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";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:120:"WPTavern: #223 – Ivana Ćirković on How WordPress Credits Bridges Education and Industry in the WordPress Ecosystem";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=206102";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:130:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/223-ivana-cirkovic-on-how-wordpress-credits-bridges-education-and-industry-in-the-wordpress-ecosystem";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:38278:"<details>Transcript<div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:00:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case how WordPress Credits bridges education and industry in the WordPress ecosystem.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox and use the form there.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So on the podcast today we have Ivana Ćirković. Ivana is a digital marketer with 18 years of experience working both in and out of the tech industry, and currently leads marketing at WPBakery. She&#8217;s an active participant in WordPress events, having attended, and spoken at, numerous local and international word camps over the years.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In this episode, our focus is on the WordPress Credits initiative. We learn how this program, launched by the WordPress Foundation, connects students with real world opportunities to contribute to the WordPress ecosystem, earn certifications, and increase their competitiveness in the job market.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Ivana discusses her own experience as a WP Credits mentor, working with students as they learn about digital marketing, remote work, and other open source contributions. We explore, how universities can modernise their curriculums, and real world value for students by participating in the initiative, and how businesses can get involved, not just to support the community, but to help shape and discover future talent.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The program&#8217;s evolving structure also gets attention, and we learn how students are guided through hands-on activities such as translation or documentation, and how their progress is tracked publicly via profiles on wordpress.org. Ivana shares the opportunities and challenges for both educators and businesses with thoughts on accountability, mentorship, and the need to bring new faces into the WordPress community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;re interested in the future of WordPress, education, or bridging the gap between academia and industry, this episode is for you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;d like to find out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And so without further delay, I bring you Ivana Ćirković.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I am joined on the podcast by Ivana Ćirković. Did I get that right?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:14] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yes. Excellent.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. This is my first interview at WordCamp Europe 2026. I&#8217;m guessing because we&#8217;re on the first day of the event and it&#8217;s quite early in the morning, it&#8217;s 10 in the morning, I&#8217;m guessing you cannot have done your presentation yet?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:30] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Not yet. Tomorrow.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you get nervous with these kind of things?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:34] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> I get nervous all the time. I&#8217;ve been doing this for 12 years, it never gets easier. It is what it is.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:39] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, the presentation that you are doing is going to be the focus of what we&#8217;re talking about today. So do you just want to tell us a little bit about the topic that you&#8217;re talking about, but also just give us a bit of a general bio about who you are and what you do. So just tell us about you and about your presentation basically.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:56] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Okay. First thing first, I would like to introduce my presentation, or the talk, that is build up around WordPress Credits initiative, which is something that WordPress has rolled out late last year in December. And I applied to be a mentor to support students into their entering into WordPress. Got accepted, did my courses, passed them and started working with students on their, first entering the WordPress society, how everything works, contributing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And out of all of this, I came up with the idea of sharing the story about WordPress Credits. What it is, why it is important, not just for the WordPress community, but also for universities all around the world for businesses to support, because there is an angle and huge opportunity for them too. And hopefully inspire people to join and become part of it more.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As far as I&#8217;m concerned, my name is  Ivana Ćirković and I am a digital marketer for 18 years. I&#8217;ve been working inside tech organisations, tech industry, but also outside of it. So I&#8217;m the multiverse. And lately, for past couple of years, I&#8217;ve been working in WPBakery, in marketing their product, and talking to people, sharing knowledge of what we do, how we do it, and so on. In the meantime I am attending many, many WordCamps, local and international ones, giving lectures, giving talks about digital marketing and all things related.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:05:39] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So are you here at this event, not just to give your presentation, are you also here on behalf of WPBakery to represent them and the products that they have as well?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:05:47] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yes, we are sponsors. I am speaker, I was table lead for marketing on Contributors Day. So we are wide into the ecosystem.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:05:56] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I have to say, having only been in this event space for about an hour, I&#8217;m actually deeply impressed by this particular event. It really is a gigantic venue. It&#8217;s so pleasurable as well to see the WordPress community in such large numbers here. And so we&#8217;re looking forward to a really good event.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Okay, let&#8217;s kick off with the topic at hand then. So it occurs to me that many people listening, whilst they&#8217;re using WordPress and they&#8217;re kind of, I don&#8217;t know, they&#8217;re building websites for people, and they&#8217;ve got products and plugins and they&#8217;re just general users. It may be that the community piece, and the educational piece, is nothing that they&#8217;ve heard of before. So would you just tell us a little bit about what WP Credits is as far as you&#8217;re concerned, just to give us that broad background of what it is?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:06:40] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Okay. So WP Credits program is initially made to bring new young people into the WordPress, to broaden the ecosystem with the new fresh blood, new contributors. And to do so, WordPress Foundation initiated this program to connect with universities all across the world. To connect students to some programs, to learn about WordPress through contribution. For that, they will get graded and get certification, which in the end will help them be more marketable, and have more modern knowledge of what is needed in today&#8217;s job market, and to be more competitive and more appealing to potential employers.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So by doing so, WordPress Credits aims to broaden the ecosystem, to strengthen the WordPress community, and WordPress itself. But also to put new generations in more marketable place, and to help them get more profitable jobs.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:07:45] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. That was a really nice summary. In terms of your personal commitment to it and what have you, how did you fall into it as a thing that you were doing? And is this something that you get sponsored for from WPBakery, or is it personal and simply a sort of philanthropic thing that you are doing on the side?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:08:01] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yeah, so basically, I&#8217;ve been doing education my whole professional life. So it&#8217;s something that comes natural to me. In my local country, in Serbia, I do informal education for high schoolers and primary school&#8217;s children about digital marketing, digital literacy. This is like very natural to me. I&#8217;m being sponsored by WPBakery to do so.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And the program works like, initiative needs people, needs more mentors to get involved. More than it needs like product and businesses to support with their products. So if there are businesses who are maybe interested in support through their product, know that you need to put your people first to actually get involved and contribute, and then you can offer products as the side piece, so to say.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:08:52] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So yeah, it seems that you&#8217;ve got a lifelong interest in education as well. Okay, that gives me some sort of hook there.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Okay, if I was to say WP Credits to the people outside, the people who already knew about it, I think would probably peg it as entirely educational in nature, just an education initiative. But curiously, your presentation, the notes that went with that and the blurb that went on the WordCamp Europe website, you kind of make the point that it&#8217;s much bigger than that, and you get into businesses and the students themselves and universities.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So the students in universities bit, well, that&#8217;s the education piece. But the business bit, what&#8217;s going on there? Because I definitely hadn&#8217;t drawn that intuition. I thought education from top to bottom. But business, okay, where does that fit in?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:09:37] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> I will get the hot insights from the talk. So basically, there is more than what meets the eye, so to speak. Businesses have unique opportunity to shape people they want to employ by getting involved as mentors. They also get the chance to see firsthand how those young minds work in real environments, in real contribution. And they get the chance to pick and choose who they want to employ by seeing them work on some real things. Whether it&#8217;s documentation, whether it&#8217;s translation or programming, developing something, AI.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We need more people who know what they do, although they are young. By having students in this program, they are working on not fictional things, but actual things that really contribute to community and businesses as a whole. By supporting this initiative, businesses then in relations to that can get more insights into who they want to employ. So on top of that, they are building the better market for themselves as well.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:10:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I guess the student university piece is fairly obvious. You know, WP Credits and the people working on that project communicate with universities, they&#8217;re probably easy to find. You know, if you go to a phone directory for example, they&#8217;ll all be there. And it&#8217;s an easy thing to do. You phone up the university and see if there&#8217;s interest. And I know that some universities have taken up the WP Credits program. And it seems to be, as far as I can work out, it seems to be working very successfully.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">How are you going to make the connection with businesses? Because that seems like a much more scattered, I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;re going to be working with big businesses, you know, huge companies or if it&#8217;s going to be kind of more the businesses on the street, the smaller businesses, that kind of thing. So, I&#8217;ll just sort of hand it over at that point.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:11:23] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> So basically, web agencies, businesses around WordPress, we know they have an issue with new employees onboarding last, let&#8217;s say three to six months. That cost time and money and other people who are teaching them what needs to be done and how.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then we have WordPress Credit students who are already doing that junior type of work within contribution. They&#8217;re already onboarded through using Slack, knowing how to do remote work, what needs to be done. So businesses supporting WordPress Credits initiative can choose those students and spend less time and money and energy in onboarding them because they already went through that by doing WordPress Credits program.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:12:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I guess if you are a small web agency, it&#8217;s highly likely that you won&#8217;t necessarily have an induction program finely tuned, so that the young people that are coming through have this sort of specialised system where they can get some accreditation. It&#8217;s probably more, okay, I&#8217;m going to assign you to John this week and then next week you&#8217;re going to go over to Susan and follow what they&#8217;re doing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So is there a sort of structured program that, let&#8217;s say a web agency based in London could drop into and receive documentation about? Where are we at with that whole process for the busineses?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:12:44] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yeah, so since this initiative is still fairly new and we already have just one generation of students that are passed the program, this is something in development. So at the moment, we still don&#8217;t have like a specific structure that is based just for agencies and businesses in general, but it is something that we are considering and working towards too. So definitely.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">On the other hand, the upper management organisational team might not be aware to the fullest what am I about to talk. So it might come as a surprise to them, but also it is something in the works as well. So give us some time and we will come up with something.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:13:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it feels like that would be something really credible. Because if you&#8217;re a small business owner, the last thing you want to be doing is kind of wasting time. And onboarding somebody might be something that you&#8217;d have to divert weeks into, you know, syphoning employees off, writing documentation, SOPs, those kind of things. And if you could just pick something up off the shelf that was tried and tested over many years, that would actually be really handy. So good luck. I hope that that initiative comes off.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In terms of students, if you were a student, let&#8217;s say you are at a university, or you are looking for work, what would you say would be some of the top line items that you would mention as to why WP Credits is worth looking at? Because, you know, if I&#8217;m at a university, there&#8217;s probably a thousand different things that I could be doing. WP Credits would be in competition with all of those. Why do you think it&#8217;s something that young people should be taking care of to look at?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:14:17] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yeah, I would think differently, in that sense. Universities curriculums are outdated comparing to the industry that we are living and working in. So WordPress Credits gives something that is in trend. That is happening now that people are using and working now. So students who choose to go to this program are gaining the most efficient and not outdated curriculum, and things that are being worked on in this moment.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And this is bigger than WordPress. It is initially for WordPress, but the knowledge students get, nobody can take that away. They learn to be outspoken. They learn to use all the necessary remote work tools that is applicable in all the industry.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So we are really encouraging them to be very marketable employees and people who have portfolios, whether they choose that category that brings them portfolio. That is very transparent throughout whatever they do. Because on wordpress.org, every contribution is noted. So they&#8217;re building their own business brand by doing WordPress Credits. And in that way they are more marketable and can get more business opportunities.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:15:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I didn&#8217;t realise that the wordpress.org profile, is it the profile that you mean?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:15:47] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yes.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:15:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Each time you participate in one of these credit programs, that will be a badge, for want of a better word, that you can display and it will be freely available for the public. And presumably that will be difficult to acquire. That&#8217;s the wrong word. What I mean is, it won&#8217;t be simple to acquire. You will genuinely have had to.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:16:07] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yes, you need to do the work. Let&#8217;s say students are interested in translation. So they go to Polyglots team and they get assigned to a mentor who is on weekly basis working with them on onboarding, helping them how to navigate through wordpress.org website, translation, what needs to be done. And basically, for that student, they need to translate to have approved translation, 150 strings approved.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So that doesn&#8217;t mean, okay, I will translate 150 words. No, no. You might need to translate 500 words out of which 150 is approved. And this is the bare minimum you need to do in order to get that badge that you contributed. Because that contribution, each contribution needs to be something very specific and tailored to help other people. That is very open and helpful.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:17:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So you mentioned translations there, which obviously is just one of multiple things that you could do, and we could list them all out, but we won&#8217;t. How is that curriculum, I&#8217;m doing air quotes, how is that curriculum decided upon? In other words, how do you decide, okay, I&#8217;m going to do a bit of translation, I&#8217;m going to do a bit of work on Core, I&#8217;m going to work for the Plugin Review Team? How is that decided? And, how is it decided by the institution, I guess that that&#8217;s going to equal something which our university will stamp as part of your degree, let&#8217;s say?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:17:33] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yeah. So basically, that is all arranged between the foundation and universities. You won&#8217;t get IT students doing marketing if that&#8217;s not their preferable choice. So students opt in. They&#8217;re given the whole like curriculum, categories of things they can contribute to. And the one they choose, this is the one they stick to throughout all the programs.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So you cannot switch in between like translation and documentation, or plugins, or WP-CLI whatever. The whole program stick to one chosen category. And that is all aligned with the, let&#8217;s say, topic of university. So IT is preferable for IT related contributions. Communications are also more favourable towards translation community, marketing. So it&#8217;s aligned that way.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:18:23] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So flipping that round, so we&#8217;ve been talking about it from the point of view of the students. Now let&#8217;s just flip it around to the point of view of the university. I guess the same thing applies. They would have to communicate with the Foundation and say, okay, these are the kind of things that we wish our students to do. These particular strands, we will, you know, if they do 500 translation strings, that will count as something. I guess there&#8217;s got to be some interface between the Foundation and each university to establish what a credit equals.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:18:50] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yeah, common ground as to how WordPress Credits adds to the official curriculum of the university. And the thing that university get out of it, they are in position to offer modern, in trend, teachings, and that makes them more appealing to next generation of students. Because the more their existing students who are in the WordPress Credits program are succeeding, the more desirable the university gets to newer generations because they don&#8217;t teach outdated curriculums. They&#8217;re aligning to what is now efficient and needed in the job market.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:19:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I suppose also as well, when I was at university, there was a choice of about, I don&#8217;t know, four things to do each year. Something like that. You could do this or this or this. And you had to pick one of them and that was your pathway. This feels much more wide open because knowing the WordPress ecosystem, I know that there&#8217;s dozens, maybe multiple dozens of different things that you could be involved in.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So that&#8217;s quite appealing as well, isn&#8217;t it? You know, you can just take a little nibble of this one thing, and another nibble of this. And so there&#8217;s potentially multiple dozens of different pathways that you could pick. And whilst you say that, once you&#8217;ve decided you&#8217;ve got to stick to that, well, that&#8217;s fair enough, but the fact that you&#8217;ve got so many different ways that you could choose. That to me as a university student would&#8217;ve been really appealing. The fact that there&#8217;s so many different things that you could do.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:20:15] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yeah. And once they got in, the overall input that we get from students that, first they don&#8217;t know that something like this exists. And once they go deep and start work, it&#8217;s like, wow. The whole mind just shifts, and they are amazed by all the possibilities that they can do within WordPress that isn&#8217;t talked about.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:20:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. And I presume they get to do it in the way that the WordPress community works, which is remotely distributed and when you wish to do it. So long as I, you make the end of the university period of whatever a semester is or something, so long as you make the deadline, you can do it at night or in the early morning or.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:20:57] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Exactly. So they are training to be like workers as we all are today, that are not restrained with some deadlines or by official university rules. They&#8217;re accountable for the final output. How will they come to that output? It&#8217;s entirely up to them because, yes, they are young but they&#8217;re not so young that they cannot be held accountable for their actions. So they need to do the work. We got weekly mentorships and assessments. So it&#8217;s a fun ride.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:21:31] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So just touching on that, the sort of ongoing support that every student needs, because with the best rule in the world, there&#8217;s a proportion of students who will leave everything to the last minute. I&#8217;m looking at myself in the mirror when I say that. So that ongoing support, it&#8217;s a weekly sort of huddle. And is that like a one-to-one thing or is it a one to many thing?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:21:50] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yeah, so depending on the number of students, if a mentor has a one or two students, it can be one-to-one. If there are more like five or six, it&#8217;s better to have a group meeting on a weekly basis, and then Slack chats in between if anything is more needed than that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So basically we go through what they did last week, are there any setbacks or they need additional help, or do they need information from other parts of the team? Are they interested in something else? So we are really trying to get them involved in a way that matters to them.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">One of the things that each student needs to do, no matter section they chose, is to create a blog and to have weekly blog posts. So we discuss about that. What interests them. Whether they want to be something personal like, or professional like. So it&#8217;s very interesting to see how they think and how they express themself and how they build their online persona.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:22:55] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do those huddles take place on a, let&#8217;s say university by university basis? So for example, when you join and you mentor students, are they from the entire WP Campus project, or are you doing it from the university of this town and the university of that town?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:23:13] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> No, it&#8217;s mixed and matched.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:23:14] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So, okay, well that&#8217;s a real strength as well it feels, because presumably then you&#8217;re on a call with people potentially from all over the world. Certainly people that you may not have encountered before. And those sort of serendipitous chance encounters can sometimes be some of the more meaningful ones. You know, work comes out of those things, and meetups come out of those things, and unexpected things come out of those things. So that must be really nice as well, watching those kind of things happen.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:23:42] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s like nothing I experienced before. And just to have the privilege to talk and work with those people, you never know what can come up out of them, and out of our connections. And I get inspired every time we have chats and they make me want to be a better educator.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:24:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, that&#8217;s interesting.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:24:04] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> So, yeah, that&#8217;s my take out of all this.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:24:06] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. Okay, so there&#8217;s actually some psychological benefit for you as well. You get a real nice feeling of it. Okay, that&#8217;s really good.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So with the best will in the world, a university, every year there&#8217;s a cohort of children, young adults, whatever it may be, whichever institution it is, and a proportion of them will work diligently and hard and they will succeed. And some others maybe not so much.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">How does that work? How do you ensure that everybody gets through it? And I don&#8217;t know if there&#8217;s enough data to answer this question. Again, I&#8217;m doing air quotes, how is the pass rate? Do most people that embark on this get through the necessary things? Or is there a fair bit of, I don&#8217;t know, discipline, for want of a better word, that needs to be applied and cajoling people to get through it?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:24:46] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yeah, so I touched base on the accountability. So we have not strict rules, but recommendations. Weekly mentor chats, async communication through Slack. They all have weekly tasks that needed to be done. So if a student don&#8217;t answer the message or come to weekly mentor call three times, they are no longer WordPress Credit students. And that is the accountability.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You need to show yourself that you are willing to do the work. So if you don&#8217;t care, we won&#8217;t force you to do that if you don&#8217;t want to. We will set reminders, we will call back, we will reach out. But if you are no show, no tell anything for three times, then evidently you are not for that. You don&#8217;t wish to be there, and we won&#8217;t force you to be there.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:25:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And then in some way, are you required then to report that back to the institution and sort of say, okay, we&#8217;ve reached the end of the road here, and then it&#8217;s for them to figure out how that impacts. And presumably the students can.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:25:53] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Their grades, yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:25:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, their grades what have you, okay. Touching back on the sort of business side, because we&#8217;ve dwelled a lot with students and universities and we&#8217;re going to stay with students, because that&#8217;s really the underpinning of the whole thing. How has the business side of things, is it taking off? You were describing that it&#8217;s kind of like a new thing. Have you got any sort of success stories or anecdotal evidence that people do in fact want this?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:26:15] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yeah, so it&#8217;s still fairly new, so we don&#8217;t have those anecdotes yet. One of the reasons why I&#8217;m here at the WordCamp Europe is to find out and to get new perspective from businesses to like reach out to them to see what they think about the program. Would they want to be evolved. And how to give tips, maybe how we can improve. So stay tuned for more.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:26:38] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. And it is interesting, when you walk around an event like this, I don&#8217;t have the exact numbers, but the demographic is definitely skewing older. There&#8217;s not so many 18 year olds. And if this community wishes to carry on, at some point the age demographic will get to retirement age.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:26:57] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Yeah. Just last night we were talking. I&#8217;ve been in the community for 11 years. And for 11 years all the same faces are here. And we really need new faces. But to get new faces, WordPress Credits is one part of the solution. But then again, we need to meet young people where they are. And they are not on the conferences, they are not on websites, they don&#8217;t use websites, they don&#8217;t care about websites. They are on very specific social media channels. And if we want to get fresh, new, young blood, we need to go there and to present what we do in a way that matters to those kids.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:27:35] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> In terms of success, if you were to, I don&#8217;t know, let&#8217;s imagine that we could cast our minds forwards five years, let&#8217;s go for that. What would you like to have happened with WP Credits? Would you like, for example, to see a bunch of 20 somethings wandering around in an event like this? Does it matter that they&#8217;re involved in the community and doing WordPress events and contributing to Core and those kind of things? Or is success just more broadly, people are using WordPress? You know, it&#8217;s still a project. What&#8217;s your take on, what does success look like in five years?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:28:08] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> For me, I would like to see more young people involved. Yes, we will always have users because in its core, WordPress is a very useful tool. And I&#8217;m happy to stumble upon that tool many, many years ago to use it both personally and professionally. But I really want to see young people involved in a way that we were involved 10, 15 years ago, and to see what can happen with WordPress.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I strongly believe it&#8217;ll be transformed, not with AI or all other flashy trends. WordPress has always been about people. And we need new people, we need young people to get it where it needs to be.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We are getting older and don&#8217;t have strengths or stamina to do so for how many long years. By having new kids, fresh perspectives, I&#8217;m really excited to see what they can come up with next.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:29:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s kind of handing over the baton in a way, isn&#8217;t it? Seeing what the future holds. Yeah, I definitely have concerns that the age demographic is skewing. And no matter what has happened in the past, I don&#8217;t see it being backfilled with younger people moment.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But I think that&#8217;s largely because we just assumed that that age demographic would fill itself, because we were excited about it, so the younger generation will be excited about it. Well it turns out the world moved on. And TikTok came along, and YouTube became a massive thing and mobile phones and all the different platforms became a thing. And so the attention was put elsewhere by many young people.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And so I suppose we needed to come up with a system where we are, in a sense, just putting it in front of their face and saying, look, it&#8217;s here. You know, you&#8217;re a university student, you are somebody looking for work in a small business. Here&#8217;s a credible way of getting involved in something which potentially could change your life. That seems like the most credible way of doing it at the moment. And I guess we&#8217;ll just have to see what the next five years brings.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In which case, is there anything that you felt you wanted to touch on that you wanted to get out of this chat before we finished?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:30:15] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> No, I think you did it masterfully. And we touched base on everything that needed to be said.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:30:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Perfect. In that case, I will say Ivana, thank you for chatting to me today. Fingers crossed that your presentation goes well tomorrow, and that you pack the place out, and that by this time next week, you are extremely busy with the WP Credits program. Thanks for chatting to me.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:30:34] <strong>Ivana Ćirković:</strong> Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.</p>
</div></details>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So on the podcast today we have Ivana Ćirković.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Ivana is a digital marketer with 18 years of experience working both in and out of the tech industry, and currently leads marketing at WPBakery. She’s an active participant in WordPress events, having attended and spoken at numerous local and international WordCamps over the years.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In this episode, our focus is on the WordPress Credits initiative. We learn how this program, launched by the WordPress Foundation, connects students with real-world opportunities to contribute to the WordPress ecosystem, earn certifications, and increase their competitiveness on the job market.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Ivana discusses her own experience as a WP Credits mentor, working with students as they learn about digital marketing, remote work, and open source contributions. We explore how universities can modernise their curriculums and add real-world value for students by participating in the initiative, and how businesses can get involved, not just to support the community, but to help shape and discover future talent.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The program’s evolving structure also gets attention, and we learn how students are guided through hands-on activities such as translation or documentation, and how their progress is tracked publicly via profiles on WordPress.org. Ivana shares the opportunities and challenges for both educators and businesses, with thoughts on accountability, mentorship, and the need to bring new faces into the WordPress community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you’re interested in the future of WordPress, education, or bridging the gap between academia and industry, this episode is for you.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/wordpress-credits/">WordPress Credits</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://wpbakery.com">WPBakery</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2026/session/what-it-really-means-to-be-a-part-of-the-wp-credits-program/">What it (really) means to be a part of the WP Credits program?</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:1;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:75:"Open Channels FM: BackTalk on Support, Decision-Making, Reputation and Risk";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2556251";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"https://openchannels.fm/backtalk-on-support-decision-making-reputation-and-risk/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:140:"Insights on community support, decision-making, starting new projects, and the importance of agency reputation in hosting. Engage and share!";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 01 Jul 2026 13:11:31 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:2;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"Aaron D. Campbell: Open Source Support Can’t Depend on Charity";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://aarondcampbell.com/?p=2933";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"https://aarondcampbell.com/2026/06/open-source-support-cant-depend-on-charity/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:470:"<p>Companies depend on open source software. Supporting the projects that support your business shouldn't be treated as charity; it should be part of sustaining the infrastructure, ecosystem, and user trust your products rely on.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://aarondcampbell.com/2026/06/open-source-support-cant-depend-on-charity/">Open Source Support Can&#8217;t Depend on Charity</a> appeared first on <a href="https://aarondcampbell.com">Aaron D. Campbell</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 30 Jun 2026 13:19:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17:"Aaron D. Campbell";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:3;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:63:"Open Channels FM: Thoughts on the Human Side of AI Acceleration";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555792";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70:"https://openchannels.fm/thoughts-on-the-human-side-of-ai-acceleration/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:155:"AI is evolving super fast, boosting productivity but also causing burnout and a loss of human touch. We need to balance tech with authentic human insights.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 30 Jun 2026 11:06:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:4;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:50:"WordPress.org blog: The First AI Leaders Graduates";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=20951";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/06/ai-leaders-graduates/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4846:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">On June 23, around 40 students from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), Louisiana Tech University, and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette were celebrated in Chicago as the first cohort to receive the AI Leaders Micro-Credential through <a href="https://ai-leaders.org/">AI Leaders</a>, the nation&#8217;s first workforce-focused AI literacy course tied to a recognized credential. Each of them earned it by building real projects, applying generative AI to genuine work, and contributing to the open source software that powers more than 40% of the web. Students who completed the course also earned $1,000, made possible by a donation from Automattic and UIC. This celebration was the moment the program had been building toward since it was <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2026/02/ai-leaders-credential/">first announced in February</a>.</p>



<div class="wp-block-group has-background is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-2431c55b wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p class="has-text-align-center has-white-color has-text-color has-link-color has-normal-font-size wp-elements-2 wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Explore the project portfolios built by this year’s AI Leaders</strong></p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><a href="https://aileaderswp.blog/"><img alt="" class="wp-image-20975" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2026/06/aileaderswpblog-scaled.png?ssl=1" /></a></figure>



<div class="wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-3e41869c wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex">
<div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link has-text-align-center wp-element-button" href="https://aileaderswp.blog/"><strong>AI Leaders · Class of 2026</strong></a></div>
</div>
</div>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When the pilot launched, the goal was to test whether open source learning could connect directly to job pathways rather than stopping at a certificate. What makes this program distinct is that it is built on open source from the ground up: students learn on WordPress, contribute to it, and use generative AI the way the WordPress ecosystem uses it every day, leaving with a credential that employers can verify and a community that continues long after the course ends.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The pilot reflects a shared belief that AI and open source skills should be within reach regardless of where someone lives or what they can afford.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">WordPress was built to expand access to publishing and participation on the open web.</p>
</blockquote>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The program is a collaboration with distinct roles for each partner. It is funded through the <a href="https://osf.it.uic.edu/">UIC Tech Solutions Open Source Fund</a>, with support from the <a href="https://www.uic.edu/">University of Illinois Chicago</a> and <a href="https://automattic.com/?p=867048">Automattic</a>, while the WordPress project and the <a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/">WordPress Foundation</a> contribute to the development of the curriculum itself.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What Comes Next</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The first cohort was just the beginning. The gathering in Chicago brought this group together with employers and agencies, and further job placements are already in motion. </p>



<div class="wp-block-group has-off-white-2-background-color has-background is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-2431c55b wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p class="has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph">The next round of AI Leaders is on the horizon. Subscribe for updates to be the first to hear when the next cohort opens and how to take part.</p>



<div class="wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-3e41869c wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex">
<div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link wp-element-button" href="https://ai-leaders.org/#apply"><strong>Subscribe for AI Leaders Updates</strong></a></div>
</div>
</div>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-text-color has-dark-strokes-grey-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-dark-strokes-grey-background-color has-background" />



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>WordPress offers a wide range of educational opportunities for people at every stage, from first steps to advanced contribution. Explore workshops, lesson plans, and community-created resources designed to help you build practical skills while connecting with others who are learning and contributing at <a href="https://wordpress.org/education/">WordPress.org/education/</a>.</em></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 29 Jun 2026 20:29:26 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Mary Hubbard";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:5;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"Open Channels FM: Six Months In: What Open Channels FM Has Been Talking About in 2026";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555969";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:91:"https://openchannels.fm/six-months-in-what-open-channels-fm-has-been-talking-about-in-2026/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:197:"In the first half of 2026, conversations on AI's impact, WordPress 7.0 launch, and the importance of the open web emerged. Key themes included rethinking work, community, and embracing uncertainty.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 29 Jun 2026 07:31:58 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:6;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Matt: Om Links";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=153359";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"https://ma.tt/2026/06/om-links/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3576:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There has been a lot of excitement about the OmFest idea. If you&#8217;d like to attend or contribute, <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScyY9c5MowPFW6BmIitqaaF3T-ykM_d8eD2pq2XqwSt7N50zg/viewform?usp=header" rel="noopener" target="_blank">please fill out this form as soon as possible</a> so we can gauge the type of venue we need.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It&#8217;s truly a testament to how Om lived life to see the outpouring of remembrances <a href="https://om.co/2026/06/24/1966-2026/">in comments on the post</a> and <a href="https://www.techmeme.com/260625/p50#a260625p50">around the web on Techmeme</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I do wish he had been more public earlier in his health journey. You never know what you&#8217;ll learn. I&#8217;ll take that as a lesson for myself if I&#8217;m ever in a similar situation.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There have been some great long-form writings about Om:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://daringfireball.net/2026/06/om">John Gruber ties together Apple, the Yankees, and luggage</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://staceyoniot.com/thank-you-om-malik/">Stacey Higginbotham</a> from the original GigaOM.</li>



<li><a href="https://mathewingram.com/work/2026/06/25/om-malik-1966-2026/">Mathew Ingram</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/technology/om-malik-dead.html">The New York Times did an obituary</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/in-loving-memory-of-om-malik-friend-writer-venture-capitalist-and-ever-the-believer">Ben Clymer on Hodinkee</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://runtimewire.com/article/om-malik-taught-silicon-valley-to-read-itself">Ryan Merket on RuntimeWire</a>.</li>



<li>Om introduced <a href="https://krutal.blog/2026/06/26/om/">Krutal Desai as his son</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://susanhobbs.blog/2026/06/27/the-gravity-of-om/">Susan Hobbs</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://pradeep.md/2026/06/25/om.html">Pradeep Elankumaran</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://blog.naveen.com/2026/06/om-2/">Naveen Selvadurai</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://explorers.com/my-friend-om/">Christopher Michel</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://x.com/jgheller/status/2070267958891524448">Jonathan Gheller</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://x.com/mamoonha/status/2070255545643364515">Mamoon Hamid</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://boingboing.net/2026/06/25/om-malik-1966-2026.html">Rob Beschizza on Boing Boing</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://www.airsugar.com/p/om-malik-1966-to-2026">Brian Sugar</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://hugo.blog/2026/06/25/r-i-p-om-malik-%f0%9f%96%a4/">Hugo Barra</a> on how Om got him to write.</li>



<li><a href="https://everwas.com/2026/06/om/">Ian Kennedy</a>, also with some great quotes.</li>



<li><a href="https://toni.org/2026/06/25/om-malik/">Toni Schneider</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://seanbonner.com/2026/06/29/death-and-what-we-leave-behind/">Sean Bonner</a>.</li>



<li><a href="https://battellemedia.com/archives/2026/06/remembering-om-malik">John Battelle</a>.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I know I&#8217;m missing a ton, I&#8217;ll update the above. I also added a <a href="https://ma.tt/2026/06/om-forever/">few more vignettes and pictures to the last post</a>.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-153374" height="453" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2026/06/IMG_0420-1024x768.jpg?resize=604%2C453&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /></figure>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 27 Jun 2026 16:34:31 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:7;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"Open Channels FM: Why “It’s Dead” Says More About You Than the Tool";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555736";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://openchannels.fm/pop-the-email-is-dead-bubble/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:143:"Email isn’t dead. Sure, email marketing might not work for everyone, but it’s still crucial for many businesses and personal communication.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 26 Jun 2026 09:08:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:8;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:26:"Matt: All Roads Lead to Om";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=153320";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://ma.tt/2026/06/om-forever/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7104:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Yesterday, my best friend and brother from another mother, Om Malik, <a href="https://om.co/2026/06/24/1966-2026/">passed away</a>. </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">They say that blood is thicker than water, and what we had was way thicker than blood. — Bob Weir</p>
</blockquote>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Om&#8217;s request was for a small family prayer ceremony. In mourning, that will be all there is. In celebration and tribute, I love that everyone is <a href="https://www.techmeme.com/260625/p50#a260625p50">sharing their Om stories online</a>, like the <a href="https://explorers.com/my-friend-om/">writing and photography Christopher Michel shared</a>, which very much embody the OG spirit of blogging that Om pioneered.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A Renaissance Man</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I knew Om contained multitudes, but sitting by his side these last few weeks, I&#8217;ve been amazed to learn how many deep and completely separate communities he was part of. He meant so much to so many, in so many different ways.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Om loved putting on a good conference, and I&#8217;d like to celebrate his life with an awesome event on September 29, 2026 (his 60th) in San Francisco, like an <strong>OmFest</strong>. I&#8217;ll find a space where every community from the many facets of Om can come together. In the spirit of Open Source and co-creation, we can have some booths, flash talks, a gallery of his photography, pen showcase, and whatever other fun ideas people want to contribute. I can&#8217;t wait for the beautiful collision of his tech / journalism / Indian party planner / pen / coffee / shoes / photography circles, and probably some niches I couldn&#8217;t even imagine.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A Few Vignettes</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I have so much to say about Om, but right now I&#8217;m working on <a href="https://om.co/2026/06/24/1966-2026/">moderating comments</a> and keeping his website tip-top, so here are a few snippets:</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Fundamentally, Om was a lover of humanity. He became a fast &#8220;regular&#8221; everywhere he went. He wouldn&#8217;t just buy coffee, he would also learn the name and story of every barista, the dogs and people in South Park. His deep curiosity and respect weren&#8217;t just for the fine and famous. It extended to every soul that crossed his path. His encyclopedic knowledge and photographic memory created connections not just in San Francisco, but all around the world wherever we traveled. (I need to pull the stats, but we went to five continents together, including Antarctica.)</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">He loved people and their stories. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Om and I were an odd couple. We met online through forums and email because Om was one of the earliest adopters of WordPress. We finally met in person in 2004 when I was 20 and he was 38. He connected me to the first investors I ever spoke to, Phil Black, who formed True Ventures, and Tony Conrad, and introduced me to Toni Schneider, my business soul mate, who became like a co-founder as the CEO of Automattic in our first 8 years.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And of course on the internet. I don&#8217;t know how we would count, but I would guess Om read at least 1 or 2% of the whole thing.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Om was a voracious learner. I was there when he first used chopsticks, and only a few months later, he knew every sushi restaurant in San Francisco and exactly what he liked at each.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Om is probably in the top ten in the world for finding things incredibly early. That&#8217;s why he has the best usernames! How does one guy get the @om username on WordPress.com in 2005 (user ID 719), <a href="https://x.com/om">Twitter in 2006</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/om">Instagram in 2010</a>? The first WordPress meetup was at <a href="https://www.chaatcornersf.com/">Chaat Cafe (now Corner)</a> in 2005, <a href="https://ma.tt/2005/01/meetup-aftermath/">8 people showed up, and Om was one of them</a>.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">One of the biggest lessons I learned from Om is the deep appreciation of craft. When he took an interest in photography or pens, he would somehow find his way to the most obscure, highest-quality expression of that form. &#8220;What Would Om Want?&#8221; is a question I will always ponder. I want to craft products that would make Om proud.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Om&#8217;s last word was &#8220;love.&#8221;</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-153336" height="402" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2026/06/MCM_9460-1024x681.jpg?resize=604%2C402&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">In a jitney on our trip to India in 2009</figcaption></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-153338" height="402" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2026/06/om-citizen-1024x681.jpg?resize=604%2C402&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The day Om became a US citizen </figcaption></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-153340" height="402" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2026/06/MAT_2822-1024x681.jpg?resize=604%2C402&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">In NYC with the True crew, 2008</figcaption></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-153342" height="403" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2026/06/MCM_0056-1024x683.jpeg?resize=604%2C403&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Matching dyed blonde hair, 2016</figcaption></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-153345" height="805" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2026/06/IMG_0284-768x1024.jpg?resize=604%2C805&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">With a golden heart, 2025</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Robert Frost</h2>



<pre class="wp-block-verse">Nature’s first green is gold,<br />Her hardest hue to hold.<br />Her early leaf’s a flower;<br />But only so an hour.<br />Then leaf subsides to leaf.<br />So Eden sank to grief,<br />So dawn goes down to day.<br />Nothing gold can stay.</pre>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 26 Jun 2026 03:02:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:9;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"Open Channels FM: The Rise of Messaging as the Universal Tech Interface";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555622";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"https://openchannels.fm/the-rise-of-messaging-as-the-universal-tech-interface/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:246:"Messaging is emerging as the universal interface for interacting with technology, simplifying complex tasks into straightforward communications akin to texting, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing technical barriers in digital engagement.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 25 Jun 2026 12:11:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:10;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"Open Channels FM: Aligning WooCommerce Marketing Strategies for Community Success";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2556016";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:88:"https://openchannels.fm/aligning-woocommerce-marketing-strategies-for-community-success/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:185:"In this episode we’re chatting about a topic that matters to everyone in the WooCommerce world and beyond: how OSS communities can come together to market themselves more effectively.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 25 Jun 2026 09:08:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:11;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:113:"WPTavern: #222 – Destiny Kanno, Anand Upadhyay, Maciej Pilarski on How WordPress Education Programs Are Growing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=204958";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:125:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/222-destiny-kanno-anand-upadhyay-maciej-pilarski-on-how-wordpress-education-programs-are-growing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80884:"<details>Transcript<div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:00:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, how WordPress education programs are growing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So on the podcast today, we are joined by three WordPress Education Initiative leaders, Destiny Kanno, Anand Upadhyay and Maciej Pilarski.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Together, they have spent years at the heart of WordPress training and outreach, working in roles spanning community education management, plugin development, and credit program administration. Their efforts have helped shape student engagement and university partnerships across the globe, introducing thousands of learners to WordPress.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The conversation focused on the current landscape of WordPress education with particular attention to three key initiatives, the WordPress Credits Program, Campus Connect, and Student Clubs.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Each initiative is designed to provide unique entry points for students of all ages and education levels. From high schoolers building their first site in a library to university students earning official credits for open source contributions.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We discussed the different approaches these programmes take. WP Credits ties student work directly to academic credit and mentorship. Campus Connect provides flexible, community driven, events in diverse locations and Student Clubs foster sustainable, peer led, learning within schools and other institutions. We explore how these models feed into each other, building a sustainable ecosystem for ongoing growth in the WordPress community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We also get into the importance of repeat campus partnerships, the need for scalable facilitator training, and the role of recognition, certificates, badges, and public showcases in keeping students motivated and validated in their journey.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;re curious about the growing movement to bring WordPress knowledge to the next generation, or are looking to get involved with education in your local community, this episode is for you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And so without further delay, I bring you Destiny Kanno, Anand Upadhyay and Maciej Pilarski.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I am joined on the podcast by Destiny Kanno, by Anand Upadhyay and Maciej Pilarski. Hello, one and all. Nice to have you with us.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:29] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> Hello. Thank you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:30] <strong>Anand Upadhyay:</strong> Hello.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:31] <strong>Maciej Pilarski:</strong> Hello.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So a few months ago, back in, I think it was September 2025, I was joined by two of the three participants on the call today. I was joined by Destiny and I was joined by Anand. We were also joined at that point by Isotta, but she&#8217;s not on the call today. We&#8217;ve obviously got a wonderful replacement, Maciej who&#8217;s going to do a fabulous job explaining the bits and pieces here.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But the intention of that episode, which you can find on the WP Tavern website, it&#8217;s episode number 183, was to find out about all of the overlapping education initiatives in the WordPress space. And it was born, I think, largely out of a sense of curiosity on my part, but also a somewhat sense of confusion, because there were lots of things which were going on. Some of them seemed to be slightly overlapping. There was a conflict of names in some cases. So that episode was laying out the groundworks of what has been happening in the WordPress space.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When that conversation finished and we&#8217;d click the stop record button, I said, that was absolutely fascinating. This seems to be moving at such a rate, wouldn&#8217;t it be good to revisit this whole subject in about six months time?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Well, we missed that target, but here we are, maybe eight months later. I think my intuition at that point was correct, because being a close observer of what&#8217;s going on in the WordPress community, I think it&#8217;s fair to say that the educational space has been somewhat turbocharged during the last eight months.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And so today&#8217;s episode, with the help of the three people I&#8217;ve just mentioned, is to describe what&#8217;s going on, what&#8217;s changed, maybe some things that have been mothballed, but certainly a lot of things that are new and interesting and have gained a lot of momentum.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But I think, dear listener, the intention of this episode is to get you involved. Is to get to the end of this episode and for your curiosity to have been turned into action. To have gotten you out of your chair, written an email, turned up to an event, helped organise a thing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So please have that in the back of your mind. If you&#8217;re sitting listening to this in a car, at your desktop, there is actual action that could be taken at the end of this. I think the intention of all four of us on this panel would be dearly for that to happen.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Okay, let&#8217;s establish the credentials of the people that we&#8217;re going to be talking to today. So we&#8217;ll just do a little potted bio of you one at a time. So we&#8217;ll begin with Destiny, if you could just tell us a little bit about you, your relationship with education in the WordPress space, I suppose would be apropos.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:06:01] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> Yeah, absolutely. So again, Destiny Kanno. I&#8217;m currently working as an education program manager sponsored by Automattic. And I work directly with the Make WordPress Community Team. And I also work adjacently with the training team as well, because education training materials, they go pretty hand in hand. And I&#8217;ve been doing this now for about four years and, yeah, it&#8217;s just evolved since my original time working on Learn WordPress, and that relaunch that happened, to now, yeah, these wonderful programs that are spreading like wildfire as you said.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:06:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Fantastic. Thank you so much. Okay, we&#8217;ll move over to Anand for the same sort of introductory moment.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:06:43] <strong>Anand Upadhyay:</strong> Yes. So my name is Anand Upadhyay, and I run the WordPress plugin development company, WPVibes. Apart from that, I&#8217;m very much involved in the WordPress community and I contribute in multiple ways. It can be documentation, it can be Core, Polyglots. But I&#8217;m also keenly involved in the community part, and specifically I can say with the education initiatives, I started with WP Campus Connect in WordPress Campus Connect in 2024. And since then, after that we started joining hands with Destiny and we started evolving this program in a much bigger shape. So that&#8217;s it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:07:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. Thank you so much. And last, but by no means least, Maciej.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:07:20] <strong>Maciej Pilarski:</strong> Yeah. Thanks for having me. My name is Maciej Pilarski. So I&#8217;ve been doing anything related to WordPress pretty much since 2007, so that&#8217;s been a while. But the biggest breakthrough for me was 2014 when I actually volunteered to WordCamp Europe in Sovia, Bulgaria. That opened my eyes to the whole community, everything that is happening around WordPress.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And since then, pretty much I&#8217;ve been working for multiple companies from the WordPress ecosystem. I joined Automattic in 2016. For many years I&#8217;ve been a Happiness Engineer, and since October last year, I&#8217;ve joined Isotta as one of the admins of the WordPress Credit program. And since that time, I will have been helping her out to grow that initiative.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And Destiny mentioned, it spreads like fire because at that time we had six universities onboarded, now we are at 21. The 21st, we got it after WordCamp Asia actually through a connection made there. And it&#8217;s our first institution from Africa, from Uganda. A huge shout out to Stephen Dumba, who I connected with during the event. And after that, pretty much a week after we signed our first partnership from Africa. So we&#8217;re actively growing and getting new institutions on board.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:08:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you so much. Gosh, there was an awful lot in there, wasn&#8217;t there? That was really interesting. We&#8217;ll try and unpack quite a lot of that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Firstly, a sort of slightly personal message from me. I don&#8217;t usually reveal much about myself on this podcast. I take the position that I&#8217;m a, kind of like an interested party, but don&#8217;t really give much of my own thoughts. However, this is different because I cannot think of a more interesting, meaningful, moral, let&#8217;s go with that word as well, use of time than educating people. It simply is the most profoundly useful thing to do with your life.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Now, obviously people will have different opinions about that, but the juxtaposition of free open source software, in this case WordPress, and education is a real sweet spot for me. I just think that is such an amazing thing to be involved in, to have going on in the background.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you think about it, an open source project, like how many open source projects have this level of stuff going on in the education space, this real international footprint. Things going on which we&#8217;ll find out about in a minute. It&#8217;s really fascinating.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And I am sure that the listenership to this podcast, the vast majority of people listening will never have encountered much of this before. Maybe they&#8217;ve seen stuff on Learn because they want to technically learn about WordPress in an online capacity, but we&#8217;re going to be delving into real world events affecting real adults, real youngsters.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And so anyway, that&#8217;s my little bit at the beginning, just how curious it is that the project is so big that we&#8217;ve got this international footprint of education. And so I suppose what we should do right at the beginning is lay out the different initiatives and just name them, and try to figure out how they differ from each other. Just so that we&#8217;ve got some kind of awareness.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So I don&#8217;t know which one of you wants to take that, but if maybe you take one each or something, I don&#8217;t know. If we just want to lay out the, just erect that tent basically so that we know what the initiatives are called, and how they differ from one another. So I&#8217;ll open that up. Whoever wants to step in.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:10:48] <strong>Maciej Pilarski:</strong> I can start with the Credits Program. So the Credits Program is based, it&#8217;s a contribution based program, internship, initiative by the WordPress Foundation that connects higher education students with the global open source community. So basically it&#8217;s an opportunity for the students as part of the educational curriculum to contribute to the WordPress community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There are two types of courses that the students can do. One of them is 50 hours, the second one is 150 hours. Usually the students do that during a full academic semester. And as part of that, students are first onboarded into the WordPress ecosystem and the wider open source ecosystem where they learn not only about WordPress, but open source as a whole, and how crucial it is for the internet.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then the second phase is picking the contribution area to which they would like to contribute. All the contributions areas basically are the ones that are listed at make.wordpress.org. So any team that is listed there, students can pick from that area. During that phase, they work on a particular area that they have selected.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And finally, during phase three, they wrap up the whole achievements, the contribution, what they did, they publish a final post. And what is also very important as part of the credit scores, students have also assigned a mentor from the WordPress community that guides them through the whole process. We don&#8217;t leave them alone. We connect them with actual mentors from the WordPress community that are vetted by us, that guide them through the whole journey into the contribution and the whole WordPress ecosystem.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So it works on multiple levels. For me, this connection is also special because it builds this bridge between the previous generation of WordPress contributors to the new one where they are introduced and can start working on any fields of contribution.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">What is also important is that this is not limited to technical universities. Pretty much any type of university can participate in the program. The first university that we started with was University of Pisa, and it was the humanity studies. So the students from humanity field were the first group who started the Credits Program. There&#8217;s room for pretty much anyone from any field.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:13:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. There&#8217;s a lot there. Wow. I&#8217;ve just been taking notes and I&#8217;ve almost filled an entire A4 page. So WP Credits, the WordPress Credits Program, I guess the name sort of gives it away. The idea here is that you trade time for university or higher education credit. So credit being, I suppose if you were to atomise your three year degree, you might do, I don&#8217;t know, 12 modules or something like that. The idea is that one of those modules, perhaps it&#8217;s more, becomes something in the WordPress, but also curiously the free open source software space as well. I didn&#8217;t actually know that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The idea is that you link up with real world institutions. So the first one was Pisa, and maybe we can get into which other ones have come along. And in exchange for 50 hours or 150 hours, you will be given that credit, which can then go to the overall awarding of a degree or whatever it is that you are hoping to get.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You&#8217;re then linked up with team members, WordPress community team members who will mentor you and shepherd you through this process. And the idea is that it culminates, I think you said in a final post, which I suppose in a sense is a bit like a dissertation or something like that, you sum up all the different bits and pieces. Yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:14:29] <strong>Maciej Pilarski:</strong> Once that happens, the students also receives an official certificate from the WordPress Foundation, signed by Matt himself, that certifies that they completed the course. And what is also important to know, the whole progress through the course and what they did during the course, it&#8217;s also stored on the wordpress.org profile. So any contributions that they did, for example, photos that they&#8217;ve uploaded, this all will be visible on the wordpress.org profile. And they also receive a special badge dedicated to students who graduated from that program.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So it really gets them started into the WordPress ecosystem, and at the same time creates something like a small portfolio for any future company that would like to, for example, hire them. Because they have a proven history of contributing to the ecosystem.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:15:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, so that&#8217;s an interesting quid pro quo, isn&#8217;t it? So the idea is you do all this work, which on the face of it, I suppose looks very philanthropic, you know, you&#8217;re giving up your time, but you get a real thing at the back end of it. You get a certificate. You can then presumably apply for jobs and indicate, okay, I&#8217;ve done this, I&#8217;ve contributed in this meaningful way.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">What I think is really interesting there, and it kind of gets lost, I&#8217;ve worked in education in the past and I know the red tape that&#8217;s involved in doing anything in the education space. There is so much red tape. And I can only imagine what&#8217;s happened in the background to enable these kind of things. You know, the back and forth, the tennis of emails that go on and on and the proof that&#8217;s required to categorically show that this thing that we are doing is worth something. You know, it&#8217;s not just this Mickey Mouse. We use that expression, Mickey Mouse kind of qualification that really, it doesn&#8217;t actually require any hard work. It&#8217;s just there, nothing really in it, but you get an accreditation anyway.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I can only imagine the hard work that has gone in every single time you touch a new institution, trying to convince them that this is legitimate, that this is real. You&#8217;ve just kind of glossed over all of that by just describing what is in existence, not necessarily what has gone on to make it happen. I know that there&#8217;s probably more than the three of you involved in this, but my profound thanks for all of that hard work, which presumably is utterly and completely invisible. And I can only imagine what&#8217;s going on there. So yeah, thank you for all of that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:16:54] <strong>Maciej Pilarski:</strong> Thank you for that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:16:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So that was WP Credits. So that was one wing of the things that we&#8217;re going to discuss today. Should we move on to another one and maybe somebody else wants to take the helm?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:17:03] <strong>Anand Upadhyay:</strong> I think Destiny can take Campus Connect and then I will take Student Clubs.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:17:06] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. Destiny, let&#8217;s move over to you and see what you can tell us about something different.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:17:11] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> Yeah, so I&#8217;d love to tell you more about WordPress Campus Connect. And the way we ended with WordPress Credits, I think is also very critical to the story of Campus Connect because, you know, it started with Campus Connect first, and that&#8217;s how organisers such as Anand and Pooja like were able to get those connections with the universities through being boots on the ground, you know, having those relationships. Proving through action that these activities that we&#8217;re doing with the students are having real impact and are showing real results.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Slowly building up these kind of case studies in a way has helped open a lot of doors, especially with Campus Connect now, we&#8217;ve done a lot of events, especially since we last talked. Like I think this year alone, we&#8217;ve already had 22 Campus Connect events. So, like it&#8217;s not even half the year and it&#8217;s quickly becoming one of the biggest run events, WordPress official series.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But these events are like a way of opening the door, right? Hey, here&#8217;s a free learning opportunity for your students. And as you said, like the red tape is there. A lot of institutions are like, wait, so what&#8217;s in it for you? Why is, there&#8217;s a little bit of dubiousness sometimes in the reaction, right? You&#8217;re going to give your time to educate our students, why? But once they see, it&#8217;s like, no, we really are just passionate about spreading WordPress, showing students what&#8217;s capable with their website, how it applies to different skillsets as well. Like it&#8217;s not just for coders, it is for marketers, it is for designers.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You know, there&#8217;s so many career opportunities that once we just get the foot in the door and we&#8217;re able to showcase that, a lot of institutions are like, okay, now I get it. I do want to highlight in Anand&#8217;s case, like they&#8217;re going to have their third WordPress Campus Connect in Ajmer this year. You&#8217;ve got repeat institutions. I&#8217;ve heard you also have institutions that are like, when are you going to come to our place and teach WordPress? You know, once the fire is lit and people see how bright and shiny it is, like people want to get involved.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But as you said, like getting it to click for people, that is like the most difficult part. And I&#8217;ll give an example of, right now in Japan, we had our first WordPress Campus Connect event on the 9th of May. So I&#8217;m like, woo hoo. Like it finally happened. But we have this community in Japan that is like very passionate, very active. So when I first was like introducing the concept of Campus Connect, people were like, okay, but like how do we do this? What&#8217;s it about? It takes like a lot of presentations, a lot of going to people in person and talking. Helping them even shape the conversation that they&#8217;re going to have with the institution to sell this amazing gift of WordPress on their campus.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And after this one on the ninth, like now we have a case study in Japan that others can now use to be a starting point for those conversations going forward. So I think, once you have that one step, the gate just slowly opens until it&#8217;s just, the doors bang open in each way. But yeah, we&#8217;ve seen really great success with Campus Connect and it&#8217;s just like honestly, it just keeps growing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:20:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Can I just ask a quick question? So I just want to draw a very clear line for everybody that&#8217;s listening to this, what the difference may be between Campus Connect and WP Credits. Because from the description that we&#8217;ve had so far, it may be that you&#8217;ve fallen into the trap of thinking, well, they sound like they might be the same thing. So could you just, Destiny, just tease out where Campus Connect differs? Maybe in the nature of the event, the timing of the event, the availability, the age group, those kind of things that separate WP Credits from the Campus Connect initiative.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:21:02] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> Yeah. Thank you, that&#8217;s like a really great distinction to make. So whereas WordPress Credits is geared toward higher education, Campus Connect is geared toward, honestly any level of students as long as they&#8217;re able to browse the web safely, and enjoy and participate.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So that means, Elementary school students now are pretty good at devices. High school students, college students, vocational students. We honestly kept the door pretty open in terms of what a campus means. We&#8217;ve even had a Campus Connect event in Uganda in a library, the Lira Public Library because students were able to go there right?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We were trying to make it as barrier free for students wherever their campus is. And so that&#8217;s, I think, the main difference. It&#8217;s more wide ranging in terms of who can participate as a student. And then also the fact that it could be a one-off event, so a one day event. A lot nowadays are multiple day events, they&#8217;ll maybe go two times out of a month, or a couple days consecutively. And then after that it&#8217;s up to really the organisers in the institution whether or not we have another addition on their campus the same year, or the next year.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:22:15] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I&#8217;m going to tease out a few things. I just want to point out to, me as an English person, that is to say, not an English speaker, but somebody from England, campus has a really defined definition, and it&#8217;s usually bound to a university. Whereas it sounds like the description here, campus literally means the place where education happens, not it&#8217;s 18 years old and older, you know, people doing degrees, bachelors and PhDs and that kind of thing. Basically, if there&#8217;s an institution somewhere, that&#8217;s what the campus is in this case. Okay.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So the WP Credits program sounds like you forge your relationship with the university, and correct me if I&#8217;m wrong, it sounds like it takes place inside that institution, and it&#8217;s part of that program and what have you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Campus Connect initiative is much more ad hoc. It could be a one-off, it could be monthly, it could be inside a library, it could be inside the school, it could be an inside an institution. It feels a bit more like, I don&#8217;t know, a WordPress Meetup, but geared towards a younger audience or something like that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And the minimum age requirement is really driven by your capacity to type on a keyboard and hold a mouse and those kind of things. And that&#8217;s kind of curious to me because I think my educational experience was always younger children. It&#8217;s really interesting how patterns are laid down at a very, very early age. Patterns that go on into much later life get laid down, typically at incredibly young ages. So this is fascinating for digging into that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And it&#8217;s not just about, say, the code, it sounds like code is on the menu, but it could be about marketing, it could be about design. Basically the gamut of anything online, CMSy, those kind of things. Okay, is there anything you want to add? Did I misunderstand anything there, or misstate anything there?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:24:02] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> No, I think you&#8217;re completely right. We&#8217;re trying to convey that WordPress isn&#8217;t just a blogging software that I think is still a lot of people have a mentality of. Like there are many ways to utilise it that goes beyond that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And one thing I did want to add are a couple numbers. So since WordPress Campus Connect became official in May of 2025, an official WordPress event series, I should say, we&#8217;ve had 42 completed events, with 71 participating institutions, and over 5,500 students have been reached.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:24:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s something else. 42 events, 71 institutions, and I think you said five and a half thousand individuals. Good grief. I don&#8217;t know what the measure of success is for this, but that feels like success to me.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I mean, imagine turning up to a WordCamp, like a flagship WordCamp and five and a half thousand people descending on you. You&#8217;d feel slightly overwhelmed. That&#8217;s a lot, isn&#8217;t it? Gosh, that&#8217;s pretty remarkable. Wow. Congratulations.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:25:05] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> And the majority, the outcome, the students make a website. So we could almost count those students as also new WordPress websites that are live now on the web. So within a year, organisers around the world have been able to make that happen.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:25:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Could I just perhaps draw another distinction as well, just very quickly, because it sounds like the WordPress Credit system, because it&#8217;s binding itself to institutions, it sounds like there might be more paperwork going on there, and maybe more high level meetings that need to take place. Whereas Campus Connect feels much more community driven. It&#8217;s the kind of thing that, quite literally, anybody listening to this podcast with a fair wind could have one of those going in a handful of months. If they&#8217;ve got the right initiative and they can find the audience for that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Again, is that about right? There&#8217;s sort of more opportunity to become involved with the Campus Connect initiatives. You don&#8217;t need to have that academic background or have a point of contact at a university. You basically just need a building, some interest and a bunch of students.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:26:02] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> Yeah, the key thing is, you know, having a real connection to the campus that you&#8217;re going to present at. But you&#8217;re exactly right. We tried really hard to lower the barrier to organise these events. Because I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve organised a WordPress event before, there&#8217;s kind of a lot of hoops you have to jump through. And we&#8217;re like, okay, how can we think about this in a different way?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And I think that also has positive repercussions for how we organise other events too, that are, changes are being thought about too so that we can enable people and empower them to put these events, instead of bogging them down and process and a little bit of bureaucracy to say.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:26:38] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So what&#8217;s really curious about that as well is we&#8217;re all in different parts of the world, aren&#8217;t we? People on the call today are in Japan and I&#8217;m in Europe and, Anand, are you in India? I think.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:26:47] <strong>Anand Upadhyay:</strong> Yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:26:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. Each of those events, I guess would look quite different. The kind of nature of the attendees, the nature of the kind of building it might be in, the institution. And it really is, you just grab what&#8217;s around you I suppose, and work with that. If you&#8217;ve got a connection to an institution, you can go for it. Maciej, I feel like I crosstalked you. I think you wanted to say quite a few times and I&#8217;ve just interrupted. I&#8217;m very sorry.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:27:08] <strong>Maciej Pilarski:</strong> No worries about that. So I wanted to add that those initiatives set backgrounds for each other. Because in some uni institutions, the interest sparks with a Campus Connect event, and that gets the institution interested in those initiatives, which sets background for WordCamp Credit.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And it happens also the other way around, where we start with an institution that starts credits and then we get the students interested in WordPress in general, the community, which leads to a Campus Connect event during the Credits Program. What is important is that those initiatives don&#8217;t compete with each other. They support each other.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:27:51] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Right, so there&#8217;s a lovely virtuous cycle there, isn&#8217;t there? Where the two things can be going on in harmony, one promoting the other and they&#8217;re definitely not in competition. Okay. That&#8217;s really interesting.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">One final question on Campus Connect, and I&#8217;ll direct this at Destiny, just because she&#8217;s been handling that. With the WP Credits thing, there is this moment where you hold the certificate in your hand and you go, yay, did it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Is the same thing true of Campus Connect or is it more of a show up to the one event, you know that you did that, that was great, you can file that away in your own head as a thing? Or is there some sort of accreditation, or certificate giving, or badge giving, or profile updating that might go on on wordpress.org? Is there any sort of thing that the attendees receive, and I suppose that the people that are organising might receive as well?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:28:37] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> Yes. So we do have a certificate of participation that students can receive signed by WordPress Foundation Executive Director, Mary Hubbard. And that just needs to be requested by the organisers ahead of time, because we need to get the signature and all that. So yes, they can come away with that. And we&#8217;ve heard really positive things about that, like it motivates them. They&#8217;re like, yeah, I did something, which they did.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:29:01] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> There we go. That was WP Credits and WP Campus Connect.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Can I just say at this point, dear listener, if at this point you&#8217;re thinking hang on a minute, there&#8217;s a lot going on here, don&#8217;t worry, there&#8217;ll be show notes. If you go to the WP Tavern website, there&#8217;ll be show notes. I&#8217;ll try to list out as many sensible links to get you to the root of each one of these initiatives, so that you can begin your journey and fan out from there.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I&#8217;m not sure what episode number this will be, but if you just go and search for, oh, I don&#8217;t know, Destiny or Anand or Maciej, you could probably find the episode that way. And all the show notes will contain all of the links.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Right, in which case, I think it might be Anand&#8217;s turn. What have you decided to take on Anand?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:29:39] <strong>Anand Upadhyay:</strong> So I will be sharing my thoughts on the third part of this whole education initiative ecosystem. So that is a Student Club. Just a few minutes before you were giving the analogue of meetup with this Campus Connect. So I would like to share the same analogue with us because we are more accustomed with like other terms of WordCamps and Meetups and contributer days.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">WordPress Campus Connect is kind of like a WordCamp happening in the campus, because it&#8217;s like a big day event that holds everything happening, different kind of sessions, maybe workshops happening. So I would compare it with that thing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And same way, credits thing, Credit Program is kind of like ongoing contribution series because more focused on the contribution part because the student devote 150 hours of their program. A lot of period goes to the contribution.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And now the same way we, if we talk about the Student club, it&#8217;s similar to like the Meetups that we have. But these are the in campus meetups for the students and by the students. How do things get started? Like the Campus Connect introduce the WordPress to those campuses and to those students, but since most of the campus, it&#8217;s a once in a year event. So once this event has sparked something about the WordPress in the students. So keeping that momentum going on, that&#8217;s where the Student Clubs come in.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So with the Student Club, it&#8217;s kind of like, as I mentioned, it&#8217;s like an in campus meet program. So a student can gather themselves, they can form a club and a couple of students can be nominated as club organisers, student club organiser from their campus. And then they organise the in-campus events, maybe like once in a month or twice a month, depending on academic calendar. There are a lot of hurdles in doing those things continuously.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But they usually do once or twice a month. They do a kind of a meetup in their campus. The students gathered together. They learn from variable resources available from WordPress. And from those resources, they share with the other students. It&#8217;s kind of a group learning, group study, that we use. Education live, we always do that. It&#8217;s kind of a group study. They&#8217;re learning from themselves. If someone has learned something, they are helping others to learn those things.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So I would just like to give some of the examples from my city. There are multiple Student Clubs are going on. When we went to the campus, we just taught like a small group of students about the WordPress, because we&#8217;d have some limitations of the resources, of the setting arrangement. We cannot call all the students of the campus and, okay, come together and I have a amazing workshop. So we have given the WordPress walk through to the limited number of students.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">After that, they form a Student Club in their campus because they got very much interested. Then the first session they did was like, they started teaching to their juniors, like the students who have just entered the campus. They took a session for them. So they told, whatever we have told them, they have taught the same thing to the juniors.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">After that, in the next few session, they experimented different things. Like in some session they&#8217;re just doing a fun quiz around WordPress. And in some sessions they are doing a kind of like a, I would say like a hackathon kind of thing. So they are just picking up a website. Or you can, just similar to the speed build challenge that Jamie do. So they have just one website open on the screen and everybody&#8217;s like cloning that website.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So there are different ways students are engaging through those student clubs. So it is helping to keep the momentum going on so that the student keep learning about WordPress and they are also connecting with the community members for the guidance about how they can learn more. What should they learn next if they are sharing their experience. Like we have covered these things and, what should we go next?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And in the recent WordCamp Asia, they&#8217;re also one of the Student Club lead from my city. She joined the event and there are conversation with the, like other community members who has offered them like, okay, we can come to your campus, or we can do, have a webinar for your campus where we can teach you particular subjects, particular topics. Maybe they can talk about SEO, maybe they can talk about plugin development.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So this is also opening the horizon for them, to learn from people across the world. So that is how the Student Clubs are happening. The examples I&#8217;ve gave, again, from my own city because I&#8217;m closely mentoring them, but there&#8217;s similar things are happening across the world.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So it is helping to create a kind of sustainable environment for the long-term sustainable environment in the campus. So the next time when we go to that campus, we are not going to teach like the basics of WordPress, because we want like, the ecosystem should be built within the campus, so every student know about the WordPress. Because last time when we went to the campus, we have to tell everything about WordPress because why you should learn WordPress.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So the Student Clubs, my ambition is that, wherever the Student Club is from, next time a Campus Connect event is happening, next time we should not tell them about what is WordPress and why they should learn this thing. There should be already a sustainable ecosystem.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And I feel that all these three programs are like very much interconnected. And the real impact of these programs, we will be able to see in the next two or three years. And there will be a regular ongoing activities around WordPress in the campus.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And these are also kind of a balance program as well. Like the Campus Connect is introducing WordPress to the students, Credits Program is motivating them more towards like the contribution part. And I would say that Student Clubs is more inclined towards getting new users to the WordPress. Because if we keep on focusing on the contribution, contribution, but if we discard the like increasing the number of new users, so we are not going to win. We need a balanced state.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Student Club is trying to, learning how to build website, how to mastering the skills of the WordPress. And later on, many of them are going to join the contribution part as well.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So this whole ecosystem is built around bringing more people to the contribution, bringing more people to use WordPress, build websites, as in, for the individuals as a business as well. So that&#8217;s how all these three programrs are very much interconnected, and growing together fast.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:35:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It feels like, of the three things that we&#8217;ve talked about, so WP Credits, Campus Connect, the Student Club, this final one that you&#8217;ve just covered, it feels like that&#8217;s got a very flat hierarchy to it. In other words, there&#8217;s like this peer learning. So it feels like more or less anybody can show up and demonstrate anything, which might then lead to somebody else thinking, okay, that was interesting, I&#8217;ll take on next month&#8217;s one because I&#8217;ve now seen that&#8217;s doable. Less hierarchy, if you know what I mean? So a much more flat structure.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:35:45] <strong>Anand Upadhyay:</strong> Because when we started Campus Connect, we also get a lot of attraction in the local community as well. And people join our Meetup groups. But then it becomes difficult for us, how to plan about the topics for our meetup. We have some experienced professionals coming in. We have some students coming in, and we plan the topics that suits the professionals. The student will feel like, okay, what&#8217;s they&#8217;re talking, we are not getting anything in our mind. If we bring the topics, very basic topics and the professionals who are joining the community meetups, they&#8217;ll feel like, okay, these are very basic stuff, why am I coming here?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Student Clubs giving them their own platform, giving them a own opportunity. Okay, these are all the familiar faces. It is also giving the opportunity to come on the stage, come onto the stage and get out of your fear as well. It is also generating leadership qualities in them. Okay, we have to keep this momentum going on and we have to keep the activities going on. So there are a lot of ways, apart from learning WordPress, there are a lot of other ways it is helping the students as well.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:36:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> When you have to stand up in front of a bunch of people and deliver something, obviously there&#8217;s a whole bunch of us that are just really confident at doing that, quite happy to stand up and do that kind of thing off the bat. But equally, there&#8217;s people for whom that is just the most terrifying experience possible. You know, standing up in front of two or three people, oh boy, you know, anything above that is just off the books.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And I was just wondering about that, whether or not there&#8217;s, in this particular style of event, the Student Club, whether there is a growing corpus of, I don&#8217;t know, previously done topics or topic suggestions or slide decks or anything like that, which might enable people to feel that level of confidence? I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s something which is being put together. Just resources which enable somebody who doesn&#8217;t have the confidence, let&#8217;s go with that word, who then may gain that confidence. And I&#8217;m going to pass this to Destiny because she&#8217;s waving her hand.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:37:30] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> I was really hoping I could shamelessly plug this project. This is like, you&#8217;ve said the most opportune thing. So I&#8217;m actually developing right now what I&#8217;m like tentatively calling the Meetup Activity Library. It comes with like kits on certain topics. So for example, WordPress Playground was the first one I built. But it comes with the facilitation guide, which is a doc. So the facilitator can read through, understand the steps they&#8217;re going to go through in the activity, how to pace it. And then a presentation deck which they would display, if that&#8217;s available to them, to the folks that they&#8217;re presenting to. And it&#8217;s a hands-on activity only. So it&#8217;s not only presentation. The facilitator of course guides and talks them through things, but then people are getting hands-on experience with that topic along the way.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:38:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That is a beautiful remover of barriers, because I think just having that little document, that little crutch, you don&#8217;t have to feel that you, okay, I&#8217;ve got to come up with a topic. Not only have I got to come up with a topic, but then I&#8217;ve got to research the topic, deliver the topic. If you can have it all on a thing that you can crib from, I don&#8217;t know, it just arms you with that confidence as you walk in. I think that&#8217;s such a brilliant topic. And, Maciej.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:38:40] <strong>Maciej Pilarski:</strong> Both Destiny and Anand mentioned two keywords, sustainability and facilitator. The goal of also getting all those educational initiatives going is also create in a sustainable way. We&#8217;re not pushing for numbers, but growing them in a smart way where we don&#8217;t get too many students so we get overwhelmed. We need to have enough mentors to accommodate those students, and also enough facilitators to be able to scale the program, to grow it in the future.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And it&#8217;s exactly what Destiny is now doing, the Facilitator Training Program, which gets more people from the educational sectors, community organisers, everyone on board, to jump on those educational initiatives and help us to grow. Because the number of every, all those students involved in participating in those programs is increasing and we need to be able to accommodate them. And through the Facilitator Training Program, this allows us to do that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:39:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s so interesting in open source software spaces as opposed to corporate spaces. I suppose the metric of success for anything like this in the corporate universe would be how many people showed up and gave us money in exchange for this knowledge or, you know, something akin to that. Basically a metric of humans in a room and money gained. And of course, the measurement of this is so not that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I did wonder, Destiny obviously very proudly rattled off the statistics for Campus Connect, you know, the five and a half thousand attendees and all of that. I wondered if there were success criteria of some kind in the background, which guide you. You know, it&#8217;s not like, okay, well we didn&#8217;t meet that we&#8217;re going to abandon it all. But more, things like you would like to see happen, so aspirational goals. It sounds from what Maciej was saying that maybe the attendance growing slowly over time is some kind of measure of success. Maybe there is none of that, but I&#8217;ll just open that one up to see if you want to take that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:40:38] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> I think one definite measure of success is repeat events on certain campuses. So if the campus is saying, we love that, please come back, or please come again soon. I think that is a really great indicator that, not only did the students get something great out of it, but the school believes in it. And that&#8217;s what we want to do. We want to create these systems that, not only bring people into WordPress, but also continue this cycle of, you know, growth within the community, but also ownership by the institution.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Another measurement of success is the institution is like, okay, great, how do we learn how to do that ourselves? So we have some folks now working in the institution that are organising WordPress Campus Connect events that are helping facilitate these Student Clubs. So the faculty and educators themselves, they&#8217;re directly getting involved. And that for us as community members too, whose volunteer time is quite limited, as Maciej was saying, like it is a great multiplier that makes everything much more sustainable.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:41:45] <strong>Maciej Pilarski:</strong> So from the WordPress Credits perspective, we don&#8217;t hope all the students to turn into contributors. That would be amazing but that might not happen. I can share with you some numbers. So currently we have 450 students globally enrolled. For the whole program so far, 75 graduates.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We hope that some or as many as possible of those graduates who completed the program will stay and become active contributors to the WordPress community, stay engaged.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That&#8217;s one of the goals we are aiming for the Credits Program, to not just get this done, but this is building the next generation of contributors. We know that like we are ageing, we&#8217;re getting older every year. We are not getting younger, unfortunately. Getting those students staying in the community allows us to build those next generations of WordPress contributors that will also have completely different perspectives to how the community functions, how it was built.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">What brought us here might not move us forward. So these new students will bring us this new, fresh perspective of how they would like the community to function and move it to the future, to be current, to stay up to date with what&#8217;s happening globally.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:43:00] <strong>Anand Upadhyay:</strong> That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s very difficult to like measure the impact in numbers because how it is impacting in the longer term. But yeah, it&#8217;s going to impact. And I would say also, like Destiny mentioned, one of the metrics is like this campus is willing to have the Campus Connect again and again in the campus.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So I just want to share one more. Like I just recently got a call from one of the faculty coordinators from one of the campus where we have a Student Club. And now they have like two months of vacations. And he called me like, okay, now the vacations are going on, students will not be here, so what can we do for the students to keep their involvement with the WordPress in those two months? So can we do something online? Can we do something like this?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When we get these calls, these kind of communications, that these are interactions that we have, this gives us a sense of like accomplishment. Okay, yeah, we were able to create some kind of interest in the students. Because we cannot expect that if we are going to like any campus and 100 or 200 students are participating in our Campus Connect, they are all going to jump into the WordPress. They are getting a lot of different kind of opportunities as well.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There are other technologies as well, which are, some students are going into that, some students are going into that. But we are showcasing the WordPress as one of the career opportunities. And they have a choice of multiple options, so they will choose what they do. But yeah, the impact will be seen in the next few years. Just like Maciej said, mentioned that he went to the WordCamp as a volunteer and it&#8217;s bring him into the community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And the same is with me. I attended the WordCamp and just after coming out of the WordCamp, I started the Meetup group in my city. So I got inspired from that. So that is a result of that WordCamp. And that cannot be measured in the numbers. That can only be sensed when we are doing this kind of conversation. Okay, that WordCamp helped me, that WordCamp helped me.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The same way in future, these students who will join the community or the WordPress industry, they will be talking about, okay, I got first introduced about WordPress through a WordPress Campus Connect event or I got introduced to the contribution through WP Credits Program. So when these conversation will be happening in the future, then we will say that those are the real metrics that we are looking for.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:45:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s really interesting, and I like that. It sounds like there&#8217;s not so much a focus on statistics, you know, literal, brutal numbers, more kind of playing it forwards and measuring the impact over many years, not, you know, a handful of months into the future.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:45:15] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> So yes, we&#8217;re not like, okay, here&#8217;s our KPIs, you know, and here&#8217;s our hard metrics. But one thing I really noticed that our community is, it could be better at doing, is just talking about what happened. Because then you hear all these success stories and there are numbers in that. So like for example, Ajmer again, Women&#8217;s Day event this year. 50% of tickets sold were to students. And that&#8217;s directly because of the involvement in going to these campuses and teaching WordPress. And I&#8217;m like, that&#8217;s amazing, that&#8217;s direct injection of 50% youth into the WordPress community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:45:52] <strong>Anand Upadhyay:</strong> And they sold out so fast.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:45:53] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> And they sold out really fast, yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:45:55] <strong>Anand Upadhyay:</strong> The organisers were hoping like, now we have to pitch out to sale our tickets. And they have planned a social media campaign around that. Okay, we will be periodically pitch a student on the social media to encourage the ticket purchase. And within one day, we sold out. And the whole social media campaign was like their whole planning was gone. We don&#8217;t have tickets.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:46:14] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s really interesting that there&#8217;s all this success going on, and yet, as Destiny said, it is hard to get that discovered. Maybe it&#8217;s a case of shouting louder about the previous success. Maybe things like this podcast will help in some small way for things like that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But I know what you mean. There&#8217;s a lot of people talking about the code, and there&#8217;s a lot of people talking about the plugins and the themes and whether or not we&#8217;re going to get collaborative editing in version 7 or 7.1. All of that seems to suck up all of the oxygen in the room. And yet, without a throughput of, let&#8217;s go for young adults, coming into the WordPress space, there&#8217;s not really a great deal of hope for a project over decades unless we get people of a much younger age beginning now. And I&#8217;ll just hand the torch to Maciej because I think he&#8217;s got something to add.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:47:05] <strong>Maciej Pilarski:</strong> But this is also changing because at WordCamp Asia, we were able to introduce the educational table during the contributor day. And I&#8217;m also organiser of WordCamp Europe that&#8217;s going to happen really soon in two, three weeks, beginning of June. And during WordCamp Europe, we will also have a contributor table, dedicated to education, but for the first time also educational track.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">During the second day, we will start the whole day with topics related to education. We will have a discussion panel rethinking learning in WordPress that Mary will be participating. And later in that afternoon, we will have actual students, who take part in the program. Sharing the experience, presenting the results. Not only students from universities, but I&#8217;m also leading a group of high school students who&#8217;ve been working for the whole past semester with a teacher on some projects related to WordPress building websites. So they are super eager and excited to show them.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We will also showcase some students, teachers stories, how both of those sites motivated each other, learn from each other, and basically help us keep growing the community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So WordCamp Europe definitely will feature some of those things. And we&#8217;re slowly introducing more and more those things into those flagship events and into the broader community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:48:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Really nice. Yeah, that&#8217;s really nice to hear. I think it&#8217;s a difficult circle to square, the idea of making this stuff visible so that everybody&#8217;s aware of it. Even if they&#8217;re only interested in running their agency, or writing code or whatever it is. Maybe to realise that this is some version of the underpinnings of the WordPress community without which the software ultimately doesn&#8217;t exist.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And it is quite curious. I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;m reading between the lines here, I think I&#8217;m not, but I get the impression that, I&#8217;m going to use the phrase like, I don&#8217;t know, from higher up, let&#8217;s put it that way. It feels like education is taking a more central place. It feels like for example, Mary Hubbard, it feels like you&#8217;ve got a real advocate there. Again, I could be reading between the lines, but it feels like the words coming out of her mouth, I hear the word education coming out of her mouth quite a lot when she&#8217;s on stage.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So it feels like you&#8217;ve got some big hitters, let&#8217;s go with that. I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve got anything you want to add to that, but it feels like the importance of this is more profound this year than it was a few years ago.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:49:33] <strong>Maciej Pilarski:</strong> You are correct. Mary is a big supporter of that and she also created this space for us to grow those initiatives that like allows us to grow that. Isotta started the first Credits Program at the Pisa University as an experiment. And from there it was proven that this actually works. It gets us universities and new contributors.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And then on the other side, there was those Campus Connect events that also organically grew up on their own. So basically there was a need. It feels like there was this hive mind somehow that worked also for all of us. All of us felt this need to introduce those things. It looks like we&#8217;ve reached a certain growth level for the community that we organically felt that that&#8217;s the direction that we should start heading.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:50:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. What&#8217;s interesting there as well is that it very much overlaps with maybe a concern. So we&#8217;ve touched on this at various points without saying it out loud quite. If you go to, and I&#8217;m going to exclude WordCamp Asia 2026 from what I&#8217;m about to say, because that event was very different. If you go to a typical WordCamp, the age skews, and I&#8217;m doing air quotes, older. You don&#8217;t typically look around and see a bunch of teenagers.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So that&#8217;s a concern. There&#8217;s this, like a pyramid, like a reverse pyramid, and if we don&#8217;t get the younger people coming up, the edifice of this entire project kind of becomes a lot more shaky. And we&#8217;ve lived through 22 plus years of WordPress, and I think quite a lot of those people began, a lot of the people who&#8217;ve been involved in the community began their careers using WordPress and they&#8217;ve kind of moved through WordPress as it&#8217;s evolved over those 22 years.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And not to, I don&#8217;t know quite how to say this. At some point they&#8217;re going to stop contributing. Their age will become something, you know, they want to retire or they want to move on or do some other things. Unless we build the scaffolding and put things in place so that young people feel they&#8217;ve got a place here, feel that, I don&#8217;t know, some proprietary system is not the way they want to go, they want to support the ethic of open source.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Unless these building blocks, these educational building blocks are put in place, then that&#8217;s going to be a bit of a concern. So to your point, Maciej, it organically grew. And what a nice thing that it did kind of organically grow because it&#8217;s sorely needed at the same time. There isn&#8217;t really a question in there. But anyway, there&#8217;s my observation. Anand, did you have something to say? I think you did.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:52:04] <strong>Anand Upadhyay:</strong> Yeah. So just want to add that thing you have raised recently. So the way that we want to teach the students about the open source as well, because if you go to the WP Credit curriculum, so the initial lessons, they learn through the, given to them to learn from the learn.wordpress. So it&#8217;s all about like open source ethics, and how the WordPress community, WordPress project works.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So this opens up their mind about the open source. Because in the education system, it is something that is not clearly mentioned. There are simple, just simple definitions around the open source. But open source is much more than those definitions.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And especially the open source community like WordPress. It&#8217;s more about the people. So the students also learn about how the community is working, how the people are working from the different time zones, people are joining hands for running the bigger events like WordCamp Asia or these Credits Programs. The students will learn all those things as well, and I&#8217;m sure when they will join as a contributor in the future, they will have lot of experience before joining as well.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:53:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. I love that expression, by the way. You just dropped it in in the middle of a sentence there. You said people are joining hands. What a perfect summation of the entire enterprise being discussed today. Maciej, you raised your hand.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:53:14] <strong>Maciej Pilarski:</strong> Yeah, and besides the community goals and keeping it going, I have also a very personal goal that also is behind all of those things that I do. From my own experience, I had a pretty difficult and bumpy educational path, let&#8217;s call it. Unlocking those possibilities for those students, helping them out, making it easier for them, it&#8217;s one of my very personal goals, because I know it does not need to be very difficult or crazy when you study, especially when you are young. You&#8217;re not sure fully which direction you would like to go. So creating for them, one of those opportunities that might click for them is also something very personal and close to my heart. Because not everyone needs to struggle or have like difficulties, so.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:53:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I am so glad you said that because that encapsulates all of it. That&#8217;s the entire point. It&#8217;s got to be that, right? So we&#8217;ve spent a long time talking about the minutiae of this, that, and the other thing. It all goes, like they&#8217;re spokes on a wheel. And the whole point is that little bit in the middle, which is the child, the adult, the human being somewhere who just wants to make use, wants to grow, wants to learn things, wants to figure things out.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">With open source, with this kind of learning, there is potentially zero impediment, or at least very few impediments to actually get that learning underway. And so I think maybe we lost sight of that in this conversation a little bit. So I&#8217;m glad that you grounded it there, Maciej, right towards the end. That&#8217;s perfect. Destiny, was there anything you wanted to say? I don&#8217;t know if you were indicating that you did.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:54:48] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> I know we&#8217;re like probably over time, but there&#8217;s still so much to share. Like even thinking about keeping WordPress relevant, right? For us and then also for youth. I think about the new AI Leaders Credential that was announced and is being worked on. And how tying WordPress to AI is like really helping students engage more, and see like the relevancy of it in a different way. Not even for the students, like for me, that&#8217;s challenging me and I think other organisers and learners of WordPress to be adaptable and think about WordPress differently in a new way of this year as AI keeps advancing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And then you were also talking about wins, right? How do we celebrate that? I did want to surface, we have the Education Buzz Report, which goes out every month, which aims to try to surface all of these educational wins that are happening in the community. And I just have received some further collaboration from marketing to hopefully also broadcast that on our socials going forward so that we do get the word out.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And lastly, like celebrating the students too. There was a post that went out about the Student Clubs and the success. And we just want to make sure that in this, that they feel seen, right? And that this feels like a space for them. And I know WordPress Credits, we&#8217;re working on something to showcase, no, something went out recently. A post went out recently to showcase some of the successes of the students. And we just want to keep highlighting that as well. Because their work and the way they operate, especially because they&#8217;re coming in with different lenses, is really important to showcase and highlight and make sure that they feel like they deserve that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:56:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, there was a post, I&#8217;ll try and link to it. I think it was like a week ago about the Student Clubs. There were three or four images, three or four photos and there were so many smiling faces in those pictures. It was absolutely lovely. Lots of people gathered in classrooms. I couldn&#8217;t exactly tell where, but it was just so nice seeing people kind of enjoying WordPress, having a nice time, bit of camaraderie, hanging out with each other, learning things. It was absolutely wonderful.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Unfortunately, I think time might have got the better of us. Hopefully, dear listener, what you&#8217;ve gained is an understanding that there&#8217;s so many layers to this educational initiative. It doesn&#8217;t appear to be in any way standing still. It&#8217;s growing. It&#8217;s interesting. There&#8217;s a lot going on, and you can be involved.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I will put links in the show notes to any of the places where I feel you would be best making a start with that. Maybe the contributors to this panel can drop some things, you know, if they&#8217;ve got a particular link. So again, wptavern.com. If you want to go over there, we will look for the links.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This giant edifice that you maybe know nothing about, and maybe at the end of this episode, some parts of you is tuned in and thinking, I would like to be involved in that. And the truth is, you can be. It&#8217;s all available to you to get involved and you could start today.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So there we go. With that said, I&#8217;m just going to say a great big thank you to Destiny, to Anand, and to Maciej. It kinds of feels like we need to come back. Let&#8217;s do it again in six months or so, and we&#8217;ll see where we&#8217;re at. Oh, I&#8217;ve got a lot of nodding faces. That&#8217;s nice. So maybe we&#8217;ll revisit this in a few months time.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But seriously, from the bottom of my heart, Destiny, Anand and Maciej, profound respect to you and all of the different things that you are doing. Thank you so much for chatting to me today.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:58:13] <strong>Anand Upadhyay:</strong> Thank you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:58:13] <strong>Maciej Pilarski:</strong> Thank you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:58:14] <strong>Destiny Kanno:</strong> Thank you.</p>
</div></details>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">On the podcast today we’re joined by three WordPress education initiative leaders, Destiny Kanno, Anand Upadhyay and Maciej Pilarski.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Together, they have spent years at the heart of WordPress training and outreach, working in roles spanning community education management, plugin development, and credit program administration. Their efforts have helped shape student engagement and university partnerships across the globe, introducing thousands of learners to WordPress. You can see their bios further down.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The conversation focused on the current landscape of WordPress education, with particular attention to three key initiatives: the WordPress Credits Program, Campus Connect, and Student Clubs. Each initiative is designed to provide unique entry points for students of all ages and education levels, from high schoolers building their first site in a library, to university students earning official credits for open source contributions.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We discussed the different approaches these programs take: WP Credits ties student work directly to academic credit and mentorship, Campus Connect provides flexible, community-driven events in diverse locations, and Student Clubs foster sustainable, peer-led learning within schools and other institutions. We explored how these models feed into each other, building a sustainable ecosystem for ongoing growth in the WordPress community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We also got into the importance of repeat campus partnerships, the need for scalable facilitator training, and the role of recognition: certificates, badges, and public showcases, in keeping students motivated and validated in their journey.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you’re curious about the growing movement to bring WordPress knowledge to the next generation, or are looking to get involved with education in your local community, this episode is for you.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Previous episode of the podcast related to this episode:<br /><a href="https://wptavern.com/forums/topic/183-destiny-kanno-isotta-peira-and-anand-upadhyay-on-how-wordpress-is-shaping-the-future-of-education-for-students-worldwide">#183 – Destiny Kanno, Isotta Peira and Anand Upadhyay on how WordPress is shaping the future of education for students worldwide</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/">WordPress Community Team</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/">Welcome to WordPress Campus Connect</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/stephendumba1/">Stephen Dumba&#8217;s WordPress.org profile</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/handbook/wordpress-credits-contribution-internship-program/">WordPress Credits: Contribution Program for Students</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://wordpress.org/education/student-clubs/">WordPress Student Clubs</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/2025/ajmer/">WordPress Campus Connect in Ajmer</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2026/05/01/peer-review-needed-hands-on-wordpress-meetup-activity-library/">Peer Review Needed: Hands-On WordPress Meetup Activity Library</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2026/04/03/introducing-the-wordpress-facilitator-training-program/">Introducing the WordPress Facilitator Training Program</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2026/02/ai-leaders-credential/">Piloting the AI Leaders Micro-Credential</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2026/06/03/monthly-education-buzz-report-may-2026/">Monthly Education Buzz Report – May 2026</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org">Learn WordPress</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2026/04/student-clubs-build-momentum/">WordPress Student Clubs Build Momentum</a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Links provided by the guests</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>WordPress.org Education page:<br /><a href="https://wordpress.org/education/">https://wordpress.org/education/</a> (and all subpages)</li>



<li>WordPress Credits Institution application form:<br /><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/handbook/wordpress-credits-contribution-internship-program/#get-involved">https://make.wordpress.org/handbook/wordpress-credits-contribution-internship-program/#get-involved</a></li>



<li>Call for WP Credits mentors and mentor application form:<br /><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/handbook/wordpress-credits-contribution-internship-program/a-guide-for-wp-credits-mentors/call-for-mentors/">https://make.wordpress.org/handbook/wordpress-credits-contribution-internship-program/a-guide-for-wp-credits-mentors/call-for-mentors/</a></li>



<li>Any companies interested in supporting the Credits Program:<br /><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/handbook/wordpress-credits-contribution-internship-program/get-involved-company-guide/">https://make.wordpress.org/handbook/wordpress-credits-contribution-internship-program/get-involved-company-guide/</a></li>



<li>Student form to apply their institution for the Credits Program:<br /><a href="https://airtable.com/appIzQKfwTn5dyPVp/shr6Gf1mMMEAxevw4">https://airtable.com/appIzQKfwTn5dyPVp/shr6Gf1mMMEAxevw4</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/education/wordpress-facilitator-training-program/">WordPress Facilitator Training Program</a></li>



<li>Education buzz reports: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/education-buzz/">https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/education-buzz/</a></li>



<li>Apply to organize a WPCC event: <a href="https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/organize/">https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/organize</a></li>



<li>Apply to create a student club: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/education/student-clubs/request-the-creation-of-a-wordpress-student-club/">https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/education/student-clubs/request-the-creation-of-a-wordpress-student-club/</a></li>



<li>Ai credentials:<br /><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2026/02/ai-leaders-credential/">https://wordpress.org/news/2026/02/ai-leaders-credential/</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Guest bios:</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Destiny Kanno</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Destiny Fox Kanno, sponsored contributor acting as a Community Education Programs Manager at Automattic. Destiny works closely with the Community team and Training Team, with a focus on growing, enabling and amplifying WordPress Campus Connect, Student Club, WordPress Credits and other education initiatives.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Anand Upadhyay</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Anand Upadhyay is a long-time WordPress contributor and community advocate based in Ajmer, India. Active in the ecosystem since 2010, he has contributed to several Make WordPress teams including Core, Docs, Community, and Polyglots, with a strong focus on empowering others to get involved. He is the founder of <a href="https://wpvibes.com">WPVibes</a>, a WordPress plugin development company that builds performance-driven tools for WordPress and WooCommerce users.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Anand is also a regular WordCamp speaker, Meetup organiser, and someone deeply committed to bringing WordPress education to students. In 2024, he launched the first WordPress Campus Connect event, which went on to become a global program officially recognised by the WordPress Foundation. Anand continues to support and mentor student communities through events, workshops, and open-source advocacy.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Maciej Pilarski</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Maciej Pilarski is a Community Wrangler at Automattic, where he works on WordPress.org with a focus on educational initiatives that connect the next generation of contributors to the global WordPress community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As one of the admins behind the WordPress Credits Program, Maciej works with universities across Central &amp; Eastern Europe and Asia to bring students into open source contribution, pairing them with mentors, building institutional partnerships, and helping turn academic coursework into real-world impact on software used by 43% of the web.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Originally from Poland and now based in Okinawa, Japan, Maciej brings a uniquely cross-cultural perspective to community building, bridging local ecosystems in places like Kraków, Riga, Tallinn, and Tokyo with the wider WordPress world. He&#8217;s passionate about making open source contribution more accessible and making sure the WordPress community reflects the full diversity of the people who use it.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:12;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:46:"Open Channels FM: Revisiting What Matters Most";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2556050";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://openchannels.fm/revisiting-what-matters-most/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:205:"In this episode, Bob Dunn recaps six months of key themes, highlighting the surge in AI discussions, ongoing debates about the open web, and WordPress's enduring relevance, while embracing honest dialogue.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 24 Jun 2026 12:58:56 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:13;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"Open Channels FM: BackTalk on Interoperability, Infrastructure and Pragmatism";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555826";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"https://openchannels.fm/backtalk-on-interoperability-infrastructure-and-pragmatism/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:147:"Ongoing challenges in decentralized social networks, emphasizing the need for practical solutions and immediate usability for developers and users.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:57:32 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:14;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15:"Matt: No Bubble";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=153299";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://ma.tt/2026/06/no-bubble/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:425:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A throwback from 2007: a local Bay Area a cappella group called The Richter Scales made a Webby Award-winning viral video about how that bubble felt. <em>Hat tip: <a href="https://toni.org/">Toni</a>.</em></p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div></figure>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 24 Jun 2026 06:57:52 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:15;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"WordPress.org blog: Browse the New Mercantile Swag Store";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=20930";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:50:"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/06/open-web-merch/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3868:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://mercantile.wordpress.org/">Mercantile</a>, the official swag store of the WordPress project, has a newly redesigned storefront with a catalog that now sits front and center, and a design tuned to hold up across a wide range of screen sizes. There are also small touches, like automatically selecting a variant when only one is in stock and order emails styled to match the look and feel of the store.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="" class="wp-image-20931" height="1055" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2026/06/image-1.png?resize=2048%2C1055&#038;ssl=1" width="2048" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Throughout the design, the storefront leans into the history and culture of WordPress. Visual and copy choices nod to familiar elements of the project, from the metabox and the admin bar to Wapuu making the occasional appearance, with small open source and code references for those who look closely. The aim was a storefront that feels uniquely WordPress.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Under the hood, the storefront shows what a modern WordPress and <a href="https://woocommerce.com/">WooCommerce</a> site can do. It is built almost entirely with blocks, including a block-based cart, checkout, mini-cart, and order confirmation, supported by a set of custom theme blocks created for the store. The <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/reference-guides/interactivity-api/iapi-about/">Interactivity API</a> powers the catalog navigation and modal states, the store runs on WordPress 7.0, and accessibility is built in throughout, honoring reduced-motion preferences across animations and meeting color contrast standards. Product pages surface per-product attributes such as size, material, and care, so shoppers have the details they need before adding an item to the cart.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="" class="wp-image-20932" height="800" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2026/06/image-2.png?resize=2048%2C800&#038;ssl=1" width="2048" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This latest redesign supported the Mercantile booth at <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2026/">WordCamp Europe</a>. To make in-person sales work smoothly, the team enabled local pickup at checkout and added a set of event-only products refined to match the rest of the catalog. Fifty orders were completed at the event using in-person payments, a strong real-world test of the new checkout flow.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There is more on the way! A playful experiment in progress will let curious shoppers explore a text-based version of the store from the command line, a small tribute to the developers who make up much of the WordPress community. Subtle hints pointing the way will appear once it is ready.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="" class="wp-image-20933" height="719" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2026/06/image-3.png?resize=2048%2C719&#038;ssl=1" width="2048" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The new Mercantile is the work of many contributors who designed, built, tested, and refined it together. Every purchase supports the <a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/">WordPress Foundation</a>, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, in its mission to democratize publishing and preserve open source software for generations to come. Take a look around and find something you love.</p>



<div class="wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-3e41869c wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex">
<div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link wp-element-button" href="https://mercantile.wordpress.org/">Shop at <strong>mercantile.WordPress.org</strong></a></div>
</div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:07:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"jillq";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:16;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"Open Channels FM: Navigating Burnout in the Age of AI-Driven Development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555430";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"https://openchannels.fm/navigating-burnout-in-the-age-of-ai-driven-development/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:180:"AI transforms developer workflows, causing cognitive overload and blurring work-rest boundaries. Establishing intentional breaks is crucial to maintain balance and prevent burnout.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 22 Jun 2026 10:08:08 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:17;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:24:"Matt: Hill For A Stepper";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=153269";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://ma.tt/2026/06/hill-stepper/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:798:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In honor of Father&#8217;s Day, I wanted to add to the <a href="https://ma.tt/chuck/">two quotes from my Dad&#8217;s obituary</a>, &#8220;Seven days without chicken made one weak.” and  “If you fail at raising your children, nothing else mattered.” with another saying he had.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Ain&#8217;t no hill for a stepper.</p>
</blockquote>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;d like to learn more about this, <a href="https://waywordradio.org/stepper-like-you/">check out this part of the A Way with Words podcast</a>, and apparently, it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lui5y2AcYpM">might have come from the musician John Gaar</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 22 Jun 2026 06:58:38 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:18;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"Matt: Death by PowerPoint";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=153252";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:42:"https://ma.tt/2026/06/death-by-powerpoint/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:760:"<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">PowerPoint makes us stupid. </p>
</blockquote>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">— Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html"><img alt="" class="wp-image-153254" height="340" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2026/06/27powerpoint_CA0-articleLarge.webp?resize=600%2C340&#038;quality=80&#038;ssl=1" width="600" /></a></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Classic <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html">2010 NYT <em>We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint</em></a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 21 Jun 2026 06:03:40 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:19;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16:"Matt: Best Trash";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=153245";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://ma.tt/2026/06/best-trash/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1194:"<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A typography savant on staff had spent a month designing link underlines (literally just lines) that were more visually pleasing than Chrome or Safari’s defaults. On Tuesdays, engineers stayed late at the office, fixing design imperfections over dinner. One of them began a 2,500-word <a href="https://medium.com/@fat/mediums-css-is-actually-pretty-fucking-good-b8e2a6c78b06" rel="noopener" target="_blank">post</a> about Medium’s CSS code with a quote attributed to Lil Wayne: “I believe that to be the best, you have to smell like the best, dress like the best, act like the best. When you throw your trash in the garbage can, it has to be better than anybody else who ever threw their trash in the garbage can.”</p>
</blockquote>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">From Harris Sockel&#8217;s essay <a href="https://www.piratewires.com/p/what-happened-to-medium">What Happened to Medium</a>, which I think is meant to be a dunk? But I think it&#8217;s awesome. Medium&#8217;s design and typography has always been really impeccable. I love when people obsess like this.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 20 Jun 2026 13:51:14 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:20;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:24:"Matt: Midjourney Medical";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=153216";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:41:"https://ma.tt/2026/06/midjourney-medical/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3191:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I&#8217;m sorry I couldn&#8217;t be there in person, but I was so excited to watch the <a href="https://www.midjourney.com/medical">Midjourney Medical</a> launch from afar. This is a really big deal. <a href="https://x.com/DavidSHolz">David Holz</a>, one of the most underrated pioneers in AI, has taken money from <a href="https://www.midjourney.com/explore?tab=top">making cat pictures</a> to build a full-body ultrasound scanner that can give you <a href="https://www.midjourney.com/medical/blogpost">incredible visibility in 60 seconds</a>.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-153220" height="302" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2026/06/female_lower_abdomen_mask-458023b86b6cf387-1024x512.webp?resize=604%2C302&#038;quality=80&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You can <a href="https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1MJgNNoAPLyGL">re-watch the livestream here</a>, which I recommend. You might remember David from Leap Motion, which <a href="https://ma.tt/2012/05/leap-motion/">I blogged back in 2012</a>. It&#8217;s so cool to a small but mighty independent company innovate and apply learnings across seemingly disparate sectors.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I wish all my friends in jazz and the arts who are  despondent about tech could meet David:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“We’re going to be a little confusing for the next six months as we announce all the things, but I’m hoping as they all are out there, they form a picture which I hope feels cohesive. Most of them are around creativity, but some of them, like this, are just around positive human futures that we actually want to be a part of. And I think this is an important thing for AI companies to do—for all humans to do.” — David Holz</p>
</blockquote>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you understand imaging, you know the tradeoffs between X-ray, CT (computed tomography), MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), and ultrasound, and Midjourney&#8217;s approach doesn&#8217;t cover everything, but what&#8217;s incredible is the speed, amount of data, and using AI to process and get something useful out of it. Ultrasonics will be an incredibly exciting area over the next few years, first for imaging and later <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/high-intensity-focused-ultrasound/about/pac-20596150">for intervention</a>. I can imagine a future where you dip into one of these once a month just to keep an eye on things, not just to find bad stuff but to see the impact of exercise or dietary changes.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We&#8217;re fairly new to scanning healthy people, and I always advise friends getting their first whole-body MRI with <a href="https://www.biograph.com/">Biograph</a> or <a href="https://prenuvo.com/">Prenuvo</a> that it&#8217;s very common to hear something scary at first, only to find it&#8217;s benign. Also, I&#8217;ve now heard many examples of things that were caught and treated early, years before they might otherwise have been noticed.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 20 Jun 2026 04:09:58 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:21;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"WordPress.org blog: Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship Opens for WordCamp US 2026";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=20927";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/06/kim-parsell-wcus-scholarship/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4552:"<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="" class="wp-image-20941" height="1080" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2026/06/Kim-Parsell-Blog-post.png?resize=1920%2C1080&#038;ssl=1" width="1920" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Applications are now open for the 2026 Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship, which supports one active WordPress contributor who identifies as a woman and has not previously attended WordCamp US. The scholarship helps make it possible for a community member with financial need to join WordCamp US 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona, and take part in one of the largest annual gatherings in the WordPress project.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The scholarship honors Kim Parsell, a longtime WordPress contributor whose work and presence left a meaningful mark on the project. Kim was known for her care, generosity, and commitment to helping others feel welcome in open source spaces. For readers who are less familiar with her story, the <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2019/memories-of-kim-parsell/">tributes shared by friends and colleagues</a> offer a deeper look at her role in the WordPress community and the lasting impact she had on those who knew her. Through this scholarship, the WordPress Foundation continues to recognize contributors who reflect that same spirit of participation and community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">WordPress is built by people from many backgrounds, experiences, and areas of expertise. Events like WordCamp US create space for contributors to meet in person, learn from one another, and continue the work that supports the software and the community around it. For some contributors, the cost of travel, lodging, and registration can make attending difficult. The Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship helps reduce that barrier for one eligible contributor each year.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Scholarship Details</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">One scholarship will be awarded for WordCamp US 2026. Applicants must:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Identify as a woman. </li>



<li>Be actively involved as a contributor to WordPress.</li>



<li>Have never attended WordCamp US before.</li>



<li>Demonstrate financial need to attend the event.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The scholarship includes the cost of a WordCamp US 2026 ticket, round-trip flight, and lodging. Applications are open through July 10, 2026, and all applicants will be notified of the decision by July 24, 2026.</p>



<div class="wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex">
<div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link has-background wp-element-button" href="https://wordcampcentral.survey.fm/wcus-2026-kim-parsell-scholarship-application" style="background-color: #6c214f;">Apply for the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship</a></div>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-7387b849 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex">
<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">WordCamp US 2026 will take place August 16–19, 2026, at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Contributors, attendees, volunteers, organizers, and sponsors will come together to share ideas, learn from each other, and continue building the future of WordPress. For many contributors, attending in person creates new ways to collaborate, find support, and stay connected to the open source work that happens throughout the year.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">To learn more about eligibility, visit the <a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship/">Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship page</a>. Community members are encouraged to share this opportunity with contributors who may qualify. You can also learn more about attending WordCamp US 2026 on the <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2026/tickets/">WordCamp US tickets page</a>, explore <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2026/call-for-volunteers/">volunteer opportunities</a>, or review <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2026/call-for-sponsors/">sponsorship opportunities</a>.</p>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="" class="wp-image-20939" height="1978" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2026/06/WCUS26_Sign.png?resize=943%2C1978&#038;ssl=1" width="943" /></figure>
</div>
</div>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:55:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Brett McSherry";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:22;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:49:"Open Channels FM: Open Channels FM v4.8 Changelog";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555724";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://openchannels.fm/open-channels-fm-v4-8-changelog/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:208:"Bob Dunn has launched a blog commentary and a weekly series, "Open Tabs." Do the Woo is now an independent podcast. Updates include a redesigned homepage, new episode features, and a newsletter format change.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 19 Jun 2026 09:23:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:23;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:92:"WordPress.org blog: Global Partners Across the First Half of the 2026 WordPress Event Season";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=20910";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/06/global-partners-first-half-2026/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7579:"<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="" class="wp-image-20911" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2026/06/55169598894_0199c1bbb9_o-scaled.jpg?ssl=1" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This post recaps how the WordPress project&#8217;s five Global Partners — Jetpack, WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Bluehost, and Hostinger — supported community events during the first half of 2026. Across more than a dozen regional <a href="https://events.wordpress.org/novisad/2026/developer-day/">the first WordPress Developers Day</a>, and a growing network of <a href="https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/">WordPress Campus Connect</a> events, Global Partners staffed booths, sponsored sessions, and connected with developers, freelancers, students, and agency owners around the world.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A global footprint</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The year began in January with <a href="https://nepal.wordcamp.org/2026">WordCamp Nepal</a>, where Jetpack joined the community in Kathmandu. The momentum carried into India, where <a href="https://kolhapur.wordcamp.org/2026">WordCamp Kolhapur</a> and, a week later, <a href="https://pune.wordcamp.org/2026">WordCamp Pune</a> brought Global Partners face-to-face with a student-heavy audience of roughly 200-250 attendees. In Pune, a session on connecting WordPress with AI workflows drew a large crowd, and attendees were curious about WordPress.com plans, new AI features, and Automattic for Agencies. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="" class="wp-image-20920" height="675" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2026/06/img_1932.jpg?resize=1206%2C675&#038;ssl=1" width="1206" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In February, Jetpack traveled to <a href="https://portharcourt.wordcamp.org/2026">WordCamp Port Harcourt</a> in Nigeria, an inclusive and well-organized event with 256 attendees that featured talks on inclusion and accessibility. Locally produced swag was a standout success there, a reminder that the WordPress community&#8217;s reach extends well beyond Europe and North America.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Across Europe</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Spring brought a wave of European events. At <a href="https://madrid.wordcamp.org/2026">WordCamp Madrid</a>, with 280 attendees, WordPress.com served as a Global Sponsor and ran a Wapuu treasure hunt that drew 97 participants. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="" class="wp-image-20921" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2026/06/55230328181_175ece15a5_o-scaled.jpg?ssl=1" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Down the coast in France, <a href="https://nice.wordcamp.org/2026">WordCamp Nice</a> gave Jetpack a chance to connect with 247 freelancers and developers, an audience that appreciated concrete, easy-to-explain solutions and asked questions about newsletters, security, and Jetpack&#8217;s broader feature set.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://vienna.wordcamp.org/2026">WordCamp Vienna</a> stood out for its developer-heavy crowd of 277. From a Jetpack-branded booth staffed on both days, the team engaged with agencies and merchants, fielded numerous questions about WooCommerce and security, and booked 8 agency meetings. Many builders were interested to learn that Automattic stands behind both WordPress.com and WooCommerce. In Italy and Germany, <a href="https://torino.wordcamp.org/2026">WordCamp Torino</a> and <a href="https://leipzig.wordcamp.org/2026">WordCamp Leipzig</a> both reflected growing curiosity about AI, a theme that resurfaced throughout the year. At Leipzig, with 109 agencies, hosting companies, and freelancers in attendance, WordPress.com staffed a booth where tote bags were in high demand, while conversations kept returning to AI and WordPress Studio.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://slovenia.wordcamp.org/2026">WordCamp Slovenia </a>and <a href="https://portugal.wordcamp.org/2026">WordCamp Portugal</a> closed the European stretch. WordPress.com brought a booth to Ljubljana, and in Porto, it appeared with both a booth and logo presence alongside WooCommerce, which suited an event filled with e-commerce builders and Woo payment providers. The first WordPress Developers Day in Novi Sad introduced a new format, with Jetpack as a global sponsor and nearly 30 in-depth conversations on Jetpack, WooCommerce, performance, and the realities of client work.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Community in Uganda</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In May, <a href="https://kampala.wordcamp.org/2026">WordCamp Kampala</a> brought four Global Partners onto the sponsor roster: Jetpack, WooCommerce, Bluehost, and WordPress.com. The event, themed &#8220;Tech for Social Good,&#8221; welcomed more than 200 attendees and reflected the energy of a fast-growing local community.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Support from Global Sponsors</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Behind every one of these events is a layer of support that does not always appear at a booth. In 2026, Bluehost and Hostinger both joined the <a href="https://events.wordpress.org/sponsor/">WordPress community sponsorship program</a> as top-tier Global Sponsors, alongside Jetpack and WordPress.com. Their contributions help underwrite the global WordCamp program and the community events that make a year like this possible. That program-level backing is what allows organizers in Kathmandu, Porto, and Kampala to bring their events to life, and the WordPress community is grateful to every partner that invests at that scale.<br /></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Campus Connect reaches 6,200 students</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">One of the most notable stories of 2026 is not a WordCamp at all. It is <a href="https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/">WordPress Campus Connect</a>. As of early June, the program has passed 6,200 students, with 25 events completed in 2026, 45 events all-time, and 42 more in planning or already scheduled. WordPress.com has played a direct support role throughout, including providing hosting for WordPress Campus Connect events around the world.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The connective tissue between these events and the broader community is real. An organizer first met at WordCamp Mukono went on to help lead WordPress Campus Connect work in Uganda. A student who built her first WordPress site at a WordPress Campus Connect event later attended a WordCamp. These events serve as a pathway for the next generation of WordPress contributors, builders, and professionals.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Looking ahead</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If 2026 has shown anything, it is that interest in WordPress, and in the tools and services that Global Partners provide, continues to grow around the world. The questions being asked at booths and in sessions are sharper, the audiences more diverse, and the community&#8217;s reach more genuinely global. Thank you to Jetpack, WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Bluehost, and Hostinger for being part of that story this year, and to every organizer, volunteer, speaker, and attendee who made these events possible.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">To find an upcoming event near you, visit <a href="https://central.wordcamp.org">WordCamp Central</a>. To learn how organizations can support the WordPress project, see the <a href="https://events.wordpress.org/sponsor/">community sponsorship program</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 18 Jun 2026 17:01:21 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Harmony Romo";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:24;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"Open Channels FM: AI Hype and Hope Navigating Optimism and Skepticism";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555778";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:76:"https://openchannels.fm/ai-hype-and-hope-navigating-optimism-and-skepticism/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:170:"In this episode, hosts and guests share diverse perspectives on AI's rise, touching on its potential, challenges, and how it's reshaping industries and human interaction.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 18 Jun 2026 09:58:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:25;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"WPTavern: #221 – Rahul Bansal on Using AI Everywhere at rtCamp";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=204828";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/221-rahul-bansal-on-using-ai-everywhere-at-rtcamp";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:55356:"<details>Transcript<div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case using AI everywhere at rtCamp.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you or your idea featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox? And use the form there.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So on the podcast today we have Rahul Bansal. Rahul has a long and accomplished history in the WordPress ecosystem. As the founder and CEO of rtCamp, a company he started 17 years ago, he&#8217;s led his agency through the rapidly changing landscape of the web, helping enterprise clients such as Google, Fortune 500 companies, and major publishers solve complex problems with innovative WordPress based solutions.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">rtCamp specialises in everything from large scale website builds, to more bespoke projects like Chrome extensions and SaaS connectors, and has grown to a team of hundreds over the years.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Today&#8217;s episode takes a deep dive into Raul&#8217;s recent talk at WordCamp Asia, which focused on what it will take to launch and scale an enterprise WordPress agency in the future.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The conversation focused on real, hard won, lessons from rtCamp&#8217;s journey, but also how rapidly the playbook is changing with advances in technology, particularly the explosion of AI tools and workflows.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We discuss Rahul&#8217;s philosophy around hiring, namely building a team of people whose strengths complement each other rather than just replicating your own skillset. This approach has allowed rtCamp to adapt to new challenges, fill gaps in expertise, and whether major industry changes.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We then explore how this idea of complimentary sets can also apply to choosing the right kinds of clients, those who value your expertise because they need what you offer, rather than simply hiring somebody who does what they already know.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A theme that emerged in the conversation was specialisation. Rahul outlines how, whereas rtCamp&#8217;s earliest differentiator was a simple focus on WordPress, when virtually nobody else in India was, today&#8217;s agencies must drill down much further to stand out choosing niches within niches, such as WooCommerce, or payment gateway integrations, and becoming recognised experts in those areas in order to thrive in a much more crowded field.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Towards the end of the episode, the discussion turns to what might be the most significant topic for agencies today, artificial intelligence. Rahul describes how recent advances in AI have not only altered his agency&#8217;s practises, but given them a firm mandate. If something in rtCamp can be done by AI it will be.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We talk about how AI is being leveraged inside rtCamp to automate and optimise everything from sales and proposal writing to project management, and even technical proof of concept builds. With a unified platform for all business processes, the agency is now able to significantly reduce costs, speed up delivery, and focus on higher value consulting and creativity, reshaping roles and team composition as a result.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;re interested in what it takes to stand out and succeed in the evolving world of enterprise WordPress agencies, how to confront uncertainty with both optimism and realism, and how AI can become not just a bolt-on feature, but the operational backbone of your business, this episode is for you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And so without further delay, I bring you Rahul Bansal.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I am joined on the podcast by Rahul Bansal. Hello, Rahul.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rahul Bansal:</strong> Hello Nathan. Thanks for having me here.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You are very welcome. Rahul and I were both at WordCamp Asia and that is going to be the main focus of the podcast today. We&#8217;re going to be talking about agencies, growth in agencies, and then probably delving into AI a little bit at the end because of a recent announcement that came out of rtCamp, which is the company that Rahul founded many years ago.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In order to, I suppose, lend credibility to a conversation about agency work, would you mind Rahul, just introducing yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do in WordPress, and maybe give us a few little interesting facts about rtCamp and what you do over there.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rahul Bansal:</strong> So I&#8217;m, as you mentioned, founder and CEO of rtCamp. We started this 17 years ago. We primarily help large enterprise client, sometimes we build websites for their marketing team, which is the most common use case of WordPress. But at the same time, we help large tech companies like Google communicate better with the WordPress ecosystem for their offering. Like sometimes we build products that includes neither thing, neither plugin, but something like Chrome extension. For large companies sometimes we build like SaaS connectors for technology companies.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Yeah, so we work with, like a big companies really Fortune 500, and the idea is to deliver something related to WordPress in one form or another form.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> If you go to the rtCamp website, you can probably Google it I would&#8217;ve imagined, then you&#8217;ll be able to get some impression of what the company is like.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I think last time we spoke you were into the sort of 200 employees level. I&#8217;m not sure if those numbers have gone up or down or what have you. But you get an impression of how large it is. And one of the interesting things that I spotted during my time at WordCamp Asia was just how vibrant the community, the WordPress community is. So maybe we&#8217;ll get into that a little bit as well.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I&#8217;m going to concentrate to begin with on the presentation that you gave at WordCamp Asia. If you would like to see that, wordpress.tv will have a video. And if the video is already available, I will link to it in the show notes. But the presentation that Rahul gave was entitled, how to Start an Enterprise WordPress Agency in 2026. And I&#8217;ll just read the blurb that goes with it because it was fairly short and easy to manage.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Building a WordPress agency business for large enterprises. In this talk, I&#8217;ll share the story of how rtCamp grew from a small WordPress shop into a globally recognised enterprise agency, trusted by Fortune 500 companies and major publishers. If you&#8217;re starting an agency today or looking to move up market in 2026, this session will give you a realistic roadmap building on real lessons from my personal experience.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So I suppose what I&#8217;m going to do at the beginning, Rahul, if it&#8217;s all right with you, is just ask you to tell us some of the bits and pieces that you mentioned during that. Some of the advice that you would give an agency owner beginning in 2026.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rahul Bansal:</strong> Yeah. So first, like I deviated a little bit from the blurb because when I applied this talk I had a different frame of mind that, hey, I&#8217;m going to do this. And then as I was preparing the talk, and in during those months, especially like last few months, the AI has reshaped everything. And then I realised that a lot of what worked for rtCamp won&#8217;t work even for rtCamp if I start again today.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Rather than making it as a nice story about what worked for us, I lean more towards practical advice, and that&#8217;s where the essence remained. But I focus more on the 2026 part, because when we started, it was 2006. The first time when I used WordPress was 2006. rtCamp started in 2009. 20 years is a big time. And then at the end of this 20th year, like we are going through this AI led change.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So a lot of things that worked for me won&#8217;t work anymore. And that is how I restructured my talk to take enough from our history, enough from our learnings, what worked for us.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The way we hire is very different. And after the talk, if that one line that stick with the audience, that many people told me that the hire your complementary set was the most different idea. And it&#8217;s timeless idea. It&#8217;s relevant in AI world also.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So the idea was basically that we have this bias that when we try to scale, like basically when we go from freelancing to agency business, the idea of building a business, we try to find people like us. But my idea was that we should initially, especially, we should find people who are opposite of us. Like I was good at engineering, bad at sales, so my co-founder is sales heavy. My English was not good. His English was very polished.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So I literally listed down my weakness and found people who were opposite of me. Even interesting part was that, to the few initial hires I asked the questions, whose answer I had no idea whether they&#8217;re saying right or wrong.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So that was the most interesting idea and I think that&#8217;s still relevant today. I will do exactly same thing if I have to start building a new agency. I will build in WordPress, build in AI, any kind of business I will, my initial few hires will all together will cover each other&#8217;s weaknesses.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It&#8217;s at certain scale then you need to replicate, like, you need 50 engineers, you need 20 React engineers, you need five people who can write same proposal. That comes much later. But starting is all about finding your complementary set. And this was inspired by a set theory from math class that I attended in when I was like some 12-year-old. That stuck around before the life. And that is what I put in this talk as a biggest lesson we learned and that worked.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The second most specific thing that I would say, practical advice, like that was more about hiring advice, but that is not only hiring address, that is, I advise in many walks of life applicable.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When you&#8217;re looking for your client, you have to look for complimentary set there as well. Because you are trying to sell to agencies like yours, your margins gets hit a lot. You need to find people who do not understand WordPress at all because then, that is why your expertise become more important and premium for them, because they need to depend on you. They value you more. You are not commoditised for them.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So that hiring your complementary set works across the board. But then the most specific advice I gave that I didn&#8217;t follow myself, I would say. Actually there was nothing to follow that. When I started WordPress was just a blogging platform. There was custom post type were not yet part of WordPress Core. Everybody was just building blogs. We were playing around themes, and the race was to make our blog look unique. The metric usually was like traffic and how many email subscribers you got.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So there was no niche to pick. Like, that was the only thing WordPress was doing. And after post type, people started building a lot more than WordPress. Actually people started pushing WordPress earlier, and as a result of that, WordPress created those APIs to make it easy to extend WordPress beyond blogging platform.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But today, in 2026, there is so many things happening. And if you&#8217;re starting new and you do what rtCamp did on day one, like, hey, we are WordPress agency. That is not going to work.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It worked for us 20 years back because we were like, probably only one in India at that time who said at that time that we will be only taking WordPress project. Because India was a land of outsourcing. Like in supply chain, it was like a, it&#8217;s like a Chinese manufacturer saying that, hey, we are only going to assemble if you are building for iPhone. So it&#8217;s like, hey, we are only going to write PHP if it is going to end up as a WordPress theme or plugin. We are not going to do what was Cake PHP project at that time. We are not going to write custom PHP script.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So in a way we picked the whole WordPress as a niche among the largest set of choices available to us. But if your largest set of choices was building a iOS company, like mobile app company. Mobile app was big because with the introduction of iPhone, there was a sudden shift and huge demand for iOS apps, and we haven&#8217;t built one till 17 years. Like literally we built our first iOS app, public iOS app last month.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That time we were like, well, we are going to only do WordPress. So now that advice translate into, pick a niche within WordPress because WordPress itself is the web now. That time, WordPress was very small. Now you can choose e-commerce. Within e-commerce then you can probably pick WooCommerce. Within WooCommerce then probably you can pick like, depending on your market, payment gateway specialisation, ERPs, back office specialisation, subscription based businesses.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Start by picking a niche as small as possible and then go bottoms up, rather than starting with everything. So that was the key takeaway of my session, I would say that. Pick a niche, position yourself as a expert in the niche. Don&#8217;t just say that, hey, we build WooCommerce store, or we build WordPress site.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. Yeah, I&#8217;ve got all of that. So firstly, hiring. That&#8217;s an interesting one. Hire people that are different from you. I was imagining when you were saying that, I wonder how long you can do that, because you can&#8217;t, eventually, you have a company of a hundred people and all of them are not the same as you. Eventually it must be nice to find somebody who&#8217;s a little bit like you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But then also you mentioned picking clients who will trust your expertise, I think is a good way of describing that. Because they themselves are perhaps not expert within that WordPress platform.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And now of course, moving forwards, what worked for you in terms of being a WordPress agency 17 odd years ago, that was, as it turns out, really successful. But now you are going to be amongst tens of thousands in India alone, if all you say is that you are a WordPress agency. So you need to go a little bit more specialised and niche down.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I wonder, Rahul, with the benefit of hindsight, it&#8217;s always easy to look back and sort of see for example, from my perspective, I see rtCamp as an entirely successful enterprise. You know, you began all those years ago, and decisions were made and you grew and you grew and you grew and you grew, and now we are where you are now. Committing a lot to WordPress with incredible growth and a really amazing agency on your hands.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But I&#8217;m just wondering, looking back, with the benefit of hindsight, were there any moments where you made some decisions where you were very nervous about how it was going to be?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So for example, one of those could be WordPress. There was no writing on the wall that said WordPress will be the successful CMS. That really could have gone either way. It could have been Drupal, it could have been something that some kid in a basement created. So I&#8217;m just wondering, are there moments when you look back and you think to yourself, gosh, I am so glad that we did that random choice than all the others that we could have made?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rahul Bansal:</strong> Yep. So it&#8217;s a reality that, one of the co-founders we lost, within the first year of company formation was because, I refused to add Joomla to our offering. And Joomla I think was market leader at that time when we started. So we were like more like engineers, like some were good at sales, some were good at communication, but we were all from the same kind of school, like we didn&#8217;t know if there was any survey existed.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So we didn&#8217;t back by any data. The only reason we chose to stay with WordPress or build this agency with WordPress because we were using WordPress. So rtCamp for the most part, people missed that. So rtCamp was not started as an agency. rtCamp was basically a media company, a blog network. And that blog network was running on WordPress. As a technology blogger. It&#8217;s like just imagine WP Beginners, like that is more relevant example.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So by the way, we, and WP Beginner were operating at the same time, that&#8217;s the power of niche. Like say I chose to focus on WordPress and say very very well. And my technical blog was everything like from iPhone to Windows operating system to Mac OS update to web APIs, to HTTP2. Whatever, like it was a larger technology blog So we were more like a stripped down version of TechCrunch rather than picking a niche. And Syed picked this WordPress as a niche.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Both were contemporaries in that same era. Now just imagine Syed in those days I started an agency. So we were using WordPress, we needed to stand out because, social network or blogging or web was still a fancy place. Like minimalism wasn&#8217;t the trend. It was how much you can push, like how you can make your website look different without using Flash. That was the coolest thing. Like how much you can push jQuery, how advanced CSS you can write. So all those things led to we customising our WordPress a lot.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Another thing that worked in our part was, our blog was one of the biggest in India. Globally also, it had good traffic. In fact, it had so much traffic that one of the most Googled keyword in my name was Rahul Bansal, how much money this guy make. Like that was the first question I used to get asked because traffic was insane. We used to get a lot of traffic.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That led us to writing nice WordPress code. In early days, like especially when I was freelancer, I had to write amazing WordPress code that will scale and host it in a way that it will also scale. So not only WordPress, we choose Nginx before it become a norm. Like before there was. anybody started any WordPress managed hosting company. We managed to scale WordPress at a very high level.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And so now we, are this famous blog running on WordPress handling so much traffic, on Linode&#8217;s $10 something plan. Customising it. So we got this natural market. We got initial customers were technically our competitors, like other tech bloggers. It&#8217;s like TechCrunch hiring Mashable to customise their blog So something like, because Mashable has a tech team. So that was at early story of rtCamp.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And then we realised that we are making more money and faster money via customising WordPress. So we started cutting down on our editorials. And then, slowly, slowly like the business has shifted from, being a blogging agency, to WordPress custom development agency. That&#8217;s why we chose WordPress.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And that has been the principle since then, like we only sell what we use. That was the reason we didn&#8217;t, so it wasn&#8217;t any ideological decision. So the ideology is at open source level. So rtCamp is committed to providing open source solution to its client from day one.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Joomla tick that box. But Joomla didn&#8217;t tick the box that we use Joomla. We don&#8217;t use Joomla. There was no reason for us to have our blog running on WordPress and website running on Joomla, and that&#8217;s why we stick around WordPress when there was no data, no trend. And I think in hindsight it was just luck. I would say like it could have backfired.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, okay, I really like this story. Firstly, I like the fact that you are identifying luck as a component, because I think too often when you listen to people who have had success, they sort of chart this narrative of how brilliant the decisions were along the journey and how impeccable, you know, we did this and then we did this, and then we did this, and then we did this. But never a nod to luck.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And of course, with the benefit of hindsight, we did this, we did this, we did this does lead to where you are now. But I really enjoy it when founders and people have that confession in them. Yeah, there was a bit of luck.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But also, and we&#8217;ll get onto this in a minute, because a big part of what you are about to do, or have recently done with your business kind of leans into what you&#8217;ve just been saying.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It sounds like you were led by what was in front of you, if you know what I mean? It doesn&#8217;t sound like there was a great big, okay, by 2016 or 2026, we want to be here. It was more like, okay, this is where we&#8217;re at now. These are the things that are coming to us. Okay, looks like WordPress, not only are we using it, but it looks like people want us to help them to use it. Well, let&#8217;s go there then. Let&#8217;s put the blogging to one side and let&#8217;s become more of a, I don&#8217;t know, a technical helper for you and your website.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So there&#8217;s this sort of lucky piece, but also the willingness to steer into favourable winds, if you know what I mean? I love that story. Thank you very much for that. I also admire your humility in all of that. That&#8217;s lovely.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So the next thing then, I suppose that I want to get into is some change in the landscape at the moment. And again, this maps to what you were just saying about move where the wind takes you. We all know that AI is a thing. You cannot have missed that. But I think a lot of people are taking nervous steps into their business and how they&#8217;re doing things with AI and maybe biting off a little bit here with AI and leaving the rest as it is, and biting off another chunk here, and leaving the rest as it is and slowly moving into AI.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You have a very different approach. And I will link in the show notes to a blog post on the rtCamp website, which I read several weeks ago. I&#8217;ve got to say, I was a little bit, not surprised, that&#8217;s the wrong word, but it was written in such a way that I thought, gosh, now that&#8217;s interesting.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Because in it you painted the case that rtCamp in the future is going to do AI everywhere. And I know we hear that all the time. You know, we&#8217;re going to use AI here, and we&#8217;re going to use AI there. You have painted your colours on the mast, and literally, I think you said, if it can be done with AI, it will be done with AI. There will be no stone left unturned.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Okay. Firstly, why? Why have you got that approach? What&#8217;s the reason? Now, I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s fairly obvious, but lay it out for us anyway.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rahul Bansal:</strong> Yeah. So I don&#8217;t know from where it comes, anytime I see things going south across industry like COVID or, like AI, like everybody was gloomy, my brain kind of think of opposite. So in my brain, I&#8217;m not building, I&#8217;m actually imagining an AI only agency with humans required to probably feel capture. That&#8217;s how my brain works. So it&#8217;s like AI first.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then again, like WordPress, so I have been lucky more than once in my life. So before this AI came, this famous saying by Steve Jobs like you can only connect the dots looking backward. Three to four years ago, riding on the digital boom, we survived the COVID, like all agencies grew. rtCamp grew a lot more, and a lot faster in very short span of time. And to manage this humongous workforce, we needed to refactor a lot internal tooling, softwares, processes, to the point that we have internally codified our mission that we want to build McDonald&#8217;s of consulting business, inspired by that movie Founder. That was also part of my talk at WorkCamp Asia.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And in fact, I had somebody to literally a complimentary set example. I know we want to build this, but I don&#8217;t have that kind of mental model. So that&#8217;s the brief I give to our chief delivery officer that you have to give me this. McDonald&#8217;s of agency business.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We start thinking of every process that we can repeat, and we realised that we need to take control of our software stack. And we ended up finding something, in open source. That&#8217;s, I would say truly a spiritually aligned to the WordPress ecosystem called Frappe ERPNext, which handle our accounting, payroll, project management, CRM. So many business processes in one single source of truth, like single source of truth for so many things. Earlier it was all siloed data.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So this was started with a different intent, to scale rtCamp, 2000 people, 5,000 people, 10,000 people, because that was a business model then. Agencies growth with capacity. You want to sell more, you need to hire more. Basically agencies growth was limited by on one dimension, the inventory, human inventory you can have. So we started implementing this open source back office software automation with the idea that we will own, central piece of our operating system of connecting, getting thousands of people working together.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then AI happened, and then we realised we don&#8217;t need to hire those many people anymore. Year on year, we moved from 200 to 250, but I think next 50 will be very slow. Because, now we are no longer aiming to sell, or hire people. But as luck would&#8217;ve been, we ended up creating this system of record, which is unified and cleaned. When we think of a client or a project or a human. All aspect of their metadata is available in a single system.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So that is why we can leverage AI more than a company, agency to agency. For agencies using say, Jira for project management. QuickBook for accounting, some other software. If their operations is scattered across 6, 7 software, we have leverage over them. Not only we are paying very less because all our software is open source. The data is first party. Like sitting duck there to query in any way we can. We are not limited by SaaS providers, enterprise plan or this AI capability.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So that is where we realised that we can take this huge bet on AI where we can now build a lot more, in a lot less time using AI across the board. And if you look at a business like not just WordPress business, when you buy something, like you buy a car from a car company. You are actually paying for everything that company does, advertising, researching on the EV technologies, hiring a brand ambassador to put billboard, sponsoring F1. Anything that company does. every penny they spend on their business, the customer ends up paying it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So we thought like now we have a single stack, which technically takes care of 70 to 80% critical nature of our business operations. From when the lead enters the CRM, the project management, time entry, people&#8217;s new management, everything is linked. Everything is beautifully linked in a single unified interface and database. So why don&#8217;t we just use AI to cut down the cost.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Because now we cannot charge by hours, we can try, but, it&#8217;s not making sense anymore for clients. They want us to commit to fix output bid. Now when we say, hey, we can migrate this thing for 100k, or we can build this website for half million dollars. So those numbers, traditionally, and actually all the time will include all the operation cost. Like my salary. I&#8217;m not doing any coding work, but my salary will be eventually paid by all the clients. Electricity bill that is also going to be paid by all the client.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So we thought like rather than just thinking AI to build a website, let&#8217;s use AI to bring our operational costs dramatically down. Because we have single source of truth for maximum data we have, and that is where we went all AI in. Now it&#8217;s like we can submit a proposal in one third of the time.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In old days we used to build PPTs. Now we vibe code a WordPress demo site and attach it to the proposal. Hey is this something that you want? Not just the screenshot, not just the Figma, like we are actually building Playground, like websites, and launching them and sharing those links to the client. Go play with it. We are even trying to copy the design systems if they&#8217;re migrating. So migration is a big category of work we do.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So that is what we mean by going AI ready. So we are leveraging AI to reduce the cost of sale, increase probability of winning the project by pitching them something. And then while estimating the effort, like let&#8217;s say we would traditionally say, oh, this might cost us a thousand hours. Now we blindly said Make it 30% less, as if it will be done in 700 hours and it will be, sometimes it backfires.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But then on some project it&#8217;ll be 500 hours. In some project it&#8217;ll be 900 hours, but average will come back to 700 hours. Then again, the idea is we have a central operating system, which gives us, like bird&#8217;s eye view of how healthy our projects education are. Are we getting returns on our AI engagement? And all this is possible because few years back we took a bet in different direction.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Like we choose WordPress because we wanted to be a better media agencies, and that was what media agencies were doing in the early days. But we ended up building an agency business with the WordPress. Likewise we choose this Frappe ERPNext software. To operationalise our back office. But now it is starting out to be our advantage point in this areas like we are able to do AI a lot more. In the end, it&#8217;s all about bringing the cost down at certain quality. You have to keep the quality up, and just make it more affordable. If that is not. as a business you cannot do that with AI, then something is wrong.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So AI is not about building something new. I have another approach. So if you&#8217;re an agency people are hiring you to move things from A to B, like you are the movers and packers of internet. I put crudely, what rtCamp does. We move things, like a shipping company who moves your house, remove you from Sitecore to WordSpace.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And that&#8217;s still big part of our business. We don&#8217;t have to reinvent or reimagine different experiences all the time. Sometimes we have to just do what everybody&#8217;s doing, the boring part. Put AI there to make it efficient, more cost effective. And if you do that, that means more people wanting to shift to new house. Again, a different approach. People think that they need to build something out of the world to benefit from this AI way.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">My idea is that pick a boring thing and make it so affordable that people who were sitting on the fence, just imagine travel, Middle East travel. Like this is a very actually a bad example, might sound inhuman, but, say like X number of people wanted to experience Dubai as a destination, but let&#8217;s say, it was beyond their budget. For some even unfortunately now suddenly that comes within their budget, they will be able to do that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">People wanted to move to WordPress Initially, agencies were quoting a hundred thousand dollars for that big shift. Now if you can, suddenly you can do it in 50k a lot more people will shift. So, you don&#8217;t have to do things like out of the world thing. You don&#8217;t have to invent new. You have to sometimes just make existing problem more efficient to solve.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And it was not always about money, especially in large client. It was not always about 100k versus 50k versus half million versus 1 million. It was about timeline. It&#8217;s like you are refurbishing your home and it is going to take three month, then it&#8217;s a different mental model, like to put up yourself in a hotel or a second home for three months. If a magically a new company appears and hey, we can refurbish your home overnight. You don&#8217;t mind checking into hotel for one night. And that is where I feel like this WordPress will be net gain because of AI. Agencies has to be optimistic, and think differently to gain from AI.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Like, what people are doing is everybody&#8217;s trying to act like a ChatGPT, OpenAI, it&#8217;s their job to invent AI algorithm. We are agency. Our job is to apply AI, not invent AI. We don&#8217;t have to think of what is Opus 4.8 will do. Let cloud engineers think of that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So we need to understand we are AI&#8217;s consumers or consultant, and that is where some people are getting it wrong by vibe coding things that they&#8217;re not able to sell to anyone. Then they will cry that, hey, six months later they will realise they built stuff nobody bought. Now they don&#8217;t have money to pay AI bills, or their developer salaries and then they will try that, hey, AI took over job, AI killed our business. No, think what existing problems we can solve with AI cheaply, efficiently, with better quality. And a lot of work is there to be done.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> There&#8217;s a lot in there, but one of the things that I&#8217;m taking out is. So prior to AI coming along and demonstrating to us all what it could do, which by the way didn&#8217;t kind of happen overnight, although it feels like it did, there was a sort of, a year in which we could suddenly see, oh boy, it&#8217;s getting much more performant and much more interesting. But prior to that, it sounds like post COVID, you kind of inspected your business and were thinking, okay, how can we refine everything that we&#8217;ve got in the business and how can we put it all into this one system?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And again, with the benefit of hindsight, and I&#8217;m maybe going to use the word luck, maybe that&#8217;s not the right word. You, having done that work, then meant that when AI did come along, you weren&#8217;t trying to link up four or five or six or ten different things. You had this one source of truth. Which meant that you could cut waste, for want of a better word. You know, waste could be measured in terms of dollars or it could be measured in terms of time or it, whatever it may be.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You happened to be in that place because you&#8217;d done that preparatory work, not necessarily knowing that AI was going to come along and make all of this fun stuff possible. But with the benefit of hindsight, that&#8217;s exactly what it did.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And it&#8217;s curious, you said 70 or 80% of the business could be streamlined in that way. And I&#8217;m so staggered by that number. I thought you&#8217;d be in the kind of, I don&#8217;t know, 20, 30% or something like that. But a full 70 to 80%. So does that mean 70 to 80% of the things available, or do you mean that you were able to cut 70 to 80% of the cost or the time? Because I wasn&#8217;t sure which 70 or 80% you were meaning.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rahul Bansal:</strong> It meant different things. First like, as I mentioned that we are not thinking AI adds just something to sell, but something to consume first. Because, again, dog fooding principle. We managed to sell WordPress better because we were a blog network. That&#8217;s why we could understood publishers better. We got into this Frappe ERPNext consulting because we built our backend with it. Now before we make any promise with AI, we have to be net gainer with the AI. And we believe that our internally, we will be.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So there are two parts, actual cost of building something and the meta cost. Like cost of sale, like the writing proposal. marketing costs, like case studies, going to even preparing for articles. Non build cost is definitely, we are able to bring, I would say it&#8217;s already half, but it&#8217;ll be, further down. I will give you a very simple example.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Like in early days is when somebody used to submit rtCamps form, inquiry form, a human, would manually check like, Hey, what is the domain name of this email id? Are they on LinkedIn? Some 30 minutes and then they will write a note hey, this looks like a good quality lead. We are fortunate that we get a lot of inbound inquiries, so we had to have prioritise, like which leads we are going to respond first.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Now, as soon as somebody submits a form an AI integration does that, within minutes. And the notes are much more details, it creates action items. Across like WordPress our Frappe CRM, our Slack, everything runs like a clockwork, and we don&#8217;t need a human. So that, junior human job is definitely gone. So in sales team, we used to have like this entry level job. That is no longer there. Some jobs are actually going to get vanished. So now going on a call, meeting notes, a lot of those things are getting automated. So the cost of sale has dramatically came down.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">What is the effect? Like, say we can now assume flat 10% discount compared to earlier pricing when we are thinking of a migration project. Like, let&#8217;s say, in early days, we used to think like hey, anybody wanting to migrate from Adobe Experience Manager? We must assume that they need to pay us 100k. On the initial call, we can say, hey, that would probably cost something like minimum 50,000 dollars.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The minimums, the starting numbers has came down because we need less energy to have those pre-sales conversations. Less number of minutes of ours spent building those demos. Very fast discovery. Data mapping sometimes happens in minutes. In fact we did one 10 days to prepare this migration literally in five days, that was unthinkable. And that included data migration, QA testing, like automation testing where somebody built a bought in panel, which would randomly open a Zendesk ticket and verify that all metadata and deploys are migrated into new health desk system, all within five days.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is where I have been saying that the cost of building custom solutions will fail. For like so low, like it&#8217;s 60, 70, 58. Like definitely more than half. It&#8217;ll be reduced by half more. People will buy custom solutions. So agencies are going to grow from here in just these one or two years. Because agencies, to price something upfront, we need consistencies. Like I&#8217;m running an airline and if my jet fuel is my biggest cost, and that is out of my control. Then how do I price my tickets? That&#8217;s AI hallucination, which is, I would say the jet fuel version of aviation industry.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Something happens in Middle East and fuel prices goes up. A war starts. So now when AI hallucinates so it&#8217;s like what we are internally tracking, or what we call as a KPI or internal metric is that, worst case, AI gains, that&#8217;s already 20%. Best case is more than 90%. In some cases it&#8217;s literally 90%. This range will keep compressing and that&#8217;s what I think 70% is my expectation in two years. We will have that maturity that, the build time will fall by 70%. That means. the client companies will hire more agencies to do more work.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">WordPress will emerge as a winner, not only for its ecosystem, but its ability to expose structured data without any proprietary walls. AI was so fast that only an open source can keep up with it. In fact, we are seeing more migration inquiries with with the AI boom.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, interesting. I was going to ask a sort of follow up question. Do you think that you, so you were mentioning, how to describe it, a rising tide carries all boats, or you certainly implied that the pie is getting bigger, if you know what I mean? So you are getting more phone calls, more migrations, more work, and you can obviously do that more affordably. And because you can pass on some of those savings to the clients, the price point lowers and so you get more inquiries because there&#8217;s this virtuous cycle of price going down, but quality staying the same or getting better.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I wonder if you, given your success in the past, I wonder if that transition will be easier for you, because the phone is already ringing, than it would be for somebody who was beginning in 2026? Because we all know when you begin, getting the phone to ring is probably the hardest thing. You know, getting those first 5, 10, 15 reliable clients, whatever it is that makes you work.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I wonder if you are in a uniquely good position, having a history of clients, a roster of clients that will come back to you. And also just being famous, for want of a better word, in the WordPress space, for doing the kind of things that you do. I wonder just what your thoughts are on that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rahul Bansal:</strong> They&#8217;re both pros and cons. The only con for rtCamp is that our business model, a big part of what&#8217;s traditional like setting our flagship revenue stream for last 8 to 10 years was staffing solutions. We used to provide engineers, sometimes to other agencies, sometimes to publishers. So usually they used to have the leadership layer with them. We were more of executors, and if AI within the IT industry, the first casualty of AI revolution was that people who code, or people who can only code but cannot think. But luckily our hiring was very different.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">While it is taking time, so as I said, net headcount addition has been slowed down. I think this is probably first time rtCamp&#8217;s career site doesn&#8217;t have any engineering opening. If we would&#8217;ve been like a publicly listed or like a shareholder owned company, we might have got mandate to fire a hundred people right now, because we have already gained by, so much that, our one third of our WordPress engineers are currently out of work when the work is rising.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Because traditionally, when we needed eight people, now we were able to do in four people. But now we are using this. We have our own challenges, going from one kind of business to another kind of business model. The switch is causing some friction, but we are communicating it openly. We are giving people like more freedom. You give us ideas like which part of the entire business equation you can optimise. Is it editorial experience, is it migration cost? Is it data mapping, visual testing? So people are constantly building.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So change is there. Change is scary. It is scary for us also because we don&#8217;t want to fire people. We don&#8217;t want to lay off people. We want to return this team. From here onwards, we don&#8217;t see we are hiring more engineers for at least a year, because we have enough of them. But, we are so optimistic about this WordPress growth and the pie getting bigger.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We are hiring more sales and marketing team. Two days back I was telling like traditionally, we had this 90 to 10% ratio, like in 200 people, our headcount team, we would have 20 people. That would be, we can call as a sales and marketing department, I think next 50 hires will be only sales and marketing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, that&#8217;s a big skew, isn&#8217;t it? So you&#8217;ll go to more like 30% marketing as opposed to 10% marketing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rahul Bansal:</strong> Yeah sales and marketing. By the way, when we say sales, sales in rtCamp means slightly different. It&#8217;s more of a initial consulting, basically making those solid promise, which can be backed by engineering, not over promising. So our sales team needs are more like a WordPress consultant, but we have a category within rtCamp which we call Growth Engineers, who are some of our best coders. But rather than writing code, they go on the first client call and make promises on behalf of WordPress which are practical, feasible, and real.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That is what our internship look like, because coding is race to bottom. Eventually the cost of building will shrink to the point that you don&#8217;t need many, you won&#8217;t need many traditional developers in any agency. You will need people who can imagine what needs to be built. There might be 20 different ways and which way this project should be executed. That prompt engineering, context in engineering.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So the value is shifting and it&#8217;s definitely shifting away from people who can only code. That is why, probably from two years now, we might be at 300 people. Hundred of them will not be coding at all. But they will be prompting AI. They will be building vibe coded prototype in pre-sale stage to gain that customer confidence like early on that day. What you want is possible with the WordPress. It won&#8217;t cost that much. It&#8217;ll be given you fast enough that your life won&#8217;t be disrupted for many months, like your business operations won&#8217;t be disrupted for many months, so this is a thing</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, nobody could deny that we&#8217;re in interesting times. I think a lot of people are very confused by what&#8217;s going on at the moment. You know, they&#8217;re trying to figure out a path. They&#8217;re trying to figure out how it affects their business. They&#8217;re probably in, I would imagine, quite a lot of cases, quite keen to stick to the ways that they&#8217;ve done it in the past. But certainly the picture that you&#8217;ve painted over at rtCamp is that you are aligning yourself with a very different future, kind of embracing AI, seeing where it can take you, trying to adapt your business. Being optimistic about it rather than pessimistic. Because I think there is quite a lot of pessimism around there at the moment. But seeing the opportunity and seizing it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Absolutely fascinating. There was so much to unpack there. I feel like we could talk probably for another nine hours about this because it genuinely is never ending. I would love to prize back the curtain a little bit more. However, time allows only this much. So what an interesting conversation. Thank you very much, Rahul.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Just before we end, could you just tell us where we can find you online, should somebody want to, you know, maybe they&#8217;re experiencing a bit of anxiety of their own. Their agency is in a rudderless ship at the moment and they&#8217;re trying to figure it out. Where can people get in touch with you best?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rahul Bansal:</strong> I am actually available on all social networks. I use LinkedIn least and email is most level way, I&#8217;m a bit old school there. But, yeah, Twitter. I check daily.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I will link to your bio in the show notes, but also, I will link to the presentation that you gave and any other bits and pieces that we discussed that I can find links for. I will mention those well. So head to wptaven.com, search for the episode with Rahul in it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Thank you so much for chatting to me, and all I can say is all the best. I hope that all of the intuitions that you have turn out to bear fruit and be fruitful for you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Thank so much for chatting to me today.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rahul Bansal:</strong> Thank you Nathan.</p>
</div></details>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">On the podcast today we have <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahul286/">Rahul Bansal</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Rahul has a long and accomplished history in the WordPress ecosystem. As the founder and CEO of  rtCamp, a company he started 17 years ago, he’s led his agency through the rapidly changing landscape of the web, helping enterprise clients such as Google, Fortune 500 companies, and major publishers solve complex problems with innovative WordPress-based solutions. <a href="https://rtcamp.com">rtCamp</a> specialises in everything from large-scale website builds to more bespoke projects like Chrome extensions and SaaS connectors, and has grown to a team of hundreds over the years.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Today’s episode takes a deep dive into Rahul’s recent talk at WordCamp Asia, which focused on what it will take to launch and scale an enterprise WordPress agency in the future. The conversation focused on real, hard-won lessons from rtCamp’s journey, but also on how rapidly the playbook is changing with advances in technology, particularly the explosion of AI tools and workflows.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We discuss Rahul’s philosophy around hiring, namely, building a team of people whose strengths complement each other, rather than just replicating your own skillset. This approach has allowed rtCamp to adapt to new challenges, fill gaps in expertise, and weather major industry changes.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We then explore how this idea of “complementary sets” can also apply to choosing the right kinds of clients, those who value your expertise because they need what you offer, rather than simply hiring someone who does what they already know.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A theme that emerged in the conversation was specialisation. Rahul outlines how, whereas rtCamp’s earliest differentiator was a simple focus on WordPress (when virtually no one else in India was), today’s agencies must drill down much further to stand out, choosing niches within niches, such as WooCommerce or payment gateway integrations, and becoming recognised experts in those areas in order to thrive in a much more crowded field.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Towards the end of the episode the discussion turns toward what might be the most significant topic for agencies today, artificial intelligence. Rahul described how recent advances in AI have not only altered his agency’s practices, but have given them a firm mandate, if something within rtCamp can be done by AI, it will be.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We talk about how AI is being leveraged inside rtCamp to automate and optimise everything from sales and proposal writing to project management and even technical proof-of-concept builds. With a unified platform for all business processes, the agency is now able to significantly reduce costs, speed up delivery, and focus on higher-value consulting and creativity, reshaping roles and team composition as a result.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you’re interested in what it takes to stand out and succeed in the evolving world of enterprise WordPress agencies, how to confront uncertainty with both optimism and realism, and how AI can become not just a bolt-on feature but the operational backbone of your business, this episode is for you.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://rtcamp.com">rtCamp</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Rahul&#8217;s presentation at WordCamp Asia 2026: <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2026/session/how-to-start-an-enterprise-wordpress-agency-in-2026/">How to start an enterprise WordPress agency in 2026</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2026/04/21/how-to-start-an-enterprise-wordpress-agency-in-2026/">The same presentation on WordPress.tv</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://rtcamp.com/blog/17-years-of-good-work/">A year of reinvention as we turn 17</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://frappe.io">Frappe tools</a> mentioned several times during the podcast</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://x.com/rahul286">Rahul on X</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahul286/">Rahul on LinkedIn</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:26;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"Open Channels FM: BackTalk on Mission, Media, Localization, AI, and Giving Back to Open Source";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555607";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:97:"https://openchannels.fm/backtalk-on-mission-media-localization-ai-and-giving-back-to-open-source/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:189:"The content reflects on past discussions highlighting the importance of amplifying diverse voices, localizing strategies, and contributing to the open-source ecosystem for future relevance.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 17 Jun 2026 09:40:01 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:27;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16:"Matt: Audio Wars";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=153172";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"https://ma.tt/2026/06/audio-wars/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1875:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It looks like Ubiquiti is coming for Sonos with its <a href="https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/premium-iot/products/upl-port">PoE Audio Port, a $199 device</a> that closely resembles <a href="https://amzn.to/4vXqjcH">the $499 Sonos Port</a>, and <a href="https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/upl-amp">$599 PowerAmp</a>. Sonos is going up-market with <a href="https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/amp-multi">the Amp Multi</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Sonos has <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-03-10/sonos-new-speaker-heralds-revival-under-ceo-tom-conrad-after-app-fiasco?sref=tT7Af65V">had a rough patch</a>, but I&#8217;m pretty ride or die for them, and some of my favorite people are there: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomconrad/">Tom Conrad, the CEO</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/hbarra/">Hugo Barra on the board</a>, and <a href="https://miketatum.com/">Mike Tatum</a> in CorpDev (he&#8217;s the guy who got me to drop out of college and join CNET back in 2004!).</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The only time I don&#8217;t do Sonos in a home is for the <a href="https://syngspace.com/">amazing audio experience of Syng Alpha</a>. The triphonic thing can be really magical. (Analog/vinyl is <a href="https://ma.tt/2009/04/visiting-shindo-labs/">still Shindo Laboratories</a>, but that&#8217;s just for special occasions.)</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For headphones right now, it&#8217;s either <a href="https://www.colorware.com/collections/wordpress">some custom Airpods Pro 3</a> or <a href="https://amzn.to/44c5wGf">the Sennheiser HDB 630</a> (<em>Hat tip: <a href="https://pud.com/">Pud</a></em>, who is also making some crazy headphones).</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">On the go, I love pairing two <a href="https://amzn.to/4fQSchD">Logitech Megaboom 4s</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 17 Jun 2026 06:59:03 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:28;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"Open Channels FM: Summer Updates New Features and Changes to Open Channels FM";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555698";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"https://openchannels.fm/summer-updates-new-features-and-changes-to-open-channels-fm/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:192:"Bob Dunn updates on Open Channels FM's recent developments, including a homepage redesign, the launch of "Do the Woo" as a standalone podcast, and upcoming features like Open Channels FM Live.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 16 Jun 2026 11:55:19 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:29;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:20:"Matt: Assorted Links";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=153102";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://ma.tt/2026/06/assorted-links-2/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10498:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Sometimes you have to just start with beauty.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Listen to <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/3eXr4s3rCLxNJpxqaIDyqJ?si=Z2vNOEF2Rm-s6BAkCVN4hg">Jon Batiste&#8217;s <em>Beethoven Blues</em></a>, then <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VM8MsR4K10">relish this interview, where he plays and talks about it</a>. I can&#8217;t <a href="https://theisolationjournals.substack.com/p/black-mozart">wait for Black Mozart</a>, which is already starting <a href="https://open.spotify.com/prerelease/4WWjrjAmp0Xqah9zqgir4M?si=6ea98fbd9d1d40ee">to trickle on Spotify</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Forget all <a href="https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/auto/ferrari-luce">that Ferrari stuff</a>, what <a href="https://www.wallpaper.com/design-interiors/lighting/jony-ive-lovefrom-balmuda-sailing-lantern">Jony Ive did with his LoveFrom Sailing Lantern</a> is divine. I&#8217;ve now seen it in person, and it&#8217;s the light at the end of the tunnel.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-153109" height="340" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2026/06/sailing-lantern-1024x576.jpg?resize=604%2C340&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That led me to discover how awesome <a href="https://us.balmuda.com/">Balmuda is</a>, and stumble upon the Japanese word <em>Monozukuri</em>, which, according to Google, &#8220;(ものづくり) is a foundational Japanese philosophy that translates literally to <em>the art and science of making things</em>&#8221; It goes far beyond standard manufacturing or production, representing a deep, holistic mindset that embraces craftsmanship, a relentless pursuit of perfection, pride in one&#8217;s labor, and a deep respect for materials.&#8221; Look <a href="https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/39758220.html">at how Toyota embodies it</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Om has a <a href="https://om.co/2026/06/07/the-myth-the-mythos-and-the-man/">beautiful and prescient post on The Myth, the Mythos and the Man</a>.  It predicted some of this <a href="https://www.techmeme.com/260615/p20#a260615p20">Fable kerfuffle</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Connection</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">How <a href="https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/modular-system/tethering">amazing is tethering on Android</a>? I have a <a href="https://amzn.to/49TXYeM">Pixel 10 Pro</a> with a USB-C Ethernet hub plugged into the WAN port of a <a href="https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/udr-5g-max">Unifi Dream Router 5G Max</a> because the <a href="https://www.qualcomm.com/modems/products/snapdragon-x62-5g-modem-rf-system">Qualcomm chip Unifi uses</a> is two generations behind what&#8217;s in the phone. (Hat tip: <a href="https://jesse.blog/">Jesse</a>.) How <a href="https://satellitemap.space/constellation/starlink">amazing are the 10,653 Starlink satellites floating above us, providing broadband from space</a>, from a company I heard <a href="https://x.com/gjurvetson/status/2065452568902279655">might have had an IPO last week</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I reconfigure ports, channels, and flows, as nurses do for arteries and cannulas.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Numbers Don&#8217;t Lie, Check The Scoreboard</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Not <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7355407/2026/06/13/knicks-nba-championship-game-5-win/">just the Knicks</a>. After a 3-year hiatus of Review Signal benchmarks, the headline was <a href="https://www.therepository.email/review-signal-publishes-2026-hosting-benchmarks-after-three-year-gap-powered-by-its-own-open-source-load-testing-platform">that Pressable dominated every category</a>, and with perfect uptime. However, the real story is about <a href="https://wp.cloud/">WP.cloud</a>, which is behind the top scores for not just Pressable and WordPress.com but also the <a href="https://www.bluehost.com/cloud-hosting">Bluehost Cloud plans</a>, beating <a href="https://www.oracle.com/cloud/">Oracle Cloud</a> and <a href="https://cloud.google.com/">GCP</a>-based solutions. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://wp.cloud/">WP.cloud</a> is <a href="https://ma.tt/files/2026/06/bezos-aws.jpeg">our AWS</a>; <a href="http://pressable.com/">Pressable</a> is our demo site. We want <em>every</em> host to offer the fastest and <em>most secure</em> WordPress possible. I&#8217;m happy to focus on infrastructure and let others figure out marketing and such <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi_and_Lois">foofram</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you speak Danish and would like a random Radical Speed Month art project detour, check out <a href="https://automattic.github.io/nima/">Joen Asmussens&#8217; Nima</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a> has been shipping, shipping, shipping. <a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/2026/06/10/wordpress-com-is-now-available-in-stripe-projects/">Start a WP.com site from the terminal with Stripe Projects</a>. <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/introducing-the-official-akismet-php-sdk/">Akismet PHP SDK</a>. Fun experiments from Radical Speed Month like <a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/2026/04/27/studio-code-beta/">Studio Code</a>, <a href="https://www.stattic.net/">Stattic</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.com/workspace/">Workspace Mac App</a>, <a href="https://github.com/Automattic/cortext">Cortext</a>, <a href="https://pressship.org/">Pressship</a>, <a href="https://wapuu.studio/">Wapuu Studio</a>,  <a href="https://studiowrite.app/">Studio Write</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/desktop-mode/">Desktop Mode</a>, <a href="https://flavorpress.io/">FlavorPress</a>, <a href="https://github.com/jonathanbossenger/concilium">Concilium</a>, <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2026/05/07/woocommerce-for-claude/">WooCommerce insights in Claude</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen">the <em>kaizen</em></a> of hundreds of behind-the-scenes bug fixes and improvements across our product suite. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Much of this came from those not historically in a product or engineering role, which we&#8217;re learning to navigate. I loved how customer-centric many things were. We also made a lot of rookie mistakes, but that&#8217;s part of how you learn, and I believe the acceleration of learning will be the biggest legacy of the Radical Speed Month experiment. That, and the fun games on <a href="https://automattic.com/work-with-us/">our intranet</a>. <img alt="🙂" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f642.png" style="height: 1em;" /></p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-153136" height="201" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2026/06/automattic-game-center-banner-1024x341.jpeg?resize=604%2C201&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1" width="604" /></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">AI Hangover</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I have <a href="https://ma.tt/2023/10/wowza/">drunk from the sweet nectar of Waymo</a>, and now find myself calling an Uber so I can talk to 72-year-old Antoly from Azerbaijan, whom I slip a hundred-dollar bill as I step out. I weep when I see talented colleagues speak and write with words not quite their own. I <a href="https://www.pangram.com/">masochistically Pangram everything</a> even though it sometimes mistakes my own hand-crafted prose for slop, or is that actually my soul being sanded down by consuming too many statistically probable next tokens?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The uncanny valley of software, writing, products, and presentations so polished on the surface but built on thin foundations of understanding gives me an almost physical, nauseous reaction. I write this even as I listen to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRsQsTMvPNg">Claude FM music for thinking and building</a>,  probably <a href="https://ma.tt/files/2026/06/mythos-jailbreak-791x1024.jpeg">Mythos-injected with subliminal messages</a> to remind me of the hours of audio transcribed in minutes; the programs that would have taken a team months, conjured from my hand in hours; the way I feel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XV8aBNOIqI">like Neo in the Matrix</a>, rapidly downloading new domains of knowledge.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">What&#8217;s the name for the paradox, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox">like Jevon&#8217;s</a>, that AI abundance and polish makes you crave messy, imperfect humanity even more?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It&#8217;s good to debate and ruminate, but only in small doses. Like salt in a dish, a little goes a long way. Avoid the <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11036542/">existential angst</a> of charting new territory by getting your hands dirty and trying things. You learn the most from failures when you can <a href="https://apagefrommunakusbook834350529.blog/2023/02/03/learning-to-laugh-at-yourself/">laugh at yourself</a>.  <a href="https://amzn.to/4vmWaDB">Build one to throw away</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Write Different</h2>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Writing is not the most important thing; thinking is. But writing is probably the best way to improve your thinking.</p>
</blockquote>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I saw this quote attributed to me and didn&#8217;t remember it, so I thought it might be an AI hallucination, but it&#8217;s actually something I said! In <a href="https://perell.com/podcast/matt-mulleweg/">this early-years podcast with David Perell</a> buried on some corner of his site. Now <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@DavidPerellChannel">David&#8217;s production quality is stellar</a>, and he gets amazing guests like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb9Tz-RQFN4">Maria Popova to discuss their craft</a>. I&#8217;ve enjoyed his rise and look forward to <a href="https://perell.com/">following him</a> in the decades to come.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I could edit and link much more, but sometimes you have to just <a href="https://vimeo.com/12238385">press the Publish button</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVOo4K_GGM">let go</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 15 Jun 2026 19:20:04 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:30;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:96:"Open Channels FM: The Balancing Act: Freedom, Convenience, and Open Source in an AI-Driven World";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555638";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"https://openchannels.fm/the-balancing-act-freedom-convenience-and-open-source-in-an-ai-driven-world/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:341:"So many of us are in a evolving relationship between freedom, convenience, and open source software in the world shaped by AI. The promise of freedom which is central to the open web and open source movements has to be continually weighed against the growing demand for convenience and simplicity. While open source software offers [&#8230;]";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:16:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:31;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:49:"Akismet: Introducing the official Akismet PHP SDK";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://akismet.com/?p=284799";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:66:"https://akismet.com/blog/introducing-the-official-akismet-php-sdk/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4711:"<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-284805" height="429" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/screenshot-2026-06-10-at-11.38.37-am.png?w=1024" width="1024" /></figure>



<div class="wp-block-jetpack-markdown"><p>For twenty years, Akismet has kept spam out of WordPress. But spammers don’t care what your site runs on and neither do we.</p>
<p>Last month we launched the <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/introducing-the-official-akismet-drupal-module/">official Akismet Drupal module</a>. Today we’re introducing the engine that powers it: the official Akismet PHP SDK, a first-party client that brings Akismet to any PHP application.</p>
<h2 id="what-it-is-and-who-itâ€™s-for">What it is, and who it’s for</h2>
<p>The Akismet PHP SDK is a first-party PHP client for the Akismet API. It’s built for the platforms the WordPress plugin doesn’t reach: custom apps, SaaS backends, and PHP frameworks like Laravel and Symfony. (The official plugins are still the way to go for <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/">WordPress</a> and <a href="https://www.drupal.org/project/akismet_antispam">Drupal</a>.)</p>
<p>Under the hood it’s built to feel at home in a modern PHP codebase:</p>
<ul>
<li>Covers the full Akismet API, from comment-check and spam/ham submissions to key verification, usage limits, and account stats.</li>
<li>Works with any PSR-18 HTTP client you already have (Guzzle, Symfony HttpClient, and the like) through auto-discovery.</li>
<li>Ships a typed exception hierarchy that redacts your API key, so credentials never leak into your logs.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="a-two-minute-quick-start">A two-minute quick start</h2>
<p>Install it with Composer:</p>
<pre><code class="language-bash">composer require automattic/akismet-sdk
</code></pre>
<p>Then check a submission:</p>
<pre><code class="language-php">use Automattic\Akismet\Akismet;
use Automattic\Akismet\DTO\Content;
use Automattic\Akismet\Enum\ContentType;

$akismet = Akismet::create(
    apiKey: 'your-api-key',
    site: 'https://your-site.com',
);

$content = new Content(
    userIp: $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'],
    userAgent: $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],
    body: $formData['message'],
    authorEmail: $formData['email'],
    type: ContentType::ContactForm,
);

$result = $akismet-&amp;gt;check($content);

if ($result-&amp;gt;isSpam()) {
    // Reject it, flag it, or queue it for review.
    // $result-&amp;gt;shouldDiscard() marks the blatant spam you can drop outright.
}
</code></pre>
<p>That’s the loop: build a <code>Content</code> object, call <code>check()</code>, act on the result.</p>
<h2 id="already-running-in-production">Already running in production</h2>
<p>The official Akismet <a href="https://www.drupal.org/project/akismet_antispam">Drupal module</a> is built on this SDK. The SDK handles the API contract and type safety, while the module handles Drupal’s service wiring, queues, and moderation UI. That’s the pattern for Laravel, Symfony, and anything else you build: the SDK owns the Akismet integration and your framework owns the glue.</p>
<h2 id="whatâ€™s-new-in-1-5-0">What’s new in 1.5.0</h2>
<p>We have just released v1.5.0, which is about giving Akismet more to work with, and giving you more back:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Richer content signals:</strong> <code>Content</code> now carries the site’s language and character set, plus the surrounding conversation context, so every check has more to go on.</li>
<li><strong>More insight into every verdict:</strong> <code>CheckResult</code> now surfaces the error and classification Akismet returns, so you can log and act on <em>why</em> something was flagged, not just whether it was.</li>
<li><strong>Extended multi-site reporting:</strong> For keys that span many sites, the new extended key-sites data adds per-site metadata for cleaner reporting and account hygiene.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="get-started">Get started</h2>
<p>The SDK is open source and live on Packagist today.</p>
<ul>
<li>Install: <code>composer require automattic/akismet-sdk</code></li>
<li>Packagist: <a href="https://packagist.org/packages/automattic/akismet-sdk">automattic/akismet-sdk</a></li>
<li>Source and docs: <a href="https://github.com/Automattic/akismet-sdk-php">github.com/Automattic/akismet-sdk-php</a></li>
</ul>
<p>You’ll need an Akismet API key to make calls. Akismet’s <a href="https://akismet.com/pricing/">Personal plan</a> is pay-what-you-can and free for personal, non-commercial sites. If you’re running something commercial, pick a paid plan that matches your traffic. Either way your code stays identical, since the plan lives with your API key, not in the SDK.</p>
</div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 15 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Derek Springer";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:32;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:59:"Open Channels FM: The Changelog: Still Here, Still Doing It";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555551";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"https://openchannels.fm/the-changelog-still-here-still-doing-it/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:305:"A bit over four years ago, in 2022, I recorded an episode from San Diego. I was getting ready for an event, about to attend my first-ever Contributor Day (which, yes, felt a little absurd given how many WordCamps I&#8217;d been to by that point). To fill the time before things kicked off, I sat [&#8230;]";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 12 Jun 2026 08:10:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:33;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:40:"Dennis Snell: Gutenberg Package Activity";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:36:"https://fluffyandflakey.blog/?p=3901";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"https://fluffyandflakey.blog/2026/06/11/gutenberg-package-activity/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1001:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Last week at <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2026/">WordCamp Europe</a> there was a get-together among WordPress Core committers and a question arose concerning the separate Gutenberg <code>npm</code> packages that are built and distributed. I was curious about how frequently they are updated and which ones are most active, so I asked Codex to review <code>git</code> commit activity, gather commits per package which touch files in that package, and then render it into a plot. It produced this.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Also available <a href="https://fluffyandflakey.blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/gb-package-rates.html">as a PNG image</a>.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Script available <a href="https://gist.github.com/dmsnell/107642d8791e5bb88c4a3f9c521dad3d">in a gist</a>.</p>



<div class="wp-block-group alignwide"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">

</div></div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:34:47 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Dennis Snell";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:34;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:97:"Open Channels FM: WordCamp Europe Takeaways: Community Vibes, Tech Advancements and Smarter Tools";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555456";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:102:"https://openchannels.fm/wordcamp-europe-takeaways-community-vibes-tech-advancements-and-smarter-tools/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:215:"This Open Channels FM episode from WordCamp Europe discusses the event's vibrant atmosphere, the integration of AI in WordPress workflows, and the positive community outlook on evolving technology and opportunities.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 11 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:35;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:104:"WPTavern: #220 – Cathy Mitchell on Why WordPress Events Matter: Community, Connection, and Giving Back";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=204704";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:115:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/220-cathy-mitchell-on-why-wordpress-events-matter-community-connection-and-giving-back";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:52587:"<details>Transcript<div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:00:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, why WordPress events and community matter.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So on the podcast today, we have Cathy Mitchell. Cathy has been working with WordPress since 2007. What began as a fun personal project during her maternity leave soon evolved into a fully fledged business with the launch of WPBarista in 2008. Over the years, Cathy has garnered extensive experience in the WordPress space, and is now working towards the 2026 WordCamp Canada.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The conversation focuses on the powerful role of community within the WordPress ecosystem, something that Cathy is deeply passionate about. We discuss how open, welcoming, and international the WordPress community feels, compared to more traditional corporate or volunteer environments. A theme that emerged was how involvement in WordPress has provided Cathy, and many others, with a sense of belonging and fulfilment, especially after life changes like becoming an empty nester.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The discussion explores the motivations for volunteering and organising within the WordPress community, both from the perspective of newcomers looking for purpose and connection, and business owners assessing the return on investment from contributing or sponsoring events. This includes how easy it is to get involved, the unique lack of barriers and red tape, and the value of altruism and camaraderie.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Other topics we explored with a broader impact of technology and loneliness, the importance of service and community for wellbeing, challenges in sponsorship amid changes economic times, and the vital need to engage the next generation in open source.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;re interested in the human side of WordPress, how volunteering shapes both individual and the broader community, and what the future might hold for WordPress events and contributors, this episode is for you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And so without further delay, I bring you Cathy Mitchell.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I am joined on the podcast by Cathy Mitchell. Hello, Cathy.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:25] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Hello. Thanks for having me.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:27] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You are very welcome. Cathy and I have been having, well, 15 minutes or so of chit chat just before we started the podcast. I&#8217;ve been learning a little bit about Cathy and we&#8217;re going to share all sorts of information.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I think probably broadly we could talk about it as being the WordPress community, which is a subject which is dear to my heart.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">However, before we get into that, Cathy, I&#8217;ve had an introduction from you over the last few minutes, but would you mind sort of giving us your potted version of that, your shorter version, your bio if you like. Tell us who you are and how come you&#8217;re featuring on a WordPress podcast.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:03:58] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Well that&#8217;s a whole lot of imposter syndrome. Why I am featuring, because you&#8217;re kind enough to have me. I&#8217;ve been working with WordPress since 2007 and it was just something fun that I did to begin, much like you with podcasting.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And then a couple years in, I told my friends that they&#8217;d have to start paying me, or I was going to go back to work, find a real job. This was during my mat leave, and so it kind of just took off from there in 2008, started WPBarista.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And now I&#8217;m very interested in the community because I was looking for something to do in the WordPress community last year. Dan in the Canada Slack got a hold of me and said, hey, do you want to help with the WordCamp? And I said, sure. You know, I had time.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And he got me in and brought me right up to like being on the organising team. And it was so fun but so shocking. Like, there is a lot of red tape in the corporate world before they let you do anything meaningful. Like you have to sweep the floors for a whole long time before they let you actually do something you&#8217;re good at. So this was remarkable. And this year I find to my surprise, I&#8217;m leading the 2026 WordCamp Canada.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m doing now. And we&#8217;re going to focus on community too. So I&#8217;m very excited about this topic, both from a corporate, like what do we get out of this? Or are we supposed to get something out of this? And from a personal standpoint, it&#8217;s been amazing to meet these people, and to be given a chance. And I found out I&#8217;m not the only one. This is like normal, which is bizarre and wonderful.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:05:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> My experience of the WordPress community, so I started in WordPress actually quite a long time after you did. Maybe sort of six or seven years after you began using WordPress. I really didn&#8217;t know that there was a community at all. I just downloaded the software and used the software. And then I can&#8217;t even remember really how it happened. It might have been through things like Facebook Groups or something like that, where I was trying to learn a particular thing? Or perhaps there was something in the dashboard which indicated that there was an event nearby.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But I found myself, to my own surprise actually, I found myself at a WordPress event in London, WordCamp London, which at the time was going really strong. You know, hundreds and hundreds of people would show up every year.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And I remember purchasing a ticket and getting the train ticket and thinking, what am I doing? What am I possibly hoping to get out of this? And showing up and kind of being a bit like a timid rabbit sitting in the corner a little bit, and then it kind of worked out fairly quickly. Okay, this is all fairly benign. Nobody seems to be all that boastful. Nobody seems to be sort of shoving corporate speech down my throat, or trying to sell me anything unnecessarily.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And during the course of a day or maybe a couple of days, opened up a little bit and got chatting to people. And lo and behold, within a couple of years, a significant proportion of my free time, let&#8217;s call it that, outside of the commitments of daily life and family and all of that kind of thing, was taken up with doing WordPressy things in my spare time.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And so I, I don&#8217;t know if the story maps the same as you, I&#8217;ve shared mine, maybe you&#8217;ll share something similar in a moment. The community to me is much more than just, oh, there&#8217;s a community there. It genuinely is a seriously important part of my life. To the point where if that was to be sort of whipped away, or somebody like a Thanos type character suddenly clicked their fingers and that disappeared, I don&#8217;t know what I would do with myself. I would really have to go out there and find an awful lot of other things to do. Was it a bit like that for you?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:07:41] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Not at all. I went to the forums first. And in 2008, 2009, there were some big names nowadays that were just answering us in the support forums. And so I learned from the best of the best, I think. And they would answer my ridiculous questions. I had no idea about PHP. I didn&#8217;t even know HTML. I didn&#8217;t even know what the internet was, like as broad concept. I asked my husband at the time like, okay, I don&#8217;t understand how my computer is talking to someone else&#8217;s computer, like you need to draw me a picture.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So anyway, I&#8217;ve only recently, I went to a couple of events, but I&#8217;ve always had the business mind. If I can&#8217;t see an ROI financially, I&#8217;ll say, from what I&#8217;m doing, then I don&#8217;t have time for it. But that was also during a time when I had a young family and then I became a single mum and then I had to work this business. And so it&#8217;s only really recently that I&#8217;m looking around and seeing people like you and going, this is unique.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I&#8217;ve been in volunteer communities, and now that my kids are all grown up, I&#8217;m kind of looking for those opportunities. What meaningful thing can I do with my time? And this just seems so unique. Like I volunteered at other places and there&#8217;s so much red tape and there&#8217;s so much, I don&#8217;t know, different feelings than this one. This one&#8217;s very open.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:09:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think the bit that is so curious to me is you can sort of dip in and dip out of it. Because, I don&#8217;t know, let&#8217;s say for example, you do something much more local, involved with your hometown or something like that. And you get involved in it and there&#8217;s a certain kind of, pressure is the wrong word, I suppose you can dip in and dip out of that as well, but do you know what I mean? You get involved in those philanthropic things locally and you get to know things and it becomes more of a habit, and you do the same thing over and over again. At least that&#8217;s my experience.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">What I quite like about this is the international flavour of it. The fact that I&#8217;m being introduced people from really different parts of the world and cultures. And it&#8217;s very, very open, and it&#8217;s a real contrast to the bit that you just mentioned, where the corporate bit, and obviously there&#8217;s a side of our community which is very much devoted to turning a profit and what have you. But there&#8217;s a significant proportion of the people who don&#8217;t have that metric in their head when they&#8217;re introducing themselves to people.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">They are just trying to be helpful and trying to deliver on the promise that the internet gave us back in the 1990s of, here&#8217;s the infrastructure to pass information around freely. Wouldn&#8217;t it be nice if everybody had the capacity to publish things, or to share things online without some sort of corporate overlord or paywall or algorithm? Which we&#8217;ve now probably regret deeply allowing that to happen to the internet.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">All of those kind of things come into play. I have constantly, for the last decade, tried to sum up and capture what this is. And I always fail. It simply feels nice, is all that I&#8217;ve got, really. This community, the people in it that I hang out with, it just feels like a nice thing to do. That&#8217;s all I&#8217;ve got. No wisdom beyond that. It&#8217;s bizarre, isn&#8217;t it?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:10:53] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> I&#8217;ve been trying to quantify it too, and especially planning this next conference. I feel much like a student because there&#8217;s a large group, probably most people are not like me. Like they&#8217;re like you, at least the ones, in Slack that I&#8217;m talking to on a daily basis. And they&#8217;re the original nerds who are so happy, like were inspired and spent their free time, like this wasn&#8217;t their job. Promoting this and like answering my questions in forum as an absolute noob. So in that way I feel like I would really like to give back now.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But the community, yeah, I can&#8217;t quite put my finger on. I just talked to a sponsor yesterday and she is of course wanting to get in front of her audience, which is agency owners. But there&#8217;s a real sense of promoting the community because the healthier the community, the healthier all of us are. Not just financially, but it creates the forward momentum, I think as far as open source as a whole too. Like there&#8217;s a bunch of us, me included, even though I kind of am taking a corporate angle that really believe that open source could change the world. I still do, maybe even more so because AI is, can actually talk to things that are open source. Less so if everything&#8217;s behind a paywall.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:12:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think one of the things that you mentioned there, which suddenly sort of struck me is whilst there are a handful of people out there, and I say a handful, there&#8217;s obviously many millions of people. I think it&#8217;s fair to say that many people prefer to be in proximity to other people, to do things, to be in conversation with people, to have a shared experience. You know, we go to the cinema or the movie theatre to watch a movie. I mean I know the screen&#8217;s bigger and everything, but part of it is to be with other people and to go ooh and ah, at the same time and go to firework displays and concerts and things like that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Now all of that stuff can be done in an isolated environment in your house. You know, you can watch Netflix and you can watch the TV and get a similar kind of experience. But I think there&#8217;s some sort of core part of me at least, and the people that I hang out with at these kind of events and online who just enjoy that shared experience, that willingness to be involved in a similar task. Just to be pointing in the same direction as a bunch of other people, pulling together on the same team. And it&#8217;s unquantifiable. I literally can&#8217;t encapsulate it, but I think you and I are talking about the same thing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">What&#8217;s interesting is I accidentally found it fairly early on in my WordPress journey. Serendipity played a really blinding hand for me there. But I think had I not had, bit like that film Sliding Doors, I could easily have missed the cues which sent me to that WordCamp or whatever it was that got me started. And I probably could have gone for a decade or more and not even noticed it was a community and maybe discovered it much more recently.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And it sounds like that&#8217;s kind of happening to you. You mentioned that you are, I think in the show notes you described it as, it&#8217;s a lovely phrase, empty nesting. Does that mean when your children grow up and go away? Is that what that means?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:13:53] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Yeah. That&#8217;s a pretty common phrase over here.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:13:55] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, okay.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:13:56] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> This side of the pond. You know, you kick the little birdies out, and they&#8217;re spreading their wings. All of a sudden we&#8217;re left with, it&#8217;s a different life stage. I think we were talking a little bit about it. You&#8217;re getting there.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:14:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I&#8217;m going to there very, yeah, awh, it&#8217;s kind of filled with melancholy. On the hand, obviously I would love for my children to grow up, but on the other hand it&#8217;s, pulls all the heartstrings, doesn&#8217;t it?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So you are finding space in your life to do this kind of stuff. I&#8217;m going to ask a question, which is maybe a little bit personal, I don&#8217;t know. Hope you don&#8217;t read it in the wrong way. Do you find this stuff like meaningful and significant? Do you get a sense of fulfilment and satisfaction from the work that you are doing? For example, with WordCamp Canada.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Because there must be moments when it&#8217;s a real chore and, you know, you&#8217;ve got far too many tasks which are spilling over, and you think, gosh, I&#8217;m just a volunteer. There&#8217;s no quid pro quo here. I&#8217;m just doing it out of the goodness of my heart. But on balance, do you get that warm and fuzzy feeling from doing all of this?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:14:54] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> That&#8217;s a good question. I had time, so I started volunteering at a bunch of things. I started volunteering teaching kids, and then to go the complete other end of the spectrum, I did a seniors class at my local college last month. I just started volunteering because in my opinion, as a little amateur psychologist, I think service, serving our community is kind of the best way to, like you said, pull alongside someone. And then when you have like a focused goal, there&#8217;s a togetherness and I really need to grow my community.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Me, and I think quite a few other people, there&#8217;s this whole epidemic of loneliness to be frank. Having raised the kids and then having done the job, now all of a sudden it&#8217;s like, I have time to invest in a real community. And I really want it to be worthwhile. I don&#8217;t want to sweep the floors for, maybe it&#8217;s an age thing, I don&#8217;t know. I&#8217;m so, so grateful that they let me do something that I&#8217;m good at, as far as organising, because they didn&#8217;t have to. That&#8217;s a big responsibility to put on somebody. And I am praying it all works out in the fall.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But it comes because of the huge number of volunteers that all work together. So my job&#8217;s just basically pulling all these people together, and making sure that we&#8217;re talking to each other. Because one person can&#8217;t possibly do all of the work that comes with putting on a conference. At least not part-time. But yeah, I&#8217;m finding it immensely rewarding because I also feel like I&#8217;m good at it. Everybody loves to do something they&#8217;re good at.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:16:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You mentioned something earlier where you sort of implied that you were very surprised that in the WordPress world, you were given a bunch of responsibility for an event. I mean, basically, I think a lot of that, isn&#8217;t there? There&#8217;s a lot of, whoever can show up does get the job really, because there&#8217;s a paucity of volunteers. And for an event of the magnitude of WordCamp Canada, if you&#8217;ve ever been to events like that, you sort of walk in and on every level it feels like a corporate event. You know, it&#8217;s very polished, highly polished. There&#8217;s catering, the venue&#8217;s all been booked, you&#8217;ve got name badges and there&#8217;s probably some translation going on, and there slides and every, there&#8217;s timetables and everything. And it&#8217;s all done by volunteers.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And I remember the same sort of thing, being asked to do a variety of different things and thinking, wait, really? You don&#8217;t know the inside of my head. I will mess this up so badly. But that is such a nice characteristic of our community. And you&#8217;ll fail together, if you know what I mean? You know, it is not like anybody&#8217;s going to let you deeply fail. People will step in and help you, should you need to.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:17:31] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Yeah, we have to say yes, like it&#8217;s part of the culture is, if people volunteer, we have to find a way to say yes. Like our default is yes, not, well, have you done this first?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:17:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. It&#8217;s interesting because you obviously have done a lot of this kind of corporate stuff, and so have the impression that you ought to be qualified, I don&#8217;t know, a decade or two decades of this particular thing in order to be trusted to do it. And this is just, yeah, this is so different. Anybody? Bueller. Okay, you&#8217;ll do it. Great. Fine. That&#8217;s great, yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:18:03] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Yeah. You&#8217;re hired.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:18:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s I&#8217;ve never done it before. It doesn&#8217;t matter. You&#8217;ll be brilliant.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:18:07] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> We&#8217;ll help you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:18:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. And that camaraderie of binding together on a particular thing, in your case WordCamp, but the broader project, you know, the WordPress project as a whole, I feel it&#8217;s full of these kind of people. And we will get into in a minute I&#8217;m sure, how that maybe has changed for some people in the more recent past, and about the fact that the community does feel like it&#8217;s in a bit of a challenging place at the moment.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But I just want to go back a little bit because you mentioned, and neither of us I suspect will have the answer to this, but I&#8217;m interested in your intuitions anyway. You mentioned that people nowadays, maybe this has always been the case, but it feels like there&#8217;s been a change. Loneliness seems to be a very common thing now. And my sort of back of the napkin calculus points me in the direction of wondering if it is actually oddly technology. The very thing that we&#8217;re celebrating. If technology might be responsible for it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For example, I look around and I see a lot of people who give an awful lot of what would&#8217;ve otherwise been free time, time that they could have gone out and socialised and what have you. And, you know, you sort of end up sitting on the couch and scrolling through social media and things like that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Television has become so absolutely fascinating. You know, there&#8217;s like a billion different channels, and essentially there&#8217;s a thousand ways to keep yourself entertained all by yourself, and never speak to another human being, or be in proximity to another human being. There&#8217;s no question there, I just wondered if you had an observation or a similar thought process.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:19:39] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> I looked up, because I knew we were going to talk about this, the stat on it. Because I know I&#8217;ve had the same feeling. And I&#8217;ve heard people talk about it, but I didn&#8217;t really know if that was like true or not, because whenever I am thinking or researching something, of course that&#8217;s what the algorithm shows me. So I&#8217;m always kind of hesitant, like is this actually real or am I just seeing this?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But it did say in a 2021 report, the US Surgeon General, and this is in the States, no 2023, that the health impact of a loneliness epidemic. Okay, General Vivek Murthy declared a loneliness epidemic in 2023. And he said that the health impact is the same as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It&#8217;s not good for us. And that the biggest effect, 79% reported feeling lonely of the 18 to 24-year-old group, which is more like 40 some percent. What was it? 41% of 66 plus.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:20:35] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, so the younger you skew, the more lonely you are likely to be.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:20:40] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Yeah. And we also see, now I don&#8217;t know if this is correlative or causative, but technology has also skyrocketed in that period of time.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:20:48] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yes. Yeah, and also probably, again, I&#8217;m drawing conclusions which are not based in fact or research or anything like that. You and I were both born in an era where that technology wasn&#8217;t available. So I imagine patterns were set down in our infant brains, which are perhaps different to the patterns that are set down now.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It&#8217;d be curious to see if there is a there, there. If the broad adoption, certainly in the UK, I can&#8217;t speak to Canada, but the broad adoption of technology to ever and ever younger children, to a really alarmingly early age. You know, you see children who are not even at school age who seem to have access to every technology under the sun, and who don&#8217;t seem to get that interaction from another human being. I wonder. And I&#8217;m going to sound all curmudgeonly and there&#8217;s probably going to be people shouting at me.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:21:34] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> I have seen it change with the Gen Z that they&#8217;re talking about. And my kids fall in that category. Whereas I wanted to be, okay, it&#8217;s personal responsibility, so we&#8217;re going to raise them. It was new to me, so I raised my kids thinking, okay, tablets, I&#8217;m going to teach you how to use it, not restrict it. I was all open-minded about all.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Now they&#8217;ve told me that if they have kids, they will restrict it far greater than I ever did. They were like, they won&#8217;t have nearly the freedom that I gave them in my open-mindedness.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:22:06] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, well, but you are forgiven for your open-mindedness because I guess humanity perhaps needed more evidence to draw conclusions around that. And perhaps those conclusions are now landing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:22:16] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> I think so.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:22:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, well, certainly as an example, I know that in Australia more recently, there&#8217;s now a widespread ban, I think under the age of 16, and I&#8217;m going to use the word illegal, maybe that&#8217;s the wrong word. Maybe there&#8217;s a technical definition, but social media is not permitted for children under the age of 16. And I think that there&#8217;s legislation being talked about in the UK of a similar nature, and some other European countries.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I don&#8217;t know how much traction that will have because I feel that there&#8217;s a persuasive argument, much like you described of, it&#8217;ll all work itself out. You know, we don&#8217;t need the government to tell us what to do, and all of that, and that all makes sense.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But my, I can well understand, I think in the UK also, there is a growing, a groundswell of this alternative way of looking at it. Like a rejection of the phones and the technology.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Anyway, there we go. That was an aside. Do you want to contribute into that a little bit more before I push us back in the WordPress space?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:23:11] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Yeah, I don&#8217;t want to be all, it&#8217;s bad, it&#8217;s bad, but I think that we&#8217;re seeing an effect. I really do believe that volunteerism, whether it&#8217;s with WordPress or anything else, in my faith background, being a person, a Christian person, I grew up seeing the service as an answer, as just part of our lifestyle. You just serve others. But now I&#8217;m seeing it come in a secular sort of way as well, where service is an antidote to loneliness.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And I think no matter where you&#8217;re serving, not the church or any, like just pick a service. Being that cameraderie with people, having a similar goal, going in the same direction, like I really do think there&#8217;s hope. There&#8217;s hope out there for all of us. And it&#8217;s a great way to do something meaningful. Like you get to do all those things. You get to practise a skill, you get to do something meaningful, you get direction, you get cameraderie all by serving.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:24:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I&#8217;m going to, say something now, and I&#8217;m going to caveat it heavily before I say it because A, it relies on my prodigiously bad memory, and B, it could just be fabricated anyway because the source could be utterly wrong. But it feels like there&#8217;s a kernel of truth in it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I was doing some research recently about happiness, that broad subject. You know, we would all like to be happy I&#8217;m sure. There&#8217;s a lot of people who spend a lot of time thinking about what this actually means, and trying to drill it down to some fairly basic maxims, if you like, for what leads to happiness.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Two of the biggest indicators of happiness are really interesting. One of the two is how often you spend with other people basically. How much time you interact with other human beings. Now I know that that&#8217;s not for everybody, but broadly speaking, that seems to be a huge indicator. If you actually get yourself out and you do things with other human beings, there is a definite benefit.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And the other one, which is very curious because I think it&#8217;s fair to say, you know, Canada and the UK, we&#8217;ve been brought up to worry about our own finances and amassing as much stuff as we can, and lining your nest for the future and everything. Well, this other one, controversially, the second one that I&#8217;m going to mention is the amount of stuff that you basically give away. And that could be time, or it could be finance, it could be any of those things. The more that you give away with no expectation of a return, that also apparently is a real indicator of happiness.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And I think we can all identify that. That moment where you give somebody a gift and you&#8217;ve really thought about it, and you hand it over and you watch the face change as they unwrap it. And you think, they&#8217;ve loved that, haven&#8217;t they? And you&#8217;re not thinking to yourself, well, I did that. I made them happy there. You&#8217;re just thinking, oh look, they&#8217;re really happy. Isn&#8217;t that wonderful? So anyway, there&#8217;s my 2 cents of utterly unproven thoughts.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:25:59] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Okay. Learned something. Those are two, so the two things were being around people and altruism basically, with nothing expected in return.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:26:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And funnily enough, they map very closely to what we&#8217;re talking about, right? We&#8217;re talking about events and socialising with other people, but also that, in this case, it&#8217;s not a financial thing that you are giving away, but you are definitely giving away an awful lot of your time for doing these kind of things. And maybe, given that little bit of information, it kind of becomes a little bit easier to justify because if you can say to yourself, this makes me happy, it might not seem it in those stressful moments.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:26:36] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Yeah, today.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:26:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s right. But ultimately that might be causing your happiness.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Okay, so there we go. That was our little segue. Let&#8217;s sort of bring it back to WordCamps. You were very kind to write me a bunch of show notes, and they really drew me in as I was reading them. And I want to sort of dwell on a few of them because you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:26:53] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Had to convince you to get me on the podcast.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:26:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, no, there not a lot of convincing needed. I loved it. You&#8217;ve got some sort of bullet points if you like, not really bullet points. You&#8217;ve touched on different areas where you feel that you&#8217;ve got something to say about, I dont know, why people might contribute and why they might volunteer and what have you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So it&#8217;s things like, why might new people, newbies, as you&#8217;ve described them, volunteer and why might business folk volunteer?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So the first one was, let me go back. So I&#8217;ll read into the record what you wrote because it makes a lot of sense. You said, in 2025 I helped the organisers for WordCamp Canada and this year found myself the lead organiser. And this has been consistently one of the nicest, most open groups, that I&#8217;ve ever been part of. And then you strayed into why other people, for example, new people and business people might like to contribute.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So on the business side, you said, volunteers, boundaries when not getting paid, giving back, sponsoring folks, not necessarily a financial return on investment. And then for the newbies, you said, there&#8217;s other ways to contribute, for example, contributing in code or non-coding ways, and also just being a recipient of the open, friendly community that you encounter. So that was really it. Maybe I&#8217;ve said everything that you wanted to say.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:28:07] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Well, those are kind of questions that I had coming from a corporate, and I keep talking to different people trying to figure out, I guess I&#8217;m looking for something other than altruism when comes to the corporate people at least. Like why are they sponsoring? And I can see, the pessimistic, or maybe the pragmatic, side of me to be positive wants to know why. Why are they putting the dollars in?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But then on the other side, I think, well, if WordPress doesn&#8217;t do well, then they don&#8217;t do well. Like, if their businesses are based on WordPress. But then I also saw something that, if you sponsor open source projects, it makes hiring people that much easier, and also vetting people that much easier. Because it gets you into the community and so it goes both ways. People will be more likely to apply for your jobs and you will be more likely to have a way to vet them. That&#8217;s one thing I saw.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:29:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think there&#8217;s a lot of truth in that, or at least I&#8217;d like to believe there&#8217;s a lot of truth in that. That makes me feel happy about the whole situation. But what&#8217;s curious about what you&#8217;ve just said, and I don&#8217;t know how much of an intuition you&#8217;ve got on this, but if you were to go back to, let&#8217;s say the year, oh, I don&#8217;t know, 2018 or something like that, WordPress was experiencing this really stratospheric growth. You know, in terms of market share of the internet broadly, you know, the number of websites as a percentage, WordPress was going from sort of the low twenties to the mid twenties, high twenties, and then through the thirties, and then finally landing at this sort of 40%.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And during that time, saying this phrase sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous, WordPress could kind of do no wrong, I think. There was just growth upon growth upon growth and a lot of companies, I don&#8217;t think needed to explain themselves to their directors quite so much. The return on the investment didn&#8217;t need to be made. It was just, look, we&#8217;re part of this thing, and there&#8217;s this rising tide, and we are one of the boats. And look, we&#8217;re going up as it all goes up. So it just happened.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">However, during COVID, and then especially over the last few years, and then now especially the last couple of years, inject AI into the mix, I feel that that calculus has changed a little bit. And there&#8217;s this inkling when you speak to the same corporate people who a few years ago were willing to open their wallets to sponsor events, the wallets are much, much harder to open.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Again, in much the same way that I don&#8217;t really know why the community is so fabulous. I don&#8217;t really know why the wallets are harder to open. But I think the landscape for sponsorship, and the requirement of a return on investment, as opposed to, well let&#8217;s just join in because WordPress is growing. I think that calculation is going to be harder and harder to make. And maybe you&#8217;ve got experience of this over at WordCamp Canada trying to gather sponsors. Perhaps you found it straightforward. Perhaps it&#8217;s been difficult. I don&#8217;t really know.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:31:08] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> There&#8217;s almost like a perfect storm right now because wallets are tighter because over the last few years, at least in the States where my clients are, it&#8217;s become, economically there&#8217;s uncertainty. And so that trickles down and trickles up, right? And so more wallets are going to be a little bit more restrictive on what they&#8217;re going to buy, and they&#8217;re going to want to see more bang for their buck.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Corporately, also there&#8217;s been this huge rise in competition in the corporate world. There&#8217;s just way more competition over the last five or six years for just about anything when it comes to agencies or plugins or themes or whatever, there&#8217;s a lot more great competition, like good products out there. But then there&#8217;s also a lot more competition to get the clients, like clients have a lot more options.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And so I think it&#8217;s a perfect storm. Like, do you want to put your money into WordPress because is that the future? Is there money for sponsorship? Plus WordPress has become stricter on what they require to sponsor, as far as trademark use and different things that have been put higher on the priority list.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And I kind of see it like a levelling off. Like not as a bad thing because every industry can&#8217;t just, go, go, go, go. Like there&#8217;s going to be a levelling, right? Can&#8217;t be that easy. When I started, I didn&#8217;t even advertise. And I&#8217;ve had this business for 19 years. I&#8217;ve never advertised. That is going to go away. Like it was just, you know, I lucked out starting somewhere, but that&#8217;s not realistic.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:32:44] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So what&#8217;s interesting in that is I think I am the same. The only period in which I&#8217;ve been in the WordPress community was during this stratospheric growth period really. Everything has been, you know, people have argued on the inside about this, that, and the other thing, and whether a feature should ship in Core, or whether or not we should do this thing at an event or what have you. So there&#8217;s been some minor disagreements.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But broadly speaking, the whole project has just swelled and swelled and swelled. There&#8217;s this overarching sense of optimism and growth, and now the brakes are on. And so for me, it feels like unfamiliar territory. And because it&#8217;s unfamiliar, it feels a little bit scary because I don&#8217;t know what that means. I don&#8217;t know whether that means that things are going to just level out as you just described, or whether it means things are going to decline, or whether it means some of my friends are going to go away because the community, it&#8217;s no longer going to be something that they wish to frequent because their profitability is under question and they need to seek revenue from other different options. Maybe AI, maybe, whatever it might be. And so I think my concern just, it&#8217;s probably self-interest really. I&#8217;m just concerned because I don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s coming and that fear is, well, it&#8217;s fear.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:33:57] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> I think this brings me perfectly into the WordCamp Canada thing that I wanted to mention. Just because I see this event, and even the community team, as a whole in WordPress. There are teams in WordPress, by the way, for people that don&#8217;t know, that help you get involved. It&#8217;s not just coders, like there&#8217;s all kinds of teams. And one of them is the community team, and all we have to know how to do is plan an event or host an event or serve coffee. It&#8217;s amazing. But anyway.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I am excited about WordCamp Canada, and the reason I&#8217;m putting so much time and effort into this conference is because I really see it as a light at the end of this tunnel. Not at the end. Maybe midway. I have no idea what&#8217;s going to happen to my own business, to WordPress, I don&#8217;t know. But I think there&#8217;s one thing that I&#8217;m fairly certain of, even now, even in the midst of AI, and that&#8217;s open source. I really still believe that open source is the way of the future. I still think it is, open source and AI are probably the way of the future. Yeah, I don&#8217;t know how else to say it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And I think the exciting thing, and the thing that we need to do as people who got to take advantage of that uprise and that uptick, is you and I need to get young people involved. Like we need to get those young people involved in open source. I don&#8217;t even care if it&#8217;s WordPress or not, but they need to become part of a community that is exciting, that is beyond themselves. They need to see that we&#8217;re nice. We don&#8217;t bite. We&#8217;ll hire them. There&#8217;s just so much good that can come out of being together. And these are the nicest people. They&#8217;ll talk to people that are just standing around in the hallways with nobody to talk to, which is me. I&#8217;m an introvert, ironically.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:35:38] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You definitely don&#8217;t come across like that, just so that you know.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:35:40] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Well, we&#8217;re I&#8217;m pretending nobody else is listening.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:35:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The other thing that I would add, as you were saying all of those things, it occurred to me that, I would imagine that people in more senior positions, I don&#8217;t really know how to describe it in the WordPress world, have got a similar intuition to the one that you just described. In that they can definitely see that the future needs to be thought about in terms of the youth coming in. Because there&#8217;s an awful lot of work being done at the moment and an awful lot of hours being put into educational initiatives.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And also, not just where you and I are living, but all over the world. And it was kind of interesting at WordCamp Asia recently, that was a big focus. A lot of people talking about exactly this thing and these kind of overlapping initiatives that are beginning to bear fruit. So people coming out of universities who&#8217;ve had experience of open source and WordPress in particular. And children at schools having experience of open source and WordPress.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And I think, as much as we would like open source and WordPress to win, just from a moral point of view, wouldn&#8217;t that be a great thing if everybody just noticed it and got on and used it? I think we need to do a bit of work to make sure that it&#8217;s being put under their noses so that they can make those judgements for themselves. And that is definitely a part of the future.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:36:57] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Yeah, the Campus Connect and the Credits where they can university credits, like it is getting popular in other places we haven&#8217;t heard so much. But I really want to introduce it and bring it to the conference in Vancouver this fall. Because we can have universities in Canada and the US, on this side of the pond get involved in this and actually give kids credits that they can use to graduate.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:37:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s so interesting as well because it&#8217;s very hard to, how to describe this, that&#8217;s a difficult one to sell, let&#8217;s put it that way. The people that are really into those initiatives really love it, but it&#8217;s hard to get people to notice that that&#8217;s going on, and hard for people perhaps to notice how important that is. But without those little foundational bricks being put in place for the future, this rising tide carries all boats metaphor, that&#8217;s not going to happen. You know, I think maybe another good metaphor there is they&#8217;re kind of building the harbour wall to make sure that the boats have got something to rise against. And I think that&#8217;s really important.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And your part of the world is definitely open to that, I&#8217;m sure. Seems to be that some European institutions, colleges, universities and South American institutions and parts in India and Southeast Asia and places like that are also beginning to bite on those ideas as well. So it&#8217;d be really interesting to see how that all goes.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You&#8217;re painting a picture, Cathy, which makes me feel optimistic. Feels like there&#8217;s a lot of positivity coming out of where you are, yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:38:24] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> I&#8217;m probably going to get in trouble for saying this, but for all of the faults that Matt might be accused of, somehow he put something in place that became very, very popular. And the culture that I have been a part of, I haven&#8217;t worked for Automattic, but the culture at the WordCamp level and volunteering and the community team has been unbelievably positive, and foreign to me. Like I&#8217;ve had to learn this culture. What do you mean there&#8217;s no application process? How do I say yes? What are you talking about? So somehow this has grown. And he has had a lot to do with it. People don&#8217;t like that he&#8217;s had a lot to do with it, but there&#8217;s some truth there.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:39:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s really interesting and it doesn&#8217;t matter how many times I have conversations like this, I&#8217;m always confused by it. I can never get my hands around it and work out what the secret sauce is so that I could copy and paste it into a different locale or a different jurisdiction or different era. But there&#8217;s a there, there. There&#8217;s something very satisfying about this community. And from everything that you&#8217;ve said, it sounds like you are very positive about it. And I share your positivity, even though sometimes it seems quite hard to grasp in the more recent times.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Oh, Cathy, that&#8217;s been absolutely wonderful. I&#8217;ve enjoyed chatting to you today. We&#8217;ve hit the sort of sweet spot of the amount of time that we&#8217;ve got, so if it&#8217;s okay with you, we&#8217;ll wrap it up there. Just before we go, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, or just sort of wants to pat you on the back for your wisdom there, where would we find you?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:39:55] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Well they can find me at WPBarista. And right now they can also find me at canada.wordcamp.org.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:40:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. Well I will make sure that that goes into the show notes. So if you&#8217;re listening to this, head to wptavern.com, search for the episode with Cathy Mitchell, that&#8217;s Cathy with a C, and you&#8217;ll be able to find the details in the show notes there. So Cathy Mitchell, thank you very much for chatting to me today. That was lovely. Thank you.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:40:19] <strong>Cathy Mitchell:</strong> Thank you. I enjoyed it.</p>
</div></details>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So on the podcast today we have Cathy Mitchell.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Cathy has been working with WordPress since 2007. What began as a fun personal project during her maternity leave soon evolved into a fully fledged business with the launch of WPBarista in 2008. Over the years, Cathy has garnered extensive experience in the WordPress space, and is now working towards the 2026 WordCamp Canada.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The conversation focuses on the powerful role of community within the WordPress ecosystem, something that Cathy is deeply passionate about. We discuss how open, welcoming, and international the WordPress community feels compared to more traditional corporate or volunteer environments. A theme that emerged was how involvement in WordPress has provided Cathy, and many others, with a sense of belonging and fulfillment, especially after life changes like becoming an &#8220;empty nester&#8221;.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The discussion explores the motivations for volunteering and organising within the WordPress community, both from the perspective of newcomers looking for purpose and connection, and business owners assessing the return on investment from contributing or sponsoring events. This included how easy it is to get involved, the unique lack of barriers and red tape, and the value of altruism and camaraderie.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Other topics we explored were the broader impact of technology and loneliness, the importance of service and community for well-being, challenges in sponsorship amid changing economic times, and the vital need to engage the next generation in open source.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you’re interested in the human side of WordPress, how volunteering shapes both individuals and the broader community, and what the future might hold for WordPress events and contributors, this episode is for you.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://wpbarista.com"> WPBarista</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://canada.wordcamp.org/2026/">WordCamp Canada 2026</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://london.wordcamp.org/2019/">WordCamp London</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/"> WordPress Campus Connect</a></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://wordpress.org/education/credits/">WordPress Credits</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:117:"Open Channels FM: BackTalk on AI Burnout, Bridging Innovation and Standards, and the Risks of Single-Maintainer Tools";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555405";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:122:"https://openchannels.fm/backtalk-on-ai-burnout-bridging-innovation-and-standards-and-the-risks-of-single-maintainer-tools/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:212:"Conversations reveal insights on deep work, innovation standards, and the risks of underappreciated developer tools, highlighting challenges of mental fatigue, standardization, and reliance on single maintainers.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 10 Jun 2026 09:40:19 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:37;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:87:"Open Channels FM: Rethinking Developer Life and Productivity with Rapid AI Advancements";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://openchannels.fm/?p=2555214";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"https://openchannels.fm/rethinking-developer-life-and-productivity-with-rapid-ai-advancements/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:264:"In this episode of Open Web Conversations, Zach Stepek and Carl Alexander discuss with Alex Standiford the impact of AI on developers, highlighting productivity, burnout, workflow changes, and the necessity of setting boundaries in this rapidly evolving landscape.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 09 Jun 2026 10:41:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Bob Dunn";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:121:"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #131 – Gutenberg Plugin Releases 23.1 – 23.3, Calls for Testing for 7.1 and more";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?post_type=podcast&p=45809";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:59:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-131/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:60685:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In episode 131 of the Gutenberg Changelog, Birgit Pauli-Haack welcomes Isabel Brison to discuss the latest developments in Gutenberg plugin releases 23.1, 23.2, and 23.3, as well as progress leading up to WordPress 7.1. The hosts highlight recent calls for testing, including collaborative editing—previously delayed from 7.0 due to stability concerns—and the new media editor modal for the image block.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Isabel Brison shares insights into the new responsive global block styles, allowing users to customize styles per device breakpoint, as well as updates to the layout and dimensions controls in the block editor. She encourages feedback from users as these features iterate for the upcoming WordPress 7.1 release. The episode covers stabilizations, such as the improved, more ergonomic media editor and cropper, and strides in accessibility, particularly regarding the tabs block.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The hosts also discuss experiments in dashboard widgets, content type management, and empowering plugin developers with new admin UI components. Both stress the importance of community feedback and testing, given the ambitious new features arriving soon. The episode wraps with practical notes on documentation improvements, React 19 integration, and a reminder of the short summer break ahead.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-131/#shownotes">Show Notes</a> / <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-131/#transcript">Transcript</a></p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Editor: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-reed/">Sandy Reed</a></li>



<li>Logo: <a href="https://markuraine.com/">Mark Uraine</a></li>



<li>Production: <a href="https://icodeforapurpose.com">Birgit Pauli-Haack</a></li>
</ul>



<p class="has-larger-font-size wp-block-paragraph" id="shownotes"><strong>Show Notes</strong></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Special guest: Isabel Brison</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>GitHub <a href="https://github.com/tellthemachines">@tellthemachines</a></li>



<li>WordPress <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/isabel_brison/">@isabel_brison</a></li>



<li>X (former Twitter) <a href="https://twitter.com/ijayessbe">@ijayessbe</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Calls for Testing</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/06/03/announcing-a-collaborative-editing-outreach-effort-for-7-1/">Announcing a collaborative editing outreach effort for 7.1</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/05/21/media-editor-modal-call-for-testing/">Media Editor Modal: call for testing</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/06/04/call-for-testing-client-side-media-processing/">Call for Testing: client-side media processing</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What&#8217;s released</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2026/05/wordpress-7-0-armstrong/">WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong”</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/05/14/wordpress-7-0-field-guide/">WordPress 7.0 Field Guide</a></li>



<li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-7-0-source-of-truth/">WordPress 7.0 Source of Truth</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/06/05/react-19-upgrade-temporarily-reverted-in-gutenberg/">React 19 upgrade temporarily reverted in Gutenberg</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg releases </h3>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/05/07/whats-new-in-gutenberg-23-1-07-may/">What’s new in Gutenberg 23.1? (07 May)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/05/21/whats-new-in-gutenberg-23-2-21-may/">What&#8217;s new in Gutenberg 23.2? (21 May)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/06/03/whats-new-in-gutenberg-23-3-03-jun/">What’s new in Gutenberg 23.3? (03 Jun)</a></li>
</ul>



<p class="has-large-font-size wp-block-paragraph">Stay in Touch</p>



<div class="wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow">
<ul class="wp-block-list">
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<p class="has-large-font-size wp-block-paragraph" id="transcript"><strong>Transcript</strong></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> So welcome to our 131st episode of the Gutenberg Changelog. We will talk about Gutenberg plugin releases 23.1, 23.2 and 23.3. There are calls for testing out for WordPress 7.1 and we have more. I&#8217;m your host, Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and a full-time core contributor for the WordPress open source project sponsored by Automattic. Today, Isabel Brison joins me from Sydney again. Isabel is a longtime core contributor and JavaScript developer on the Gutenberg Project. Welcome back to the show, Isabel. Thank you for joining me. How are you?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison</em>: I&#8217;ll be good. Thanks for having me. It&#8217;s always a pleasure to be here.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Birgit Pauli-Haack: Well, I&#8217;m so glad you&#8217;re here because you and your team have worked on some of the most exciting features that coming to Gutenberg. People have been waiting for quite a long time. So we will dive in when we get to the updates. How is Sydney?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>It&#8217;s winter, cold, rainy, you know, the usual.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>The usual? Yeah. How is the technology? I know you&#8217;re going to meetups there. Are these WordPress meetups or are these other technology meetups?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>I go to a variety of tech meetups. There&#8217;s not a huge amount, so I&#8217;ll go say to JavaScript meetup and there&#8217;s a good technology leaders one too. I enjoy going to the Python meetup even though I don&#8217;t work with Python. It&#8217;s just a lovely community and they have some interesting talks. So it&#8217;s sort of whatever&#8217;s on offer, I guess.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Oh, nice. Yeah, I found out in Munich to the technology community and I kind of connected with a local Claude meetup community and it was kind of interesting at the Technical university or the Design university, they switch around the places, but it was interesting. Yeah, they had some lightning talks. Yeah, like 20-minute talks and it was really cool. Yeah, I think we need to get out more.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Yeah, no, I like, I like going out after work and just, you know, even if it&#8217;s just to listen to some tech talks, you get a bit of air and meet new people.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, that&#8217;s good. Yeah. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Announcements</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">All right, so we have a few announcements. WordPress 7.0 has been released two weeks ago and we are heading big steps towards 7.1. Beta 1 is scheduled for July 15th. That&#8217;s kind of a little bit of ahh. It&#8217;s only six weeks away.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>Yeah. So we get going not long time at all.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>And contributors have been working on the next major version already. So the official roadmap planning post is in the works. The team is in the final steps to assemble the release squad and we do well from the Gutenberg plugin releases we get a pretty good idea what might come through also from what didn&#8217;t make it into 7.0 as well. So we will. But it&#8217;s the web, right? Web is translated for me in the Japanese kind of design thing. Yeah, it&#8217;s like wabi sabi. Nothing is finished, nothing is last, and nothing is perfect. So we always get work to do and it&#8217;s always getting better. Yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>Yep. It&#8217;s a work in progress.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>It&#8217;s a work in progress. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Calls for Testing &#8211; WordPress 7.1</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So there are two calls for testing out now. One is announcing the collaborative editing outreach effort for 7.1. Many of you dear listeners remember, okay, collaborative editing, real time collaborative editing was pulled from the 7.0 because it wasn&#8217;t stable enough for all the hosting environments that are out there. And there was this call for testing out for hosting and now there&#8217;s another one for outreach effort to make sure that everything is kind of caught for 7.1. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And Anne McCarthy just published it on the Make Core blog so you can join it anytime. There&#8217;s a separate channel Collaborative Editing Outreach that you can. It&#8217;s kind of modeled after the full site editing outreach program that ran for two or three years. I hope this doesn&#8217;t run for two or three years before it&#8217;s released, but it definitely there are more people kind of discussing it and how it all supposed to work. Amy Kamala, who was the Release Coordinator for 7.0 and Justin Tadlock, who is a developer advocate at Automattic and Theme Team Rep are helping Anne to coordinate those calls for testing. And also some of the teams at Automattic who work with Enterprise level are also there. So yeah, it&#8217;s a bigger discussion on how collaborative editing works on all the levels.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>Yeah, it&#8217;s a pretty big and complex piece of work.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, join the channel and dive right in if that&#8217;s a feature that you are excited about. I&#8217;m excited about it. But I also only have two or three people that handle my editing stuff. So I don&#8217;t have 10 or 15 editors in my post zone. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Another call for testing is about the media editor Modal that has been added to the image block. Ramon Dodd published a call for testing about two weeks ago about the new modal for the image cropper. It&#8217;s kind of the bigger image cropping in the block editor, so you don&#8217;t have to. It&#8217;s a much easier way to get your images in line, but you can also rotate the images and resize them. And it has been merged with the Gutenberg plugin. It also, with 23.3, is out of experimentation. So anybody who has the Gutenberg plugin installed can be testers. And Ramon has some great details on how to test things and what to look for and how to share the feedback. It also has a little paragraph there on what&#8217;s out of scope. So for this version, we of course share all the links in the show. Notes. Isabel, you&#8217;re part of that project. What excites you about it?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>I haven&#8217;t actually, actually worked on it. Well, not I, I, I helped a little, a little bit at the very beginning when we were discussing sort of choice of libraries and whether to build our own or use a third party. And a bit with the initial testing, but it was mostly Ramon and Andrew&#8217;s work. This latter part, the bit that&#8217;s now in Gutenberg, in fact, it was all their work. And I think it&#8217;s super exciting because replacing the old, the old Cropper, I. I never liked it. I have to be perfectly honest.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>I hate the old Cropper.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>I never could figure out how to use it. It was not ergonomic at all. And this one is such a better experience. Aside from allowing us to do all the stuff that the old Cropper, the in Editor Cropper is what I&#8217;m talking about. The one that you can access from the Image block toolbar. It&#8217;s also on the site Logo block. So you can now access it from both those blocks and the new one, in addition to what the old one did, also allows you to do free cropping and free rotating. So if you want to rotate your image 3 degrees and if you want to crop it to whatever weird aspect ratio you like, you can do that, which you couldn&#8217;t on the old one. Yeah, and it&#8217;s. It&#8217;s just a much nicer experience. I believe it&#8217;s also more accessible than the old one in terms of the keyboard accessibility of it. It&#8217;s. It&#8217;s better too, so. All advantages. Yeah, they did a great job on it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>I used it just for a little bit and I was so amazed how smooth it was. Yeah, I kind of. It was also much more intuitive. I never knew what to do with the Cropper when I was pinging it previously and said, so how do I do this now? Every. I had to think every time. And this one is very, very intuitive and very smooth also to use it and to see it. So I&#8217;m really happy about that. I&#8217;m hoping it makes it into 7.1. Yeah, so we have that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>Yeah, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s on track, I don&#8217;t think. I mean, barring any major natural disaster, I don&#8217;t think that there&#8217;s any reason for that not to make 7.1. It&#8217;s a great piece of work. It&#8217;s really stable and now that it&#8217;s not behind the experiment flag anymore, real users are using it. I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;re going to get tons of feedback if there&#8217;s anything that&#8217;s not 100% perfect and we still have time to iterate on it until beta one.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>I really appreciate that Roman and Andrew went to the research portion and kind of looked at how other graphic programs actually are doing things and tried to get some of the experiences also into the blocked. So okay, yeah, so two calls for testing for those who want to dive in. It&#8217;s a very good way to contribute to WordPress because it&#8217;s so close to what you&#8217;re doing with WordPress. And not only developers but also content creators can help testers even better and those who work at agencies or work with clients at agencies to kind of see how that all works. Which brings us to what&#8217;s released. I mentioned it. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s Released &#8211; WordPress 7.0</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">WordPress 7.0 Armstrong was released. We talked about it in previous episodes on this changelog with various people from the agency view, from the designer view, from the content creators views. We will share in the show notes in case you need to catch up. The Field Guide the link to the official field guide for WordPress 7.0 as well as to the source of truth on Gutenberg Times that has all the user facing stuff in there. Those are the best information on 7.0. I have not seen in the last two weeks any major boo boos that came in. Yeah, it was such a great testing cycle with a delay of six weeks. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Most of the bugs were actually caught quite early or in the loliso, I don&#8217;t think. I&#8217;m not sure when there will be a point release which normally happens within a few weeks of the major release, but I have not seen any planning for that. But it could be end of June after WorldCap Europe. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So let&#8217;s dive into the Gutenberg releases. We start with Gutenberg 23.1. Oh, one question, Isabel, do you have a favorite feature that came into WordPress 7.0?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>Oh, I don&#8217;t know. There&#8217;s a bunch of interesting features and I worked on some of them. Of course I have sort of my personal favorites of the ones that I worked on of which one that is. It was very, very subtle or sort of low profile. We didn&#8217;t talk about it much, but I worked on a little handy addition to the grid block or the grid layout type, I should say. That allows us to configure a responsive number of columns. So by setting column count and a minimum width you can say I want my block to always have at maximum three columns but on smaller screens it can go down to two and even one. So that&#8217;s something we didn&#8217;t have before and I&#8217;m quite happy with it. I think it&#8217;s a good improvement. But compared to. Oh, there was. There was loads of stuff. The pattern editing work I think is going to be really handy. And what else? There was the notes feature.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> No, I was in 6.9 already. Yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Oh yeah. No, there was something about what? Oh God, I&#8217;m confusing my releases.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, yeah, they&#8217;re kind of. They melt together once it&#8217;s released. They melt all together. It&#8217;s kind of. Yeah. Was it there or there? Yeah, sometimes. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 23.1</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">All right, let&#8217;s dive into Gutenberg 23.1. It was released on May 7, had 212 closed PRs by 49 contributors. So we are really wrapping up the releases or the work on Gutenberg and the block editor. It&#8217;s now not only the block editor, it&#8217;s also the site editor. It&#8217;s the data views, it&#8217;s the. The design system, those all. So the Gutenberg repo has kind of exploded in other areas for the WordPress ecosystem. So. But yeah, the first one on the list and it&#8217;s. It&#8217;s really interesting how these change logs are actually automated and coming together is the upload media and it enabling concurrent sideload uploads. That&#8217;s an interesting thing because it&#8217;s so performance issue to have multiple streams on upload on images so you don&#8217;t have to wait so long that the image shows up in your block canvas. And that&#8217;s a really good improvement for that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>Yeah, yeah. I&#8217;d imagine when uploading, when bulk uploading particularly.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>So when you copy paste content from another source it has this also a feature that you can download and upload the images that you connect there. And that also happens in this module stream uploads thing. So it&#8217;s really cool. You only know this because it&#8217;s faster but other than that there&#8217;s no disruption of your work or any of that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>Yeah, there&#8217;s a lot of good work. This was also the client side. This is part, I believe, of the client side media processing work that did not make 7.0 but is now being aimed at 7.1. That&#8217;s mostly Adam Silverstein&#8217;s been working on that. I haven&#8217;t kept a close eye on it, but it looks like, you know, very useful work and it&#8217;ll be good once we manage to get it in for performance.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, Adam Silverstein has worked on these image handling features quite a bit for 6.9 as well. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Enhancements</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So yeah, there is an enhancement that I have flagged here, but I&#8217;m not sure how useful that is. It&#8217;s for the WordPress UI overlays and a global preview styles on the storybook. So the WordPress UI is the next level of components for WordPress.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>It&#8217;s sort of the successor of the components package.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. And at the moment both are used, but I have seen now efforts to migrate, merge things, I don&#8217;t know how you call it, but to get it kind of in one thing. But the overlays, the preview styles is how you can show the preview in the storybook so you have a better inkling how it&#8217;s going to look later on.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>Yeah, that should be good.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>And then there are tons of changes for the components, the admin ui, the UI components, dialogues. This is mostly for developers that are working with WordPress and creating their own either building WordPress or creating plugins for WordPress to have a unified design system, unified component system that they don&#8217;t have to kind of come up with their own interfaces. Those decisions are already made and you can kind of build on top of things before any of that, even the components, every plugin had to design their own interfaces and now this is really cool.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>Yeah, it&#8217;s good to have a sort of a system that you can use when you&#8217;re extending and you need to build a new screen or something for your plugin, you can just use these components and everything looks integrated with WordPress.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>And it&#8217;s also good for the users because they don&#8217;t have to think about how do I use this tool now? Or how, how is. How do I filter now on this screen? Because it&#8217;s all a unified system and it&#8217;s all built out and stable. So the next thing is on the notes getting a few updates. So right now it&#8217;s in 23.1. It&#8217;s mostly refactors on the positions and the floating board. But we will see later in, in the other releases that there are some nice features coming in for the Blocked libraries. We have updates to the tabs block. I&#8217;m really hoping that it comes into 7.1. It&#8217;s still behind an experiment flag, but now it can handle duplicate tabs, meaning duplicate handles on the tabs. And it follows now WCAG tabs pattern for accessibility in the renaming of the blocks. So which is a. It&#8217;s a major step towards accessibility and acceptance for that. I&#8217;m really waiting for the tabs to come into Gutenberg or to.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>Mostly I think the renaming was about as I understand it, so that the blocks have names that match the accessibility standards or how these things are known as. There&#8217;s a WCAG pattern it&#8217;s linked to in the PR, and those sort of example patterns that the WCAG website has for people to know how to use ARIA attributes correctly, which is a whole science. And the idea is to have our tabs blocks match the names of that pattern so that it feels more standard and it&#8217;ll be more familiar to people who might have implemented tabs in other places.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. And those are the standards also where screen readers kind of tap into and people are. That use screen readers kind of have a common pattern for that. Yes. So that definitely elevates the tabs block in its accessibility. Yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>So it&#8217;s going to be pretty useful block once it&#8217;s stabilized. So I hope it is.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Yeah. I know that quite a few block collections have tabs right from the beginning in the last eight years. And they&#8217;re not going to go away because the first iteration of any of the core blocks will not be as feature rich as any of the block collections that have been developed for the last six or seven years. Yeah. The next one is tapping into the image cropper we talked about. So you can. And it was tapping into the keyboard actions with drag handles on the canvas. So you can use your mouse to do some of the actions that you want to do with the image cropper or the image tool. Yeah, if you say Image Cropper, it kind of reduces it to cropping, but yeah, it&#8217;s also the handling to rotate</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>And all that too.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, yeah. There&#8217;s a new API for the WordPress grid package, but that&#8217;s a different grid that you are working on.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>Yeah, that&#8217;s not the layout. The block layout grid. This is something else. This is a grid that you can use for dashboard UI.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Exactly.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Sort of admin stuff.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. That&#8217;s the new API that powers the new experiments that in Gutenberg. That is the dashboard widgets. We kind of talked about it a little later. You as a plugin developer or extender of WordPress, you can use them now as well for any of your dashboards. If you are having a plugin that has some data vising kind of, you can put them into these grid package and display them on your plugin settings pages. The guidelines is also a new API and it has now a public API method and the REST API route to it. There have been iterations after 23.1, so I think that that would be really helpful to look at later. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">New APIs</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The guidelines are actually a whole set of content types that are for AIs. Pretty much when your agents come to the WordPress site, you can tell them what to do with things. What&#8217;s the purpose of the site? The editing guidelines? Yeah, how, how you want AIs to behave on your site if you let them in. And it&#8217;s really important when you have other agents come in that you don&#8217;t control. Yeah, that sounds scary. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But if you as a site owner connect your Claude to your website, you can have in the guidelines all the things that you want Claude to know about your site. So it&#8217;s. You don&#8217;t have to put it all in a prompt and it kind of finds all the things and it&#8217;s also your memory. So if you use an agent to do your SEO, to do your. Some of the content updates like headlines or tags, your policies on how to do tags and categories, that&#8217;s all things that you can solidify in your documentation in the guidelines for your AI. And it will remember that. But it&#8217;s also interesting to see the discussions about it. I had a short discussion with Grzegorz, who was a former co-host here on the Changelog, a few, I would say a few hundred episodes before, but it wasn&#8217;t that much. But he is now part of that team who thinks about AI and memory and all that. And it was really interesting to hear because if you are in an agency, you work on multiple different sites, but you have one Claude, so you don&#8217;t want things to bleed over from one site to the next. And these guidelines help you kind of keep track of everything. So it&#8217;s an interesting problem space that came out with AI.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> It&#8217;s like providing the correct context and the correct amount of context so that the AI can be maximally productive on your website, whatever you want to do with it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Most people are really not all that into. Site owners are not so into AI, but it helps a few things quite nicely. I find it with SEO and with yeah, accessibility and all that. It&#8217;s really helpful to have a double check there. Yeah. All right, what&#8217;s next in 23.1? Do we have something? </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Experiments</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Oh yeah, there&#8217;s these custom taxonomies experiment in 23.1 with the custom post types and taxonomy management that started out as out of. I don&#8217;t know how that came about, but it probably is one of the radical speed month project as well that people say okay, we probably need to have content management when the APIs were in WordPress in 3.1. But there is no interface there and there were always plugins there to do this, be it custom UI, custom post UI or ACF or so. But there&#8217;s no interface for. And that&#8217;s where this experiment comes in to kind of push the envelope on that a bit. Have the REST controllers in there, have the interface in there. But it definitely is not the last word spoken there yet because that is a field where there have been a lot of extensions in the universe or in the WordPress ecosystem that might not fit in where this is going. So it&#8217;s just a. It&#8217;s a prototype kind of experimental way to do that. But check it out. You just have to enable the experiment in the Gutenberg plugin and then you can kind of try it out and work with it. It uses the common APIs. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The other experiment is the dashboard. We talked a little bit about it because that&#8217;s the grid package was created for that. The dashboard to have administ page routes and sidebar menus as a shell to add additional grids on the dashboard. I&#8217;m interested to see. I haven&#8217;t played with it yet but I want to see if I can. So what are the dashboards? The dashboard right now is just a. The quick edit and the site health and the news that&#8217;s on your dashboard right now and a few other things and plugin kind of tap into that as well. But I have never have not seen yet and I&#8217;m still thinking about it to. Maybe Claude can help me with that. Having a quick edit that&#8217;s a block editor actually. So when you log in into your WordPress site you don&#8217;t want to kind of just do all the other admin stuff. You just want to create a new post. So why not have it on the dashboard and create a blog post right there from the quick edit. Quick Edit only gives you text based things but not block editor.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> So a block based quick edit, do you reckon all the blocks. I reckon it would need to be A very simplified version of the block editor.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. Yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Maybe images, paragraphs, but yeah, that would be cool.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, yeah. Lists. Yeah. Like an outliner kind of. Yeah. Very fast kind of. Yeah. Maybe come back to the white space, but kind of instead of having a classic editor, just build blocks with it. Yeah. So kind of a distraction free, quick edit, full set, toolbar on top kind of thing. I don&#8217;t know. When I&#8217;m bored, I&#8217;m gonna star B. Prototype it. Prototype it. Yeah. And get it in. Yeah. That. That was one of the things that a lot of writers said. I don&#8217;t want to deal with all the stuff I&#8217;m getting so distracted. Yeah. There&#8217;s announcements and all that. So let me just start my blog post. But anyway, and then there is a list of Media editor modal call for testing. We talked about it. There&#8217;s a whole in 23.1. There&#8217;s a whole list of bigger and smaller PRs that went in. I think the call for testing gives you all the ins and outs of it that I think was. Was it. Did you find anything for 23.1 that you wanted to talk about further?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Not. Not really. Apart from the things that you&#8217;ve already highlighted. I just thought. I already mentioned that the media editor is also on the site logo block. So you can test it on both blocks and that&#8217;s it.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 23.2</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> So right into Gutenberg. 23.2 was released on May 21st and also with 204 PRs by 50 contributors and there were four first timers there. Congratulations. You got your first contribution to WordPress core. Yeah. And you got your badge. Well, you got your badge when 7.1 is released, I guess the first feature that is listed is the responsive global block styles with states. This is so cool. Yeah. What does it say? Can you walk us through it?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Yeah. So this was the first part of the work towards enabling responsive styles for blocks. And it&#8217;s with States because it leverages a style states API that was already built. So Maggie Cabrera was who did that initial work for the States API, and her part was just leveraging it for adding the ability to style pseudo states for very few blocks have pseudo states. Well, this might be extended, but it won&#8217;t be super extended because not all blocks need to have pseudo by pseudo states, I mean hover focus and things like that. So usually only interactive blocks would need those. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And so States came about to cater to that pseudo element scenario. But it was always something that could potentially be extended further. And one of the use cases that had been thought out when this initial idea of having the states API was thought it was using it to be able to create responsive styles for blocks was one of the possibilities there. And I had been eyeballing all those issues that have been sitting in the Gutenberg repo for years about creating some mechanism that allows us to define responsive styles. And I finally had the opportunity to pick them up. And having that state&#8217;s work already partially done was great because, you know, sometimes it&#8217;s starting something is the hard part. And there were endless decisions in the repo about how should we build this and let&#8217;s do this and let&#8217;s do that and let&#8217;s not do that. And it&#8217;s like we should take this into account. You know, how you can talk and talk and talk and then it never actually starts because it seems like the problem is too big and too complicated. And the more that&#8217;s added to the discussion, the bigger and the more complicated it gets. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But there was this little stepping stone. This states API had already been built. And so I thought, well, it&#8217;s already in there for pseudo states, let&#8217;s try building responsive. So we call them viewport states. I&#8217;ve been working on this with my teammate Dan Richards. We&#8217;ve both started working on this and thought, okay, let&#8217;s do as sort of a baseline for global styles, but then as a stretch goal, let&#8217;s try and do it for actual block instance too. So we managed to do both in the end, but for 23.2, it was only the global block styles that was ready. And this means when you go into the site editor and into the style section, where you have global styles, then you go into blocks. This only works for blocks. It doesn&#8217;t work for top level global styles yet. We&#8217;re not quite sure. Well, we&#8217;re not quite sure if there&#8217;s a need to add this to top level stars yet. It&#8217;s still something that&#8217;s being thought about because for a lot of them, so a lot of really sort of global basic elements like typography, you know, font sizes. Okay, we already have ways of defining them responsively even without using breakpoints. So we are using the clamp function. You can define a maximum and a minimum and you can pretty much, you know, manipulate it so that you get your different font sizes on mobile and tablet and desktop. So there is to some extent you already have that responsive functionality there. So that&#8217;s something that might be looked at later on for enabling actual breakpoints for those global styles. But for now it only applies to blocks so for each block you can go into the block, into the block&#8217;s global styles and you can pick a state. There&#8217;s a new little states drop down at the top and so by default you&#8217;ll be styling the default state that&#8217;s you know, no media query. And then you have a tablet and a mobile state and the tablet state is only, so it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s only from you know, the top level. Like what&#8217;s your maximum Breakpoint to the minimum, which is the maximum for mobile. So the tablet styles will only apply to tablet to that breakpoint and then the mobile styles will only apply to their own breakpoint. And that&#8217;s. Yeah, essentially that&#8217;s it. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">You can do anything color typography and spacing wise. So for most blocks you know, you have the typography, you have the colors, you have dimensions like not for most blocks you don&#8217;t have dimensions, you have, you know, margin, padding, block gap if the block has layout and you can define per break point what you want those values to be. And there are certain features that exist in global styles that do not yet work with, with that responsive logic and those. So when you enter that breakpoint you know, you get, you choose the tablet viewport and you&#8217;ll see that some of the tools might be hidden. So for instance, Duotone is one. You can&#8217;t set Duotone per breakpoint yet. This is something that will be worked on in the future but it feels like a bit like I&#8217;m not sure how many people will need to change the colors per break point. That&#8217;s not usually responsive styles are more about spacing dimensions, that sort of thing. So we focused more on those that felt like these are the ones that are really going to be used by most people and the more edge Casey ones if they don&#8217;t work out of the box, we sort of. Okay that, you know, that&#8217;s a problem for later. We&#8217;ll, we&#8217;ll figure it out later. And Duotone is one of those awesome.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Well a lot of people have been waiting for that a long time. So glad you, you finally started taking it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> I hope it&#8217;s useful. I just hope that folks can take this and like ok, okay, I can finally build the thing and yeah, and it works. And please, please, to anyone listening and wanting to try this out, if there&#8217;s anything that&#8217;s not working, if there&#8217;s anything you don&#8217;t like or you think, no, no, this should be different because it doesn&#8217;t work. Just please give us feedback. We need feedback because this is in the plugin now it&#8217;s aimed to go into 7.1. We still have those six weeks until beta one. Those six weeks will be iterating on the feature. The earlier we get feedback the better so that we know if there&#8217;s anything that really isn&#8217;t working for anyone then we can change it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So that&#8217;s a 23.2. There&#8217;s also a WordPress components called WordPress Theme and that&#8217;s actually the theme for the admin section. We have definitely confusion things going on because we use the same term for multiple things that are totally different and have nothing to do with each other except they are now motion design tokens for duration and easing in the WordPress theme component. So if you want to use those for your admin pages and plugins, go have at it. I am really because it kind of gets you a little bit more into a more interactive way to build websites and I think we really like those or I do. Yeah. Although I&#8217;m not a motion or animation kind of person. But yeah, I like when it&#8217;s nice.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Yeah. Little bits of discreet smooth animation here and there can really make a web experience.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. It&#8217;s kind of a quality of life kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. What else is in the 23? Yeah, the content types. It was an iteration on. We talked about it on the content types experiments with various improvements and post type and taxonomy management, duplicate view, quick edit actions. A ton of PRs have been added to that so it definitely is maturing and you can with 23.2 also the media editor modal had matured and there is now. I also will share in  the show notes a link to an overview issue on the Dashboard experiment so you can go back and read up about it, what it&#8217;s all about. Because there&#8217;s a whole lot of work still being done with that. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Experiments</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There&#8217;s also an experiment on the classic block migration notice. I&#8217;m just pointing that out because you might see it that the classic block might get deprecated or might not be available in certain situations.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Yeah. I believe the plan is to deprecate it and remove it at some point, but it&#8217;s a whole process because I guess lots of folks are using it. So it needs to be slow, give people time to adjust, choose alternatives.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, well it has been in Gutenberg for eight years and all that and actually what I found is that some of the AI tools actually create blocks that need to be. That are looking like classic blocks and need to be migrated to blocks before they can be in the block editor canvas. So, yeah, those things also need to be kind of tested in that space.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>Yeah, that&#8217;s a good point. With AI, with AI tools increasingly being used to build websites and create and. Or move content across from other places, it. You don&#8217;t want AI sort of adding the classic block to its knowledge base and suddenly deciding that the easiest way to do anything is to just dump all the content into a classic block,</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Which what they&#8217;re doing right now. Yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> So this is a good time to deprecate it so that. Okay, let&#8217;s. Let&#8217;s ensure that AI works properly, that it&#8217;s easier for AI tools to work properly and do things as we expect them to.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Documentation</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> It hasn&#8217;t been merged yet, but there is also a documentation issue. It&#8217;s a big. It was a big undertaking that Juan Margarito took on, was that it was found that an AI can&#8217;t really find documentation on the block markup for each of the core blocks. And that was a documentation gap that was kind of found that none of the block library blocks had a readme so it wouldn&#8217;t. So what Guan Ma did, he created automatically from the block JSON files a readme for each block on documentation site and then created some tokens where you can have on the readme additional manual content that&#8217;s put in there and then have a parser go through that and put it into the block editor handbook. And that is a really. So it talks about the supports, it talks about the, the, the global styles design tool supports about the block markup and also the connection with other blocks. It&#8217;s a comprehensive documentation about each block and that&#8217;s in the block handbook. It will be merged. We had a hardware hangout on it. We had a proposal on MakeBlog, a core block about that. And I think it&#8217;s finally going to be merged within I hope a week, but maybe days.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Oh, cool.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>That&#8217;ll be super useful. So it will be in the, in the block edit handbook. It has an additional 80 pages, of course. Yeah. But they&#8217;re all connected and categorized by blocks. And so now block developers and there were some comments from the community where people said, well, I wish I had that when I was starting out learning about block development and now it&#8217;s finally coming. But it was a huge undertaking because it kind of created a ton of new code and that all needs to be reviewed. And it was so. But there were a lot of people kind of working on that. Guided or spearheaded by Guan Ma but it&#8217;s now coming and it&#8217;s really cool. I&#8217;m so happy that it made it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> I mean, you can never have too much documentation, but developers are crap at writing it. So, you know, nowadays we have tools to assist us in the creation of the documentation and we should leverage them.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. And the hybrid version, automatic documentation plus a way to have also manual content in that is actually a good combination because for some of the blocks, Joe Dawson from the Accessibility team has said, okay, maybe we also want to have some documentation about the accessibility of blocks. And anybody who has comments on that can add it to the, the readme file of that particular block to elaborate on that. And that is outside of any automation. You can just add it to the page. And it was really cool to see that process working. I post a link to the proposal into the show notes just as a side note here. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 23.3</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And now we&#8217;re coming to 23.3. That was just released a day ago June 3rd with 270 closed PRs and 57 contributors. So we are ramping up to 7.1 kind of thing. And the first item on that is really cool that you can now that the notes section. And I think it was Adam Silverstein as well who worked on that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Oh yeah, the multiple notes per block. Yeah. Oh, that&#8217;s cool. That&#8217;s really useful.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, so you can have multiple threads or comments per block. That&#8217;s also helpful when you work with AI that comes in and kind of reviews some of your post and posts notes in there. So yeah, it was really helpful. And it&#8217;s also. And he found it to be necessary to have that. So what&#8217;s missing in the notes in comparison to Google Docs is that you can highlight a section and then comment on that section. So yeah, like, okay, you probably can delete this half sentence or something like that. And that you couldn&#8217;t do that up until now. And with the multi threads on the notes for a block you can highlight a section because if the paragraph is, I don&#8217;t know, 10 lines or something like that, you might have multiple comments on the, on that block. And now you can have that. So it&#8217;s really cool.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Yeah. So the note is attached to a part of a block and not to the block itself.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, yeah. The next sections are a continuation on your quest for responsive styles.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Enhancements</h3>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Yeah, that&#8217;s part two, part two of the work which is enabling responsive styles for block instances. So again this, this was a part. So Maggie Cabrera had worked on the sudo style states for global styles and she had an open PR to add them to block instances. And Dan and I basically hijacked her PR with her approval of course. We asked Maggie first, can we just take this work that you. She was off doing something else. She wasn&#8217;t actively working on the PR at the time. We thought ah, we could just take that over and finish it and then build the responsive styles on top of it. So we did and that obviously there was work already pre-existing so it sort of made it easier to build it step by step on top of it. And now we have in 23.3 the ability to add responsive styles to. So any block, open a post, pick a block, open the inspector controls and then at the top where you have the block name you have this little menu which has a drop down that has the states. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So again just like with global styles we have tablet and mobile. The default is what you get by default what you already had. And then you have a tablet breakpoint and a mobile breakpoint. And for those again as in global styles there were a few things that didn&#8217;t really work out of the box, a few of the controls. So we decided to hide everything that doesn&#8217;t work. So for now what&#8217;s enabled is only the controls that you can actually create responsive styles with. Those are pretty much all the block supports, the standard block supports like color typography, dimensions, block gap. Now layout is also supported and we aside a sort of side effect of that was that we ended up moving the layout panel into the styles tab. And well that was sort of. I&#8217;d been wanting to do that for ages I have to say because to me it didn&#8217;t make any sense at all that layout was in at the same time. Settings tab and Dimensions, which has controls that are intimately related to layout such as block gap was in the styles tab. And so I felt the. The only thing that makes sense is to have them side by side. If it&#8217;s not the same panel, which I still think we could maybe make it the same panel. But that&#8217;s another different conversation. But at least they&#8217;re side by side. So now layout is in the styles panel. That&#8217;s the reason why it&#8217;s in the styles panel. So when we have a responsive state enabled we&#8217;re only showing the styles panel in the inspector and only the controls that work, which is most of them. There&#8217;s a couple of things that we had to hide again, you know, duotonethings like that. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And for block instances there are some blocks have custom controls and some of those custom controls should probably become Block supports. Some are like aspect ratio is a block support, but there&#8217;s only one block using it and there&#8217;s a couple of blocks that have their own custom implementation of aspect ratio. This is something that should change. I have an open PR to try and enable aspect ratio to work responsively because I feel that that&#8217;s one of the important ones that people will want to change aspect ratios for different breakpoints. So that&#8217;s in progress and what our plan is basically to try to get as much as we can working until 7.1.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Awesome. So when I want to start testing this, I&#8217;m going to add a paragraph to my block canvas and then I go to the block inspector and say, okay, this paragraph, I want a different background for a different viewport. So on the mobile I want it green and on tablet I want it yellow and on desktop I want it gray.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Yep, you can do that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Okay. Yeah, so that&#8217;s how I will change it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> You go into. So you give the default. The desktop is the default. I guess we&#8217;re not mobile. We were never mobile first really. I mean Gutenberg has from the beginning being a dev stop first experience. And that&#8217;s how it&#8217;s sort of turned out to be. So you have default desktop and then you can go into the tablet state, you can select the tablet state and then whatever you add to the visible controls in the block inspector in that state is exclusive to that state. And you can go into the mobile and choose a different color for that and save everything and then you can go and do the good old resizing. Well, in the block editor we leveraging the responsive preview, the sort of device specific preview to show you a preview of what the styles are as you&#8217;re editing them. And then once you go into the front end, you can resize your window to your heart&#8217;s content and see all the changes happening.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> All right, all right. So that is really cool and I&#8217;m looking forward to kind of testing it out and trying it out and have opinions.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Yeah, yeah, no, lots of opinions, I&#8217;m sure. And one of the things that I feel like we haven&#8217;t got 100% right is the previewing because you switch like you go enable mobile state for this block and it switches you to the mobile preview. But then you can select another block while still being in the mobile preview and then you&#8217;re not in the mobile state for that blocking. So I feel like this is something that we&#8217;re working on. We need to improve that experience and feedback. Again, very welcome. What are your opinions on this and how you think it would be the most intuitive to work with.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Well, awesome. Yeah. I&#8217;m thinking maybe we should actually have a demo hallway hangout about that somewhere. Let me think about that. Well, I have a time issue because I&#8217;m going on vacation.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Okay. Yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Coming back to the beginning of July, but yeah, definitely. Maybe find somebody to do a demo video or something like that. Well, the demos are all on the PR, so definitely check those out because they&#8217;re the best way to learn how to use that and how what works or what doesn&#8217;t work. Yeah. All right. What&#8217;s else in 23.3?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> There was so much. Well, the media editor was stabilized, so now it&#8217;s no longer an experiment. You get it by default whether you want it or not. Again, I mean, we hope to get feedback on that. I think it&#8217;s a pretty good piece of work, honestly.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Just wanted to. You said it in the. You talked about it. But if you are looking for the layout panel after 23.3 Gutenberg plugin install, it&#8217;s not hidden, it&#8217;s not lost. It&#8217;s in the Styles tab now.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Yes.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Some content creators that are not interested in this, all that, they might have a little oops, where is it? Kind of thing. It&#8217;s in the other tab now. Yeah.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> And that is. It might be weird for blocks that still have a Settings panel. So, for blocks, what happened with the group block? For instance, the group block only had layout and position in Settings, so we moved position into styles. Because it makes sense. Position is a style. And now the group block doesn&#8217;t have a Settings tab. So you open the group. I think it&#8217;s much easier because you don&#8217;t have clicking, clicking, clicking. Everything&#8217;s there, everything&#8217;s visible. Layout, position, all the other controls in the same tab for other blocks. For instance, the navigation block still has a bunch of stuff in Settings. So if you put a navigation block on the page and suddenly you&#8217;re, oh, where&#8217;s the layout controls gone? Okay, they&#8217;re in the Styles tab. They&#8217;re no longer in the Settings tab.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> I just wanted to point that out. People kind of miss that part because they&#8217;re so excited about the responsiveness. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">And then there&#8217;s also. Oh, there was one thing that was fixed. It was a. I would say it was a bug, but it is an enhancement that the additional CSS. If there was an error in there, you wouldn&#8217;t see that when you get back into the post again, until you interact with the additional CSS field, you wouldn&#8217;t see the error message. So unless you interact with that, you wouldn&#8217;t see that it&#8217;s actually not working. That has changed. That now has a little notification that there is something in the additional CSS that&#8217;s not valid CSS for those who muck about with that. Yeah. And here it is. The PR78653 has the modal media editor, image cropper modal being the default experience for the block editor. It&#8217;s out of experiments in. Another thing for 23.3 is that Gutenberg upgraded to React 19. This is important for plugin developers and those who have a very tight handle on the dependencies for their work. React 19 is now the default and there might be dragons out there. Please, please, please, yeah. Give feedback on that. Create issues what works and what doesn&#8217;t work. Especially what doesn&#8217;t work. So those can be fixed PR 7.1 so you don&#8217;t have any surprises later on. What else? I think those were the, the big items.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Yeah, I mean I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve been sort of like under, under my responsive styles rock for these past few weeks just working on that. Very, very fixated on getting this thing right.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>So I have to say nothing.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> I mean it&#8217;s definitely got a huge amount of attention to. Yeah. What else is out there?</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Definitely God&#8217;s work.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> Hopefully it&#8217;s worth it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that&#8217;s it. As I said, there are 270 PRs. So. Yeah. And it just has been released for a while ago.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison:</em> There&#8217;s a lot of enhancements and bug fixes and stuff in here.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, that&#8217;s it. I think we are good. So, dear listeners, you will see on the Weekend Edition and the Gutenberg Changelog will pause during my vacation. I&#8217;m going on vacation next week, which is June 15th and I&#8217;m coming back in beginning of July. So in time for 7.1 beta, you&#8217;ll hear us again and you will read us again. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I&#8217;m so happy, Isabel, you are here on the show to walk us through all the good things that come with Gutenberg to 7.1, especially the responsive parts. The responsive parts. I like that. Responsive parts. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy work schedule and be on the show and walk us through that.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>No worries. You always enjoy this show.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Well, thank you so much. And as always, dear listeners, the show notes will be published on GutenbergTimes.com podcast. This is episode 1311 31st. And if you have questions or suggestions or news you want us to include, send them to <a href="http://changelogutenbergtimecs.com">changelogutenbergtimecs.com</a> that&#8217;s <a href="http://changelogutenburgtimes.com">changelogutenburgtimes.com</a>. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Thank you all for listening. And until the next time, and I see you in July. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Isabel Brison: </em>Bye bye.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 07 Jun 2026 10:03:25 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19:"Gutenberg Changelog";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:39;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:57:"WordPress.org blog: What Happened at WordCamp Europe 2026";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=20793";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:51:"https://wordpress.org/news/2026/06/wceu-2026-recap/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:36048:"<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="" class="wp-image-20801" height="1440" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2026/06/WhatsApp-Image-2026-06-04-at-01.08.10-1-scaled-edited.jpeg?resize=2560%2C1440&#038;ssl=1" width="2560" /></figure>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">WordCamp Europe, <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2026/">the biggest WordPress conference in Europe</a>, spent the first week of June in Kraków. The 2026 edition of this event filled the ICE Kraków Congress Centre from June 4 to 6, drawing 2,458 ticket holders from 81 countries to the south of Poland. Close to a quarter of them were attending their first WordCamp Europe.</p>
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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The city made it easy to settle in. Every attendee&#8217;s badge carried a transport hologram good for unlimited trams and buses. The Main Market Square, the largest in Europe, sat a short ride away, and the local food ran the gamut from pierogi to żurek soup to obwarzanek pretzels sold off the street.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Kraków is beautiful, with history everywhere.<br /><em>&#8211; Sebastian Miśniakiewicz, local team lead</em></p>
</blockquote>



<div class="wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-7387b849 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The program kept pace with the setting. Across multiple tracks, the schedule held 49 talks and eight hands-on workshops, grouped into themes that ran from core development and AI to business and the open web. Around them sat a full Contributor Day, a sponsor area, side events, on-site childcare, and an after-party the local team stretched to eight hours.</p>



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Contributor Day Opens the Week</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As it does every year, the event began the day before the talks. Contributors filled the venue for Contributor Day, a working session where people work together to improve WordPress itself rather than watch a presentation about it. The morning started with registration and a welcome, the room split into teams, and a group photo broke up the work around midday. The afternoon ran a second working block before each team gathered to share what it had done.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The range of tables is the clearest picture of how wide the project has become. Newcomers could sit down with Polyglots to translate WordPress into their own language, with Documentation to fix the pages people reach when they get stuck, or with Support to answer questions in the forums. More technical tables covered Core, Performance, Testing, Themes, and the Plugins team, whose reviewers screen every plugin submitted to the directory.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">First-timers were not left to find their own way. The day was built around onboarding tables, named table leads, and mentors, with an open invitation for experienced contributors to adopt a newcomer and walk them through their first patch, string, or ticket.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">People who could not travel to Kraków were welcomed to join remotely through the #contributor-day channel in the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/">Make WordPress Slack</a>, so distance was not a reason to sit the day out.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Birthplace of the Web</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It was fitting that the opening keynote came from CERN. The European Laboratory for Particle Physics, on the French-Swiss border outside Geneva, is where the World Wide Web was invented more than 30 years ago, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/joachimv">Joachim Valdemar Yde</a>, who has managed CERN&#8217;s web team since 2021, came to explain why the laboratory had chosen WordPress to carry its web presence forward.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Yde and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/franciscobbarros">Francisco Borges Aurindo Barros</a>, who leads CERN&#8217;s WordPress infrastructure, framed the move as a chance to give a web presence built up over three decades a shared, modern foundation. After evaluating several leading content management systems against CERN&#8217;s needs, WordPress came out on top.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Barros walked through what they had built. The guiding idea is that people at CERN focus on their content while the web team looks after the platform underneath. A self-service portal lets anyone request a site in a few clicks. Behind it, a shared distribution supplies a common theme and a set of approved, security-hardened plugins, and an in-house tool provisions each new site on Kubernetes in about a minute. In its first year, the platform has already set up hundreds of sites.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Moving years of existing content onto the new platform is the other half of the work, and the team automated it: a single command lifts each site&#8217;s pages, headings, and images and rebuilds them as Gutenberg blocks, with no downtime. They plan to open source the tool.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then Yde delivered the line that the room had been waiting for.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">As of today, our main flagship website, home.cern, is now served on WordPress. It&#8217;s been automatically migrated, and it&#8217;s live.<br /><br /><em>&#8211; Joachim Valdemar Yde, Web Manager, CERN</em></p>
</blockquote>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The rollout is on track to wrap up over the coming months, and early impressions, Yde said, have been overwhelmingly positive, with easy wins in responsiveness and accessibility. For those at the event, the keynote pointed the room toward <a href="https://youtu.be/f09yvh3mnME">a later talk by CERN&#8217;s Akanksha Chatterjee</a> on building and maintaining the laboratory&#8217;s engineering websites on the same service.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There is a neat symmetry to it. The institution that published the world&#8217;s first website now runs on the software that powers more than 40% of today&#8217;s web, licensed under the GPL and maintained by the people in the room.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 7.0 and AI</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">WordPress 7.0 was a throughline of the conference. Several sessions placed the release at the center, framing it less as a routine update than as a change in what the software is, and in what it makes possible for the people who build with it.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The anchor for that conversation was a panel called &#8220;Inside WordPress 7.0.&#8221; It gathered contributors who worked on the release, among them <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/juanmaguitar">Juan Manuel Garrido</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/adamsilverstein">Adam Silverstein</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/benjamin_zekavica">Benjamin Zekavica</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mikachan">Sarah Norris</a>, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/milana_cap">Milana Cap</a>. It was framed around more than a feature list, setting out to cover how a release of this size actually comes together: the contribution workflows, the coordination, and the human aspects of shipping software in the open.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">What gives this release its weight is the work moving into WordPress&#8217;s core: a native AI client, a new Abilities API that lets plugins declare what they can do in a way other tools can discover, and a Connectors screen for wiring up providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google Gemini. The argument running through the AI sessions was that this belongs to everyone who builds on WordPress, not only to developers shipping their own integrations. Speakers got specific about how to put that to work.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/anukasha">Anukasha Singh</a> focused on how the Abilities API can make plugin permissions cleaner and safer than the capability checks developers have leaned on for years.</li>



<li>In a workshop, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/wpfeedback">Vito Peleg</a> set out to take builders from one-off prompts toward a tool-using workflow that audits a live site and files structured tickets.</li>



<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/schlessera">Alain Schlesser</a>, a WP-CLI maintainer who has worked on structured data and the AI-native web, turned to a fast-growing opportunity. AI assistants and search now send real traffic to the open web, with more than a billion referral visits logged by the middle of 2025. His session framed WordPress as well-placed to earn that attention, with a practical checklist for getting a site ready to be found, read, and cited.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">People stayed at the center of the conversation, too. <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/karmatosed">Tammie Lister</a>, in a talk called &#8220;Human in the loop means something,&#8221; framed the phrase as a real commitment rather than a checkbox. Humans and AI are each good at different things, and the products worth building let each do what it does best.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Development and Craft</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The development sessions were where the craft lived. <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dmsnell">Dennis Snell</a>, who co-wrote the HTML API and designed the block parser, devoted a deep-dive workshop to that API. <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/peterwilsoncc">Peter Wilson</a>, a long-time Core committer on the Performance team, focused on how the WP_Query class has been made faster through better caching, and how site builders can take advantage of that at scale.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Scaling got a hands-on session of its own. One talk set out to see how far a WordPress site can run on a twelve-dollar virtual server, profiling it under load in Grafana and tuning away the bottlenecks, with a GitHub repository so attendees could follow along at home. <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/fellyph">Fellyph Cintra</a> focused on the latest in <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/">WordPress Playground</a>, the browser-based tooling and architectural changes that the project credits with a real speed-up.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/luminuu">Jessica Lyschik</a>, a Core contributor and former default-theme co-lead, set out to make the case that accessibility-ready requirements are far easier to meet than most theme developers assume, drawing on real reviews of both block and classic themes.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Two members of the Plugins team, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidperez">David Perez</a> and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/frantorres">Fran Torres</a>, framed their session as a practical clinic. Between them, they have reviewed more than 25,000 plugins, and they set out to name the common, avoidable issues that keep good plugins stuck in the review queue. For a first-time author, that is the difference between an afternoon and a month of waiting.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Business of WordPress and the Open Web</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The business and community sessions pulled the lens back to people, with a refreshingly unsentimental view of running a WordPress business. <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/deltacx">Debbie Levitt</a> built her talk around a model for finding product-market fit at three levels at once, on the premise that teams celebrate one good metric and then wonder months later where their users went. <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/vasvalch">Vassilena Valchanova</a> took on a quieter problem: being good at the work is not the same as anyone knowing you are.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">There was a local thread here as well. <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/irsilviana">Irfani Silviana</a>, a full-stack developer at a Kraków-based agency, framed the Business Model Canvas as a translation layer that moves developers from shipping features to engineering business value, a fitting talk to give in her own city.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The web&#8217;s standards, the argument goes, remain as open as the day Tim Berners-Lee created them at CERN.</p>
</blockquote>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That idea carried through the rest of the community sessions. </p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/wdavidsnead">David Snead</a>, an attorney who works with internet infrastructure providers, set out to explain how hosts, registrars, and registries coordinate against abuse through shared, real-time intelligence, on the logic that a threat to one WordPress host is a threat to all of them.</li>



<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mbootsman">Marcel Bootsman</a> shared a practical playbook for how companies and individuals can support open source sustainably and look after the people who keep it going.</li>



<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/karinchristen">Karin Christen</a> set out to describe how her Swiss agency turned <a href="https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/">Five for the Future</a> from a good intention into a standing team habit through internal contributor days.</li>
</ul>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Running alongside the talks, the hands-on workshops were a chance to build something on the spot. In one, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/welcher">Ryan Welcher</a> set out to build a touch-enabled gallery slider with the Interactivity API, while another centered on Full Site Editing, with a working portfolio theme attendees could reuse on their next client project. These were laptop-open, leave-with-working-code sessions.</p>



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Closing Fireside Chat</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The closing session opened with a warm gesture from Kraków University of Technology. Representatives took the stage to thank the organizers and the community and to present <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/4thhubbard">Mary Hubbard</a>, the Executive Director of WordPress, with a gift from their faculty of informatics and mathematics. They described what the university and the WordCamp community share: a love of learning and sharing knowledge, and an openness to new ideas, skills, and connections.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Hubbard used the moment to share some news. Starting in October, the university will open a WordPress-specific course, which she called a trail-blazing event for Poland and for WordPress. Earlier that day, the program&#8217;s first cohort, around 20 students, had shown what they built, part of the <a href="https://wordpress.org/education/campus-connect/">WordPress Campus Connect</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.org/education/credits/">WordPress Credits</a> education work.</p>



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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container"><img alt="" class="wp-image-20887" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2026/06/WhatsApp-Image-2026-06-06-at-10.26.32-1.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1" width="1024" /><button class="lightbox-trigger" type="button">
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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Hubbard then turned the stage into a conversation, inviting <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/matveb">Matías Ventura</a>, the lead of the Gutenberg project, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/richtabor">Rich Tabor</a>, a WordPress designer and developer, to talk through where WordPress is heading and how AI fits in. WordPress 7.0 had just launched with Ventura as its release lead, and he asked everyone who had contributed to it to stand for a round of applause.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Much of the chat explored the balance between building WordPress with AI, and building with AI on WordPress, without losing the human part. Ventura noted that WordPress&#8217;s long investment in its design system is paying off now that you can ask an AI to extend a menu or a control, and it reaches for the right components. He pointed to older primitives gaining new value, like <a href="https://wordpress.org/cli/">WP-CLI</a>, which AI models use fluently, and to <a href="https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/developer-tools/studio/studio-code/">Studio Code</a>, an open source, agent-based coding tool the team has been building for WordPress. Tabor showed how he now ships many small editor improvements by talking to an agent instead of typing code, and Ventura demoed desktop mode and open-canvas experiments that reimagine the admin.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">On open source and AI, Hubbard argued that open source is why WordPress has thrived, that the same values should shape AI, and that the community should be far more vocal about it. As she put it, &#8220;We should be talking about it, and we should be much louder about it.&#8221;</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Audience questions pushed on multilingual support, unsticking long-stalled tickets, and reaching a younger, more diverse community. On that last point, Hubbard came back to education, pointing to a <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2026/02/ai-leaders-credential/">US pilot of an AI literacy micro-credential</a> that uses WordPress as the playground, and made the case for it:</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I think that focusing in on younger generations, and bringing them into the project in a healthy way, with the dynamic of education as well as mentorship, and how we can understand and learn from them, as well as mentor them and adopt them as contributors, is very important.<br /><br /><em>&#8211; Mary Hubbard, WordPress Executive Director</em></p>
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Beyond the Talks</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">WordCamp is also about the corridor outside the talks, and Kraków gave people reason to roam. Between sessions, attendees moved through the sponsor area for product demos and conversations that often carried on over lunch.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The after-party was the not-so-subtle flourish of a local team that doubled the usual length to eight hours, with Polish food and dragon-and-floral swag that nodded to the Wawel Dragon of Kraków legend. The nearby artistic Kazimierz district kept the evening going, and the trams, as one organizer had promised, were still running reliably afterward.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What Comes Next</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">WordCamps run on people, and 2026 was no different. The organizing teams, the speakers, the sponsors who funded the venue and the meals, the local crew who sorted trams and pierogi, and the contributors who arrived a day early to work on the project all built this WCEU together. The people watching the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1pJFUVKQ7ET_os7azDwYFsUDoc0Y9plA">livestream</a> from outside Kraków were part of it as well.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">For anyone whose appetite was only sharpened by three days in Poland, the calendar already has the next stop. <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2026/">WordCamp US 2026</a> (Phoenix, USA) runs August 16 to 19, with its own Contributor Day opening the week.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large has-custom-border"><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2026/"><img alt="WordCamp US: Powered by WordPress, Driven by Community, August 16-19, 2026" class="wp-image-20859" height="321" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2026/06/wcus-2026-teaser.png?resize=1024%2C321&#038;ssl=1" width="1024" /></a></figure>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">WordCamp Europe will return next year (May 27-29, 2027) in Málaga, Spain.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>Photography by the <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2026/community/organisers/#photography-team">WCEU 2026 photography team</a>. See the full galleries on <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wceu/albums/">Flickr</a>.</em></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 06 Jun 2026 17:44:14 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17:"Nicholas Garofalo";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:40;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:21:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"Gutenberg Times: Calls for Testing, Gutenberg 23.3, Block MCP and more — Weekend Edition 367";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=45754";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:90:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/calls-for-testing-gutenberg-23-3-block-mcp-weekend-edition-367/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23404:"<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Howdy,</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is the time of the year when publishing on the Gutenberg Times becomes less frequent. I will be on vacation and back at the beginning of July with the weekend edition, just in-time for Beta 1 of WordPress 7.1. Three more Gutenberg plugin releases will happen before that. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">What also happened was that someone <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/01/hackers-hijacked-instagram-accounts-by-tricking-meta-ai-support-chatbot-into-granting-access/">grabbed my instagram account in this AI hack</a> at Meta.  Although Meta reports this as resolved, I probably won&#8217;t get my account back. I am now actively looking for a better way to share my photos without the overlords that can&#8217;t keep things tight. <img alt="🤦‍♀️" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f926-200d-2640-fe0f.png" style="height: 1em;" />   It&#8217;s not that I didn&#8217;t know better. &lt;sigh/&gt; <img alt="🤷‍♀️" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f937-200d-2640-fe0f.png" style="height: 1em;" /> It&#8217;s a cautionary tale for what&#8217;s in store for all internet services handing over crucial business processes to a gulliable AI.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I had the great pleasure of going on the <strong>OpenMakers</strong> show with <strong>Abha Thakor</strong> to <a href="https://openchannels.fm/new-tools-and-updates-in-wordpress-7-0-for-developers-and-content-managers/">talk through what WordPress 7.0 &#8220;Armstrong&#8221; means for you</a>. First, the safety bit: test on a staging site or Playground before updating, and check your PHP. Then the good stuff. Visual revisions show edits in context with color coding. Notes keep feedback inside the editor. Patterns gain content-only editing, blocks can hide by device, and new AI connector APIs give developers a unified foundation. Real-time editing waits for a later release.</p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"></p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Yours, <img alt="💕" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f495.png" style="height: 1em;" /><br /><em>Birgit</em></p>





<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>WordCamp Europe</strong> LiveStream was up and running and Friday&#8217;s keynote can be watched online. <strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/cLGiNR-h_34?si=7JEdopb4nHMec5Bs&amp;t=5032">Two worlds collide: WordPress at CERN</a></strong> with Joachim Valdemar Yde and Francisco Borges Aurindo Barros. The Livestream are all routed to the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@WordPress/streams">WordPress YouTube account</a>. <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2026/schedule/">The schedule</a> is posted on the website. </p>


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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Over the course of the weekend more recordings will be uploaded to <a href="https://wordpress.tv/event/wordcamp-europe-2026/">WordPress TV &gt; WordCamp Europe 2026</a>. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">On Saturday, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic  will close out WordCamp Europe 2026 with his keynote. Afterward, the organizers will reveal where WordCamp Europe 2027 will take place. Tune in around 2:15 UTC / 8:15 am EDT. </p>



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Arthur Chu </strong>walks you through <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/06/03/whats-new-in-gutenberg-23-3-03-jun/">what&#8217;s new in Gutenberg 23.3</a>.</strong> The modal media editor is now the default for cropping. It pulls cropping, flip, rotation, and metadata into one place. The experimental customizable dashboard grows too, with five new widgets you can drag and resize. Responsive styles now reach individual blocks, so designs adapt per screen. </p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rae Morey</strong> reports that <a href="https://www.therepository.email/gutenberg-23-3-ships-experimental-customizable-wordpress-dashboard">Gutenberg 23.3 brings an experimental, customizable WordPress dashboard</a>. It&#8217;s the admin&#8217;s biggest structural shakeup in years. You can drag, resize, and rearrange widgets like Welcome, Activity, and Site Health to fit how you actually work. It&#8217;s the first testable preview of a long-discussed overhaul. Enable it under Gutenberg &gt; Experiments to try it. </p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Jarda Snajdr</strong> reports that <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/06/05/react-19-upgrade-temporarily-reverted-in-gutenberg/"><strong>the React 19 upgrade has been reverted in Gutenberg</strong></a>. Shortly after 23.3.0 shipped, many plugins built for React 18 started crashing. The APIs barely changed, but the runtimes clashed: React 19 rejects elements made by a bundled React 18 JSX helper. So 23.3.2 rolls back to React 18. The team still plans the upgrade for 7.1—this time with a feature flag and a compatibility layer.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Isabel Brison</strong> and I chatted extensively about the latest Gutenberg plugin releases 23.1 to 23.3 and discussed the responsive controls now available in the Gutenberg plugin for desktop, tablet and mobile view ports. The episode will drop in your favorite podcast app over the weekend. </p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><img alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/1f399.png" style="height: 1em;" /> The latest episode is <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-131/">Gutenberg Changelog #131 – Gutenberg Plugin Releases 23.1 – 23.3, Calls for Testing for 7.1 and more</a></p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rich Tabor</strong> shares a few <strong><a href="https://rich.blog/little-big-things/">“little big things” for WordPress editing</a>. </strong>The idea is simple: complexity has piled up, and small fixes can clear it. His PRs make block locking a one-click job in List View. They keep you in place when editing synced patterns, instead of whisking you off to another view. And zooming out reuses the familiar Patterns Explorer. He&#8217;s not precious about them—contributors are warmly invited to take them over the line.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Dave Smith</strong> walks you through <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdsQe9oi8mg">an interactive prototype reimagining the WordPress Site Editor around user goals rather than system architecture</a>. Built during Automattic&#8217;s Radical Speed Month, it keeps the same blocks, templates, and data model intact while changing entry points, language, and defaults. Since internal research flags the Site Editor as the top driver of negative support outcomes, you&#8217;ll see how remapping it around what you want to do could ease that friction. It&#8217;s an experiment, not a roadmap.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="calls-for-testing-for-wordpress-7-1">Calls for Testing for WordPress 7.1</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph">With WordPress 7.0 out the door, contributors shared a series of Calls for testing  this week to prepare for WordPress 7.1. The schedule is tight with Beta 1 slated for July 15, 2026. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Ramon Dodd</strong> puts out a <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/05/21/media-editor-modal-call-for-testing/">call for testing the new Media Editor Modal</a>.</strong> Cropping in the block editor hasn&#8217;t changed much in years, and the old inline tool leans on a limited third-party library. This new standard way of Image edition inside the Block editor replaces it with a WordPress-native one. You get freeform and aspect-ratio cropping, flip, rotation, and metadata editing in one place. The quickest way to try it is a ready-made Playground link. Feedback is welcome via the comments or GitHub.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> announced a <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/06/03/announcing-a-collaborative-editing-outreach-effort-for-7-1/">collaborative editing outreach effort for WordPress 7.1</a>.</strong>  After real-time collaboration was pulled from 7.0, this gathers real-world early adopters across many hosting setups to find bugs faster. It lives in one Slack channel, <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C0B7W4UQFC2">#collaborative-editing-outreach</a>. If you&#8217;d use collaborative editing regularly and run the latest Gutenberg, you&#8217;re invited—through the cycle, with a test team badge at the end. </p>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Rae Morey</strong> has the skinny for you in <strong><a href="https://www.therepository.email/contributors-launch-fse-style-outreach-program-to-get-real-time-collaboration-ready-for-wordpress-7-1" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Contributors Launch FSE-Style Outreach Program to Get Real-Time Collaboration Ready for WordPress 7.1</a></strong></p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Adam Silverstein</strong> puts out a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/06/04/call-for-testing-client-side-media-processing/"><strong>call for testing client-side media processing</strong></a>, now targeting WordPress 7.1. Here&#8217;s the idea: when you upload an image, your browser resizes and encodes every size locally using VIPS in WebAssembly, before anything reaches the server. That eases CPU and memory load on hosts and brings modern formats like AVIF, WebP, HEIC, and JPEG XL to every site. Browsers that can&#8217;t cope fall back quietly to server-side. Try it in Chromium with the latest Gutenberg.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Brian Coords</strong> invites you to a <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2026/06/03/ai-wordpress-woo-live-event/"><strong>live panel on practical AI workflows for WordPress and WooCommerce</strong></a> on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, at 10am PDT. Hosted with Shani Banerjee and featuring Nik McLaughlin, Kyle Runner, and Suzanne Kolpakov, the conversation covers WooCommerce MCP, the WordPress Abilities API, Pressable MCP, and making your own plugins more agent-ready. You&#8217;ll come away with practical ideas for managing stores and guiding cautious clients, plus open Q&amp;A. Can&#8217;t make it live? Register anyway for the recording.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Nathan Wrigley</strong> talks with plugin reviewer Luke Carbis about <a href="https://wptavern.com/podcast/218-luke-carbis-on-the-future-of-wordpress-plugins-ai-ethics-and-new-directory-standards">the future of WordPress plugins on the Jukebox podcast</a>. Here&#8217;s the worry: plugin submissions have quadrupled in a year, largely AI-generated, so good plugins struggle to stand out. Carbis floats ideas you can test: logging into your site with your WordPress.org account, installing from your own Git repos, or a commercial marketplace funding contributors. They also weigh AI ethics, a generational backlash, and his proposed AI-disclosure header for the directory.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Wes Theron</strong> published a new training video and you can learn <strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIbZSbBbF2k">how to customize your site’s navigation menus with AI</a><a>.</a></strong> Once your site is connected, you describe the change and the agent makes it. You&#8217;ll learn to add a page to your header, remove an outdated link, and reorder items. It also covers building dropdown menus under an unclickable parent, adding a footer menu, and linking to blog categories. The point: clear menus help visitors find what matters.</p>


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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Ajit Bohra</strong> and the LUBUS team released <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/color-palette-block/">Color Palette Block 2.0, a free plugin for building and sharing color palettes</a> in the block editor. It grew out of their own client and internal documentation needs. It&#8217;s handy for brand kits, design systems, and style guides. You add swatches manually, pull from your theme, or generate random ones. Pick from four display styles—Square, Polaroid, Circle, or Droplet—and copy each color as HEX, RGB, HSL, or a CSS variable.</p>



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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> shares a playful tutorial on registering custom icons for WordPress 7.0&#8217;s new Icon block. Since the public registration API won&#8217;t land until 7.1, you&#8217;ll learn a clever workaround using PHP Reflection to reach the protected <code>WP_Icons_Registry::register()</code> method, bundling SVGs in your theme through an Icon enum and registrar class. Built on work by Ryan Welcher and Nick Diego, it&#8217;s educational fun—not for production, where Nick&#8217;s Icon Block plugin still does the job properly.</p>


<div class="ng-block-7740483c98ba74ad wp-block-newsletterglue-container ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div class="ng-block-vs ng-block-vs-1" colspan="3" height="0" style="height: 0px;"></div></div><div><div class="ng-block-hs ng-block-hs-1" height="0" style="width: 0px;"></div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: none; color: #666666; background-color: #fdfcea; border-radius: 12px;"><div class="ng-block-d481c02ffb8c8467 wp-block-newsletterglue-text ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: none; color: #666666;"><p><strong> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2025&#8221;</a> </strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. </p></div></div></div></div>

<div class="ng-block-2764cf6c181a18b3 wp-block-newsletterglue-text ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: none; color: #666666;"><p>The previous years are also available: <br /><strong><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">2020</a> | <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2021/">2021</a></strong> | <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2022/">2022</a></strong></strong> | <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2023">2023</a></strong> | <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2024/"><strong>2024</strong></a></p></div></div></div></div></div><div class="ng-block-hs ng-block-hs-2" height="0" style="width: 0px;"></div></div><div><div class="ng-block-vs ng-block-vs-2" colspan="3" height="0" style="height: 0px;"></div></div></div></div>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.</h2>



<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Casey Burridge</strong> introduced <strong><a href="https://www.gravitykit.com/introducing-block-mcp/">Block MCP, GravityKit&#8217;s open-source WordPress MCP server</a>. </strong>The problem it solves is familiar: existing MCPs treat a post as one HTML blob, so AI edits strip block markers and break your layout. Block MCP exposes each block as an addressable unit with a stable ID. Your agent can make surgical edits, batch up to 50 changes atomically, and undo any of them. In their tests across Claude models, only Block MCP worked reliably. </p>


<div class="ng-block-e5d09f6bb655eba8 wp-block-newsletterglue-container ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div class="ng-block-vs ng-block-vs-1" colspan="3" height="0" style="height: 0px;"></div></div><div><div class="ng-block-hs ng-block-hs-1" height="0" style="width: 0px;"></div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: none; color: #666666; background-color: #f8f8f8; border-radius: 8px;"><div class="ng-block-94aff0e577ec06b3 wp-block-newsletterglue-text ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: none; color: #666666;"><p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.</p></div></div></div></div>

<div class="ng-block-147a5e9877cf4bdc wp-block-newsletterglue-image ng-block size-full is-resized" width="100%"><div><div><div align="center" class="ng-block-td" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px;"><a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json"><img alt="" class="wp-image-42874 ng-image" height="45" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2025-11-15-at-12.06.44.png?resize=196%2C45&#038;ssl=1" style="border-style: none; border-color: transparent;" width="196" /></a></div></div></div></div>

<div class="ng-block-ad59c9f65e7ed6e6 wp-block-newsletterglue-text ng-block" style="color: #666666;" width="100%"><div><div><div align="none" class="ng-block-td" style="font-size: 16px; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: 1.6; font-weight: normal; padding-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: none; color: #666666;"><p>Now also available via <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">Email me </a>with your experience.</p></div></div></div></div></div><div class="ng-block-hs ng-block-hs-2" height="0" style="width: 0px;"></div></div><div><div class="ng-block-vs ng-block-vs-2" colspan="3" height="0" style="height: 0px;"></div></div></div></div>


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<p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? </em><br /><em>Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or</em><br /><em> send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>.</p>
