Episode 2: Roger Williams  ## Metadata - Author: [[Community & Code]] - Full Title: Episode 2: Roger Williams - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #community - #remotework - #async - #wordpress - #kinsta - #culture - #leadership - #ai Author: [Chris Reynolds (host), Roger Williams (guest)] Source: [Community and Code Podcast, Episode 2: Roger Williams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA) Reference: [YouTube, 2024] date created: 2025-07-01 13:30 --- # Episode 2: Roger Williams – Community Management, Remote Work, and Culture in WordPress ## Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📖 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging)](#-deib-diversity-equity-inclusion-belonging-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) --- ## 📝 Summary Roger Williams, Community Manager at Kinsta, joins Chris Reynolds on the "Community and Code" podcast to discuss building authentic connections in tech, the evolution of remote work, and how async culture empowers global teams. Through a mix of personal anecdotes and practical experience, Roger explains his transition from sales to community management, the impact of formative experiences (like LAN parties and travel), and strategies for cultivating healthy, inclusive remote environments in the WordPress ecosystem. --- ## 📖 Main Content ### 🗒️ Notes - **[00:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=6) Roger’s Role at Kinsta** - Created community manager role to focus on engagement and feedback rather than just sales - Grew Kinsta’s presence at WordCamps and in the broader WordPress community - **[02:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=151) Interviews & Community Building** - Short interviews with WordCamp US speakers - Feedback loop: product insights go from community back to product teams - Expanded focus beyond WordPress to broader open source connections - **[06:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=410) University Experience** - Advocated for economics as a secondary major at UEA - LAN gaming culture—T1 dorms, Unreal, Quake 2 - Immersed in UK club scene; avoided comfort zones to maximize cultural exposure - **[13:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=785) Music & Identity** - Discovery of UK garage and drum & bass music through DJ sets and video games - Importance of following personal interests for networking and joy - **[15:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=906) Travel’s Transformative Power** - Early travel (hockey in Soviet Union, China) shaped worldview - Emphasized broadening children’s perspectives with international experiences - **[18:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=1132) College & Study Abroad** - Balanced intense academics with vibrant social/party culture - Advocates for immersion even in English-speaking countries for genuine growth - **[24:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=1469) Early Internet & AI Skepticism** - From BBSs to early chatbots—warns about “garbage in, garbage out” with AI - Stresses need for healthy skepticism and understanding AI limitations - **[29:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=1796) Remote Work Journey** - Left corporate job in 2009; transitioned to web development and remote work - Ran an agency while full-time RVing, learned value of work-life separation - **[35:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=2134) Productivity & Workspaces** - Dedicated workspace is essential for remote success - Boundaries help maintain family dynamics and mental health - **[40:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=2452) The Realities of Office Life** - Nostalgia for office “mentorship” is overblown; hierarchies and silos dominate - Remote work allows direct access to leadership, challenging old norms - **[46:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=2790) Async Communication Culture** - Async-first approach: essential for distributed teams across time zones - Tools like Google Docs and Slack can minimize meeting fatigue, but require discipline - **[54:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=3246) Value of In-Person Meetups** - Face-to-face interaction remains critical for breaking down silos - Annual gatherings recommended to maintain healthy cross-functional collaboration - **[59:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=3579) Continuous Improvement in Remote Work** - Importance of proactive communication and ongoing self-management - Remote work is a “pinch yourself” moment, but always a work in progress - **[1:03:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA&t=3784) Personal Projects & Events** - Promotes WordCamp Europe/US, Veg Press (dietary inclusion at events), blog, and LinkedIn - Focus on making community spaces inclusive for various dietary and lifestyle needs --- ## 📖 References - [Community and Code Podcast – Episode 2: Roger Williams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA) - [Kinsta](https://kinsta.com/) - [Roger Wills Media](https://rogerwillsmedia.com/) - [Veg Press](https://twitter.com/vegpress) (initiative for inclusive dining at tech events) --- ## 🗣️ Paraphrase 1. **Original:** “AI is overhyped… I think the analysis I always go back to is it's a really fancy spellcheck grammar checker. Whatever you give it, as you're saying with this garbage in, garbage out, right, it's the same thing, right? You've got to give it something good to work with. And then you also need to know about its limitations.” **Paraphrased:** "People exaggerate what AI can do—it’s really just a sophisticated tool for checking grammar and spelling. The quality of its output depends entirely on the quality of the input. It's crucial to understand where its strengths and weaknesses lie." 2. **Original:** “Remote work is great. I love it. I really don't know how I could work in an office again for future employers. I'm saying that tentatively because, you know, the right offer or whatever, but I think just from a productivity perspective like I can I get up in the morning I do my routine I’m able to come into my office do work I can take a break I can leave I can do chores I can come right back I can do work… it's just so much more productive, so much more efficient and all the people I work with right they're all over the world like Kinsta, we're fully remote company.” **Paraphrased:** "Remote work has become essential for me—I’m not sure I could return to a traditional office, barring some exceptional circumstances. It allows me to structure my day efficiently and productively. The flexibility is unmatched, and it’s a core part of how we operate at Kinsta." --- ## 📰 Newsletter **Community Pulse: Humans Behind the Code** Get the inside scoop on building real connections in WordPress! This week, Roger Williams of Kinsta shares how community management is more than swag and Slack emojis—it's about intentional feedback loops, async communication, and, yes, the fine art of LAN parties. From the early days of BBS to managing a global team, Roger’s journey reveals the secret sauce behind WordPress’s collaborative culture. Want to boost your productivity and stay sane working remotely? Roger and Chris swap battle-tested tips (spoiler: get a door on your office), and we take a quick spin through his favorite side project—Veg Press—for everyone with dietary needs at WordCamps. Catch up on the [full episode here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA) and check out Roger’s [blog](https://rogerwillsmedia.com/) for more community insights. Plus: WordCamp Europe/US event updates, new plugins in the wild, and inclusive event dining! 🥦 -- - Summary: This week on the podcast I spoke with Roger Williams, the Community Manager from Kinsta. Weirdly enough, we both did a study abroad program at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England within a couple years of each other and shared our experiences at UEA, immersing ourselves in the music and culture of the place while we were there and exploration of the early internet. This segues into a conversation about AI, remote work and the office productivity myth Intro music: nqt provided by mobygratis. Outro music: Conspire provided by mobygratis. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9KMGMRMCA [Music] [Music] Welcome to Community and Code, a podcast about the humans behind the commits. I'm here today with Roger Williams. I'm your host, Chris Reynolds. Uh, and Roger Williams comes to us from Kinsta. He's a community manager. Uh, and we met at Pressconf, uh, where we kind of invented #vegpress. Um, and, uh, and yeah, but basically that just involved going to the same place through the whole week. Absolutely. Hey Chris, how are you? Good. I'm good. I'm good. How are you? I'm doing really well. Um, I'm excited to be on the show. Thanks for having me. I'm I'm this is a a slightly different format for me. You know, I've got a little show that I do with Kinsta called Kinsta Talks and I don't even really know what the format is for that show. So, I'm excited to be on this one and kind of experiment and play around and see where we go with this. Yeah. What is what is what do you do at Kinsta? What's uh what is a community manager? Oh, man. It's a great question. So, um, we we we kind of created the, uh, position for me last year, um, because I was doing outbound sales and my boss at the time realized that, you know, if I if I kind of maybe went upstream or up level a little bit in terms of the conversations and made them less salesy and more community or more just like meeting people and like collecting feedback that there was a whole lot for us to gain. gain from that. Uh because we, you know, at Kinsta we we've never been like the most forwardfacing company in terms of like having lots of people at events and things like that. And so we kind of really kickstarted that. Um and so it's there man there's so many things and the the problem I have is I like to boil the ocean which uh you know is not something you can actually do. Uh but I try. Um, and so, you know, it started off with I was going to a lot of word camps, um, meeting people at word camps. I was actually, you know, able to meet some prospects and things like that and hand that off to the sales team as were, but also just like getting feedback about the product, what people liked, what they didn't like, passing that on to the product teams. And um and then last year around Word Camp US, I started interviewing the people who were going to be presenting and just really short like five minute 10-minute little interviews. Hey, what are you talking about? Who should go to your talk? Should they have anything prepared before they go? And I did a whole bunch of those. Um and then and then when I went to Word Camp US, like the whole time people kept approaching me going, "Hey man, I love your show. I'd love to be on it." All this stuff. And I was like, whoa, okay, I guess, you know, maybe there's something here. Um, and so I started doing like these regular kind of interview thing where I'm just talking to all types of people across the WordPress ecosystem, sometimes people outside of WordPress. um trying to be like definitely open source focused and and then um you know and then there's just a whole bunch of little things that I do inside of Kinsta as well to like just help help us understand that there's a WordPress community and we need to be a part of it and um you know just all that type of stuff. So it's just it's a really fun job um and I'm pinching myself every day. Yeah. Uh that sounds that sounds awesome. Sounds very much like uh what uh what I feel like I've been doing uh in developer relations at Pantheon for the last few months since I since I moved over to the DeL team. Excellent. Um yeah, I I just they pay me to do this thing that I've kind of wanted to and and been doing for for a really long time. So yeah. Um your LinkedIn tells me that you were at University of East Anglia for a bit for a study abroad program. I too was at University of East Anglia for a semester. Uh I the the story I tell about um my experience in Norwich uh was um the the voice that Monty Python does uh the old lady voice that they do. Yes. I was in the city center in Norwich and I heard that voice and I thought for sure somebody was just quoting Monty Python and I turned around and no, it was actually a little old lady. making that voice. What brought you to to Norwich? Uh what was your experience like uh in that study abroad? This is total segue, but I happened to notice this on your on your LinkedIn and I had to bring it up. Yeah. No, this is awesome. All right. UA Wow. Um talk about a trip down memory lane. So my junior year of university, I did the exchange program. Was it a full year or just a semester? I did a full year. Um yeah. So, uh, CU Boulder is where I did my undergrad and they have a, uh, program, an exchange program with UEA. And so, the difference between study abroad and exchange is that with exchange, you you actually qualify into the program. And now you just pay your regular uh tuition and somebody from England basically lives on my tuition and then I go and live on, you know, back then they had just implemented $1,000 a year for university and everybody lost their mind and I'm just sitting there laughing like wow. Okay. Um, so, uh, yeah, so it it so like crazy story like the, you know, the whole impetus of going there, I was doing like a humanities degree at at Boulder. I really wasn't sure what I wanted to be doing. I knew I wanted to go study abroad. Um, and then uh, and and but the problem is I I don't speak any other languages, right? And I'm very lazy. And so so yeah, I was like, I think I can do English. I think I can pull that off. Um, so that was kind of the qualifier on my end. Also, uh, as a humanities major at Boulder, you have like a primary and a secondary focus, basically a major and a minor within the major. So, I had philosophy and economics and or actually I had philosophy. I hadn't uh determined what I wanted to do for a secondary yet. And when I was looking at UEA, the it was a little bit slimmer options, right? CU is a huge university. UEA is a goodsized university, still nowhere near the same size, but uh so they had philosophy and then they had economics as an option. And traditionally the humanities program at Boulder did not have h uh economics as an option. Sure. for primary or secondary focuses. And so I actually went to the dean of the economics school and convinced her to allow me for the first time in the school's history to have economics as a secondary so that when I went and studied abroad, I was or studied exchange, I was able to get full credit. Um, wow. So that's like the really boring aspect of having gone to UEA. The exciting part of going to the UEA was when I went there, it was 9798. Mhm. They had just I think I was there probably the the year after or maybe a year or two after you. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Awesome. So So they had just built some new dorms. Uh I I feel like it was to the north, right? And those were exactly what you're talking about. Okay. Those are the computer science dorms and they all had like T1 connections in the rooms. Mhm. And so this is where it actually got fun is that I was in a dorm room or dorm building with all computer science people. And 1997 was the year that um Unreal uh the first Unreal came out. Yep. Um I want to say Quake 2 came out that year. Makes sense. Yeah. Um and like a whole bunch of other like groundbreaking 3D games. So we played a ton of and and you were able to connect to the internet right with the T1. So we were dorm wide land parties. Yep. Got it. Oh my god. And also like you know playing you know across the seas and like dealing with horrible lag times. But um so I I got a really that was like my first I was I was kind of a gamer before that but like I really got into gaming that year a bit a bit but I also really like the club scene in the UK was really the reason that I went to school there. Uh, I had I had gotten into the rave scene when I first went to university in Boulder. And then the attraction was, hey, in England they don't you don't have to go to these fields. Although they have that, but you can just go down to a regular club and they have amazing DJs and amazing music. I saw Chemistry and Storm play like an empty nightclub one time. Uh, that was amazing. I saw Ronnie size play The End in London and um really had a great time. the my my one rule that I put onto myself that year was I was not going to hang out with any Americans. And so and it was great like I hung out with all uh English and Europeans and um really like dove into the culture and Oh man. Yeah. UA uh you know there's another connection that we have with UEA or Norwich is John Blackburn. Okay. Yeah, the um security uh core committer. Yeah. Okay. So, he lives in Norwich. Why did I not know that? I've I've known John for a while. I worked with him at at Human Maid and I didn't know that he lives in Norwich. Yeah. Yeah. So, what took you to UEA? Um basically the same. uh my my girlfriend at the time and also my current partner uh both went on the same study abroad program to India and I looked at a couple things and I was like no England is good. I want to go to England anyway. The the thing was like I I had gone to Italy uh in high school for like a twoe exchange program thing. Okay. Um and I was kind of thinking of that but I was like because I know it a little bit of Italian I figured I could probably you know pick it up again. Yeah, but I was like, but I've already been there. Um, so like looking at the different programs and it was a sim very similar thing to to your university. We had a similar uh it was an exchange program. It was a study abroad program, but it was the same thing. You pay your normal tuition and you just go there. Sweet. Um, and uh and I just I I wanted to go to to England. Uh I thought maybe I could I could use that as an excuse to kind of, you know, go other places in the UK or whatever. That never really happened. I went to London a few times, but but my my ambitions were a bit more uh more ambitious than reality. Um I was in uh I was in a dorm that did not have internet. Um I was in a big uh a big old one of their old buildings. Um probably probably even uh maybe would recogn pyramid kind of slanted. Yeah. Yeah. You I'm sure you have that image. There's actually an apartment complex that's in Salt Lake City uh that looks like it. We were driving by yesterday. I was like, "My dorm in in England looked almost exactly like that." Um I when I got there, I I was super homesick and had a little bit of culture shock. I hung out at a at a there was a dorm that was all American exchange students or American study abroad students, and I hung out at a party with them once and there's a bunch of people from my school that went there and so I was hanging out with them. And then after that night, I was like, "Okay, I need to not do this. I need to figure out how to not because this is just going to be comfort and this is just going to be like the same thing that I would do at home. I need if I'm going to be here, I need to be here." So, what I did is is uh early on in the semester, they had like I don't know, they they got all sorts of clubs and stuff and there's like a like like a demo kind of thing where you like talk to the different things and figure out what's going on. There was a deviant society uh that I joined which is basically like the goth kids. Yeah. Uh as as a club which was amazing. Uh and the goth kids as a club actually had a goth night at a local pub, Fat Paulies. So I was going to Fat Poly's uh uh probably every week. And then there was another one where uh you there was a radio station on campus, super tiny signal, you could barely get it across campus. Um, but I was really interested in DJing and I thought, well, uh, this is my only chance, right, to get on a college radio. Um, so I I did that and what was cool about that is is the guy that, um, DJed right before me played a lot of like white label UK garage. Um, and uh, so I would just go early and listen to like the the tail end of his set and then hang out with him for a little bit. um and got to exposed to all sorts of like underground stuff that I wouldn't have really uh heard otherwise and and developed a love for uh for UK garage and and the sort of like two-step kind of uh Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, we're going to stay on this for a while because so uh so UEA is where I learned about drum and bass like and like really learned about it. And it's funny the origin story actually goes to Wipeout 2097. And I don't know if you ever played that on PlayStation 2. I don't think so. Okay. It's an amazing racing game. It's probably not as good as I remember it, but the amazing part of it was it had a really great soundtrack. Like it had Prodigy, um, uh, Chemical Brothers, a whole bunch of songs. And then it had a Fauxk song. And And I remember being like, "Oo, I really like this." And, uh, and and somebody was like, "Oh, yeah, well, that's drum and bass." And I was like, "Okay, well, this is what I like." And so I really like I started DJing. I was walking around campus with records and had friends with turntables in all the dorms. Um, I was no good, but I really enjoyed it. And uh, yeah. Oh, man. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Garage. Yeah. So, I I watched a movie on the plane. Okay. Called GMT and it was about a band that played drum and bass. Okay. Uh, and as soon as I landed, I'm like, where do I get more of this? So, I immediately went to the castle mall, which for people that don't know, who had weren't in Norwich ever, is a mall that is literally underneath the castle. Like, there's the castle and then like underneath it is is a shopping mall. Uh, and I went to the music store and I found the soundtrack. Uh and um and it was uh one of the the the guy from so Fufu is Image and Heap and Guy Sigworth and Guy Sigworth has done a bunch of other work with other people but he was basically the producer and the main sound engineer for most of the that soundtrack. So I kind of like I and then I and then I yeah I got that and then I got a bunch of like you know compilation things just like yeah that was that was my so sim very similar like I got there I landed I'm like okay where do I get more of this thing? Uh and and yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. No, uh very formative experience for me. You know, I had traveled abroad a lot before then. I was super fortunate growing up playing ice hockey. I got to go on a traveling team that went to the Soviet Union right before it fell. Uh went to China um in the 90s. And then when I was in England, actually, uh, the team that I had played for needed an assistant coach because they were doing a tour to Eastern Europe. And so I got to travel with them. I went to Poland and Prague and um, Oh, that was amazing. Um, yeah, super great experience. I cannot recommend that people travel enough. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and um yeah, my my family and I, we went to we took the kids to out of out of the country for the first time. I went to Japan over the summer last year. Um and that was the first time they had left. We've gone, you know, done road trips. We've gone to, you know, different places in the States, but that was the first time that we we went outside the country. And I think that I mean my my daughter still talks about it. My son uh still talks about it. Um, and yeah, I mean more more of that like it's it's really is especially at a certain age where like um well for me and as a teenager you think you know everything and you think you've seen everything and being able to just go someplace else and and understand that like no actually you don't know anything. There's there's so there's so much more to to human experience than than just what you see like even on TV or or like in your in your daily life. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah. No, imagine for a moment that you don't know everything. You know, I think I think that there's a there was a really good um Oh gosh, I think it's called Lights On as an audio book that was just produced by um Sam Harris's wife and anyway, it's about consciousness being a fundamental aspect of the universe. And at one point, she's interviewing this physicist and they're like, "Well, but you know, other people are saying this and they're saying that that can't really happen." And he's like, "Well, imagine just for a moment that you don't know everything." And you know, and I think and I think that's what travel gives you, right? Is like that insight of like, "Wow, I had no idea that first of all, you could even eat food like this." Um, you know, or that like that even a culture could like operate, you know, a way a different culture does. So, yeah. No, definitely travel. Absolutely. And that's awesome that uh that's such a small world. Yeah, I know, right? Like I I was I was It was just hilarious. It's like you both studied at the University of East England. Really? What did you study while you were there? Um, I did uh some English classes. I did a writing class and I did a theater class. I did comedy and the absurd in theater which was which was awesome. Um, they had a they had a pretty good theater program. Um, so I was I was kind of leaning into into that stuff and and then like yeah, English and writing um stuff. I I read like I one of the the other memories I have of of being at UEA was um that I was studying and working harder than I think I had previously in college. Um and also partying harder than I think I ever had. Like and that just seemed like that was the norm. Like that was kind of what everybody did is that like you study hard and then you party hard. Um, and and like they had a a much more flexible like you weren't in classes every day, you know, it was like two or three days a week or something. So that meant that I could actually do the work and like read all like read an entire book in two weeks or whatever, which is not a thing for me. Like I'm not I'm not a fast reader. Um, so like the like there's a literature class, a modernist literature class that I took then and we're basically reading a book a week or a book every two weeks and and I yeah I was it was it was a lot of fun. It was pretty hard and I would definitely recommend like it, you know, it it was a a lot of there's a lot of people at at our like our our university, my university um really pushed people to do a semester abroad and um like so almost everybody did it. Um, and there was a lot of different options and a lot of people and, you know, I can't speak for anyone else's sort of experience, but like for me, like it wasn't any less for it being in, you know, an English-speaking country. Um, because I really felt like I tried to immerse myself in the culture and figure out what it is, like what that culture was even. Um, uh, but um, but yeah, I I was is very very good experience. Um, that's awesome. That's awesome. How much did uh so my first impression of the UEA campus was did they build this as a set for a Doctor Who episode because the concrete like the the just the the absurdest bow house like concrete just everywhere and like the library was like on stilts and the walkways. Yeah, it was it was a pretty it was a pretty gloomy campus. Yeah, it is. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Well, and that that whole getting there um was a whole uh thing for me, too, because uh I left I left my dorm and I think I maybe even got to the airport and then realized that my ticket was still in my room. So, I missed my flight and I and I was supposed to ride I was supposed to fly over with someone else that was in the program with me. So, she ended up getting on the flight and going over and so I I went later. by the time I got there. And like you know you you probably did this too. You land in Heathrow, you get on a bus and then you get on a train and then you're on the train and then you get take another bus and then like you're walking and I've got like tons of stuff with me and I'm like I get to the campus. I'm like it's night. It's like I don't know 10:00 at night or something. There's the the night watchman and I'm like I don't know anything. Like I don't know where to go. I don't have any people. I like barely know what I'm doing. Yeah. Uh yeah. So yeah, that that first that first just finding my way to to the dorm and then figuring out where I'm going to stay for the next few months was was its own sort of uh it it began a long tradition for me of uh sort of uh air airline uh horror stories. Oh no. That I Oh no. Like I have I have a history like people people who I I know and who have followed me on on the internet. Um like I h I I've had a bad luck with with flights in various different ways and this was the first time that I that I sort of uh screwed things up. But this was probably my own fault more than more than like uh bad luck in in the airport. Generally generally well that sounds like a an issue. But you know what I think one interesting thing that kind of ties into maybe what we want to talk about here is I met like I was obviously around a bunch of computer science people and they had a variety of different um interests but there was a strong interest about the internet and the web. Yeah. And and that really even though I wasn't doing a computer science degree I was fascinated with the web. Obviously, I was using it as a resource tool and goofing off tool and all that stuff, but I was also starting to kind of see uh, you know, how this is going to start shaping the world moving forward. And I totally, you know, looking back on it, I missed so many opportunities. Like there were multiple people that were like, "Hey, I want to start building websites for companies. Do you want to do this with me?" And, you know, and I just I wasn't I just wasn't in the right frame of mind to go, "Yes, absolutely." But I have, you know, it these those experiences have taught me now to say yes more often and to be, you know, more excited about trying things out. But, uh, you know, you just think back to then and you know, we didn't even have Google back then. It was I I don't even think Alta Vista was really even, uh, a thing at that point. It was still, uh, Directories and Yahoo, um, Demos, and then, you know, and then everything's just exploded since then. What a what a wild uh one of the So I my first internet exposure um pre this trip was through like BBS is BBS's um I I was on BBS's before I was on the internet. I was paying for BBS's before I was on the internet. Okay. Um and uh when I was in UEA, I me and a friend um had like a chat room that we hung out in. Um but he he added a chat bot and it was one of those one of these chat bots that was supposed to be and this is like again 99 maybe 2000. Um, uh, it was supposed to be like an AI chatbot, um, where in which you could talk to it and it would remember conversations and then it would talk back to you and, uh, try to form coherent sentences. Um, and we fed it so much garbage that we we said that the the bot just went insane. and like it just started spewing out the same sort of like if you if you've been on the uh on on the internet for long enough there's like a horse ebooks uh Twitter account where it's just like uh it's just a Twitter account that just spews like random like internet garbage basically it's like old old school like AI right before like large language models um and uh so when like chat GPT and things came out and when I learned that you know the way that they trained these large language age models is from internet data. It's like okay well I have personal experience with what happens when you feed something like this too much garbage you get garbage out. So obviously like just from the baseline set my expectations pretty low like I know that if you feed it garbage you're going to get garbage and so like like you have to go into it with like a base level of sort of distrust. Um, and obviously now like AI is ruling the world and everybody is scared for their jobs and whatever, but like it the fundamental truth is you still kind of feed it like an internet worth of of of Reddit posts and and uh [ \_\_ ] posts and like you know like sure just and and maybe maybe out out of it it's got enough filtering stuff and it is a valuable tool but you but it's not always right like it's still going to be basing it off of off of the whatever garbage it was sent at some point that somebody said somewhere maybe like it's it's a predictive model. It's not a it's not a factchecking thing. Absolutely. No, I think you know and we're jumping all over the place here, but talking about AI, you know, it's the it's something I talk about and think about every single day. Um I do I do believe that there's overhype happening. Uh as with all technologies, everything gets overhyped and the people selling it are the one that's going to benefit the most from it. Um, I think that this idea though that it's going to take all of our jobs. I have not nothing about it yet has convinced me of that, right? I I can see where it helps me maybe do my job a little faster. It helps me be more creative. Um, you know, it helps me think of things that I haven't necessarily contemplated just because, you know, there's only so much time in the day. And, um, so I see it as kind of like a supercharging type of thing. I I think the analysis that I always go back to is it's a really fancy spellch check grammar checker. Yeah. Right. And so whatever you give it, as you're saying with this garbage in, garbage out, right, it's it's the same thing, right? You've you've got to give it something good to work with. And then you also need to know about its limitations. Yeah. And you know, at certain points it's okay, I've used this tool enough. Now it's time for me to just be me or whatever. Um, oh man, thanks for the trip down memory lane. That that was crazy. I, you know, I think about UEA often, but uh, I don't meet many people that have gone there. Yeah, I same. I mean, I I every once in a while I come across somebody on on LinkedIn that has it in their in their profile. Um, but but I don't know that I've actually ever been able to sort of like reminisce on on our our early formative UEA days. Yeah. Um, yeah. Switching gears a little bit, you uh we talked uh a little bit before about um uh working remotely. I've been working remotely for gez uh probably close to 20-ish years, I guess. Like I uh I uh after graduation, uh came out to to Salt Lake. Uh I did some retail stuff. I ended up uh getting doing like tech support uh for a few years. I deliberately avoided uh getting into the business of making websites because I really liked making websites. Um and I had friends uh I had friends who went to art school and then went on into the world to be artists, okay? And they hated everything because they like design work for them was boring and it took all the creativity and all of the joy out of making art out of out of their daily lives and I didn't want that to be the case for me in making websites. Yeah. Yeah. Uh and then one day sometime after uh my son was born, I was like, you know, I don't want to be my my dad was always sort of working um and I'm not not very available. And so I was like, I don't want to do that. I want to be more available for my kids than than my dad was. Um so how can I do that? Well, I do know how to make websites. So maybe we can try to figure out a way to make this work. Uh and that ultimately led to a long path that ended up at WordPress, ended up in agencies, ended up at Pantheon. Um and and here we are. Um so I've been I've been working remotely before it was called remote work because I was just working at home making websites. Yeah. Um and and now it's now it's a whole thing. And I I have a lot of very uh I've worked in in good remote environments um where you know there's a lot of asynchronous and like um room for people being at different sort of uh time zones you know. Uh, and I've worked at other remote environments where um, you're expected to still clock in at at nine o'clock business time in East Coast or whatever. Um, and because that's just 9 to5 is is operating hours. Um, what is what is your path to remote work and and what are what are sort of the the takeaways that you've had in in your journey? Yeah. No, absolutely. So, I haven't I'm not quite 20 years. I'm I'm probably like 15. Um my last office job was in 2009. I was selling content delivery network system solutions for level three communications which is a very large but mostly unknown telecommunications company that built most of the fiber backbone across the US. Um I worked in uh internet like I I did I did uh the tech support I was doing was uh for MSN for a while. Yeah. Um, and then I worked at Quest, which then became Century Link. It was before it was Century Link, but like the the phone system. So, like I'm that I I'm very familiar. Yeah. Well, and now Quest became Century Link, then it became Lutron, not Lutron, something like that. And and then I think it just bought level three and then I just saw that AT&T has now purchased their fiber system. So, it's all going to be AT&T again. But, you know, before before we're dead, it'll all be AT&T again. Um, so that was my last office job. Um, and that was a very good I think that was a very good last office job because that was a super corporate job. They were using some crazy ERP management system. It took two weeks to create a quote to sell CDN. Uh, just to give you an indicator of like how little I was selling because like, you know, by then, you know, people were able to get CDN much faster. Anyway, um I left that I got fired from that job and then I tried to figure out what I wanted to do. I started building websites finally. I finally took, you know, I was like, "Ah, I like doing websites. I don't want to build them." I started building them because I had worked at um a an agency that specialized in backlinks. And so the whole job was just, you know, going out and finding back links and and all this stuff. And I'm sitting there the whole time and I'm looking at the client's websites and I'm like, "Yeah, we're getting all these backlinks for them, but their on-site SEO is garbage. Like there's not even an H1 tag, you know, like just basics." And so that's when I realized I was like, "Oh, I I should just I should just do this. Like I'll just keep all the money, you know, like like why am I working for people doing this?" And so I did that for like eight years or so. um and managed to burn myself out. Uh tried to do too many things. I was doing social media. I was doing paid ads. Mhm. And and I also was not delegating. So like I was not not a good agency person. Um and then and then I was like, you know what? And and that was fully remote. And the kind of the interesting side note to that whole part, in 2014, my wife and I hit the road full-time uh and we traveled in an RV across the US for six years. And so, yeah, and so we were working remote doing that. And and she actually walked away from her full-time career uh in the aerospace industry. Uh we were just burnt out of Phoenix. She was burnt out of that job. We hit the road. she was like she started doing like some freelancing and then she found her dream job finally and and so that's fully remote. Um and so I was just working doing client work and then in like 2018 I was like you know I'm I'm kind of I think I'm ready to go back and work for somebody again. Um you know there's something about when you run your own company you've got to you got to do it all and Yep. I, you know, I'm not saying I won't do that necessarily again at some point in the future, but it just I was like, man, you know what? I really like doing like certain tasks and like really just doing the job. And so I went back in and I I went on the tech support side. Um I had done some support work when I was at GoDaddy way way back 2003. Uh but that's really more of a sales job. And so this time I went back in like pure tech support. I went and worked at Pressible. I was there for like a year and a half. uh learned a whole bunch, learned WPCLI, SSH, like um uh started to figure things out and started running across this company, Kinsta, because every time I would uh do a Google search for like a database error that was coming up, they would have a blog post that would that would that would fix the problem, right? Like it wasn't just like, oh yeah, here's the issue. They they would actually like have the solution. And I was like, who is this company? like they're just willing to give away all this information. And so I went and talked with them and started uh doing migrations for them. And uh yeah, I've been there for over five years now, fully remote position. We've since built a house. Uh so now I've got like a dedicated office space. One of the things I learned about being on the road is that I really need a dedicated workspace. Yeah. Um for a few reasons. The first one is I like I need to be focused. I'm already good enough at distracting myself. I need to limit as many distractions as possible. And then the other thing is and this is like a bigger topic I think about remote work that you know maybe it doesn't get discussed enough is when I'm done working I walk out the door and I close the door and work stays in that room. Yeah. And and I think that's really important like making sure like you're delineating when you're working, when you're not working, and and like because otherwise you go crazy, right? And and and your family goes crazy too because they're like, "Are you working right now or are you with us?" Like what what's happening here? Um so remote work is great. I love it. I I really don't know how I could work in an office again for future employers. I'm saying that tentatively because you know the right offer or whatever but I think just from a productivity perspective like I can I get up in the morning I do my routine I I'm able to come into my office do work I can take a break I can leave I can do chores I can come right back I can do work um it's just so much more productive so much more efficient and all the people I work with right they're all over the world like Kinsta, we're fully remote company. There's no, it just doesn't make sense to have an office unless you really need that much of a um permanent workspace, right, to go to or whatever. And I understand like not everybody has the luxury of having a a room that they can dedicate as their office. So like going to a co-working space, I think that makes a ton of sense for if if that's what works for you. Um but yeah, man, happy to talk about remote work anytime. Yeah, I I read these headlines about like from companies that are doing the return to office thing. Yeah. And I think about So I was I worked in a in an office in a cubicle for a number of years at a couple different jobs. Um and then and then obviously and then I I also uh my first setup at home was like the computers were just in the main open in the living room um with the kids uh you know, newborns and and you know, up until like they're two or three or something. And then and at a certain point I was like, "Okay, I need I need to not be in this space because I'm not good for them and I'm not good for for me." Um and so I moved my office in into the bedroom and that was kind of janky, but it was better because I could close the door and and having that space was was a a big improvement. Um, yeah. But, um, I think about like going into the office and working in a cubicle job and the amount of just playing flash games uh on on on office time. Um, tower defense. Yeah, that among among other things. There there was a there was a role playinging one that I was really into and I I wish that I remember the name of it. Um, it was like it was a flash game where you like had a hero and you could get equipment and just go through and fight monsters and stuff and you would level up and get better stuff and go to different areas. It was amazing. Sweet. Um, and I Yeah, I wish I wish I and I played so much of that. And I think about like, yeah, you're saying that I'm I'm more productive in the office because I guess you can look over my shoulder. Like I don't I don't I literally don't understand that because I know that when I'm at the computer at home, this is the only thing that I'm thinking about. And especially like starting off doing freelancing, every minute that I'm not spending doing my job, I am not making money. So like I am a lot more incentivized to to get stuff done. And then like you said like um having a dedicated space that you can just walk away from and like okay I'm done with this whole thing now like uh is is a really is a really powerful thing for for uh remote employees. Um, but yeah, I I just I don't understand uh the return to office thing because I like I will say like there's there's the water cooler thing, whatever. And I will say like, you know, um I I worked for Albertson's for a number of years doing like off the tech support for their like um their stores. They're like they had Windows servers and Unix servers and I supported the Windows servers and in in our uh umbrella we also did support for photo kiosks which were they were putting out into uh all and it was kind of earlyish days of photo kiosks now you see them they're pretty common um and I think they're pretty much all like uh canon now. Um but we had our own uh system that we had built um and hired like this uh these Romanian developers to to build out the software. Yeah. And so we had in-house uh engineers literally across the hall. So um and this is actually where I sort of learned that one of my superpowers is being able to translate programmer speak into normal English. Um and why I I like doing developer relations because it's a lot of that stuff. Um because I would be on the phone with somebody who's very very uh techphobic, right? Who has customers in a line at this photo kiosk and it's not working. And I would go across the hall to the the developers and say, "This is what's happening." And they would say, "Okay, this is where you get into the MSSQL database and you can see what's going on, whatever, and this is this is the problem." And then I would take that and I'd go over there. Okay. And then I would translate that into English and say, "This is what you need to do." Um, and uh and that was definitely like nice to be able to walk across the room uh to but like I don't need to walk across the room if I can just send him a Slack message, right? Like Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I think that's really interesting, right, to talk about the dynamic, right? Because there is there's there is kind of this nostalgia, I think, of what office office work was or is, right? And there's this nostalgia of like, oh, yeah. No, it's where we all come together and it's kumbaya and and we're able to be synergistic. And I'll tell you my experience when I was in the office, right? When I was at GoDaddy, you had a key card, right? And the key card, depending on who you were, opened certain doors. Oh no. And so since I was sales support, it meant most of the doors did not open. And so there was no chance I could go and talk to a developer, right? And in fact, they they like actively they did not want you talking to the developers. And so I think back on my experience working in offices and all the time that these people are like, "Oh, but you know, this is where the mentorship happened." And I'm like, "Yeah, I worked in offices for years and there was no mentorship happening." like, you know, the only mentorship that was happening were these like toxic uh relationships where like I was being intimidated and whatnot. And and so, you know, I I I hear the words. I I like I understand what they're saying and the benefits of that. I think we can have all of that in a remote situation. And I think there also there's a lot of delusion over how much of this mentorship and all of these synergistic things were happening. Um, you know, maybe for a few people, yes. Right. Like a few people were able to get the CEO to take interest in them, but the majority of us are not getting that attention. And so, you know, I can now on Slack, I can DM my CEO whenever I want. Um, he doesn't always respond, but uh, you know, no, that's I'm kidding. He totally does. Um, I I try and be, you know, not uh I I try to understand that he's got a lot of people messaging him, right? So, um, with remote work, there is, we do lose this thing with the in-person contact, though. And I I do, you know, and so that is one of the things we're doing better about is having like remote meetups. Of course, I started right during the pandemic, right? And like, you know, everything got wiped out for a couple of years. We've we've been coming back with the in-person meetups. I try and make whenever I go to like word camps, I try and get other people who are nearby to to join in and and meet. So like word campus coming up, we'll have a whole bunch of people there. And so we'll we'll get that ability to meet people face to face for at least a little bit. And and I think now with it in a remote situation, I think I appreciate those situations so much more now, right? because I I'm like, "Oh, yeah. I know you really well from Slack, but you know, obviously I don't know your sense of humor. I don't know like what tone you're actually talking to me in." Yeah. Um and so it's weird. It's there's a lot of balance going on, but I think um you know, kind of segueing or or jumping all over again, my sister works for a very large corporation and they went fully remote from the pandemic and then now they've slowly started coming back. I think she's doing two days a month back at the office. And it's absurd, right? She goes into this office, she sits down at her computer, she gets on a Zoom call with somebody in a different state. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I It's I don't I don't I mean, I guess you need to justify paying for the office space or something. I don't I don't really I don't really get it. I I do I do know like you know again from sort of from personal experience um like that there are significant challenges particularly when you're in a distributed uh team across uh time zones across uh you know continents. Um, does uh what have you found that helps negotiate that sort of challenge of like we just literally have difficulties being in the same Slack rooms at the same times? How does how does you how do you or how does Kinsta sort of handle that? Yeah. So, um I'm very fortunate. Uh before I even got to Kinsta, the async culture was something that was being talked about and promoted heavily, right? And so, this is where you as an individual need to make sure you have an understanding that other people at the company have other things that they're working on, right? Like this is all this is stuff that we should have anyway, right? But I think in a remote situation, you really have to like make sure that you're embodying this mentality of when I reach out to Sam or or Nicole, right, for something, they might not be ready to like work on that or read that message at that moment, right? And and I have to make sure I make the call of how important, how soon do I need them to respond to this, right? If it's a server outage, right? like that's obviously a all hands on deck. Let's we need to get this thing resolved. If it's a I need you to review my vacation request time or I need you to like review my strategy planning for the next six months like there's wiggle room and and we need to have more understanding of that. And so Kinsta does a really great job. It's this is why I really enjoy many reasons I enjoy working at Kinsta, but like this async culture first um they've we've really adopted it, right? We didn't invent it like lots of companies do this. Uh but we've really adopted it at our core from the top down, right? So leadership down understands that async first. Um, and and especially since we're a distributed company around the globe, like it's really important that we understand that because if I'm messaging somebody who's in Asia, they're asleep usually when I'm working. And so I I need to know like there's there's going to be a delay to that response. And so, you know, how can I package the question, right? Am I am I doing a good job of like can I just go and create like a Google doc with a whole the whole plan in there for them to review so that you know we're not necessarily doing a death by a thousand cuts back and forth. We're just kind of looking at everything at once. And then based on how that's all working, now you need to decide, okay, does it make sense for us to have an in-person or, you know, not an inerson, but an an actual meeting so that we can talk, we can get the, you know, get our tones like, hey, can I figure out like, hey, Chris, are you really excited about this project or is this like really toothpulling for you? Like I think it's helpful sometimes to get that. Um, but you've got to work async first. You've got to try to work through whether it's Slack or whatever communication program you're using. You've got to be good try and be really good at communicating through that first. Um and then when there when there's holdups or roadblocks or whatever um you know switching to other forms of communication. I love video um communication. I know a lot of people get very um uncomfortable with video and and I understand completely why like not everybody like is necessarily comfortable on a camera. Um what I would urge everybody to do is get over that first of all. Like you you've got to I mean if you had an office job you would have to go and see people in the office. Yeah. Um, when you're remote working, you don't necessarily need to get all dressed up and, you know, crazy. Uh, but like, you know, try and take care of yourself, make yourself presentable. I think having a good video setup, right? I don't think you have to spend a ton of money on microphones. You need to spend some money on lighting. Like just the the the number of people that have their window behind them and their face is just black. Like, we've got to stop this. This is, you know, this is what killers, this is what kills remote work. Like jokingly, but also somewhat seriously. Um it it's like I need to see your face because most of human communication is non-verbal. Yeah. And so I need you get lost in Slack. Don't even try I mean that's the other thing like people try and be sarcastic on in text, right? the internet. Like don't try and use sarcasm on the internet unless you want to like cause an argument. um like you need to be as toned neutral as possible in text and then if there's an actual issue that's what a video calls for is like hey I need you to understand like you're really annoying me right now without without saying that right and so um and then the other person needs to be really good at picking up on those cues right like if if if the person's not turning on their camera that's a that's a personal option I get it not everybody wants to be on camera. Um, so that's already telling me something maybe a little bit um that they're not necessarily comfortable for whatever reason. Um, and just like so I think you know to to get back to your original question like how do we handle human communication as a remote company? Um, it's complicated, right? But but you've got to be proactive about it and um I don't know how how do you how do you handle it? How does Pantheon handle this? Pantheon originally was a in the office sort of thing with a couple people that would work remotely. Um, but most people were in one of a a couple different offices in different places. Um, and then went fully remote uh for COVID. I joined after that. Um, and it's still so like I said, I've worked at a couple different things. I've, you know, Human Made uh I was at Human Made for a little more than four years. Um, and we actually did a uh while I was there a virtual conference about remote work and invited people from like base camp and like other places that were doing remote work to talk about what like the best practices were. Um, and I feel like because humanmade was remote first like they they were in an office for a minute. Um, but you know once it was larger than uh Joe and Tom uh and they started hiring people, I think they pretty much went remote from from you know day 10 or something. Okay. Um they uh they really dug into what does it mean to to be remote? And so they I feel like they did a lot of things right and one of the things that they did um was have you know followed the automatic example of um using P2s for everything. uh P2 is a is a blogging it's a theme really um for WordPress but the the main thing is that it's uh has a front-end editor and and comments and threaded comments and none of this stuff is is unique or or special now but at the time it was really uh like live updating and the idea was you could kind of do a twittery kind of thing on on your blog and and then it kind of got adapted for for this sort of thing. Um now all the make blogs use use a variation of of this thing. Um and so whenever there was a project whenever you know each of the sort of departments had a P2 projects had P2s all communication happened in P2 so that that was the place that you went to look for stuff so that you weren't doing uh all of your communication over Slack. Um, I like to think of Slack as not asynchronous. Um, because there is just so much mental overhead uh in in trying to to to catch up with the back scroll that it's just it's it's not it's it's not it's not asynchronous. I mean, you'd like it it people like to think that it is because there is like a a log, but it's just impossible to keep up with all the things that are happening, especially when a when a company gets above a certain size. Um, I think Pantheon, um, there there honestly there there's still struggles. There's things that that I think uh, Human Made was doing right that Pantheon still kind of needs to learn. Um, one of the things too that like you you mentioned as well is is getting together in person. And that's a thing that um we're still trying to figure out. We kind of do it a little bit in like team team size uh meetups, but like you know, human made did a whole companywide thing. And I that it's it's hard to underell or it's hard to oversell I should say uh the value of getting everyone together in person so that everyone can so that you are you are rubbing up against people that you would not interact with normally. um whether that's because of a time zone difference or departmental difference or whatever because that then carries over into your Slack conversations like you said like I'm not going to understand what a person's humor is like what what their tone is like but if I see them in person then I then I have that context and when I see them online next then I have I come into that interaction with that context. Sure. Um and and that that it's like I said it's it's hard to to oversell the value of that. I think that's a thing that um every remote team needs to figure out how to make happen. Um and make happen in in different ways than just we're going to get this team together, we're going to get that team together. It needs to really be crossf functional because you're working with more than pe more than just the people on your team. working with people across across and and it's usually in my experience and particularly a thing that again I see a lot at Pantheon the the difficulties in communication are often between departments between teams that are already embedded in the way that they do things and that is why it's even more important to have all of those people in in a space a physical space together so that they can figure out like just how to communicate with people. Um yeah, and that's that's that's huge. It's it's a very human thing and we try to pretend like we can do this online only thing and use things like Zoom or or video calls and whatever to make up for the inperson stuff, but really there there is a a ne necessary part of working with other humans that needs to happen in person. It doesn't have to be all the time, but there does need to be something. No, I So, yeah, jumping uh on the bandwagon here. Uh, I think we're both in agreement that in-person meetups, like we just need to have them. Um, whether it's whether it's once a year, I I think at least once a year, right, would be um just get everybody together and then get the teams to to mix together, right? Like mix things up because the siloing, right? what what I'm hearing from you and what I experience as well is the siloing of departments and you know everybody's got their own missions they've got their own OKRs KPIs whatever you're using and the problem becomes that they don't necessarily those things don't interact and and but we still need people to interact we still need the people to work together and so I wonder if there's like a you know do we have a new acronym we need to come up with for either not an OKR not a KPI but like some sort a a a measurement system that figures out how well departments are talking to each other and and working with each other and you know maybe that's just something that gets incorporated into our OKRs and KPIs but it it is shocking like you know how much like one team is working on something that just obviously makes sense like this this work could be doing some work with another team um and but we're just not using it. We're not even aware that each other's got these systems going, these tools in place. Um, like I'm using software that that other teams don't aren't even like they're just discovering. And I'm like, "Oh, I would have told you about that a year ago. You just had to ask." Yeah. Um, and maybe I need to do a better job of broadcasting internally. Um, you know, we don't we don't do a P2 uh type system. We have Confluence, which is not a good Confluence is a mess. I love the idea of confluence. I love the ideas of these knowledge platforms, but then the actual use of them. Yeah. It just like why can't we figure out things, you know? I love Slack and I hate Slack. Um I love email and I hate email. Uh I love social media and I hate social media, but the these are all tools that I use um for managing all of this. And and I want to jump back real quick to your comment about Slack, you know, not being async. And I'll agree with you that the human the human instinct, right, is as soon as you see that notification, right, you see that you see the bubble, right? And I've even changed all my colors, right? I've even changed all my colors. I I don't use the traditional colors. Like the notification bubble is not red because red makes me like super intense. um I think it's green or some something you know benign. Um, but like human human instinct is, "Oh, I need to answer this right now as soon as you see it." Right? And so I get really good and I think this is where the mobile app for Slack is better than the desktop app because in the mobile app you can go through your your threads, right? And and you can choose mark as read or reply, right? Or you can just leave it. And and I love just leaving it because I'll check things first thing in the morning. I'll just kind of skim, hey, did is the CEO reaching out? Is like a customer reaching out? Like these are like really important messages I need to respond to. Whereas like almost everything else can wait and and so I have to like so I've got all these weird systems, right? Like I've got Slack reminders, but then I then I keep ignoring those and you know there's there's so many bad habits that get built out of trying to like manage all of this and then I'm part of too many channels for sure. Um, and then we're creating new channels all the time. It's it's a challenge. Um, I don't have any concrete answers for you, but I can tell you I've got kind of a system that works. Um, nobody's nobody seems to be upset with me for how I I handle my Slack stuff. Um, but I think again, it's kind of like how I have to compartmentalize all of work into an office. We need to get better at com I know I need to get better at compartmentalizing like email. Okay, I'm going to check email only a couple of times a day. Slack, I'm only going to check Slack a couple of times a day. Um, you know, if somebody really needs me, they can DM me, but if they start DMing me too much, then like I'll just let them know. I'm like, man, you DM me too much or something. Um, I'm not always that comfortable. Like with my bosses, obviously, I can't say that. But, uh, there is a challenge here. Um, and and I but I, you know, I think that these are good challenges to have, right? I think getting back to the original premise of like remote work, like this is still so much more productive than than any office work that I've ever done. Um, and I think it's just it's definitely on us. It's on the workers to be more interactive uh in a remote work situation because it is really easy for me to just sit here and goof off uh because nobody's watching. Uh but eventually people are going to figure this out. eventually they're going to realize like, hey, you're not doing stuff, you know, it, you know, and then changes will happen. So, um, man, I tell you what, it's a pinch yourself moment. I'm pinching myself to have the position I'm at. I'm pinching myself that I get to work remote. You know, I remember being a kid and being like, "Oh, man, what a dream. you could just sit at home and work and like that was like in the 90s ' 80s and 90s like that was such a fantasy and and now it's just such a it's just such just a fact of life for so many people. Um but we need to work on it, right? We need to not just like rest on our laurels and be like, "Oh yeah, remote works here. We've got it all figured out." Like no, there there's constant improvement because I remember being at Pressible, right? that was a part of automatic and that we had our P2s, but you know the problem then is participation, right? If nobody's riding in the P2s, then they're not they're not really effective. Um and and so we kind of there was some of that issue um that I ran into when I was there. Um so I don't know the an interesting thing and I'm going to keep sucking up all the air here for just a little longer. One interesting thing we did at Kinsta early on when I got there is we had these Kinsta culture projects. And so this is something where anybody that works at at at the company can come up with an idea, run it by HR, of course, make sure it's not, you know, going to violate any or anything like that. But um so like the first one I did, I did a a 100 days of blogging right in the middle of the pandemic. I was like, "Hey, first of all, we work at a company that we host blogs. like we should all be blogging more. Um and and so we did a 100 day blogging challenge and you know we had a few people participate. It wasn't a huge number. Um but with you know we had somebody set up a book club and uh like I created a a computer club a place just to talk about general computer stuff. And I think and that was one thing I remembered from being automatic with the P2s, right? There would be these like subcultures within the company. Mhm. And I think that that's really a fascinating way because you also get that crossf functional cross departmental connections that can occur. Um so just trying to figure out a way to facilitate all of that. Um it's it's a full-time job in itself though. Yeah. Yeah, for real. Well, thank you Roger for coming on. Uh, I feel like we could we could be chatting for a million years. So, I'll I'll I'll have to to get the the hook uh for now, but love to have you on again uh in the future. Uh, do you have uh links or anything that you're you're promoting there? Uh, what events uh what does your calendar look like over the summer and and into into the fall this year? Yeah. No, absolutely. So, from a Kinsta side of things, we've got Word Camp Europe coming up. We've got all the Word Camps. We've got Word Camp US. Um, so those those I'd love to see people there. Uh, always stop by and say hi to me. I'm, you know, interrupt any conversation I'm having. It's, you know, it's all surface level. Um, uh, links. So, kinston.com. Great. Yeah, go there. Um, but then personally, so I've got my own blog is rogerwillsmedia.com. I've kind of just restarted that recently. Uh, and so I'm just having fun there, just kind of riffing on different subjects and topics. um and seeing how much AI can make me sound maybe a little bit more intelligent. Uh so it's definitely AI assisted um work there. Uh Veg Press, you'd mentioned Veg Press at the beginning of the the conversation. So we're working on getting Veg Press kind of organized for Word Camp Europe if this comes out by then, otherwise uh it's too late. But uh then for Word Camp US uh I'm working on I think the idea is going to be we just have like a big party and all of the food that is catered for it just happens to be vegan um which also would make it kosher and you know and then and and then we'll have like some like gluten-free. So to me the idea with veg press is it's just people that've got dietary kind of restrictions or choices and they just need like a group that can kind of help empathize with them. Yeah, that's what we're here for. Um, and we're not and you know, and it's not like a necessarily trying to indoctrinate people, but I mean, we are, but you know, we're not, but I mean, but we are, but you know, anyway. Um, but yeah, and then on LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn all the time, so feel free to find me on LinkedIn and say hi and chat and Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks again for h for coming on. Uh, this is the first recording. I don't think it's going to be the first episode. Uh but uh yeah uh early early adopter uh for for the community and code podcast. Um and uh yeah, lovely chatting with you. Yeah, absolutely. Chris, thank you for having me on. Uh I'm really excited to see where this goes and um yeah, man. I I'll see you again soon. [Music], Episode 2: Roger Williams, Community & Code, 01jyz6j8nt0gps54x62mtgazab.