 Svajdi toward Camp Asia right this wonderful crowd out here Yeah, and you know I'm used to be standing when I speak Feels a little different sitting down But I hope you guys are full of energy. Are you okay? I don't know that I believed them Are you all high energy all right, okay good so You know It was 2014 when I met Matt for the first time in person and We were at World Camp San Francisco and taking selfies with him And it was like a fan moment for me Yes World camps are like wonderlands You have so many of your heroes here People that you've seen online people that you've learned from and you've only seen them online And you come to a world camp and you can take selfies with them. You can shake hands with them That's the opportunity. You don't get anywhere else. Yeah Unfortunately, we're gonna miss that Yeah today because Matt is not here But I think you know what Matt Is probably missing us more. Oh, yeah I'll say yes on his behalf Because I know you know he rooted for World Camp Asia. Yes, and he's been behind this to make this happen and Unfortunately, he's not here So I know that while we miss him When we bring him on Can we welcome him such that he feels that he's here? Yeah, that he's not sitting somewhere else, but he's with us Can we please do that? Yeah, so let's welcome Matt. Can we have madden please? Yes, I don't think I've ever been more scared of anything in my life. Great. Wonderful So, yes, there there if you cannot walk down these stairs flag down one of our runners where our runners And they have a wireless microphone for you. Yes, so When you're at the mic Say your name Where are you from and what is your involvement in the project? And then go ahead and ask your question Try to make it a question And try to be crisp Yeah, and y'all seen hear me. Yes Well, let me repeat what I said earlier, which was I am so excited Even to be here virtually with y'all because to have a new continental scale work camp happening in Asia um Is amazing and it's been a dream of mine and so many others for for many many years So thank you all for making it happen. Really appreciate that And if you want to take a selfie with me now is a perfect time Yes, it's gonna be an assito because we are so here Well, I'll be in it so True that's what I I can't wait to attend in person next year And I would love to see you all at future work camp. So I'm sorry very very sorry. I couldn't make this one Heartbreaking to me, but thank you so much for the whole team for setting up this virtual way that we can still connect via video Thanks to those So just resuming what I was saying One question will be alternating between pre-submitted and live questions uh If you're in the line and if your question is already answered Feel free to step away, but before doing that if you want to say hello to matt You're welcome to do that. Yeah We may have to moderate or intervene at times just in the interest of time All questions are important, but we need to make sure that we can get maximum questions answered Is that fair? Yeah, okay. All right. So good to go All right, so let's start on this side. Please introduce yourself and ask a question. Hello Yeah, I'm first question on all three continents. So I'm milana top from Serbia and from the documentation team and I have a question On behalf of the documentation team, but also all make teams We have a foundation that is helping and supporting work camps and that's wonderful. Thank you very much But my question is Could we have something like that for make teams? now Volunteering and contribution and open source. It's all beautiful And we don't have uh, we cannot afford that kind of romantic thinking because we are too big It's not sustainable. So I understand that logistic of You know Supporting all volunteers all over the world is a nightmare and maybe not possible. I don't have answers I have only questions But if we could have something that would help teams, you know Sponsors something. I don't know Per project or something like that and every team besides what they are doing for WordPress They also have a lot of other things that they are doing So the documentation team is not just writing documentation We have so many things around it that we are working on and we We are paying tools by our own money. I'm paying a tool by my Sponsored money from xwp And if we could have some kind of support for those kind of things that logistic that we are doing To be able to do what we do for WordPress that would be So helpful. So if that's possible, I I would like to see that while I'm still on Inside the project. Thank you He's the one for your question There were a few layers there, so I'll try to work through them On tools you're using I'm curious what tool that you're you're having to pay for and that there wasn't an open source Alternative so what is that? Yep That is a tool that I build onboarding form for documentation team to help people You know find a way and Discover all the roles they can do in documentation team and that involves Conditions so based on what you answer I create condition to give you the list of the Roles that you can work with so there is no free tool for that And I don't have enough time to build it myself So, you know, we have to balance time and and what we can do Uh, so there are Tools that can simulate something like that, but the logistic is not Completed so I had to pay for it Actually, you paid for a WordPress plugin or is that like a third? It's a third-party service Gotcha. Okay. Um Yeah, so again a few things there one like part of what we want to do on wordpress.org and with the meta team Is try to use our development efforts to try to create open source versions of everything you need to build a community like wordpresses so Hopefully someday like I think it's great. Let's be pragmatic. So and thank you I guess xwp for paying for that tool that you used If anyone else needs any tools You know, we we don't mind paying for software if we need to we're always looking for an open source first if we can Uh, and many companies are very happy to donate their services to us such as slack does currently for our dot org slack but If there's ever something you need, please don't hesitate to get in touch with the sort of meta team If you need a tool sponsored for getting something done On the broader issue of being sponsored or not, um, I will say that Uh, the foundation side of wordpress as you know has had no employees ever since it started So no one gets paid by the foundation. We do do grants and scholarships and sponsorships and things like that Um, but it's not really set up to be an employment entity Uh, wordpress has always tried to be a place where people can come together regardless of Who employs them or how they get paid or whether they want to get paid or not? and uh work together on something um, I realize that this isn't for everyone and that uh Number of folks as part of their fire for the future contribution Uh companies sponsor people, you know automatic has over 100 people that we sponsor full time Uh that just contribute to various elements of wordpress um, and You sounds like work for xwp a number of other companies. Yoast is a big one that sponsors a ton of great people But I I would strongly disagree with you that um People need to be sponsored or that sponsored work is better I think that open source Uh is the idea of coming together around a cause It's not about um Being paid for work. It doesn't mean the work is value isn't valuable. In fact, it's as we say both free and priceless at the same time uh, but Yeah, I don't see that changing. Um For the foreseeable future that the foundation will ever have any employees. It's really just meant to be a intellectual property holding You know doing things like events and places to facilitate places where we need an entity But um not an employment entity now or in the future Yeah, thank you. Well, I I didn't say that sponsored work is better just to make sure Uh, yeah, yeah, I I didn't say that and I don't think that I'm just think It's more sustainable when we have something a project to do like this Right design that has been done. It's marvelous, but it took a lot of Time and sometimes we need things to be done faster So, you know, maybe having some kind of support would do it faster. That's all I'm saying Uh, so you then identify another issue, which is in many areas. We are moving I think a lot slower um Then we should Uh, I would love to say that paying people Surely helped them go faster, but I have lots of experience in working Um inside automatic with projects that went too slow even though everyone was paid So I think there's something else there that we need to identify and get a lot better at Um around how we are If I had to guess I would say that Too often we are Doing particularly designed by committee and trying to develop a consensus and everything and it Would probably be better if we just chose A single person to be a decision maker and said even when we don't all agree with it Let's just start with that person's decisions and use that to move things through faster And uh, and then we can always iterate from there, but right now we're taking a very long time to get the version one out and I think that's not conducive for creating great products or experiences or anything Um, I wrote an essay on this on my blog Uh, so m a dot t t if you look for it was called 1.0 is the loneliest number I talk a lot about sort of the idea of designed by committee consensus and Um, yeah creating great user experiences Uh, if I'm super honest right now, I'm pretty embarrassed by a lot of what's going on On wordpress.org the website right now. I think the information architecture the design the menu system everything is, um not up to the standard of What wordpress itself provides which is world-class software So inside the core software, I think that we're doing Pretty decent and in many places fantastic job of many things but we haven't yet been able to translate that to the project surrounding it Including wordpress.org itself. So it's very very much on my mind and something I've been talking to Joseph a lot and Thinked about and you just heard my best theory that perhaps we need more sometimes we call them DRIs or directly responsible individuals um Maybe try that approach a little bit more than necessarily the uh The consensus which we've been attempting now for several years Thank you. Thank you. So, uh, at this time, you know As I was hearing the answers and questions um Something else popped up and you know subash's chatterjee From the community had a very interesting question And I could relate to that as a as a parent of two school going daughters And he said is there any way That we can start WordPress, you know education Using wordpress teaching people to code with wordpress And at school level That was quite interesting and as I think of it You know if you imagine the impact this could have over the long term future just amazing so Any thoughts on that, you know, how do we get kids start contributing early get to use wordpress early? Because I thought if you're up for it, I'd I'd love for you to take this one because I think you're We're doing all over the world there So i'm just going to double check we're asking how to get wordpress taught in schools and how to get wordpress Very young so First things first my favorite question This is a thing that I worked on before I even was sponsored to work on wordpress by automatic I want wordpress as Software and as a way to collaborate with one another to be in schools I think it's something that we have to be able to teach people wordpress can teach you how to Use all of your 21st century skills well, but also it is able If you're contributing you're able to learn how to work across cultures. You're able to work across Global boundaries as all of you are aware. I've worked with some of you for like five or six years And I've never been in the same room with you before today, and I think that's fascinating So I'm a strong advocate for it and in my current experience of trying to get Open source or wordpress into school systems It moves too fast for them to be able to build curriculum and If it's not moving quickly then they are worried about this concept of open source It's kind of it's kind of like a Power to the people sort of thing and schools find that Moderately alarming so that's why we have not succeeded. I think at getting that done yet But around the question of like how to get it to young users early We are working on getting kids camp started back up if anyone is familiar with that. It's Students who are 13 and younger They get to go to a whole day of sessions alongside a regular word camp and they get to learn basics of wordpress basics of Basically project management and for some of them like the start of their entrepreneurial spirit is there But then also we I've been having a lot of conversations with our attendees this This weekend about how to do that also for like Basically teenagers because teenagers don't want to do anything that their parents want them to learn And so we got to figure out a way to help them get that Experience as well. So strong advocate lots of difficulty getting it done in my current experience. Yeah, I can understand. Yeah I love that you mentioned kids and um, perhaps that's actually something that could be part of future word camp asias as well Yes Yeah, uh, it's near a slack channel or a place for people who They're helping, you know, younger folks get involved wordpress coordinate or share what they're doing Yeah, I don't know if there's a specific channel for like kids camp and such But we do have the community team in the making wordpress slack where you can join the working groups for those things But also If you just want some self-serve Content that helps expose your students your children to wordpress. You can also go to learn dot wordpress.org There's a lot of content there as well Oh and meetups. Don't forget meetups. So I can go to meet them in call it like a hashtag kids camp or something and um You know what? I'll start that right now. I'm on a computer. So this is actually On stage make it so so and then folks are interested about that, you know, because The in education no one understands better than a parent or teacher who's directly working with kids And so I think uh, the folks who are are attempting this are going to have the most Wisdom and experience there and if they can start sharing in a peer-to-peer way What's worked and what hasn't um, I think that would be kind of the best way to scale this up Yeah, awesome. So Yeah, as we're talking about learning and learn wordpress, uh, you know, I had another question from The community earlier lux mariappin. Uh, he said Uh, how can designers and developers upskill themselves? Now we have some great material on learn dot wordpress. Uh, what else can we do so that in all these new things It's easier for people to learn all that That do you want to answer or do you want me to answer? Uh, well, I just made the kids channel So I'll answer it because he was busy On the word So so the question is how do you help designers and developers Level up their skills. Yes I think one of the best ways in the wordpress project that you can do that is actually participating in a do action hackathon So those hackathons are put together by the community But through the wordpress foundation and you can learn all sorts of skills required to to work inside that Um, to work with wordpress and you're actually Building websites for people sometimes creating content for companies and nonprofits And so you get a lot of hands-on opportunities and and that pragmatic work that helps you to remember it So that's my recommendation All right, so shall we go to another question here on the right side? Michelle has question. Michelle do you have oh, okay. Go ahead. Yeah Um Okay, perfect. So michelle fresh up with stellar wp and post status Nice to see you. I'll be it from the other side of the world With the wave of layoffs and hiring freezes that we've seen lately in the wordpress community What do you think that we as a community can do to create more jobs in our ecosystem and stop the anxiety and fear That comes with the layoffs that we've seen Not a softball question today. I know Never never softball questions for me. Yeah Sorry, one moment met One second met Oh now we can't hear you at all. Okay, hang on We can tell it's an excellent answer Oh Oh Oh, can you hear me? Yes Yes, okay One thing that I found consistent uh through economic boom times and recessions is that We try to create more value than we capture and so As we continue to just stay close to our customers stay close to people doing real things in the world um I think actually wordpress can benefit from recessionary times as well because We provide One economic agency where people can do things themselves people everyone can be an entrepreneur with wordpress Um businesses always are going to need more customers and they might become more price sensitive You know, they find they're paying hundreds of hundreds of dollars at Shopify And a WooCommerce site could do it for one-tenth the cost or they're spending too much money on works in square space So I would encourage, you know people with wordpress skills to look at businesses in their area or once they have contact to Um, particularly who might be spending more on some of these other services And look at the opportunity to bring the wordpress because You could probably give that Business or non-profit or whatever organization it is a better website And save them a ton of monthly cost as well, which would be really great I so I feel like open source really shines in recessionary times In terms of as a community I feel like the relationships that are formed at work camps and online and by people working together and private contributing to open source is really one of the very best ways to also be connected to jobs as well and You know from the very first days of wordpress, you know when I was starting automatic Who did I look to of course the people I always had already been working with? building Early versions of wordpress and mu at folks like donica Andi Skeleton and Ryan Bourne like these were folks. I've already had experience working sort of shoulder to shoulder Making things with and so participating in an open source project if you find yourself having Some extra time is a great way also to build your portfolio to make professional contacts and network So alongside other things you might be doing like polishing your resume improving your portfolio I would say I know as someone who's hired thousands of people You know one of the first things I always look at is is our open source contributions I can't think of a developer application. I've gotten in the past 15 years. I didn't have a github link. So Contributing contributing and participating in something Is a great way to fill those holes in your resume as well Yeah, I'm going to add on a thing here for the folks here and watching at home or wherever you are I think also an important part of this answer is that you all are a step ahead of everyone who isn't here already Right you came here to learn about wordpress or to teach others about wordpress and you are Making those connections that matt's talking about where you are finding other people that you can do Fun projects with learn new skills or just partner and come up with a new business entirely And I think that that's excellent. I'm so glad that you all are here For that reason and many others so Yeah, see when when that conversation is going on I'm just kind of in the presence of the contribution that wordpress has had on this community the asian community It's created so many jobs already. I mean you know like 2010 is when we started store apps and doing all this wordpress work and I didn't even imagine Where this could reach right and I meet so many people every day Wordpress has changed so many lives here. Would you agree to that or not like has wordpress changed your life? Yeah, yeah Mine for sure. Yeah So it does change lives It may take time at times. There are ups and downs Right and life goes through the stages But you know, this community has contributed a lot back and it's also received a lot Uh on on that topic, you know When we thinking about the you know the roadmap for 2023 Is there anything specific or particular any announcements or updates that you think this community needs to know about wordpress the project? Before we get to that should we take another audience question or sure we could do that Yeah, we have people lining up All right, so let's go to this side and then we can come back to that Hi, um, my name is Yogesh. I am from Bangalore, India Nice to see you again Yeah Okay, my question is uh, you know in recently we see that there's a lot of upheaval in the tech scenario and Things change rapidly, but when they change a lot of it affects the people who are Usually working in the open source like when uh, google went with axe and on the jobs The first thing they cut down was their open source contributions department and then on the other side, uh Microsoft came up with chat jpt. Yeah, very very popular, but they took it. They basically bought GitHub they used all the contributions And they closed source it they say no not really closed source, but they Monetize it and so we see that the tragedy of commons Keeps happening out there So as wordpress Is around 40 42 percent of the web How does uh, how do we avoid the how do we make it resistant to? tragedy of commons or how do we make the open source itself? resistant to tragedy of commons You had you had a few really good things in there, so I'll try to address each first on for technology like chat jpt and other you know Large language models and other things I think are absolutely the future And we should be thinking about how we can leverage them to make ourselves more productive and Not try to fight it So the best that but they also we should recognize their limitations The best essay I've seen so far Actually, one of my favorite sci-fi writers, uh, Ted Chang wrote an essay for the new yorker called Chat jpt is a blurry jpeg of the web it's a like how These things learn and why they astound us in certain ways And also their limitations But I 100 percent just like you might have had a IDE or something else that would help you with autocomplete based on reading the code and knowing classes like imagine that times 10 And it's going to improve the quality and our ability to create software so quickly Like there's articles and youtube's online and people creating entire wordpress plugins In minutes, you know using chat jpt or Bing or other things So I think it would be foolish to ignore this And I don't see it as um I'm not sure how it's going to play out economically So it was kind of astounded. Uh, there are Are So The best that I've been able to come up with there in talking to thousands of wordpress community members and studying the history of open source and And economics and everything like that is a five for the future So for those who aren't familiar five with the future is the idea of these parts um, you know if you if you are You know benefiting from wordpress in some way like if it's changed your life if you're making money from it um it's kind of like there Used to be like these legal pin to take a pin in bars like you could say take five percent back or whatever you feel like hitting from wordpress um Contribute that back to the open source box. So whether that's you know, like a variety of ways that people contribute whether it's talking to taking support I I probably don't need to explain it to all people probably are doing it already by Identity and ad work in Asia, but um, I feel like if we can continue if you post uh us all benefiting a tremendous amount for wordpress, but also taking a little bit just five percent And you know putting that back and um That will help us avoid the comments and it's certainly allowed us to Be I think one of the most respectful long-term open source projects so far when I'd see You know our other open source projects in our cohort the batteries or That haven't had as a vibrant meeting of us It's generally been when they have that social more a norm of uh contributing and so That's why uh, that's why we talk about it so much. It's also why we demonstrate it by I do it myself by contributing a lot of my time back to wordpress and um for companies and that i'm involved in Both that I invest in or or run like automatic We take it very seriously now for the tune of over a hundred full-time people. So Yeah, we try to lead by example there, but I think anyone who's who's really done it also can talk to the benefits of how contributing can Benefit you a lot as well as the community So I the good news is that I don't worry about it because it's in everyone's interest Uh for the commons to thrive with open source And that's why when open source the flywheel kind of gets going of contribution and the improvements in the software Leading to more usage which leads to more contributors, which leads to the software getting better um that it becomes kind of a World standard if you will much like wordpress is starting to you know, we have 10 times the The number of domains using us as uh the number two in the market, which is the proprietary competitor called Shopify um So if we continue doing that it doesn't mean that we don't need to like Ruthlessly iterate ourselves and get better at doing meetings and collaborating and everything else But like if we if we keep doing that I uh I can see wordpress. I could see the wordpress being around Not just around but actually core to the the fabric of the web 100 years from now You know, and I would love to attend the workamp asia in my 80s or something like that Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you I do want to give Fast where are you to hurry? If you want to know more there you are if you want to know more about The five for the future program that excellent steward of that program is the person to speak to Um, I'm sure that he will be made available out here in the sponsor area All right, shall we take one more question here? Hi, man Good morning My name is Vishal. I am from India and we build plugins for voo commerce. We have been doing that since 2012 So, yeah, it has Created a lot of livelihoods for me and for our team of you know, 17 20 people uh, my question is uh regarding the onboarding process of the self-hosted version of wordpress so Currently the you know when we install when we download the The wordpress version it It is meant to be for a developer or you know, uh, someone who knows What's the database user name? What's the password and and those things? Do we have a plan to change it such that? Rather than all those details coming first We ask as to what is the kind of site that you are trying to build You know with this particular installation Let's say, you know, uh, maybe a physiotherapist is trying to build a blog Or someone, you know based on the domain that they want to use it for based on the purpose of the site that's what we ask first and Then you know, uh, we we uh follow up based on that instead of What is the theme you want to install? What's the plugin you want to install? So, yeah, do we have a plan or anything in in that? Yeah in that context That's a great question. Thank you Uh, our plan has been to leave that to the folks providing wordpress as a service Whether that's a web host or you know, the wordpress is a fast type of writers And there's been a ton of innovation in that onboarding flow and if you look at The blue host or wordpress.com of the world like there's a lot they're doing so experiment there And as to whether we should have course well Open to it. Like there's everything not to it's just been something We've decided not to do so far But if that's something that you're personally passionate about or want to spin up We could definitely start to build some onboarding core Um, and of course because it would be completely configurable Anyone who already has a custom onboarding, which is turn off the bits of onboarding, but they don't like um But there's so much to do within like the kind of after the onboard Uh user experience, uh, you know with the four phases of Gutenberg that we're working on But also just all the rest of WP admin. There's just so much we can still improve um, that hasn't seemed like the uh The most crucial area. Um It definitely appears by It's not that these parts are important. It's that we're bringing a lot of people on the board for us every day um, it's that I think a lot about that maintenance and that usability for how to Customize the site that you want And you know sort of picking a theme in a plug and only gets you so far What we're trying to do with Gutenberg Is actually take it so that so much of what before you used to have to use a plug and or a theme for We can provide a common block based interface for and Gutenberg gets further and further like You'll basically start with like one of our blank canvas and be able to Use block patterns and other things to create a site just exactly like you imagine And customize it however you like We're right now themes are basically kind of prepackaged versions of that But I mean it's not going to be the next couple of years but maybe 10 or 15 years from now. You could imagine Basically everyone's starting with one of the blank canvas theme or themes themselves just being collections of these patterns and that blocks Okay, so I think that's kind of the answer to go on board is at least that we're going to do in court Okay Okay. Thank you. Matt. That's an interesting perspective actually And that kind of links back to contribution, right, you know So what do you think could be some of the most impactful ways the asian community in particular Can contribute to wordpress in meaningful ways, especially keeping the big picture goals of 2023 and beyond like the next 10 years Matt Yeah, I would say that but did you want to jump in just a little Can I start and then you do it? Sure. Great. So I think especially since you're here with Exactly the right people some of the things that are most impactful that you all as a community can do right now is number one Get that the meetup programs your meetup events started again That helps a lot with wherever you went you guys I don't know where you went with the five for the future question as well Having more people attending these events helps us to on board new users and on board new contributors So that's one thing and the other thing that is so incredibly important right now Is translating our content that is on wordpress.org the training content that's out there needs to be translated Into all the 200 languages that wordpress core is translated into And our docs as well. I think could use some attention from a translation standpoint So those are the three things that I would say you could do right now Now Matt what you got And by the way, normally Joseph and I would be in person and we were kind of like to look at each other to know Who is going to go first? So Feel free to jump in or interrupt me at any point if you want to take something Um, I was going to say exactly what you said Shoot sorry, uh, no, no, that's perfect. You said it better and um It is true that outside of japan it feels like uh, many of the countries represented in camp asia Wordpress's adoption within many of these countries Is not as lost English Spanish, you know, some of these Japanese So I would say that No one better than to Connect to the local of Starting in schools adults developer businesses Wow, really making wordpress present in every single one of those And truly localizing it and translating it not just in the language, but For the needs of that particular Culture and society is um something that the folks in this room will be able to do better Than myself or or anyone else. So that I would say is is really one of the critical things um that particularly to see as we start to start to you know But hopefully the first and very many I'd love to see you develop a lot Yeah, the difference between localization India and um, I mentioned stuff about that. Um, india itself is so large has such an amazing diversity of Of languages and everything. I mean, it's building people on its own feels like it should also probably have its own sort of continental work camp And You know, so I think it's awesome that you're all a part of work camp asia, but it feels large enough that perhaps, you know, sort of An indian work camp could be something that it's kind of the same size as Work camp or camp you understand Fear not we've been talking about it all weekend and everybody that I've talked to about it is chuckling to themselves See, I told you he was in favor Awesome Yes, yes already discussing it Yeah, if you want to learn more that that uh hand wave was for you Awesome. Shall we continue with another question? Yes on this side So, uh, hi matt. I'm arun from india. I've been doing hosting business since 2009 and frankly WordPress gets a lot of bad rap of not being secure not being fast Not being well supported not easy to maintain because of the basically kls hosts Which is sort of improving recently What do you basically see? Happening in the near future and what more would you like to be seen and as an opportunity for the hosting industry per se Well, of course, thank you for hosting with us You identified it As someone's If you think of the everyday experience the most work by groups of there, it's primarily mediated by the host And you know the hosts are taking on a lot of responsibility to keep their site secure Uploaded, you know, not just WordPress but everything underneath it. Do you think of the operating the web server or the database? It's all of you who patched enough data continuously The hardware underlying things you need to run backups. You need to prepare things when they're hacked host Really is best suited and Has a technical proficiency beyond most WordPress users to be able to get these sorts of things um I think it's getting better also just from the competitive nature mostly which is You know, as I'm sure you're very aware of bearing competitive marketplace Where there's a lot of folks really doing their best to provide a fantastic experience What we focused on in WordPress Was really the auto update and I think updates and backwards compatibility being something that we take very very seriously so I When I've studied sort of platforms and operating systems everything in the past It's really about how you can update Not just the core but all the components on top of it the teams of plugins And I feel like for core we've gone to a very very good place where as you know We can even push out proactive security updates to You know tens of millions of sites and hours And we've done that to keep sites secure across the web um I think that there's still a lot to do there particularly around plugins and features And I'd love to extend Some of our plug bounties some of the way we do security some of the way we could code audits to Top 100 plugins, but really everything is interactive because when we have something in our official directory We're also endorsing it a little bit, you know, not explicitly But we're explicitly saying like hey, we're hosting this so just like you hosting for WordPress You're taking a little bit of responsibility when we host a plug in a theme We are taking a little bit of responsibility for it This is also someplace and we have a number of code scanning tools about the things we've run in the past so Like when we become aware of a certain type of vulnerability, we can actually scan the entire plugin repo Work for developers to update it with a plug of the bandits and not even upload it ourselves um In the future, I'm actually very very excited about the I can't say this So just like I talked about I feel like AI is going to make every developer or designer basically everyone a lot more efficient and productive each person will be able to do a lot more with these sort of increased AIs of the tool I'm very excited that when we can start to run sort of code AI banners and over the entire repository for before but also all the extensions to WordPress And how that can help us improve the quality of those um for the folks in the audience who are the developers the plugin developers The most important thing you can do is just have people be able to trust updates And I know that's so hard And with the plugins i'm involved with including new commerce. We've made mistakes there in the past but There's nothing more important than someone You know looking forward So just to add a couple of things there like Updates is usually never the problem never in the back of the mind of entrepreneur who's getting the website up it's usually starts with performance and Sort of whether the website will be up or not so Those are the two things whenever we have a conversation between Shopify versus WooCommerce so Just a thought there You know, we've had some incredible pains there over the past couple years Including with the doubling of php performance that came with php 7 7.2 Databases are getting better. I'm actually really excited with the sequel light work that's going on As a mysql alternative for I think for many wordpress sites that will open up some very exciting Kind of performance improvements including things like being able to replicate Sort of a sequel light containerized version of wordpress to the edges So, you know, it automatically won 23 Sort of points of presence around the world that are like a cloud for a like cdn that allows us to accelerate things Being able to shift actually that the compute of wordpress to the edge It's going to be very very exciting for improving performance. I think that's you know, well one wordpress is with proper caching and everything set up is one of the most secure and fastest things you can do Powering sites as mission critical and as security critical as it like the white house.gov And I think that Part of what I always think about is is how do we take the thing that Right now we do for big enterprises or people spending millions of dollars And make that accessible to everyone So I would love for anyone on a five or ten dollar a month web host To be able to have that same level of security and performance So always looking at like what can we do in coral? What can we do in kind of the the basic systems of how we work to to bring those improvements and optimizations into the core software That's been one of the benefits as well What's for example with wordpress.com and made the decision not to fork the software basically wordpress.com runs Core wordpress core wordpress emu and in fact Many times. I think we've fallen behind this a little bit We'll actually deploy like beta Or release candidate versions of wordpress to wordpress.com before the wordpress release and we do that Get it on, you know Tens of hundreds of millions despite getting billion the page views to find any bottlenecks before it goes out in the core software So that's something that um Automatics contributed. I know other hosts have done a lot of testing like that as well And uh, something we hope we can do more in the future Thanks. Thank you. We have about 15 minutes left. So we gonna be quick on this side Hello, just talking. Okay Hi, I'm shilpa from WP cubicle And what I really want to ask is why aren't you here? But I'll I'll I'll stop on that. Um, so Uh in my past life, I mean over the past 10 years We've had a bunch of plugins on the wordpress plugins directory And I'm sort of in the early stages of getting a new one there But the things that made me nervous Um, you know with early on starting on still make me nervous as in the lack of data From the point of view of how many people are, you know, landing on my wordpress or plugin directory page How many of them are actually downloading And how many of them are installing it every day, you know Feedback like that would be tremendously useful for a freemium plugin And so is there I I don't know if there's something going on in the background But I would love to hear from you about that, please So how can you make it easier for us? The first thing is there is a work happenable So there is um You know, as we know on wordpress.org we're very privacy focused Well, we but we are looking at sort of what's telemetry or more specifics we can share um there was sort of Some because it's actually what you said I want if people to be able to like Think about how to optimize and and uh their findability um I would love like better feedback loops um I think that we need to integrate the forms quite a bit better because users being able to For example, I'd love for within wp admin people will be able to Really easily leave feedback So for example, there might be users who install your plugin when they're turning it off Like is there something we can capture when they're turning it off that they can go back to wordpress.org Be shared with everyone but also share it with the plugin developer I think those types of I think in the user interface there's little nudges We can do that could provide really great feedback loops and if we do it right it also provides great data for people Searching the plugin directory and trying to decide between you know, tend to for plugins doing the same things what they should choose I'm very excited with you know and say to the word we announced our new taxonomy for sort of discerning between free plugins solo plugins community plugins commercial plugins and sort of canonical plugins I think that's also going to be in the directory a great way for both users to be able to Choose what they're looking for and set expectations correctly and also developers and plugin creators to Communicate what they're doing Also, thank you for asking the kind of elephant in the room question, which is why I'm not there in Bangkok um, but I really wish I was and Right now. I'm navigating some family health things and I decided to prioritize staying here in Houston So I just couldn't make it but uh, I really am hopeful that um, they are going well So I hope I'll be able to travel again in the future and uh, hopefully before not too long And so by the next time I work in Beja is Have you all announced the city it's going to be in yet? I don't know where but I I'm very much looking forward to being there and Meeting everyone in person shaking hands shaking selfies all those sorts of things. That's one of the things that gives me a ton of energy um And yeah attending work camps is is really one of my favorite parts of the job too So I really um looking forward to being there in person in the future Anyone ever thought that your your WordPress Mentors were joking when we said we want you to put your family and well-being first like this is an example of why we Like we do mean that all the way around And so yes, and we again huge. Thanks to the organizers for helping us to make this work out anyway Thank you Okay, hello math. My name is Kitan and Samaria from Thailand. You can call me more Thank you for having me to ask your question Um, it has been around three years and a half that since your company automatic Acquired tumbler since then I saw you some improvement on the platform and I'm impressed that you can manage both platforms Really in a great way. So my question is after the acquisition Which aspect of tumbler that influenced the development of WordPress? especially in the open source one and also what is your plan to develop both platform even further Thank you Yeah, I've said it before I'll say it again It's taking a little longer than we hoped but we are planning to switch the back end of tumbler to be WordPress powered So that's going to mean Hundreds of millions of new WordPress sites in the world And I'm very very excited about that WordPress is robust enough. It can do everything that the back end of tumbler needs to do Now simultaneously we've also been doing a business turnaround of tumbler So, you know when we purchased tumbler it was losing I think we publicly disclosed, you know over 65 million dollars per year. So bringing that to a break even sort of like a stemming that burn Has been the first priority because of course we want tumbler to be around For many years in the future and to do so it does need to be at at least break even hopefully profitable But at least break even For us to really promise to its community and users that will be able to sustain it For you know many many decades to come As we're doing that though the turnaround is going well like you have seen a lot of platform improvements With the sort of tumultuous nature of social media recently especially with twitter We've gotten some huge influxes of users huge influx of users And people will also just sort of appreciating the fun stuff we're doing like the polls feature and other Things we've been doing tumbler is basically blogging. That's really fun. And so I believe what it's inspired me to think more about Both of wordpress.com and also core wordpress is how can we add a little moments of fun and delight, you know something that We had And some of the early days of wordpress, but we kind of like have iterated our way out of is um easter eggs Uh language that could be fun or silly Um being celebratory. So, you know, for example, when you make a new post, can we do a fun animation there? Can we show like some confetti dropping or just things like that? I think that we have a lot more room to be opinionated And a reverent a little bit in some of the design of the software I know that feels less safe sometimes or we can always come up with reasons why we shouldn't have those things But I think it's really important to wordpress to have some personality as well and the very core interface You know, it's in things like the hello dolly plugin and others But how can we bring a little more jazz in the wordpress? I'll go bring a little more of that as rod of the of Of the fun that we have creating it, you know, we want to translate that And so the fun that everyday people have been using it Uh the other thing that has been on my mind quite a bit is um if I have to think of like an original sin of wordpress or something that Uh is a flaw in how the software has been designed um I think it's our importance on titles I know this sounds kind of weird and fundamental, but really going back to the b2 days Something that's extinguished wordpress from blogger live journal Some of the you know Frontier user land or scripting.com some of the other early blogging platforms Was wordpress made the title like you basically required it and particularly when we started adopting, you know, our Our way of doing permanent links That included the title as part of it we really made it very central Um And it's kind of hard to publish something without a title and I feel like I know it sounds subtle, but um There's something kind of magical about what I would call the sides on my blog Um, I forget what we might have called them when we did a post-format But it's kind of what twitter is is microblogging That idea of just being able to have an update that doesn't necessarily need um a title on it So, uh, I've been talking to Matias a lot about this and some of the Gutenberg team But how we can make it easier both in theming and the core interface Uh to really make titles more optional because I just want people to be able to Feel like they can post anything to their blogs um A little bit how blogging has evolved over the past five or ten years with people thinking a lot about seo And findability and social media optimization everything Takes a little bit of the fun and spontaneity out of it. I've experienced this myself in my own blogging You know I used to post hundreds of times per year and now I think of it a little bit more like writing a college essay like I really need to do a lot of work to put something out there and um Just if we can lower those barriers to entry and make people comfortable with posting Just silly things or just posting a link or just posting a youtube embed or something And not every blog post having to be like a huge thing With a title and paragraphs and you know seo optimized and a featured image and all that sort of you know kind of additional Burden we put on post. It's great to allow that and some blogs will do that and some posts will be that But I think that kind of micro blogging is something that I want to make a lot more effortless with an interface That's a great input. Thank you. Thank you. Um, we have five more minutes So if you can get to the thing quickly, then we can yeah At a matte mob wp here I do want to answer the question just very quickly You said is there something you know to announce or talk about here at work camp asia? And of course I have something for y'all Which is that we are getting ready to kick off a lot of phase three of Gutenberg So, you know, we've been talking about this gosh five seven years now That phase is one if you want to play that um, yeah phase three is I would say the kickoff for that is coming soon So keep an eye out and to remind people phase three is the collaboration phase of Gutenberg So allowing things like real time co-editing of documents pages themes blocks entire sites So people can be kind of working out at the same time on different computers and see where what's going on Editing workflows. I want to really improve post revisions. So there's a lot that's coming and inviting people to share draft or submit comments like all that kind of like Workflow and collaboration part is going to be phase three and uh blogging is definitely something more fun when you do it without the people And site creation and everything like many things in life the more the merrier and so, uh, yeah Keep an eye out for phase three very excited to us. Hey that that is coming soon Hey matt bob wp here from your part of the world Question for you. I know your love of science science fiction and You're intrigued at time travel if you had one point in time In wordpress history to travel back to what would that be? When would it be and why? Of course think quick There's um, you know, I I would happily do the entire thing over again So The day that mike little left the comment on my blog Um, and that we started, you know chatting with each other on irc and started collaborating Uh bringing the volunteer like I do the whole thing over again a thousand times. So, you know, I guess that's that's when I have time travel back to Thanks, ma'am Can we take one question or matt are you going to be able to answer a question in 30 seconds? I'm going to take it as a yes one more question. Yeah speed Okay, quick question. I'm leo from Malaysia. I run an agency the the the issue about I face in wordpress Uh, that is about marketing wordpress So around agencies we have Other agencies coming to my clients telling them that wordpress is not secure wordpress is not Fast which is which you know, it's not true but the problem is we have clients moving from WooCommerce to Shopify back to WooCommerce and then Shopify and they say hey, WooCommerce is not secure. I was like really when they know me They say you don't know the right guy, right? You don't know the right agency, but but overall I don't know about other countries, but I know in Malaysia Wordpress gets a bad rep but press people think wordpress is for cheap websites Not not enterprise websites and how what can we do as a community? To to to change the image of wordpress. What do you think? I love this question my quick answer is Nothing Is as good as showing examples So doing excellent work and then raising the profile of those And I know we've redesigned the showcase, but I really want to make this a lot more prominent And I want every single rosetta site every single language and country version of wordpress.org to have a really prominent showcase So by elevating the best examples of wordpress I think that is better because we can you know say all day that Wordpress is secure. It's performant or something like that, but being able to point to a site like whitehouse.gov that switched to wordpress and You know when the war in ukraine started all the kremlin sites got hacked whitehouse.gov did not like being able to point to Examples like that say well if it's secure enough for The white house like it gets secure enough for you probably Um is really really helpful. So examples is my short answer And I guess we're out of time Can I just say thank you all like this has been amazing Um, I can tell there's a ton of energy in the room. Um, I can I've been watching the tweets since some of the live streams And it's been so exciting to follow along This is really one of the best word camps I've seen yet And that's a testament to the organizers and also everyone before I thank you so so much Me I'll finish this up. Do you want to finish you're finishing me? Yeah, okay. My friends Thank you matt for joining us all the way from the other side of the world Thank you everyone who is joining us here in the audience. You are wonderful Everybody that has asked a question Thank you folks who did not ask your questions or that pre-submitted them and they didn't get answered We will put out a blog post as usual And you now have a 15 minute short break until your next section starts at 10 30 I guess 10 30 10 30 Thank you everyone. Thank you for coming. Enjoy the rest of the day Thank you