 Yeah, that's me So I don't know about you, but I am so tired of hearing that we're in unprecedented times This is unprecedented times. We've never had a world like this before I'm ready to go back to precedent in times. It turns out that's not a real word But it should be because we need to get back to whatever normal is So I want to tell you a little bit about the things that have been going on, right? Have you are you aware that we've had a global pandemic? It's I know right We've had war we still have wars going on earthquakes Recently that have taken hundreds of thousands of lives Supply chain issues. I don't know about you where I live eggs cost about eight dollars for a dozen right now It's crazy times that we're living in I live in the United States So you know we have mass shootings and skills and school shootings We've all dealt with personal loss over the last few years layoffs in our community Cancelations of events this one finally three years later. We're able to be together Absolutely and and so much more and as a community The things that we do together and the way that we can move forward Really talks a lot about who we are and how we relate to one another But we're tired and we're hurting from the last three years, but we're still strong So this is me when I was very young Take a picture. It's adorable So I wanted to tell you a little bit about my story My story with WordPress started in 2012. It's the first word press website I ever logged into didn't build it But I did put a lot of content on there and from that very first moment. I was like Love this it was amazing. I didn't even know there was a community yet. I just loved WordPress. I Started a few years after that freelancing building where WordPress websites for other people. I was Charging not nearly enough money. I was charging It's okay if you laugh $300 to build a whole website. I Know how I couldn't even sustain myself on that But from there things have grown. So I was freelancing for a while and then in 2017 I met give WP and the owners of give to be P at word camp Pittsburgh and Then later that year at word camp Ottawa in Canada And I met with them and I said if you ever have a position open for me I want to work for your company in January of 2018 I started working for give WP and the whole world changed For me because now I was working I already had a little bit of a name because I was doing a lot of speaking and wordpress But the connections that I could make through working at give WP were amazing and This community Supported me in becoming part of a full-time wordpress employee in 2018 I also made the decision to leave a bad marriage and I had to move out of a home that was Very very large old home into a very small apartment on my own and as a disabled person I didn't know how I was going to make that happen I wasn't making enough money to just hire as many people as I wanted to come and move me out So I posted on Facebook and I said if anybody is able to help me move July 25th at five o'clock Please come to my home 18 people came to my home 15 of them from the wordpress meetup in Rochester I Cried then and I still cry thinking about it all the happy tears That's such amazing community of people are like we are there for you We will do what we need to help you move forward and then in 20 What year was it 2020 2021 2021 give was acquired by liquid web and there was this fear Like oh gosh, am I still gonna have a job? There were people talk about acquisitions and they talk about the companies But they very seldom think about what happens to employees during an app acquisition It was very frightening. It was very scary But the company that we were acquired by made it very smooth and and very easy to continue to work Again, it was a community of people. It wasn't that the company had rules and regulations that people had to reach out to us The people within liquid web reached out to us and said, how can we make your transition here easier and I don't mean HR I mean people people that worked at the different at nexus people that worked at liquid web people that worked at the events calendar They all came together to say we want you to be welcome here. How can we do that? Since then I also changed jobs. So now I don't work at give anymore I still work within liquid web, but I work at stellar WP and that transition was made easy for people And when I started working there, nobody in the community knew what stellar WP was and I got to take over the the Twitter account and start to grow that and reach out to people and make that happen again It was because of the connections of the network that I was able to pull together And able to reach out to because people are so receptive in this community Last year I lost my father. I can't tell you how many people reached out to me sent me cards Send me gifts called me on the telephone all within the WordPress community to say I just want you to know you're not alone. And there are people here who love you and will support you through this process I'm a woman with a disability and You may have read a story I wrote last year called five days without a shower on post status about my time at WordCamp US and the fact that it was very difficult for me To navigate the situation the hotel room I had I couldn't get in and out of the shower So every day I was washing with washcloth saying I hope I don't smell too bad for everybody WordCamp, but as a result of that one post Today here at WordCamp Asia. I've had no difficulties Everybody it's been amazing the community the community here in Asia and Specifically the organizers and the volunteers have checked in with me frequently to make sure that I have access To the things that I need and to make my time here not only possible but enjoyable So thank you so much to all of the organizers volunteers and my fellow campers here who have been so kind to me so You can tell that I've always looked for the good. I've always looked for the people in the community that are able to Help me and be a be a role model like Carol you spoke earlier and knowing that she's not she's fearless She comes forward and she says I have this and I want to normalize mental health issues and and Ajit with empathy It's it's amazing to hear people and be able to look up to you both as people that I can aspire to be as well But we also There we go. What is it? WordPress help me. Sorry. I missed that slide. Okay. We'll come on our story. So we as WordPress. How does WordPress help us? Well in 2020 when we lost in-person events, it was devastating All I could think of was how the WordPress community would fracture and we would lose the ability to Commune and become one with each other But I'll tell you what really happened is we pivoted so quickly to online events that my network grew Exponentially because I was able to talk to people I didn't have connection with or the ability to because I didn't I wasn't able to go to WordCamp India for example, but I got to speak at WordCamp India I got to speak at WordCamp Taiwan because I could do it through my computer screen and that Brought our community so much closer together and those were the good people in the good situations that we had there Around things like war around things like Some of the political unrest and things I've seen us pull together and help one another and support one another through Twitter through Plugins that are made to show that you can share your sympathy and your empathy with others Visa travel issues I know people that wanted to be here so much and their visas didn't come through or come to WordCamp US And their visas didn't come through but still people reach out to them through Twitter And they are able to be albeit from a distance part of the community and part of what's happening here Because we create good in this community and we are good So all we have to do to look for the good is look internally and see each other More recently we've seen layoffs. I asked Matt earlier a question about how do we move forward? With positivity when so many of our brothers and sisters in WordPress Have been laid off and are losing their jobs and it's it's crushing. It's It's very difficult to see I'm so grateful that I have a job And it makes me feel almost guilty to the people who have experienced that loss recently But I have hope that those of us at WordCamp those of us in the community will find a way to incorporate those other people into The roles and positions that we have open every Wednesday. I tweet a thread of at least 14 Tweets so if you haven't seen it you're in for a few minutes of reading But I tweet at least 10 jobs a week or 10 companies that are hiring multiple jobs And I do what I can through WP career pages calm Which by the way I had vacation in 2020 during a pandemic I had no place I could go so I thought why not build a website? So that's what I did over that vacation But if you're looking for a job if you're one of the people affected WP career pages calm lists about 80 different websites that are hiring in WordPress or that sometimes hire in WordPress and That's a place that you can go and look for a job Which brings me to the question let's see I push the wrong button What happens next? Right, so I talked about where we've been and how we look for the good and how we create good in our community But what happens next? We have more work to do and that's why it's important that we continue the good that we've done We have to continue to build a CMS that that incorporates everybody the accessibility issues that we still encounter those need to be fixed the Multilingual aspects of WordPress that are still lacking We need to fix those we as a community need to come together and create the good that will move forward that and as a community Continue to support one another through the difficulties the personal difficulties like I mentioned and also the community Community difficulties that we face all together I think we have the ability to do that because we are united and we are determined and we are strong That's what I have for you