I should not do it all.
No, you're absolutely right.
You should not do it all.
And.
That experience that you've had.
I am terribly sorry for that andI wish it did not happen to you.
And I wish that it doesnot happen to anyone else.
Absolutely.
I also have two little ones nowat home this week that I'm hoping
to start bringing to camps.
Yeah.
Congratulations.
I have mine in here.
Yeah, we need the next generation.
For sure.
Right?
I'm proud of myself.
So, on that note, I hear that we haveWe're facing transparency issues.
We're facing transparency issues, uh,for the businesses, for those who,
uh, ultimately fund the whole projectand the people who make the project.
So I would like to ask you in theaudience, if you have any ideas on
how to increase transparency, eventhe, the smallest change matters.
So what can you do in your make teams?
What can you do in your siteprojects that you're working on?
Any ideas at all how we can betterconnect businesses and the value that
the people of this project deliver?
So the people, the companies who arewithin the Five for the Futures, uh,
when they are within the Five for theFutures, they could get like a badge
or something that they can put on theirwebsites where it says we are contributing
to WordPress or we are making WordPresspossible or something like this.
Good marketing initiative.
And about that, Carol, you have someideas around marketing initiatives.
Um, Yeah, I mean, those are more tightto, uh, word camps because that's more
my area of expertise where, um, whereI think that the conversations can
start happening more transparently.
So I mentioned it earlier.
Um, I believe that if we, uh, are startingto destigmatize the topic of money.
Please, let's do that.
Um, because in the end, itall ties back to money, right?
I mean, instead of paying with yourtime, you should be able to get a
financial, uh, yeah, that you have tofinancial safety and, uh, yeah, feeling,
feeling, feeling good about what you'redoing and also being able to pay the
bills at the end of your of the month.
So I still feel that we as a communityare not doing the best we can to
build the bridge to the, to the,to the business world from our end.
Um, so when we have these gatherings,when we have these big flagship events,
there's so much opportunity in bringingthe businesses and the community
together and have conversations about.
The business topics so that we can startunderstanding what the companies need
so that we can determine the return oninvestment or the insurance case and in
an ideal world, bringing those together.
But to be able to do that, thereneeds to be a safe place for that.
And at the moment, and pleasein the audience is interactive.
Correct me if I'm wrong,and I'm ready to learn.
I personally, I'm notfeeling that at WordCamp.
I'm not saying that there shouldn't belike 100 percent community gatherings,
but the flagship events, they arealready commercial and business centric.
And again, it's just a part ofus that is at the moment, um,
able to grab those opportunities.
So, for example, the business track, Iwould love to see, um, a business track
over two days where we could, um, bringin the hosting companies together and we
would give them the opportunity to bringon stage what is important for them and
then we would bring them together withthe community and we could also discuss
with the hosting companies just to namethose what is your incentive what would be
your incentive to become more involved andthere were also pretty good suggestions
earlier this morning in the in the firstsession What would, what could be your
incentive or how could you help, uh,with what you are doing in your business
to raise fundings for contributors?
And then we do for the nextthree hours, we invite the
plugin companies and do the same.
And then we bring in the agencies,maybe also talk to the publishers
and bring the agents and publisherstogether as our word camp.
I would love to see that.
So, there is much potential there, andagain, this doesn't mean that we are
completely changing the character ofwhat WordCamps are, because nobody's
forcing anyone to go to a businesstrack if that is not your alley.
A quick tag off of what Carol shared, afew of you in the room know Tara Clays.
Tara and I were hanging out on theback deck at the beach last summer
at her house, because where I go tovacation is close to her family home.
Tara shared with me, after I subcontractedsome things for her, I shared with
her about what I was doing with theWPCC, and I, please know, I am not
receiving funds from this, this isjust, this is extra, this is not my go
daddy time either, this is extra time.
So, through the WPCC, Tara saw, oh,you want to fund somebody part time
to contribute to WordPress project?
I would certainly, on an annual basis,pay a premium license fee, like an
agency level premium license fee.
I would be willing todonate that once a year.
So even when we're dealing with smalleragencies, I mean, Tara has quite a few
clients that she is maintaining theirwebsites and usually a half dozen or so
active projects in flight at some point.
But that idea that even at a smallbusiness level scale, you know, there's
ways of helping to fund contributorsthrough that process that still
would be valuable to their business.
And I think helping to educateothers on that is really important.
Tara's great.
Folks should meet her if they can.
Well, I had a Oh, there's a question.
Go ahead.
No, no, no, no, no.
Hi, everyone.
Um, I just want to call out a few things.
These are not the only solutions,but I think this is a multi faceted
subject, and I think there are alot of things that are already in
motion that can help convince us.
leadership of larger companies tocontribute funding to contributors.
Um, one of those things, andI apologize, this has already
been surfaced in other talks.
One of those things is to perhapsconsider stop calling word camps, word
camps, use the word conference, becauseif you think of, I'll, I'll challenge
you all to remove yourselves fromthe WordPress community for a moment.
And think of yourself as someone whois a traditional, um, uh, salesperson
or business person, a VP of a companywho has only been to trade shows
where it's all about scanning badgesand making deals and selling things.
Um, and they have no concept.
Uh, I'm not saying my particularleadership does, but, um, many
people have no concept of.
community like we all understand itin the WordPress space and what the
importance of, of this community is.
So when we come to, uh, uh, uh,our leadership and we say it's
important to fund this part ofthe project because the immediate
question is what is the ROI on that?
What do we get back like Karim and,and others on, on stage have mentioned.
So, uh, people like, uh, Courtneyand Carol and, uh, and others, we, we
have to make a business case and turnor translate what we all know to be
important and true into a financialbusiness case in an ROI on what it means.
Mm-Hmm.
, uh, and, and what the cost is fornot, uh, contributing to a project.
Yep.
So, um.
There was more I wanted to say, butI don't want to talk too much, but
it's, I think it's a little thingsabout changing perception, uh, of
what word camps are, um, especiallyflagship events, uh, because they
hear the word camp, they go camp.
Okay.
That's not a conference.
It doesn't sound as professional as whatI'm used to, uh, hearing and going to.
Um, and it also comes down to,uh, people within these larger
companies Uh, continually advocatingand making these business cases.
Um, in our case, we very specifically ask,uh, leadership to come to these events.
Uh, we set up meetings, we, um,educate, educate, educate, um,
about the importance of open source.
Uh, in general, the WordPress projectspecifically, uh, and it's something
that we continually hammer on.
Um, so I don't know if that's helpfulto anyone else here, but, um, it,
it, it's about translating, it'sabout perception first, and then the
cost of, of not, uh, being involved.
I think I would just liketo add one sentence to what,
uh, what, um, Adam just said.
I would also recommend everyone whocan to grab the opportunity to, uh,
outside of our bubble occasionally.
Like there's other events out there.
Um, so it can be otheropen source communities.
It can also be a commercial events,cloud fest to name just one and just
go there, dip your toes, see whatit's like, take out what you like.
Don't, don't imitate what youdon't like, but it is always going
to be a big win to just broadenthe horizon and, and, and see.
What else is out there?
And I find it sometimes, yeah,I don't know, a little, a little
limiting when you own when, whenyou only see, uh, WordPress events.
So I'm here from a non WordPresscommunity, the type of three community.
And, uh, I was, uh, Iwas really happy because.
of the keynote that I saw thismorning, because this is one of the
topics that I keep talking about.
And what I see at events, I mean, I'vevisited a lot of different open source
communities and what I see is, veryoften, we don't think that talking about
open source, like at the keynote today,we don't think that that's interesting.
Well, it is interesting.
And hey, it's also necessary.
We have to keep repeating this,because in, in, in, in, in, A
community setting like this, andwe're actually dealing with humans.
You have to repeat things and you haveto remember that things take time.
Uh, so, you know, if you go out thereand you keep talking to businesses,
I think it's a really good idea.
And then yes.
Tell them your message, thenlisten to what they say back.
Try to modify your message next timeand refine it and make it even better.
But keep doing it because that'sthe only thing that's going to work.
Keep it up.
Resilience for the win.
I couldn't agree more.
Um, honestly, it does comeback to communication.
Um, when we're start, we started thesession talking about how to communicate
this, we talked about onboarding and it,it's back to how do we get out there?
I mean, specifically, I'm about to callout the gentleman sitting next to you.
Who's also part of the scale consortium.
Um, you're not getting out of here,Robert, without opening your mouth,
but what can organizations do?
For instance, scale consortium was Foundedspecifically to talk to, um, procurement
of enterprise and stakeholders.
So non engineering topics, mostlynon topics around where are we
going, but a topic of what'sthe benefit going to be to them.
Part of that messaging could bequite literally, you can contribute.
And that brings thingsback into your realm.
You can be part of the roadmap.
You're not going to get thatfrom an international monolithic.
You're just not going to.
Uh, so I'm going to ask Robert,Robert, what did I miss?
What did we on the panel miss?
Um, what else can we do, whetherit's scale consortium or in
the enterprise space to help?
Um, Um, easy thing, um, I thoughtabout, it's, um, it's very easy
to like being the role model.
So, um, we had this conversationdad work camp like working in
Europe has not a much budget.
Let's say that way that would, couldbe better if we have more budget, we
can do it differently and we can fundother people and something like that.
So, To solve that, um, like being a rolemodel, Karim, you, you asked for that, um,
would be what if all agencies simply donot buy the normal price ticket, but they
price in normal business price tickets.
So we have request, like, let's say we300, 500 bucks ticket that we didn't buy.
We buy.
Want not be listed differently.
We just want to be listed like in a waythat we know who's not, who's coming,
who's not doing that in our realm.
So that we simply ask like otheragencies, like you, you, you bought this.
I saw you on the, on the attendeelist with like, you're not
buying like the other ticket.
Why?
So in terms of like, um, simply beingour own role model and our, with our
peers, with the agencies and with likethe other businesses simply by, um, like.
Improving the world by ourselves and bythen, um, showing that to other people.
I like that.
I think it's a great idea.
I know it was discussed in communitysummit, like 2013, 14, whenever that was.
And it was put away at the time.
I think it's a great idea to resurface.
Can I ask, because there was beforemy time, why it was put away?
Do you know that?
Former leadership.
That's not around thinking that that wouldcommunicate that there's different tiers
of attendees and Robert's idea solves thatof saying we're not asking to be listed.
We're not asking for specialrecognition, but we are different.
That's the thing.
Yeah.
Like I said, it's anunequal playing field.
Like, um, I'm, I'm, I'm cominghere because my, I'm fortunate
enough to work for a company.
This is not only sponsoringor funding contributors.
I learned that.
I find, I find that to use the wordfunding against the word sponsoring.
So I work for a company that isfunding contributors, but I am also
here because my company sent me here.
And, uh, that is a very different,uh, uh, very different privileged
position to other people.
And so we are not, we are not equal.
So we can then also pay different,different prices and maybe support.
Other people that those voices.
Need to be heard because they arevaluable so that they can show up where
decisions are possibly being made.
Right.
And we have now reached our timelimit, so it's time to wrap up.
And we've heard many very, veryinteresting suggestions and
actionable steps that we cantake to increase transparency,
to increase, uh, to incentivize,uh, sponsors to keep sponsoring.
And I have a final question for you.
Uh, for those of you who do organizeand participate in community events,
has anything during this talk, um,inspired you to take action to, uh,
connect sponsors and contributors.
I've been inspired.
I've been inspired by what Jorbensaid to not only work it back into
the crowd favorites, informationthat we're giving customers, but to
give that back to the project to say,other people should put this in their
decks of how they explain WordPress.
Absolutely.
Wonderful.
Thank you everyone.