Celebrating Seven Years of the Do the Woo Podcast

BobWP:
Hey, BobWP here and welcome to Do the Woo Live a Do the Woo Podcast show. Would like to thank our sponsor, GoDaddy, build your client sites using the flexibility of a managed WooCommerce store from GoDaddy. If your clients are looking to expand their store, you can deliver them a fully customized WooCommerce site. I’ll tell you more about GoDaddy later, but today I’m sharing with you our return to live streams after our last one in September of 2023. Find out I’m a little bit rusty doing live streams as well as doing this one last minute, but hey, it can only get better and you can expect them on and off as we move ahead on Friday the 17th. Last week, myself and several of our hosts talk about the celebration of seven years, and I started out with playing a snippet from our first episode, but let’s listen in,

Hey everybody, Bob WP here, and we are on the debut episode of Do the Woo Podcast. Yes, I’m bringing it back all in its glory. A little bit different format this time around, more conversational, and what I’m going to be doing is I’m going to be bringing on a co-host each week. So instead of just this q and a, even though I may not have a lot to say about the subject, we kind of want to make it a bit more bantering back and forth as well as the opportunity to bring on a few people more than once. And I think probably to start this off, it’s going to be somebody that will be returning here and there. Many of you know Brad Williams from Web Dev Studios. Hey Brad.

Brad:
Hey Bob. Thanks for having me on. It’s no pressure being on the debut, relaunch of the show.

BobWP:
No pressure at all. Yeah, that’s what I figured everybody was saying. Oh, I’m so glad this is starting up again. And I thought, okay, well who can I sucker? I mean, who can I ask to be on the first one?

Brad:
This is perfect, Bob, WP. Brad. Wp,

BobWP:
Yeah,

Brad:
Really let do this.

BobWP:
Alrighty, Brad, that happened. Do you remeber?

Brad:
I don’t know who that guy was, but he sounded pretty good.

BobWP:
Yeah, first host. Well, we are celebrating seven years. Yeah, seven years. Today was that first episode, and I just thought I’d have some of the hosts come in and I’m going to let most of them talk, but before I do, I’m going to go around and have them at least let you know who is here and who isn’t. And I think we Ross somebody there. I’m going to make sure they’re not gone, but alright. Anyway, so let’s start with Brad. So Brad, the first episode was seven years from now and a Lifetime. Then on May 16th, episode five, 2018, he became a co-host and I believe he has, and I’m just going to bring this up, you’re the first one. He has 75 episodes under his belt, I believe it’s right around there. So Brad, tell us a little bit, let people know who you are in case they don’t know.

Brad:
Yeah, how’s it going? Did we really do that many episodes? Yeah. Did you quiz me? I probably would’ve said like 10. Yeah, that was a lifetime ago. Glad to be here. Bob, Brad Williams, WebDevStudios. BradWP apparently, but that was a fun

BobWP:
Time. Alrighty. And then we have James Kemp James, let’s see, he’s fairly new as a host, but he did come on, I believe it was episode 19, May 20th, 2019, and since then he’s been a guest six times and yeah. Hey James, tell us a little bit about yourself.

James:
Hey. Yeah. Yeah, 19 must’ve been a while ago, right?

BobWP:
Yeah. Yeah. Nine two, we’re

James:
On 590 something right now.

BobWP:
Yeah. Yeah.

James:
So back then I was probably running Iconic. Now I’m a product manager at WooCommerce and yeah, we’ve dabbled a bit in me hosting a show, trying to just find the right show to host with some changes coming up. Right. I guess you’ll talk about them.

BobWP:
Yeah, for sure. Zach. Zach first hosting was February 23rd, 2021, and on episode 37, January 30th, 2020 was his first guest episode. So Zach, you’ve been hanging around here a bit.

Zach:
Yeah, a little bit. A little bit.

BobWP:
So what are you up to these days?

Zach:
Well, I recently found myself looking for work and have started back up my consulting business, so doing a little bit of consulting while I look for my next home. But yeah, it’s been really interesting. The WooCommerce space just keeps growing and there’s more and more opportunity, so I’m not worried about finding a good place to land.

BobWP:
Cool. Ready? Robert Jacobi? Oh, let’s see. Robert’s been around longer than I heard mentioned, but I think his, let’s see, his first hosting was episode 99…

Robert:
Just under the 100 mark.

BobWP:
Yeah. Yeah, I didn’t want you in the three digits there, but yeah, that was February 23rd, 2021. Then your first guest was episode 84. Yeah, December 3rd, 2020. So seven years. Where are you at now?

Robert:
Wow, it’s been an insane seven years, what is it, five years, I dunno. Covid time or is it 50 years? But no, currently the chief experience Officer at Botguard.

BobWP:
Cool. Cool. Well, I was going to, I think we lost Abha here unfortunately but she’s been around too and I don’t know where, she might have had some technical difficulty or something, so hopefully she’ll pop back in. Marcus who first episode was January 20th, 2022, was a guest on episode 1 46 on August 19th, 2021. And again, somebody that’s hung around long enough and put up with me and yeah, you’ve been doing some new stuff lately too.

Marcus:
Yeah, I think when I first guessed it, that was still at Sky Verge and then Sky Verge got acquired by GoDaddy and I guess I did such a good job guessing that you asked me to be a host and was able to join Katie Keith with the chat stuff for the last couple of years, two, three years. Two years while at GoDaddy and then late last year and joined the Bluehost folks. So that’s where I’m now.

BobWP:
Excellent. Emma, you hosted your first show on November 8th, 2023, and I just got to admit that Emma was never a host. She kept refusing me every time I asked her to be a host a guess. He never was a guest. That’s what I meant though. She actually, yeah, she just wouldn’t do it. So I said, well then you have to be a host. Are you up there?

Emma:
I remember that story completely different, but I was like, please let me be a guest. And he was like, absolutely not. So yeah, I think I’m one of the newest ones actually. But when you said 2023, I was actually surprised with that number. I thought it was just last year. But yeah, no, actually just changed roles at hosting her. So I was head of content and now I am running the organic marketing teams. So it’s an exciting change for me now, but it also gives me more time to do more podcasts. Yeah.

BobWP:
Ann, your first show was last year on April 4th, and you were actually your first guest appearance April 22nd, 2022. So again, you took your time, you became a host, you had to kind of play the water as a guest. So what are you doing these days?

Anne:
Well, given my line of work, I’m into digital accessibility currently. I’m drowning and weeding up requests for support and accessibility and shooting all kinds of customers in all kinds of directions and spreading them out to other agencies because things are going crazy. The European Accessibility Act is coming into effect in six months and it seems a lot of businesses are like, oh, this is serious. Maybe we really got to do something about it. So yeah, that’s basically is going on and I’m really, really grateful to have the show in Ulu so we can soothe people’s mind and say it’s not as scary as people think it is.

BobWP:
Yeah. I slipped by Dave, Dave, he’s been on since as a host. I just, Dave, he disappeared there for a minute from my peripheral. I thought you were

Dave:
Just saving the best for last.

BobWP:
Yeah, he joined on February 7th, 2023 and actually first guest episode, or first he was a guest, was on October 29th, 2020. So that, I’m not sure what the number was. I don’t have that down, but that’s a while back and yeah, he’s

Dave:
Been a while,

BobWP:
He’s been hanging. So how’s things in the web re area and all that good stuff that you’ve been doing?

Dave:
I mean, it doesn’t seem like there’s much going on with emerging technology at the moment, does it? So every day something new, if you’re paying attention, it’s wild and crazy times. And I think what’s particularly interesting this year is that AI is starting to converge with lots of the other technologies, especially crypto, which has always been kind of janky and hard for people to use. Turns out super easy for AI to use. So as people are starting to develop more agent experiences, that’s unlocking a adjacent and complimentary technology. So it’s really, I think a very exciting time. Yeah,

BobWP:
Yeah. Well, he’s something more you’ll be talking about on your show. And last but not least, mark, he, I waited until he got a lot of alcohol in him and then I passing to be a host and then he was kicking and screaming, didn’t want to come in, but he’s just starting up. But actually, I think the first time you were a guest was in New York City at the state of the word in 2021, and then you’ve done, after that, you’ve been on six times the guest. So again, it took some talking into

Mark:
It was just announced at a lunch and that was it. I was told I wasn’t asked, I was told that was.

BobWP:
But anyway, so what are you doing these days?

Mark:
Same thing, forms it. Theater. Yeah, and we had a good year last year and looking forward to this year, doing the show with you and I’ll see you in four weeks and WordCamp Asia. Looking forward to that. A few other people can be here as well, Robert and that. Yeah. And then God, what have we got after that? Workcamp Europe, Workcamp us. Yeah, cloud. I dunno if I’m going to go to cloud. I’ve never been to cloudfest. Maybe I should.

Robert:
There’s a WordPress track single day, so actually

Mark:
Okay,

Robert:
Cool. Much more relevant to certainly our audience here.

Mark:
Yeah, yeah. And then press comp as well.

Robert:
Oh, press comp, that’s right. Yep.

Mark:
Yeah, yeah, so that’d be good. Yes, lots going on this year. Lots of development, lots of pushing forward and yeah, excited by it. So let’s go

BobWP:
Abha, you did make it back. I’m glad you did. I must be having a little bit of difficulty. God, I love live feed in the world, you know

Robert:
It’s not real if it’s not live, Bob.

Mark:
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right. That’s true. That’s true. Disney never opened, never worked on day one, did it?

BobWP:
Yeah, I’ll let her work on that a bit. But yeah, for those of you that don’t know, but she’s been, the first appearance was on April 22nd, 2022 and last year.

Robert:
I wonder if that was with Anne, maybe

BobWP:
I tried to, yeah, I actually was going to and then I thought I could get too far into these. So anyway, so seven years. Yeah, we’ve gone from me and Brad to what? I think there’s now 20, 22 or 23 hosts. We’ve got our 12 shows all lined up. Some of ’em are new, some of them are continuing on and it as is, so I want hear from, I want this to be not me, just and I think most people would agree with that. So what have you, I don’t want to say, what have you learned that really sucks? What’s your biggest screw up? Do you remember a screw up? Besides with Robert, he can never record anything if I give him the button to, but other than that, is there anything that you remember that you messed up? I think most of the time it’s me. Actually.

Robert:
I’ll certainly go first just to finish Bob’s story there. Yes, it was ClouodFest last year and yes, it was a wonderful one-on-one sit down with wonderful people from Automattic and Bluehost and there’s just too many buttons on that. I just need one button that says press here, lights up, press here shuts down.

Zach:
You’re talking about the big red one that says REC, right under it, right?

Robert:
It was something out of the 1950s that had dialed and twists and switches. I may be making most of that up just because I totally screwed it up, but that’s besides the

Mark:
Point. Bob still recalls an analog tape to tape.

Anne:
No, but that corn is amazing. It has a lot of funky bells and whistles and nice little blinky blinky lamps, but I mean even I could operate it,

Robert:
Oh boy. And it got rerecorded and it was actually much better. So I feel redeemed at the end of that journey.

Mark:
Oh, you now recording everything twice, Robert?

Robert:
Yes.

Anne:
Isn’t that part of what we do? I mean sometimes we just need to improvise. That’s the best thing about it. I think

Robert:
Most of the Bob Do the Woo shows go. It’s super improvisation.

BobWP:
Yeah, that’s probably the easiest part of it is you’re not having to follow notes and stuff. So it seems like that sometimes is when you screw up is when you have to actually follow some kind of format. This way you can just be yourselves, whatever that may be.

Anne:
I mean one of the things that’s really easy to screw up is to get everything wrong about a time zone. This is what I excel at. It’s absolutely difficult and I’m not afraid to admit that

Brad:
Bob scheduling this podcast an hour before it’s supposed to go live. I know I triple checked UTC time and I’m like, that’s not right boss.

Robert:
Well yes, speaking of seven years, it doesn’t help that Bob moved to Europe.

Anne:
Oh yes it did.

Brad:
That was a bit of a change

Anne:
Certainly. But we do have one hour time zone difference and even that is difficult. So whenever you write UTC, I have to go and say, Google, what time is that?

Mark:
And it changes right? Twice a year it changes.

Anne:
Oh yeah. I should actually create a macro for it on my stream deck just to tell me the time zone difference.

Robert:
We need those international plots. Great idea. I did not even think about that.

Anne:
Yeah, I said, you can abuse, do that for all those kinds of things. And same like with counting characters, sometimes you want to do a post and despite the fact that Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it, allows you 5,000 characters if you have a premium account, I still want to stay below the 280 characters so I have this character counter on my stream that it will arrive. I’ll press it. I’m like, oh yeah, cool. That’s like less than 280,

BobWP:
Right? Abha did you get your things going there?

Abha:
Yeah, I can hear you all. I’m really glad that you came to Europe. So despite people who are not, it’s the place to be.

BobWP:
I was just going to let you all know, and I don’t know if you’ve heard it before, but Abha is often teased about doing a cooking woo show and this would be two or three people getting in their kitchens. You get your cam set up and basically cook your favorite dish while talking about WooCommerce. Now I don’t know if that, I keep telling her that, well now we got video. Maybe it’s time to do something like that. Everybody in

Abha:
That’s great to hear and I’m going to make sure we find your favorite dish and we can connect all of the stuff to boom and we’ve managed to get quite a collection of people’s favorite recipes. Just share the cultural links as well.

Robert:
What did I miss this So in as well,

BobWP:
James, what’s your favorite thing to cook?

James:
My favorite thing is to not cook. We’ve been to not cook someone else. Cook. Yeah, no, I do cook quite a lot actually. We get Gusto meals where they send a box of recipes and you make ’em. But yeah, I am actually a vegan vegetarian, so my dish choices are usually quite select. But yeah, my favorite thing to eat would be cake or any kind of cake or cookie.

Abha:
But that’s really good, James. We have a lot of vegetarian recipes that have been shared already and because we are trying to go to a global audience, so have other people from more different trace of food as well. The fact that you’re a vegan, you probably have something to share

James:
Quite possibly, yeah.

Abha:
Even if you don’t want to cook at the same time.

BobWP:
And what I’m going to do is I’m going to cook the simplest things like, well everybody’s doing their dish, I’ll like microwave a bag of podcorn, heat up soup toast, slices of toast. That’s it.

Abha:
You definitely have to chop something.

BobWP:
Hi, I will chop up the popcorn into small pieces, I don’t know, add the butter.

Anne:
Actually the first time I ever used WooCommerce for myself was on my back in the day food blog. I made people buy my workshops and they were all thinking they were going to learn how to lose weight and I was just teaching them how to cook properly. Starting out with chuff.

Abha:
Yeah, well they’re going to have fun with that Anne, because during the pandemic we had a WP recipe share and that ran for about two years and we shared recipes, we had people cooking the same thing. Banana cake came up so many times, did not expect that. We also had people cooking different versions of the same food. I didn’t realize that paella would be such a controversial food type to do, but from pronunciations to how you cook it and what’s included. But it was good. It managed to get people connected and show that actually we’re all working together and get to know a bit more about each other’s cultures as well. That’s so lovely.

BobWP:
So what else do you want to, I mean, oh Dave, Dave, I got to ask Dave something personal here. What’s your favorite Portuguese food now?

Dave:
I mean you just can’t go wrong with Pastel de Nada, but if I had to pick something savory, you’ve got to keep it simple. Flamingo Perum, which is like a spicy chicken chips, it’s just so good. Makes me hungry now,

BobWP:
Bob. Yeah, I’m thinking, what’s the sandwich?

Dave:
The Fransencino?

BobWP:
Yeah,

Dave:
Something is ridiculous. I had one for the first time in Porto, so if you haven’t had one, it’s like a whole big sandwich and in it you’ve got ham and cheese and sausage and a bunch of stuff and then it’s got a tomato sauce or soup or something over it. I dunno, it took a lot of eating. It was delicious. But that was like those massive calories,

BobWP:
A lot of meat and way too much. That’s what they go out and have at the Porto meetup every time they basically just get together or a little bit before they can go out and have a two hour dinner afterwards and everybody eats those. Then everyone

Dave:
Has a food coma.

BobWP:
Yeah, so we got new shows going on. Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff. I’m doing some stuff to the side. Hopefully we’ll have that already by WordCamp Asia. But yeah, let’s see. So Anne has her own show now. We moved it for accessibility show over to who Accessibility Insights Mark will be doing WP Beyond the Build, so bringing in small businesses, talking about product default and talking more about their journey, but kind of pulled the scene on to smaller business. Emma and who’s that other guy? No, Adam. They took over who BizChat. So a couple times they’re tickled to death to have video because Adam talks with his hand. So Marcus has actually just got tired of Woo BizChat. No, he didn’t. Tired. He’s going to start. WP Agency Tracks Robert’s continuing with Woo Agency chat and hopefully we’ll kick up the open source talk. Wendy,

Robert:
Well there are my fabulous co-host on those so I know they’re not here. Yeah. Well Robbie, there’s nn Agent and Courtney Robertson for the Open Source Talks.

BobWP:
Yep, exactly. And James, he’s, he’s going be doing two shows kind of, well not regularly one, but he’ll be doing the Woo Product chat with Katie. She’s moving over to that and then he’s going to be doing some stuff more on Inside Woo here and there as far as more kind of internal team conversation between themselves and stuff. So he’s good stuff there. Brad, I don’t know, he’s been around so long, I don’t even know what he does anymore. , anyway, I’m Aker. He’s going to be continuing on the scaling enterprise and yeah, we’ll be moving along with Tom Andre on that one. Zach is, him and Carl have popped away from Woo, DevChat. Marcel and Mike going to keep doing that, but Carl and Zach are going to be doing, call it Expanding the stack where they’re going to be talking more about maybe you should not just have one stack.

He maybe should learn some and be a little bit more flexible in what you can do. And then Dave will be continuing with emerging tech. He’s kind of under open web conversations now Matthias, he’s going to be doing something on Fediverse and then Abha, she’s going to keep on going with the WordPress way, Anybody want to talk about anything with their new show or their existing show or their old show .

Anne:
Sure. First of all, I already had James as a guest on the show and I would actually also like to have any other from you as a guest on the show because no matter what you do, you’re going to touch accessibility at some point. So I think that is a nice thing to do. It’s not like I’m trying to fill my show with guests, but really, I mean I would really love that. For example, mark forms and accessibility sites that need to convert have to have fantastic forms.

Mark:
Yeah, we’ve just launched a new accessibility updates as well.

Anne:
I saw that. I saw that. And more to

Mark:
Come. It never ends.

Anne:
Oh, it does end at some point. Don’t worries in too easy here.

Mark:
There’s always something I’ve missed. What better ways to and think?

Anne:
There are discussions going on about new HTML elements, stuff like that, but they’ll take a while as long as they’re not compatible with every browser and the

Mark:
Yeah. Next thing we’re going to be doing is adding some warnings on certain field types, just not good for accessibility. So just educating the user, really educating the

Anne:
First user. That’s fantastic because people kind of expect that when you publish a product for WordPress that it has to be accessible all the way. But hey, it is true. Oftentimes you can’t, can’t be chocolate, you can’t serve the, there’s some responsibility

Mark:
People still

James:
Most signature forms for some reason. So, Hey Anne, did you see the accessibility best practices

Anne:
Document? I did. Guys, I’m so happy you’ve put it out there and I am going to talk about it and I will send it all over the web.

James:
Yes, please do. Yeah. Written by Amber and team.

Anne:
Yeah, that’s wonderful.

James:
It’s very in depth.

Anne:
It’s absolutely correct me if I’m wrong folks, but I get the impression that the accessibility community has been the most daring community in the past couple of years because it affects everyone. We’re getting so much great content from Amber, shes from Equalize Digital, from WooCommerce. They did another a booklet for small businesses and it’s just fantastic. And I’m curious, Emma, you are working for a hosting company, Marcus, that’s where I want to talk to as well because you guys work B2C, anybody can order the main with you and have an email address, which basically means if you have European customers, your sites need to be accessible and I’m really curious how things are going there and what are you doing? And if you need help broadcast it out there. There are so many people writing about accessibility and if people start asking more pointed questions about it, I’m totally panicked about this part. Can you help? I’m sure you’re going to get a lot of great advice.

Emma:
Yeah, it would also be interesting to hear from you because of how much things that we’re having to change just as a company before mid next year and how long it’s taking, because we started this last year when we heard about the accessibility change and the deadlines for it, and it’s been kind of crazy how many things have changed just because of suggestions or it could possibly be better for accessibility, but it’s had a lot of movement, at least at hosting. I dunno what it’s like at Bluehost, but just the conversation starter. There’s been so many nice changes about it. So I would actually love to go on the podcast.

Anne:
Yeah, well shoot you a message in Slack. Wonderful. Yeah. Marcus, what about you?

Marcus:
Yeah, same. I’d love to, there’s so many levels to it, right? There’s like, we have to make sure that our site is accessible. Then we have to make sure that our dashboards and all of that that are facing our customers accessible. And then we have to make sure that the customers, the sites that they’re building for their clients are all accessible. So there’s so many different layers along that pipeline that all have to be considered along the way for everyone.

Anne:
Yeah, very joyful. It’s absolutely joyful. James, are you getting any feedback from people using commerce who are really saying, Hey, this is cool that you guys made this accessible?

James:
No. No.

Anne:
Okay.

James:
No. Well, only if I put something out there. If I say we’ve done this or I’ve added this

Anne:
Document,

James:
People will respond to that. But I haven’t indirectly had feedback about

Anne:
We got to blow them more. Much louder than great wish.,

James:
Yeah, I mean we’ve done tons. For anyone that doesn’t know where the front end of WooCommerce is being audited for accessibility, that audit was complete. So we got a list from Equalized Digital of every issue we have in order to meet the W CAG guidelines. I think there was like 80 in total, so it’s not a drastic amount of issues. But yeah, we’ve been working through them for the past maybe six months or so and just absolutely hammering them off the list. If you look at the accessibility tag in the WooCommerce repo and just filter by closed issues, you’ll see how many we’ve put through. So yeah, it’s going really well and well hopefully by the deadline, the front end will be fully up to standards and we’ll be able to publish a report on that.

Anne:
Oh yeah, that’s fantastic. Are you guys in touch with the folks who actually create plugins that are in the marketplace about accessibility or is it more like we leave that with you?

James:
Yeah, I’m not directly whether someone else on the team might be probably, I know that there’s often communication that goes on between them, so yeah, I would hope so.

Anne:
I agree

BobWP:
A lot of thank everybody for this joining this short version of Accessibility Insights. Right? No, I’m just kidding. I just had to give you, give Anna a show and yeah,

Anne:
She’ll take your entire

BobWP:
Universe.

Anne:
He’ll drag it, cue you alive.

Zach:
Well, and on the topic of plugin authors, as WooCommerce itself improves the accessibility of things like the admin plugin, developers will gain some of that simply by utilizing the new admin. So there are a number of just add-on effects that will happen as the ecosystem itself improves, and as WooCommerce core makes the experience more accessible for everyone, those plugin developers will gain the benefits of some of that as well if they’re doing things in the way that they’re supposed to. So that’s always a nice thing when you, an ecosystem plugin like WooCommerce, when they improve things that improves for the whole ecosystem, which is really a cool thing. And it’s been really nice, James to see how the team has been improving the ecosystem for all of us. Congrats on all of that.

James:
Yeah, thanks. I think there’s been a real shift in visibility in what we’ve been doing the past year or so, which I’ve been excited to be a part of. It’s just good to open the curtains a bit and let people in, get feedback and all that kind of stuff. Okay,

BobWP:
So I have a good question for you here for everyone. WordCampUS. Last time I asked some of these strange questions and I never quite got around to producing them, but I want each of you to tell me that if Do the Woo podcast was a smell, what would it be to the important stuff? Yeah, this has just been keeping me up at night and I need some insight on this.

Anne:
An Indian food market with all these nice flavor wafting from all corners, very sweet flavors, savory flavors. Sometimes it’s a bit burned.

BobWP:
Now you’re getting my corner here.

Anne:
Yeah,

BobWP:
Yeah. Okay. Mark, what do you think?

Mark:
A waffle house
I dunno what smell it is.

BobWP:
Yeah, no Waffle House would be good.

Mark:
A rose at a waffle house. Oh, that’s a good question. Yeah, probably have to be early morning when it’s full 3:00 AM

Zach:
What you’re saying is that do the rule will remain open unless the weather is catastrophic.

Mark:
Exactly. Good point, Zach. That is how the emergency services know if there’s a disaster or not.

BobWP:
James, who do you think the smell is? I don’t know, Bob,

James:
The first thing that came to mind, and I think it’s just the color of this screen is grass just smells like grass.

BobWP:
Grass. Well, we could go a few ways on that. We okay, I know that was a silly question. I never be forced to that.

Brad:
I have a question for you, Bob. What’s that? I have a question for you. How many different services have you used in the past seven years to record all the various shows? There was a period of time where every week it was different and you say, log in here, try this other service. We’re trying something out and they all worked. But I’m very curious if you have any idea how many different sources?

BobWP:
Oh man, there hasn’t been that many. This is Riverside and then there was SquadCast and then there was a whole list of One way back. I’m drawing a blank on one or two of ’em. I think they’re still around. Honestly, I can’t remember the name of the, one of ’em has been around for years and years and I think I might’ve even, what was, I dunno, blueberry Press had, I think they had some integration in Bird Press too. I think I used them. I probably used most of the old ones and some of the new ones. I got to keep you on your toes and you get in here, there’s something new to go on and hopefully this one’s been working the best as long as I don’t screw it up and push the wrong button or something. But otherwise it’s been good, so, so I always wonder with all my hosts, if anybody’s going to start their own podcast,

Dave:
I do an internal one at Automattic. Oh really? Yeah, we just chat with people because such a big company and so many different business units and just smart, lovely people doing interesting things. I started it when I joined just because I wanted to go meet a bunch of people and find out what was going on. In fact, Otto and I, Otto has been on the show, decided to do it because we were just connecting regularly and talking about geeky emerging tech stuff and then it evolved from there into just having conversations and recording them because other people might want to listen them too.

BobWP:
Yeah, that makes sense. So let’s see, what’s anything else about this

James:
Podcast that I had a question interested to know, and it’s a good way to plug your episodes, what your favorite episode of Do the Woo that you’ve done is anyone that’s open to anyone?

BobWP:
Yeah. Does anyone have one that I think through?

James:
There’s been a few, right? 500 plus.

Abha:
I think I have two favorites. One other one was when we managed to get us a recording from Africa and that was amazing because the technology wasn’t easy to connect and time zones and ever so grateful, the hard work that everyone did to make that happen.

James:
What do you mean by recording from Africa?

Abha:
So we might have guests from, we had two guests from Africa talking about WordPress and because signals are and infrastructure is very different and we are in a very different time zone, even within Africa, and I think one, the people who joined, they joined from their sister’s wedding, which just absolutely just blew me away that their commitment to finally making it work. And we did some wonderful follow-ups including into their word camps live, which was just great and was, I think that’s one of the wonderful things about the WordPress way. We don’t just stick to the same usual countries. We try and travel as much as possible and we try and do something that they can then use locally and they can translate locally, which has been just phenomenal.

And we’ve got one of those interviewees who messaged to say that he felt valued by being on the show and has put his hand up for doing lots of other things, including WordCamp Europe this year so that he learns things that he can then do for hopefully a WordCamp Africa in the future, which would be fantastic to see. So I think that’s one of my absolute favorites. And we get lots of people now wanting to do various shows because of that, which is great. But my second favorites got to be the releases because there’s so much work that goes into it. It helps being on the squad or being involved in a release to do that. But we get a tremendous amount of questions from people to say, I think this is good, but I dunno what it means. So being able to translate that, make it useful, and then help people make use of it and hopefully go and do something on release, it’s just great. And we’ve had quite a few people who’ve now put their hands up to be shadowing or volunteering on a component or fixing a bug as a result. And it’s just lovely to get their stories. And I trained as a journalist about too many decades ago, and that’s what makes it all worthwhile when you can see just the joy it brings somebody or the confidence it gives them and it gets them to tell their story to other people and become the storytellers themselves. And I think that’s great working with Bob to do that.

BobWP:
No. Can anybody talk that?

Zach:
Well, I mean, I don’t think I can top that, but I will say that first of all, Robert Jacobi evidently is waiting to get let back in. Just let him wait. I’ve been waiting for a break to say that. And in addition to that, hey, there he is. So my favorite episode that we’ve done on the Woo DevChat over the time that we’ve been doing that was an episode where Till and Carl and I tried to define what a WooCommerce developer was, and it was just a lot of fun to talk about all the various things that we personally believe qualifies someone as having crossed that threshold from builder and implementer into developer and really kind of set the tone for how the W Dev chats evolved from there. And I think that was a seminal moment for us.

Anne:
Oh yeah, I know what my favorite one was very well, that was a first because I was nervous, I had prepared questions, I was super excited about my guest. It was Taeke Reijenga from Level Level, also one of the co-founders of the Accessibility Collective. So I was getting, and we were doing the preliminary talk like, Hey, how you doing? This is what we’re going to do, yada, yada, yada. And TTaekeaka and I, we know each other quite well where it comes to our professions and we’re just bantering back and forth and suddenly Bob’s like without asking me, Hey, you guys got some good chemistry there. How about you come on the show as a co-host, which I absolutely love.

Unfortunately, Taeke had to let go of the opportunity after a few recordings due to obligations that he had. But the thing was, my entire preparation went to, I’m not going to say backwards here, but it went down the drain and then I winging it got a new definition for me. I mean, I like to wing stuff in general, but that was like, I had this prepared so well and we were having a lot of fun and brainstorming online, what were we going to do and what we’re going to talk about. And that is why this is still my favorite episode because we were both happily caught off guard. And I thank you for that, Bob, because that was a lot of fun and it actually made me want to do this a lot, a lot more.

BobWP:
Yeah. Honestly, I find very sneaky ways to do, and I’m all sure you realize at one point or another, Brad, I think what was interesting with Brad is, and I don’t know if I said it in an episode early thinking by, because I did a few episodes where I was interviewing people and I thought, God, I need a co-host to do this. I can’t just do it by myself. It’s so much easier. And some of you have co-host and some of you don’t, and the bannering back and forth. So I had Brad, I asked him, and I think we did it pretty slow at first. We might’ve done it, I don’t know, once a month or something, but we got it going and stuff. And then at some point, I think it was Jonathan who isn’t here, Jonathan Wold and Mendel Kurland, some of you will remember Mendel from GoDaddy. And so I brought those three in and we kind of interchanged and started the co-hosting thing and kept going and going,

Anne:
I’m still looking for a co-host. Bob and I were talking about that. We just have this incredible time zone challenge. So yeah, I’m out looking and if anybody here feels like, oh yeah, I’d love to be a co-host on a funky accessibility show, ring it on, ping me on Slack, Twitter, LinkedIn, wherever.

Brad:
Yeah, Bob, I’ll call an episode. That definitely stands out. Like you mentioned, we’ve done a number of shows together, but there’s one I still think about and still even talk about from time to time, which was speaking about the African community with Mary job and understanding some of the challenges that different parts of the world have. Even just setting up an online store, a lot of that didn’t really, I didn’t realize there were challenges like that in certain parts of the world, which is a little bit me being naive, but the idea of just setting up a payment processing account in Africa is extremely difficult. And at the time, this was just a few years ago, there was only one, we have a lot of options that we can all use, right? Many of us stripe whatever, but they don’t. So just kind of understanding that there’s these larger hurdles in different parts of the world where we think, oh, a couple clicks of a button and I have an online store.

It’s not that simple in many areas of the world. So I think it was a little bit eyeopening that we’re not all playing on the same field. And I think that’s important that we all understand that everyone has different challenges, but just purely based on location and what’s available. And especially in the African community, they have some huge challenges, but she’s doing an amazing job to help bridge that gap, to bring more processors in and to help people that want to start online stores to even figure out how to work with the processor that was available. And this was in 2021, so hopefully things have improved, but it was pretty eyeopening. One of the more impactful shows I’ve probably ever done. And I still think about it, it still sits with me.

BobWP:
It’s interesting because some people may have caught it. When Brad and I were talking the first episode, I said, I’m bringing it back. And it was our debut. And so in reality, Do the Woo started in 2016 and that’s when we thought of the name and I was talking to the team at WooCommerce at that time, went ahead and launched it. And about after, I don’t know five or six episodes, we decided to go to the WP eCommerce show and be a little bit more broad on that. And we actually did that. I think I did that for about three years, about three 400. And then I decided, I picked up Do the Woo again, and I was doing both of them at the same time and decided to hook it back just on Do the Woo. And I do have an interesting story, although, and this is always, I have a ton of screw-ups.

There was, on that particular one, there was a lady that had started a business in Ghana and she basically hired people there and they did perfume cosmetics and stuff from the stuff that grew in Ghana and fascinating. And I spent some time getting her set up to be on the podcast. She came on the podcast and halfway through the podcast I noticed my record button wasn’t working for, actually not there. It is very embarrassing when you see that and you think halfway through this podcast, I have to stop and say, oh, I think we have a little problem here. I think I forgot to push record. And that did happen. And she was very gracious and we did another time. She came back and we found another time to do it. But those are very embarrassing moments as well. But I don’t think I’ve done that since then, but I’m sure I’ve done plenty of other things.

Robert:
So let’s make that clear. That’s who I learned to record podcasts from.

Zach:
Yeah, no, that’s fair. That’s

Robert:
Fair.

Anne:
Seeing that that was 2016, right? Well, this is mirroring. You can’t read this.

Robert:
Oh yeah, no, you’re there.

Anne:
Party 2026. Now we can say that’s next year. Yeah.

BobWP:
So anyway, that’s kind of the origins of it. And yeah, it is been a long, long haul and stuff’s been great. And I mean, we have sponsors over the years. We started with sponsors from the gate starting gate and stuff, and they’ve supported us. I mean, right now we have six sponsors. We kind of keep, that’s the number we’re going to have moving forward. And just like to thank them GoDaddy, Omnisend, Hostinger, Weglot Kinsta and Avalara and they basically, I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for them. And I think we’ve been going about an hour here and on this. Does anybody else have anything they want to share or say before we have help?

Anne:
One last thing. I remember you talking last year about that with you were gathering funds to help other people to go places, go to WordCamps. Maybe you want to tell us a bit more about that?

BobWP:
It’s been an ongoing thing that hasn’t been very fruitful at all, really. I’d hope to do it. And can we help you try a couple of different models and Yeah, I still got a few things in my head. I’m working out, but it’s funding is tough and it’s almost like I’d rather, I’m at the point where I’d rather give other people that are doing this more exposure and have it in place and they have things set up and spend my energy promoting them and talking about them. So I’m kind of hoping, but yeah, something may come of it sooner or later.

Anne:
Well, I mean, like I said, if you need help with that, maybe we can all spread the word about it a bit more.

BobWP:
Yeah, yeah, I definitely, I was

Anne:
Thinking I was closing this with a very happy topic and then missed

BobWP:
That

Anne:
News. Oh man. New party pooper there.

BobWP:
Getting funding is so much fun. Let me tell you, that’s the best part of Bobcat casting.

Mark:
Thank you to you, Bob, as well for everything you do.

Anne:
Agree.

Robert:
Thank you, Bob.

Mark:
It takes a lot and thank you everything that you do. And thank you all. Thank you. Yeah,

BobWP:
Most of you have been here, been friends, colleagues for a long time, and then a lot of you have been on podcasts, especially you, Brad. I can’t believe you put up with me this long, but it’s great. So thank you very much and thank everyone for yeah, tuning in. Hopefully we’ll have some other live shows coming out in the future here as we get into more video. So thank you all.