A Tech Conversation: Seeing it Through During COVID

BobWP:
Hey everyone. Bob WP here. Welcome. Yes. You see four faces this time. This is what the special version of Do the Woo Podcast is. It’s visual. Well, it’s actually more than that. It’s a special edition because I have my special friends. I never get all three of my co-hosts on at the same time. So that makes it special. And also, we’re just going to talk a little bit about the current situation in the world, how it relates to our own businesses. Just thought it might be good to gather these brains together and hear what’s going on. I’m going to dive right into it. This is actually episode 48. We’re going to make this an episode, and we are recording this on Thursday the ninth. It’ll be coming out next Tuesday, but I just want to let you know in case something happens between now and then, Mendel moves to another country and we don’t see him for a while, and you’ll wonder why he was here and why he’s not anymore. So anyway, things like that might happen. But speaking of Mendel, Mendel, why don’t you, and what I’d like to do is have you tell us a little bit about, well tell everybody who you are, of course, but how is this affecting your business right now? What are you hearing from customers, clients? Just kind of a general overview of how it’s being dealt with. So

Mendel:
Yeah, cool. Hey, I’m Mendel and I’m the developer advocate for WooCommerce at Nexus. My specialty is agencies, so help those agencies out that need help getting connected with cool solutions to run performant WooCommerce. So what’s happening at Nexus Liquid Web right now? What’s happening in the hosting world in general when it comes to C 19? I think there are two things happening broadly. There are two categories. One category is internal and one category is external. So we spend a lot of time talking internally about things like how are we going to help each other? How are we going to help other people? How are we going to stay safe, stay sane? Some of us have worked remotely for a long time. Some of us have not worked remotely for a long time. We have physical offices and a lot of web hosts have physical offices all around the world.
And so this is something that is significant and important. And just because you’re a technology company doesn’t necessarily mean that working remotely is easier in your DNA. For instance, if you are a server admin in a data center, it might be more difficult to work remotely than it is if you are somebody in marketing or if you’re a facilities person, that might be more difficult. So there’s some of these dynamics happening. There’s also, even if your job translates well to being a remote job, your team might not be used to working fully remote. And so that’s an interesting dynamic. And so we’ve been working through how to support each other, which has been pretty fun to watch with things as fun and simple as Netflix, watch parties and video game parties and stuff like that. But then also just having each other’s back and taking care of each other.
People need to run out for a food run or something like that. And we’ve got one guy that’s 3D printing face shields for people on the outside, first responders and stuff like that. And so after we are making sure that we are safe and we are good and we’re in a position to keep things as business as usual as possible, then we’re looking outward to the rest of the world and trying to lend our assistance. So first and foremost is employees and customers, because without employees you can’t serve customers. So making sure that we’re able to respond to everything as though the world is normal and then trying to spread some of that love and help out into the rest of the world. And I think generally from the responses I’ve seen from other hosts, other people that are technology providers in the industry, they’re doing mostly variants of those things. Some people are talking about it more than others. So I want to stop with that one because I’m curious to hear how everybody else is dealing in that particular category. But I think that’s the first thing is internal and helping other people in the community.

BobWP:
Jonathan,

Jonathan:
Man, well, lemme just talk first about automatic broadly. One, we’re almost entirely distributed with the exception of Tumblr, who saw some offices who’s now working remotely. So on the one hand, we have a bit of an initial advantage because so much of how we do things is focused on being distributed, and there’s been a lot of opportunity for us at automatic to help others. People are turning to us with, Hey, we have questions. How do we do this? How do we do that? I think what’s been interesting though is the internal discussions and something we’ve all felt is like, yes, we are in a good spot, but it’s still really difficult. A lot of us at Automatic now have our kids home and that changes things. My kids have been home for three weeks now and I’ve had to adjust in terms of when I can do this and when I can do that.
And so to the same point that Mendel made, it’s been important for us to automatic, even though we are set up well, this is not business as usual. So people, everyone’s more stressed in general about these things. So there’s been a lot of effort internally to support that, encouraging messages and encouraging people to, one of the ways of dealing with stress is to look for ways to help those around you. I’ve certainly been the case for me. So that’s on the automatic side. On the WooCommerce side, of course, my context, I’m responsible for community at WooCommerce, and when I started the year, I had a very clear sense of direction. I’m going to work to bring a hundred new, get us up to a hundred physical meetups. That was my big focus at the beginning of the year and got a lot of interest, a lot of momentum building.
And then not too long into the year making the decision, okay, now we’re going to shut all this down for now and switch to virtual. So it’s been definitely an adjustment. And at the same time also I’ve been really encouraged to see the positive responses and the willingness of people to make that transition into virtual. For me personally, it’s really important to emphasize local communities because one tendency could be to just, oh, let’s bring everyone together online. Well, it’s easy to get lost and diluted in something like that. So it’s been interesting to see the creative ways that people have been finding to foster a sense of local community, even as we’re all stuck indoors. So it’s been really interesting.

BobWP:
And Brad,

Brad:
Yeah, so it’s been interesting to hear what you guys are saying. We’re obviously in a little bit like we overlap obviously in the WordPress space and the online space, but we’re in different markets or different business models. So it’s interesting to hear what you guys are doing. So on our side, the agency side, the small business side, internally, obviously Jonathan, you made a great point. We’ve been remote really for 10 years now, but it’s not the same. There’s no guarantee my four year old’s not going to walk in that door anymore. As much as I told him, do not walk in that door. It could happen. But what’s interesting is we’re all in that together, not internally at web dev studios, but also with our clients. There are more distractions around us. There are more noise in the background, there’s more noise in the background, there’s more things that could go wrong on a call and that’s okay, right?
That’s okay. We’re all in the exact same position and not just in the US all over the world. So it’s really interesting to think about it like that and to kind of understand that. And that’s what we did internally with our team is kind of sat down and said, look, there’s a lot of extra stressors in our lives right now. Clearly kids being home is an obvious one, but there’s a lot more than that. We don’t know everyone’s stressors in life in general. And this is just even a hundred fold. So basically internally, we put together a plan and reached out to our company, all of our team members at Web Dev Studio does and said, look, if you need to adjust your working hours, reach out. Let’s talk. We’ll be more flexible. If you’d rather come in a little bit earlier, maybe take a bigger break during the midday and then circle back around at night or just your time, maybe put some more time in on the weekends so you can have more open hours.
We understand that the kids are home older kids still need to learn. The schools are trying to figure out e-learning. Some have it down really well and others have no idea what they’re doing and it’s tough. So there’s a lot of extra stressors, spouses, maybe the spouse is out of work now and that income is no longer coming in. So we’re trying to do whatever we can internally to help alleviate some of that stress with our team just by being more flexible with our team, really trying to look at spending, which I think everybody’s doing right, especially as a small business, any kind of tightening up the belt, any kind of extra spending that we can eliminate, we’re doing that. We’re very fortunate so far that we haven’t felt immediate effects, large effects of this. We’ve had a few projects that are on pause, but by and large, most of our clients are in industries that are actually doing very well, like media,
Consumer packaged goods. These industries are as well as you can be in an environment like this. They’re doing good. And some areas are doing even better than normal, like consumer packaged goods. They just can’t make stuff fast enough in some cases. So we’re also working with our clients because again, while we’re used to working remote, our clients, a lot of ’em are not. So we also have to understand that we need to be more flexible, we need to be more understanding. We need to know if they need to move a call last minute, it’s fine, it’s fine. It’s not a big deal. Whatever we need to do to help alleviate whatever stress we can on their side. And I think what we’re all doing, and a lot of people in the space and even outside the space, but what’s really interesting is just how those of us that are more familiar with working from home are really trying to help out those that aren’t, even if it’s not necessarily a client relationship, it’s just like, Hey, we’ve been doing this for a while.
Let us help you. Let us give you some tips. I’m really good at working in pajamas, sweats, doing it for a long time. It’s natural for me, but for most people it’s not. So whatever we can do on that front we’re trying to do. But by and large, I mean we’re all in it together. That’s what we keep preaching internally and with our clients and whatever we can do to help each other, this is just so unprecedented that we don’t know where we’re going to end up. We don’t even know what’s going to happen next week. So it’s a day by day thing, but as long as we’re all in it together and helping each other and pushing forward, I’m confident we’ll all be okay. It’s a weird time right now.

BobWP:
Cool. Well thanks for sharing. I love hearing all through your perspective. I invited my entire team down here so you can see internally my entire team here in front of this microphone, but internally it is strange because I’m not a service provider anymore. Service our product. So our lives have always been pretty mellow the last few years. So it’s pretty much normal in that sense. I mean, we spend a lot of time at home, so it’s an easy thing for me to do. I can relate to people that are struggling with that and find it challenging. And also our daughter’s grown up long gone, so we have our cat and we don’t have kids running around. We don’t have that extra layer there. So in a lot of ways blessed. But then we are both my wife and I at the age where we’re in the 60 plus, so that adds a little bit of anxiety there in the whole day to day.
Even going out, I’ve been going out once a week shopping. So that I think is probably the biggest thing. And for me internally, it was when this started and being obsessed with the news and being obsessed with what everybody’s saying. Do I still want to put out content or do I put on the mindset that well, people are, they’re stressing right now. They need to deal with what they need to deal with. They may need content, they may want to do this, they may want to listen to, they may want to zone out in front of the tv, they may want to just stare at the wall for an hour and mellow out. And I decided, well, no, that’s not my nature, so I’m going to just keep pushing out content. And what I’ve seen externally since I don’t have clients again, basically I have readers and listeners, so the monetization part of this site, the side of the business or my side is it is very erratic.
I don’t know. I’ve had some stuff come in, sponsorship, things like that, but I’m that person sitting there that is depending on the success of everybody else or the continue business as usual or as usual as it can be. So there’s that challenge. I always wonder, I look at people and I think, God, I feel for these people that are losing jobs or losing clients. And I’ve been there, I’ve gone through the recession before and our other business, so I totally get it. And it was a tough time. And even with the content I’m seeing, probably the visitors have actually views on my side have gone up a bit. And of course I’ve been doing a bit more content than usual because it just is what I’m doing. It’s just coming naturally to me. But it’s erratic. So everything is erratic, nothing is predictable. And it’s almost like Brad said, we’re going day to day here, so I can’t say I’m going to put this podcast out and this many lessons one day, this many another day and try to understand or decipher why it’s happening.
I just let it go. So I don’t worry about the numbers at all right now. And I’ve never been huge on the numbers. It’s like if somebody’s listening, if somebody’s reading, if somebody’s doing something, they can pull away from it. That’s great. And it was interesting because the other day I decided to put out six spots and a lot of people have been doing this and it’s been very cool and I’ve kind of held back from doing it because of all the content I end up producing. But I put up six spots on Twitter. I just said, Hey, if you want to talk to me 45 minutes about content marketing, podcasting, whatever, I’ve got these four slots, just sign up if I can help you. And it doesn’t even depending on is a result of this time and what’s going on or is it just you need some help at this point or some advice, you just want to chat.
So within by the next morning, all six spots were taken and I thought, well, that’s great. I mean, I can add a little bit to the layer there or a little bit of what I’m doing and that way also connect with people. But yeah, it’s very interesting. And I could look back at when I was doing client work and the other challenges that would be on top of everything else. Right now, in one way I feel very fortunate. I’m still plugging along, but I feel for a lot of people out there that just, it’s hitting them left and right.

Mendel:
Bob, you brought up a really interesting thought or a really interesting point, and that is this whole idea of taking things day by day. Recently I was talking with somebody and they said they were sitting outside and they noticed the grass and they noticed the birds and they noticed all these things happening around them. And it was funny, they mentioned it to me because I had a similar experience sitting outside one day as well. I started looking around and realizing that the birds in the grass, they don’t really care. In fact, they don’t even know. They don’t really know what’s going on. They probably know that they’re fewer jerks driving their cars and hitting them, but they don’t really know. I think that there’s a super important time to connect with the fact that life is different and to mourn the life that we had and to really contemplate and sit with that grief a little bit. I also think there’s an important moment to start to look at our businesses in a way that we can move forward confidently and lean into a new way of doing business.
And so I’ve started to see some businesses doing this. I’ve started to try and do this myself, and that is to kind of come up with a new plan and instead of thinking of it as a day by day thing, thinking of it as this is a new normal thing. I know we’ve heard that term, but thinking of it as I move forward, this is what I’m going to lean wholeheartedly into. So in my case, I’ve been producing videos and I’ve been having similar meetings to you, Bob, talking with people, having some office hours, trying to help them get through whatever they’re trying to figure out in their online world. And these aren’t things that I’m just doing now. They’re things that I plan on bringing forward into whatever world we’re stepping into because I believe that our world is changing.
Notably, I don’t know, I don’t know how much different it will be, but I know that there’s a notable change happening and I just think it’s important at some point to come out of that grief and move towards a strong stance in however you’re moving your business forward, whether that’s a restaurant becoming a grocery store, or understanding that they have now the flexibility to offer both groceries and pre-made stuff and pivot in that way depending on the environment, just becoming more agile, realizing that there are other things that you can adapt to and moving forward with that kind of in your playbook. So I dunno. I dunno, just something to think about. I guess that was deep.

Brad:
That was good. Mendel. Another point I wanted to kind of tack onto that is I think a lot of us, all of us, if not we should be really look at some of the silver lining here. I know sometimes it’s hard to think about that. I know it’s for me if you watch the news for any amount of time and obviously want to stay current on what’s going on, but it’s overwhelming because it’s very negative and that’s just the situation we’re in. So I’m trying to really look at the silver linings. I get to eat lunch with my son every day now and I didn’t get to do that before and that’s cool. We block out time. I actually take two hours out of my day every day now in my schedule I talked about kind of adjusting our schedule. So my wife works at web dev with me, so guess what?
We have to take turns. She’s got stuff she has to get done too. So every day I meet lunch with my son, which is awesome, and he’s in those really formative years and we’re spending more time together now than we have since he was an infant. So while some days it may be more challenging than others, I’m still really cherishing that time. Now, will he remember all this and why we’re doing this? I don’t, don’t necessarily know kind of at that cusp of we’re not trying to give him too much information about what’s going on. I don’t think he would be able to understand it, but at the end of the day, he knows he’s hanging out with mommy and daddy all day and he’s extremely excited about that. So for me in my personal life, the good silver lining, that’s the thing I need to think about anytime I’m kind of getting down or the news is just getting so negative that it’s hard to take is just look for those silver linings and all of our, we all have ’em and they’re all a little bit different, but I think just try to find those and hold onto those and that’s what’s going to help us get through this

Jonathan:
And my experience, it’s important to try to be conscious of, I guess just the impact that it’s having. Easy to forget sometimes. Okay. Why does today seem harder? Well, there’s a lot of things that you’re maybe not as aware of. There’s a lot of extra stressors that sometimes will push you out to focus on something, but it’s still you’re having difficult day. And for me, an arc over the past year or so has just become more accepting of myself and hey, it’s difficult. Let’s go ahead and just accept that today is a difficult day and let’s do our best to finish strong. For me personally, it’s like having my tiny habits that I can keep building on top of and playing with. And even if other things fall apart that keeps me on the rails, but just accepting some of the days that, okay, wow, there’s a lot going on here.
I don’t have to just fix this right now. Maybe I need to catch up on sleep, go to bed earlier and try again tomorrow. And then I find that if I’m better about that with myself, it tends to be easier to be more patient with my kids and with my spouse and those around me. But sometimes it’s easy to just forget. You’ll be having like, wait a minute, there’s still a lot happening out there. It’s not just this circumstance, it’s not just this difficulty. There’s a lot of other things that are weighing at the same time.

BobWP:
Yeah, I let myself wander when I want to wander, so I like what I do. I like sitting down producing the content. And Mendel, you’re right, there’s been a lot of things that have come out of this that I thought, yeah, this is stuff, whether it’s a business or even how I think about certain things, and I’ve been getting creative with that. But yeah, if I’m working and I just suddenly it hits me and I’m thinking, okay, I need a little bit of a break, I’ll wander around. I mean, we live in a perfect kind of place. The other day I looked outside and there was two ducks on the roof of the house next to us, and all I could think of is, my God, I’ve never seen ducks on the roof of a house. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of ducks around there, waddling around, and they were just sitting up there and they were looking towards the ocean. So then my wife and I got us, we started talking about how they were enjoying the day and talking about the ocean and talking about this is a hell of a perspective up here compared to how we’re always on the ground or we’re always floating in some little pond.
And that’s probably my natural way anyway, but sometimes I’ll relate it to what’s going on. I’ll look at something a little bit odd that happens and not make the light of it, but make it a little bit more interesting, a little bit more fun and an experience that you think, okay, this is really strange everything that’s going on and now there’s ducks on the roof. That’s strange too. So does that have something to do with this? I doubt it, but I don’t know what ducks are thinking right now. Like you said, Mendel, the birds in the yard, do they really know what’s going on around here or it’s,

Mendel:
I feel you, Bob. I watched a spider today do crazy stuff to its prey and it’s web and I’m on the phone with my mom and I’m like, hold on, hold on. There’s a spider and it’s killing this brain. She’s like, are you okay? I

Jonathan:
Want to know what our conversations are going to be like a month from now. It’s only three weeks in so far.

BobWP:
Yeah, I saw two little odd bugs on the window doing it, and I thought, man, my God, actually you always have to take it there, man. Yeah,

Jonathan:
It was. I was watching the grass grow for a couple hours and it just really

Brad:
A month from now Bob will be like, I caught those effing ducks and they’ll never be on that roof again. Bob, you made a point earlier about maybe feeling a little guilty about pushing out content and things like that. I think if we could circle back to that a minute, I think as a business owner, I think that’s something that we’re all thinking about too, right? On one hand there’s a pandemic, obviously we’re all worried for our health, for our family, for our friends, obviously we don’t want to see anyone suffer from this nasty virus. On the other hand, we have a business to run, we have bills to pay, we have my case, I have payroll, I have employees doing everything we can to keep the lights on and keep everyone working. So it’s this weird kind of balance right now of being respectful to the situation, but also I don’t think business as usual is necessarily, and it’s not business as usual, but in the sense of moving forward with the business, I think that’s a good thing, right? Because we need to continue to move forward. And honestly, seeing you keep a regular schedule with content, with podcasts is that little bit of normalcy that we can all use right now.
And even stepping into high gear, pushing out more content, like you said, like Mendel, you said you’ve been doing a lot of video content and stuff. I think that’s great because we’re just in this weird situation and if we all just stop doing anything, and especially from a professional standpoint, this is going to be way worse off than what we’re hoping for, but we have to be sensitive to the situation. So it’s a little bit of a balancing act of yes, you want to be sensitive to what’s going on, but we also have companies to run or companies sensitivity successful, and so we have to find that balancing act, which is kind of a weird spot right now,

Jonathan:
That sensitivity is an interesting thing. So take a business for instance, that’s positively affected where there’s suddenly more interest in their services and they’re just doing their best to keep up. What kind of a message do they send businesses that are negatively affected? How do they be empathetic and sympathetic without feeling desperate? It’s very difficult for us at Woo, we’re seeing more interest in Woo across the board, which generally makes sense. And part of the question is, well, how do we serve folks effectively without any hints of taking advantage of the situation? I think we’re coming from that point of we’re starting with service, but we have to also be sensitive of when you’re communicating a message, how do you make sure that it’s being sensitive and useful at the same time? And it’s difficult. I’m sure

Brad:
We’ve all seen things that we’ve already felt were taking it too

Jonathan:
Far, and at first

Brad:
Coupon codes and stuff

Jonathan:
Over the first week, it was interesting to see the ads. There were ads running still. That’s like, all right, this is a tone deaf ad. This is clearly an ad. You probably shouldn’t be pushing this product right now. And clearly the ads have just been scheduled to run. So then you started to see that come down, people are reducing spend in a number of different areas and now they’re starting to adapt. Some are doing really well, so I’m like you said or Okay, guys. No, no.

BobWP:
Well, it’s a fine line between encouragement and sensitivity because you want to encourage people to do things. I could say, yeah, it is time to push up your content a bit or it’s time to start a podcast, but then you want to step back at that sensitivity and say that I don’t want to push it on people and feel like, oh yeah, you have all the time now. Or we assume people have all the time, which I think is a mistake in a lot of ways. Not necessarily we have more time now or just some people are just frozen and they feel like they can’t produce. So it’s tough to have that balance there and to get people, like I said, to keep the spirits up, but also to be empathetic at the same time and not say Now’s the time to hustle. Do that hustle you’ve always wanted to do. Well, maybe I want to watch ducks on a roof or grass grow instead. Right now

Brad:
I want to watch ducks on a roof. At this point, I’m looking forward to that Netflix documentary.

Mendel:
We need a webcam on the ducks. I think the example stays mostly the same or the tactic stays most of the same throughout the example of the small business or the large corporation, whether you’re GE or whether you’re electric company or a local restaurant. And I don’t know that these are different principles than they’ve ever been, right? You want to be reliable, you want to communicate, you want to over communicate when you’re in situations like this. So if you’re a local restaurant and you, you’re still open, you’re still in business telling people, Hey, we’re here. We got you. We got your back. Let us know what you need. Communicate with us. We’re here to communicate with you and doing that quickly. I think that’s key for a small business. And then you look at medium businesses, large businesses, whatever, it’s the same thing when all this stuff first started happening and we continue to do it this way, we put up a portal page or a landing page basically said, Hey, we’re here.
We’re still open. These are all the things that we’re doing to make sure that your service is reliable, that your experience is reliable, that you can still reliably get ahold of one of our people even though they’re sitting in their pajamas the same way you are dealing with their dog and three kids and whatever when they take breaks. But that we’re here and we’re serious about making sure that your experience is good. And I think any business should be communicating and over-communicating that stance If you truly are. Now, if you’re not and you can’t provide that service, then also be honest about that and people are likely going to be a little more accepting of that right now than maybe they would’ve been if it were a sunny day. The economy is great and you’re like, Hey, we just don’t feel like helping you. So I think over-communicating is important and just, I don’t think you’re ever going to go wrong when you tell people genuinely that you’ve got their back and you’re going to take care of them.

Jonathan:
It’s interesting. We were talking about normalcy a little bit earlier and the way that I’ve been thinking about it, one, it’s important to acknowledge that it’s not business as usual. This is a strange time. Yet at the same time, having routine and having the things that, and I’ve had some living experiments with our kids here over the past couple of weeks, but having an adjusted routine, you can’t expect to do the same things that you’ve been doing. The park is closed now, so if it were summertime, we’d be spending more time at the park, but the park is closed. So even as the weather gets nicer, we have to, but still, even though as we acknowledge the situation, still having a, okay, here’s what we’re going to do, here’s how we’re going to adjust to this change and still being flexible about that. But yeah, that’s important.
And for a small business especially, it’s like, okay, let’s acknowledge it. This is different now, but these are the fundamentals. These are the things that are not changed. Communication, providing value to our customers, this is the way that we can do it. And I think what we’re starting to see more of is businesses that are looking at areas of ways that they can provide value that they hadn’t before, and there’s an opportunity for innovation. We have to acknowledge that for many it’s just straight up painful and really for all and for some, there’s nothing they can do right now, but for some, if you’ll start with that, the acknowledgement, but then saying, okay, well what can we do now? How can we provide value? You’re seeing people good online who they’ve been putting off things now they’re getting into it. And

Mendel:
There are multiple businesses in Austin that they sent me an email and they’re like, Hey, we used to be this mom and pop shop. Surprise, we have a new online store order whatever you want. And I’m like, yep, I’m going to take that, that and that. Right? Because it’s also rewarding that you’ve heard about the distilleries, I’m sure changing over to hand sanitizer companies.

Jonathan:
Oh man.

Mendel:
And I’m like, yep, I’ll take 64 ounces of the good stuff, whatever. Because they’re keeping people in business, they’re keeping jobs around and it’s cool. It’s cool to see more people coming online as a result of this. I guess that’s my happy moment, seeing people finally dust off those plans to build an online store.

Brad:
We talked about how things won’t be the same, and I agree with that. This is a new chapter and we don’t know what that’s going to look like right now in the middle of it, but the one thing I do know is it’s good for the internet. Everybody is now, whether they did or not in the past, they now realize how important internet is, how important it is to have an online presence if you’re a business or schools. Some schools are really good at e-learning, fully equipped. All the kids have Chromebooks, no problem. They didn’t skip a beat. Other schools have no idea what to do, and they’re scrambling to try to figure out how to get some learning to these students, especially older kids, that these are important years. You can’t just skip a whole semester of high school and go into the next year.
You’re going to struggle a little bit. There’s going to be some kids in some tough spots, I’m sure. So schools are going to have to reevaluate. E-learning businesses are going to have to reevaluate remote working and how critical it is that they have some kind of a plan in place that they can work remote in a situation like this. So at the very least, the new norm is going to be that people are going to pivot to the internet and figure out ways to work through the internet if this were to ever happen again or something else at this level, God forbid, that keeps everybody in their homes. That is the new norm. So being in the internet online sector, we all are. I think, Jonathan, you said there’s a lot of interesting opportunities. There’s going to be a lot of innovation, and I think all of us and all the people watching are going to be right there at the front lines helping however we can. So I think it’s going to be very exciting to see where the web’s at just in a year or two from now.

Jonathan:
I’m part of a local Toastmasters organization and we didn’t skip a beat the first week we jumped into Zoom and it was very interesting to adapt. If any of you have been, it’s a very formal, this happens, this happens. You go up to the podium, this happens. And we had to adapt yet figured out pretty quickly how to do it and have created a good experience that by the second and third week we were starting to invite guests into and it was cool to be able to be in a position and all of us have this where things that we take for granted about how to use technology and how to put things together and our familiarity with, it’s really valuable in a time where more people are saying, okay, well it’s time. I need to finally get a camera or a microphone or I need to do this. Or hopefully you’ve got that early Now it’s really, it’s hard to find those things, but it’s interesting to watch people where necessity breeds these new experiences that when it’s all done, you’re like, you know what? We could actually make it easier for people to attend these things who maybe can’t out all the time. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can adapt it.

BobWP:
That’s interesting because opening up these new opportunities that either expand and they probably can be kind of an add-on now for a lot of instances, just like you said, the Toastmasters, and it probably gives people a different perspective when you think of it because it is a lot of the things when we’re talking with each other and we’re sitting and talking with each other around a table or lunch or whatever, we move that online. It is truly a different experience and maybe that is beneficial in a lot of ways because giving people a new comfort level for things they might want to start exploring that they never did before. They’ll think, Hey, next time they hear somebody doing something online when things are semi-normal, they’ll go, yeah, man, I enjoyed it, so now I’m going to dive into that. Instead of saying, oh God, I can’t be online, that’s the last thing I want to do. I don’t even know what button to push. And it’s going to really, it is, it’s expanding opportunities for people in a controlled situation.

Jonathan:
All criticism suspended, we get a little round of applause for Zoom. It’s been crazy to see kids using Zoom all around the world, people using it.

Mendel:
Totally.

Jonathan:
It’s been talk about the infrastructure load and having to be prepared for things like that. I’ve been like, man, nice work guys.

Brad:
Yeah, I’m really surprised it didn’t have some outages, at least in the first week especially. But

Jonathan:
They had what, 700 million new visitors to zoom us?

Mendel:
That’s crazy.
Some of that I think is super cool. Going off of what you were saying, Bob is this painting with wine thing that people do where you go sit in a room and you have a canvas and they teach you how to paint and you paint something terribly, but you’re on your fourth glass of wine and so it doesn’t really matter. And I’ve seen these things going online where they have this thing where they’ll give you this package and then you can go take it to your house and you can paint and watch the instructor do it. There are wine and cheese tastings through a cheese place here in Austin. They’re doing tastings. You go pick up the plate or they put it in your trunk and then you take it home and you do the cheese tasting remotely and there’s wine tasting the same way. And when I think about it, I also can’t help but think that this is going to be super great for people that are in vulnerable populations or couldn’t get out of their house,
That never really could experience the world the same way an able-bodied person could or somebody that wasn’t in a vulnerable population. Think about somebody that’s bedridden but they really love to paint or maybe they’ve never tried painting. Think about how cool that would be to connect in that way. And so I can see some really interesting possibilities with the mashup of the physical world and the virtual world now that literally everybody in the world has a webcam and everybody has a microphone and they’re thinking outside the box to create these experiences. So I am really excited about that and that also opens up new people and new possibilities of meeting people if only virtually that I would’ve never met. So I don’t know. I think that’s pretty cool too.

Jonathan:
Have any of you guys played with Mozilla hubs or similar things?
So Mozilla hubs, it’s like a virtual reality space, but it’s very accessible. So you can use headsets, which it’s kind of optimized for, but you can also just use a keyboard or a mobile device and it puts you in these physical, these virtual spaces together where one of the big things you’ll notice if you’re wearing headphones is like sound is like you move, but I’ve done some playing with it and started to think about having WordPress experiences, like WordCamp experiences that are virtual. And I was really impressed with my first few of like, wow, you can actually, there’s something about having an avatar and for people gaming, it’s all really familiar, but the whole point is if you’re not used to it, making it really accessible and being able to experience someone behind you or hearing a voice in another room, and I dunno, again, things that people wouldn’t try otherwise, but then they’ll like, oh wow, this is a really interesting experience that you now have context for when we can appreciate being able to get together physically. Actually again,

Brad:
When’s the first VR word camp? Sometime this year? Probably word camp VR baby.

Mendel:
Well, I think it’s a fine point to make here, and that is a lot of people think about VR as completely virtual, and I guess what I’m suggesting is that it’s possible to integrate the physical world in with the virtual world so that yeah, maybe your environment doesn’t look exactly the same, but you’re doing the same thing in the same place with smelling the same things, touching the same things, seeing the same things. And so that’s a notable augmentation to the VR idea,

Jonathan:
Being able to watch a movie together but in different places, right?

Mendel:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Shared experience and shared experience that is not as scary as we’re not to the point yet where VR can make it so that you can feel, taste, all that stuff, at least safely or non experimentally.

Jonathan:
Oh man.

BobWP:
Alrighty. Well this has been a great conversation and I think what I like is that I had no idea where we were going to go with it. Let everybody know we did not plan this or talk about anything that we were going to talk about. I had made a few notes and I’ve just kind of pushed them aside, but I think that, but I like about it is that we have talked more positive than, I don’t know how long we’ve been going here, if it’s been quite an hour, probably maybe about 45 minutes or so, but we brought a lot of positivity to the situation and I think everybody can use some of that right now because we didn’t do it in a smarmy, big grin, unreal kind of way. We did it down to earth and really, I think a lot of people listening to this couldn’t relate to what you all shared and maybe think of it as, okay, there are some good things that are coming out of this.
Often that’s the case. I mean out of anything, you never know what will in the longterm affect you and what new adventures you’ll have and new things you’ll explore. So I don’t know if we want to end this with, I dunno if each would have some final little comment or a little thought you might want to add to that and then we’ll just kind of head off into the sunset or I guess it’s going to be census sooner or later. Watch. Yeah, go watch the ducks or bugs or whatever you want to watch. Mendel, you want to start with something?

Mendel:
Yeah, sure. Just want to say in the spirit of everything we’re talking about here, I’m a guy with tons of experience in the online world and with WordPress and WooCommerce and I’m extremely happy to open up my time and attention to you if you need something, whether it’s building something or learning about something or finding a resource and just getting sent in the right direction. So I’m at, if you will it on Twitter, no strings attached, no money attached, just some goodwill. So let me know if you need something.

BobWP:
Cool, Jonathan.

Jonathan:
Yeah, I ya the cord out of my computer for a moment.

BobWP:
I thought, okay, he’s done with it. He compliments zoom and then it loses his feet. Yeah,

Jonathan:
I think the thing that’s really stood out for me is how important, even as we’re stuck at home, community is in the midst of this and as I’ve been working with organizers around the world, my encouragement is like, Hey, just lower the bar. A lot of people have, oh, I need to do this big production and just connecting each other. It’s often unspoken. I’m someone, I love being at home. I’ve noticed though I don’t like that I can’t go out. Of course I could, but I’m trying to follow the rules and it’s tough. It wears on you. Community is really important and just encouraging people to both find community to connect to in the midst of this and also to be a part of facilitating that connection, helping others get connected, inviting people to do things. I’ve done more like extra projects with my local school and local church community and those have been valuable ways of just connecting with people. All that is the unique thing about this to me is as I talk to people around the world, we’re all being affected by this. So recognizing and remembering how important it is as humans to be connected to each other and finding ways to do more of that sometimes and then having a positive experience like, wow, I really needed that. I didn’t even know I needed that.

Brad:
Yeah, mine, I think similar to Jonathan’s, but I’ll kind of go back to the idea of just think of, look at the silver linings. Really, this is an unprecedented time. This is something we’ll never forget. We’ve never been in anything like this. And to your point, Jonathan, the fact that it’s global is even crazier. My sister lives in Scotland and I’m talking to her more now than her family than we have in a long time. I’m talking to friends that I haven’t talked to in years. We’re just popping on Zoom because everyone’s kind of bored and antsy and like, Hey, let’s connect. I’ll throw up a zoom. Anybody wants to maybe have a coffee or a beer or something, let’s hang out. And I’m seeing a lot of that. People are really, even though we’re not able to get together, people are really trying to figure out different unique ways to connect virtually and especially with people that haven’t even seen in years.
I feel like families are connecting more again virtually. But it’s an interesting time. So I keep going back to that because there’s so much negative news and the news is so negative because it kind of has to be with what we’re going through. That’s the facts. The facts are negative, unfortunately. So you got to look at the positive side of it and look at that. Like you said, Jonathan community like family and friends connecting over Zoom or FaceTime or whatever that looks like chatting on Facebook or Slack or whatever. I feel like I’m more connected in some sense in some areas than I have been in a long, long time, which sounds kind weird to say, but it’s true. And of course there’s other areas where I’m not right. Like you said, John, you don’t realize you want to leave until someone tells you can’t. Then you’re like, I got to get out of here. So look for the silver lightings. There’s a lot of positivity out there. At the end of the day, the entire world’s in this together. The news is starting to get a little bit better in the us I think we’re starting to see some positive stuff, hopefully flattening the curve a little bit, especially in the New York area. So stay positive, look for the positivity and we’ll get through this together.

BobWP:
Excellent. Yeah, I’ve already kind of spoken my 2 cents there and yeah, I’d just say just hang in there the best you can and reach out. You got some great people here. I’m always available if you want to reach out. And I just personally want to thank the three co-hosts I have because they’ve always been here for me. When their time comes around, they’re not saying, oh, Bob just can’t do it this time. They chime right in and they jumped at the chance to get on here and have this little bit of discussion. And so I’m fortunate to have Mendel, Jonathan, and Brad, and I know sometimes they talk behind my back, but I don’t care.

Brad:
Oh, Bob knows we’re home and we had nothing to do. So

BobWP:
Yeah, really this is prime time for me. I can just ping him anytime and get a hold of. Well, thank you guys. I really appreciate you pulling together for this. I think this has been a great chat. I hope people get a lot of it and I just, yeah, we’ll just leave it at that and hang in there. Take care and reach out to any of us if you have any questions or just want to chat, we’re all here for you all next time. Do the.