Patricia Brun Torre
Hello everyone.
I'm happy to introduce, uh, thesefine people for this session.
This session is five for the future.
How can someone become a sponsoredcontributor and how a company can donate
an employee time to the WordPress project?
And I'm happy to, uh, invite here.
Um, Courtney Robertson,Hari Shankar,Emanuel Blagonic, and Afshana Diya.
So they're going to cover the topic,uh, that I mentioned, and if you have
question, you can, uh, ask them andthey will be happy to answer you.
Hello?
Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello,
Hari Shankar: hello, everybody.
So we have a very exciting, uh,topic that we are discussing today.
Before we start, I guess it's best thatwe all quickly introduce ourselves.
I can start.
Uh, so my name is Shankar.
I'm a full-time, uh,contributor to WordPress.
My work is sponsored by Automattic.
My focus specifically is on improvingcontribution for WordPress contributor
experience and, and fight for the future.
And I'm currently runninga working group to build a
mentorship program for WordPress.
That's about me.
I live in Cohi, India.
What you called me.
Courtney Robertson: Hi there.
I'm Courtney Robertson.
I, my first contribution to WordPresswas in 2009 when I checked guests
in for a mid WordCamp Mid-Atlanticbefore we had a foundation.
So there was no foundationyet WordPress events.
People were just doingthem however they did them.
Uh, so I volunteered becauseI didn't get a ticket in time.
I joined the WordPresstraining team in 2014.
I've been contributingto that team ever since.
We're the ones making contenton Learn.WordPress.org.
I've spent time teaching and in, uh,working in plugin companies as well in
support and knowledge-based articles.
These days, you can find me.
For the last two years I haveworked at GoDaddy and in that
time my role has evolved.
I'm a developer advocate andI've been that since I began.
But what that also looks like isthat I, uh, advocate for how we
responsibly handle open source software,including the community aspects like.
Getting people sponsored.
Um, and so I do that.
I have some responsibilitiesinternally at GoDaddy.
I also contribute a lot to theWordPress training team and other teams.
And my schedule varies based uponwhere the need is at the time.
So I have to do a lot of maintainingmy own priorities, um, and knowing
where those priorities lie.
So you could say half the time, butalso I have internal things that are.
Making sure our booth here is good, right.
So there's that.
Emanuel Blagonic: We have our own
Courtney Robertson: Oh look, you're fancy.
Wow.
You're fancy then.
Emanuel Blagonic: Hi everyone.
Thanks for joining us today.
Um, I am Emanuel Blagonic.
Uh, I've been contributing toWordPress actively since the very
first work of Europe in Liden.
That was where a lot of sparklestarted for a lot of European
communities I started contributingto work with even before.
But generally I'm a designer, so I'm notlike that connected to, to WordPress.
Like for the past six months, I'vebeen doing more WordPress projects
than in the last 10 years altogetherbecause I'm focusing on the design.
Um, in community, I was, uh,part of com uh, community team.
Uh, I was mentoring WordCamps and meetups.
Um, I was part of the firstWordCamp incubator program.
Um, and alongside that I was also.
In the organizing team for work in Europe,in Vienna, in Paris, and in Belgrade ion.
The last two, I was leading thecommunications team, so I was
contributing quite a lot at the time.
It was, um, a big emotional tolleventually because communications
team is working throughout the year.
Uh, but I wouldn't change thatexperience for anything in life because
I met so many incredible people.
Um, And I'd like first of all tojust say thank you to all, um, and
applause for you as well, becausesomewhere I, I know I remember you
volunteered, uh, uh, in a lot of event.
So I'd just like to applause for you.
Thank you.
Afshana Diya: Uh, this is Afshana.
I'm from Taka Bangladesh, so.
I travel around 14 hoursto be here with you all.
Uh, so I started my WordPress, um, journeyback in 2009 when I was just using a blog.
I was not contributing at that time.
Uh, later after my undergrad, I startedworking with WordPress product company.
Uh, then I joined my first WordCamp campback in 2017, which was in Singapore.
So, That was not a sponsor train.
Uh, I joined the work camp becauseI wanted to, even if I'm not a
developer, uh, I was completely no code.
And before attending thatWordCamp, uh, my idea of WordCamp
was, is mostly for developer.
Then I joined WordCamp Singapore andmy whole idea was changed for better.
Uh, after that I got involvedin my local community.
Uh, we had our first WordCampin Haka and we had around 800.
Uh, People attending our WordCamp inthe first WordCamp April, our ticket
got sold out in just 40 minutes.
So the community was veryactive from, uh, many years,
but we didn't have the WordCamp.
Uh, when we had the first monthin, we started seeing more people
interested to contribute to WordPress.
Uh, even in my first word camp, wedidn't have, uh, Any female organizer
except me, we didn't have female speaker.
Uh, we kind of influenced one to talk.
Uh, after that we had our, um,Regular Meetup people started coming,
females started to participate.
And right now, even in this, WordCampEurope, we have, uh, except me, there
are a few other female and there area lot of Bangladeshi people joining.
I just took a picture of allBangladeshi making photo too.
WordCamp Europe so, yeah.
Now, I then after, uh, WordCampHaca, I was also part of
WordCamp Europe last year.
Uh, as an organizer, I was organizerfor WordCamp Asia this year.
And, uh, I'm also a community deputyfor Make WordPress, so I'm trying
to help make people, make teamby, uh, supporting the community.
Thank you.
Wow.
What a panel.
Hari Shankar: Not counting myselfcause, but really I think we
have the best crowd to talk aboutthe topic that we have today.
which is Five for the future.
The very important topic of.
Uh, paying contributorsin very important topic.
Topic of, yeah.
You know, companiesgetting more contributors.
But before we start all that, like thetitle of our topic is Five for the Future.
I think we should briefly go into that.
Like, what, what is it exactly?
Like some of you might have heard of it,some of you might not have heard of it.
I think it's time to explorefor us to start there.
Like, what does that mean?
What does it mean for contributions?
What does it mean for WordPress?
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna start by askingCourtney that question, like, what
do you think is five for the future?
Can you just please explainwhat your feelings are?
Thoughts are.
Courtney Robertson: So if you goto the actual page, uh, it's under
WordPress.org/five-for-the-future, um, you'll find it.
And, uh, basically Matt had an idea thathe shared on his blog some time ago that
those that are making their earningsthrough WordPress give back to that.
So all open source projects need tosustain the project in some manner.
That means that people showup and do the work of that.
Sometimes people will need to be paid forthe work that they do, and other times,
uh, people just, it's a side hustlefor them or a, a side project even.
Something they just really are passionateabout and they'll do it either way.
Um, But five for the future as a programis there for both individuals and
companies to say, I'm going to give 5%of my working resources to that endeavor.
Um, and so I think we're still figuringout sometimes what it is and what
that looks like in different contexts.
Hari Shankar: Thank you forthe report classification.
So, um, we learned what, whatthis is, but why this significant?
Like why do we need this thingcalled five for the future?
I mean, there's been a lot ofdiscussions, especially in 2022.
Uh, Around the fact that whydo we really need a program?
I mean, WordPress is built byvolunteers all around the world.
Do we need companies to come in?
I mean, in a way, if you lookat it, it seems like a corporate
take over WordPress, right?
So do we really need companiescoming in and paying people?
I mean, can't all just volunteers do it?
So I'd like to hear thoughts from,okay, I, I see Afshana here who's a,
I know he is a sponsored contributor.
So what do you think Afshana?
Afshana Diya: Uh, well, uh,
actually they do.
Uh, because, uh, when I startedcontributing, I was not doing it
as a sponsor contributor, right.
Um, I tried to influence,I tried to inspire my local
community to, uh, contribute.
Some of the people started, some didfor few months, then they stopped.
Uh, so what we did is like, uh, I'mfrom the company called WP Developer.
It's a WordPress product company.
So I'm the CMO at WP Developer.
At WP Developer.
We try to, uh, inspire our employeesto contribute, uh, starting from me.
So I try to share what I, I didfor Make WordPress, how people
can contribute without even.
Uh, going to somewhere because we livein a city called Haka, which has so
much traffic, so people don't want tomake it feel effort to go to the Meetup.
So how they can, uh, contributewithout going somewhere.
So we, uh, try to inspireour, uh, teammates.
Uh, and we started to, um, dosome in-house contribution there.
Uh, what happened is, like, uh, atfirst we had, um, probably five to
six people contributing, but fromthere they started contributing more.
Uh, we had, um, Our regular kindof, uh, meetings for, to join wa
WordPress meetup, uh, teams meeting.
So in our meetings, uh, some peoplefind it very interesting, said
they describe it to the others,and others started contributing.
So we announced that, uh, Every week,we will allow our team members to
contribute to make WordPress for howmany hours they want to contribute, and
that will be fully sponsored so theycan contribute during their office time.
They don't have to do iton their personal time.
What happened is, like when, uh, weannounced that some of the people who
actually wanted to contribute but didn'thave the time or energy to do it after
office, they actually got interested.
Uh, they got contributed,they started contributing.
And after a while, uh, we found like,uh, in last WordPress 6.1 release.
Uh, there was around 16 peoplefrom our team who contributed,
and in last 6.2, uh, we had 32people contributing from our team.
Uh, we are a team of 120, so it'slike more than, uh, 25% people
contributed, uh, for WordPress code.
So that's the big number.
I, I think that's only happened becausethey were inspired and got that free
time from the office to contribute.
Yeah.
Hari Shankar: Thank you Afshana.
So what I'm hearing is like there isa space of sponsored contribution,
especially because, That isWordPress is a huge project.
It powers 40% of the internet.
There's so many complex things in thisproject that cannot be done by volunteers.
There is so many big tasksand so many complicated tasks.
Like some of them, yes ERs can doit, but volunteers, they may not
have the bandwidth to do it and.
It makes sense for somebodyto pay people to do it, right.
So there is a space of volunteer consponsored contributions and like I've
actually done some research on thenumber of, uh, contributions myself,
and I can say with certainty that atthis point in time right now, most of
the contribution and majority of thecontributions coming into WordPress
are from a sponsored contributors,as in people who have paid for it.
So what, yes, WordPress is a volunteerrun project, but there is indeed a space.
For that.
So, while on this topic, before we moveon to the core of our discussion, I
wanna ask Emanuel a question as well.
I mean, Emanuel.
You are a volunteer contributor,and we were just talking about your
experience as a volunteer contributor.
So as a volunteer who's done so muchfor WordPress, and I know you've
been a, you've been part of, uh, theincubator program as you mentioned,
you've been, you've led to whatWordCamp Europe in the past editions.
So what are your thoughts on fivefor the future as a volunteer
who pledged this time towards us?
Emanuel Blagonic: Well, first of all,I'd like to start by saying that there is
not a contribution that doesn't matter.
No matter how small it is, I mean,even if you try and go to contributor
day, like, like yesterday, and yougo to polyglots team, you start by
translating 10 strings and then yougo and translate another 10 strings.
You are doing a lot of effort andyou are helping spread WordPress.
And for me, WordPress is like sortof a freedom, um, When I started,
uh, working with WordPress,I was completely a designer.
I didn't know, uh, to write a line of php.
And, uh, I started working withWordPress because of the codex.
And like nowadays, it'smuch more elaborate.
Uh, a lot of things have changed,but even today when you go like
to make.wordpress.org, you,you get like so many resources
on how to start contributing.
So first of all, I wouldlike to repeat again.
Every contribution matters.
Um, when you, we set, we thoughtabout five for the future.
Uh, I, at some point I contributed 50%of my time, uh, to WordPress for the,
for these two work computers where Iwas, uh, part of the communications team.
I, at, at the end, I just like, wantedlike to figure out how many hours did I
contribute and what would I buy myself ifI would like, did client work and it, I
realized I could bought a Tesla,uh, and it was like, I don't know.
Uh, I, I wouldn't say, uh, changing, butafter, after that last WordCamp where I
was part of the organizing team, uh, Icontinued contributing to, uh, community
team mentoring, meetups, WordCamps,uh, part of the incubator program we
started, uh, I, I was assigned to help,uh, start meet up in Malaysia in Kodak.
Uh, and we started with one meetup, andthen they, uh, arranged another meetup.
Eventually they got a WordCamp.
And, and at that point theyrealized I cannot do it anymore.
And for me it was like, I don't know,I felt like betraying the community
at that point because, uh, I said,I will like do it until the end.
And then I, I realized that.
I cannot like emotionallysustain that anymore.
Uh, at that point, because I'ma freelancer all my life at that
point, if I would have like a sortof someone who would step in and
say, Hey man, do you want liketo, to, uh, continue contributing?
I would say yeah, probably.
Um, so yeah, I think that wedefinitely need someone like
that steps in and helps like.
These kind of folks.
Um, I'm okay.
I don't need any like, help anymore,but, uh, I'm just getting better on
track on starting to contribute again.
Uh, Yeah, that's it.
Hari Shankar: Wow.
Wow.
You missed out on a Tesla, but thank you.
For me, I would say like thecontributions that you've done for
workers, that's invaluable money.
Emanuel Blagonic: I don't need a Tesla.
It's okay.
I don't need money.
Hari Shankar: But really, I would saythat your contributions are priceless.
As Matt says, WordPress is freein both prices at the same time.
Like your contributions are priceless.
Yeah.
Emanuel Blagonic: But the importantthing is that while I was like
contributing, I met so manyincredible people along the way.
Uh, Like yesterday and today, andthis is my first WordCamp since
WordCamp Bucharest, which happenedtwo months before Covid started.
I spoke there, um, andI haven't been anywhere.
I mean, in my private life alot of things have changed.
I bought a house, renovated a house,got two kids, got married, all of
things in like this, four or five years.
Uh, and constantly I'm like going 10meters and I'm seeing someone who I.
Have seen for the lasttime, uh, four years ago.
And that's like the most importantthing about contributing to community.
Um, and I would like toemphasize not to forget that.
Hari Shankar: Excellent.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Um, I think that brings usto a very important point.
So we've, I think we've establishedthat there is a need for sponsored
contributions and there is a needto pay people who do contribute
because there's, there's so muchwork that needs to be done, and.
Yes.
Some of it can be done by volunteers,but some folks, I'm, I'm using an
exhibition that I'm hearing fromso many people's burn, both ends of
the candle while they try concrete.
It's a, it's a problem that we allshould be aware of and we should
definitely pay contributors.
And I, I know I can see severalcontributors out here in this, even in
this group, like who I think personallycould benefit from sponsorship.
Which brings us to the coreof our discussion today.
And before we go ahead, I justhave one more thing to say.
If any anyone of you have anyquestions, please feel, feel
free to interrupt and ask.
But after we end, we have adedicated query session yet.
If you have any, if you want to like,have any pressing questions that
you wanna ask, feel free to ask us.
So I'm gonna ask Courtney here was,I know is very, very passionate
about this topic as I am.
Um, well the core of ourdiscussion here is how can, uh,
someone be a sponsor contributor?
So we.
There's a bunch of one contributorshere in this WordCamp Europe.
They've done a lot of work and someof them they actually, like, I, I know
real examples of this who've set asideclient work and Emanuel himself mentioned
as one example who they've set asidereal client work to support WordPress.
So how can we adequately comment with themand how can they find, uh, sponsorship?
What are your thoughts?
I'd like to heard from them.
Courtney Robertson: Wow.
Okay.
So I, I spent many years notsponsored myself, uh, like Emanuel.
I ran my own business for a while.
I was not good at it, eventhough I was a background as
a business education teacher.
I was great at doing the work of Dev andcode because that's what I could teach.
I was great at training my clients.
I was not great at the businessadministration as a solo person.
Not at all.
And I remember that going to the firstWordCamp in US, the first WordCamp
US event, it was a financial hardshipfor me and I could drive to it.
And I live in America, and it was afinancial hardship for me to do this.
Um, and that it, it meant a lot,I guess at that time for me.
And in fact, shortly after that, Ihad two children close together and
took three years off from contributingfor the most part because I just
could not fit it in my schedule.
Um, There was nothing that, I don't know,some of that probably couldn't have been
changed, but when I started to resurface,pandemic was happening right around the
time that my children were old enough thatI could start going back to camps again.
But pandemic happened right then.
And so, um, I had an opportunityto go teach at a bootcamp.
That sort of afforded me alittle bit of time, but it
wasn't a lot to contribute again.
Um, and I saw my own journey.
Of I really want to besponsored and I want to do more.
I want, I like, I love that I was teachingWordPress, but what was happening is that
while teaching WordPress, if you've everworked in a plugin company and one of
my coworkers is here, they'll attest to,um, You need to know a proficient amount
of php, even in the support forums tobe able to answer questions correctly.
And they weren't doing thatin this bootcamp program.
And so I said, oh, I just wanna gofix it and make official resources
on learn.wordpress.Org that say,here's what you need as the minimum
skill level to get that thing.
But to do that, I needed moretime than my teaching role
could give me to do that thing.
And we're in the process of working onthat within the training team these days.
Um, but I flat out cold calledmy now manager Adam Warner,
who many of you may know.
Um, I found him in between sessionsduring one of the online WordCamps.
Um, that was in the sponsor booth ofthat time, and I said, Hey, if GoDaddy
would ever sponsored me, let me know.
A few months go by.
And he was already looking toexpand his team and he said, we have
this developer advocate positionthat we would like to bring on.
And it seems like, you know, uh, a d adeep amount of developing and working
with developers and how to speak to them.
Um, sometimes developers need.
Help translating to human languages.
Uh, so, so yes, those are skillsets that I have and I applied
and now I get to do that.
But I remember the journey of having tosleep on my college roommate's couch and
barely affording parking for WordCamp US,um, and juggling the funds at that time.
And so I'm wildly passionate aboutunburdening people that have the
skillsets for me that look like Iwasn't great at running my business.
I was good at teaching.
Um, and I love what I get to do thesedays, but for some people, if you're
running your own business, it's accountingfor, if you want to give that back,
then making that a sales advantage pointand why customers should come to you.
Budgeting things so that youcan afford that time off.
If that is not an option that youwant to pursue, then, then don't.
Sometimes it takes this confidenceof, like I had of, I knew a person.
But I felt that I trusted prettywell in the space that might
know one of an opportunity.
And so I started shopping that around.
Um, for others that are on the flip sideof this, uh, if you, well, okay, Maureen,
if you want to be sponsored, other optionsinclude setting up in your GitHub profile.
You don't even have to useGitHub really for this.
You can set up a profileand accept donations.
Um, Joe Dolson had started thatfor his work on accessibility.
He is part of the accessibility team.
He reviews a lot of what goes on in everyrelease for accessibility related areas.
Joe is an accessibility consultant,but Joe needed to do that without
having all of the client work going on,and so he set up his GitHub profile.
He let the community now and peoplestarted giving, some individuals
just started giving in on a regularbasis to the work that Joe does.
So you can accept regulardonation type of things.
But then the flip side, now thatI'm a GoDaddy, my role at GoDaddy
is broadly open source community.
And I get to work, another coworkeris here with me, um, Mike in the back,
and so helps work on our initiativesof how we are as a company also
being responsible and contributing.
And how we allocate staff resourcesfor that because you have to
account for that somewhere.
Uh, and I've learned what the redtape is in corporate America life
of how to get approval for that.
So when you work for really bigenterprises, they don't wanna write checks
to just some random person that justwants to be paid to just go do that thing.
Right?
They want employees maybe, Conversationslike WordPress has a release coming
out, what should we know as far asour hosting goes or what those things.
So I need to know details like thisand that can create some red tape
in terms of just giving money out.
Some companies, especially thosethat are not publicly held,
can adapt fast for those needs.
Automattic is great at that.
Um, my budget was setOctober of last year.
I don't get to decide things on a suddenwhim for how we spend certain money.
And so from that side of it, um, and Iasked Hari ahead of time about mentioning
this, my, uh, but I'm not contributingand on the clock and doing mom things, I
have a six and a seven year old almost.
Um, When I'm not busy with all of that,I helped co-found the WP Community
Collective, and that is a nonprofit.
It is running through Open Collective.
Open Collective is a foundationthat exists for open source
projects, publicly transparentin how the banking gets handled.
So if you don't wanna stuff moneyin an envelope and mail it off to
your favorite WordPress contributoracross any of our 21 teams, it
doesn't have to be the core team.
It could be.
We've got 20, no, 22 now, becauseyesterday we launched a new team.
Yes.
So, um, if you're not wild about shovingmoney in an envelope and hoping the mail
arrives for them, uh, the WP CommunityCollective or the WP CCC exists so that
whether a person or an organization,a company would like to give money
to those that want to be sponsored.
Then that organization exists.
And I will say we are stillin the early phases of this.
Um, we've invited the executivedirector of WordPress to have
a, a say in what areas are beingsponsored, what are the needs of the
project, what does WordPress need.
We know that we needpeople plugin review team.
Because they were small, backlogged,and people want to retire and
they rightly should they say, thisis time and, and I'm done here.
Um, we know that that's a need.
We know that there is a needfor more accessibility work.
We know that, um, there are needsvariously across the project.
And so we're just beginning to get going.
And I can say that my ownemployer does fund every year,
uh, diverse speaker initiatives.
To get diverse speakersto WordCamps as speakers.
And, um, I got the email confirmationwhile I've been here that that is
almost done, and it's been a few monthsin the process because internally
at my employer, it takes some time.
To clear all of the red tape tothen onboard a new vendor and then
transfer the funds to that vendorthat will then transfer the, which
is the WP ccc, and then transferthose funds to the recipients.
So there's a lot of work thatis still there to be done.
And I'm studying what other opensource projects do as well about
how other open source projectsfund contributors, because I think.
Gosh, there are some really big, I mean,think about every server out there is
probably running Linux in some fashion.
How do they fund whatthey do on the servers?
There's entire open source stuffin the automotive industry.
Who knew?
And it's on Mars inside of the Rover.
It's everywhere.
And so how do these other big opensource projects handle their funds?
And I'm just starting to touch.
Re researching and re like understandingthat and what can we learn from
some of those spaces as well.
So if you're at an organizationthat wishes to give funds, see me.
If you are a person that wants the courageto go up and boldly tell people, here I
am, I wish to be sponsored and I don'twant the stigma of asking for money.
See me about that as well.
Hari Shankar: Thank you,thank you, thank you.
So he wants to get sponsored, reachout to companies, look at the op,
look at the WPCC, look at differentopportunities, start a GitHub profile.
Right.
Okay.
Excellent.
So additionally I can also share, Imean my full, uh, I work full-time
on five for the future these days.
And I'm also looking at seeing.
If this can be done project wide as well,like if there's something that can be
done where, you know, I can, we can bringcompanies together and, uh, you know,
uh, and, and make teams together to bringout sponsorship opportunities and bring
out, like both connect, connect peoplewho want to be sponsored to companies.
So, you know how WordPress, it's,it's, it's an open source project.
It's built by a group of people.
So this something like this needs a, abroader support, but hopefully someday
we'll have this, like something likeGitHub sponsors built into WordPress.
Or maybe not in that way, butlike some, some form of it.
But in short, any contributorshere who want to get sponsored,
please feel free to ask.
And I think, uh, um, I'm gonna probablyask somebody else here about this as well.
So, What would make a good pitch?
I mean, tell, let's say youwanna be contributed con you
want to be sponsored by somebody.
Like how do you, how doyou like approach somebody?
Like who, like how doyou make a case for it?
So does anybody have any thoughts?
So this open to you can,
Afshana Diya: I can share.
Go ahead.
Uh, so for our company, uh, Isaw, uh, some people started
contributing, but if you ask me, uh,to select someone for sponsoring.
For their contribution, I would like tosee how they have already contributed.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Excellent.
So if you have already contributed,you showed your passion for that
specific thing, uh, then probablyit'll be easier for, uh, companies
to select you for sponsorship.
So first start contributing.
And then, uh, look for thecompanies, ask for sponsorship.
Uh, I think if you have done majorcontribution, there are a lot of
WordPress product company who are happyto contribute for your, uh, contributions.
Right.
Thank you.
Hari Shankar: So I guess like firststart contributing as a volunteer
and once you've sort of builtthat and start looking at things.
And I also want to resurface likemany companies like Yost as a
diversity fund and you, you mentionedthe GoDaddy has a travel fund.
So many companies, and I guess someof the, I, I forget the exact names,
but like many, many organizations,many companies actually have some
funds like this, folks who travel toWordCamps and things like that, right?
Afshana Diya: A lot of companyhave funds and a lot of company.
Are willing to give more fund.
Exactly.
Uh, right now, since, uh, probablyby seeing big companies, even
the small companies are willingto contribute, uh, as a sponsor.
Hari Shankar: Right, right, right.
So I think to summarize what we'vediscussed here, so if you, if you
would like to get sponsored, just ask.
There's so many companies out there,there's so many opportunities.
Uh, this Courtney mentioned GitHub.
I think maybe you couldeven start a Patreon right?
Yeah.
So many officers actually use Patreon.
So you could start a Patreon, youcould start a GitHub sponsors,
you could reach out to WPCC.
You could reach out tocompanies themselves, like
maybe write a proposal, right?
So, uh, I can see a couple of sponsoredcontributors over here and be folks
who are willing to spot, maybe likeafter the discussion we can come
to you looking at you if one, tosee how you probably got sponsored.
Anyway.
So, uh, we need to move on to thenext part of our discussion, which
is like, how can a company donatesan employee to the WordPress project?
So, um, well this isjust as important, man.
As we get into this, I want toquickly talk about the reason
why companies should do this.
I mean, if you look at it from acorporate or a business perspective,
how does it make business sense for acompany to, you know, contribute people?
Because like, it seems like an overhead,especially mind you, we are in very
complicated economic times wherecompanies have hiring freeze going on.
Like my, my company has one.
I mean, I mean, in a sense, likemany, many companies are not, like,
they're not actively hiring, right?
That's, that's, that's what's happening.
Like, many, many.
That's, that's, that's what'sgoing on in the ecosystem.
Like, um, so in, in this, inthis situation, like how does
it make sense for a business toactually sponsor a contributors?
What, what is a business sense?
I'm gonna open this questionto all the panelists, so maybe
I'll start with the Emanuel.
Emanuel Blagonic: Um, Personally, Idon't know because I was never in that
position to, to work in a company.
I'm freelancer all my life.
Um, but imagine WordPress 10 yearsago, if we didn't have all these
contributors, if we didn't have allthese companies that stood be behind
how many features wouldn't be done.
And I'm not talk, I'm not talkingjust like a new core feature
or a new plugin or something.
I'm talking about myriadof other different things.
So I think that's the biggest benefit.
WordPress now and WordPress 10 yearsago completed two different things.
WordPress now powered so many websites,uh, from like small family run businesses
to blogs to huge, uh, commercialwebsites, web shops and whatnot.
Uh, that wouldn't be possible withoutcontributions and without paid
contributions because everything isokay when, like, things are good.
But from time to time you need likechoose between do I want to work for
free out of my passion and like outof the need to help other people.
And like provide for my family, for mykids, uh, for people that I love and I.
I, I want to help them, uh,live their life and whatnot.
So I'd say that that'slike the biggest benefit.
If we want to move WordPress even further,like to democratize publishing even more,
uh, democratize Web, not just publishing,then we need like to have companies too.
Who understand that, and I'mreally happy today to see so many
companies that like contribute.
I mean, before this, uh, this panel,when I was asked to, to be part
of, I, I didn't know you guys, Ididn't know of Afshana as well.
I didn't know how manycompanies contribute.
And I was like, when I wasresearching for this panel, I went
to make.wordpress.org and I see.
This person contributes like 40 hours.
Uh, this person is contributing for 10hours, for four hours, and it doesn't
matter how many hours do we contribute,but that someone else has faith in what
we do and they're willing to pay us forthat, like, for this peace of mind that
we need to have to like, uh, give it back.
Hari Shankar: I wanna pass this toCourtney because I think she's only
a very unique person to answer this.
Courtney Robertson: So what do you,so I know Hari you have full-time
hours at Automattic, and the way thatAutomattic tends to organize is there
is a division of Automattic that onlydoes done work things for the most part.
Um, whereas at other companies you havekind of a mixture of things going on.
So my role is not full-time.
My role is, um, Again, it varies.
Where are we in the release cycle, whatare the fires that I need to put out
internally or externally or whatever.
Um, so my role, it kind of fluctuates.
I would average that well over halfof my time is in.org related efforts.
Somewhere between 50 to 75% ofmy hours are.org related efforts.
Um, and so we have a kind ofa mixture of things going on.
There are, there are individuals that we.
That we sponsor that are not employees.
They do not in any way act as employees.
They are not in our internal commsat all, and we just know that they're
doing good work and, um, we give themsome money because they should be able
to not do clients and do that work.
Then there are some folks like myself thatit's part of our job description, and that
might be all the way up through full-time.
We've got two full-timecontributors, one to Core, which
is Mike and one to Gutenberg,which will be George Maade feel.
Um, and that's, that's theirpurview of what they do.
Um, and then we have some ad hoc stuff.
So, uh, some of our folks in Pagely,especially in Pagely, will find, um, some
something in PHP that needs fixing orsomeone finds a, a typo in some Gutenberg
change log or whatever, and they just fixit because they see it and they're there.
And that's not necessarilydedicated time in any capacity.
They're just, they happen to beneeding that item from, from something
and they spot a, a bug or whatever,and they do the responsible thing
and they log it on the clock andfix the change when they can do it.
Um, so it's, it's varied interms of how, from the business
side of it, we structure things.
And one of the areas that I'm alwayslooking to improve without being
overly creepy is tracking metrics.
Because corporate folks, in order tojustify this to the financial board
that owns a publicly held company,I've gotta have some data to tell them,
here is why this is important, right?
But quantifying, how long doesit take to think about a thing?
Because knowledge is work,being able to sit and do things.
So tracking shouldn't be abouthow many Pull requests or how many
people were listed on a core release.
Because we're contributingto all of these teams, right?
I'm on the training team.
I've been leading meta meetings.
That doesn't show up on a corerelease in terms of props.
So props aren't a core.
Props for a release isnot a good metric for us.
Um, clocking hours thinking,well, that, that's weird too.
Um, and then also people don'tlike to have their privacy.
Invaded and they don't want to be likequantified necessarily and all the things.
So it gets complicated and I'mstill exploring areas with that.
I love talking aboutthose things with people.
Um, I, I feel like I understandboth sides of the equation.
Oh, we got a question.
Go ahead, Javier.
Hi.
I'll repeat it.
Javier Casares: Yeah.
Uh,
so I, I have a big voice.
That's okay.
So want mic?
Okay.
So we've been thinking about thisin the hosting team for some time
because we know what we need.
We know some companies in this case,in the hosting world, but have money.
So, uh, should be the make teams involvedin this five for the future part.
So I'm, I'm one of the team reps, so maybeI can write like a little project, maybe
quantify hours, maybe quantify the money,maybe, and publish that in some place.
And get all the people involved andbe there because companies maybe don't
want to be involved controlling thepeople, but I'm one of the team reps
I can check if things don't get done.
So maybe I, we can be likesomebody inside the process.
Courtney Robertson: Actually that ideathat you shared, uh, a couple of different
learn.wordpress.org has a website, folks,and it needs some help in development
and functionality and some things.
Not only do we need content and we needto know what people need to learn to
get started and to keep learning becauseWordPress and languages keep evolving,
we also need to develop the website.
And so a couple of companies that I hadsome conversations with, I've kicked
around that idea of similar Javier.
Um, Javier was saying about basicallywriting a document and here's what needs
to be done and kind of quantifying it, butfrom the team rep's perspective of things.
And so I've kicked out theidea of running a sprint.
Basically, if you're a dev,you're familiar with sprints.
Sprint is, you have a big longepic that tells what, what the
whole scope of maybe the year or acouple years phases of projects is.
And within that you have sprints.
And here's what we're doingin this little window of time.
And that little window of time mightstill be like a six week window of
time, but you say, here's everythingwe're going to work on and get done.
And, and I, I worked on these sprintswith Juan that's sitting over here a lot.
And then at the end you havea retro and you talk about
what worked and didn't work.
And I think the idea of, um, otherorganizations that might want to
contribute, Setting up something like asprint that says, oh great, this group
of already existing coworkers mightwant to do the thing and somebody,
they need someone to organize what thething is that they're going to do, and
they can swing in as a team unit thatalready flows well, follow the guidelines
that.org has and get that knocked out.
That can be really interesting.
That's something that I've thoughtabout, but it's great to hear
other teams are thinking about ittoo, and how we could set that up.
Attendee 1: Um, I just have a like idea ona thing which could be maybe problematic
a little bit, is about decision makingprocess by who is there, makes a
decision, and if you have a existingteam from, let's say, a hosting company.
Who sponsors a whole team to do a hosting,um, task for the WordPress community.
This could be an issue maybe.
Courtney Robertson: Yes.
It could also, yes, it very much couldbe an issue, but it's also an issue from
both sides of this who can, who who getssponsored can even be a privilege because.
I have been able to contributein some fashion for since 2009.
So when my now employer saw thatI had contributing experience,
then they wanted to hire me.
But what about the person that can'tcontribute until they get the sponsorship?
Well, maybe speaking at a WordCampcould be part of that, and that
might be a lesser commitment, right?
Um, but then the flip side of who getthe decision makers, that that is,
that is a, a big and a hard thing.
So when, um, I love what Yost doeswhen they hold contributor days.
They invite the public, theydon't have internal conversations.
They, during pandemic, we did three orfour, and I got up at 4:00 AM in my time
zone to join them, um, as part of thetraining team and said, Here is what
the training team and the marketingteam are collaborating on today.
And uh, we were all together in Zoom withYost and some of them were in office and
the public also is, so maybe sprints likethat could have people join in, um, as
well and not be exclusive in that sense.
Um, I think that that's still, yeah, it'ssomething, it's like an idea to play with
and see could we maybe work, make thattype of situation work because from the
employer's side, If they, it depends on,on the company and what they're doing.
Uh, I know that there is alarge scale agency that has
wanted people to contribute.
They go in and they get lost in Slackchannels and meetings and things don't
get, they don't finish an initiative.
It's just it does, it feelslike they're sending someone
in that might be wasting time.
Even from, from theemployer's side of things.
So from an employer's side, they'reless likely to give people that
time that are already employeesbecause it's directionless.
And so having some kind of a directionbut not being exclusive, maybe
we could play with ideas on that.
I don't know.
Thank you folks.
Hari Shankar: Uh, Ithink, um, do you want to,
Patricia: I just want to say that, uh,it was planned to be finished now, but
if everyone is excited, we can keep on.
Talking about it.
Hari Shankar: I think we, we arealmost done, but uh, just wanna quickly
wrap things up and maybe, maybe liketake a couple more Go, go for it.
So
Emanuel Blagonic: what, what we discussedtoday, um, I mean we were one talking
mostly, but I think that a really goodthing that we could do afterwards is
just write a post and Courtney I, I.
I'm looking at you because Ithink that you, you are the
person who will write that.
Maybe just like to, to summarizethings that we, we talked
and like kick, I'm sorry.
Kick some ideas, uh, inside all that.
Yeah.
Birgit Olzem: Um, I think, uh, I whatsparked with this idea to get, uh, or
found the idea that, uh, people like getsponsored, uh, to contribute to WordPress
In 2014 when I, uh, attended to theword Camp San Francisco and Community
Summit, and since then I'm looking for.
A company who's willing tosponsor my contribution time.
I took a three year sabbaticalbecause of my health issues, and
I'm like, you, uh, self-employed andnot that business type of person.
I'm a.
Sometimes a people pleasing person.
So, but I also, uh, have not that bigexposure before because I did also
the contribution, which with, I haveno props and it's not that visible.
So, um, that's also an issue to.
To make yourself as a contributor alsovisible to, to get acknowledged about it.
So, and that's also I think, a difficultpart because the most contributor I've met
on, on this, uh, journey over contributingto WordPress over 13 years now, um, is.
A lot of people areintroverted and are shy to ask.
So, so I think it's a responsibilityof our community to make tools and
connections available for them sothey don't have this high bar level
to, um, overcome this, um, yeah,and, and get the courage to, yeah, I
want to contribute to WordPress andmore amount of time I can afford.
Uh, so I get sponsored.
Yes.
So thank you.
Hari Shankar: So, uh, go ahead.
Afshana Diya: Yeah, so I would like that,uh, for I can understand your point.
Um, uh, in our company we have the peoplewho are contributing for our company.
They have like dedicated ourcontributing not the full-time.
So our challenges is like all ofthose people have specific roles,
so we cannot contribute theirfull-time for the contribution, right?
So we try to look for the people,uh, who are already contributing
so we can sponsor them.
But interestingly, we didn't findanyone because no one asking for it.
Hari Shankar: Um, you should talk again.
What do you doing this part?
Afshana Diya: Yeah, because, and I,I, I have, uh, this discussion with
few of other product owners as well.
They also want to contribute, uh, butthey don't have their extra resource
that they can donate full-time.
And I think, uh, many of them would liketo contribute, not probably 10 or 20
sponsor contributor, but probably 1, 2, 5.
That would be good enough, but.
They, I need, I mean, we need tofind them somewhere that they are
looking for the sponsorship theyare, uh, contributing already.
Right.
Emanuel Blagonic: And just to, tocontinue on that thought, I think
that there are companies that are for,for them it's easier to give money.
Then to find a personin, inside a company.
For example, I'm working as a freelancer.
My partner and I, we are like a twoman band company and we are constantly
donating things like for, I don'tknow, people in need or whatever.
It doesn't need to be like a huge amount.
But, uh, finding a way to like channelthat money to people that deserve it
and like do a lot of contributions tothe WordPress that would be like, uh,
Hari Shankar: Yeah, I, I think youshould look at Courtney's initiative.
Yeah.
Alright, so, um, we are almostfive minutes ahead of time.
So I wanna quickly summarizewhat we discussed today.
I mean, especially around the, um,so for, for folks who are looking
for contributions, Please feel free.
You should advocate by yourself.
Like write a proposal, create a GitHubprofile, GitHub sponsor profile, create
a Patreon look into options like WPCC,there's so many, and hopefully we'll
even have something in the project,or at least you can come and talk to
me because this is my full-time job.
I, I connect contributors to sponsors.
This is what I do for work.
This is what I do for a living,so I, I can also maybe help you.
Um, and, and for companieslooking at sponsorship, that's
definitely a benefit to it.
Like all of you mentioned this.
And a couple, couple morepoints that I'd like to add.
Personally, I think there's a business,like there's a solid business case
to contributing, especially ifyou're a WordPress company, you,
you contribute, your employeesknow where the product is going.
And like, especially if you needhosting lead plugins, you can actually
make business decisions based on that.
And did you know that contributionis a learning opportunity?
Like really?
So if you have, especially if you'rea small agency and if you have core
contributors, that definitely elevatesyour, you know, like your credibility.
I've seen this locally.
I've seen small companieswho've contributed to core, like
they've actually improved theirreputation, they've gotten work.
This has actually improved their business.
And not just that youremployees, they learn so much.
So I'm working on a Courtneyis also part of this.
So we are working on a contributormentorship project where like,
Both sponsored and not sponsoredcontributors, they can actually learn
things, new people coming into theproject, they can actually learn things.
They learn actual skillswhich they can put to work.
So you can, you can becomebetter as an individual.
You can become better as aprofessional by contributing.
Right.
So hopefully we have a future wherelearn and Contribution come together.
So we have like an internshipprogram or something.
Yeah, no, just, just doingsome wild blue sky thinking.
So, uh, I think we can wrap up,but maybe we can take like one
or two more questions from theaudience in case anybody's curious.
Any any thoughts?
Any questions?
Go ahead.
Attendee 2: Uh, hello.
My name is Arson.
So I founded the company and we aredoing WordPress for about 10 years.
When now when I'm trying to hirenew people, I see that young age is
not interested to work in workers.
So I'm wondering if big companies asa strategy, To keep WordPress going
to keep WordPress growing, and uh,maybe they need to look for young age
people and try to support them, try tosponsor them to make the contribution.
What do you think?
Hari Shankar: Can I, can we havean educator here who I think,
Courtney Robertson: so I was teachingWordPress High schools in 2015 using
Pippins plug-ins, if anyone's been aroundand remembers the Pippins plug-ins videos.
These days though, we havelearned@wordpress.org, and one of the
dreams that I have is that we take.
A combo of the content that's there.
And we, we will need so much content.
We need, we need as much, if notmore help than docs because we
can address people through meetupgroups, through direct learning.
We've got courses on there.
Um, educators could use all ofthose materials in classrooms.
They're fit for classrooms Right now.
We have some rules where we can directlymarket to youth with it because that
would, there's legal stuff, but ateacher could say, this video is fine
for my classroom and I'm gonna show it.
So bringing it into educationalinstitutions and then using things
like the mentorship program.
Hari and I last night were talking,um, about specifically what if
this mentorship program were toapproach, uh, technical schools.
I was teaching in a WordPress in a highschool that was a technical school,
so the students were either collegebound or off directly to work out
of computer programming background.
And so what if we approach placeslike that and or higher ed institutes?
That, that could be partof their internship during
their training time as well.
And already there are, thereare a lot of educators using
things like EduBlogs in schools.
Uh, students have been exposedto WordPress a lot of times.
Not always, but I, I've seenit pop up in different places.
It's just that there is a disconnectfrom the time the teacher stops using it.
To them out in the workforce, and theydon't know that the community exists.
They don't know that there are theseresources and people that are desperate
for them and ready to come and help.
But it's out of the scope of wordpress.orgto approach every university in
every possible continent and right.
So there is some bridge to happen withthat in a long range type of fashion.
What I would like to do is seethat we've got enough complete
learning pathways, meaning as.
Series of courses on learn and thenstart working with the locale ambassadors
through Polyglots around the globe andsaying, Hey, who do you know in education?
Do you have anyone in your meetupgroups that are like teachers
that could get us in touch?
And I've been in touch withsome folks that work with, um,
the training materials that.
The EU organization implements thatthey're creating some materials
specifically around WordPress already.
So couldn't we start talking with some ofthose kind of places where the standards
of education find out some of the, atleast the really large language areas.
Um, the most common language is let's getprioritized finding out the educational
institutions within those and say,do you know that this resource exists
and that we're powering 43% of the weband we could do that and let's keep
working on our youth camp program.
We had a youth workshop yesterday.
Um, a youth camp just happenedlast week in India that I
saw went phenomenally well.
So let's keep doing that as well.
Not saying that that's not stoppingthat, but keep doing some of those things
Hari Shankar: does really feel.
Do you wanna add a thing?
Any more questions?
Yeah.
We good?
Yeah.
Birgit Olzem: Uh, just a quick question.
Um, I, I, uh, I'm in awe that youput so much effort into it already.
Um, can you enlighten us about, uh,the future plans about the program?
Is there kind of, uh, committeewith our team and, uh, mentorship.
Um, uh, deputy program, especially forthe five, for the future, um, initiative.
I would love to see thatbecause, uh, as we see in the w w
diversity with the speaker supporttraining, uh, it's awesome to see.
But I would like to see something likethat in, uh, in the five for the future.
That we have some kind of deputyprogram, uh, to help companies
also to vet contributors so that.
Maybe we need to make sure that there'salso a kind of quality also that I, I fear
that some people are jumping on the board.
I, I would like to get somemoney to put some fixed three
tickets and then disappear.
So not, not that many people are intendingto, but I think, uh, it may be, uh,
water down the initiative if we have suchamount as we see on a, um, Company, um,
who contributed five for the future, andthe entry from the companies who say I
sponsor, uh, um, my employee, um, with,uh, 10 hours per week and the employee
does maybe five minutes per month.
So the, the spam on, onthe five for the future.
That's what I'm thinking aboutto, um, maybe install a kind
of deputy program for this.
Hari Shankar: Can I.
Courtney Robertson: Yes, please.
Hari Shankar: That's, that's a greatquestion, first of all, and uh,
honestly, I don't know the answerfor it, but five for the future.
Currently at this point,it's a, it's a website.
It started off as a, like, as Courtneymentioned, Matt, it came out of a blog
post, Matt, asking people to contribute.
Then in 20 18, 20 19, we have a website.
We don't have a program over it yet.
That's what I'm trying, I'm tryingto build a program around it, so, The
community team right now has a contributorworking group, uh, Courtney a part of it,
and then, and like some of the community,Mike here o here is also a part of it.
So what we're trying to do is weare trying to refine contributions.
So the contributor working groupactually kicked off in 2021.
It was kind of, uh, it wasactive during the pandemic.
Then it like, Sort of got defunct.
Now we are trying to arrive it.
So once the mentorship program is likemore or less set, I think maybe this,
this working group can focus moreon other things like contributions.
So maybe it can, it can look atcontributions and improving the way
things are and looking at five forthe future and things like that.
So that's a directionwhere things are going.
You asked about the directionof the mentorship program.
I think that was the firstpart of your question.
Honestly.
I dunno.
So we're right.
So to explain, to sharemore context with you.
Uh, this working groupis creating a mentorship.
Even Patricia is also part of this.
So we are creating a mentorshipprogram for WordPress.
We do have pilot.
It's a test really.
So there's gonna be a firstcohort starting in July.
So we are going to put out a call formentee soon in a more public qu space.
We'll be inviting, we'll be getting,selecting 10 people, 10, uh,
new contributors from WordPress.
We'll have a group of mentees, mentors.
So all these people, they'llbe together in a Slack channel
for one, one month, four weeks.
Uh, these folks will getthe training and mentorship.
They'll learn about the project,and they'll pick a make team.
They'll start contributing towardsthat team, and our hope is that
once they graduate, they stayon as long the contributors.
So this is open to both sponsoredand non-sponsored folks.