 Thanks again for joining for the lightning talks. We have two today. The first one is from Denise van the cruise She's been building sites for over 20 years and she's very passionate about empowering people through technology She spearheaded a mentorship program for young people as well She's one of the oh, you'll be leading organizer for Paris World Camp For the Vienna World Camp and she was the organizer in the previous Vienna World Camp as well, weren't you? you as a speaker, right and She builds now sites through her company girlbot today. She'll be talking about Working up across different time zones And it's an entirely remote company and I love to travel so This year alone last year 2016 for example, I spent the entire summer in the Caribbean So I was in South America and Haiti in the Dominican Republic And I'm in Scotland a lot. I'm in Copenhagen a lot So I love to travel so this is something that is near and dear to my heart because wherever I go I have to work My full day So today I'll be talking about how to work across time zones not just within your company But for your client's sake as well How many by a show of hands? How many of you work remotely? Okay, good. That's great. I Think that is one of the great opportunities that jobs within WordPress create so That's the slide about me you could reach me at solchika on on Twitter good So let's talk about structuring a remote project you you're in your remote island And you want to work with collaborators to get something done in WordPress. What do you have to make sure? Happens So the first thing that you have to think about is your legal structure How will you set yourself up legally to work with people all across the world? And there are different models for doing that some people organize in a particular country that allows them to do that in Contract with other people other people do it so that people are actually recognized employees with no fixed place it really just depends on How you want to organize yourself for legal purposes and tax purposes and it depends on your particular situation So but this is something that you really need to think about Especially within the EU we have pretty strict labor laws In Austria and Vienna particularly so you want to make sure that you're not running afoul of that Another thing that needs to happen here is that your vision needs to be clearly defined How many of you have gotten Asked to do something and someone talked to you for about two hours or so and at the end of the two hours You weren't quite sure what you were just asked to do That happens a lot that happens a lot sometimes we we get very fired up about doing something and We get people on board But we're not really sure what we're asking people to do and this is very very important Especially in this ecology of WordPress because you're dealing with people with multiple skills So sometimes you might be dealing with someone who could be a developer, but maybe they could be a supporter Maybe they could be a project lead and they need to know exactly what you need for your project So that's that's key. You have to define your vision and where you want people to come in on that vision with you And in accordance with that the roles have to be spelled out What do you do in the project? Are you just the guy that has ideas or will you be working in the project alongside everyone else? So that also has to be spelled out. So the thing about remote projects is that They're They cannot be as nebulous as Projects that are based on a physical location, right? Because if we're all working together in an office And I'm unsure about something I just tap you on your shoulder and say hey, I'm unsure about this What are we doing? But if We're working remotely and perhaps we don't overlap the entire day those opportunities are not as plentiful So a lot of time may get wasted just in the lack of clarity and The last thing I would say that's really Important here when you're structuring your remote project is to think about culture culture, I think people think culture is something that you could only really Influence if you're in people's presence, but even when you have a remote team you still can Really determine what your company culture what your project culture will look like and that has to do with things like how are you? communicating with people Right, how are you asking people for things? What does it look like in terms of are you talking to them every day? Do you have a daily check-in or do you talk to people once and then you see them in a month when the deadline Happens so think about how the the culture is going to play itself out and if that will meet your needs So I made a little toolkit here If I knew I would be Taking up this much time. I would have done a much more bulleted. I love slides, but At first I had so many slides and they were like you have to pair down the slide So I have to tell you a lot that I would love to give you bulleted points for Because I have a lot of recommendations about everything here, and I'm sure that You guys have recommendations too since so many of you have worked remotely So if you're working remotely and you're working across time zones What is important one is a scheduling system if you're in Asia, and I'm in Europe We need to be really clear how we're organizing our times so that we have at least some overlap In my in my old position. I had to onboard people that were coming in from all across the world So that would mean that if I had to deal with someone in Asia for example I would have to get up early and they would have to stay up late a bit so that we could have a Significant chunk of time especially during the onboarding process where I could walk them through certain things so Scheduling system is really important, especially in the beginning There are some companies that don't really allow remote employees until they have been working at a company for some years or for a significant amount of time and The reason that happens is because when you have this overlapping time You're able to establish certain things with people they can ping you for questions You can do an orientation. You can do your training with them This is a really important building time So especially in the beginning of a relationship what I would recommend is No matter where you are in the world that you find Period of time and you both sort of meet halfway so that you can have some significant overlap Even if that significant overlap only happens for a period of weeks Or the first couple of months Another thing that's important is a project or bug system so Who here has used a base camp or yeah, Jack Brains, right? So whatever it is it has to be consistent and it has to meet your needs and what this system has to do is to track issues and To track accountability of those issues. So who's working on it when how long are they working on it? What are the important resources that? Need to be logged with this issue Whatever tool you use it has to have those things Another thing that I would recommend is a document bank. A lot of companies use Google Docs for this But you could use whatever works dropbox Any kind of online cloud storage system or even a hosted System, but there has to be a place where you have your virtual file cabinet Chat tool life conferencing so that could be Skype that could be slack for the chat tool for example and Client management and backup information so What kind of tools could we use for like client management? Can you guys what kind of tools do you guys use for client management? Trello, right so Confluence, okay, cool. So it it it there's so many tools out there right now Some people use a sauna right which is similar to Trello in some ways. I just started using Trello it's a great tool and Backup is absolutely essential. You don't want the bulk of your data to be sitting in Any one person's computer because anything can happen to that computer all right, so When you're hiring remotely and you're dealing with remote collaborators one thing to To really realize is is the most essential element of dealing with these people will be trust These have to be these have to be people that you can trust and they need to be able to trust you and How does that happen that happens through accountability? following through and Making sure that you're very clear with each other about what needs to happen So when you're when you're hiring and you're looking for someone make sure that there are people that have a proven track record and The the the next part of that is that you have to have to have to allow them to take ownership of what they are supposed to do so one thing that is Very hard to do with a remote team is micromanaging And you wouldn't want to do that anyway, but it's especially hard to do with with a remote team so This all kind of leads into managing expectations That getting to know you phase In the in the remote relationship is as important as as anything you will do afterwards Because that's the period that you clarify how you're going to be working with them and how they're going to be working with you This is something that is important for your client relationships as well If you're dealing with clients that are outside of a time zone that you have full support of they need to know What window within their time zone can they expect immediate support? so managing expectations of your clients and of your collaborators is a huge part of Successfully managing a remote team How am I doing on time? Okay, good so The happy ending When when all of these things are done you should have a mutually beneficial relationship and And look back on it and have freedom that you wouldn't normally have within a physical location And I think I'm out of time because it's a lightning session. So thank you so much for listening Does anyone have anything else to add or questions? You mentioned scheduling time zones Have you got any tips on how to actually schedule the actual workload of the remote team? How to schedule the workload of the remote How to manage the workload of the yeah You can't see people so you don't get a sense of like when they're stressed and they're overloaded and similarly Okay, that's when they're sitting sitting twiddling their thumbs and don't have enough to do okay Yeah, I have some some ideas about that The first thing is that because you've got this wonderful tracking system bug system or support ticket system Everything is very transparent. So one thing that you should think about is that you're dealing with very smart people So Bob in Utah knows exactly How much work his counterpart in Egypt did? Right, so you want the first thing that you have to think about is it has to be equitable It has to feel fair because when it starts to not feel fair then you have other problems within your company culture That's the first part, but then again Not everyone may have equal capabilities And so you want to make sure that they're supported and that there's adequate training and systems in place So that when they don't feel like they have the are equipped with the tools that they need to do their job that they can get those tools Thank you. You're welcome How do your clients feel about you being on the beach when you're working How do you yeah, how do you focus you mean or that as well But how do your clients feel about it? And how do you deal with that? Well in my position, I didn't do a ton of video Chat so the video that I did was just with our team our internal team and they were like great 10 pictures So that you because everyone understood We had team members that just traveled the world They didn't have a fixed place that they lived most of the time They just would spend a month here or two months here One thing that I will say about being in different parts of the world is this summer I would I was in places that I would was in for the very first time and what that means is that I ran into odd situations where my internet access didn't always work the way that I needed it to work and that's the hardest thing so Always try to go into a situation where you have some certainties around What your access is going to be even if that means that you You know find a relationship with An hotel whether you stay there or not, but that you have a relationship with them that okay I can use your internet or possibly a business that that has a high speed internet connection That is there that you say hey I'm coming into town and things might go out because I was there during hurricane season and Strong wind would be like oh, no, so yeah, that's the only thing that I could warn against and Discipline as well to go and get a full eight hours day Yeah For me the way that I dealt with it when I was traveling is that you know when people travel They really stay sleeping late if they're having a nice vacation. They would sleep in until like let's say 10 or 11 so the way that I would deal with Wanting to go out and see new places yet at the same time needing to get some work done was I'd Wake up very early. I'd start my day at like 5 a.m. And so In the afternoon I could actually just go and enjoy things So it really just depends if you're a morning person use that to your advantage Figure out when is this town sleeping? Because not only will it be great for you to do your work Because you can focus and everyone's quiet and you don't have a lot of noise around you But then you still get to go out and explore Okay, I'm gonna pass the mic. Thank you so much for listening Shall I start introducing Mark and I'm hoping that it's not long that he's got everything going so Mark's a former geography and I CT teacher and he started using WordPress in 2005 He's now a WordPress developer and a business owner of an agency called high-rise digital Fun fact of the day that I learned today that Mark and Keith Keith Devon whose Mark's business partner they both are really tall people and that's why they call themselves high-rise digital So Mark's gonna talk about How computing is done in the UK schools? Take it away Thanks Right. So first of all apologies. This is all a bit last minute and a bit rushed So I was sitting in for someone else So I apologize if it's not quite as polished as it would have been but I'll do my best to get through I'm also having to present on this different screen. So yeah, I'm gonna talk to you about computing in UK schools And maybe a bit at the end is like what perhaps WordPress role in that could be as As you've just heard I used to be a teacher So I was a teacher from 2002 until 2014 So I've got some experience of the sort of thing that you know, this is about And I'm now a developer and business owner and I've been using WordPress quite a while So, you know, why is it important that you guys perhaps want to know about what's important about it being taught in? UK schools or schools around the world as matter in terms of computing and I think obviously as the web gets bigger and starts to grow it's still relatively in its infancy We're gonna need more and more people working in the web and those people are gonna come from schools are gonna come from colleges So what they're actually being taught in there now is probably of good Interest to most of us in terms of what can they do? What skills have they got coming out of schools and colleges? You know, and how can we best use those skills? Maybe if someone that's looking to employ those people, etc So, you know, I think it is important that we have a broad knowledge of what's been taught just like we do with other subjects And the reason why this might be important Particularly now is that there's been a massive change with ICT and computers and the way it's been taught in the UK schools in the last sort of three or four years so pre 2013 The actual subjects was called ICT information and communication technology And there was very little computing actually in that curriculum at all So essentially it was sort of like using computers and using software to obviously solve problems and to do different tasks So previous to 2013 this document was the government document the national curriculum for ICT Which told teachers what they actually had to deliver it in those lessons? So it's a very pretty design But very old now and these are the things that essentially as teachers back then we had to sort of deliver So it was split into key concepts and into key processes So it was a little bit about communication and collaboration So there was a bit about, you know, how we communicate with each other the tools we can use for that Manipulating information so for that we did a lot of stuff with like spreadsheets and using spreadsheets And how to use the formulas and functions in spreadsheets things like that So a lot of sort of Excel stuff in there The impact that technologies had on the world So this when this curriculum was designed it was kind of like in the mid to late 90s when sort of technology I really just started in terms of computers and the Internet So a lot of it was teaching what impact that might have on society and the community And I guess that's still relevant today obviously, but perhaps for slightly different ways in which it's relevant And then the key process was finding information So we had this vast new web that we'd never come across before and how on earth do we use it to find information and find stuff that we want So there's a lot about teaching like, you know, how to search for things You know relevant stuff, I guess and then Let's communicate information. Oh, it's been twice then I'm land And then developing ideas so developing the ideas of things using different pieces of software And it came to sort of about 2011-12 ish and it became a lot of discontent with this sort of curriculum So I've got a few quotes here from some of some people this guy is a quote from Ian Livingston Who is a was or I don't know he still is or he was he has his own games workshop type company And he's also a government and business advisor on sort of technology He also wrote the fighting fantasy books, which I didn't realize and which you might have read when you were little I did you said like roller dice and then you've got to fight like different things with it So that was quite interesting with Steve Jackson. He wrote loads of those So he's a good experience in this and this was a quote from him So he said children have been forced to learn how to use applications rather than actually how to make them and So we just sort of churning out a Lot of people that can just use things rather than making them It says they're becoming slaves to the user interface and they're just totally bored by it That's quite a bold statement I'm not I think there's some children obviously enjoyed what they were doing But I think what he said did have some merit and that we were actually just teaching kids to use Microsoft Office And to use these pieces of software that comes out on computers rather than actually to think about how they were built And can we make our own and what can we do with them? This was a quote from ahead of computing that I used to work with And he says that in the 21st century there is a much greater need to develop learners for the future The curriculum now focuses on thinking about problem-solving skills Whereas pupils learn to create software and not just use it So again, he was quite interested in the fact that instead of just using these pieces of software We're going to teach them the skills and the coding standards and structures to be able to actually create these things for themselves to use And solve problems with So that's how kind of the curriculum has changed really So we've moved from from ICT into computing and you'll have to bear with me now So I've got to catch up on this laptop to see my speaker notes Which is fine and Obviously that that raised some challenges in schools because we had a set of staff that were delivering ICT a Lot of the time a lot of those weren't particularly ICT focused They were from other subjects and ended up doing ICT and all of a sudden they were being told that you need to know How to program and you need to be able to teach this and that was a big big shock So a lot of people included me And so we moved over to a curriculum a computing curriculum Excuse me, so we completely changed the name of this subject. It was got a completely different name It was no longer called information communication technology It was now called computing and even today you still get teachers and educational staff still calling it ICT When it's changed its name four years ago most now So it just shows you how long a culture has to change for it to become sort of ingrained And so yeah, and a new sort of name and this is kind of what the curriculum now looks like It's actually much simpler. There's less documents about what you have to do But it just goes through some of the things that you you know, you need to cover as as a teacher So key stage one on the left if you're not familiar with UK schools key stage one is from the years of four to six Ages the years old key stage two is from six to eleven Key stage three is eleven to six Sorry eleven to fourteen and then key stage four is from years fourteen to sixteen So that just gives you some of the ideas about the age of some of the people that so we're learning these things And you see sort of there's some stuff that we've got coming in here now We saw and and some of it is quite surprising that you look at it So like algorithms is key stage one so like you four years old and Or to six years old and you're looking at algorithms And also the way in which you deliver that is going to be highly customized to those those kids But it's interesting that they're actually teaching that now and they're teaching them to debug simple programs things We kind of like probably do every day and so it's getting that ingrained and using technology to create store manipulate and use Technology safely so that's really coming in at key stage one You know it's part of our lives all the time now So we're trying to deliver that to them, you know very early on which I think it's probably a good idea Key stage two starting to get a bit more advanced in terms of variables inputs and outputs Using logical reasons, sorry logical reasons to explain algorithms So not just sort of using them trying to get them to understand actually what they are etc Understanding about networks and how the internet works remember this is between the age of six and eleven so sort of the latest stages of primary school and Effective use of search technology so some of the things have remained some of the things are still there They're still important for today's world So they're not got rid of everything and safely using a range of software on a range of devices And that comes into some sort of like e e-safety and things like that and making sure that you really know what they're doing online Moving into key stage three I've got design and use of modeling systems So you know modeling the the world if you like or things around the world what happens if we do this what's going to come out You know so forth Understanding algorithms so sorting and selecting and they have to use in key stage three Two programming languages so they actually have to learn some programming language like we do with JavaScript and PHP and all that One of them has to be tech space as well So they actually have to do some proper coding, you know in a text editor, which is quite unique and quite different And sometimes when we first started teaching this the the reaction from the kids was what you want me to do this This is something that you know people far far more important and Intelligent than the media and no no you're gonna do it and you know they got through it quite well Procedures and functions the boolean logic they look at some hardware So looking at you know how computers are put together, etc. And a bit of binary as well And then in key stage for the key stage for curriculum. That's like your GCSE type years It's kind of a bit bit sparse really. There's not really stipulate very much. They just say computer science You've got to do some computer science and You could take that a lots of ways digital media, which is obviously linking into the web and stuff Computational thinking problem-solving again keeping that focus of online privacy So making sure that we're you know, they're fully aware of that all the time And obviously again, they've kept in there that how technology changes and impacts us over time and so on I think when that first came into the curriculum, obviously it was the introduction of technology But now it's more how that our technology is changing over time and how that's going to impact society I mean you think of just social media in the last five six seven years and the change that that's had on on everyone's lives Really, I suppose so that's what they're actually teaching at the moment Bear with me a sec So yeah, I've mentioned that the challenges that this face so in the staffing in particular And a lot of money was spent on on retraining staff Obviously getting new staffing to be able to teach this sort of curriculum course And you got sort of going around schools asking does anyone know how to do this and so on and they were sort of brought in to teach those things And and also software, you know, we Schools had basically a Microsoft license to run Microsoft office because that's kind of what they used There are some other software as well, which actually cost quite a lot of money and actually a lot of this stuff now Could actually be taught for using open source stuff and for free So actually that was a good thing in many ways, but we had to obviously find out what software there was Would it be installed okay on a network in a school, etc. There's a lot of change to think about in that aspect and obviously the problem of expertise, you know Do we know how to actually teach this and that took quite a long time to solve. I'm sure for a lot of schools so Let's have a look at some of the tools and software that they sort of use now to sort of teach The coding sort of aspects of the the course or the curriculum So I don't have you seen this piece of software. It's called scratch It's it's actually an online tool and it's sort of teach the the principles of coding to young people And it's actually quite good fun if you've never used it log on a credit account and have a go at creating some Little games and stuff. He's actually quite good fun. So this is the website. It's an online tool So you you don't have to create an account to create something but you can't really save it if you don't create an account So you can create it's just it's all free And I'm pretty sure it's under the creative commons license as well. I think it's certainly one of the you know free, sorry So this is scratch and I'll just show you what some of it looks like so basically scratch and tries to teach them the coding methods by showing them code blocks like this and these are split up into different groupings I'll show that in the next slide But as you can see it's a bit like a jigsaw puzzle So the idea is that they've got to put together these pieces of the jigsaw to build up Whatever they want it usually correct like a game or something a maze games quite popular We've got to navigate something around the maze and if you if you touch something you get You get sort of a life knocked off or something So you can see we've got ifs we've got Loops for forever's and if else is and repeats and all sorts of things some of the general coding things that you sort of like You'll see in other languages, but it's trying to make it a bit more intuitive and get them to understand what's happening a bit more easily So that's some of the examples of that and the way it works is like this So you've got sort of a graphical interface on the left hand side We sort of build in your game This is a game where you've got to get the mouse from the red screen to the blue screen And if you touch the green walls it's going to sort of take you back to the start So that you're doing that and then the code for that is over on the right hand side So you just build up the code on the right hand side using the different blocks And you can see that they split into different parts like events control sensing operators And you can even do stuff like variables and all that sort of stuff and putting things into functions that run more than one So it teaches all that sort of principles of it So it's a really nice little tool and they really found this fun You know basically saying right, you know concrete a game and you can pretty much, you know do what they wanted and This is a tool called flow all and this is actually quite an old piece of Software, but it's been quite popular. So it's all about Doing sort of like flowcharts of code and showing how it works and you've got you sort of Flowchart symbols to understand what they do and essentially they've got to sort of Process through the different things to make the wheel go around and let everyone through the gate, etc There's lots of these as well. So there's not just that one There's like a traffic light one where they will have to work the traffic lights, which is surprisingly difficult if you've never tried that Particularly when you've got more than two sets of traffic lights So that's an interesting one to do. So yeah flow all this is quite a popular one Bear with me a sec and Then the last one is I mentioned that they had to use a text based language and most schools have opted for Python Which is like it's quite an interesting choice. I'm not entirely sure why I think it's probably because there's quite a lot of information out There on Python and there's some quite easy tools that you can install on a computer That's pretty quick to install and runs without much problem on a network as well So I don't know if anyone's coded in Python It's just do the text based language and you know sort of year 9s and year 10s That's key stage 3 the end of key stage 3 key stage 4 are using Python to sort of build Various different things and solve various different problems and a lot of this comes into like the GCC courses as well Where they've got to produce something using a text based language such as Python I'd love to see them start to use JavaScript Because actually you've all you need is a browser really and a text editor and everyone's got a browser on the computer So actually that would be something that they could perhaps have a look at in the future. I think that would help So the last sort of part oops is like WordPress's role What sort of WordPress what sort of role of we got and of WordPress got to sort of contribute to this and that's tricky one because actually Getting kids to use WordPress is obviously quite a barrier. It's quite a big step up from using some of these tools But you know getting kids to have a go with WordPress There's some really nice stuff in the customizer that you could use with CSS to try and help them understand You know what happens when I do this in CSS if you teach them a bit of basic CSS But also there's lots of things like code clubs that you could get involved with if you wanted to help out your local school They would be absolutely snapping your hand off if you said I want to run a code club And I want to sort of teach you maybe WordPress maybe something else So I think perhaps not just like WordPress's role But maybe our role as the community is that if we could try and get involved and help out You know teaching the the upcoming stars of the future may be in our industry Inspiring them as well to sort of you know become become the next the next us lot sat in this room Perhaps and you know going for that sort of career That's me. Thank you Any questions Yeah Hi our youngest our eldest daughter others in year one at primary school And she's already using scratch junior on the iPads there What's the best way to support at home to encourage it as well? Good question? Yeah, cuz my kids in year I've got one in year one and one in year in year five as well. They haven't used that was as interesting So obviously you think you've got a good a good school that's pushing it a lot I think showing me as a teacher when I was teaching it was all about showing the kids The end product first of all so because I think if you just show them like look at a lot of code It's like boring, you know what what's all that about? But showing them the end product and then saying do you want to make that? Do you want to do something similar to that? Do you want to change it all to pink or to blue instead of what it color is and then getting them to understand How to do that then that could be a way of sort of encouraging them to get involved and And then delve into the code a bit more and to say look, you know, you can you can do this This is how you do it. So that's just you know something to think about but yeah It's really good to see that they're using stuff like that in so early on Any of this I want to rush off to the party Cool