 And for the people who don't know Berkel and Roderijs, I guess that's everybody here, except for Jan, maybe. That's near Rotterdam in the Netherlands and the total distance that I'm going to walk is 737 kilometers. I'm going to tell you a bit about how I came to this idea and how the idea came to life and how the idea grew from a small idea to something that's hopefully going to change the lives of some people in the WordPress community. And before I'm going to do that, maybe I should turn my laptop around so we can see my presentation. No worries. I can check this out if things are going good here because it was working. One final check and if it doesn't work, I'm just going to do it without slides and without sound. Sound's gone now also. Okay, so we got no sound or image. We need to choose. It's here, right? Okay. Shall I do it without sound then? Well, this is me. That's the logo which someone from the community, Tom Hermans, designed. I wanted this to be a community-based thing. And I want to tell you a bit about myself first. Well, my name is Marcel Bozman. I own a company which is called Nostromo. And within Nostromo, I build websites. I do support and I do that in a CMS that's probably known by you which is called WordPress. And I do quite a lot. It's my own company and I do almost everything in there. And besides that, I realized that when I started about 10 years ago with my company, I realized that I was using a free piece of software that people actually donate their time into and help it make it better. And I wanted to do something back for that. And I guess a lot of people who are here right now have the feeling that they want to contribute to the WordPress as a project. So I started visiting WordCamps and met a lot of people which I still know right now. And I started to do more in contributing to WordPress. I'm not a core developer and I try to look like ways so that I could contribute to WordPress. So I started with the forum in the Netherlands which I'm now moderator. I started with translating. There's a big community in the Netherlands with people that are helping translating WordPress to Dutch. And I'm also an organizer of several WordCamps and co-organizer. I started with a team or we started as a team with WordCamp Europe in Leiden in 2013 and I was on the organizing team there. And after that I was able to join the organizing teams for WordCamp the Netherlands which is probably going to happen again sometime. Maybe if people stand up and want to organize it. And right now I am the lead developer, the lead organizer for WordCamp Rotterdam. And I want to take the opportunity to make a bit of a commercial for WordCamp Rotterdam very short. It's on the April 12th and it's going to be a 24-hour WordCamp. We have a WordCamp conference during the day, presentations and hallway tracks and you can meet people. And from 8pm in the evening we're going to start a do action hackathon and help four charities build a new website. And at 8 o'clock in the morning we're going to finish that and hopefully we have four websites to show to the charities. And we have support from SiteGround who's going to host those websites for a year and it's going to be fun. So if you don't have anything to do on April 12th this year please come to Rotterdam. There's still some tickets left a lot but you can also come. So why would you contribute to WordPress? Who of you has not ever contributed to WordPress? Okay, well that's not true because you're here. By being here you're already contributing to WordPress. So contributing can be a lot and contributing is for WordPress. It depends on the time that contributors put into the project. If everybody stops doing what they're contributing right now WordPress is not going to be as successful as it has been. So people like you help make WordPress better. I believe there was a contributing room for the whole WordCamp here. I arrived this morning so it wasn't a contributor day. There was a contributor day also. The room is still there I know. People are still contributing which is very good and contributing is a big part of what makes WordPress big. And what I wanted to do is how can you help or why should you contribute to WordPress? It's just for simple bullet points. You can learn new stuff. You can learn a lot. There's lots of experienced people in any subject where you would like to contribute like translating, like core contributing, like the Gutenberg project or the block editor as we need to call it right now. So there's always something you can do and if you want to learn stuff, join those teams and introduce yourself. Tell them what you can add to the team or what you want to learn and people will embrace you and help contribute to WordPress. You can also share your knowledge. If you are experienced in certain areas, you can share that knowledge to new people or people who want to learn which is also an awesome thing to do. But maybe the most important thing is the last point and that's having fun and making new friends. I see a lot of familiar faces in here. And every WordCamp where I go to, which is not a lot, but I visit a few, it's the familiar faces that make it very cool and also seeing new faces arrive. Ever since we had the little dashboard widget where announcements of WordCamps were, we see a lot of new people going to WordCamp. So who's here for the first time on a WordCamp? Okay. Well, that's good. That's good to see you here. And I'd like to dig a little deeper in how did I get the idea of going to Berlin while walking? If you want to start contributing, you can go to make.wordpress.org. There's a lot of information there. You can see what kind of teams are there and if you can contribute there or if you would like to learn, pick a team, subscribe to Slack, join those teams. Everybody knows Slack in here? Excellent. So just have fun and help contributing and make Wordpress even better. So what about the walk to Berlin? I told you in the beginning that I was going to do that and where did the idea come from? Well, the idea actually came from this. I'm someone who talks before he thinks and sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes that's not a good thing. And I had a thought. It was June 4th of last year, which is almost a year ago. And I had the idea of, well, WordCamp Europe. It's going to be in Europe, so it's probably not going to be far away. Maybe I should walk there and don't ask me why I thought of that. I don't know. It just popped up somewhere and I thought it. And at the moment I thought it. I put it on Twitter, which is not really smart to do, but I did it. And people were liking that tweet and were asking, hey, you probably know where the next edition of WordCamp is going to be because it was before WordCamp Europe in Belgrade. And I didn't know because, well, I used to be in the organization. So people thought, well, it's going to be in Antwerp or it's going to be in Utrecht in the Netherlands. So it's going to be close. No, I didn't know that. So, well, eventually it was announced that it was going to be Berlin. And I was, I was happy, but also I realized quickly that, well, that's not so close to the Netherlands, Berlin. But okay, why am I going to do this? Because first of all, it was just a little idea. I was going to walk and I didn't think about planning. I have my own company. I can't just drop my company for a month and go walking and I need support for that. And I'm going to get some attention by this because it's an insane adventure that I'm going to do and people are going to like it or not. They're going to talk about it. And I wanted to turn that into something that was a positive thing for the WordPress community. So I decided I wanted to raise money for a good cause to do that. The other reason I'm going to do it is because I wanted to go outside of my own conference zone. I may look like a relaxed guy, but I don't easily go up to new people or people I don't know and talk to them. But I'm up here, I'm talking and I'm going to do that walk and I'm going to sleep at people's places which I don't know. I made contact with people where I can sleep who I don't know and it will all be good and we'll chat and we'll get to know each other. And maybe I end up with some friends that might even come visit me in a while or something. So those are the things that I wanted to do and I needed to go outside of my conference zone because, well, nothing really happens in your conference zone. Well, it's comfortable, of course, that is, but nothing really happens there. And Carol Olinger, who I met on WordCamp Utrecht and on other WordCamps too, she said during one of her presentations, well, everything you want is on the other side of fear because you might be nervous or anxious about something that you need to do or something that you want to do. But if you don't do it, well, you never know what it's like or how it's going to be and it might even be fun. Even walking 700 kilometers to Berlin might be fun. So this is my route and that's the long end. And there are some icons on there, which I don't know if everybody can see it, but those are beds and there's a person in there. Well, at least there's a head in there. So I hope the rest of the person is in there too. And on the other side of the map on the eastern part, there are some flags, which means I still need places to sleep in those areas. And to zoom into that area, these are the towns which are along the route. And so I was hoping there were a lot of people that are from that area right here. I guess that's not going to happen. But maybe you know people or you know people who know people or who have friends who live in that area. Well, actually people should live there because there are towns, so people live there. So it might be possible that I might gain one or two places to sleep or even, well, have you think about your surroundings and maybe you know people there. And if you do, please bring them into contact with me so I can see to get a place to sleep over there. Just a little bit more about the route. In the first part in the Netherlands, I had some troubles in getting sleeping places there too. And that was picked up on Twitter by a national radio station. And there were three places left in the Netherlands. So I was invited to join their show, Live on Radio. And I'll tell about my adventure and what I was looking for. And they said, OK, we're going to give you an hour or we're going to give our listeners an hour. And after that hour, we will come back to you and let you know if we could arrange something. And after that hour, I was called again. I was live on the radio and they told me, well, we've got three people here. They have three places for you, so you're done for the Netherlands. So that was a little cheer for me. The next part is, and the challenging part is getting places right over there. If that's not going to happen, that's not going to be a red flag for me. I'm going to go anyway because people live there. There's probably cafes or restaurants where people meet up and I can talk to people. If I don't like it, I have to talk to people and see if there are places to sleep in those areas. I'm not going to bring a tent in my luggage, so that's the only option. Other option is under a bridge, but I don't really like that. So how can you help? Share this. And I'm going to go a little bit further into the last point, which is also there's a party right here, Raid Boxes. They have joined my sponsor program, which sounds really professional right now. I've set up sponsors, sponsor packages for companies that want to sponsor me and support me financially to be able to hire someone to take over my work while I'm gone. My customers need to be serviced, or at least their websites should be serviced, and I can't make it to do anything. So thanks for Raid Boxes there too. If you're going to scan that QR link, I see some mobile phones up there, you're going to be forwarded to a payment link which donates 25 euros, which of course you have to agree, it's not going to happen. That should be fun if I could have made that one. Just if you click the QR link, you're donating 25 euros. Try me. So you can donate, and there's actually two things. The sponsoring part is purely for me, sounds a bit selfish, selfish, but it isn't, I need to support my business. And the other part is the donating. And I haven't told you why I'm raising funds and what's the charity that I'm raising funds for. I'm going to raise funds for a foundation, which is started by a colleague in the Netherlands, Ines Van Essen, and she has started a foundation which is called Donate WC. And it has nothing to do with the toilets. It's a foundation that raises money for people to go to word camps when they don't have the financial means to do so. We are here in Osnabruk. There's probably a lot of people from the surroundings here. There's also people in other countries that might have something to share with the WordPress community by a talk, or they want to volunteer, or they want to help organize. And if they're from abroad and they do not have the financial means to come to that word camp, well, they can come and we're going to miss out as a community. So there are also right now multiple initiatives to support people for diversity, but also for people who just don't have the financial means to come to a word camp. And I thought, well, Donate WC is a good cause. So I've started collecting money already. And at this moment, I've almost raised 1400 euros already. So that's probably going to help one person to go to a word camp. But of course I want more, not for me, but for the foundation. I want more people to come to word camps, even if they don't have the possibilities to do so. So if you want to donate, you can donate until the start of WordCamp Europe. I will give a presentation there too, and I will show everybody how much money I've raised for Donate WC. And I hope it's going to be a multiple of the 1400 euros that I have raised right now. Sponsors are still needed. So if you have a company or you work at a company that might think, hey, this is a great initiative, there are multiple packages for sponsoring, which are on my website, walk2wc.eu. And you can see if maybe there is a fit for your company to start sponsoring me. So contributing to WordPress brought me, well, here. I heard there was a party last night. And I heard also from some people who were arriving at their hotel or at the place where they sleep at about 3 a.m., 3.30, 4 a.m. This morning at 3.45, I got out of bed to get here. I managed to take the train at 5 a.m. in Rotterdam. I went to Amsterdam from Amsterdam. I took the train here to Osnabruk. And I'm very happy to be here and being able to share this talk with you. So thanks also to Rion and Kostper for putting me on the bar camp. So thanks for that. And I wanted to give you the opportunity to ask me about contributing to WordPress about this insane idea or anything you want to talk about. You're welcome to ask. Thank you. So any questions? There's one in the back. I'll repeat the question for you. Okay. Yeah. The question was how the foundation donate WC, how they select the people that are able to get funds from the foundation and how the selection process is. I'm not at this moment aware of the precise details on the selection. I know people are being, there's been looked at, where are you from? Which area in the world are you from? Where do you want to go to? Because it's not meant to be a means of, well, I live in, well, name a country somewhere, and I want to go to the other side of the world just to see it there. You have to contribute something to the WordPress project at the basis. You have to contribute something. And well, the exact selection criteria are not known by me right now, but I certainly will know them in a few moments. And I will put them on my website also to share this with you and maybe the people who want to donate to be aware of how the selection process is going. So that answers your question. Excellent. Thank you very much. Other questions. Go ahead. Okay. Well, the question was if I want to walk alone or if people can join me in walking along the route. From the beginning, people were very enthusiastic and they were saying I want to join and I want to walk with you. And I started thinking of the practical things that that could bring and one of the issues that I've noticed that if I'm training, I walk at a certain pace at a certain speed. And if people walk different speeds, it's not going to be that cozy because there's someone walking there and there and it's not, that's not going to work. Also, if you want to sleep somewhere and you come alone, the chances are bigger that you are being entered someone in somebody's home. If you're with a group, even if it's four or five people, that's going to be a bit more difficult. So at the end, sorry, I decided I'm going to do it alone. There are some people who are joining me for a piece of the track. Kasper is one of them. He's going to join me from and walk to Potsdam, from Potsdam to Berlin. So the final stage. But if, well, you've seen the map, if you live along the route and you want to walk with me during one of those pieces, you're welcome to join me. I'm going to walk my own pace. If you can't keep up or you're fast, or even if you're faster, no problem. I think I like it. If people want to join me, that gives me, well, more opportunity to get to know each other. And of course, you're welcome to join. You need to think of your own sleeping places though. I'm not going to arrange them for you. So thank you for your question. Other questions? Go ahead. What's your plan? My way back home. The question is, what is your plan for your way back home? I haven't decided yet, but there's one option that I'm not going to do, and that's walking back. After walking 700 kilometers and being on a word camp for three days, which is going to be a lot of walking also, I don't think I have the energy and the, how do you say it, the motivation to walk back again? No, that's not going to happen. And it's going to take me another month, and I don't think my wife and kids would like that if I'm going to be gone for another month. So my wife is coming over, and we're probably going to go back by car or by train, but we have to arrange that. So thanks for your question. Other questions? Yes. Yes, I have daily goals. I will put my route here. Not all the stages are the exact length. When I started planning this, I just entered my hometown in Google Maps, and I entered the address of the venue. I checked that I wanted to go walking because otherwise I'd be walking on a highway or something, and I planned about 30 kilometers per stage, which sounds like a lot, but it's just six hours walking. Even just, yeah, I've been training. You can hear this. It sounds so easy. It's 30 kilometers. I've trained actually one time, and I've been walking for six and a half hours, and I had a break of 10 minutes. I had an app that could track it, and at the end I saw that I was not moving for 10 minutes during the whole day, and I was like, okay, so if I'm really starting this, I'm going to take more breaks to give my legs and feet a bit more rest, which I think they're going to need for 700 kilometers. So there's a bit of difference. I think the smallest stage that I have, that's after Osnabrück right there, which is about 16 kilometers. The next one there is 40. So I've got the minimum and the maximum stage right next to each other, so I hope the 16 kilometers gives me enough rest to make that next stage a success and continue with stages that are, well, between 25 and 35 kilometers. Thank you. Maya. Yes. The question was if I have planned some break days, resting days, yeah, it's going to be resting. Yes, it's going to take me 32 days from start to beginning, and I've planned six resting days in between. And the first stage is going to be an whole week, and I'm going to go from my hometown to about Bentheim, and one of my friends also from the WordPress community, he booked a hotel room there, and I booked another night there, so I'm going to stay there for another day to just relax and maybe do some work or see how my work is going while I'm gone, and then continue. And later on in the stages, I have some breaks in between just to also for rest, also for a bit of sightseeing, because, well, I'm there anyway, so better make the best of it. So thank you. Other questions about this adventure? Are there questions about WordPress contributing in general, which I'd like to answer for you? There's one. Go ahead. The question was in which teams do I contribute? I contribute mostly in the Polyglots team. I'm in the Polyglots team for the Netherlands, and we are four or five general translation editors in there, so I make sure translations for Dutch are being checked if they are according to the rules we set, according to the glossary that's set, and sometimes on contributor days I translate myself, but it's mainly checking and confirming or denying translations that are submitted by contributors. Thank you. Other question? Yes. What do I think about the leadership in WordPress? That's a very small question, which can have an answer for about a half hour or maybe more. I think the leadership in WordPress, it's very hard for me to say something about it. How do I say that? Off-record. Let's do this off-record. No. I can say something about it. We all know there is a strict leadership from across the big pond. There is a team there. They have a trajectory set for where WordPress is going, what should happen, and I think leadership is needed for a project as big as this. I also think that there should be more... or the leadership should listen more to what the community has to say about which way it goes, and that's about what I want to say about it. We can discuss this after the meeting because I'm happy to talk about it and I have some opinions about it, but I don't want to discuss this right here because I don't think a lot of people are interested in hearing that. If you want to talk to me later on, I'll be welcome to do it. I dodged that question a little right there. Thanks. Any other questions before... There's going to be an end speech, I guess. Closing remarks in room 1 in a few minutes or I don't know how late exactly, but if there are no questions left, I would like to thank you for being here, for listening to me, and if you want to donate, you've seen the address and the QR code. It's not on here, it's here. I hope to see you in Berlin, on WordCamp Europe, in June. If I don't see you there, you can follow my progress on my website or follow the hashtag on Twitter. I will be vlogging, I'll be blogging, I'll be doing a lot of spamming about this adventure to get as much attention as possible. Thank you.