The Real Impact of Sponsored Contributors on WordPress Progress and Innovation

Adam Weeks:
Hey everyone, this is Adam Weeks talking on Open Channels. We are talking today with two incredibly talented ladies about core contribution to the WordPress project. I have Amy and Miriam. Today, Miriam is going to tell us a little bit about herself. For those who don’t know and everybody does. Miriam, share a little bit about yourself and who you are.

Miriam Schwab:
So my name is Miriam Schwab and I’m head of WordPress at Elementor. I’ve been at Elementor for three years. I joined after they acquired a startup I founded called Stratic. I am Stratic with a product in the WordPress space as well. And prior to Stratic, I founded and managed a WordPress development agency for 13 years. So I’ve been in the WordPress space for over 18 years and have been involved in various ways. So yeah, I’ve been around for a while and I am passionate about supporting and helping the WordPress ecosystem and community.

Amy Kamala:
Sure. Hi Adam. Thank you so much for having us. I’m Amy Kamala. I’m a contributor to the WordPress open source project. I have been since 2018. I mainly contribute to the hosting team. I have worked for a couple different web hosts over the years that support WordPress, alongside with many other contributors. The hosting team is mainly developers, system administrators and other professionals, but also some plugin developers and aspiring contributors.

Adam Weeks:
That’s great. Thank you Amy and Miriam for sharing your time with us today. In our community there’s a lot of talk about contribution, why you should do it, does it matter? Is it still relevant? We are far from the roots of a very small number of people. You know, this thing is huge now, obviously larger than 43% of the Internet. A big, big deal. It may be difficult to think of how can individuals actually make a difference in this? And so I want to start with Amy. Is how do you feel that you make a difference when you contribute? How do you make a difference as an individual?

Amy Kamala:
Well, as an individual, I’ve been working in an administrative capacity. So the hosting team acts as an intermediary between web hosts that support WordPress and the WordPress Open Source Project. So for example, if there are bugs, other issues that hosts find as they’re testing WordPress, they can report that back to the open source project through the hosting team. So I’ve facilitated that and others have as well. In an administrative capacity, we would be a point of contact for web hosts if they run into issues during testing. The hosting team has a distributed testing software that hosts can set up on their platforms to test releases prior to actually being released to the public and report back in advance. And that helps the WordPress open source project to iron out any issues before users are actually affected by them. It also gives hosts a chance to iron out issues that are compatibility related with their platforms. Specifically for WordPress. There are a lot of hosts that support WordPress and Aspire or are effectively being WordPress hosts, specifically, for example, Kinsta, there are a number of them. And because WordPress is so popular, it benefits hosts to support WordPress and to have a relationship with WordPress. So as an individual, I have acted kind of as a middle ground between hosts and the open source project and that’s what the hosting team does as well.

Adam Weeks:
Nice. So you’ve been able to make a difference on your own. You’re there, you’re working with these different hosting companies and an administrative role that’s really exciting. Other people can do that too. What I’m curious also, Miriam, is if you could kind of lay a little bit of the background for Elementor’s contribution. Has Elementor always contributed, always from the beginning, or just give us a little bit of background for the current state and background of Elementor’s contribution to the WordPress project?

Miriam Schwab:
Elementor has been contributing for many years, but in a way that wasn’t necessarily recognized by the project in an official capacity. So a mentor has sponsored many WordCamps, which, you know, is controversial. Some say sponsoring a WordCamp is a marketing play, but I and we see sponsoring WordCamps as an opportunity to enable the community to get together by highly subsidizing tickets and reducing the cost tremendously by sponsoring and and to be honest, it’s not a tremendous marketing opportunity to be at WorkCamps. We’re very happy for the opportunity to meet the community face to face and our users and engage and the feedback we get is very valuable, but it’s not like a pure marketing play. So we do see WordCamp sponsorships as contributing to the community. And Elementor’s, the company and the founders have created many plugins that have provided a lot of value that are just free in the repo, including obviously Elementor Free, the core version, what we call core, which provides tons of functionality and people can use that for many years, many websites, without ever needing to upgrade. And that helps grow the open web and democratize publishing in an additional way. So that’s the type of contribution that happened until the last few years where when I started in my role as head of WordPress, we discussed how we can formalize Elementor’s contribution, structure it in a way that is more recognizable and also hopefully makes a real impact on the project itself. And so that’s when we set up our five for the future presence, I don’t know what to call it, and started seeking out.

Adam Weeks:
So it’s your fault. You’re the one that really brought it to Elementor, which is exciting.

Miriam Schwab:
I didn’t bring it to Elementor. I am fortunate to work for people who know that they want to do these things, but, like, we’re lacking maybe that very direct link to the community that I had after having been in the community for so many years, like I mentioned. And so, like, I really like, I live and breathe WordPress. Whereas, you know, sometimes people create products for WordPress, but they don’t always like, have that, you know, very kind of almost intimate connection. So when I took on the role, we discussed it and they, you know, management shared their very strong interest in contributing in a more structured way. But I’m very supported in my efforts, in my work and the investments that we make. I have very strong backing and basically, you know, I. I can do what I think we need to do, more or less. That’s how it works.

Adam Weeks:
Fantastic. So Elementor is wanting to contribute as a whole. You are kind of leading the charge and you’re thinking, how do we do this? I’m curious about your relationship with Amy. Was it that about Amy’s work that said? Yep, we want Elementor to be a part of what Amy’s doing.

Miriam Schwab:
Actually, Amy’s not the first person we’re sponsoring as a contributor. We already. The first team that I organized our contribution for was the performance team. But I will say that my experience in trying to figure out how we can contribute was not simple. Once I, you know, started this process of looking for ways to meaningfully contribute. Finding a way to sponsor cotton contributors was really actually not easy. I had to do a lot of research and I had to talk to a lot of people and there’s not really, at least then especially there wasn’t a mechanism in place for a company that wants to sponsor financially contributors, rather than putting team members on sponsorship on Contribution. We do have team members that contribute but we wanted to expand it so we didn’t have the internal capacity for that. So we wanted to sponsor externally. It was actually really not easy but through research and discussion and also trying to identify a team that where our contribution could have an impact, we settled on first the performance team, then expanded it to the plugin review team. So we sponsored a contributor there, then the theme review team. Actually a very small team taking care of a lot of themes that really matter for our ecosystem. So they were thrilled to like that. Now someone there is sponsored full time and then I wanted to expand our sponsorship further and I met Amy a few years back and I loved meeting you, Amy in general as a person. But also your background is super impressive. I mean I don’t know how many people are have such expertise and deep depth of experience in the hosting space and in the WordPress hosting space, both as an employee of hosting companies. So seeing the inner workings from that perspective, but also making very meaningful contributions to the WordPress hosting team. So when it came time to further expand our contribution, I reached out to Amy to see if that was possible and interesting to her. And you know, it was a bit of a process because we’re bureaucratic companies sometimes, all the time. But no, it’s getting better, it’s getting better but you know, it’s a thing. So anyways, and then we were able to make that happen and I’m really excited because the hosting team hosting is the infrastructure of WordPress. Every WordPress site needs to be hosted somewhere and how it’s hosted, the quality of the hosting, the consistency it deserves, community effort. And so anyways, that’s the story with sponsoring Amy and her very important work on the hosting team.

Adam Weeks:
That’s very cool. So Amy, a couple questions. Do you consider yourself a full time contributor? Is this what you do?

Amy Kamala:
No, I’m a WordPress developer. I’ve been in a couple different roles. Some infrastructure, kind of a combination of infrastructure, web servers design, user experience and web development or software development, combination of those things. So I consider myself a full stack developer. I have art degrees, I have a master’s degree in fine arts, so I have a background in visual arts. I previously had a career in animation and film in a past life and that actually does benefit me and my career in WordPress, not specifically in the hosting team, but it does benefit me in a business capacity. And so no, I’m not a full time contributor. My contribution has varied in terms of quantity over the years. Like I said, I started contributing in 2018 I was working for a web host at the time and I was not sponsored. I just kind of fell into it and was interested and very motivated. Later on I was sponsored by a couple of employees while I was working for them. This is my first time being sponsored as a contractor, not a full time employee. So it’s a little bit different for me but my contributions have varied. In the past it has been closer to full time, whereas I was working full time and then also on top of that, three to five hours a day contributing to WordPress, doing meetups, helping with camps, helping with the hosting team and also helping with core at certain points, various points in time. Right now I’m contributing part time. Of course that could always change, but at this point in time I’m contributing part time.

Adam Weeks:
Very cool. As far as contribution goes, what are some of the direct benefits that you could see to companies such as Elementors or others? What is kind of the case like hey yeah, we need people, we need companies sponsoring people. So I want to go from it from both sides on your perspective is hey, I’m an individual, I have some skills and talents. I believe in this project. I, I would like to help out more but I need to be sponsored for my time someone. So we’ll start with there and then I’m curious your perspective on the benefits to the company. So first you’re a person who wants to help out with a project. How do you position yourself to be sponsored?

Amy Kamala:
So as an individual, if somebody feels aligned and connected with WordPress values, being part of the community can be personally beneficial. You make friends, you learn things, you grow. As an individual, you WordPress is a global entity and you can have exposure to other cultures, other mindsets, other thinking. It’s also very diverse. And so there’s a lot of personal benefit to being part of the community. As a contributor, there’s networking opportunities, which is not my personal goal in contributing, but it just happens to be that way. It actually can be. If you ever like speak at a word camp, sometimes there’s a bit of an overwhelming response from a large amount of people. That course positive people are generally really, really nice. That could be a little bit intimidating. So if you have any imposter syndrome, it’s going to come out in that arena, most likely. But for companies it benefits. WordPress is a huge ecosystem and there are a lot of companies that their entire business model is based on WordPress working with WordPress piggybacking as an add on a plugin a theme for WordPress or hosting WordPress. And those companies can really benefit by having a relationship with the WordPress open source project, a positive working relationship. So that doesn’t mean that they get to control what happens with the WordPress software. They don’t. But it does mean that there’s a feedback loop where companies are communicating with the open source project. Bugs get resolved faster. Motivation for projects can be invested in or amplified. Companies know what’s going on, kind of like on the back end of the WordPress project. Before the public knows, before it hits all the blogs and the articles and so forth, companies have a insight into what’s coming down the pipeline. And so in that regard, it really helps companies to have a working relationship with WordPress.

Adam Weeks:
You’D mentioned the being a speaker at a WordCamp. That’s one way that people might, you know, see you and see some of the work that you’ve done. I think that’s fantastic. And then also from the company side, some of that feedback. Miriam, from, from your perspective, what are some of the benefits? What are some of the arguments to be made on both sides of like hey, we aren’t currently. If a company is currently not sponsoring anyone, what are some of the things that a company would want to think about before they do that?

Miriam Schwab:
When a company is sponsoring a contributor or contributing their own, let’s say internal resources to the open source project. The way that I looked at it was I was trying to find a good fit in terms of a number of things. One, teams that resonated with us, our values or our goals as a company. So the performance team was a good fit. I personally my background with Strata clickstart that I founded, one of the primary goals of Stratic was to solve performance issues in the WordPress landscape. And so I think that having a faster Internet is better for everyone in many ways it creates better user experience, even could be seen as better for the environment. So it was very Interesting to us to and for Elementor in general, performance is a big priority and if WordPress is faster than Elementor is faster. So it made a lot of sense for us to contribute there because we saw it as benefiting the entire ecosystem and also aligning with our own priorities and goals. It didn’t mean we had any say or anything in anything that they were doing there, but it was just, it was great to be able to support their efforts and they made some very significant progress over the last few years in improving WordPress performance or at least maintaining the performance metrics rather than losing them, which is actually something that can happen. So that was that. And then the next one was the plugin review team and the reason we started sponsoring that one was because I don’t know if you remember, but there was like a huge issue with backlog of plugins there and there was a real need to increase resources on that team. And so it just was like a no brainer, like we’re a plugin oriented company so we get how important plugins are. But the, there was a clear need and so it was just, you know, a good fit also so we could kind of like swoop in and help out there. And since then the plugin team has, you know, also maintained a reasonable backlog and everything. So it’s great. So, and I want, you know, that’s kind of how each one evolved. There’s teams that resonate less with us and so then we’ll look to sponsor elsewhere. So I think every company needs to look at their own internal kind of DNA, interests, passions, it’s like that kind of thing because in the end we’re not like gaining actual direct benefit from it, but it’s just, it’s nice to support something that you’re very aligned with. So I would say to companies, look for that and yeah, we support contributors because it’s the right thing to do. When you’re a company that’s built off of free open source software, that free open source software needs to be sustained and we can’t just be like, no, they’ll do it and they’ll do it, we also need to do it. And so that’s why we do it. But I like Amy, what you said about the benefits, they’re like soft benefits, you know, they don’t impact the bottom line necessarily. So I don’t think companies are going to this being like we’re going to make big bucks out of this. No, you won’t, you will not. But it, you do, you, you connect with People who are key to the ecosystem and the project and all the things that you mentioned, you get to have an impact which is meaningful and especially if your, your company’s like vision is related to that and supporting open source and it’s the right thing to do. So yeah, so that’s, that’s kind of how we see it. We’re all, by the way, it’s like all learning process. Someone who is leading this kind of activity at a different company, he reached out to me to get some advice and he’s like, what’s your strategy? And I started laughing because it’s like each time I’m figuring it out and seeing who’s contributing and seeing who needs, like, it’s just, I’m trying to do the best that I can and that we can.

Adam Weeks:
Yeah, I think that what you’re hitting on, there’s this, to me, there’s this idea of companies like us do things like this. And in the WordPress community, community, the businesses of WordPress are unique in that they are built on the backs of volunteers. You know, this company, this whole infrastructure is built on this open source project. And I think that the companies are unique in that are in this WordPress ecosystem. And so I kind of go back to you. Companies like us do things like this, there may not be this direct one. For one, we spend money here on sponsoring incredible people like Amy. And so then we’ll make this amount of money. But there is a certain amount of, if we do enough good stuff, if we are smart with how we are benefiting the community, it will raise what we’re doing and we will be successful. And that’s kind of the feel that I get.

Miriam Schwab:
I think it’s a sentiment thing, which sentiment can’t be measured. And I don’t think that there’s necessarily an ROI on sentiment, but as an organization you definitely want there to be more positive sentiment towards you rather than less. And when you’re in an open source ecosystem doing the right thing, in this case, which is specifically contributing to WordPress, it creates more positive sentiment towards you as an organization. I think also it creates a stronger sense of trust that you’re not just there to take, you’re also there to give. And you’re shouldering the burden with everyone else and not just handing it off. And positive sentiment does matter. So I think there’s that.

Adam Weeks:
Ah, fantastic, Amy. So you’re someone who, you see what’s happening in core. You’re, you see those who are just volunteering their own time, you see those who Are sponsoring what? How would the world be better? How would WordPress be better if there were more people like you sponsored? Like, do you see any specific things that. Oh man, if we had more people working on this, this is how the software, this is how the community would be better.

Amy Kamala:
So sponsoring contributors facilitates directly development momentum. Without the contributors doing the work, there’s not any development. WordPress would progress much more slowly, if at all. The maintenance, security and other types of maintenance needs to happen for WordPress to be able to function and for a lot of these companies too, for the company’s product offerings. WordPress needs to be functional, up to date, needs to be maintained, needs new features, needs all of this work to be done. So the more contribution there is, the more work is done on the WordPress software.

Adam Weeks:
Nice. So as we’re wrapping up, I’m going to ask each of you to speak to the, maybe the community that you represent. Amy, you representing the contributors. Miriam, you representing companies that are working in this space and kind of that call to action for you. Amy, what would you, what are you, what would you tell people, hey, this is the best way to contribute directly to the project. We talked, you know, about speaking at wordcamps, but like what, what would be your, your call to action for individuals who believe in what the power of WordPress is? Yeah, what would be your call to action?

Amy Kamala:
So for any individual that’s interested in contributing, my first bullet point for advice would be to join the Slack community and start attending meetings, pick a team or go to every team and wave in in the Slack meetings and comment, make connections with people. That’s really the first order of business for anyone that wants to contribute or be involved. A lot happens in the Slack community. The majority of asynchronous communication happens within Slack and so that would be the arena where contributors need to participate. Second would be to make a friend, an existing contributor that is already embedded in the WordPress space to some capacity who could help onboard you, introduce you to people, help answer your questions, guide you on what to do, how to do it, when to do it, where to do it and be moral support and technical support and offer guidance. And thirdly would be the WordPress. On make.WordPress.org the various teams are frequently putting out call to actions and call for volunteers. And at that point that’s an opportunity for contributors to jump in and become involved in the various projects that are happening within the WordPress space. So if contributors are interested in actually getting involved, volunteering for those different projects, like right now, there’s an open call for volunteers for working on core WordPress 6.9. So anyone can volunteer for that. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to become part of the team at that point, but it does create visibility for you as a person who wants to be involved. People start to see your name, especially if you’re waving in at meetings, you become part of the community. And there are often frequently open calls for contributors. And that’s when folks would want to jump in and say, me, me, me. I want to do this, I want to help. And a lot of the time WordPress is a very, very welcoming space. A lot of very nice people. In terms of the contribution community, it’s very nice, it’s very diverse, it’s very accepting and supportive. And if you attempt to be involved, people will warmly welcome you and try to help guide you and take you on in that capacity. And the majority of contributors that end up contributing long term, they do those three things. They make friendships. They either already have friendships or they make friendships or both with existing contributors. They kind of dwell on Slack quite a bit. And then when they see the call for actions and the call for volunteers, they raise their hand and volunteer.

Adam Weeks:
Wow, those are. That’s incredibly great, actionable items. Yeah. Getting in slack, going to org, seeing what’s there. And then I really like what you said, Make a friend. The thing that over and over again, I see. I think the reason why this project works, it’s because of the relationships people have with one another. We’re in this together. We have this larger thing that we’re trying to build and create together. And it’s the people that make that happen. So I love how you kind of started that with make a friend and be a friend. That’s fantastic, Amy. After this, you’re gonna have lots of people who want to be your friend. They already do.

Amy Kamala:
I’m here for it.

Adam Weeks:
That’s awesome. Miriam. You know, from Elementor’s perspective, as a company who says, hey, we don’t want to do this all on our own, we know that there are. We need more companies for doing this. What’s your call to action for small, big companies that operate in this ecosystem for sponsoring contributor contributors, either internally or externally. And actually, if you want to kind of talk to that a little bit about the differences between external contribution and internal contribution, I’m curious.

Miriam Schwab:
As someone who owns a small agency, I understand how hard it can be to allocate. Allocate resources to contribution. If smaller organizations can. That’s great. I would say, you know, you need to make sure your business is running like. And okay, right. Small businesses, it’s often like a matter of that. And so it’s up to us, those of us who have more resources to make sure that we’re contributing. Even the smaller ones could, you know, give an hour a week to let’s say translation, you know of something or whatever, you know, you can find a way. And then once you start contributing, even if it’s a matter of like an hour or two a week, you can already open up a five for the Future page and register that and start your journey as a contributor and then hopefully as your business grows and you can maybe expand that as well. Yeah, so I would just look for places even like to start, low hanging fruit types of places where it’s like you have the skill set, they have the need. It’s not necessarily too overwhelming. Let’s get started and take next steps for the larger organizations. Like I said, we contribute because we should. Running a business off of open source software means someone needs to maintain it and should be any of us. How you do it again depends on your goals, your, your company, DNA, what you know, where you think you can be, can be the best contributing organization in whatever way. Don’t do the research, understand what the various teams are and try to understand who’s active in them. I mentioned that, it was hard for me, but at this point there’s, there’s some interesting projects to help people contribute, like kind of creating a, I don’t know if you could call it database or community of contributors who are looking for sponsorship. So Michelle Frechette set up a project recently. I can’t remember what it’s called. It’s like maybe WP sponsors or something like that. It’s like something pretty straightforward, but I can’t remember. It’s an amazing resource. And there’s the WordPress community collective which also has contributors listed there who are looking for sponsorships. So your job is easier now in terms of finding sponsors I think. And that’s a good place to start also. So yeah, so you could definitely take the next step. It does take some time and effort and for large organizations it does take management buy in. It’s not an easy sell internally and I’m not belittling that and I don’t think anyone should. A business is a business. There’s boards and there’s management and all decisions have to generally lead towards an ROI or a bottom line or like be justified in that way. And so you need to like Figure out how to make the case for it and get management spy in. But if you can, then it can have a very good impact on the sentiment towards your company in the space that you’re profiting from, which I think matters. And maybe that’s the selling point, I don’t know. But it’s a good experience and I’m very grateful that we can do this. And I get to work with amazing people like Amy.

Adam Weeks:
That’s awesome. I haven’t say that, you know, you know, good things happen in the margin and margin when your company has extra. If you’re like you said, if your company is just barely hanging on or you’re. You’re every little minute, it’s a hard case to say like, hey, we need to take care of what we’re doing. But as your company grows and you’re saying, hey, we’re doing well here, we have extra. What can we do to give back? And I think it is the special companies of WordPress that think about those things and people like you, Maryam and Amy. I’m so glad to get to meet you. Are there any in person events that the two of you will be at that people might be able to run into? Any WordPress events?

Miriam Schwab:
Oh, I’ll be at WordCamp US we’re sponsoring so we’ll have a booth. I’ll be there with a bunch of Elementarists like we tend to do at the flagship. So I hope people will come say hi. You’ll be able to find us. We’re the pink booth. It’s hard to.

Adam Weeks:
The pink booth. Excellently branded by the way.

Miriam Schwab:
Thank you, Amy.

Adam Weeks:
Will you be at any of the in person events coming up?

Amy Kamala:
Not sure if I’m going to be at WordCamp US this year or not, but the hosting team will absolutely be at WordCamp us. There’s going to be a hosting table at the Contributor Day event and so anyone can drop by and become involved in the hosting team. That’s another way that folks can get involved with contribution is showing up at contributor Days at wordcamps and sitting down at a table and saying I want to help. What can I do?

Adam Weeks:
Fantastic. And that’s actually how I chose to be. The most visible part of my personal contribution is I’m on the sponsorship team for WordCampus and an incredible group of people who are making things happen and we are yet to see how this event turns out. There’s a lot of talk about numbers and all of that kind of stuff, but yes, I hope that lots of people come and sign up and buy their tickets because we need more people to show up in person. So Amy, I hope you are able to make it. As we wrap up, is there any last things that you know people, how they can find you and where you where your stuff is at online?

Miriam Schwab:
I’m on Twitter LinkedIn marriage Schwab. You can find me there. Vita chat and connect and be a.

Adam Weeks:
Friend like Amy was.

Miriam Schwab:
Be a friend. Yes, let’s be friends.

Adam Weeks:
Let’s be friends.

Amy Kamala:
And Amy on Twitter LinkedIn Amy Kamala K A M A L A and Amy’s a M Y across all platforms. That’s the name that you can find me under and on WordPress Slack. That’s the name that you can find.

Adam Weeks:
And on WordPress Slack. As you mentioned before, I’m there too. Good place to connect and to make friends. Well, thank you both so much for your time. I hope this is inspiring to others about the pros and cons and the reasons why people would want to contribute and make that a part of their company’s DNA, that part of their company’s vision for the growth of the WordPress project that we all benefit from. All right, thank you both so much.

Miriam Schwab:
Thank you.