Discovering the Future of AI and Customer Success at CloudFest USA

Adam Weeks:
Hi, everyone. This is Adam Weeks from OpenChannels FM. And today I am joined by two incredibly talented people, Jess Frick and Jeff Paul. And the thing that they both have in common, except for having J names, is that they are going to be speaking in November at CloudFest USA. They’re on panels there and they have some pretty incredible things that they want to share about what’s happening in the world of AI and hosting. And. And if you haven’t noticed, there’s a lot happening in AI and hosting and you’re going to want to catch their talks if at all possible. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Jess Frick and Jeff Paul. Jess, tell us a little about yourself. You’ve recently made a gmungous career change, so I’m kind of curious about that too. Tell us a little about yourself.

Jess Frick:
Well, hi, Jess Frick, non smoking Pisces. Big fan of long walks on the beach, which is very convenient considering CloudFest is in Miami. There you go. And I am going to be talking about delivering customer success with WordPress. Adam, look at that mug.

Adam Weeks:
Oh, I do love this mug. For those of you our audio listeners, what does my mug say?

Jess Frick:
Your mug has one of the coolest stickers I’ve ever seen on it and it says Frick. Yeah, Frick.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah. It’s all shiny and stuff.

Jess Frick:
Yeah. Whoever gave that to you must really like you Frick.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah.

Jess Frick:
So my job today, I get to serve as General Manager of Rocket.net. we are one of the top 200 fastest growing companies in the United States right now.

Adam Weeks:
Dang, that’s awesome.

Jess Frick:
I’m just. I’m so grateful to be a part of the team and I’m happy to share the secret of their success because it vibes perfectly with what we’re talking about at CloudFest.

Adam Weeks:
Could you tell us a little bit about what you’re going to be talking at CloudFest us now? You’re going to be one of the speakers, correct?

Jess Frick:
Yeah. So I’m actually speaking with Aaron Campbell and Mike Hansen and John Robinson, and we’re going to be talking about customer success with WordPress.

Adam Weeks:
Customer success. That sounds. That sounds important. Jess Frick, what is customer success to you? What does that mean to you?

Jess Frick:
So it can mean a lot of things. That’s a great question. Adam. But in the context of CloudFest, I think it’s primarily going to focus on the hosting aspect of WordPress. Whether you’ve been to CloudFest before or not, whether you are a host or an end user, or perhaps you are kind of an intermediary host, maybe you host client sites, you know, and you’re sort of reselling. I think you’re going to find actionable insights and advice from all of us. And we are all industry veterans. I’ve personally been in WordPress hosting for well over a decade. WordPress hosting, that weird little niche, and we’ve learned some stuff along the way. And so this is going to be our opportunity to give back and share what we’ve learned.

Adam Weeks:
What do you think kind of sets you guys aside?

Jess Frick:
What sets us aside is we don’t have a scope of support.

Adam Weeks:
Ah, what does that mean?

Jess Frick:
It means we just do right by the customer. Okay, you know, we’ll find out what you mean. We don’t just say, oh, that’s outside of our scope of support. You’re going to need to contact so and so and then send you running.

Adam Weeks:
Well, it’s almost as though customers are people that have people problems and that you want to help them that way.

Jess Frick:
It’s true. And again, coming back to, you know, the Cloud Fest us audience, I have a feeling we’re going to have a lot of hosters and resellers in our audience. And when it comes to resellers especially, you know, time is money and you don’t have, you know, hours upon hours to be bounced here and there when you have an issue. So obviously the, the first priority is don’t give you an issue to have in the first place wherever possible, but when you have an issue, help you solve it as quickly as possible.

Adam Weeks:
Nice. Yeah, no, that, that’s awesome. I’m excited to hear your talk. You’ve got an excellent group of panelists too, to talk with. As you’re thinking about Cloud Fest and attending yourself, is there anything else that you’re looking forward to?

Jess Frick:
I have never been to the server throwing.

Adam Weeks:
Ah, you’ve been stretching. You’re going to stretch.

Jess Frick:
I have been stretching. I need to, I need to start doing some lifts.

Adam Weeks:
All right.

Jess Frick:
Throw my back out. I’m not sure if I’m going to actually throw, but I am absolutely going to be cheering those on who do.

Adam Weeks:
That is, that’s fantastic. I will stand next to you and we will yell a lot at people making fools of themselves because I will definitely not be throwing servers. But I’m Proud of those who choose to.

Jess Frick:
Yeah. There’s also a lot of other great content, too. Like, one thing that I love about CloudFest this year is they have a us focused production team, you know, whereas CloudFest us was almost kind of like an afterthought or, you know. Junior.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah.

Jess Frick:
To the main Cloud Fest this year. I feel like it’s being given special attention and it’s really coming through in the programming, so I’m so, so excited.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah. And. And being in Miami in November, that’s not bad either.

Jess Frick:
No, that’s not gonna be bad. Again, long walks on the beach. I heard there may be, like, some barbecues. I don’t know. Well, we’ll see. I was so cute, too.

Adam Weeks:
It’s cool. I was watching the last season of Amazing Race with my family, and the very finale is takes place at where we’re going to be at the movie studio.

Jess Frick:
Oh, my gosh. For real?

Adam Weeks:
Yeah. Like, I was like, they had to put together, like, these. This giant puzzle inside the building where we’ll be.

Jess Frick:
That’s so cool.

Adam Weeks:
It is cool. Yeah. It’s like a legit movie studio with, like, legit doing stuff there.

Jess Frick:
Yeah. You’re gonna have to send me that episode link. I want to watch.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah. No, it’s cool. Yeah, it’s amazing.

Jess Frick:
Here’s where they did this.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah. Some big guy in, like, this giant beard, like, sitting in the building in a classic car, like, judging them. It’s as only. Yeah. It’s just kind of funny.

Jess Frick:
But you know what, though? I think between the area that we’re going to be in and the people who are going to be there, it’s going to be a phenomenal week. I’m just so excited about it.

Adam Weeks:
Well, I’m looking forward to it. Thank you so much. Jess, if someone wants to find out more about you and the work you’re doing on the Interwebs, where would they go to do that?

Jess Frick:
Our brand is Rocket.net, so that is our website, too.

Adam Weeks:
And I assume you’re on. On the. On the socials and on the. The different places.

Jess Frick:
Yeah, I’m on. I’m on all the socials. You can usually find me at XO Jess Frick. Or on LinkedIn. I’m. Hey, Frick.

Adam Weeks:
All right, well, thank you so much, Ms. J. I really appreciate this time that you have taken with us. I know that people are still maybe deciding to. To buy their tickets. With open channels, they can get a 20% discount. So make sure you check that coupon code below. And yeah, we. We will See you at Cloud Fest.

Jess Frick:
And you know, before we go, if you see me in Cloud Fest and you tell me that you watched this episode, I will have a Frick. Yeah. Sticker waiting.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah, yeah, you will.

Jess Frick:
I will. Just.

Adam Weeks:
I might need another one.

Jess Frick:
You gotta tell me you watched this.

Adam Weeks:
All right. Okay, perfect. Sounds good. All right, see you soon.

Jess Frick:
Bye.

Adam Weeks:
Hey Jeff, nice to see you again.

Jeff Paul:
Yeah, Adam, good to see you. It’s only been a couple weeks since Portland, but you know, good to catch up here. Virtually.

Adam Weeks:
Fantastic. Well, I’d love to if you could give us a minute of share some context for who you are and what you’re going to be doing at CloudFest. You and I have worked on some fun projects in the past with 10 up now fueled, and I have always been impressed with your brain. You’ve got a good brain, my friend, and you think about things in a way that is inspiring and encouraging. And with all of the stuff that’s happening with AI, you are a really important person to hear your voice, especially at a. At a conference like CloudFest. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jeff Paul:
Yeah. So VP of open source at Fueled. Some folks may know TenUp in the WordPress space a little better. I’ve been with TenUp since 2019. TenUp and Fueled merged September 2023. So trying to effectively go to market as Fuel. But many folks appreciate understand 10 up within fuel. The open source practice that I run is responsible for three different kind of tenets. One is company owned open source. So things like classify distributor open source products or projects that historically TeneBRF fueled had created and now exist as free open source. Right. There’s community owned open source. So things like WordPress, Core, Gutenberg, perhaps other open web platforms that fueled and 10 up contribute to. Our team is responsible for that and the last bit is client owned open source. So Fueled typically, you know, works on strategy and execution on digital experiences for clients. My background in the WordPress space, I’ve been using it since 2007. I think I’ve been an active contributor since 2016 helping as a deputy on the WordPress 4.7 release and then have been active on several of the major releases in WordPress core. So very active there on a project and product management perspective, not on an engineering perspective. And then kind of what starts to overlap a bit with the panel I’m on at CloudFest USA is 10 up. Back in 2018 had a client project where we built an integration with IBM Watson to help classify content. Right. And like most of the things that our team open sources, this was came from a client project. We open sourced it in 2019, supported it for a couple years. ClassifAI is the name of the plugin. It’s, you know, brings AI functionalities into WordPress to kind of help stream editorial words workflows and content creation workflows. And over a couple years it was more just a fun R and D space. But as time went by and the AI space exploded a couple years ago, it became more a thoughtful place to contribute nurture and the lens there of being at Fueled helping to build this. Since 2018, the feedback we’ve gotten from enterprise publishers along the way of this sort of UX or UI is optimal or suboptimal as well as Fueled usage of AI alongside the kind of the creative excellence of the humans on the team. Right. All those lenses I think helps for the panel that I’m on with Chris and James and Arto.

Adam Weeks:
Nice. Well, this definitely seems like a time where the work that you’ve been doing with AI and this lack of clarity on where all of this is heading and a lot of us were, a lot of us are guessing the work you’re doing with enterprise definitely seems to be extra important at this time because I would imagine that is going to impact the industry significantly.

Jeff Paul:
Yeah. And I think on the panel James and myself are also part of the WordPress core AI team and trying to figure out their how do we also bring AI functionality to that large portion of the open web. Right. Both from enterprise developer tooling sorts of things down to everyday consumer experience as well and trying to make sure that we’re serving both of those audiences and within that I think the enterprise audience is definitely one component, certainly the developer tooling and being able to kind of raise the bar on what folks, at least in the open web Space can do with these. And the same problem with other agencies, with other product teams that have built AI into their, their stacks over the years and now that they’ll. Some of these things will now be centrally managed and maintained by the community, just alleviates companies from having to own those ourselves and can now contribute to that, those core toolings and then focus a bit more really on the enterprise needs of our clients and building specifically to that and not have to be so beholden to the kind of the technical plumbing underneath.

Adam Weeks:
Right, yeah, that makes a lot of sense in that. Yeah. This is going to be a really great panel. I’m excited to be able to see you guys there in person. Tell me a little bit about CloudFest USA, your experience, what are you looking forward to? What are your thoughts about the event specifically?

Jeff Paul:
First of all, I’m in the Chicago area, so November in Chicago, it tends to start being not so lovely. I’m somebody who live on the equator, happily. So being able to one to be in Miami in November I think is a selling point almost on its own. Right. Secondly, this actually will be my first CloudFest, so I’m actually excited to get into that community, understand who’s there, meet new people, new companies and really explore some of the workshops and talks that otherwise I wouldn’t be exposed to in other conferences. So really excited about that. You know, the Miami bit is kind of icing on the cake, as it were.

Adam Weeks:
Sure.

Jeff Paul:
You know, there are folks that are also talking about how do you blend AI experiences with delivering creative human work, which is a similar problem we try and tackle at Fueled, and that’s something that Vito Peleg from Atarim is talking about. So really excited about that one. There are, I think there’s a workshop on how to embed AI into workflows. So we’re really excited for that. Interestingly enough, Mary Hubbard and Jonathan Wold, also from the WordPress community, will be there. And so getting to hear from Mary’s perspective, really at the 10,000 foot level of the open web and the impacts that she’s seen, you know, any opportunity to see her talk and to get time with her is fantastic. So really excited about that. You know, I think there’s some talks about bytecoding, which, you know, is something to try and stay on top of even though it’s impossible because that changes week to week. But no, getting to sit in and understand at that moment in person is so much easier to learn in an environment like that than to try and, you know, quickly read a newsletter or watch a Video online. Right. Being able to do that in person is great. And then really the kind of, the last one that I’m excited about is to see, I don’t know, Cory Doctorow talk about the Enshiification. I think that that is definitely an experience I think many people are seeing online. And how can the people that are there, that accompanies that are there try and help pivot towards, you know, how did he phrase it? The enshido scene. Right. And get to a place where there’s a better, newer, good. Internet is definitely something that I similarly care about. So really interesting to see his, his thoughts on that coming from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. So super excited for that one. You know, definitely not leaving early on a Friday or not leaving early on a Thursday because I wanted to see him talk too. So really excited about the whole schedule. Hopefully my panel can live up to the excitement I have for everybody else that’s on the list.

Adam Weeks:
Yet as you were listing those things off, like, oh, I got to make sure I met that talk. And that sounds really interesting. In this world of AI and all the things, it feels like being in the room with these people is incredibly valuable. And I think that having an opportunity to see your panel, I think. Would there be a Q and A? Do you know if there’s going to be a Q and A for your panel?

Jeff Paul:
I imagine the format we’ve done in other places, I think that played really well. Right. Like try and read folks into what Chris, James, myself and Ardo are thinking in the lenses we bring in. But then reserve time for Q and A because there’s, you know, folks that presumably will be there that just haven’t, you know, groked some of the things that we’ve been struggling with and are curious to learn more. So as far as I understand, yes, Q and A. And if not being in person at a conference like this, you always have the, the hallway track right in between sessions and before and after. So always happy to. To chat with folks there after the panel conversation.

Adam Weeks:
Fantastic. All right, my, my second to last question is, have you been working out? There’s a, a server throwing competition. Do you think you’ll be involved in chucking a giant server as far as you can?

Jeff Paul:
Adam, I appreciate that you think that I didn’t just pull my back turning around to grab my coffee off the counter this morning. The server throw in might be best left to those that are maybe going to join. One of the networking events was like the under 30 networking event. I think that’s probably well tuned for people that are younger and stronger in that way. But definitely we’ll go and check that out.

Adam Weeks:
Well, if someone wants to learn more about your work or be able to find you on the interwebs, how would they find Jeff Paul?

Jeff Paul:
Sure. So jeffpaul.com probably references out to all the social platforms that’s needed for work. Fuel.com can be found there and then the plugin I mentioned classified pluckin.com for context there. And then for folks that want to go even Deeper on the WordPress side of things, make.WordPress.org AI is really where all that’s coming from. WordPress and the intersection of AI and the team there would be a great place to go.

Adam Weeks:
Great. Well friends, there you have it. Jeff Paul is going to be at CloudFest USA this November. He is going to be running away from the tundra that is Chicago and heading to Miami. Hopefully we’ll see you all there. And what a great time. Thank you so much Jeff for sharing a little bit about your talk and giving us an introduction to yourself.

Jeff Paul:
Thanks Adam.