 Yeah, oh Yeah, let's see Well, that's really loud, right? Yeah That's maybe we can do it right on them. Okay, perfect. Yeah So help me again like I need to go back and forward. It's like this And could we please make the notes a little bit bigger because I can't read this This is really smooth Can it can it be a little bit bigger? Is that possible? Yeah, this is so I think Sorry, oh the final line is not there. You mean I think this is let me click a couple of slides and then see I Know a lot by heart of course, but I just sometimes Need to have a peak and I think this This will be alright, but because it's like in black mode. Let's see if it's My highlighted words are there. It's now all white. I guess Yeah, I will I will try to fix it I will free real a bit But it doesn't sink It seems to be different presentation now Okay, let's see show leadership show leadership. Yeah, that makes sense but this is them and So so this is the current slide and this the upcoming slide. No, it's the other way around This is the next page. Let's see Yeah This is what I'm talking about and this is coming up, right? Yeah Yeah It's always a little bit different, right? And if I want to go back is it this one Yeah Let's see how This works Now if you look at this, oh, yeah, it needs to Need to have some time right to adjust I Need to make sure that I watch this and not that way because you come to stand like this, right? So car values. Oh, yeah Yeah, I get that Okay, I think I can work The light will be this. Yes, so don't see much people. Maybe that's a good thing, right? You need yeah, it's well, it's really in in your eyes It is a bit. Yeah, I think it's all right, but maybe it reflects on my classes a bit But can it be a little bit because I you it's so bright Yeah Because then it also Yeah, this is this is better Yeah, because you can't So I think I have a really loud voice. I don't know. I always when I'm really enthusiastic I think that's wise for everyone Because I will be here like going off and I don't know If I would open it would be like this. Good morning everyone like it's really loud It's okay Okay, not too loud Okay, perfect Okay, maybe it's here in this place in the on stage Yeah, I'm just now. I think I can leave the only thing that be For a next event if the is if it's in the dark mode Then it doesn't have any point of highlighting words Do you get me? Yeah But otherwise it will be or yeah, if we can easily change it, maybe that would be easier Yeah Yeah, when I and I'm I have a long talk So we need to figure out the end a little bit But if there's no time for questions, that's all right people can come afterwards Yeah, not there. Yeah, I know that I will I will have a look Yeah Okay, and then yeah, and then the time is up and then the Q&A can start right So after times up the Q&A starts right. I'm right there. Yeah, okay If it's not possible, then it's not possible, but then Yeah, but that would take too much time now Yeah, I will I will try to That's all right Maybe they can put it on the start slide then because it's almost then Yeah, yeah, so let's get the first slide up then Yes, and then it's it's ready and then we Right Yeah, yeah Hi nice to meet you Okay, all right Yeah, I guess so Yeah, so welcome everybody Thank you for bearing with us as we have a little bit of a delay this morning But thank you and welcome to track two and happy International Women's Day I'm Tess from WordPress VIP I have the pleasure of introducing you to Chaya Osterbroek and I probably said that wrong, but I do I am part Dutch So I tried her talk from independence to integration the journey of being acquired Chaya is the COO of Yoast a dedicated social entrepreneur and a passionate advocate for authenticity and equality All things that I love as well She's here today to give us a firsthand look of the acquisition process and how she became the last woman standing from the Old board of her company. So let's welcome Chaya So good morning, everyone Good morning, I do it again. It isn't working. Oh, yes, there we go So, of course, this is me My name is Chaya Osterbroek and I am the last person standing at Yoast from the former shareholders team And I fulfilled the role of CEO within Yoast. I consider myself an entrepreneur I had several businesses. I was into the fashion industry. We produced lovely leather bags with organic materials I was the owner of the Center for Young Entrepreneurship Not for young in age, but young in entrepreneurship, of course, and I consulted for the Dutch government so For the first from the first moment I joined Yoast I was flooded with a lot of stories about this awesome WordPress community And I think you see in my background a couple of familiar faces, of course and the world of WordPress Was always appealing to me because I love the idea of open source, of course, but I often wondered How how people actually made money and that was not something that people talked about really But luckily luckily I had some some awesome colleagues who explained that to me because we all make WordPress, of course We do that by voluntary, by volunteering and of course there are those companies that support or finance Core teams, for example, like we do at Yoast and within the new field group So today I will take you through my story and first I will tell you why one can decide to to sell then of course I will tell you on how that's done and Lastly, I will tell you what it is like to be sold What implications are there and what challenges can you come across? So let's start with the why in general selling a company can be a strategic part forward for several reasons Of course market entry or expansion The clicker and I are not in sync Not clicking Access of course to tech and talent And you can look for a competitive advantage and Of course the diversification of your business and entering new business areas So each acquisition is of course unique and the decision-making process can be quite complex and involving a lot of different stakeholders, of course, but the ultimate Ultimate goal is to ensure that the acquisition not only makes financial sense But it also should be a strategically put to position your company to grow and to create more success So let's delve a little bit into my story how I became a shareholder at Yoast Which wasn't of course being a part of this acquisition and Process so the journey became just before the COVID hit I switched places in the Netherlands and Then and because of COVID my business in India rapidly closed down So after some reflection, I decided to Look for a new opportunity in my new neighborhood And that's where I came across a beautiful company called Yoast and they were looking for a position at support And I Replied and luckily They hired me and in that process I Received a lot of complicated questions for a person you might know and that's taco Who really made it really difficult for me, of course so with with China opening rapidly the manufacturing it was clear for me I needed to ensure that all of the employees of my business in India were taken care of and then I could fully focused on my new adventure and Weeks into my new role as a support manager something shifted in the board of Shareholders and that prompted me to be more involved in The Yoast business so I approached Yoast America Maybe a little bit bold and I told them I should be your next shareholder I should join your board of directors and I was expecting that they would probably laugh in my face, but luckily they didn't and Of course, I'm still happy about that as well So as an entrepreneur, I knew that it was really important to put yourself out there because otherwise no one will notice you of course So a new chapter began a new chapter began. Sorry a new chapter began and After do my own personally do the diligence of course this chapter began. I Need to be in sync with my slides here and the clicker. I'm sorry for that So being weeks into my role as a shareholder We noticed that The COVID COVID hit was of course a paradigm shift for all of us But it made us worry about for example the exchange rate and that is far less fun than coming up with beautiful product ideas and scaling and growing your company of course, so I was told that the WordPress ecosystem already had changed over the last couple of years and a lot of companies had bigger companies behind themselves and we were still bootstrapped, so you can imagine That in that kind of situation it becomes became a little bit stressful at some points. So we decided to proceed proceed with looking for a bigger company behind us We assumed that Joe's would be still of interest of a lot of different companies Because in the past Joe's the Marika the founding partners of of Joe's had several had turned down several offers so What's next? So I will dive into what how to best approach such as ill I Share a couple of our steps with you So if you consider yourself a professional, I would advise you to Search for a really good banker that will assist you in all of this process and Together with the banker we did all of our preparations of course and soon in this process We already learned that we were still of interest to a lot of parties And this also taught me that when you grow really quickly from start up Maybe even to a skill up. It is really important to structure everything to have the foundation of your company really structured and That also gave me there the opportunity to of course have in a kind of pressure cooker setting to even have more knowledge About all the details that were coming on in our business and actually how awesome it was I was already excited, but now I became even more excited of course so as Shareholder's team We were thinking about what kind of criterias We will yeah check. We will check the the the potential buyer So one of the most important things for us was our core values The new investor should definitely believe of course in open source That was really important for us Secondly, we didn't want a financer that had Background or was financing in the war industry or even child labor that was not an option for us so If you all other areas to consider in this process Sorry, is the it's not a sink okay, so There are a lot of areas to consider in this process and it will be Too far stretch to touch on everything of course, but the first important thing is of course your strategic alignment so the first first step is Evaluating how well this acquisition aligns with your company's strategic goals This includes considering Whether the acquisition would help the company to make this the biggest impact For your products. We of course, Joost was SEO for everyone. So we wanted to skill that Secondly a Financial analysis is really important. So you need to do with thorough financial evaluation and you need to assess if the bias if the buyer has a financial stability and That involves in looking at the credit wordiness the cash flow the profitability and the overall financial strength to ensure that your buyer can actually complete the transaction and Meet any post acquisition obligations, of course and luckily as I mentioned before we had this awesome banker to assist us with this as well second Secondly, what's really important is of course assessing your the cultural Compatibility between us and them and you need that for a successful integration and maybe like every entrepreneur was saying our Culture is unique. We really take care of our people. So We thought that it was important to see how that matches. So one the second point in our criteria list was this cultural fit of course and We know on forehand that if you mismatch that that can lead to other issues in the upcoming years so as I mentioned core values are really important and one of the things we really focused on was equality Because within our company, we made sure that everyone has the same opportunities to advance and make an impact of course So diversity in leadership. We looked at the division between genders and the different backgrounds because Yoast is built on equality think of our care fund or a diversity fund And you can imagine that we asked all of these kind of questions and all of the conversations we had So back to the banker in his team. They had listed a number of potential partners and We and we agreed to talk to several of them So stepping in the world of private equity venture capital it's a totally different environment and it and it brings you also some different perspective to your business as well and we had several meetings with a lot of different people and Every time there was a different angle of course to the meeting that we had so after a few weeks we had a Smaller list which we decided to proceed with and there it is already on the slide Um We were eventually acquired by new fold digital and you might not know that name But I am sure that you know blue host and together with blue host and Yoast We are still aiming to do the best for our WordPress users, of course so What's next after acquisition then you need to announce that to your workforce and I can tell you there are a lot of emotions that come to play because you are going to make changes so After all these preparations and countless conversations the moment was there we announced We announced to almost everyone this message in person and I need to speed up a little bit. Sorry So what we what we did we called up people we couldn't do a big town hall Because it was summertime. It was during the holidays. So we ensured that we had reached almost everyone of course and We had a lot of different reactions Some people were really surprised and some people also couldn't actually follow that But we started to talk about the why why we did this sale and it was really important Of course to show leadership We communicated that with a big company behind us. We wouldn't be as vulnerable for example the exchange rate We will have more room to experiment and We could even create more beautiful product for our customers. Is there another way because Okey-dokey Yeah, so of course customer reactions And Client and market. Yeah, so yeah, so not only the employee reactions But of course you receive a lot of reactions from your customers from the market And I think it was a bit similar somewhere surprised and somewhere Really thinking that this was the most logical step to do and to even grow our impact And of course this comes with a lot of Should I point somewhere else? Okay, there we go It comes with a lot of integration Challenges so after a merger organization often find a lot of these kind of challenges and that can significantly impact your success and efficiency So and we were no exception There is a lot of information available about merches and how you should go about that But I can already spoil you you will run into the same issues Everyone is talking about you can prepare yourself But people will behave a little bit different a or maybe unique So I will dive a little bit into the Importance of Hink integrating culture and then I need to skip a part because we are a bit more delayed so Okay, so Change is of course hard and people will always struggle to find their ways in a new shared future And I say new shared future because it's really important to integrate cultures because a well integrated culture is essential because it directly Impacts or effects your internal health of your organization and also its external success a well integrated culture Not only enhances employee satisfaction But also productivity and it also Contributes to a sustained growth of your business and a stronger market position And of course it is not a sink people. So I will now try to free will a little bit more Of course you want to prevent that You lose customers and if you And a very important thing here is also you need to be clear To your people as well. So if you don't share a clear vision your employees start to Making decisions that are maybe not aligned with a bigger goal, of course here And of course they might leave and you don't want to have that so it's really important to keep the team together So it could also lead to working a bit slower, so it will reduce your productivity as well and Eventually it can lead to low spirits and maybe higher costs So you we were of course wanted to prevent all of those things and in my view the key focus should be Boosting and boosting employees morale and keeping the team together. Why because the heart of A successful company is the culture that uplifts these people where there are where their beliefs are Accepted and where there is where inclusivity is not just the buzzword But an actual practice So the That the environment doesn't just make people happier at work. It makes them More engaged more productive and more committed to the organization and let's face it If we if you don't catch your culture, right you list a lot I Staff on owner lower morale and a team that just not in So how did we go about that? So we rolled out a crystal clear communication plan. We didn't just send out emails We met everyone face-to-face as I just mentioned we opened up about the decision to join hands with new fold We shared our thought process and The why behind it and these weren't just rushed meetings No, we actually invited feedback as well and we made sure that there was enough enough time Okay, I will try that Sorry Yeah When we think about how we unified cultures can boost an organizational efficiency and Productivity it's all about streamlining streamlining how we communicate how we make decisions and how we get some things done So imagine a workspace where everyone regardless of the background Works together in perfect harmony and this isn't just good for the atmosphere it leads to better teamwork and At least a better teamwork more innovations and effective problem-solving and On the flip side if we don't think if you don't think your culture as well It can lead to misunderstanding and can lead to slowing your organization down Can you please tell me how much time I have because? Okay, yeah, okay Okay Okay Maybe I can pick it up for you if it works. So Let's dive into four crucial strategies for success in integrating post acquisitions First of course is communication You need to have a crystal clear plan for that Secondly, let's say should we start the Q&A Maybe some people have some questions because this ain't working You know someone else is clicking I can if we can't get it to slide The next slide. Yes, okay So strategies for success communication cultural harmonization I touched on that a little bit Systematic integration and of course you need to focus on business success Because it's not all about the culture of course the culture Property will drive and let try will thrive your let drive your business as well and Yeah, in conclusion, but it is a bit scattered and fragmented this time I would say that if you incorporate your four crucial strategies that I just mentioned here before You will probably make a really big impact I told you a little bit about my journey how I became a partner a shareholder at Joost and My main message here is that Being acquired the process of leading to being acquired is really interesting and fascinating, of course But the real work starts after being acquired, of course You have a lot of Integrational Challenges you have culture to think about your people that of course make your success your product That's really important. You have you need to innovate and you need to see how you can Consilitate with the bigger organization that you joined which talented watch talents are working around which Great minds can you use to enhance your your product as well? I would like to go over to the Q&A because this is basically the talk if You want to if you want to say yeah, can you someone skip it to the last slide? Would be awesome Yeah, so if you want to follow this presentation Please use the QR code and I will be around Today and tomorrow for any questions And I can tell you a lot about my journey and a lot of more detail details about How you do how you run a business after being acquired? So I'm so sorry for this fragmented presentation But thank you for sticking so long in this room with me Thank you. Thank you so much Chaya Thank you. Thank you Do we have any questions? Stick your hand up if you have a question. We have some with a microphone here in the audience. Oh There's one down the front here So looking back at the past two and a half years that we've been part of new fold Is there anything you would do differently in the sales process in the sales process? No, I don't think so and I think the most important thing here to highlight is you need to have conversations with totally different Investors or companies you need to take the time to compare every interesting part a party Because it's only not only as I've tried to point out. It's not only financially driven It's also about that fit that you can actually grow your company and Make an impact as we at that time, of course and still will do now make an impact for everyone Hi Viola So thank you very much for your great talk even with all this technical problems And so I will have also a question to you at the back for goods. What happened with this? Is it still? No, and yeah, no, it's unfortunately It is and not because of COVID I decided to gather with the team on the ground there to stop that So I've given a bunch of the inventory to some people that were running the business to give them the opportunity after COVID to maybe relaunch the brand but Some did but not under the same brand but everywhere I still am in contact with a couple of them and They are doing good, but it can tell you that at that time We had 40 people working for our brand and that was really hard and yeah I think we all saw the news what happened everywhere around the world, but Yes, that's that ended there Thank you Thank you, and the session was really insightful So I just would like to ask about the future plans, you know Why well while you are maybe on the board of new for digital and you are you are you know a part of yours So what are the future plans for yours and you? For so after being acquired by new fault We had the luck of a general manager entering the Yoast company She is responsible for the whole European business. That's Kimberly Cole. She was she's at the boot She's sitting here, so you can always go up to her For me personally I decided to stay on longer, so I will see where my opportunities are I will be at Yoast I will be running Yoast on a daily basis and I of course be a part of this bigger awesome company called new fault And that also gives me a lot of opportunities, of course to grow and to learn from our talented colleagues Thank you any other questions Chaya, I have a question for you actually I'm curious when you had those conversations with the team about the acquisition Were there any surprising? reactions or responses from the team about it at There was one conversation Because it was a family a family business as you call that There was one conversation that they suggested to kick all the women out That definitely surprised me That's a short answer, but that's the one that I And I couldn't we couldn't think of why that actually was a driver for them, but I think it was a more tragic traditionally Organization or investor that thought that man ruled the world Well once again happy international women. Yeah, everybody Any other questions? Yep down the front here So in the beginning you mentioned all these reasons of why you want to sell a company You actually did and it's a couple of years later later What do you think is the biggest thing Yoast actually got from it? I think access to create minds within the new field group innovation and Maybe consolidation of some of our products as well So we have a far more more bigger reach of course whether we're joining a team like new fold Thank you We've still got time for a couple more questions if anyone has them Okay, well again. Thank you so much Chaya. We actually have a little gift here for you On behalf of the organizers. Thank you. Thank you so much. Everybody give a round of applause for Chaya Thank you, and she will be at the Yoast booth if you have want to chat to her in person as well Thank you all Testing, okay Welcome everyone. We've got some spare seats down here near the front if you've just come in and you're looking for a seat So quite a few down here Come in have a seat feel welcome. Hi everyone. There's some seats couple just in the row here, I think If you've got a spare seat next to you could you put your hand up because there's a few people at the back who need to sit Thank you so much people at the back who want to have a seat You can see where there's some free seats here Thanks, everyone Finally ask you to oh, sorry can I kindly ask you to put up your hand again if you've got a seat near you We've got more people coming in so New people you can see where people's hands are up. There's a seat there. Thank you so much everyone We'll be getting started here really shortly folks Just as a quick reminder, there is no eating or drinking in this room Thank you so much. Oh everybody Officially welcome to this session Happy International Women's Day I'm Tess from WordPress VIP and automatic I have the pleasure of introducing you to our next speaker rich Tabor for the talk design is an expedition of the multi-faceted nature of design Rich is a product manager at automatic and works on making WordPress's publishing processes more intuitive and human as A design enthusiast. I'm so excited to be taken on this journey through the art of design. Please welcome rich Thank you design is More than the way things look Design is much more than the way things work Design is the culmination of purpose intention and human connection It's a transformative craft that we use functionality and meaning Into the fabric of being Into our spaces around us both digital and physical I'm rich Tabor a product manager at automatic and core contributor to WordPress. I were many hats these days The one I'm most fond of is that of design This is my first time in Taiwan my first word Camp Asia I'm stoked to be here came all the way from Atlanta And I know the organizers put on a wonderful weekend ahead of us And I'm so proud of the energy of this community So let's give it a round to a round of applause to all the organizers and volunteers and the Sponsors who helped make this possible The one thing that I'm most looking forward to over this weekend is to connect Connect with people connect with ideas. I want to hear what you're inspired about what you're passionate about What you're struggling with within WordPress and outside. I think it's interesting that we connect on a human level To elevate what we're doing as designers So my goal today is to impart some wisdom my passion what I love about design What I think design is and then perhaps we can elevate as a community Within WordPress, but also with every single thing that we produce as humans Now as we dive into the art of design, let's first consider visionary Taiwanese sculptor Yu Yu Yong And Yong was known for transforming ordinary spaces into extraordinary experiences Let's take a little time back a little time to think about this story here Yong was a young creative in The middle of Taipei There's this park. He would go to this park and observe sit and watch watch as the children played on the paths Watch as the workers hurried through from point A to point B And watch as the elderly sat and listened and watched as the day unfolded Now Yong didn't see just a park. He didn't see a square in the middle of the city He saw an opportunity He saw an opportunity to express creative intention to make an interactive gallery not just a path So he created these sculptures beautiful sculptures They rose out of the ground. They created a sense of expression of curiosity Adults would stop to touch to view to take photos of to take photos with Children would play on them. They would hang from them Benches old benches became these flowing forms encouraging rest and reflection The important thing here is that Yong observed created these experiences and The people changed Now as we dive into this art of design this craft that we all know and love I want to carry with us how Yong approached design How he gained an empathetic understanding Observed the people he was designing for and created intentional experiences And let's start with what I would consider the most crucial part of design purpose Purpose is a reason for being right When we think of what design is we like to hone in on aesthetics or technicalities We want to know how something works We want to know if something's beautiful, but really the most challenging part of design is not on those fronts It's simply getting in the requirements right That is getting the purpose right And to do that we use what's called the design thinking process Now the design thinking process is a user-centric approach to problem-solving that encourages creativity innovation and practical solutions There are four key steps here The first is to gain that empathetic understanding for the people that you're designing for by observing Just as Yong did in the early mornings at the park. We understand not just that users are doing We understand their motivations their feelings The challenges were going beyond those surface level assumptions into what's deeper the meaning behind this So I encourage all of you in the room here to meet with the people you're designing for Set up time to watch them watch them engage and then engage with them Because that's how we can build these experiences that really hone in on purpose Now the second step is to define the core challenge to synthesize insights into an actionable statement If you followed some of my work online one thing I'm very consistent on is approaching solutions with action If we can't come up with an actionable solution, it's probably something we need a table and take a look at later Now when we're defining this core problem, it's not about stating the problem as we see it It's about framing in a way that focuses on users needs and their expectations So by observing we see these real-world complexities And we ask ourselves the question. What is the fundamental challenge that our users are facing? I have an example of a problem statement here and This is perhaps many of us have e-commerce clients or have worked with e-commerce sites So this example here we start by identifying the group. Who do we want to help? Who are the primary users that we need to design for? In this case, it's online shoppers between 25 and 40 perhaps that's the target market already set by the client The next step in defining this problem is to identify the core challenge the root cause What is actually happening here? We can only get this by observing In this example, we noticed that perhaps it's difficult to navigate to check out from Maybe there's too many steps. Maybe there's something missing. Maybe the icon looks funky The goal is where we transition from the problem to the potential Here we took that core challenge that we have observed users running into and we distill it down to something simple here What is the goal to simplify this purchase flow? That is something that's much more actionable than trying to come up with some some arbitrary way to make more sales The last step of defining the core problem is to outline the outcome. What do we want to do? And what do we want to have that accomplish? to boost sales Right, it's it's simple like this problem statement is very succinct very direct and that's purposeful Because otherwise we end up with lots of ideas that don't focus in the right direction Now when defining this core problem We need to find the problem Not the solution even when I'm up here explaining this in my head The first thing I think of is what are the ways to fix this? That's not really the the way that we need to progress through building beautiful solutions Because it's about solving the right problem We can come up with lots of interesting ideas, but if we're not focused we're not pointed in the right direction We're gonna end up burning out our engineering teams burning out our design teams as we build ideas that don't really have purpose So we gained that empathetic understanding We defined the core problem Now the third step is where we transition into the more creative and dynamic phase of the design thinking process But that's when we can ideate to come up with ideas lots of them Generate as many ideas as possible Designers we like to call this divergent thinking Throw everything on the table see where things land think outside the conventional thinking and push the boundaries of What we can actually accomplish even because at this point. It's just about focusing on that right solution And just throw out the ideas Now creative thinkers designers Developers marketers a lot of us in the room here We like to start here, right? This is the fun part This is the part where you open up Figma you start throwing pieces together and you try to see what looks nice Or you open up a code editor and you start placing in Components to see if you can get something working if we keep doing that if we keep starting here We just lose a lot of momentum because we're like again We're just going into tangents instead of focusing on the right problem So once you have lots of ideas, you'll start to see some bubbling to the top We get to take those ideas and Prototype them test them see if they work see if there's merit to these So the fourth step is to test and prototype When you're building these prototypes, they should be quick to make they should be You know something small and but just enough to prove the idea Is this going to work? Is it functional? Is it viable? Is it reliable? And if it's not that's great to because it's all about failing fast To get through these ideas that are in the right direction and figure out What is the actual approach that has merit here? One thing I consistently tell folks is that you can never underestimate the skill it takes to serve and deliver prototypes quickly So the best designers and the best engineers and the best marketers even are those who can put together ideas Quickly and prove them out quickly So as we've seen through this design thinking process every step that we start with here Is built on a foundation of purpose and it addresses specific users needs and their challenges But good design takes that and goes a step further Design is intention Design is intention intention Essentially connects the ideas between purpose and function When you're designing with intention, it's about aligning design with the natural inclinations of people What do we expect? What is the intended result here? And how does that match our expectations? The result is that a design's intended use is Hopefully obvious. I know we have lots of experiences where it's not obvious where it's tricky and convoluted Perhaps but really intention is about finding out how to design experiences that are obvious and How do we do that as? Designers we have two key tools in our toolbox as affordances and signifiers Now affordances are the characteristics of an object that naturally suggests how it should be used Let's think of an example here Maybe a door of a door right here, and it has a handle that I grab on to naturally even my stance I'm in this position to pull this is an affordance to the door that I need to pull this to open it towards me This contrasts that with another door over here with a flat plate This is one that you push you lean into and it pushes inward These are the natural inclinations of humans of our anatomy and how we react to these objects in the physical space That help us learn how to interact with these digital with these physical and even digital affordances In the digital context, we have a lot of different affordances, but they're all very unique in what they're providing Take a look at the toggle here It's dual functionality suggests that something is either on or off like many light switches in many countries It lights up when it's on and it turns off when it's off Now this binary choice is a very intentional physical cue that we can relate to as people There's also checkboxes. Now these are influenced by physical forms Perhaps like the doctor's office where you can check off one or even multiple items And then we have radio buttons radio buttons allow for only one choice at a time What's cool about radio buttons is that these are inspired by radio buttons We're selecting one action would physically pop up the other buttons on the device I Remember being a kid and hearing your favorite song on the radio and you you press the record real quick on the cassette And you listen to it as soon as you don't you hit stop and it clanks away and all the buttons come back up That's exactly the same sort of physical input that we've translated into these digital affordances So I encourage you as you lean into this idea of affordances And as I review signifiers to look through the rooms through the hallways through your aptically apaclations applications as you're using these Software and these physical environments to identify the affordances that we can use to better our design Now in the landscape of design signifiers are guides These are the signals that communicate not just the possibility of an action, but also how to interact with it We have a typical link here underline and all this is probably the most classic Visual cue that has stood the test of time right every time you see text That's underlined you know that I can click on that and get a new portal of information right in front of me That's relevant We also have search icons. It's a magnifying glass. That's represented by something that magnifies and larges reveals I know as soon as I see one of these I can input a query and get more information And equally intuitive are those visual cues for our media players play and pause Where these are universal Across the board every single media application would leverage these if it doesn't you wouldn't know how it worked That's how signifiers play a role in our application design If we get a bit closer to WordPress We have the classic save button at the top right or the top left of the editor Now this WordPress published button transitions to a state of processing once you click it So it signals to you something is happening. This page is responsive Your page is being saved and once it's done it transitions back out of this So those signals are helping you understand what is happening without you having to really understand what's happening Signifiers are more than just design elements They are the visual cues the language of user interface So when you're designing your next project consider the intentionality Behind the art behind the craft those affordances and those signifiers that make this Experience much more effortless Now while intention is about those deliberate decisions that we make as designers During that design process. There's another aspect of design that connects the dots between purpose and attention And this one's dear to me design is experience Again design is more than the way things look and much more than the way things work It's also about how they feel The story the journey the collective elements throughout the entire experience We call that user experience or rather UX User experience design considers how each interaction works together to help the user Accomplish their goal their mission their vision While we often start with the individual interactions like all the minute details that consist of user experience I encourage you to kind of broaden that perspective and pull up from the ground and Look at things from an activity-centric perspective By focusing on activities We actually get a big picture view that helps us have into in workflows that are supporting the user not necessarily Isolated instances You can think of an activity as a set of tasks a bunch of things that you need to accomplish that you wrap it all together And then you achieve a higher goal with So when you also start at the task level you're designing in a restrictive bubble You're stuck with this one unit of control Rather than from the activity perspective There's a much broader perspective to lean into and that's what really leans us into The ideas of forward-thinking design Consider a photographer Whose goal is to take photos upload them onto a computer and then output the final edited images Now task-based design and the thought process along those lines would lead you to identify the tasks that would they would be necessary like Editing an image increasing the brightness cropping it and whatnot But then activity-centric design pulls up from that perspective and it really looks into the whole flow from I need to Upload my images so I need to share them with my friends or my clients or my audience The idea behind activity-centric design is that it's much more broad than those small pieces So that we can come up with ideas that are much more supportive to users In the context of wordpress we have so many tasks right you can edit copy add plugins add themes Review post approve post add users I could probably spend the rest of the conversation just going over wordpress tasks and activities But when I think of wordpress, I try to focus on the main activity the big thing in the room That's the publish By focusing on publishing in wordpress We can create solutions and experiences within wordpress that help you accomplish your goal to publish to share Here's an example WordPress users don't want to add a featured image to your post It's kind of broad right it's kind of direct But hear me out WordPress users don't want to add featured images to their post What they want to do is share that post with their audience and have a relevant beautiful image that shows up in the feed with it That's what you want. So the task would be upload an image The activity is I need to share this with my friends If we take this task-centric approach and we did the design thinking process What we do is we end up with solutions that are only about uploading an image We lose everything to the left and right that could potentially be the novel solution Perhaps the ideal solution is not even uploading an image It could be there's some sort of image creation experience where there's maybe it's a cover block And you can add a logo at a heading that's that your post title Maybe you design it yourself or maybe there's a default one that you've uploaded one time and every time you share a link It looks nice. That's what I do on my blog the key is is that With an activity-centric perspective, we keep our eyes open to the possibilities that what we think is the right task might not even be the right task Experience is about that cohesion That holistic journey and supporting people through their goals through their visions From every pixel that we draw in a canvas To every brick laid in the physical space. It's all the same But experience is a culmination of disciplines. It's not just an art It's also very much a science It requires us not only to dream to visualize and produce as designers But also to execute to turn these ideas into a reality design is engineering Now I know this could be touchy as designers We don't like to hear that design is engineering and engineers don't like to hear that design is engineering either But really it is Design and engineering have such an interplay because engineering bridges that gap between experience and execution While we as designers prioritize the user experience. There is a parallel story running here One of technical feasibility one of viability Or rather like I say the how Understanding the how behind our craft is just as crucial as the purpose intention and experience It's about appreciating those mechanics behind the surface that code underlining your design And it's here that we transition from just Coming up with ideas that are on purpose to actually creating them to exposing them to the world So I encourage you learn the basics of engineering it doesn't mean that you need to replace the engineers in your room That's not at all the goal here our goal is to Augment designers or augment developers with design Now WordPress is great for this right there are so many different tiers of engineering that we can lean into I know a lot Of people including myself who have started with themes we come in a tinkerer, right? Where you start by perhaps making small changes to a theme maybe it's a small CSS tweak maybe the next step is to Lean into the code a little bit you pull it into a code editor just to see what's there What are template parts? What are patterns? What is the theme not json file? How did these interplay with each other? The next step might be building plugins where press org has So many plugins that you can just observe and look into for free and learn from Just inviting curiosity to go in and explore. How did someone do this? Why did they make the decisions they made and the next step from there is you can reach out to that developer and actually talk to them There's probably a lot of them in the room here or at the conference Yeah, I think leaning in on this idea of multiple tiers is imperative because we as designers We can start at any one of these tiers are not just for developers or for all of us in the room here You can lean into blocks You could start building a little bit of react applications by looking at the Gutenberg repo and just understanding What's going on here? Ask a friend and ask me. I'm here all weekend. I would love to help you One step further here You're actually contributing WordPress code into core that can run on potentially hundreds of millions of websites That's the power of WordPress But no other platform even comes close to achieving and that's something we need to hold dear to and keep pursuing and keep Growing as designers as we lean into it now by augmenting developers What I mean to is by adding to you know augmenting means to make something greater to add to it and When I think of augmenting I come back to a story of when I first started out as a designer I was making email headers and landing pages Just kind of rough cutting some ideas as a junior designer to fill out What style that I want to go for and my engineering team would come back They would show me what they made and a designer's worst nightmare is that it looks awful. It doesn't look like what you intended It's really off So talking with the project manager it became clear that my designs are too complicated I didn't understand the system that I was designing for so we met after work with one of my engineer friends and He showed me a little bit of how WordPress works for the very first time We added a button to the header of a site just to see what it is I started diving in and understanding that system. I shared some of my skills So we did some skill swapping and collectively we started launching really beautiful projects pretty fast Who's we both had that shared understanding? So augment those developers around you because it creates a more purposeful work environment There's mutual respect and you get to collaborate with other smart people. It's amazing We're people right? We're meant to collaborate We're designed to design even At the core of all these principles all these ideas of what design is how its purpose and tension Experience and engineering is one common thread that I've kind of hinted to throughout design is human design is uniquely human Reflects the creativity the planning and the intentionality In creating functional and yes aesthetic systems and objects Now this creative impulse leads us to the heart of human-centric design Where we're designing not just for users and for people but rather with them For every curve every color every line that we draw is with the deep understanding of how it will be perceived Interact it with and experienced by the people using it It's about creating solutions that are not only purposeful and intuitive and even technically sound But deeply resonant on a human level and for WordPress. This is more important than ever that we accomplish this Now a fundamental truth of design of our craft is that design is subjective It's shaped by our own experiences our own past our perceptions expectations Our cultural background our taste if it's if it's happened. It's shaped you Now our role as designers is to navigate these subjective waters and craft experiences that resonate with a diverse audience Balancing those subjective elements that are there and acknowledging them with objective purpose It's a process of continuously learning and adapting and growing being curious as a designer Yes, like Yong did in the park those early mornings observing and watching Putting the time in with the people that we're designing for and with In embracing the sub the subjectivity of design We not only acknowledge the individuality of people But rather celebrate it as a core aspect of humanity design is purpose design is intention experience engineering and human Design is all of us in the room here and everything that we craft So if there's one thing I could say last is just take the ordinary and make it extraordinary Thank you Thank you so much rich and we have some time now for questions So if anyone has a question, please stick up your hand. We've got one down here to kick us off Hello. Thank you. It's all very good I have a question yesterday. I was that Contributor contributed a and there was no table for design So my question is simply how it is valued and what is the current state of design within world press because I even the Channel It feels pretty empty. Yes. The the hardest part about working collaboratively across a project like wordpress is Being where the work is and so it's really tough It's really tough because the work is happening in github, right? We're on track. We're pushing things forward as a lot of as an engineering led organization in essence It's tough to be from a design perspective somewhere else So what I would encourage is to dive into again learning a little bit about github Understanding what's happening there and following some of the tags and resources on github in our repos that really help orient designers And then and the purpose of slack we need to share more I think we need to be more open to ask questions of each other ask for feedback Putting ideas in slack for other designers is great or even on the make WordPress blog I think we can connect and Generally share more so that we learn more together and push design forward in WordPress But is there something somebody to lead or someone we can talk to or just to You know, yes showed the first steps Yeah, all the other table add some mentoring or things like that. It was really disappointing. Yes I mean, I'm happy to help you I'm happy to take on folks. I know we do have a mentoring team as well I think the the tough part, you know yesterday was that we have so many tables and a lot of needs for design So it's sometimes difficult to focus in on one table instead of spreading out Design over the tables, but maybe we can adapt so next year There's a period where we come together and then we kind of move out into different tables and help support engineering It's a good idea. Thank you. I'll come to you. Thank you Questions. Yep. We've got one just down here. I think was the next one and then I see one up the back so you mentioned about designers leading into engineering so my question is about The converse like what can engineers do to understand a little bit about design? Yeah, that's a great one Like wouldn't make me and my friend when we started trading skills the number one thing He needed to know at first was what are the systems that I use? What do I value as a designer and how do I communicate so that he understands and so if we understand the same language? whether it's Metrics you know all those like small words that we use as designers and figma even trying to correlate that into Everyday normal talk so that we can both communicate along the same lines So I would encourage engineers to lean into design just as much as designed to lead into engineering So my question is like what would be a good first step to it would be to connect to a designer and understand the tools that users and the vocabulary I like to ask you have to share feedback in and ask Okay. Yeah The next one was up the back there with the check shirt. Yep Hey, rich standing Ramon is a nice With WordPress, you know in WP admin specifically Design can be all over the place once you install a couple plugins right you get flashes of greens reds whatever and user interfaces are all over the place and I think that's Becoming a huge problem. It's been a problem. So I just want to know your take on standardization of that and How we can become more? Noel and his talk earlier touched on this and I think it's a really Important conversation Yeah, that's great I think we're at this pivotal time in WordPress as we are theorizing what this new admin experience Feels like that we lean in collectively as designers and put our best ideas forward so that we can actually come up with solutions that are novel and Creative enough to where there's still personality. It's not a WordPress that lacks Personality and even brands could still have personality and ownership just like applications on our phones and our other devices And so we're at this point where If we do that This is the best opportunity to lean forward and do that to make essentially many applications in WordPress Otherwise, we'll end up with the same scenario 10 years down the road where it's a hot mess and we don't we don't want that Any other questions Thank you I do have one question about like a design thinking like have you ever encountered a situation that you notice There's a problem. There's an intention and you want to fulfill it But however, your leadership feel like that's not creating profit. There's not beneficial to your overall customer What will you do in that situation? Yeah, that's that's probably more common than we think, you know, I think as designers We'd like to pitch ideas and it's important to also be okay with something that doesn't that doesn't land but I would do in that case is Really try to sell what I'm thinking is important and you need to figure out. What are the objections? Like what is what is the pushback here? Is it just a monetary thing? Is it is there a bigger picture problem? Is there something I'm not understanding road map wise and try to meet in the middle in that area And perhaps it's just not the right time for that particular effort, which is also a very valid reason to stop Thank you. Yeah Yep, there's one over here Hello, I really like what you talked about Design being human centric that um more often than not Design is mostly I mean not most of the time design is bounded by the technology that we are the wordpress is providing No, I was actually wondering what's the wordpress direction on this to allow, you know designers to create more human centric Designs and for the engineers to easily implement them That's that's that's a great question. I Think we're at you know like what I mentioned to Devin here I think we're at this point where we need to come up with systems that are maintainable and scalable Within this new paradigm that we're shifting towards We have an opportunity to create these experiences that are very refined because we have so much experience within wordpress We have lots of understanding with how the product is used because so many people use it But what I would encourage is to share your ideas share your ideas on your blog even like right and just publicly Put it out there because lots of us can learn from each of our individual Learnings on the design front and what you think is important That might also be what someone else in the room thinks and is important And when you collaborate together its surface is to the top and we could get it in Yep Thanks for the talk Rich that was really informative my question specifically relates to sort of the whole failing fast Idea my question is how complex should you make the success criteria for an MVP? And how much input should you seek just so that it is able to be proved out properly? But not so complex that it slows down the design process. Yeah, that's wonderful Failing fast is really important to me. I what I like to do is Almost hack it together hack together ideas Don't worry about the fluff all the all the pieces of the puzzle that need to be there one day because if the idea doesn't work We shouldn't be worrying about those extra pieces So as long as you can prove out Something that is possible like you know your right solution based on the right problem and you try it quickly Then great if it's something that's massive you have to cut it down like it has to be A day or two even like small prototyping to move in the right direction Otherwise we just get lost in that you know just coming up with ideas and leaning into directions that will probably end up getting blocked Other questions put your hand up high Got a bit more time. So don't hold back. There's any niggling question. You wanted to ask rich. Oh, there's one I wish Nice to see you here. Um, can you share about how decide? Team make decision about decide for WordPress because it's open source It's not a typical that decide and customer thing, right? Yes. Yeah about how how the design team made decision for Release or launch. Thank you. Yeah, that's it's a complicated one. You know with the open source project There are a lot of designers a lot of developers engineers to really lean in on I would say the biggest push to get something into the project is to be super passionate about it Pitch it to lots of people see if there's other interests See if you can get people on your team to help you move something forward And then the best ideas come from those people who really care about it And that's what's great about WordPress because we all have those those pieces of us that are very different But we also have something that's familiar. We all want WordPress to be better, right? So as we lean into that I just encourage you to share with people get people on board push ideas forward And that's that's what I do and I know a lot of other people that do the same thing and I'd love to see more of that even Thank you. Um, I was just wondering as a normal person that we it's really hard for normal person to Define what is beauty? Sometimes for me actually I try to design website. I find like It's really like gig design And they're like so do you have any idea other than we can learn like good design or any reference website in our reference books. I Like the the book The design of everyday things. It's kind of an older book But it's a very very classic view of a lot of the similar things that I think are important here Where it talks about design as an art as a craft the foundational pieces And then from there learn into that would lean into the direction of your interests So if it's building websites like try to look at other websites see what seems to be collectively interesting But then also keep you what's cool and interesting to you because your style is nice. It's fun. It's interesting It doesn't mean it doesn't mean it's bad because like I don't know what your angle is Because I think the personality that we impart in our designs is this super paramount to making design amazing and beautiful Got time for another one or two questions. If there is anything burning that you had to ask Hi, this is such a nice session. I enjoyed a lot. My question is sometimes I struggle with to make I Work with the design team. So it's been a struggle to make decision about responsive and adaptive design Can you give me some ideas that how can I make decision on responsive or adaptive design? Yeah, do you mean like in the editor itself? Yeah editor itself, okay, how can we make a design responsive? But sometimes it takes so much time to make design responsive maybe that in that case scenario We can make the design adaptive So how can we make decision on that to make the design adaptive or responsive? Can you give me some scenario or examples? Yeah, I mean when I when I think of that I lean in towards You know when I when I create I mean all of us are most of it the room And we've created Instagram stories or whatnot when you put text on there and you resize it and it looks fine everywhere Like I lean into experiences that maybe are not so integer driven like it's not like a value But it's more of like a perception like what do I want this to be and I think as as we're developing The editor and leaning into responsive controls and trying to understand what can we do to make like a naturally inherit? Website that just feels right everywhere. I lean into those future thinking ideas instead of instead of trying to use something That's perhaps proven, but also behind us. So I I'm open to ideas if folks have Interesting concepts that you've explored and how to leverage better Adaptive or responsive design elements and the editor Great. Thank you so much again rich. We have a little gift for you from the organizers as well Thank you. Thank you so much round of applause for rich And I also have a couple of announcements so rich you feel free to leave the stage There is a break now Sessions are going to recommence at one o'clock. I know we were running a little bit late this morning But the afternoon sessions will run on time. So they are starting at one o'clock as per the schedule and During the break, please feel free to visit our sponsor areas in the first floor moon hall and the second floor Sun Moon Hall Moon Bear Hall, sorry first floor Moon Bear Hall second floor Sun Moon Hall and in the Sun Moon Hall You'll also find the community corner and the jobs board where anyone can post their job offerings So check those out and lunch is available on the third floor in the banquet room. Um, so again sessions will begin again at one Thank you so much test test test Oh, hey sounds good to me Yeah, I mean I can I take it off for an hour and then put it on Welcome everyone. We're gonna get started really soon. Just a quick reminder that there's no eating or drinking in this room Thank you so much and we've got a few spare seats down near the stage on the right and left There's also a few seats in the middle section come on in you made it just in time Can I ask you a quick favor if you have a seat next to you that's free. Can you stick your hand up, please so people can find them Thank you so much Everyone who's coming in there's some Free seats if you look for people's hands if you've just arrived in the room We do have quite a few spare seats still Just come down near the stage and you'll see some and just a quick reminder that there's no food or drink in this room Thank you so much. There's a few seats spare in this section down near stage, right? Hey everybody welcome Hope you have had a great lunch and that you're feeling energized for the afternoon Welcome to track two. I'm Tess from WordPress VIP at automatic and I have the pleasure of introducing our next speaker Ben Thompson is the founder and author of Stratechery a blog about technology and strategy Whoo and the impact of the internet on media He's here to share the story of Stratechery and Something a bit new called Passport in his talk Expanding WordPress's capabilities to support personalized content creation at scale over to you Ben. I haven't given whoa. That's very loud Number one and welcome to Taiwan. I have lived in Taiwan for a long time, which I'm actually gonna get to in my story Today is Very reluctantly, but I feel appropriately going to be mostly about me I actually got this shirt which has a Stratechery logo on it I had to tear the tag off the shirt when I got it because I sold merch once and I was so mortified at the sort of like self-promotion involved and all that sort of thing that I got I just bought a bunch and put them down on the bottom of my closet never wore it and I I Like to talk about tech. I like to talk about the impact of the internet, but I don't really like to talk about myself but the story for me and the story for Stratechery is very intertwined with WordPress and that's one of the reasons I was happy to come here to speak and It's one of the reasons why I wanted to sort of give this talk to everyone in this room and In part just express my gratitude for everything everyone here does. I grew up in a small town called Lodi Lodi, Wisconsin not Lodi, California Lodi, Wisconsin. It's about 30 miles north of Madison. If you see the sort of crosswalk there in the stop That is the main intersection in town As in there is not a stoplight there. It is a You know, I grew up a great childhood I have no sort of real complaints, but I was in a sort of world that we knew San Francisco existed We knew New York existed Maybe some people in town had been to Chicago, but really no sort of awareness or acknowledgement or impact of Sort of the rest of the world or or business or technology This is in the 90s the internet was taking off and I was so intrigued by this this idea that you could go You could learn anything. I was the first person that I knew to sort of get online Thanks to a cousin when I visit him in California like this is incredible. It's the first person I knew to get an email address but This interest wasn't really matched by any sort of like career aspirations that there was no one in my life that Did anything like that? No one, you know went off to caught like for me like the big Aspirational thing if you were sort of smart and you could really pull it off was go to the University of Wisconsin Which is which is what I did and there, you know was super into it like dot-com was exploding I stayed in the dorms two years most people stay one year because the dorm had a t1 connection, which was amazing Napster came out when I was a freshman in in college and like just very very exciting very into it But it's interesting looking back with where my mind was what I should have done is I should have packed up and gone to San Francisco and worked in tech and Seen what happened, but it just never occurred to me I was gonna maybe like the aspirational goal that that occurred to me was maybe I would go Become a professor or do something like that My last year or my last few years of college I worked for one of the students papers called the Badger Herald I couldn't find any appropriate pictures I had to take a Google Maps picture of the building that it was in it was up on the third floor at the four lease That is another story about the impact of the internet on media that we're not necessarily going to get into but one of the things I did at at the Badger Herald when I was there I was in charge of the editorial page my senior year and You know to there had been like up. There's like opinion columns and things like that So I got started. I wrote an opinion column, but Occasionally every month every two months people would you know the editorial board such as it existed Would write some pompous sort of essay about world events that absolutely no one cared about it It was really just you know play acting at being in an editorial board And I thought like what if we could actually make an impact? What if we could actually influence things what that meant was we had to focus on what we could actually control or not control But at least influence so there was really three things it was student government it was like the university administration and city government and Maybe state government was in the right city, but that was even getting a little big and so we set five goals There's five things we want to change this varied from things like this sort of attitude towards like free speech on campus Drinking laws like certain legislations as in front of the city council like so very practical things to some philosophical things and sort of a mix And what we did is we wrote an editorial every single day Well four days a week and the fifth day was for letters the editor Four days we would write an editorial every single day about one of those five topics Now this was kind of a crazy goal never done before the reality was the editorial board It was theoretically authoring these I actually offered like 85% of them and it turned out number one I love to write That idea of writing every day was very invigorating and number three It had an impact like of our five goals. We marked sort of at the end of the year significant progress in four of them The fifth was about the state government like I said they didn't listen to us so we are already reaching a little too high right there and This was like this gave me like this is what I want to do I want to do this sort of I want to do the sort of writing I want to have an impact in this way But like how do I actually do that because I looked up, you know I went to the New York Times editorial page because I was a political science major, of course I'd have my New York Times description. I looked at the bios everyone on there most of them like journalists for 20 years I don't want to be a journalist. I don't want to do that for a long time I don't want to wait till I'm 15 sort of get there and then there was William Sapphire because I don't know if any of you old people remember William Sapphire He was the you know the the time test always had their conservative columnist He was their conservative columnist for a long time But the reason he was interested interesting to me is he had worked as a political operative He worked in like the Nixon White House and you know worked up through there and then he he's moved over to to to Writing and I'm like that sounds much more interesting. I'm gonna work in politics I said political science and then I will just step into a job at the New York Times Probably a little ambitious in retrospect So I left I went to work on a political campaign and I realized that politics is terrible It's it I'd not recommend it at all I worked there for a few months and that I'm like like it made my skin crawl I was working on a campaign and I just sort of bailed out And so I'm sitting I'm sitting in a The But in the meantime, like I still wanted to write well, so I started a blog in 2002 when I graduated on blogger And then when I graduated sort of a year later, of course my blog had been not maintained Year later. I'm like I need to start a blog again So what software should I use turned out? Couple like a month or two right before I did this this new hot new thing had launched WordPress I don't think that's what it looked like in 2003. That's as far back as I get on the wayback machine But so I started a WordPress blog And I started a WordPress blog. I thought to sort of Articulating my views of the world. Of course, everyone's gonna be so interested but actually I was I didn't know what to do with my life and I was working at the Center for the deaf and hard of hearing like Teletyping their calls. Of course, I was still the pretentious political science graduate So I'm a New York Times subscription and I was reading an article about a bombing in Saudi Arabia and They interviewed an English teacher there and I'm like, I could be an English teacher doesn't sound so bad Turned out I didn't want to go to Saudi Arabia Kind of want to go to Japan I missed the deadline to apply for their English teaching program the government one by day and her friends like oh I just got back from Taiwan or my brother just got from Taiwan. He thinks it's great. It's fantastic. Talk to him He's like, I'll hook you up. I'll connect you with people and so my blog mostly became documenting my time in Taiwan and That's what I was doing. I was teaching kindergartners their ABCs in Retrospect it would be impossible to sort of do the things that I do today without this sort of bit I just Articulated all these goals all these ideas that I had all the things I wanted to do that were completely unrealistic and out of touch I was You know, I'm gonna just step into the New York Times. I'm gonna go become a professor I'm gonna do sort of XYZ and I literally couldn't come up with anything better to do in the meantime than teach English But it turned out teaching English was pretty great You had actual tangible impact on kids lives and not sort of their outcomes And I had to sort of accept look If that's all that happens, that's okay It's okay Just be a good person work hard change someone's life even if it's only one or two and Everything's gonna be fine Anyhow not to dwell too long on my English teaching the question is how was I teaching the ABCs and End up in the same country, but in a very different sort of role Standing here on stage at sort of word camp 2024 with a full crowd everyone, you know, very excited to come which I Appreciate in my own branded shirt that I'm very embarrassed about wearing. I went through, you know Here I owe my wife a lot She was like all you do when you come home is read about and talk about tech Like why did you not go work in tech? And I'm like It honestly never occurred to me that wasn't something people who grew up like me did and so I'm like well I'm gonna sort of you know, what's the fastest shortest route to legitimacy in the US job markets kind of researched a little bit I have to get an MBA now I'd grown up on the web in the tech web and MBAs were the worst and Having gotten MBA most of it's true to be totally honest But I went back to the US. I got an MBA. I had the opportunity to intern at Apple And then I went to Microsoft after I graduated and I had a couple friends from sort of business school that were like You have so many opinions and so many takes about tech and they're they're good. They're interesting You need to start a blog. I'm like I've started so many blogs They I like I've never really gonna do another one But you know, there was other things going on my wife was from Taiwan We kind of wanted to come back and it's like well This is what I want to do and then something, you know, I saw all my compatriots for when I graduated right at the same time as like Azure Klein or Matthew Glaze is two people in politics that are my age John Gruber had started daring fireball about Apple in 2003 about when I graduated and I'm like man I could have been doing that but I let my blog die But I realized well one problem with blogging back then is you know, there's The ads the ad model is not gonna work in the long run and like that like my analytical mind says that's gonna be an issue But a new company I come along called Stripe that made sort of subscriptions possible and I'm like I think There might be a model to sort of help people, you know to Massively increase your average revenue per user and actually build some things that could be in Taiwan in a long time So what did I do? I? Went to wordpress.org Actually, I think I went to to I was smarter this time went to a managed toast And I started a blog. I was still at Microsoft, but I launched this blog called for checkery Stratuary strategy and tech, you know in the long run It would be a site that would grow via word of mouth with a name that nobody could pronounce Which is not not not not an approach I necessarily endorse But the fact that I could do this on my own That the it was available. There was a host available This is an adaptation of some open-source theme that I sort of found online There's a bunch of different plugins that I went to making it all sort of work. I could be this sort of Dreamer from a small town that had managed to worm his way up into a big tech company And I could start a start a site that was mine and do do what I want you write what I wanted to write I Did feel there was this space between like product sites and Wall Street like all the stuff in the middle about strategy and culture And incentives and business models and all that sort of thing. So I thought there was an opportunity Thought it'd take like five years, and I really needed a job Because the problem was Microsoft lets you blog, but then I couldn't blog about Microsoft and also It just felt a little weird because I was kind of critical of Microsoft I was really thought Apple was doing a great job at this time And so I needed a job that let me blog and I have to think some of the people in this room This is actually not my first wordpress or my first word camp the last time I was at a word camp was at word camp Indonesia and There is one of my automatic t-shirts. I had a chance to come work for automatic and At automatic it was it was actually kind of funny because I was on the team that eventually shifted to doing project Gutenberg I was not an engineer. So I had literally nothing to do So I kind of wrote a lot of security. So I appreciate the forbearance as I was Figuring out what to do next a few months later. Thanks to the internet. It took off. It just exploded Really really quickly Twitter Facebook all the social media was actually a huge Advantage if you were a small player if you didn't have huge costs to sort of worry about and you fast forward It just not very long eight or nine months and number one I felt really guilty because I wasn't doing enough work at automatic But number two I felt like I had an audience and I could actually do this I Left and the WordPress ecosystem really came to me once again I was able to build up a subscription model for my site and this was before you have all the software That's out there today. It was like there. I had to glue together a lot of different pieces But I couldn't manage gluing I couldn't manage actually making all this stuff And the fact that there were so many tools and options and plugins and themes made it possible that you know a year later Stratuary 2.0 now you have subscriptions and if you like what I write, I'm gonna give you more sort of if you subscribe fast forward to today You know Stratuary has been running for a decade. There's a whole host of family Host of products a bunch of podcasts. I have a chance to do interviews with amazing people I've had mad on before I've had other tech CEOs like, you know, Mark Zuckerberg touching the Della I've interviewed lots of startup founders analysts and then to know that people sort of all over the world are reading and consuming this and it has a big impact and Turned out to be a lot more financially lucrative than I thought it would be full disclosure all of this is it's I look back and None of this was anything that I imagined. It was just absolutely incredible Like I said millions of readers hundreds of thousands of subscribers tens of thousands of members to have a real impact to know that Things happen in Silicon Valley or things happen in Washington, DC or on Wall Street or whatever and all of this Sure, I worked hard But people talk about oh, you know The bit of luck I would say my biggest bit of luck is the fact that The product you guys all work on and the ecosystem that was built by all the people in this room Made all of that possible And so I want to thank all of you Anyhow one of the big theories that I write about is one of the big things to check this thing called aggregation theory There's this idea that before if I wanted to be sort of William Sapphire or whatever it might be I had to get a job with a newspaper Why because you have to actually get the product in front of people and you need printing presses and you need an advertising Ecosystem and you need like classifies and you need delivery trucks You need all these sorts of things and that gave a lot of power to anyone that controlled the sort of distribution How do you actually get stuff in front of people? The internet completely transforms this wordpress has played a part of this But just the idea that everyone has free distribution everyone can distribute the problem with that and this goes to my bit before about Advertising going to zero there is infinite content if literally anyone can do it You're gonna get everyone's gonna do it and you get tons and tons of stuff and the issue is number one That's not very good for the people used to have exclusive control and number two How do you find what you're looking for like there's just so much stuff out there? What happens is there are companies that come along and they are what I called aggregators They get all the content and they help you discover it Google is obviously the classic example you go to Google to find something you're looking for and when what does Google do? Does Google deliver you to a website? No Google delivers you to a page. They deliver you to a post like it's it's Completely atomizes and commoditizes all this content and if everyone starts at Google and Google knows everything that you get Well, if you're an advertiser where are you gonna go are you gonna go to all those other sites and maybe by randomly get the right person? No, you're gonna go to Google right and you can have a similar thing with sort of Facebook You like you go to Facebook and Facebook is total commoditization You have a six month investigative report from the New York Times is a little box on there And then you have a picture of your niece with their new dog and it's like literally the same size It's total commodification of content and the big challenge for publishers is If you're stuck in that if you're behind the aggregator if you're behind Google you're behind Facebook You're in big trouble your only answer is just turn out more turn out more what happens? You turn out more the quality goes down quality goes down People aren't particularly interested and you end up just scrounging around for pennies and getting all the crap That's on the internet today So what part, you know what the brilliance or the appropriate response for a publisher is You have to connect directly with customers You have to go around the aggregator you have to build a direct connection and that is what checkery was And that's what you know newspapers has exceeded like the New York Times has exceeded by building direct connections with customers and again Tools software were available to help me do that obviously more have come along since then many of them sort of modeled on Checkery and that's a great thing But I wanted it to be a little bit better One of the challenges and I go back to that post of WordPress started in 2003 The only means it was amazing that any person could start a blog But the functionality was you wrote a post and you broadcast it to everyone Everyone got the same thing and so I would write about in the context of this Oh, if you want to succeed on the internet you have to build a direct connection with customers But the direct connection of customers wasn't actually a direct connection. It was just a much smaller broadcast and so what As I was thinking about this, how can I make checkery better? What is sort of missing? What's the missing hole? How can I build a direct connection with customers that actually sort of realizes is like the second piece to this idea of Yes, anyone can write, but how can you actually build sort of a direct connection? This is what led to over the last three years. I've been work or three or four years I've been working on this new piece of software called passport Passport is what empowers checkery right now in addition to WordPress WordPress does all the WordPress sort of stuff What sort of? Passport does is all the things about connecting with my customers. So number one There are five free channels. We all think about the web, but by free. I mean sort of Not free as in beer free as in speech You have access to the web you have access to RSS you have access to podcasts, which is basically RSS But we're gonna call it a different thing You have access to email and you have access to messaging not messaging is a great example of it costs money But you can send a message to sort of any sort of phone number The first thing passport does is it make sure you can communicate with all your customers via those five free channels? So you don't have to go and get an integration here and integration there and make sure stuff glues together and moves around it's all part of one thing you should be able to Have a post have some content and distribute it in whatever way sort of makes sense and be able to meet your customers sort of wherever you are The second thing is you want to deliver that sort of tokens and sort of customized experience What do I mean by tokens? Well, you're sending out all this came this idea came I first built the sort of podcast piece of this It was actually the the a different product that that sort of evolved into what it is now The way you do paid podcasts is it's security biophysication, right? You you give everyone a unique our URL and So everyone has a unique URL that they add to their podcast player and they can get sort of the podcast that they paid for It sort of occurred to me if every single person has a unique URL Why should every single person get the exact same content? You should be able to just as a basic sort of thing you go in your podcast and add your subscription information If you're if you're if your description is expired you can let them know be a podcast If you have other podcasts like say I have sharp tech I have dithering you should be able to put a link in there You click that link and you can immediately download the podcast without having to search and iTunes or go back to the website All these sorts of things we can do this because passport Token eyes is everything everything is unique to that customer that they get if you get an email from me Every link that goes back to my site you click that link you get a read it right there You don't have to log in why I know it's you I sent that email unique to you Every link is token eyes you click that link you're logged in right away or via a podcast sort of thing And this is something that we're just we've barely scratched the surface of but to me is Opens up this entirely new sort of opportunity for having content that one person can create for anyone But then can sort of customize it and deliver it to all their users and have much more of that sort of direct connection All this functions through something called sort of entitlements entitlements is just basically this idea Go think about a passport. This is the name where it came from You have a passport that says who you are How do you actually get into a country? You need a visa right you you need sort of the the permission that yes This person has access to this particular piece of territory This is our passport sort of functions every user instead of putting them in buckets and say okay We have content bucket a bucket B bucket C. Okay. Can they pass the paywall and come in? We start with the user this user has access to these different entitlement this user has an entitlement to this sort of content This user's entitled to that sort of content this user because it's all based on Olaf can integrate with anything else So I'm integrated with Spotify you link your Spotify and your passport account together You have an entitlement to the Spotify content you go to Spotify You can listen to my for pay podcast sort of for free this sort of flipping it on its head from being content first to user first And users have sort of visas where they can go Enables again in the we just built a little bit But in the long run this idea that you could sort of connect to all sorts of services You can deliver all sorts of content that again is unique and special to the user and is something that a Single sort of a small team or a single person can do without needing massive Infrastructure and connections all these sorts of things you can make arbitrary plans I do things like corporate plans like the Microsoft plan or whatever sort of XYZ all this is super seamless They just get the Microsoft entitlement that is what they sort of are entitled to All these sort of pieces go together Membership management distribution sort of a paywall single sign-on strike payments built for WordPress and The goal is I wanted to deliver a great experience to my customers that is personal to them that lets them feel like they're Connected with Shotecary. It's just not getting access to a blog with annoying paywall It's something that is unique to me and it's something that can grow and have more opportunities sort of going forward what's particularly exciting is Like I said, I personally feel like this was sort of a bit of a hole I think it was a hole in content management generally And I feel like it was a bit of a hole for the WordPress ecosystem specifically So I'm super excited to announce that I am actually partnering full circle coming back with automatic to make Passport sort of broadly available It's not available today. It will be available in the coming weeks If the goal is to have it today, but we didn't make you guys have all made software before It is coming soon as a part of this. This is a commitment from me. There is absolutely been open source project It's not open source yet. That is part of sort of the process of getting it there but Why do this? It's I talked about the product parts but a big part of this is This ecosystem this product has given so much to me and it means a lot to me to be able to give back There's a philosophical sort of point which is people should be able to control their own destiny on the internet You shouldn't be able to be Cancelled or taken off sort of XYZ. I'm not going to get cancelled like I've read about tech strategy I think even particularly cares about me, but there is a point where one of my providers Got pretty aggressive and taking people off their off their platform You know four or five years ago, and it's like do I actually want to be associated with or even potentially subject to Folks that are where it's not in my control if someone kicks me off my email provider. What can I do? The only way you can be truly publisher friendly You can truly support independent publishers is through open source is through the entire ethos that sort of fills this room And that is something that I absolutely sort of want to deliver you can find out more You can sign up and get information again a very basic sort of marketing page a passport down online but The reason I wanted to sort of talk about it today and introduce it here is People ask me a lot all the time like oh, I mean I haven't taken you know, why are you why are you? I've built this myself. I spent spent the money I mean with engineers obviously, but this isn't sort of a BC sort of project And I'm like you can't understand my motivations here without understanding the philosophy that I believe in that is very much the WordPress philosophy and The extent to which I appreciate what was made possible for me And what I hope I can make possible for sort of other people on the road. So thank you very much Thank you so much, Ben. We have some time for questions. I'm bet there is at least one question Down here in the front We've got a microphone coming Hello. Hello. Hi, Ben. Thank you very much Great speech and I'm really impressed by everything that you did this this journey I'm curious then of what is the business model for a passport You're saying that it will be open source But does it also mean that we can like switch the providers like we can switch the stripe Payment or like the SMS so published so passport from the very Basic is meant to be publisher friendly now. There's lots of Subscription providers that talk about being publisher friendly and I think they are very sincere My view is you cannot be truly publisher friendly unless you have an open-source alternative Because that means the publisher actually has sort of total control now that said passport is pretty complicated software One of the challenges is with those sort of blog you think about the traditional WordPress What was always the WordPress challenge and you saw WordPress, right? You need WP cash, right? I'll say you're gonna be in trouble That's pretty easy though when you're just publishing one thing for everyone to actually deliver on any basis is pretty tough And so as part of making it available source. I did want to have a hosted sort of Version available because I think that's gonna be the most approachable and useful option for most people so I'm very pleased and excited to have the opportunity to partner with automatic to sort of make make that available, but The business model from my perspective. I didn't raise VC I'm not out here to make a four hundred million dollar company or whatever the return would need to be for whatever it does This is why I did it myself because when you do it yourself You have more latitude you have more room You have the ability to be somewhat philosophical about it. And so yes, certainly, I would like to make some money there will be a some combination of monthly fee and relatively small sort of revenue share that that makes this possible, but But I'm not looking for an astronomical return again I started checkery did not make very much money either. Maybe it ends up being huge. That would be amazing I'm not gonna lie to you but but there will be fees that are associated with it but the you know hopefully by not having the Necessity of a particular guaranteed return. We can sort of grow it slowly and organically and make it broadly accessible Thank you Well questions. Yep, this one just here I've been thank you. I'm finally good to see you after eight years. I'm big fan of your content and everything you do Not a question to passport just intrigued if you're hiding intrigued what hiding You are welcome to email me and make the pits So here's the deal do we need more work? Absolutely, we could definitely use more help. I think the issue right now is this is part of sort of the philosophical issue It's really important to us to sort of keep costs under control, but we are you know TBD TBD, I would say email me But there's definitely no guarantees with that, but you were we're gonna just see how it goes Yeah, okay References talk. Sorry. I get a lot of email. I give a whole bit about philosophy of life and how you survive One of them is you have someone else wants to check your email, so I'm gonna blame him Stick up your hand if you have a question Down here in the front. Hi Ben. I think a lot about my information diet I think of a lot about inputs and outputs creative outputs being writing for example and Inputs being some of the content I might consume through passport like a podcast You have a lot of output. You're creating a software startup. You write a lot. You podcast a lot What are some of your inputs? I? mean It's a good question. I am And you could probably pick this up going back to the history that I told you about You hear about sort of information sort of omnivores or information or whatever the word sort of is That's been me from a very young age There's pretty much no moment of time other than I'm like sort of with my family that I'm not reading or sort of consuming now It is it you know, I think the you know the internet's been amazing in this regard I think that Twitter for all its sort of flaws and challenges over the last year remains in incredible place to find sort of new things I think the The internet one of the glorious sort of outcomes of the internet as far as social networking goes is sort of chat and group chat And I've had the good opportunity and I started out just a total outsider It's some guy in Taiwan writing a blog right and it was thanks to social media that it grew and people shared and things on Those lines now I have the chance to sort of know a lot more people which is which is pretty cool And you weren't stuff sort of that way, but I would say just It's always it's a question I always get and it's it for me I Try to think of things from the sort of base assumptions as much as possible And I view a lot of my information consumption is one it's sort of like scavenging like trying to figure out everything that's going on And then when there's something I want to focus on that's when I drill deep So people ask well what books do you read I personally am not a person that just sits down for fun and read the book by Inlargeless modification. I'm reading some junkie you like sort of like like for you know fiction novel But sometimes I will read a book in a very I'm a very fast reader Just because I want to know about this topic and I know I need to understand deeply sort of the history I think some of the best trajectory posts are like that they get into some of the historical Context of things like that so that's I'm very it's sort of a scavenge and then focus and dig super deep That's sort of the approach that I take. I'm not it's hard to articulate it I'm not sure how repical it is, but it works for me And it's one of those things I've been honing for literally like 35 years because that's just how I've always sort of operated Yep, there's another one Hey Ben, so how do you determine the balance or the equilibrium between your philosophy and the revenue? well the This is both a good thing and a bad thing that I have a full-time job, which is writing to checkery so the Now I'm not a believer in I think there is a challenge with stuff is purely altruistic that can have its own bad incentive sort of as well So passport is definitely gonna have a business model. We're gonna hopefully sort of make money But at the same time, you know, I thought about this idea of this ecosystem For years and years as you can imagine right like I was the one that the first one to go through the pain of Trying to build a subscription management system when none of it sort of really existed there were again Thank you to the ecosystem. There were some good plugins that were there mostly designed to gate content like downloads and things like that I was able to adapt for a sort of a daily sort of communication sort of thing But so I knew there was a need my question all along just to be totally frank was I wasn't sure How large the market was going to be and I was concerned about as with my publisher hat If you have someone offering the software who at the end of day needs to make a certain size return At what point do the incentives of the software provider diverge from the incentives of the publisher and So to me, this is the positive of Stratechery is by and large for the orders completely funded the development of passport to date is that that allows Passport to be first and foremost thinking about the publisher and what makes sense for them Now I'm not gonna promise or guarantee how that's gonna turn on the long run Maybe this is something that I think the software is actually exceptionally capable Extremely philosophical. This is fairly insane financially to be clear I mean again, I'm fortunate things to check where I can afford it But the really the driving thing was not just the need for the software but the real sense particularly four to five years ago that publishers and the WordPress ecosystem needs a An alternative that is for people that you know, you go back to when WordPress started I won't speak for for matter or whatever But this sort of idea that like there was various context all content should be free right everything on the internet is sort of free I Was very sort of I didn't believe that when I started techery and I would get in sort of like, you know arguments about it that no I think that The definition of free can differ, you know free as in beer is not necessary requirement Free as in sort of speech is and that's sort of the core thing that is undergirding the motivation That I want people to have expensive beer, but be able to sell whatever beer they want We've got time for a couple more questions if there are any Yes, just behind you here Yeah More ad hoc just because you keep mentioning beer. Do you have a favorite craft beer bar and Taipei then? Yes, Taihu for sure. They're the one in the blue in the blue can is I Apologize to my fellow, you know the other people from Taiwan here The only good IPA in Taiwan, but it is actually quite good So tonight is I've as I've gotten older you saw that picture of me when I was much thinner and much younger and had all dark hair I Have as I hit my forties had to give up, you know Not drinking nearly as much except for Friday nights when I go to the grocery store And I buy some of that beer and I'm gonna go get some tonight and I'm already looking forward to it That might have been a nice softball question to end up Thank you so much. Oh, thank you for I was gonna drop the cliche. Thank you Blah blah blah, but actually I just want to reemphasize that is truly the theme of my speech It's why I'm here. Why I wanted to come sort of speak. I don't like doing this that much anymore I like the Q&A sort of thing. I'll sit a chair and talk but This project and this ecosystem has changed my life. So thank you Ben, we also have a speaker gift for you from the organizers. Thank you so much Thanks, everyone The next session here, I believe is starting at two o'clock in the meantime Please visit the sponsor areas on the first floor moonbear hall and the second floor sun moon hall And in sun moon, you'll also find the community corner and the jobs board where anyone can post their job offerings. Thanks very much Yeah, so Before we actually start I'm the emcee for the rest of the day. I told pie that I'm all hers today So just wanted to mention this one major thing that has happened today, which is to all the ladies in the house Happy women's day. So a shout out to all you ladies Yeah, I understand we just had lunch, but we can give a huge round of applause to all the ladies once again Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so the this talk is Really, you know for all the people you've already seen the you know the topic of the talk So I'll just introduce the amazing speakers going to come on stage The name of the speaker is right here, but I'm going to still say it. It's Alan Schleser and he's been he's the principal architect in Yoast obviously he's the person who's responsible for navigating the complexities out there So you can obviously understand that he's going to be making things a little simple out here And that's what it is along with that the reason why I know Alan is for the because he's been a maintainer for WPC li for a long long time and Yeah, the hooting should continue and this is the this is the power that you should show to all the speakers out here So guys put your hands together for Alan will be doing the talk. Yeah Thank you Hi everyone Thank you all for coming to my talk I'll try to bore you for you not too much. I'll try my best The talk I'm giving today is about code quality. So software quality in general It is not super detailed. So I will not be covering too much code There's a few code examples, but not too much. So hopefully everyone can make use of the more conceptual nature of the talk. I want to really Try to get you to approach your problem solving when you need to create software in a different way So I have a bit of a mindset shift Now let me try if just click a works awesome So let's start with the story first There was once upon a time a Young little machine called the Mars climate orbiter It was built by NASA in as part of an ongoing series of missions to explore Mars it was launched on the 11th of December in 1998 and The its goal was basically to enter the orbit around Mars and keep circling around Mars to capture Climate data about Mars and it was part of a larger initiative where that data would be used for for later projects as well When it tried to enter the orbit The navigational data that they received in the NASA control center was a bit misleading they had discrepancies in the data and During the entire trajectory they were already seeing these discrepancies, but They didn't try to do any changes so the calculations were that the Parallel at altitude so the altitude at which it would try to enter this orbit where it would then automatically circle around the planet That was calculated to be ideally at 227 226 kilometers Then when it started approaching the planet gathering more data all of a sudden the calculations changed so they had an altitude that was a hundred and fifty two hundred and seventy kilometers and Then when it really approached the orbit All of a sudden with more precise data. This was one hour prior to the actual insertion into the orbit The calculations said that it should be at 110 kilometers of altitude and that at that point It was known that the survivable altitude was at 80 kilometers. So it couldn't possibly go below 80 kilometers Otherwise it would just crash and burn in the atmosphere so all of a sudden these calculations they came closer and closer to this fatal threshold and then finally on September 23 at nine nine o'clock the engine started to launch the insertion process and At about four minutes in they lost signal to the Mars orbit the climate orbiter they They assumed that it would lose the signal when it goes on the backside of Mars But the signal loss came 49 seconds too early, which was really unexpected and since then they have never been able to establish contact anymore and so after the fact that they try to find out what what had happened and as it turns out it was entering the orbit way too low so it was directly flying into the atmosphere of Mars and when it lost signal It was not because it was getting behind the planet It was because it had crashed and burned because it was way below that that safe altitude So the report that came out afterwards to find out what actually happened Generally said that because of software error the spacecraft encountered Mars at the lower than anticipated Altitude and disintegrated due to atmospheric stresses So that was the official outcome of this and what it actually meant was that The software that was supplied by Lockheed Martin one supplier produced results in one unit and It was then consumed in another unit assuming another unit to make decisions. And so there was always a discrepancy between the signal getting Recorded and the signal being interpreted because two companies made assumptions that produced a mismatch so everything was converted at at a factor of 4.45 or so of error conversion and the result was a loss of 327.6 million US dollars Because two companies couldn't agree on the unit to use and they just assumed on both sides that the unit they were using was the one that that was in use anyway and So this this assumption was very costly one and that was the root cause of why this entire mission ultimately failed Then we have a similar example All made a very simple one We have this piece of PHP code So at first not very relatable to a Mars mission But what do you have in common? So this is this is really silly code This is not something that you can now copy paste and use somewhere This doesn't make any sense at all, but it's just meant to serve to illustrate a point What you have in common is that there's all sorts of assumptions That are made that are left unchecked with This code I Just want to show you how easy it is to miss some of these assumptions So that's why the code is so simple. We have a function that is meant to fuse two values It has a total and increment and then it fuses those with a magical magical operation Assume this is a black box and then it returns the total So we have assumptions and we have assertions and here The assumptions they might not immediately be obvious so we call the The operation fuse and we accept two arguments and now someone who wants to consume our new newly created package Okay, they now use this function so they want to fuse Goku and Vegeta and They want to create a new fusion For those that are a bit more into anime. They probably get the reference here They want to create a fusion, but of course the end result will not be what they expect Do you know what the actual result is of running the code with a purple background here? Who who can confidently say that they know in PHP. So this is PHP code. What will be the end result of this operation? What do you think? Yes, that's a valid assumption, but it's wrong The thing is with everything with operations that are not clearly defined It's very easy to make assumptions and very easy Thank you for the example and does it this is of course not to bash you it is it was meant to be very misleading for obvious reasons so in PHP up to version 7 this will return the integer value 0 in PHP version 7 1 to 7 4 This will return the integer value 0 with a warning that a non-numeric value was encountered and In PHP 8 onwards it will create a hard fatal error a type error Saying that unsupported operant types string plus string were encountered So not only will it produce the integer value null when it actually produces results, but it's also produces Inconsistent results. So this is really the type of bugs You really don't want in your code where not only does it break it all who also breaks? Contextually depending on where you run it So the thing is these assumptions are One of them are the type we didn't actually enforce any typing here We made the assumption that while we create a Fuse function everybody knows how to use a fuse function, right and the arguments are even labeled So what can possibly go wrong? but the thing is if we not and force a given type Somebody will misuse it and you will have to deal with the results of that But if we now try to add an insertion here, we have the integer version of These arguments so we can see we type Where we are Strongly typing this against integer the two arguments are integer and can only return an integer So this assumption is then properly cleared now. Nobody can try to To create to use this function with two strings and if they do so They will actually have an error on their own end saying that they are just using it wrong So your own code will not be the part that is breaking their code will break So we have already one piece of your code that is free of this assumption Because ultimately every single assumption that is left unchecked is a potential bug It is not a guaranteed bug sometimes It's still correct if you assume something But it is a potential bug as long as you're not verifying that it is actually correct and What's more is that This is not the only assumption that is in that code so we fixed these with integer type hints and This operation here Leads to another problem another assumption and that might be less obvious because here we incrementing integer values and the assumption is that we can do this An infinite amount of times with infinitely large values, but it's that's not actually the case What we need is to check To make sure that we're not overflowing the maximum capacity of what an integer value can actually consume so every data type has limitations that is generally Generally the case when you're adding something you need to make sure that you're also observing the limits to this addition We just assumed that we can do this without watching for anything else So here we have another check where we're first making sure that this this maximum is not Not over over flown However, there's another assumption can anyone spot Another assumption that is in that code and it is maybe less obvious. Yes Exactly There's someone paying attention here the increment can be negative so Assuming that the increment is only positive is not an assumption that it was never enforced So that is not an assumption you can make if the increment is Possible to be negative you need to deal with the possibility of that You cannot just assume that everybody will just follow the happy path of your code It can be negative. So you need to deal with the negative case So now as we have dealt with these assumptions We have one piece of our code where we can Sleep easy at night because we know that when there's a problem. It's probably not in that part of the code We really have harmed it So all of these things are basically the same mechanism We made an assumption and we didn't double check that assumption is true and in case it is wrong. It is a buck so what happens if we now just try to generalize this to Generalize this into a strategic approach We can take when when doing software construction where we just say I want to be as systematic as possible in Reducing these assumptions because every assumption I make is a potential bug. So the less assumptions I make Statistically speaking I will have less bugs. That is just Statistically speaking is something that that will be the end result Every single instance of that it doesn't say much, but statistically the end result will be less bugs So that's one what we want to look into every single assertion that we make is Not a potential bug, but it basically says that in this part for this reason. There's guaranteed to be no bug and then What we also add here is If we make assumptions those assumptions they multiply across your code base and all of a sudden There's no part of your code that is safe anymore because you introduced some ambiguity somewhere and and it grows into this huge Megabug that is really hard to track because your your internal consistency is just not given and Instead when you create these assertions, I noticed the fondest wrong story about that if you create these assertions the The this also documents everything you have already checked So on one hand this helps with skill transfer and with checking that all the right assertions are in place that no assumptions Are left unchecked and also when you actually need to hunt down for another bug when you might have missed an assumption It's much easier to go through because you already see what was considered so Assumptions a potential or latent bugs. We want to get rid of them and Checks and assertions are guarantees So we want to want to have less potential bugs and more guarantees and the end result will more Will be hopefully less actual bugs So that's That's the talk but now yeah, okay, how this is easier said than done So let's try to go through through a thought experiment first and then I'll show you a few examples. So first of all The general approach is you have a problem You let it go through process for software design discovery planning whatever and you end up with a solution that you built You want to make sure that your solution is correct The thing is first of all How can you how can you check where this solution is correct? one thing is that you can have all sorts of Automated testing and so on in place, but usually that type of testing that checks where the Solution matches the expectations So one issue is that the expectations are what we produced during the process However, given the same problem if we have a different process, we end up with a different solution. So Do we know whether our process is actually? Correct. Sorry for all. This is a bit confusing. Sorry for latency Do we actually know that our process is correct? with the with the Problem, there's also the fact that if we have a different problem that we're trying to solve and We apply the same process to it. We also end up with a different solution So we also need to know whether our problem was correctly identified and that means that if we want to really Do this systematically and get rid of assumptions It needs to start at the problem space not the solution space. We first need to make sure that We don't make assumptions about what problem to solve because otherwise no matter how How strong our typing is if we solve the correct problem? It's wrong. It's just bad and We're not talking about single software bugs here. We're talking about Software failure. We're talking about projects that fail as just a larger version of a bug in our thinking a bug in our execution and so we want to really go The entire way and to do this for the entire process So what I thought about is that first you should think about what the dimensions are that you're working in When you look at the traditional definition of software quality, you have process quality. You have the structural quality and you have the functional quality So how are we solving problems? Are we solving the correct problem? The problems correctly and are we solving the right problems? These three dimensions are generally Generally what you consider when you're talking about software quality When you do automatic automated testing for example That would be the structural quality. Are we solving problems correctly? But if you then do user acceptance testing that is the functional quality Are we actually solving the right problems and all of that is tied in a process that makes sure that We're correctly collecting data. We're feeding the data back into the development process and so on and so forth but this this traditional Display of software quality doesn't look at this iterative approach of slowly converging towards a System where you introduce less assumptions. So what I propose is that you think about a software quality in a revised way first of all by having Functional and structural quality they need overlap They need to have a way of checking each other to making sure that you cannot have Perfectly fine unit testing that's perfectly Perfectly solves the wrong problem. You don't want to have one thing be completely independent of the other They need to counter check each other to make sure that you cannot You cannot fool yourself into the wrong confidence by by having tests validate something that that where the test just Start with the wrong expectations So that's why there needs to be overlap and then the process quality should be something that that envelops the entire thing We are Imagine that you're doing this this automated testing and then there's requirements change and You make changes to your code and then you run the automated testing again. Everything is green. Okay. We're good to go But how do you know then that? Your tests are actually testing the changes that the changes in the requirements Needed because it might just as well be that your tests don't actually cover that part of the code Or that they don't cover that approach to solving the problem So the entire process needs to be built in such a way that there's always like this double checking for everything where Like for example, you might get to requirements in such a way that as soon as these requirements are part of your project Your tests start to fail no matter what and you need to make changes to get the test into a green state again so this this This all should be something where everything relies on each other to make sure that you cannot get to a sense of false confidence where again, you have assumptions that are unchecked and And so there's three Phases, I think that you should go through when you want to when to manage that first of all There's the clarify phase and I'm I completely came up with these phases So this is not something you will find in books. That's just my way of thinking through it first. You need to have a clarify step you have requirements and That is what the client wants. They told you yeah, we need XYZ and Probably everyone who has worked with clients has already had the situation where the client is very adamant that this is what we want Now we need to build this However, the thing is that There's also the problem domain and there's the boundaries of an acceptable solution that also need to go into Requirements so when you collect these requirements don't only listen what the client wants Because you also need to know what the client actually needs Which is not necessarily the same thing and you need to know what the client can actually use Which is also again a different thing and your requirements should include all of that and come up with a solution that solves Well for the entirety of that because otherwise you might actually build the thing that the client wants and the client cannot use It and it's not what it needed what they needed So that that is When you try to clarify the requirements make sure that you clarify all requirements and there's functional requirements So the features of the software it needs to be able To print in color, but then there's also the non-functional requirements. Those are the properties of your solution It might be that there's really hard Restrictions hard thresholds that you need to hit in terms of performance for example You're building an API for someone right every time you do a request. It just takes three hours to solve Okay, it's completely unusable If the performance is a factor in in the success of the project It needs to be a part of the requirements and you need to solve for it This car this is the same for performance security reliability usability all of these non-functional requirements If there is a heart limit a heart requirement for any of these they need to be part of the planning Then there's also the boundary conditions there might be laws in place So yeah, it's if the client needs insides into their customers It's great to collect all the data that you can get from your customers But they might actually loss that tell you that you're not allowed to do that So all of those are also requirements. I need to go into this process and then documentation is key any requirement that is not Documented it cannot be validated. Nobody can actually check whether you made the right The right assumption there It cannot be verified and it cannot be relied upon so you need to document everything So that it can also be challenged because it's fine if you identify a requirement But if you then build the code and build a solution and publish it Nobody was able to actually challenge whatever assumptions you made there and you don't want to make assumptions So every time you might be making an assumption it helps to have other people double-check what you're deciding what you're assuming So if it's not challenge the challenge a ball you cannot use it so document everything then the second step is the verify step and What I'm thinking about here is that After you clarified what you need You came up with a set of expectations Then the verify step is that you need to make sure that those expectations make sense before you start building something That's the verify step. So again documentation is key Because behavior that is not documented. It cannot be trusted and it cannot be relied upon again So for example, if you build an interface for something that someone else is supposed to rely upon Then of course that needs to be documented and ideally you'll document it and you test that The documentation the specification and the actual behavior are all in sync. This is very important Then You should have contracts in place so Here I try to visualize a bit how you can how you can think about this Imagine that you have the internal behavior and you have your package under development and usually you might have dependencies that you pull in it's it's Rare that for a non-trivial piece of software that you build everything from scratch. So you'll have dependencies So part of the internal behavior Will connect to the dependency through an interface and rely on that and then you have on the other side Other side you have a consumer where you provide an interface and they consume your behavior. So your package Does things and then has an interface so that people can make use of the results The thing is that You need to verify the documented behavior you rely on on this and and you need to verify and Document to behave your others should rely on on this and and those are the boundaries of your system The internal behavior is not that important, but those boundaries that is where There can actually be bugs where it's not that your code is incorrect or someone else's code is incorrect It's just like with the most climate orbiter. You were not in sync. You had You had a mismatch in your assumptions So that is very important that you make it as hard as possible to have these mismatches in place Again a silly code example So which ones of these are correct, can you see it at first glance? It's probably hard to see from there Because all of these look like they might potentially be correct however, if you're not Very very used to the weird behavior of PHP and you don't double check in documentation chances are Pretty pretty high that you get it wrong. So here in this case It's it's what a rather weird mixture which ones are correct and which ones are not correct And that means always read the fine manual, please It's very important Then the third step is assert and so now we build up our expectations We verified that we came up with the right expectations and that everyone else has right expectations on us Now we need to actually enforce things So we want to first if we have a large system. We want to create and enforce boundaries The thing is that if we have a large enough code base it probably operates in multiple layers and multiple levels of complexity and We do have an expected behavior, but it's also for every Single place where nothing is enforced. We will have more and more Ambiguity and uncertainty that gets included into the code. So this is something where as the code execution goes from layer through layer the Uncertainty is actually growing and the Possibility the potential for bugs is actually growing and what we need to do is to actually build in boundaries where we have hard checks on just letting only certain certain types of code and data through Making hard failures when expectations are not met making sure that the interface is correctly Respected and so on and so forth. So these boundaries where all From time to time we just do a reset while going from one part of the code to the other part Make sure that we have the growth of this uncertainty under control over time It cannot grow uncontrollably This can be done for example by retyping at boundaries So if you look at how WordPress behaves you have your code that uses a filter. So apply filters goes to WordPress Then WordPress will then execute Plugins the first plug-in gets the filter function does something with it Returns it the next plug-in gets the filter function does something with it Return it so this value is being passed around and it's potentially being manipulated and at the end you get it back at some point But do you really know what happened to it? You cannot possibly know what happened to it. So in that case it is important to actually Assume that it was manipulated assume that it might potentially be wrong that it might not be the right type or not right Structure anymore. So even though you start it out with the correct type after passing something through a filter Reinforced a type. We're doing this here with With a class that has its own validate function. So not only are we enforcing the type But we are also enforcing the internal structure of the data and even though we started with that customer ID type We're retyping it to make sure that we're still correct. So the worst case scenario is that somebody else made it wrong and It will fail here at this point. So everything after this point cannot fail anymore for the for anyone having Used the filters wrong. That's the type of boundaries. We can use then there's other types of boundaries For example, when you're dealing with errors here, we have again this this illustration of how a package would would be structured potentially and Imagine that you're throwing an exception if you're in an unacceptable case. You're throwing the exception that is Generally part of the interface and the consumer will then Manage this exception and deal with it the the problem though is that What often happens is that the dependencies can also throw exceptions. So all of a sudden the consumer Get something that is not part of the interface. It's not part of the contract that the consumer has signed with you So you said I'm only doing this but you're actually doing something else It might be a dependency that is doing that but the client the consumer cannot possibly know they only and enter the contract with you So what you need to actually consider here is that the exceptions they should be caught and We thrown under your umbrella under your Responsibility so that they all pass to the same interface that you are actually documenting that those are also exceptions that can be thrown or that you're we throwing them as your own exceptions and This means that Responsibility according to the contract you're entering with your consumer It includes the dependencies you're adding you cannot just say well those are the dependencies That's not my fault because the consumer They assume that you're only doing the things that you have in your interface So you can re-throw at boundaries by basically Trying to think about everything that can go wrong possibly go wrong and then make sure that there's nothing that can get past that Barrier so at that point you're sure again that you have full control over what happens next So to summarize Assumptions can hide everywhere. They can hide throughout the entire process. It's not just at the at the precise coat level, but also at the design level at the process level All of those need to be checked. They cannot be in all parts and all layers of your system and Every assumption is a potential bug. So the less assumptions you have The better you're off. So eliminate assumptions that will statistically reduce the number of possible bugs of actual bugs statistically speaking and So the steps that I that I recommend you think about when when you're going through this process first Clarify to make sure that you probably understood the problem the problem is documented and you know exactly what the expectations are supposed to be then Verify that you actually came up with the right Expectations and then assert that everything is According to these expectations and that cannot possibly be anything else That is basically the systematic way of getting rid of more and more assumptions You will not be able to do this perfectly of course, but again statistically speaking This will be a definite improvement of your code and of the quality of the software you're producing Thank you very much, mr. MC, please I got to mesmerized by the talk, you know He was returning the favor of calling me to the stage, but yeah huge round of applause once more guys Thank you, and as a token of appreciation, I would like to you know give a token of appreciation to you So here we go. Thank you Thank you so much Alan Just a quick question as to when did you step into the world of technology not specifically coding, but the world of technology? That has been a very long time ago That that was at a very young age. I was just Fascinated by computers when I got the first access to the first one, and I think there was Seven or so that's when I started programming basic if anyone remembers that time So what was the time like I mean how that was in 1987 and that was on a common old C64 So that had a lot of other assumptions that were included in the system at very different requirements to today's machines But yeah, that was my entry point ladies and gentlemen before I was even born. He started coding. So thank you so much Thanks, Alan. Thank you. Maybe other questions. Oh, yeah. Yeah, please if you have any other question I've done my questions. You would I would like you guys to ask your questions He's covered. Yeah, I'm good Okay, great. So my question is As the as a person who write the requirement for for our clients How can we make sure that every single aspect for that that we are developing? can be able to serve to our customer because There's some situation that happened recently that we designed a system and then our our client said that Hey, this is not the thing that we want We need something more than that and they didn't specify anything from that and how we can how can we? Try to convince them to to Tell me it'll ask more detail about that. Yeah, thank you for the question. That's a really great question so first of all You should really make sure That you understand what problem the client is is trying to solve So usually the client tells you about the solution. They would like to see But you really don't need to drill down. There are systems like the five wires or so where Constantly asking them. Yeah, okay. You need a green button. Okay. Why do you need a green button? Well, I need a green button so that somebody can push on it so that this happens Okay, why does that need to happen? So you need to drill down to get to the bottom of what the actual problem is They they need solving and oftentimes it always already fails at that step because The client doesn't know What the solution is supposed to be so if they tell you assume that they're wrong They are not the expert in solving those problems They should let you know what the problem is but it's really difficult for clients to actually understand and express it correctly That's why it's it's your duty to then drill down deeper and deeper and deeper and until you get to the bottom of it and really understand in detail what the actual problem is usually You you need to get to a point where you're trying to solve a business problem Clients start with yeah, technically needs to do this and that but you need to drill down to understand What is the business problem you need solving and? As an example, you might have a Butcher that comes to you that says my my website doesn't have enough visitors There's not enough Traffic I need better SEO. Okay, then you need do more SEO. They get more traffic They get more online orders or whatnot, but they cannot fulfill them because that was never a business problem They had in the first place So just doing what the client wants is not right approach You really need to drill down to understand the business problem that needs solving the actual pain points Then once you have that as I showed these lists before with the functional requirements and the non-functional Requirements you should really have for you internally a checklist to go through to make sure that you covered all the aspects that you that you asked questions about each of these aspects to uncover Requirements that were not obvious at first, but that actually happened to be important for your client And then finally you need to document everything so that on one hand you have a document that that allows the client to clearly verify the The results the conclusions that you came to so that they can really challenge that that you can see Okay, that's the conclusion. Yeah, that makes sense seems like you're in You're heading in the right direction but also as a tool for yourself to actually let the client sign off and then in the worst-case scenario because It might be that they ask you for a solution to a problem now Then you build it in six months time you deploy it and then their problem has changed So you really need to make sure that on one hand you're documenting what the client has agreed to if it's in enough detail so that that can protect you but also then include a process where like an agile process or so where you work iteratively and constantly Revalidate whether you're still solving the right problem. And so Yeah, going in more detail will now be way out of scope But that should be the general approach where you really need to do your due diligence To make sure that you get the best possible start into the project and then give the client enough input points where they can Help you adapt it if needed and then finally make sure that you're protected in case the client just Changes his mind on the whim and it's not what you agreed on Thank you for the question. Do we have time for another question? Okay, so Alan will be around I'm sure yes, and you can ask your questions just find Alan and you know We'll be able to answer any questions that you have find me. Yeah, so Easy to find I mean this guy's never, you know mistake. So alright guys. Thank you so much Alan Thank you so much for your time. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you We'll be having the next talk at three. So please make yourself available here. Thank you so much I guess there are people still coming in Shall we start? Great So people sitting out here, how many of you like fast websites? Could you just raise your hands? I? Still see people not raising their hands. I'm dead sure you do not not like fast websites But of course yeah, so you know there's a reason why your websites are fast when it comes to WordPress I mean we're gonna be talking about you've already seen the topic. It's democratizing performance by Pasca And just a little bit about our next speaker Pascal has been a part of the community and the core team member for a long long time And his main focus is to you know focus on the aspect of performance of the CMS called WordPress that we all love So I'd like to call on stage Pascal Birchler and take over the stage so huge round of applause for Pascal, please Thank you. Hey everyone. I'm really excited to be here today to talk about democratizing performance First I want to explain. Oh, it doesn't switch. I mean we can just look at my face for like half an hour Good point So anyway, so beginning I just want to clarify What that even means to democratize performance? Because that question or the term gets confused a little bit Especially for not native English speakers, so it's not about politics or anything So it just means making something accessible to everyone and in my eyes everyone should be able to have a fast website No, it doesn't seem to be working because Now it seems better. All right Yay so Democratizing performance is of course a reference to the mission statement of WordPress, which is to democratize publishing WordPress believes that great software should work with minimum setup and work out of the box People can use it. Yeah, you can use it out of the box Or in the words of WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenwick We take things that used to require advanced technical technical knowledge and make it accessible to everyone So it just as WordPress democratizes publishing it can play a significant role in making Performance accessible to everyone regardless of their skills or technical knowledge Not everyone knows how to code or manage a server still they should be able to have a fast website with fast interactions But why does that matter? Well performance is essentially for user experience if your site is slow Visitors might leave and not come back or your ads might load too slowly and you lose revenue Or if your site is slow to interact with maybe people don't buy the product in your online store so you lose money and Performance is increasingly important for search engines as well as becomes a ranking factor So it can really affect your online presence and your traffic throughout this talk when I'm usually referring to performance on the front end I do so by referring to core web files Web files isn't initiative by Google To provide guidance for quality signals that are essential for a good user experience on the web the core areas such as loading performance Layout stability and Interactive interaction responsiveness While core web files are still relatively young Performance is another new invention of course and WordPress has always kept an eye on performance to a certain degree However, the complexity of websites Has evolved over the years and so have expectations. It was not so long ago when the community started caring more deeply A few years ago a new core performance team was focused was formed to focus specifically on performance The WordPress core performance team is dedicated to monitoring enhancing and promoting performance In both WordPress core and its ecosystem The team's activities can be roughly grouped into three categories or pillars one is improving core itself Providing new APIs fixing slow code and measuring improvements Second we're working with the ecosystem to help people adopt best practices and make their websites faster And third is providing tools and documentation to facilitate doing so So as you can see tackling performance in an open-source project like WordPress In both more than just improving the core software itself because there's like thousands of plugins themes involved This is actually a fact that I would like to Emphasize a bit more so to democratize performance is not something that WordPress or the core performance team can do alone So whether you're building WordPress sites for friends or family or you're making a living By building themes or plugins takes all of us to elevate performance and to raise the bar for everyone Still there are of course some things that we can do in WordPress core itself So let's take a closer look at some of the performance improvements in WordPress WordPress core to give you a better idea of what it means Even though the core performance team is still a relatively young There's already a proven track record of performance improvements in the last few years Many of these improvements were implemented. Thanks to more advanced testing measurements Which helped identify areas with poor performance? This in turn facilitated improvements to image lazy loading or the span of multiple releases WordPress has got much better at detecting like the high priority images The third example here is a perhaps a bit more unusual or unexpected So ever since WordPress added support for emojis like ten years ago It added a little bit of JavaScript on every page to detect whether your browser Supports the latest versions of emoji because there's always new emoji coming out So it turns out doing this on the main thread and on every page load is quite wasteful So what we did in a recent release is we do this only once When you visit the page first and we cash the result and we do so in a separate thread This change was a main contributing factor to a 30 percent client side performance improvement in WordPress 6.3 compared to WordPress 6.2 and To benefit from this all you had to do was update your website. I think that's a great example of democratizing performance You may wonder how such a change can be measured. How do you know whether? Changes were successful. How do you know what to work on next? There are usually two ways to do this one you set up controlled WordPress site like a super preside and controlled environment somewhere you make a change and then you Measure the performance like before and after the change. This is so-called lap testing or lap data Lap testing is a very powerful tool that allows you to keep track of performance on an ongoing basis And that's why we added automated performance testing in WordPress core So we can ensure that we are aren't regressing in any area and for each major release. We do like a detailed in-depth performance analysis as well and collecting all this data really helps facilitate decision-making based on performance metrics Because we finally have like numbers to tell whether a change is actually good for performance or not And when it comes to measuring success the more important aspect actually is seeing how WordPress is doing For actual users out there. For example, when we want to find out whether this emoji improvement Made WordPress faster. We need to measure how the millions of WordPress sites out there in the world are performing for their actual visitors You can't do that with lap testing So how do you do that instead? This kind of information is available for free through open-source datasets such as HTTP archive and the Chrome UX report The former is useful to see which technologies a website is using like which plugins and themes and The latter is the official dataset of the web vitals program So all user centric core web vitals are represented there. This is the so-called field data Combining the two data sites provides a more accurate picture of WordPress performance in the wild or in the field At the end of last year we looked at this field data to see how we are doing and the results were very very positive Looking at the millions of WordPress websites from a Chrome UX report core web vitals passing rate improved by over 8% Seeing such an improvement at scale across this huge amount of sites is quite a significant boost Alright, so these were some recent examples of how we have been improving WordPress performance and measuring such changes Now I want to share some of the upcoming changes that we're focusing on this year and some of the changes you should be aware of The first one I am particularly proud about because I've been working on it for a long time myself It turns out that loading translations in WordPress is very very slow Lab data showed that loading translations in WordPress could even make it like up to 30% slower and Considering that more than half of all WordPress websites around the world are not using the default English language But are translated. That's a huge disadvantage So to fix this we completely rebuilt how translations work in WordPress To make them faster and more lightweight Here on the left side in blue you can see the typical load time of a regular WordPress site And in the middle is the same site but with translations loaded as exceed a load time is much higher And on the right side in yellow is the new system that we built which has a much improved load time There's barely any difference to a site without translations Thanks to the performance translations Translated web where presides will automatically faster This is actually shipping Later this month in WordPress 6.5. So all you have to do is update WordPress and If you have a translated WordPress site, it will be automatically faster Another big focus this year is interactivity performance Which is about ensuring that any interaction with visitors of visitors on your website are as fast and smooth as possible What we're doing now is identifying key areas And opportunities to improve Interaction but interactivity bottlenecks in WordPress Here's an example of such an interaction issue where the UI is not responding right away when you try to click on the accordion This isn't this is an area that actually affects more like the ecosystem Side of things so it's more about which themes and plugins that you are using that affect Interaction issues still there are some things that we can do in WordPress to help make that better And of course this responsiveness can be measured and this can be done using a new core web file metric called interaction to next paint or INP for short. So it's a new core web file that is Coming stable actually next week If you want to learn more about it, my colleague Adam here is talking about it tomorrow morning at this work While INP is of course an ecosystem problem again. There's ways for core to do improvements and provide tools and guardrails for for developers one aspect to do this is the new interactivity API in WordPress 6.5 the derivative interactivity API powers the things like image lightbox functionality in the image block or pagination without full page reloads and if we can get plugins and themes to adopt this new API and we can ensure fast and responsive interactions and Maybe hopefully we can get rid of jQuery as well Images are a bit of a recurring topic when it comes to WordPress performance You know the usage of images on the web has steadily increased over the years and usually images get bigger and bigger In the past we have done some work to ensure that WordPress Properly supports the web P image format which allows for much smaller file sizes And now we did the same for a bit as well. So a bit is a new Image format which helps make images even smaller So starting with WordPress 6.5 WordPress natively supports a bit images problem with these new formats is that older servers often don't support these formats and Uploading images is also a very compute Intensive task, especially if you're a shared on a shared hosting environment Uploading images can take a long time To solve this problem. We are looking into the bringing the whole media processing from the server to the browser So that what that means is you could optimize your images and convert them to web P or a with right in the browser Right in the editor even if your server doesn't actually support it Hey, it works So in its simplest form This would allow you to optimize existing images in your editor with the click of a button And this would happen all in the browser without requiring any server power or plug-in And such client-side image optimization not only helps reduce file size and improve performance But it's also a much better for user experience because the upload will be much faster because all the processing Happened on your device. It can happen in parallel It's much smoother experience Another personal favorite of mine is the work to add support for speculative Pre-rendering for near instant page loads So what that means is so this is a new browser API called speculation rules And it allows you to preload the next pages in the background For example on a news website on the whole page. You could automatically instruct how you could instruct the browser to automatically Preload the first like the headline article, but then when the user clicks on the article, it will load instantly You could even do that more dynamically for example in an online store When you hover over a product you can preload the product page in the background So when you click on it, the product will be instantly there This is currently supported in Chrome and Edge and there's a WordPress plugin to try it out And we hope to bring this to WordPress core eventually with the browser support increases and I think this API is a good example of How WordPress is embracing the web platform Luckily for us the web is constantly evolving and our job is to review such new APIs in the web and see if they're a good fit for WordPress and How we can implement these APIs in WordPress to make it easier for plug-in and theme developers to make use of them and Build fast experiences All right, so these are just a few examples of the things that we're working on in WordPress core to help improve performance If you want to learn more about what's in store go check out the core performance teams roadmap for this year As I said earlier it takes all of us To help democratize performance in WordPress and it is mainly an ecosystem effort after all there's this Ecosystem of thousands of themes and plugins and millions of users affected And just for WordPress core itself. There are multiple ways to help elevate the ecosystem Let me give you a few examples of what we can do in this regard of what we are doing right now First we really like talking about performance. We want to let everyone know about the latest and greatest developments in performance Everything that's happening in the space. This includes things like standing on this stage right now and talking about performance at the work in Asia Or sometimes we also reach out to developers individually for example by opening issues or pull requests and what we can also do is we look at Data from Chrome UX support or HTTP archive and we can see Plugins that are commonly used on slower websites So we can go to these plug-in developers directly and see if there's any anything that we can do to improve performance there Of course, this is all accompanied by the right documentation. It's important pride to provide developers with the necessary knowledge To about WordPress performance from implementing best practices to measuring changes throughout the development cycle This is not just relevant for the plug-in and theme developers But also the people like assembling the sites. It could be a freelancer or an agency You really need to know and you know learn and understand performance best practices in order to be able to apply them to your project One example, we recently published a Block post an article about how to set up end-to-end performance testing in WordPress using playwright So it's basically the same principle that we use in WordPress core for doing the lab testing for performance like ongoing performance tests Same thing just for plugging a theme developers So this way developers can do the same thing for their projects as well And of course everyone can write such documentation and they're really encourage you if you have any Tips or tricks and want to share your knowledge. Please do so The WordPress community can only benefit from this In addition to documentation. We also provide tools tools for developers and end users alike Such tools allow for a more hands-on approach to identify and tackle certain performance problems One such tool is the performance lab plug-in, which allows you to test upcoming Performance improvements before they actually land in WordPress core So not all of the features I've shown you before Land in WordPress right away. So first we add them to a performance lab to incubate them and test them and This way we can get them into the hands of users right away and we can iterate on them and If the feature works, we can propose merging into work with core Sometimes it turns out it doesn't work so well. So we could even discard it if necessary And performance lab is built in a modular way So you can just install the modules that you like and apply it to your website and because over a hundred thousand sites Use the plug-in already this in turn gives us valuable field data to see how sites using performance lab perform in the wild So this really helps us validate ideas at larger scale before they reach WordPress core and we can really iterate on them more quickly Another plugin we help develop and promote is plug-in check Plug-in check helps to ensure that your plug-in follows various best practices And requirements not just for submitting your plug-in to the plug-in directory, but also well beyond that And so it's actually a joint calibration collaboration with the plug-in review team As it's recommended to use it when first submitting a plug-in to the repository However, plug-in check actually remains useful even after that and we recommend you to use it consistently and continuously for your plug-in because it also includes checks for things like security accessibility and of course performance Using plug-in check is a very convenient tool because it's just another plug-in that you install on your development site So while you are working on your plug-in Plug-in check is right there for you to constantly around the checks against your plug-in But this can be made even more convenient and we really want to meet developers where they are and Many WordPress developers are using GitHub for hosting their source code For this reason we built a very easy to use GitHub action that runs plug-in check against your plug-in Just requires a few lines of configuration and every time you make a code change We run plug-in check and if there's any reported issues you will see them right away in line in your source code Similarly, we want to make it very easy for you to measure your success as well So we developed a github action that automatically installs your theme or plug-in on a fresh WordPress site and runs Performing to performance tests every time you make a code change So instead of reading the blog post I mentioned you can just add a few lines of configuration and you instantly have performance testing set up and Once the results are collected by the github action you presented with a nice overview of all the results and if there's any Regressions or improvements to a previous run you will see them in line in that table as well So that really makes it super easy for you to stay on top of performance metrics for your plug-in or theme and if you need something more custom you can always go back to the blog post and Customize the setup to your needs All right, so so far. I've talked about things the WordPress core performance team is doing to improve performance for everyone This includes code changes feature development bug fixes documentation tooling I've also shown you a little bit of the upcoming things in WordPress 6.5 and beyond all the things that we're working on but What if we go further than that? What if we dream a bit bigger? So in this section, I want to briefly touch on some loose ideas Things that we could do to even make things even better for developers If we take the tooling aspect to the next level There's a lot of potential to better help developers make the right decision when it comes to performance For instance when your browser tests to dev tools tell you about some slow JavaScript on your page Why can't it tell you how to fix this JavaScript in the context of WordPress? Many developers also use tools like query monitor to ensure there's no bugs in anything These tools could also show you performance related issues As I mentioned at the beginning Even if you're not a very tech savvy users, you should be able to have a fast WordPress website And of course no one uses WordPress without any plugins or themes There are always You know at least a few plugins on a website and when it comes to installing one you can choose from many different Options, but which one is better? Which one is faster? You simply don't know that's That's where we could step in and inform users about which solution might be better for performance Turns out there actually are some solutions for this already So there are tools There are browser extensions which basically test all the plugins in the entire WordPress plugin directory and if they have any errors or Compatibility issues with the latest WordPress version you'll see that information in the plugin directory They also measure things like memory usage And also of course the performance impact on both the front end and the back end So you can see exactly the plugins impact on a site Here's a little bit zoomed in So from a user perspective, I think this is a really useful Feature there's nothing more annoying than installing a plugin And seeing that it doesn't work properly just throws errors or makes your website super slow so From a performance standpoint, this is great for user experience And you don't have to worry about these headaches anymore when you can see this information up front So while these tests are currently available through some browser extension The tests are performed by some other platform. There's actually the infrastructure in place Already on WordPress.org to do this ourselves So there's this project called Tide which was built exactly for this purpose It is a series of automated tests that run against every plugin and also the theme On WordPress.org and provides the results via an API Unfortunately, the project has stalled quite a bit since it was since its inception like six years ago But what if he would bring it back? I think they would really go a long way All right, so this wouldn't be a conference talk in 2024 without mentioning AI You know, it's the hot topic can be used for many different things. So why not use AI for improving WordPress performance? Imagine an AI assistant in your WordPress admin that tells you how to optimize your site's configuration for example how to improve the configuration of your caching plugin or an assistant in your code editor having deep knowledge of the WordPress APIs and telling you how to load your plugins JavaScript or CSS in a more performant way You don't have to be an expert in performance to benefit from such helpers Making it possible for everyone to have a past website And this kind of tooling would definitely help lower the barrier for improving performance All right, so in this talk I have covered many different aspects of democratizing performance so far Let me try to summarize them in a few words First and foremost the core performance teams role is to enhance and improve Performance in both WordPress core and the surrounding ecosystem this includes building new features or APIs But also documenting best practices and providing tools for developers to understand measure and address performance issues And when it comes to measuring it, it's important to not just look at the lab data, but also the field data With our approach on improving WordPress performance We lower the barrier for everyone to have a fast website for me personally. I think the best outcome of this talk Is that all of you care more deeply out about performance and go check out all the things that the WordPress core performance team is doing? If you're excited about what's lying ahead, I encourage you to go check out tools such as plug-in check or performance lab and Definitely check out this year's roadmap that I've shown before for the WordPress core performance team this year Or even better get involved with the performance team yourself and help make the web a better and faster place Together we can democratize performance Thank you very much. Thank you Pascal. Thank you so much I'll have a question for you. I do have a question for you. When did you realize that you know performance is what you wanted to focus on? um Probably a long well performance was also always a bit on my mind, but when I saw The perform the core performance team getting formed and like taking shape That really caught my interest and wanted to help out because there's a huge potential and it's a big Still unsolved problem. There's still a lot of work to do. Sure. Sure guys any other questions that you have For Pascal. Yeah, please Can we have the mic, please? Hey, so I'm now for I managed smart phone hummingbird by the way It's very interesting talk. Thanks for thanks for all the Caring that you did I'm curious what where do you see all the performance plugins? Going or where would you rather like them to focus on going forward? A great question So there's quite a few performance plugins quite a few big ones In my eyes, they have tons of configuration options They can be quite a bit overwhelming for users Because they can affect things that you don't see immediately on a page. I Think there's a huge potential in making things simpler have like more Opinionated configurations and Again, if there's like an assistant that can tell you how to optimize your configuration. That's even more helpful Because otherwise it's really too overwhelming. So there's a lot of potential to simplify things Any other questions guys? We had a question from there Anybody else would like to ask a question Yeah, sure, please of course Hi Pascal a big fan of your work That's not ironic. I actually am You mentioned the pre-fetching Stuff that's there Has there been any thought on the kind of survey impacts of that? I know that we have seen with frameworks like next.js, which do prefetching It massively increases the number of HGP requests that actually hit the server I haven't actually seen that Pre-fetching before can you tell us a bit more about that? Sure. Yeah, so you probably haven't seen it because it's brand new. So it just landed in Chrome Chroming process very recently at API is actually very Flexible so it's up to you as the developer to tell the browser what to pre-fetch and what not to pre-fetch or pre-render and The browser also tries to Apply some heuristics to not overwhelm the server as well So I think it's just a matter of configuration to make The changes that apply to your stack so you don't you know Overwhelm the server. All right guys any other question that we have Shop, please Why do I sense there's some ironic stuff? It may be ironic I Guess it's a question that I have for you. I could ask you offline as well, but Do you feel that people should just rely on the performance team to make Performance better and wait until it gets better or everyone has a responsibility Whatever they are doing in WordPress whether it's site owners installing plugins or developers building plugins Do you feel it's a shared mission or? The performance team will do it on its own. Oh, it's absolutely a shared mission. We can't fix performance by ourselves Because no matter what we do in in core itself if there's like a bad plug-in or theme like a bad actor on the site that They could destroy all that hard work theory because it's like badly written plug-in So it's really up to all the plug-in developers Team developers, but also like the people actually assembling the sites Whether that be like a freelancer or an agency so they have a role to play as well. I don't think it would be on the user themselves to You know it fix the performance because the average user might not have the technical knowledge to understand this So it's really for All the other parties involved to help address the performance I Am a very small fan of York Just kidding. So my question is you implement a lot of these things in core What are some examples of things that appeared to have a lot of promise that didn't really pan out and you decided to get rid of it and Are there ever cases where? You know, we don't come up with it a second attempt of that and it's just a concept that we scrap and throw away I think so far that probably hasn't been Anything that didn't like fully work but one example was that maybe wasn't ready for primetime it was a Converting all images in WordPress to web pee by default Because it turns out where pee is great but if you download a web pee image and can't use it in like I don't know out look or Photoshop or I don't know in other program. It doesn't work like that's bad for a user experience to not necessarily the user experience of the site owner but the visitor But there are also places where Our features that might not necessarily be a good fit for for WordPress core itself that might Be plug-in territory. We have a lot of ideas on for example using And it's currently in the works so using the data from the the front end to inform the server about which is the prominent image on the website so we can prioritize That image in the browser. It's a bit complicated to to build and set up and we have to see whether that's actually something that works in core or not We have time for one question There are any one more You like a medium fan of my work anybody medium fan. I Guess after the talk, I mean lots of them are gonna be great fans But yeah, thank you so much Pascal and a huge round of applause for them. Thank you And yeah, a little token of appreciation from our end. Oh Wow, oh, wow, thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks everyone Take care. Thanks Alright guys, the next talk is going to start in about 20 minutes. So Whenever you're ready, please do be here. Yeah, thank you Can we all settle down, please? We'll be starting the next up next talk. How many of you here are aware of the third-party cookies? Okay, then the stock is all for you and So, okay, I'll just announce the next speaker You've already seen the name Alberto and Alberto's right there So Alberto has been a part of the develop developers relations engineer team And currently working on the privacy sandbox initiative at Google So I'd like you all to give a huge round of applause for Alberto. Thank you so much for being here and over to you I like it. Thanks. Thank you Hello. Hello. Yeah, so I'm glad that I saw many hands up. So by now, you know that all major browsers are moving in the direction of You know making the web platform more private in many ways that includes deprecating the party cookies And if you are a developer a site owner or you know as a technology leader Our goal is to take action and get ready so that our sites and our web properties are ready for this major transition and then we Guaranteed that our users experience the minimum amount of disruption So in this session what I'm gonna do is I'm going to give you a very quick overview of everything that you need to know So to understand what's changing and what actions that you have to take to get ready. So let's start with the root of the problem. So Composability is one of the superpowers of the web, right? So nowadays nobody Built a site from scratch right back in the day when you were little and I was starting working on the web Actually every web developers Developed the site from from scratch it, you know from zero to complete now Nowadays actually there are so many so many third party components that we put together to bring the user experience to our user And this is model that is seen very very powerful Because we don't have to do all the work ourselves But there is a big problem with this is that this Composability of third party components make the user very vulnerable when it comes to privacy and protecting their data So and the core of the problem is that the web was built on top of technologies that were designed a long time ago And they were not designed with privacy in mind At that time the important thing was to get the thing working and we were so excited that everything was working and for many years This situation stayed like that And despite of the severe privacy vulnerabilities The technologies. Oh, sorry. I wanted to dive a little bit more on this So when I say technology that were no privacy preserving and talking about two things One is the use of a partition storage right this ability that we have to store data in the browser of a user and Then access it when the user goes between sites, you know That's what is called on partition storage and the other one that I'm referring to is cover tracking Also, it's like these techniques that take advantage of data that the browser exchange between the server and the client to basically Determine and uniquely identify you as a user as you navigate through the web, right? So these two things are very powerful and despite of the vulnerabilities that they present They have basically been Has enabled us to power the web as we know it today like for example, you know Personalization like having the ability to log in once and not having to log in many times Having the ability to your images to be loaded faster for a CDN all these capabilities that we are so used to our power by these Privacy poor technology right and this situation was having this way for the last 20 plus years and For for many years the user just didn't know about it and also even when we knew about it We just say well, we know what we're gonna do So we want to take advantage of the web and the web is awesome then okay track me. I don't care, right? But the thing has been changing quite a bit recently, you know in recent surveys It has been you know, it's clear that more than 80% of the users out there They are demanding user privacy that they have been said severe scandals that have been users made users aware of the problem And it is estimated that by 2024 by this year more than 75% of the world population is going to be under some kind of Regulation that controls what can be tracked and what cannot be tracked right and in response to this demand and this pressure from the government then businesses are moving in the direction or Actually making their technologies or their solutions more private preserving right and the good thing is that as I said at the beginning We didn't have the technologies that allowed us to be privacy preserving but now the technologies are here They are very strong. So the time is right to do this, you know now As I said at the beginning all browsers are moving in this direction You know Safari was one of the first that started with something that is called intelligent tracking protection then fire fought followed with enhanced tracking protection something like that and Chrome have been working on this for the last few years it announced recently that they are also going in the same direction And when it comes to to Chrome Chrome have been investing a lot in making the platform as safe and secure as possible And that includes a variety of features. It's not only cookies For example, if you use if you are a Chrome user you are now, you know Take advantage of the strong password manager that does a lot of work for you So that ensuring that you don't have weak password that your is your password have been compromised Come tells you and so on You can force all your connections to go through HTTPS and you name it, right? And the purpose of today talk is an initiative that is called privacy sandbox that has The goal of is actually an industry wide It's not only Chrome not only Google that has the purpose of try to remove the problems That make the web platform privacy weak and also at the same time bring forward building blocks that allows us to implement Technologies that have until now have been powered with cookies and on partition storage on top of privacy preserving building blocks So that the web remains vibrant and private at the same time Now at the core of the problem of the privacy vulnerability of the web is This idea of how do we determine our identity on the web, right? So on the web identity is base You see this is like the format job shifted there a little bit, but web identity today is determined By a confluence of two factors one is this ability that we have to store data in the user browser on Every time that the user goes to a site where the server is able to put some information there And that information can be shared across site boundary, right? So putting those two things together. What happened is that as you browse the web from side to side These cookies allow their party provider to build a global Profile of you as a user. So, you know, they know that Alberto like Sports he has a dog. He went to the bank. He went to the pharmacy and that is the problem Right because they you in principle. They do that to serve you think that you want like, you know Personalization or really but not but also they you know, they are taking information from you that you don't want them to have Now if we want them to make the web more private then what we need is to bring a new privacy model for the web and Then if you follow that link there that is basically a proposal for a new privacy model That basically is based on three major principles first Browser state has to be partitioned at the top level. So if I go to site a I Am agreeing to be tracked on site a because I'm going to site a when you go to Facebook. You'd say Facebook I am your user. Yeah, you know what I'm doing But you don't want whatever happens inside B to be known when you go to site B So that's principle number one now. There are many use cases that are legitimate that require or need You know these applications to know that you went from one place to another. So we need to somehow Provide those capabilities to achieve that that's going to be possible for only via browser mediation So the browser is going to be the arbiter That is going to involve the user so that when that happens the user has a say and everything is transparent and When information is a change and on a cross boundary a cross-site boundary the amount of information that is going to be a change Is privacy preserving using statistical techniques and also is very limited. It's only what is needed no more Okay, so now privacy sandbox then has You know the purpose of three tracks issue if you will The first thing the price and book is trying to do is to remove the source of the problem So let's try to you know if we know that on partition storage and cover tracking is the problem. Let's try to remove it Second we cannot do you'll say, okay, let's remove private cookies and on partition storage. That's it Whatever you're doing with them is your problem because if we do do if we do that then the web is gonna doubt Publishers are not gonna be able to sustain themselves and then this community specifically is gonna be severely affected So what the price is a book is trying to do is well Let's provide the building blocks so that all the applications that are powering the web today are possible But in a privacy preserving manner Okay, and then you can see there that there are four categories of these Building blocks two of them has to do with private advertising And then the third one is the one that we are going to be discussing today It has to do with cross-site privacy boundaries that is that idea that you know You are going to limit the scope of what you can do and then also we need to Count the area of fighting Spun and fraud now at the moment that you remove Technological components that are used to track users You have to be very careful what was what what could happen is that then people are gonna start come up with coming up With ideas of how they are gonna attract you So another track of the process and both is that we need to make sure that we combat things I bounce tracking or fingerprinting all those kind of things so we can say well We're gonna remove cookie and we are not gonna allow you to track users in other ways So let's make the platform truly secure Now if you are a chrome user all these products and box you're gonna experience it through a new chrome feature That is called tracking protection Chrome is rolling out this Feature little by little and if you are one of the users that has it you're gonna see an interface like this You're gonna see, you know, you're gonna see a message that says okay now you're browsing more private You're gonna see a little eye in the URL bar with a slash there to say you your cookies are blocked and you are able so far to Enable you as a user you say no no no I want cookies. I want to be track. Okay, we enable them. Okay, and So in order to facilitate testing we want to do this in a way that gives you time To actually test if your size wanna work all your use cases are taking care and take action to fix the thing That need to be fixed. So in order to achieve that we start the rolling 3pcd third-party cookie deprecation to 1% of all users when I say a user is a chrome instant And we're gonna be doing this until Q3 this year So this is enough time for you to go analyze your site see what's breaking what not breaking and then do the things that You know, you need to do to make sure that your users will not experience disruptions later After Q3 then we are going to ramp up all the way to a hundred percent I don't know. I'm not sure how long the time is gonna take but we have until now onto Q3 to take action So what do we need to do? And this is the purpose of this talk. Let's try to get ready for the deprecation of third-party cookies so There are four things that we need to according to me So first we need to understand what's happening. What is changing exactly? What is privacy sandbox exactly? Once we understand that then we need to take advantage of guidance and tooling that is available to you to audit your sites Try to see what breaks and get ready Third when you identify what's happening in your site, you have to say well if I'm using cookies for this scenario What are the building blocks that I can use to replace what I'm doing and then in a way that is privacy preserving? That's what I call mapping your scenarios to price and box API and the final point is just make it happen Right, so now that you are clear. I need to do this. I need to implement that There is no substitute. You have to roll your all your sleep and make it happen So let's start with step number one. What's changing? So a little you know fundamental review the web is built on top of the hypertext transfer protocol that is a basically a communication protocol to exchange things between a web server and a web client, right and The ACTP is a stateless protocol So, you know as a user agent like a browser sent a request to the bread the web server They were service take the resource that was asked which could be an image a video a web page and then return it And that's it you forget everything. So it's designed to be stately. There was no state at all As soon as 1994 they realize no but what a second this is not gonna work, right? So if we want to do anything useful, we need to do some kind of state and they borrow some Mechanisms that were available in Unix at that time that were called the magic cookie and they say well I don't take this concept from Unix and bring it to the web and they call it web cookies And that's where cookies were built, right? So cookies when you think about cookie is basically a very simple state management mechanism There are no different from local storage or session storage, but very simple at the core So a cookie then It's not nothing else that a key value pair the name of the cookie and what is storing the cookie the rest of the Cookie is a set of metadata that tells the browser how to deal with the cookie. You can say for example Well, the domain of the cookie is a.com which means that the cookie in principle can be only Accessed by a.com that doesn't that's not necessarily the case because there are you know a bunch of cases that people do exploit Well, that's what that means you can also say well I want this cookie to be to expire in a certain time I want to force it to be used only over secure channel and so on The way that cookies are set they can be set via HTTP or JavaScript if we think about HTTP It's just basically what I said every time that there is a request to the server the server The response come with a set cookie header with a cookie and a value the browser says okay This is the cookie with these parameters that put it in the browser Then on every subsequent request to the server the browser sent the same cookie So whatever is storing the cookie outdated then the service gonna keep receiving No, and then you can start seeing how the source of the problem starts shaping now cookies are super simple And you can classify them basically in terms of what you use it for but at the end a cookie is a cookie and then You know there's nothing much to it, but for example, we can say well we can have session cookies or Persistent cookies, you know cookies that expire when the browser is closed or Cookies that remain or you can say well I'm gonna have tracking cookies that can be used for third-party analytics or marketing or You know social media like like buttons and things like that you can say okay I want to have secure cookies that I force them to be on secure channel or only on HTTP or something and finally we had the scope of the cookie right remember this the domain that I told you well The domain of the cookie determines if the cookies first party or third party It is first party if the domain of the cookie is the same as the domain of the side that your VC team And it's their party if it's not okay So Okay, and that is the focus that we are right now. So this is where the problem relies third party is okay Third party cookies is what the problem comes in and then we need to deal with it Why well You know I said this is what I said the definition But imagine this case over there right so I have two sides side a and side b and both sides have an embed from a third party See so when a user goes to side a the third party C is loaded and puts a cookie in the browser So when the user goes from side a to side b you'll buy a navigation The third party C knows. Oh, this is the same user that was inside day before now I can show that's exactly why you go to search for something and then you go to Facebook And you see the ad of this you and you say oh, and then my mom says like oh You see you know I'm despite and then they cover the camera and I cannot in the noise It was a cookie that is there and then it's basically that's what is happening, right? So now to summarize privacy sandbox is Removing the source of the problem on partition storage Notice that cookie is one mechanism of storage Local storage session storage quota five system API all those are storage API that are changing or you know Most of them are already changed and then building a bunch of privacy preserving building blocks for us And then I'm going to give you a hint just a couple of APIs to give you a sense of the kind of things that you're gonna Be doing to get your size ready The first API is called Cookies having independent states. It's like chips, you know, I didn't invent that acronym it but that is what it means, you know so We just review this example With the deprecation of third-party cookies this example is not gonna be possible However, there are certain cases in which third-party cookies are used to track users on us on a specific site For example, you can have an analytics provider that is provided by a third party And you want to use it to track your users in your site That is a third-party cookie both on a first-party context That case is gonna be enabled is you extend the definition of the cookie just by adding the partition attribute to it At this moment the browser knows, okay, this is a third-party cookie But it is on a first-party context then it's work So what is gonna happen then is that the browser rather than having a single cookie place or a cookie jar for all the cookies It's gonna have well, I'm going to create a cookie jar for this third-party in this site That's what I say AC there. This is the cookies for site A and third-party C So when they say the user goes to site A to site B Third-party C has no idea what is in the cookie jar or site A And then we broke the chain and the user cannot be tracked Now this simple API is gonna allow a lot of use cases to continue working You have a chat, you know embed content like a YouTube embed or you have like a chat chat embed or the map We get a lot of things are gonna work only by switching from third-party cookies to chips Also payment providers, CDN, CMS, there is a lot of applications that it's gonna very easy to fix, okay now Despite the fact that we know that third-party cookies when they are used to track users across site are problematic There are a lot of use cases that are legitimate And I said at the beginning that I just won't want to go and break the web, right? So we need to come up with ways to enable these Scenarios while keeping the users safe and this is what related website sets come into place The idea of related website sets is that we would like to enable the browser to determine When there is a relation between websites so that he can say, okay this Application that belongs to this domain is requesting third-party access in this domain But look they are related therefore. It's okay, right? So that is the purpose of Related website sets. So for example, I could have a company that is called example And then I have a primary site that is called example.com But then also then I'm very successful and then I say well I want to start doing shopping and then I open another domain that is called example store.com It's a separate domain, but I own it, right? And also I can have for example one site per country and all are my site But they have different domains and so I can have a CDN associated with my business, right? I can have a video server running all this site belong to me and I want to be able to Share cookies between them because the user experience for my brand is going to depend on those cookies So Related website sets allows us to define this kind of thing So if you know I put there that is the primary so there is a notion of a primary and then subsets associated with it There are three types of subsets, right? So I can have I don't know when I share the slide the formatting That was that I was afraid of and it happened Anyway, so there is the notion of primary and then you can say well I'm going to have a CCDL this upset that is all the size at a country level that I that I can own Then I can have service upset that is for example CDN video servers You name it are in that set and then the associated subset that I can have for example if I sell glasses And I sell shoes on different domains I can put them both there and each of these sets have certain Rational that you have to justify certain limitations, but once you do that Basically, you know the browser is going to know that you're going to be able to use cookies across both sides Now once we have defined those sets The you know other browsers that I have implemented some kind of similar approaches But without the concept of related website set in Chrome We have the notion of a related website set once you have you have it defined then As a developer you have to request access So you have an embed in one of your sites Accessing cross-site data in another side that you own and then you're going to tell Chrome Can I have access to third-party cookies here? Chrome is going to say okay. Yeah, this is your site. Go ahead. I Have to ask it's not going to be automatic, right? For example here. I have example dot a dot com example That's the dot com So and I have basically And also this is correct. What I'm trying to convey here is that I have an embed From example B.com and then when the embed is loaded. I'm going to ask Chrome Can I store cookies here and access them? Then I'm gonna say yes vice versa is true, too I can basically from the top level side I can request access to the information in the cookies for domain C and then Chrome is gonna say, okay You are in the same set. You can do it. Okay. As I said access is granted automatically Now there are still legitimate use cases when you need to track users So you need third-party cookies among different sites that you don't own and here is where the storage access API with Prompt com into play. So basically it's a little bit reminiscent of GTPR in which you are going to be able to ask the browser Hey, I have a legitimate use case. Can I store cookies here? the browser then is going to Basically pop up a little prompt that is gonna ask the user listen this embed that you are using is Requesting access you want to allow it now the interesting thing here is that there are limited restrictions So the user has to interact with the eye frame for somebody is that embed is an eye frame? This is not that the frame is gonna request and that's it is gonna be a prompt like a push notification Cannot request no if the user says I want to open this video and the video embed Says yeah, I think we're cookies then the users is gonna be asked you want to access this video You're gonna have to allow the cookies and the user said yes because I want to see the video fine sort of like the GDPR Now That is the website set storage partition storage access API and storage access API with prompt now I mentioned that cookies is only one Cookie one storage mechanism There are many okay, and all of these API that required to store a store access and store data in a browser are going to be Modified for example Many of you are familiar with local storage right so imagine that I have a dot com site there And then I'm doing something in that I frame in the javascript of city with that I frame And then I call local storage that basically puts a piece of information a key value per in the browser of the kind When the user goes to side B that also has an embed of Example the commerce see you any third party they're imagine The same thing we are going to be able to go to local storage and get the key value pair That was stored when the user went to the first site That is not possible anymore all the storage API have been partitioned and now this case is gonna break Right, and then we are you know that is actually different from cookies because cookies are being rolled out The the percussion of the party cookies is happening all storage for all storage apis are already partition So you have if you are relying on these apis you already have to be that in mind So I just put here this slide to give you an idea of how many apis have changed Things like the file system api for something that is super powerful Also is partition now if you go and put something in the file system associated with site eight You cannot recover it when you go to site B Now in our getting ready path we already Okay, let's you know we know quite a bit of price and box right now we understand At a good level what is changing and what are the things that I have available for me to take action? The second part then is liberal tooling and guidance that is out there and when I talk to tooling About tooling I refer into three things one is chrome the browser because a lot of the apis You can basically Experience them through configuration settings of chrome So you're gonna see you go to chrome settings and you're gonna see tracking protection And then you're gonna see features of the apis surface to you so you can play with them But you can configure exactly what you want them to do The second thing is chrome this tool if you are a developer you are very familiar from this tool It's a debugging powerhouse that gives you all capabilities to debug anything you do with web development CSA Java script Performance you name it and then You know there are many things that many features that this tool gives you that allows you to deal with things that have to do with the Particle the cookie deprecation, but we wanted to build a chrome this tool extension on top of this tool that Extra capabilities that are not in this tool yet And also provides you a single entry point that you allow you to start doing your debugging on your site analysis Thinking about privacy sandbox rather than in this tool as a whole that is very complicated And that is what we call the privacy sandbox analysis extension This is a tool that my team is working on working with Articam that probably many of you know We have been working in this for like a last year and it's coming pretty good And this is what I want to talk next so right now The tool is still in pre-release if we're in zero point five point two We have about six sixty four hundred users So and that is basically something that the Chrome Web Store gives you that allows you to see where the extension is used and Basically, if you want to install it You just go to the Chrome Web Store and then you look for prices and books and then the last one there or PSAD You can also set for PSAD and then that's what you're what you're gonna see and you want you click Articam then that little you know the extension icon is gonna appear there with a glimpse or a Brief summary of the cookies that are set by that page Now if you go to if you open Death tools and then you're gonna have a privacy sandbox panel And this is the landing page of the extension right so you have there and embed with the prices and box side that you Can start reading if you want or you can jump to the side directly there We put some quick links and latest information that we source from directly from those sites and here on the right on the left side you have a panel with Like prices and box with four categories and then you have facilitated testing That is what I said at the beginning with the timeline there you find information and what's happening right now How you can request more time if you need it and so on I'm not gonna get into the test about that But you can ask me if you want later and then you have some settings there for the tool here You can see there are four categories, right? So we wanted to do this tool to actually not only help you with the deprecation of third-party cookies Analyzing your site, but also as we move forward also to help with the adoption of the new API However, the priority right now is to help you to understand what's happening with cookies because that is the most important problem That you have to solve immediately Okay, so that way we have cookies side boundaries that includes chips and related website sets and then you have private Advertising that includes things like topics and protected audiences and then tracking protection that includes things like bounce tracking fingerprinting and so on Now let's focus on cookies now if you go to the cookies panel the first thing that you're gonna see is a cookies insights page That is going to give you at a glance The situation with the page that is loaded in the browser at that time, right? So here you see for example, these are the cookies that are loaded These are the type and then you expand the view there It tells you the classification of the cookies what the cookies are used for The ones that we can't figure out because we are using a database and it's not a hundred percent accurate But it's pretty good and then here the second section is very important because it tells you how many cookies were blocked in this page And why and this is where your journey begins? Okay, you're gonna say okay all these cookies belong to critical user journeys in my side That are potentially breaking because the browser is Blocking them. Okay. And again if you expand the view there, you're gonna see the explanation of the blocking now as you go to the Cookies, you know the cookie here you have basically what is called browsing context Or you can also associate them with frames on the page components on the page And here you can see for example for the first or the top frame that is the full page You can see all the cookies and the one that I highlighted in yellow are the ones that we identify as being blocked The little arrow on the left tells you if the cookie was blocked on all the responses on All the requests or some responses or some request because then you can start analyzing and say, okay This cookie is actually blocked only in certain context. Okay, let me see what's going on If I click on one of them, you can see that the information card here. Tell me this blog was This cookie was blocked because of the reason of preparing for facing out This is a reason that Chrome is telling you that listen, this is happening and blocking this cookie Take action this cookie is just going to disappear in the future And you will know you're not gonna have an idea and then here is a detailed explanation Here it says for example that you have a cookie that has same side equal known that actually Specification that they'll come that you want that cookie to be used in third-party context But you don't have the partition Attribute in it then that cookie is being blocked. So now you have a lot of ideas you say, okay Look at that this cookie belongs to double click which is an app related stuff or to beam Which we know is a search kind of related analytics that is something from being is in my page That has a cookie that is being blocked. Now you have a focus on where to look for now Something that the tool has that is interesting that is super simple but has been very very useful is filtering You can open a filter there and you can say show me all the third-party cookies That have the same side attribute equal to known and then when you do that We want to filter it for you and then you can focus your attention or give me all the cookies for the particular third party Provided I want to see what's happening with my analytics provider for okay Now we also implemented a feature that is very cool that is called frame overlays that you know If you click on that little icon over there next to cookies What happened is when you hover over the frame of your page? He said he's gonna tell you well this frame has these cookies here For example, we have four third-party cookies out of which four were blocked and he's gonna tell you the frame Associated with this page component This is very important because if you are trying to determine if a specifics critical user journey breaks You can go and say this is the embed that I want to check I hover over it I see what is the frame see what are the cookies that are blocked boom? Okay, that is is Is in some in many cases it doesn't work as smooth because people does all kind of things that you can imagine Embed inside embed inside embeds and then the future get a little bit crazy But in general it gives you good information Last we implemented a feature that actually we are implementing this progressively. We are trying to Detect things that we know that break for example the Google signing library version number two Was known to break with with third-party cookies blog and they fix it But the problem that they are having is that people are not migrating sounds familiar. Yes So people don't migrate so then what we are doing is basically we put If you go to LinkedIn for example It turns out that they had that library so here you can see non breakages the tool detected that Google signing there to is being used and then if you open here It tells you listen you are using this functionality that is being deprecated. Please check this information to migrate Right, so that is what I have and we are adding, you know There was some problems with Facebook like buttons with Facebook comments with this coach at all that We are basically putting in pieces so that people can say, okay These things that are known to break we know and those are the most reference procs that we are receiving at Google for people testing now the last part is Mapping your CUJs to the new APIs. I'm not gonna go into most detail here, but I'm sorry I have to go that way so as I said at the beginning cookies are used for whatever It's a simple state management mechanism. So anything under the zone can be powered by a cookie seems like embedded content Federation identity remote resources comments personalization you name it, you know a lot of things can be so now your Particular side has your particular critical user journey. So you have to go and say what is my site doing? Oh, I have a video in bed. Okay. I have to check this one Oh, I have a federated identity widget here that helps me to keep my user's login Then you can focus on one CUJ at a time and in general the kind of things that you ask is okay. Well Imagine that you revert the equation you say, let me start thinking about the cookies. I know that these cookies are mine Right, so I'm gonna ask okay These cookies are used to track things users or whatever on the context of a specific site Okay, I want to know what my user does when it comes to this side Then this is a third-party cookie on a first-party context, then I can use chips Easy and I want you to determine that you go and you put the attribute partition. You're done, right? Alternatively, you can also use local storage partition as well. That would work Now if the cookies that you are analyzing and use for federated identity or for single sign-on Then you can consider something like FedCM That is a new solution also by Google that allows you to do this without cookies Now again, we saw this. Oh, I am using these cookies and These cookies are for a Perfect More number of sites that I own therefore. I'm okay. I can use related website sets And I know that I need to use the torus access API once I have this set defined I need to request access now this kind of analysis is what I would like you to take with you and then go to your site and do it This is a little mapping here, you know a chat widget Most of the time can be solved with chips Mapping bet with chips, you know, you can take a picture of that if you want or see later There is a lot of documentation about this by the way that you can take advantage of What next now we saw We now we understand what prices and boxes was changing, you know, what kind of things We need to pay attention to we have an idea of the tooling that is, you know We know that we need to familiarize ourselves with the features in Chrome depth tools and Pizazz, right? We know a little bit of the kind of mapping from the Critical user journey to my side to the solution that I need Then four step is that I want you to commit today after today You say I'm going to make this happen if you are a site owner if you are a technology leader If anything depends on your decision power make the decision today of go and update your site And then you're gonna be done with it, okay This is a lot of you know what I would like you to do is what you go There is a lot of documentation you set up an environment to test When you guarantee that the browser that you are using has all these APIs available to you and cookies are fully blocked Then you're gonna use this tool and Pizazz to analyze what's happening Then you're gonna audit your site fully You're gonna engage with those that are support forums that you can reach out to us You can actually come in and Google are working together on this You have a full support for most and there is also by the way not only Pizazz support for There are many support forms that Google has put there in github and other places that you can leverage You find breakages that have not been sold before we please report and so that you can help the community And then if you are the owner of a big public inside or if you are an agency Working with a big site and you determine that you need more time There are mechanisms that are called the vacation trial that you can apply to so that Google allows you to say okay We are gonna basically let the particle keyboard for you for a specific amount of time So you have time to fix them. It's not gonna be forever. It's gonna be a specific time, but you can't request that And that's it I Can't believe that I made it in the time that I thought sorry that I went too fast questions Yeah, guys, please questions that you might have we have time for one or two questions. Yeah, please Yes, please Yeah, so so thanks a lot for a very great talk You went into very much detail in very fast time and so I Still I still process them up right now, but so my my question is simple I mean while I was also listening to I was looking a bit on the web about its initiative I know that the other browsers they also have initiated this and so on and I also understand that there's a lot of criticism about each Different method even the one of Apple even one of Google. So what is you? What is your answer to that kind of thing that the developers probably have to adapt to multiple? Privacy solutions in the future and especially the Google one privacy sandbox seems to be very extensive So what do you think? Would there be a better way maybe to have some common forum like the W3C or others to implement a common standard? Or do you think that this will eventually become a standard? Yes. No, that's a great question and this is basically something that I'm Last year I presented at work on page I Talk about the future of WordPress and the Gator economy in where I talk about this issue of openness, right? And and when we need to make big decisions together, right? It's one of the most difficult things in the open web, right? Because the prices and bogies have massive Undertake right and we cannot do it alone and actually so much that we cannot do it along that actually the government is involved Right because the government is ensuring that whatever the community Does does not actually causes the death of publishers right and advertising It's a humongous ecosystem out there that you remove cookies. You actually could cause severe damage Now having said that there is clarity and consensus that privacy is a necessity, right? There is user demand that is government Oversight so there is no other way So we need to find solutions that actually allows us to have a privacy preserving open web The question is how right now What practice and bogies doing is to bring forward a set of proposals that we think and we are investing a lot of resources and thinking And actually collaborating with the old industry to see if we can find these kind of building blocks that actually make the thing work now Ideally you could have an idea that say listen, you know, this could be improved this way That is happening so each of these API subject to change But what in order to answer your question what I think is going to happen is that yes We are going to basically go through this period that is going to be a little bit uncomfortable There's a lot of fear a lot of you know anxiety, but I think that At least on certain aspect is not rocket science actually changing a cookie is basically changing a state management mechanism so we can do that as in from an engineering perspective and The the bottom line is gonna be is either these APIs or some other APIs We are open, you know to whatever it works right, but we need to work together and make it happen So I think it's gonna happen, but let's see any other question. Yeah, the questions, please Yeah okay, so as you mentioned that the the standard of privacy sandbox is just announced and then As as you mentioned that also at that the privacy sandbox is coming to enforce most of the core music across the web, right? So Right now there right now we Right now we are working We saw a lot of warning related to privacy and One thing that we are unsure of is What type of web of what type of third party that we are using that is not currently support the first party approach of? privacy sandbox so how can you Make sure that we the thing the thing that we are the thing that is not currently support is also support the privacy sandbox Okay, let me see if I understood the question So you are hinting to the fact that we say well We have a set of building blocks that address a set of scenarios And it could be that there are some scenarios that are not covered by any of the building block. Okay Yeah, that's a great question. All right, so What I would say is that From my perspective locally Everything voice down to a state management mechanism right so every solution that out there is using the same kind of thing Putting a piece of data recovery putting a piece of data recovery So if you solve the problem at a fundamental level, it is very likely that we're gonna address Most of the case now there still could be some cases in which listen, you know My use case doesn't work. There are forums that are open and people are asking things Our people are saying for example, listen the existing building blocks are great, but They don't cover my use case fully for example It could be that the API has some limits that are too restrictive for example in mind that I say I want to allow you only five sets in the related website sets. Yeah, but I have a hundred So what I'm going to do. Oh wait a second Okay, so probably a hundred is a better limit that kind of thing still Having said that There could be a moment in which somebody comes up with an important use case and then said yes We are gonna address it we are basically our goal is to ensure and actually the Ecosystem as a whole goal is to ensure that everybody comes along right so it's not like You know some other Scenarios are that people say, okay, let's let's take cookies and just figure it out We are trying to do Let's take a cookie for insure that everybody has a solution. So I hope that answers your question and it's great question Could you tell us more how the chips are going to improve the payments or the CDNs and other cases that you mentioned? I would say I don't know how much they're gonna improve them They're gonna improve me in the sense that they are going to be now privacy safe, right in the same right, but I Would say that basically you're gonna switch from using third-party cookies on a first-party context to use Third-party cookies on a first-party context safely by adding the partition attribute That's what I would say. I don't see that it's gonna add anything Additional of what you already have because basically the only thing that's gonna happen is that you're gonna continue You're gonna use cookies both in a restricted way in a safe way All right. I'm so sorry We are running out of time so So last one this last question So non-technical question I was curious to understand how the governments are interacting with you and how they are Helping and governing and is it just the US governments or how are the global governments engaging? Yeah, I I always only I don't answer the question usually like I am no I'm basically I am that developer relations person working on tooling for the ecosystem I want to give you my my perspective. What is happening? And this is open information out there Regulators like for example the CMA that I don't even remember what the you know, whatever agency in the UK It's over our scene a lot of the thing. There is the IMBA in Singapore There is here in Taiwan also. There are you know a lot of oversight and what what is happening It's basically a Google is actually very happy that this is happening right because we want to ensure that what we do is Approved it's basically the consensus right so We don't want to go with a unilateral solution that then basically we want to say not you are doing it because it benefits you No, listen, this is and then they are very fine that each of these building blocks actually work for everybody So we have to prove to these regulators Working with the stakeholders the stakeholders have to say yes This work for me or no that doesn't work for me And then the idea is that we're gonna go on an iterative process So that at the end the solutions that we come up with to market are going to be Satisfactorily solving the problem for everybody. So I don't know how many regulators are involved But I'm aware that the UK the Singapore one and others are basically You know verifying everything and Until those regulators are not happy This is not going to see the light of day fully because that's the whole purpose and they are basically doing it I like what they are doing. I think that they are very thorough They are very you know, they also want this to work, but they are tough You know, they are not basically, you know, it's very interesting very dynamic that I have never seen I have never been in a project like this where actually a technology Train is being defined by so many stakeholders at the same time, right? So it's Well, thank God, I'm not working with them. I'm just technically here But it's very difficult because you have to basically be creating reports. You have to be very thorough You have to be very specific. So it kind of beautiful, you know And for example, like the fact that we are developing tools that I'm doing it because from a development perspective I believe that tooling is necessary But that shows the regulators that actually listen, you know, we actually are doing things for the for you to be able to succeed because Cookies are very simple, but figuring out what's happening across the whole it is not trivial, you know And then so so thank you so much and you have more question gonna be here tomorrow or two as well Thank you so much, Alberto and just a token of appreciation from our thank you so much my friend. Oh nice cookies All right guys the next session is going to start at five so please be here Thank you. Yes Guys the final talk for the day and I hope you guys are still, you know Still have your energy because the next speaker that we have It's gonna talk about a little bit about, you know, unlocking the universal creativity something that I'm interested in as well We're gonna talk. I'll just introduce the speaker first. Our speaker is Maestro Stevens He's the founder of iconic expressions and has eight plus years of experience in marketing strategy brand strategy and project management So guys, this is one person who has been using technology and you know has been making his life easy life Cooking and traveling easy through technology and strategy. So put your hands together for Maestro. Maestro, please We would love to have you on stage Over to you. Thanks. Thank you Hopefully this clicker is going to be clicking because I've seen some people has in trouble with the clickers So we gonna see Well, you know how they say the math ain't mapping with the clicker ain't clicking something ain't happening We gonna figure it out So I'm gonna have a different approach to my presentation to my session. It's gonna be a little different than probably what you're used to Waited a long time to have this opportunity. This is actually a dream come true I want to throw some shout outs first because how can we talk about inclusivity without including the people that matter? That makes sense. Okay So Real quickly, I want to give a shout out first of all to wordpress WordCamp Asia Organizers O'Neill if you're in here if you're not in here, you hope you've been holding it down. Thank you some notable mentions Destiny cocomatic and automatic they are a big part of a reason why I'm here They they helped me get here. So I have to thank her have to thank them for for so much The cadence crew have client partners royalty on the lake Alisha Nick clear canvas It's our bannar for show me a great time last night. It was it was nice Vickers with instant WP. I wouldn't be able to have the platform. I have without his hosting in his solutions The Jackson's the Dave's the Shorter's the founders Matt Mullerwig and Mike little and I'm saying Mike little because a lot of people don't know his name and know He is a founder of wordpress and it's from the African diaspora So we're gonna give a round of applause for that. Can we give a round of applause for that? Thank you My team Linwell and Dessa. I wish they could be here. The irony is my two Employees have been working with me for about two and a half years and they live in the Philippines And I told them when they started working for me one day I was gonna meet them in person tonight or tomorrow I'm hoping I can make that dream come true because as we say where I'm from they ride around the block now I know that doesn't mean they literally around the block because they're probably a water away But we say hey that person's right around the block. You know I'm saying that hey down the street then it's five blocks later 20 blocks later and you finally get to your destination So I want to thank them for everything they've been holding it down my family my mom's side the Shermans and my dad's side the Stevens and my daughter Yadira she is a big part of everything of why I'm here today, and I'm gonna leave a legacy for her All right, so let's get into it I'm gonna move pretty quickly because I've heard I got some cue cards And you know I got to be quick and they got to wrap it up real fast So we're gonna move quick through this and then get to some QA because I think that you all might want to ask some questions So a little bit about our story With iconic templates, I know they said iconic expressions, but we're here today for iconic templates At iconic templates. We're not just developing templates. We're building technology empowered community for creative minds across the globe It short for iconic templates. You're gonna hear it a lot. So get used to it Stands as a beacon for affordability uniqueness and inclusiveness tailored for the BIPOC community Reinforcing our commitment to a more diverse creative world And this is just a short timeline of events that we've that we've had over the years Where I started the agency the parent company back in 2015. We built our first WordPress Websites for clients in 2020. I found that iconic templates as a MVP in 2022. I Found I was a founder Excuse me. I spoke at work camp as a founder representing my company at EU and US and In 2024 this year. We rebranded and we relaunched now Here's one thing that I'm real curious little trivia I kind of did this off the cusp and it came last night when I was talking to a couple couple brothers and some sisters and I'm betting that most people can't answer this question if you already know the answer because I've told you you don't count You don't get it, but I will get you a drink on The speaker after party excuse me after party, but the after party We just had the after party the other day that was it was nice but at the after party and I want to know Basically, you just tell me after the after the the session There's been three people that have spoken that have spoken at all three work camps in a row Since we're camp Europe we're camp us and we're camp Asia. I Am one of those there's two more if you know the other two after the session Tell me who it is and I owe you one round Maybe two if you're lucky. I owe you one round Okay, again the people who know the answer that I've told that we talked about this You don't count in this situation again three speakers. I am one and I'm very proud of that There's two more. I Want to see who can guess? So I won't go too much into my story since we we got a little bit of an introduction but for the most part, you know outside of the the strategy the development the Project management all the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Outside of that. I really cherish fatherhood and I love the simplicity that not only technology brings but knowledge brings You know life can be a lot more simple if you're willing to to educate yourself you willing to learn something so When it comes to that I'm the big fan of that and the culinary arts aka me being a chef and another life Not in this life another life Literature and music and travel are a big part of my biggest passions and that is my baby girl right there I was there when she was born And I'm going to be hopefully be there for the rest of her life So quickly the agenda Part one we talk in accessibility part two a Community and the culture part three design it with purpose and then as I was told see they didn't know I put that in the in the thing they said my show you got to wrap it up We put that sign up you got to wrap it up. So I said, okay, I'm gonna wrap it up. All right talking accessibility So let's just go over some preliminary or some housekeeping things when we're talking and defining accessibility for WordPress It's people with visual impairments Blindness low vision people with hearing impairments deafness and heart of hearing people with motor disabilities Limited dexterity and coordination limited strength or range of motion people with cognitive disabilities learning disabilities attention deficits Then we also have people with speech just disabilities alternative communication methods visual cue needs older adults and temporary disabilities age related impairments injuries or short-term medical conditions Now I want to pause here because the fact that There was a speaker that came before me today and he presented and He is the expert when it comes to more of the accessibility stuff So I give Joe a shout out for that. So I'm not gonna do that part. I'm gonna take a little bit of a right turn left turn 360 whatever you want to call it, you know, we don't go somewhere. I'm gonna move the goalpost Normally, we don't move the goalpost but today we go move the goalpost. It's not a bad thing so we know that Accessibility is important because it powers 43% Now there's some people in here right now that are gonna say no maestro it powers 44 43.2 with powers 42.1. I don't care. We it's power it powers, you know, I'm saying it powers the world, you know, like Electricity, however, that's why accessibility is so important So we're thinking about accessibility for diverse communities. We're talking about the cultural vibe You know as the kids say you got you got a vibe with it. You got a vibe with me We're talking about UI and UX user interface and user experience and we're also talking about how it actually responds Not it being responsive, but how it responds. How do people respond to it? How do people respond or how do it respond to people? So contrast and color This is huge when it comes to Making things accessible and also inclusive because the type of colors that you use are representative of The culture the mission your vision and values Keyboard navigation Can somebody navigate the website with just the keyboard? screen reader friendly design can your Website or your app be read with a screen reader. Maybe you're using something on the browser like an extension and It needs to be able to read the text that way people who have disabilities can still get the content and still get the information that they need Responsible mobile friendly we know this we we are using phones cell phones You saw me read my notes people are looking at content and looking at websites on phones or looking at on tablets So it's not just desktop, but it's everything else representation and inspiration That's also really really important when it comes to people Believing and feeling like it was made for them. It's meant for them I bet most people in this room don't know and I just learned it from one of the language translating Plug-ins that most people won't buy unless it's in their native language and There's data out there that shows improves that most people want to see themselves when they are purchasing Or when they are viewing or when they are Engaging or when they are browsing they want to see parts of themselves that encourages them to make a decision representation is huge So this is me playing around instead of being boring. I call it getting styling on them Y'all might call it design custom design You got a style on them. This is the classic customizer and You know when you're getting when you're styling on them You're adding colors you're adding your headings you're adding your backgrounds This is the full site Editing version of the same thing depending on which route you want to go you still got a style on them to make it accessible part two a Community and the culture so We went from the accessibility aspect of things to now talking about us the people So what is community? The WordPress community is a global collection of developers designers and content creators working together to evolve and support the platform Why is community and culture important to iconic templates? Community is a vital community is vital to iconic templates because it feels creativity and inclusivity Ensuring our platforms continuously resonate with diverse audiences Engaging with communities allow us to gather unique insights and feedback driving innovation and fostering a sense of a logging of diverse creators among diverse creators So tips for contributing to the WordPress community active participation meet-ups online discussions shout-outs the black press content creation and blogging storytelling creating creating content contributing to open-source projects Like contributing to code offering design inputs testing for bugs Leading or participating you can initiate you can join or you can engage or you can do all Tweet that's how my daughter talks. She says Tweet daddy Like tweet like the tree. No Tweet design it with purpose part Tweety I brought it back. See how I brought it back. Oh Y'all not with me see I'm warming up. Y'all don't understand when I do presentations I start off slow Then we just keep climbing and climbing and climbing until I get y'all cracking up. So You're gonna design it with purpose You got to think about what is going to be some of your the foundation of your design What is the foundation of the tools that you're using now? I know I know it can be a little controversial When it comes to what you use because we all use different things Lock things and core blocks I'm starting to learn more about why They're important and how useful they are when it comes to building a lean site like lean Okay, you're not ready yet So 2024 theme we have here. We have our theme. We have our design now. Here's another thing too I got a little bone to pick. Hello. I got a little bone to pick Like the bones that I was picking out that that duck Oh, it has some bones in it, but it was good though. We often use a lot of words interchangeably It's very confusing and WordPress makes it very hard to Bring new people in to educate new people because we use these different things like blue is green and but green is blue and but yellow is Well, okay. I don't know what yellow is anymore and it's that thing where Yes, you see the word design But it's still the customizer At the end of the day and if you're using something different you'll see that And you'll see different words meaning the same thing and I'm noticing some Brands and some companies are starting to make things easier such as the word block patterns They're starting to incorporate word presses terminology and not so much use their own terminology and that does make things easier And we have our core blocks as well, too So now we have classic themes and third-party blocks And that's why this looks different because you're gonna see a different user interface depending on what direction what pathway you take So you can start off with some type of classic theme You can use something like a cadence or Astra and then you're gonna see once again says you are now Customizing WordPress. You don't see the word design in here, but it's the same thing and Then we have blocks so you can use third-party blocks to add more Advanced functionality to your website if the core blocks themselves is not enough for your needs and last but not least We have the old tried and true page builders and widgets So page builders such as Eleventor now once again terminology says design system It's still design still the customizer. They're just using a different terminology And you can see the theme style and then instead of calling it blocks. They call their widgets It's all the same thing. So now do you understand what I mean by terminology versus definition versus actuality Sometimes you could be using words and using different things, but they all mean the same thing. It just depends on what you're using and These are three of the main pathways that people usually take when they're thinking about design So develop it with inclusive design Representation I just mentioned that earlier just to give you guys a little hint and plant a seed Diverse imagery inclusive narratives and authenticity. I Can't tell you how important that that is It's so important And I want to make sure I'm doing good with time. So I'm gonna keep my eye. I'm keeping my eye on the ball I'm keep my eye. I'm looking but For me, this was what inspired me to even want to think about including different cultures including People that are black and brown or people who are from countries or continents like Asia countries like Taiwan Including people in the Middle East. It's because I did not see myself on a lot of templates for a long time I Didn't see people that look like me Now most people will say well, what's the problem with that? You're just gonna take the content out anyway, maestro Why are you getting all bent out of shape? I've literally been told that multiple times But I just told you in the beginning that representation matters I I see people all the time sometimes if the images are so good or they just keep them there so Representation of how you use images it makes a big difference the same way aesthetics do culturally rich palates accessibility focused and Emotionally resonant colors Then we have transparency clear design origins Open feedback channels and ethical practices Inspiration what did you use to inspire you to create what you've created? global design influences BIPOC creators spotlight future focus trends and A real quick story on on this particular part here because this was something that really did give me a lot of inspiration And help my team get inspiration when it came to creating our design Creating our layout and creating our theme one of my favorite artists is JZ as you can see here For a long time when we started this mission, I didn't Know who I was my identity was not completely carved out and so If you use way back and you went to our website, you'll see that we have a whole bunch of colors Now I didn't know this back then but I promise you one day is gonna be a famous story because this is this I can't make this up I didn't know that the choice of the colors that we chose were reflective of Me not knowing or believing or being who I needed to be Meaning we just I just we had a whole bunch of colors notice. You don't see a whole bunch of colors now That's because a year and a half later through a lot of I'll say prayer and other things I Was able to focus and say, you know what I'm gonna make a decision To just be myself, which I believe a lot of you have done as well, too and JZ's album the blueprint was and it just came to me in a dream literally a Eureka moment a year and a half later I thought you know, I'm a blueprint People who are being modeled by other people their blueprints You're a template if you if you've done something in your life that somebody else is modeling from you You're a template You're a blueprint So when I thought about that and I'm like, well, what is my favorite artist? Oh the blueprint And so I took that inspiration and we just started playing around with it and literally the work blue has It's a solid color Solidarity in many ways And blue also has some other meanings, but I just thought it was something that it came as a epiphany if you will So use those things when it comes to giving yourself inspiration So you're gonna wrap it up look, I made a job easy didn't I like you making my job too easy for me now, huh? But I did this because like I said, I wanted to give you all the opportunity To give me some feedback and ask questions because I saw some places that people didn't have enough time to do a Q&A session And I felt bad for that. So I said, well, let me just get through The presentation in a way where you can get the slides. I believe the slides are gonna be available No, I don't have them like Joe did with the whole fancy QR code thing, you know, I'm not that accessible yet when it comes to that stuff. I'm get there though but I Want to thank you guys If you want to check out the site to see if if we are really inclusive and accessible and and you want to test our might Check things out. You can use the QR code here. Again, it doesn't lead to the slides. We're gonna do that next time Slide to the left slide to the right reverse. I don't know nothing about that. Maybe I'm not in the wrong place You gotta do the little shit. All right, so I guess we have do we have time do we have time for you or a matter of time? I Mean, I'm a little sarcastic sometimes She's like you got some time. You got enough time. So, um, yeah How do we want to do it now everybody at once now, I know nobody wants to be the first person He's just making my job easier as well. I mean, I was the one who's supposed to take the questions out here But I was just sitting out there mesmerized Anyone who has questions, okay, we've got questions. So please go ahead. I just I just say ladies first but both of you Thank you for the talk maestro I Wanted to ask you if you had maybe an example story of maybe a customer you worked with where you took them from You know, maybe not knowing their vision and understanding what they needed and applying your tools and knowledge to You know what their needs and getting them where they needed to be so Basically, how Maybe an example of a customer Was taken from a to b kind of with the process. Is that what you're asking in the way like getting into like What is my story? Who am I like how do you and then how do I reflect that into my sights and? Good question Well, I know that I was hinting at it in certain ways because this is not necessarily about Design itself or branding itself, but I was striving to Plant the seed that the only reason why we got to what we got to and what I do with my customers In the beginning when I was shouting out a couple of my client partners and clients They are the people that I was mentioning intentionally because I helped get them from a to b and we always start with branding We always start with your your How do I call them kind of like your qualitative? Factors of your business or your brand which are mission which are values. What do you believe in? Where do you want to be and then what is your target audience? Who are your customers my? the client that I mentioned royalty on the lake we were able to Help her and her nonprofit Get to a point to where her she had a vision and she didn't understand Exactly what it looked like on paper because you know how we be thinking things But yet we don't know what it actually is going to be and when you go through a process of branding like brand strategy and brand Identity user terms that I'm sure most people in this room are very aware of but when you go through those stages You rarely have to do a lot of how can I say? Kind of faking it till you're making it or figuring things out because now you have actual data to back up Your theory to back up your assumptions you actually have Documentation you actually have plans When you combine those things and you combine your elements of your brand it makes your the design it makes your website So much better in so many ways because now you're unique you stand out. You don't look like everybody else As well as it makes your team More empowered and more confident and that's something that I think that it's very important That when you're thinking about all of this stuff if you're not going through a process of I need to write down Who am I? Where am I? What am I? What do I want to be? What position? You're not your website is not gonna get to the point where you're you're designing it or you're thinking about it for others and so Like I said my my previous or my current customer. I'm not customer of our current client They are in the We're past the branding stage or now we're getting ready to go into the website stage And we're only going to the website stage because they signed off on the branding stage if that makes any sense So good question destiny. Thank you. Hi. I like to your comment about sort of seeing more images of oneself because I'm an overseas Asian living in European Countries and actually that is something that's quite remarkable because the moment you see an image you really immediately Resonate and I wanted to ask you, you know as designers as content developers How could we push more of that and I know? For instance, as you said, there's so many websites that can offer free images or you know images that contribute But how do we engage more people to so build up that sort of? kind of critical mask and encourage people to sort of be more diverse and versatile in that sense and Are you referring to people doing it on their own website? Yeah. Yeah, I think it takes talks like this Like to be honest, you know, we need talks like this. We need more talks like this the reason why I kept you know picking on and and and You know in a friendly way, but you know Joe when it came to his because His talks as he meant he's been he's traveled so much. He's done so much with accessibility that I you know, most people wouldn't have The same type of insight, you know, if it wasn't for people like him and Michelle, you know that we're able to help build these Build these opportunities in bridges. So I think that it starts with people talking about it You know on a major level, but also to be a hundred percent honest and transparency because transparency was a big part of my Sometimes I'm overly transparent I'm learning I got to hold that back because I hate when people you think against me if that makes any sense But the reality is is that we have to have conversations and we have to understand our tribe our communities and that's something that Without going in too much detail. I learned that in the past month I was talking to the wrong group of people and that's why I was getting a lot of you know Misunderstandings I guess per se, you know came in different forms. I'm trying I'm keeping this You know family-friendly, you know, man, but it came in other forms But when I said what you just said to these people the wrong tribe, they didn't like that That's why I said that year and a half ago if you weigh back my My brand You'll see that the colors are all over the place. It was because when I tried it I got discouraged and then I said, you know what I'm gonna make something for everybody And then a year later. I was like, you know what? No, I'm not doing that. I'm making something for specific people And I and I will take whatever it's gonna come whatever hurt pain Anger, you know, people I'm gonna take whatever it comes to to do this because the question you just asked It's why I'm here today And the only reason why I got to the point that we are as when destiny asks about the branding I had to understand who I was Before I can even show pictures of what I look like what I should look like and what you should look like That makes sense today answer the question. Hey maestro. Thanks for the great presentation You talked about going from version one to version two, but during your presentation you show Full-site editing you show page builder. Are your templates available in all three of those formats or Can you talk a little bit about how do people access your templates and use them in those different environments? good question They are currently only available in the classic format if you're talking about the three that I mentioned Right now. We are looking to Transition so one thing that we did and let me know time is okay. One thing that we did is I I named the So I'm gonna drop some gems on y'all trademarking is real like y'all if you go and come up with a trademark Okay, y'all don't know I mean especially I don't know if trademarking is in every country But it's very important to trademark your ideas. I promise you because you will be going you have to change Things up later on the reason why I'm bringing that up is because I wanted to create a terminology called universal Universal theme I found that I couldn't use universal theme because Universal Studios Stole every version of the word universal so the lawyers told me a you kind of pick in the battle You might lose even though I'm a mighty man, but I can't beat the world You know Scott pilgrim conversal world but not me. That's another joke. I don't know if y'all know the movie But so when it came when it comes to our themes I wanted to create a unique way of saying hey We have one style to fit all these different types of pathways meaning we're gonna use one Plumber theme, you know or one restaurant theme whatever and it's gonna be in classic. It's gonna be in the page builder with elementor and it's gonna be with the Wordpress the block editor So a person can say you know what I I like that the look But oh, I don't use that tool though man. I can't use that look That was a problem that I started noticing in the community if you I like that look But I don't use that tool and I didn't see anybody that's making the same look with multiple tools So I was like let's call it universal template themes So I'm that I ended up having to switch the name out You know switch the name because of that's why I said the universal story to give a little context to why change the name so the whole Theme of the theme a little word play for y'all the whole theme of the theme was universal template theme And universal template libraries is because we're also creating most forms we're creating Block patterns we're creating automations emails and we're doing it with multiple plugins It's the same email the same styles But it's with this plug-in and this plug-in and this plug-in that's a lot of work But I believe it's worth it because if somebody says I like what that looks like I want to use it, but I don't have that tool Well What do you do you can't use it? So unless we provide opportunities? That's my other kind of way of being accessible making things accessible if that makes sense And you help define accessibility in different ways, and I just wanted to help Extend that Can you take a follow-up? Have you seen any trends in terms of what people want? I mean are they preferring your full-site editing versus your page builder from version one to two? Do you see any trends for me? Only because we only have the At least the the themes we all the themes templates. We only have those in classic I haven't seen anything from the verse not not with that yet. I'm excited to see what that's going to look like in this next year But not yet. I haven't seen any People anybody said that only because we haven't provided them in different ways But to answer your your your previous question about how to access them That was the main reason why I said hey if you want to use the key again I'm not as fancy as you with the QR code with the slides But hey the QR code go to the site and that's how you should access them if it's not easy for you to access We have a problem right that you're the test for me If you went to the site and you can't figure out how to access our templates now I got to figure something else out if we have a problem So I want to use that to learn does that answer the first one and second one Any other questions, please Okay, I'll just ask the last question from me. So being so you've been working on strategies all along You've been working on marketing. You've been working on branding Is there a golden rule for every industry that you might follow while talking to your clients that you know You've been getting clients from different industries, of course. Has there been a golden rule that okay fine This is how I would approach them you said the brain section where but you just you know get into the brain of the person Understand what do you have to ask? But is there some some sort of again? I'll use the word template where you can actually access the people's mind and then just understand what it is Or is it different from for every industry the strategy bit? Is it different for every industry? I? Would say that we should all have some sort of process all of us Including myself including you now that process needs to be flexible because sometimes you got a You know I'm saying you got to get down. I dare somebody to challenge me on the dance floor for the after party. I dare you anybody in here But I know somebody in here got so I was there but I But um to your point. Yeah, I definitely would say that process is a template It should be a template and you should be able to apply it I've applied it to my clients and we've applied it to our Our templates and our themes for our customers so they can have also access of my brain without You know use enough my time You know saying all right, so that's why I was like hey You we all need the opportunity to have a process or a starting point and that's what a template is So I use that with all of my clients, but then I adjust to their personality. I Adjust to their preferences. I always tell my clients we have to have a balance of your Preferences like what you like versus it is what it is. That's another time we use it. It is what it is You know this is I can't go through it It is what it is, you know, it is just it is what it is So you have to combine that it is what it is with their preferences And that's a hard thing to do because a person likes what they like and they will Hire you or bring you on board no matter what it is that you're doing whether it's designing developing whether it's consulting Whatever it is that you do they'll bring you on board and then they'll fight you They'll fight your information and I always tell people I don't want to have to fight you to fight for you Does that make sense drop some gems on you now, that's my code right there tag me to that one But yeah Fight them to fight for them. That's right. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying that the process and the template We want to use but they'll start fighting you With your process and template But then they also want you to help them get from point A to point B and it's like well Yo, if I'm gonna get in this vehicle with you. Let's use metaphors. I'm in the vehicle. You're in the vehicle I'm I'm driving right You're here if you're in the safari or you're in other places. They have wheels on both sides sometimes Sometimes they even have on both sides. So I'm guiding you But sometimes I'm gonna let the wheel go and you gotta grab the you gotta steer me You got to give me some directions because I can't bring your vision out for you Now that's the problem. They get nervous. I gotta drop. Yes. I cannot bring your vision out for you You've got to steer some time. So that's the the tug and pull that makes any sense Thank you so much any other questions guys, okay one last question for the evening Hi, maestro. Um, I'm a freelancer and I build websites for my clients But I'm not a professional designer I self-taught design from Watching YouTube YouTube videos So the one thing I know the one problem I have is like my design looks too generic I make sure all my websites follows the principle of design like Hierarchy white spaces and like contrast etc but This makes my website looks too generic So my question is what's the mindset to have? to break the rule while remaining Stakely Stakely appealing. What's the mindset to break the rule while remaining aesthetically, okay? It's a good question You know that word generic And I'll make this quick but that word generic. It's an interesting term because I'll go back to I like to connect people's questions together So I'll go back to a destiny asking for the example with the client and Alicia don't kill me You know I'm saying you gave me permission now Shots you out, but She called our Designs generic when we first were creating her We'll say creating her inspiration. So there's a term that I got from Chris dough He is with the future and he is one of my favorite. I call my distant mentor He has a term called stylescape I'm giving you some example right here, right? So what we did when I when we did our stylescape and I had to learn through our process when we did our stylescape I Intentionally start the stylescape generic now. Why would I do that? She called it cookie cutter. Remember the words are interchangeable, right? Oh, this is cookie cutter. This is generic. I had to explain to her that's done on purpose Because I've made the mistake of getting too detailed Going into a design with stuff and then the client or the person's like no I don't like that when it comes to the brand so starting generic My bunny ears, you know generic quotations it's necessary because If you go to detail too fast with anything you won't give it room to grow and think about other things You know as they come along as well as Do you watch commercials? Okay, that wasn't a trick question. I was a real question. I don't know. You know what I said, but Commercials if you if you notice no matter what country you're in where you're from they use a lot of as we call it corny Concepts right corny people like that's corny man. Like that's not cool. That's that's a little that's a little weak That's a little wack. I'm trying to think about a whole bunch of different terms to say corny All right, but they say things like that but yet those commercials make so much They get our attention. They make so much money to do so much So I'm trying to give you a context an example of I get what you're saying where you want to have more of understanding on how do I make my designs more Unique and appealing fresh hot, you know all those terms, right? I'm trying to use I'm 37 I know I look young. I know I look young, but I'm a little older now, but Those things you got to combine the two because if you play too much outside the rules like you say sound like you Like I want to be do fundamentals Practice the fundamentals then play play practice the fundamentals But then play With everything else make it your playground I think in WordPress because I know we got developers and designers here I'm trying to bridge the gap between us all but in WordPress is a term called sandbox, right? This you sandbox site you bring up in the site. I like to call it playground Because when I was a kid, you know, we were at the playground and they're doing a little things and swinging So I like to wear they have at the playground your generic or your certain things But then like we look at it is well, what's so fun about that? But a kid's so imaginative They're they're able to like turn a little box into their you know a spaceship, but the box is generic, isn't it? So if you're following me and understand what I'm saying I'm trying to give you context to where generic and cookie-cutters not bad if you're following the fundamentals But you're also adding your little taste. What they would say put some hot sauce in that bag You know, man, you got put you know, you use hot sauce No, I saw what sauce do you use? You like I don't use no hot sauce now No sauce man, I Wish I had some sauce for our lunch today. I was like I need some sauce and salt and pepper. You feel me? Oh Okay, see now you giving me more information now. I'm starting to see more understand more Well, I would definitely say to wrap it up utilize that generic or that fundamental approach Keep that fundamental approach intact and then play around with other things get messy with it See, I think you're in let me know if I'm wrong, but are you afraid to get a little messy with things? It's okay I'm in what they call I have OCD I have a small sliver of OCD myself, you know, I do I can't help it But I'm okay with getting messy. I'm okay with you know doing this stuff because I know that it's not just entertaining It's helping people understand the information when it and take the information But I believe that once you start doing things in your regular life Your regular life getting it'll translate to your professional life Does that make sense? All right, guys, thank you so much and a huge round of applause for my my throw and we got a token of appreciation for you For being so amazing and anyone who wants to challenge him on the dance floor. He's here at the after-party plus us All right further. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you And do you mind if I get a picture like the thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I Never get one of these and I said one day I'm gonna do this because I see all the famous celebrities and people do it like I'm gonna do it one day. I don't care Wave your hands in the air like you just don't care. I'm just joking. All right, I'll count the three and we'll make it We'll make it quick And it's 545 which means I'm on time. Interesting All right. All right, we do backward here. Let me get the white. Let me get the um, I wish I had a why Let's see. Let's see. Can I get can I get can I get? Can I get? No, I can't get All right, I can get most I can get most I can get most all right and count three we're gonna do WordPress and you got to say it like that If y'all don't say it like that we doing it again That's what my mama say listen if you do it right the first time you don't got to do it again All right one two three Great job. Great job. Thank y'all. I appreciate y'all