What Ended WordCamp Europe 2022 on a High Note

Carl: So, what brought you into WordPress?

Bōggie: What brought me to WordPress?

Carl: Yeah.

Bōggie: I was probably 16 years old.

Carl: Oh, my goodness. Now I have to try to guess how many years ago that was?

BoÌ„ggie: This is a while back. So, I was 16 years old. I was just done wrapping up doing Flash websites. I was riding the golden age, doing Flash. And I’m like, “Wait. Is Flash the future or should I be doing more?” And so, somehow I had Dream Weaver on my computer because it was part of the macro media.

Carl: Dream Weaver was way better than Front Page.

BoÌ„ggie: Oh, yeah. So, I was using Dream Weaver to build, to create the index files for the SWF, for the Flash files to be there and that’s all I knew about websites.

Carl: That’s the extent your HDML, how to embed a SWF file?

BoÌ„ggie: Basically, that’s all I do. And so, then I started playing with like, wait, you can build multiple pages, and there’s this thing called HTML, I should probably learn how to play with it. Then I started inspecting websites, copying the code, playing with the code, modifying. Next thing you know, I’m self teaching myself, HTML and CSS. At that time, I think that was high school era, I took a JavaScript class, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, this JavaScript, this is a whole other thing, this is so interesting.”

Next thing you know, I come across CMS, different CMS platforms. First one was Joomla, took apart Joomla, but I got to WordPress, I’m like, “This is cool.” This is very simple, it’s minimal, it’s very efficient, there’s not 200 files for no reason and it works. And so, around 2010, I started building websites using WordPress. And then I started building custom themes because I’m a customizer guy, I need to design my own thing. What you don’t know before I started this, I was actually a designer, so you have a designer who now learned how to code PHP.

Carl: So, you’re the unicorn.

Bōggie: Something like that.

Carl: There’s different kinds of unicorns, there’s the developer marketer, but I find also the unicorn is the designer developer, the one that can design the website and also code it to work. So, you were a unicorn.

BoÌ„ggie: Well, that’s how I started and that’s how I got across WordPress, that’s how I got into this whole work.

Carl: Okay. But you didn’t attend WordCamps?

Bōggie: I did not. I always saw the WordCamp in the dashboard. I always knew something was happening and I knew it was a bigger community, but I was just so focused on my own little space.

Carl: Wait, so is this your first WordCamp?

BoÌ„ggie: It’s my first WordCamp.

Carl: No way. So, you’ve been working with WordPress for forever but no WordCamps? My goodness, you missed out.

Bōggie: Tell me about your first WordPress experience?

Carl: Okay. So, it’s a bit similar to you, so I’ve been also working with WordPress for over a decade. But my story is, I started coding when I was eight and I coded on and off, I did a RPG in basic, like choose your own adventure. Like, do you want to go right left, things like that.

Bōggie: Like Pokemon or Zelda?

Carl: Yeah. But it was just text, it was like you choose your own adventure books. Do you remember?

Bōggie: Yeah.

Carl: So, I was dabbling with things, I even did a robotics project at 10. I was in the news in Canada because it was in Logo, I don’t know if you know Logo? It was this old thing, it was educational, programming thing, it was a turtle, you could draw with it. But I had it wired to a computer and it would do animations and it would control… For example, one year we did a ferris wheel and then the ferris wheel would start turning, but we actually built one and it would just start the motor. It’s still amazing.

One year I did a hovercraft, it was in water, so we did a foam with two motors, so you have to actually control the two motors. So, it didn’t go too straight because the motors, they were the same models, but it’s really easy if they’re not at the same power level, it’s not going to go-

BoÌ„ggie: Yeah. It’s really easy to do but they’re not sync.

Carl: So, I dabbled with programming. I always was technical, I did computer engineering, but then I got out and I got hired doing tech support for a law firm.

Bōggie: You went from robotics to law.

Carl: Robotics and computer engineering. Computer engineer to level two support, although I did a lot of system, and a lot of what I do with WordPress nowadays is system network, so I did Windows system. But I started building tools for them at the law firm, it was in C Sharp, it was Microsoft SDKs and stuff like that. But I started building, then I realized, shit, I really like programming, why the fuck am I working for a law firm doing this? And also I like traveling, I like backpacking, so I was like, “Fuck this. I’m leaving.”

By the way I decided that 2008, so the crash happens, so I come back, there’s not that much jobs going around and I’m trying to get a job as a developer. And I’m dealing with the catch 22 too, I’m trying to explain to people, “I’m a really good developer, I have no programming,” but they’d always pass the fucking coding exams. I would ace the interviews.

Bōggie: But they want you to be certified?

Carl: No. Then they’re like, “Oh, that’s great. We’re going to do a small programming exam.” But I hate programming. I got to hiring people, I never made them do a programming exam, I hate programming exams. Nobody arrives and they’re like, “I know how to do this algorithm.” You Google that shit. So, I would always ace the behavioral, there’d be like, “This is awesome.” And then they’re like, “We’re just going to pass you a small test,” and I’m like, “Yeah. No. See ya. I’ll never see you again.”

I knew at the back of my head I’d never see them again. I’m in Montreal, so Montreal, if you don’t know is one of the North American capitals of video game development. So, I wanted to build tools, there’s a job title that’s called tools developer and they’re the ones that build the map designer, the level editors and stuff like that. Anyways, I never got that.

Eventually I interviewed a company for a C Sharp position, bombed the exam but they’re like, “Carl, we really like you and we have this contract for…” In Canada, they’re called Rogers, they’re basically the equivalent of Time Warner in Canada, they own a ton of media properties. So they were like, “Yeah. We’ve got this contract to build this site with this thing called WordPress, we’re a C Sharp shop, you don’t know anything about PhD, would you do it?” And it was like, I’ll do anything so, I was just like, “I’ll learn anything, I’m in.”

So, the project went super well, and so well that we built out the team. So, the whole agency started building more and more, getting hired by Rogers and other companies to build more complex… So, I had built out their WordPress but then my boss heard this thing like, “Yeah. There’s a WordCamp.” So, Montreal is one of the oldest WordCamps ever. Matt gave three keynotes in his life in Montreal because if we did it for Jazz Fest in Montreal, which he loved, he was always in town, so he would do a keynote or a town hall. But my boss told me, “Go to this thing called WordCamp.” And I was like, “Oh.” And it was really cool and they had meetups and I was like, “I’ll go to the meetups.”

BoÌ„ggie: And then so, you haven’t played with WordPress at all? Your first experience was the meetup?

Carl: No. It was about six or eight months in of the project. But my boss was just like, “Just figure out what’s going on, what’s this about?” And I just liked it and then I started getting more involved and then I started organizing the meetups. And then I started organizing the WordCamps, I organized the WordCamp in Montreal for 10 years. So, that’s how I got involved, it’s a long story, but they’re good stories.

BoÌ„ggie: It’s always interesting the origin story, the first experience. It’s like, “Tell us.”

Carl: Yeah. And that’s what I do now too. What I’m building right now, my product is a developer tool for WordPress because I like developers and I always like building tools to help developers.

Thanks to our Pod Friends PeachPay and IconicWP

BoÌ„ggie: Question, I want to take a little topic change. What is the worst thing that bothers you about WordPress? And the whole thing, not just the platform, in the overall experience, what’s the thing you wish you could fix?

Carl: So, this is where I’m going to play my expert card where I say I’m not a domain enough expert to really give an insightful answer to that. But I will tell you as somebody that does a lot of consulting, maintaining old software, I wish that the team in core appreciated a bit more the fact that this is legacy software sometimes. I think they’re doing a lot better now, it used to be they wouldn’t do right tests and it was basically, “Well, we’re big enough if something breaks, everybody’s going to yell at us and then we’ll we’ll fix it.” There’s more of an emphasis on that.

But just being aware of, obviously there’s Gutenberg, that’s a thing on top, but the PHP backend is always going to be there, they’re not going to swap. I was just with Matthias last night and talking about that, they’re not going to swap the backend for some next GS thing, it’s always going to PHP. So, sometimes I wish they appreciated that and they maybe put more effort into maintaining it, not just adding more stuff. But there’s some stuff in there that’s been deprecated since 0.1.

BoÌ„ggie: Yeah. That’s true.

Carl: Just cleaning things up maybe a bit, being not so scared of refactoring, but otherwise, honestly I’m not involved in core that much, I’ve done a couple of tickets, but they were always discussions that didn’t really lead anywhere. But that’s what I think, that makes sense. I think especially WordPress is coming on 20 years old, so it’s old.

BoÌ„ggie: And it’s come a long way.

Carl: Yeah.

BoÌ„ggie: I remember from the early days it’s like, this is a completely different thing, holy crap.

So, my biggest thing is I remember way back in the day, and this is pre everything that’s modern, is always having to update the plugins, always having to make sure the sites update and making sure that when you do update it nothing breaks. That was the biggest pain point for me, there’s always a fear, I don’t even want to do auto update, I’m so afraid.

Carl: It’s true, it’s scary. The more plug-ins you have, the more points of failures you have. So, absolutely. I think it’s probably scarier now if you haven’t updated a site with 80 plug-ins in a while. There’s that, and maybe developer experience, I think now, if you look at Laravel and other PHP ecosystem players, they do a better job I think, building tools, helping people onboard. Especially when I hear people talk about Gutenberg and things like that, it’s really, really hard to get into it.

BoÌ„ggie: It’s a whole next step.

Carl: Yeah. And it’s a huge next step when you come from a lot of people that are like you, self-taught, things like that, I think there’s even more onus on the project to make an effort to make that the whole progression accessible. I’m not sure what the best course for that is, whether it’s to actually make a course or just build out documentation, like video series, things like that but I think that’d be useful. I know a lot of people are writing that content, but it’s still something I think the project should keep in mind as well.

BoÌ„ggie: That makes sense. So, one of the things that’s been a hot topic is enterprise level, shamelessly plugging right now-

Carl: That’s fine. My product is basically building out serverless WordPress on AWS.

Bōggie: There you go.

Carl: I get in pissing matches with Josh on Post Status Slack, then he’s like, “Look, if you wanted to just get a job at Pagely you could just ask for it.” I know a lot of the Pagely people, especially the assistant mans people, the people that do architecture and things like that. Because that’s a lot of what I do now, a lot of my consulting is not actually developer work. To bring it back to that Windows system at the law firm, it’s a lot of systems administration and things like that for some clients.

BoÌ„ggie: That’s great.

Carl: Sorry I interrupted you, but where are you going with the enterprise thing?

BoÌ„ggie: No. I was just going to shamelessly plug it in, the fact I’ve been hearing that GoDaddy and Pagely have been working on a secret project.

Carl: Okay. Yes. Adam Warner said there was stuff coming.

BoÌ„ggie: It’s a secret project. It basically takes the best and the biggest, and I like to think it’s a revolution honestly, because of what they’re planning to pull off. So, I’m excited about that.

Carl: I’ll be excited to see because right now I’m the one doing the craziest shit. I’m doing serverless, it doesn’t even run on a regular server, it’s literally like WordPress on demand. So, if you make a request to a WordPress site, it’ll spin up an instance to respond to that and then it tears it down after, and then you can scale to basically zero to three. I do a lot of load testing for eCommerce because right now eCommerce is the killer use case for it because a lot of the people I talk to, they deal with eCommerce stores where they’re doing sales driven. They send a newsletter and then they get a huge wave of traffic.

Bōggie: And eCommerce being the best solution given the WordPress ecosystem.

Carl: Yep. But scaling eCommerce is hard, it’s a different problem than scaling a regular WordPress site.

Bōggie: Exactly.

Carl: So, that’s why I know the problem really well, because like I was going to say, I did low testing going from zero to 3000 people checking out in a minute. So, I know from other customers trying the other platforms that there’s not a lot of platforms that can handle that. And especially not without you having to worry about anything like, “Oh, I’m running out of this space or this or that.” No. As long as the database holds. We had a discussion actually, me and Josh, sorry, we’re going to get into more nerdy, technical talk now. But AWS came out with ORA 2 recently and we were talking, so database that scales really fast.

Bōggie: That makes sense.

Carl: But their previous product, they said that it did and it did not. Anyhow, so I’m looking forward to seeing what that product is, I assume it’s Northstack 2.0 or something like that, if you know what Northstack was?

BoÌ„ggie: I feel like it sounds familiar, but that’s above my pay grade. I’m not that smart when it comes to tech.

Carl: Yeah. So, I like this space. I’m friends with all the hosting companies.

BoÌ„ggie: You’re a great guy, you seem like a very happy, pleasant person to be around, so I’m not surprised.

Carl: Well, thank you, you too Boggie. I didn’t even know you until two days ago and we’re just both two smiling guys, basically.

Bōggie: Enjoying life as I like to say, living my best life.

Carl: Boggie’s enjoying its first WordCamp and having a blast.

Bōggie: I am. This is great. Amazing people, amazing times. Thank you so much for stopping by the booth.

Carl: Thank you, and thank you for having me Boggie.