WordCamp Europe 2023 - Track 2, Day 1  [[3. Resources/Readwise/Full Document Contents/Articles/WordCamp Europe 2023 - Track 2, Day 1|Full Document Contents]] ## Document Notes (8) WordCamp Europe 2023 - Track 2, Day 1 - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VIQIsXv7u0 Transcript: (28:42) uh remind you about a few things that are general for wordcamp that everybody should be aware of so we have the track table where you can get back with a T-shirt and something very exciting we introduced this year that are the game cards game cards is a way to get to meet people introduce yourself because word Camp is getting to meet people and not only sitting behind our computers and do work but also meet people and get to know people in our community and also for the game cards there are some questions with it and (29:16) after this talk please don't go away immediately because I have the first question for you all so please be present so you can play the game with us and maybe become a winner also about the game cards if you have any questions about it in the community boot which is also in a sponsor area there are people who can tell you everything about it and also when you have an answer to the question you can go to the community Booth to get an extra card to show that you are also playing the game um some more general information we also (29:52) have an info desk at the sponsor area if you have any questions and there is also the lost and found section so if you find something please bring it there so if somebody lost a day can also find it also maybe some people they for the contribute a day and if you still have time in between the sessions and you would like to contribute more to Wordpress then you're welcome in the contributing area on level one and there you can go and do some more contributing um yeah of course very important is have WordPress wordcamp we have a call of (30:35) conduct it's on our website please read it careful how we try to be respectful of everybody and be inclusive of everybody so please follow that and there's also a wellness track in the morning but that's too late for you guys maybe tomorrow morning 8 15 yoga but this afternoon for people who wants Tai Chi a tree and there is a a walk from 6 pm for the people who want to do that okay I think it's time for our first speaker and uh I need my paper a little bit because there's so many announcements I (31:16) have to make so our first speaker is Theo lagrunner she's from Germany and uh she does the marketing at Inspire site Viola I give you the podium hello and thank you thank you very much okay hello nice to see you all oh my God I'm I'm a little bit nervous because it's my first word Camp Europe and yeah it's my first big talk so but I heard that the WordPress Community is here to support and not to seeing me fail that makes me a little bit relaxing more so first I would love to invite you all to a living room so (31:58) assume that's your living room where you live and now I have a question for you so which table is longer what do you think and I would love to do it with you old-fashioned like and I would love to see your hands up so I will ask you now who thinks table a is longer please hands up okay who thinks thank you very much who thinks table B is longer okay some people say also table B but less and who wants to say nothing hands up okay some people don't want to say anything okay so it's interesting because yeah most (32:46) people think um table a is longer and the aspect ratio is three to one from table a and 1.5 to 1 for table beam but um the truth is they are the same size and when I first saw this I was like in a restaurant drinking a coffee with my friends and a friend she showed me this example and she told me oh we will have a look what you think is longer I said of course table a and then she said no they are the same size and I was like what no I cannot believe it so I took a spoon and I measured it there and yeah I also brought you something to measure it (33:30) to prove it to you because also in this picture I think it's not that true but I think the stages is way too big to measure let's try no but it's really the same size okay no I okay I I cannot do it it's it's too it's too big I never expected this um no but yeah they are the same size um so the reason for it why we think this is because of the table legs and because they're of the alignment so our brain is playing as a little trick here and that's also because of illusions so if you look at this picture for me it (34:14) looked also that the green one is moving a little bit um suppress perceptions can mislead us sometimes so the orange dots are also the same size and yeah that was also for me ah unbelievable and that's why I started with this for you with this is examples because sometimes it's also important instead of just guessing to test and to measure and that's what we did and that's my topic testing instead of measuring my name is Viola kuna I'm from impside um a WordPress agency and today I'm just going to talk to you (35:01) about the goal of this presentation so what's also my goal what you're going out with um then also um I would love to explain you the workflow so I created with my team uh workflow and I want to show you one example how to use this workflow then some examples from my experience so I made some growth tests and I want to explain you these and then my learnings also and the learnings of my team and finally you also will get the workflow so I even made your download link so every one of you that you can have the slides the workflow and some (35:47) examples how you can use it so yeah at the end you get this and yeah the goal of this presentation is how to make the right decision so if you're going out that you know how can you make the right decision for example and how to structure your leads to structure your decisions better and your ideas and then how to grow with low budget and this talk is for I think for everyone so if we are having here some freelancer who is a freelancer maybe of you okay nearly no one hour there are some okay if you are our agency who is (36:33) working for an agency okay and nothing of these also some people okay so okay test for interest no but I think every one of you can get something out here and can use this so I would love to start to talk to you about the contact firm so the contact form is for a marketer is something very important because we really want to structure our leads better and yeah they wanted to have the monthly volume inside of the contact form and to yeah structure them better and that was for me a big oh my God no we cannot do this (37:16) first because it's a big risk so normally if you're adding one more and farm field you're here also in University I heard always okay and the conversion rate will drop so also for example nail pedal they increase their conversion rate 26 by removing just one form field and imagescape they even um increased also their conversion rate 120 percent by removing a lot of form fields so yeah instead of guessing I said to the sales team okay we will test this but my um God feeling said ah no it will not work but yeah let's test this and that (38:02) was a long conversation but yeah we did this but how is here the question and yeah with my self-created workflow I created this also together with my team and we have here different steps in this workflow so first is to share and Pitch an idea then to rate the idea then to start the experiment and finally to draw a conclusion and to implement this test into the website so I would love to bring like with this example I brought to you with the contact form I will lead you through this this different processes so first it's share and Pitch the idea (38:48) so that's the document I know it sounded very fancy the workflow it's just a simple um Excel sheet um so here we were um collecting all our ideas and we were structuring them so all the ideas are having the structure and the same way the item name we have the hypothesis and the key metrics and if I would like to implement this test I'm talking to you about and adding one more form field to this document and just putting it into the backlog and there you have the test the form field test and yes so you put (39:35) it inside of the document and you can see also > [!note]+ Document Notes > (8) WordCamp Europe 2023 - Track 2, Day 1 - YouTube > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VIQIsXv7u0 > > Transcript: > (28:42) uh remind you about a few things that are general for wordcamp that everybody should be aware of so we have the track table where you can get back with a T-shirt and something very exciting we introduced this year that are the game cards game cards is a way to get to meet people introduce yourself because word Camp is getting to meet people and not only sitting behind our computers and do work but also meet people and get to know people in our community and also for the game cards there are some questions with it and > (29:16) after this talk please don't go away immediately because I have the first question for you all so please be present so you can play the game with us and maybe become a winner also about the game cards if you have any questions about it in the community boot which is also in a sponsor area there are people who can tell you everything about it and also when you have an answer to the question you can go to the community Booth to get an extra card to show that you are also playing the game um some more general information we also > (29:52) have an info desk at the sponsor area if you have any questions and there is also the lost and found section so if you find something please bring it there so if somebody lost a day can also find it also maybe some people they for the contribute a day and if you still have time in between the sessions and you would like to contribute more to Wordpress then you're welcome in the contributing area on level one and there you can go and do some more contributing um yeah of course very important is have WordPress wordcamp we have a call of > (30:35) conduct it's on our website please read it careful how we try to be respectful of everybody and be inclusive of everybody so please follow that and there's also a wellness track in the morning but that's too late for you guys maybe tomorrow morning 8 15 yoga but this afternoon for people who wants Tai Chi a tree and there is a a walk from 6 pm for the people who want to do that okay I think it's time for our first speaker and uh I need my paper a little bit because there's so many announcements I > (31:16) have to make so our first speaker is Theo lagrunner she's from Germany and uh she does the marketing at Inspire site Viola I give you the podium hello and thank you thank you very much okay hello nice to see you all oh my God I'm I'm a little bit nervous because it's my first word Camp Europe and yeah it's my first big talk so but I heard that the WordPress Community is here to support and not to seeing me fail that makes me a little bit relaxing more so first I would love to invite you all to a living room so > (31:58) assume that's your living room where you live and now I have a question for you so which table is longer what do you think and I would love to do it with you old-fashioned like and I would love to see your hands up so I will ask you now who thinks table a is longer please hands up okay who thinks thank you very much who thinks table B is longer okay some people say also table B but less and who wants to say nothing hands up okay some people don't want to say anything okay so it's interesting because yeah most > (32:46) people think um table a is longer and the aspect ratio is three to one from table a and 1.5 to 1 for table beam but um the truth is they are the same size and when I first saw this I was like in a restaurant drinking a coffee with my friends and a friend she showed me this example and she told me oh we will have a look what you think is longer I said of course table a and then she said no they are the same size and I was like what no I cannot believe it so I took a spoon and I measured it there and yeah I also brought you something to measure it > (33:30) to prove it to you because also in this picture I think it's not that true but I think the stages is way too big to measure let's try no but it's really the same size okay no I okay I I cannot do it it's it's too it's too big I never expected this um no but yeah they are the same size um so the reason for it why we think this is because of the table legs and because they're of the alignment so our brain is playing as a little trick here and that's also because of illusions so if you look at this picture for me it > (34:14) looked also that the green one is moving a little bit um suppress perceptions can mislead us sometimes so the orange dots are also the same size and yeah that was also for me ah unbelievable and that's why I started with this for you with this is examples because sometimes it's also important instead of just guessing to test and to measure and that's what we did and that's my topic testing instead of measuring my name is Viola kuna I'm from impside um a WordPress agency and today I'm just going to talk to you > (35:01) about the goal of this presentation so what's also my goal what you're going out with um then also um I would love to explain you the workflow so I created with my team uh workflow and I want to show you one example how to use this workflow then some examples from my experience so I made some growth tests and I want to explain you these and then my learnings also and the learnings of my team and finally you also will get the workflow so I even made your download link so every one of you that you can have the slides the workflow and some > (35:47) examples how you can use it so yeah at the end you get this and yeah the goal of this presentation is how to make the right decision so if you're going out that you know how can you make the right decision for example and how to structure your leads to structure your decisions better and your ideas and then how to grow with low budget and this talk is for I think for everyone so if we are having here some freelancer who is a freelancer maybe of you okay nearly no one hour there are some okay if you are our agency who is > (36:33) working for an agency okay and nothing of these also some people okay so okay test for interest no but I think every one of you can get something out here and can use this so I would love to start to talk to you about the contact firm so the contact form is for a marketer is something very important because we really want to structure our leads better and yeah they wanted to have the monthly volume inside of the contact form and to yeah structure them better and that was for me a big oh my God no we cannot do this > (37:16) first because it's a big risk so normally if you're adding one more and farm field you're here also in University I heard always okay and the conversion rate will drop so also for example nail pedal they increase their conversion rate 26 by removing just one form field and imagescape they even um increased also their conversion rate 120 percent by removing a lot of form fields so yeah instead of guessing I said to the sales team okay we will test this but my um God feeling said ah no it will not work but yeah let's test this and that > (38:02) was a long conversation but yeah we did this but how is here the question and yeah with my self-created workflow I created this also together with my team and we have here different steps in this workflow so first is to share and Pitch an idea then to rate the idea then to start the experiment and finally to draw a conclusion and to implement this test into the website so I would love to bring like with this example I brought to you with the contact form I will lead you through this this different processes so first it's share and Pitch the idea > (38:48) so that's the document I know it sounded very fancy the workflow it's just a simple um Excel sheet um so here we were um collecting all our ideas and we were structuring them so all the ideas are having the structure and the same way the item name we have the hypothesis and the key metrics and if I would like to implement this test I'm talking to you about and adding one more form field to this document and just putting it into the backlog and there you have the test the form field test and yes so you put > (39:35) it inside of the document and you can see also I linked this part and it's linked to a pitch card and the pitch card is just a simple Google Docs and I will show you how we were like or what metrics we had here so I'm now showing you the pitch card so it's divided in two different parts so we have the part before testing and we have the part after testing so it starts with the hypothesis um yeah so if you are adding a hypothesis you should write down what is going to happen and it's also good to write down a number > (40:28) so we were saying if we are adding one more form field our conversion rate will drop 12 um percent that means from seven percent to 6.1 percent and we had this number also it's out of research okay it's not just by God feeling it's it was a research so if you build your hypothesis please try just to write it also down measurable then we have the objective so why we are going to do it yeah because the sales team told us and they wanted to make their leads more manageable and structure them better so you just write > (41:11) about the why and that's also good to sometimes have also the numbers normally you try to improve your conversion rate at these tests and you have also that is a sign inside of it and so here you can just take a screenshot for example if you see a competitive duration so in the pitch card are a little bit more metrics than here I'm showing you now because it would be a little bit longer and but it would be for this test 12 weeks so I added you also a link to this a b testing tool and you type in in this > (41:52) left left side for you and different numbers for example the conversion rate um you are having at the moment the conversion rate You're Expecting so normally increasing it and then also how many unique visitors you have and you see yeah it's a very high number of visitors to make it significantly that means that we really can prove it's scalable and yeah if we are having more leads this number will not normally not change um so yeah and here we see also the duration and yeah that's how we did it > (42:38) and the next step is to rate the idea and to write the idea we use the ice model and I called it ice model and it's also called ice model that means impact confidence and ease and it's also um here in the tool so we are going from the backlog to the rater and there we had our different team members and they were also all written down and everyone is counting every voice is counting the same so we were writing from 0 to 10. > (43:20) and that means for example for impact we were saying okay how high is the impact from 0 to 10. zero means there's no impact at all 10 means there's a very high impact so you can see everyone is allowed to put the numbers inside of it and the thing was here also that I saw that anzafi and Martin they gave both two points so they said oh my God if our conversion rate drops it's a very very um sorry my hair um it's a very high impact but normally giving a 10 it was one of our first tests so we still weren't that > (44:00) used to give numbers here normally we never had this High numbers because you know having a 10 impact means it's a very worse test or a very good test yeah in the next year I'll say your confidence so there we also used our God feeling so we were saying what is my God feeling saying is it saying more or less so you can see also the whole team thought okay I think the conversion rate will drop for sure so we were all at the same page here and then the East and that's also important thing because often we think > (44:41) okay with what could we start this is important this just have a look how easy it is so to add one more form field it's not that hard so it's also a very easy test so out of this you're getting the priority and if we are now going back to our backlog we see here the priority so you see different tests but we saw oh my God okay we need to start with this test because it's having the best number for now and then you put it into life and in the live um part so if you run a test especially an important test > (45:27) um with conversion rates and so on you should take care that you're not going to run another test and what's testing the conversion rate so a social test for example a LinkedIn test is okay but you know tests can influence each other so take care of this and yeah we started the experience experiment we waited 12 weeks and we did the a b testing so that means the visitors are coming and they are getting so one part is getting coming to contact form one and a and one to contact Form B so with the monthly > (46:05) volume inside of it and yeah here we used [Music] um HubSpot and Google optimize with this tools and the option A was seven percent so the conversion rate was seven percent as we expected so we thought it's seven percent and it was now the option b I have another question there we have the one more form field what do you think you think the marketing team was right like the conversion rate was worse or you think it was the same or it was better so now I'm going to ask again for your signs who thinks the conversion rate was worse > (46:50) so like the marketing team said okay we have some signs but not that many okay who thinks it was the same hands up okay it's nearly the same like the first one and who thinks it was even better hence F okay less okay here in front two people decided another thing so the interesting thing about it was the conversion rate was even better and I couldn't believe my eyes because really it was for me no way and also for the team that the option b was the winner so but it's not significantly um better you know it's significantly > (47:37) the same but still yeah the winner was option b and that's also this example why I bring together with the team we saw hey awesome the things are different because the target group is different you know because your website it's so many different factors why things are sometimes different so that's why I think you should test or why we test it a lot yeah and finally we are coming back to our pitch card and to draw the conclusion so it's also important to write down the conclusions after you are running the test to have > (48:18) them summarized so we are putting it in closed and there you have a lot of different um tests you were running so I brought you some tests here with me and you have always the conclusion with the pitch cut here and yeah so you have later access to this tool so you can decide how you want to structure them better in the future you can use the date also you can add things and yeah as you wish and yeah we were writing down the outcome so there was no significant difference between the two contact forms and that meant we can implement this new context > (49:02) and the learnings for us as a team it was yeah it was different than we thought and it's also nice if you are in different markets you could test first for one market so you are having less risk so we tested it first for the German speaking market and then we tested it for the English speaking Market so I recommend you to do this as well if you can and some side effects of the workflow it's the scene in the team and everyone is allowed to make something and often you know we lose um our ideas we say hey let's do that > (49:43) but we never start with it so if you write them down and you collect the ideas you make them true and yeah everyone every idea gets seen like I said and also the equality of the team so to taking it together it's really great for the team spirit and you learn together so for us we had every second week a growth hacking meeting and everyone in my team came up with AI with idea and with a pitch card and we did this and yeah we learned all the time together and now I brought you also some examples um how we improved the conversion rate > (50:27) with some tests and yeah first of course the contact form there you can do a lot of different things phone number we changed it to optional for example that can um change it a little bit and reduce and add a new form field so you can have also less you can have an expandable form field so if you type something in it's going open but that can also be you know some people get angry so it can also be bad for your conversion rate and then also you can use a testimonial sorry Alex he's now standing here I just > (51:09) took him as an example it's not his quote I gave it for him and we improved also in the previous company I worked for here our conversion rate just a little bit two percent yeah but you see the market difference you can also change your call to action so for example instead of contact us and so on you can say book a free consultation and try a little bit with this this is really these are some simple tests and you can have um some big change here and now I bring brought you also the best test we did with the most > (51:51) increasing conversion rate and that was so we were building a landing page for one for for a keyword so we were reaching where we are getting a lot of new um visitors through which keywords and we were building specifically for this and keyword a landing page so you put in the headline for example the main keyword you're having again Alex you sorry and then we had what our clients say and yeah just uh something the people can trust and we improved our conversion rate 18 for some keywords but not for all so > (52:32) please don't think okay I used this test and Yola said our conversion rate will increase 18 no because also you need to test to to try it out and also yeah remember every Target group is different know your numbers that's also something very important if you want to test significantly and don't be afraid to fail tests so I said fail because there is no failing if you test because every test you do is a win and it's a learning so every completed test is a succeed so success sorry so yes really it was for us when we > (53:23) finished a test we were oh wow and we celebrated it even if the numbers weren't better or even if they were worse we were so happy that we did this test and it helped us often to make decisions and yeah now what should you do now so first you should download the tool if you want and yeah you have it for free I'm not going to measure anything so don't be afraid that I'm collecting data there um and research different and possible tests so you can look at a competitor or at websites you really like and check it > (54:03) out what do they have what do they do then evaluate the test so even if you're a freelancer and you're not having a team you can evaluate it for yourself with the ice model and then start that yeah thank you so much here you can download the workflow in this little here uh I'm now so confused because of this nice group and yeah just download it you can reach out to me whenever you want and with your questions and you can write me you can make now some questions and I also wanted to say thank you so > (54:44) much to all volunteers here I'm so impressed really it's the soundtrack behind the scene the volunteer so thank you so so much to you making this possible it's it's amazing it's amazing shop they do they put a lot of work I'm so thankful yeah and thank you Fiona but uh you're not ready yet because maybe some people have questions yes and then we have two mics one there and one there so if you have a question please line up at one of the mics and um we also have an audience that is > (55:20) maybe online and watching this live stream so if you're on the live stream okay now I'm not afraid so yeah we would like to ask everybody to give feedback about this talk on the website of word Camp uh 2023 there's a feedback form you can give feedback to every talk you have been we appreciate your feedback to improve World Camp every time we have it okay um I see a first question over there please go ahead yeah hi hi Viola thank you so much for your talk it was really really interesting about a B test is > (55:56) always interesting to me I actually have a few doubts about a B test which I want to to to forward to you so you can you know convince me about no just kidding no uh no just uh try to understand how much a b tests could be effective for everyone so for example first question is a B test can be done also for small website I have a Blog that I have like 2. > (56:25) 5 k user for each year is it okay to do like um like uh a B test for this or could be uh just a two small uh group of people second question is so I I would start answering you the first question if this is okay so that's a very good question and yeah so I just can say you to have really significant proof it's greater a B test but there are different steps you know so for example A B test you can imagine um yeah like I don't know so the first thing is you can do asking experts collecting their data then in the next > (57:07) step you can also measure more you know it's also good um and it's really high in this pyramid so yeah but you think it will be work it no because so for being significant I really recommend to have the data and to use this a b testing tool but there we had a very um high percent so you can even drive tests with lower ones and for example also for my master thesis I had a Target group for the experiment of 220 people so it depends also a little bit on the test so you can research it but for being significant for the website I > (57:49) recommend you to have those High numbers be rude but could you do the next question maybe after the next person because in line behind me no otherwise really a fast question it's just a uh I hope I answered your question I was really like uh of spreading out can the next person align uh ask the next question because and you can always write me asking the questions just contact me if you want um sorry he kind of actually asked my question my question but I wanted to know how you get into the math of these statistically significant numbers so if > (58:30) you have a smaller sample size how are you doing the math to know what is significant so to read and then you can calculate it there are different forms you can use and also with this a b testing tool at two hello hello uh I was just wondering if it's really important to consider what uh in the in the context forms that you showed us if it's very important to notice what kind of extra field we add to the form or not so if it's a if it's a field that the visitor would like to be asked you know that's important to measure it better to > (59:15) structure something so it should be for you but of course you can also if you want to make them feeling good your clients you can also try something else I hope uh I think you didn't understand my question okay I was just asking to get from the visitor or if it's not something necessary that we need to get from The Visitor so I think I think contact from what kind of informations I cannot say it it depends always on the things you're working for asking if it needs to test different kinds okay now now I got it > (59:57) um so it depends on you if you're happy with your conversion rate now you don't need to to change it you know but if you want to improve it you could for example remove some Fields that's normally the market saying hey if you're removing Fields you're making it shorter it's normally bringing you more conversions so yeah it depends it depends on what you're selling yes it depends on what you're selling so you can research here also so it depends always for example in logistics they have um the normal > (1:00:28) conversion rate around six to four to six percent so you can research this what's the normal um conversion rate in your market and depends on this you can say okay my conversion rate is really good are you same we could test this you know I hope that answered also your question I see also on the other side we have somebody at the microphone ah yes thank you for your presentation first and the question is um that's the interesting thing about this you mean about the 70 18 yes it was increased but yeah in Germany it > (1:01:07) was increased um so that was a thing my I left this company at the after this test so I didn't do the test for um United States but my this team told me afterwards hey viewer but that's yeah the answer so it's also good to try to test the different markets I always need to do a a b test and also for those different fields thank you thank you very much thank you uh first of uh first it was an interesting presentation and it's always interesting to analyze this conversion rates like a topic of research my > (1:01:48) question is uh have you considered uh doing in uh in more scientific way so uh like maybe uh doing logistic regression as these are coral categorical categorical variables so uh maybe you can uh like set a new hypothesis and refuted the probability level of uh how to refute that hypothesis like uh in more scientific way uh not only a b split testing like another level because always a b split testing from my experience because I worked in this statistic and research field it sometimes can lead to to erroneous > (1:02:27) results and regression it's uh it's more scientific and like right way to do this have you considered doing in that way thank you yeah thank we had this amount of um group as you saw it's we had a lot of visitors it was like the tool you can check it out later the a b testing tool it's really looking that you're um having um significant and proof but as you say you can always test even better but you know if you are a b testing it shouldn't be too much workload to just run this test I think because with this a b testing we > (1:03:12) made very good experience in my past into this kind of numbers so we saw the difference after this test and they were not changing and also with this a b testing tool I showed you you can also measure afterwards all the numbers so yeah that's my answer to this I have yeah thank you very much thank you yeah we just have time for two more questions please keep them shorts yes my question is really fast just imagine uh yeah again you're again nice to see you again nice meeting you too and always great content uh my question was this and it > (1:03:51) was simple so imagine for a second you're doing um an A B test yes you end your A B test you get your answer from the A B test you do the edits to the to the side to the service to the app or whatever to impact and to get the the the the the update to get to to have the version of uh of the one that the app went and you notice that it's not uh doing it's not performing like it was expected but you will do at that time I Will Wait the reach a lead from a lead to a client you can use different steps here > (1:04:35) um and then you can measure here also the numbers and that's also so important like you said to have a look at the lead quality but yeah I had 30 minutes I couldn't talk about this as well but good good question also so if anybody has any more question I'm sure Viola is willing to talk to you yes just contact me in a few moments she will be outside remember us also when you're at home thank you I thank you okay bye-bye so just before the game card announcement a few more things um between the talks is a 15 minute > (1:05:09) break you can get some refreshments uh kind of you to come over all here and > (1:18:09) have a listen to Anna on us who is going to tell you something about how to ask for web design feedback so if that's what you want to hear you're in the right track um I hope you all played the the game card and that you all got the first question and maybe already went to the community board boot to get a new card in the case you didn't get the first question I'm gonna help you out a little bit for the game cards the first question of today is yeah okay the first question of today is is WordPress older than Facebook and > (1:18:54) Twitter true or false so if after the talk you go to the community boot you can tell them the answer you get an extra card and this game helps you to mingle with people get to know people at word Camp is about getting away from our computers and get to meet people in person and life and get to know new people um what's more for today let me have a look too many papers too many announcements to do um now I get lost yeah there it is yeah as you see volunteers are wearing blue shirt so if you have any questions > (1:19:40) uh and you see a volunteer just ask them and they will try to help you and otherwise we also have an info Boot and that's also for lost items if you find somebody if you find something bring it to the info boot so people can get their belongings back and um at 1 pm there's a lunch served for people that didn't know that yet um I think I have enough announcements so I think it's now time for our speaker and yeah please welcome give her a bigger blouse how to ask for website website feedback and yeah > (1:20:25) [Applause] thank you hello everyone welcome Europe 2023. [Applause] this is amazing well before introducing myself let me tell you a personal story I want to talk to you talk to you about the birthday problem also known as the birthday paradox the birthday Paradox states that in a group of 23 people there is a 50. > (1:21:06) 7 percent probability that that two of them share the same birthday for a group of 57 or more people the probability of two of them sharing the same birthday is greater than 99.66 percent almost 100 100 percent in other words in a crowded city bus it is very likely that there are at least two people who share the same the same birthday the probability is almost 100 this is awesome isn't it however this probability drops to zero point zero five nine if we choose one of those people by selecting one person we will need at least 253 more people to have a probability > (1:22:04) greater than 0.5 of someone sharing the same birthday in my life I have chosen one person she used Drupal with with respect according to the code of conduct but C also uses WordPress sees volunteering or at this worker as a media partner her name is Helen and today is her birthday and she's here so happy birthday to you okay okay [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so I thank you > (1:23:10) I am a digital business designer with over 15 years of experience in design in the beginning I started with print and graphic design I specialize in typography and branding and then I learned website development I have worked work with WordPress for almost seven years as a freelancer I have been contributing to the workers Community since 2017. > (1:23:42) I am I have worked on the design team called plugins WordPress TV polygloss and community I contribute to the community team by running the torilodones Meetup and welcome is a beautiful little village near Madrid in Spain and you are of course also inviting all invited to the next War come in March next year I am also a proud brand ambassador of piensa solutions that is a little hosting provider specialized in WordPress without free plan I also run a podcast if you want to learn Spanish and if you like WordPress you can listen to um > (1:24:33) where I talk about marketing web design and digital business with my partner Pablo Latinos uh by the way this podcast is a welcome Europe media partner and we also run an online Academy in Spanish and please you can also follow me on Twitter okay what is asking for feedback feedback is a communication tool where you share your design and get criticism for from others to see if expectations aligned and to improve and Advance the project it would be ideal for all the states holders involved in the project to give > (1:25:25) feedback but it's important that only those people who have authority over the project get feedback we asked for feedback from other designers to to get other professional perspectives perspectives the testing some problems or areas where we need to improve and can also help us to validate our desired decisions we asked for feedback from developers to involve them in the design phase we asked for feedback from clients to validate the design and we asked for feedback from the users to check if the design works for them > (1:26:10) so we asked for feedback from all these people but in this talk I'm going to focus on asking for feedback from clients because they pay for their work okay why is it important to ask for feedback well because we may not have all the information about the project it's necessary to have an external perspective to improve the project and make sure we are on the right track if we ask for feedback we can improve the final design we can meet the client's expectations and we can stay within their projects Technical and financial scope > (1:26:59) when to ask for feedback well as for feedback constantly don't move too far ahead without requesting feedback the further you go without asking for feedback the more time and money you could waste if you don't ask for feedback throughout the process you may spend weeks working on a design I discovered too late that it wasn't viable asking for feedback is essential to effectively move forward with the project and ensure its success not doing so can result in a significant loss of time and effort and in some cases it may even damage > (1:27:43) your reputation therefore is always better to save than sorry and not and to not forget to ask for feedback at all stages of the project so are we all on the same page just want to take that we are all in agreement about what feedback is why we should ask for feedback and when and who to ask for fever from okay so why aren't we as designers continuously asking for feedback I think it is because we may not be asking for a I think I think it is because we lack confidence we suffer from imposter syndrome and don't want our designs to be > (1:28:35) negatively criticizes or maybe because we think asking for feedback will will delay the project and we don't have time or because we don't know how to do it or don't have the necessary tools or maybe because we don't want to be asked for changes we don't want to work more or deviate from the original idea so how can we ask for feedback effectively let's take a look at some tips as I said before I'm going to focus on how to ask for feedback from the client but some recommendations apply to asking > (1:29:20) for feedback from any stakeholder on the project tip number one ask for both real-time and asynchronous feedback as a designer is crucial who explain and justify each design decision and user flow to the client just send the design and wait for the feedback this does approach doesn't work because we need to sell our design to the client and give them a real-time experience that conveys our emotions and passion so the first time someone sees a design it's better to show it in real time sharing your screen displaying and > (1:30:12) explain explaining the design during a video call or even in person afterwards they can view it and use it more easily and provide asynchronous feedback using tools like slack Discord or Trello thank you it is important to use collaboration tools use the tool that works best for each state of the project these are the ones I usually use but there are many try them out and choose the one that best fits your way of working yeah for design figma or paint pot paint pot if you don't know it's an open source tool for > (1:31:09) a collaborate in real time designing and with the developers also for review we can use webisio or eerio for tax manager Trello Asana and for communication there are many also email is good I assume or Microsoft Microsoft teams or Google meet or and yeah you all know slack and Discord okay um three build trust and respect don't take it personally make them feel comfortable to give feedback without hesitation if you have a good relationship with your client the project will turn out better building a good relationship with > (1:32:05) clients can improve the outcome of a project for ask specific questions the responsibility of communication is ours as the professionals not the clients ask the right questions don't ask what they think because we need a specific feedback and if we ask this we will yet open-ended responses so don't ask if they like it because it's not because you don't want them to just say no and because it's not about liking it's about fitting business objectives and client needs we need to explain well how we made each > (1:32:58) design decision and have the client tell us if those decisions are aligned with business objectives provide context explain the context the context and the purpose behind its decision it's important to provide enough context when asking for feedback so people understand the purpose of the design and can give more relevant comments always appreciate feedback the feedback will improve the project and that is good for you always receive it with a grateful attitude and this goes for most things in life liberates the benefits of co-creation > (1:33:54) the client has a different perspectives pays attention to different things and may notice things that you haven't seen this is the moment to find errors or missing elements some problems has have different solutions there is not a single valid solution we can give the client a choice between two or different versions and later we can do AV testing to find out which Solutions converts better also there are clients who want to make decisions and participates very actively we're not very good and hard to do a lot > (1:34:38) of correcting they will remember that and repeat this Behavior with you give them confidence so they know they don't have to start designing themselves describe the problem not the solution Focus the feedback on the business not on the design explain their intentions and business objectives pursued in each page or section don't explain what you have done explain why you have done it consider the feedback but don't always follow it right away although it's important to consider all feedback received > (1:35:25) as a designer you're the one who makes the final decision about the design it's important to discuss with the client the reasons behind their request and work together to find a solution that needs their needs and goals we need to make sure the client understands the reasons behind its decision even after learning the results for the reasons for our decisions if the client wants to execute a different solution even if we consider it wrong we should do what the client asked because the other ones paying for the > (1:36:04) project understand your client and anticipate their needs we need to know our clients needs very well to be able to anticipate the possible changes they may ask for there are changes or requests that most clients tend to have knowing these needs we can take into take them into account both when designing and when asking for feedback and those anticipate so that they don't ask ask for those changes I have three examples of common client requests what do you think one of the most common regrets from clients is > (1:37:00) I really love that because it's what I think so when a client asks for that change we have to ask why they want that change why does the client want the logo to be bigger probably because they feel like the design doesn't Express their brand the client isn't telling you the problem they are giving you a solution that they think will fix it based on their limited design knowledge and terminology the client may not know how to say the design doesn't express my brand they know how to say make the logo > (1:37:52) bigger because they lack design knowledge but as designers we know that there are other ways to express a brand besides making the logo bigger we know that we know the brand is reflected in the design through colors typography layout images illustrations and other graphic elements such as icons that's why both when this when we design and when we ask for feedback we must consider that the design reflect the client's brand not just through the logo but through all these elements if we explain to the client > (1:38:37) all of the resources we have used to express their brand when we present the design it's most likely they won't ask us to make the logo bigger we have to combine the client that we understand their need and that we have made it so on the left what the client asked for and on the right what the client is really needed example two clients often ask to add more items to the main menu of our website as they believe as they believe it can make it can make the page easier to navigate however adding more items to the main > (1:39:25) menu is not always a good idea because it can make the menu too confusing the more items the main menu has the harder it is for the user to click on one of them as we know that the client usually wants to add more items when we show them our main menu with three or five items we must combine them to of the import importance of keeping a simple main menu to ensure usability to prevent the client from feeding that the user will not access important information we will explain for example that in addition to the main menu we > (1:40:07) will have calls to one to action on the page and for example a secondary navigation on the filter on the footer if the client understands the reasons for keeping the main menu simple they probably won't ask us to add more items so on the left what the what is probably needing and free clients are always asking for more and more some clients may ask to add more content or visual elements to the design such as icons or Graphics to make the page more appealing and easier to understand sometimes we can incorporate more > (1:40:58) content and rearrange the layout without any problem to meet the clients needs and we may even agree that this will improve the user experience but other times adding more visual element or more content to design can be worse for the usability or user experience of the page if we anticipate this and explain to the client why we use those elements and why we choose we chose that length of content the client probably won't feel the need to add more elements or content to the design so on the left what the client asks for > (1:41:46) and on the right what is probably happened in the in the design the internet is full of memes about clients requesting changes clients tend to ask for the same changes all over the world all the days so if you already know what's going to happen anticipate it and write us everything thank you thank you and if it's time for your questions you have to go deeper hi thank you yeah thank you Anna um there must be a lot of questions so we have two mics lined up One mic over there and One mic over there so you can > (1:42:44) ask your question and I would like to ask everybody to just ask one question per time so everybody gets a chance and uh I talked to Anna and she said also after this session she will be available outside this Trek to talk more to you if you have more in-depth questions um at least we don't have to ask anymore if people ask you how to make the logo bigger at least we now know what to do instead of laughing about the customer we are actually doing something wrong and we have to do something about it thank you for that that was a big lesson > (1:43:19) for me I see there the first person for questions yeah I have a quick question so um I find myself now giving a lot of feedback so I would love to ask from the perspective of like the client okay and you're you know you're being a designer what's the best way of like receiving feedback so for instance I usually do the feedback sandwich where I might start with a little bit of positive then maybe give you a little bit of the negative and then maybe end up with a little bit of positive does that work or > (1:43:46) what's your preferred method of receiving feedback yeah thank you for your question for the client perspective I can recommend you to focus on the design goals business goals not on the design focus on their problems you have and you know because you know that your business you know your client the final client and not focus the feedback on the design of the solutions colors typography layout this is for is there is designer's job if you focus your your feedback on the your business um I think it's easier to the designer > (1:44:33) to give you a Solutions and understand your what you need to to get with your with your website it's a it's okay for you okay thank you okay thank you very much we have a next person for a question hello great presentation uh I wanted to ask regarding the asynchronous and the real-time feedback what do you do when from the real time when you go to a synchronous the client has changed his mind so you're asking me about the client gives you a one feedback in real time and then you get a message with so yeah I think I I I would try to to > (1:45:26) get an appointment to re to to get to get the real time again and talk to the client why no or I don't know if yes I guess that is always real time the the selection of it uh you always get the best option when the client talks to you in person that's why I want to ask when you get different feedback on the asynchronous uh it's never happened to me I I always try to to make a didactical work explain explain a lot the design decisions because I made design decisions when I designed even if you choose a theme and > (1:46:17) you need to make why you make that decisions so I always explain a lot the client why so the the client give me the feedback and we agree we meet we meet the the objectives and the business goals and you say you are saying that maybe tomorrow the client can change their mind mind so okay we can discuss again and you can always agree also because it's not one solution for in the design we as as designers maybe have a lot of maybe half ego and the design is Our Song and on the one to make changes but if if we work with a business > (1:47:16) perspective we don't mind to to change and we don't mind to to make to make two or three versions and test because the the final word is a clients the final client the user so we need to test the website we don't have the the last we don't have the truth I don't know if uh yeah yeah government thank you okay does any woman have any question because I see we still have some I like I like man I like men but I like also woman so I think we um as a woman as a woman as woman we maybe have um it's more difficult to us to go to a > (1:48:06) micro and ask questions but I would like to answer if if you have any question or if you want to go deeper thank you yeah awesome thank you please go ahead so um the website for a client we made the design together she was great as a client she approved the design we talked about the user Persona it works perfectly like it works now she was on holidays with her friends and two friends don't like the website ah um they are not the users at all it's an educational website for Math teachers in the US and they're > (1:48:56) not so I don't know what to do I don't want to change it it works I've been there she's happy but not anymore so yeah um and their friends is always asking for carousels in the homes and the homepage and things like that yeah it's hard slider but yeah it's the worst performance on the slider so the heat map goes blue yeah we want more slides and and also they want to change the color obviously yeah so in that case we we need to repeat the reasons for not to put a slide on their home page > (1:49:42) but even if a Green Dot if the client is asking you to the slider well is the is the is who pay for the work so it's frustrated and may maybe it's not your client and yeah you've finished the world they work and Say Goodbye and look for another client another type of client that um be confident uh with you doing the the work for her as a client and I think that the issue is really her ego so I feel like her friends telling her that they don't like the design it's like somebody telling you your baby is ugly yeah yeah > (1:50:29) yeah but I think it's a you need always to talk about business objectives and until the client if you justify the text for example the text is not reading good well so is your decision but if you do that this is that you are going to get because I am as a designer I have experience I studied a lot and we know the user experience is that so according to the all of these books I read this is the the best thing we can do but let's try let's let's do uh AV test and let's see and maybe just like that is a > (1:51:21) good idea who knows okay I'll try that thank you thank you yeah thank you so maybe maybe I can add a little bit to it I myself also an agency owner and um I always tell customers the website is not for you but it's for your customers yeah so of course also in this case with the girlfriends are they the demographic are they the potential customers if they are not then it doesn't matter they don't like the website because they are not the potential customer always try to talk about that at least that's from my > (1:51:54) experience yeah through okay um I see also online there are no questions if there are no questions anymore I want to thank and very much for learning is more of about giving feedback and as I already said the oh make local I'm not coming to close you make local Beaker is really uh something coming home with me that it's actually our fault that they're asking this so that's really something we have to work on when you're on the design team thank you very much from wordcamp we have a small present for you > (1:52:33) okay um [Applause] thank you and we uh okay thank you okay it's done track two how you can give feedback about this kind of talks so go to the website there's a feedback form every talk you go to you can give feedback and that's quite nice it helps to organize us to select good speakers for every new Work Camp just if you're getting hungry we have to wait a little bit till 1 pm at 1 pm it's lunchtime and that said served at level zero and minus one and of course don't forget to visit our sponsors because our sponsors make this > (1:53:30) all possible if there are no sponsors there is no word Camp because for the ticket price that you are paying it's impossible to organize this kind of event so please also go and visit them because they make this all possible um we have a short break now and at 12 p.m we continue with uh history he is doing a talk about building high performance headless worker systems main challenges and solutions so if you are interested in that talk I hope you to see you again at 12 and thank you for now bye-bye which already go to some nice tracks or > (2:11:33) workshops and are you playing the game have the game is there to interact with people and get to know more people because that's what wordcamp is about we get from our computer away and start meeting people connecting with people and so very important in the end of this talk I have the second question so if you are playing the game I have the second question and uh if you play that you can go to the community boat with your answer and yeah hopefully you get another card okay um my name is Paul Carroll I'm from the > (2:12:12) Netherlands I'm your MC for today and it's already my last session so also enjoying this and learning getting new experiences and today we have our speaker history panjarov I think I met him first time at wordcamp Netherlands and since then I met him at many word camps in the US and and he's a very active Community member in in WordPress and working for the company sitegrounds and hey he's already here so you are just uh getting behind me because I'm just dropping by you oh yeah okay you're > (2:12:51) just dropping by that uh he's building uh skilled airplanes as a hobby yes I am yes you are and that gives a big problem I heard because now the house is getting too small yeah I may become homeless if my wife so that's that's that yeah and I heard from your team that even you use this uh building of skilled airplanes as a team building activity yeah yeah we did that in the team building yeah we crashed a couple of planes it's very nice so next to knowing a lot about headless WordPress systems he also knows > (2:13:25) about skilled airplanes so if you have talk uh questions about have this WordPress ask him but also about skilled airplanes okay so ISRO the talk is yours go ahead and enjoy it thank you presentation hello thank you all for coming to my talk as Paul introduced me okay here's it gone um I'm Christopher I'm a WordPress Innovation director at siteground and I've been working here for 15 years and for the past years we've been developing more and more things with headless WordPress systems so today I want to > (2:14:07) talk to you about headless WordPress different ideas to consider and I will hopefully help you out decide whether you're going a headless way is for you and probably give you an idea about something that you can use to improve the way you do things to improve your businesses and your flows so to begin with I think one of the most important things when we talk about pretty much everything in general is that you should evaluate whether this is for you um for example headless a WordPress what is headless WordPress basically you have a WordPress > (2:14:50) course system that supplies data via an API to a different application it may be a react single page app or some other system and it's it's a way of doing things doing systems platforms that gives you a lot of flexibility but adds to the complexity of your of your system of your platform you need to spend more development work to it so it's important to ask the right questions and to figure out whether this is this is the way you should do things and the first thing I asked when um when I start working on on such such > (2:15:29) platforms is that is this a standalone project or you need to integrate it with something else something existent there is a lot of chatter on Twitter on slack on everywhere about headless headless headless headless is not a one solution for everything yes we can build very fast systems we've uh going headless you can use all sort of Technologies but you have we can have a super fast regular Standalone WordPress website you just need to have a proper team proper hosting proper caching a good developer and you can achieve the > (2:16:05) same thing so the first question is do you really want to invest that development time going headless and uh I'm doing those things and sometimes the answer is no and that's perfectly fine WordPress is great out of the box and if you don't need to integrate it with your own existing stuff or with a different system that you're working on you don't necessarily need to do it so you need to have this in your mind um usually uh WordPress headless is very applicable when you have an existing use > (2:16:42) case or an existing system uh for example this is the siteground client area and we have WordPress powering our entire knowledge base of answers like uh tutorials articles and this is um and we showed this in a contextual manner our client area is a react application it has tons of business logic in it you know all the renewals all that stuff that's already there we can't rewrite that in WordPress and it doesn't make any business sense for us to do that but on the other hand I just can't make a > (2:17:23) WordPress website with all the support uh articles there and make it look like the client area or cytos which is another application built in react which manages our entire hosting system but I need to show that data to our clients so we have a we have a headless WordPress powering all that uh uh basically the react app here uh hits a WordPress API and says hey I'm on that page we have a custom plugin that gets the page on which the content is requested and gets the client language because we have Italian Spanish French Deutsche > (2:18:09) and serves the data through the API so for us it makes a lot of sense to do that on top of everything we can cache this in react we can use front page caching and this is very fast way to serve data from WordPress and you can integrate it seamlessly into your existing system without doing a lot of work so for us this this works very very well and on top of it if you have a centralized place where you host your app that you integrate your WordPress you can you can cache very very well that system and you don't need to have some very powerful > (2:18:53) server to host WordPress to power that those those two pages are getting millions of hits uh weekly or I'm sure we're in supplement somewhere in the tens of millions per month but it's hosted on a super cheap Cloud Server that's just isolated it's like 50 bucks a month or something at the cost and um another important questions when we talk about this is do you need to use any third-party Integrations that provide you functionality out of the box because for example this is this was a very simple > (2:19:32) use case you know we have posts it's a WordPress multi-site actually in different languages have posts you get you get the data you render it but if you have something more complex that you rely on like like a learn Dash or member press for courses or some sort of um customized let's say ticketing system or whatever and you get a certain functionality that is out of the box ready for you coming from a plugin that you that that you have purchased that you rely on you need to take into account that if you you can't just use that > (2:20:10) functionality out of the box you at least you have to style it again to make it work for your application so I'm not advocating against going headless but you need to take these things into consideration and this all sums up to the question whether this will pay off uh for example if you're if you're doing a single thing uh maybe it's not worth spending a lot of development time and money at the end of the day to build a very complex react application back ends Etc but for example how many of you are doing sites > (2:20:51) for clients I see some hands oh that's a lot of people and how many of you are sort of kind of embarrassed to give your projects ready with the default WordPress backend yeah okay that's quite a few less hands but um at least the feedback that we're getting from from most of the people we're hosting is that they get a bit confused with the WordPress backend and many big agencies for example invest into their own admin stuff so this is another way of another very good use case so of headless WordPress > (2:21:27) if you if you're launching uh more product more websites to to clients uh it's worth investing the time in in building your own admin panel and it will be much easier to build a beautiful react app and give it to the client with their branding with only the menus they want to see then styling and WordPress admin panel which is I don't know how many of you have done this but it's not an easy thing to do and once you consider that hopefully headless WordPress is for you and there are a lot of benefits from it and one of > (2:22:10) them is performance WordPress can be very fast if you cache it properly if you host it properly if you optimize it properly um so I started with that you don't need to go headless to have a web fast website but react apps are very well performing you can host them on a CDN you know you can't have a lot of a lot of your functionality cash to the front end so here are some alternative ideas if you have decided to go that way that may give you some suggestions about what else can you do because the standard way > (2:22:49) is like you have an app if you do an HTTP request to the WordPress API you get some data and then you render it but the thing is that you don't even need to use the WordPress API like it everything depends on your use case for example uh if you have a Symphony framework of something you can just include the entire WordPress in it and then in your Symphony code you can use every WordPress function uh every uh filter everything you want as if you're working on WordPress and then you can get that data and use it > (2:23:28) for your own needs so when going WordPress ongoing headless it's important to properly analyze your needs and do things depending on them and not just for the sake of doing something and this is very fast way of doing it probably is not the most Orthodox way of doing it but it's very fast because you're saving a lot of a lot of HTTP requests if you already have let's say middleware software or something like that that connects to a uh to a front end you don't need to add another set of requests to go back and forth which > (2:24:04) inevitably adds to the to the Loading time of your pages another thing that is not the standard way of doing things that we've been playing a lot of with is using Doctrine or another object relation relational mapping system so basically map WordPress database to uh to the orm and then use the orm to fetch data from uh this way if you need to get a query to the database you can get it from uh from Doctrine for example because it has included object caching it's really fast and the beauty of it is that you don't call you don't fire up > (2:24:48) the entire WordPress framework when you when you want to get a piece of data and avoiding to load the WordPress framework saves a lot of a lot of precious milliseconds and especially if you're doing something that is more traffic heavy this is a good idea that you may consider using custom handles or filters and actions is something that you should know exists and it's very useful um when you get for example some error coming from an API it Returns the error message or the success message in a certain way uh feel free don't be afraid > (2:25:33) to interrupt that and have your own message displayed in the way you're doing this way uh you may save another another millisecond uh for depending on the actual message itself and you will get it in the proper format and since we talked about front-end cache about react apps all sort of uh JavaScript Frameworks use front-end caching as much as you can it's your best friend you're offloading QR caching your cash on your clients computers which is the fastest place to get data from and with with headless WordPress that's > (2:26:20) that's that and react for example or other Frameworks that's much easier than than going the classic way another benefit of of headless WordPress systems apps is that they can be made much more secure than a standalone WordPress um I'm not saying that WordPress core is not secure it's a very mature project it's been for 20 years now uh uh we rarely see any hacking for vulnerabilities that go that come from the core but you all know that plugins are out there they're not developed the same way that the core is > (2:26:59) developed and often we have vulnerabilities so go ahead let's allow you to easily isolate WordPress completely from the public you can have it on a separate hostname it limits its access or to only to your application no matter what is it what is it what it's written on and this way you'll be safe from all those attacks that Target WordPress systems that Target certain plug-in no matter which one is it and you still get the benefit of using that functionality through the API now um one downside of doing this > (2:27:40) um we do it it's great both for Speed and for security because you're cutting off all the bot traffic for example but another um something that's important to consider is that you may need to rewrite your urls when when isolating WordPress because it will live on a separate hostname um that's just an example of how to do it it's not a big thing but you need to have it in mind that WordPress doesn't know the actual URL it's working on um another idea is to replace the WordPress login system > (2:28:21) again that is something that depends on your particular use case a big fan of job authentication I don't know why it's spelled jot it's JWT but it's jot for some reason uh but Joe tokens are very scalable a big fan of it I'll link your plugin at the end of the presentation um the beauty of it is that you can scale it very much you don't need to have a large session storage for all the user sessions to store them tokens are super fast but there are two ways of doing this now if you want to know if if you need the > (2:28:58) information about the particular users you may need to map the users coming from your application to the ones from at your WordPress database if you don't need that information if your business logic user specific logic is somewhere else you don't need to do it you can make one admin account one admin user that talks to through the API to the application otherwise you need to do a user ID mapping for sure um again on the same topic a bit you can replace WordPress Access Controller or integrate it with something external > (2:29:35) or integrate the microservice for this um again in case of of our client area we we don't need to know we don't have any complex ACLS for for our clients we only want to know which is their language but for example if you're building let's say uh uh a custom admin panel and you provide it to your clients you may need to consider whether you are going to use the WordPress roles and capabilities or you you have to map again something external uh next I want to talk a bit about plugins and Integrations > (2:30:25) because plugins are a big part of Wordpress and nowadays I don't know a website that works only only with core uh people sometimes are afraid to go headless because uh they're like oh you know I really need this plugin but it doesn't have apis well you can register custom apis it's very very easy if you haven't explored this way uh the WordPress API is one of the best documented apis out there uh the guys and girls that have done this have done tremendous work it's very well documented and you can > (2:31:08) even if you rely on a plugin that doesn't have API endpoints you can make them yourselves and you can make them provide the data in the format you need um another thing to consider is that especially when you're isolating WordPress from from the world you may need to make some sort of a middleware or Gateway app to uh to handle external requests to handle web hooks for example if you're connecting where let's say an online store to PayPal or to stripe or some shipping provider or whatever uh when you send them an order for for a > (2:31:52) payment they need to call you back and say hey that order was paid successful or the payment failed Etc and if your WordPress is working from uh hidden hostname behind a firewall that has access only to your app you can't just hit the web hook that's provided by woocommerce for example so it's not it's not a difficult thing to do but it's something that you need to develop and organize yourself just so you proxy those requests to the actual systems and another thing is that you can modify > (2:32:31) uh plug-in endpoints and responses to better fit your needs um nowadays most of the well-developed plugins have apis have endpoints it's okay if the plugin does not return the data in the way you need it it's very easy to modify plugin responses uh in a way similar to how uh child teams work so don't be afraid of doing that and modify it as much as you can to best fit your needs and that's that's the beauty of going headless WordPress you can use WordPress not in any particular way and not necessarily the way we have used to > (2:33:24) uh we are used to use WordPress and I hope that I have inspired some of you to try to build their next project in a headless way and improve the way you work with your clients and the way you build apps systems and websites thank you thank you very much I think you still have time left I have some time left yeah some questions here some shall we do a q a session we have some mics over there on that side on that side so if anybody has a question you can line up and that was a bit fast so we can have more time for lunch okay that's great > (2:34:11) yeah but the problem is the lunch only start at 1pm so if you go there before that time there's no lunch so we have to entertain the people a little bit I think I'm a bit disappointed yeah I know I know but that doesn't matter now we have a angry hungry crowd yeah yeah that's that's that's why we have to do our best to who don't have an Angry Crowd I hope we have a question so are there some people I know it was very technical there's a microphone over there and over there could you line up > (2:34:41) at the microphone because then it's uh easier for us maybe we also have an online feed that our people now watching us online and they can ask a question in online feed and if everything works then my mobile will get a message and I will ask that question also to his stroke okay so let's go ahead the first question please hi there thank you very much for the talk I have a question because you mentioned that your admin area handles uh the the set of the multi-side and you you've mentioned also the ulti language > (2:35:19) multi-language setup as well how is your what's your take on that how do you handle this what's your solution the way uh is that on okay so uh so um there are different ways you can you can Go multilingual unfortunately we don't have anything in core that's standardized and covered by the core API so you can but that may be good or not but still you have to figure it out for for your use case uh what we what we do have is we have English German uh French Spanish and Italian we have five languages > (2:36:00) um and the content is the same uh in in the majority of articles but some are not the same for example we have specific uh support a specific content for people in Italy and Spain that that care about European stuff others in the United States we don't show them building we show them proper billing information depending on where people are uh on top of it we have different people different uh people who work in the content team who manage those and for us it's very easy to have basically uh WordPress multi-site in which we have > (2:36:41) subside in Spanish and Italian you know it's for every different language and it's basically it's just a small middleware Symphony app that gets the request from the from the react app and it proxies the proxies the request for for the article to the to the proper language subside and first this works pretty well because I can give the Italian content team access only to the Italian website they don't need to uh and do stuff um it has downsides we've spent a lot of development not a lot but we've > (2:37:23) spent development we're doing for example when we when we add a new language we recently added French uh what we did is we migrated the English content in French and then we had the team of translators the con the French content team translate that so they don't have to you know open different tabs copy paste stuff around and try we made it easier uh we've been playing with automated translation which is very easy to you can you know use AI you know some people have to drink water somebody says on Twitter every > (2:38:00) time someone mentions AI you know but we use we use external microservices so to translate and it's very easy to move data from here and there so but we have different URLs which is why multi-site works great in in that case I mean my question was also related to a plug-in Solution that's why I asked about that one but you you sold it via multi-site right so I I don't need to use a plugin for that because I don't have a front-facing interface that users switch between languages this is this is > (2:38:40) my react react application the client area cytos or or other other other interfaces that that logic is there the switching I'm the simpler you organize it the simpler is to maintain it I have another one then because I have been playing with headless lately a lot and cool the the biggest problem that I see right right now at least because probably they because of lack of experience with building more and more applications like that or more you know websites shops whatever there is a huge overhead or there is a > (2:39:22) huge difference during the development time between going headless and doing this the classic way I would say so what's what's how would you comment that or what would you recommend I mean of course there is this basic question that you have uh stated on the very beginning do you actually need to go headless in the first place right but yeah that's that's that's a decision that only you can make and I believe it's more of a business decision rather than a development decision if you if you're > (2:39:54) comfortable with working with apis if you can view your stuff yourself or you have a team of people um you can you can calculate how much that will cost and if it's financially worth it go for it if you can provide a better experience for your customers from now on go for it build build your own branded admin panel for the websites you're doing most probably your clients if you're an agency for example won't need to uh use like 60 percent of the menus we see on the left side of it and then they > (2:40:31) won't see the annoying advertisement but every single free plug in that now and then tries to jump over each other and show you even more and more and more and very important stuff and so I I believe that's worth it and if you if you see like big agencies like human made for example this is what they're doing they're building their own uh framework headless framework so they when they provide they have big customers they they charge a lot of money so I believe that if you can invest if you can spend that development > (2:41:05) time no depending on whether you're doing yourself or hiring people it doesn't matter but if you can make that investment it's worth it because you will your product the product that you're selling will look will feel more professional and you will be able to charge your clients more thanks very much yeah we are all here to learn more so please don't hesitate to ask questions but I see we have another gentleman over there hello um you talk a bit about JWT authentication um WordPress has application passwords > (2:41:38) built in um is there any kind of benefits to using JWT over application passwords and what you kind of see those being uh again as everything headless it depends on the particular use case like uh for me it's um I'm building a number of products that are powered by WordPress and if you already have some sort of a login system it's much easier when you have an existing plugin to issue a JV jot token and and then authorize it at WordPress um and Joe tokens are very scalable you don't need to store sessions uh > (2:42:21) hopefully your projects will reach millions of visitors daily or weekly and Joe tokens are very fast especially when when you get it issued from something that already exists I'm not saying that if you're building a standalone WordPress you need to go and replace the entire login authentication system altogether that that would be meaningless and we will waste a lot of time but if in case of siteground I already have my clients logged into the client area I just issue another token and they're authorized and they can get the > (2:43:00) information they need cool thanks thanks which is just you talk a lot about obviously the rest API here have you used graphql at all and uh do you see any benefits with that no I haven't because on uh uh on my projects I don't have a need for it there's a there is a very good blog post on the wp engine blog blog about that you should you can Google it and despite the fact there are competitors they have done a very good work in that blog post and uh it's actually about Gutenberg and how to the couple of ways that you can uh make > (2:43:43) Gutenberg render HTML you should take a look at that it's it's a very very well written piece of content to give you pros and cons about that thank you very much welcome so on custom backend which suggested that it's a good idea to make it is possible for us to load the Gutenberg so the editor I think that should be the main reason why we will be using headless WordPress admin we'll be able to include somehow that into our custom react application yeah you you can do that Gutenberg is written in a way that actually the idea > (2:44:25) as far as I'm aware is that other applications use Gutenberg not just WordPress so it's uh it's pretty easy to to use it and implement it into your into your projects but because that's just the the page building part right uh everything else is there too you know users settings all that stuff dashboards what about custom plugin uh blocks for example if it if you if you load Gutenberg once then you you can benefit from all the custom plugins that that are written for it it it's not limiting you if they you > (2:45:08) need to accommodate if they have some interface outside Gutenberg for example but uh that depends on on the plugin and whether you want to show it at all because like you may want to have uh uh you may want to have let's say the yoast plugin working for your SEO content but then you don't want to show their settings because you're configuring it all the settings for the titles and keywords and stuff like that you're you're doing it for your clients you just don't render that interface and > (2:45:41) give them a better user experience and you're still using you don't have to maintain an SEO plugin I hope that answers your question yes thank you thank you I see you next gentleman lining up hello hi hello um I was really interested in what you said about Symphony and don't create Doctrine um could you please explain it more about the use case uh well um the use case of Doctrine is when you have a big WordPress database for us for for the way I've used it with my team um when you have a very big WordPress > (2:46:17) database that you that you need to query basically you map that WordPress database to to Doctrine like clone it and synchronize them and then you fetch the data from Doctrine which comes uh it's it's a that's PHP Library it comes with object caching and everything and it's very easy very well written you don't have to you know write queries um it it's it's not big of a learning curve I urge you to take a look at it it's it's a great piece of tech and what you're doing is > (2:46:52) you're getting the data directly from that database and it's very fast to get the data from there and you're not you're not hitting the WordPress database which may be which has a lot of other things you you're building an index only of what you actually need to to query and query it in a very very fast way um as for the symphony um uh our use case is for a product that's not launched yet so I can't really speak in details about it but um basically we're um we're building a product that sends > (2:47:33) emails which is written in Symphony and but we need WordPress for content for uh for permanent storage uh and for other things and we have a rest we have a react app for the interfaces which talks to the to the middleware to the symphony app so in that case if you want to add WordPress to this existing infrastructure uh you would double the amount of HTTP requests if you have your app making one request to the symphony and then Symphony making another request to Wordpress and you get all that back and forth and this adds up a lot because > (2:48:16) every time you you do that you're you're losing milliseconds and it's not performing well well it's a bit of a uh it's a bit of a not not canonical thing to do but if you just include WordPress it works I've tested it we have really use cases of it and you can you can use all the functions all the data directly in your existing Symphony app for example and then have only one one code that you can't avoid between the interface and the back end thank you you're welcome okay thank you > (2:48:56) very much okay I think we are almost coming to the end of this talk and yeah you all see Aristo has a lot of knowledge about WordPress thank you and skilled airplanes and I didn't talk about airplanes at all I don't know maybe that's the next talk on wordcamp to talk about that and we do some team building out about it but before we always saw you at every word camp but now you slow down a little bit you're becoming a family man and um I think as a family man it's also important that you learn new skills like > (2:49:29) cooking so we have here something with a recipe for you thank you very much you're welcome thank you all for thanks everybody thank you okay so I know everybody is excited because we almost have the second question for the game cards but uh internet helping me everything is reloading okay we also have some announcements uh before we go to uh to lunch had a lunch start at 1pm and it's still 2 p. > (2:50:08) m uh how we kindly ask you don't take lunch into track rooms or Workshop rooms because uh how we want to keep them tidy um so let's have a look what is there um there are a lot of things to see see yeah and so the learn she said level -1 and also at level plus one in the main area um there is the next WP connect session at the balcony that you can go to and yeah for people who like to relax a little bit at 3 P. > (2:50:45) M there's a Tai Chi session so I think for the moment you all have been waiting for to work with your game cards uh the second question for your game card is in how many languages is WordPress translated I think that's a very interesting question and for the people who didn't get the first question the first question was is WordPress older than Facebook and Twitter true or false go with your answers to the community Boot and get an extra card get to connect to people get to connect to people in wordcamp because that's what > (2:51:23) wordcamp is all about I thank you all for me this was the last session as MC in this afternoon it will be Emma Young and there will be new talks starting at 2 pm sharply thanks everybody bye-bye [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] > (2:52:46) [Applause] [Music] foreign both planes okay > (4:12:13) just just me okay crowd um all right so my name is Emma I'll be your MC today on track two uh so I'm just going to start off with a few General announcements and then I'll get to the good stuff in just a couple of minutes uh so just a reminder at the in the middle of the um Expo area there is the swag table information desk a lot of volunteers lost and found everything is there that's where you pick your swag bag up so if you have any questions just head over there if you can't find somebody in > (4:12:46) a blue shirt uh we also have um just a reminder that there is going to be a wellness track right after this it's closer to the workshop area and there's going to be tai chi I don't know how to do it but it's at three so if you need to if you feel like doing that it's a good place to go afterwards um and um the last thing is there's about uh 15 minutes between everything so use that time to go get drinks there's drinks scattered around all around the conference areas and uh yeah just eat as > (4:13:18) much as you can while it's there so um yeah this is a 30 minute talk uh we'll have 15 minutes afterwards for Q a so there are two microphones on both sides of the aisles um you can walk up after the presentation if you have any follow-up questions if you or if you don't want to walk up there or can't just raise your hand and we'll run over and give you a microphone so I will be a very brief uh intro to our first uh presenter for the afternoon uh this is Chris lopkert and can we get a round of applause for him and yeah > (4:13:52) cheers hello everyone so I'm here to talk about raising Capital raising funds for uh for a WordPress business specifically um I'll share a little bit about myself my name is Chris lepker as I mentioned I live in Denver Colorado um in the USA go skiing and biking and things like that um and I conveniently wore the same shirt as is in my photo so you know it's really me um and I'm the co-founder of extendify which is a software solution that helps hosts around the world to improve their WordPress experience > (4:14:29) and at extensify we raised capital for our business um a few different times now over the past a little while and so I have that experience you know kind of being on the the founder side of it raising funds also previously I was at automatic which is the company behind wordpress.com and woocommerce Etc and that automatic we I I managed some various Acquisitions and also Investments that we made on behalf of the company so I've kind of been on both sides of the table both in and outside of Wordpress because previous to > (4:15:00) automatic I was at another software company we raised 25 million dollars of growth Capital at some point and supported that was also in private Equity way back early in my career as well so so kind of I I I I feel like raising capital is oftentimes this mysterious process this mysterious concept uh so I wanted to just some shed some light on what it is what it entails and give some some framework for thinking about uh whether or not it's right for your business so that's what we'll talk about today > (4:15:29) we'll talk about what is raisin Capital should you raise Capital because the short answer is no not for everyone um so it's it's a it's an important question to consider for yourself and then if it does make sense we'll talk about how to go about doing that and the steps that you should take so what is Raising capital and capital you know is kind of a fancy word for money essentially it's just money right um no matter which no matter no matter how you get it you know getting getting capital for your business is just about > (4:15:59) raising money you can do that I'll go through a couple different ways that that can happen just so we can like think about um you know the different options that exist and then talk about before we talk about should you do it or not but Capital if you want to need funds for your business you can do that in two basic ways it can be debt which is you know Capital that you pay back it's you know you could get it from a bank you could get it from an individual they could give you a loan you pay it back with interest that's one way you can you > (4:16:29) can raise Capital the second way is as equity and then do this in exchange for an ownership stake in your business um and that's where we'll really focus today I'll spend most of my time talking about Equity oftentimes when people talk about raising Capital they're talking about Equity Capital specifically um so bring down an investor in their business uh in exchange for giving away a portion of the ownership of their business so we'll focus on that today but just I think it is important to be aware that > (4:16:57) depending on your needs you could also consider debt as well through a variety of different ways so and then another concept which people often talk about is majority versus minority and this is you know a fairly straightforward concept but you know essentially if you're selling if someone's investing a majority stake that means they own more than half of the business and so for all the math Majors out there that means you own less than half of the business and if it's a minority stake then that means the investor owns less than half > (4:17:28) of the business it could be 49 it could be one percent it could be anything in between or even less I guess Theory um and so that in a minority state that means you still own the majority of the business um in theory you could get multiple minority Investments and you could end up with less than half yourself but traditionally that means that you still own the business you still have at least some portion some version of control of the business and what happens but somebody else has ownership in it and so a majority investment can > (4:17:59) oftentimes feel more like uh closer to an acquisition than an investment because somebody else owns the business they own control over the business you still have some ownership in the business and so you can still share in the upside so you know kind of as it continues to succeed and grow that will you could reap the benefits of that so it's not exactly like a full acquisition but we'll focus today more on the minority investment because that's oftentimes what people refer to uh when they talk about this > (4:18:29) and the last like we're going through some terminology here but I think it's important you know these are kind of the words aren't necessarily important but the concepts are important to think about uh with when it comes to raising Capital but there's this concept of primary versus secondary capital and what that means essentially is primary is when the business gets the money and so you know if you raised a hundred dollars you know in exchange for some portion of equity that hundred dollars > (4:18:56) if it's primary Capital goes into business bank account it's used to for the business in some way or another in theory it should be used to help increase the value of that business but it doesn't go to your your personal bank account it's not you selling your own Equity your own shares in the business and secondary capital is when you would sell or anyone would sell shares that they already own um and this is a little bit less common I would say secondary Capital often as people are talking about raising Capital > (4:19:27) it's because they want funds to do something for their business uh which would be primary Capital essentially using the using the money to help increase the value of the business but sometimes there are people who will uh decide that they want to maintain some ownership of their business but they want you know some sort of proceeds to go do something with some funds or de-risk their future or something like that so there are sometimes opportunities uh typically the secondary capital is more for established businesses ones that > (4:19:57) don't need the money but the owner is just looking to or some some shareholders looking to sell a portion of their stake so I think generally when I when I talk about reason Capital I'll talk about primary capital I won't specify it but but typically it's about using funds for your business to help it help you help you grow help you achieve certain goals that you're looking to do and you can raise capital from a variety of different places you know the three most common ones that we think about are > (4:20:26) you know Angel Investors which are individuals you know these are either individuals on their own or as part of a small Collective of people who choose to invest in a particular company there are investment firms as well so these can be anything from like some of the traditional Venture Capital funds out of Silicon Valley and all around the world you know like um that have you know teams of people that manage other people's money make lots of different Investments or the last one to think about our strategic investors as well and so I > (4:21:01) think about my role at automatic when we would make an investment that would be considered a strategic investor it's another company investing in a business and I would I think from my perspective I think automatic is the most active in our space there are a few others in the WordPress space but there are also others outside of Wordpress that could be relevant depending on your business so companies like stripe or PayPal have made strategic investments in other companies and so uh you know these are three > (4:21:28) different categories of companies that you can pursue or you know when thinking about raising Capital who could be potential investors and at extendify we've essentially raised capital from all three kind of a blend of all of these so I kind of experience and think about each of these different groups um so there's a big question about like should you raise capital for your business and I think that was the that was the kind of when I thought about this topic it was it was a question that I feel like I'm > (4:22:01) asked quite often given my background experience a lot of times people come and say I'm thinking about raising Capital how should I think about that decision should I do it or not you know there's kind of this very basic question at the beginning and it's important to think about because it's not the answer to every problem it's not right for every business it's you know it comes with you know what for some businesses could be very uh important benefits but it's also comes with some implications that > (4:22:28) you need to be aware of and make sure is the right fit for what you're trying to do so I'll talk first about like what uh bringing out investors can help you by help you do you know there are three different things they can obviously there's the capital part of it where you're given funds and so you can use that funds to do different things investors can also give you guidance or hold you accountable if that's something you need as well and they can also bring credibility to you your business and > (4:22:57) help you in various ways there so let's I'll dig in a little bit deeper on each of these um so the what can you use the money for essentially this is like going to be one of the first questions that um any investor if you are seeking to raise Capital will ask you it's like well why are you asking for this money what are you going to go do with it how is it going to help your business uh to grow and so there are three broad buckets that you could do that you could use a capital for one is to invest in product > (4:23:27) maybe there's a new product that you want to go build there's something that you've kind of have a prototype for and want to invest in growing it out um you know you can invest it in r d essentially a product development the second broad category is growth when I say growth I really mean and what I'm really talking about is you know kind of marketing or sales or initiatives there that you know you could do to um gain more customers and grow help to grow the business that way and this is something both of these are > (4:23:57) ones where it can be very helpful to have some initial like proof points I would say right so just going and trying to raise capital for a product you've have started uh zero development on or zero research on can be quite challenging same with growth I think a lot of times companies think well if only had a sales person or only if only I had a marketer then everything would be great right then my business would continue to grow and it can be quite challenging if you've never even experimented with some of these > (4:24:30) initiatives to get people to believe that it's going to work out right so even if you you know feel like you need Capital to invest in growth and marketing or a sales person or something like that then you know doing a few steps early on to demonstrate that there will be some a success with that can be very very helpful and the last thing is the last broad category is m a which is mergers and Acquisitions so you could decide you wanted to use Capital to acquire another business and I think it's something a lot of > (4:25:02) times people don't think about they don't think that it's a possibility for them they don't think that they're big enough to acquire another business or they don't have the funds to do it and you know M A is a whole separate talk and a whole another topic to really think through how to do that well and how to make sure that it's good for the business but it is something that you know many times you can raise Capital to do whether it's debt or equity and so even if your business is profitable it's growing you > (4:25:27) feel like you don't need funds it could be a reason at some point in the future if you did decide to pursue some sort of acquisition that was going to be strategic and important for your business and really helpful you could use capital for that as well and the right investors can be very very helpful actually so I think we've found this with extendify we are a WordPress business obviously based on based on WordPress so we've brought some people with deep experience in the WordPress ecosystem like yoast and mariki from uh > (4:25:59) Emilia Capital with their Booth right outside you know they obviously have they've invested in extended by they obviously have a tremendous amount of experience growing one of the largest product companies in the space and have been they've got a guidance and support has been very helpful we also sell for us we sell into the hosting Market and we brought on some investors who have both expertise and Connections in that space as well and has been very helpful for us so as I think about extendify we have obviously the capital > (4:26:32) the money has been important in itself but probably even more impactful has been bringing the right types of investors that have been really helpful for our business and I don't think we'd be where we are today without some a lot of their support so and then the last piece that I mentioned before is credibility and I think this has been um an impact for us at extendify as well I mentioned selling to the hosting market like many of the you know aside from the 10 hosts that come to work camps like many of them aren't very deep into the > (4:27:06) WordPress ecosystem in the community and so we're unknown to us like we didn't know them they didn't know us and so our first conversations with people you know having some stamp of approval if you will you know by by The credibility that it comes with other people saying that they are willing to put money behind your business behind your idea behind what you're doing has been helpful as well you know it just kind of like gives people an opportunity to or you know kind of puts people pretty in a positive > (4:27:37) predisposition to talk to you so should you raise capital I think there are a few questions you should ask yourself um in order to really think through whether or not it's right for your business or not so like one is do you need the money right um if you don't need the money then maybe you could get advisors you could try to solve some of your um or solve for some of your kind of gaps that you're looking to fill around credibility or support in other ways so if you don't need I think this is like a > (4:28:09) very important question to think about like I mentioned this earlier what would you go do with those funds as well right like what's your plan and it's not enough just to say oh marketing I would like to invest in marketing so let me raise some money for that I think going a level deeper and really thinking about what is it going to do for your business how is it going to make it more valuable because there is a real trade-off right you're giving away a portion of the ownership of your business to someone else and so that > (4:28:35) funding that transaction should make the whole thing more valuable than what you would do just on your own and it can have that effect right obviously owning if you own 80 of a business that's three times as large as it would have been otherwise that's that's certainly better than owning from a financial standpoint at least they're only 100 of the smaller business but so the second is do you need the support and I think this also goes into what types of investors you would look for as well but is it > (4:29:03) you know are there people that you could bring on board that would be helpful to your business that would fill in kind of gaps in your own knowledge or experience in some way or another um that you could that could be valuable this next one the third question is about what type of business you really want to run and this is this is more of like a looking deep inside yourself as opposed to looking at your business and you know kind of more objective it's more like soul searching really you know like are you interested in uh having a > (4:29:35) business that supports your lifestyle that you run for the next 20 years that allows you to work on interesting things and you're just perfectly content with the path that you're on in that case you probably shouldn't raise Capital right because you know the investors are going to have different whatever investor you bring on is likely to have a different expectation for that business and what you're going to do or are you are you interested in uh continuing to grow and for some people if you're a single individual that means > (4:30:03) that might mean now managing a team and going from being a product product owner developer working on building out the product and now spending most of your time managing a team like is that something you really want to do does that get you excited is that something that uh you know will fulfill you essentially um so it's kind of thinking about the type of business you are you're you're looking after it will both make sure that raising capital is the right decision for you and it will also help you to > (4:30:35) uh find the right types of investors as well that kind of match what you're trying to do and then the last question I think is important to ask yourself is are if you're ready for the responsibility because it is a responsibility there's a lot of trust that goes into somebody giving you you know whether it's a small or a large amount of money it doesn't really matter you are now a custodian essentially of their of their investment right you your responsibility is not just to uh the business you had previously but > (4:31:04) you have a responsibility to deliver on what you said you were going to do and take care of the investment that someone's chosen to to make to make in you and and deliver on that trust right um they're believing in you that you and the team that you have are able to build something great deliver on uh on what what you uh set out to do so so these are questions to really think about and ask yourself around whether or not you should raise capitals we talked about some of the benefits you know but I think there are also it's it's > (4:31:38) absolutely not the right decision for every person out there um and it's important to really think about if if it's if it's right for you and now is the right time for you as well so so assuming you do think it makes sense we'll talk briefly here about how to raise capital I think this is something that's also like a mysterious process right you most of what you hear about are you know some sort of announcement that says hey we've raised some capital and you don't understand all of the effort > (4:32:06) that goes into and all the work uh steps that have gone into um you know kind of getting to that point and it's interesting I feel like this is on people's minds a lot more now in the WordPress ecosystem because over the past two three years there's been an increase in investment opportunities so now it's like a real possibility for many people previously you know kind of in the first 15 16 17 years of wordpress's History it was mainly just a few hosting providers that were kind of had an external > (4:32:37) Capital almost every other business was you know one that was bootstrapped and grown and kind of grown over time and many have been quite successful um and so that was the tried and true model in WordPress and I think it still is possible today to grow a successful business using that model but now more than ever I think there's an opportunity if it's right for your business to decide to raise capital and so there are a few key steps I'll talk about here the first one is to identify the right type > (4:33:09) of investor I talked a little bit about this I touched a little bit about this earlier but we talked about Angel Investors you know investment funds strategic investors um so there are types in kind of that way in terms of like who they who they are and which one is going to be uh or multiple ones is going to be most helpful for your business is going to help you achieve whatever goals you have to you have you have um but there's also an important thing to think about like both what stage you're in by stage I > (4:33:39) mean where your company is are you just getting started have you do you have a profitable growing business today are you you know you have a multi-million dollar business that just needs some other type of funding you know so thinking about the right stage is important because if you are you know just starting out you've been in business for a year you have a product you have a handful of customers but you're looking to get Beyond this very early stage if you go reach out to people who people are companies who > (4:34:09) focus more on later stage growth Capital they're investing tens of millions of dollars in businesses that already have meaningful lots of lots of meaningful Revenue lots of History you could talk to 100 of them and none of them is going to be a fit right they're not going to be the right fit for where you are in your stage of business and kind of equally important to Stage is thinking about what your Ambitions are because there are some companies traditional kind of Silicon Valley investment Venture Capital funds who all > (4:34:41) they care about are can you be a billion dollar multi-billion dollar company they would rather have a two percent chance that you turn out to be this unicorn and a 98 chance that it completely fails then have something that's a a less risky bet but with less upside so this is this kind of goes back to the soul searching part of it a little bit but like what type of business are what are you striving for what are your goals and Ambitions will also help you align with the right types of investors as well because there's there are plenty of > (4:35:12) investors out there who would be excited about a you know making five you know kind of five times return on their business on their money meaning if they invest a hundred dollars they get 500 back that would be a good outcome for them and they hope that every one of their Investments succeeds and you know returns some sort of capital but if you go talk to Andresen Horowitz or Sequoia capital or some of these you know kind of traditional Venture Capital funds that would be completely not interested in a business like that so really thinking > (4:35:40) about like where you want to take the business will help you to find the right types of investors to you know kind of their ambition from an investment standpoint is aligned with what you're trying to do and then you have to build a pitch and this isn't I I think there's an exercise around building a slide deck and that's not that's not specifically what I'm talking about here I mean what's your story like why do you uh what has brought you to where you are today what is where where is where where do > (4:36:11) you hope to achieve your business what success have you had so far we talked about those proof points whether it's marketing or other other uh uses of the capital but like how have you what what success have you been able to demonstrate today and where do you want to take the business and why is it a big opportunity why is it an opportunity that somebody should be excited about investing now and I think equally important to this is the person behind it right you your team the people behind it I should say > (4:36:39) because um that is when you talk to when I've talked to like various investors it is almost always the number one criteria it's the person right they want to see a big opportunity they want to see some traction but without a doubt they have to believe that you and the team are able to kind of actually achieve and execute on this business yeah I was talking to someone just the other day he was talking about hey I really think this is a good opportunity but I'm not actually sure if this team is the right team to go after it to be > (4:37:13) successful and so you are selling yourself just as much as you are selling your business and the opportunity in the market you're you're going after and lastly it's about making connections so it's I think people you hear this a lot that it's it's largely about you know there's there's always a important element of you know kind of making connections and networking but getting out there talking to people finding introductions um meeting different people telling your story this is why it's important to have that > (4:37:45) pitch that's why I put Pitch is the number two uh before the connections is really thinking through what that story is can help you to tell that story find new people who with whom that resonates and you have to make those connections because again it comes back to I mentioned trust before people have to trust that you're going to be a good custodian of their investment and they have to believe in you as a person and you as a t Collective team as well uh in your ability to succeed so I listed as three of these steps it's > (4:38:15) not easy and it's not quick right um this is a it's another important consideration thinking about um whether you should raise capital is the time and distraction it takes it can take months and months and literally hundreds of conversations uh for different businesses so there is a lot to it but at a very high level these are the steps that I would uh recommend taking if you if it is a path you choose to explore so with that I will uh be happy to take any questions whether they're um broad questions or specific to someone's > (4:38:53) experience so yeah thanks for having me thank you so much Chris so yeah um like you said there is a opportunity for some q a so there are two microphones um on both aisles so if you have any questions please head over to it oh if there's a hand up yeah yeah if you can please yes I will hide over here sorry yeah it's a it's a bit asking a question is a bit of a show itself anyway um the kind of person or business that could go to a level that is a multi-billion one yes are there some basic traits um and either the company or the person > (4:39:56) that runs or the team that runs the company have to you know abide to in order to achieve that level of are there some basic traits I'm not talking yeah of course I think yeah I would say it's a good question because most companies never reach anywhere close to that right that's why they're called unicorns they're kind of these are companies that have been massively successful and you know kind of exceed 99. > (4:40:28) 9 of all their outcomes out there so I think it's uh uh there's a whole industry of venture capital around trying to identify these companies and look for those traits like you said I think from a company standpoint the number one thing um as you think about the how big the company can go is how big the market is so how big the opportunity is and we're fortunate in WordPress in this broad ecosystem because WordPress Powers you know 40 some odd percent of the web depending on what you look at you know it's a huge opportunity there's a huge > (4:40:55) Market there but you need to think about your specific opportunity and what that what that looks like if today you know the entire Market is only 500 million dollars then obviously it's really hard for you to grow meaningfully beyond that unless you're kind of creating a whole new category and evangelizing something so the first thing that people will look at oh when thinking about like the opportunity and the chances of becoming this multi-billion dollar company is the market um and this may be one kind of > (4:41:25) clarification qualification on that is it could be you know you could get there in different steps right you could have initial product and offering that is maybe you know kind of at one level but then you could have a path to potentially expanding that offering to then go after an even larger market so besides the market is the is one of the elements and then when it comes to the person it's the ambition very frankly it's not for everyone that's not what Everyone likes to do it might be easy to > (4:41:53) sit here and think of I could Snap My Fingers have a billion dollar company of course who you know maybe lots of people would say they want that but the work it's going to take and the risk that's involved with kind of striving for that level I think is it comes down to kind of the ambition what that person's looking to do and so I think reflecting yourself and trying to think about if that's what if that's the life you want to have for yourself not the outcome but all the work it takes to get there would > (4:42:21) be the the second thing I think about thank you very much yeah thank you I think we've got a few more over there yeah hi I'm Tom uh would you say that Europeans are much more modest in their Ambitions and I'm asking that because you know back in the day we raised a seed round of you know 100K or so and then I would read on TechCrunch that our American counterparts would raise like a 2. > (4:42:51) 5 mil pre-seed round right so there's some kind of disconnected and difference in I don't know our raising culture or our expectations so what's your comment on that yeah I think traditionally that's been true yeah historically there's been a difference between you know kind of geographies and it's been a combination of maybe the pitch or the story you know the ambition part of it it's also access to Capital right so there was a lot more funds coming into some of the large investment areas within the United > (4:43:24) States there's just more money available essentially so people were willing to make bigger Investments um and you talk about the difference between geography I think the same has also been true thinking about WordPress actually right like what is often has been a large round um for a WordPress company would be considered a very tiny one for a software company out in the non-wordpress ecosystem and I don't actually necessarily think that's a bad thing right I I don't think that the size of the round is something that > (4:43:55) you know is a bragging point you know right it's what you do with it and it's what you're actually able to go achieve and so in many ways you could say raising a smaller amount of capital and still succeeding is better better for you the investors Etc so um I don't know that like one's necessarily better the other but there has been that difference I think at a very anecdotal level I think it's changing as you know more investors are willing to make uh Investments outside of specific geographic regions so many U.S investors > (4:44:26) are able to make investments outside of the United States these days so I think that's changing a little bit but I also don't think it's like the primary metric right if you can raise a hundred thousand dollars then that can fuel your next stage of growth and set you up for Success then you should you should do that right you shouldn't raise two and a half million dollars if you don't need it so yeah hello uh thank you for presentation really good um I have a question like I'm really like have zero information about you > (4:44:56) know investors and this stuff uh the question is uh could you please share some tips places where to find U.S investors for the European company yeah so the first thing you can do this is a US investor but you can go to the Amelia Capital Booth I hear by the way they're giving out 10 10 euro notes as swag so definitely to go check it out um it's just a rumor so don't don't find me if that's not true but um but you know I think you know it is always a challenge if you're reaching out to people cold right > (4:45:30) with no introduction they don't know you're sending an email it may be you know sometimes it works out sometimes you can send the perfect email someone happens to read it they choose to talk to you and it works out magically but the it's it's it's very very hard to make that work really you know um so the best way is to try to make connections to get there and you may not have deep connections to U. > (4:45:54) S investors or any investors maybe right um so that's where it comes down to like telling your story and making any connection right like meeting people at a word Camp who then may be excited about what you're doing and maybe they're not an investor but maybe they know someone who would also maybe be excited about what you're doing kind of even if it takes multiple chains multiple kind of links steps to get there um that's by far the most effective way I can't think of a single investor that we've brought on is > (4:46:23) extendify or even in my kind of past experience where we didn't have some sort of connection um so yeah that that I mean it's it's not the I know it's it's certainly a challenge it's not easy to do that um but sometimes all it takes is finding one person you know who's excited about what you're doing who can then connect you to one other person so and I would say we've had my co-founder Arthur and I like probably hundreds in the hundreds of conversations not with specific investors but telling our story right > (4:46:57) and so the majority of them don't work out they don't turn into anything and so I wouldn't get discouraged thinking oh I found this person but then they never ended up connecting me to someone so you just have to kind of keep putting in that effort to networking and making those connections and telling telling your story cool thanks yeah good luck hi and thank you for all the information yeah I wanted to ask if there is some good way to estimate for example if there is an investor for your company if > (4:47:24) it's an angel investor let's say how much percentage would you think it's a good one to give to the investor or in the case of a strategic investor or how do you estimate how much is fair enough that's a very very good question um and with every good question it comes with a standard answer of like it depends right it's not there's not like a generic there's not a um but it's something that is the reason it's it's a question it's a very good question is because oftentimes it's not > (4:47:54) uh this information isn't very public right people talk about uh they maybe they raise some Capital but the details of it aren't shared publicly so you don't have this you know kind of these examples of what's common what makes sense for different types of businesses um but the the two things that it really depends on is one how much Capital you're kind of bringing in and two like how kind of the belief of how valuable the business is right both today and where it can go in the future because the very simple equation > (4:48:27) is right if someone puts in a hundred thousand dollars and they believe the business is worth a million dollars then they should own 10 of that business right you kind of think about it as as that basic math there um so in some ways the value is how good you can sell it right and maybe even how much interest there is right so if you have multiple different options that's always better than you know kind of having one uh person or fund or firm or anything that's that you could go after I would say broadly though to give you a > (4:48:56) sense like kind of for an early stage like a first investor you probably could expect whether it's an individual or a collect group of different investors anywhere from like five to maybe upwards of like 30 25 30 25 30 would probably be pretty high five would probably be on the lower side of things so something in that range would be a common uh amount but but again it all comes down to like how well you can sell yourself in your company kind of essentially right so thank you thank you for your thoughts yeah > (4:49:31) if you had a million dollars and you had to invest that in WordPress where would you I would invest in extendify but if assuming that that wasn't what you were wondering about um I mean it is that is the opportunity that I'm excited about the most right it's kind of helping the experience especially the initial experience and the ongoing experience with uh with WordPress I think I would invest it in a company that uh has a clear distribution strategy right so it goes beyond just having a good product but is there some > (4:50:03) unique way to get uh distribution and kind of growth for the business so uh today I'm quite like the path we're taking is selling in and kind of going through the hosting Channel which I think is interesting and under under tapped today so if there are I think there are handful of Solutions in both the security space performance space that are also doing that and have found good success so I think would be a company like that patch stack object cash Pro these are some companies that have kind of taken that approach and > (4:50:35) um I think have a bright future so yeah all right thank you very much everyone just give it up one more time first thank you so much okay so while uh everybody's trying to run away I will just try to make some quick announcements again um so uh in your Swag Bags if you guys were also maybe a little bit confused about what those postcards were about uh it is a word Camp card game and uh there are it says for me to remind the rules but I feel like it's Whose Line Is It Anyways and there are no rules uh so uh > (4:51:13) there are some kind of things that you can do you're supposed to mingle Network try to trade your cars get all of the cards as Collectibles um specifically for this word Camp Europe 2023 but you do have to do something to get the next postcard so you will have to go to the community booth and answer this question so the second question for today is in how many languages is WordPress translated into so if you go check out the community Booth talk to some of the volunteers and you provide them that answer you'll get > (4:51:48) another WordPress postcard and then yeah and you can also ask them what the first one was from the day from earlier today and get to the sixth one so all right thank you guys we have another uh panel starting at three so see you guys then I don't need a clap is doing oh thank you thank you for that > (5:10:29) yeah okay [Applause] okay so I will make this as quickly as possible because we have an awesome panel for you guys so we want to I want to leave as much time for them so just a few quick announcements uh just remember at the middle of the oh I'm Emma by the way I'm the MC I am just skipping right over that yeah if you have any questions ask me or anybody else in a blue shirt um the easiest way to find them is at the center of the Expo there is that place where you guys got your Swag Bags um there's also the lost and found there > (5:11:04) and infodesk everything all questions I don't know even like philosophical questions you could go for it there sure why not um and uh yeah so I will uh just make this brief and introduce our host and he will take it from there with the panel uh welcome to the stage Jonathan thank you Emma and I'm happy to announce our panelists we have Rosalind Lavery from woocommerce we have Miriam Schwab from Elementor and James Giroux from Team WP this is a really cool space we've got some volume to it this would be > (5:11:52) fantastic so we're here today to talk about Partnerships I want to give a little bit of context for this WordPress as we know is this it's a big decentralized ecosystem there's a lot of players coming to a word camp like this is a great way to get a sense of just like how big our ecosystem is and this is still just a small part of it and one of the best ways that we find to grow in this ecosystem is through Partnerships and then putting this together I wanted to give you guys a chance to hear from > (5:12:20) people who have a lot of experience in Partnerships and we have a couple things we want to accomplish we want to give you a better sense of what's possible like open you to new ideas about Partnerships give you a chance to hear from each of them with some guidance on what to look for in a good partnership what are some of the opportunities and challenges and then ultimately what we're hoping to do is give you some takeaways that inspire you to go out and work on Partnerships of your own so Let's uh let's go ahead and get started > (5:12:49) so Roslyn you uh just a little bit of context for your background you've you're not a stranger to Wordpress you've been in the space for a long time can you just give folks a little bit of context of where you started and what you do now so cool everyone I so I started I had to go check this I started working with WordPress in 2009. > (5:13:11) and spent a number of years a few years building WordPress science and then a number of years building woocommerce sites it was quite exciting and I was in South Africa at the time and it was very exciting at the time because there were a lot of people asking for how do we make this give us money kind of thing you know so that was quite fun and then I worked at some payment companies in BD and partnership roles for a few years and now I am part of the payment partnership team at with Commerce and looking at our payment Partnerships as > (5:13:45) well as starting to consider our payment program more broadly within the company one thing I'm curious about is have you noticed anything so there's the way that we do Partnerships in WordPress and I think woocommerce is a great example is a much more mature and general program compared to like what a lot of folks are doing but you also have experience in the world like outside and like the the payment space Etc when you like how would you just how how well developed do you feel like the partnership stuff is > (5:14:12) in the WordPress space today in WordPress in general I think to me it's almost intrinsically part of it because we're an ecosystem every like nothing works individually nothing works on its own it all is about how we work together and I think the whole nature of Wordpress in itself is a bit of a partnership yes you know so I I think the whole ecosystem is kind of designed perfectly for Partnerships um whether we are that developed in figuring out how we formalize that a little bit more I think is potentially > (5:14:48) where there's growth still to be seen but I think it is part of our ethos it's it's like we're we're well set up for it and the growth part is what a lot of what I've been noticing is where it makes sense to people maybe they just haven't been curious enough or they're intimidating just like where do I start but there's a general Readiness in the space for it Miriam so you are also no stranger to Wordpress you've seen and experience a lot for those who don't know can you give us a little bit of > (5:15:13) your background and what you're doing now sure so I started working with WordPress about 15 16 years ago when I founded a WordPress development agency uh based in Israel we worked with leading Israeli tech companies and large organizations building custom implementations for them on WordPress um through the years I came to be familiar with all of the benefits and some of the disadvantages of working with WordPress particularly around performance scaling security and try to look for solutions for that and in the > (5:15:44) end came to the conclusion um that publishing site WordPress sites in a static format would solve all of that and I founded a company called stratic worked on that for quite a few years and it was acquired a year ago by Elementor so now I'm at elementary and I have a relatively new position there as head of Wordpress relations so in my agency and at stratic and at elementary I've had different types of experience and interactions around Partnerships and one of the things I love too is you've also seen a gamut having both been on > (5:16:19) the hosting side of things and Elementor is a massive plug-in in the space with its own really ecosystem around it as well so you get this you've had a very rich sort of diverse range of experiences on that front yeah depending on where you are at within our ecosystem within WordPress Partnerships might look a little differently to you whether you know there's many agencies here who are working Partnerships as well or if you're a product company or hosting company um or a company like Elementor where > (5:16:47) it's a there's a plug-in and there's hosting and there's static now um and like you said Elementor is very interesting because it has a very large ecosystem around it wow I can't remember the number of plugins I think there might be like something like a thousand extensions I'm just focused on that yeah built just for Elementor which is crazy and some of those uh extensions and and plugins are generating serious Revenue so it's like a mini ecosystem I think it's worth saying too and well just to > (5:17:13) plant the seed broadly that Partnerships is a very encompassing term that can mean a lot of different things right like that's part of what you're alluding to there is like the way the Elementor would do it might be different than what a hosting company would do versus a small agency like Partnerships is relevant and just the seat I want to plant with you broadly is don't just assume what it means like for some some people partnership is oh we're going to have an affiliate arrangement and generally versus all the way to like a > (5:17:37) very deep integration and one of the examples is paperwork being signed or not that's one of the like one of the uh turning points where at least in general I find it's okay now it's more serious right I think um what you were saying about WordPress like the nature of our ecosystem being one that kind of uh just developed Partnerships in and of itself so I think Elementary is a good example of that because Elementor was developed to be extensible yes right and actually I was just talking to someone who used > (5:18:01) to extend plugins and was working with Elementor and he was so thrilled with elementor's documentation as a developer so from the beginning if you're building a product and you build it so that others can build on top of it and around it yes then you're already creating a form of Partnerships by actually just almost not doing anything yep so yeah facilitating that yeah so James you you've had quite the background in WordPress as well and you've had us like an especially special way of seeing like > (5:18:28) the partnership side of the ecosystem growth please tell us a little bit about where when WordPress came into the radar for you what that looked like and what you're doing today yeah yeah I have been in the WordPress space almost as long as Miriam actually about 14 15 years it started out running my own little agency I did some product work for page lines theme back in the day for those of you who may remember one of the first page Builders building themes and plugins there and then got hired on actually as > (5:18:54) their director of operations and doing Community Management before making the leap to envato where I was for a while as the author engagement lead that was kind of my my main role working with all 60 000 of the independent creators in the envato ecosystem including many WordPress developers yeah we talked about this so this is it's interesting too because of the timing like Partnerships as a concept hadn't really been formalized right so it was author engagement yeah author engagement so I mean if you think about it's sort of > (5:19:28) like a mashup of Partnerships and Community engagement and Community Management because so much of what we do working with at scale with so many independent creators is community right just like in WordPress and so you're navigating a lot of the the challenges and opportunities that come along with that um I also worked at gravity forms which is a plug-in many people may know in the space and most recently was at Stellar WP and what are you doing now what am I doing now now I uh in the last 18 20 weeks have been going uh full steam into > (5:20:03) team WP which is a team and culture platform for WordPress companies James one of the things I loved about the work you did with envato early on is like you're very much getting into and this is General about Partnerships it's work that really affects people's livelihoods when it goes well it makes it it's fantastic when it doesn't like a strong partnership can be can make all the difference in a business and it's all one of the things that's we can sometimes just say oh it's business > (5:20:30) but Partnerships is also very much about the relationships and like how well people fit together there's a cultural aspect to it as well so you guys we have a lot of perspective that we can draw from here what I want to start with is talk a bit about Partnerships as a concept and the first question I'll start with you Rosalind is when you think about Partnerships for those who like so first I agree that like it's a general way that we kind of do things in WordPress but now when I when for purposes of this discussion I'm > (5:20:59) talking about like more formal especially on the like commercial and the business side of things like we're growing together in a partnership so that's the context for it from your perspective like what are some of the benefits and trade-offs that that folks should be aware of when they're thinking about Partnerships I think that's it's always so Broad and this is this is kind of because it depends how you've designed your Partnerships or kind of what you're wanting to get out of it I I always see > (5:21:27) Partnerships as being a balance it to me I sort of like I don't really put Affiliates into a partnership Concept in my mind because to me that's often a lot more one way yeah can you just touch on that for a moment because I think that's an important concept like people a lot of times I've heard multiple oh I have Affiliates it's like what's that the one-way versus two-way and the way that I see it is that the the definition of partnership means that there has to be benefit going both directions > (5:21:56) and kind of similar benefit going back and forth between both sides so Affiliates is a lot more a lot of the time is kind of based I see it as being a little bit more of a a one-way benefit in a way that is then compensated yes and that's a bit of a transaction that is there's something going one way and we're paying for it in the other direction but it's almost more like a sale yes and less like I am trading with you and I am I'm giving something and it's coming back but together we're > (5:22:29) growing more than what we would if we were individually selling those things to different people or something it's a bit harder to but there's it's a bit of the you know one plus one is more than two kind of so and so one of the clear benefits if you're if it's two ways that you're growing together your interests are aligned what's one of what's a trade-off like what's a downside of that level of like you're you're both working closely together I think aware of when you are building > (5:22:55) Partnerships is how you manage the competition behind that because naturally what ends up happening is you start building Partnerships is it becomes a question of well what you're doing is you making something more together than you would individually but now it means that you're growing differently to how you are to the rest of the ecosystem and particularly I think when you're in a space of an ecosystem you're now starting to elevate particular people or particular Partnerships and how do you make sure that you're > (5:23:23) still growing the broader ecosystem as part of that and how do you balance that competition that happens between the different partners that you have um and keep that balance in a way that you don't end up because in my mind as well like you can get exclusive Partnerships they're not the ones that I tend to prefer because I think they often remove people out of the ecosystem more than they actually encourage them this is a key point this is something that for folks who are new to it I've noticed this a lot where they'll > (5:23:52) gravitate towards exclusive yeah and and it makes sense at first blush like why someone would ask for that and but in general it's like uh at least in my experience it is a more of a short term like it's maybe a short-term win but you're missing out on the long run yes and I to the concept of growing the pie yes you want it together be growing The Pie as well as each other's business yes and the growing the pie piece is very difficult to do in an exclusive Arrangement um because I like that invariably you > (5:24:25) know the the world changes systems what you need out of it you almost become a bit too comfortable in an exclusive environment because there isn't in that you know it's a little bit like the what you would expect you're going to get the worst coffee at an airport because you know like you've got no other choice you've got no exactly and I think I I sort of I I put exclusivity into a bit about some of the things so I think there are times when it can work but I think it's a tricky piece of it and and > (5:24:52) a lot of the time for me it's more about how you find that balance and how you how you build Partnerships in a way that shows and creates value yeah that is beneficial to both sides of that partnership as well as the users or merchants or whoever that you're actually doing that partnership for there's always a third party and I think taking that third party into account you're generally partnering to build value between two companies but for the benefit of a broader community so there's always that third > (5:25:22) element that you have to take into account that's a key point because sometimes people talk about Partnerships but if you lose focus on the Mutual customer yeah then it's like oh we have a partnership but it doesn't really go anywhere Miriam so from your perspective a similar question like you have a lot of experience in Partnerships you've seen it from multiple lenses now the hosting side and the plug-in side of things and what are some of the the benefits and and trade-offs especially that stand > (5:25:48) out to you um well like you mentioned the benefit really is one plus one equals more than two it's an exponential yeah yeah and I I think that's one of the wonderful things about being in business in general and in WordPress specifically which is that uh instead of everyone just doing their own thing and staying in their own lane if we each bring our value to each other's customers then everyone wins and including the customer right because like for example with Elementor elementor's market shares is relatively > (5:26:18) large um and so what happens is a lot of other products in the ecosystem will see that a large percentage of their users are using Elementor so how can we make sure that these users are getting the best possible experience we can all pretend that like you're doing your thing and we're doing we're thinking and there's no overlap or we can look at it and say okay our mutual users are gaining value from you value from us now how can we collaborate at least or at the very least communicate around that reality > (5:26:50) and make sure that we're bringing the best possible experience yes I like that James you've you've had this um like one of the reasons why you focus on the culture side of things now is that you've you've been a part of that multiple steps in the different organizations that you've been in both being acquired like there's a there's all these cultural things that often don't get talked about so much that have an impact I'm curious from a Partnerships perspective what are some of the benefits that > (5:27:14) you've noticed like when it comes to the culture of a company when you're doing like so company a has a certain way of doing things so commercially they agree that this is a we're going to work well together and like Rosalind was saying it's going to be a two-way we're really going to work but maybe they're very different cultures I think um one of the interesting things about the space is anybody can start yeah right anybody can create a company anyone can create a product and because > (5:27:41) of that you get the opportunity to to see different perspectives on ways of working and like how you approach problem solving how you approach the um the user story or the customer experience right and so the one of the great opportunities of Partnerships is the opportunity to be exposed to different ways of working and so a great example actually I can tell is a story of envato and Elementor so very early on um I say early on it was a few years ago now not so early but like Elementor had been working toward this thing called > (5:28:16) template kits right this idea of a library of templates that you can do and obviously envato has this huge community of authors that are designers and creating demos and doing all of that that kind of thing and one of the things that was really neat for me being in that story was watching the way that the Elementor crew would craft an agenda for our meetings together and being really clear about the outcomes of the meetings and disciplined around what we were going to talk about and watching that culture come through I don't know if > (5:28:48) that's an Israeli thing or if it was just uh the the discipline is the Hebrew word for that okay that means let's get to the point yeah I heard someone laugh so they've heard the word yeah so so for me you know I I was in an Australian company and it's a little bit more casual right in things like we feel each other out a lot more and so there's that sort of like cultural dynamic as well that was really interesting getting into these conversations and and being able like being able oh I like that like I > (5:29:17) like that way of doing things because we get right to the point we get into it um so yes that was that's from a cultural point of view that's kind of fun to be exposed are there any trade-offs that stand out um I think uh like as far as Partnerships go the trade-off obviously is that they take longer yeah right and so if you are going in expecting things to happen um in Partnerships you have to remember that the partnership is always secondary to the primary the primary thing yep that's happening so uh I want to touch > (5:29:48) on it from a slightly different perspective sure let's so with WordPress one of the at least for me one of the big benefits is that you have all this like people from very different backgrounds and perspectives and contexts coming together word camps to me are a beautiful example of that so in Partnerships I think it's quite natural because of our ecosystem for people to say oh we should do business together and that's a logical conclusion yet they're coming from a very like different context or different set of > (5:30:12) like different culture different so from my perspective I see the benefits of that right because we serve a global audience I think the more intermixed you can be the better what are there any trade-offs that stand out to you from a culture perspective where it's like company a is very much this way and B that way I think and um being clear on what the value of the partnership is going to be I mean I mean for a lot of people it's Revenue right like Roi what is this going to to lead me to um and Partnerships are a long game yes > (5:30:45) right and so if you get into it for a short-term thing I think sometimes that can work and sometimes there are short-term goals right that you can assign to it but um they really are about the long-term value that you're going to get out of it so if you have misalignment around what the ROI is going to be yeah that's something that you really have to get clarity on right away I think that's a good transition to the next so Roslyn from your perspective uh what what are some of the things that you look for > (5:31:15) it's almost like what are some of the the positive indicators of a partnership so you just mentioned like the values alignment or you want some more things but for me for your perspective and what do you look for I think the starting point often is just straight customers because of what I was speaking about like ultimately you're you're really designing a partnership to create benefit for both the companies but mostly for the the end users who are actually going to benefit from that I think at the same time that's not enough > (5:31:43) okay and just having shared customers doesn't necessarily mean that there's a way to actually create value Beyond just having shared customers uh so I think for me it's it's a lot of the time it's understanding shared goals as well between companies what's an example of a shared goal like you've got a shared customer but yeah I think a lot of the time a lot of so I've worked mostly in product Partnerships which is quite a specific field within Partnerships and a lot of the time it is about finding > (5:32:12) shared incentives that mean that you build a better product together yes which ultimately benefits the End customer at the end of the day so I think that is where things can really sort of spearhead the we're making more than two from the one plus one um so is there is there opportunity available to be able to create deeper integration that we wouldn't be able to invest the resources in unless there was a way that we were going to accelerate Revenue growth by doing this and it is a long-term goal there is a lot to that > (5:32:46) but so I think the the kind of product integration layers are a key part of that um I think there's also looking for how a partnership would benefit how you communicate the ecosystem to your customers so a lot of what of what we do at woocommerce as well is using sort of feedback of products that customers are already using and how do we Elevate those and how do we position those in a way that customers are finding them better there's so there's I think it's it's a bit of a layering approach and you have > (5:33:23) to find that first key thing and that you kind of growth by finding you know and I think often the the first things for me are shared customers and then the product and then you start looking at um the additional layers of how you can grow within the company one of the things I found useful because so I agree wholeheartedly it's shared customers this sort of shared problem set this thing that you're doing for them and then I find that those who do well tend to focus on like some first wins like okay how do we get started and like > (5:33:52) because it's easy to get lost into the details sometimes or overly focused on the commercials which are important but like how do we actually prove that we're creating value together for for the end customers Miriam I'm curious from your perspective what are some of the things and so you've had multiple Vantage points over the years of what you've looked for but what in general what do you look for in a partnership or anything that you'd add or things you think of differently so what you were > (5:34:16) just mentioning about easy first wins is something that I very much believe in because setting up a full-fledged partnership can sometimes be quite complicated like both sides can understand and be aware that there's a lot of opportunity there and that there's shared customers and uh just like they can bring more value Etc but sometimes just getting things moving can be complicated and it can even be an issue of internal resources yeah right building a partnership takes a lot of time often around different aspects of > (5:34:43) it like the planning strategy and the bureaucracy so um sorry I roll my eyes of bureaucracy I guess what's wrong with bureaucracy where you can have a mutual win so you're looking for a couple of things first shared customers I think that's gonna I've seen people like oh we want to do a partner with so-and-so like well you don't really have much in common they're focused on the small business they're focused on Enterprise you're you're almost I've talked to folks who've like said oh yeah we tried a > (5:35:04) partnership and you ask a couple of questions like well that was very different audiences so so finding shared customers finding this aligned interest and a problem set that you can solve and finding things that you can like a good starting points like you may have a great long-term idea about how closely you can integrate but starting with something just hit the ball rolling James so from your perspective like and especially with kind of what you've seen over the years how do you measure the success of a partnership oh give me the > (5:35:35) data question great um you know I think uh you know so to start if you're going for quick wins that's probably the first place to get your first data set right so if you don't have any data on a partnership and you're not sure how much investment you want to pour into the partnership those quick wins those easy sort of things that don't involve a lot of bureaucracy or overhead or team alignment can be a really good way to sort of prove the value or prove the kit the business case for why you want might want to take the > (5:36:06) next step for it I'm a big believer in hypothesis driven design and development so start from a hypothesis we think that by doing this partnership together we are going to see maybe an X percent uh you know number of visits come to that or a number of conversions and you don't have to set it big but just see if you can prove your hypothesis and then go from there okay we proved it what's next what's next from there so that's a great way to start getting data and then move beyond that into the bigger Roi which I > (5:36:35) think is around um that the effort scaling okay right so you know uh from my experience one of the things that um often happens is we're already doing our thing we've already got our campaigns going our marketing our activities our products and we've got these problems that we're trying to solve for our customers and when somebody comes alongside us and says hey we can solve that problem or an ongoing problem faster than you can right and still enhance that that's actually that helps sell my product anyway yes right > (5:37:15) so it actually increases as Roslyn was saying that ecosystem you of like no just by having other players other partners in Sharing what we're doing together and serving that customer together increases the value for both and then that relationship can get stronger and stronger over time as you start to see those those synergies I use the word um come together sorry it's a great word so I had to say it Rosalind so from your perspective so woocommerce has quite a mature partnership program lots of experience like there's a strong > (5:37:49) background doing Partnerships so a lot of folks are going to focus initially on how to get started we've talked a bit about that what are some of the things from your experience that stand out in terms of like main like because a good partnership is going to be long term right it's going to go for a long time so what are some of the things that you think about beyond the initial start maybe like year after the first year and Beyond what are some of the things that the way that you think about long term > (5:38:17) on to seeing things from both perspectives so a lot of the time how I approach kind of growth conversations or and a lot of the time it's just about let's have a discussion let's and and this is where the relationship side of Partnerships comes in really is understanding and kind of what I was speaking about before understanding what our shared goals are yeah like the you know everything's evolving in the economy all the time so being able to re-evaluate and go okay well have our goals changed have our customers changed > (5:38:50) have you know like which things have have changed from the basis of what we started from and then how do we look at those again um I think a bit of an analogy but I do some handstand training and I kind of see it as a little bit of it like you're constantly tweaking like you you have to find your foundation and a lot of the time that Foundation is pretty solid and actually remains consistent the whole way through the partnership so yes the the basic fundamentals of like where you're generating Revenue what the > (5:39:19) actual like Foundation of that partnership agreement is is pretty consistent and that's around finding or share customers and making sure that you have um like aligned incentives yes and then beyond that the way that I approach this and what I was saying is that if you if you are trying to understand what you would want to do next with a partnership seeing it from the other person's perspective and going what would be a win for them and then looking at it from the other side and going okay if that's the win > (5:39:53) for them and understanding what that is what are things that I could do on my side that are not a huge cost or things that I'm doing already that would benefit that goal but you kind of have to put the other person's hat on to go because they don't know what you have to offer you don't know what they have to offer but you sort of have to play Both Sides to be able to figure out how you find growth within there I think this is especially relevant like roadmap discussions where okay you you have a current state you > (5:40:24) have something that's working but you're both going to grow and I like that you like this is part of why having that strong foundation of the line interest matters because if it's loose and like you're focused on one audience and they're focused on another then the odds are you're going to become even more separated whereas if you have that same shared interest yeah that's so Miriam what about from your perspective What's um but what when you think of past that initial stage of a partnership so you > (5:40:49) have the quick wins if you think about long-term success what are some of the things that are that you look at as like indicators that this is going to work well for the long term well it really is about making sure that each side feels like they're winning not just feels yes sometimes it is about feeling sometimes it is like in everything but um it's actually winning yeah and uh it is important to keep the other the other your partner in mind all the time and make sure that you understand what it is that they want to > (5:41:16) achieve and also really to focus on what it is that you want to achieve and be clear about that um and then keeping an eye on it is it working for us is it not uh what can we improve or is it really just not meant to be and uh you know parting ways as hopefully as friends which it should be his friends because it was like an attempt to make each other more successful and if it didn't work it's just it's not necessarily anyone's fault um I want to touch on that for a moment because I think a lot of folks at least and maybe it's > (5:41:48) just because we're still learning how to do this it's like you set something up but people tend to not like ask questions or so like like have a Frank it's like oh we created a partnership especially if you're public about it um but in your experience Miriam like when something's not working um why yeah like how do you think about that like it's yeah so actually in some cases I said that it's not necessarily almost fault sometimes what happens is expectations aren't aligned yes and the expected efforts from both > (5:42:18) sides is not um just communicated properly and so uh you know they'll set out on a journey together with expectations that each will do X but actually that's not what they all need to understand so communication is really important um something else that can be tricky is if one of the players is a much stronger company than the other and I mean stronger maybe just like yeah more experienced larger more reasons maybe a marketing team versus not everyone yeah um and what can sometimes happen there is not what you would expect what you > (5:42:50) would think is that that because they're larger they can put more resources towards it but because they're larger they'll they might be working on many like have their fingers in many pies or whatever I don't feel like I don't know what to say his fingers and many some things is it pies everyone wants to have fingers and pies yeah it's all about pies so blueberry whatever anyways so [Laughter] um so the large organization might not put in the efforts yes that the smaller organization thought that they could or > (5:43:20) would because they're big just because someone's big doesn't mean that that's going how it's going to be and so it's really important that if you're like the smaller player to really really make sure that like you are demanding in some way uh what like you know that that both parties are like putting in some kind of equal effort having said that sorry just one more thing sometimes working with a larger entity that's putting in less effort still has a ton of value for a smaller company because they've aligned > (5:43:46) themselves with the brand of the larger company and so in that way but at least in that way the expectations are aligned yes I'm aligning myself with you now my brand is part of like seeing with your bigger brand and just that on its own practically gives me value so anyways communication expectations James so I want to talk bit more about this like when things aren't working um and and I like to focus on the positive but I think if you by asking good questions and by anticipating like how you deal with that so so in your > (5:44:14) experience at envato you were sometimes in the position of having to like disappoint communicate disappointments and sometimes so what are what are some of the ways that uh anything besides some perhaps Scar Tissue anything that stands out from that experience of like when things aren't working like how do you how do you deal with it how should people think about it um I think the first thing in anything is just remember you're talking to humans uh you're not talking to machines and so there are feelings involved no > (5:44:45) matter we can say it's just business but it is just people and um that to me I think is the number one thing to remember and you know Roslyn said relationships miramus said relationships it's all relationships our community is too small to let failures in these experiences get in the way of good healthy relationships so sorry I'll get that rent out of the way but failure I I would I wouldn't say failure or I would I would say like learning opportunities is maybe a better term to describe let me put it a > (5:45:20) specific example it's like especially as a larger company oh yeah yeah well you look at like a policy change yeah yeah you look at like okay we need to make an adjustment maybe you started out you have like 10 Partnerships and then you take a step back woocommerce is an element like all as a larger company you look at this and say okay we need to make a change and that change it could have a negative effect on a smaller partner yeah so we we deal with we dealt with that a lot at envato and one of the things you just have to do is > (5:45:50) um first of all be direct about it like don't don't beat around the bush um you know one of the challenges we had at envato is your Communications are often scaled yeah so when we would make a policy decision we weren't impacting one and two we were impacting tens of thousands and so uh and not just tens of thousands but those are might be the individual authors but there's the employees of those author teams there's their families that you know like and so it's very easy for emotion to get > (5:46:18) involved in that so you need to be direct right you need to be clear about what the change is you need to be clear about the why but you also have to keep your eye on the North Star what are you working toward and if ultimately the reason for the policy change is the overall health and growth of the entire ecosystem or the entire experience or the the customer experience you you as the the primary of that partnership I guess have to just own that and and be okay with the Flack and you're going to deal with it right we deal with it in > (5:46:48) WordPress so all the time right our livelihood comes out of this and when you know our you know pull request doesn't get accepted for something in a new version release that's really going to impact our business we get emotional so it's very similar yeah Roslyn from your perspective for folks who are starting out let's take an example of a product company um if they're new to Partnerships and I think I think uh for especially for folks here there is probably already this General sense of the value of > (5:47:18) collaboration and working together on things but let's say they want to say okay we want to to grow we want to do something more formal we want to find our way to align interest where would you suggest someone start how should they think about it where should they focus their initial efforts as if they're brand new it's very hard to get that specific uh I sort of feel like a lot of the time it's just about being curious about the initial conversation okay and acknowledging that not everything needs to be a yes I think > (5:47:51) part of what I've experienced a little bit with people that are trying to like enter into the into a partnership discussion is is a little bit of that of well we have a line cut we have shared customers so they might you know it must work like there must be something there and you sort of I think Partnerships when they work are quite obvious actually like they don't require a huge amount of digging you know you you shouldn't need to try that hard if you're having to set up new things and set up new structures and try that hard > (5:48:24) you probably just have not found the right one and and I think you want to start with some things more I would say you probably want to start with companies of a similar size and you want to start in a space where you are already winning and I think this is also part of what I've seen that go wrong is Partnerships are not a good way for you to enter a market yeah this is an important point because yeah yeah and and it is because in order for you to benefit each other you both need to be bringing a certain value within that > (5:48:56) same concept at the same time so you can't be the launch partner for some that's more of an affiliate kind of style thing where actually what you're looking for is inbound people coming towards you to start a new section so I think it's something that you're already winning in that somebody else is already winning in to the similar degree and then you can start branching out to potentially working with bigger companies or bigger ones I think that's a great point so for like products like > (5:49:23) let's take small products maybe some small plugins what I'm hearing you say is that they might start by saying okay let's work with others of similar size of similar compliments and be able to introduce each other to each other's customers like we can sort of work together that way and gain some experience and increase the increase the degree to which they're winning yes yes and and sort of if if I'm winning in you know I'm I'm doing really well we're both doing really well in the European > (5:49:50) market and you're tackling um point of sale and the other person's tackling payments or something so you're working with the same customers you're working within the same product line they but you're both winning within each of those areas and you can support each other to make a better product for the customer and yeah but yeah I I think I think getting too complicated and trying to dig too deep to find exactly how you're going to find new customers is is too hot I want to make that anchor that point too it's > (5:50:20) like not it needs to be a two-way thing so sometimes it's like folks will rightly see Partnerships as a great growth opportunity because it is you have to make sure that you've done some initial work that you've done the work that you that you are winning to an appropriate degree where you're saying you're proving that you have value versus just seeing someone with an audience already and say hey can I tap into that without having something to bring you have to bring you have to that's the point of that it's a two-way > (5:50:48) street on both sides yeah you have to bring value but you also have to actually do work it can't be a one-way Street Miriam what about you for someone who's new they like this idea of Partnerships they want to get started where where do you where do you recommend they think where should they focus um I guess one way to start is to analyze their own data and just their own interactions with their customers or clients and understand what other products they're using yep um so yeah look at that and look at > (5:51:18) support is a great way to do that support what shows up most often yeah those types of questions and interactions um and just start to look at that if it's a product that can bring more value to your customers current setup with you that's a great win potentially something that you're not doing um in my experience when it's something that doesn't overlap at all with what we are doing whatever we is and I'm talking about in the previous everything um and then it's also much more comfortable so in the WordPress space > (5:51:55) there is the ability and the opportunity to partner with competing companies and it happens all the time it's just more complicated and it's a demands a certain level of expertise to make it work in a way that everyone is comfortable with it while retaining their own Brands and protections and this and that and clients it's the customers it's just it's a whole thing so if you can start with something that has no overlap in any way then I think that also can be an easier way to get started cool James > (5:52:25) what about from your perspective someone brand new or should they where should they start uh start by getting to know people um I think is is good build building building relationships and adding value without expecting anything in return um when you're but James what if I have to make money don't start with money don't start with money if you're fresh don't don't do that um it because that's not what you need actually um well let me step back from that we all need money I get that we all want > (5:52:55) Revenue but when you're getting started the most important thing that you can get is audience and credibility and in WordPress relationships are the way to grow audience and credibility so finding those people that are complementary to you that are maybe at the same size as you or or in the same kind of like vein as you is good learn from them figure out what the the problem space is like and then finding ways to um to be able to solve the problem together is good I like what Miriam said about not not being you know like doing > (5:53:28) the same thing first like you might go to their party but it's probably not a good idea to to do something necessarily uh with them that that might be a little bit rough to start but you know like there are complementary things that you can do that that can support it so that's where I would start excellent and and from my perspective what I would just add um like one of the themes that stands out just the importance of continuing to be curious one thing and listening to you guys that stands out to me I like > (5:53:56) your point about um like it shouldn't be complicated like it's being simple and I've talked to quite a few folks where there are partnership opportunities that are actually really obvious and they're they're like looking in harder places where and I like the idea of seeing what your customers are already doing because if you're like your customers can often tell you and then all that you're really doing is starting a relationship you say oh this plugin shows up a lot with my customers how about we go talk to them > (5:54:23) and then at that point like you were saying it begins okay maybe we can find ways that we can integrate to provide more value in that context um last but not least from my perspective I just want to encourage you guys to to try things right like be curious start with small things and now between now and the next word camp and you can tell us about some of the things you've worked on thank you each for your time appreciate it very much and uh thank you you enjoy the rest of our workout thank you so uh before you guys race off I think > (5:54:59) if anybody has just a quick question we can squeeze in one or two there's microphones on both sides I will stall by saying thank you with these yeah if anyone wants to jump up to that mic if not then yeah if we have time yeah why not just like one or two yeah sure we can take one or two questions all right let's have anything yeah all right I don't know I guess not I think we were at the time right yeah it's okay but it's okay if you guys have questions afterwards you can uh try to catch these fine folks oh there's one > (5:55:27) all right we'll take one uh who is woocommerce currently partnered with they have lots of you have lots of Partners if you go look at our Marketplace a lot of those people um yeah it so we we partner in various categories payments marketing shipping tax uh sort of the the core the core products that don't that are not part of core of the the core product of woocommerce uh we I guess acknowledge and realize that we can't solve all the problems that we don't intend to so the core product solves the basics of what > (5:56:07) you need in order to run a store but there are a huge around nuances needed country specific Solutions so a lot of those Solutions are Partners in various different forms um but yeah the the our Marketplace and kind of all of the products that are available in there is a good source to understand kind of like where we where we look for partners would be in that and one of the benefits of being at work Camp there's a great woocommerce Booth so you can go and check it out and ask them yeah so cool thank you guys yeah > (5:56:36) let's get one more arrival Applause for our wonderful panel thank you and uh while um you guys are all walking out it's okay feel free to but if you want to stay for another awesome panel uh we will keep this party going but I will just make some announcements as you guys are walking or staying um there is another WP connect session at four so in like 12 minutes um on the trianti balcony so the top is topic is actually going to be the five for the future one so how someone can be a sponsored contributor and how a > (5:57:15) company can donate to an employee to work on that WordPress project so if you're interested go to that balcony if not stay for the next panel oh thank you thank you for that uh how > (6:08:51) you guys doing [Applause] [Laughter] thank you that always makes me feel good and feel like I can't say anything wrong now uh okay so we have an awesome panel of waiting for you guys to um yeah talk about some really interesting things the panel is called um women and non-binary folk of Wordpress so it the panel brings together a diverse group of people for a very honest discussion about underrepresented folk in involvement in WordPress and this open source project so the panelists will discuss their achievements some struggles and then > (6:09:33) give advice to those that are starting out and any of questions that you guys have afterwards we do have uh two microphones one in each aisle so uh we will do the panel for about 30 minutes fill out the room if there's lots of questions please stand up and ask if not we will give the floor back to them and then they can continue with their discussion so can I get a round of applause for Francesca [Applause] all right also have Ann on the panel and Chaya and Jessica yeah and we also have Leanne and Thelma [Applause] > (6:10:23) we already had a lot of fun if you can tell thank you so much for being here with us today so just a little bit of an intro work in Europe is a big event that brings together people from all over the world under representation and discrimination in Tech have been an issue for a long time and the WordPress Community has always tried to bridge these gaps with different initiatives having a group of women and non-binary folks on stage in Athens is one of the many ways we have as a community to showcase our diversity > (6:11:05) so please give it up for Ann McCarthy product Wrangler at automatic [Applause] an entrepreneur massive Round of Applause for Jessica Lee Schick front-end developer at extendify cheers lots of cheers for Rhian rapfeld web accessibility expert for level level and a trainer at Ali Collective and finally I want to see the pom-poms in the air for Thelma Hotel happiness engineer at automatic so Pom-Pom > (6:12:13) [Applause] yes Chaya asked me to do the introduction she said she says that I do great introductions I'm available for birthday bar mitzvahs and anything else huge shout out to Francesca for hosting the panel thank you thank you to introduce myself I thought the dance was enough to introduce myself to Jessica so we're prepared a few questions and we have talked in the last week so we'll start with one topic that we all felt was quite important for our career about mentorship so I don't know if you're > (6:13:05) familiar with the concept of mentoring people coaching them and sponsoring them so mentorship is one of the first actions you can do for underrepresented people in every group and they proved to be quite effective for professional growth so have you had any mentors in your career and what role did they play and have you been a mentor to others who wants to go first yes I had a mentor when I was an analyst I studied chemistry so in the laboratory and what I learned from him is there are no stupid questions and you have to keep asking > (6:13:56) until you actually know what you want to know so if you're afraid to speak out because you don't understand anything please say okay I don't understand it tell me it and keep asking and and that was very useful in my career I'm mentoring now uh Caitlin I don't know if she's here yeah okay guys the new accessibility expert at level level and she's very bright yeah then we're showing Vita for our next panel who else who else want to say something about mentorship yes I had a mentor and > (6:14:42) at the start of my career and his advice was become a mentor and I thought that was the best advice he could give me because then I could look at it from a different perspective so and hopefully I'm a mentor to many of of course the yoast people or new book people and I think that at this no it's not a table right but in this half round I think we are all mentors to each other right yes yes we were um my introduction to the WordPress Community into the WordPress space was through mentorship and sponsorship > (6:15:18) um and I think a key part of it for me was the right amount of stress so there's like a concept of like you stress which is good stress and so I learned something in WordPress and then he teach me something else and it kind of just progressed from there um and now I feel like a lot of my mentorship is at a different scale I've done one-on-one mentorship but now it's about creating Pathways for people to feel comfortable in reporting GitHub issues or trying something new out and giving feedback on on what's being > (6:15:44) worked on in WordPress core yeah Jessica Thelma something to add from my experience when I started working with WordPress I the people that helped me I don't think they'll even consider themselves as mentors but when I look back I see all the things that they did and how they helped me get into the space and get comfortable and start working on things which eventually led to a number of things so that's that was like my experience yes yeah I can actually share this experience like I never heard a mentor that I defined as a mentor > (6:16:24) instead I had many people like helping me out in some way and kind of mentoring me but I never had someone I called a mentor okay and this is a follow-up question would you be ready to be like officially a mentor for someone like being you know like I'm beer I'm Gonna Be Your mentor and reach out to people and say hey I can help you do you feel you're at a point in your career were you I've never tried it actually to like be a mentor to have that that mindset but I think we'll give it a try > (6:17:02) yeah yeah that never hurts to try I do want to call out a mentorship program that's being worked on by Hari who I don't know if he's here but um that's something that I was thinking about with that question is that there's actually a program um being started to help provide mentorship more formally in the WordPress project so it could be it would be amazing I think if you're looking at a panel of mentors for me at least early in my career to see someone like me as a part of the initial group > (6:17:26) of that so I encourage all of us to maybe be a part of that effort yes yes please um shall I move on to the next question do we want to add something to this topic no let's go next so ah being part of an underrepresented group have you struggled in your job or the WordPress community someone wants to go first yeah someone else should go first [Laughter] I mean to be candid [Music] um I think I'm perceived a certain way between my age perceived gender and just yeah needing to be friendly at all times needing to be approachable at all > (6:18:18) times needing to read paragraphs and paragraphs of text and it's yes that is part of my job but it is interesting whenever I'm talking to other co-workers um how they don't get those interactions um and yeah there are times whenever I think it's been difficult to navigate and emojis don't cover up everything so yeah I've definitely have had some moments where I've had to you know say like this is where the Project's headed this is what we're doing and then I've noticed the reaction is a bit different > (6:18:49) um and that's something I'm mindful of like there are times whenever I'll ask um a male colleague to share a message rather than myself because I know it'll be perceived differently and we were talking also about the age I know that yeah we'll have more to say about the topic but you when we were preparing for this who really brought up the age issue yeah whenever I got started in our first project I was very young I was 21 when I joined automatic and my first word Camp um got bossed around a little bit > (6:19:22) um temperatures in 2014 a lot has changed since then I didn't really know how to advocate for myself so I definitely have experienced that and I know we were talking about Rihanna I don't know if you want to share yeah yeah I never was like felt left out as a woman but I feel left out as someone who is not young anymore I'm a baby boomer So within the weirdest Community I'm very very old I entered the very special community in my 50s so I already was a bit older but if you have like an experience in web > (6:19:55) development in like 20 years you've seen everything and then new developers come up with oh I have this new idea and said yeah yeah yeah and and then convincing them that I've been there done that got a t-shirt it doesn't work and that that's quite a sometimes I think that this friction between young eager people really want to learn and address stuff and then seeing yeah this is not going anywhere so that's a bit but what I'm struggling with that when you're older um you're not taking seriously at that > (6:20:32) point and I don't know the solution for that but I think maybe it's just fact of life I don't know well shout out to our blog uh grumpy old women codes yes Rhiannon and I have a Blog grumpy old women yeah [Laughter] oh yeah we can be grumpy together yes and it's just me and Ryan reading it basically but when we have to vent about something we go there anyone else yeah I think I had a I worked in several Industries and if I compare the WordPress ecosystem with for example corporate companies and um of our example is that I worked at > (6:21:26) huge insurance company and really corporate orientated of course and there I had to struggle a bit more of course I belong to the minorities of the minorities so that was in that time that was really difficult but when I entered the the WordPress ecosystem that was a warm bath I really want to point it out because I felt that it was really inclusive everyone was basically adopting my background and there was not an issue so there's also a positive story to share here is Thelma it's after school so the first industry > (6:22:10) that I experienced was WordPress related I didn't know much about that but also I had I experienced a lot of imposter syndrome when I started out or so as someone who's from a very small country in Zimbabwe the community is not that big and WordPress was more European and worse and American centralized so you're going to the speak world and the culture is different but people are welcoming you know so it did at the end I did manage to go around that because of the people some of the people that I > (6:22:44) met after a couple of times but at first it was very difficult to put myself out there and say I want to do that because I didn't know how that would be perceived you know that was the biggest struggle that I had Jessica do you want to add something did you have any struggle of course dude I have struggled so it's yeah I think it's um I would be surprised if there would be anyone with like zero struggles at all who is not male yeah so yep someone had to say it thank you for saying it thank you this also reminds me that I said that I > (6:23:34) would do a round robbing asking you your pronouns and where you're from and I totally forgot about it because I was very very concentrated on the choreography do we want to take a moment to ask everyone for their pronouns and where they're from because maybe okay sorry let's go all right Seattle Washington right now in the U. > (6:23:59) S um and she they her Germany she her the Netherlands I'm a female baby boomer [Laughter] like I mentioned before I'm from Zimbabwe and she hey she her Italy she her okay and Francesca yes Torino Italy but also Norwich England um I wanted to stay a bit more on the struggles but I also didn't want to to sound like oh poor us we just you know it has been so hard and we didn't achieve anything because that's not true despite all these difficulties and many more that we probably haven't mentioned here we also > (6:24:55) had some pretty impressive achievements so who wants them to cook out first ah now it's the alphabetical yeah we've been debating and we're supposed to answer every question alphabetically and I was like well let's not yes but this one is on you um yeah I was thinking about this um I think for me it's recent that the outreach program the full siding outreach program I'm really proud of I know it's been imperfect and um [Applause] I think a lot of it is like a testament to people taking a risk and being > (6:25:33) willing to engage and experiment and a first for the community and I know it wasn't always met like I started it privately at first and people were like what are you doing I was like oh that was bad okay let me undo this um so I feel like I've learned along the way and I hope I hope it creates other outreach program efforts in the future yes I was thinking what am I going to highlight here but I'm going to of course going to highlight the pride event that we are hosting tonight are you going to be there > (6:26:07) and I think it started out small a couple of years ago and it was I believe done by accountable we partnered up and now we have this amazing waiting list so if you aren't there tonight that's sad for you but be there next year yes um I would say one what two of my biggest achievements so far have been being part of the 5. > (6:26:35) 6 release as a default theme Wrangler and also being the lead organizer for word campus Network in 2019 which was a 250 person Work Camp happening in Germany and I'm going to repeat both of these achievements again this year oh wow you hear it here first um my achievements I think together with the accessibility team we got accessibility on the map in WordPress and my my 15 minutes of fame when I quit the accessibility team because I didn't agree with the way it was going so I'm famous for quitting my job [Applause] > (6:27:43) um this is kind of a difficult one but I think if I look at the things that I've done I would say my biggest achievement was being part of the woman that release 5.6 are you going to be part of 6.4 I haven't dragged you into it you can come willingly you know we're a friendly bunch um this is so this question about the achievement and we were discussing this just before we came on stage and it's a hard one I don't know why um underrepresented group of groups of people have such a hard time boosting their achievements and I see > (6:28:38) this over and over and I've seen this over and over in my life and I'm exactly like that you know I'm like um and then it's like no you led the three releases before I was like yeah but you know it's a group of people it's a well-load machine we do it as a group you know it's like oh you're a director at your company yes but we're four directors it's not just me so you know I see this happening quite a lot in underrepresented groups I don't know if you have this feeling also with your > (6:29:10) friends you know colleagues if you see there is this famous article by hbr uh see our Harvard Business Review which is at this point like 20 years old that says that women and in general minorities apply for a job only if they take 100 of the of the check boxes and white men will be like do I fit two of them sure I'm gonna send my CV so you know and then that's how you don't get a lot of women in executive roles because we don't apply for them unless we feel that we are the most the best most qualified person to to > (6:29:55) apply for that job so you know if anyone in the audience also is downplaying their successes find yourself a cheerleader that you know when you're like oh no I didn't do anything they will tell you no but you did that and you remember that time you did that and do you remember that time we did that and then you say oh yes I did and that's that's healthy it's not you know it's not being showing off it's really claiming what it's yours already so that's important moving on to another topic where is our > (6:30:32) time keeper how much time do we have we're good okay no because we prepared for this panel and we're like it's gonna take us four hours to talk about this make sure that we have ah this is a very um Hot Topic I would say in terms of that it's very current we know that representation on stage is essential to Showcase diverse voices do you think that underrepresented groups of people like women non-binary folks and minorities are reluctant to speak at events I'll say personally um I would not be on the stage or would > (6:31:26) speak at a word Camp um if it wasn't for covet weirdly because it actually made me way more comfortable to be able to record a talk and give it um so I gave like a keynote talk at what a word camp and I would never do that otherwise and I think having a lot of that is because of I think just the perception and the fear and what questions am I going to get asked and just all that because I'm a lot of times I was talking about the site editor very early on and it's hard to share Nuance in 10 seconds and honestly having the > (6:31:56) recorded format and getting some practice um underneath me I think has allowed me to feel comfortable even doing this which is something I feel like I should be able to talk about without fear right um so it is like a I do think that is still in people's heads yeah for sure I also think it relates to what you said women want to be perfect and then perform and you don't have to you just uh you have to say okay I'm the expert here I'm going to tell you and um you don't have to see the audience as > (6:32:30) hostile the audience wants you to do well and this sounds very Zen like but feel the warmth of the sun of the of the audience because the audience wants you to do well and wants you to listen to you so don't be afraid if your talk isn't perfect my English isn't perfect and sometimes I mess up talks and people still get a message so don't strive for perfect just do it and practice it and you will very very nervous at the beginning and I'm still very nervous but when you start and you prepare very well > (6:33:09) it will just go right so try it and don't want to be perfect I'm going to try it and get passionate about a message you want to get through and focus on the message you want to tell you want to learn your audience something and they come to listen to you because they want to learn so I think really you do yourself short if you what you know if you keep that for yourself you share what you know and that will get you further in life [Applause] so I have this amazing team around me and also I sometimes struggle should I > (6:33:55) apply for something should I be on stage but my awesome team pointed out that and I think that's a really awesome advice like do it with anxiety just do it try that yeah and then let's see what happens and then it is yeah he'll survive probably I will say there's a cost like my mental health I literally will not sleep the night before like I'm not it's not um even when I record the presentation having to watch myself I thought my heart was just gonna jump out so I think there is a cost to it and I think you > (6:34:28) know we can all be supportive audiences and I agree with you like I I wish I could get that out of my head um but yeah there's a very real like my anxiety will stay for days um yeah yeah yeah maybe if I can add a personal story to this so I when I had my first talk at a world Camp I did not do my topic was introversion so it was not a technical talk because I was too afraid of giving a technical talk of being like getting like questions I could not answer for some for whatever reason or so so I gave myself > (6:35:08) uh the permission to give a talk where I could talk about a topic where I could feel confident of where I had personal experience and as you just said where I had a message because it was helpful for me to understand myself after I learned that I'm an introvert so and this is how it got me started and like going past that anxiety to actually share my message and then from there slowly get into the more advanced talks Telma I I think what I would say would just Echo what everyone has said here and maybe I'll share a bit of my experience > (6:35:52) why myself I don't try to speak at events yes I have the wastage right in the world it's I I never used to do any presentation in school I'll be like I'll do everything else as long as you go in front because I don't want to be part of it and also organizing webcams and volunteering I can do that but I can't be a speaker it's not something that I can do so that's why I wouldn't want to give a talk but I think sometimes there are people that are the biggest cheerleaders and if we manage to have > (6:36:23) that in our community people will be more comfortable to be doing that even if they're going to butcher it they'll be like oh well well people won't say anything bad or anything like that because they want me to learn so if we have a space where people feel comfortable to learn and grow while they're doing everything then maybe that could help you don't have to start at work at Europe but also you can start at your local Meetup or for your colleagues like and don't start small and don't practice > (6:36:59) and practice and then you end up on the stage I also want to say that you said yes without hesitation to this panel so you know you said yes without hesitation to this panel so you know I was so excited to I saw that the heading and what we'll be talking about like yeah yeah yeah but then I forgot that see you have a message so go for the message not for your anxiety yeah I agree I agree it's a great story Thelma because you really said yes without hesitation and like I have stage for either like okay you realize we're > (6:37:49) gonna do this on a stage so but I'm I'm I I'm really thankful that you decided to you know overcome yes and I know that it's very expensive for your mental health and this is also something that so I feel the need to volunteer for everything and say yes to everything because I'm like I'm a woman I'm a bit older I was technical I'm not so technical anymore I'm an executive so I was like I feel this urge and responsibility to be on stage for younger generation on one hand or for older women that feel that you > (6:38:31) know it's late for them to start something in their I have a talk for working for war camps that I never it never gets peaked but it's like starting something new in your 50s one point I'll manage to give this talk um but but there is a cost attached to it like you know I came on stage dancing and being a fool my heart was pounding because it doesn't matter if I get on a stage with 10 people in front of me or a thousand people there is that moment before you go on stages like why am I doing this > (6:39:13) do you also want to just call out um I joined the project much after I think a lot of people on that stage and to say thank you for Paving the way and also I am younger than you and I really appreciate that you are Paving the way for older people in WordPress because I will one day hopefully be that so thank you and may I say what we're saying doesn't apply to women alone I think a lot of men have the same issues like I'm afraid to go I'm afraid to talk so this is like a human thing I think yes I think yes yes please there was a > (6:39:54) clog starting I think and that's basically the reason why we're here is that um is still this old hbr article that actually kind of set the tone for a lot of things if a man has a stage fright and then he applies for an event he has more chances to be picked than us so the problem the initial problem issue might be the same but you know I think that women and minorities in general underrepresented groups of people don't always get to overcome that fear because they don't always get called on stage so > (6:40:49) that's that's a that's a big issue I think um so we are at time I'll take another five minutes just to finish do we have any questions there are some questions just to gauge the the the audience because if you don't have any questions well okay okay there are a few questions okay um so how can we encourage and achieve more diversity on stage Chaya do you want to go I saw you reaching for the mic so I was wondering if she's going to start oh yes alphabetically yeah I think that I've been thinking a > (6:41:36) long time about this question so of course I of no I don't know if it's of course I got us a lot of times to be on a stage and we covered this topic already but what is actually the purpose of being on stage from a minority group like are we just now being role models is that what is expected of us I'm just wondering about that I I that's a that's a question then yeah I remember uh there's a conference called lesbians who Tech and one of the speakers said we'll know when we've > (6:42:11) achieved uh success when you can have like a mediocre lesbian in leadership laughs but I think about that a lot because I think there is like that's I think part of the pressure I feel is I'm like oh I got to be perfect because I want other people to see that like we can do this um yeah rather than just thinking about speaking in general I think in terms of other Pathways one of the things I really appreciate is across the the project people doing the same kind of work in different ways and the more we > (6:42:42) can Elevate that um so maybe you're really good at reviewing documentation like let's Elevate that maybe you're not just writing it maybe you're reviewing it and you're excellent at spotting sorts of stuff I need someone who does that for me I can bust out a lot of content but need a reviewer and I think um everyone on stage has done it in their own way and I think it's a the more ways we can have people be successful the more resilient the project is um the longer it'll last in the future > (6:43:07) the more people we can have contributing the more we can get the Next Generation and the generation above involved um my mom has macular degeneration which is like partly losing your central vision and so I think a lot about accessibility from that standpoint and I would love to have her doing testing with that we're all going to be there at some point we're all temporarily abled and so I think there's a lot of interesting things there in terms of thinking about the resilience of an open source project where we just need more > (6:43:31) and more people from different backgrounds to be successful monthly Jessica I think you had something to you wanted to say something about how to encourage and have more women more diversity in General on stage yeah now you called me should oh but I have notes that's why yeah that's why I asked you because you told me that you had notes about I was just following so concentrated like you have a discussion I was like yeah and then my memory just put it away here we are um yeah so maybe so there are initiatives > (6:44:11) out there who encourage women and non-binaries to like get on stage and do that and I think they're quite successful and I think there's a lot of things going on there but maybe we also need a discussion about like the ugly things the things of me forgetting what I wanted to say the things of me not breathing enough and just talking talking talking [Music] and then not really being able to talk because I cannot get air like these things it happened to me so and it's not very does not look very professional and I think many people may > (6:44:57) be um paralyzed by these things that they cannot that they fear this would happen to them and not do it because like they're scared of like what could potentially happen yeah and maybe we need some more discussions of this because I've never heard anyone talking about these stuff that's true I um I think that in the diverse speaker program that the wordpress. > (6:45:27) org if you go to wordpress.org I want to say learn or training or well you'll find it Google is your friend there's a diverse speaker program and there is actually a section that addresses a little bit also the you know the onstage presence which is very difficult to achieve um and yeah that's that's something that I think it's in a lot of people's mind and again we go back to the fact that underrepresented people feel that we always have to be perfect before we do something and I think it was John do you > (6:46:08) did you tell I think one time you told me you sorry to put you on the spot but you told me that there was this uh you went to a PHP conference when there was this great developer that basically spent 20 minutes introducing himself and this was like a PHP Guru that you know people came from all over the world to listen to him and learn stuff and the guy just spent 20 minutes randomly so and but the thing is that he gets away with it because he's a white man PHP Guru and when women do that we don't get away as easily with that > (6:46:50) that's the sad reality can I quickly add to that another way that I think we could help is to have folks who are from more represented backgrounds to give out their seats oh yeah and to pay attention to that stuff it shouldn't just be honest it really is not fun to be that person or to get the last minute ask when I'm like you should have asked you can ask yes and then I'm gonna point the attention to my friend Aaron jarving here on the first row that at some point you said I'm not gonna emcee > (6:47:29) events anymore because I always get asked and I think it's time people that look different than I am should do it so give it up for Aaron Jordan as well who is a true Ally okay last thing like quick round of what advice would you give to people starting out underrepresented people starting out in the WordPress Community or Tech yes yes so I was I was trying how many things can I fit into like one thing like okay but I would say just do you yeah okay yeah um find something you're passionate about and you want to tell about and prepare > (6:48:28) the hell out of it so practice practice I practice like a talk like a zillion times I know my slides by heart and I go stand and do my talk because I own the material and if you do that it will all be okay um it depends on like how everyone's how everyone's personality is so either connect with people directly like go up to them tell them hey I love what you do or find another topic like you can talk to about the person I'm not that person and the way I did it was by volunteering or like getting a like having a job to > (6:49:16) do and this way I got to know more and more people over time which grew into my network that I have today and this is another way you can do it yeah um I would say go do the thing no one wants to do and be great at it honestly like build subject matter expertise on the stuff that people are avoiding until it's cool I've noticed that time and time again and honestly for a while that was Dei work no one wanted to touch it and so you can kind of build some expertise and and kind of grow from there and you can also make a > (6:49:47) lot of mistakes because no one's looking can I add one more thing you can I think we all should accept the empowerment that you receive yes yes yes so I think that we are all empowered by people coming up to you you engage with them and everyone is probably pointing out you you have a great story to share but what we do we downsize that so if we are open to accept that we probably will leave that yeah yeah we discussed that we're terrible at taking compliments there was like an agreement yeah I would say do it and do it within > (6:50:38) the the boundaries that you set for yourself for your health because sometimes also kind of persevering and trying to do something when everyone tells you that you cannot do it it sucks because you should be able to do anything but your health you know I think should come first like I always say that I want to retire as the CEO of Microsoft I think that's a pretty hellish job so I don't think I really want to do it but I say to myself to pump myself up and say the sky is the limit I think you're right that there's > (6:51:15) something to be said for being a slow burn rather than a Quick Flame and that the Slow Burn is often what leads to a longer impact yeah well thank you so much for being here today thank you for saying yes to this conversation and to this panel it is the first time that there is a panel like this at work in Europe there were other work camps in the U. > (6:51:42) S I think there was one at work in police Bond last week but basically let's keep having this conversation they might be a bit uncomfortable sometimes but we really need them right all right so please Round Up Applause for our lovely lovely team I know I will not say lovely because that's also another thing they always tell us oh you're lovely well I'm a questions yeah we have time for maybe one or two so if you run fast you can be them I told you we had four hours of content you didn't yeah yeah go for it uh first of all thank you all so much > (6:52:34) for overcoming the fear and getting on stage these are really important conversations to be having so you're great thanks um what there are a number of initiatives out there to get um more women and non-binary folks speaking but what else could we all be doing to make the WordPress Community as a whole uh more safer welcoming and inclusive space and do you want to take this yeah I've actually everything about this um yeah I think there's going to be said for uh having resource groups similar to companies > (6:53:08) um so having things there's a group called black press for example um that I think is awesome and I think we should we could have more of these kinds of groups um where necessary conversation can happen amongst the group but then also that can be brought out and advocated for on a larger scale and similar to like make teams you could have some level of um Authority is not the right word but there would be a way to be listened to or a pathway that is recognized in the project yes um that I think could be really > (6:53:37) interesting and of course then you can run into which we were talking about earlier there needs to be some intersectionality um you don't want a black queer person having to pick between which group they're going to join for the day and so I think there's there's a lot of work to be done but in my mind that's a place to start and to potentially experiment with I know that there is some talk about creating um well there was yesterday at uh table diversity Equity inclusion yesterday or today there was a blog post and one of > (6:54:05) the make uh blogs so I think things are moving you can go first if you want okay I'm going to read this because I'm nervous but um I don't actually have a question I just want to say thank you for putting yourself out there and being vulnerable I also think we should probably acknowledge the men that are here today um I think there's a lot of men that we work with in the community that are incredibly supportive of yes non-binary and you know the sorry I'm nervous I'm not saying my words properly but the > (6:54:41) underrepresented groups there's a lot of men in our community that support yes those groups and I just want to say thank you for being here and for listening and whether you are battling to breathe or forgetting your words or not feeling like you should be up there I hope I speak for everyone to say that we as your audience are here to learn we're here to listen and we are not here to judge so please keep being up there so we can be here and learn from you thank you so yes thank you very much it was great > (6:55:17) listening to you and yeah I had today also my first talk or no it was you did awesome my first big talk I had a lightning talk before in Portugal and when I had my lightning talk they told me Viola we are so sorry no one can ask you questions and my first thought was oh my God yay I don't need to answer questions I was so happy so what I would suggest is also to say let's choose the person who is going to speak because when I talk to some friends of mine and I think they would be great speakers but they say if you like could prepare but > (6:55:53) if they're coming bad questions and yesterday some friends of mine they helped me to prepare some upcoming questions but if you are on the stage I was so nervous yeah I think we should let people choose if they want it yeah the questions on stage or afterwards because I think then we can decide on our own and yeah on the stage you're feeling sometimes not secure I like that thank you [Applause] can I add something to that can I add it to Michael yeah I totally agree because I'm not a native English speaker and > (6:56:35) sometimes I get a question in short Irish and then I totally don't understand what question is and that will get very very embarrassing so um I'll say and then I say come after afterwards to me and then I will answer it but uh having it to choose I think that's an excellent idea yes yes thanks Emma is about to kick us off Emma is about to kick us off stage I think okay just one more thing first of all you guys are fabulous second of all there is one other thing that we can do as a community to ensure that this stage > (6:57:10) looks more like us and that is when you know someone who's fabulous but they're not up there tell them encourage them say get up there and let's just keep that Applause going for a lovely panel uh I think we wanted to do a conga line out all right thank you guys yeah thank you tomorrow we have one more about women in Tech right after this one if you're > (6:58:14) interested in that but uh yeah just don't forget to come back tomorrow talk start at nine if people want to join yoga that is at age 20 is when they start letting people in it's first come first serve it's just in the wellness track um and then also we will do a hike today after everything is finished so if you're interested in that uh also meet at the wellness track it's at 6 00 pm and everybody will leave at 6 20. > (6:58:43) and that's about it yeah so next one starts in about 10 minutes thanks guys [Applause] to track two so our final presentation > (7:08:55) for the evening um we have Amy Kamala can I get a round of applause for her she will close off this evening with an awesome talk about women in Tech and so I will save the announcements for afterwards and I will give the floor to you thank you hi everybody hello it's so lovely to see your faces hi thank you so much for coming thank you to the organizers of word Camp Europe for having me and for hosting this amazing event I'm so happy to be here I'd like to also thank all of my mentors and supporters all of my friends and family > (7:09:42) my current and previous employers for supporting me and my career I'm Amy Kamala you may have seen my name kicking around the WordPress space a little bit I've been involved for about five years um I am one of the contributors to the open source project and I've also been involved in word camps and meetups over the years I'm also a hosting rep for the make.wordpress. > (7:10:14) org organization I'm from Los Angeles California where I was born and raised I'm a full stack developer and I've had my hands in a technology design all sorts of parts of the industry and I also have a master's degree in Fine Arts from UCLA I've worked for three different web hosts a couple different agencies and I currently work as a developer for LA County the organization I've been in leadership positions I've worked with leadership teams I've helped establish and Implement design standards build out infrastructure launch products > (7:10:53) Implement policies and practices um develop new products I've worked in project management and business development most importantly I'm a single mom and I'm a domestic violence Survivor and I've managed to build a career while also raising two children by myself the recommendations that I'm bringing to you today are databased so they're not speculation and they're also born of my first hand experience as a woman working in the tech industry some of you may wonder why it matters that I'm a single mom > (7:11:37) and a domestic violence Survivor why is it relevant why is it important to business um why is motherhood relevant and why is domestic violence relevant so much that I'm giving personal details to a bunch of strangers I'd like to answer that with some statistics all of the stats that I'm providing today are from official sources like the World Bank the United States Census Bureau and accredited Publications so according to the World Bank there are over 3 billion women in the world which makes up about 50 > (7:12:16) percent of the human population so half of humans are women according to the World Bank 53 percent of women ages 15 to 64. participated in the workforce in 2021 which means that there are more than 1.5 billion women workers in the world so when we talk about women we're talking about about half the workforce 1. > (7:12:44) 5 billion workers including the employees in your own organization so that means that 1.5 more than 1.5 billion workers face challenges that inherently come with being a woman those challenges include the physical ramifications of childbirth caretaking families domestic violence like I mentioned sexual assault um long-term child rearing that women are statistically speaking primarily responsible for lower pay less opportunities fewer promotions microaggressions and just good old-fashioned discrimination So when you say that you support women in Tech > (7:13:31) I want to encourage you as members of your org and your community to really examine if you support women by hiring women which is a really great start or if you go the extra mile to support your portion of those 1.5 billion women workers in ways that are really needed specifically for women implementing these policies here helps with employee retention and reduces the cost of employee loss and employee acquisition these policies make workers feel supported and motivates them to invest more in the company as well as stick around for longer > (7:14:12) so back to me I'd like to tell you a little bit of my own story as a real world example of how simple internal policies can benefit a business in real terms and by real terms I mean increased Revenue I started my career in 2015 making thirty thousand dollars a year as a tech support agent I was and I am still the sole caretaker of my children so that means that my priorities are a little bit different than that of most men not only am I responsible for my job and supporting my family but I'm also responsible for the > (7:14:51) day-to-day care of my family so that makes my job that much more important and that translates into having a necessity and a drive to do well at work in my first year as a tech support agent my then two-year-old started to cry every time I left for work nothing that I tried stopped this she was crying for hours while I was gone it was very stressful so I added I started asking my bosses for help and my bosses at the time were men mostly and they wanted to help but they came up short by the time this happened I had already > (7:15:37) been in the position for a while and I had gone above and beyond in their words so they didn't actually want me to have problems and I was planning to quit because my daughter obviously is a priority and so they didn't want me to quit so the one female boss that I had decided to give me her support and she approved a remote contract for me so that meant that I could still do my job and I didn't have to leave my daughter crying while I did it fast forward three years I was still working at the same company I was > (7:16:12) working remotely and they had also issued me a few more women supportive policies like training like remote work and also scheduling flexibility so scheduling flexibility means they would give me a longer lunch they would let me make up the hours later so I could go pick up my children drop off my children take time off to take them to the doctor and so forth so these policies really helped me to do a good job in the workplace at that point I had been promoted multiple times and by 2018 I had helped form a new WordPress support team > (7:16:56) and I was helping develop a new product for the company I was in an unofficial leadership position and I was working with the VP of product and the CEO to build out that new product in the first year the product generated a decent amount of Revenue before it was even released to the public and before it was fully developed the company has since released that product and they're benefiting financially long term from my hard work so because of those three supportive policies which were fairly easy for the company to give me > (7:17:30) the ability to work remotely training and flexible scheduling one single woman worker changed the face of that company expanded their offerings and earned them extra Revenue that's just one woman worker imagine what 1.5 billion women workers could do now amazing women workers can't change the face of your company and earn extra Revenue if you don't hire women in the first place if you don't promote them if you don't train them and you don't retain them according to the United States census > (7:18:06) Census Bureau an average of 31 percent of employees at Major tech companies like Google Amazon Facebook are women so that's less than a third and that's actually better than the rest of the tech industry according to the World Bank only 28 percent of stem that's science technology engineering and mathematical positions are held by women worldwide so that's for the whole Earth it's even worse in the United States outside of those larger companies only about 23 percent of stem positions are held by women > (7:18:43) in Europe only 19 percent of IT jobs are held by women and only 25 percent of company leadership worldwide and this is in all Industries are held by women and that stat is even worse for women of color women who are racial minorities only about five percent of leadership positions are held by women who are racial minorities so while the first computer programmers were women there's no doubt that now stem fields are dominated by white men so if your company does have policies that support women I'd like to commend you > (7:19:23) and I hope that you reap the benefits of those policies according to womentech.org 38 percent of companies want to invest in the hiring and retention of women workers so this talk is geared towards them those companies that actively want to invest in women in Tech so what can companies do to adjust internal policies it starts with interviews and diversity hiring practices train your recruiters to pull women applicants out of the stack for interviews data shows that there are fewer women applicants in Tech fields > (7:20:00) which translates to fewer interviews and ultimately fewer hirings so if a woman applicant is in the pile have a policy to interview her secondly choose to hire those women applicants if a woman is qualified have a policy to hire her if a woman is under qualified have a policy to hire her and train her let her learn on the job employees are an investment and you can have a business model of hiring entry level and giving people bumps and promotions internally which ultimately saves hiring costs you can also save on > (7:20:46) boarding bonuses employee retention because giving promotions and training makes people feel more secure and more invested in so higher qualified women and also higher under qualified women and let them learn on the job additionally training employees up and promoting internally not only saves the company Recruitment and onboarding costs but it does support employee retention it creates a company culture where people feel valued and invested in and taken care of which makes them more likely to work hard and stick around for > (7:21:20) longer it also gives the company positive PR and marketing talking points and a lot of companies already Market that they support women in Tech those are some real world ways that you can actually do that it's important to promote women and minorities into leadership roles it brings alternate perspectives to the table that gives you insights into the market which is an advantage and it continues to save the company money on hiring costs such as onboarding bonuses these policies can be used in marketing strategies and generates positive public > (7:22:03) discourse and it also can assist companies in legal proceedings if they ever come under scrutiny back to my story in 2019 I ended up leaving that company out of frustration because I was doing all of this valuable work and I was living under the poverty line for my area according to the Pew Research Center in the United States women's pay hasn't increased in two decades according to whitehouse. > (7:22:35) gov women in the United States are paid 84 cents to every dollar that a man earns so I would be making 82 000 per year while my mail counterpart in the exact same role makes a hundred thousand in the world space that's even worse with women making 77 cents to every dollar that a man makes so there's definitely a pay Gap that pay Gap is even more in the tech industry and it's even more when you get into Technology's specific fields in my real life case I was making forty eight thousand while my white male developer colleagues were making 120 or > (7:23:19) more up to 160. so that's why I ended up being kind of frustrated and I left that position it's a recipe for women and minority workers to resent their employers it racks up liabilities and additional costs for the company and lack of productivity in complaints and also workers could get mad and quit and Sue so the policies I just mentioned of hiring training and promoting women in my minorities alongside equal pay can save the company money in the long run and it also saves in legal scrutiny productivity and employee retention > (7:24:03) now once a woman is your employee there's a whole other slew of issues that she has to face including childbirth and motherhood including assault and domestic violence so I'm hoping to give employers a path forward in investing in their female employers employees in the way that they really need specifically for women according to the National Partnership for women and families more than 65 million women in the United States provide unpaid care for their families and the majority do that while also holding down a job > (7:24:42) so out of those caretakers 25 million women are caretakers of their own children so mothers 25 million mothers in the workforce in the United States and this means that women are doing double time taking care of their families and working employers can invest in their female employees by supporting their caretaker roles outside of the workplace which ultimately enables them to do a better job within the workplace and it creates a sense of dedication towards the employer If an employer takes care of the real life needs of the employee that employee > (7:25:18) will grow a sense of loyalty and commitment to the employer which AIDS longevity and dedication and ultimately reduces the cost of employment long term If an employer makes life more difficult by being rigid and not accommodating the needs of their employees the employee is going to end up presenting their employer be less dedicated more stressed and ultimately seek out a different job costing the company and lack of productivity hiring expenses and training to replace them ways that an employer can invest in > (7:25:51) their employees and build that sense of dedication are through leave programs assistance programs flexible scheduling and remote contracts or hybrid contracts let's make it easier for people to live their lives and handle their responsibilities If an employer enables parents to step away from the workplace as needed to take care of their children pickups drop-offs go to the doctor and so forth tending to their family's needs work alternate schedules make up time later that encourages those employees in > (7:26:28) return to invest in the company and stay for longer to be more dedicated more committed more engaged in projects and it overall creates a culture of stability and support having your needs met also reduces stress and increases Health which makes people more capable more productive and better workers so motherhood is a bit of an elephant in the room when it comes to hiring women and the reason is because of maternity leave employers see that as a burden on their costs and their Staffing but women biologically are responsible > (7:27:08) for carrying and birthing children which is kind of important I'm sure most people would agree because that assures the continuation of the human species investing in Family Health assures retention and reduces Recruitment and hiring costs and the cost of training and this is especially true for women in technical roles who've already spent months to years ramping up in a developer position and learning the specific Tech stack a developer that knows off the top of their head what block of code does what > (7:27:40) where why and how can save an organization days to weeks of downtime countless hours of troubleshooting tons of stress and help reduce liability so if you have some of these women on your staff their valuable asset and I'd like to encourage you to support them according to the U.S Census Bureau 18 to 48 percent of women leave the workforce within the first year of childbirth I can attest to how incredibly exhausting and challenging it is to raise children and maintain a job let alone a career but the good news is that companies can > (7:28:16) alleviate that and retain their valued employees and one of the main reasons for this phenomenon is because of lack of maternity leave admittedly the EU is way better about maternity leave and family leave in general than the United States so this data focuses on the United States in the U. > (7:28:38) S workers are not entitled to Paid Family Leave like at all across the board they're entitled to 12 weeks of unpaid leave and you can imagine 12 weeks of unpaid leave can leave a family in quite a difficult financial position so because of this lack of Paid Family Leave women are often forced to choose between being a mother and working ultimately which is more satisfying busting your butt nine to five to earn money for CEOs or taking care of your own children child care costs about as much as women typically earn so that's not hiring a > (7:29:14) full-time Nanny isn't in the realm realistic realm of possibility for most women this tends to affect single moms more than anyone if you have a single mom on your staff offer her a remote or hybrid contract and flexible scheduling so she can take care of her kids without going crazy multitasking and running herself into the ground offer her child care and medical benefits if you don't already she'll start to love her job love her employer be grateful and turn around and invest in her work and contributions > (7:29:48) not offering these puts her in a position of stress and difficulty and ultimately she'll end up sick and hating life and leaving or if she doesn't leave she won't be able to apply herself as well ideally families would have up to two years of Paid Family Leave the United States and many countries just aren't there yet 12 weeks paid leave is the absolute bare minimum with paid leave not required in the U. > (7:30:19) S the bar isn't just low it's Underground with unpaid leave being forced back into the office workers have undue stressed placed on them both physically and financially which causes them to seek out other options no or poor employee benefits guarantees that an employee will burn out regardless of their gender and Circumstance in contrast providing benefits assures employee retention long-term dedication and hard work and a healthy happy employee will bring more value to your org um okay so now we're in the more difficult Zone talking about assault and > (7:30:57) domestic violence nobody really likes to talk about these things but it is a reality for women and others according to the uscdc one-third of women and that means one-third of women workers face domestic violence at some point in their life so that means that one-third of women workers either have are currently or will face domestic violence that means that about 500 million workers have do or will face domestic violence an employer can help alleviate this by offering many of the same benefits that I've already mentioned > (7:31:37) flexible scheduling paid leave legal and mental health benefits would also help greatly in these situations Implement policies that will enable somebody to get out of a situation quickly and minimize damage to the company offer accommodation programs that provide legal assistance programs that provide mental health assistance flexibility support and compassion trained managers to understand abusive Cycles as well as laws around domestic violence and how to offer support to employees that are going through this > (7:32:13) as I mentioned earlier I was a domestic violence victim myself and my employer directly enabled me to get out of this situation they give me accommodations letting me take time off to file police reports and for a restraining order they helped me land an apartment with employment verification and my boss still gave me good performance reviews because that situation was not my fault and I was still doing a good job if I had lost my job during that time I would have been even more disenfranchised and in even more danger > (7:32:47) and I would not be here today but because I was supported in the workplace I was able to get out of the situation and contribute to the company long term policies and training can literally save lives years later I was a manager myself and one of my team members was being abused by her spouse my higher-ups told me that her job was at risk they were going to fire her because he was interrupting meetings and causing A disruption in the workplace so I had experienced this from my own past so obviously I felt quite a bit of > (7:33:24) compassion and I wanted to support her and my first line of action was to give her accommodations for minimizing disruptions in the workplace since that was the main issue by the employer so for example during remote work I told her keep your microphone and your camera on mute a lot of organizations insist on being on camera and being unmuted in this situation it's better to be muted I told her that time off is pre-approved and that she could make up for lost hours later outside of her work schedule provided > (7:34:00) that her deliverables made it on time and that she communicated most importantly I told her that she had support and that she can depend on me to have her back so she's not alone in this terrifying situation I told her repeatedly that she needs to leave him which she did need to do and eventually she did leave him her happiness and her productivity increased not only that but the employer retained a good developer who was familiar with their Tech stack so make your company a culture of support of flexibility of understanding > (7:34:40) and of care be lenient for human situations be kind about mistakes discourage competitive attitudes and harsh judgments most importantly make sure that your managers are trained in how to handle these type of situations where domestic violence is a factor this applies to sexual harassment as well according to zippya sexual harassment costs businesses an upward of three billion dollars in Lost productivity legal expenses and other costs more than half of women have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace > (7:35:18) up to 81 percent in some Industries I can't claim to have the answer to stop that in its tracks but company culture can go a really long way in prevention to start a company can assure that there are consequences for offenders only 30 percent of women believe that their employers handle harassment complaints properly while 50 have actually experienced damage to their own careers when they make a harassment complaint companies can Implement strict consequences for offenses like firing for serious offenders > (7:35:54) softer consequences for more more mild defenses like reflecting the behavior in performance reviews withholding raises withholding promotions training courses for the offender performance Improvement plans reassignment for the perpetrator and other consequences one of my old co-workers at a tech job had intimate photos of her passed around by a group of male co-workers the victim was given a remote contract so she didn't have to face the men who had harassed her but that was a bit of a punishment because that meant she > (7:36:29) couldn't go into the workplace work in the office or feel safe or comfortable in her workplace no consequences meant these guys thought it was okay and they kept harassing women I was harassed in that workplace I told my bosses and nothing happened implementing real consequences for abusive behavior is the first step to preventing it from happening either one of us could have sued that company and caused a real loss of funds and I actually found out later that another woman did Sue if you let people get away with crimes > (7:37:02) in your company it puts you in legal Jeopardy it creates a culture of abuse and reduces productivity it's imperative that companies insist on consequences for poor Behavior 98 percent of companies already have a formal harassment policy but that does nothing if they don't enforce it company culture stop starts from the top and trickles down leaders can minimize harassment by insisting on strict standards and strict consequences don't make excuses for your guys insist on consequences of workplace culture > (7:37:43) excuse me and on a bit of a lighter note another issue is microaggression I'm sure you all have heard of mansplaining right another story here when I was in tech support as a live chat agent there was an outright refusal on the part of the customers to listen to technical advice from women techs so every single woman in the chat eventually changed their chat name from their actual name to their initials so that the customers didn't know that they were women customers listened to the same agents when they thought they just assumed that > (7:38:21) it was a man but not when they thought that it was a woman a woman Tech Network survey found that microaggressions are incredibly common in the workplace with 64 percent of women surveyed having experienced being spoken over during meetings nineteen percent have felt pigeonholed by stereotypes and 11 percent have been asked to supply the food in meetings again this starts and ends with company culture companies can train managers to directly ask women questions and shut down interruptions don't allow interruptions > (7:38:57) make a dedicated space for women to be able to speak and be heard companies can also hire a diverse set of employees to minimize othering and intentionally highlight differences as an advantage companies can create an atmosphere of support and condemn competitive language and behaviors a lot of why this continues is because males are primarily in leadership positions and they just kind of don't notice it and because it's not a legal liability HR companies don't really do anything about it HR departments don't > (7:39:31) really do anything about it the thing is it still creates a culture of combativeness of discouragement and it prevents women employees from feeling safe comfortable and excelling in their roles all employees are an investment and it's vital that we treat them that way with a safe workplace culture equal opportunity equal pay and an equal voice I'm fully confident that if your organization implements some or all of these policies productivity and revenue will increase I've given you some real life examples > (7:40:07) of this and it's no secret that having a supportive and caring workplace culture Fosters success thank you so much for listening today and thank you to word Camp Europe for hosting [Applause] that's amazing awesome thank you so much um and now we actually have some time for Q a so we have two mics set up on in both aisles if you have a question please walk up to the microphone and um yeah we have about 10 minutes so I will let you know if we run out of time but please just line up and then we have one ready > (7:40:56) um hello hello first of all thank you for that uh talk that's the type of talks we needed what can Europe to be honest um I have so many questions I don't know which thing we want to ask maybe the most important one you've given so many advices on how managers can be trained to be aware of all those issues do you know of any like materials like online courses some like first steps they can take to be aware of those things some some things you can recommend maybe from your point of view uh Tori Amos has a > (7:41:31) non-profit organization to support women who are abuse victims called rain r-a-i-n-n and that has a lot of resources and information about abusive Cycles and there are quite a few resources online and different organizations although I don't know a specific training program off the top of my head okay thanks thank you too hi hi thank you for the talk um we are looking at increasing the diversity of gender in our companies awesome and are running into a problem with at the applicant level already so I'm I'm > (7:42:17) looking at the problem at possibly job ads level um have you seen what have you seen work for job ads as in if you want to hire females or you know any any other non-male I guess option um should you design for it differently literally like colors text copywriting um to get to get that attention of the pool what have you seen work I love your thinking uh well initially having recruiters actively seek out women and minority groups to interview would be a great step in hiring a diverse set of employees there are fewer women applicants but > (7:43:02) generally speaking if a recruiter contacts you and offers an opportunity most people are inclined to at least explore it and do a couple interviews so I would have recruiters actively seek out minority groups what if you don't use recruiters and do your own recruiting if you don't use recruiters you can have specific language um like a lot of companies Market we support women in Tech if you put that in your hiring descriptions in your job descriptions and uh exemplify that you are actively looking for diversity hires then that might make > (7:43:48) people feel more inclined to apply and it also could make it easier for them to find the roles okay maybe talk after yeah thank you thank you too hi um hi bezel thank you for sharing your story I feel like it's people like you who do share that the difficult times you've been through that help us all understand and help other people be aware of it I think some of the stories that you mentioned as well about the domestic violence like I think that if they didn't communicate that they were having that problem and > (7:44:22) felt safe doing it then people couldn't help so I think more people need to share their story like you so that other people feel confident so thank you for for doing that first of all thank you too um and I wanted to ask um about general advice on what other employees can do because I feel like anyone who's in the room right now are probably inclined to be the type of people to help and step up that's why they're here and obviously the advice you've given is really helpful but there's still an issue out > (7:44:52) there like I think you gave an example of how the lady who was being bullied in the workplace actually sort of gets punished by having to work remotely right when instead actually the people passing around the photos should have got reprimanded and something happened to them absolutely this is something that still happens you know you mentioned about employers not liking maternity leave I've seen that I've I've directly had conversations with male employers who are like I'm not hiring chicks because they're going to take a > (7:45:18) month a day off every month because their period pain hurts or something like that and that's the sort of attitude they get and and this is still around um and you know I still think that women especially in Tech like you said it's male dominated and finance all that sort of stuff are definitely looked down on regardless of whatever legislations are in place about diversity and everything like this absolutely it's still not being done so what can we do to address the greater issue that these problems > (7:45:48) still lie in the workplace and they're still not being addressed properly because all the examples you've given are fantastic but they are only going to be implemented by people who actually care and give a share sorry that's right you know and that's the thing and there are still so many employers out there who don't how do we address that how do we bring in con consequences for that and highlight that this is not okay and something needs to be done I don't know if you've heard the phrase that people > (7:46:13) can vote with their money before investing money in a company individuals on the floor can check out the leadership team see if there are any women and minorities on their leadership team and if not then choose to invest in a company that does have women and minorities on their leadership teams and I would think that like if we do that in Mass then that would show companies that buyers and users in the market care about these things and so they would then adjust their policies it's not just within a leadership of > (7:46:49) everything as I guess like yeah how do we I guess make it more vocal I guess that's obviously a great idea that people would support those but how do we everyone in the room I guess do our little bit to make bring a more awareness I guess is what I'm trying to ask if there's anything we can do to bring more awareness to these issues talking about it talking about it in your own organization speaking to your managers expressing your concerns if you have any uh also it's important to praise things that companies are doing > (7:47:18) right so if your employer is doing something right you make sure to highlight that for them because otherwise people get a little bit defensive but from within an organization communicating with managers and Leadership or even submitting concerns like during surveys and other opportunities that employers tend to give concerns and desires could be expressed unmet needs could be expressed hopefully they give people a chance to do it anonymously so you don't become a Target uh and so from within the company that > (7:47:54) you work at being vocal about it and outside of the company being vocal about it people can email any company and it lands on the HR department or another department um social media is another way you can at a company that you feel is either doing a great job with diversity and commend them or ask them I noticed that you know you don't have any women on your leadership team are you guys doing anything to address that in the public Arena and get your friends to retweet it and so forth even on LinkedIn so that kind of puts them on the spot > (7:48:33) and makes them address it be forced to address it publicly thank you thank you too hello hi thank you for your presentation and thank you for your vulnerability and sharing your story it's obviously not easy to get on stage to begin with but to get on stage and share what you've shared really appreciate it thank you you mentioned a lot about maternity leave and the importance of that and you highlighted that it is different in the US than it is here in the EU yes I wonder your thoughts about parental > (7:49:07) leave as opposed to just maternity leave giving then supportive fathers because there are luckily some yes the chance to also be a part of that parenting early on in my opinion the policies should be the same for both fathers and mothers up to two years of paid leave or companies could give three or four months four or five months of paid family leave and then up to two years of remote and hybrid contracts so that those parents are available to their families during work hours and companies are kind of scared that that would mean that they're > (7:49:44) not at their desk and they're not doing their work but most of the time when an employee is supported and given the opportunity to take care of their needs they work harder they're more likely to be focused and invested one other question that's okay it's on a different topic so you mentioned the the need for managers to be supportive if there is domestic violence or sexual assault situation happening how can a manager balance the desire to be supportive with the desire to honor that person's need for privacy in that > (7:50:20) moment right so if somebody has come to a manager saying that they're struggling with something anything in the first place they are essentially asking for support so of course managers should keep This Confidential they shouldn't go telling people and so forth and it should not be reflected in the employer the employee's documentation like their performance reviews keep it separate I'm sure there would need to be HR documentation about it but that has to be absolutely confidential and so it's > (7:50:55) important to train managers to honor the privacy of their employees thank you time for just one very quick one yeah yeah quick maybe I I hope it's quick because actually I I think so uh thank you so much I actually I'll be honest with you I just joined uh at the question moment I'm so sorry about that but I guess you're you're doing a very good job thank you now my question is a bit yeah it's a bit complicated I hope to be really uh really fast uh so starting from the the part so I I'm > (7:51:39) a disabled person okay let's say that uh I used to think about what we mean for diversity when I this is a not really an answer a question but a question answer uh I want to start with the open um a light an idea to think about it I really think that uh inclusion is important absolutely my point is are we don't going to be with too much inclusion are you not going to be exclusion I mean let me explain a moment uh when I I sometimes I I see people says okay oh companies that says okay let's hire people that are for diversity > (7:52:24) but in that case I honestly think that if you have been hired because I you are diverse sometimes it could be possible that actually as a diverse person I feel like a little bad about me right because it's like I have do I have been hired be not because of my of my knowledge of I know how but for my for what for what I am right right and I think this is the thing that we should discuss as a community not only wordpressment I mean as a work Community because it's I think it's a it's really a point it's really a point > (7:53:06) because inclusion is important but you can't uh include someone if it's just if you just hire some someone just for oh is a he's a a woman right maybe she's not she doesn't know anything about uh the the topic in this case cause an issue for I think for the person myself that I'm being hired for that and also for the the company and the customers right what do you think about it so a lot of that starts with language um you well companies should not hire just because somebody is a minority you > (7:53:42) do want to hire somebody that's a good match regardless of their personal specifics but language goes a long way so instead of using for example the term diversity higher which I know can sometimes be used as an insult like oh you're just a diversity hire you don't know what you're talking about which I think is kind of what you're saying maybe not someone that says to you that but maybe as a person a diverse person I can think about that like imposter syndrome like oh I I was only hired because you know it's not the Imposter > (7:54:16) maybe I'm super expert but I said wow I may be uh maybe someone instead of me at this time there could be someone else that maybe could be a better fit for the company for some reasons and instead I was here just because I have this ticket right right so employers can adjust their language to minimize those feelings by making it clear that we're hiring you because we think you're a good match for the company we want you to be here you you are a valued and respected member if you don't know something that's inevitable > (7:54:54) even the most senior developers need to look up stack Overflow and research so it's I've seen developers with Master degrees in computer science Googling stuff numerous times so the feeling of like I might not have the most knowledge for this position and somebody else employers can help reduce that by making asking questions and not knowing all the answers and doing research part of the role and that should be for any developer regardless of who they are or what they are that should be part of the role research is one of the ways that > (7:55:34) developers find the right answers so employers can use their language instead of saying like like I said earlier we're looking for diversity hires changing that to something like we like to have a wide variety of employees to bring more insights to our organization helps people with their feelings of being an other of maybe being not the right person or being hired because of being a minority so it really falls on the employer to use language that is supportive alrighty thank you very much can we get a last round of applause for 8 Kamala > (7:56:17) thank you um yep something that we all really needed to hear thank you thank you yeah so uh that finalizes our first day at word Camp Europe 2023. so I'll just say something yeah I uh I hope you guys have all enjoyed the day and the food and the snacks eat more I always see them very filled with cookies so um either we're not eating enough or they're really good at their job um but yeah so again we will have more presentations tomorrow all of the checks start at nine there are panels uh WP connect is also resuming tomorrow so if > (7:57:01) you're interested in those listen for those announcements uh again if you're interested in yoga before the sessions start they're um it's first come first serve but it's on the wellness track at 8 20 and it will start at 8 30 they'll start letting people in a little bit earlier um and tonight if you're looking for some Wellness I guess there is a hike leaving in about 30 minutes so at 6 20 you can go to the sponsor Hall and join in on a board Camp hike I guess I don't know how intense it's going to be > (7:57:34) there's a lot of Hills here so it's up to you um and yeah just thank you to all of you guys for joining and for being such a supportive audience and uh yeah I will see you guys all tomorrow thank you ## Highlights - remind ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01h3app7c6c9werpd082vbw6cm))