Grow Your Developer Network, Career and Business

Marcus: Yeah, we get a chance to speak quite often. But yeah, it’s good topic that we have today. And I’m glad that we get to share it with some folks out there. Courtney and I are both very busy with virtual events, recording podcasts, speaking engagements, and contributing to WordPress and open source in various ways. And today we wanted to take a little bit of time to answer the question, why? What’s in it for us? And how have these things helped us grow our careers? And more importantly, how can they help you grow your career as a designer, developer or site builder? Or maybe, on the flip side of that, if you’re looking to hire, how can these things help you find talent and all of that?

So, I was going to say, let’s go ahead and just start with the big one, speaking engagements, whether that’s virtual or in person, what do you think? How does speaking at events help your career or help you get hired? Or if you’re, like I said before, a company looking to hire, how does speaking engagements help you find that talent? Or if you’re the one speaking, be able to get in there and find the folks that you’re looking for?

Courtney: Yeah. So, I will be the first to say, I am a second generation teacher and I am an extrovert. Not everybody will fit those categories. It’s okay. When you get into public speaking of any sort, there are some real values in that process. Even if you think, “I really am intimidated by this.” I think about even like BNI groups, Business Networking International groups, that’s a pretty common thing or Chamber of Commerce mixers, sometimes people have opportunities to speak. This is Do the Woo, so WordPress and WooCommerce events, there are lots of opportunities there as well.

In the process of speaking, there’s some really great things that come out of that. First, you have to do your research to get into this. You need to find the balance in whatever you’re presenting, that it fits the timeframe that you have. That is interesting for the folks that are coming. In my classroom, I still need it to be interesting for the students that were coming, even though they didn’t get a choice in the topic. Sorry.

But in the public space, you get to cater your talk to your audience and get to engage your audience in what they would like out of that process. So, you research the topic really well, so that you know it enough to teach others. It gives you an opportunity to deeply know a particular thing. And then you synthesize that information, consolidate it in your own unique way to present it to others. And with that unique way, that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be the first person to have ever come up with this idea, the audience that you’re presenting that to wants to hear your perspective of that thing. And also, it can be fresh in your delivery to them.

So, you might have heard somebody else give a similar talk at some other city or whatever, but when you present that information yourself, that also helps solidify that you are knowledgeable, because you have done your research. Even if it was just to get to the point of giving that presentation, you’ve done your research and now you’re positioned as somebody in the know or an expert or that are yet somebody that wants to help others get really good at that same topic.

When you think about it from, “I’m going to help somebody else figure this thing out and be able to do it themselves and know why it’s valuable.” People will gravitate to that more than you just telling them, “Well, because I said so.” We’re both parents of littles, so we know that approach won’t work well. Also, it’s a good chance to learn just new things in the process or to connect the pieces. I think about, there was one year, Joe Casabona gave a talk across, I want to say I saw him at four different WordCamps that year in my vicinity, I live near Gettysburg. So, there’s Philly, Baltimore, DC. There was a couple of WordCamps all going on.

Joe gave this talk as he was learning to build his own theme and he was getting married and he had this theme that he was making for his family that was forming. So, it was a synthesis of, “Here, I learned this much by this WordCamp. Here, I learned that much by that WordCamp.” So, it was Joe’s chance to learn new things and share what he was learning with us, which was fantastic.

Marcus: To follow along the process. Yeah, one of the huge benefits, I think, in being able to pick your own topics and stuff for speaking engagements for us, in the WordPress space and stuff, is that a lot of times, it’s just trying to figure out what it is you would like to hear about. I mean, you are, in most cases, the audience that you’re speaking to. So, being able to pick and choose, and then, I don’t know, one of the best things to do I think is to pick something that you don’t know a ton about, because it forces you to then become an expert in that topic.

Courtney: Yeah, for sure. I mentioned, my background is teaching and I’m naturally extroverted. But even I will hit a point where after the event is done, I need some time to decompress. When I was teaching, that was my commute home from work. When I’m at a conference, I’ll hang around and answer some questions, but I also need to go make use of that speaker room to just sort of settle myself before and after. You don’t need to be extroverted to do these things, just to be super clear, it can be intimidating, start small, start with your local meetup or your local BNI or a Toastmasters or something like that, as you’re venturing into these areas.

Hosting virtual events helping to build careers

So, Marcus, question for you, how has hosting, since you and I host once a week, we are over at the GoDaddy Pro events. How has hosting virtual events helped your career? And also, how could organizing and hosting events help you grow as a professional? And this is a fun one for me to ask you, actually, because you were hosting these events before you were actually on my team in the role that you have. So, what has it done for your career?

Marcus: Well, it’s shifted it for sure. So, this is a good one for me to speak to, because, unlike you, I haven’t done a ton of public speaking and I’m not particularly extroverted. I do consider myself more of an introvert. So, hosting, as opposed to being the actual presenter and speaker at the event, allows me to take some of the pressure off of having to be the one to come up with all of the content all of the time. It’s also allowed me to meet a ton of people that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to meet.

Now, in my case, some of the speakers have been arranged for me. So, I haven’t had to go out, that’s the introvert’s nightmare is having to jump into a conversation and, “Hey, look at me, what are you guys talking about? Can I join?” That’s horrifying for me anyways. And I think for a lot of introverts. So, having that set up is great. But even if you were to, say, have your own podcast, have your own virtual events and be the one organizing, being able to reach out on things like Twitter and other social spaces and say, “Hey, I have this thing that I’m doing, love to have you come on and talk about what it is that you do and your expertise.”

And I would say if you’re a business, that’s a great way to find talent, get people on, that honestly you can kind of do a bit of an interview, like a job interview, not exactly a job interview, but like a job interview, just right there on a podcast episode, “Tell me about yourself. What it is that you do?” And sort of suss out their potential to maybe be hired. But then, on the flip side, if you’re an individual that kind of boosts your exposure, your personal brand a bit and allows you to maybe show that you’re an expert or at the very least know how to talk to different sides of the coin, the designers, developers, get a feel for talking to everybody and definitely help with getting hired.

Now, in my case, I came onto GoDaddy as a technical account manager is what I was officially called, but it was on the support team, supporting our WooCommerce plugins with SkyVerge. And I came from an agency before that. So, marketing has always kind of been in my blood. And while I really enjoyed being that frontline on support and talking to customers on a daily basis, I kind of always wanted to shift over into a more marketing-focused role. So, I started by volunteering to host some of the GoDaddy Pro virtual events before I was even on the field team with you, got a feel for it, really enjoyed doing that. And like I said before, I got to meet some new people that I wouldn’t have met otherwise, and really liked doing that. So, ended up being on the team and doing that on a more regular basis.

Courtney: Yeah. It’s fun too to also think what led you to working more closely here on Do the Woo with Bob was, I remember, WordFest back in October, last year. And we were both at the GoDaddy booth and I just introduced the two of you. And that bit of connecting and saying, “Hey, so-and-so, meet so-and-so.” And letting that type of thing evolve. While it’s not really public speaking, it can be, especially in the questions people have after the fact. Get to know some people in your audience, just a bit, enough, balance, if you’re the introvert, there is a balance to be found and that’s important for sure for everybody.

But as you get to know people, think about ways that you can foster them connecting also with each other, because that too, that piece about referrals and networking, people networking is very important as part of that process towards opening up additional opportunities for others, for yourself, for the betterment of the entire community.

Marcus: Yeah. I think back, I think actually, now that you mentioned it, that was, I believe, maybe back in the spring. I think I was still on the SkyVerge team at that time. And then, hadn’t moved over to the field team with you yet. So, it’s very interesting. The other thing I was going to mention for introverts out there, one of the things that you can do to take the pressure off some, if you still want to be seen, but take the pressure off a little bit is find panels that you can join. They’re a great way to shift the pressure across four, five, six different people, rather than being the sole person on stage or on camera alone. Find those opportunities where people are looking for panelists, especially if they’re talking about something that you are an expert in. Find the WooCommerce panels, find the WordPress panels and join those. And that takes the pressure off a little bit if you’re an introvert. Regardless, I still need that decompression time, just like you said, it’s actually comforting to hear that even as an extrovert you find that decompression time is still necessary.

Courtney: It’s especially necessary for me. Drive homes from WordCamp were my time to process all that info I just absorbed, even if I wasn’t the speaker. But especially if I was the speaker. Because inevitably I face, when you’re the speaker first thing in the morning at a WordCamp, everything that could happen will happen, including the projector not working, the internet not working, just everything that could go wrong as the first speaker of the day has happened to me. So, that sets me off in a path of, “Oh, now I’m a little flustered as a speaker,” and things will go wrong. Right?

Marcus: Yeah.

Courtney: So, that drive home has always been a bit of a good decompression in those regards. And I just let it sort of wash away. People are very understanding. They can, because they want to meet you and hear from you. So, people still care, even if things go sideways and it’s worth giving yourself that opportunity to have a little bit of quiet time somewhere in the process, especially for those of you that are a caregiver for others in your home. Because once you get there, you have to shift roles to parent or caregiver mode pretty quickly.

Marcus: Yep. You’re still on, just in a different way.

Courtney: Exactly.

Grow you career through podcasting or being a podcast guest

Marcus: From there, let’s shift over to podcasting. It’s going to be a little bit meta since we’re podcasting about podcasting. But how does hosting or being a guest on a podcast, do you think, help growing your career if you’re a designer, developer, agency, site builder, from either direction? How do you think that hosting or guest speaking on a podcast helps with those?

Courtney: I have a very funny story and I’m not going to give out too many bits of information here, because I don’t want to reveal to folks. But there was somebody that appeared on a podcast episode that I listened to that is job seeking at this time. And because I listened to that podcast episode, I thought they would be a good fit for a role that I know that is currently open. I’m not the hiring manager in any way.

Marcus: Play a matchmaker though.

Courtney: Right. That’s what I’m saying. So, whether it’s a business referral or something to that effect. Right before we went on today, another conversation came up, somebody was asking over in Post Status about retraining from one career into another. And I said, “Oh, this…” One of the options could be, I really heard from this one WordPresser who appears on a good bit of podcasts about the systems that she set up, that she has everybody walk through that are quite simple checklists of, do this, then this, and that would be an easy switch for this kind of a career change, because it’s following very precise directions and repeatedly doing the task. That would be something that you don’t need a lot of experience beforehand to get into doing.

So, I thought of that, because I heard on several podcasts that this was an agency owner that set these systems up. So, somebody like that, if they were job seeking, that might be a good path as well in that direction. So, I listen to lots of podcasts. I try to keep up with all of them. That’s just what Marcus and I do. We listen to lots of podcasts. So, it’s my way of getting to know people. If I’m the listener, if I’m the consumer, it’s my way of getting to know people and the information that they’re sharing.

And even if I don’t really actually know the person, like we’ve never spoken anywhere, it still puts the information in mind for me that if I see a job role, or if I see a client referral to give, they are the folks that come to mind, because I am familiar with what they have shared, I am familiar, most likely, I go and follow them on Twitter. I’ve got a big WordPress Twitter list folks. So, I follow them. I observe from a distance. So, there’s this feeling, I know I don’t really know them, but I know enough about them and about their presence in our space, in our community, to feel comfortable saying, “This might be a good job fit for you. Would you check it out?” Or so-and-so says they want to apply and I tell people internally, “This is how I know of that person.” So, that tends to be good for them in that process.

Marcus: Yeah. I didn’t even think about the kind of snowball effect there, where you just mentioned you hear them on a podcast and then you go follow them on Twitter. And that just opens up another avenue. If you’re the one looking for a job and someone listens to you on a podcast, because you guested on a podcast and, “Oh, that sounds interesting. Let me go follow them on Twitter.” Then, you can continue to post more things on your Twitter that solidify your expertise. Maybe someone goes and follows you on LinkedIn and you get this snowball effect of creating this “resume” of all the things that you’re an expert in. And it all just started because someone heard you share on a podcast a little bit about yourself and what you do. And then, there’s just more and more information about you.

I also love that angle that you mentioned about matchmaking. You’re not always going to be either the one looking for a job or the one looking to hire someone. But you’re most likely going to be aware of, if you’re already working somewhere, open positions that need to be filled. And of course, maybe selfishly, you want those positions to be filled by people who know what they’re doing and are going to be easy to work with and a great cultural fit. And you find all those things out by hearing someone’s story on podcast or at an event or something like that.

So, I think that’s a great way to expose yourself and your expertise by coming on and guesting and hosting and all that stuff. Because it really makes people who, maybe not in a position to hire, but know open roles on their teams and think that you would be a great fit for those. So, they can reach out and play matchmaker and all of that as well.

Courtney: Yeah. And I think this also works in business-to-business situations for referrals as well. I will give a shout out for someone I consider a mentor, a personal acquaintance at least of mine, a former client as well. BobBurg, B-U-R-G, .com, burg.com. He wrote the book Endless Referrals and The Go-Giver and has really shaped my understanding of what it means to give referrals. So, those referrals may come by way of somebody seeking employment or something to that effect. It could also be, I know who in the industry specializes in accessibility websites. I know who specializes in writing their own custom WooCommerce extensions. So, depending upon what somebody is looking for by having listened to these folks speak on many podcasts and also following them along in social media and other ways, I know who I would go to first to give those referrals.

Marcus: That’s a great point. You have the personal branding aspect of it. You have the business branding aspect of it. But then, at the end of the day, it all comes down to making business happen. So, all of these provide additional opportunities for folks and for businesses to drive extra business through just being out there, being active in the space.

Thanks to our Pod Friends OSTraining and Trustpilot

Contributing to WordPress and open source

Marcus: So, on that note, let’s spend a few minutes talking about maybe contributing to WordPress and open source. I know that this is near and dear to your heart. This is something that we’re both a part of in various ways. Maybe talk a little bit about some of the stuff that you’ve done and what benefits might a designer, developer site, builder or agency see from giving back to the project and the community, because there are kind of two parts to that, to contributing back, especially in the WordPress space, there’s the project itself and then there’s the community and they kind of go hand in hand, but there are opportunities to contribute to both. And how might those be beneficial?

Courtney: Yeah. So, first thing that comes to mind is actually a great episode that Josepha did on the podcast, WP Brief? I could be mistaking the name.

Marcus: Yeah. WP Briefing.

Courtney: Yep. That one, has the ING, that’s the one. Yeah. So, it was about digital citizenship. And I’ll make sure that we give a link for the show notes about this. But it was talking about as you contribute, there is concept of digital citizenship in education, in the education world, where you are learning to be a good citizen by the things that we do online. And how Josepha connected that with contributing, I thought was brilliant.

And it looks like if you are, for instance, part of, I am most familiar with the training team. I know a little bit about what’s going on in docs and some with marketing team. So, as I am a part of these teams, I learn about skills with project management about prioritizing what needs to happen and when, about interfacing across the various teams. In WordPress, we have 20 different teams now that contribute to the project to make it happen.

And folks have long thought of, “Hmm, core?” And I love the core team. Core is kind of a weird misnomer. Core could be the coders that make the software and just the core team, or it could mean broadly anybody that contributes across make.wordpress.org to these 20 teams. So, as you get involved and connected in that space, you start meeting folks in other industries, in other companies, and other parts of the globe, you start having a more broad view of the world and the good that we could do in that space and how we can relate to each other. So, you’re learning all of these valuable skills.

And I have been a contributor since 2014. And actually, my first contribution to WordPress was in 2009, I was the person that gave out the name tags at a WordCamp. So, that was my first real contribution to the project. I volunteered to give out name tags. Just that simple act people then, the rest of the day, knew who I was because they saw my face first thing when they got there in the morning. It’s a great role to help with, because you’re done before the opening talk, for the most part. Then, you’re on your way for the day.

So, in contributing, it was a vital part of my role that I have now. It was important for me to have had that when I was teaching. At my last profession, I was teaching web dev in a bootcamp, a proper bootcamp. So, it was important that they had somebody that was skilled in WordPress training for that role. I had been contributing to the training team since 2014. So, I wouldn’t be where I am at my career now without that.

But I also have a huge amount of compassion for those that are contributing of their own time, especially our small business owner folks, because I was that person for quite a while. And that’s a juggle to find the ability. And I think somebody like Arrooba strikes me as having done this a little bit. She builds in to her pricing model and into her schedule ways that she can have contributing time. So, she prices the rest of the work in the week accordingly so that she can still do, whether it’s proper Five for the Future or something to that effect, that she could still do some of that work on her own company time.

So, it’s a juggle through that, but it opens so many doors and it takes networking to an even bigger degree. And I think one of the things that got me through COVID, frankly, what am I going to do with the weird schedule I now have? Well, I think I’m going to go make a difference by contributing to learn. So, that kept me going.

Marcus: Yeah, there’s a lot in there to unpack. I think one of the things that I often find is a misconception with lots of folks is that contributing in their minds equals writing code. Like you said, there are 20 teams, and one or two of them are hard on the code and the rest aren’t, there are a lot of ways to contribute that don’t necessarily require code writing. If I think of it in terms of someone looking to get hired, there’s a marketing team and you could join the marketing team and start to contribute in that way, showing people that you know how to market, and that’s going to make you more valuable as a marketing hire.

And so many others like the training team, being able, you don’t have to write code to be able to train people on how to use WordPress. So, that’s a great way to come tribute as well. And so many others. So, I really like that. When we’re talking about contributing to the project and to the community, making sure that folks know that if you can code, great, that’s a great way to contribute. That’s going to make the project better. That’s going to make life easier for you as a developer using the product. If you have input into what runs the product, then it’s going to make life easier for you. But there are so many other ways to contribute as well.

Courtney: For sure. And it’s worth making sure folks know, Marcus is one of the Photos team reps. The Photos project is a fun new part of WordPress. The Photos directory. WordPress.org/photos, if you haven’t checked it out yet. He and Topher along with Katie Richards. Am I correct in that? Yes.

Marcus: Yeah.

Courtney: Our team reps for that team. So, do check out that area. It’s a way to upload and share your photos that meet the standards. It’s a way to get photos to use in your projects. It will trickle over to Openverse. And we heard recently that if you’re running the Jetpack plugin and you go to insert media, that Openverse is one of the options that’s there. So, it’s a very indirect method of what does this do for the project? Well, it gives content writers, content creators access to a lot of media assets. So, it’s an indirect, but still incredibly valuable way of contributing.

Marcus: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s super fun if you’re a photographer or any way into photography, it’s a really fun way to contribute too.

Courtney: Sure is. I think too, I want to highlight folks that are designers. If you are skilled in design, traditionally the design team has really been needing more contributors. The design team works on a lot of different things, but it can be as small as various teams need featured images for their posts so that when they’re shared on social media. And you might say, “Oh, I have a nice way to quickly set up a system for something like that.” It could be a low lift. It could also be using your design eye for content on the courses on Learn. It’s very cross-collaborative. So, we want the layout of these courses on Learn to look good. We want maybe some wireframes and some UX to go on over there. The design team again is one that heavily is cross-collaborative as well.

Marcus: Yep, absolutely. And then, the other thing I was going to mention too, just in terms of either getting hired or looking for talent to hire is, in the WordPress space anyways, the WordPress profiles have badges on them, that kind of showcase a bit. I think there are some plans for that to become an even more robust way to find talent and use those profiles to find and qualify talent. But even currently already, there are badges on there and kind of shows some activity, contribution activity, shows plugins that you’ve developed, if you’re a plugin developer and other ways that you’ve contributed across the different teams. And I think that’s a great, maybe not alternative resume, but a great part of your resume when you’re looking for a job, looking for a career, or if you’re scouting out, you have a stack of resumes and you don’t know where to start, maybe looking at some of the wordpress.org profiles and seeing what, in what ways, some of the people that, some of the candidates have contributed back to the project.

Courtney: Absolutely. To that effect, badges, I’ve come across in the WordPress industry, I know while I was teaching, I showed my students the GiveWP job application page, and they ask for dot-org profile. If you connect your dot-org and your GitHub profile, it’s a good activity to do because then as folks are starting to research you, they could also go, if they want a GitHub profile link, they can find it. They can connect it over to dot-org profile, back and forth.

Also, this is very early stages, but if you complete courses on Learn, it’s learn.wordpress.org/courses, when you complete courses there, they show right now as an activity in the activity stream on your dot-org profile, meaning this individual has completed this course. We’re not giving out grades or anything like that. We may, in the near future, have those course completions move to its own tab. At this time, badges are a term reserved for you contributed to a team, you did some stuff on a team, so you get a badge. But we’ll have some kind of information available showing what courses on Learn you’ve completed as well. So, your dot-org profile can be really helpful.

Since we’ve been talking a little bit jobs and things, I do want to say, if you would like to help triage jobs.wordpress.net hit me up. We’ve got jobs there. It’s a nice job board. And there are lots of WordPress jobs. But again, I only found out about this because I heard one of the other maintainers speak at a WordCamp and found him on Twitter. Didn’t know he was managing the job board site until he admitted to it at some point. Then I said, “Would you like help or a substitute?” So, jobs.wordpress.net is another small part of the WordPress space that also could use contributors.

Marcus: Yep. For sure. And I think that both of our Twitter handles will be on the page for this podcast episode as well. And hit either of us up, if you’re looking for work and we’ll do what we can to try and connect you to places that are hiring. Yeah. So, I think that the main takeaway there is just the more that you can be active and be visible and share your expertise, the more opportunities that you’ll have open up for you. We’re on time here. So, I’m going to go ahead and wrap us up. Thank you so much, Courtney, for joining me in Ronald’s absence.

Courtney: Absolutely.

Marcus: We miss you, Ronald. I hope you’re enjoying some time off. Talk to you next time.