 Okay, so I'm very glad to be here. I have heard of your region of the country. I've been to New Mexico. I've been to many states, by the way, and New Mexico is very nice. What? Pardon me? Louder. Okay, I'm gonna go like this. Okay, thank you. I'll switch to Oprah mode. Okay, so as I was saying, New Mexico is my place. I walked here from the nice hotel and I experienced cars. So I felt the car society. I used to live in Dallas for a while. So I felt that similarity because when it's hot, you don't want to walk outside. I got that. So I got here and I started taking pictures and I have about 39 minutes. I'm big on time and I believe that everything should be about some kind of tangible value exchange. You came here, you've been lunch, you're kind of sleepy now. That was high calories folks. Those are big max times a few, right? So it may be kind of stunned a bit by the calories. So I'd like to ask all of you that if you have a question about something that I'm talking about and you were meaning to ask a question or something, just text me right here and I can get your question anytime while I'm blah blah blah lying. Okay, and then what I'll do is I'll stop because I can answer your question because oftentimes what happens is people talk and you can't ask any questions. So I invented this new way to be interactive. It's also very introvert inclusive. You know what I'm talking about? We're like the three excellent extroverts that get up and they're like, oh no, I wanted that question. Direct line here. Okay, so go ahead, all right. And this number will appear throughout the slide so it's not lost but there it is. Okay, all right. So I am a student of change. Change is this wonderful terrible thing because change is always needed but it's okay if they change, not okay if I change because that sounds like work. And one of my favorite quotes by Eric Shinseki is if you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more. It kind of hits you, right? You're like, oh, okay. All right. Okay. Maybe I want to change but just now I had this amazing lesson. I gave you three eyes, by the way, sorry about that. I had this great moment with Jamie and she defined change in a new way for me. She said, I quote, people aren't ready for change unless the alternative is provably better, right? That provably. Jamie, you nailed it because you want to know with 100.0% that this change that's coming down the line is going to work, right? Because every day you've had pancakes at McDonald's and they were awesome. And then one day, like, I think you need a special avocado spritzer, cupcake, mac or whatever, right? And like, no, I don't know about that. That may not give me assistance for the whole day, right? So you kind of doubt it. And if someone, if the piece of paper says, I give you 100% guarantee it's going to be okay, then you might do it, right? But on the other hand, McDonald's is going to do that for you. So, right? So no one wants to change to something new because there's risk involved and people who are trying to bring out change with something new are likely to fail because it isn't guaranteed. Likely meaning not truly likely, but a little likely means likely, right? It's a fail. So that's why I had such an enjoyable time listening to my colleague Ashley Axios over there. Can you get another round of applause for Ashley? That was a, I just kind of went away thinking about stuff and she had 15 or so tips about how to approach how you work as a creative person and work with change, work against change in some cases, but work with change and also foment change. Number six, give space for emotion really caught my attention because when you're trying to convince someone that that change has a high probability of working out, what's the first thing you're going to do? You're going to powerpoint them, right? Our survey shows that 92.8% of the people will come on board or even I was like, oh my gosh, spreadsheets, numbers and like, I wrote a five page white paper. You know, it's going to prove it to you, right? And it's got facts and facts. I was nine and one seven. No problem introverts. It says, thank you for the introverts. Come, come. Your house is in my phone. People want to hear facts because people think facts are going to change your mind. But to Ashley's point, the motion in part is really important. And I'm a big believer in having them all. You know, like the you go to buy food, and there's this item on the menus, the fisherman's platter, it's got the scallops, it's got the trim, I go for that. I love variety. And in that variety, bringing about change, facts, I love facts, but emotions, I love emotions too. And if you might notice, I have this a t-shirt on. This t-shirt, it was designed by Christelle Rossignale. She is on Ashley's team. And it has a, it has a G motif or do you see G here? It's hidden. There's also bunnies here on the edges if we can't see them very festive. And on the back, there is a, you know, the Cheshire cat, Cheshire cat, the cat goes invisible and all you only to see the smile, it's got a Cheshire Wapoo. Do you see it? Like what is that? The Wapoo's hiding from you. And why are these kind of items being created by the automatic design team? It's because we believe that this ecosystem that we're all living in needs that emotional element that goes beyond the code, goes into this sense of belongingness that's so strong to WordPress. And so it's one example. This isn't, this is a new thing I'm doing recently that I realized that one big problem we have in the WordPress ecosystem is we're kind of stuck in the desktop world. You know this thing called a desktop computer? Yeah, good laptop. And everyone's got laptops. Not true, right? Everyone has smartphones. So anytime we spend 80% of our time figuring out a desktop problem, we're losing market share to a world that's moved over to not just smartphones, but every person out there has moved to that. So internally, and I think maybe I'll make a t-shirt too. Who's been to London? London visitors? London? London? You know that's that sign? It says mind the gap. Mind the gap means there's a gap as you're going to step onto the train. And that gap is big. So if you just cannot walk in and do that, you fall. So mind the mobile is a phrase that I like to say as often as possible together with Wapoo because it becomes more friendly that way. Wapoo makes everything more friendly. And mind the mobile is hard if you love desktop. Who loves desktop? Come on, everyone loves desktop. Come on, bigger screen, more ways to navigate, pick perfection. You know, it's so good, right? It's hard to imagine this mobile thing. So I just want to say that it's out there. It's growing. It's already grown pretty much. And it's kind of an issue. Now, I love this quote that success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses. This is by Marilyn Boss Savant. She's like a super men's genius. And I bring this up because I've been fortunate. I've joined Automatic a little over a year ago. And I've had the gift from all of you to be invited to attend many word camps, not just here in the US, but also in Europe, and soon in Asia as well. And people ask me, why do I go to word camps? It's because I believe that all the strength of WordPress is living in the word camps. And the only way to understand it and fight for it is to visit as much as possible. So I'm so glad to be here, you know? It's just a thrill for me. And that's why another example is this t-shirt has just come out. It's in horizontal and vertical. It says wordpress.org, established in 2003. I mean, internet time, that's a century ago, right? But, you know, when you see someone wearing a rat wearing an Airbnb dev shirt, it's like, you know, pretty cool. But establish what year? This is going way back. So we're trying to recreate some of the pride that you all feel. Now, someone can say, well, what's a t-shirt gonna do? Like, how's it gonna change anything? Well, it's gonna change anything at all. But it's gonna open a door, open a door to seeing ourselves in this ecosystem. There's another shirt called WordPress University. I met so many people who have told me that they learned how to code. They learned how to have a trade because of WordPress. And so it's essentially an alumni network of people who are practitioners because in large senses, the tech industry, the tech industry has excluded so many people. If you know the stories about Silicon Valley, that it is a amazing place that has tended to be more or less inclusive than the rest of the world, that's very easy to see from the outside, right? But WordPress has been not that way because it's owned by so many people together through so many walks of life. And that's a huge strength. It's an advantage that very few technology products have. So these things that put a put a label onto it, make it visible, I think are very important. Now, those of you, so who's new to WordPress in the last couple of years? Like I kind of ended up here by accident. Okay, there we go. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, when people ask why WordPress is interesting or important, I point out that anytime you'd like to introvert send a question, I point out that I remember when the net was young, clear members of the net was young. Who remembered, yeah, who remember ARPA Net, all those early server days, you know, there was a time where you couldn't email someone, you had to bounce it off five computers to get to that person and you had to list the computers to route it, right? So it was, it was, it was the old days, you know, and the computers weren't designed for everyone to be used. You know, there was a time where people said the world will only need seven computers, stuff like that, you know. And it's a very complex system and emerged from military needs of communication to kind of accidentally entering into the research world to support academic communication, knowledge sharing. And then somehow it kind of spilled out into the real world. But the big moment didn't happen until 2008, which is the same time as the global financial crisis, but the same time when smartphones started to get traction. And that's when every living person could have access to a high end computer in their pocket or purse. Now, before that, however, before the smartphone revolution, though, it was still the Wild West. And the winners weren't clear. And the network is really complex. And there were many developers trying to free the capability of this network stack of technology. A very complex network that really one single mind couldn't understand. Many papers are written about it. But the chaos of it was interesting. I remember at MIT, I just remember that one of the core networks was called ChaosNet. Because they're just like, whoa, what is this magical alien technology? And we don't fully understand it, but it's working out okay. So this is how the net is, was, and will continue to be. I should note that all of you who work in WordPress know there's this thing called the command line, right? It's like, whoa, I'm down here in the matrix. Right? And it's funny because it looks exactly the same as in the 70s. It's like the same thing. So I was like, wow, that thing's been in there for a long time, you know? And like many things have been done for a long time, you have what's called deferred maintenance problems. Do you know like, or technical debt is a different way to say it, but everyone knows I will talk about London. So there's a statistic I read that 40% of London's water gets lost in the water supply system, the underground supply system, because of all the leaks in it. So imagine you're pushing water into the London homes, knowing you're going to lose close to half of the water. But luckily, technology isn't like water. It's stackable. It's layerable. It's fault tolerant. So the layers are strong. But they're complex. And there's this influential paper that came out in 1999, called the Cathedral and the Bazaar. Who's ever heard of this? Raise your hand. Okay, excellent. Because knowing this is knowing this can open a whole like magic wardrobe door to understanding why this WordPress thing is truly odd and interesting. Because there was a time when technology companies, they're very few controlled everything. And there were freedom fighters, super coders who sought to make free versions of software. And like all these human things we do, we kind of like bifurcate, like, I'm gonna go this way. I'm gonna go this way. Well, I'm not gonna follow you. I'm gonna go this way. And suddenly, you know, the crowd separates, right? You know, they're getting kind of like sci fi movie. Oh, you're over there. Yeah, I'm over there. I'm here. Okay. All right. Yeah. There was a small group that believed that they could create a better version of the UNIX operating system. Having a small group, small team, develop in privacy. And every once in a while, they share the code for everyone to compile and run. That was the GNU movement. And then there was this man, Linus Travalds. He thought maybe what we'll do is we'll start writing this UNIX clone. And we'll let anyone change the source code, like anyone, anyone. Now, of course, people over here like, I ain't ever gonna work. That's not gonna work. This proven that this can't work. You can't just open the whole thing and say, let's go build it together and have a party and boom, it's going to win. But it won. And why did it win? It won in large part because it mirrors the system it's in. The system itself is too complicated to understand by one, six, 10, 20 people. But a collective of hundreds and thousands of people suddenly becomes possible. And when you think about the history of software systems that succeeded like this, like Linux, WordPress is one of the famous canonical examples of the bizarre approach to development, which sounds like bizarre, right? Can you imagine like, okay, let's all build this up together? It's not possible, you saying, but the technology itself, the underlying network technology itself affords the possibility. But it's the people that fill in that gap. And the people are working with everyone else's best interests in mind. And that's, especially in this day and age, it's pretty special. That's a coming to word camps. I can just see it all over the place. Because a bizarre is looks like this to someone, right? It's messy. It's impossible. Now, when you think about the cathedral versus the bizarre, however, people will jump to conclusions. Right? It's like a cocker Pepsi. Is that dangerous here? This is Dr Pepper place. I never know where kind of part of the country. There you go. 314 says WordPress University School of Inspect Elements. Thank you 314. So some people believe in the bizarre. They are the true open source warriors. Some people still believe in the cathedral. Companies especially believe in the cathedral, right? It's like, I'll give it to you. When I think it's okay. And bosses, bosses, bosses says it's okay. And now it's okay. And don't you dare open it. And I'll come back and I'll get you give you the next one, right? So who is it good for? Which side? Now, here's the problem. Remember, I said how like 2008 happened and this thing like this phone thing became a Star Trek communicator device that every living person can use even like a two year old or one year old, maybe like dogs using things nowadays too. So it's pretty amazing, right? And it became lucrative at the same time to and money was infused into the ecosystem. And so what happened is open source ecosystems didn't get the level of funding that the cathedrals the companies received. And so we can say that's okay, that's no big deal. Because before 2008, there weren't that many computers. You can still kind of compete. But after 2008, we got smartphones and everyone has a computer. This looks like good money. So imagine the spigot turned on once again, even stronger. And that spigot not hitting the open source world. What happens? What happens is this experience gets better. Not just like a little better, like a lot better. Because it's trying to solve regular people's problems. When I said regular people, I mean, like Kim Kardashian, she's amazing regular person, right? She's gonna sit here and like, you know, command line and like, you know, hit control. See, I mean, she's busy. She's got her like stuff to do. Right. So the consumer side, high investment, targeting people who don't want to sit on these systems that we have gotten used to on desktop, found ways to make a lot of money off of them and pour it back into it. Making experiences that a lot of people love, like, who loves Instagram, how it feels. Come on. It's nice, isn't it? Yeah. That's an expensive system. Right. Like who likes typing stuff into Google fast, huh? Expensive system. Right. So a lot of money that put into this, you know, a lot of money, a lot of money, a lot of talent came into it. So we have a problem in that the bazaars are not competitive with the cathedrals. And the problem with the bazaar, if you design by bazaar or called designed by committee, bad stuff happens. Right. It's like, I think it should be like this. I think it should be like this. I think it should be like this. And they have to consensus compromise. In the end, there's no opinionated experience. And so I don't believe that the bizarre model is a good way to create a coherent experience for the large majority of people. It requires to what Ashley was saying, understanding who this is for, and recognizing that who this is for, maybe five types, 20 types, a thousand types, and then just choosing which ones to be good at, and just narrowing in on an experience. And mind you, this is costing time, it's costing money, that a lot of volunteers don't have to put it to. So the theory I have, going back to the idea of proving something to you, I can't prove that this is going to change. But I have a strongly held belief that it can. My strongly held belief tells me that right now, we're like big, gigantic bazaar, any tiny cathedral. I think we have to make that what they call Cathedral Mosque Temple SIG has to get a little bigger to be able to more clearly define the experience needs of more people. Now, why is that hard? It's hard because any time introverts. It's hard because, you know, today, like I was saying, like, who's been to a Google site before? Google All right, how's the food? It's good, huh? And that's a good mind was good. The food, yes, the food of the Google. Okay, who's been to Google site? Food's good. It's like heaven. You know, it's amazing. This is Google's hiring site. So anyways, recently, this article came out on Google. And the outline was that Google is really good at design. Google is really good design. So and when I joined Automatic, and Matt invited me to come on board, and I was lucky to have Ashley come on board too. It's exciting. He said, you know, I Google is really good design. Can we be good design too? And I said, of course, because WordPress was the best designed alternative. I use WordPress in 2004, 2005, 2006, who remembers when it was the best design solution? Who was there? You remember it, right? It was the best solution. It was the best is oh my gosh, it's so much nicer, it's much better designed. Okay, so what I like is that there's old DNA that we have to reawaken. Don't worry, it isn't bad like Lord of the Rings. There's no like, you know, scary stuff hopefully. But we're gonna reawaken that potential. So I believe tomorrow, sometime in the future, the outline will say WordPress is good design for all. And me and my colleagues are working to imagine how we can execute together as a global community to see this happen. Now, you might be sitting there saying that sounds like a great story. Sounds kind of good. Maybe I want the t t shirt. What color do you have? You know, can you ask his questions? The reason why I believe that the we will we will be able to catch up in some shape or form an experience side is because our parts are good. It's a parts of good. Like I've been traveling the different airports along the way here. And everywhere I go, I get a salad, it's got lettuce, onions, chicken, next salad, lettuce, onion, chickens, right? One costs, you know, $19, one costs $8, but they're all kind of the same. Good salad, right? But you need good ingredients. So a good example is by one automatic designer, I want to show you this. This is an example he made a couple nights ago as a proof of concept I want to show you, which is, you know, everyone's like loves VR AR, if you're tech person, like, Oh, my gosh, you know, I just got this the next version of goggles, whatever kind of thing. This is a simple a frames a frame VR based system talking to the rest API. By the way, the rest API was a key investment on the WordPress end, making it possible for any service to talk to a WordPress site through a separately written program. And this is talking to a website, a WordPress site right now. And this is a post. And if you click on this and put on the little goggles, you'll see it in 3D. And you can move around. Now, would you ever need this? Maybe the future when these things switch over. But at least it tells you that we've got the right stuff. Right? We've got the chicken for the taco salad. It's right there. Okay. And I want to show you this, but I can't play the video very easily. So I'm going to see the for some reason, the USBC thing takes over the audio. So you can't hear it. But one thing I've been doing with my colleagues is role playing. Who knows role playing role playing or you like play? Okay, so have you noticed that if you own a voice enabled device in your house, you're talking to a computer. We noticed that like Alexa, whatever, watch out. You know, you're just talking, right? So I realized that we can make up a lot of conversations. So me and my colleague Bob pretended that I was Alexa. I don't make a good Alexa, but I'm pretty good. So I was going to show you a simulation of Bob talking to Alexa and putting posts, changing things around. And when we saw it, we're like, Oh, the parts are already there. Do something like that if we wanted to, if you wanted to. So to my note that the lettuce is there too. So anything is possible for the future. But we've got to solve the present. We've got to solve the present. And we can't get distracted from the technology. So who here is a developer? Right developer? What do you love the most? New technology? I mean, I'm with MIT. So I'm with you. I love stuff, the new stuff. It's good. It's good. Good. The problem is the new stuff doesn't solve the present day problems of experience debt. And the new stuff is designed to appeal to a narrow audience that loves this stuff. So you might think it's the most important thing in the world. But the average person isn't there yet. So how do we target the non technical person to grow our success is going to require back to the example that I actually showed this morning of narrow focus around who we are serving to be able to design full experiences for them. Now, how to do that? Focus on this for all thing. This for all sounds pretty big, right? It's like that's a little too big in center for before all. For all is cool. Because the for all of the world has changed. You know, I was lucky in my early thirties to be the liaison from MIT to an organization called AARP. As my early thirties, I was like, What is this thing? You know, I go to Washington DC every other week. I visit this two blocks in the DC, gigantic towers. This is AARP. Wow, it's cool. And walk in at the most advanced HD studio. It was so far ahead. And they predicted that a large number of people in America and the world were aging at a rate that was different than the past. Because number one, the boomer generation, number two, medical science is prolonging our lives. And they kept saying to me that this is a whole group of people that will want to be engaged in something. So when I say for all, or when I actually says inclusion, it includes this opportunity that this all is a whole new all. And there's a big opportunity there. Oh, questions again. I'm a pause for a second. 505. Do you believe WordPress and open source in general can survive in a post net neutrality world? How do you see creativity flourishing when corporate interests will control the dissemination? Well, number one, I believe that if systems like WordPress, which which is one of the largest, if not the largest of its kind in this category, it needs to survive because it's holding up the open web. So it isn't a matter of it isn't matter if it'll survive, it needs to survive not just for us and WordPress, but for what all you know, it's given gives freedom to people. So I think that's what we wake up in the morning or come on a Saturday, folks, it's a weekend. It's important thing. And how do you see creativity flourishing when corporate interests will control the dissemination? Well, I want to flip that around. I'll flip it around a bit. So, so there's a thing called the open web, right? Open web means the web. Right? You type in HTTP, you see some stuff is open web. There's also the dark web, I know that but you know, the open web and close web is like Twitter and like the walled garden Facebook, etc. Right. So I think one key that we're already seeing it already. And our designers recently posted about how to blog better how to blog to get a better traction. And the common theme was, Hey, actually, engagement isn't high in the open web. So we have to send our traffic to the close web, which is good, because the web is bigger, right? And I think sometimes in the open web, we think we're beholden by the closed web. But the closed web needs that. And when we when we get them back over here, we have a chance. So I think the two are linked. I love open web close web crossover. Five zero five. Does this mean WordPress will take more control of the admin experience more consistency? I don't really know. And I say that because WordPress is not owned by any single individual. But you will see us sharing everything we learn how to design for people as automatic design in an open source way. Like Ashley shared the inclusive design checklist, that's open available. Everything we do, we want to do in the same network open way. That's right here. Perfect. So this list, this list is available on design.blog slash inclusive. Oh, what's this headline over here? Yesterday, a friend pointing me to this, this, this site, actually this page on courts. It says your company Slack is probably sexist. I thought this was an amazing article. So just Google it later if you haven't who's read this article before who's read it. It's just amazing. But it really kind of like helped me understand certain patterns in Slack and a whole new way and not just for women also for men as well. So just check it out. But it's the fact that a lot of systems and technology weren't designed for people. They were designed for technologists. And this narrow mind in this is meaning that the products themselves are not very good. And so what that means is this room for improvement, which means this room for growth and opportunity. So how are we gonna so how are we gonna like imagine a world where there's better design as area five five five astus now. We're betting and actually mentioned it also Muriel. Muriel is a project that we have launched to create a common vocabulary for how we design on the internet and how we make products more inclusive, how we craft them with different kind of design constraints that involve mobile. And also, how do we make them things that are truly emotional, delightful, but driven by data based decisions versus I think this is a really good idea. I'm going to go do it. Have a hypothesis and have a hypothesis test and go. And Muriel will ideally provide resources that are cathedral like and their prescriptiveness for more people to use. Think of like, you know, Android material design. It's kind of a useful reusable standard. So like that, with more guidance around inclusivity and more relevance to open source and the open web. Okay, we're good. Alright, questions over here. 917. What are some of your ideas for the future of design inclusivity and branding and WordPress? Any specifics with timeline you can share? I thought that if you if you Eric code 917 starting prefix 282, haven't seen Ashley's talk or you're in the other room, please watch that to get a grounding a foundation of where we're headed in terms of a timeline as fast as possible. But as you know, speed doesn't work all the time. So it's going to happen organically. I apologize. This is going to happen overnight. But if it did happen overnight, you'd probably hate me. So it's going to be slow, organic, natural, normal, with a lot of failure along the way, quite frankly. Because when you think about everyone loves SWAT, some managerial sort of like framework, like one of many frameworks. But I like just the strengths and weakness part. And when I think about how we are at craft, we're really great at craft on desktop, and all the browsers, but not great on mobile. Those are very hard problems, mind you. The data side, we have a hard time figuring out who designed for. Yes, two minutes. Yes, thank you. Lastly, an inclusion side, there's all kind of inclusion stuff. And it's really good stuff. And as you dig into it, from an experience perspective, it's so exciting. Because it means unlocking these technologies we use for so many new kinds of people. All right, we have two one minute left. I have questions left over here. Let's see what I was going to, I think I got there almost everything. That's good. That's good. If you're asking what mirror will look like, it will look something like this. Simple graphics to explain different faces of how you design. Because design in the old days was designing icons, picking colors, and things like this. But design is more about a process and a full experience. And once that kind of thinking can enter the WordPress ecosystem, we'll slowly start to see experiences improve for targeted people groups. And once the competency sets in, we'll start that road to positive change, I believe. Okay, I'm on time. I love being on time. Thanks so much for your attention, everybody.