Live from WordCamp US 2023

Robbie: This going to be a very short episode Do The I’m Robbie Adair, and I’m here Robert Jacobi and we are recording this live in front of a WordCamp studio audience.

(applause)

Robbie: Okay, thank you. They just

Robert: love us here.

Robbie: Do you know, Robert and I worked ten minutes on that before this. It’s hard to corral all, what, 1, 500 people? We did convince them to sit and listen to us do this It’s amazing.

Robert: Ah, it’s so much fun doing Do The Woo.

Robbie: Yes, it is. We love doing Do The Woo. And thanks to Bob for having us come over and do this at his booth, that it’s one of his new sponsors right.

Robert: But we are actually in the sponsored hall here in Washington, D. C. ‘s Gaylord most super gigantic hotel on earth.

Robbie: No joke, this place is ginormous. I was really surprised how big it is. But it’s amazing for type of of an event because there’s so many places you can break off to and have a meetings, quick meetings. You can work. And people are co working. It’s actually really cool. I had to go do some client work and I sat down at a table with two other people. We all doing work, but we’ve been chatting, and it was just everybody was like, this is different. I’m usually just sitting by myself at a computer working. It was fun .

Robert: It’s literally like this podcast. When was the last time you in person to do a podcast?

Robbie: I think the last time was WordCamp Europe.

Robert: State of the Word.

Robbie: Yeah, we there too. That’s right, State of Word. Oh my goodness, I know. So it’s cool to do stuff in person with people, but it a fantastic venue for doing this. It’s really large. And there so many events that are going on. And I saw something really cool Robert. I was on X or Twitter or whatever we’re calling it these days. And you had designed, I know, because you had cheat sheet for all the events going on here at WordCamp. And how’s that going for you?

Robert: Oh my god, I can’t believe how that blew up. Unbelievable, yeah. It started just as a quick thing for myself cause the site’s so big and keeping track of everything and what not. So I decided to post it on my blog and all of a sudden it just went WordPress viral. So I have to do one I guess for every event.

Robbie: Yes you are. Now, and I’m going to expect that because you made it really easy for to put my schedule together.

Robert: Thank much. It was a pleasant surprise.

Robbie: So we’ve had a day of sessions. Did you make it to the NASA talk this morning?

Robert: Coolest session I think was the keynote with WordPress and NASA. And how, there was so much stuff in there. It was 45 minute session keynote. And they packed in lot. So much stuff. I can’t even remember all the acronyms. It’s NASA so it’s a government project. Filled with all sorts of acronyms. But there’s a whole new government web development standard platform, and it’s WordPress, and just a huge awesome deal. Oh, got one of our fans here front of us.

Robbie: That’s right. storming the stage

Robert: Jessica Frick, say hi to everyone.

Jessica: Hi everyone. Woohoo,

Robert: we got Jessica.

Jessica: I was just coming by show my butt.

Robert: You going to be recorded saying that.

Jessica: Fantastic.

Robert: Jessica Frick from Pressable. A little distracted here.

Robbie: Yeah, it shows you how it is to distracted here when you’re doing these shows live. Anyway, yeah, so NASA talk was interesting. I really appreciated, too, the fact they made it really feel part of the WordCamp. they were not only telling us what they had and how they had used WordPress, but then were also relating the whole thing to audience here too and saying that they realized that WordPress is built by a community and they thanked everyone there because they know they wouldn’t have this tool without this community. And so it was just really because it didn’t feel like it was just someone coming in and giving us a case study. It felt like it was just another member of the community that was telling what they did and saying how they appreciate the whole community.

Robert: It was strangely friendly for someone as big as NASA. Then were workshops about the project after the keynote and they’re doing things with accessibility and security.

Robbie: Yeah. And they even gave hands on demos of some of the blocks that they had created and stuff. Yeah. Really awesome. I really enjoyed that. I’m also quite a space and so I’m from Houston where NASA is I really appreciate it. it.

Robert: And one of the nice things was there was a little of Q& A, and of course, the most important question was will NASA’s project be open sourced? And they’re going through the government channels, and there will be a ton of custom tools they built will be open sourced.

Robbie: I have a client actually, that is government based, or it’s government, and they’re a state government, but they have some tools from our federal government, and they have something that is called Government Open Source. And a, similar to Open Source, but is called Government Open Source. Probably it’s a different licensing, I’m not sure, but it’s quite interesting, so I wondered when they said that, or said how they’re going to release this. We’ll have to watch it. And then there’s just been awesome networking. call it the hallway track, as most people do. So much networking. But, yeah, like I said, it feels a little bit not as frantic paced as some the WordCamps. It’s been calmer, I can talk to someone for 10 or 15 minutes and not feel stressed and need to be somewhere else.

Robert: 100% and people have figured out where to just hang out and meet, and whether that’s in a giant lunch room behind us or near registration or outside in the cafe areas, people decide where they want to camp and it’s nice and nothing feels unattended because of that cause it’s just so many people here.

Robbie: Yeah, absolutely. And so tonight is the night that all of the sponsors are putting on events. my goodness, your dance card gets real full, real fast, and you’re just having a party, but it’s so much fun, because you to see many different people, I would say a more concentrated sets of people.

Robert: On, let me check the cheat sheet.

Robbie: Oh, yes. So the Woo Meetup, it’s gonna be everyone is and talking about Woo.

Robert: it’s a big Woo community meetup. WordPress VIP is having a social event. WP Engine. And I think the big will be Pride.

Robbie: Pride. Yeah. Absolutely.

Robert: And Pride’s going latest, so I where we’re all going to end up. It’s going to be fantastic. If it’s anything, even just remotely close to the Athens Pride Party, it’s going to be amazing because that party was by far, I have to say, I go to a lot of conferences, a lot, and I go to a lot of networking events at those conferences, and by far that Pride party was the best one I’ve ever been to.

What’s interesting about Pride specifically is it’s meant to be a celebration. the events, which are networking events and whatnot. Pride is really to celebrate, have fun, be inclusive, and it’s just a great experience.

Robbie: Absolutely, it is. So I’m looking forward to tonight, but also knowing that means I don’t get much sleep for tomorrow. But tomorrow, we have another full day of sessions. Sponsorship Hall is going to be open again and of course, tomorrow, we have Josepha and then Matt close out

Robert: Correct. have the Future of WordPress, I think that’s with Josepha, and then the WordPress Advantage.

Robbie: Gutenberg. Which is Gutenberg.

Robert: Which is Gutenberg.

Robbie: That is. If you go into deeper details of the talk it’s Gutenberg, which we know Matt has said many times is future of WordPress. It’s more important than WordPress, which I totally agree with. I’ve had some long discussions people this year though, too, it’s funny, some people they don’t know. I don’t understand that. But then, when I start telling them, because I’m in other communities, not just WordPress community, I’m in Joomla and Drupal and other communities and Laravel and Gutenberg is slowly making its way into and I feel like that is Matt’s vision. Eventually it could be the editor that is the intersection between so many open source projects, even applications after he did the licensing and stuff for it. So it would mean though, to me, what I see is I see this ability for people make blocks that could work in anything and mean, so it’d be extension block builders for Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, everything.

Robert: Wix.

Robbie: Anything. Wix needs it too. Squarespace. Whatever. They need to use Gutenberg and then we could have these tools that all of and it would be amazing.

Robert: And then also just a consistency for the end user. . So gutenberg becomes the web editor, application editor like WordPress is the publishing platform, 60% of everyone’s using Gutenberg. That makes it a lot easier to learn and move between different types of projects. And friction in that creating content process.

Robbie: Yeah. And if a developer says, Oh, this is a complex project that I need to use Drupal, use Drupal but, Oh, users never want me to do that because it’s difficult for them. If they had a way to use something like Gutenberg that made it easy for the users, now you can use whatever tool you want as a developer.

And so I think that’s cool. And not only are we seeing Gutenberg, but even in a way, WordPress a little bit, because the APIs we’re seeing whole lot of endless use of WordPress there and endless moves. So I think it’s really cool , it’s like WordPress doesn’t feel like it has to keep everything close to the vest and not share. I feel like WordPress is doing it says it’s doing, it is trying to share the world.

Robert: Yep. Without a doubt. Yeah. I can’t add to that.

Robbie: So what about tomorrow night’s closing event?

Robert: The closing event. So that’s going to be at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.

Robbie: Which I’ve never been to.

Robert: It’s beautiful. It’ll be amazing. And yeah, we have the run of the museum as part of WordCamp.

Robbie: Which is awesome.

Robert: That’s crazy in my head.

Robbie: I know. Were you at WordCamp in St. Louis?

Robert: Yes.

Robbie: So that was also in a museum. And that was that was the first time I’d ever been in that big of a party in a museum. And it was amazing. It was just so much fun. And again, you think you’re just going to work here and there’s networking in the hallway track. But it’s It’s at every one of these events. And they’re so different. There are different venues. just different sets of people.

And so you just get network in different ways. is always my favorite part of live events. It’s the networking. I feel like there’s just so many different ways it happens Including that we’re all pretty much staying in the same hotel here, so you see each everywhere.

Robert: And when we say networking, I think it’s important to realize that it’s community building as well. not just business networking. It’s okay, you sell this, I’ll buy this, yadda. It’s people who have worked with each other remotely at companies. So just looking here, there’s SiteGround hosting, or Elementor, WP Rocket, WPEngine, yada, yada. Gotta stop saying that phrase. And a lot of these folks are remote workers, so they get to reconnect in a kind of networking magical way.

Robbie: I think I’ve at least twice today and yesterday, I heard people talking to each other like they knew each other, but then they mentioned, this is the first time we’ve ever met in person though and I’m like, this is so amazing. It’s really cool. And I actually walked up to somebody and they were like, oh my you’re in because in Zoom stuff together, and was like, I’m a real person. I actually have legs.

Robert: I can confirm Robbie has legs.

Robbie: Yes, I do, but you know, most my conversations are with people on Zoom these days and it’s really cool to meet people in person. We did forget to say one thing, that technically, yes, this is WordCamp, but earlier in the week was the WordPress Community Summit, and Contributor Day, which is always attached to WordCamp. And those were, by all counts, huge successes.

I didn’t get to go to either one of those, but I did talk to several people that were at those, and they seemed very well attended, and everyone I talked to seemed to have a really positive experience from it, so that was good. Contributor day, I’ve been to and then I’ve also talked to people after they’ve done them, and they typically seem to be usually pretty successful in the WordPress world feel like. But I didn’t know anything about Community summit. you know mucmuch

Robert: It’s really for the community team leads and core community folk to talk out the next phases of what the org looks like. That’s really what it’s about. My understanding, how do we organize things? How do we move ideas forward?

Robbie: Awesome. Yeah, we should probably let all these 1,500 back to doing their networking. Thanks to everyone for coming over.

(applause)

The crowd is roaring. They are. Alright listen to the next episode of Do The Woo, and thanks for entertaining us’