Episode 12: Christos Paloukas  Welcome to Community and Code, the podcast about the human beings behind the commits. I'm here today with Christos Palucas who is uh in the WordPress community, works at Precidium. Tell me actually, why don't you I'll let you introduce yourself. What do you do and uh who are you and where in the world are you? >> I'm in Greece. I'm Christos and I do work at Presidium. It's so much easier when the host does the introductions, but I love as a host myself uh for podcasts I do passing it off to the guest. So, I've been in the IT space since I don't know since school. I guess, but like uh formally since 2010 or 2012, 2010 was an iconic year for me when I moved to Greece from Chicago, Illinois. Born and raised in Chicago. Uh Burbank, Illinois to be specific. A suburb just outside of Chicago. Born in Evergreen Park. This is the part where I talk about long walks on the beach and how I like them. Right. Um >> yeah, >> I'm a cat person. >> Are there many? There's not very many beaches in Chicago, though, right? >> Well, there are. Uh >> are there? >> Yeah. Well, very many. I Does it count as one? Like, you know, like like shore. There's a lake. There's not a There's not an ocean. It kind of smells funny. I don't know. Yeah, I wasn't a fan. >> Yeah, we have a smelly lake here, too. >> Yeah, lakes are weird, especially Chicago. Could you imagine how many corpses are in there from like the mafia days? >> It's like rolled up rugs getting tossed. Actually, uh, go ahead. I was going to say we're uh I'm I'm in Salt Lake City, so we have obviously the Great Salt Lake and that smells weird for completely different reasons. >> Yeah. >> Not not so much the mafia though. >> Yeah, good point. Actually, when I was in school, a fun random tangent, uh there was kind of a thing to Okay, so you know, people get shot in Chicago all the time. you kind of get desensitized to it for all the forced reasons, but it was a thing to I don't know have a shooting of sorts, burn the car and have the car disposed of in the lake. >> Okay. >> Like I mean there's so many layers of messed up on that with that. >> Yeah. Yeah. Indeed. >> Greece is much more peaceful. Greece has nice weather. Greece is nice. Cuts the island. Got the islands. >> What What took you to Greece? Oh, I just ended up uh coming to Greece so I can get some Cisco certifications to like uh I don't know expand my knowledge in it and whether I did it in the states or whether I did it in Greece, it would have been the same kind of story. Everything would be in English. So, it would have kind of worked for me. I do speak Greek. My Greek writing n it's not there. The military helped. There's conscription in Greece. So, if you want citizenship, you have to go to the military as if you were born a male >> for nine months. It was for me 12 months now. Uh, for some reason it's even longer and we keep spending money on, I don't know, like F-16s and our military as if we're ever going to actually go to war. >> But, um, I was I talking about the Greek and the English and the speaking. >> Yes. And going to Greece uh to do a Cisco certification. >> Yeah. I ended up doing all that. I But I ended up finding myself in a relationship that I was kind of committed to at the time. And then I found work and work turned into the military and I don't know time passed and I'm still here and it's been over a decade. It's been 15 years. >> That's impressive. >> 25 now. Yeah, it's been 15 years. >> Um, how's that Cisco certification working for you? >> I was just talking about this today with one of my co-workers. Uh, he was talking about getting the CCNA and I told him that the best thing I ever did in my Cisco career was to stop taking those exams. It was the most like relieving thing. It was I think two or three years ago when I had to give take the uh CCMP security or something like greater to continue having my Cisco certifications and I never used like them ever in my professional career. Sure, it's great. I that's what I told him too. You get good knowledge. You learn about how networks work. We were talking about the OSI model in comparison to the TCP IP model. I hate that like we still use terms like volutric and OS and like layer 4 and layer three attacks for Presidium Edge. We were talking about this how like you know uh L3 and L4 attacks are cut off at the edge but I I I hate it. I I can't stand it because the whole world works off the TCP IP stack, right? OSI is great for troubleshooting. you have to know it as an IT guy. But I mean, why do we still have to refer to things formally using the OSI stack >> there? There was a point in time uh when I was doing tech support uh where and I was doing well I so so the longer story is I used to do tech support for MSN when MSN was a thing um and when MSN was was actually rivaling AOL to some extent you know um as the like the thing that you click on to get internet you know like when that was a thing now everybody just has internet all the time Um, so I did that and then I moved from MSN to basically the phone company that did DSL support. Um, and a bunch of people that I knew had or were taking Cisco certification and I considered it for a minute. Um but like at the time uh we had so there was a point in time where before I joined uh the the phone company um they had given people Cisco modems and so or Cisco routers actually and so it would have been marginally helpful like you actually would be working with some of the things that maybe you would be talking about because no one really cares about the networking stuff in like when you're doing DSL tech support like you're not you're you're not doing networking, you're doing like the networking hitting the the router and but you're not doing any internal networking, right? >> Yeah. >> Um >> so it would have been like kind of tangentially okay. Uh but we were also phasing that out. Um and rolling out this is when like sort of at the beginning of when phone companies were like like rebranding like getting some vendor and rebranding the modem and putting their logo on it and like so was and there's a crappy remote modem that didn't let you do anything at all and the Cisco link and everything in the world. Yeah. Um, so I never did it. Um, and I never actually thought that anyone who did take it used any of that information. So you just confirmed that suspicion. I mean, it looks good, right? It looks good to have a little like CCNA whatever does badge. >> Well, I mean, maybe some maybe not so much anymore. It was more impressive like 10 years ago, 15. >> I thought it was too, right? So just have that cute little CCNA thing with the little but then you learn at the end of the day that like I don't know there was this scandal I guess it wasn't a scandal but more of a realization where large companies like that like Cisco specifically I don't want to talk trash about Cisco podcast but uh you you figure out eventually that they get make more of their most of their money off their huge partnerships that they have like you know gold partner silver partner whatever of Cisco and through training I don't remember the percentage but it was huge like 30 40 50 Yeah, >> was probably too much, but they make it off training and training centers and certifications, which makes sense because one of my problems then was I paid for the CCMP security exam and that was like 350 if I remember correctly. 300 350 euro. It's a lump sum >> to get certified in something you don't use. Plus, the other thing that bugged me is I don't know, let's go back to the CCNA thing where I was talking to the coworker back then. would learn, you know, basic routing protocols and then EIGRP. No one uses EIGRP. No one. >> But it's good to theoretically know that things exist, right? >> Yeah. Not EIGRP, but it's good to know how to work. like they should really focus on well they should have focused on it's been so long now like you know routing protocols or maybe even expand to things like BGP that's widely used but no you have to be a CCMP level or maybe even higher than for BGP to actually get into the curriculum >> and for anyone who's listening who is not following the the rapid fire uh abbreviations we will we will definitely move on from this part of the podcast uh what do you do exactly at at Precedium you're Your LinkedIn says you are a performance engineer. What does a performance engineer do? >> My LinkedIn is right. So performance engineers uh we make we make [ \_\_ ] faster. >> We complex. >> How do how do you engineer speed? >> How do you engineer speed? You start from the ground up. I guess uh by using high speeded technologies or using like if you want to go really technical you'd start at the probably operating system level. If not, even if we have like any, I don't know, machine geeks or like actual hardware geeks in the house, they would probably argue it starts at the machine level, which does make sense, too. NVMEs do play a role. They're not they're significantly faster than like the older SSDs, the solid state discs and spinning discs. They do die out much faster. But anyway, uh the role of a performance engineer, I guess, is relative to what they're focusing on. So at presidity only we do managed WordPress hosting. So I focus on WordPress. So I focus on web technologies. It could be database. Uh it could be the server itself, the web server, whether it's engine X or Apache. Optimizing the actual web server for the specific site in question because WordPress is a very it's a beast with many faces. You can do pretty much everything on WordPress and people do do pretty much everything on WordPress. meaning that every time I get a performance audit, which is one of my responsibilities, it's it's usually like everything from the beginning. Uh, writing something like a SOP for audits would be very vague because then you have to find something and then rabbit hole. Sure, they're all like lowhanging fruit. I don't know, slow queries for example, that you kind of knock out really quick, but as a whole, without changing or potentially ruining the website, performance work is kind of hard. If you asked me like what are the most common things you or no the most common I can answer but if you asked me what are the best practices I would tell you there's no such thing. I mean it really depends on your website. Sure there are again like I don't know be careful with your images. Be careful with how things load. Be aware of what like the critical or the critical rendering path is. Be careful with your CSS. But if you don't actually get your hands dirty, you're not going to you're not going to be able to identify anything. >> Yeah, I think that's I think that's a really interesting sort of take on on performance. I think that's really grounded in sort of reality. I think we both work at hosts and obviously hosts want to say >> that ours is the fastest, but how you define fast depends largely on what you're sort of like emphasizing. One of the things that Pantheon emphasizes uh is that everything should be in the the caching layer in the CDN and we give everybody a CDN from from the get-go and that's a thing that we've done for a really long time. And so to really benefit from, you know, the speed that Pantheon can give you, like yes, obviously we have like containerization and we use Google Cloud and whatever and those things are like help things be fast, but like ideally you're never hitting the application server at all to to make those database queries or whatever. you're just hitting a cacheed page in a CDN somewhere that that stays there for, you know, an extended period of time. Um, and then you don't need to worry how fast the machine is because the machine can be slow and it's only hopefully going to be serving, you know, a request to a single visitor who just, you know, gets the short straw. >> Yeah. Uh, well, offloading things to see what's funny is that like in performance, lots of the solutions end up being the problem in some way, shape, or form. uh you mentioned caching uh CDN which basically is caching for I don't know static assets uh that can help you alleviate like what's going on on the actual server itself but then other sorts of caching maybe like full page caching uh on the edge something like Presidium Image Presidium Edge does uh it's relatively new it's pretty cool with the static and dynamic caching on the edge only tells me that okay yeah you can really really benefit your site if you don't have like logged in user traffic or Right. >> Um you're it's not an LMS kind of deal or it's a WooCommerce shop that's not necessarily built. >> Yep. Those are all the things that fall down. Yep. >> Yeah. Exactly. I mean with Woo Commerce or you can always do like that uh I always forget what it's called the adaptive caching. Not adaptive. What's the word for when you cache only certain parts of the page? >> Cash fragments. No. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fragment caching. Exactly. You can do that but you have to be like in sync completely with the developer. Uh you have to know that like a certain banner or a certain part of the page is going to be served from the cache and you have to identify those parts of the page. >> Yeah, you can't change those either. But like caching is one of the best and worst things ever because it's like the easiest way to hide all your performance issues. On the other side of things, it's the easy maybe the easiest way to make your site significantly significantly faster, you know, closer to the user. >> Yeah. >> That's why we always do our troubleshoot thing without caching. Like if you want >> Yeah. Fix the root cause and then you don't need to worry so much. You don't need to rely so much on your caching. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. >> Uh what's a good term? I've used this in a WordPress uh meetup in Athens. Uh, caching is a smart way to do less steps for certain things, but I don't know. I make pizzas and I've been doing it like religiously lately because it's becoming an obsession. If I do less steps in my pizza making process, my dough isn't going to come out right. >> So, I don't know. It doesn't apply to every situation. The caching. >> Yep. Uh, what took you what what took you into the WordPress world? Honest to God, it was just an ad. There's no fun or cool story here. I'm not an old WordPress contributor. Uh I sure Okay. I was taught to use WordPress as a go-to in high school, but that's just because I think it wasn't part of the like formal curriculum. Uh back then, I graduated high school in 2009, but I think it was because our electronics computer science teacher used WordPress at some point in his life. So, Mr. Nichols. Richard Nichols. Great guy. Awesome guy. Loved him. >> Shout out to Mr. Nichols. >> Hi, Mr. Nichols. Uh, I think I can call him Richard now, can I? >> I It's always weird with teachers. Yeah. >> You get over it. Uh, but yeah, I think it it was because it was his go-to at the time. >> And you were telling me earlier that you're now involved in the Word Camp Athens organization. Uh, tell me about how that happened. Yeah, I'm a co-organizer. I was asked if I wanted to be part of it. I gave one of those like really sure yes. I definitely want to be part of it. And now at towards the end there's like a lot of work. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And >> so for someone who who doesn't know what's involved in organizing a camp um or even like you know like a local meetup, but we'll we'll talk about camps. Um I I've I've done this so I already sort of know this story, but what is what would what does that look like? uh for you uh especially maybe if if this is like your first uh word camp that you've been involved in. >> It's the first word camp. I was a volunteer for uh word camp Europe. Yeah. >> Mhm. >> Uh twice. Once in Athens and once in Torino >> uh that was good because it was all very structured and I just had to pick a roll and do my roll. >> You just have to show up. Yeah. >> Yeah. Pretty much. And you wear your different colored shirt or whatever. >> Yep. Yep. >> Uh now we did do that. We did something similar like that. We did spread out roles. Uh but you have to fill in blanks all over the place. Like you just have to keep helping each other. And sure, there's always going to be an imbalance. Like we've got 12 different organizers. All 12 are either running their own business or working somewhere else. >> They're all busy uh half the time. The other half the time they're I don't know living their lives. Let's not forget that. And then they have word camp organizing going on too. >> Yeah. And I'll be straight with everyone. In the beginning, I was one of the most inactive out of the 12. And now these past two weeks, I'm the guy responding to emails, which responding to emails like for the sponsors team doesn't really mean like, you know, you write a fiveminute email. You have to look all over the place to gather the information that you need for that particular person. So you can be again aware of their situation before you can formulate a reply. And if something is like taking long with this confirmation process that you know is going on with Word Camp Central now. >> Mhm. >> Uh it's our fault that it's taking too long. >> Mhm. >> It's not we're the direct point of contact. It's like you go to a restaurant and you have a problem. I worked in service for a long time and I use uh service based analogies very often. But you go to a restaurant and you're not happy with something or you find like a huge hair or multiple pieces of hair or even something that's moving that shouldn't be moving on your plate. >> You're the rest the waiter's going to take the [ \_\_ ] >> Right. Right. >> And then it kind of goes up the >> Yeah. And then you have a Karen that asks to talk to the the manager and then the manager pulls out the head chef. Yep. Yep. >> Yeah. Yeah. And it just makes everyone's day really bad. There has to be a lot of patience. There has to be a lot of from what I'm saying there has to be a lot of understanding. things do magically seem to work, you know, because we have to do it. Uh we're at the point that we have to do it. I think there's like a certain demarcation point where if you really can't handle, which I think I was there at that demarcation point, I think I was the weak link uh until I had to not be the weak link. And now I'm quite tired. There's still some pushing to go. Uh there's still some there's a lot of last minute things to go and we're actually getting a lot of like engagement from people mostly positive people asking for uh well people asking to sponsor obviously uh people asking to volunteer volunteering seems to be a lot easier or to find finding volunteers seems to be a lot easier than it is to find sponsors. >> Yes. >> Uh Word Camp Central has been very good about the portion that they've given us for the event. I'm not going to lie there. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Um when uh when is Word Camp Athens? >> When is >> Yeah. When? >> November 8th. >> November 8th. Oh, yeah. My birthday. >> Hey, happy birthday Athens. >> Um yeah, unfortunately I won't be going to Athens for my birthday this year. Um >> keyword this year. >> I I' I'd like to go to Athens for my birthday. Uh um but yeah. So, no, I I I did um I was organized I was involved in Word Camp Salt Lake City for for a long long long long long time. I started out as a volunteer. Um and then I was um and then I got more involved and then I eventually I was doing like just uh working with like speakers and stuff and sponsors and then I was co-organizing and I co-organized for two years and then I solo organized for two years and then I was pretty done. And that also like that last year um that last year that I that I organized was also probably 2018. So like just before co so like yeah then then um then co happened. Well a we didn't have one in 2019 because nobody nobody in the community was like able or willing to pick up the reigns after I basically carried it for I mean at that point close to four years. Like I mean it was it was me and one other person were were lead organizing and >> uh the two years before I was just fully organizing but or lead organizing but um but yeah nobody else was was willing to to to pick up the the the reigns and then and then COVID hit and that kind of decimated our like local meetup group. like >> we I we still haven't really picked up. There was a there is a a somebody posted in in our Utah word camp Slack um like last week and it was like the first time like it had gotten to the point where you know with Slack cuts off after 90 days or whatever. So like it was like the first message in the general channel after the the last cut off like it had been that long that it that it had been quiet. Um >> yeah it's it's and it's sad. I I would like to have a community, but I also like it's a lot of work and I don't want to do the work involved in like living in the community on my own shoulders. >> Has it like kind of fixed? Do you guys do meetups? Cuz I know the Athens Oh, this was before I was like really involved in WordPress aside from making a website using WordPress. Uh the Athens community had the same issue like after co we're probably still not back up to speed since the before Christo's days. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, we we haven't we haven't. I mean, if there are meetups, they're not happening through our Slack. There used to be um there used to be like a Salt Lake Valley meetup and there used to be like a couple people that would meet up in like Park City. Um and I mean a lot of those people to be fair uh moved out of Utah. So like that also it's not just the co that killed everything. It was also like I think there's almost like a co exodus that happened too like people like when everybody was remote working then everybody decided that they could like move other places and live other places. >> Um Oh, >> and uh and so that that I think affected things too. But um but yeah, mo most of the people that were like leading the charge for like making sure that the meetups are happening and the the word camps and stuff are happening kind of kind of got burned out. >> No, that makes sense. But what surprises me like I pulled up uh that's why I'm looking around. I'm on the laptop. I pulled up the results of last year's award camp, Larissa. I'm sure you've never heard of Larissa, right? >> Yeah. It's I think the third Oh man, the ladies people are gonna get upset with me. It's either the third or I think it's the third third or fourth largest city in Greece. Uh it's up near Mount Olympus and they had uh 242 attendees and it's got like, you know, some other fun stuff from 12 different cities in Greece. 50% newcomers, uh 13 speakers, 14 volunteers, 242 for a very local, I'd say, world camp, not even in the first or second largest city. >> And uh everything went really well. I was we were all very surprised. Well, >> I don't know if they were because I wasn't expecting, >> but I was very surprised to see that that smaller part of Greece that geographically kind of works for everyone because it's kind of in the middle. >> Mhm. >> If you don't count Yeah. >> Yeah, >> it went very well. Uh, which was very inspirational especially for Word Camp Athens this year. >> Yeah, location matters a lot. Um, >> it's it's like I and it's it's interesting um the word camp WordPress events versus um and and how they have or have not um come back after COVID versus um Drupal events. I'm learning um because I think that for the most part like Drupal events are still smaller than WordPress events or than than they used to be before COVID, but there are they are happening and like the local like sort of regional or citybased sort of meetup groups are like making Drupal camps. Um I I just came back from Bay Area Drupal Camp Bad Camp um last month. Um and it was a pretty nice I mean it was a cool turnout. it felt like a a small word camp and that was cool. Um >> and and there's been a couple others um that I've seen. >> For the most part, there are very few of those things happening uh in the WordPress space in the States outside of you know the the flagships. Um which I find I find interesting and disheartening. Um and and there's >> possibly drama involved in that. Um, I know at least uh in a couple cases some folks have chosen to uh make their own event as opposed to doing a a WordPress community support WordPress word camp event. Um like uh you know instead of instead of like the organizers of of Word Camp uh Minneapolis St. Paul decided to make some conf instead which I'll be speaking on in a couple months. Um uh which I mean I think that's great but also like there's there's stuff there. There's I think um Brad Williams announced a while ago uh Wadadelphia um to do like a small WordPress event in Philly. Um >> Wadadelphia yeah because Philadelphia Wadelia I don't know it's a weird name. Um >> interesting. And uh I think there's another one that was done um by the word camp Buffalo uh organizers that's I think it's color code or something to that effect. Um which is actually going to be like in different places but it started in in in Buffalo. Um, and so like there's these other things and obviously press conf. Um, but that's not really like I mean that was uh descended from uh Pressnomics. So it's it's sort of but like it's nice to see that there are other things happening um outside of just the word camp ecosystem. >> Yeah. Plus I like things like press conf specifically that you mentioned or Okay. So there's the WordPress community and there's WordPress community events where we're supposed to be from my understanding and maybe the point of view of a relatively newcomer is like you know significant from my understanding it's supposed to be a little bit more community- based than it is business- based kind of like the WordPress or uh Slack right it's definitely community based not >> but then you have people turning these kind of events that are geared towards community into more commercial events. Whereas Prescom, they're there to make money. You're there to make connections. You're there to make money and it's clear, right? So, kind of like Post Status and the WordPress or >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> I I really like when it's uh clear when it's clearcut like you know you're there to make connections, to make money, to progress your business. Whereas with Word Camps, I'm kind of confused. I think it's a bit of a mix and I don't know where the balance should be, would be or or where people even want the balance to be. >> That's a really fair point. I know as a I when I was wrangling speakers um for Word Camp Salt Lake City, the Salt Lake City meetups often had a very strong small business uh sort of focus. And part of that or a large part of that is um Salt Lake City in particular, Utah broadly um and even more broad than that, I would say like the dominant culture in the state um is very big on sort of small business and kind of do-it-yourself kind of things. Um so obviously that that filters down into a lot of people that go to the meetups, a lot of people that are interested in the camps are small businessoriented or small business owners or whatever. And so obviously as as an organizer trying to come up with a schedule, you want to cater to that. Um but also balance with like also we should have some dev tracks too. Also we should have some other things that aren't businessy that are like and and how to like balance that so that you have like I mean it's almost like an art to really get the the right sk it's it's like it's like making the perfect playlist. I'm I'm really big on on making play like I used to be a DJ. I if you've ever seen uh the movie High Fidelity, he like you know there's this like >> I haven't >> all through the movie uh John Kuzzac's character like talks about like um how he like like making the perfect playlist is like a common sort of thread and like he would sit down and like just like spend hours listening to records and like organizing things in the right way um to get the perfect flow. It it has to start this way. It has to like then you have to come down a little bit, then you go up a little bit, you know, like like just like making making it into an experience, which I think uh you know, obviously uh that is a maybe a relic of of of >> records and cassettes and CDs and and not streaming services. Um, but like the same thing is true for like crafting a a a schedule for for an event like that like where you have to like understand who your audience is. Uh, and figure out like and also like timing makes a difference. End of the day talks everybody's tired, everybody's sleepy, especially at like post lunch like you need to like have something that's going to bring a lot of energy otherwise everybody's going to fall asleep. Like you know there's all sorts of stuff like that. >> Yeah, there's definitely like risk too. So like we got a bunch of newcomers for speakers and we wanted newcomers for speakers under the idea. But then you have that thought in the back of your head if that ex well-known person isn't giving a talk are people going to I don't know actually sit in the auditorium. >> Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. You have to like you can you can maybe like if you if you like sandwich them with other talks that people do know or something like you can like kind of find ways to cheat. Um, but yeah, or like like yeah, it's it's it's a really interesting like that was actually one of the things that I thought was really fun about like like this the the speaker stuff is always something I really enjoyed um working with like both from from like because this is also like how you're presenting in some ways your local community, right? And like um it's not just we're not just here independent of of time and place and just talking about WordPress. We're also putting on a show for for by and for the people of our city and our community. Yeah. >> And so you you want that to to you know be look good. You want you want your community to to be cool and people to like walk away and be like you want people to come from out of state even or out of the city. >> It's like difficult. I don't know like one of the I don't even know if I should be talking about this but I'm going to do it anyway. Sorry if you don't like it. One of the issues that we faced was not having enough uh submissions from uh females. >> So at the end of the day, the speakers list is going to be, you know, there's not going to be the diversity that we'd want. >> Yeah. >> Because but it's not necessarily our fault. So we want to what the what we talked about was that we want to like take some time during the event to encourage more female people to, you know, submit submissions for talks. I I found I had that same problem. Um and the solution to that problem is asking >> Oh, going straight to people and being like, >> yes, going to people and just inviting them. Say, hey, I'm the organizer for Word Camp, blah blah blah blah. Um do you want to come and speak? And um often times the answer is yes. And that's cool. And then you can kind of curate that that speaker list because for a long time um our our word camp was in 100% reliant on the submissions that we got and yeah there's only so much that you can sort of coersse uh the the submissions and you know because the dominant culture uh is largely white males then the speakers that you end up getting are predominantly white males. I presented actually at a um at uh Open West back in like I don't know 2018 2019 or something before COVID again um and I was presenting on being an ally um and the way that their speaker submission worked and I think it's actually similar to the way uh work camp Europe does it now maybe maybe they they just other things that they add to that um that I don't know about behind the scenes but the way that they the way that open west did submissions is it was sort of like you you enter it into a system and then names and stuff are removed from all the submissions so that it's judged purely on the the content of the submission. Um so you don't know who submitted it. Um and the idea is that that's more yeah the idea is that that's more egalitarian, right? Because you're just basing your acceptance or rejection based on on the subject matter. The problem with that that I observed was that 80 to 90% of the speakers that were selected for that conference were male and most of them were white male. Um, and here I am giving a talk on allyship and like I'm like I I told I told the organizer like look like I'm giving this talk and I'm going to blast you because like all of the keynotes were men except for one. um like most of the talks were by men and I was like, you know, I I think that there are better ways of doing this and I I see what you're doing, but also I have a counterpoint and I'm going to talk about that. Is that okay? And and it was you like he said, yes. Um >> and uh but yeah, I mean like I think I think if you just rely on on the submissions and you don't do sort of your own outreach, then you're going to get you're going to just get it naturally because that's kind of how the tech industry just works. And it's upsetting too like all the other teams volunteer-wise, organizing wise. Yeah. We have a great mix and you know without greatness, everyone knows this already but without diversity you don't have innovation. Without innovation you don't do anything. I mean it's been proven over and over and over. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel strongly about like you know like I don't I don't I don't even think it's like it's not about like it's not equal or giving some people like special special access. It's like, no, we need to just make the table bigger. And if that means we need to invite people to the table, like the white guys are going to come to the table. Like they they're just going to because they're like that's that's their their perspective. That's their their privilege that they've lived with their whole lives to just know that they can go out and do things. And it's harder when there's not an actual invitation like no, you can you can come to the table too and we like you are welcome at this table. Like we don't want it to just be uh a bunch of white dudes at a conference, at a at an event, like anything. Yeah, >> I know. Uh I know. I don't want to fall under any like stereotype stuff, but no, I totally agree. Uh and I mean that's how inclusivity like starts, right? Inclusivity doesn't mean like the doors open, you can enter because no one's going to come in. >> Yeah. Right. >> It's more of a we have to go to them. That makes sense. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I I I think one of my first posts that I when I moved uh when I went to Blue Sky um I have it as a pinned post um one of the first things that I I don't know if you blute or bleet or I don't know what the what the right word for posting on blue sky is >> bleeding. Yeah, sure. Definitely bleeding. Um um one of the first things that I that I posted was um was about like you know things that were happening and and and the discourse in uh the United States. And I was I was just saying like you know inclusivity is not about people taking your piece of the pie. It's about saying hey everyone there's pie here. Do you want some? >> Yeah. Share the pie. >> Yeah. Exactly. I share and actually invite people into eating the pie with you. It's not just about saying, you know, putting a sign up there that says this. >> And if you need more pie, you can make more pie. It's not like there's people that going to take your pie. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Uh I don't know. Fear. Fear is a big topic. I think we could talk about fear for like 10 different podcasts, but fear really everyone back on everything at the end of the day. >> Yeah. >> Fear and comfort. I guess they go hand in hand. >> Yeah. Well, I did save some time uh because I I definitely want to talk about cats. >> Yes. Yes. So, maybe you go first. Tell tell me about your cats. >> Um well, I I wanted to I wanted because I I still I still like uh so we talked uh previously about um like you take your cat camping. Uh and I think that's awesome. I would like a camping cat. Um, I also think that you're a little bit spoiled because you can just like take uh you can just go to a beach in Greece on an island and and then and then kind of be remote. Um, but but uh talk about the story of of how you uh first took your cat on uh on a camping trip and how that's worked since. Um because I I think that people who who like I see videos every once in a while of people who have taken their cats camping and or taken their cats to the beach even. Um but most people uh assume that cats and beaches and camping are not a thing that you do. Dogs and camping seem fine, but cats and camping always seems weird. >> I don't know. Okay, I'll give you the story before that. David DeBella, one of our most recent partners. Uh him and his wife were totally shocked when they went out to the Rockies and they saw more cats than dogs. >> Sure, they were leashed, which I don't know how I feel about like a leashed cat, but my cat was like a crazy cat that I don't know, some family that couldn't handle him. Uh they ended up finding some vet that was going to euthanize him for being uh too aggressive. The cat wasn't aggressive. And I picked up on it through the animal welfare volunteering that I do. and I said, "No, I'm taking this cat." So, I basically stole the cat. >> Yeah, I basically stole the cat. Uh, and there were some legal implications for the veterary in question, which that's how it should have been. But anyway, uh, it all came down to like necessity at the end of the day. I couldn't find someone to take care of my cat. >> Uh, he had gotten much better like behavior-wise. The first year or two actually were very difficult. But uh we ended up going to camping and uh I figured it'd be okay. I don't know. There's always risk uh because he's not a leash cat. You can't put a leash on him. I tried during like the first days of or the first weeks maybe of COVID when they said we can go out if we're taking our pet out. >> Uh that didn't go well for the leash or for the cat. >> Um but I just got to the island. I let the cat out and I was dumb. Uh it took a long time to get there and I felt bad for the cat. So I was like, "Okay, cool." As now that we took this tiny little boat to get to Kato Kufon DC, it's uh down Kufon DC. I thought it'd be a good idea to take him out as soon as, you know, I could rather than finding a spot to, you know, make Cap and then be like, "Here, this is home." Uh, dumbest idea ever. The cat freaked out. He saw the water. He There was like a whoosh of the wave and he just ran up this uh side of this really steep hill. And I tried getting him down, but eventually I was gonna either maybe get the cat down and have like hurt myself severely >> and I don't know, I had to abandon it. So I kind of slept close there. I made camp somewhere further back and I slept close to that area. Uh and I went for it in the morning and I I was basically just, you know, climbing the side of this really steep hill with a can of tuna in my hand to get the cat down. And fortunately, I did get the cat down and everything went well. Uh since then the second time was kind of difficult. We went to Donusa which is an island that's uh conquered by cats. There are countless cats there. And my cat's kind of fighter/killer. So he didn't have a great time there. Anafi was the island that he kind of loved and even if I he's been three times uh to Anafi. >> Uh when I take him out on that one particular beach that I camp on, he's like, "All right, cool. I know where I am. I hate you. I don't know why you do this to me. I don't belong here. Why are you taking me here? Fine. Screw yourself. But he's like, "Okay, cool. I'm good." And since then, like this year, we went to Aavos, which is the most uh most southern point in Europe. >> It's this island uh maybe two hours, two and a half hours from Cree. Uh everything was fine. Actually, he's kind of getting older, too. And he's got FIV. Uh he's got the feline leukemia and he's got the uh it's another autoimmune disease, the gingivo stomatitis. Is that how you say it? I don't know. It's another feline one that really messes with him. Uh so he's a lot calmer because of all that I guess too on the drugs. >> But uh he would just stick around the tent and basically be a guard dog. >> So So basically what I'm hearing is immersion therapy like >> Yeah. kind of kind of kind of just did it and then and then he eventually figured it out. >> Yeah. Totally organic. Totally. I did see some other cats like there was this girl on the on the on the boat on their way back to Athens and she had her cat she was sleeping and she had her cat out of the crate on her chest while she was sleeping. And I was thinking, "Wow, like on the boat, not even on a beach or anything, on the boat." >> And I did meet another person. I just remember this too. I did meet another person that had a cat. uh that brought the cat with them. It wasn't a cat that was at the island of Gaos for camping. So, it kind of works sometimes. I guess >> you there's something that you mentioned in there that I that that I wanted to pull out a little bit is like you did some animal uh sort of rescue kind of stuff uh or animal advocacy kind of thing like tell me about that. >> I haven't stopped. Uh I did distance myself at some point. I haven't stopped since I got my first dog and that's like [ \_\_ ] uh since 2012 I think when I started working at Codex some office down in Athens. Uh my first dog was a rescue and my all my cats are rescues. Uh I don't know. Okay, so rescuing and everything. Some weird stuff happens in the world of animals and humans. Some like really messed up [ \_\_ ] though. I mean even down to like rape and at some point I had to distant myself like rape like like humans raping animals sometimes I had to distance myself at some point because Greek law at that point was not sufficient enough to punish cases like that and we had a case like that and unfortunately the case got into the hands of the boys and girls in the animal welfare group which because you know the courts didn't do much at all other than a three grand uh fine. The law has been changed since uh not so long ago, maybe two years ago. Now, at least fines, they stack and there is potential prison time. Back then it was kind of whatever you did, oh fine, you get a three grand fine and you're off the hook. That didn't work for the people of the animal society, the animal rescue society or whatever you want. And I it turned into violence, like individual violence. And I had to distance myself at that point. But sooner or later, I would find a cat and I would keep it. That's Duke. That's my biggest one. There was another one, Maisie. She's a total ditz. She's my partner's cat. >> Uh my partner, she found her outside of my house, which was totally my fault cuz I removed her from the bakery >> that was across the street from my house cuz they had issues with the cat twice in the same day and put it in near my apartment, >> you know, before we can contact people to see if someone can take the cat and take care of it. Uh, I ended up not being at home the time my partner she returned home and she just called me and she's like, "I found this wonderful cat downstairs and I proud it upstairs." And I'm thinking, "Oh, hang on. What color is the cat?" And she says, "White and orange." And I was like, "I know the cat." And you know, she would ask too, like, "Could we keep it? Could we keep it?" And I said, "Well, it's already in the house. I mean, >> we can't once it's in the house, you can't kick it out." Yeah. >> I know. I know. Oh, it's a law of nature. Like the cat distribution system itself never fails. She I don't know if she understood the concept when I said it's in the house. I think she thought that maybe we can put it back outside. And I said it's not a thing now. Now it's our cat. Exactly. And now I've got two other blind ones. One has one eye. It's kind of a pirate. Her name is Lala. And her brother Mimi has no eyes. He's blind. And uh he's the first blind animal I've ever had, actually. But they do everything. He literally goes around. Uh, so one of the bathrooms is relatively old in the house >> and it's got like those external pipes for uh water plumbing going around. He goes and climbs on those tiny little pipes that are like nailed to the wall. And I'm thinking, how can you do this? You don't have eyes. >> How did you get involved in in animal rescue, though? >> I got a dog. >> You just got a dog. >> You just rescued a dog. >> Yeah, it just kind of happened. And I mean, if you have like I I'm a total softy for these things. I can't handle it. Like, if I ever killed a human, it would probably be over something like animal abuse. I I'm a total softy for I can't help myself. They're they're so perfect. I literally That's how I started. No fun story or anything. No family. We didn't have pets. I was raised with like strictly birds. >> Nothing better, nothing more. I didn't I didn't have pets until I was uh early teens. And then we um my stepmom's sister was breeding Yorkshire terriers. >> And so we got we got one of her Yorkie pups. Um and then I had a dog from zero to some from from from zero pets basically to dog. Um and um yeah, that was that was good. I he was cool. Uh his name is Pirate. Um and uh because that was the name of the game that we played. It was sort of like a white elephant, like everybody brings a present and then you can steal the present, but like we called it pirate. Um and he was a pirate gift that nobody else wanted to steal from me. >> So he was named pirate. Um and uh and then nothing until after I graduated and uh my partner got a job at the Humane Society of uh of Utah and she was in receiving which is where all of the surrendered animals go. Uh and then there's a whole like in in a shelter like that there's a whole like evaluation process that kind of boils down to do we think this animal will be adoptable? um because they get more animals surrendered than the number of animals they're able to adopt out. And um >> and there are no kill shelters in Utah. >> The Humane Societ so Society would like to be one but is not. They just don't have the capacity. Um >> so um so they do need to like make yay or nay calls and that was uh always kind of awful. Um she eventually moved into adoptions and then she moved into the vet clinic. Um and those are much better. Um but obviously through this process we're like taking animals home um learning about like how the difference between like you know an animal that doesn't do well in the shelter. That doesn't necessarily mean like your experience like >> it doesn't necessarily mean that they are aggressive. It just means that they aren't doing well in the shelter. Like this is a really stressful environment and maybe this this animal is a little bit more sensitive to that than >> for humans. Humans would react the same way. >> Exactly. Exactly. Um, so yeah. Um, that's always been a And so all of our cats have been either um quasi rescued, like rescued from the shelter. >> Um, or uh or they came from like an actual uh animal rescue. Uh, and we currently have three. >> Um, and our oldest has cancer, but she's had cancer for like two or three years. >> That's the thing about cats, man. They could be they could have like five three different uh autoimmune diseases. Duke and he's still a fighter and a camper literally. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And she's the sweetest thing. She's my daughter's cat. Um >> she's she's like the most empathetic animal like she like in in the world. Um and >> too cute. >> But we can talk about cats all day. We probably would talk about cats all day. We don't This isn't necessarily a cat podcast. I mean, it could be a cat podcast. It'll be a different podcast. >> Um, >> but you have a podcast, too, don't you? >> I do. Uh, I started Uncast with Prescidian. We only have one episode with Kareem talking about fair, but like the context is kind of hard to find people. So, it has to be you have to identify a problem in and around the WordPress ecosystem. And you have to be relative to the solution of the problem to be on the show. I hope it doesn't get stuck at Kareem. Uh, good show Kareem. And then there's an interviewy one kind of like this one. Get another person behind the tech. I called it three Q interview. I probably have to change the title because it was supposed to be three questions and now it's about 30 to 45 minutes long. It just kind of evolved. >> Mhm. That's that's how it works. That's why I don't make rules for myself. >> Yeah, I'm learning. I'm learning. >> Uh well, where can people find you on the internet? >> I guess I can Google Christos Palucas, but I some would be I'm on Twitter, uh LinkedIn kind of. I did a couple posts recently. Not a huge fan, but uh Twitter for sure. Slbalucas. Uh I don't know where else. YouTube. I guess there's like podcast there. I have an old version of myself that used to write classical music. So if you find uh >> there you go. >> I kind of do it sometimes too, secretly. If you find some you I don't even talk about this, man. I don't even know why I mentioned this. >> That's a whole other podcast. We need to get you back and we can talk about your classical music. Yeah, I abandoned that kind of but if you do search Christo Felucas, you might find some songs. >> Well, thank you so much, Christos, for for coming on uh and check out Christos' podcast or the one episode. Uh and and go find him at uh Word Camp Athens if you happen to be in Greece on November 8th. >> Um thanks again for for coming and uh yeah, we'll see you. >> It was a pleasure. Hope to host you too. Absolutely., Episode 12: Christos Paloukas, YouTube, 01kgjm3vce306mhphd662n932v.