 Can I get your picture and then of course, I need a selfie with you. All right. So how do the world everyone? Thank you for coming to my word camp talk. It's not a Ted talk We're gonna talk today a little bit about your oppress success stories And what success means and what it means to you and what it means to me and and each of us I have a few Just a few quotes to start us off with this is Thelma. She's from Zimbabwe and She came up to me at word camp Europe in Porto and said writing my hero process. They changed everything. I Said to a Tommy war. She said that she ended up being a release cohort a coordinator cohort for WordPress 5.6 She got a job with automatic. She everything changed after that. This is Leo. He's from South Africa um Sometime after writing is your press essay. He decided that he needed to be done on this earth and Other people decided otherwise and brought him back and he attributes his return to The world and life and family to the WordPress community His friends around the world gather around him and said we need you to stay with us But first some of you may be wondering what is hero press? Your press is a blog and It's most fundamental. It's just a blog But we collect stories from people all over the world About how they've leveraged WordPress to make their lives better and there's a wide variety of ways of people have done that There are single mothers working at home and not putting their kids in daycare older folks on their fourth career People in repressed economies making much more money than they used to There are just a thousand different ways people have used WordPress to make their lives better We have nearly 250 essays now it's eight years this month that Hero press has been around We have 27 languages and I've only been doing more than English for two years So there's a lot more than that We have equal numbers men and women right now. It's it's 50 50 exactly With a few others as they choose and we have essays from 59 different countries Check out that map That makes me happy Anybody knows anybody in Algeria? Cuz that Kazakhstan or Mongolia. I'd like to hear about it But how do we define success this talk has caused me more Time-awake at night thinking about it than any other talk I've ever given Because what is success this I mean this is success stories of hero press Is it the success of hero press? Is it the success of the people? Is it what is it? And I I Thought long and hard about how we define success One of them is making our own lives better. This is Tremy Tremy are you here right there? That's Tremy. It's from Meghalaya, India When I met him he was a school teacher And he said how do I become a web developer and I said, what do you know? He said HTML and CSS and I said you should pick up a little JavaScript and And now he is a full-time web developer Because that's what he wanted to do Making others lives better. This is Mark Andrew you'll note that his Place of residence is a skateboard You see that board in his hand? That's where he lives He has a 30-liter backpack and he skated fifty-three 5300 kilometers across the United States living out of a little backpack a tent and traveling on a skateboard As he traveled he would meet good people People who took care of him took care of others Just just good people and he said Do you have a website? No, I don't have a website. I'll build you a website and I will host it for you for free and so now he hosts several dozen websites for people all across the United States and You may notice a little 30-liter backpack isn't gonna hold a lot of equipment. He doesn't own a laptop He builds all those websites on his pixel 6 phone. So if you ever use Gutenberg on a phone That's what he does and he doesn't like he's never used WordPress on a laptop Finding joy in the journey This is Jitendra. He grew up in India went to New York for school and Enjoyed it and thought you know what I need to get back home. I want to go and Chose to use WordPress to get started a new career in India I think he was doing law in New York and he said I don't want to do that So he went back to WordPress and WordPress allowed him to move anywhere. He wanted and he went home So those three things finding joy in the journey doing making our own lives better and making other lives better. I think those are some of the successes of Your press WordPress. I don't know people It's our all of our successes But there's some common ground amongst all of them One of them is self-determination Each of these people decided they wanted something different than they had Whether it's to live somewhere else do something else Be anything else. It's just the decision. I don't like what I have now. I want something else. I'm gonna try free software This is word camp. It's about word press but quite honestly They could have done this with any free software Drupal Joomla php react All of the free softwares the the ability to download something from the internet and change it and build it and And do what you need to with it is one of the fundamental elements of this success of our modern society and then remote work the ability to work from where you are and Make wages from someplace else is world-changing I I work where I work at home in my at my desk in my apartment, but my employers I haven't worked for an employer in my own city in 13 years Trummy lives in Northern India and but his employers in Pune That you the the ability to have remote work is common amongst all of these abilities to change your own lives Change others lives, etc so Originally this talk was just gonna be a bunch of stories because I have stories all day long I could talk into the night. I only have 30 minutes so I have a couple of great stories and then a couple of More foundational stories, I think I Want to talk to you about work camp crazy as a see here No, okay, I see set word camp. He's out there somewhere That's a see if they're on the right left That's Muhammad and non so a see if it's from Bangladesh Muhammad is from Pakistan and they met I think at word camp, San Francisco 2014 and Aseef was quite wary because I Assume most of you know the history of Pakistan and Bangladesh Well, I see was very surprised to learn that Adnan did not know the history of Pakistan and Bangladesh They don't teach it in Pakistan because they don't want that memory and so they They talked they talked long and deep and they learned about each other's culture They learned about each other's history and they became very good friends and they started a company together and And then they started going to word camps together and then bringing friends along So before too long, it's a Facebook camp a group called work camp crazy before too long There's this group of Pakistanis Bangladesh and some Indians all traveling together in a group going to word camps around the world and just growing and learning together and becoming friends and erasing generations of of yuck and At some point a see his father said I'd like to meet your Pakistani friends and It was a big deal because he was there at 71 when everything was horrible and Just the idea of that growth that reaching out that stretching Now Europe I said nothing to do with this I just happen to know these men. They're both done essays. They're both on here of us calm and you can read about that But it was wordpress that made this happen Is anybody here ever contributed to wordpress? Yeah, so He asked me was there gonna be tears I Said yes, so This all happened because wordpress exists wordpress exists because you made it You did this And I thank you so now I'm gonna talk about that guy from Bangladesh, and that's how you're gonna get to know him I was told this story by a friend of mine This young man grew up became a wordpress or a web developer and Got married had some children lived in a very small village in Bangladesh and was not making enough money to survive He couldn't feed his family so he moved to Dhaka alone and Left his wife and children Back home and he worked All the time and sent all the money home and lived as poor as he could so that he could send more money home and Then he got a job with a wordpress company an SEO company. I Will not tell you their name, but it runs with toast and They have a policy of paying positions the same no matter where they are in the world and So very suddenly he was making Dutch city wages in Bangladesh and so he was able to move home and Now he supports most of his extended family in his village because of wordpress because of remote work because of free software because of good people making good companies with good policies and But those stories are rare. I mean the great stories. That's one of the things that makes them great They're kind of rare and special the most frequent stories are much more common in their foundation. Are they the ones that really? build everything So I have some quotes here There's power in the asking. I Said to my friend Allie who's right there. I Said what was what what are writing and I say do for you what changed and she said I made me feel like someone cared about my story Like I mattered a little bit more in the grand scheme of things It helped me re-evaluate where I came from and where I was going and it helped a lot with the feeling of gratitude Now Allie was already using wordpress. I met her at a word camp. She was speaking She was in the community But after writing an essay because someone cared someone reached out and said hi Welcome to wordcamp. Thanks for coming She became part of us a part of the family Michelle for shut Michelle here Nope, she's out there Power in the asking I said I said Michelle what changed for you She said it made me feel like a greater part of the community accepted Seen I wrote it before I was widely known in the community many of you probably know Michelle. She's she does a lot I didn't know her when I reached out It I think it made me feel more legitimate and less like I was outside Looking in It's the power in the asking when you say to someone hi Tell me your story. I want to know who you are. I want to know where you live. I Want to know how you feel It matters Leo Remember Leo he attempted suicide When I asked him he sent me this out of the blue. I didn't even ask him He said I remember when you first got in contact He says you talked me out of her. I felt unqualified and confused as to why anyone who want to know my little story everyone says that 100% of the people I've ever asked her at a story said oh, I don't have a fun story. I don't have a good story Nobody cares about me and they always do People who fall in love with the community build more community. I Reach out to you You reach out to someone else and it spreads it grows This love is not limited to wordpress That helps us raise our children treat our spouse and love our neighbors Wordpress helped me raise my children. It taught helped me teach my children To love all other people to love all of you to go out and reach out their hand and say hi I want to know you and That extended community builds more community changing the world. I'm running out of time Your press is a work of art and Its people are it's brushstrokes every new person that comes in is one more little brush stroke one more I little happy little tree you get the reference and Like all art it impacts people who impact others and it grows and it spreads and it moves on and on and on and on Across the world across the cultures and you are that art You are the success of hero press So your homework ask people for their stories Stick out your hand and say hi. Where are you from? What do you do and really listen? Don't say anything. Just listen. Don't comment. Don't advise. Don't suggest Little questions to probe and help them move on it's good and Then let them know you appreciate them Trusting you with their story. So thank you Thank you so far um the links We have we can you you can be found at hero press network and here press calm. Are you on social media as well? Yes At your oppress pretty much everywhere. Also at toe for one Kenobi pretty much everywhere You know, I actually thought your name was tow for Kenobi for quite a long time. Yeah, my last name is not Kenobi No, I don't mind. Well, it's a very fine as this So we have a little time now for some questions from the floor if anyone has a question for tofa Quick show of hands and I'll be able to get a microphone over tea. Yes, madam over there Hi tofer. I'm Cal. My question is if you're collecting all the stories of others What is your story? How did you get inspired and getting started with hero press and curating all the stories of the people from the community? I will try my hardest to tell it quickly because it's a long great story I was working for a company called xwp and the owner of the company came to me and said I want you to do something special for wordpress And that's all he said That's I wrote back. I said what is that? He said that's your journey to discover and so he He gave me a budget and told me to come up with something great and hero press There's a different idea. We're here press was going to be on television It's gonna be all video and we did a Kickstarter and it failed and it crashed and I thought that was the end of it and I rebooted it as a blog and At that point I was unemployed and it was just a mission of love. I said I just I want to I want to do this I want these stories to go out so we turned it into a blog and After a while Dave the guy from xwp wrote to me and said hey I like what you're doing keep it up and and just been Been a labor of love ever since Another question. Yes, madam. Hi tofer. My name is Ali What is next for hero press do you have any plans to do to build upon it or to do anything different with it in the future? Yeah About a year and a half ago my wife and I decided to grow it beyond Just hero press calm and make a whole network of sites and so we have a site called WV Podcasts, which is all a wordpress podcasting We have a podcast called hero hallway chats We have about eight sites now and in December. I lost my job and The dream is to try to turn your press into a job somehow So I'm building a lot of content getting a lot of trying to raise traffic and at some point in the future I'll start asking the world corporations for money and Get some sponsorship And then do it forever till I die Hey, tofer. Hello. It's Naisha. I am on the podcast with tofer. Oh, yes, she's on how I chanced my covo I wanted to know so I know we can contribute to hero press by writing and you know speaking on the Podcast, what are some other ways that people can contribute to help grow your mission and grow your dream for hero press? There are several things you can do Gain help gain attention talk about it on social Things like that My love language is comments you want to comment on posts. I love that it's rare people don't usually comment on the essays But that's good There's an email list you can sign up for If I get a suitably large email list then I can attract corporate sponsorship and potentially go on doing that forever But yeah, just attention is one of the best ways highlighting it tweet about it blog about it anything Do you have any more questions from the floor? Ah Well, actually, I had a question. Yes, sir. This was so you showed towards the beginning of your Your presentation a great world map with stories from all over the place Yeah, I wonder what sort of elements of the stories Do you think very most from place to place and what strands are the most common because I think one one of their Really interesting things about these regional word camps is that we do get to see things from we get to step back From our own world you a bit and and see my night I imagine this This great map of all these stories must give you a very privileged position to see the way that Wordpress and people are the same and maybe different all over the world. Yeah, I Have I feel like I have a lot of special insight into the community It's I feel tremendously blessed that there is no one on earth more blessed right here of us than me I hands down Things that have surprised me are I like people to speak to their peers and So I'll come to you with my perspective of who you are and say I think they're probably going to write To this other group of people and they pick a completely different group I have several from people who have physical Disabilities whether they're blind or wheelchairs or whatever and I'm like Oh, the blind person's probably gonna write some other blind people about being in tech They're like no, why would I do that? I was gonna write about being a parent in tech Oh, okay, and So I think one of the things that surprised me is how how often I'm wrong About who people want to write to and about Everybody's like it's so Random so interesting that one of the reasons I keep doing it. I guess it never gets boring Everyone is fascinating All of you you're all fascinating Thank you I would commend a good long deep dive into the archives of hero press every story is a surprise Yeah, and there are very many of them there and in a way They kind of chart some of the history of the WordPress community over the years as it's changing. Yes I have some sequel essays and I have several people who say to me, you know I should I should do another one because things are so different now. Yeah. Yeah Something that has surprised me is I it posts every week and I used to think everybody read Every week it's a new issue. Let's go read it and I was I Almost depressed to find out how few people read it every week People who love your oppressor like now. I don't really read it every week Then why do I do this? But then People would come to me and say, you know, I don't read every week But every now and again a couple times a year I get a little down about the world I get depressed people are yelling at each other. Everything's ugly and I just could read 10 stories everything's better Somebody from automatic who's in a position of authority said to me I'm kind of the mom of automatic people come to me all the time say, oh, I had a terrible day at work I don't like my boss. I'm on support. Everybody yells at me Thanks for listening. I'm gonna go read hero press now And and everything's better. And so I'm looking at it more now as a library an archive of our stories and less as a Journalistic publication that you need to rush out and read every week and I'm okay with that Your press is there for you anytime you need it. And like I said, there's almost 250 stories You can just you can read for a long time before you run out Thank you Tofa. Thank you for your presentation today and thank you for hero press. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed