Introducing Nancy Lyons

CEO and co-founder of Clockwork, an enterprise web development company in Minneapolis MN. We’ve known her through the internet for years, and it was a delight to get to talk to her in this episode.

Show Notes

https://www.nancylyons.com/

https://www.clockwork.com/

Transcript:

Topher: Hey everybody, welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Topher, your host, and my regular co-host is Nyasha and she’s here. 

Nyasha: Hey, I’m Nyasha.

Topher: And I stepped on her introduction, and I’m sorry. 

Nyasha: It’s okay.

Topher: Before we get going, I want to say thanks to Nexcess for our hosting, and for sponsoring us. They’re good friends. They’re good hosts. They have some really cool WooCommerce automated testing. I don’t know anybody else that does that. Automated testing is awesome, and will save you time and money. They have a cool Sales Performance Monitor and a plugin performance monitor to keep your store running super fast. 

All right, our guest today is Nancy Lyons. Welcome. 

Nyasha: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Topher: You’re welcome. The first time I ever heard of you was my wife and I bought a remote ticket to Prestige Home and we put it on TV. So we watched your talk on TV. And as it was going, it was like, is it too late to get there? How many hours is it to Minneapolis? And we decided we probably couldn’t get there before you were done. Then we came back the next year just to meet you and you weren’t there.

Nancy: That’s rude.

Topher: I’ve been mad at you ever since. 

Nancy: I’m just glad that you liked the talk. But I feel like we’ve talked off and on over the years on Twitter.

Topher: Yeah. 

Nancy: Like when I realized who this podcast was with, I was like, “Oh, I know that guy. He and his wife are like a power couple of WordPress. Power couple.” 

Nyasha: Oh, yeah. 

Nancy: Right?

Topher: Yeah. Well, we try. Yeah, I thought it was funny because usually I get requests all the time, all the time from office assistants. Hey, my boss is somebody who is so awesome. You really want to have him on your podcast. I’m just so tired of them, I just delete them almost out of hand. I literally was like, “Nancy? Oh, well, yeah, let’s do that.”

Nancy: Sweet. I’m glad I didn’t get deleted. You know, we are on a growth mission, so we have a relatively new, about 18 months chief growth officer. And one of her tactics in the broader marketing plan is just a podcast campaign. So she’s actually working with a booking agency to identify relevant podcasts where, you know, I might be a helpful guest. And then they’re doing the outreach, which is weird for me too. Like, they do the whole media kit, and then they sell me.

So I actually had a recording earlier today even and it’s weird to do a couple of recordings in the same day because then you’re like, did I say this already? Is this menopause? But it’s actually been fun because I’ve met, you know, people with different businesses and different interests and podcasts focused on a wide variety of things. So it’s actually been kind of fun.

Topher: That’s cool. I really enjoy being on podcasts, too. And I too have done it that often, I think, “Oh, did I already say this? Do they want to hear the story again?”

Nancy: Exactly. Right. I think this must be what early-onset dementia is like. 

Topher: So tell us who you are and why you’re here, what you do, and WordPress and all that kind of stuff. Where do you live? 

Nancy: Sure. Well, I live in Minneapolis. My name is Nancy Lyons, and I am the co-founder and CEO of a company called Clockwork. Clockwork is an experienced design and technology consultancy. A staple of our businesses is WordPress development.

We also in the last couple of years spun out a smaller agile studio called Tempo. And Tempo is… you know, Clockwork does a lot of work for the enterprise and we roll in a lot of customer experience, user experience, and change strategy consulting, and then we actually build the solutions that we collaborate toward with our clients.

And Clockwork has clients like OPTiM, Ameriprise, UnitedHealth, Ecolab, General Motors. Tempo is actually a studio that was built for startups, small and medium businesses using, you know, obviously a very lean approach, a very lean, agile approach to delivery. So we’re delivering much quicker and WordPress is a staple of that business as well. 

So I think it speaks to the fact that WordPress is appropriate for the enterprise and WordPress is appropriate for, you know, startups and small businesses. And having the right partner helps you determine the right implementation of WordPress. So we’re in Minneapolis, but we have clients all over.

Nyasha: That is cool.

Topher: Yeah. I really liked the idea of having the smaller, lean agency for the people who need smaller, lean stuff. 

Nancy: I mean, it’s been good for us because also what we’re finding is even larger companies that don’t want to invest a ton of dollars in testing an idea will come through the Tempo doors, and we’ll test and run and prototype some of their concepts with them and they’re not going through this giant process and there’s not so many stops and starts in the process. It’s a much quicker experience. 

Topher: Yeah. I noticed LinkedIn says you’ve been running an agency for 21 years now. 

Nancy: Hmm.

Topher: I am someone who has been around the agency trail a lot. Especially in the last few years, agencies are struggling to keep people employed lately. Are you still happy with that? I’m not asking if you’re happy if you did it. Are you still happy continuing to do it? Do you see you doing it till you’re 80? 

Nancy: I’m barely gonna breathe till I’m 80. So that’s an interesting question. First of all, Clockwork wasn’t our first rodeo. So we had done this before. We actually started-

Topher: I’m sorry. Who’s we?

Nancy: Oh, sure. I have business partners, and I’ve been with them for 175 years. That’s what it feels like, speaking about, you know, something. They actually started up an internet service provider in 1994. 

Topher: Oh, wow. 

Nancy: And that is how I met them, and ultimately became a partner and the president of that company, which was… Is it okay if we have dogs in the hallway, this hallway chats? 

Nyasha: Yeah, of course. We love dogs.

Nancy: He picks now to bark, right? 

Topher: Yeah. 

Nancy: Sorry about him. That’s Nacho. And he’s very, very, very vocal. I didn’t think for a minute that he would be backing. My apologies. Anyway. So we started in internet service provider in ’94, ’95, built the first website for a commercial client in 1995, sold that company in 2001. We had had an investor prior to that, and worked with that investor pretty heavily, and then walked away from that started Clockwork in January of 2002. 

And we called it a startover instead of a startup. We sort of had a better idea of how we wanted to operate. And we’ve evolved over those 21 years. We started out as a web dev shop. And I think the distinction, relative to what you said, is I don’t consider us an agency. When we started we were… I mean, you know, the term is subjective. You can see an agency the way you want to and I’ll see the way I want to. 

But when we first started, we were competing with advertising agencies. And advertising agencies saw digital as the bastard stepchild, right? It’s something we put in the basement. There’s too sad, sad developers down there, and we throw creative ideas at them and they execute in line with our expectations and deliver something that maybe is functional but not user-friendly, and maybe delivers on business requirements. 

We build software and change businesses. We’re doing a lot. So we don’t do digital marketing. We don’t do banner ads. We’re not doing pay-per-click stuff. We’re not doing any of that. We are doing consulting around customer experience and user experience, product development.

We have a change enablement practice, which makes us different because technology changes big businesses. Businesses are fundamentally changed when we build the solutions for them, right? So we are helping our clients think through how to bring their workforce along to ensure the success of these products. So that’s a little different than what we see in your average dev shop.

But over the years, we have evolved from being considered an agency to really being a consultancy. And now we see ourselves competing with some of the big three. We see us invited to tables where we’re also seeing Slalom or Accenture. And we do as much thinking and innovation work, strategy work as we do development work. So it’s a little different. 

Do I love it? Do I see myself doing it forever? I’ll tell you, I don’t see myself working for anybody else for a while. And there’s a reason for that. I think the reason we’ve been around for 21 years is we don’t have a holding company trying to tell us… you know, I mean, we’re still… I mean, I know you can relate to this. I’m going to assume that you can both relate to this, but tell me if you can’t. You’ve been doing it so long, you know what’s up, right? 

Topher: Yeah. 

Nancy: And some force comes in and acquires the organization, that changes everything because suddenly they’re less concerned about quality, more concerned about bottom line, or less concerned about security, more concerned about budget, or the sale itself.

I mean, my God, when we were acquired the last time, I remember sitting in rooms where all they cared about was the sales pipeline and the closed sales. Not whether or not we could actually deliver the work, not whether or not we had the right people in the right seats to deliver on the promises.

Topher: Yeah, the money.

Nancy: It was all about the money. And that’s just not who we’ve ever been. And you know this too. I mean, I hate to keep saying we’re both old, but come on, we’re both old for the internet. We’ve been around for a long time. I’m like the grandma in internet years. And you know that there’s a lot of people out there that still deliver vapor, that still talk a lot of air, but couldn’t actually execute if their lives depended on it, that don’t understand the nuances of the technology. We are not those people. 

And I think that 21 years with this company alone, but that, you know, 26 or seven years cumulatively is really quite something and valuable to our clients. And the fact that we enjoy delivering makes us different. And we enjoy the success that our clients experience as a result of our relationship. That also makes us different. 

So, do I want to do this forever? No, because where there is a job, there are people and people are starting to be the hardest part about technology. But I can’t see myself doing it for anybody else anytime soon. So there you go. I think we may find some of the same things we found 25 years ago. And that is it’s really hard to compete when the holding companies own all the talent. You know, when the big monsters own all the talent, it’s hard to compete. 

The wage inflation situation that we’re all experiencing is happening because of, you know, the talent wars that are occurring. And it’s hard to create sustainable businesses in the shadow of all of that. 

Topher: Yeah. 

Nancy: I’m a windbag. Sorry.

Topher: No, that’s all right. 

Nyasha: That is okay.

Topher: That is exactly what I was looking for. Do you ever go to WordCamp anymore? 

Nancy: I haven’t. I haven’t but I’m not opposed to it. I’m not opposed to it. I go where I’m asked to speak because I like to have a job. I like to be put to work. It’s fun. It’s fun. And you know, I don’t talk about tech hardly at all. I’m really talking about motivating people. 

I’m doing a talk on Thursday for the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association, and that talk is about not fearing the robots. Like get in the driver’s seat and stop being afraid. You know, because most of the conversations about developing technology, emerging technologies are ridiculous. Like the idea that we’re suddenly going to be in a sequel to repo man just blows my mind. 

Topher: That leads me to my next thing. You do a lot of things besides run an agency. I have an email newsletter, and it’s about 1/10 the length of yours. So I know how long it takes to put something like that together. How do you manage to fit all that in? 

Nancy: Well, with help. I mean, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have help. I do have help. I have a secret weapon. Her name is Liz. And Liz helps me with it. Now, I do write it. I do conceive of the ideas. But I’ll tell you between Liz and Nathan, Nathan is the… he’s the proofer. He looks for my typos. So if you ever see a typo in that newsletter, just call Nathan out and I’ll have him drawn and quartered.

I mean, I have a great team. I mean, nothing good happens because of one person, right? I’m grateful that I have a subscriber base for the newsletter. The newsletter I do because I love it and I hear from people every month when I send it out. I really try to make it meaningful and helpful. So that is of just a personal joy. 

The book writing is about credibility, but also because I have something to say. It’s like, you know, I wrote that book “Work Like a Boss”, and honestly, it’s a love letter to everybody who just can’t get their feet under them, you know, in the workplace, because the whole book was about having agency and self-empowerment and self-awareness. 

Because I think unless you work for yourself, you witness how often people just sort of throw their hands up and act powerless. I don’t think we’re living in a time where anybody can afford to sit in their lack of power and hope things improve.

Nyasha: Yes. That’s amazing. I want to add, like you said earlier that you’re old, you’re not. What you are is a powerful force of awesomeness. And I have to learn from you because you hit on so many things I’m looking for. I want my own business. I want my own agency. I really don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this for other people. I think it takes a wise and powerful person to realize that and know that and to execute it like you’re doing. Like, with the time and everything, I know you have your secret weapon, but I just think it’s amazing. It is amazing what you’re doing. 

Nancy: You’re kind. I have a great team. I have a great team. And honestly, I mean, what you’ve just said is exactly sort of my career path in that I’ve always been too much. I’ve always been a windbag. I’ve always been too masculine. So I don’t fit the lady business mold. I’ve always been too opinionated. Right? 

So working in a typical situation, there just were never any welcome mats thrown out for me when I was, you know, on the job hunt. When I talk to young folks, I’m reminded of how often I was told I was too much. “You’re too much. You’re too big. You’re too loud, too opinionated, too dyke-y, too all sorts of things. 

And I think we’re living in a time where we have to start embracing people’s toos because that’s what makes them exceptional. And it’s exceptional people that are going to help us evolve our businesses and get them to the next level. So I really believe that the traditional ways of work just don’t work anymore. And that’s why work is so broken. That’s why we have quiet quitting. That’s why everybody’s in an existential crisis. That’s why we still want to be taking a nap post-pandemic.

But we live in a system of capitalism. So many of these systems have to be dismantled. But unless we get together and agree to do that, we’re stuck in it. So how do we make the best of it? And I think that’s the opportunity we have. 

I don’t necessarily subscribe to the American dream because it’s hustle and hard. It’s exhausting. I mean, unless you’re Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, and unless you’re privileged and White, and you have wealth or whatever, I don’t think the fairy tale is true for everybody. But I do think if you have gumption and hustle, you can carve out enough of a dream for yourself to have a decent quality of life. 

And I don’t think that’s true across the board. I hate generalizing. There are certainly people who want things that will never experience them because of their lived experience or their status in life or whatever. But I do think it’s possible to have a decent quality of life and not work for the man.

Nyasha: Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. Yes. Embracing people’s toos. I’m writing that down. I’ll credit you but I’m writing it down.

Nancy: All right, thanks.

Nyasha: Oh, wonderful. 

Nancy: What about you? What’s going on with you all? What’s happening? Are you still doing your publication? Is it HeroPress? Yes. Yes. 

Topher: HeroPress. Yes. 

Nancy: How’s it going? 

Topher: Still going. 

Nancy: Nice. 

Topher: It changes every few years. So it’ll be nine this year. 

Nancy: Wow. 

Topher: Just a long time to have anything going on the internet. 

Nancy: Anything. Truly.

Topher: Ny and I used to both work at the same agency-

Nancy: Oh, wow. 

Topher: …and both have been laid off several times in the last year. 

Nancy: No. 

Topher: I mentioned agencies are having a hard time keeping people on board. So at the moment, I’m doing my own thing. I’ve been making videos for years about WordPress, about kind of anything. So kind of a niche. I’m good at it. So I hung up my shingle right before WordCamp US. It’s going all right. I’ve got a few clients doing video. I’m making most of my money just building websites for small places. But the video thing is growing and that’s pretty cool.

Nancy: That’s cool.

Topher: Yeah. I hope so. I’m enjoying being my own boss. I’m not even making remotely what I was making when I had a job. So that’s kind of tough. But it’ll come. It’s starting up. It’s only been like three months.

Nancy: Well, I should get your info from you so that I can keep that stuff in mind.

Topher: Yeah. Ny, what are you doing these days? 

Nyasha: Well, me and Topher were laid off by the same company.

Nancy: I’m sorry.

Nyasha: No, it’s okay. Topher, when you said several layoffs, I don’t… Topher is such a strong, great person as well because the one layoff from this company nearly broke me. So I’m like, If I had several layoffs, I don’t know what I would do.” But that’s not him. I know what I would do. You gotta keep going. But-

Topher: Three and nine months. 

Nyasha: I hate that. And I think a lot of what Nancy said is why… it’s people aren’t embracing people. People don’t have agency. People don’t feel… they don’t feel like people at these jobs. I had a lot of reflection. At first, I looked for work, I was like, I cannot not work. That was my first time ever getting laid off, fired anything like that ever in my life. 

So I started doing freelance work, which was awesome. It restored my faith in myself as a web developer because I had lost faith in myself after that layoff. It was like, you can do this yourself. Why are you waiting on somebody? So that’s why a lot of what you said really, really, really, really connected with me. I also got a job with LinkedIn as an instructor there. So I actually got to go record my first course, which teaching WordPress blogs will be out in January. 

Nancy: That’s awesome. 

Nyasha: Thank you. I was in California. And I still got to do my WordPress stuff. I was a keynote speaker at WordCamp Rochester. I was hanging out with Topher and Cate. 

Nancy: Nice. 

Nyasha: So I kept myself busy and I kept myself working. And it really was an experience. It was like, you can do this yourself. I really want to start my own business. That’s something I’m planning for the new year. I want to be my own person. Because at the end of the day, if everything collapses around me, I want it to be… I mean, sometimes it’s just going to be random acts of the universe, I guess. But if something collapses around me in terms of income, I want it to be mainly on me. I don’t want to depend on anybody else for income anymore unless they’re a client. So I got a new job and I am working for someone again, but again, in the next year, I’m trying to have my own business. 

Topher: Demands.

Nyasha: I’m working for the main demands. But I’m trying to have my own business and make my own income. LinkedIn has actually been a big part of that. They give you a lot of agency there and pay you. 

Nancy: That’s great.

Nyasha: I am very optimistic for the next year. I wasn’t at all and now I am. So I’m happy about the future and I’m ready to kick some butt. 

Nancy: No, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. 

Nyasha: Thank you. 

Nancy: I mean, I just heard from a financial expert at a thing I spoke at last week, and they were saying there’s a lot of talk of recession, but recessions historically don’t happen in an election year. So the administration, the current administration, but the government overall has an incentive to not let us, you know, move any lower than we’ve moved. 

So I see that as being a positive. So we don’t have to panic, we can focus on the stuff that matters. I think when there’s all this chatter in the ether about the state of the economy, we start to plan for something that isn’t real. That can make us less bold, I think. I don’t think we have to… We don’t have to put on our life jackets because the planes are not going to crash. 

I think that’s an important thing to keep sort of close to your chest as you think about starting a new business. Like you don’t have to be afraid because everything’s not gonna fall apart next year. 

Nyasha: Oh, that’s so good to hear. Thank you.

Nancy: But I mean, if it does, you did not hear that from me. 

Nyasha: Well, it’s because I tried.

Nancy: There we go. Sorry, I was wrong. 

Topher: I was actually kind of surprised by the number of WordPress layoffs in the last couple years. Because in 2008 when the recession hit, web stuff boomed. There was so much work because you couldn’t give it away. I mean, you couldn’t pay people enough. The same sort of thing kind of happened with COVID. When everybody went home and locked themselves away, you could still do your web stuff. And this kept going. But then after COVID is when things kind of started to fall apart. And every hosting company and agency I know has laid somebody off.

Nancy: We haven’t. But I will tell you, our crappy year was last year. 2022 was awful. And I think it has a lot to do with pipeline and sales cycles, right? What we saw was a lot of clients got real quiet in the midst of the pandemic. We took advantage of some programs just like everybody else did, and thank God.

I mean, I used to say the government has never helped me ever and I can’t say that anymore because they did. And I’m grateful for it. Though, I wish there weren’t so many people that didn’t need it that gamed the system and created such a quagmire, because who knows how those programs will show up the next time. 

But what we did do while we were having a really crappy year, because our clients didn’t know what to expect, and so they got real tentative, and they shut down in our pipeline, had been a little slim during COVID. So it was the sales cycle, right? It was COVID got real slow, everybody was very quiet, clients pulled back. So our pipelines started to dwindle and the cycle came full circle, and the work that we would have done in ’22 just wasn’t there.

But what we did do over the course of COVID that we had started actually pre-COVID was really putting on… you know, getting the training, putting in place the tools so that we could compete with consultancies versus agencies. And that has been like a seven or eight-year journey with a huge piece of that effort and energy happening in the midst of COVID. 

And then in ’22, without really having the financial security I would have wanted, I very deliberately hired a chief growth officer and expanded my sales team. Historically… you know, you mentioned a little bit ago that I’ve been doing this for 21 years. The majority of those 21 years, I was sales, and I had one salesperson. And now I have, in my sales department for the first time in my life, or the life of this company, I have one, two, three, four, five people. 

Topher: Wow.

Nancy: And that has changed the trajectory of my organization, really taking a leap and investing in sales and investing in a comprehensive sales and marketing strategy and sticking to it and positioning. We also got real, real, real clear on our positioning and who we work for, and what we do for them. You know, regulated industries has always been our space. But we got super clear on financial services, health care, insurance, and manufacturing. And because of that clarity and that strategy, we’re having one of the best years we’ve ever had.

And I don’t like to say that because I certainly network with other agency leaders, consultancy, practice leaders, etc, and I know what’s happening out there. And it’s feast or famine, and I feel horrible about it. You know, we certainly share work. Like we have contractors that we use that come from my network, come from our network of dev shops that have been hit hard. 

I definitely think we’re constantly looking at how we can be a good neighbor. And yet it’s hard to hear those stories. It’s really hard to hear what’s happening in the industry right now. And it makes me wonder, like, you know, what’s next? Because I think it would be a sad, sad day if, very much like the ISP space, if the big behemoths came in to monopolize the space.

Topher: Oh, yeah.

Nancy: I think that would be true for the web space too. I think it would be tragic.

Topher: It’s funny talking about what you do during COVID. I recently bought a car, like two weeks ago.

Nancy: Nice. 

Topher: And tiny dealership, they had 35 cars, four people in the office. And before we left, I said, “Can I use your bathroom?” And was like, “Sure, go through that door.” And it was a huge warehouse. I mean, the warehouse was bigger than the whole lot. And right in the middle, it was one thing: A 35 foot RV. I said, “What is this?” He goes, “COVID.” They had to do something. They weren’t selling cars. He bought it to renovate and sell. 

Nancy: Wow. 

Topher: Everybody’s got this thing now when you say, Sorry, hands up to COVID. 

Nancy: I mean, COVID changed all of us, right? I’m resentful if I have to wear pants now. I have more social anxiety than I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t like putting out… You know, like tomorrow… I’m thinking about my tomorrow. I have a speaking engagement in the morning. And then I have an event where I’m introducing the speaker. For both of those things, I’m going to have to think about what I wear. And I can’t tell you about how resentful I get about spending energy trying to fit in in spaces, when the truth is I could wear jeans and boots and be fine. But that’s not the world we live in. I mean, trust me, I’m with you. We are people of the internet. We do not dress to impress. We dress for comfort. I know it’s true.

Topher: Right. 

Nancy: And yet because of my role in the spaces that I have to be in, it’s not always true. I have to be a chameleon, right? My preference is my genic slacker, get up and you know, where I’m like, Yeah, that sounds good. But I’m only going to get invited into those rooms that may hire me if I show up in a way that they’re comfortable with. And, you know, therein lies the dilemma. I wish I could be Mark Zuckerberg and just… I mean, not entirely. Not all of him, but just not have to care.

Nyasha: I’m with you. Gosh, you are hitting so many things I’ve been thinking about. I’m like, Yes. Like you can ask Topher. I come to WordCamps and I always dress up. And I change a lot of people. Some people notices I change at least twice a day. 

Nancy: Oh, sure. 

Nyasha: I have many things in a day, day outfits, and my hair is always done. And sometimes I’ll even put on makeup. That’s how I present in the community because I might need something, I might need an opportunity, I might need something. And I’ve been taught that I have to dress up or I won’t be taken too seriously, especially being a woman and a woman of color. And Topher and I we get on this… like you saw me earlier. I have on a yoga cap-

Nancy: I love it. 

Nyasha: …and I have a T-shirt and I have a pajama bottoms. Like that’s how I am. 99% of the time that’s how I am. But when I go to WordCamps and I’m out and about, I’m putting on my dressy clothes, and I’m like a fashionista. And that’s not me at all. So yeah, you’re right. Like to get in these spaces, the things we do. But gosh, why do we have to sacrifice comfort all the time? 

Nancy: I think it’s different for women. I think you hit the nail on the head. I think it’s different for women. It’s different for women of color. I’m a queer woman. I think it’s different for us, right? We already are breaking the rules. We’re already not exempted. They’re already doing us a favor letting us in this room. So we don’t want to really rock the boat too much farther. 

And I think that’s how I was trained. Like you gotta try, you gotta try or they’re not going to take you seriously. And I am getting to the age where I’m like, You know what? Don’t take me seriously. It’s fine. You’ll live to regret it.

Nyasha: Oh, yeah. I love it. 

Topher: You’re really great. We should have you on our podcast. 

Nyasha: Yes. 

Nancy: That’s an awesome idea. You should invite me to a WordCamp. That’s what I’m thinking. Sounds like you have more fun. 

Topher: We’re gonna have in Grand Rapids.

Nancy: You tried at one point. 

Topher: Yeah. And just didn’t have the inertia. We might try again next year. We considered having a Midwest WordCamp. Sort of Grand Rapids, Chicago, Detroit, Lansing, that kind of thing. It’d be fun to have you come down. 

Nancy: I’d love it. I mean, I grew up in Michigan in the Upper Peninsula and I went to Grand Valley for like a minute and a half. So when I was going to college, I supported myself in college by waiting tables, by being a food server and my first food service job was with Marie Catrib’s at Marie Lebanese deli, which was the first one was in Houghton and then it was in Marquette, Michigan. So Marie and her husband Fred, may they both rest… well, I really don’t care about Fred. But Marie I hope she rest in peace. 

She was just a lovely mentor and influence in my life. I developed a friendship with her. Actually, I have these very fond memories of doing nature walks with her and her talking about her culture and how she met her husband and how she married her husband and how different it was for her to be a Lebanese woman. 

She taught me a lot about the world at a time when I was really young and didn’t really have the cultural view. I understood that there were other countries and I didn’t understand how they operate. Yeah, that perspective. Exactly. I know that Marie’s still exists in Grand Rapids, right? Isn’t it still there?

Topher: Oh, yeah. 

Nancy: Because her son Fuad took it over. And he was a tyke. He was a little boy when… and he would come to the restaurant after school and get in the way and whine a lot. But now he’s a grown man running the restaurant. I understand that they maintain all of her recipes. So if I have my druthers, I would like you’d have WordCamp in Grand Rapids, so I can come and eat at Marie’s.

Topher: Marie’s is gone now. 

Nancy: Bummer. 

Nyasha: Oh, I was gonna say invite me. 

Nancy: She made the best food. We’ve lived on it. The best food. It was so good. So amazing. And then she passed away from cancer. And I never got to see her again and thank her. And she divorced her husband. She left her husband somewhere in there.

Topher: Which is why you don’t care. 

Nancy: Yeah. I mean, it was a very traditional Lebanese relationship. It may even have been arranged if I remember correctly or forced upon her. I don’t want to speak out of school about somebody else’s family. But you know, I mean, it was interesting to hear. And you saw how he treated her. She was just like furniture. But she was the brains of the operation. So it was fascinating. 

Topher: Yeah, that would be fascinating to watch. 

Nyasha: We should look into it and see if their son does any pop-ups every now and again. I know a lot of restaurants who closed especially during COVID they still pop up sometimes. And if they do, you all call me. Topher knows [inaudible 00:37:02] anywhere, I will be there. 

Nancy: We can go together.

Nyasha: Yes, I love Lebanese food. 

Topher: Such a foodie.

Nyasha: Yes.

Nancy: Me too. I do too. I love love. That was my first foray into Lebanese food. And it was hardcore. She made her own pita. We would sit and watch a little pita puff that she made. She was amazing. We both went to WordCamp Asia in Thailand and the food was good. It was pretty diverse. 

The hotel we stayed at had a very, very expensive breakfast buffet. I mean, it was multiple rooms and it had a large British section. So you can get beans on toast and stuff like that.

Nancy: Wow. 

Topher: It was interesting. 

Nyasha: It was amazing. I have not eaten food that good since then. So Topher I’m in a crisis. 

Topher: Oh, no. You know, they have Thai restaurants in the U.S..

Nyasha: Yeah, but it’s not the same. I went to my usual Thai spot and I wanted to cry. 

Nancy: You were ruined.

Nyasha: I was. 

Nancy: It’s what travel does—ruins us. 

Topher: Here in Grand Rapids, our favorite Indian place is actually a Nepali place run by a guy from Bhutan. 

Nancy: Yum. 

Topher: So the food’s pretty diverse. But it’s really-

Nancy: Grand Rapids is a great town. 

Topher: Oh, it’s so different. 

Nancy: I believe it.

Topher: You should come back. It’s so… You know about ArtPrize, right? 

Nancy: I don’t know, do I? 

Topher: Oh, ArtPrize has been around for about 10 years now. It’s the world’s largest art competition that has a prize. And they give away $2 million every summer. 

Nancy: What? 

Topher: And the entire city is filled with art on the streets, in the stores, in the halls of buildings, there’s music, there’s food. And it goes on for a month.

Nancy: I had no idea. 

Topher: Yeah. So it’s kind of end of August through September. And it’s fantastic.

Nancy: I gotta check it out, for sure. 

Topher: Yeah, yeah. 

Nancy: Are you inviting me to Grand Rapids? That’s what I’m hearing. 

Topher: Yes, you’re hearing that.

Nancy: “Please come and visit.”

Topher: In addition, every year, we have a festival of the arts, and one of the arts is culinary. 

Nancy: Oh, wow. 

Topher: We have various festivals through the year. We have Polish festival, Italian festival, etc. But during Festival of the Arts, all of them get out their food carts. So there’s the Polish cart and the Italian cart and the Baha’i temple always has chicken on a stick. It’s just everybody. The Lutherans have a donut truck. 

Nancy: Oh, I love it. 

Topher: It’s amazing. 

Nancy: Sounds like a fat girl’s dream. I’m in. I love all of it. 

Topher: All right. So we’ve been doing this for 45 minutes now. 

Nancy: Have we made people sick of us yet? 

Topher: I don’t know. We’ll see what the comments are. 

Nyasha: Never. 

Topher: I’ve never had a comment on the podcast, so-

Nancy: You haven’t? 

Topher: No. 

Nancy: That’s good. That’s gonna be good. Because people only talk when they have something bad to say. 

Topher: Oh, yeah. 

Nyasha: Oh, yeah. 

Nancy: Great. I do an announcement on email list every time we release one, and we get over 50% open on newsletter one. That’s about it.

Nancy: That’s awesome. 

Topher: So that’s pretty good. All right. I’m gonna read the outro. This has been an episode of Hallway Chats, part of the HeroPress Network. Your hosts were Nyasha Green and Topher DeRosia. We’d like to thank Sophia DeRosia for the music, and Nexcess for hosting our network. If you liked this episode, please subscribe and mention us on social media.

Introducing Evelyn Maina

Evelyn is a very unusual guest in that we brought her into the WordPress community! Years ago when Liam and Tara started this podcast they hired Evelyn as their transcriber. Since then, Evelyn has gotten to know more than 175 WordPressers by transcribing their interviews here on Hallway Chats. Her perspective as an “outsider” was quite heartwarming.

Show Notes

https://havenscribe.com/

https://glowfaceportal.co.ke/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/evalyn-maina/

Transcript:

Topher: Hey everyone, my name is Topher. 

Nyasha: And my name is Nyasha. 

Topher: And this is Hallway Chats. We’d like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Nexcess, a Liquid Web. brand. Nexcess has been a solid web host for the entire HeroPress Network. So if you need hosting, check them out. 

Our guest today is Evelyn. Welcome. 

Evelyn: Thank you.

Topher: You know, I said that the American ways. Is it right? Just the normal way? 

Evelyn: Yes. Right.

Topher: Okay.

Evelyn: Yes. 

Topher: So by way of introduction, Evelyn does the transcription for Hallway Chats and a lot of stuff at HeroPress, and has been magnificent. So I feel like she’s already a part of the WordPress community because she read so much of our stuff. But that said, I know almost nothing about you, Evelyn. I don’t know your last name. I know you live in Kenya?

Evelyn: Yes.

Topher: And that you do transcription. That’s it. So who are you? 

Evelyn: Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate. My name is Evelyn Maina. I’m an accountant by profession. 

Topher: Oh.

Nyasha: Wow. 

Evelyn: Yes. So here in Kenya we call it CPAK, and I have a degree in finance. 

Topher: Okay. 

Evelyn: So I started transcription since 2016. So that’s what I’ve been doing all along. And kind of like I no longer practice accounting. 

Topher: Okay. So you’re a full-time transcriptionist now? 

Evelyn: Yes. 

Topher: Okay. What made you get into that, and what made you fall in love it so much that you quit your current job? 

Evelyn: Well, it was actually by accident, I would say. Back in 20… actually 2015 I was working in an insurance company and I got exhausted at some point. I would get anxious and stuff like that, so I decided to take a break from accounting, and from that firm I was working for. And as I was doing that, at some point, I went back to that company to pick up a check that I had left. And a friend of mine told me… because the idea was to take a break for three months, and then get back to it. 

Meanwhile, within that three months, the idea was to find another job. And I went back to that company, my friend gave me a contact of a person and she said, “By the way, there’s a way this friend of mine who work online…” She actually said “work online.” She never mentioned transcription. “…this friend of mine who work online, I probably would give you his contact so that you can… I mean, before you find something else to do, just try it out and see how it goes for you.

So at that point, I actually didn’t know what working online was or I had never heard the word “transcription”. So I contacted the friend and it turned out they were doing transcription. I tried it out. When I started I still was looking for an accounting job, but at some point, I felt like it was like a nice thing to do. That’s why I fell in love with it. 

I never went back to accounting again because when I started I met some nice people in transcription. The idea of learning a lot of things, I’ve learned a little bit about WordPress, stuff about medical, a lot of things. You can imagine eight years that I’ve been doing this with different people. I get to learn a lot of things as I work. I usually say sort of like a free… It’s like I’m in school for free because I learn a lot of things. 

The idea of flexibility is what kept me out of… I never want to go back to eight to five again. No more anxiety. I would say the pay is better than you used to earn back then. So all those factors combined I do not see myself going back there any time soon.

Topher: That’s wonderful. 

Nyasha: Nice. You have such a lovely story. 

Evelyn: Yeah, thank you. 

Topher: My wife did transcriptions for a short while. 

Evelyn: Oh.

Evelyn: It was technical stuff and she’s not a computer person, and she quite suddenly started asking me very specific technical questions like over dinner. She’s like, “Wait a minute, where’s this coming from?” 

Nyasha: I love people who do transcription work, and I salute you, especially you, Evelyn, because I am.. my southern United States accent I know makes it difficult at times or lots of audio to pick up what I’m saying or the terms I use. So I’m so happy and thankful for you all. 

Evelyn: True. True. But I think for the period I’ve done it, because I started in… 2016 was basically kind of orienting myself, getting used to it. So I would say 2017 was when I really officially started and decided this is what I want to do. So I think within that period of time I’ve have come across thousands of… Okay, I don’t know if it’s thousands but well, a lot of accents. And some have gotten used to them.

Well, there are some that you can come across that are quite challenging, but generally, I’m comfortable with majority of the accents that I come across.

Topher: I have been consistently very impressed with how you’ve managed to transcribe not just accents, but accents over a terrible connection. Have you ever deliberately studied accents or an accent to say, you know, I’d like to get better at polish or you know, or something from Asia? 

Evelyn: No, not quite. What usually happens is when you come across a client, whether you’re introduced to or whatever means you find them, what happens is they just basically present whatever they have and you struggle with it. Sometimes the quality of the audio is… I don’t want to say horrible but it’s really not so good. And I think because of that you kind of like get… I don’t know. You just get used to it somehow. 

Now, when you present something to me, more often than not, I’ll just handle it. It now comes naturally to me to be able to decipher those accents, different accents.

Topher: Very cool. I know you live in Kenya, but that’s all. Do you live in a big city? Do you live downtown? Do you live in a country?

Evelyn: Yes. I live in Nairobi. Nairobi is the capital of Kenya. So basically what happens in Nairobi has a different… we call them estates. I don’t know what to call them back there. Normally use British English. So different parts of the town. So I’m basically about 10 kilometers… You translate them two miles and I usually have a difficult time coverting them. 

Nyasha: It’s okay. 

Evelyn: I’m 10 kilometers from the CBD of Nairobi, central business district. Okay. Yes. 

Nyasha: It’s about 6.2 miles. I’m learning. I’m learning. In Kenya or even our school system we usually use British English so it’s like for example back there you will say a trunk, we’ll say a boot, such thing. So yeah, that’s differences. In terms of distance, we use kilometers back here.

Topher: Cool. 

Nyasha: Cool. 

Topher: Do you have a family? 

Evelyn: No, not yet.

Topher: Oh, okay. 

Evelyn: And I understand in the US family means like you’re married and probably children. 

Topher: Yeah. It doesn’t have to. You could say like, is your extended family in the city with you, like your parents around, you have cousins? 

Evelyn: Okay. Well, I think in my line of work, I’ve noticed when people are saying family they most of the times reference a nuclear family, like have a wife and children. When you say family when you’re here, it’s sort of it could be your mother, your brother. But generally, I would say, I have a mother and brothers and sister, one sister and five brothers. So we are seven of us in my family. 

Topher: Oh, nice. 

Nyasha: But family of my own, not yet.

Topher: Okay. 

Nyasha: That’s interesting because you’re right. Usually, people are asking, Do you have children? Are married? Like, with me, I am married, but I don’t have any children. And when I’m referring to my family, I feel like people assume I’m talking about children. But I have a big extended family or… I’m one of four children but I have 15 nieces and nephews and my mom had 10 siblings and my grandmother had 15 siblings, and we’re all still connected. So that’s my extended family. And they could be a cousin that’s twice removed but that’s still my first cousin to me. 

So I love that you talked about that because, you know, people typically do mean like nuclear, but we want to know, like, who are the people in your life that you consider family. It could be even friends.

Evelyn: Yes. 

Nyasha: And that’s awesome it’s seven of you all. I know, it was a very interesting growing up, right, with so many siblings?

Evelyn: I love it. It’s so nice having a bunch of siblings around. Although my sister is the firstborn in the family. So kind of like back when I was in primary school, she was married. So I’ve not gotten to experience her as I would have loved but she’s there. She’s more of a mom than a sister. We are so far much apart. It feels like she’s… And then my dad passed when I was younger so sort of like my mom and my elder siblings kind of brought us up. 

Nyasha: Oh, that’s wonderful. 

Topher: So… go ahead. 

Nyasha: I was gonna say, You know what I want to talk about next over. You probably have an idea. I want to talk about food.

Evelyn: Amazing.

Nyasha: So one of my good friends he’s from Kenya and he teases me so often about the food because he knows I want him to cook for me. There is a Kenyan dish I want you to… first I want you to let me know like what Kenyan dishes would you recommend? If I was coming to visit, what would you recommend for me to eat? And then I need you to tell me about Kenyan pilau with the beef and the potatoes because it looks good and I want him to make it for me. 

Evelyn: Yes, yes, the pilau. Food-wise, generally, we have dishes that are known all over by everyone. We have the pilau which you have referenced. It kind of like when you visit a home and you don’t find a pilau… It’s considered.. If you’re coming here, it’s one of the things that you must find. More often than not, you’ll find a Pilau. It’s a mixture of rice and meat and some spices.

And then we have Ugali. Ugali is maize flower… I think you call it corn back there. So it’s just a mixture of that and water and then it served we some veggies. So how do you spell it? 

Evelyn: Sorry.

Topher: How do you spell that? 

Evelyn: Ugali? 

Topher: Yeah, ugali.

Evelyn: Yeah, Ugali. It’s U-G-A-L-I. 

Topher: All right. 

Evelyn: Ugali. But possibly, if you happen to come here and visit you probably won’t… It’s a common dish but you probably won’t find it. It’s not considered special when someone’s special is visiting or just someone visiting you for the first time, you probably you won’t find it but it’s quite common. 

Topher: Okay.

Evelyn: Then we have Githeri. Okay, maybe let me just say we have so many tribes and each and every tribe have their own delicacies that they… but then there are those common ones that are known countrywide. Personally, I come from the central part of Kenya, and by tribe I’m a Kikuyu. So our main dish is Githeri. We call it Githeri. It’s a mixture of maize, what you would call corn back there, and beans. And then you just boil and once it’s ready, you can do a lot of things with it once it’s ready. And then we have street food. It’s a lot. I cannot cover the whole of it. It’s so much.

Nyasha: I love it. First of all, I love rice, for me. Second of all, that just sounds so wonderful. And the street food… I was Googling as you were talking and it just all looks so wonderful. The Ugali looks like… it reminds me of American cornbread. And then it’s sort of to me also it looks like Fufu a little bit as well.

Evelyn: Yes.

Topher: It looks like dense grits. 

Nyasha: Yeah, like cornbread. 

Topher: Well, it doesn’t look like Northern cornbread. 

Nyasha: Oh, yeah. You have to get some southern cornbread. But yes, that’s so wonderful. I will put Nairobi down as one of my places to visit. My stomach guides my trip. So definitely on my list of places to go.

Evelyn: And also Nairobi it’s the only city in the world that has a national park, sort of like in the middle of the city or just near the city. So you get to experience that too if you happen to be in Nairobi. 

Topher: Ahh.

Nyasha: Yeah, wow. 

Topher: That’s cool.

Nyasha: What types of things can you do there? 

Evelyn: Sorry.

Nyasha: What types of things can you do at the park? 

Evelyn: Animal drives and I think we have lions and stuff like that. All the big five. No, no, we don’t have the… I’m not sure if there are all the big five now. But the big five is like the Lion, Elephant, cheetah. You get to see the animals and just a nice drive in the park. 

Topher: That’s cool. 

Nyasha: Wow, that is so cool. 

Evelyn: It’s so close. It’s so near the city. It’s considered the only national park in the world—I don’t think there’s another one by now. But it is considered the only one in the world that has the national park in the city.

Topher: That’s cool. 

Nyasha: Nice. That is amazing. 

Evelyn: Yes. 

Topher: I was gonna ask you how you got connected to Hallway Chats. 

Evelyn: Oh, interesting. Yes. If I recall well, I think we must have met with Liam and Tala… Is her name L or R? I don’t know. I can’t remember. They had posted a job on Upwork-

Topher: Got you. 

Evelyn: Back then I used to work on Upwork. So they posted a job and I applied. So that’s how we got connected with them. And then I worked for them for a long while. I can’t remember how long it was until they hand it over to you.

Topher: Yeah. And then we did a terrible job maintaining it for a while. You didn’t hear from us for a long time. 

Evelyn: Yeah.

Topher: Well, that’s cool. I am at the end of my list of questions. Ny, do you have anything? 

Nyasha: No, I don’t. I’m still thinking about the food. I think it’s just so wonderful. I do have another question. So I know you’ve been doing Hallway Chats for a very, very long time. We salute you and we thank you for your hard work again. You make the show happen, honestly. I wanted to ask you, so in all the time that you’ve been doing Hallway Chats, what has been the… I know you said you’ve gotten to learn a lot. What has been the most, I guess not fun, but I guess it could be fun. What’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned while doing Hallway Chats transcriptions specifically? If you can name one.

Evelyn: Okay, all right. I think what I would say the WordPress itself. Most of the people talk about WordPress and I’m kind of like, “I don’t know what to do with it. I feel like joining because everyone talks about the community in WordPress, when you speak to people. And I think it’s such a good community hearing people talk about you go to a place for the first time, you meet a stranger sort of and you connect so well and you are received so well. I think it’s the only community I’ve gotten to hear about where people behave as such, so to speak, because people speak about how well they were received, how… I mean, it doesn’t happen quite often anywhere. Even in church. When I go to church, it rarely you get a stranger talking to you. It’s one of the stories that is so interesting that it makes me sort of like want to join WordPress.

And just to mention, from that, I’ve made… even though I’m not very consistent, I actually managed to create a small WordPress site for myself. Actually-

Topher: Oh, wow. That’s great. 

Nyasha: That’s wonderful. 

Evelyn: Yes. So I usually do DIY, learn, and implement. So out of the conversations on Hallway Chats, I can’t remember any one that can I reference but it generally that’s what you really talk about. And it’s been so nice to hear people talk about their experiences with WordPress. And because most of the times, they usually pick clients from time to time. I have a small website where… it’s sort of like a profile, my profile. And then I have another one where I do a side hustle I sell skincare products.

Topher: Oh, cool.

Nyasha: Wow. 

Evelyn: Yes. And I made them out of the Hallway Chats conversation, even though I’ve not been able to go to any WordPress events, because of… sometimes my job is tight, I would say, but I’ve been able to do that. And it’s been so nice to get to do that myself.

Topher: That’s really amazing.

Nyasha: That is wonderful. And I know-

Topher: This makes me happy.  

Nyasha: Me too. Like, Evelyn’s skin looks incredible. You should definitely buy her products. If you can’t see, just trust Ny. Trust Ny. But that’s wonderful. I hope you can hop into… you’ll love the community. I already consider you a part of the community. So when we do WordCamp Kenya, I’m coming. 

Evelyn: Yes, please come.

Topher: Nairobi was just this last week, I think, wasn’t it? 

Nyasha: Yeah. I think they did do it because I saw some tweets about it. So I will be there.

Evelyn: Yes, yes, yes, please come over. I’ll make sure you get all our types of food and then visit the park and all stuff like that. All the nice stuff. 

Nyasha: I am looking at flights right now.

Topher: That’s fun.

Evelyn: I also consider myself part of the community by extension, so… 

Nyasha: You are.

Topher: You are now.

Evelyn: Yeah. 

Topher: All right, I’m gonna wrap this up. This has been an episode of Hallway Chats, a part of the HeroPress Network. Your hosts were Nyasha Green and Topher DeRosia. We’d like to thank Sophia DeRosia for the music and Nexcess for hosting our network. If you liked the episode, please subscribe and mention us on social media.

Introducing Aisha Adams and Marcus Burnette at WordCamp Birmingham

In February Topher and Cate went to WordCamp Birmingham and Topher was able to interview both Aisha Adams and Marcus Burnette in the hallway.

Aisha’s Links:

• https://aishaadamsmedia.com/
• https://wordpress.tv/speakers/aisha-adams/
• https://www.facebook.com/aishaadamsmediagroup

Marcus’ Links

• https://mburnette.com/
• https://profiles.wordpress.org/mdburnette/
• https://wordpress.tv/speakers/marcus-burnette/

Transcript:

Topher: Hey folks, welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m your host Topher. This week we have an interesting collection of Hallway Chats from WordCamp Birmingham. A few months ago, Kate and I went down to work in Birmingham, and I got to talk with Aisha and Marcus. We’re going to listen to both of those interviews in this hour today. 

But before we get started, I want to say thanks to our sponsor Nexcess. They’ve been really good to us and a faithful companion for a long time now. If you’re looking for a good web host, check out Nexcess. 

Hey, folks, this is Topher. I’m at WordCamp Birmingham. I’m here with Aisha, and we’re having an honest-to-goodness hallway chat right here in the lobby of the venue. Aisha, where are you from? 

Aisha: Hi, I’m so excited to be here. Actually, I’m originally from Birmingham, Alabama. 

Topher: Wow.

Aisha: And that is why WordPress, y’all, is so important. 

Topher: Good. You said “originally”. Are you still from here or did you go away? 

Aisha: I actually live in Asheville. Asheville, North Carolina.

Topher: Okay. All right. Awesome. So I don’t know the South. Is that very far away? Do you fly?

Aisha: It’s about six hours away. Have you not been to WordPress AVL?

Topher: No.

Aisha: WordPress AVL. You gotta come to WordCamp AVL.

Topher: Okay. 

Aisha: You gotta try it out. 

Topher: I will do that. Did you drive or fly to get here? 

Aisha: We drove. Actually, my husband… Whenever I do WordCamp, he’s like, “Let me just drop you off.” So he dropped me off and took a trip to Atlanta without me. 

Topher: Oh. That’s not so bad.

Aisha: So I’m here with all my friends and enjoying… Just enjoying being with… It’s been so long since we’ve been together, you know? 

Topher: Yeah. Oh, that’s great. So why are you here? What do you do for WordPress? 

Aisha: Mostly just have a good time and meet people and learn a lot of things. But I like to get back to the community that gives so much to me. So today I spoke on diversity, equity, and inclusion. And when I’m not speaking on DEI, I’m probably talking about being an influencer using social media marketing to promote your blog. So I have a WordPress blog that has 64,000 followers. And then I also have my business on WordPress site as well.

Topher: How are you measuring followers on your blog? What tool do you use to know that?

Aisha: I actually use my Facebook because it has the highest engagement. I’ve been very lucky… Facebook recently picked me up to do performance bonus. 

Topher: Oh, wow. 

Aisha: So I actually get pay per view, per click, per share, per comment.

Topher: Wow.

Aisha: Yeah. So that’s been an amazing journey. So Facebook is like the hub for kind of where I do everything. But I also use my analytics. I have… You know Jetpack?

Topher: Yes. 

Aisha: So I use the Jetpack plugin to track my analytics.

Topher: Okay, that’s cool. How long have you been doing this? How long you’ve been in WordPress?

Aisha: So a funny story. I was a school teacher and I had a car accident. I broke my neck, my wrist, and my leg. 

Topher: Oh.

Aisha: And my car had actually hydroplaned upside down into a body of water. And I was in the water and thinking to myself, “Yes, I don’t have to go to work tomorrow.” So when I get to the hospital, they’re wheeling me into surgery, because I’m in and out, in and out, and I’m telling the nurse, “You gotta call my boss and tell her I can’t make it today.” And she looks at me and she said, “Sweetie, it’s gonna be a lot of days that you won’t make it,” and I got even more excited. 

Topher: Okay, that’s your first clue that that’s not the job for you. 

Aisha: It’s time. It’s time. I’ve done my time. I love the kids, I’ve done enough. And I’m gonna be a famous writer. So I started a blog and I had a very boring blog, because I was trying veganism and you know how the vegans are. ?

Topher: Oh, yeah. 

Aisha: You go vegan, you got to tell everybody about it, how you did it and I would get like two people to my blog and be like, “If I could just get 20 people to my blog.” And a friend of mine reached out to me and he said, “Your blog is really nice, you have a really great platform, but you really have other things that we need to talk about. And right now, you will be more useful to us talking about those things.”

So I started actually writing for activists. So I worked with Black Lives Matter Birmingham-

Topher: Sure.

Aisha: …to tell some of the activism stories that they were working on. I talked to people who felt like they had been done wrong by the justice system. I still share a recipe-

Topher: Were you ghostwriting on their behalf or were you like doing journalism and telling their story?

Aisha: Journalism and telling their story and bringing people in and starting conversations about the things that mattered in my community.

Topher: Yeah, that’s good stuff. That’s better than veganism. 

Aisha: Of course. I’m not even vegan anymore. But you could still find some really good food.

Topher: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that is really cool. I like that a lot. I have a personal project called HeroPress that facilitates people telling their stories about, you know, just the same sort of stuff. And it is very fulfilling to… because a lot of people I talk to, they’re like, “Oh, I don’t have a story. I’m not interesting. Why would anybody care?” And there’s an art to drawing that out, saying, “Listen, you are cool. If you do have a story, and it’s important, and you need to tell people. And then when they realize that that expression on their face, like, “Oh, wow, I didn’t know that I had this.”

Aisha: How did you learn about that like the power of storytelling? How did that come to you? 

Topher: It’s funny. Now you’re interviewing me. When I was starting HeroPress, I didn’t know what it was going to be. My task was to come up with something. And I was talking to a young man in India, he was a developer, and he came to me frustrated one day said, “My company is failing. We’re not getting contracts from America. We don’t know what to do. What do I do?” 

And I said, “I don’t know. I’m not a businessman. I’m not in India. I don’t know any of this stuff. But I went looking for somebody else who could answer that. So I found some business people in India-

Aisha: Oh, wow.

Topher: …who knew how to do it and I connected them. And they will help him. And then I thought, Okay, so this is what I want to do. I want to find people in repressed economies or whatever and help them. But I don’t want to come in as the great white savior and say, Here’s what you should be doing. I want to get people who are their neighbors who already succeeded, and then connect with them.

So that began my journey of finding those people. I go into a community and I find that somebody who’s done something. And often enough, they don’t know they’ve done something. Like, I have a job and I’m working, and like you have it, you’re working, they’re not, so tell them how you did it. 

Aisha: So you’re a connector and you’re also an encourager. 

Topher: Yeah. 

Aisha: That is wonderful leadership. 

Topher: It’s very, very fun. Probably because I mean that’s what fulfills me. Everybody loves what fulfills them. That’s my thing. 

Aisha: Nice.

Topher: Well, thank you for talking with me. I hope to see you again. Do you get around to other WordCamps?

Aisha: Yeah. I’ve done, of course, WordCamp Asheville and WordCamp Birmingham but also WordCamp Philly and WordCamp Jacksonville and WordCamp Greenville and [inaudible Toron?].

Topher: Do you go to WordCamp Philly proper or do you go to US in Philly?

Aisha: I actually went to WordCamp Philly proper.

Topher: I did that once. Maybe twice. I’ve been to Jacksonville but none of the others you mentioned.

Aisha: I have not gone to worlds yet. I really want to go. So hopefully I will get an opportunity someday.

Topher: Yeah. You should do US. It’s not that far north this time.

Aisha: Okay. Where is it gonna be? 

Topher: It’s right next to Washington DC. 

Aisha: Okay. So what? Virginia? 

Topher: I don’t remember the name of the town. And I’m not sure. It might even be in DC proper.

Aisha: Oh.

Topher: But it’s that close. 

Aisha: I love Disney. I spent time there and I’ve been there for a while. 

Topher: So. Yeah, yeah. It’ll be fun.

Aisha: Cool. It’s so great talking to you. Thanks for sharing your story.

Hi everybody. This is Topher. I’m at WordCamp Birmingham and I am here with Marcus Burnette. And he’s manning the GoDaddy booth with Jessica. Welcome, Marcus.

Marcus: Good, Topher. How are you doing?

Topher: I’m doing awesome. This is… what are we in? February? How many WordCamps you’ve been to this year? This is your first? 

Marcus: Yeah. This is my first one this year.

Topher: All right. I don’t think there were very many in January. So what do you do in WordPress? 

Marcus: I am on the GoDaddy Pro field team now. I’ve been working with WordPress for I guess about eight, nine, ten, years maybe. I worked at an agency in Orlando where I’m from for 10 years and we did Drupal work for a little while and then I switched over to WordPress after that. Didn’t like the direction that the Drupal project was going for our business. We were a small agency of four people and we didn’t have the time to take on another steep learning curve. So we decided to see what else we could do and WordPress was where we-

Topher: So what led you to GoDaddy? 

Marcus: At the end of 2019 before the pandemic even, the agency that I was at was starting to have a little bit of just financial trouble. So it was just time to look for new work. And I actually ended up getting hired at the SkyVerge on the support team there. And so-

Topher: And then GoDaddy bought SkyVerge?

Marcus: Yeah. So I was at SkyVerge for about six months before GoDaddy acquired SkyVerge. So I came to GoDaddy via the SkyVerge acquisition.

Topher: So you were a developer, but you’re not developing now. Right? 

Marcus: Yeah. I’ve been all over. So I started as a designer at the agency. And then because we were so small, took on development as another hat, as they say. And then when I left there, I had two criteria. One, I wanted to work remotely. SkyVerge had always been a remote team even before the pandemic. 

And I wanted to not be part of an agency, but help the folks that were in my spot in the agency. So I specifically looked for support work where I was supporting agencies doing the work that I had been doing for 10 years because I knew the struggles that they would face and the ways that they needed help, and so on to be able to support that. So I started with SkyVerge on the support team after leaving the agency.

Topher: So practically speaking, what do you do day to day?

Marcus: So twofold. A lot of it is event-related. Coming into WordCamp is a big part of it. Also, I run a weekly meetup for GoDaddy Pro, where we have folks come on and provide value for our Pro audience. When I say pro audience, I mean folks that are building websites for other people, so agencies, freelancers, that sort of thing.

We have people come on weekly, and kind of share a little bit about what they do and who they work for, and provide some value to our Pro audience. So it’s a mix of that, mix of virtual events and then personal events.

Topher: Yeah, I’ve seen you in a lot of WordCamps. I guess, since pandemic, what’s your average? 

Marcus: It feels that way. I have really only been coming to WordCamps for maybe the last year. So my first one was actually Montclair last year right before EU. So I had a chance to kind of dip my feet in with a smaller group before being dumped into the massive WordCamp that is EU.

Topher: Was that your first WordCamp or just your first one for GoDaddy?

Marcus: It was my first one for GoDaddy, but I think maybe only my second one, period, because even though I had been working with WordPress for a while with the agency, I wasn’t really a part of the community at that time. I think I went to one WordCamp Orlando, and then the pandemic happened, and everything got shut down for a couple of years. So Montclair was the first one back, I believe. I was able to go to Montclair. And at that time, I happened to be part of GoDaddy already.

Topher: It’s interesting to me. Before the pandemic, most people in WordPress had been to WordCamp at some point, one or two or five or whatever. But nearing the end of the pandemic, I met people who had been in WordPress for, quote, “years,” few years, and had never been to a WordCamp. Then one-

Marcus: I almost fell into that bucket. Right?

Topher: Yeah.

Marcus: I had one before. And it is interesting. It does feel like I’ve been around for a while working with WordPress, because I have. But I wasn’t really part of the community at that time. And it wasn’t until really towards the middle end of 2019 that I decided that, you know, I want to check out what the rest of the community is about and dip in there. And then all of a sudden, everything shut down.

Topher: So now you’ve been to some WordCamps, what do you think of them? Would you have recommended to yourself five years ago that, hey, you need to get on this? 

Marcus: Yeah, I clearly didn’t know what I was missing when I was working in WordPress and not part of the community and part of the camps. And that’s both virtually and online. I mean, the community at camps is great. It’s definitely a different environment. But I wasn’t part of the community online either. And I feel like there’s so much that you’re missing out on if you’re not engaged with the community virtually. And then, you know, if possible, I know it’s not possible for everybody all the time to go to WordCamps, but if there’s one near enough to you that you can make it to.. I know that the WordCamp do their best to keep them reasonably priced so that everyone can attend if they’re, you know, close enough. So I 100% would encourage anybody to go to a WordCamp if they’re able to.

Topher: I have a friend, Andrea, who used to be on the WordCamp central organizing team and she has a WordCamp called “And then I went to WordCamp.”

Marcus: Nice. 

Topher: And everyone who’s ever been to one immediately knows what it’s about. You hear those words? You know? Because everything changes when you go.

Marcus: It really does. I mean, I didn’t realize just how much the connections that you make with folks that at WordCamps, really help inspire you in your WordPress work, and give you all these avenues for help when you run into a wall. 

Topher: Pretty much. Just today, I met a woman, this is her first WordCamp and she’s been in WordPress two years. I saw her standing by herself, not talking to anybody, which, that’s not right at WordCamp. So I went over and said, Hi. And I could tell that it was already having an impact on her that she’s probably gonna make friends here today that are gonna help form her career, just like everybody does. 

Marcus: You don’t realize how much you’re missing out. And you don’t know what to look for when kind of on your own. But when you meet up with folks and they offer, you know, here’s what I do in WordPress, a lot of times its stuff you didn’t even think about. You’re like, Oh, yeah, well, you run this plugin. Oh, that sounds like a really interesting plugin. I wouldn’t have even thought to search for something like that. But now that you’ve told me about it, I don’t see why I haven’t been using something like that the whole time. 

Topher: I can remember probably four or five WordCamps over my career where I traveled home thinking, Well, this changes everything. This changes the direction of my career, this changes everything I do, this changes everything. So it’s not just like your first WordCamp opens your eyes. It’s like every one of them as you go, it’s like-

Marcus: Yes. Oh, there’s something 

Topher: Ah, wow. 

Marcus: It spans everything from WordPress itself to the business around WordPress to how you just meet up with friends in WordPress. It changes your friendships, it changes how you do work, all of that. 

Topher: Yeah. All right. Well, I appreciate you talking to me. 

Marcus: Absolutely.

Introducing Robert DeVore

Believe it or not, this is Robert’s second time on Hallway Chats! His first was back in 2017 with Liam and Tara. Since Ny and Topher had never talked to him on here, we decided to give it another go!

Show Notes

Website | www.wpdispensary.com
Website | www.robertdevore.com
Twitter | @deviorobert
Twitter | @wpdispensary

Transcript:

Topher: Hey everyone. My name is Topher.

Long pause

Nyasha: And I’m Nyasha. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. 

Topher: (laughing) Just pick it up. Just pick it up here, I’ll snip it out.

Nyasha: And I’m Nyasha.

Topher: And this is Hallway Chats.

Robert: And I’m Robert. 

Topher: Oh, not you, Robert, yet. 

Robert: Oh, okay. Sorry about that.

Topher: This is totally staying in the podcast. 

Robert: Good. Good.

Topher: But first I have to say nice things about Nexcess because they’re paying the bills. Nexcess is a great hosting company. I really liked it. We’ve been with them for a while now. And they are paying the bills here at Hallway Chats, which is really great because I’m not sure it would work without it. So if you need a good host, try out Nexcess.

Our guest today, if you haven’t guessed, is Robert. Robert, is it Devore? 

Robert: Yeah.

Topher: Okay, I didn’t know if maybe you were French and it was Devoir or something like that? 

Robert: No, no. It’s French but everyone, since I’ve been born, pronounces it Devore. That’s the way I go with it. So I don’t know if they switched it up or not. 

Topher: Cool. My last name is French too, if you go back far enough, of the rose. But there’s an Italian branch, and I think it means the same thing. So whatever. Robert, you’re here today. You and I have known each other on Twitter for a bunch of years but never really talked deeply. And you live kind of close to me. Like how far do you live from me? 

Robert: I think like maybe three or four hours, I think. 

Topher: Yeah. Okay. Are you from there?

Robert: Yeah. From suburban Detroit. 

Topher: Oh, cool.

Robert: Born and raised. 

Topher: Wow. Nice. 

Nyasha: I’m sure you’re inviting Topher and I over soon, right? 

Robert: Yeah, yeah, whenever you’re in town, just let me know. 

Nyasha: Okay. 

Topher: You know, we go Ikea all the time in Canton. 

Robert: Okay, nice. Yeah, that’s not that far at all. It’s like 20 minutes from here. 

Topher: Lucky you. It’s like two and a half hours for us. So who are you and what do you do?

Robert: I do a little bit of everything. I’ve been a freelance WordPress developer, I’ve run affiliate sites. Everything from start to finish I’ve done. But now I’m working full-time at SiteCare for the last almost four years, and still just building projects on the side still, just enjoying the fun of it. Being able to just open something up and come up with an idea and do it, I’m forever going to do that. So if I did sum it up, that would be who I am.

Topher: Cool. I know, a few years ago, maybe a lot of years ago now, you were building a product. Is that still a thing or did you put it away? 

Robert: Yeah, it’s still there. 

Topher: Cool. Want to tell us about it? 

Robert: Yeah. WP Dispensary, I built it at the tail end of 2015 and I kept building it. I have a bunch of pro add-ons that were built for it. I was transitioning it into a whole software company and I was going to offer the hosting. But right now I’m just working through some payment processing issues, trying to get actual company to accept me to allow me to have subscription payments. So once that hurdle’s crossed, it’ll be back to full running again.

Topher: I was working at BigCommerce when things started to break loose for weed. And there’s a lot of question of which of the big outlets would accept payments and which ones wouldn’t and what it would mean for different shops and different states and all that kind of stuff. It was really interesting at the time. I think that’s about when I met you. 

Robert: Yeah. I started using Twitter probably the middle of 2015. Then like six months later, is when I came up with WP Dispensary. I was toying with ideas. I built random themes and that one just stuck. Because I was a lifetime user and it was legal for medical here at the time. So it was like, All right, I’m gonna just jump in. I didn’t really see anything that was available other than a few big names. So I was like, I want to give them like an open source solution.

The beginning, if you go back to the very first 1.0 release, it was horrible compared to what it is now. But I mean, I was just toying around with it at the time. So it built up from there and it just kept building and kept building so I’m forever grateful for it because I feel like that’s what actually allowed me to join the space of WordPress on Twitter and have something that differentiated me so. 

And the people that I talked to that would use it but not talk about it publicly, I’ve had people come to me and be like, It was cool to be able to talk to someone that was so open about it because they weren’t able to be. So a lot has changed since then. That was like seven years ago now. Eight years.

Topher: Right. Yeah, it really has. It’s just so strange to think it’s been that long.

Robert: Yeah. It feels like just yesterday.

Topher: A friend of mine, her birthday is tomorrow. It’s actually today. She’s in India. She’s 44 today. And she was commenting that COVID started on her 40th birthday. And I thought, Wow, we’re getting to the point where it was years ago now. 

Nyasha: Wow. That’s an interesting way to view it. That just blew my mind just now. Sorry. 

Topher: It’s pretty crazy. 

Nyasha: Robert-

Topher: Yeah, go ahead. 

Nyasha: I have a question for you, Robert. 

Robert: Yeah. 

Nyasha: In my opinion, what you’re doing is one of the cooler things I see in WordPress, combining marijuana and WordPress. Where did you first get the idea to do this?

Robert: It was because I was shopping, looking at different sites that had menus and nothing really looked the way I wanted it to look. And I went, “I bet I could rebuild something like that.” And at the time, I was working with custom post types more heavily. So I separated every type of product into its own custom post type at the time. So it was very, very low budget but it was what I envisioned that it could actually be compared to what they’re doing now. Because you get some companies now, they’re charging thousands of dollars per month just to run their software. So I feel like that’s a rip-off. 

I wanted to have an alternative out there so other people could have an actual way to run their business without having to pay, you know, 25, 30 grand a year or more just to be able to have the functioning software, not including all the other hurdles they’re already having to face.

Topher: How far did you take it or plan to take it? Were you thinking of running point of sale in the store or that kind of stuff?

Robert: I toyed with it. But there was so many options already out there that dispensaries were set on. So I went, Okay, they’ve already got the kind of chokehold on that. They were funded companies. So I didn’t really feel the need to jump in first before having some type of solid base. The plan was to actually just connect to various point-of-sale services so you could just use our product for the website and then have everything run through the same point of sale automatically. 

So that was the plan at the time. But it’s a closed community unless you got big money and you’re funded and you know the right people, so you don’t get as much of the connection that you would want. So it’s just been that constant hurdles, little stuff like that. 

Topher: A friend of mine lives in a small town near me and he feels like… It’s a really small town. It’s just main street basically. It feels like main streets but mostly taken over by weed shops. So he did a little research and found that about half of them are owned by the same company. 

Robert: That happens. That happens a lot. 

Topher: Just running differently. Seems like it can make it hard for mom-and-pop shops. 

Robert: Yeah, yeah. You get multi-state operators that will come in, they’ll pop up their spots right next door to another shop. The place I go to has three other places within viewing distance. So it’s like this one corner. It’s like this one little section. It’s good in a sense because they’re consolidating it in the whole area where they’re at and just putting it in one spot. But then you have like, literal, your parking lots next door to another spot’s parking lot. So it gets weird when you start looking at it like that.

Nyasha: You made me think of a very interesting question. We’ve talked a little bit before about this, Robert, but I just wanted to talk to you again, excuse me, especially since I’m in a kind of different place now. When we first met, when I first met Robert, I was living in a state South Carolina, but you know, they still have very strict laws against marijuana.

I now live in North Carolina, not too far but medical marijuana is legal here, which I didn’t know when I was moving here which is awesome. Oh, how has life changed for you from not only a business standpoint but a community standpoint as well since they legalized marijuana where you are located?

Nyasha: You don’t feel as nervous driving around now. That’s the biggest thing. I got a bag in my car and now I got to worry about getting arrested. If the cop pulls me over and it smells a little funny in here, I’m gonna have to go to jail. Now I don’t have to worry about that because cops drive up and down the street past these places. It is what it is. Now they’re focusing or should be focusing on something more important. So that’s the one thing that’s changed the most for me personally, just being able to move about and not stress as much. Which makes living life a little bit happier because now you’re not worried about one extra thing that you don’t really want to be. So I feel like it’s a good thing. It’s a net positive.

Nyasha: It is. And I’m glad you can feel that level of comfort. I hope it eventually extends to the entire United States. Topher and both went to work in Asia at Bangkok, and I was wandering around on the streets one night because that’s what I do in other countries and we found a weed shop. Their grand opening was going to be the next day, so they did a little soft opening that night. I never told you that, Topher?

Topher: No.

Nyasha: Oh, okay. I’m sorry. So I’ll tell the story. I was trying to go to the WordPress parties, and I didn’t sign up for any in advance, so I couldn’t get into any of the WordPress parties. 

Topher: Oh, no.

Nyasha: So I was like, “You know what, this is a free night.” My husband was with me and I said, “Hey, let’s go to Chinatown. I heard Bangkok Chinatown is unreal. Let’s go.” So we hopped in a cab, went to Chinatown. And then we started wandering around, because it was just so much to do with so many people, so much food, so much alcohol, so much entertainment. It was just everything.

We were just wandering, and we saw a shop. It was kind of dark, and it was like glowing green and I was like, “This looks so cool. Let’s go in.” So we go in and we see marijuana lined up on the counter. And they’re like, ‘Hey, welcome in.” Topher can tell you that people were just so friendly in Thailand. They came in and it was like we were like family. And they were like, we are opening a cannabis shop. It opens tomorrow but we did a soft launch tonight. And they were like, “Would you guys like anything?” And then they just let us see. They took us on a tour of the whole shop. They gave us local ready-made craft fruit beer. 

Topher: Oh, wow. 

Nyasha: They had a weed loft. So we went upstairs and there was a weed loft. They had video games and a guy was playing the guitar. It was amazing and so comfortable. I have video of that. I’ll send you both the video. I was like, Wow, I’m thousands of miles away from South Carolina and you could not have this legally there. You could not have this safety and this comfort. But I experienced it in Thailand. They just legalized marijuana, by the way. I think it was January. 

Topher: Oh, wow.

Nyasha: Was it January? If it wasn’t January, it was like recent recent. 

Topher: Oh, yeah. WordCamp Asia was in February. 

Nyasha: Yeah. So it was incredible. I don’t really partake in marijuana, but I think it should be legalized. I just really with what you said… It was like, you know, people are comfortable. They’re not stressed out about what’s going on and the police can focus on more serious things. That’s why I really, really love what you’re doing. I think making it easier and safer for people to purchase marijuana and use it, that should be the goal that we’re striving for, in my opinion. So I think you’re awesome for that. 

Robert: Thank you. Thank you. And I bet you when you were there you probably didn’t see one angry face that whole time. Everybody was happy and having fun. You didn’t have to worry about a fight breaking out. It was a good time, I bet.

Nyasha: You are correct. I’ll have to send you all the videos of just hanging out with these local Thai guys playing God of War and drinking craft beer.

Topher: If you don’t mind, I’ll put that video in the transcript of this-

Nyasha: Yeah, I don’t mind at all.

Topher: …this episode. All right, cool. Robert, I was gonna ask if you go to WordCamps. And then I remember you don’t know. 

Robert: No, no, I don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever really done any events ever. So it’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just it’s never worked out. Times in life I either had a kid right around the times where they were having all the ones locally. I’m not really a big traveler, I stay here. Don’t really leave the state or leave this area. So it’s got to be close and then the timing has got to be right for it. And it just hasn’t worked out yet. I’m working on it though. I’m looking into a few.

Topher: That’s cool. We pulled the plug on WordCamp Grand Rapids for this year. 

Nyasha: Oh.

Topher: We’re gonna try it for next year. 

Nyasha: Topher, that means you have to start WordCamp Michigan. And then we can finally… I’ll come there. I’m a traveler, so I’ll come and we can all hang out. 

Topher: It was mentioned. 

Nyasha: Nice. 

Topher: That’d be a lot of work, though. 

Nyasha: Oh, yeah, you’re right. You’re right. That’s our goal, though. We eventually want to do… I just started a WordPress meetup with my mentors in Columbia, South Carolina. And one day we want to have WordCamp Carolina and combine… because North Carolina is our snooty cousin. So that would be fun.

Topher: That’s fun. 

Nyasha: That does lead me to a question. Robert, I know you haven’t been to any but it’s kind of hard to escape when one of the bigger ones happens. They’re all over social media. They’re all in the WordPress news. Which one would you be… It could be a flagship major one or it can be a smaller one. Which one would you be most excited about attending?

Robert: It would be less about the event and where it’s at. I think if I’m going to travel, I’m going to just travel to the one that looks most interesting to me. So the right topics, the right people, actually, you know, being at the event or hosting the event, I think that would be more important than the location of it. Or if it’s a big one like US or Europe, compared to a state one or a city one, I don’t think it would really make that much of a difference. 

Nyasha: Gotcha.

Topher: Interesting. Has there ever been one where you thought, boy, if I was gonna go that’s the one. I wish I’d gone to that?

Robert: I can’t think of one offhand. Just because I don’t dive too deep. I see the news when it comes through. 

Topher: Sure. 

Robert: I’ll remember it or talk about it during that time. But then seven other thousand things happen and you know, it just gets lost in the shuffle. So I can’t think of one off the top of my head. 

Topher: Well, if you get the chance, I highly recommend that they really change things in the WordPress game. 

Nyasha: They are. I can’t wait to go to my first small. I’ve only been to bigger ones.

Topher: Really? 

Nyasha: I can’t wait to go to my first small one. My first small one I’m going to WordCamp Rochester, and I can wait. 

Topher: Oh, nice. 

Nyasha: I guess I can ask you, Topher, how does it feel? I feel like they’ll be more intimate at a smaller one versus a major one. How do you feel about them?

Topher: They are. Actually, I went to Buffalo not too long ago, which is probably going to be similar in size to Rochester. And it’s maybe 100 people. And you get to meet everybody, every single one. At a big camp, there’s a lot of split-off. Like you’d only comfortably talk to so many people in a group at once. So you know, 20 people will go to dinner over here and 20 over there and a bunch of people go to the museum. They all split off and do things. But at a small camp, pretty much everybody sticks together. It’s a one big happy group thing. 

We still had three tracks. I don’t know that I recommend three for a really small camp, because it does split people off. With three tracks and only 100 people and not everybody goes to every session, then your talks get low traction. You know what I mean? Because everybody’s trying to figure out where they want to go. We had considered even a one-track conference so everybody was all together all the time. 

Nyasha: That’d be really cool.

Topher: Yeah, it’d be cool. 

Robert: I think for a smaller one, that would be really cool.

Topher: We’ll see. 

Nyasha: I actually don’t know how hard or easy this would be because of the United States, you know, marijuana is legal in certain places and it’s not in others. Robert, in Michigan, have you heard of any canna-tech-type conferences or events going on where you can come and kind of like just talk about cannabis and tech? 

Robert: Yeah. They have a couple that’ll pop up. They have other ones that are just more geared towards the cannabis products themselves. I still haven’t went to none of those either. So I’m not targeting WordPress and saying I’m not going to no WordCamps ever. Yeah, basically. Yeah. I’m at the house. Now with a three-year-old too now, I can’t ever leave. He won’t let me.

Nyasha: Ooh.

Topher: We need WordCamp Devore and it’ll be at your house. 

Nyasha: Yeah. And we can set up cameras and do it virtually too. That’s what we need. Nice WordCamp Devore Canna-tech Virtual conference. We could put it together. I know some sponsors. That would be awesome.

Topher: I’ve considered the idea of micro camps. Probably three or four times now I’ve tried to join the core contributor team out of WordCamp contributor day. And the idea is that you spun up with track and you pick a ticket and you commit code and you’re a committer. The actuality is it takes seven out of your eight hours to get Docker set up. And then people have long drifted away and no one’s interested in helping and it’s just over. 

So I considered a camp of maximum 20 attendees and have it be three or four days. And you go ahead and you spend the whole first day doing Docker, but then you’ve got two or three doing Core, or whatever your theme is. I haven’t done it obviously. I don’t know that anybody has. But I think it’d be an interesting idea. 

Robert: Yeah, yeah. I think stuff like that would be beneficial to WordPress in general. Like just people not having to be rely on, oh, it’s a WordCamp officially so now I can focus on this one. Instead, you can make your own little things where it’s now just a coding session about WordPress where you guys are hanging out having fun, but also doing a bunch of cool stuff.

Or, you know, if I went the route where I was like, Okay, I’m gonna combine the weed and the technology together, and we’re gonna have like a weed camp and everybody that likes WordPress and weed comes and hangs out, and you’re 21 and over, here it’s legal, so you can just do it. So anybody that comes to Michigan would be able to use it if they wanted to or buy it from shops. 

So I feel like stuff like that would be cool. I just don’t feel like I’m going to be the one to go, “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to start that.” I can’t even get myself to a WordCamp or an event. So I don’t see myself hosting and running one like that. But someone else is free to take the idea and run with it if they want to. That would be one I would highly consider going to.

Topher: What would swag be like in a weed camp? 

Nyasha: Oh, my gosh.

Robert: Great. It would be great. I mean, if you like it and you’re into it, or you want to, there’s a ton of stuff that you can try and a ton of different options. So it’s not the same as it was 40, 50 years ago. There’s a lot of different things that are available now.

Nyasha: Robert, that makes me remember something we talked about. I know you talked about how the cannabis industry is just going fast and it’s hard to keep up with it. You had your idea in 2015 and you’re still working on it? How do you feel about it like now versus when you had it in 2015 overall?

Robert: I feel overall technology-wise in the way it’s built, it’s a billion times better. And it’s something that I’m actually where I’m proud to show it and say, here’s a product I’m willing to sell and actually, say, put my stamp of approval on it more than just it’s a side project that might live on GitHub for a while. So I’m happy in that sense. 

But then I’m also still frustrated that I can’t get everything just moving forward the way if I built the regular WordPress business where I’m like, I’m going to host your WordPress site and offer you some type of maintenance or something like that, they won’t have no problem with that. But since I’m even involved in the industry whatsoever, I can’t do it. They won’t accept it because your cannabis adjacent. I’m not touching the product, I’m not doing nothing with that, it’s just software and hosting, they still don’t care. 

Topher: Interesting.

Robert: So that’s something that I’m still frustrated with. But overall, I’m happy with the product itself, and I wish I could get it out and push it out to more people and allow more people to use it and know that it’s a viable option.

Topher: Do you think the weed industry will ever simmer down and become more like the alcohol industry? We have liquor stores, but I don’t have bar on my street.

Robert: Yeah, yeah. Because if you look at the stock market, most of these companies are way, way under and going down further every single quarter. So the product is so mass-produced now, you’re getting things for like dirt cheap in most places. Like when it first became recreational here for a regular to be like 70 bucks for a high-quality one. Now you can spend like 30, 35 to get a really good quality one. 

Topher: Oh my gosh. 

Nyasha: So the pricing has dropped drastically on everything because there’s so much of an available you can only sell so much. And I think that’s going to allow the good quality products and everybody that likes their main state products that you get will the ones that stick around and all the smaller ones will just disappear and do something else. That’s what I feel anyways.

Topher: I’m a whiskey guy. I’m into scotch. You can make better product by spending years refining it. Like a barrel of Scotch might sit there for 15 years. Aside from having a good strain, is there something you can do to weed to make it 10 times the value of something else, like a super excellent bottle of scotch?

Robert: It’s just the way you grow it. You’ll get certain harvesters that’ll use a lot of nutrients that aren’t really like organic or all that healthy. They don’t flush the products to get all that out at the end. So when you’re using it, you can taste the more bitter tastes. So when you’re doing the right things and you’re putting the quality product out, a user of this product will know it right away. They might try new ones if they haven’t seen your name before, but if it’s not something up to par with what they know, they’re out and they’ll never touch it again. So it’s the good quality. It’s just the way you grow it, how you cultivate it. Certain strength will actually be-

Topher: Organic.

Nyasha: Yeah, yeah, actually. Yeah. 100%. If you can get everything organic for it. It’s better. I’ve done it myself before where I’ve grown with just straight organic product and it worked wonderfully. Everything turned out great with it. None of the chemical taste or… You know, if you don’t want to ingest a lot of chemicals anyway in your normal day, you’re vegan or you’re looking at a health conscious, this is something that you’re going to be worried about. 

You’ll see a lot of edibles now are changing over to vegan options and switching things up, because a lot of people won’t use their products if they can’t. So they’re trying to reach more people. So it’s becoming more mainstream. I think that the big thing long term will just be the quality products will stick around and the rest will just be seen in mom-and-pop shops and little places here and there if they can get someone to sell it for them. But it won’t be the nationally known.

You know, like cookies brand. Everybody knows cookies. So it’s just one of those things where you’re gonna stick around because everybody knows you and they love you. And the rest will just fade.

Topher: All right. Nyasha gotta be out of here in a couple of minutes. Anything else you wanted to say, Ny?

Nyasha: Oh, no. That was awesome. Have you all seen the movie How High? When the guy is explaining the marijuana, he’s like, wow, did you go to weed college? That’s how I felt just now because Robert was like, That’s the… I just felt like, oh my god, this is amazing. 

Robert: I’ve watched that movie enough times. So it might just be blind conditioning from watching it so much. 

Topher: That is the weed college. 

Robert: Yeah. 

Nyasha: This is wonderful. Thank you, Robert. This is amazing technology that you’re putting out here. I know you’re going to have it done and it’s gonna be great. Just remember us when you become a billionaire. 

Robert: When the business grows beyond what I can do myself, I’m pulling from people that I know. I’m not going to try to just outsource to whatever place I can find the cheapest labor. I’m going to find quality people that actually want to help and would be perfect for the roles that I’m trying to fill. So if that’s you, then you know, you might be hearing from me soon. And then you’ll be a part of the billion-dollar business. 

Nyasha: Oh, yeah, I have multiple jobs. I’ll add another. You come in on too, Topher?

Topher: Yeah, sure. All right, I’m gonna read the outro here. 

This has been an episode of Hallway Chats, a part of the HeroPress Network. Your hosts were Nyasha Green and Topher DeRosia. We’d like to thank Sophia DeRosia for the music and Nexcess for hosting our network. If you liked the episode, please subscribe and mention us on social media.

In November 2022 Topher went to WordCamp Italy in Milan. While there he had several conversations with attendees and sponsors.

Episode Transcript

Topher: Hey folks, welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m your host Topher. This week is going to be a little bit different from usual. This last November, I had the opportunity to go to WordCamp Italy in Milan, or WordCamp Italia in Milano, depending on how your mama says it. 

While I was there, I got to have some actual in-person hallway chats with a number of people. And this week is going to be an aggregation of five of them. So you’re going to get to meet five really cool people that I have the opportunity to interview, and I hope you find them just as great as I did.

[00:00:40] 

Hey, everybody, this is Topher. I’m at WordCamp Italia in Milano, and I’m here with-

James: James Baldacchino.

Topher: James, why are you here? 

James: That’s good question. I’m here because I met two of the organizers in WordCamp US who told me it was coming up, and I said, why not? They also asked me whether I’ve been interested in applying to for a talk. My first reaction was, would I do? So I applied, they liked it, and here I am. 

Topher: That’s great. So you were at WordCamp US in San Diego? 

James: Yeah. That was fun. 

Topher: Did we meet and I forgot? 

James: Yes. 

Topher: I’m sorry. 

James: You met a lot of people.

Topher: I did. All right. Cool. So how did you get into WordPress? 

James: I joined Ellipsis 18 months ago. As simple as that. I’ve been using WordPress personally, of course, like most other people for a long, long time but I never realized there was such a huge community and such huge industry behind it. I have found WordPress incredibly useful. For example, when I was in a marketing job, which had zero budget, and I pulled together a lot of great websites for very low price. I loved it. But I never knew it was a beautiful shock to find out-

Topher: That’s a great word—beautiful shock. 

James: Yeah. 

Topher: When did you first realize the community was like that? Was it at WordCamp Us or did you find the community online? 

James: To be honest, the first year of working with WordPress, there was no WordCamp because it was all online because of the pandemic. WordCamps just cemented. But before, what made me realize what a tight-knit community this is was the fact that such a lot of information is shared so freely. 

Topher: Ah, yes. 

James: And there’s a lot of it as well. I’m coming from industries where if you have information, you don’t publish it, because you don’t want your competitors to know.

Topher: Right. Right. Proprietary.

James: So it was shocking and it was wonderful. I said, okay, then there must be more to this than what I realize.

Topher: And then you went to WordCamp?

James: And then I went to WordCamp Europe, which was massive. 

Topher: Oh, Porto? 

James: Yes. 

Topher: Did we meet there and I forgot?

James: No. 

Topher: Okay. 

James: It was huge. 

Topher: I was there. 

James: That was really good as well. That was my first one. 

Topher: Okay.

James: It was lovely. 

Topher: Wow. So this is your third then? 

James: My third then. Yeah, from zero to hero. But nothing compared to heros.

Topher: You know, it’s funny people who work for SiteGround go to a lot of WordCamps. But because of the pandemic, there was this big gap. And I would talk to people from agencies and hosting companies and say, “Oh, yes, I’ve been in WordPress for two years now.” Oh, what WordCamps have you been to? None.

James: Of course.

Topher: You know, Oh, no. That’s so sad. 

James: No, I think it makes a massive difference. 

Topher: It does. A friend of mine has a WordCamp talk called “And Then I Went to WordCamp”.

James: It makes sense.

Topher: It does. It makes perfect sense.

James: I can completely relate to that as well.

Topher: So what do you do at Ellipsis?

James: I’m the head of strategy. So my job is helping clients with marketing strategy. That means clients who work with WordPress, that means either agencies or hosts or people who sell the plugins or themes. The core of my role is helping them figure out what marketing strategy they should deploy, what makes sense for them in order to deliver growth and the right type of growth, not growth for growth.

Topher: Right. Yes. 

James: It’s a wonderful role, which I’m really enjoying. Honestly, I’ve been working in marketing 14 years and the learning curve within WordPress has mean like no other.

Topher: Meaning good or bad?

James: Good. 

Topher: Very good.

James: Extremely good. 

Topher: Good. 

James: Every single day I learned something new and I love it. 

Topher: Good.

James: I love being told new things and finding out new things and helping clients test new theories and find new ways of delivering growth. And yes, fantastic. I love it.

Topher: That’s great. I’m happy to hear it. Where are you from?

James: I’m from Malta, which is pretty close. It’s made it even easier to come.

Topher: Born and raised?

James: Yeah, born and raised.

Topher: That’s cool. All right. I’ve been in Milan now for three days and I have not yet met anyone from here. 

James: Me too actually. Maybe the hotel check-in guy. Maybe.

Topher: Maybe. I don’t know. All right. Well, thank you very much for talking with me. 

James: Thank you for your time. Thanks for the invitation. 

Topher: All right. 

[00:05:53]

Hey, folks, this is Topher. I’m here at WordCamp Italia in Milano, and I’m here with—

Luisa: Luisa.

Topher: Luisa. And what do you do with WordPress? 

Luisa: Ooh, with WordPress I work of course, and I work with a community also. The thing that I do most is translations. I am into the Polyglots team. I am one of the… I think we are seven GTs for Italian and we are always translating something and we are hoping to do good and useful job. 

Topher: For your work, are you a developer, a designer, communicator? 

Luisa: Ah, something in the middle of all those things. 

Topher: That makes sense. That is not uncommon. Lots of people do that.

Luisa: And also I am a teacher. 

Topher: Also a teacher?

Luisa: Yeah. But not only web-related things. I teach kids all the things with robotics and coding sometimes.

Topher: That is very cool. That is very cool.

Luisa: I like it. 

Topher: Where are you from? 

Luisa: Brescia, which is a little city near here, about an hour from Milan. 

Topher: Okay. So have you been staying here in a hotel or do you just drive back and forth? 

Luisa: No, no, I have a home, thanks to my friend that lent me this house. 

Topher: Nice. Is this your first WordCamp? 

Luisa: No, no, no, no. I have been to several WordCamps in the last five years, I think. Six maybe.

Topher: Which ones? 

Luisa: All the ones in Italy: Milan, Turin, Verona, Rome, and also WordCamp Europe in Berlin. 

Topher: I was there. 

Luisa: Ooh.

Topher: Yeah. 

Luisa: We didn’t met.

Topher: You didn’t see me?

Luisa: I did not know about you at that time. 

Topher: I have met many people that were also there and I did not see them. 

Luisa: We were many. I remember the main room with the conversation with Marta and we were three thousand and a half or something. Very, very big. I’ve never been in something so big. 

Topher: It was very impressive. And the dance. The after dance. 

Luisa: It was an amazing event. 

Topher: Yeah, it really was. I had another question and I need to remember it. I don’t remember it. What are you doing here? Are you the organizer, a volunteer or…? 

Luisa: I’m an organizer and I was in charge of the contributor day. 

Topher: Ah. Okay. That’s why I saw you so much.

Luisa: That’s why I called you at first. 

Topher: So how did you feel contributor day went? Were you happy with it? 

Luisa: Oh, we’ve been so happy. 

Topher: Good. 

Luisa: So many people and a real good job for all the teams.

Topher: I was very impressed. I’ve been doing a lot of WordCamps and contributor days and I’ve noticed that about 10% of WordCamp shows up to contributor day. And I feel like that fits for this one. We have 500 or 600 attendees here?

Luisa: Yesterday we-

Topher: Not yesterday. Today. 

Luisa: Today, three hundred and a half. 

Topher: Oh, three and a half. Okay. 

Luisa: I don’t know if they all show.

Topher: How many did we have yesterday for contributor day?

Luisa: A hundred.

Topher: Okay, so that’s better than average. That’s a third. That’s really good. So well done. 

Luisa: Thank you. The place was big and so we could do this. It’s difficult this time to have space to let all the people work safely and in a good way. 

Topher: All right. Well, thank you very much for talking with me today. 

Luisa: Thank you, Topher, for coming here. 

Topher: Oh, you’re very welcome. It was my pleasure. 

Luisa: Thank you again. 

[00:10:19] 

Topher: Hey everybody, this is Topher. I am at WordCamp Italia in Milano, and I am here with-

Caroline: Caroline Crossland. I am head of inbound marketing at Atarim. 

Topher: All right, cool. What brings you to WordCamp? 

Caroline: I joined Atarim only three weeks ago. So this is all very new to me. I’m new to the industry. So technology is one of my passions, but this is my first time working within the industry, within the WordPress community. So I am here to learn as much as I can and soak up information from guys like yourself-

Topher: Ah, thank you. 

Caroline: …who know everything in this community. And it has been a very welcoming community-

Topher: Good. I was gonna ask what you think. 

Caroline: …and one that’s really helpful. It’s been notably a diverse group of people. It’s a very inclusive atmosphere. I have been welcomed with open arms and made lots of interesting new contacts. And yeah, it’s been really good because I’ve had a lot of questions. I’ve probably been quite annoying. 

Topher: Well, not to me. I don’t speak for the rest of the team. Cool. So how did you get connected with Atarim? Were you WordPress before or just random job?

Caroline: Just a random job or many random jobs. No, I was marketing director at a business until just over a year ago. And due to COVID, I was made redundant and I actually decided to take a year off to spend with my little boys, which was absolutely lovely. 

And when it came time to look for another job, I decided that I really wanted to work in an industry connected to one of my passions, and my passions are technology and travel. I began the job hunt and actually Atarim was the first job that I saw that was interesting and I applied. 

I had two fantastically entertaining interviews, where we… the second one was with one of the co-founders of the business. We had a really interesting conversation. We got on really well. I was really excited by what Atarim… who they are, what the product does, and where they want to take the product. So yeah, that’s how it all came about. 

I have no experience working in the technology industry but I do freelance build the occasional website for family, friends, friends of friends, and so on. And WordPress is my tool of choice. 

Topher: Excellent. 

Caroline: So I know the product to a certain extent, but I haven’t been part of the community until now. 

Topher: All right. Where are you from? 

Caroline: I am from Sheffield in England. 

Topher: And here you are in Italy. So you’re getting your travel wish? 

Caroline: Absolutely, definitely. All my previous roles have involved a lot of travel mostly to the US. So I’m known for talking about traveling from the UK to the US. I help people with that online. This is actually my first time in Europe since COVID. 

Topher: Wow. I don’t know if you’re aware, but there are a lot of WordCamps. 

Caroline: I am becoming aware, yes. 

Topher: And they are all over the place. And you’re going to have to travel to all of them.

Caroline: I am indeed. We are sponsoring WordCamp Asia in Bangkok in February.

Topher: Oh, nice. 

Caroline: So all being well I should be there. So this is kind of my learning WordCamp. This is the WordCamp where I’m asking all the questions and trying to meet all the people, which will hopefully put me in good stead for the next one. 

Topher: Yep. All right. Wow, thank you very much for talking with me. 

Caroline: No problem. Thank you very much. 

Topher: I will see you later. 

Caroline: Goodbye.

[00:14:22] 

Topher: Hi everybody. This is Topher. I am at WordCamp Italia in Milano, and I’m here with… What is your name? 

Paolo: My name is Paolo Scala. 

Topher: Paolo Scala. 

Paolo: Yeah.

Topher: And why are you here? 

Paolo: I am here because I work for Yoast, and we have a booth here at WordCamp Italia. 

Topher: Excellent. Where do you live? 

Paolo: I live actually 30 minutes from here. I came by car.

Topher: You said 30 meters?

Paolo: No, 30 minutes.

Topher: Minutes. Oh, okay.

Paolo: Thirty minutes by car. It’s something like 15, 16 kilometers. 

Topher: Okay. My hotel is literally 200 meters from here.

Paolo: Wow. 

Topher: So I thought, well, maybe.

Paolo: No, no, no, this is a very, very central area of Milan. So you have to be very, very rich to live here.

Topher: So you work for Yoast, so you’re in WordPress. How long have you been doing WordPress things? 

Paolo: Not that much at all because I started this year. I used the WordPress a couple of years ago but just to configure a site, a website. I didn’t develop anything at all for WordPress. So I just started about this year.

Topher: What made you join Yoast, if you weren’t a WordPressor before?

Paolo: I was actually considering a career change, because I come from the public research field. And my partner too. And so we were scouting some websites. She’s a linguist and she looked… I don’t know why but she saw this Yoast job offer and she said to me, “Ah, look, there is this company which is hiring developers.” Because I am a developer. 

Topher: Ah, okay.

Paolo: Yeah. So I didn’t know Yoast at all. I looked at their website, and I was very impressed by all the positive vibes that all these videos gave to me. So I thought, Why not try? So I sent the CV, I interviewed, and here I am. 

Topher: That’s great. Is this your first WordCamp?

Paolo: Yes. 

Topher: What do you think? 

Paolo: It’s very nice. One thing that really struck me is the people are very, very nice. It’s very good atmosphere. Very nice vibes. I really like it. 

Topher: WordCamps have a reputation for being very pleasant places to be with very nice people. That’s why I go.

Paolo: Yes, yes, I can reassure that it’s exactly like this. 

Topher: That’s cool. So you’re a developer but you’re standing at a booth at a WordCamp. Do you also do marketing things? Like why are you here? 

Paolo: I’m here because today I’m a speaker.

Topher: Oh, excellent. What are you speaking on? 

Paolo: I’m speaking about schema.org. 

Topher: Oh, I saw that one. That’s dear to my heart. I love that company. Will you also give it in English?

Paolo: Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s a very interesting topic. So I hope to-

Topher: I can read it online. All right. Well, that’s very cool. Thank you for talking with me today. 

Paolo: No problem. Thanks to you. 

[00:17:59] 

Topher: Hi everybody, this is Topher. I’m at WordCamp Italia in Milano, and I’m here today with-

Samah: Samah Nasr.

Topher: All right. And you’re with Yoast?

Samah: Definitely. I’m with Yoast since almost more than four years. 

Topher: That’s a long time. 

Samah: And it’s passed so quickly. I feel like two weeks ago I joined them. 

Topher: Excellent. Where do you live? 

Samah: I live in the Netherlands in a lovely city called Arnhem. So I love the city and it’s petite city, but I’m there since almost five years.

Topher: Is that where Yoast is based? 

Samah: No, Yoast is based in the city called Wijchen. It’s like 30 minutes with a train from my city.

Topher: Okay. So you can go to the office if you need to?

Samah: Yeah, definitely. But everyone love working from home.

Topher: Yeah. Yeah. So what do you do there? 

Samah: I work at community team. We’re mainly working with sponsoring events, especially WordCamps meetups, and also I’m working with Yoast Care Fund and Yoast Diversity Fund. 

Topher: Okay. Very cool. My wife, Cate, won the Yoast Care Fund around six months ago, a year ago. Something like that. So is your time with Yoast the whole of your time with WordPress, or did you do WordPress before? 

Samah: Honestly, I studied IT when I was young, but I’m coming from Middle East and it was very difficult for a woman to work in IT. I studied the C++, PHP, and those ones but I never really worked in WordPress or even think about it. When I joined Yoast, I started falling in love with WordPress and this awesome community. Then it’s grown more and more. And then I started working with WordPress after joining Yoast.

Topher: Sure. So you’re in community with Yoast. Did you do community things before? 

Samah: Never at all. I used to work with the Red Cross. I shifted my career completely-

Topher: A different community.

Samah: A different community. I changed my career because I want to move to the Netherlands, have a little bit calmer life, and more… just to start a family.

Topher: Okay. This is your first WordCamp? 

Samah: Definitely not. But this is my first WordCamp in Italy and I’m really happy to meet all of the Italian community. I know them in Slack or a lot of online events.

Topher: Sure. 

Samah: But it was nice to see they have legs, they’re not only faces.

Topher: What other camps have you been to? 

Samah: I’ve been to WordCamp Berlin. Sorry, WordCamp Europe in Berlin. I went to WordCamp Netherlands. I went to… Yeah, I think that’s it. And WordCamp Nijmegen a couple of times. 

Topher: Where is that? 

Samah: It was 2019 before COVID time.

Topher: Where is that? 

Samah: In Netherlands. 

Topher: Oh, okay. My Dutch doesn’t help me understand that word. 

Samah: You should see me the first time trying to pronounce. I called it Nai-me-gen.

Topher: Oh, yes. So what do you like about WordCamps? 

Samah: I love that all the people come together in their own free time to build or to communicate about open source. And just the atmosphere, the love between them, the way they contribute, you feel welcome. It doesn’t matter who you are, where are you from, what languages you speak. You feel welcome. Like I’m here, I don’t speak Italian and it was-

Topher: Me neither. 

Samah: And people are so friendly. Even the one who doesn’t speak English, they are trying. They’re waving or they give you the sign. But that’s really amazing. You feel welcome. You feel like home in different place. 

Topher: Yes. Yes. I have often thought that WordCamps feels like home. No matter which one it is- 

Samah: Yeah, definitely. 

Topher: …they all do. All right. Well, thank you very much for talking with me today. 

Samah: Thank you. It was lovely talking to you, too. 

Topher: All right. 

Well, there you have it, folks, five conversations from WordCamp Italy. I had a wonderful time and the people were invariably nice, kind, thoughtful. It was a great trip. So let’s wind this up. 

This has been an episode of Hallway Chats, a part of the HeroPress network. I was your host Topher DeRosia. I’d like to thank Sophia DeRosia for the music and Nexcess for hosting our network. If you liked the episode, please subscribe and mention us on social media.

Topher and Sophia met with Benjamin Zekavica and Moritz Bappert, both WordCamp Europe 2023 volunteers.

Show Notes

Episode Transcript

Topher: Hey everyone! Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Topher and my co-host is Sofia. 

Sophia: Hello. 

Moritz: Hi. Nice to meet you. 

Benjamin: Nice to meet you two.

Topher: It’s great having you here. Once again, our guests are from WordCamp Europe. Please tell us your names and what your role is for WordCamp.

Benjamin: I’m Benjamin. I’m 24 years old, and I’m a volunteer here at the WordCamp. I am the photographer and photographer organizer to take the picture from the SD card to the computer and to give it to the social media team. And I’m really happy to be here today.

Topher: Great.

Moritz: So my name is [Moritz? 00:05:05] and I’m here for the second time on WordCamp Europe, first time as a volunteer. So I’m excited about that. I was on the sponsors team today, helping the sponsors with everything they needed. And one more shift that I have is as a speakers assistant, so calming down the speakers before their speech, and then guiding them to the stage, and helping with anything else. 

Topher: Cool. Did you say this is your second WordCamp? Europe? 

Moritz: Yes. I’ve been at one in Berlin in 2019.

Topher: I was there. And Benjamin, it’s just your first WordCamp Europe? 

Benjamin: No, it’s my second. I was also in Berlin. 

Topher: I was there too. 

Benjamin: My volunteer is now first time and I’m really happy to be here. Because after COVID it’s now a freedom to have again here with much people to communicate and so on. I’m really happy to have our life back. 

Topher: Yeah, yeah. So where are you each from? Where do you live? 

Moritz: I’m from the Black Forest area in Germany at the very southwest, bordering France and Switzerland. 

Topher: All right. 

Benjamin: I live in Aachen. It’s near Cologne. It’s wonderful, small city.

Topher: Very nice. It’s morning for us. I don’t want to say early morning anymore because I don’t want to seem like I don’t get up early. But it’s midafternoon of day two for you. How’s it been? Are things going well? Is it smooth? Having fun?

Benjamin: I think we are a little bit tired. Now it’s okay. I think it’s completely good for us to work, I think, four hours, if not more, and it’s really good for us. It’s not the full day. And you can choose your shifts. It, for me personally, was relaxed and good. I was really happy because to see the attendees. I was really happy with the speakers that was known for more different things and learned other new technical things. I am really proud about that. 

Topher: That’s cool. 

Moritz: For me, it’s really exciting in that way. Of course, it’s also exhausting because I’m talking to so many inspiring people and I’m like all over the place. I’m having lots of fun. The party yesterday night was nice. There’s gonna be a party too this night and tomorrow night. So it’s a lot. You need to see how you’re managing everything. But yeah, I’m just here for meeting so many interesting people. And I’m having a great time. It’s amazing. 

Topher: Great.

Sophia: Nice.

Topher: You’re on, Sophia. 

Sophia: What? 

Topher: You’re on. 

Sophia: What made you both seek a role in the WordCamp organizing team?

Moritz: For me, I was really interested to get involved more, to talk to more interesting people, to just put myself out there. For example, as a speakers assistant, I have the great opportunity to directly get in touch with some of them. We also get invited to the social last night to the party with all the sponsors and speakers, organizers, and so forth, which was really nice, and many interesting people around. So I think it’s a great opportunity. On the one hand, giving back and investing our own work and effort into a great event. And on the other hand, you also get recognition for it. And it’s lots of fun, you get to know other volunteers. 

Sophia: Yeah, for sure.

Moritz: So great experience. Definitely gonna do that again. 

Benjamin: Repeat it again. I want to add it’s really nice experience because some people, some volunteers, it’s so much problems and I could help them and they could help me. In general, we say you give it and you get it back. It’s a really nice thing what you can expect to be a volunteer. My first time and I was a little bit here, I say, Okay I don’t know if I want to apply for volunteer role because people say it’s so difficult because the English is maybe not so well. But I think here all people want only one thing—to learn and to grow our community. And that makes me so happy.

Sophia: Yeah, absolutely. How has the reality of how WordCamp Europe is now…? Like after the organizing, how has that compared to… Gosh, let me rephrase that. So after having organized WordCamp Europe, and this is now day two, how is it going? Like how does it compare to how you hoped it would be?

Benjamin: I can say I work here as a contributor for WordPress Core and community team and it’s more online basis. But I think here and volunteer, it’s also nice to meet the people directly here and to help to make the WordCamp better. And if we have more volunteers, then it’s easier for all organizers to organize all good things to make the WordCamp better. And it is important because without volunteers it’s impossible to make the event.

Moritz: I mean, I guess what you were asking is also, like, is this event in any sense different from how events work during COVID? I don’t feel that way. For me, it really feels like any event before. It’s been like lots of people. We have great parties. So there’s not any restrictions on that. And I don’t see that people are hesitant in meeting so many people. So it’s really feeling like getting back to normal somehow and feeling great. 

I think COVID didn’t really impact this in any negative way. And probably we even learned some things from that and we’re able to improve stuff. So I’m really happy to have in-person events again. And it’s so valuable to really meet people in person and talk to them directly. For me, even as I’m doing much of the stuff online and working remotely, quite often it’s a different feeling. You get different depths really of interactions with all the people. 

Topher: So volunteering and organizing is a lot of work. It is different from just being an attendee. You’re not free to just wander around and shake all the hands and eat all the snacks. Would you do it again? Is volunteering better than just being an attendee? Or would you value not having responsibility?

Benjamin: I will say yes because I want to come again here and to the next WordCamp because all people wanted to be involved and to help the community to grow up. I think the part is volunteering you have much more exercises to do and you have to help other people. It’s sort of a bit different because you are completely a visitor. But you can also join the community and so on. But like the volunteer, you have more permissions, you can ask directly people to make maybe the next WordCamp better maybe and say directly your opinion to make the next events… The problems was not again to do that. That is a good thing because as well as volunteer you have more to speak out directly to the organizer.

Moritz: That’s the point that I see as well, just like being closer at the center of really what goes on behind the event and inside organizing everything. For me, it’s really interesting to see that and to get more involved and to talk to the people behind the scenes, like, either the organizers themselves or speakers, for example. As a normal attendee, I feel more isolated, of course, I can go and talk to lots of people. But as a volunteer, I really feel more as part of the whole. It lets me connect easily with many people, people approached me seeing me in my volunteer t-shirt. 

Somehow, you’re also one face of the whole event, so to say, and it feels good. I really enjoy doing my little part to help make a successful event, and this way also getting in touch with much more people. Of course, you have to do your small tasks, it takes some time. You don’t go to so many sessions, but I really value talking to people and doing all the related tasks. So I don’t regret missing any of the sessions also.

Benjamin: To add one more thing, I think the good thing as a volunteer, you have a team of mature people. And so it’s funny because all people work together. And we are a team. And that makes me so happy because we have direct communication and work together and that makes your experience much higher. And it’s one thing why I really love to be a volunteer today in this event here. 

Topher: Imagine for a moment you’re talking to someone who has been to four or five local WordCamps, small in their city or maybe another city, but just small camps. What’s different about WordCamp in Europe?

Benjamin: I think we have same opinion of that I think it’s the huge people here, so many people here. It’s a bit difficult because they have more to organize. It’s a bit smaller group. And it’s a bit easier maybe for the organizer, for the volunteers to coordinate, to see how it works. But here is a little bit bigger, much more attendance was here. It’s a little bit stressful. A little bit.

Moritz: I agree. It can be overwhelming, I think. But still there’s so much opportunity because all the people from every place in the world that engage in WordPress topics somehow are here. And you can talk to anyone we have, with any WordPress company you could imagine. It’s so nice. 

Like I’m working as an agency with two co-founders and we’re in that since seven years, so we’ve seen lots of plugins and stuff and some blogs of developers or other things that we find useful. This is the place where you can really meet all of those people in person. This is something that is really satisfying for me to talk to them in person, get to know them.

Topher: Personally I really value that myself—getting to know people on a personal level is… It’s not just WordPress, I’ve experienced it in the whole open source community. I’m a Linux guy, I’m a Mozilla guy, you know, the PHP team, they’re all very open like this. And to be able to just walk up and shake the hand of someone who built something that you use every day it’s amazing. It’s impressive. It’s really cool. 

Moritz: Yeah, I agree. 

Topher: All right, I want to open it up to you two. I don’t have all the questions and all the answers. I’m not there. Is there anything you’d like to say about your experience, about WordCamp, something you wish I’d asked you? No, is an acceptable answer. 

Moritz: Let me think. I think most of the points I already covered. I mean, it’s really impressive to meet so many cool people, having really great time. 

Topher: Let me ask this then. I’ve had some a number of conversations with people in the last couple of weeks about the multilingual aspect of a thing like WordCamp Europe and particularly how mentally taxing it can be to try to communicate across not just one language but 10 or 20, or 30, you know, and all the variety of accents, some are thicker, some are not. How’s it been for you? Yes, I’m assuming that English is pretty common language on the floor at WordCamp. You both speak wonderful English. But how are you doing with people who don’t speak wonderful English or German or anything, you know? What’s it been like for you? 

Moritz: Well, to be honest, all the people I met up to now were able to communicate well in English with me. So that wasn’t really a problem. I mean, for me myself, it’s exhausting. And I’m much more tired in the end of the day as I would be compared to talking the whole day in German, which is already tiring. But doing it in English is even more… But it works. And everybody is making a good effort to be open and communicate, which is mostly English. And, of course, we’re also meeting people from Germany you’re talking to. But yeah, 90% of my conversations have been in English today. 

Topher: All right. 

Benjamin: English is the language here. I’m born in Germany, and my parents are from Serbia. And the funny thing is there are more Serbians here. And for me, it’s really nice to talk with them in Serbian language, because it’s so nice to see the other people talking other languages. And yes, we can speak all languages as that possible directly. But with English we also were happy because my English is not so well but I try to learn it more better. I only can say it’s important that we have what was happy and understand a little bit. But I say sometimes you don’t need something to say. If one smile, it’s enough. 

Topher: Yes, yes. Something that the WordPress community has taught me, has given me is an appreciation for everybody in the world who has learned English so that I don’t have to learn their language. People all the time say to me, “I’m sorry for my English.” And I say, “Boy, I’m sorry, for my version of your language because you don’t want to hear it.” I appreciate. You do not want to hear my German. So I appreciate greatly anyone who takes the time to learn a language that I speak—the only language I speak. So I express that to you now. Thank you. Thank you for taking that time to learn English and be able to be here with us today.

Benjamin: Yeah, nice.

Topher: I don’t have any more questions. Sophia, do have anything? 

Sophia: I do not. 

Topher: All right. Then I just have a little thing to read here and then we can wrap up. 

This has been an episode of Hallway Chats, a part of the HeroPress Network. Your hosts were Sophia DeRosia and Topher DeRosia. We’d like to thank Sophia for the music and Nexcess for hosting our network.

If you liked the episode please subscribe and mention us on social media!

Show Notes

Episode Transcript

Topher: Hey everyone. Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Topher and my co-host is Sofia. Say hello, Sophia.

Sophia: Sorry. Hello. I was trying to look at the show. 

Topher: Okay. Our guests today come from WordCamp Europe. Please tell us your names and what your role is for WordCamp. 

Evangelia: Hi, my name is Evangelia Pappa. And for WordCamp Europe 2023, I am one of the global leads this year. So I’m responsible for the teams of budgets, sponsors, and the community team. 

Topher: Okay. 

Lena: Hi, I’m Lena Lekkou. I’m responsible for the design. I was the design lead team. What you see and what is printed, what is on the website and what is on the social media is from my team. You can blame us or not. 

Topher: Oh, I can’t hear you anymore. Oh, there we go. 

Hacer: So my name is-

Topher: Now it’s not coming through very well. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the angle.

Hacer: Maybe.

Topher: That’s much better. Yeah. 

Hacer: My name is Hacer Yilmaz. I’m a member of the communications and PR team, and sites, I’ve been involved with adding all of the content to the website and also organizing our relationships with media partners. 

Topher: Oh, you know what? I’m gonna stop us right now. I’m gonna hit record and start over. 

Sophia: It is recording. 

Topher: It is?

Sophia: Yeah.

Topher: No, it’s not. Oh, you are recording? Wonderful. Yeah. All right, then never mind. Okay, great. That’s awesome. I’m glad to have you here. Where are each of you from? 

Evangelia: We are at the moment at Athens Concert Hall. This is the venue of WordCamp Europe 2023 otherwise called Megaron. 

Topher: Yes. But where do you live?

Evangelia: I live in Larissa. It is a city in central Greece. So it is four hours from Athens. 

Topher: And Lena, where do you live? 

Lena: I live here in Athens in Greece. 

Topher: Oh, wow. That’s cool. 

Hacer: I live in Portugal. 

Topher: Okay. I guess I don’t know why I expected more people from outside Greece. But maybe that’s just a false expectation on my part.

Evangelia: Oh, we do have a lot of people from outside Greece. You just hit the jackpot today with me and Lena, two out of three. 

Topher: It is a jackpot. 

Lena: I must say that as a Greek community, we are very involved with WordCamps and with the community as it is. So this is why you might see a lot of Greeks.

Topher: Okay. In general, Greeks are really involved and love organizing events because we have two local WordCamps that we are also planning, a third one in a different city, maybe after WordCamp Europe. However, it’s also a little bit difficult to find people who are able to commit their time and invest being an organizer. You will see this year’s organizing team did have a lot of breaks, in several teams, not only the local team. However, we do have people from all around Europe and also some people from other continents. 

Topher: That’s cool. It is early morning for us, not too early, but it’s the beginning of our day and it is mid-afternoon of day two for you. How’s it been so far? Is it going smoothly? Are you having a good time?

Evangelia: Yes, it’s the first day of the main event because yesterday we had the contributor day. So basically, the event started yesterday. Today we had talks in three tracks and also two workshops. And at the same time, we had panels, panel discussions that was something really interesting, except for the talks and workshops. And enlightening because we had also panel discussions regarding diversity, getting involved with the community, women and non-binary people positions in let’s say [inaudible 00:04:57] also, like the amazing team that we have, This is like an example on how we should be handling diversity. It was so far a very nice day.

Topher: How’s the weather been? Is it nice?

Evangelia: Finally it is summer. Because the last week in Greece, it was almost winter. It wasn’t normal for us. Usually in May and early June, it is considered to be summer, but at the moment, we have around 30 degrees Celsius. Last week we had around 15 or 12. It was raining.

Topher: That’s cool. 

Sophia: So this is a question for all three of you. What made you seek a role in the WordCamp organizing team? 

Hacer: So I was also an organizer last year at WordCamp Europe. But before that, I had just been working with WordPress for around three or four years. I was kind of as a freelancer, I am kind of missing in our colleague environment, and the whole social part, let’s say. I know that WordPress has a big community. So I thought maybe that’s something also for me, you know, nice community to be a part of. So that’s why I applied to be an organizer last year. That was also the same reason for this year is because last year I found out it’s a great community. So I just wanted to keep being part of that. 

Sophia: Nice. 

Lena: If you start with this, you cannot stop, I think.

Sophia: Oh, yeah. You can never leave. They never let you go. 

Evangelia: To be honest, many of us every year say, you know, This is my last WordCamp. And it never is. Because you might feel very tired during or a few days after the event considering it has been a very intense period before and also during the whole conference. But then you realize, “Oh, my God, all those smiley faces. How can I live without this tension every day of my life? Spending every day working for WordCamp as an organizer?” And seeing things happening-

Topher: So what you’re saying is that WordCamps are children.

Evangelia: I don’t know. Maybe like that. But you cannot leave that. You cannot. I said to myself I would stop or you know, take some time off to get some rest. I needed vacation really badly sometimes. And then I realized, “Oh, my God, they will start organizing without me. I will have no idea what is going on.” How can I live with that? It’s really strange.

Lena: So I agree with both their opinions about this. But something that I have as a reason for working in all these communities is that when I started to work in this industry, it was very hard to make connections and feel welcoming and start not being so introverted. So that’s what helped me overcome this situation and start having connections and working at this industry. So because I feel that at the start it was very welcoming for me, I feel some way that I can do the same for people that are in this position right now. So I feel that I can help people that are now at the start of this journey. And I feel the need to give something back to something like this. 

Sophia: Yeah, for sure. 

Topher: Think back, if you will, to the first time you volunteered. What did you expect? How does the reality compare to what you thought being an organizer would be like? 

Evangelia: For WordCamp Europe or in general volunteering as an organizer for WordCamps

Lena: I have the same question, if it’s only for WordCamp or volunteering in general. 

Topher: Well, now I want to know how they’re different. So both.

Evangelia: I can explain why they’re different. Because my first experience with the WordPress community was back in 2015. So I had nothing to do with WordPress back then. I will be honest with you. I met the community, I saw how it felt like a safe space, a supportive space, a space where people were pushing me to grow. And I found it really important because I felt I belong here. I feel this is my space, my people. So I think I chose to be here. I chose the community, not the tool from the beginning. 

So when we started organizing the first WordCamp in Athens, it was a fest for the whole great community, it was very few people coming from all around the country, not only from the local meetup. And it was really impressive to see the event happening from the backstage, because we had never done that before, we had no idea what we were doing. So we were also very thankful that we had mentors helping us out. The WordCamp handbook also organizes so you know, what you shouldn’t be doing, which is sometimes more important than what you should be doing. 

It gave me a skill set I never had. Because working as an organizer gives you also knowledge, skill set that you can use also in your daily life, in your work, or anyplace you can imagine. And it also gave me a family. So I selected to stay with this family like forever. 

Topher: That’s really good. I like that. 

Evangelia: But the difference with WordCamp Europe is that we started as a community volunteering to WordCamp Europe in 2018 in Belgrade. And we said, other countries are hosting WordCamp Europe, we would like to do that in our country, too. So let’s go and see how it is, but not go as attendees. We want to see backstage what’s happening. And if you like it and we believe that we can make it, then we will apply. 

So our first experience was that. We traveled all together from Greece. We stayed for a week in Belgrade. We volunteered. We all volunteer to the events. We saw what was happening, we liked it. It was a different taste on the lips because it’s different cultures, different people, different languages. When you are in your country, you can communicate perfectly fine, because it’s your language, everybody will understand exactly what you’re telling them. But when you are in another country, and you have people from all around Europe, there is always a language barrier. 

And the way that we try to avoid misunderstandings, I think it makes the community better because it helps people with being more understanding and caring about other people’s feelings. For example, if I joke with you about something, maybe this is a joke for me because I come from this place and it’s funny for us, it’s hilarious, but maybe for you this is insulting. So that’s a very big difference in WordCamp Europe from a local WordCamp because you have to pay attention. 

Topher: Right. That’s very, very insightful. What about the others? How has it been for you? Oh, you have to lean into the microphone. 

Hacer: My first experience volunteering was actually already as an organizer last year for WordCamp Europe. I didn’t volunteer before for any local WordCamps. Also because I’m living in Portugal and I live very remote. So the near most WordCamps that are near to me is Lisbon. But that is a two-hour drive from where I live. So I don’t go there very often. I only go to the WordCamp Portugal as the national one. I attend that one. But I cannot really compare it because WordCamp Europe is the only one where I have been volunteering and being an organizer. But I mean, I liked it so much last year that I did it again this year. 

Topher: That’s really fascinating given that there are far more small WordCamps than there are the big ones. 

Hacer: Yes, definitely. And Portugal –

Topher: Yeah, go ahead. 

Hacer: I just want to say like in Portugal, it’s not a very big country, so the community is big, but they’re mostly centered in the big city. So it’s like in Lisbon and Porto. So if you live nearby, yeah. If I were living in Lisbon, I would go all the time to meetups for sure. If you’re remote, it’s a bit more of a problem. 

Topher: Sure. I went to Portugal last year for WordCamp Europe. It was fantastic. I even stayed an extra week for my birthday. It was fun.

Evangelia: There are people who stayed like forever because they moved there. 

Topher: Yes. 

Lena: We still have some people…

Topher: Lena, how about you? How do you feel the comparison to what you imagined it would be? 

Lena: I have a very big history with volunteering. I was volunteering in some art exhibitions. In the past, I was volunteering at the theater. I have seen backstage how with theater is working. But the things that Evangelia told about how you’re feeling that you’re welcome and you are a family with all these people, it’s very different from everything else. 

Fun story from my first ever volunteering. It was in the exhibition. I was 18 years old, I was just come here in Athens for my first year. And they put me in a building alone just to watch the paintings. The area wasn’t very safe, and had people coming from outside asking for a cigarette or something. And I wasn’t really safe. I was alone in the huge building. But I was very happy that I was volunteering and making something. But in addition to this, this is very welcoming and I’m feeling very safe. And like I think part of my family. So it’s very nice.

Topher: That’s really cool, and makes me happy to hear that. Excuse me, my voice has been weird today. As a host, I come up with questions. But I always wonder if there are wonderful things that I don’t even know to ask about. Tell me something about WordCamp or yourself or something that… I’m in Michigan in the U.S.. I’m not there. I don’t know. I can’t see it. So tell me something cool about WordCamp that’s happening or you’ve seen or done.

Evangelia: Well, I think that we have been organizing in WordCamp Europe, at least I can speak for myself, in around four or five years now. And it was a really amazing experience because it taught me a lot of things. A good thing is that everybody is supportive because we have different teams that handle different aspects of the event. So we have, for example, design team for the branding and designs and printing and all these things. We have a different team that has to do with technical staff like the IT team for systems access, for the tools that we’re using. We have the sponsors team that is handling the sponsors. 

Usually in smaller WordCamp like the local ones, we do not have teams because it’s almost everyone doing everything. And it’s in a smaller scale. Local WordCamp have around 15 organizers, depending on the size, but WordCamp Europe has around 100 people and also 150 volunteers this year. We would have more people attending as volunteers to assist us. But we had some issues with Visa applications for specific countries

Topher: Oh, right. 

Evangelia: So unfortunately that reduced the number of the volunteers from 200 to 150. In general, WordCamp Europe gives you the opportunity to meet with people through Zoom meetings every week with your team and also we have big town halls during organizing where we can meet the whole organizing team. This is a struggle to make it happen because it is like 100 people in different time zones. you might never be able to find one date and time that accommodates everyone but we try to do that. So you can get to see each other, not in person but at least in the video call before you actually come in the venue. Because organizing WordCamp Europe means I am in Greece, Hacer is in Portugal and we never met each other.

Topher: Right.

Evangelia: Especially.

Topher: And now you’re best friends. 

Evangelia: Yeah. Especially if both of us are first-time organizers. Because we have a lot of first-time organizers. And that was an amazing thing to see the past two years. We had people that organized for the first time, not only WordCamp Europe, but in general at WordCamp, they were leading a team for the first time and they did amazingly well. 

Lena: When I see people that I haven’t seen before, you have legs, I didn’t know you have legs. I only see from this side. You’re a person, a whole person.

Topher: That’s really funny. 

Hacer: Something I want to add is like last year when I was first-time organizer, as Evangelia said, you know, you don’t see each other and then you see each other for the first time at the event. But it was like as if I already knew everyone from my team as, you know, we were already, I don’t know, we saw each other 10 times or 12 times before. And we were like, you know, like hugging and like, “Oh, yes. Hi. Hi, how are you?” Well, I never saw those people in my life for real, only on the screen. So that was I think also really nice being an organizer for WordCamp because it’s just like as if you know everyone already through the screen. 

Topher: Right. 

Lena: I was saying yesterday at the party we have that I had a lot of time to receive so many real hugs. We are seeing everyone and we are hugging. It was so nice. 

Topher: Yes. 

Evangelia: Last year, we wanted to find other people-

Lena: But we couldn’t. 

Evangelia: We were trying to be a little bit cautious for COVID. Now don’t really have that fear. So it’s adding all over ?? Megaron. 

Lena: Let’s see how it goes. I’m not sure yet. We will see. 

Topher: What is some advice you would give somebody who’s never been to WordCamp Europe before? 

Evangelia: Joining with the people. It might be scary to seeing someone say, Hi, my name is Evangelia, for example, I’m a developer, I’m a designer or I’m blogger, if you are not also very social person. However, we’re trying to accommodate a rule that I recently found out how is it is called. And I don’t recall the name at the moment. I think it was The Pac-Man Rule. When people are in a circle and they’re talking, you leave a space like so they can feel invited to join the conversation. 

Sophia: Nice. 

Evangelia: That was a really nice thing that I read and would love to share with people.

Lena: I didn’t know that. 

Evangelia: I think it was [inaudible 00:23:16] that explained that to me a few days ago. And I was like, “Really insightful. Thank you for sharing this will me. I will be sharing this with everyone I know.” Also for the people that have been attending a lot of WordCamps or they are organizers, volunteers, speakers, they have any other role, if you see someone, just grab them from the hand and say, “Hi, I want to introduce you my friends. Who are you? What are you doing with your life? How come you’re here?” So just give people the space to open up. 

Sophia: For sure.

Lena: So if you’re feeling like you also don’t know how you can start the conversation, be a volunteer, and you will meet a whole bunch of people and you can start conversation with them. So that’s my advice. Go and be volunteer for something. 

Topher: That’s great. That’s great. All right. We are at about 20 minutes. So this is about the right time to end. I really appreciate you being here, getting up at this early hour of 4 p.m. 

Evangelia: Thank you very much for hosting us, giving us the opportunity to express ourselves.

Topher: I look forward to talking with you again. I don’t think I’ve met any of you before. 

Evangelia: I think we met last year in Porto.

Topher: Oh, did we? 

Evangelia: Yeah. 

Topher: I met a lot of people in Porto. 

Evangelia: I completely understand that. I was leading the peer team so we definitely accommodated some of your interviews. Because you’re partnering and also sharing the equipment I think with Nathan… Bob. Bob Down. 

Sophia: Oh, yeah. 

Topher: All right. I have a little bit here to read, and then we can go. 

Evangelia: Sure. 

Topher: This has been an episode of Hallway Chats, a part of the HeroPress Network. Your hosts were Sophia DeRosia and Topher DeRosia. We’d like to thank Sophia for the music and Nexcess for hosting our network.

If you liked the episode please subscribe and mention us on social media!

Show Notes

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Episode Transcript

Topher: Hey everyone, welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Topher and my co-host today is Sophia.

Sophia: Hello.

Topher: She waved. Before we get started, I want to say thanks to our sponsor Nexcess. They’ve been good to us for a couple of years now. And I’ve been really, really happy with their hosting. Their servers are really fast. They give me all the special tools that I really like in a host, and they have some really great specialized things for WooCommerce like automated testing, which is pretty unique. I’m not sure of any place else that does that. And they have a Sales Performance Monitor and a Plugin Performance Monitor. So if any of that sounds good to you, check them out, Nexcess, and tell them we sent you.

All right, our guest today is Amy Kamala. Welcome.

Amy: Thank you. And thank you so much for having me. 

Topher: You’re welcome. I did say that right, right? Because you told me just a minute ago.

Amy: Yes, you did.

Topher: Okay, good. 

Amy: You said it right. 

Topher: Good. Where are you from? 

Amy: I’m from Los Angeles, California, United States. 

Topher: Excellent. Born and raised?

Amy: Born and raised. I’m from Venice Beach, specifically.

Topher: Oh, okay. 

Amy: It’s a big place. 

Topher: I’ve never been there. Been to a lot of California but never to LA. What do you do with WordPress?

Amy: I’ve been working professionally with WordPress since 2015. I’m a full stack developer and I have a master’s degree in Fine Arts. So I work with both development and design and the back end system, Linux and pipelines, development pipelines. 

Topher: Wow, that’s super-duper cool. You are way more advanced than me.

Amy: Well, I don’t want to give that impression because I don’t know everything by any means. Every senior developer and pretty much every senior in pretty much any industry that I’ve spoken to acknowledges that there’s always more to learn and research is really important.

Topher: Oh, yes. I have a soft spot in my heart for Linux. What do you do there? 

Amy: Well, I also have a soft spot in my heart for Linux. So I’ve worked for three different web hosts, and two of them are very infrastructure based. The third one is more cloud-based, a little bit less infrastructure. But I’ve spent quite a bit of time working my way around LAMP and LEMP systems, Linux, Apache, or NGINX, MySQL, and PHP, working command line. I would say that Linux command line is probably if we can call it a language, it’s my favorite to work with. Talking to a server or computer is so much fun. 

Topher: Do you run Linux on your desktop at all? 

Amy: One of them, yes, I do. 

Topher: What distro?

Amy: Red Hat. 

Topher: Okay. I ran Red Hat for a little while until about Red Hat 6, I think.

Amy: Really? 

Topher: That gives you an idea a long time ago-

Amy: What are you running now?

Topher: I don’t really run it on my desktop anymore. My oldest stuff that I used to use, it’s not my Plex server and I run Arch on it. 

Amy: Oh nice. 

Topher: I’ve been running Arch for about 15 years. 

Amy: I won’t make any jokes about people that say, “I run Arch.”

Topher: That’s all right. I’m used to it. 

Amy: Ubuntu would be my second choice. If I were going to switch from Red Hat, I would certainly go with Ubuntu. And I would recommend that for most people.

Topher: Yeah. My big deal is rolling release. I don’t think I could ever live without a rolling release again. 

Amy: Fair enough.

Topher: That’s just a beautiful, beautiful thing. All right, we’re not talking about WordPress at all. We should get back to that. 

Amy: Okay. So I became involved in the WordPress community in I think around 2018. I was working for a web host. I started in technical support, actually in social support, which for most people, I think, it’s infinitely easy if you’re personable. If you’re an extrovert like myself, it’s fairly easy to interact with customers and to be kind and helpful. 

From social support, I started picking up tech support tickets and asking people questions. I picked a lot of people’s brains. I want to thank everybody whose brands I’ve picked because it’s really helped me a lot in my career and in life. But yeah, I have picked a lot of brains. And I would advise anybody to ask questions, ask stupid questions, ask the same questions, just ask questions, because that’s one of the best ways that you can learn.

So anyway, I started in tech support, social support, then tech support. By 2018, I had contributed to the formation of a dedicated WordPress support team at that web host. So it’s a team of 14 WordPress-specialized agents, myself being one of them. And through that, I was spending all my time at that point working with WordPress.

My love of command line kind of translated over to WordPress command line. And that really enabled me to maneuver my way around WordPress a lot, especially in the tech support arena, where you have to be really fast, you have to get answers quickly, you have to fix things quickly. WordPress command line was absolutely a key for me in becoming a little bit more advanced and capable.

So in about 2018, I was on a dedicated WordPress support team. The hosts that I was working for helped form the make.wordpress.org hosting team, was one of the main contributors at the time to the formation of that particular team. And they were really proud of it, rightfully so. They were sharing their accomplishments in all hands, meeting staff meetings. And so I became aware that this existed through that. 

Mike Schroeder was one of the people at the time. He was one of the OG, one of the original WordPress hosting team reps. And that team can be attributed to his hard work. A large percentage of it can be. So because of that, I found out that the WordPress community exists, that it’s possible to be involved in the WordPress open-source project, and I hopped on Slack and joined a wordpress.org hosting meeting. 

My first meeting was actually a Slack meeting. It was really welcoming. Everybody was really welcoming because of the hosts that I worked for was involved in the formation of the team, I already knew everybody in the room, almost everybody in the room. One of them I knew his wife, but not him. So it was really comfortable for me to just kind of jump right in. 

And I became involved in the hosting team and I’m still involved in the hosting team. This is my fifth year, I think as a make.wordpress.org hosting team rep. I’ve had my hands in other parts of WordPress as well. I’ve helped out with Core a little bit. I’ve helped out with some WordCamps. I’ve spoken at some WordCamps. I’ve helped out with some meetups, especially in the LA area and spoken at some meetups, and been involved with the LA WordPress meetups team.

So yeah, it’s been just kind of a… I started out taking notes for the hosting team. I was really proud the first time my notes were posted on make.wordress.org. It was a huge accomplishment. 

Topher: Yeah, it’s a big deal.

Amy: I felt really special. And I just, you know, kept going and kept going. And here I am. I’m still one of the team reps involved. It’s been a great experience in terms of my career.

Topher: Oh, that’s cool.

Amy: At certain points, I’ve been worried about being pigeonholed as a WordPress person in the tech industry. Because there’s so much other technology that one could get involved with. But quite frankly, that’s a really beautiful pigeonhole to be in.

Topher: It is so big. So much.

Amy: It’s a big pigeonhole. That’s right. Right. I think there’s like 800 million WordPress installs on the internet right now WordPress websites, approximately, which is insane. There’s just so many websites that the WordPress application is supporting. You know, eventually I got really familiar with the WordPress foundation values and I feel very aligned with them. Ideas like democratize publishing give everybody a voice. I don’t see how anybody could not be on board with that. But I grew up in Venice Beach, which is probably one of the most liberal parts of the planet. So it’s easy for me to, you know, kind of align myself with those type of ideas.

Topher: Sure. 

Amy: So, I have definitely-

Topher: We’re all a bunch of hippies anyway.

Amy: That’s true. The idea of open source, in general, it’s kind of a hippie concept. 

Topher: Yeah, it really is. 

Sophia: So for somebody who’s very unfamiliar with the concept, tell me the difference between social support and tech support.

Amy: I would be happy to. So social support is… it’s still technical support but it’s a little bit more on the social end and less on the technical end, where you’re kind of the frontline, the first line of action on the internet for an organization to communicate with its customers. So you’ll be interacting with customers via Twitter, via forums, via Facebook, via Instagram, social media, essentially. And it’s really important for marketing. A social support rep could make or break the PR of a company for potentially-

Sophia: For sure. 

Amy: So it’s really important to be, you know, personable, to be mature, to be reasonable and level-headed. 

Topher: And you’re able to talk to angry, angry people.

Amy: Yeah, angry people. It’s very true. That kind of gave me a system for dealing with people. I have two daughters. At the time, my daughters were babies and toddlers. So there’s a system for hand- 

Sophia: Oh. Say that again.

Amy: There’s a system for hand-

Topher: Every time you say “hand,” it breaks. 

Sophia: That literally just happened to me honestly

Amy: Really?

Sophia: Yeah.

Amy: I’m gonna put it on “Do Not Disturb” which I apologize, I should have done that before. 

Topher: It’s okay.

Sophia: That’s all right. 

Amy: So when a toddler is throwing a tantrum, there is kind of a system that you can use to help tame the tantrum. And the first thing is to acknowledge that they’re upset and validate their feelings. And with a customer, when a customer’s throwing a tantrum, the first thing you want to do is validate their feelings. It’s totally understandable that you feel this way. And often repeat the feelings back to them. “It’s understandable that you feel so angry, I would be frustrated too.” And then the next line of action would be to reassure them, I’m going to support you and do everything I can to get this resolved. 

With a toddler, it’s kind of the same. I understand that you feel that way, it’s totally understandable you feel that way, let’s figure out a way to get this fixed for you so you can feel better. You know, the language is a little bit different but nonetheless-

Topher: Let’s talk about the naptime. It does work for customers too.

Sophia: It really does.

Amy: It does. And you know, just that validation, just the acknowledgment that… and this is a concept that therapists across the board would also… That validating the feelings of somebody is the first line of action to resolving a problem. So in customer service, that’s the first line of action to resolving a problem. So at social support, you do get a lot of angry customers and I happen to be very nice person. And I kind of took my experience as a mother and applied it to social support and technical support.

So to answer your question, the difference is technical support is really more technical-based. You’re working a lot with the actual websites, or the actual tech stack, actual application, on the back end on servers, kind of more internally on the internal infrastructure, internally with other agents and technicians. And social support, there’s a little bit less of that, in my experience, at least. There’s a little bit less of that and a lot more customer-facing, a lot more soothing the customer, a lot more, making sure they’re heard, making sure that there’s a plan of action to get their needs met and their issues resolved. So it’s a little bit more on the marketing and a little bit less on the technical end.

Topher: All right. I’m gonna pivot here a little bit. You’re gonna speak at WordCamp Europe next week.

Amy: I am. I’m very excited and very nervous. 

Topher: What is your topic? 

Amy: I am talking about how to support women in tech. 

Sophia: Yay.

Topher: All right. Have you ever seen Jeeves and Wooster?

Amy: I have not but it sounds familiar. 

Topher: It’s a wonderful British TV show. It was a book. Jeeves is a socialite in England in the early 20s. And someone says to him, “How would you support a wife?” He thinks for a minute and he says, “Probably a firm grasp of the left elbow as we cross the street.” So how would you support women in tech? 

Amy: Well, I’ve got a whole list of ways that women in tech could be supported.

Topher: Don’t give a whole talk.

Amy: It is, yeah, 30-minute talk. It starts with hiring. In the technical industry, women applicants are, statistically speaking, less common. There are way fewer women applicants, especially for technical roles. Just across the board, fewer applicants that are female, and or identify as female, either one. So my first suggestion to companies is to… If you have a female applicant or women applicant, pull them out of the pile and interview them.

A lot of the time, recruiters will use an algorithm and they’re probably hopefully not really looking at gender. But in this case, I’m recommending that as a diversity practice that recruiters do take a look at gender. And if they see a women applicant to pull them out of the pile. Because if you don’t hire women into the tech industry, then they’re not going to be very many women to support.

Topher: That’s very, very true. 

Amy: Worldwide-

Topher: Yeah, go ahead. 

Amy: Worldwide, the tech industry is comprised of about 20% female, and the rest is male-dominated, and white, male-dominated. There are way fewer minorities in most industries, and also in the tech industry, including women and racial minorities as well. So the first line of action to changing that statistic.. so even though women were the first programmers on the planet, now as it stands, it is very white male dominated as an industry. So recruiters and organization leaders can change that by pulling women out of the pile, and interviewing them, and hiring them. And that’s just the first line of action.

Topher: I’m going to tip my hand a little bit and admit that I’ve seen your slides. And you have a lot of numbers. And I don’t remember…. I think I asked. I don’t remember the answer. Do your slides reflect mostly US or is it global? 

Amy: It’s both. So there are some statistics in my talk that do focus on the US. For example, the portion about family leave is mostly focused on the US. And the reason for that is because no offense to my country, but we are horrible about family leave. It’s not even legally required. What’s legally required is 12 weeks unpaid leave. And the reality is that 12 weeks unpaid leave can make a family destitute financially.

Topher: Oh, yeah.

Amy: So this is not a realistic solution for families. And it puts particularly women as, statistically speaking, the primary caretakers of their families in a position of having no other option but to choose between being a mother and their career. Another way that companies can support women and families and the continuation of the human species is definitely leave, paid family leave, not just maternity leave, but paternity leave as well, because children need their fathers and partners need each other. It’s really important. 

So offering paid leave for all genders and all different identifications is extremely important because that enables families to survive while they’re going through major life change bringing new humans into the world. And I think we all can agree that the continuation of the human species is a little bit important. 

Sophia: Yeah, we appreciate that. 

Topher: I have two questions here next for you. You’re my second WordCamp Europe speaker that I’ve spoken to this week. But I want to ask the same questions just to see how the answers compare. How many WordCamps have you spoken up before? And have any of them ever been one of the flagship?

Amy: I’m a bit of a noob at speaking at WordCamps. I’ve only spoken at two before this. WordCamp Vegas and WordCamp Santa Clarita. Pretty local to me. And the organizers are amazing. I absolutely adore them. They were fantastic experiences. Really valuable. And I would do it again, even though public speaking is not my forte. I get horrible stage fright. The first 10 minutes of those two talks were a little bit difficult. 

I’ve also spoken at some meetups. I’ve helped organize meetups. So that gave me a little bit more experience and a little bit more confidence in public speaking. So I’m pretty much a noob. Kind of jumping from being really, really like keeping to myself for the past couple of years to being on stage in front of I don’t know how many people.

Topher: You have more experience than the other person that I interviewed? 

Amy: Really? 

Topher: Yes. Europe will be his second talk ever. 

Amy: Oh, wow. Well, I appreciate that the organizers are not excluding people that don’t have as much experience. 

Topher: Soph, you had a question. Go for it. 

Sophia: So you’ve spoken at two separate WordCamps. Both you weren’t super comfortable with, you know, just public speaking and starting in a brand new space. What are some tips or suggestions you would have for somebody else who’s looking to speak at a WordCamp?

Amy: To get in the door, or once you’re in the door to be on stage.

Sophia: That usually helps. 

Topher: What are you asking about? What kind of [inaudible 00:21:40] are you asking for?

Sophia: Like something that you figured out through the process that made it easier for you to be able to speak or that was very encouraging for you.

Amy: Well, despite my massive stage fright, I actually have a decent amount of performance training. In my past, I’ve been in a couple of theater groups, a couple of plays, I was in choir when I was younger, multiple different choirs for years, like six years, I was second chair violin for a couple years. So I performed in that regard. Although I don’t play violin anymore. And also I took ballet for some years. So I did ballet recitals. And so you know, the stage fright never really went away. 

The tips that I have are actually quite personal to me, but also tips from my theatre teachers. I would say the biggest one is to remember that the audience is on your side, the audience is rooting for you, the audience wants to see you shine, wants to see you succeed, wants to hear what you have to say. And that’s why they’re there. So that can be a really soothing idea when you go up on stage, to look out at the crowd and think these people are on my side, these people are my advocates, these people are my friends, and you know, we’re in this together. They want to see me be confident. They want to see me give information and shine and be comfortable up here on stage. 

And then another line of thinking that comes directly from theater teachers is and from my education in film, as well. So when there’s an audience looking at a movie or stage, they’re projecting themselves into the character, into the person on stage, and so when you falter, they feel uncomfortable. Because they feel like it’s them faltering on some subconscious level. And when you’re confident and comfortable, they feel confident and comfortable because they’re projecting themselves into you on some unconscious level. So it’s kind of like an act of nurturing to be comfortable, confident on stage. 

And then another one, a third one, also directly from theater teacher is if you mess up, just keep going. Don’t go, “Oops, oh my gosh, Oh, no, oh my gosh, I just mess up,” because everybody’s gonna like… the whole momentum is thrown out of whack and everybody will start to feel awkward. So you just breeze right over it. You stumble, you just get up and keep going. 

Sophia: Right.

Topher: And until you tell them, they don’t know you stumbled. 

Amy: That’s true. That’s very true. 

Topher: All right, I have another question for you. So you have two camps behind you. What has it been like working with a very international organizing team? You’ve interacted with a number of people from a variety of cultures and countries and languages. 

Amy: Right. In the WordPress space?

Topher: Yeah. Has it been fine for WordCamp Europe? Any struggles. 

Amy: Oh, you know what? So the time difference I would say is the… Working with WordPress open source project, which is a sync across the globe, a synchronous across the globe and with organizers on the other side, across the pond on the other side of the planet from where I am, the time difference is really the major challenge. There’s a lot of other… I don’t speak fluently. I speak like tiny bits amount of Hebrew and Japanese, but just tiny, like, maybe the level of a two-year-old. Like I can’t even really have a real conversation other than “Hello” “how are you?” “I love you”. And like counting, you know, that type of thing. 

But other countries speak English for the most part and teach English in their schools. So that’s very helpful to have English as a primary language that opens the bridge for communication. And it’s kind of sad that in the United States, English is kind of the only language that people want and need. And it’s a lot less common for folks to be bilingual, trilingual, or anything more than that. It’s not even really encouraged that much in our education system to learn other languages. I know that a lot of people take Spanish class or French class but there isn’t necessarily… 

Topher: It’s not the same. 

Amy: Right. It’s not immersion. So speaking other languages isn’t for the United States… For folks raised in the United States, it’s kind of not that much of a thing. It’s like a novelty to speak another language. So we’re very blessed that in other countries they don’t see it the same way and English is taught in schools, and it’s very common. 

So while there are some language barriers, that’s definitely not the biggest hurdle by any means. And there are some cultural differences. But I haven’t found those to be barriers in any way, shape, or form. I find them to be really fascinating, really beautiful, really interesting. 

And WordPress, as a whole, as an organization, the WordPress Foundation, and the WordPress open source project, diversity is one of the main values. And that means that a lot of people from a lot of different places with a lot of different opinions and a lot of different attitudes, a lot of different languages, a lot of different experiences are at the table. And it’s really interesting, really eye-opening, really fascinating. You could learn a lot, you can grow a lot, and I find it incredibly valuable. So time zone difference is seriously the only real hurdle that I’ve experienced. 

Topher: All right, that’s cool. Both my wife and I had the experience of realizing that everybody else we talked to around the world that speaks English as a second or third or fourth language put in all that time and energy to be able to talk to us, and we put none to talk to them. And for us, it has led to certain amount of compassion for… Like people apologize all the time. “Oh, I’m so sorry for my English.” Like, no. 

Amy: “Your English is amazing. Are you kidding me?”

Topher: “Don’t be sorry for spending 10 years learning my language.”

Amy: Right.

Topher: You know?

Amy: That’s true. 

Topher: So, you know, I try to be really supportive of anybody who’s learned another language, because I haven’t. And I try to be-

Amy: That’s very hard to. It’s hard to learn, especially as an adult. 

Topher: Oh, yeah. I try to be really sensitive to my inability to pick out words in an accent, a heavy accent. I love accents. They’re amazing. They’re like the spice of language. But there are people who understand that language technically very well and can write it wonderfully. But maybe they don’t practice speaking and all that much, and they have a thick accent, and I can’t understand it. And I feel terrible, you know, they’re working so hard, they’re doing a great job, and I’m letting them down by not understanding. So, you know, I have auditory processing issues already. So if I’m in a loud place talking to somebody with an accent, it’s kind of a mess anyway. 

Amy: But you know, I sometimes have trouble understanding native English speakers in a loud space where there’s a lot going on. And sensory disorders are probably a little bit more common in the tech industry than in other industries. I don’t have any stats on that, but in my experience, and from what I understand, it’s a little bit more common. I don’t think that anybody would fault you for that at all. 

And it’s important for us to remember too to speak slowly, to speak clearly, and to use correct grammar. As a team rep, we’re trained in those ideas of use correct grammar. Don’t use slang, or to use as little slang as possible because the slang tends to be really confusing for non-native speakers.

Topher: Something I sort of knew about but I had to learn myself by going to another country is the mental strain that it takes to listen to another language all day. People told me, you know, I’m exhausted at the end of the day listening to all your English speakers-

Amy: Oh, wow, that makes sense. 

Topher: I didn’t really understand until I went to India. And all day long, I was sorting out accents and trying to understand. And I was exhausted at the end of the day—my brain was just tired. 

Amy: Absolutely. It’s so funny that you say that because I have a thing, like just for myself in my life that if I’m having trouble sleeping, I will find a tutorial, a technical tutorial given by an Indian person or a person of a thick accent and watch it. And every single time without fail, I end up falling asleep. 

Sophia: That’s so funny

Topher: That is funny.

Amy: And learning some things as well. But it does take so much focus to dissect a thicker accent. And there’s no doubt that accents from the United States… I tried to refrain from calling people from the United States Americans because I think it’s really narcissistic of us to refer to ourselves that way. Because Canada is part of America, South America is part of America. We’re not the only Americans. 

Topher: Right. 

Amy: So that’s why I’m saying people from the United States instead of saying Americans. But I imagine that it goes both ways where we have different accents as well. We have a New York accent, we have, you know, Minnesota, we have the South, and we have California, and I think probably west coast accent is maybe the most commonly found. And for me, of course, being from here, it’s easier to understand. But all those different dialects and different ways of speaking from different parts of such a massive, gigantic country, I can imagine it being pretty hard to decipher. 

Sophia: Oh, yeah.

Topher: Yeah. All right, we are at just about the end of our time. Is there anything that you would like to ask or say?

Amy: I wouldn’t mind hearing about some of the two of your experiences in the WordPress community, because I’ve been kicking around for some years now. And I just love meeting other people and hearing about them and their experiences, their WordPress story, how they became involved, why you’re still involved also I would be something I’d be interested in hearing if you’d like to share. 

Topher: Sure. Soph, you want to go first? 

Sophia: Sure. I’m here because of him. I grew up in the WordPress space and met people first and got to know people, and they became friends and family friends. It kind of just fit at the time. I’m about 21 so I’m the very early stage of adulthood, and I needed to be making money and didn’t want to work in retail or food service anymore. 

Amy: That’s fair. 

Sophia: So I was like, Well, what else can I do? So I quit my job and started reaching out trying to find something that I could do and turn into a career. I’m not a scholarly person for all that I am very intelligent, and I do much better putting in the work, getting my hands dirty and filling it out as I go, or maybe finding a mentor or something like that. 

So I decided to reach out to some random people, anybody that I knew to see if they could help me find something. And I found at least two people that gave me a chance. And the first one didn’t work out. The second one I’m still at. I’ve been at for maybe six months now. And I’m like slogging through content marketing and just kind of absorbing and learning everything that I can to see if it’s a career, I’d want to continue.

Amy: That’s incredible. 

Sophia: It’s been really fun. And it’s been a very healthy start for somebody my age. It’s giving me a chance to build up savings. I am finally able to like get my health under control and just build a very solid foundation for being an adult. So it’s something that I really appreciate. 

Amy: I think it’s really amazing and beautiful that you grew up in the WordPress space. That is so special. So WordPress is 20 years old now, you could have literally, and am gathering that you did literally grow up in the WordPress space. And that I can’t imagine how much that has influenced you in a positive way. Especially with… I very much agree With WordPress values. And to grow up with that, and in that environment is so special. 

Topher: It was interesting for me and my wife’s experience in the WordPress space to have our kids grew up there because they had friends, their own friends in other countries that they met at WordCamp and online and things like that. And people that we ended up getting to know and trust. And it’s interesting to know that if something happened to us, there was a global community of people who would look out for our kids. 

Amy: That is also really beautiful and amazing. And that diversity and exposure to all those different cultures and communities, I can imagine how enriching that would be for children and young adults, people growing up in that space, that the perspective that you have on the world would be so vastly different and educated compared to somebody who maybe grew up in a small town and, you know, 500 people their whole life or whatever, although there’s value in that, too. But that is really beautiful. 

The WordPress community is extremely caring, special, supportive, kind, and a great environment for children. You know, my children haven’t really been involved that much. I haven’t brought them with me to camps or meetups. But now that you’re saying that, I feel like I definitely should.

Sophia: You know, it gave us-

Amy: Oh, go ahead. 

Topher: How old were you when we went to Chicago?

Sophia: About 12, I think. 12 or 13. 

Topher: Yeah. And when we told the girls they needed to have their own blogs, and they made their own schedules at WordCamp and went to their own talks and made your own friends and all that. So that was a good time and a good way to start. 

Sophia: It gave us a lot of opportunities to put things into practice. So it helps us learn how to confidently… Not even helped us learn, but helped us develop the skill for confidently communicating and confidently communicating with adults. It broke down that barrier of Mr. or Mrs. and this person knows more than you. It helped us develop just treating people with respect and being a good human, which helped a lot in regards to like having managers at work or talking to a boss or having job interviews. 

Amy: And feeling confident, I imagine.

Sophia: And feeling confident, for sure. And it gave us those opportunities for experiencing culture and how to communicate with people. When we were talking about like, languages in various cultures, like I grew up learning two different languages kind of by choice. It was part of the world that I was living in at the time. It was interesting, and it helped me be able to do things better. It gave us a reason to be doing things as opposed to just taking a Spanish class because you have to.

Amy: Absolutely. And it’s so interesting that you say that because the WordPress community and the open source project is very much democratized. It’s not an authoritarian environment in any way, shape, or form. And I could imagine how that would affect children. Because typically in a classroom, you have the authority of the grownups, the authority of the parents, the authority of the teacher. And that puts children at a disadvantage in a way because they’re not empowered being the not… not being the authority in a situation, you know, gives you less power and takes away your power. 

So a democratized environment, like WordPress, I could see that very much empowering… It empowers adults, but quite frankly, it’s very empowering for adults and for children growing up in that space. I could see that being extremely empowering and giving folks a really well-rounded perspective on the idea of hierarchy as a fallacy, as a falsification, as a way to empower and disempower people. 

Topher: All right, my turn.

Sophia: Oh, yeah. 

Topher: I have been a web developer since 1995 or 1994, almost 30 years now. It’s funny to think the internet’s that old now. But I didn’t really get into WordPress until 2010 Custom Post Types came out. And I realized I would never have to build an administration area again. Glorious.  

Amy: That is glorious. 

Topher: And I just fell in love with it. I didn’t do anything else after that. My first WordCamp was here in our own city, WordCamp Grand Rapids. And I think it was a two of those before we, as a family, went out. No, no, my first one ever was WordCamp Austin. I went for work and then everything changed. It was glorious and magnificent. I have a friend who doesn’t WordCamp Talk titled “And then I went to WordCamp”. And anybody who’s ever been knows exactly what that talk is about.

Amy: Right. Your life kind of changes. 

Topher: It really does. I fell deeply in love with them. I think I’ve been to more than 90 WordCamps now. I’ve spoken to probably 30 or 40. 

Amy: That’s amazing.

Topher: It’s just fantastic. And you asked why I stayed. It’s 100% because of the people. I dabbled with leaving development for a while. For a couple of years, I wasn’t a developer. I focused on the people. And I just love talking to people, helping people, making relationships, that kind of thing.

Amy: Well, that is very fulfilling. 

Topher: Yeah. That’s why I stayed. 

Amy: Have you found that your own confidence level, feeling comfortable in your own skin, feeling secure in the world, feeling safe with other people, feeling safe on stage, that type of thing? Have you found that through being involved with WordPress that those healthy feelings have grown and increased because of the community and your involvement with the community and also practice speaking in front of people? 

Topher: Yeah. I can’t imagine that that hasn’t happened. But I came into WordPress a pretty confident public speaker and already really enjoying it. I spoke at things before WordPress.

Amy: Really?

Topher: But that said, I mean, I’ve been practicing now for all these years. Surely I must be better at it. I hope. 

Amy: What are your tips for public speaking?

Topher: Oh, boy, you know, I did a whole talk about this last year. Tips for public speaking. Ironically, the hardest part I had with my talk on public speaking was how to deal with jitters because I don’t deal with them myself. 

Sophia: Yeah, the [trump?] has no anxious bone in his body. 

Amy: Wow. 

Topher: So I crowdsourced that. And sadly, I can’t remember off the top of my head. I’ll see if I can find the link to that talk and put it in the show notes for this. But some of the tips, like you and I have been talking about slides recently. One tip is to have a little gadget to advance your slides back and forth so you’re not tied to your laptop. 

Another potential thing is to bring your own wireless microphone and have it synced to your laptop so that you have your own recording. 

Amy: Oh, wow. 

Topher: If the one from the venue, I don’t know, doesn’t work for some reason—it happens a lot—

Amy: It does happen. Yeah. 

Topher: …then you have your own copy.

Amy: That’s a good idea. 

Topher: And wireless mic from Amazon is 35 bucks and it’s in your pocket and it’s not a big deal. 

Amy: It’s so interesting that you say about having the pointer and your own control. We did talk about that the other day. I appreciate that tip. A lot of childhood education therapists and psychologists would say that holding on to something, putting your hands on the podium, holding something in your hand does help. Even if you’re not clicking, it does help to reduce jitters because it gives you like a solid unwavering… And even for folks who are having an anxiety attack, like actively in an anxiety attack, leaning against a wall, sitting on the floor, touching something that’s solid that isn’t moving, that isn’t changing can kind of regulate your nervous system a little bit.

Topher: That’s very interesting. 

Sophia: And it would provide a separate sensory experience for your brain to be focusing on. 

Topher: Yeah.

Amy: That’s true. That’s very true. 

Topher: That’s an interesting point because I’ve often associated anxiety attacks with vertigo. Your brain is being lied to about something. 

Amy: Right. Usually your own thoughts otherwise. 

Topher: And if you can find it was regular vertigo, you grab the counter, and you don’t fall down. 

Amy: Right.

Topher: If you can figure out whatever, whatever works for you anxiety, then you can do the same thing. And I think it’s interesting that you say that maybe just grabbing the counter is exactly the same thing. 

Amy: Absolutely. I’ve heard some tips about public speaking from, you know, random folks over the years. Putting your hands on the podium is one of the way, the suggestions that I’ve seen over and over and over again, if you’re at a podium. And you can see it, like, when the President of the United States gives a talk, their hands are on the podium. And they have trained gestures, like these are all coordinated. It’s not necessarily improvised or subconscious. But a lot of that is putting your hands on the podium, it kind of like grounds you and gives you something solid to align yourself with. 

So holding a clicker could potentially do something very similar. We have this thing in your hand that’s solid that you can hold on to. And then it also, instead of like fidgeting with your hands, you’re holding on to something.

Topher: Right. 

Amy: And for kids with autism and other disorders, fidgets have come onto the market to help… to help everybody, not just them. That’s a similar concept. Although it’s something that you play with, so it is fidgety, hence the name, it still gives like a way to kind of channel your energy and focus so that the other things that are spinning around you like vertigo, like you said, kind of fall off a little bit. 

Topher: All right, we should wrap this up. Can you tell me where we can find you on the internet? 

Amy: I have a website, a blog, although I haven’t posted in a little while. It’s kittenkamala.com. Kitten, like a baby cat. kittenkamala.com. That’s my website. You can email me through there. You could also find me on profiles.wordpress.org/amykamala, spelled the same. 

Topher: All right. Send me those links in Slack and I’ll make sure they get in the show notes. 

Amy: Awesome. I will. Thank you. 

Topher: Thank you. 

Amy: It’s been my pleasure. It’s been absolutely lovely speaking with both of you, and thank you for having me. 

Topher: Oh, you’re welcome. It’s been really fun. I enjoyed it. 

Sophia: Absolutely.

Topher: I have a little bit to read here, and then we can go. 

This has been an episode of Hallway Chats, a part of the HeroPress Network. Your hosts were Sophia DeRosia and Topher DeRosia. We’d like to thank Sophia for the music and Nexcess for hosting our network. If you liked the episode, please subscribe and mention us on social media.

Show Notes

Contact Info:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Episode Transcript

Topher: Hey everyone, welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Topher, your host today. My regular co-host Nyasha is sick today, so it’s just gonna be me and our guest.

Before we get started, I want to say thanks to our sponsor Nexcess. We’ve been hosted with Nexcess for a couple of years now and it’s been extremely good. To put it bluntly, their servers are fast, uptime is great, good communication when there needs to be downtime. A couple of times over the couple of years we’ve had midnight outages for 20 minutes while they redo something. But that’s great. I’m happy with their communication.

As a nerd, they give me what I want. I like SSH, I like database access, I like to get under the hood, and it’s all there. They also offer some stuff I don’t use but it looks really sharp. They have WooCommerce automated testing, which is great if you’re running Woo. They have a Sales Performance Monitor and a plug in performance monitor. So if those things sound like something you can use, I recommend giving it a shot.

You have to forgive me, I have a slight cold but we’ll press through. Our guest today is Maestro Stevens. Welcome, sir.

Maestro: Thank you for having me, Topher. Great to be here.

Topher: Welcome. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Maestro: Absolutely.

Topher: We met quite recently at Buffalo WordCamp for the first time. And then very soon after we got connected because of WordCamp Europe, and now we’re doing this. It feels like within the span of a month we’ve become best buddies.

Maestro: Yes, yes. It’s been a short journey but it feels like it’s been forever.

Topher: Yeah. You know, I’m impressed that we haven’t run into each other sooner because I mean, we live within 300 or 400 miles of each other. It seems like we would be going to the same kind of WordCamps or meetups in the same communities, you know?

Maestro: Yeah, I definitely can see that happening a lot more now that we have linked up at the WordCamp Buffalo-

Topher: Oh, yeah.

Maestro: That’s where we met in person, got acquainted.

Topher: So tell me a little about yourself. Where do you live and what do you do?

Maestro: Speaking of where I live, like you said, I’m pretty close to you. I’m in Cleveland, Ohio, currently is where I reside and I am a Brand Webmaster, also coined myself as the Fresh Prince of WordPress, just mainly because I’m striving to bring a fresh perspective to the WordPress community. I started my journey in WordPress back in 2018. But I started my company, which is a creative agency, helping people build websites and brands back in 2015.

Topher: Awesome. I’m going to tip my hand a little bit and tell the crowd that this is our second time through this podcast because somebody didn’t press the “record” button. So a couple of my questions I kind of know the answer to but I want to hear them again anyway. You own your business. Are you a solo? You said you had a team. Are they W2 or contractors? Where are you in that growth process?

Maestro: Good question. Within the growth process, I started my hiring process about two years ago. Started off with part-timers and contractors. I did the whole, you know, Upwork and Fiverr thing, then I ended up just deciding to outsource overseas permanently, I would say, and just hire and work with people part-time. And then recently this year, I brought on two of my staff members that I’ve been working with for the past two years. They’re the ones who’ve made it through the trials and tribulations. I brought them on full-time, and I pretty much call them my employees or training wheels, if you will.

Topher: What was it that gave you the confidence to commit to paying people that much? Like they’re dependent on you now. Was it you just had enough work consistently and said, “Hey, let’s go for it”?

Maestro: I would say what gave me the confidence was me, and I don’t know exactly what sources that I use. I was doing a lot of research at that time, whether it was Google or YouTube. But I was just getting a lot of great feedback… not feedback, but great ideas from other people who are looking to take themselves to the next level out of entrepreneurship or solopreneurship and become a real business owner. And they said, you know, you’re going to run into a wall at some point in time between working with people who are coming in and out of your business, or even part-time versus people who are working with you consistently more so full-time because they’re less distracted with other projects.

Topher: Oh, yeah.

Maestro: You know, and I really thought about that and it really resonated with me because that was one of the big keys of building culture, you know, having the attention.

Topher: Yeah, I never thought of that. That’s a really good point. I guess it’s why a lot of companies don’t allow side work—they want your focus. Well, that’s really good stuff. So you’re going to be speaking in two weeks at WordCamp Europe? How long?

Maestro: A weeks?

Topher: Oh, eight weeks?

Maestro: I mean, no. Like a week? It’s less than two weeks. So a week and a couple days.

Topher: Oh, a week.

Maestro: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Topher: Wow. It is looming?

Maestro: Yeah.

Topher: What’s your topic?

Maestro: My topic is based on templates and templates within the Gutenberg editor. The title is called Fresh Off The Block: Transform WordPress With Templates.

Topher: Nice. That’s cool. I get to peek at your slides. And one of the things that I was very happy about is that it’s not just Gutenberg templates, it’s a universal templates in all the WordPress, which is cool because it used to be… that was really only the one that was the PHP theme template. Occasionally we plug in templates, but even though those are theme templates. And now we have so many different things. What are all the different types of templates you’re gonna talk about?

Maestro: I don’t want to give away too much of the juice. You know, people are going to be able to watch the replay at wordpress.tv.

Topher: That’s right.

Maestro: But you know, to your point, some examples are things like PHP templates, other plugin templates, their form templates that you can be using in WordPress. They don’t have to be Gutenberg templates.

Topher: oh, yeah,

Maestro: Template whether or not you’re using some type of… I know people think of the theme. So there’s templates in Gutenberg itself. But there’s also theme-based templates, which are a different thing than the block-based templates. And even templates outside of WordPress, for example, like design-based templates, whether you use Figma or Canva, before you even get into the WordPress ecosystem and start designing, you know, are you helping yourself create a way of giving yourself a head start? That’s pretty much what they are, are head starters.

Topher: All right, folks, if you want to hear the rest, go get yourself a ticket to Athens.

Maestro: Yeah. It’ll be amazing.

Topher: Is this your first time speaking at one of the flagship of WordCamps?

Maestro: I would say yes, it is my first time at one of the flagships. So WordCamp Buffalo was my first time live. So that was a great, I would say, kind of pre-game warmup for something like this.

Topher: That’s quite a jump to your second camp being one of the flagships.

Maestro: Yes, I will definitely say I’m honored. I’m grateful. I believe I earned this opportunity. You know, it wasn’t just given to me just for the kicks. But at the same time, I know that there are a lot of other great people who applied and they could have done just as a great job as I believe I’m going to do. So I’m just grateful that I was chosen. But I will say that that last WordCamp Buffalo just gave me a lot more confidence that feel like I can’t do this. It’s just be myself.

Topher: That’s great. I know a number of people that have just generally increased their public speaking skills, in general, through WordPress, either just talking to meetups or going to WordCamps and speaking or whatever. You know, their first one they’re terrified and by the 10th one they’re doing a whole lot better.

Maestro: I can agree with you on that.

Topher: So how are you feeling about it? I mean, it’s a big stage. Are you nervous?

Maestro: Well, I guess before I answer that, I mean, were you nervous your first big one?

Topher: No. No. In general, I don’t really get nervous speaking in front of people, but my first big one was U.S., and that was probably my 20th time speaking at a WordCamp. So it wasn’t that different. But you know, different things make people nervous. Some people are worried about their knowledge of their topic, and other people have that cold and they’re worried actually about all those eyeballs looking at them, you know?

Maestro: Yeah, yeah. That’s a good point. I would definitely say based on that, I’m not too worried about the eyeballs. I’m not too worried about my slides or anything like that. I mean, I feel like based on me having prior speaking engagements and opportunities, it’s helped. On top of the fact that, you know, the last one I did was WordCamp Buffalo, it’s all helped compile me to feel pretty confident. But I would definitely say my own doubts will come internally for me. Like, you know, am I going to be good enough? Or will I be too funny or too boring, too this? You know, just those little small things.

Topher: Oh, yeah.

Maestro: Am I gonna be too serious?

Topher: Yeah. I have every confidence you’re gonna do fine. I mean, you’re doing fine here in a podcast in front of the entire internet.

Maestro: Thanks so much.

Topher: I was gonna ask you… So you spoke at Buffalo and now you have worked with the Europe team? What’s it like working with a very international team with all those different cultures and communication skills and processes?

Maestro: Good question. I would definitely say it’s an interesting experience, something that I’m embracing a lot more now that it’s happening in real-time versus me thinking about, you know, when it’s going to happen back when I first got accepted, and just knowing that I wouldn’t be talking with people with more diverse or different backgrounds, from the even a language standpoint, you know, versus working with U.S. people.

So, I would say, from a text communication and just from kind of emailing and things like that standpoint, it’s been pretty smooth. And I believe that the real test is going to come, you know, when I’m there physically. And now I’m actually having to verbally communicate or physically demonstrate the adequacies and things like that, or even understandings of somebody else’s background and culture and just try not to get offended or try not to offend somebody. I’ll try to still be myself. So it’s interesting to say the least.

Topher: Have you run into anything other than just minor misunderstandings? Like any cultural faux pas, or somebody says something and you’re like, “Oh, sir, we don’t say that here.”

Maestro: No, I don’t think I have yet actually. I can essentially see it happening in its own way, you know, form and shape. It’s different for everybody, just like the whole confidence thing. But in this situation, I can see, you know, mainly because of the fact that I am… Like you mentioned before, we did talk prior, but you used the word “army brat” before. I didn’t use it, you used it. I am an army brat. I had to admit that that was me. So me being an army brat because my mother was in the military, and that’s why I’m originally from San Antonio, Texas and I ended up moving to Cleveland. But that helped me see the world in a different perspective. So I’m kind of, I don’t know, pre-gamed for this type of situation as well, too, just because I’ve seen so many different cultural backgrounds with my mother being in military.

Topher: That is a huge help. I know, a lot of people who are not Americans say things like, “I don’t know how you get along with just one culture around you.” you know, because America is so monoculture. It’s not monoculture. But it’s all American culture. Unless you live near a border, you probably don’t hear too many other languages or, you know, in a super large city like New York or something.

Maestro: That’s true.

Topher: Have you ever been to Toronto?

Maestro: I’m looking forward to the day. It’s coming soon.

Topher: I recommend it. I’ve been told—and I’ve been there and I believe it—it’s the most diverse city in the world.

Maestro: I’ll give you a technicality part. I will be at Toronto because that’s one of my layovers before I get to…

Topher: Nice. It’s one of the most diverse cities. I think it’s the most diverse city in the world. You can meet somebody from anywhere. And all the food is there, all the languages are there, all the dresses… not dresses, Outfits, dress styles types are there.

Maestro: Fashion stuff.

Topher: It’s amazing. You should hang out there sometime.

Maestro: You know what else they got there, I heard? They got all the coders. All the coders.

Topher: Yes.

Maestro: How do you like that?

Topher: I had a co-worker one time. He and his wife they are both Europeans, not from the same country, but they lived nomadically. They were six months visa kind of people. Most countries will give you a six-month visa just for whatever. So they traveled around the world and moved every six months and neither one had ever seen the snow. And they said, “We should try that. Let’s try staying in Toronto for a year.” Oh, you picked it. The problem is they picked an apartment on like the 30th floor of this building. I’m like, “Oh, you’re never gonna shovel. There’s probably a restaurant in the ground floor. You don’t have to go outside. You don’t have to drive in it. That’s not really in the snow.

Maestro: No, that’s not really a snow. That’s something that Santa Claus would do when he retires trying to get away from the snow.

Topher: That’s right. All right. It’s 20 minutes. That’s about the usual time for Hallway Chats. Anything you want to talk about? Anything you want to ask me?

Maestro: I will definitely say that I appreciate, you know, everything you’ve done, and what you do for the community. And just to reiterate, since, you know, technically for our listeners, this is the first time they’re hearing this. But just going back to the notion that you’ve definitely created a model for people who are looking to enter into a tech community like WordPress, as well as pass on a lot of that knowledge and information and, you know, inspiration to their kids or to a nephew or to the youth. And that’s something that you do within your family and I believe that you do it with other people as well, too. So I just want to thank you for that, for your contribution to that.

Topher: I appreciate that. That’s really kind of you to say.

Maestro: Right on.

Topher: All right. I’m gonna read the outro here.

Maestro: Cool.

Topher: This has been an episode of Hallway Chats, a part of the HeroPress Network. My name is Topher, I was your host. And we’d like to thank Sophia DeRosia for the music and Nexcess for hosting our network. If you liked the episode, please subscribe and mention us on social media.

Show Notes

Contact Info:

• Yoast Profile

Episode Transcript

Topher: Hey folks, welcome to Hallway Chats. My name is Topher. This week we have another hallway chat that was actually recorded on-site at a WordCamp. This one was recorded at WordCamp Italia in Milan and we were outside in a beautiful courtyard at an ancient university.

My guest is Iolanda Sequino. She works for Yoast and was there at WordCamp working the booth and we got into a great conversation and I said, “Hey, we should record this.” So here we are, and you get to listen in. 

Hey everybody, this is Topher, I’m at WordCamp Italia in Milano. Today I’m here with-

Iolanda: Iolanda.

Topher: Iolanda. Tell me why you’re here. 

Iolanda: To have fun! No, I’m kidding. I mean, we have lots of fun in WordCamps-

Topher: Oh, yeah. 

Iolanda: …so it’s not entirely false. I’m here to be part of the Yoast booth. So we talk to people, we answer the questions, we collect questions actually also. It’s also a valuable feedback moment. We also collect the compliments. 

Topher: Oh, yes, yes. 

Iolanda: And we play games and give prizes. 

Topher: Oh, nice. How long have you been in WordPress? 

Iolanda: I would say five years.

Topher: Nice. 

Iolanda: A couple of years as a content writer, and then now with Yoast as a developer of the plugin.

Topher: Oh, okay. How long have you been with Yoast? 

Iolanda: A little over three years now. 

Topher: Okay, quite a while.

Iolanda: Yeah. Yeah. 

Topher: Developer the whole time?

Iolanda: I started as a researcher because I’m a linguist originally. And then, since we, I mean, we need the language, linguistic proficiency to be able to develop the assessments, then we basically grew. My team and I, we grew into this developer role. We’re all linguists actually.

Topher: That’s really cool. 

Iolanda: Thank you. 

Topher: So you’re here at a booth, are you also in marketing at all or do you…?

Iolanda: No. 

Topher: No. You got picked? 

Iolanda: Yeah. 

Topher: Did you ask to come or did they tell you to come?

Iolanda: I was asked to come. 

Topher: Okay. This is your first WordCamp?

Iolanda: No. 

Topher: Oh, good. 

Iolanda: No. 

Topher: So you know what you’re coming to? 

Iolanda: No, I was eager to come.

Topher: What were your past WordCamps? 

Iolanda: Netherlands. Actually Italy already, but then we were in the online ones. 

Topher: All right, yes. 

Iolanda: And already there you got this feeling of how energizing it is to interact with the people. I think it’s the best thing about meeting in person. When you work with technology, I mean, you don’t have that many contacts with people all around the world. And then finally, you get this chance to see, to talk, which is invaluable.

Topher: How far did you have to travel to come here? Where are you from? 

Iolanda: So I’m from Italy, originally but I live in the Netherlands. 

Topher: Quite a ways.

Iolanda: I mean, it was a short flight. Doable.

Topher: I forget how small Europe is

Iolanda: Actually, the size of China. We looked it up this week.

Topher: Oh, that’s cool. 

Iolanda: Yeah. It was also in fact checking what the size of Europe like. And it’s like China. 

Topher: All right. All right. Well, thank you very much for chatting with me today. 

Iolanda: Thank you for having me. 

Topher: Yes, I will see you. 

This has been an episode of Hallway Chats, a part of the HeroPress Network. This episode was recorded in person at WordCamp Italia in Milan, Italy. Your host was Topher DeRosia. We’d like to thank Sophia DeRosia for the music and Nexcess for hosting our network. If you liked the episode, please subscribe and mention us on social media. 

Show Notes

Contact Info:

• https://www.wp1x1.de/
• @MajaBenke

Episode Transcript

Topher: Hey everyone! I’m Topher. Welcome to Hallway Chats. This episode is a little bit different. It’s another one that was recorded in person, so it’s just me and the guest. Last summer, I visited Barcelona and I spent about a week wandering the city and seeing the sights with Maja Benke, who was from Germany. 

We basically just moved from cafe to cafe throughout the week trying food and beverages and just talking about everything. So this is a recording of one of those conversations.

Before we get started, though, I want to thank our sponsor Nexcess. Nexcess has been really great for HeroPress. Their speed is fantastic. I love their admin panel, it works great. 

And they have some stuff I don’t use, but I admire tremendously. They have WooCommerce automated testing, which is kind of a big deal. Not every place has that. In fact, I don’t know of another place that does have that. 

They have a great sales performance monitor, so it can help you with business decisions. And then of a plugin performance monitor, which is actually really hard to do. I know a bunch of plugins that claim to do it well, but they don’t really. The one from Nexcess does a really great job. So if you’re looking for a good host, especially with WooCommerce, checkout Nexcess, they’re great.

Alright, so let’s get on with our conversation with Maja. The scene is we were sitting in a cafe, an outdoor cafe. Every cafe in Barcelona at that time of the year had tables and chairs outside. I don’t think we sat inside any of them. So you could just walk down the street and just stop and sit and someone would come and offer you coffee. It was pretty great.

So let’s dive right in.

Topher: What I really like about that story is that it didn’t work for you, and so you were able to do something else, you know?

Maja: Yeah. I don’t know if I would have looked at it this way. I mean, it’s true. Like what I’m really glad about it’s actually… So maybe where it started was like… So I started in landscape architecture, which I really loved and really enjoyed because I really like to design. I also like, especially in terms of user experience, not just in terms of art and do pretty things, but in terms of doing design which means stuff that works for people and they’re enjoying it even in a way that maybe they not even notice that it’s actually really good design because it’s so like normal feeling in a good way.

Topher: Intuitive.

Maja: Yeah, intuitive. It’s not even look like a good design. So I really like those. And also like plants and being creative, but in an engineer way, you know, not in a blank canvas and you just put color in and you have all the freedom because it’s for me too much freedom. I like to have limits of rules. Especially in architecture, you have a lot of rules that people don’t hurt themselves using those things. So I love this a lot. But I had a lot of problems not being able to travel around. 

Topher: So that’s what led you to leave that career and pick something else?

Maja: Yes. So this was the main reason. It was actually the main reason why I wanted to change the profession I had. Also, I figured out that the greatest part in being a landscape architect is not the biggest part. It’s actually the smallest part and really small, because the rest is like a lot of paperwork, a lot of like helping building the table matrix, checking that the stuff got billed in a correct way, and also changing the plans all the time. 

Because there was a lot of other parties involved that you’re related to so you had to like change your plans all the time, your ideas, and… I don’t know, it was not that fun and creative as I thought. 

Topher: sure. 

Maja: It was too much limitation. But especially not being able to travel as much as I wanted to. Like, for one time I was working in an auto store and we had a lot of clients coming in looking for equipment for the next travel. So keep asking, “Are you travelling?” And also we were asking, “What were you going to do? What’s the weather temperature, stuff like this.” They were a lot of cool stuff. So I had a little list putting all the cool ideas on I wanted to do and my colleagues were like, “You will never have enough vacation and holiday that you’re able to do that.”

And they were like early 20. I was like, “This is too sad. I don’t want to live just to work. I want to work and then I’m able to live and do stuff.” And if even in my early 20s people already told me, “You will not…” I mean if you’re like, I don’t know, 70, and people will tell you, “Oh, you don’t have the time to do all these things,” I think it’s still critical to say that. But maybe it would be a bit more makes sense. But early 20s is like not the time to tell someone they’ll not be able to do all the stuff because they don’t have time because you will have to work so much all the time. You don’t have enough holidays.

And I found it super depressing. And I was like, “Nah, I don’t want to live like this. I really wanted to be independent just working and still work something that I’m really passionate about it because… And then not really know what it is. So after my university time, I did an internship and then I found out that I’m not really made for the office and doing this work. Even the university were really cool and creative.

So, yeah, I did Camino de Santiago in Spain, so pilgrim way, and found a lot of people who had some unusual work lives. So they were not working the classical job sometimes. I mean, a lot of them did obviously but also there were some who were just, “Yeah, I work sometimes here, sometimes there, and I live there and there.” I mean, usually it was like being a waiter or doing the kind of any job. 

And thought for myself, “That would be fine. I don’t have to work at something, I don’t know, where you earn a lot of money or something if you’re not able to… Like, I don’t need to work in something where I need to do a lot of money if I’m not able to have the lifestyle I want, which was traveling and being free.

I mean, many people, I think, think money gives you the freedom, which is partly true, obviously. But it’s not freedom if you have to work so much that you can’t really use the money in the way you want. So, I get the input so I was less scared of having not a career or something. I was like, “No, for me it’s more important to be free and live on places I wanted to.”

So then I moved to Barcelona being a waitress. It was a cool way to be in Barcelona but still, it was not local independency. So I still had my shift. So when I wanted to go home for like celebration, any birthday or something-

Topher: Right, you couldn’t go.

Maja: I couldn’t go because I had shifts. So it was still not ideal, but it was good starting point. And then I was thinking, “Okay, so I like to travel, the work that it’s local independency is probably online and digital. What should it be? Traveling and digital? I don’t know, maybe a travel work.” So it was a time where I think in the English community or English-speaking community travel blogs were already pretty common. In a German community, I would say it started already.

I mean, there were a few travel blogs, they were also quite big, but they were not that super many. So it was kind of still time to get in and possibly also be able probably to do a big and have a living from it. So I was looking for a platform to do a travel blog. So I was researching how to make a travel blog, or how to make a blog. Like I had no idea from online. Really no clue. 

And then I heard this WordPress thing. I was like, “Okay.” So I checked some and saw a lot of websites were using WordPress. I was like, “Okay, I mean, if you can build like this, probably I can do it as well. But we’ll see. I will try to learn how to do… I will try to manage, not even to learn, just to manage to get a blog online.” I think I needed a week to install WordPress on a server because it didn’t know how that works with domain and server, database. Never heard about that either. No clue.

And really I needed a week. It’s so funny. Looking back, it’s just so funny. I mean, now I need like, I don’t know, five minutes or maybe even more. Like half an hour probably to set everything. But I was so lost. I needed a week. Now I don’t know if I get to… I don’t know. So yeah, somehow I got the travel blog started. 

I think even there was one of the starter themes. I think it was 2011 or 2012 theme. I think it was the one with the pictures that were like full… I think full width?

Topher: Yeah. 

Maja: And on every page it changed, they had a different picture. But I think it was randomly or something. At least I couldn’t figure out, for a while, how to select the specific picture I want on a specific page. But I was really lost. I had to look up a lot. I don’t know. 

I was a bit frustrated because I couldn’t really find any German resources for really low beginners. I mean there were explanations, but they assumed you know what FTP is and stuff like this, and I didn’t know that. So I was a little bit lost sometimes. 

So I did a travel blog for like two, three years, tried to make a living from it. I was always working as a waiter besides that. During that time I also lived in England for a while. So I also was a waitress there. And I failed badly because I was really bad in social media, really bad in writing, really bad in doing the-

Topher: Travel blogging?

Maja: Yeah. I mean, travel blogging it was not that bad a thing, but it was like to get money from it, you need partnerships, for example. And I am just too shy… Or not too shy but… I don’t know. I think it’s really weird to write like a hustle, for example, and say, “Hey, I’m a travel blogger. Can I get free stuff?” I never did that. 

I was always kind of incognito. So I just went there as a normal person and was writing about and recommending stuff that I thought it’s cool. Because I always thought when I’m like telling them I would write about it they would treat me differently as well. I don’t know. Also, I felt really uncomfortable doing that. So yeah, I was obviously not successful. Because if you don’t ask for trades, obviously you don’t get any trades. So yeah, it was…

Topher: What was the thing that made you say, “This isn’t working? I need to do something else?” 

Maja: Well, the main thing I would say because I didn’t get any money. It was kind of a hint to me that this is not working at all. I mean, at the beginning, I thought, surely you need a while to start. Like, I don’t know, if I give you three months and thing, then you will have a lot of money, obviously, this is not working. But if it doesn’t work out after three years and also you don’t feel comfortable with the things you should do to earn money, it’s kind of also a hint that this is working out. 

Topher: That’s key. 

Maja: Yeah. So I was on some meetups or conferences in terms of vloggers or traveling or stuff like this and I saw how the other bloggers were doing that. They always had a camera on everything. They were always filming everything. They’re always like try to, you know, have partnerships. What’s the name for that, like partnership?

Topher: Sponsorship.

Maja: Sponsorships, things like this. And I never did that. I always felt really uncomfortable. I hated to be filmed or make pictures, put them online. I don’t know. I’m not this online person all the time. I felt weird about that. So it was kind of yeah, that’s not really my comfortable level, comfort zone. 

But because I know them, the most of them, I think all of them use WordPress, and I’ve always had troubles in a technical way or design perspective for something… I mean, after I would say a year, we say in German the coin dropped—it means I felt really comfortable with WordPress and had really feeling I started to understanding it. 

I mean, obviously, I didn’t know everything but if I didn’t know I could Google it, I could understand the answers like this was the crucial point at the beginning. So that understanding the answers for your question you had because they were too technical and too complicated.

So after a year or maybe one and a half years, I felt really, really comfortable with WordPress. I actually preferred working on the side instead of writing stuff and publishing stuff on social media. So I started to help my friends with their WordPress sites to fix problems, to add functionalities, to change CSS.

One day I was at meetup in Berlin for The 4-Hour Workweek. It’s a book from Timothy Ferriss that a lot of people in the digital nomad community are big fan off. And this is how many people started. And I was there. And we had a guy in front making a talk about like he’s having… It was not so much about local independency, but about how to make business with less effort.

And he said he has a WordPress agency, but he didn’t know anything about it or doesn’t know anything about WordPress. This was actually his opening line. And I’m sitting there and I’m like, “What? What a scam!” He was super self-confident. He said, “I always use the same template and just change a little bit of colors, put the pictures, different tags and then there’s a website.” Obviously, he did a bit more. I mean, yeah. I saw the website, they were not too bad. They were not like the best I’ve ever seen. But they were not that bad. But I think in technical terms they could have probably better websites than those. 

And I thought, “Okay, I probably know more about WordPress than this guy and he has an agency and make a living from WordPress, and I’m not.” And it was like, “Fuck that, maybe you should…” You have cut out the fuck that. 

Topher: Do you know the movie with Gru?

Maja: No.

Topher: It’s the bad guy who adopts the three little girls as cartoon?

Maja: No. 

Topher: There’s a one point where somebody is getting something right and he goes, “Light bulb.” 

Maja: Oh, okay. It was a moment like this, but it’s just more… I mean, also in terms of our idea that actually even if you haven’t learned proper IT stuff, you could do maybe websites. But also in terms of what if the man just making even a talk about it that he actually doesn’t know what he’s doing but he makes money from it. You know, having like the balls. I don’t know how you would say it in a nice way in English.

Topher: Confidence. 

Maja: Yeah, having the confidence to just do that instead of that you actually kind of know this stuff, but you still think you’re not good enough. I was like, “You know, maybe I should just have the confidence to start.” So I had an idea maybe I do that but first like getting a bit better. So I gave myself a couple more months and made really a lot of research like how… like in all the ways. I mean, I already know a lot of stuff because I secured my own website, for example. But I was like, “I want to be on a better level if I do this for other people.”

So I learned a lot of about security, usability, design trends, CSS, HTML, what kind of templates are good or not. Obviously, at the beginning, I didn’t have really the best clue.

Topher: The what?

Maja: The best knowledge.

Topher: Oh, yeah, yeah. 

Maja: I mean, obviously, I grew during the last few years. So for the first two clients’ website, I was looking online someone who does like an NGO or volunteering thing needs a website, and I would do it for free to learn also the workflow with the client and to see if that actually works out. And in terms of it doesn’t, you know, you could say, “Okay, I’m sorry, I can’t.” 

But it actually worked out pretty well. The clients were super happy. I learned also a lot about how to interact with clients, how to do project management. I mean, everything’s still beginning level.  But, you know, I started slowly. At the beginning, I was more like fixing problems with WordPress. It was not comfortable. 

I mean, the first two projects were actually complete websites but then also were sometimes smaller stuff. I think it was like 2013, 2014, something like this. In 2015, was my first WordCamp. It was quite of a happy accident how I went there.  

Topher: Which one was it?

Maja: Cologne 2015. 

Topher: Okay.

Maja: Really good WordCamp. Really liked it. I went there with a lot of confidence and thought, “I know a lot about WordPress,” and then I really… You say “I came to the ground”? Is that a good sentence?

Topher: Came to the ground.

Maja: That is a German sentence expression. So I thought I know a lot about it. Obviously, I was not an expert or something. But I thought I know my stuff. And then I went there and have the title of the talks I couldn’t even… Just from the headline, I couldn’t understand what it’s about because it was so specific and I didn’t have any idea. It was like, “Oh, wow, yeah, no, no, I’m not there yet.” 

Topher: What was the main language of the WordCamp?

Maja: German.

Topher: German.

Maja: I don’t know if we even had English talks, actually. I don’t know if we had any English talks. But I went to the community. Also, I got talked in to go to the contributor day, where I choose the wrong team immediately because I choose themes, which was a cool theme. I thought it’s about design but it was actually about coding and I’m not a developer. So a completely wrong team for me.

But they were also super nice and not judgmental or something that I choose the wrong team. So they encouraged me to go to polyglot, so I hopped there. And it was kind of the starting point to going on a higher levels of knowledge in terms of WordPress. Like I started contributing slowly. 

I mean, I needed a couple WordCamps, couple of contributor days that I founded the teams I really wanted to participate in and learn. Like couple months later I were in Utrecht in Netherlands in 2015 also on WordCamp. And during the Contributor Day, Rian Rietveld made a workshop about accessibility problems in WordPress, and I were really impressed. 

I heard about accessibility because of landscape architecture and also, when I was younger, I was really interested in are people with disability is solving the challenges. So it was always, for me, an interesting topic. Like I learned braille when I was 14, for example, use it as a secret written language with my friends. 

And also this is a really interesting field. I was really passionate about it because it would help a lot of people to use the web. I mean, at this time, I already knew that WordPress. I think it was like 27% of the web, or something, or 30%. I mean it’s getting higher every year but it was already… I mean, it was a lot of websites. 

And there were some core problems like, Wow, like this is actually affecting so many websites in the world in core? We should change that. So this was, I don’t know, just thinking about I could solve something, even if it’s a tiny thing but for so many websites made me really excited. And I thought it’s really important, so I was really passionate about that. So I became part of the accessibility team. At the beginning, obviously, I just had to learn a lot of stuff. This is nothing you can learn overnight or something. 

The most of the team were developers they were discussing a lot of technical problems. And I thought, “Wow, this is mind blowing. This is so complicated and you have to know so much.” But I was really comfortable with design because I had a design education, also UX thinking. I learned that. And for me, accessibility is like a wider range of UX.

So I opened a lot of tickets in terms of accessibility problems in design, like color contrast, for example, or information like color only for Core, but also a lot for meta, like for the websites the WordPress community presented. So this was how I started contributing with accessibility. And contributing to the WordPress community gives you a big push in knowledge in WordPress.

And I always had the needs to get better because I never wanted to be a kind of a scam or something. I really wanted to provide the best service I can and I’m able to and if I don’t, you know… And I think the most important lesson in WordCamps I had directly on my first WordCamp, to know what you don’t know. Because if you have never looked into other fields, you don’t know your limits, you don’t know where your knowledge limit ends or what some stuff is really important and you should consider.

For example, I don’t to any online shops. Not because I could not do that, but I know there’s a lot of things you really should know in terms of usability, web flow, for paying, for example, also. The law is really, especially in Germany, quite strict on stuff like this. And also the technical… sometimes it’s not that easy to set up. So I think it’s good if people are specialized in this. And to say, “Okay, just don’t do that because I’m not specialized in it. So the outcome would be maybe okay, but not really good.”

Topher: Right.

Maja: And I think this was a really important lesson in the WordCamp community to have a look in other fields, have maybe basic overview. 

Topher: It’s okay. 

Maja: So this was a really important lesson to know what you don’t know and to know people who does know that and then maybe ask them for help and collaboration. If you have a project that you need that or just give it to them. And also the other way around. I mean, now I do accessibility since 2015. Couple years… like continuous learning?

Topher: Continue learning.

Maja: Continue learning in the field. So now I’m really passionate about it. And actually at the beginning when I was working the Camino de Santiago, I never never thought I will ending up be a digital accessibility consultant and having the life I wanted to have at this point. It was actually really nice as, you know, the whole like travel blogs thing and wanted to work remotely and being able to travel started in Barcelona. 

In 2022, I moved back to Barcelona for a couple months to having this lifestyle and it was for me really special feeling being back here and living it and also doing something that I really enjoy. For me, it’s really nice because first it’s also challenging. So it’s not boring. It’s not something, Okay, you know that and now you do for the rest of your life every day the same.

Topher: Right.

Maja: I think it would be too boring for me. So it’s still always a challenge and you still really have to learn all the time new stuff. It’s a complicated field sometimes. But also I think it’s really important what I do. So even if it’s really hard times, especially accessibility is not always easy to do or to test or to work on, but I know that… For me, it’s really important. So that’s why I’m not really getting tired of it. And I think I will never do. 

I never thought I would find something where I thought I could do this for the rest of my life. And also like creating websites and designing them and then sometimes testing websites is a good mix of being creative but also doing things that’s really fun. I mean, also having nice website is really important. But that they’re also accessible, I don’t know, I think it’s also really, really important because over 20%, 25% of the world population needs accessible web. And it’s a lot of people actually.

Topher: It is a lot of people. So to be clear, you found your career as an accessibility person because you joined the accessibility team, as opposed to the other way around? Were you already interested in accessibility and then found the team?

Maja: Well, I was not specifically looking for that. I was always interested in accessibility, I think, because I don’t know… I don’t really know. I was like, why I was so interested in that? 

Topher: But you weren’t making a living at it yet when you found the team, right? 

Maja: No. No, not at all. I thought I would never be that good that I could do that actually. I was more like at this time, she did a talk at the workshop at 2015 in Utrecht. There were a problem with the loop on the [ACF?] side so the “read more” links were not accessible. Like for screen readers they were not accessible. 

And I thought, “Okay, so the loop is the main function of WordPress. This is how it started and this is still the main thing, and this is not accessible? What the fuck?” Yeah, I wanted to solve that? I mean, now it’s solved because of some really smart people found a solution.

I think I opened a ticket for that and other people solved it. I mean, Rian kind of pointed out, but I think there were no ticket. But I don’t really… I mean, maybe it was Rian. I have to look this up actually who opened the ticket. I don’t know if I did it or somewhere else. But I thought, “This is not good that this is not accessible and also why it is not accessible.”

I mean, that’s for me the saddest thing that accessibility is something an afterthought or not even a thought at all. And to fix something it’s way harder than have it at from the beginning. Yeah, no, I was more passionate about to make it usable for other people who couldn’t use it instead of having like… I never thought making a living out of it. I was more I’m doing web design or doing UX.

And thinking about doing a living or working with accessibility just maybe last three years, because, you know, I’d say it’s a complicated field. I think it’s important that you really understand the user groups and have really a deep understanding and knowledge and keep learning. Like not to think, “Oh, now I’m accessibility consultant and I’m CPACC certificated person, so now I know everything.” This is completely wrong, especially… Like also by people with one disability are super different. So you have to keep listening and learning. 

I don’t know, I now learned really for pretty long time I didn’t thought making a living from it just like contributing to WordPress to make WordPress more accessible because this was my area where I could change something. I’m not in politics, for example, so I can’t change their stuff. But I can change things that’s in my range of things. And accessibility in WordPress is something I could improve by contributing. So I thought more like this.

I mean, then after a while, I get better in it. Also, they’re not that many accessibility consultants or specialists. I mean, there are way more developers or SEO persons than accessibility people. And I think it’s too bad because we need them. Also, we need to educate developers and designers and content creators, and project managers. So it can’t just be up to the accessibility consultant. 

So this is maybe why I’m doing this because there’s a need. And for me, it’s important to change it. Not that much because it’s such a great work to do, actually. Like to design websites is more fun than testing website for accessibility, but it’s important.

Topher: So one of the questions that I always use as a foundation when people say, “What are your essays about?” I say, essays are about how WordPress enabled you to live the life you want. And what I’m hearing is the life you wanted was to be able to move freely around the world. And the career you’ve chosen as an accessibility consultant lets you do that. 

Maja: Yeah. And I do something I’m passionate about and I think it’s important. And I think this is really, like for me, but I think also for a lot of other people-

Topher: It’s true. 

Maja: ….this is really important that if you go to work every day, and maybe even on time, so it’s not a good time maybe or where it’s like, I don’t know, especially as a freelancer, sometimes you have like rough time, but to know why you do that, like to know your why it’s so important. 

Topher: That’s so good. So know your why.

Maja: And for me, it’s a really strong why. Like first time in contributing in WordPress, you don’t get money. I don’t get money for that. Maybe some people get to sponsor, but I don’t. And still I was for sometimes investing a lot of hours in contributing because for me it was important. 

And even now I’m really, really sad that not everything in WordPress is accessible. Even we have a team for so long and… I mean, obviously it’s not that easy, but still it could be better. And that is a bit frustrating as well. But still, you know, we keep fighting. So yeah.

Topher: That’s really cool.

Maja: Actually, my dream is to make the WordPress world more accessible. Like I don’t have the impact on other communities because I’m not there but my dream would be to find a way that all the plugins, all the themes, or at least the things in the directory are accessible and especially the Core. I mean, the Core back end and also front end has to be accessible in my opinion because there are rules over the world where for example, NGOs or public sites are only allowed to use accessible software. Also for other stuff, not only the front end. So I think it’s important that WordPress is accessible in every term.

Topher: That’s really cool. Thank you for what you do. 

Maja: Thank you.

Topher: This has been an episode of Hallway Chats, a part of the HeroPress Network. This episode was recorded in person in Barcelona, Spain. Your host was Topher DeRosia. We’d like to thank Sophia DeRosia for the music, and Nexcess for hosting our network. If you liked this episode, please subscribe and mention us on social media.