A Personal Journey to WordPress and Becoming a Contributor

BobWP:
Hey, BobWP, yes, it’s me. You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here on The WordPress Way, DEIB. We decided to do something a little bit different this month. That doesn’t mean that you are going to be missing our wonderful host that is usually here, Birgit, but we thought this time let’s learn about Birgit. I mean, I’ve had a few hosts on different shows, and we’ve learned more about their journey, and it’s always fun, and I’ll probably even learn things I don’t know. So I am looking forward to it. So yeah, Birgit is here. Hello, Birgit, how you doing?

Birgit:
Hello, Bob. I’m doing fine, thanks, and thanks for sharing the idea or turning tables. It’s interesting.

BobWP:
It’s fun. It’s always fun. I did that in the very early years when we had three co-hosts. I did a kind of highlight. I called it Unplugged. Each one of them unplugged, and we just went through their own story and learned a little bit more about them. So I’m excited for it. And I think the best way to start is everybody’s always curious, especially some people because you’ve heard it so many times, but I don’t even know if I have heard how you got into WordPress or what drove you to WordPress. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that?

Birgit:
Well, that is kind of funny, but also interesting for those who don’t know me yet, especially or didn’t see, I am a white woman almost 50 years now, and I’m a mom of five almost grown-up children, and I also have already two grandchildren. My ex-husband back in the day was a truck driver, so I was over the weekdays alone with all our children. And when my children went to bed, I had a lot of time to spend, and I was always a curious person. I learned about computers back in school, and I went to a business school and learned about Word, Excel, bookkeeping, all the stuff. And when we got our first personal computer, I was always in. And then when we got the internet, I was sucked in. I opened a new reel to my perception. So I need to preface this a little bit because it’s kind of funny.

Imagine a woman breastfeeding one of the children, sitting next to a computer in a chat room, and talking about stuff, and someone shared a link to a personal website. I was so stoked about that. I was so curious. Oh, I want to build websites myself. How does it function? I’m always a person who wants to look behind the curtains and how things work. And then I went down this rabbit hole, learning about HTML, how to build websites with iframes and tables. So crazy. And no, none of those websites are live anymore, so I can’t share them with the world today. But yeah, pivoting from HTML, and then you have to change everything. When you want to change, you have to change the navigation on every page when you build it in classic HTML and so on. And I was tired of that. So how can I get dynamic data too? So I learned about PHP and some frameworks and how to do that, and somehow I stumbled upon Typeform and B2/cafelog back in the day, and I was like, interesting. You can publish something and put it in the world without worrying about changing any hardcoded links to something. So I played with that, and then I learned that B2/cafelog would be discontinued, and it was forked by someone and called it WordPress. And I was one of the persons who installed WordPress on their web servers from this first release. I played around, but I wasn’t really serious about it yet back in the day. But in 2005, I was asked to build a website for someone. I didn’t use WordPress for building websites, just playing and fiddling around with my personal projects.

But it meant I started to get self-employed as a side hustle to be more legal and serious about it. And since then, oh wow, always as a side hustle, I learned more about website building, and I didn’t have the chance to go to some form of professional training. Everything I know today I taught myself scrolling through the internet. Selfhtml.de was one of my plates. I learned a lot about just asking questions and checking other blog posts. And then when YouTube started to be a thing, I learned about that. I also experimented with Joomla, Drupal, Typo3, which is more popular in Germany, and so on. I also managed one time I was working with a primary direct marketing with call center and address data management and so on. I went to my boss one day and told him, our website sucks, it doesn’t look very good. And he told me, okay, come up with a new concept. I did it in one week, and then I founded the web design department in that company. Wow. I pivoted from a mom with five children learning HTML and designing websites in the afternoon and when the kids are asleep or something to running a web design department in a small business company, we had around 150 employees back in the day. So building websites and also later building apps and using WordPress as a data management backend. When REST API became a thing, I’m more of a generalist because I have multiple interests. Maybe my divergent traits come into play on that. But on the other hand, it’s ongoing consistency in my life building websites and fiddling around with new stuff and maybe sometimes running after the new shiny objects. So I’m kind of weak for these shiny objects, but on the other hand, it’s always sparking new ideas and so on.

And that is how I came to WordPress. And then I was building websites. And then I found a theme framework called the Extreme theme, which was utilizing back in the day the YAML CSS framework. It’s like today, the Bootstrap or Tailwind CSS framework. But YAML was the other part, and it’s kind of a page builder theme back in the day. I was really interested and founded by a German workforce engineer. He unfortunately passed away too early back in the years, but I was part of the forum members. We grew friendship over that. And someday he talked about, oh, I’m going to a WordCamp in Berlin, and you need to come. And I was, Ooh, I am a girl in a rural area in western Germany, and I have five children. I don’t go to a big city like Berlin. But somehow I managed to go to the WordCamp.

I met with the people I adored back in the day, people who ran blogs like Frank Bültge, co-founder of Inpsyde. I learned that those people are normal people like you and me. But somehow back in the day, I put people on a pedestal because I looked up to them. But on the other hand, it was really good. This stoked me with the WordPress community. It was my first encounter, and this was 2010, and I was infected by the WordPress event virus. I needed to go to WordCamp. Then I learned about, oh, you can contribute to WordPress, to the project, and you can help with that. And so we grew, and then 2011 was my next WordCamp in Cologne, which is more nearby in my hometown. But also 2011, a big pivot year in my personal life because I finally separated from my then-husband living in a toxic marriage.

I lost a good friend of mine to cancer in the same year. Two years earlier, my mom died. So there was so much going on in my life, but WordPress and building websites were always a consistent pillar in my life. Then I met Robert Windisch, you know him, the man with the hat, the other hat. Robert was also one of the founding partners of a site back in the day called Inpsyde. In 2009, I specialized in training WordPress instead of just building websites, and I ran individual training for small business owners and small companies and so on. I joined forces with them in 2012, first as a self-employed contract trainer, and later they took the leap and employed me on a part-time job. One of the first tasks when I’m not training, I should have maintained the translations for WordPress in German.

For those who don’t know how that works, I need to go into that because it’s really important. The agency site was founded because of some people who joined forces and translating WordPress back in the day was translating in the code. Can you imagine translating and changing the original code? It’s a no-go today. So for everyone who doesn’t know, don’t work and edit core software. They started a community forum, and over that, they grew and got asked for contracts and so on. They built a company. That is a long time ago, but over the years, they always maintained the German translation for WordPress in two variants. One is the informal, it’s the default version, but also the formal translation for formal speech. In Germany, we have two different forms of that. So it means you need to maintain two language sets.

Back in the day, we also needed to alter some files of the core software before we could release a German language pack and the German compiled version. When I started translating WordPress as an employee of Inpsyde or outside, I learned how to compile WordPress. Imagine, a tired Birgit. The kids are asleep, and I’m sitting there waiting in the IRC chat room for the WordPress core to get the announcement that a new version was released because then I needed to go to compile the translation files. I prepared and tested beforehand with the original file, and then go to the backend of WordPress.org and compile a package and then push the button for release. So imagine this kind

of sweating, dripping experience in the middle of the night because the majority of the developers were sitting in the US, based more in San Francisco.

So the time zone shift to Germany was something. So it’s gotten easier over the years, but this experience and my natural curiosity, which comes with my larger divergent trait, was always leading the path where I am currently now. So contributing to WordPress and building communities, fostering relationships. So in 2013, when Remkus de Vries and Zé Fontainhas founded the WordCamp Europe, this was my first international WordCamp. So in 2013, 11 years ago, that opened another gate. In 2013, I was privileged with the travel assistance program, or I learned about the travel assistance program for the community summit, and I traveled to WordCamp San Francisco and Community Summit in 2014. This was my first touchdown on US soil. That’s crazy. It’s so crazy. Given the fact that I, as a mom of five children, divorced back in 2014, I was just joining a new partnership after three years of being a single parent and leaving my children.

The majority were already older now, but my youngest was eight and a half years old, my youngest, back in 2014. Also, being a person with mobility issues, it is kind of challenging to travel internationally. But this is a backstory of how I got involved with WordPress and how I started contributing to WordPress and fell in love with the community. I really fell because I care a lot about the people. And that brings me to today, why I am so advocating for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Because I come from a position where I had to think about how I can feed my children the next day. So low income because of different circumstances, having a part-time job over all the years, not filling the fridge and dealing with a toxic marriage and so on, getting no child support and all the stuff. I know how it feels to be not that privileged.

Even if I’m living in a privileged country, I live in Germany, I’m in a pretty safe space. We have a decent healthcare system. But still, given all that, I see a lot of injustice, and where I see injustice, I am going to fight for that. I try to be the voice for those who can’t raise their voices, even if it’s someone who’s introverted or doesn’t know where to speak or who to speak with to change things. A good friend of mine phrased it. I’m some kind of an overarching glue to all within the community because as someone who’s a generalist and not a specialist in a certain area, I know a lot, but on the surface, only in certain areas, I’m more likely to dive deep. But yeah, so that is helping to connect. I’m more the person who connects others, and that is why I’m advocating so much.

And I’m also not shy to speak out when I see there’s injustice. But I also try to consider and not to dive into some kind of drama. Even if I see drama unfold on social media like Twitter or X now or whatever it’s called today, I try to find all voices within this drama and see, okay, what is this side? What is this side? Where do we have some kind of overlap? And then I try to be constructive with my feedback. So I don’t want to fuel the fire, but not shutting down the fire but giving it direction in a productive way. And that is why I’m always asking to have some kind of an overview above the organization of the WordPress open source ecosystem, how we can make sure that everyone is treated equally, that everyone gets the same chance even if they don’t have the same starting point.

So especially WordPress as an open-source system. And when you see I am with WordPress since its first release, I saw a lot of progress, but still, we have so many areas where you don’t have to know how to code and that is not that obvious. But on the other hand, it’s also not so attractive for some companies to put money on those areas of the WordPress ecosystem where there’s also a lot of work to do. And since I’m thinking about this accessibility team, which makes sure that the software project and everything issues like needing to raise assistive technology, but also for someone with neurodivergence is the UX and so on. The next part is documentation. How many contributors do we have which are sponsored to document our fast-pacing software development, but also community and making sure that areas like the DEIB within WordPress so that the DEIB principles can be applied in the daily work of the majority of people who are volunteers so they don’t get some formal training on how to behave, even if it might be common sense in certain areas of the world to treat people nicely and kindly.

We have a worldwide project which also has a lot of different cultures and histories and sees the diversity not only in the color of the skin, diversity also the diverse range of age, the diverse range of knowledge where people are coming from. So when I compare myself with a core developer who got some formal training at MIT, for instance, so I can’t compare myself, it’s because I’m self-educated, but on the other hand, I have traits and knowledge in other areas where we can combine those and create a better experience for everyone. So yeah, it’s a long story to share.

BobWP:
A lot to unpack there. Yeah, and one of the interesting things, you went through a lot of different phases, you touched on a lot of different things there. No wonder we connected so well. You and I have so many similarities, just not in the timeline, but in attitude and how we feel about things. I think you started with the first release, and I started like you, just dabbling in 2006. The interesting thing with me was I’d already been doing marketing, running a marketing company for 17 years prior to WordPress. In the, I believe it was, I don’t know if it was the mid or late eighties, I took a year of computer programming. I thought I needed to learn this. So I spent a year learning Cobol, Assembly Language, FORTRAN, and Basic, and it was absolutely a nightmare to me. I mean, I was fascinated by computers.

I loved doing what I could do, but getting inside of them, opposite of you, was fearful. It was like, whoa. But having done that got me very comfortable with computers too, which I don’t regret spending that year because it just felt like I got it more than some people. And unlike you, I went in kicking and screaming into any kind of building sites, doing HTML, just horrible flash sites for a couple of clients. I knew I had to get into it owning a marketing and design business. I’d been doing print design for so many years, but when I found WordPress in 2006 and started playing with it, it was mostly around the blogging part that fascinated me. I was already into content. My wife was already doing stuff on Typepad, and she had an award-winning blog way back in the days. I discovered WordPress as a rescue for me.

It was like, wow, I can build a site using one of these themes. I got a theme from iThemes, one of their early themes, shortly after they started, and I built our own little brochure site. I thought, wow, this thing actually looks professional now and I can make changes. So I was forced into it, not so much ever really wanting to dive in. I was curious about the code, but not so curious as wanting to do it yet. I’ll leave that to the other people that want to do that and are good at it. But just all the things. My first WordCamp was in 2010, San Francisco. A lot of similarities. It’s amazing. Just how you got into contributing. I did kind of the different side of things. It wasn’t like official contributions, but it was educating, consulting, writing, being more of a teacher and trainer in WordPress all those years. So we both went on similar paths. We’ve been privileged, but in the sense that we went through some very rough times in our business and stuff, and some really tense times, and you have more empathy. I feel like I have it because I am always thinking of the other person and how they feel versus just what I’m thinking.

Birgit:
Yeah, it’s really interesting and you mentioned something about this empathy part, but also caring a lot about other people. And when I had some rough times, I mentioned I went from a toxic marriage to being a single parent and fighting for the rights of my children, et cetera. I’m very vocal about my history and sometimes I was so hard struggling with my mental health and also all the stuff going on in my life. But as I mentioned, WordPress and the community are always some of the stable pillars in my life, and I’ve spoken about that already. I shared it in some talks at a WordCamp. WordPress literally saved my life at some point in my life where maybe I said a trigger warning. I had moments in my life where I was questioning if it’s worthwhile to stay alive and then I just vented it out and spoke to someone and I reached out to someone and they immediately jumped in and supported me.

That is a moment in my life where I always tear up when I’m sharing that, even in the darkest moments, when you have the courage to reach out to someone, even if it’s a stranger on the internet, you may have built a relationship over the internet. But so many people in this community jumped in supporting me. The recent example was collecting funds so that I could afford to travel to WordCamp Europe and to Sweden this year. The WordPress community has my back all the time when I reach out and am vocal about and share my vulnerability. So to be vulnerable is not a bad thing. As long as we turn our

vulnerability into something we can grow and build upon, and create more empathy for someone else who may have a similar struggle. I learned about that my crowdfunding campaign this year to go to WordCamp Europe inspired someone to take action in another similar direction and also see their initiatives like the WP Community Collective.

They got inspired by the crowdfunding campaign to fund contributors to travel to WordCamps. We have great initiatives that support speakers to travel to WordCamps, but someone who is contributing to WordPress and doesn’t have, maybe due to several facts, the ability to afford to travel, but to be accepted as the speaker at a WordCamp. That is something I learned about, even if I shared my vulnerability, not to earn empathy, but just to share, Hey, I feel this way now. So if someone has something to spare, I’m really appreciative of this. But thinking about looking back on that, how much this might have positively affected someone else. So in retrospect, everything I touched in my life had somehow affected someone else’s life. That is how I always also try to be alert to everything I do, how someone else’s life may be influenced by that. I’m not forcing that, but I try to consider every decision I make, does this affect someone else negatively? That is what you say about empathy.

BobWP:
Yeah, exactly. Let’s step back and put ourselves in this person’s shoe or from this person’s view or whatever, because a lot of times what’s being said or what’s being told, we’ve all been there. And that’s the thing a lot of people lose is the ability to go back and say, oh, I remember when I was in that spot. Like you said, traveling between costs of just traveling, especially if you’re traveling internationally, you’re taking a day or two on each end just to get there. And then you’ve got the actual event and you’re away for a week. So not only are you spending money for a lot of these people, they’re not making money during that time. They don’t have the luxury of being given the time off for something. They have to close down shop and do that thing, even though that may be productive and helpful to their business.

Birgit:
Exactly. And thinking of traveling, especially for someone with mobility issues, I need to plan ahead every move because walking distances is still kind of challenging. Even if I now have two hip replacements,
Mechanically, I can walk, but my body isn’t used yet to this kind of movement. So it takes a while to get on board. Again, as someone with neurodivergent traits, I like to know where I’m going and what kind of obstacles I may face and how to get from A to B in the most effective way so it doesn’t drain my energy too much so I can be alert when I’m there. But it’s still also overwhelming meeting new people and a lot of people at events like WordCamp Europe, WordCamp US, or WordCamp Asia. These are the flagship events with 2,000 or 3,000 attendees. And also traveling abroad internationally, it’s always challenging to the body, even if someone is healthy and fit.
It’s draining.

BobWP:
Yeah, it’s brutal, is what it is. Yeah.

Birgit:
So thinking of someone who has more mobility issues or someone who has more weight on their bones than someone else, finding a good safe spot to sit. I experienced entering some chairs with very unfortunate positions of armrests and so on, which my butt didn’t fit in really well.

It’s kind of difficult to sit down, but on the other hand, I can’t assume that everyone can acknowledge that beforehand, but I can share my experience. For instance, I tend to speak to WordCamp organizers, especially WordCamp Europe and WordCamp US, to make sure that there are enough seating positions also in the hallways so that people who might need to take a rest, especially for someone we are barely out of the pandemic, and the pandemic showed up that someone who was infected with this viral infection can suffer from syndromes like chronic fatigue. You don’t see that when someone is challenged with chronic fatigue syndrome. So you have to take a rest because you are going out of breath when you are walking 20 meters or 30 meters, so you may need to take a rest. So to make sure that the WordCamp event or the WordPress event venue accommodates the situation, not only do we need accessible restrooms, and hopefully the cleaning staff doesn’t put any cleaning supplies within the accessible restrooms so that someone with a wheelchair can’t navigate.

That is also an example when you see something where you see, okay, this might affect someone else. Going back to the empathy part, if you see something, maybe the instance I experienced at WordCamp Europe on the first conference day and I went to the restroom as someone with mobility issues, I prefer accessible restrooms because they’re more convenient to use, even if I don’t have a wheelchair. But not having a wheelchair is not an excuse not to use accessible restrooms for everyone who wants to judge why someone is using an accessible restroom. Even if they can walk, there may have other reasons to use an accessible restroom, just to note. But I imagine I witnessed that the cleaning staff had their cart with all the cleaning supplies and if someone with a wheelchair would have accessed the room, they wouldn’t have had any chance to navigate through that because the washing thing was blocked. I reported that immediately to the organizing team, and they went to the venue facility manager and it was solved the next day because it was the end of the event. But yeah.

BobWP:
Yeah, I was just thinking those wet floor signs that they put out too could be a real issue because they have to try to put it somewhere where you can see it, but that could be right in the way too.

Birgit:
Yeah, exactly. And that is something when you see, and that is why I urge everyone to first use common sense, then ask yourself, does this affect someone else negatively? I can’t expect that everyone knows everything, but if you have someone in your family or friend surroundings who may have faced some issues, try to be advocating for their convenience if possible. We can’t please everyone to be fair, so we can do as much as possible even if we can’t accommodate everything and include everyone and everything. But to be in a balance and make it, because there’s a saying, talking about also WordPress websites, having accessible WordPress websites, it’s not only benefiting those who need it but benefits everyone. Accessibility benefits everyone. And that is also true for venue traveling, et cetera.

BobWP:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, this has been great because this has not only been learning about everything you do or have done and then how you got into your passion around what you’re doing on this show but also a conversation about it. So it was just a very nice rounded chat we had. And we can see why you do this once a month on here at Do the Woo. So this is very cool and I appreciate being able to turn the table and I think everybody likes to learn a little bit more about our hosts. And I’m just going to throw this out. It’s a little bit of an opportunity. I haven’t had a chance to talk about it regarding our news site. So for those of you that listen to various shows, we do have a way now we have our sponsors, which I adore, and they make this whole thing possible.

But there is another way of giving back to this show and that is supporting each specific show. And what that means is you can go in and you can give a one-time gift or you can subscribe for a couple of different amounts, but that money actually will go to the host of the show. It doesn’t go into running the show or anything. And as Birgit mentioned, she’s been lucky to have the support of the community. And that’s what this is going to be. It will either help the hosts themselves with their contributions, the time they spend on that, their travel. And for some of our hosts, maybe they don’t feel they need that because of their position and where they are at this time in their life. And they’ll say, Hey, let’s give it to one of these related WordPress organizations that do help speakers and contributor travel.

So if you’ve been listening to a show and you’re really getting into it and you want to give something back to that show’s host, we’ll pull that together, figure out what to do with it, and you’re actually supporting them because they’re driving all the shows and they’re doing all the front face work and stuff. I’m just running behind the scenes doing all the other stuff, except occasionally I come in and have the opportunity to do great interviews and chats with my friends like this. So I appreciate it. And yeah, this has been absolutely wonderful. Anything you want to say before we sign off?

Birgit:
Yeah, on the first end, I really want to thank you again, Bob first for creating this kind of great show and place to learn, but also offering the spot for people like me to talk about topics we care about a lot, but also giving someone else a voice where they can share also their story and learnings so that everyone can benefit from that. I am also very appreciative of all the work you are doing in the backend, which is not seen by everyone. So a special shout out again to you, but for the listeners, I want to say if you want to go and make a difference, there are several ways you can join the WordPress community and you don’t need to know how to code. There are certain areas where you can contribute your time and knowledge. And if you have any questions, please reach out to me. I’m Coach Birgit on all the socials on the Make WordPress Slack. Also, you can reach out to Bob if you have any questions. We are really happy to guide you in the right direction where you can contribute your passion to the project.

BobWP:
Well, thank you and thank everyone for listening. If you’re not subscribed, you can subscribe to the

old channel, or you can just subscribe to your favorite show. And we are trying to push more people back to commenting. This is my own little mission. I would love for you to come in on the post and comment and share your thoughts on anything we talked about. Of course, Birgit is always looking for wonderful guests that want to come in and talk around the issue of DEIB. So please consider that as well. And my final thank you to Birgit for being a wonderful guest.

Birgit:
Thank you for being a wonderful host.