Goodbye 2023 and Hello 2024

Hey, BobWP here and welcome to the last show of the Do the Woo podcast 2023. Well, here I am by myself winging it. I say that because we had originally planned to have a group of us here to talk about the last year and what’s coming. Of course with the holidays, it’s been rather crazy. It’s like herding cats that are also herding elves and following Santa, and you get the picture. Anyway, it’s been rough. I think everybody’s trying to wrap up at work and get ready for their time with their families to enjoy the holidays. So instead, we put it off a couple times. I had plans to really think this one through, and to be honest, I’m just winging it. I don’t have any notes made for it, and I thought I do a few things today as it is the last show. First, I want to share four audios with four of our hosts, so not everybody was able to pull one together. Again, like I said, they’re very busy, but we had originally planned to, as I mentioned, get together very early for some of our hosts. In fact, it was very, very early for Adam, who is one of the hosts of Woo BizChat. And I think we woke up, Adam.

Hey, hey Bob. This is Adam Weeks. Oh, why do we have to do this so early in the morning? It’s not my fault that I’m halfway across the world. Anyways, hey, since I’m here, Bob, thank you so much for building an incredible community where people can come together, laugh, have fun, learn from each other, and grow in this crazy, crazy WordPress world. Thank you for all that you do. I am excited that we’re just getting started. And with that, I’m, I’m gonna go back to bed. You guys, you guys have fun.

Well, that was a failure on my part because that episode did not even transpire. So Adam woke himself up for no reason at all. But hey, you know, I know he forgives me next. Katie, Katie, who also does Woo BizChat, she shared what she thought was one of her favorite shows, kind of for a unique reason.
Congratulations to Bob and everyone at Do the Woo for another fantastic year. My favorite episode this year was something completely new. It was the episode that was recorded at WordCamp us by members of the Spanish speaking WordPress community. I moved to Spain two years ago and have been working hard to learn Spanish. So it was a lovely experience to listen to people talking about WordPress in Spanish and learn more about the Spanish speaking side of the community more widely. I’ve enjoyed seeing do the w diversify by adding a wide range of regular co-hosts with podcasts on various niche topics relating to WordPress and WooCommerce. This is made even better by the regular guests who join each show, each of whom add huge value and insights to the topics being discussed in 2024. I look forward to seeing the Do the Woo website continue to develop. For example, I’d like to be able to filter by topic to find episodes about specific areas. I know that lots of exciting things are planned and are looking forward to seeing them.

Well, I get it. I get the trying to learn language. I’m waiting to do a show in Portuguese here, and then I will <laugh> stumble through it because I’ve still yet to learn Portuguese very well. Dave from Emerging Tech gives us a short thoughts about how crazy and wild that space is, and I think it’s gonna stay crazy in hope, and I think as he projects, it’s a bit crazy.

Hello, and thank you for listening to do the Woo’s Emerging Tech podcast this year with Kathy. Brad and I, who knows what next year holds. This year has been a bit of a ride, but my guess is the next year is gonna be even crazier. So stay tuned and look forward to some news industry discussion and some special guests through 2024.

Thanks Dave. And yeah, I’m, I’m curious what, what we’re going to even be talking about in this new year around emerging tech. So last but not least, Ronald, Ronald is a longtime host and he’s been the host of Woo ProductChat. He works at WooCommerce. He has his finger on the pulse of a lot of things, and I enjoyed Ronald. He really kind of shared and reflected on some of the shows he did and the whole space of Woo. So let’s, let’s listen to what Ronald has to say.

Hey, it’s Ronald here, one of the co-hosts of Do the Woo. It’s the end of 2023. And I’m just reflecting on a couple of good moments of what’s been happening in the Woo ecosystem. I think one that stood out is the recording with Bob of the 400th episode. It’s always a bit of a milestone. ’cause 400 is really just a number, but it’s makes you think for a moment and pause where you know, the journey you’ve been on to get to that stage. And that journey has been quite massive as, at least for me personally, but also the Do the Woo, I mean, 400 episodes, that’s 400 guests, 400 stories businesses, companies, agencies. They’re all part of this, this massive ecosystem. And that’s just a tiny little bit of, you know, a a moment of, of that. Everybody’s there on a, on a journey.
But the ecosystem is widening. It’s getting bigger and larger. So, you know, some of the interviews I did was were with yeah, one company called What, three Words, who created this really interesting system. And now, you know, after years of, of development, want to integrate deeper with with WooCommerce because it’s, it’s huge. You know, it’s continuous, continuously growing. you know, looking at some of the statistics on, for example, store leads, it’s past the four, maybe four and a half million stores. Okay? They might not all be busy huge stores, but that’s, you have to start somewhere. And seeing the growth in Europe, in Asia. Latin Amercian, pretty much all around the world, it’s very encouraging. great conversation with Avalara and American Eagle, how they collaborate and build this sort of mini bubble where they help each other grow.
We talked a lot with well with shipping, with payments and also have to know that word comes are back the events. I didn’t go to all of them, but I’ve been involved with help you know, steer the conversation. There’s some prerecording I’ve listened to that pop went to various events around the world. and that’s great because, you know, podcast fantastic, but that nothing beats in real life experiences and, and connections. So with that, I’m hoping that I’ll, I’ll meet many of you in at various word camps and events, at least WordCamp Europe. But until then, keep growing and enjoy everything that Woo has to offer. Take care.

Well, thanks Ronald. That was perfect. And I wanna thank all my hosts from this last year. Abha, Brad, Carl, Jonathan, Kathy, Katie, Robbie, Marcus, Robert, Ronald, Tammy, Zach, Emma, one of our newer hosts along with Adam and Devon who has just started. So anyway, what a great group. I mean, this has been an amazing year and that’s why, although I don’t always reflect on the year, I just have to a little bit in this one to let you know what I’ve seen and not so much in the space, but more or less what I’ve seen through the podcast and how this has grown and the community has grown. As you can see, we now currently have 16 hosts, 16 co-hosts, and we’re gonna be adding some more as we add new shows. So that’s been very special to me because each one of them have a unique personality.

They bring something very special to each show they do, and Do The Woo would not be Do the Woo without them. Now, before I get into a little bit of my thoughts of this last year, aside from the wonderful growth of our co-hosts, there’s two other figures I wanna throw out to you. We’ve been able to push out 128 episodes in 2023 and through these episodes we elevated 165 individual voices. And as I look at those numbers, I don’t read them simply to say, Hey, look at how many people we’ve had on the show. But it also confirms for me that we are doing what we set out to do. And that is to elevate a lot of voices and not only of the people you may know daily and you’ll hear on so many other podcasts, but individuals that have literally been on the podcast for the very first time when they come onto Do the Woo.

So if you’re listening to those that’s pretty impressive to hear how well they done, how much they got into the conversation, and how much they enjoyed telling their story. So over this year, it’s just been a steady growth to where we wanna be. Exactly. And early on about September. So I started thinking of actually breaking the podcast up into shows. So what that means is, and I’ve explained this before, but I haven’t quite gone into this much depth of it or a podcast I don’t believe, and that means that Do the Woo is now the umbrella of several shows that are focused on not only WooCommerce Builder, but WordPress Builders. Because a lot of times it’s one and the same. And if you’re a Woo builder, you have to build on WordPress obviously. So those shows have been broken up, and actually you can go now to the site and you’ll be able to click through any of those particular shows, the ones that interest you more.

And I might just let me just read off those shows ’cause if you haven’t really gotten a grip of what we are doing. So we have Woo AgencyChat, which of course we talk to more of the agency side of Woo. Speaking of what it’s been and where it’s going with our new co-host, Emmett and Adam, this is not only going to turn into Woo businesses coming in and talking about how they succeeded, how they built their businesses, how they’ve been challenged, but it’s also going to give you the opportunity to learn from experts that maybe don’t necessarily run a WooCommerce business, but work with WooCommerce businesses. So you’ll learn more in the email space, et cetera, et cetera. And that adds a little bit of a layer of another type of education to the podcast. Then we have Woo Dev Chat.

Woo DevChat has been around Carl and Zach, if you’ve geeked out with them, you know, <laugh>, what’s that like? We’ll also be doing more of bringing in guest hosts, a couple developers where they can have a fun conversation between themselves. Woo DevChat which is just that we bring in the product builders, people talk about their products, what they do, again, what it took to grow that business and that product, which is always very interesting. And we have Inside Boo that will be gearing up a bit more. And that’s where we talk to the people actually at WooCommerce or you know, people that work in core, people that contribute, learn more or less behind the scenes at Woo. Then on the flip side, the WordPress Way. Now some people actually look at that as a I don’t say negative comment, but they think the WordPress way is really people that do things the way it always been.

And I look at it differently. I look at the WordPress way as this is the way things are going. I mean, the WordPress way is constantly evolving and that’s what we’re gonna be doing in that we’re gonna be talking more to more WordPress contributors and make WordPress teams learning a bit more inside WordPress. Then we have all things WordPress and WooCommerce. This is our, I don’t wanna say catchall, but this is where we can bring in people on accessibility, security SEO, different things like that. And it can touch on either and both WooCommerce and WordPress Emerging tech. I mentioned that Dave had talked a little bit about that. That’s really unique because we are looking at all the stuff that’s coming out and how it plays a part with either WordPress, WooCommerce, even open source. A lot of that talk’s been around AI obviously, and some Crypto.

Hey, who knows what we’ll be talking about. As Dave said in the next year WordPress event talk. Ronald mentioned that a little bit. That is where we are diving more into the different events from WordCamp to beat up to the Next Gen events. this is also where often I promote, and this is also where I often share things that are happening at WordCamps, actually talking to organizers, talking to speakers, talking to attendees, and you never know what will end up in WordPress event talk. So that’s another one that you may wanna, we wanna stay on top of different events and just see what’s going on. We wanna look at around the world because there’s so many cool things happening, speaking the world. The other show is Community Voices WordPress Around the World. This one has been especially fun for me.

Katie mentioned one of those. We’ve had the Spanish community on, we’ve had the community from Serbia, we’ve had the Dutch community, and we have several more lined up. So essentially what this is, is this giving a particular WordPress community geographically the opportunity to come in and either share about their community, and I’m sure it’s gonna move into more even sharing about building with WordPress, building with WooCommerce in their native language. So it’s really a show that is built for their community in their language, and this just gives them the opportunity to really express their passion for WordPress and WooCommerce. And then I have my end of the week show almost every week called Boo Bits, where I do commentary, bits and pieces, and then occasionally we put out Do the Woo News, and that is news. Not so much about what’s going on in the space news about Do the Woo, there are plenty of the news podcasts that we don’t need to be part of that.

Two new shows we have coming, actually three two of them one of them is going to be called Open Talk On Open Source, and this should be starting in the first quarter, I’m hoping in January. We’ll kind of see when January, February-ish. But this is where we’re gonna bring in other open source projects. And I think the importance of doing something like that is exposing people in WordPress to other open source projects. Hey, we all have to admit it. We sometimes get in this WordPress bubble of open source, but there’s so many other open source things going on and this will just give you glimpses into all of those. The other one is Empowering Enterprise with WordPress and WooCommerce. This is something you’ve probably seen more and more people talk about. I’m not sure exactly when that’ll be starting, probably again in January or February, but it’s essentially going to bring on people who build for enterprise and help convince the entire world that yes, WordPress can handle enterprise.

So it’s gonna be interesting to see where this goes. We haven’t dove into the actual things we’ll be talking about as much, but that is going to be a new one. Then the one I haven’t publicly announced or even created any artwork, let’s just say that if you know Nathan from WP Builds and he does weaken WordPress every Monday and myself, we’re gonna be doing one called the WordPress Chronicles. Now all I’m gonna say is this is going to be something to do around AI and it’s gonna be fun ’cause Nathan and I do like to have fun. So we’re gonna add a little bit of lightheartedness into the mix of all these shows. So that’s quite a few shows we have going on and that’s what we’ve been building up to, which builds up to our launch of our new site, which will be happening last part of January or in February.

This is a very exciting step for Do the Woo. It’s something that I’ve still had to keep under wraps exactly what is happening and what it’ll look like and all that good stuff, but it’s something hopefully we will be announcing officially soon after the holidays and into the new year. what’s going on with that? And that’s gonna, that’s just going to bring do the woo up kind of to that next place. I don’t wanna say next level ’cause I really don’t like saying Next Level, but it’s, it’s gonna really do amazing things for do the Woo and you’re going to be able to really focus on the content you wanna listen to. As I said, all the shows will have their own feed, so you can listen, choose and pick which shows you want. They currently have their own feed right now. So if you go in and just go to the taxonomy, you know, click on the particular show and put that into an RSS, you’ll get the feed.

So they are all on Apple Podcasts already. I think some of them are on I think they’re all on Apple Podcasts. They’re almost all on Apple Podcasts. I’m sorry I can’t remember everything I’m doing right now. Got a busy couple weeks coming up here over the holidays, getting all this stuff scheduled. But you’ll be able to find them on all your podcast apps. So you can again listen to you know that there’s like three, four shows. Ah, I like those shows. Or you can get the fire hose of do the Woo and of course subscribe as you probably have in the past to do the Woo and get all the shows in your inbox or on your pod app. And I, I think that, again, looking at 2023 moving into 2024, the core mission of Do the Woo has been to elevate voices and to grow more globally.

And I think we’ve done that already in 2023. I think it’s going to more or less explode in 2024 and there’s gonna be a lot of opportunities for even more community members to get involved. I do look occasionally for hosts. You know, we have a lot of shows, a lot of spots that can be filled, but we also are constantly looking for guests and guest hosts to come in to do some of these shows. So, like I said, you know, if you’re a developer, if you know another developer and you would just like to get on, have a conversation specifically a little bit more around woo, reach out. There’s always a way to find a way to connect with us at dothewoo.io.

So I’m not gonna, you know, dive into a lot of 2023. It pretty much is reflected in listening to the shows and hearing the people that we had on as guests. it’s hard for me to select any one or two shows that I’ve just loved. I have to admit that I’m pretty excited about the community voices around the world just because I love hearing individuals talking to their own community with the passion that it deserves. So plus I love all the other shows. What can I say? And now before I go, please hang in there just a little bit longer. I’d like to mention our sponsors because really, I mean, our hosts are amazing, the time they give our sponsors. We would not be do the Woo without our sponsors. I had hoped to get some, some comments or some reflections from our sponsors, but again, everybody’s really busy. But I did get one Rita from one of our newer sponsors, Omnisend had something to share.
Hey, Bob, and all the Do the Woo hosts. This is Rytis from Omnisend. As we are relatively new in WordPress community, I would like to express our first impressions. So we found everyone in the community very friendly, very welcoming, and very supportive. So we enjoy every minute being here and wish you all stay the same.

Well, I appreciate Rytis being able to squeeze in the time to share that little bit with you. And also I appreciate all our sponsors because hey, you know, they like I said, they’re the lifeblood of this podcast. Currently we have GoDaddy, Weglot, Avalara, Jetpack, Hostinger and A2 Hosting. And as you just heard Omnisend, we are, you know, continuing to look for sponsors for 2024. We have some of these sponsors stepping up again in the first quarter of 2024, and we’ll be continuing their sponsorship. So again, I can’t say thank you enough to them because this is what allows us to do what we do and also allows me to put in all of my energies into do the Woo, because that is really all I do. I do the woo. So, and last, but of course not least, I just want to thank all of you for listening, for supporting us, for sharing our content. again, we wouldn’t <laugh> essentially have or want to do this if we did not have the listeners out there to enjoy it, all these different voices we bring to the podcast. So that is it. I’m not going to go on any longer. I probably talk quite a bit here, more than I typically do when I’m doing a show by myself. But hey, I hope that how whatever you may celebrate, and also for 2024 I hope

You have wonderful success. I hope things are going great for you personally and professionally. And again, if you’re interested in being on the show or being some part of the show or would like to support or sponsor, you know, just visit dothewoo.io. You can connect with me through that. You can connect with us just about anywhere. So that’s it. And with that said, happy holidays. Happy New Year, and we’ll see you in 2024.