I’m not usually one for mid-year check-ins, but here we are halfway through 2026 and I keep finding myself thinking back over the conversations we’ve had on the show since January. There have been a lot of them, episodes 710 through 766 if you’re counting and a few threads have woven themselves through nearly all of them whether I planned it that way or not.
So here’s my honest take on what the first half of this year has actually been about while highlighting a few episodes.
AI — Everywhere, and Not Always Comfortably
I know. You’re already rolling your eyes. But stay with me, because the AI conversations we had this year weren’t the usual hype-or-doom takes you hear everywhere else.
The one that stuck with me most was when Zach, Carl Alexander, and Alex Standiford sat down together (Ep. 763) and just got real about what using AI heavily is actually doing to them. Alex said something that I keep coming back to:
“I have spent my entire career learning how to go deep on one thing for hours. AI does not reward that kind of behavior.”
Carl followed it up with the observation that he hasn’t had a true flow state since he started leaning into AI tools. That’s a loss worth naming.
And then there was Kimberly Pace Becker (Ep. 751), coming at it from a completely different angle as a linguist and edtech founder. Her concern isn’t productivity but its language. AI, she says, strips out uncertainty. It sounds confident even when it’s wrong. Her question before shipping any AI feature: “What does this tool do with uncertainty? If you don’t know the answer, you’re not ready to ship.” That hit differently than most AI discourse I’ve sat through this year.
WordPress 7.0 Finally Arrived
In the midst of all the AI noise, WordPress hit a genuinely significant milestone with the 7.0 “Armstrong” release, and I was glad we got to dig into it properly with Birgit Pauli-Haack from Gutenberg Times (Ep. 759).
Visual revisions, in-editor notes for editorial teams, responsive block visibility (something the community had been asking for for years), and a unified API layer for AI integrations. It was a jam-packed release. More than 875 contributors made it happen, including over 200 first-timers. That community story is easy to overlook when you’re focused on feature lists, but Birgit reminded me why it matters:
“You don’t have to start from zero. You start where core left off.”
The Open Web Is Still Worth Fighting For
This might be the theme I care most about personally, and it ran quietly through a lot of our episodes this year, especially the ones hosted by Matthias Pfefferle.
The conversation with Paul Kinlan (Ep. 754) was fascinating and a little humbling. Paul created Web Intents about 15 years ago — a system to let users choose which service handles actions like “share” or “follow” across the open web. It didn’t take off. And honestly, not much has changed. Federated likes and follows still don’t work seamlessly in 2026. His takeaway:
“As an industry, we always want the complete solution. You’re never going to get the complete solution. Solve one small piece, prove demand, then standardize.”
That, combined with Will Norris’s perspective on the IndieWeb and DiSo project (Ep. 744), and my own “Keep It Open” episode (745), made for a through-line I didn’t entirely plan but am glad emerged. The open web needs advocates who are in it for the long haul, not just the trend cycle.
New Ways of Building
A few episodes this year stood out for showcasing people who are rethinking the how of building, not just the what.
Marcus Burnett (Ep. 749, also a former host on the show) came back as a guest to talk about WellPlayedWP, a plugin library built on a single-membership model inspired by SetApp. Instead of selling individual plugins, you get access to the whole growing library under one license.
Every plugin is designed to fill a gap, not duplicate what’s already out there. Marcus is using AI to accelerate development and ship faster, but the philosophy behind it is very human: build things that actually solve problems people haven’t solved yet.
And the WooCommerce automation episode with James Collins (Ep. 747) was a good reminder that automation doesn’t have to be complicated. Start with one repetitive task. Automate it. See what you get back.
What I Keep Coming Back To
If there’s a common thread underneath all of it, it’s this: 2026 is a year where a lot of the old certainties are being renegotiated. What it means to do deep work. What the web owes its users. What community looks like when you can just as easily stay home. What responsible building actually requires.
The conversations that stayed with me weren’t the ones where someone had all the answers. They were the ones where smart people sat with the uncertainty long enough to say something honest.
That’s what I want more of in the second half of the year. I hope you’ll keep tuning in for it.
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