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What’s Exciting about WordPress 6.1?
Press the Issue
11/10/22 • 48 min
- Brian and Teron recall their impressions of 6.1 from the WCUS Q&A with Matt Mullenweg
- They discuss stand out features, accessibility, and what’s going on under the hood.
- Also determined – to what extent does this release move WordPress forward?
Monet Davenport: Welcome to Press The Issue, a podcast for MasterWP, your source for industry insights for WordPress professionals. Get show notes, transcripts, and more information about the show at masterwp.com/presstheissue.
With every new version of WordPress comes an array of changes, updates, and adjustments. Understanding each and every change and how they affect your sites can be daunting. So join Brian and Teron as they discuss the most exciting things coming to WordPress in 6.1.
Teron Bullock: How you doing today, Brian?
Brian Coords: I’m doing good. How are you doing today?
Teron Bullock: I’m well. I’m excited. I know we have a great conversation today. We’re going to talk about WordPress 6.1, and I’m excited to jump into it.
Brian Coords: Yeah, I’m excited too. This is kind of a pretty cool release, and I feel like there’s a lot to talk about coming out with WordPress 6.1.
Teron Bullock: All right, so let’s get right into it. So, I want to paint the picture for everyone. We were both at WordCamp US in San Diego, and we were sitting outside the conference doors, and we were all waiting for Matt Mullenweg to come in and give us this announcement, as he normally does to end the WordCamps. Do you know what they call it, his address? I can’t remember the exact name, but I know-
Brian Coords: Yeah, so it used to be that he would give a speech called the State of the Word, where he would talk about the full year, but in the last few years they’ve separated that. So the State of the Word usually happens now in December, and so he’ll probably do a small presentation then, and this one was really mostly a Q and A with just a short presentation at the beginning. And I think they just called it Q and A with Matt Mullenweg.
Teron Bullock: Right. So we’re waiting on this Q and A from Matt, and it seemed like the anticipation in the room was surreal. It’s weird because on one hand, you had ... It was like almost had a fever pitch, you had so many people who were just chomping at the bits trying to figure out, can we get in the room? What is he going to say? What’s going to happen? But then you had other people who were kind of like, “All right, here’s another conversation, here’s another address,” yada, yada, yada, like, “What can we expect?” So you had the people who were super excited, but then you had other people who were almost waiting to be disappointed.
And I found it, because this is my first WordCamp US, and so I found it to be really intriguing. I was one of the people that was on the side of like, okay, I’m expecting to see Elvis, Tupac, and Michael Jackson on stage or something, because it just was like really motivating to see as many people who were waiting to hear what people had to say about WordPress. And so I’m wondering, what was your experience before we even got into that room?
Brian Coords: Yeah, well it comes at the end of the conference, so you’ve been there for a couple of days, and like every conference, it’s very exciting, but it’s also very exhausting. So you’re, a lot of socializing, a lot of talking to people, a lot of walking around, a lot of late nights, those sorts of things. So I’m sure I came into it a little bit exhausted and worn down, but also, it’s your one chance to see the defacto leader of WordPress sort of engage with the community. He’s a very busy person, so he has a lot of other companies and social platform to run, so I think people just like to see where his head’s at, what he’s thinking about, what he’s focusing on, because it’s kind of your one opportunity, apart from the State of the Word and apart from sometimes he does another Q and A at the WordCamp Europe, but that’s really in the US that one opportunity to see, what is he going to talk about? What are people going to ask him about? What is the topic of conversation in WordPress?
Teron Bullock: Absolutely. So we get into the room, we all sit down, and then it’s like a quiet comes over the room, and he’s addressed or announced. And then like you said, this presentation shows up on the screen, and it’s WordPress 6.1. And when that presentation first rolled out, what was your initial thoughts?
Brian Coords: Yeah, well the first thing I remember seeing, and I have a pretty terrible memory, but what I remember w...
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Why Is It Important to Pay Event Speakers?
Press the Issue
09/01/22 • 23 min
For years, WordCamps have been run by volunteers, and all the content has been produced by volunteer speakers. Lately, there have been more and more conversations around compensating speakers for their time and expertise. In this episode, Allie and Devin break down the details of what paying event speakers could look like.
Episode TranscriptMonet Davenport: Welcome to Press The Issue, a podcast for Master WP, your source for industry insights for WordPress professionals. Get show notes, transcripts, and more information about the show at masterwp.com/presstheissue.
Monet Davenport: For years, WordCamps have been run by volunteers, and all the content has been produced by volunteer speakers. Lately, there have been more and more conversations around compensating speakers for their time and expertise. In this episode, Allie and Devin break down the details of what paying event speakers could look like.
Devin Egger: Today, we’re here with Allie Nimmons talking about why speakers at WordCamps need to get paid. Hey Allie, how are you doing?
Allie Nimmons: Hey, Devin. I’m really good. How are you?
Devin Egger: I’m doing great. Thanks for taking the time to sit down with me.
Allie Nimmons: Of course.
Devin Egger: So this is definitely a topic that we’ve talked about a little bit here at Master WP, and I’m really glad you’re coming to talk a little bit more about the idea of speakers getting paid at WordCamps, and that’s definitely something that’s been quite a hot button topic. So I guess just kind of starting out, just in general, what are your kind of thoughts on this whole issue and where do you stand on it? I mean, obviously we probably think that people need to get paid, but what do you think?
Allie Nimmons: Yeah. I definitely think that speakers should be paid. I think that anyone who is providing a service based off of their knowledge, their expertise, their experience, there needs to be adequate compensation for that. I understand the model that we have that exists right now, which is super community-based. It’s very volunteer-oriented. It’s very education for the sake of education and learning for the sake of learning.
Allie Nimmons: And I don’t think that there’s anything inherently wrong with people speaking for free. It’s a choice. And I think that in a lot of ways, it destresses the situation in terms of, you can decide to speak at a WordCamp for free and not have kind of additional pressures of, okay, well they’re paying me this much, so everything has to be super duper perfect. Right? I think as a speaker, if you’re doing it for free, you can feel a little bit more comfortable, maybe making mistakes here or there, or maybe speaking for the first time. There’s not as much pressure if you’re doing it on a volunteer basis.
Allie Nimmons: But we start to get into issues where people can’t speak as readily without being compensated, or people are trying or speaking a lot and they’re not being compensated, or at a certain point, the payoff of having that exposure is not worthwhile anymore. And so people are, what’s the word, de-encouraged. It’s not the right word. I’ll think of it later. But it’s not as attractive to speak, especially because there are so many other tech conferences and other types of business conferences out there that do pay.
Allie Nimmons: So if you’re approaching somebody from maybe the fringes or outside of the WordPress community and you’re asking them to come in and to speak and to share their knowledge, a lot of people do expect some sort of compensation for that time because it’s been a standard in other communities. Like I’ve spoken at tons of WordCamps for free, and I love doing that, but I’ve also been offered speaking engagements for other events. I’ve been paid up to $1,500 to just speak. Not anything crazy, not anything more than a WordCamp speaker would be expected to do, and it was just, “Hey, we’d like you to speak. Here’s how much you get paid.” No beating around the bush.
Allie Nimmons: So I think that there’s value to paying people. I understand right now why we don’t, but I understand also coming out of the pandemic, people are very precious with their time and their energy. And I think we’re seeing this really interesting shift right now in companies really appreciating the fact that it’s hard to just speak for free even virtually, and that we need to put our money where our mouths are when it comes to actually paying people to speak.
Devin Egger: Right. Yeah, totally. And that also brings about... You touched on it, but the idea that because we gain so much benefit from WordPress being free and open source, I think that’s kind of the central idea behind it, right, is that we are giving back to that and we provide some additional benefit from our end for being able to use WordPress and benefiting from the open source community. But like you said, that makes it really di...
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Keeping a Sane Work/Life Balance in Tech
Press the Issue
09/22/22 • 12 min
Balancing work life and personal life has always been a challenge up until and continuing into the pandemic. There are actionable and adaptable ways to achieve this balance. In this episode, Lauren Ward talks to Nyasha Green about her six main tips for work life balance, including one bonus seventh tip.
Episode TranscriptBalancing work life and personal life has always been a challenge up until and continuing into the pandemic. There are actionable and adaptable ways to achieve this balance. In this episode, Lauren Ward talks to Nyasha Green about her six main tips for work life balance, including one bonus seventh tip.
Nyasha Green: Hey Lauren, how are you doing today?
Lauren Ward: I’m doing great Ny. How are you?
Nyasha Green: I’m doing well, doing well. I’m really excited to speak with you today. We’re going to talk about an article that you did for MasterWP. The title was Boundaries, Zoom Calls, and Potty-talk:Keeping a sane work/life balance in tech. And I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about your article and just talk about a few things that I thought were really interesting that you wrote. And I just want to start off by asking you what inspired you to write this article?
Lauren Ward: Wow. So my kids and my personal journey were definitely a big inspiration for me, but also knowing that there are others out there in tech looking for a better work, life balance, whether it’s newbies, who might just be starting off in WordPress and wondering how in the world are going to juggle all the things and still enjoy life. Or if it’s the seasoned WordPress developer, who’s realizing that there are just some things in life they want to switch up for a better balance. That’s kind of where my inspiration came from. And honestly, I’m just hoping that my ideas help others in some way.
Nyasha Green: Nice. Nice. And you start off the article by talking about just the routine that you have for not only your family, but yourself. Do you think it’s easier now to do all the things that you are able to do now because you have a routine set?
Lauren Ward: Oh, absolutely. Having a routine in place and setting expectations, not only for my family, but also within myself has proven to help me achieve both day to day work goals, like getting a project completed as well as long term personal goals, like taking a trip or vacation every now and then. And as a side note, I’ve found that having a trip to look forward to even a small one helps so much with being consistent in routines, kind of like a little reward.
Nyasha Green: Yeah, definitely. And with your routine, were you the main one to set this routine up or was it you and your partner? How did you guys go about it?
Lauren Ward: My husband and I definitely worked together to set up our routines and create structure for a productive week. We rely, heavily rely on good communication between us and our shared Google Calendar really helps us along. But setting our routine has not only allowed us to accomplish work goals, but also having more quality time as a family, as well as being intentional and parenting our kids together. And that’s not to say that every day is a win, but having our routines in place has really helped us along.
Nyasha Green: That is so awesome. And it’s funny you say that. I’ve tried to share my Google Calendar with my husband, like a million times. And he finally told me he was like, there’s no way I’m looking at that. I don’t know what you have going on, but the technology you can use to support these routines are definitely, really awesome.
Lauren Ward: Absolutely.
Nyasha Green: How long did it take you all to get into a good routine? I know we’ve talked in the past about how been pretty organized and you are organized. You’re like my role model when it comes to organization. I need help. But how long did it take for you all to get on a good routine together?
Lauren Ward: Well, it’s definitely been a work in progress. Starting off, we tested different strategies and found things that worked for us as well as things that didn’t, and when something didn’t work, we just simply adjusted our strategy and moved forward from there. I think it’s all about testing to see what works and what doesn’t and just having a positive attitude in general about it, but also staying flexible. And when it comes to working while having kids at home, things come up and you sometimes just have to roll with it.
Nyasha Green: Yeah. And speaking of, so you do have two boys. You do have children. I just know you have to have a good story. Do you have any good or funny stories about having them at home while you’re working?
Lauren Ward: Yes. Oh my goodness. Yes. One in particular, I was on a business call with about 15 other professionals and it was my turn to talk. And my little one came in, running into the room, wrapped his arms around me while I was on vide...
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How Accessible Is WordPress?
Press the Issue
07/28/22 • 38 min
In many instances, WordPress prioritizes accessibility in ways that other CMS’s and open source projects do not. But that doesn’t mean we do things perfectly. In this full-length episode of Press the Issue, Allie Nimmons explores WordPress accessibility from as many angles as she can in order to answer the question – how accessible is WordPress?
Episode TranscriptMonet Davenport: Welcome to Press the Issue, a podcast for Master WP, your source for industry insights for WordPress professionals. Get show notes, transcripts, and more information about the show at masterwp.com/presstheissue.
Allie Nimmons: I love podcasts. I love creating them, but I mostly love listening to them. In my car, while I get ready in the morning, while I make dinner, and every so often I stop and think about how privileged I am that I can listen without any assistive technology or devices.
Allie Nimmons: A lot of the time as makers of the web, we forget how easy it is to just read something or listen to something, or just do something in the way the creator of that thing intended, without wondering if there will be some kind of special option for us. The world has been created with able bodied, neurotypical people in mind. Michelle Frechette, in addition to being a very good friend of mine, is the director of community engagement at StellarWP, co-founder of Underrepresented In Tech, and the director of community relations at Post Status. In a recent episode of our own Underrepresented In Tech podcast, she shared her perspective as a wheelchair user. She had recently given a talk about accessibility, and here’s a little of what she had to say about the content of that presentation.
Michelle Frechette: I talked about Word Camp US in Nashville, and for people who are able bodied, they were like, “Wow, this is a long walk.” Well, for somebody walking with a cane, because at the time that’s what I was using, who’s running out of breath and whose legs and back are about to collapse, it was probably a quarter mile walk. So by the time I got to lunch, because you had to go all the way basically one city block and then halfway down the other one. And so you’re talking about a quarter of a mile there at least. And by the time I got there, I was already stressing about having to walk back. So yeah, I could eat, but now my knees are already hurting. My back’s already hurting. Is that really accessible?
Allie Nimmons: After that experience, Michelle did share her thoughts with the organizers, and the next Word Camp US she made sure to ask about the spatial accessibility of the event. Organizers assured her that the event space was indeed accessible, but that wasn’t completely true.
Michelle Frechette: The people who reviewed those are able bodied walkers, people who go for walks for fun, those kinds of things. And to them it didn’t seem that far. But to somebody who has to use a cane or who can’t walk long distances, it was still... And luckily I had a scooter for Word Camp US that year, but if I hadn’t I would’ve been hurting and I would not have been able to participate to the extent that I did.
Allie Nimmons: We can often find it difficult to really put ourselves in the place of someone who has not lived the way that we do. I will admit before meeting and spending time with Michelle, I didn’t really look at the world from wheelchair level. For example, recently I’ve been looking at apartments to move into. All of them without fail have had only stairs. Previously I may not have given a second thought to that, but each time I think, well Michelle could never visit me here because there’s not an elevator. When we look at the web, things are not that much better. There’s a pretty big disparity between how many people need accessible websites and how many accessible websites there are. As one of the largest tools and communities for website building, WordPress has a lot of power to grow or diminish that disparity.
Allie Nimmons: My name is Allie Nimmons, I’m a WordPress builder, instructor, community member, contributor and digital producer of this podcast. As I press into issues relating to the WordPress open source project and beyond, I want to explore how accessible WordPress is. The code, the systems, the events and the community. Press the Issue is sponsored by Cloudways. Cloudways managed hosting ensures that your sites get the performance boost they deserve. It offers you fast speeds, uptime and managed security at affordable rates. Learn more at cloudways.com.
Allie Nimmons: Press the Issue is sponsored by Weglot. Discover a way to translate your WordPress site that’s easy to install, compatible with all themes and plugins, implements multilingual SEO and translates your site with machine translation, with full post-editing control. Learn more at weglot.com. That’s W-E-G-L-O-T .com.
Allie Nimmons: Accessibility might be a bit of a new topic to you, so I want to g...
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07/13/22 • 32 min
It is the duty of those who build with the internet to ensure accessibility. But what does that all mean, beyond completing a set of checklists? In this episode, Devin Egger and Teron Bullock connect to discuss the realities and challenges of web accessibility.
This podcast was sponsored by LearnDash. Your expertise makes you money doing what you do. Now let it make you money teaching what you do. Create a course with LearnDash. Visit LearnDash.com.
Press the Issue is a production of MasterWP. It was produced by Allie Nimmons. It was hosted and edited by Monet Davenport and mixed and mastered by Teron Bullock. Please visit masterwp.com/presstheissue to find more episodes. Subscribe to our newsletter for more WordPress news at masterwp.com.
Episode Transcript:Monet Davenport: Welcome to Press the Issue, a podcast for Master WP, your source for industry insights for WordPress professionals. Get show notes, transcripts, and more information about the show at masterwp.com/presstheissue.
Monet Davenport: It is the duty of those who build with the internet to ensure accessibility, but what does that all mean beyond completing a set of checklists? In this episode, Devin Egger and Teron Bullock connect to discuss the realities and challenges of web accessibility. Teron Bullock: How you doing today, Devin? Devin Egger: I'm doing good, Teron. How are you? Teron Bullock: I'm doing excellent. I know we have an exciting episode today. We're going to talk about web accessibilities and we're going to deal with it from the perspective of the end user. Devin Egger: Yeah. I was really excited when I started this article and presented this idea. As a developer, we're both developers, I'm sure you as well as I have read lots of articles on how to make websites accessible, and they always are tackling it from a very technical mindset and this is what you do in the code to make things accessible. And I feel so much that when you do that, yeah, we nerd out on it and we like that. We're like, "Okay. Yeah, cool." But then your project managers and your content writers and your designers then, they just tune out. You know? Teron Bullock: Right. Devin Egger: And I think that it's a conversation for everyone to have. And so I think by taking a step back and looking at web accessibility from a non-technical perspective, we can gain a lot and we can really look at it from a personal standpoint, because at the end of the day, we're doing this for people. Teron Bullock: So hearing you speak about the end user, it makes me think, why did the end user become the focus for you? Devin Egger: That's a good question. I mean, it kind of started off way back when I was a kid, before the web was even really a thing. I grew up with my grandma, one of my grandmas was blind, and so there was all these braille books around the house. So she knew how to read braille. I kind of started learning how to read braille when I was a kid, but that's not something that ever really materialized anything. But I'd always kind of thought in the back of my mind what would this be like if you couldn't see right. Just kind of fast forwarding several years, decades later, being a web developer, the whole idea of accessibility first came to mind. I think as a lot of web developers do, I had a client that was afraid of getting sued. So they're saying, "Hey, there's all these lawsuits going on. And people are getting sued for their website not being accessible. I don't really even understand what this means. But either way, we need you to make our website accessible." Teron Bullock: Right. Devin Egger: And so to be completely honest, I really didn't know what that meant either. And so when I initially started getting diving into it and doing research about what accessibility was as it relates to websites, I always like to look at the history of things, so looking at the history of web accessibility stems back to the Americans with Disabilities Act. It started with people busting curbs, people taking sledge hammers and busting curbs so that people in wheelchairs could actually use the streets, could get over the curbs. Devin Egger: Knowing that that kind of was the start of it really brought a personal aspect to it for me. There's a lot of videos out there that will share what the experience is like using websites, for example, if you're blind. And that's kind of the big one that comes to mind all the time, it's most easy for us to think about, "Well, if I just close my eyes and then I can't see the website," and so you can kind of just imagine how difficult it would be to use the website. But then think about some of that's been amputated or that has cerebral palsy. See people that I didn't even think about like, "Oh, what if you couldn't use a keyboard or mouse?" Teron Bullo...
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Why WordPress Mentorship Should Extend Beyond WordCamps
Press the Issue
09/09/22 • 25 min
As the WordPress community grows and evolves, it's important that new people with new ideas join in on the fun. What WordPress lacks outside of its formal events is a system for mentorship. Allie Nimmons and prolific mentor Nyasha Green talk about mentorship in WordPress, what it looks like now, and where it could go
Episode TranscriptAllie Nimmons: Hey, Nyasha, how are you doing today?
Nyasha Green: I’m doing well. How are you doing, Allie?
Allie Nimmons: I’m great. I am so excited to be talking to you. Anytime I get to get on a call and chat with you I think is a good time. So, on today’s episode of the podcast, we are going to be chatting about an article that you wrote that’s up on our site right now called 5 for the Now: Why WordPress Mentorship Contribution Should Extend Beyond WordCamps, and I think this is such an interesting topic and it’s such an important community topic specifically and something that you’re really well-slated to talk about, being the prolific mentor that you are, so yeah, I had a couple of questions for you to get some more information about what you think about mentorship.
Nyasha Green: Yeah, let’s do it. I love that title, “prolific mentor.” I’m going to put that on my Twitter.
Allie Nimmons: You are. You’re extremely prolific. You have, what, 50-plus mentees right now? That’s what I’d call “prolific.”
Nyasha Green: Yes.
Allie Nimmons: Cool. So, my first thing that I wanted to talk about, in this article you talk about we don’t really have a lot of mentors or mentorship within the width of the community. Why do you think that is? Do you think that this community in particular struggles with this particular topic?
Nyasha Green: I think it’s a few reasons why. I think the major reason is people don’t really know how to mentor. What I mean by that is people think mentoring is, I guess, driving to a person’s house, or signing up for a specific program, or spending a bunch of money to set up a fancy meeting place to talk to people, and a lot of people don’t know that a mentor is simply someone that can speak into this person, guide them, and help them, and there’s really not a financial aspect to that, or it doesn’t have to be. You can be that mentor that’s spending this money or doing these fancy things. But what I’ve discovered mostly about people trying to get into tech in general, and then in our community specifically, they just need knowledge, and they need resources. If we can give that to them, that’s way more valuable than just giving them money, or anything fancy, because those resources are going to elevate them professionally.
Allie Nimmons: Yeah. That makes so much sense to me. I definitely feel that. I struggled finding mentors at the beginning, and I’ve only just started turning around and trying to mentor other people, and I feel like there’s a lot of misconceptions about, yeah, what a mentor is and what that means as well as just how to find one, how to connect with somebody, so I feel like there might be a misconception as well out there that maybe somebody thinks, “Oh, I could be a good mentor. I could talk to people. I could help somebody, but maybe there’s not people out there who need that. Maybe there’s there isn’t anyone who needs me.”
Allie Nimmons: How can you imagine that? I mean, based off of your personal experience and other things you’ve seen, what are good methods and ways for mentees and mentors to be able to find each other? Is it really just asking people, is it better to have a formalized structure or organization or form or something like that? What do you feel is the way to actually encourage people to connect with each other?
Nyasha Green: So, it depends on what type of person you are. Both actually work. I do both. Mostly most of mine is loose space mentoring where I meet people online, so social media is especially in the age of COVID the best way to meet people online that have this need, and with the technology we have like Zoom and Skype and things like that, we have so many ways of connecting where you really don’t have to meet in person, so that takes a lot of accessibility challenges out of it, too. You might be a great mentor to someone who needs you, you might be in you’re in Texas, and they might be in Boston or Massachusetts, but can still connect because we have all of these tools.
Nyasha Green: But also, if you are just one of those people that it’s hard to connect online, and that’s perfectly okay, I meet people like that all the time, there are formalized programs to go through like we talked about. I’m doing one for a coding program in South Carolina, and they give me mentor new mentees every six months, and they are actually working with a program called Persevere Now. Persevere Now actually helps women in prison that have recently been released learn how to code, and then they get computers, things like that, and they get on-the-work ...
Let’s Talk Burnout and Breaks
Press the Issue
08/25/22 • 41 min
Work-life balance isn't a new topic, especially since 2020. But the traditional methods of focus, relation, and de-stressing don't work for everyone. Nyasha and Rob have their own approaches to burnout and breaks.
Episode TranscriptMonet Davenport: Welcome to Press the Issue, a podcast for Master WP, your source for industry insights for WordPress professionals. Get show notes, transcripts, and more information about the show at masterwp.com/presstheissue.
Monet Davenport: Work-life balance isn’t a new topic, especially since 2020. But the traditional methods of focus, relation, and de-stressing don’t work for everyone. Nyasha and Rob have their own approaches to burnout and breaks.
Nyasha Green: Hey, Rob, how are you doing today?
Rob Howard: Hey, Nyasha. Very good. How about you?
Nyasha Green: Doing well. Really excited to talk to you today about, well, these two articles that we did, breaking... Taking breaks and vacations are my favorite things in life. So just really excited to talk to you. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about the article that you wrote. It was titled Vacations Make a Business Stronger. And first, what inspired you to write this article?
Rob Howard: So this concept for me dates back probably 15 years, right? In the near term, what I’ve discovered both when I was running a very small agency with one or two people. And now all the way up, we have 18 or 19 people. What I’ve discovered is that by essentially forcing yourself to exit work for a significant amount of time, maybe a week or two where you’re truly not checking email, not checking slack, it’s not a working vacation. It is truly like you are out of the picture, right?
Rob Howard: It really forces me to run a more efficient business. Right? So what I joke around about with my family is my business is way more efficient when I’m on vacation than when I’m actually here. Right? And obviously that’s intended to be a little bit of a joke, but it’s really true because that compels me to train and systematize. Right? And I think the trap that a lot of people whether they’re business owners or employees of a business gets stuck in, is they, for various reasons that we can talk about, perceive themselves to be indispensable to the business that they run or that they’re part of. Right?
Rob Howard: And while you can be important to the business, being indispensable to the business can actually be a very unhealthy mindset because then you can never let go. Not only does that stress you out individually, but it also in a lot of ways prevents you from leveling up, right? Because part of leveling up your business is actually taking that owner or the initial founding team out of the equation for some of the important business operations. Right?
Rob Howard: So if you’re never willing to do that, then you’re stuck because you can only do so much as one individual human being. And eventually, if you do want that business to grow and get bigger, you got to be able to train, delegate, document. And in my experience, vacations are a really fun way to force you to do that. So that was kind of the near term inspiration. And going farther back, I’ve always been in that digital nomad, four-hour work week mindset.
Rob Howard: I don’t work a four-hour work week and I don’t necessarily endorse everything in that book and in that sort of worldview, but one thing that I do think is really smart and sensible is this idea that you shouldn’t be waiting for retirement or for some distant point in the future to enjoy your life and do the things that you want to do.
Rob Howard: So I think what I take away from a lot of that four-hour work week perspective is not that you should literally be working one hour a day, but that you should also not be deferring your life until some point in the future. Right? So a lot of people say, “Well, I’m going to work really hard in my twenties or work really hard for the next five years or whatever that is. And then I’ll go to this vacation destination. Then I’ll do this thing or that thing that is on my bucket list.
Rob Howard: Of course, work has a tendency to be infinite if you allow it to be, right? And what a lot of people discover is that someday keeps getting pushed back. Right? So the philosophy that I try to take is you got to do stuff now. Right? I have a son who’s eight years old and we’ve done a lot of fun things and fun vacations in eight years of his life that we could have easily pushed back and said, “Oh, well, now maybe we’ll do that when he’s older, when we have more money, when we have more time, whatever.” Right?
Rob Howard: But you got to sometimes do the thing in life that you actually want to do. And I think that applies to vacations. It applies to other major life decisions. It applies to moving to the city you want to live in, right? All these things that they are really easy to put off. And you do that...
How to Handle WordPress Criticism Online
Press the Issue
08/11/22 • 32 min
When you put out your thoughts and opinions online, you’re bound to eventually get opposing views in reply. But what do you do when your professional reputation is tied up in those exchanges? In this episode of Press the Issue, Teron Bullock and Allie Nimmons explore how to navigate negative criticism online.
Episode TranscriptMonet Davenport: Welcome to Press the Issue, a podcast from MasterWP, your source for industry insights for WordPress professionals. Get show notes, transcripts, and more information about the show at Masterwp.com/presstheissue.
Monet Davenport: When you put out your thoughts and opinions online, you’re bound to eventually get opposing views and reply. But what do you do when your professional reputation is tied up in those exchanges? In this episode of Press the Issue, Teron Bullock and Allie Nimmons explore how to navigate negative criticism online.
Teron Bullock: Hi, Allie, how are you doing today?
Allie Nimmons: Hi, Teron, I’m good, how are you?
Teron Bullock: I am well. I know today we have a great conversation in hand. We’re going to talk about criticism on social media and how do you respond properly if you respond at all. So I just want to send this question directly to you. We’re going to get started. And so I guess the first question is, how do you respond to social media criticism if you respond at all?
Allie Nimmons: Yeah. It’s complex, right? Because it depends on a lot of factors. I’ve definitely criticized people on social media and I’ve definitely been criticized. And I think that if you are responding to something that is criticism and not an attack or inflammatory, that’s going to change how you’re going to respond. And I think that somebody is really being nasty or mean or cruel or those kinds of things, I tend to try not to even engage at all with those sorts of things because that’s not... I’m not entering into a conversation, I’m going to be entering into a fight. And a fight is not about let’s get to a resolution, a fight is about who’s going to win. And especially on social media, I don’t think that that’s useful. But if it’s criticism where somebody is saying this was not the strongest choice, or why did you do this this way, or whatever the case may be, that is usually more of something I will try to respond to.
Allie Nimmons: And I mean that happened to me literally today. I was posting about the BlackPress Slack group, I said, “This is a group for Brown/Black people.” And someone was like, “You say that this is for Black people, but then you just used Brown in the tweet, well, what’s the deal?” And they criticized my word choices. And my response was like, “Yeah. No, that’s a great question, and thank you for identifying that.” And I went into detail of more of what I meant and we understood each other. And I was embarrassed because I kind of got called out for not using the correct words to describe people, but I could tell they were coming from a good place. So the criticism was easier for me to respond to and clarify what I was talking about.
Allie Nimmons: But that’s not always the case, right? People get really heated and up in arms and then things can get complicated. And so I think that, if you’re responding to criticism and you’re taking it as that, it’s important to understand where is this person coming from. What are they trying to achieve? Are they just trying to understand me better? Are they unhappy with the choice that I’ve made? Are they hurt? Have they directly been affected by something I’ve done? Does this warrant an apology? I think it’s most important to come at it looking at the other person’s perspective first and then saying, okay, well, what did I mean? How can I bridge that gap and find the resolution? And that’s not always possible in a single tweet. Sometimes it’s a thread. Sometimes it has to go into a DM, but it should start with looking at, how is this person feeling and how can I meet them where they’re at.
Teron Bullock: Absolutely. Let’s pull the layer back a little bit. So when you first received the tweet, you said that you have to make the determination between whether this is criticism or if this is something that’s more harsh. How do you first gauge yourself? Because criticism can hurt just as much as something that is more harsh, and how do you take the emotions out of it to be able to determine which one it is?
Allie Nimmons: Yeah. That’s a good question. I mean, a lot of the times, it’s two things, right? To me, at least. It’s word choice and it’s tone. The person I just talked about in that example, their word choice was very neutral. They were asking me a question, right? It wasn’t like, oh great, this idiot doesn’t even know what they’re talking about. Once it starts to being insults and that kind of stuff, that sets it over the top. And then the tone, which can be really hard on social media. But a lot of times when people will come wit...
2022 Highlight Show
Press the Issue
12/22/22 • 17 min
In our final episode of the year, producer Allie Nimmons takes you through the highlights of her favorite episodes, with a glimpse into why they stand out. We really hope that you enjoy our final episode of 2022, and we cannot wait to press more into issues with you in 2023.
Press These LinksListen to the episodes mentioned in this episode:
- A Look Back at WordCamp US 2022
- How Other Open Source Projects Raise Money
- Screen Readers and Beyond: How Web Accessibility Makes Lives Better
- Toxic Scorekeeping: The Case Against ‘Five for the Future’
- Is Working from Home a Trap for Women
- Does Market Share Matter?
- How Did the Pandemic Affect WordPress Contributors?
Monet Davenport: Welcome to Press the Issue, a podcast for MasterWP, your source for industry insights for WordPress professionals. Get show notes, transcripts, and more information about the show at masterwp.com/presstheissue. Press the Issue by MasterWP is sponsored by LearnDash. Your expertise makes you money doing what you do, now let it make you money teaching what you do. To create a course with LearnDash visit learndash.com. Our mission at MasterWP is to bring new voices into WordPress and tech every day. The new MasterWP Workshop series does just that. Our new live and recorded workshops on everything from code, to design, to business turn WordPress fans into WordPress experts. Find the workshop for you at workshops.masterwp.com. Use the code Podcast 10 for a 10% discount.
Allie Nimmons: Hi, I’m Allie Nimmons, and I’m the producer of this podcast, Press the Issue. We launched this podcast on June 1st of this year, 2022, and in the past six months, we’ve produced 25 unique episodes all about issues that we wanted to explore in WordPress, open source, and beyond. In our final episode of the year, I’m going to take you through the highlight of my favorite episodes, with a glimpse into why they stand out to me. I really hope that you enjoy our final episode of 2022, and we cannot wait to press more into issues with you in 2023.
One of the biggest things to happen in WordPress this year was the first back to in-person WordCamp US since 2019, and so this episode definitely feels like a highlight to me. In it, we took a different approach to our usual episode structure, and had multiple team members weigh in on what made the event so special for them. For me, it felt like a homecoming, so I loved hearing others talk about this event being their introduction to WordPress events. Here’s Devin Egger talking about how this camp was his first, and what that was like for him.
Devin Egger: I was really excited to go to this, and the opportunity to meet so many people in-person in the WordPress space was just so exciting and so awesome to meet. So many people that I’ve either worked with online, or met online, or watched their videos, or taken their classes, it was just an awesome opportunity to meet these people in-person. And getting the chance to see everyone face-to-face really sets in the idea that it’s a community, and that we’re all a part of this WordPress community, and a good reminder that we’re really all in this together, and we’re all here because we dig WordPress, and we’re all about the same thing.
So my least favorite thing coming back from WordCamp US actually came after the fact, and when I got home and I realized that all the workshops in the surf room weren’t actually recorded and available for future playback, and I just didn’t have enough time to go see all the things that I wanted to see, and get to attend all the events and the sections that I wanted to go to. And so I was really hoping when I got back home that I’d be able to catch the workshops that I missed, and just a little bit bummed that I didn’t get to do that. But that being said, the ones that I did get to go to and participate in were very educational, and I learned a lot more than I expected going into it. So I’m happy that I did get to go see the ones I got to see, and I’m really excited to go to my next WordCamp.
Allie Nimmons: So much about producing this podcast has been about finding hard questions to answer, and in the WordPress world, we aren’t short on those. I wanted us to look at things lik...
How Other Open Source Projects Raise Money
Press the Issue
09/15/22 • 30 min
Here at Press The Issue we live for examining the most complicated questions and problems that face the WordPress community, and that includes how money flows or sometimes does not flow through it. In this episode, Brian and Rob go deep into discussing funding the future of open source.
Episode TranscriptHere at Press The Issue we live for examining the most complicated questions and problems that face the WordPress community, and that includes how money flows or sometimes does not flow through it. In this episode, Brian and Rob go deep into discussing funding the future of open source.
Rob Howard: Hey Brian, how’s it going?
Brian Coords: Good, how are you doing today?
Rob Howard: Very good. So we’ve been talking a lot about funding, the future of WordPress, there’s a ton of different ideas that are swirling around that central concept. But today we really want to focus on actually just looking at some examples of how open source projects are funded outside of WordPress. There’s a ton of well known interesting ones, and we’ve picked out a few and we’re going to basically just dive into different funding models, how they contrast with WordPress, how they could be used by WordPress and hopefully just spur some ideas and brainstorm a bit about different and additional ways to fund our favorite open source projects.
Brian Coords: And you’ve brought forward a few really good examples of some projects, they’re pretty much household names, they all have ways in which they’re similar to WordPress, ways in which they’re different, so we’re just going to go through a few of those. And the first example, which I think is probably the biggest name, is Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is very similar in that there’s a nonprofit, there’s some for-profit stuff in there, and there’s a very passionate contributor base to Wikipedia, which is very similar to WordPress. So for you, can you give us an overview? How does Wikipedia generate money and then how do they use that money to push the project forward?
Rob Howard: Yeah, so Wikipedia, as we know it, is a nonprofit, it’s run by the Wikimedia Foundation, and that is just a simple charitable 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which essentially any charity you donate to has that nonprofit status. In addition to the Wikimedia Foundation, the owner of Wikipedia also owns Fandom, which actually used to be called Wikia. So anytime you Google a deep cut about a movie or a video game or something, you often will end up on a Fandom site, and that’s actually a paid for profit thing, they run ads, there may be a premium option at some point for the users. So they’re making money off of Fandom, it is a parallel idea to Wikipedia, so that’s one source of revenue that basically keeps the lights on at the very least. And then Wikipedia also runs pledge drives and basically says, “Hey, we’re a nonprofit, please donate to us”.
Rob Howard: This is very analogous to PBS running telethons or pledge drives to say, “Hey, we’re public, we’re funded by you, we need your support, you’re going to get a tote bag if you support us”, whatever that is. So the parallels, as you mentioned, are number one, they have a big contributor base that essentially is producing open source information. The way Wikipedia is licensed, it’s all basically free for the world to use and redistribute under very basic terms. You maybe have to reference that you found it on Wikipedia or something, but effectively it’s open source knowledge. So where we do open source code or open source publishing in WordPress, they do open source information and obviously they’ve rapidly overshadowed every other encyclopedia or information source in the world, because they do a nice job with it. So in parallel to WordPress, they are directly asking for help, and we see that with Fight For the Future.
Rob Howard: And I think the contrast is they accept money, so that is a thing that WordPress really doesn’t do very well right now, that I think would be a pretty low hanging fruit for them to do better or for us as a community to help WordPress do better. So Wikipedia is basically asking for donations, and then they’re taking those donations, they’re using it to fund their servers, they’re using it to fund their employees. They have a lot of contributors, the contributor environment is quite passionate and there can be drama in it but I also think that there seems to be much more coherent mission among the Wikipedia contributors. And I don’t think people are saying, “I’m going to go fork Wikipedia, because I’m mad about it”, but we are seeing that a little bit in the WordPress world.
Rob Howard: So Wikipedia probably is the most straightforward example of an open source project that is getting funded by money from donors, and then they also, similar to wordpress.com, have a for profit twist on the same idea where they’re making money directly, effectively as a software, as a service or ad sales ty...
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FAQ
How many episodes does Press the Issue have?
Press the Issue currently has 34 episodes available.
What topics does Press the Issue cover?
The podcast is about Podcasts, Technology and Business.
What is the most popular episode on Press the Issue?
The episode title 'How Accessible Is WordPress?' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Press the Issue?
The average episode length on Press the Issue is 29 minutes.
How often are episodes of Press the Issue released?
Episodes of Press the Issue are typically released every 7 days, 3 hours.
When was the first episode of Press the Issue?
The first episode of Press the Issue was released on Jun 1, 2022.
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