Enterprise-Scale WordPress in the Modern Ecosystem

Brad:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Scaling Enterprise WordPress: The Inside Track. I am one half of your co-hosting duo, back for another really fun episode. We have a really awesome guest, which we’ll get to in just a second, but as always, I want to welcome Tom, the other half of this show, to the episode.

Tom:
Hey, Brad. Hey, great to be here. Excited to be doing another episode. For those that listened to Karim’s last episode, unfortunately, I couldn’t be on that one as I was on vacation up a mountain with very poor internet, so glad to be back home on the fiber.

Brad:
Yeah. Well, we’re happy to have you back, and this is going to be a really fun episode, so I’m glad you’re here because we have a really special guest whom we’d like to introduce now. James Giroux is joining us on the show. Hey, James.

James:
Hello. Hello, everyone.

Brad:
Very excited. If anyone who’s been in the WordPress industry for a while has probably crossed paths with James at some event or some online endeavor. James, you have a really cool kind of history of your path through WordPress, and one of the reasons I want to set the context of why you’re on the show about enterprise, I think that’s important, but then we’ll dive quickly into how you got there because I think it’s a really fun journey, and I want to hear a little bit more about it. What really caught my eye, James, was back in July you posted a tweet and a blog post announcing that you started a new role at WordPress VIP under Automattic, and you’re learning enterprise deeply. So right away that caught my eye because I had never quite heard that phrase, “learning enterprise deeply,” but I was like, we got to get James on the show because he is literally doing what we’re talking about within WordPress and the inside track around enterprise. You have a really great blog post about it, which we’ll talk about and we’ll share in the show notes, but I’d love to hear a little bit about your journey through WordPress, kind of quickly how you got to where you are now. You’ve touched so many different parts of the WordPress ecosystem that brought you to VIP and the enterprise level side of it. So, let’s talk about how you got there real quick.

James:
Sure, yeah. I have been in the WordPress ecosystem for, oh, 15-plus years at this point, so it’s been a long time. Not maybe as long as the two of you, but I’m chasing your heels a little bit. Like most folks, I got started just looking for something that I could use to build a website. So, that’s kind of how I got started tinkering, and from there I like to call it the “four bases of WordPress.” You’ve got Marketplace, Agency, Product, and Automattic. Those are the four bases as far as I’m concerned in WordPress. My journey is like that. That’s why I called it a home run, but I started out really just on the freelance side, on the agency side, doing work for customers, clients, all that kind of thing. Then from there, I ended up working with a product called PageLines, which was one of the early pioneers of this whole page builder concept.

Brad:
I remember PageLines. Yeah, that was a long time ago.

James:
A very long time ago. So I worked there developing themes and plugins for that ecosystem, and that’s really what kind of launched me into WordPress at a community level, was my involvement there. I was hired by PageLines eventually as their Director of Operations, working with developers and things like that. From there, I met some folks from Envato at PressNomics. I was at PressNomics 3, hanging out, driving around, and ended up hearing about a role at Envato. So, I joined Envato in 2016 as their WordPress evangelist, which was great. I could continue to go to all the events that I really wanted to go to and get paid for it, which was a really neat and novel thing at the time. After about five years there, I moved to Gravity Forms and worked at one of these pillar product companies in the WordPress ecosystem. Then I was at StellarWP, working with all the folks over there. I was a Director of Brand and Product Marketing there, then transitioned out of that, and now I am at Automattic in WordPress VIP as a Technical Account Manager. Bit of a career swap, but I’m loving it.

Brad:
Very cool. Yeah, no, I think one thing that stands out about your story is just, and I like to talk about the community and the impact of engaging, meeting people, and going to events. I know things are a little different than they were maybe 10 or 15 years ago, but there’s still a lot of value in those events. Like you said, your career path was just by attending and being present, meeting people, and talking to people. It shaped your career and kind of opened some doors that maybe otherwise would’ve been harder to open, going in without any kind of a warm lead or knowing people within that company or within that industry. So, just want to touch on that, get out there because it can absolutely help in the growth of your career and what your goals are and your aspirations, which is another reason why I love this community.

So, going into really focusing on where you’re at now and some of the goals that you’re looking to accomplish, going back to that “learning enterprise deeply.” You posted this a few months ago, so I have to imagine you have not learned everything about enterprise in a couple of months. I think you probably have a little bit further to go, but I’d love to hear a little bit about early on—it’s been about a month and a half since your post and you’ve kind of dug into this a bit—but what are some of the things that really stand out? Maybe some of the challenges, or things that were unexpected or maybe even expected, but what really stood out just in the last month and a half, two months since you’ve been in this new role?

Certainly! Here’s the continuation of the transcript with corrected spelling and punctuation:

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James:
I think one of the things about enterprise that folks on the outside maybe don’t understand is you really don’t know what you don’t know. I think that for me has been the first little bit of learning here—it’s learning what I don’t know. I didn’t really know what a DXP was before joining WordPress VIP—that’s a Digital Experience Platform, for those who don’t know. I didn’t really understand the role that WordPress played in larger enterprise infrastructure and how it integrates, and the kinds of complexities at a technical level that a lot of enterprises deal with. Nor would I, because so much of my past experience has been very direct WordPress, where you have one application, you have one WordPress installation that you’re responsible for, and you have to be concerned about that at a very small scale. In terms of traffic, all the concerns are very different, and looking at how do I scale that thinking out and look at the kinds of challenges that exist. So, that’s been really interesting. The sales cycle has been interesting. The role of technology service providers, or technology platforms like VIP, and the relationship they have with agencies, and how those work together. The role they play, and the relationships they need to develop with product companies as well, and how that factors into how we deliver solutions to customers and clients. It’s a very interesting nut to crack, and I’m enjoying it. Yeah, it’s so much to learn.

Brad:
We could probably do an entire show on sales cycles, couldn’t we, Tom? I mean that’s, oh boy. That might be a little bit of a trigger for both of us as agency owners in this.

Tom:
Yeah, we’re both jealous of you not knowing about them.

Brad:
Yeah. It’s interesting you mentioned not knowing what you don’t know, and I think when the larger community hears “enterprise” and “WordPress” specifically, I think the assumption is it’s a big website with a lot of content, a lot of writers, most likely a lot of users in the backend, and a lot of traffic, which is by and large pretty true, but there’s a lot more than that. That’s kind of the surface level of what enterprise entails. All the behind-the-scenes stuff of integrating with SSO and different providers and APIs, and all the security requirements that go into it that are well outside of Core WordPress. It can absolutely work with WordPress, but it takes more advanced teams to make those things happen. So when you really get under the hood of what the enterprise work is with WordPress, it’s so much more than just big websites with a lot of traffic—a way I like to describe it. But there’s a lot more than that when you start peeling back that onion.

James:
Absolutely. It’s been really interesting looking at the number of people that need to be involved, and you can’t really get away from it. You think, “Oh, it’s just a big website with more traffic.” But no, I mean it’s bigger projects, there are more stakeholders, there are more moving parts that you may or may not understand or know about. There’s a lot of extra discovery that goes into it. It’s been really interesting watching different projects that we’ve gotten different customers on. So, we’ve got customers that are just starting and getting ready to launch and going through that process of migrating from maybe an existing build they have on a different platform or on a different WordPress installation over onto the VIP architecture. And then you’ve got those that have been on VIP architecture for a while and sort of what maintenance looks like in that cycle and how that goes forward. It’s really, really interesting. And just the number of people involved at all different levels and the ongoing work and the constant communication that needs to happen at an enterprise level is way different from running a local restaurant or running a local e-commerce retail shop’s website. It’s very, very different.

Brad:
Yeah, no doubt. Tom, what do you got over there? I don’t want to monopolize this conversation.

Tom:
Well, I’m keen to dive a little bit into some of the stuff that you raised in the blog post that you wrote calling on the WordPress ecosystem to embrace enterprise. So, why’d you write it? I guess this phrase “learn enterprise deeply”—we’ve typically reserved that phrase for pretty important things. I think Matt’s only used it twice, for JavaScript and then for AI. So, why do you think enterprise is that important to the WordPress ecosystem?

James:
Well, as a community, as a content management system platform and open source, we’ve done a really good job of hitting the ones and twos, right? We are really good at being a first choice for a lot of folks that are looking for a website that delivers minimal traffic concerns, no compliance, no security—none of that kind of stuff. But if we want to grow the ecosystem beyond the ones and twos to the hundreds and the thousands, we really need to look at where a lot of folks work. They work in government, they work in large enterprise, they’re on marketing teams of thousands rather than marketing teams of five. There are intranets and extranets and all of that kind of stuff where WordPress has an opportunity to flex its muscles. And we have maybe not fully understood that or cared so much about it. Like all folks, we take the path of least resistance. We go for what’s easiest first. We’ve done easy. We’ve accomplished easy. And now it’s time to accomplish what’s maybe a little bit harder. My whole pitch, my whole thinking behind that is, if we want to see WordPress grow to 80% market share—which I know is probably a pipe dream—but if we want to double what we’re currently at, 43%, and get to 86%, then we need to get into these enterprises because that’s where young people are going to work as well. They’re not all going into startups, they’re not all building apps for themselves and doing things for themselves. They need to find a job, and they’re getting jobs in banks and pharmaceutical companies and all these other places. If the tooling that they’re being provided is Sitecore or Adobe, whatever Adobe is running with, they’re not getting the best of what the web can be. And so, that for me is one of the reasons, because once they’re experienced with WordPress in work—when they’re paid to use WordPress in their day-to-day—that’s going to leak out into their side projects because that’s the platform they’re most familiar with. That’s how we grow adoption. That’s how we grow WordPress in my opinion, and actually get it to a place where it’s solving the really hard problems of the web that folks have.

Tom:
That’s a super interesting take, because it’s like actually probably a lot of the early growth of WordPress was almost the opposite of that, right? People were not using it at work, but they were discovering it and using it for their own stuff. They were blogging, they were using it for their kids’ football team or whatever, and a lot of the early penetration into business was people using it for their side projects and then bringing it with them, fighting the good fight internally: “Why don’t we use this WordPress thing for our site? I’ve been using it, it’s great.” Maybe we’re transitioning out of that, and actually it needs to become the default at work so that all these young people who get jobs are introduced to it there. I love that take. I’ve never really quite thought of it in those terms.

Brad:
I think even early on, as WordPress really started transforming from a blogging platform to a true CMS, back when custom post types were introduced and it really became an option for the enterprise, getting some of those early enterprise clients also really helped validate it for everybody. I know it made my job easier as an agency owner when I said, “Hey, we just launched something on microsoft.com with WordPress.” So, everybody we talked to at that point, the idea of “Is it secure? Can we use it?”—those questions really went out the window once we said, “Well, Microsoft’s using it, and they did a full-blown security audit on it.” So that in some way also helped, I think probably more in that mid-market, to say, “Hey, we can actually use this when we just thought it was a blogging platform.” So, I think even that early on, just getting a couple of those key large enterprise brands on WordPress, and we could all point to them as a community and say, “Look what these brands are doing,” that really helped accelerate WordPress into the CMS market and has continued to, because I still use those examples. But we don’t have to answer those questions anymore, or certainly not as often. “Is it secure? Is it a blogging platform?”—those are long gone, right? The enterprise has helped squash that, in my opinion.

James:
Yeah, I completely agree.

Tom:
I’m interested in enterprise WordPress’s place within the wider ecosystem, the awareness of it, the role it plays—maybe what your perspective was on that or your awareness of it before, and how that’s shifted since. And maybe, therefore, what you think we need to do more as an enterprise WordPress community, as the subset of the WordPress community that’s focused on enterprise, to better showcase actually how successful WordPress is in enterprise. You were saying you joined VIP, and you get exposed to quite a lot of stuff, and you’re like, “Oh, I perhaps didn’t actually know WordPress was being used

in these ways or the level of complexity.” It’s a bit of an iceberg problem I think we have, where there’s quite a lot more happening than perhaps people realize.

James:
I think there are a couple things to that. Before I really dove deep into enterprise, I couldn’t find anything on WordPress enterprise. There was nothing out there I could read, there’s nothing out there I could go to. I mean, I could go to events—and I did—and I’m very grateful to folks who would invite me to show up at their enterprise events. But I didn’t know how to even jump into those conversations or start them, and that’s a big part of it. I couldn’t go to a WordCamp and get a 101 talk on enterprise. We joke about the sales cycle, but it’s so intimidating. But where’s the opportunity for agencies that are looking to build out their freelancer bench to talk about what does it actually take to become an enterprise freelancer or to work in this space? Or how can we equip you to be able to jump into what we need? There’s none of that. And so, I think that’s one of the reasons why I wrote that blog post—to sort of wave a bit of that flag and say, “Hey, I can’t even find anything to help me get started on the path toward enterprise.” And the reality is that what’s going to end up happening is folks that are really good at Drupal—not that that’s bad—but that’s sort of where enterprise is, or they’re really good at Sitecore, and they’re going to go, “Okay, well, we’ll expand our toolset, maybe we’ll look at WordPress,” but they’re not really going to be from the community. They’re not going to be part of the story of what we’ve been, and it’s going to make it harder for those of us who truly understand what WordPress is all about to get in front of these enterprises that are looking, possibly, at WordPress as a tool, and helping them understand what this ecosystem and this community is all about.

So, that’s one thing. I think, what can enterprise folks be doing? You need to get out there more. This is hard because I’ve been here a couple months now, and I haven’t written a blog post since my announcement post because my brain is so packed with all of the things that I’m trying to learn and understand, the complexities, and just all the things that I’m finding it hard to sit down and write. What do I write about? What do I talk about now? So, I need to get out there and do that. And that’s what we need more of. We need more enterprise champions showing up at WordPress events, at WordCamps, doing things like this podcast—which I think is fantastic—and just really talking through what does it mean to be enterprise WordPress? What are the challenges we’re facing? How do we invite folks in? How do we get product folks in who maybe have no idea how their product is being used in an enterprise setting? I’ve got a call coming up with one product company that has no enterprise pricing, no enterprise service level, but their product is being used in a really intense way on a customer’s website. What’s really cool is being able to facilitate that as somebody who’s got both the community side and the enterprise side now, but we need more of those relationships to develop between WordPress product companies and enterprise agencies and enterprise infrastructure companies—I would call VIP. Let’s get them all around the same table and talking. The product companies don’t have any clue how their products are being used at scale.

Tom:
Yeah, I mean that’s definitely a common problem I see.

Brad:
Yeah, and thank you for calling out the podcast because honestly, one of the reasons we’re doing this is because there aren’t enough people in the WordPress ecosystem, WordPress space, talking about enterprise and sharing our knowledge and information. Getting people like you, James, on to share your experiences, your learning, and where you’re at, because there just hasn’t really been a lot of this, even going back across the 15 years or so that we’ve all been doing this. There hasn’t really been a lot of dedication around enterprise, talking about it, challenges, what can we do to help push it? It’s another reason why we’re all really excited, and Tom and I are both a part of the Scale Consortium, which for years I think many of us kind of looked at Automattic, and maybe even VIP in a sense, and said, “Help us, sell us in the enterprise. Help push us into the enterprise.” But the reality is it was on all of us to do that. So, it took a little bit of time, but finally all the agencies were able to get together that work in that space, in the WordPress enterprise space, and say, “Look, if we work together on helping spread positive information and what people are doing in WordPress enterprise, it’s going to help all of us.” And so now the Scale Consortium exists exactly for that reason. We’re really pushing into the space to help spread awareness, spread information, help people learn around enterprise, have events at WordCamps or other webinars, share that information. Because you’re right, I think many of us agency owners especially, it’s trial by fire. Did I start WebDev thinking I want to get into enterprise? No. But when Microsoft walks through your door or a big brand walks through your door, you learn it real quick, right? Not going to tell them no. So, I love that you call that out. Exactly why we’re doing this. We’re hoping to get more of this in, between the show we’re doing here, and then with Karim and Tom. Even though we’re early, I feel like the information we’re getting out there—these are conversations that have not been happening in the public, and they need to be happening. So, I love it, and I’m hoping that the audience is also understanding what we’re trying to do here and getting some value out of it.

Tom:
Yeah, I mean I hope that you do keep blogging as well, James, actually, because I’ve read your blog for a long time, long before you were writing about enterprise, so I’m kind of even more excited to read it now that you’re in enterprise, which is a space that’s even closer to my interests. The listeners to this show should all go and start reading it—that’ll add to the pressure for you to then give them some content that’s relevant.

James:
I don’t know if it’s writer’s block or if it’s just my brain is full of all the things, but I’ve been challenged. I’m going to WordCamp US and I’m looking forward to the conversations. WordCamp US is really exciting for me this year because of Showcase Day, and because it’s a really good opportunity for enterprise to have its moment in the sun, so to speak, and the spotlight. We get to see innovation, we get to see scale, and it’s so exciting that somebody’s starting to pick that up a bit. I’m looking forward to the kinds of conversations it spurs. I’m curious what I’m going to be thinking about after.

Tom:
Yeah, I think it’s going to be super interesting. I mean, I agree, it’s a really exciting evolution. I know even last year there was the NASA keynote, which was almost a precursor to this Showcase Day, and that’s a really great evolution. It’s going to be interesting—probably the first time there’s going to be a day with all of those people who are doing this kind of work, all there, showcasing together. The conversations afterward—I’m pretty interested to see what the floor traffic is like, and the kind of conversations that come off the back of that, the collaboration. Hopefully that opens up.

Brad:
There’ll probably be some surprises in those showcases, too. There are going to be some things that kind of blow us all away—like, “Oh wow, look what they built, look what they did.” I mean, just WordCamp last year with NASA.gov and the big push there and the presentations was honestly digging into understanding the amount of data and what they worked through was pretty mind-blowing. And obviously, it was all behind the scenes until they presented that. So, it was just fun to hear more of the challenges, more in how they worked through those with NASA, especially with the amount of content, which was absolutely insane, that they had to migrate into a block-based system. So, it’s fun sharing that stuff, it’s fun hearing it. I’m glad it is more focused. I know Matt used to—Matt Mullenweg—used to mention some highlights in his State of the Word, but he’s kind of gotten away from that, and probably for good reason, because he doesn’t want to play favorites when you’re showing off what other companies did. That could come off as playing favorites. So, I’m excited about that, too, because I’m sure there are going to be some interesting surprises—projects none of us knew were even out there, things that happened, and we’ll be like, “Oh, wow, I’m going to be telling some of my clients about that because that’s cool.” Sharing the information around enterprise, sharing out there. I know it’s not all enterprise—it’s just showcasing WordPress—but I have a feeling there’ll be a few big showcases in there.

James:
I’m excited to see our enterprise customers and clients in the WordPress ecosystem having their time to present what WordPress means to them and how they’re using WordPress from their mouths, from their perspective, and what will it mean. The WordPress ecosystem is very different from the

way the rest of the world operates. We’re kind of nice. And because we’re kind of nice and because we’re kind of kind to folks, the way we operate and interoperate together is a little bit different, and that can throw folks for a loop that are coming from other industries. And so, it’ll be really neat to see what happens when you get these big publishers that are competitors in the publishing landscape together, showcasing how they’re using the same technology platform to achieve their goals and do things, and what’s going to happen when they start talking to each other off the stage and see some of that WordPress culture, that WordPress community vibe sort of leak into how they interact with each other. There’s just something really cool about that that I’m looking forward to seeing happen, too.

Brad:
And honestly, just in WordPress in general, I feel like that is the vibe. People want to share. And maybe honestly, it’s the open-source vibe. It’s not just WordPress. It’s like if you’re into open-source and you’re into it enough that you’re going to attend an event about a piece of software, I’ve got to believe there’s some passion behind it. You’re proud and excited about what you’re doing, and you want to share it—even if you’re sharing it with competitors, you want to say, “Hey, look at the cool things we’re doing over here.” And they’re probably, like you said, sharing some things they’re doing that you weren’t aware of or you might be interested in. It’s similar to what agencies are doing and freelancers—we’re all showing off our work, like, “Look at this cool thing we built.” So, you’re right. Seeing actual owners of websites, publishers, really showing off and sharing information is going to be pretty neat. It’s just open-source. We’re all out there trying to build and help each other and just build an awesome platform that we can all use. So, I’d like to talk just a little bit about some of the goals. What are some of your longer-term goals within this new role? What kind of impact are you looking to make around organizations, clients, or just WordPress in general? We’ve talked about it being just a month and a half—it’s still a fairly new role for you—but long-term, your vision, what kind of impact are you looking to make?

James:
Well, I’ve packed up 15 years of marketing experience and taken that hat off and put on the account management hat. It’s a bit of a career reset for me, which is kind of neat to do. Long-term…

Brad:
Maybe a little scary too, huh?

James:
Yeah, it is. It’s very scary. You’re sort of starting from ground zero again, but with 15 years of experience, it’s kind of cool actually to do that. My first goal is to become the best technical account manager in the world. So, that’s maybe the entrepreneur in me going, “Take over the world!” or whatever. But I want to be the best.

Tom:
I like that. That’s only the first goal.

James:
Yeah, that’s the first goal: be the best I can be, be the best that I can do, support my team, be somebody they can count on, bring all of the knowledge and depth of experience I have across the WordPress ecosystem into this role and add value to these relationships, and add value. That’s the number one thing. Maybe selfishly—we don’t really have a lot of—this sounds so funny to say—but enterprise WordPress influencers. Why not be an ambassador for enterprise WordPress? We need more folks that are championing the transition from one side of WordPress to the other and opening those doors, and it’s something I did all throughout my career in the rest of WordPress, so I don’t see why I couldn’t do that at the enterprise level and just connect folks to each other, connect partners. So many of our product companies just need a door to be opened for them or exposure to what’s going on in enterprise.

Tom:
Yeah, I mean I’d love to do an episode actually on enterprise for WordPress product companies. Of all the parts of WordPress, I think they’re the ones that seem to have cracked enterprise the least. But like you say, there are lots of enterprise companies that are discovering their stuff and using it, and there’s a lot of opportunity there.

Brad:
Please start charging more for products because enterprise, they don’t want to pay $99 a year. They just won’t trust it if it’s that cheap.

James:
But the issue isn’t the $99, it’s the fact that they’re not going to get the level of service and access to a team that they need. Every build is unique. We think that folks in enterprise are just using WordPress as vanilla WordPress—they’re not. They’re taking WordPress, and they’re molding it and shaping it into something that works for them. They’re rebranding it internally. They have different names for it as a tool, and they can do that because they’re paying millions of dollars a year to do that. So, yeah.

Tom:
Well, yeah, there we go. Add that on the list, Brad, for a future episode because…

Brad:
Yeah, I love that idea, Tom. I love that. And talk about enterprise influencers. I mean, I’ve got to be honest, Tom’s got the look, he’s got the style, he’s got the voice—just lacking the influence! The stars are aligning, Tom, I’m telling you. But I do think I love it because, like we talked about, getting more content out there—and honestly, even YouTube and videos are so popular now, more popular than ever, and it’s really gaining traction. And within the WordPress space, there’s just a lot of great video content out there, and I expect that’s only going to continue to grow, especially in the enterprise space too, as that usually catches up once the masses are out there doing it. But yeah, more content, more information, sharing resources, getting people talking about more of the challenges, talking about the FUD that’s out there from other platforms, talking about WordPress and how we kind of speak back to that and alleviate those concerns. So, enterprise is a big topic, and there is a lot to dig into, which is one of the reasons we’re doing this. We bring on awesome people like you, James, and really understand where you’re at, your experiences. And what I would love to do is have you come back on the show maybe in six months, maybe next year at some point, and really circle back through your progression. What has transpired? Did you expect it? What have you learned? Things like that. Since you are a little bit new into the role, I think it’ll be fun to have you back on a little bit later next year and kind of dig back into where we’re at.

Tom:
When you’re a grizzled and tired enterprise WordPress expert.

James:
After the honeymoon period is over and I’m into the day-to-day grind. Yeah, exactly.

Brad:
Yeah, after the old honeymoon period. But it’s pretty exciting. Just to wind down a little bit, any kind of final thoughts around the enterprise space and really what’s just top of mind for you, James? We talked about short-term goals, some longer-term goals, but really what’s top of mind for you in the space and where you’re looking to go?

James:
I think, like that blog post says, we’ve got a lot of opportunity to help people get a better grasp of what enterprise actually looks like. I think WordPress is ready. I think a lot of our product companies and even our hosting companies that are maybe more downstream are ready to make the leap. They just need some help figuring out what that looks like. I would like to see more of that happening. Maybe I’ll write about that. Actually, that’s a good topic for me to sort of follow up on. What am I thinking about? What are my final thoughts? I’m curious to see how we as CMS folks—not just as WordPress—start to navigate thought leadership more broadly. WordPress, we’re competing against Adobe, we’re competing against some other proprietary platforms. We’re going up against these monolith DXPs, and we’re advocating for composability—all words that make sense to folks that are in enterprise, but maybe don’t make sense to anybody outside of it. But we have an opportunity to lead the pack when it comes to innovation. AI, we’re so much more agile than a lot of these other platforms are, and I would love to see us moving more in that direction as well, more broadly, and bringing more folks who maybe have sold themselves to these other platforms to come over and see what it’s like. The grass is very much greener over here. So, yeah, those are the things I’m thinking about.

Brad:
Come on over. We’re very friendly.

Tom:
I mean, that ties back perfectly into the need for more influencers, right? Because I think actually the biggest need for influencers is to project that vision that we have—that WordPress has for enterprise—out into the world. At the moment, most of the buzzwords and categories and descriptions of what enterprise CMS is are set by our competitors, set by the analysts. And we tend to play catch-up, and we tend to say, “Oh, WordPress could do that,” but they’re the ones that came up with what that is. And then we’re scrambling to try and prove WordPress could do it.

James:

That’s exactly right.

Tom:
Actually, perhaps with folks like you getting out and saying, “Well, actually, this is what WordPress’s vision for enterprise CMS is,” that’s super exciting. I think if we can start doing that—that’s a great point, Tom. That’s the next era of growth.

Brad:
Awesome. Well, this has been a really fun show. Appreciate you coming on, James. You mentioned you’re going to be at WordCamp US coming up, which is September 17th through the 20th out in Portland, Oregon. I will be there as well. Tom, are you going to make the trek over?

Tom:
I will be there, absolutely.

Brad:
Yeah, you’ll be there. It’s a long flight for you.

Tom:
It’s a long flight for me, so I’m stopping in New York on the way, so I’m not coming as far.

Brad:
Okay, well, that’ll help break up the flight a little bit. But anywhere else people can find you online, James? You want to plug your blog or any social networks where people can interact with you if someone wants to chase you down and say hi?

James:
Yeah, absolutely. My blog, JamesGiroux.ca is a great place. My handle pretty much everywhere is JamesGiroux, so you can find me on X (formerly known as Twitter), LinkedIn, or give you my Gravatar—yeah, so it’s all there.

Brad:
Very cool. Well, I look forward to seeing you in person there. I’m definitely going to track you down at WordCamp US and get a little FaceTime. Really appreciate you coming on the show, James, and we’re looking forward to following your progress and really rooting for you and rooting for the enterprise. And we’re here to support, however, as obviously, this is important to all of us, as well as a lot of people out there. So, I’m excited we’re doing the show. I’m excited we’re talking about it, we’re getting people like you that are talking about it, blogging about it, and right in the middle of it. So, this is exactly what we’re looking to showcase with this platform. It’s been a lot of fun. So, Tom, anything you want to plug before we head out?

Tom:
No, just to say thank you for the work that you’ve been doing so far, especially the blogging and the influencing. That’s, I think, a big gap. So, keep doing that. And yeah, looking forward to talking more about WordCamp US.

Brad:
Awesome. Well, for Tom, I’m Brad Williams. This is Scaling Enterprise: The Inside Track. We will see you on the next episode. See you, everyone.