 Thank you for that very fine and very kind introduction, Karthik. And hello, WordCamp Asia. How are you all today? Tired after lunch? I see a very spirited crowd here, and you all make me excited to sort of be with you. And I want to say, like before I start my session, super excited to be here. I've always waited to attend WordCamp Asia. It's been my favorite WordCamp. Second, only to my home WordCamp, WordCamp Kochi and WordCamp Kella. Yeah, definitely the one after that. But super excited to be here. And it's been an amazing, amazing experience so far. I've talked to so many people. I've attended so many exciting sessions. It's been nothing but a joy. And I'm so, so happy to be here. And Karthik has done a wonderful job introducing me. I think he's been a bit too kind, but don't take him too much for granted. I'm just a normal guy like you. So let me get started. Today, I'm talking about a topic, Five for the Future. And I don't want to be too long because I know that you're tired after lunch. The food here has been amazing. I've had a very full lunch. And I want this to be the most chilled out session at WordCamp Asia. I just want to share a few points that I know about Five for the Future. And I can see a few sponsored contributors here and a few veteran contributors here. So if you all have anything more to add to what I'm saying or if you would like to share more, I would love to hear from you as well. All right, without much ado, let's get started. So this is a very famous XKCD gift. Who here knows XKCD? I am a big fan of the web. I don't really agree with some of his things, but in general, some of their comics are good. This is definitely one comic that I can relate a lot to. So the idea behind this is the infrastructure, the web infrastructure today, is sustained by open source contributors. And there are some folks, some volunteer contributors, who have not gotten paid for their work, but the internet sustains due to some people like this random person in Nebraska. It comes off as a joke, but for those of us who work in open source, you will know that this is a reality in the web. So I just want to quickly share this slide. It's from 2022. It's a report by an independent company. It's an open source security and risk analysis report which says that 88% of code bases have new components that have not had development, which poses serious security issues. So the web uses open source software, as you know. And 88% has components that have not been maintained. So why would that be? Again, we go back to many volunteer contributors who have spent their time working on these things. So do they really have the bandwidth to keep maintaining that? It could be one of the reasons why this is happening. So I don't know if you've heard this news. How many of you here have heard of CoreJS? And open source library called CoreJS, yes. So the maintainer of CoreJS, he's going broke. So one thing to note is, including the WordPress project, CoreJS is there in almost every major website, including Netflix. It's a library that is so popular. So the developer of this JavaScript library is about to go broke. He's even considering making his open source software commercial. So we saw a couple of news articles. So what is the root cost behind this? So open source software is built by volunteer contributors, folks who really spend a lot of their free time doing open source, but they're not getting paid for it. What is the solution? Any ideas? How can we fix this problem? Exactly, pay them. So what we are looking at today is it's something Matt mentioned in the morning session today. He referred to the tragedy of the comments. I can see Yogesh here. Thank you for asking the excellent question. Matt explained this very eloquently. He explained the problem, tragedy of the comments. So what we are seeing here is the tragedy of the comments. The problem that you saw here in these news stories, it is the tragedy of the comments. So in short, what tragedy of comments means is that resources, which can be considered as open source software, a lot of people use these resources, but they don't replenish it. People use it, but people don't really contribute to it. So in order for the comments to sustain, it needs input. It needs support. It needs work on. So with that context, let's come to WordPress. So we've been talking broadly about open source projects. Let's come to WordPress. So the co-founder of WordPress, Matt Malinweg, he wrote a blog post in 2014. And this is a direct quote from that blog post. He says, a good rule of thumb will be that all the companies that work on WordPress, they contribute around 5% of their resources towards WordPress. So he identified this as a potential solution to this problem. So the issues there in WordPress, it's very real. The tragedy of the comments that he saw, it's very real. I've heard from so many contributors, especially here at this event about folks who, quote, unquote, burn both ends of the candle. So how can we fix this? We need to pay the developers. And who can pay them? There's so many companies out there in WordPress, including the companies that are working automatic, who gain a lot from WordPress. So companies like them should give a portion of that back to WordPress by either sponsoring contributors or paying their employees to contribute to WordPress. This is proposed as a solution. This idea grew a lot. So some very quick history for you folks who've not been here for around for a while. In 2017 at the Make WordPress Community Summit in Paris, a contributor, Tracy Lefsec, she proposed this idea. It really caught traction. And in 2018 and 2019, what was now as an official program called Five for the Future. So now there's a website. It can be easily accessed by this link. You can scan the QR code if you want to quickly access it. So right now we have a program in WordPress, which attempts. I use the word attempts to solve the problem of supporting contributors. So it's called Five for the Future. So this is what I'm going to talk about today. And in my session, I'm going to cover a few things. I'm going to demystify Five for the Future just a little bit. I'm going to share some ideas for individual contributors or self-funded contributors, how they can contribute to WordPress. I'm going to share some ideas on how companies can contribute to Five for the Future and some perceived benefits that companies can get from contributing to Five for the Future. And finally, I will share some ideas on where this program needs to go in the future. All right, so moving on, let's start first. Let's start with the basics. What is the Five for the Future contribution? So any direct contribution to the work of a make WordPress team is a Five for the Future contribution. So we have around, correct me if I'm not because the number is changing a bit. I think that's about 25. Is that the number, right, Courtney, Angela? How many make teams do we have? Any ideas? 25? 21, 21, yes. So 21 make teams. So any work that you do to any of the 21 make teams, so every single make team has a list of tasks. And when I say make, I refer to this website, make.wordpress.org. So there's 21 teams out here. So any work that is done to any of these 21 make teams, any contribution that you do to any of these 21 make teams, it is a Five for the Future contribution. Now, that obviously brings in the question, this has been a contentious, there's been a lot of discussions about this in the community. But there's a lot to face to contribute to WordPress, like not just not just contributing to make teams. Are these contributions not valid? The short answer here, and please quote me on this, every single contribution to WordPress. We need Five for the Future, we need not Five for the Future. Let's not divide it into those sections for the time being. Every contribution is valid. Every single contribution. Anything that you can do for WordPress is valid. Even if you're talking to your friend about WordPress, that's valid. If you're posting about WordPress in a blog, that's valid. If you're helping somebody build a WordPress website, that is valid. So literally, anything that you do for WordPress is a valid contribution. The thing about Five for the Future contributions is, you can make the most impact through Five for the Future contributions. So if you want to make impact, this is where Five for the Future really comes in. So I have a small chart here showing the impact of different types of contributions. And I'm really generalizing here. There's so many other ways. Some contributions in some categories may have more impact than the others. So this is just a general chart. And please don't censor this formal source. But generally, when you work on make team projects like core, when you organize WordPress events like this WordCamp, if you create WordPress documentation, those have the highest impact in terms of impact on the project. Again, I want to repeat, I'm generalizing. And like any generalization, there's got to be exceptions. And in this case, there are a lot of exceptions. So if you contribute to the WordPress ecosystem, which is creating plugins, creating themes, creating blocks, and there's so many ways you can support and build the ecosystem, I see so many creators out here. So you're really providing a great impact by supporting the ecosystem. And definitely, other contributions, like writing about WordPress or sharing about WordPress, evangelizing WordPress, those have a very good impact on WordPress too. What I'm just saying is that five for the future contributions have the highest impact. So we've seen the basics. We've seen what is a five for the future contribution. Now let's look at how one can pledge for five for the future. So there's two ways that you can pledge. You can pledge individually. So every single person here who has a WordPress.org profile, you can pledge. How many people here have a WordPress.org profile? Can I have a show of hands, please? OK, good. For the others, please go to Profile. I think the URL is login.wordpress.org-register. I should have put a QR here. But you can really just go there and register to create a WordPress.org profile now. I'll be talking about onboarding in a bit. There's some onboarding issues. But in general, you can go to login.wordpress.org to register for a profile. So if you have a profile, and if you are interested in contributing, just go to the Contribution tab over there. And in the Contribution tab, you can set the number of hours and set the teams that you want to work on. Now all the teams are not listed there. You will see that the Plugins team is not listed there. But there are several other teams. You can select the teams, and you can select the number of hours. And you can choose whether you're sponsored or not. And you can submit. So then it will show up in your profile. Now, organizations here, any entrepreneurs that I have here, you can pledge as a company too. So I will be talking a bit about this here, about how companies can support 5 for the Future. If you go to the website over the top, there's a link called for organizations. By clicking on that link, you can fill out your details. And you can create a pledge for your page. So it will show up like this, as you can see here. This page shows a list of the companies that are currently pledged. So at this point in time, there is definitely more than 140 companies in WordPress. So that includes a lot of the folks here who've pledged to 5 for the Future. Now, I spoke in detail about tragedy of the commons and all that. We are in a world where there's a lot of economic challenges happening. We saw a lot of sessions. We saw a lot of discussions about this at WordCamp this week. In that context, other than supporting an open-source project like WordPress, why should a company or individual really pledge? What is the real benefit to it? Why should you really do it? I mean, OK, it definitely supports WordPress. It definitely supports in building WordPress. But other than that, are there any benefits somebody can get by pledging? So I'm going to make a pitch here. Like, really, this is my idea. And you can quote me on this. I believe, I honestly strongly believe that contributing to WordPress can help you succeed. And I'm very happy to say that in this session this morning, there was a discussion about this in Matt's Q&A. And Matt kind of seconded me. So I'm happy that I have some validation there. But really, I honestly believe in this because I personally am a success story. And I know several folks here in this hall who've succeeded because they've contributed to WordPress. Now, I'm going to divide the rest of my session, not all the rest of the session, into two parts. One, on how contributions or pledging can help individual contributors or self-sponsored contributors. And I'm also going to quickly talk about companies. How can contributions help companies? So I'm going to start with individual contributors. Like, first, when you pledge your time and when you spend a lot of time contributing, you could gain a place in this list. So this is the list of the contributors of WordPress 6.1.1. You could work with people from all over the world. In my opinion, this is the biggest benefit that I've gained. I literally work with people from all over the world as a WordPress contributor. So the experience that you gain is immense. The benefits that you, the ideas that you exchange, the opportunities that you get by interacting with all these people, it is literally priceless. This is one of my favorite articles from WB Tavern. And I want to really pitch this because I am a living example of this. Contributing to open source is definitely better than a college degree. I mean, again, it's just an article. It's something that I believe in. It's not necessary that it is the truth. But really, the learnings that you get from contributing to WordPress is immense. There's so much that you can learn by going out there in the wild and putting your contributions out there. So the link is here. If you've asked WB Tavern, do go with it. It's an external article by Justin Tadlock. It came out in 2021. And so this was also mentioned in the talk this morning by Matt. Like, when you contribute to WordPress, your profile, your WordPress.org profile, or your GitHub profile, it really becomes your resume. So right now, at this point in time, the meta team is working hard on bringing as many contributions as possible to the WordPress profiles. So they did a lot of great work last year. And as a result of their work, any translations that you do show up in your profile. Your GitHub contributions to the WordPress repository show up in your WordPress.org profile. So a lot of information is already out there, which really helps you. It helps people identify the work that you're doing. So it's very helpful in that sense. It's not my favorite meme, but it's a reality. And Matt definitely supported me with this this morning. Thank you, Matt. Matt really did my talk for me. But, yes, recruiters definitely prefer. I mean, if you have open source contributions, if you've made some contributions to WordPress or any other open source projects, it really shows your work. So you can write a long resume. But when you have open source contributions, they really stand out. So when you apply for a job, especially in a WordPress company, if you have open source contributions, they really speak for you. And this is a very brief contributor journey in the WordPress project. People start off as a user. Some people move on to become casual contributors. Some people pledge themselves in fight for the future. So when you pledge or when you contribute consistently, you have a greater chance of being a leader or an expert in the project. And being that leader, it brings you real advantages. So in Ali's talk yesterday, she mentioned a lot about how non-developers can become developers. And she explained a lot about how open source projects can also help. So I want to really go back to that session and talk a bit about this as well. Yes. So definitely, especially in this recessionary period, I don't know if you'll go into a recession, but there's definitely an economic slowdown happening. But if you contribute to open source as an individual, it gives you a chance to be a leader or an expert in your area. OK. I am not a fan of bragging, but who doesn't like to brag, let's be honest. But if you contribute, it's not a bad thing to brag. But you can definitely brag about your contributions, but that's on the lighter note. Don't take me too seriously on that. And we've seen how fight for the future will help individuals. Let's take a look at how it can help companies and organizations. So definitely for companies, as I mentioned earlier in the individual contributor slide, open source contributions are a great way to gorge somebody's talent. So this is if you know somebody who makes great open source contributions, it will be a great way to see if they do good work. So for recruiters, it makes their job easier. And as a company, when you pledge people to contribute to the open source project, you have a way to stay updated with the platform. So when you consistently contribute, you know what's happening in the project. You know what's happening in the team that you contribute. So you know what's happening. And if you're in the workplace business, if you're in the business of creating workplace products, you know what's going on, and you can take business decisions that will really help you. And definitely, so many of our run agencies, and for those of us run agencies, you know what your clients want. And you might see some trends, which are really a problem with WordPress. So you can actually speak for your clients to the WordPress project, and you can make any changes that you want in the project with your expertise. And finally, let's be honest, when you're a pledge contributor, when you as a company make contributions, it is a credential. I know so many small agencies in my city of Kochi and in my local community who've actually gotten more work because they were core contributors, or they've been involved in the community. It is definitely a credential, especially for a smaller agency or a company. Because when you're involved in the project, it shows the expertise that you have, and the business results of that is immense. Now, we've seen the wise. Let's quickly move on to some tips. I'm going to be going a little faster because we are slowly running short of time, but I hope to cover everything. As I said, I just want to really cover a primer here. There's a lot more to talk about five for the future because it's a big topic. So to every new contributor here, my request here is to start slow. Especially, let's be honest, contributing to WordPress is not easy at this time. There's a lot more that needs to be done. So there is a chance that you will be intimidated at the beginning. So please don't worry too much about it. Take it easy. Because slow and steady wins the race. The first place to start, whichever team that you want to contribute to, is the team's handbook. Every make team has a handbook. And there's usually a how-to-contribute page. So if you are stumped, start with that page. You can find the page in the team's make handbook. Now, one of the easiest ways to start contributing for any generic make team is to join their chat. Every team has a chat going on. So what you can see in the screen here is the new contributor chat from the core team. The core team regularly runs a new contributor chat. It's a chat specifically aimed at new contributors where you can get some personal mentorship from experienced contributors. So it's a great way to start. So once you've made your first contribution, consider making contribution a habit. Because if you want to really say, even if it's for a small time, even if it's like five minutes or 10 minutes per week, I mean, it's easy for me to say from this platform, it may not be possible for all the teams. But if you can achieve some sort of habit in your contributions, it really goes a long way. And I know it may not be possible for everybody to contribute equally. So there's a bit of disparity there. But still, if that's something that you can do, it will really help you succeed. Let's take a quick look at how a company or an organization can make effective contributions to five for the future. The first thing you need to do is to set a strategy. And how do you set a strategy? Ask yourself these questions. What are your goals? What teams align with your company's values? What skill sets do your employees have? Is there anybody from a team already contributing to WordPress? Where can you make the most impact from WordPress? And how much time can you dedicate? So if you ask all these questions, like if you're an entrepreneur, you can find out a strategy for your company. Again, as I mentioned in the previous slide for individual contributors, start small. Even if you're just supporting one person, like pledging one person for one hour per week, that is a great start. So once you've identified the requirements, start small, get them to slowly start contributing, and then slowly consider scaling up. Some things that you can do is, so I've had a chat with a lot of five for the future companies at WordPress. I would like to chat with more people. But I want to share some of my learnings real quick. So the most successful companies, they share their learnings internally. So what they've learned from their contributions, they share internally. And the successful teams that I've worked with, they really note down their contributions. So what have they done? They make a record of it, and they share it with their companies. The companies that I know celebrate wins. Yesterday, I was talking with RT Camp, and they shared about how they create cakes with the patch numbers in each cake, which I think is a very lovely way to celebrate your wins. Even if it's a core patch or your first translation, celebrate wins. And definitely knowledge sharing, which I think kind of ties into the first point. So once you've reached there, like once you've made small contributions, slowly consider scaling up. Why don't you build a contribution team? I mean, it may not be possible for everybody. The company I work for automatic, we have a team of 100 people who contribute regularly to .org. I don't think every company will be able to do that. But if it's possible for your company, consider building a contribution team, even if it's like two people. I would also like to propose five for the future rotation for employees. So if your company has employees who regularly do other work, maybe ask them to do like two to three ask for contributions every week. It's a great way to sort of like learn. Five for the future or contributions are a learning opportunity. And once you've reached peak contribution Nirvana, consider hiring full-time contributors. So many companies do that. I am a full-time contributor. Companies like Yoast, GoDaddy, Bluehost, they all hire full-time contributors. I can see a few full-time contributors here in this audience as well. So that's something that you can do if you feel there's a case for it for your company. Now, this is one point that I want to highlight, because there's a lot of misconception about this here. The 5% of five for the future is aspiration. You really do not, and I repeat, do not need to contribute 5% to your company. Like I mentioned earlier, if you're a 100% company, even if you are dedicating one employee to contribute one hour per week, that is valid. There is really no five for the future police. Like I can give this to you in writing. There is no five for the future police. You can quote me on this. Feel free to quote me on this. There is no five for the future police. Nobody is going to judge you by your contributions. Really. Please quote me on this, because it's a reality. This project needs contributions as much as ever. There's so much need for contribution. So any small thing that you can do goes a long way. Now, we've seen what five for the future is so far. I'm quickly, solely coming to an end of my session. I want to discuss a few more points of where this is going. So these are some ideas. These are some thoughts or some learnings that I've had based on conversations that I've had with computers. I've been talking to so many people. And these are some of the key points that stand out, which need to be done, or which need to be fixed with the program. So let's be honest. Five for the future currently is a website. You pledge your time. That's it. In order to take it to the next level, in order to take it to a program that really takes purpose to the next level, you need to have more contributions to be recorded automatically. So currently, not every contribution is automatically recorded. Make teams need better onboarding. Or five for the future needs better onboarding. So when a company pledges to five for the future, or when an individual pledges to five for the future, nothing happens at that point. There needs to be a lot more onboarding that needs to be done. And companies should have contribution resources. Like, they really need help. So when a new company is just new to the project, when they pledge their time to WordPress, they need onboarding. And there's so many companies that do good work in five for the future. I see Web Dev Studios here. I see GoDaddy here. I see Automatic here. All of you do amazing work towards five for the future. How about sharing all this knowledge together? And so many individual contributors, they would like sponsorships. Would it be possible for us to share these sponsorship opportunities more in the open? And finally, I've purposefully put it in bold. How about we have a system where sponsored contributors are five for the future pledged contributors who support volunteer contributors? That would be awesome, right? So I've come to an end of my session. I have a couple of quick things that I want to share with you. I have a couple of posts going on in the Make Project P2. If you could share some feedback from it, I would greatly appreciate it. So along with several volunteers out there, I'm trying to improve the five for the future program. So I wrote a post in the Make Project P2 earlier this month in January sharing the five for the future contributor journey and how it can be improved. So if you have any thoughts, I would greatly appreciate your comment. And so we spoke of how volunteer contributors in the project need help. And the last point that I mentioned in the previous slide about how volunteers need help and how they can be mentored. So I've proposed a contributor mentorship program. If you have any thoughts on that, on whether the mentorship program makes sense, I don't want to talk a lot about that. But if you have some time, please give it a read. And if there's any feedback that you can share, I would greatly appreciate that. And with that, I would like to wrap up my session. Thank you so much for being very patient listeners. I hope you've learned something about five for the future. And if you have any thoughts, any questions, feel free to share with me. Here are some resources. Feel free to partake in them, which I hope can shed more light on what this actually is. Thank you.