 Okay welcome everybody how's everybody enjoying the word camp so far? Very good okay I just wanted before I start my talk I just want to do a quick because everybody's been sitting around all day I just want to do a quick thing this is a fun thing I like to do what we're gonna see how far people have come to word camp today to Singapore so what I wanted you to do is stand up and what I want you to do is if you've come like if you live in Singapore you live close by I want to want you to put your hands close together and if you've come from a long distance like from overseas put your hands wide apart so everybody stand up come on I know so like this straight out and if you've come from a long way away put your hands like that if you're very close put that okay are you ready okay now I've got a good photo of my standing ovation thank you very much I get a lot of standing ovations that way okay so let's get into my talk now let's go into presenter mode might be a bit better you're seeing half of this thing all this magic so should be just there we go okay so when I wrote this talk this is the third time I've given this talk and it evolves every time and the reason I wrote it's because I thought I was a bit unique in what my story with WordPress was but as I talked to people and you know you interact with a lot of people with the WordPress community I found out that my story isn't unique everybody's story is unique and it's everybody's got a really good story about how they got involved with WordPress and how it impacts their lives and for anybody who's seen the articles from HeroPress has anybody seen those so Topher de Rossi I met him firstly he's a really great guy he has the HeroPress and he has articles from people and how WordPress has changed their lives and it's really inspiring to see where people have come from and how much WordPress has made their lives better but this is my story and to tell my story we've got to go back in time a little bit so we're going back in time back to 2013 all the way back then now the first time we gave this talk it wasn't so far back and now it's getting further and further away so back in 2013 I was working in a factory there's me a couple of mates wearing the fluoro driving forklifts all that kind of stuff but they decided to shut down the factory and I've been working there for 20 years and that's pretty much all I knew apart from fixing computers on the side and I taught myself a little bit of HTML CSS so I had to reinvent my career so I started looking around for something to do so I decided to get into web design now one of the things I was really keen on doing back in those days I was a very avid gamer anybody here game play games computer games yeah you know how much time you can waste on those but those have got kids who are playing computer games you know what it's like they're on there all the time I was really bad at it I'd play for hours and hours on end but I had to learn how to be a web developer so I had to study so I had to stop playing games that was the first thing that changed a big change in my life I went from wasting six to eight hours a day playing computer games to actually learning about web design and that kind of stuff so I then realized no one would probably employ me so I had to start my own business so I started a company called Data Guru and I started building websites for customers now back then I was just doing everything in plain old HTML CSS with notepad plus plus and then I heard about this thing called a CMS and I thought hmm this sounds like fun so I did a lot of research a lot of research and of course the two three main open source CMS is a WordPress Drupal and Jumla so I did a lot of research to find out which one was the best one and then I thought I'll pick that one and learn a lot about it and of course I picked no just kidding no I picked WordPress I did a lot of research and all the the forums and all the research I did pointed to where WordPress being the best and obviously I mean Jumla and you know Drupal are very good but as we know WordPress now has what 34 35% of the web so it was a good choice so I started learning about WordPress and I found I was going online and finding as much information as I could there's lots of information out there lots of videos but one of the greatest resources I found was on it was called Linda.com I think people know it now as LinkedIn learning but I went on there and I bought and ran Hendrickson so anybody who knows like who lives in the WordPress world there's probably heard his name is very vocal on accessibility and all sorts of things but he's also a really good trainer for WordPress so if anybody's out there starting out highly recommend watching his videos but that really changed how I did things and so I was learning at this point I was learning how to use WordPress I hadn't actually used it yet so does anybody remember this the old manual install of WordPress so first time this is my first time I decided to build out a WordPress site and it was amazing okay that but that wasn't it but it wasn't far from that but the thing was what it used to take me a week or two with just plain text and HTML and CSS I did in like four hours my first attempt and I had a five six page website with images and a menu and everything was working and it was amazing and I thought this is great but then there was a problem this was the point that I nearly broke up with WordPress because I was looking for a business and I was looking for people to pay me to build websites and because I built this site with really little training and not real a lot of knowledge and I built it very quickly but who is going to pay me to build a WordPress site so I kind of thought well this is a bit of a waste of time because you know I'm not going to make any money out of it but I talked to some people and they said look you really can make money out of building WordPress sites so I started falling in love with WordPress and as you all know WordPress is amazing and people do pay you for people to build WordPress sites even though you can do it yourself it's like I you know I can basically fix a car but I prefer to pay somebody else to do it or wash it then I started going to meet up so my phone's talking to me so has anybody here go to a WordPress meet-up or any kind of meet-ups so I found the meet-up by accident I was searching for something about WordPress and came across a WordPress meet-up and I thought this sounds interesting so I went along and there was a lot of people there a lot of people and I'm not a real outgoing person I'm very shy so I went to the talk and I sat actually sat up the front but I sat by myself and then at the end of the meet-up they decided they said oh we're all going to a pub you know to a bar and we're gonna talk and you get to network and have fun and and I thought I don't know if want to do this I'm not the kind of person who can just sort of meet people I was very shy so but I did it and I went along but I kind of felt a bit left out everybody was in their groups and I didn't really know anyone it was hard to sort of get to talk I sort of wandered around and sort of has anybody been in that situation you'd sort of wandering around and you don't know who to talk to and you kind of stand listening on a conversation and then you walk of somewhere else and listen on someone else's conversation so I did that and didn't really get to know anyone I felt kind of a bit left out but I kept going I kept going every month I go to the meet-up and I think people started feeling sorry for me or you know but no people started realizing I was coming over and over again and they started talking to me and I made friends and it was hard at first because I you know for those people shy it's hard to go out and meet people but I did it and those friends that I made back then are still really good friends now today and they're a big reason that I'm standing here right now and then these new friends told me about a word camp now I live in Brisbane and it was a word camp coming up in Sydney and I didn't know what to do I've never been to a conference before never been to a word camp but I saved up all my money and I flew down the Sydney and I went to my first word camp and that really changed my life who's here for the first time for a word camp who's here like who's been to many many word camps yeah so those who put your hands up for the first time expect to keep coming back they're very addictive so I went to my first word camp once again I was very shy I didn't know I had a few people on you but yeah I kind of thing was I made some really good friends I made like a really good friend on the first day I met this guy waiting to like registered we got talking and and we end up sitting next to each other and it just about every talk and you make some really good friends you make some good connections at word camps and you learn a lot of cool stuff probably won't learn much in my talk but in the other talks you'll learn some cool stuff but then I saw these people up talking and this is actually one of one of the friends I've made this is Luke Carvis and he was talking but there's lots of other people talking and I thought you know what one day I want to be up at a word camp and talk that'd be really cool maybe four or five years down the track when I get some experience and I know what I'm talking about I hope to be one of those people less than 12 months later I was up talking at a word camp they had one in Brisbane and one of the organizers said you should talk I said well I don't know what I've got nothing to talk about he said just pick a topic that you're good at or interested in or know something about and he really encouraged me and that his name was Bronson quick and he's a really good community member in Australia he really encouraged me and so I submitted talk and I got accepted didn't get accepted to the very end so I kept thinking I wasn't accepted but in the end they sent me an email and said you can come along and talk and so I went and did my first talk was on child themes and I was nervous and I didn't really know what I was talking about but I did it and I had a really great time so I really encourage you for those who are sitting out in the audience think about when word camps and meet-ups are coming up don't be afraid to stand up and talk that's it's really good experience even if you show I and then I saw all the people who are organizing the word camp but these are all my friends that I've made in Brisbane and you know word press in general and I saw them organizing the word camp and I said you know what in a couple of years time it'd be really good if I could organize a word camp less than 12 months later I was organizing my own word camp with a whole heap of other people it was word camp sunshine coast and it was great it was a great experience it was it's hectic and when you do one you wonder why you'd ever do one because it's it's very stressful and there's a lot of work but it's people keep doing it it's it's great fun so the thing is we're just normal people who organize word camps we're just volunteers and a lot of times it's you'll be sitting around at a coffee shop and go let's do a word camp and that's where it comes from and it turns into something like this so here I was I was now drawn into word camps I was a speaker I was an organizer and also I was helping run a lot of the meet-ups so when I started going to meet-ups a lot of people had helped me and I really appreciated all the help and the friends I made and I kept saying how can I help and and when you go to meet-ups they always say if you want to help you know come and see us and I thought what I don't know what I can do to help but I kept saying if there's anything I can do and one of the meet-up organizers said oh you can help me run it so I said yeah sure and then he said I'm going up like overseas next month you can run the whole meet-up so that was my first taste of running a meet-up all by myself but then I started helping and got involved with a lot of other meet-ups and it's really good to give back and to help the community and to you know make these meet-ups happen and there's the there's a couple of people in WordPress Brisbane and Sunshine Coast and we all have a good time learn stuff have pizza sometimes we have beer and then I realized I was doing something something I had never done before networking not that kind of networking that kind of networking I've been working in a factory and you know never had to do any of this kind of stuff and I was going to these meet-ups and I didn't realize I was doing it I was making friends just having good time but I was actually networking meeting people building relationships and I had that business I'd started and I was teaching myself as I went and my business started to grow because people knew me and they would refer work to me and get you know like it was really great for my business it wasn't what I set out to do it was just a nice side effect so that was really amazing then I got a really strange thing happened I went to do a guy asked me to do a website for him I told him how much would it cost and he nearly fell off his chair and he said do you want to get fit I said actually I do so we had a deal where I'd build him a website and he'd train me like be my personal trainer and I actually got really fit and notice there's something missing there like a big belly so that was that was really good that was a long time ago I've since fallen off the car back to my fat self but but that was amazing and then I needed I realized I need some help my business as well so I've been told about Troy Dean and WP elevation for a long time and I finally bit the bullet and joined the WP elevation course and that really changed the way my business and look look I'm thin again there amazing but yeah I did the course and that would really help with my business once again I had my business going really well had all sorted out and then I went to Word Camp Sydney 2016 and I gave this exact talk how WordPress changed my life and it was really good I was fit I was thin my business was going good and the talk went really well and that's where my talk ended sort of back in Sydney 2016 but I've given this talk a few more times and there's more I was very active with Brisbane I was helping organize I now co-organize the Word Camp Brisbane Word Camp which is actually happening next weekend and I was working well it's a very good photo that's a friend of mine called Dion now Dion actually is one of the lead developers for automatic but basically he builds WordPress and I noticed him and a couple other people that I knew who are working for big companies like you know Human Made and XWP and automatic and they were getting trips to Word Camp US Word Camp Europe Word Camp disc flying around the world for retreats I thought to myself that's really cool I wish I could do that and also heard about job called a WordPress evangelist I thought that that sounds like something I could do so all my friends were going all to these Word Camps and getting paid to go it wasn't like they had to dig into their own pocket and I thought I want to do that and you can kind of see a bit of a trend going here whenever I sort of put my mind to something it seems to happen whether I want it to or not so I wanted to do that I wanted to work for a company that would pay me to go to Word Camps and have fun and out of the blue WP engine came along so I was kind of doing the community thing and working my business and I was at a meet-up and this guy came along said hey would you like to work for WP engine I said sure I didn't think I'd get the job but I did I got I started working for WP engine I shut down my business and I started working for them and I get to travel I've since I've started with WP engine I've traveled to Texas to Austin Texas to Phoenix Arizona Word Camp Phoenix been to Word Camp Wellington where I also tricked them in to give me a standing ovation I've been to London I've been to Limerick Island this is our Limerick team and London team and I've been to Singapore and as well I travel all around Australia and go to meet-ups and Word Camps and this is you know like this all came from the main reason that's happening is because I was going to meet-ups I was being active in the community and I got noticed and it was all because I started up off with WordPress that that one day when I looked into all those different CMS's and didn't choose Joomla I chose but one last thing I'm going to wrap it up really quickly because we are getting close to lunchtime well one last thing of all those things one of the coolest things I started networking more when I realized I was networking I was looking for opportunities back when I had my business and I started going to other meet-ups not just techie ones and I went to one it was like a small business meet-up and it was run by this lady over here called Sally Abba Hart who is now my partner so through all this WordPress even brought me love so that was really amazing because if I hadn't found WordPress I wouldn't have gone to meet-ups I wouldn't have started networking and I wouldn't have met her so in summary WordPress has made me more confident obviously I'm up here talking I'm not shy anymore well still shy but I've made a lot of new friends and I've made so many cool new friends since I've just been in Singapore I've achieved my goals like I kind of set goals and I achieved them now I got healthy kind of and I've got a job that I love so this all adds up to WordPress is awesome and that's it thank you Singapore I'm curious, do WEP engines also have remote work? we do have a few remote people but they're very few we tend we've got a really strong company culture and we like to keep everybody in the office and and you know together and you know kind of keeping everybody happy and healthy and and having a fun time so we I mean as the company's evolving there's probably going to be more opportunities for remote work and we had to I think we've only got like 13 people out of 700 that work remotely at the moment are you looking for a job? no worries yeah and actually my my partner she actually wrote a book called networking for introverts because we're both introverts we like to we're a bit shy but one of the main things with networking and this is a tip from my girlfriend she this is a really good tip when you do go to an event look for the person there's other people in the room who are shy just like you and you'll pick them out because they're standing by themselves in the corner so look for those people and just go up and say hi because you're both shy and you both need that person and then once you've got two people then it's a lot easier to go up to a third person and before too long you've got a little group so that's a really good tip and the other thing is just especially with WordPress and the community that everybody wants to be your friend even though it doesn't feel like it at first don't be shy to walk up and introduce yourself and just start talking the WordPress community is one of the most accepting and most you know giving communities I've ever been in and if you are in the community and if you do like if you regularly attend the meet-up and you you know you've got your little groups of friends when you do have a meet-up just look around for those people who are new and you know standing by themselves and welcome them in and just say hello because you know it really does make a big difference you