Well, before I revisit some of the things I have picked up around the web, I have been thinking about the WordPress community a lot lately. Well, to be honest, I’m always thinking about it in different ways. This last week or so has been a collection of a lot of thoughts, both in reflection of the community, what’s happening now and the future. Of course I cannot encapsulate all of this into a single WooBits.
I feel the WordPress community is still strong and growing
Some conversations, whether recently, or in the past on social media can sometimes not end well. And to be honest, there is never only one person to blame. Myself, I feel these conversations shouldn’t be there for two reasons. First, it just doesn’t work. And that should be obvious. And I’m talking from the start with the very first Tweet. Secondly, I wonder if it has ever occurred to anyone how this reflects on the WordPress community from others, looking from the outside in. For those who might be considering WordPress, these certainly don’t encourage them to join.
Honestly, this part of the community takes up only a small part of my brain power when it comes to thinking about the WordPress community. As an optimistic kind of guy, I continue to look at all the good stuff people are doing, which in my opinion outweighs the so called drama or however you want to label it. And the other part of me is looking at how we at Do the Woo can continue to empower the community. That is where I spend a lot of time and I hope this site is reflective of that.
So yes, things need to happen. Some things need to change. And those two can vary from community member to member. I know they do with me.
Well, let’s get into what I feel is why we are all here in the community. And that’s all the cool things I discover throughout the week, and often share. I’ll start with three highlights.
Speaker Diversity at WordPress Accessibility Day
WordPress Accessibility Day is coming our way on September 27th, a 24 hour event. We all know how important this topic is. But I want to focus on how they have grown the diversity of their speakers. In a WPTavern article, and I quote, says:
Based on the stats for speakers (of people who opted to give the info), WPAD’s organizers have succeeded at recruiting a diverse lineup for the event:
10 countries
67% female, 30% male, 3% Nonbinary
14% LGBTQ
41% non-white identifying
2 first time speakers who have never spoken at any event.
11 of the 27 speakers identify as having a disability. (41%) There are speakers who identify as blind/low vision, deaf or hard of hearing, have limited mobility, and learning disabilities.
Now I highlight this as this touches not only on the importance of accessibility, but also diversity, which, well, goes hand in hand. So congrats on Amber Hind and her team.
Getting to Know Woo: A Series on the Cart and Checkout Blocks
All week long, on the Developer with Woo blog, they ran a series that ends today. In this series they offer third-party developers an updated tour through the available extensibility interfaces they can use to extend the Cart and Checkout blocks functionality for integrating their products. The topics included:
- Understanding the Architecture of Cart and Checkout Blocks
- Customizing Cart and Checkout Fields
- Modifying Existing Cart and Checkout Block Fields
- Extending Payment Gateway Options in WooCommerce
- Exploring Server-Side Extensibility with Hooks
So make sure and check that out if it interests you.
WooSesh open for registration
As I mentioned last week, WooSesh is now open for registration. And to tell you more about it, I asked Brian Richards from WPSessions to share all that is going on.
Hey there, Do the Woo fans. This is Brian Richards from WP Sessions, and I’m excited to talk to you today about WooSesh, our flagship conference for people who work with WooCommerce. This year, like every year, we’re hosting an incredibly talented group of speakers. 30 of them in fact, spread across 20 sessions that run from October 10th through 12th.
We’ll kick things off with the State of the Woo, a special keynote featuring different members from the WooCommerce team. They’re going to share some highlights from the past year and give us a sneak peek at several exciting things that we have to look forward to. And that’s only the beginning. We also have loads of great stories, demos, and case studies.
From across topics like store design, copywriting, personalization, accessibility, security, and even more exotic topics like the creation of a brand new nationally recognized digital currency for the country of Nigeria. Each daily broadcast will culminate in a special live conversation with your favorite hosts from Do The Woo.
And if that wasn’t already exciting enough, this year we’re introducing a brand new community awards ceremony that we’re calling the Seshies. We’re giving out awards across six categories, and I actually need your help with this one. These awards are meant to celebrate the best of the best across the entire WooCommerce ecosystem as nominated by the community.
So I need you to help us put the spotlight on these exceptional folks and nominate your favorite WooCommerce stores. agencies, developers, and community advocates from all around the world. The week before WooSesh, we’ll actually close nominations and open the voting process for the top three nominees in each category, then we’ll announce the six winners during the closing remarks of WooSesh with all of our favorite folks here from Do The Woo.
You can find our full event schedule, speaker list, awards nomination form, and even register to attend at WooSesh.com. That’s W O O S E S H dot com.
And even more special, as you may recall me saying, Do the Woo will be doing a end of day recap all three days of WooSesh. The first day will have hosts Zach Stepek and Robert Jacobi. The second day, Katie Keith and Robbie Adair be there with myself joining in. And the last day we round it up with Marcus Burnette and Kathy Zant. Each day speakers and sponsors will join us for the conversation. So make sure and grab that free registration as Brian mentioned.
More recaps from the week
The Community Team on Make WordPress invites organizers to apply for hosting next generation WordPress events and we are excited about that here at Do the Woo since we will be talking in the future with organizers and attendees of these cool events. Our sponsor Hostinger, put out a great interview with Destiny Kanno on the Evolution of Learn WordPress. And a shoutout to the 2023 WooExpert Award winners, via WooCommerce from the Americas! The winners were, The Newcomer: Zao, The Innovator: Kelp, The Open Source Champion: WPSpins, Agency Excellence Award: First Tracks, and Top Agency: Bright Vessel
On Do the Woo
We started the week with a great show as Bud Kraus and Mark Westguard hosted a conversation with Alain Schlesser on AI, WordPress and WooCommerce.
I don’t think we should worry as much on what AI could do, but rather more on what humans can do with AI humans now get a type of access to information. That we didn’t have before so on one hand, the I can help us really figure out things that would have been very difficult to figure out before then, even if those are malicious things. On the other hand a eyes. Can also just like social media can have this accelerating effect with echo chambers and so on. So there’s a similar danger with AI where the humans will use the AI to figure things out everything they figure out will go back into the AI as training data for the next generation.
Next Colin Daniels from FooSales and FooEvents joined host Jonathan for a conversation on his products and entrepreneurial spirit.
So we launched as a free product. So it was actually free for about two years whilst we worked on building it. And the reason we could do that was because we had the luxury of having another product and through events and also, having revenue coming in , through our agency business. It was a long time in incubation. And over that time, we learned so much about the markets about the needs and one of, the biggest complaints we started to get off in that incubation period from people was that it was free and they didn’t trust it
And we ended on Thursday with a Woo AgencyChat as Robbie and Robert, with guest host Travis Lima from Woo chatted with co-founders of the Big Red Jelly, Josh and Zach Webber about agency growth and enterprise.
As far as optimizing goes, we use some really awesome and behavioral analytical tools to see where people are clicking, where they’re hovering, where they’re scrolling, how long they’re staying there. And we can analyze the user experience on the website. And so there are some bits and pieces that can be optimized in the user flow and the user journey through an ecommerce website. .
Plus I cannot leave without giving kudos to my friend Cami MacNamara. On her new podcast she has taken a unique approach and is reading some of her favorite posts from across the web. This is really cool on two parts. First, what an absolute joy hearing her read one of my posts from BobWP titled Sharing is Caring. Elevating the Voices. But also the fact that she is doing exactly what is so close to our hearts here at Do the Woo. Elevating the voices. So thanks Cami for this special moment.
I would like to close out and thank our two newest Global Community Friends for their support. Cirrus Influence, where you can find someone to assist you with the Public Relations for your WordPress business. And WP Builds. Podcasts about the world of WordPress with one of my favorite news podcast, The Week in WordPress. So until the next time, keep on doing the Woo.
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