The WP Minute+

[00:00:00] Kim: Welcome everybody. This is the 12th episode of WP Product Talk. Sadly, we are down a co-host today, Matt. Um, just too much going on in life to pull in. So Brad and I are gonna do our best, um, to keep you entertained for the next 40 minutes or a little less, depending on how things go.

[00:00:17] Um, I wanna give a shout out to the WP Minute for, um, always taking these recordings and publishing them on our. Um, just an introduction to this space. If you have questions as we're talking, we'll be watching comments on this, uh, stream. And then also, if you use the hashtag WP product talk, that'll help us, um, answer your question live while we're chatting.

[00:00:38] So today we are talking about five for the future, and I'm joined by special guest Brad Williams. Hey Brad, how are

[00:00:45] Brad: you? I'm doing.

[00:00:47] Kim: How are you doing, Kelly? Very good. Very good. A little bit of a rainy, you're in my area. I guess it's probably also rainy in your area, but a little

[00:00:54] Brad: gloomy. A little rainy, but you know what, it could be snow.

[00:00:57] Kim: I know. So , I'm okay. We'll take this. I know you have a pretty rough driveway if that's still the case at your house. Um, better not to have bad snow. So cool. Um, I'll let you introduce yourself so everyone knows who they're talking to here. If you wanna go first.

[00:01:11] Brad: Sure. Yeah. Brad Williams. I founded a company called Web Dev Studios back in 2008, so we're coming up on our 15th year in a few months, which is kind of crazy to think about.

[00:01:22] But we specialize in building, uh, anything and everything with WordPress. So, We work with a lot of, uh, kind of bigger enterprise clients and corporations and, uh, just building WordPress at scale. So doing a lot of really

[00:01:33] Kim: cool stuff. Super cool. And, and this is a product space, so even, um, your team, they do not only services, but also lots of products in this space too.

[00:01:42] So it's good to have both perspectives here, especially on this kind of topic. Um, I'm Kim Coleman. I am co-founder of a membership pro plugin, paid memberships pro. Um, we've been open source, um, in de developing paid memberships pro for 12 years. . Um, and yeah, I'm also the, uh, WP Product Talk host for today.

[00:02:01] So, um, we're talking about five for the future. So what is five for the future? I'm gonna read an excerpt from the website. That talks about five for the future. Um, and it's described as an initiative promoting the WordPress communities con contribution to the platform's growth. Um, it's been around since 2014 and I think in recent times there's been a resurgence of conversation around what qualifies as a contribution.

[00:02:27] What types of contributions, um, support moving the WordPress project forward, um, and things like that. So I have a quote from Josepha here. Um, there are many important efforts and lots of incredible work performed outside of wordpress.org and the make teams. While these are indispensable activities that further the WordPress ecosystem, Five for the future is about ensuring that the WordPress project continues to be a fertile foundation for WordPress extenders and users.

[00:02:55] So on that context, Brad, what do you think makes this such a significant [00:03:00] topic for people building WordPress products and uh, building sites in the WordPress space?

[00:03:04] Brad: Yeah, I mean, it's a great topic. It's one I love talking about, which is contributing to open source. If you're in open source at all. I mean, Probably something you're familiar with or at least curious about.

[00:03:16] Um, but yeah, I mean, ultimately it really boils down to the fact that WordPress is built by, uh, you know, people volunteering essentially, uh, by and large, most, most people that, that work and help build WordPress. Contribute to WordPress, um, or volunteers. And I know some people, um, are sponsored and have, you know, companies funding them to do that.

[00:03:35] But by and large, I think most are not. We do it because we're passionate about the web, we're passionate about WordPress, we're passionate about getting more people involved and helping make WordPress a better product for us and others. Um, you know, so I think that's, you know, one area that really. draws a lot of people to it.

[00:03:53] Cuz if you're into open source, I gotta believe that's one of the primary reasons you're into open source, is it's open, it's open source, and you can get involved. So, um, so yeah, we definitely, uh, have been a part of the Five for the Future movement since 2014. Back when first announced, announced it, I think it was, I guess that was before Word camp us.

[00:04:14] So it probably would've been Word Camp in San Francisco back. .

[00:04:17] Kim: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's very early days when this kind of initiative started. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I, I think it's also important because like, uh, when you're a product, you're building your business on top of the platform. Mm-hmm. and whether or not you've open sourced your products, I sure hope you are.

[00:04:33] Um, you rely on. WordPress itself moving forward. Um, you rely on all kinds of things, not just the code base, but the community around it, that users have information, have documentation. have pathways to learn through word camps and WordPress meetups. Um, and I think a lot of people look at contributing and think, oh, you know, I do WordPress for my day job.

[00:04:56] The last thing I wanna do is more coding and, and more things after, after the fact. So I think what five for the Future makes interesting is that it, it brings the company involved and it can make it an effort that's. Part of your whole team. Mm-hmm. , um, and something you do and collaborate on together. So although it is very similar to what you might be doing in your every day building your products, it can also be a lot more creative.

[00:05:17] Yeah. Um, if you move outside of the development side.

[00:05:20] Brad: Yeah. And I mean, to your point about, you know, I code all day. I don't wanna code at night. Like That's a good point because one of the things I always like to mention whenever I talk about contributing to WordPress is it doesn't have to be. . You know, I think the, the default thought is contributing to WordPress means writing code for the core of WordPress, like, you know, WordPress, the product.

[00:05:40] Um, and it's actually way more than that, right? That's obviously a big part of it, certainly as the WordPress code base, but contributing could be. You know, it could be what we're doing right now. Honestly, like I look at this as contributing to WordPress because we are sharing knowledge and experience and our thoughts around topics of WordPress and hopefully getting more people thinking about it, [00:06:00] interested.

[00:06:01] It could be organized in a meetup, a local meetup, or maybe a Word camp. It could be, you know, sometimes some of our developers. You know, they want to take a break from coding, so they'll spend the day just going into support forms on wordpress.org and answering questions and helping newer users get comfortable working with WordPress.

[00:06:16] Because, you know, there's a really good feeling when you can help somebody out when they're stuck and they're in a jam, and it's a question that you can answer, you know? Um, again, I think it's another reason why many of us were drawn to open source in the first place. I know I was, because my background of of getting into web development and.

[00:06:33] You know, this was 20 plus years ago. It was on message boards and forums. That's where I learned, I mean, I didn't go to college to learn programming. I learned it basically myself. Uh, a little bit of the Marine Corps taught me, I was a little bit behind, but they taught me some stuff. But I learned a lot of it on message boards and just getting help from other users out there, learning together, you know, and that.

[00:06:52] Lines up real well with what we're doing at Open Source. I think it's important to just to remember that, you know, there's a lot of different ways to contribute, so don't feel like if you're a coder, you have to code, you know, or if you're a content writer, you have to write content. Like there's other stuff you could potentially do to help, you know, contribute to WordPress in the community.

[00:07:09] Kim: Definitely. I love that. And I think it touches into our, the next phase of where we go with WordPress product talk, which is kind of a story time we talk about how is contributing to WordPress a part of our history or our current thinking. Um, I'll go first so I can kind of share a little bit of how I think about contributing to WordPress.

[00:07:28] So, um, when I was doing some research for this, pre this talk, this Twitter space, I started reading some of. Um, things about pledging and contributing and what people are doing. And I realize even though we don't have an official policy within our team, we do have, uh, every time someone wants to speak at a Word camp or a WordPress meetup, if somebody wants to attend a word, a word camp, um, we have unofficial policies in our team that we're like, come to us, talk to us.

[00:07:55] We wanna, you know, sponsor that travel for you. Um, I've been speaking and, um, being a host, Virtual word, word camps and things like that. Um, so it's, it's interesting because it doesn't look like it's gonna take a lot of effort to make this contribution more official. Um, . It sounded scary at first when I was doing the research, like what will it entail for me to pledge my company or my own personal time?

[00:08:22] But when you look at the types of contribution activities, I think a lot of us will realize we're already doing this, like you said, Brad, right. If we're just, um, talking about WordPress, sharing introductory knowledge that we have to other people. So, um, I hope to learn a lot more from you, Brad, about how you've made this, um, part of the culture at WebDev Studios.

[00:08:39] Yeah. So I'm gonna hand it back to you if you wanna share a little story time. , um, where this all began with your team or anything you wanna. .

[00:08:46] Brad: Yeah. I mean, similar too, right? Like, you know, back before this was officially a thing of five for the future, we were contributing. We, you know, we had various people at our company and myself included, that were contributing to core.

[00:08:57] We released some plugins, you know, we were just kind of geeking out on [00:09:00] WordPress. Um, we were, back then, we were like an irc. This is before Slacks, so now we're getting really old, um, you know, helping people out. Again, I learned a lot of WordPress develop. In, in irc, in the chat rooms, in message boards, talking to other people and just kind of learning together.

[00:09:14] So, um, you know, so kind of, you know, just formalizing it more once Matt kind of said, Hey, this five for the future thing, which, which really just boils down to the pledge. Like he said, sign a contract or something. But it's a pledge that we're gonna dedicate, um, or strive to dedicate 5% of our company time to contributing.

[00:09:34] You know, and, and the way we've, we've done this a number of different ways over the years, cuz again, we've been doing this like eight years now. Um, so the, where we landed the last few years that have worked really well is we have, we, um, set the last day of the, the last Friday of the month as our five for the future day across the entire company.

[00:09:52] So we're all doing it together. We've tried different things where we stagger it or it's different teams on different days, but we found. You know what's works best generally is when our entire company is doing it at the same time. Uh, because then the messaging to clients and the messaging to others is very simple, right?

[00:10:08] We're closed for internal, you know, whatever, . We don't get in all the details with our clients. Some of them we do, but we're closed for internal stuff, right? And that's the day we spend. contributing. Um, and that's great because it's a Friday, so it's a great way to go into the weekend. It's a good time to work on maybe a passion project or something you've been, you know, interested in, or maybe get a new version of your plugin out the door or, you know, again, help organize an event.

[00:10:30] It gives a nice break from the client grind. We do products, but primarily what we do is, you know, service, service work for clients. So it's a nice break from that, but, . It really just gave us a way to formalize what we're already doing. Which sounds similar to you, is Yeah, this is five, the future, this is our official way.

[00:10:43] It doesn't mean you can't do more than that. You certainly can and you're encouraged to, but this is the official, you know, time that, that we dedicate our company to contributing back.

[00:10:54] Kim: It sounds pretty simple when you phrase it that way and frame it. I'm, I'm curious, how do people, when you know, when planning for that day, um, how do you like, get new people?

[00:11:06] find a place to get involved, go to the, make WordPress slack, dig into and find a place? Or, or do you kind of pair people up that they collaborate on certain things or, you know, how do you dip in and, and find things that you can contribute to?

[00:11:20] Brad: Yeah, I mean, it's a good, it's a good question. Cause I think if you're on your own, like you said, it could be, or, or even just researching the topic, it can look a little intimidating, but Right.

[00:11:29] You're right. When you really peel it back to what you're doing, um, it's really not right. Um, You know, the wordpress.org has where you can sign up and kind of pledge. That's newer within the last few years. Prior to that it was really just kind of officially saying, yes, we're doing this and we weren't really , you know, nothing more than that.

[00:11:47] So, um, in terms of how we buddy up, since we are a little bit of a larger company, um, you know, we, what we like to do is, cuz you're right, new. You know, new team members join, um, and they're like, [00:12:00] well, what do I do? I don't know what to do. And many of our engineers, many of our, certainly our project managers and others have never contributed before.

[00:12:07] When they join web dev, this is new. So when they first hire, you know, we obviously meet with them and I talk to 'em and say, Hey, start thinking about it. Start thinking about what you might wanna do. Cuz at the end of the month is our day. So talk to your team. Talk to your, you know, the engineering managers, talk to your group and see if they have ideas or.

[00:12:23] We also, um, have a signup sheet, a spreadsheet that we track, and that's where everybody essentially writes down what they're gonna be contributing to. . Um, and we do this for a couple reasons. One, it's so everyone can see what everyone else is doing, and if that interests them, they could buddy up. Like you mentioned, we've had, you know, groups of 3, 4, 5 devs dedicate, you know, time together to get some patch, you know, finalized and WordPress core kind of work together.

[00:12:47] Um, but just generally to see what everyone else is doing right. And see if something interests you and you want to kind of work with them or learn from them. And we will buddy up some people if they say, I'm interested in contributing to WordPress core, great. Let's buddy you up with someone who's. and let's find a good ticket to be your first ticket, your first patch, and let's get, you know, let's get you props and WordPress core.

[00:13:07] Um, and there's also the, you know, the, the, the other angle of it. Obviously you're a company, so there's the marketing side of it. It's nice to know what our team's working on. We can talk about on social and other platforms and kind of brag a little bit about the ways that we're contributing. Cause again, why not, right?

[00:13:21] we wanna talk about it for sure. We wanna get more people excited about it. So they, they do it.

[00:13:24] Kim: But it sounds, the way that you're speaking, it doesn't sound like the, the value is in, is in how you can share about it, but it really is, it sounds like it's just a personal commitment that you heard those words.

[00:13:35] You appreciate open source project projects. WordPress in particular and, and want to do this because when I was looking at, you can, um, if you go to wordpress.org/five-four-the-future, um, that's kind of the landing page for where these, uh, initiatives are coordinated. So individuals can sign up through that page and companies can also pledge their company time through that page.

[00:13:57] Mm-hmm. , so I pulled up the web dev studios page, um, but I don't see that as a reason anyone's really doing this, but it's cool that that's become a part of it. Yeah. Like you said, it seems pretty new. They're trying. more officially track contribution, track people's pledges, um, and, and monitor that. Um, individuals that contributed also gets, uh, included in your wordpress.org user profile page.

[00:14:20] So I have yours here too. I'm gonna tweet these both out after the event. So you can see Brad's individual page and the web dev studios pledge for the company page. Um, yeah, but yeah, yeah,

[00:14:29] Brad: that's It's a, go ahead. It's a cool section. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there, but No, um, yeah, it's a cool section.

[00:14:36] The, the, the one thing I will say, uh, is, you know, I, I, I think my definition of contributing is a little bit more broad than, than WordPress's definition, you know, like I said, like what we're doing right now in my mind is contributing mm-hmm. , whereas officially, I don't think they would track this as like contributing to WordPress.

[00:14:55] Right. But I think, again, I think just putting. Knowledge and information into the [00:15:00] public space around WordPress is contributing. You know, we're sharing information, we're sharing knowledge. Maybe we get, you know, somebody that listens to this and decides, you know what I want? I want my team to contribute, or I want to give it a shot, even though I'm a freelancer.

[00:15:12] I want to go contribute and be part of this five for the future. You know, that's helping the project. So, , um, you know, the way I look at it, if you're putting some out there, the public is sharing knowledge. You're sharing information around WordPress to help WordPress grow that is contributing. So my like worry about five to the future and it getting more formalized is that it gets too strict, too rigid, and like you said, becomes almost intimidating.

[00:15:35] Yeah, I completely agree for people to jump into and that's not what I want. And I'm sure that's not what the WordPress project wants, but, um, so yeah, just

[00:15:42] Kim: something to think about. But yeah, I, I, I couldn't agree more. I think it's, um, when we start to do things, so we get a badge or so we get a notice on a page.

[00:15:52] Um, it kind of, where, where's the heart of this? Is this like a resume builder for you? Right. Um, where, how are you? emotionally attached to the work that you're doing, um, and contributing that way. So I think you're totally right. That formalizing it, I guess helps because it makes it transparent who's giving, and it sets a standard, um, that other people who look up to you and your brand and your company mm-hmm.

[00:16:16] Brad can say, you know, if Brad's company can do this, we can do this too. You know, at our size of 14, 15 people, we could do one day a month also, and it wouldn't hurt. anything within our organization to

[00:16:27] Brad: start doing that. Yeah. And there's, there's, there's ancillary benefits too, outside of just contributing, like it's, you know, it's helping your team potentially level up, level up their skills.

[00:16:35] Maybe they, you know, cause this is what I see with my engineers and developers is they might dive into something within WordPress that they're not super familiar with. Or maybe they want to get a little bit more, you know, into React and working with like Gutenberg and the block editor. So they wanna jump into that and see if they can help build, you know, with some tickets.

[00:16:50] So it can actually help level up your team with more knowledge around WordPress and the different areas they're working and how they interact with open source development and open source teams. So, um, it's not the reason we do it, but it's definitely something we've seen over the years that it does actually help.

[00:17:05] You know, it's not just, don't look at it as I'm just, you know, paying people. Have the day off or do something that's not billable. Look at it as you're actually growing your team. It's actually a benefit to your team. It's a benefit to people that might wanna join your team. Um, and honestly, it's a bit addictive once you start getting into it.

[00:17:22] You wanna do more, you know, we've actually helped coach other companies. They've reached out and we spent time and sat down and, and did kind of like what we're doing here, but just more one-on-one with other company and agency owners of this is how we're doing it and how we've, we've done it. Success. To try to, you know, again, because they're, they, like you said, they see what we're doing.

[00:17:39] We're pretty vocal about it on social and online because I wanna brag about my team. They're doing cool stuff, you know, so, um, it's, it's contagious and it spreads, and that's exactly what we want.

[00:17:50] Kim: Yeah. I love it. You talked about it as like a, You know, employee retention or, um, yeah, even as part of a package to say like, this is a different [00:18:00] differentiator for us and the team that you'll work on.

[00:18:02] Um, because I think many people who work in the WordPress space, you know, we might not be doing it just for the money. There's other technology. , uh, jobs out there. And I, I look at my team, I think a lot of them are in the roles that they're in because they like the community, they like the open source aspect.

[00:18:18] Mm-hmm. . Um, and it, you know, maybe it's a little lower pressure than other technology jobs, but I definitely could see Yeah. A product team adding this on as an aspect of employment that really, you know, touches. What the employee really needs from their career. Um, yeah. In a way that isn't financial, you know, it's, it's different.

[00:18:35] Yeah. It's a, it's

[00:18:36] Brad: a, it's a benefit. Um, and we use it in our hiring. We use it, um, in our selling, within our proposals and stuff. We brag about the fact that our team, you know, spends time contributing to WordPress officially, you know, and that shows to our potential clients that. We're passionate about this.

[00:18:54] It's, again, like you said, it's not necessarily just a paycheck. Well, yes, that's important. We all have to survive and we have to make money to do that. Um, we're passionate about it and we hire people of, are passionate about it and we want those hungry and eager people to wanna learn and continue to grow.

[00:19:07] And by showing our clients. Hey, we spend some of our company time doing just that officially. You know, it shows that passion that we have. So there's a lot of other benefits that, and other ways that you can kinda use the fact that you do contribute to your advantage. And I don't see anything wrong with that.

[00:19:24] I think you should, because again, the more you know, we yell this from the mountaintops, the more people you know, I think get involved and get interested in five for the future, which is great for everybody on Word.

[00:19:36] Kim: I think if we could talk a little, you are gonna be able to speak to this probably better than me, but just how do you find ways to contribute? So we talked about a few early on. We can dig into them a little bit more here. Um, maybe we could just go through a few of the most popular ways people contribute.

[00:19:52] So I know on the five for the Future website one way was through doing translations through Glotpress. So, um, my understanding, and you can correct me if you have knowledge about this, , you know, create your user profile, you get onto the God press site and then you can, um, submit yourself as a translator for a language that you specialize in and get to work, you know, translating strings and it's interesting.

[00:20:15] Mm-hmm. , that feels kind of like development, but that's an awesome thing if you're somebody who knows multiple languages, even just one or two languages loosely. Um, to be able to contribute to, because it, um, can help the core WordPress product and all of the open source plugins that are. also really need translation, um, so that we can continue to appeal to like the world of users.

[00:20:35] So

[00:20:37] Brad: yeah, that's a great way. Um, another way that's somewhat similar, but um, is, is transcribing, um, presentations on WordPress tv. So it, the process, essentially watch the presentation and, you know, type the words that they're saying basically. Right? You're transcribing it for, uh, for a reader, um, so that, you know, it'll have close cash in essentially.

[00:20:59] [00:21:00] So it's, it's, it's a lot. More tedious, I think, than it sounds because, you know, most people can't type as fast as somebody's talking. So it's a lot of kind of play, five seconds type, type, type, play. A few more seconds type, type, you know. But um, again, that is a kind of an easy one to jump into. Um, that can have a pretty big impact, you know, and especially in the, in the world of accessibility.

[00:21:21] So that's another area a lot of our. Like to do. Again, it's, it's a lot of engineers sometimes like to take, you know, do something completely different on this day, right? So some of our engineers do exactly that. We'll transcribe videos on wordpress.tv.

[00:21:36] Kim: Um, I didn't even realize that was an opportunity.

[00:21:37] That sounds so awesome, . And do you think for that, would you just, is part of the WordPress, um, make Slack environment, is there a channel where you can be like, Hey, what needs transcribing? Or how does that even.

[00:21:48] Brad: Yeah, there is. There is. There's a a make, so if you go to make that wordpress.org/tv. This is kind of the official make section for, for tv.

[00:21:59] Um, and within here there's just different information and videos and stuff like that. But yeah, I, I believe I'd have to confirm as, as still how it works, but I believe the videos that need trans transcribed are tagged and then you can go in there and just grab a video and, and there's a process for just essentially watching the video and type in as you go.

[00:22:14] So it's, it's pretty simple, but any of the, once you get set up, I should. Yeah, I should say it's simple. It was a little tedious because it's a lot of stopping starting unless you're a really fast hyper . Maybe you can fly through it, but most people probably are not that fast.

[00:22:27] Kim: I think the last time I looked at contributing, like this was like a contributor day where it was an auditorium of tables and you could just go sit with a team and it was awkward because you couldn't just jump in.

[00:22:38] you know, there was a lot of like, you don't have access to that, or, you know, try to write a Google Doc and send it to me. And it felt really challenging. But those, yeah. Translations, some of that still exists. Really easy entry. Go ahead.

[00:22:50] Brad: Yeah, no, some of that still exists for sure, right? Like mm-hmm. , um, you know, it's, There's some stuff you can really jump into quickly and easily and other stuff that, you know, like contributing to work press core, you gotta have a bit of a setup locally.

[00:23:01] You gotta have, you know, sbn running and you know how to create a patch off the work that you're doing and how to submit that. So it does take a little bit of know-how, it's not insanely hard, but it's a little bit of a weird process the first time you do it first couple times. But that's where like, you know, really buddying up with, with somebody that's been there can, can really go a long way.

[00:23:19] Um, yeah, I remember that, that,

[00:23:21] Kim: oh, Jason once sat and tried to do theme review and he was just like, I don't belong here. , I gotta go.

[00:23:28] Brad: Yeah. Theme review. Plugin review. Like the review. Literally reviewing all lines of code, making sure it's done correctly. But you gotta have that certain knowledge to make sure, you know, to be on those teams.

[00:23:37] Um, the documentations, I know that team, I'll call out because. , um, it's just a thankless job, right? Like documentation is so important in everything we do, but, you know, nobody wants to do it , right? So, yeah, because it's a little bit boring. You're just writing documentation around what's this function do or what does this feature do?

[00:23:54] Or how do I do this, you know, like, but it's so important because, you know, all of us, anyone listening, [00:24:00] I'm, we read documentation online. That's what, how we learned to interact with services or work with, you know, whatever, uh, code bases or anything is documentation. So that's another great way. , you don't want to have all these technical chops to, to dive in and have an impact.

[00:24:13] It might be documenting a new feature in Gutenberg and you just walk through the feature and kind of type it up and throw in some screenshots or, or it might be helping document a more technical level, like giving them the, you know, the code layered and documenting some of that stuff. But, um, they always need help because again, it's just a thankless job that not, it's not, it's glamorous as some of the other areas that might be more kind of out there in the open.

[00:24:34] Um, but it's, they always need help. So if you go to make that WordPress dot. Um, site, they have one for the documentation team and they have a really good, uh, melana cap who is really involved over there. Has a really good sticky post that is basically links to everything you kind of need to know. Um, the great thing about these teams too is you can always go into the WordPress Slack instance, and there's channels for each one of these teams.

[00:25:01] Um, you know, cuz again, you're probably not gonna, you're, you're gonna have some questions I'm sure. So you can always jump into one of those channels in Slack in a real time, ask questions, be like, Hey, I wanna get involved in documentation, or I wanna help transcribe videos, or I wanna work on WordPress core, who can help me?

[00:25:14] Where do I start? And I guarantee you there would be people jumping at the chance to help, help you get started. Oh yeah.

[00:25:19] Kim: I, I can particular identify with the documentation because with, with how fast. , Gutenberg and, and block development has been going. Mm-hmm. , I'm seeing a lot more documentation for wordpress.com, how to use each block than there is for our.org users.

[00:25:34] And when I'm writing documentation for our own plugin and I wanna link to, you know, insert the navigation block, wordpress.com has better docs than.org has right now. So I'm like, maybe I need to help this out because I don't wanna link to.com through my side. I wanna link to the.org and keep it within the project.

[00:25:49] Mm-hmm. ? Yeah, if I can. Yeah. . Um, I know another way to contribute is, you know, to pitch yourself, to be a Word camp speaker or pitch yourself as a meetup speaker. So I know in my area there's tons of meetups and if you can get in touch with your local community and find the, the people who lead your meetups in your area.

[00:26:08] Think of an idea of something that you could present to them in a very casual weather, in-person or virtual type event, or plan one talk and socialize it across meetups across the country even as possible. So, um, I know that that looked to be an approved way to contribute it. We were talking earlier about what's a, you know, gray area?

[00:26:27] What's a approved activity for contribution, which we could dig into a little bit. Um, but I think the whole meetup and, and word camp. Interesting. And it really good for professional development as an individual as well.

[00:26:40] Brad: Yes. It's a great place to learn. I mean, it's your local community, right? So you're, you're there and interacting with people that live around you and live in your, your areas.

[00:26:48] So, um, yeah, I mean, speaking and I know speaking's not for everybody or presenting, uh, but meetups especially are, if you have any interest or a really great, you know, kind of safe space, if you. [00:27:00] To, to test the water a little bit, you know, in a smaller environment with local people that most likely, you know or familiar with, you're not speaking to a room of 500 people probably.

[00:27:08] Right? So it's a good place to, to test it out, you know, dip your toe in, see if it's, if you like it, you know, it's, everyone gets nervous speaking some more than others. Um, but you're either gonna get off that stage and, and. You know, like you have this massive adrenal adrenal, uh, adrenaline rush and you just loved it.

[00:27:27] Or you're gonna get off the stage and say, no, that wasn't for me. . Right. Yeah. But sometimes you gotta put yourself out there and try things. But if that's not for you, help volunteer, help organize. Yep. You know, be more behind the scenes and that's another great way to get involved, especially for word camps, cuz they need a lot of volunteers.

[00:27:42] You know, that's what some of our, in fact, jc one of our engineering managers is helping organize Word Camp Asia. So she's been spending the last. I don't know, 5, 6, 7, 5 for the future is just heads down with that, you know, because especially organizing a, you know, something as big as Work Camp Asia, you know, it takes a lot of volunteers and a lot of work.

[00:28:01] So there's always stuff to do, you know, another great way to work, um, or contribute, you know?

[00:28:09] Kim: That's huge. Yeah. We had a team member who was involved in organizing us, um, and it, you know, took time out of their day on a regular, weekly basis, you know, and. As a company, just have to give them that time and make sure they're, that it's known.

[00:28:24] I think I need to do better with that for my team, um, to keep open communication, make sure that they know that we approve of this. You know, it's not, if you have to go do a meeting for two hours during the day for your participation and contribution, you have to make that up after hours. Like, no, like to know that it's, uh, official.

[00:28:41] So I think. I have a lot of work to do to make it a more, um, approved part of our process. Mm-hmm. for our team.

[00:28:48] Brad: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you know, the other thing I'd recommend is track that time we've tracked, you know, we log all the time that we contribute. You know, it's really just for internal. Um, but it's also kind of cool to see we're literally an hour or two away from having 11,000 hours.

[00:29:05] Since we started, you know, eight years ago. So being able to look at that data, you know, year in, year out and over time is, is, is pretty cool. Um, now, you know, some people might take that and multiply it against their hourly rate and say, that's what I'm leaving on the table. But I don't really think that's necessarily true in all cases.

[00:29:22] So, um, but it's fun to track. It's, it's good data have, and then you can really see what your overall impact is and how you're doing week in, week out, or month to month, year.

[00:29:35] Kim: Do you wanna talk a little bit about. The gray area of contribution at all, and like you said, um, what we're doing now, fears, like, contribution? Um, I think when, when volunteering, when contributing becomes really official and organized and structured, like you said, it can put some walls up. It can make it more challenging to just dip in.

[00:29:55] It can make certain people feel more, um, valued and useful [00:30:00] and it can make other activities. , like, oh, well these aren't really helping anymore. Or, I don't know. It's, it's hard. I, when, when, um, this conversation researched and some articles were published about what actually is contributing, I know as plug-in authors who support our plug-in for free through.org, all of our plug-ins on.org, um, it can feel like that is contributing building products and extending the platform of ways that people use Word.

[00:30:28] that feels like contributing. Um, what do you, what are your, what is your take on all of that,

[00:30:32] Brad: Brad? Yeah, I mean, again, I think my, my take is a little looser than, than WordPress org's take, if you will. Um, I really look at it and how I tell my team is if you're working on something, obviously WordPress related, that you intend to put out publicly, you know, whether it's a blog post, a plugin, a snippet of code, whatever, um, I deem that as contributing to word.

[00:30:58] you know, because you are sharing knowledge or putting information out there publicly, whether it's on your own blog or web dev blog or whatever. If you're helping organize, you know, meetups, these are public events. You know, if you're hosting podcasts, if you're, you know, that's, I, I like to do podcasts.

[00:31:14] Matt is on, is here. We have a little show we do like once a year called the Random. , which we should probably do one, Matt, before the end of the year. . Um, that one maybe isn't con that one's random, so that's not necessarily a WordPress. But I do a show with Bob that is all about WooCommerce, Bob Wp. So, again, I feel like that is contributing.

[00:31:32] Cause we're sharing information, we're sharing knowledge, we're talking about WordPress, we're putting it out there in the public. Other people can join. They're learning hopefully, and, and join what they're hearing. So I I, I just, you know, Lisa, my partner and i's take on it is, it's really just gotta be con, you know, contributing to, to the WordPress project in some capacity.

[00:31:48] Something related to WordPress that you're, you're eventually gonna put out there publicly doesn't mean you have to build and release a plug-in in one. But the goal should be, if you're working on a plugin, at some point you're gonna put it out there on GitHub, or you know, it doesn't have to be on official release.

[00:32:01] Right. But it needs to be out there publicly somewhere at some point. So that's kinda how we take it. Yeah. And then we just tell our team, look, if you're not sure if you're, you know, if you're worried you might do something that's not necessarily, just talk to us. You know? Yeah. Like you said, just talk to us and We'll, you know, we've made exceptions for certain things.

[00:32:15] Like someone need to help out a local nonprofit, you know, and I was like, that's fine, you can help them out today. You know, even though it's not. Contributing publicly. It's helping out somebody on WordPress that's a nonprofit that really needed it. So, you know, that kind of is helping WordPress, right?

[00:32:29] Yeah.

[00:32:29] Kim: And maybe in the act of, you know, working on that plugin that you're gonna re release publicly, you find a documentation hole, or you mm-hmm. , you know, look at someone else's code and find as an inspiration. You find an issue and you submit a patch. So you. Um, I think these things happen organically and naturally when we are exploring the, our interests through, through the WordPress community.

[00:32:51] So, um, it doesn't have to be, um, totally a prescribed and defined way to contribute. So, yeah. And I mean, that's your approach.

[00:32:59] Brad: Yeah. [00:33:00] And look for opportunities. There's no reason your company can't benefit from this, right. And I'm not, you shouldn't be in it only because of that, cuz those are kind of the wrong reasons.

[00:33:09] But the ancillary side of it is the company can benefit. So a good example is, uh, we use Algolia, which is a search, uh, product, a third party search project, product, um, or service. Uh, for many of our clients, they like Algolia, they use it well. Algolia had a WordPress plugin that they essentially deprecated and said, we're not gonna continue supporting this.

[00:33:29] Um, so we saw that as an opportunity. We had a number of clients. , we knew we were gonna have to continue to support this in some capacity, so why not just take it over, right? So they deprecated it, shut it down. We forked it, and we kept growing it and kept building it. And now we're the unofficial official plugin for Algolia, and I'm getting leads in the door every single week.

[00:33:50] Wanting to talk to us about Algolia integrations for people's website because we took over that plugin and we continue to build it, grow it, and support it primarily under five for the future. Um, some, maybe we do a little bit more on that one than, than just five for the future, but it has turned into. A, uh, essentially a revenue stream on the service side of the house.

[00:34:08] So that was a good opp. It's a win-win, right? We're helping WordPress, we're keeping a plugin running that a lot of people were using that the main company didn't want to continue to support, and now we're, you know, getting some business because of it. So look for those opportunities that really compliment what you're doing.

[00:34:21] Don't do it only because of that. But that's a great side benefit of what we, what we've done there.

[00:34:27] Kim: Okay. Now the, it's escaping me, but there is a tag that you can search for plug-ins that need ado. I think it's adoption or needs Adoption. Yeah. It might be something like that. I don't know if that's how you discovered it, if it was just.

[00:34:38] you know, you saw, oh, this hasn't been updated, or we just saw,

[00:34:41] Brad: cause our clients were using it and they put out a, a notice saying this is gonna be shut down after this release. They're like, whoa. What? , wait

[00:34:48] Kim: a minute. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it, no, no, no. We can't. That's why open source is so cool.

[00:34:53] Brad: And we reached out to Tag Goalie to talk to 'em.

[00:34:55] Cause I didn't wanna just fork their plug in without saying, Hey, are you like really shutting us down? So we talked to 'em and they, and they told us, yeah, we. , we're not gonna continue to support it, so Okay. It's open source. We forked it. They still get credit for the original, and we're continuing to build it and grow it.

[00:35:08] And I think we have six or 7,000 active users now in a number of our clients. So it's been a win-win. That's

[00:35:14] Kim: awesome. We're about at time, so I guess I'll wrap us up unless you have any closing thoughts, but we like to close with kind of that best nugget of advice that you have for product shops. Um, thinking about five for the future, thinking about getting started, just where do you even, where do you give them that best advice?

[00:35:32] Brad: Yeah. I mean, I, I would, I would just say, you know, if you're, if you're on the fence or you thought about it, or maybe you're even, most likely, a lot of those people listening to a lot of companies out there are already contributing in some way. Right. Just like we both talked about how we kind of were without really formalizing it.

[00:35:47] So into saying we are doing fights for the future and this is the plan. So I would encourage anyone out there that, um, even if you're on your own, you know, It's only gonna help you. It's only gonna, you know, grow your awareness around [00:36:00] WordPress and what's being, you know, actively built and worked on, and how you can get involved.

[00:36:03] And it's just kinda deepen your understanding of WordPress. It's. Be a nice feather in your cap that you could potentially use with maybe clients or, um, whatever be even, you know, even on the product space, it's the same thing, right? Like if you say, Hey, we built all these products and we contribute part of our time to WordPress, now you're building confidence.

[00:36:18] You're giving me confidence that, oh, it's, they're not just a one-off, you know, landing page, fly by night, get my $50 and I'll never see 'em again. It's not gonna, , they're, they're actively contributing. They're helping build WordPress as well as selling these products. They must really be passionate about this, right?

[00:36:32] They must really be into this, uh, why else would they do that? So now I'm, you've just built confidence and I honestly think that could even help, you know, more sales on the premium side. So, um, but yeah, my number one advice is don't be intimidated. Just figure out something that's gonna work for you, yourself, your team, your group, um, and run with it.

[00:36:48] And then you can always pivot and adjust and reach out. I'm more than happy to talk to anybody about how they can help contribute. A number of people at my company would, would be happy to as well. So we're gonna keep doing it. We're gonna keep talking about it cuz we're passionate about it and we want others to get involved.

[00:37:01] So, I

[00:37:03] Kim: love that. Uh, my Avi advice would be, you know, start small with anything. We can overdo it from the get go and, and make grand plans for ourself. But think about how you've been contributing and think about setting a goal for yourself on a weekly basis. Or like brass company, they do that one month power day.

[00:37:21] Um, can we not all contribute one day in a. To just jump into the make slack, find something that we can ramp up on quickly and devote some time and contribute back to this project that's helping all of us build our businesses and build our livelihoods. So, Closing thoughts and go to wordpress.org/five-four-the dash.

[00:37:41] Future not super easy, probably better to just Google that one. Um, I wanna give a final shout out to the WP Minute for syndicating our recordings. Um, we are back next week. We might be going a little bit early to accommodate our guests, so I'm not going to, uh, tease that one out yet. But thank you so much for being here, Brad.

[00:37:59] I think we did pretty good without an extra host. Yeah, we don't need Matt. We don't need Matt. We're we got the other. Yeah, we got the other Matt here. Awesome. Thanks everyone. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you. Have a day.