Episode 30: Miriam Goldman  🔗 **Source:** [Episode 30: Miriam Goldman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXyG-AxjypU) > [!note]+ Document Notes > --- > tags: [wordpress-community, drupal, wordcamp-organizing, open-source-sustainability, contributor-burnout] > author: Chris Reynolds > source: Community & Code > reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXyG-AxjypU > date created: {{date:YYYY-MM-DD}} {{time:HH:mm}} > --- > # 🏷️ Title: Episode 30: Miriam Goldman > ## 🧭 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 Assessment](#-deib-assessment) > - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) > - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) > - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) > ### 🔗 References > - [Episode video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXyG-AxjypU) > - [Pantheon](https://pantheon.io) — employer of both host and guest > - [DrupalCon](https://events.drupal.org) — the event Miriam attended two weeks before recording > - [WordCamp Central](https://central.wordcamp.org) — the WordCamp program discussed throughout > ## 📝 Summary > - What happened: Chris Reynolds interviews Miriam Goldman — senior solutions architect at Pantheon, 10+ year WordPress community member, and WordCamp organizer/speaker/volunteer — about her recent cross-pollination into the Drupal community via DrupalCon and Drupal Camp Ottawa, plus her origin story, community bands, and 19 years of martial arts. > - Why it matters: the episode surfaces a concrete sustainability critique of the WordCamp model. DrupalCon charges roughly $1,000, funds a paid Drupal Association staff, and directs surplus to development; flagship WordCamps charge $50–$100, run on unpaid volunteers, and are stalling from organizer burnout and failed succession. > - Key stakeholders: WordCamp organizers and volunteers, the WordPress Community Team, plugin/module developers in both ecosystems, Pantheon (multi-CMS host), and the Drupal Association as a governance model. > - Risks and tradeoffs: raising WordCamp ticket prices could fund paid organizers and project grants but risks pricing out the accessibility that defines WordCamps; Drupal's collaborative module culture produces better shared solutions but is "at odds with making money on the thing." > - Bottom line: WordPress and Drupal communities feel remarkably similar on the ground, and each holds the fix for the other's weakness — WordPress could adopt Drupal's funded-event and collaboration models; Drupal benefits from WordPress people showing up and vice versa. > ## 📖 Main Content > - Miriam has filled every WordCamp role — organizer, speaker, volunteer, attendee — over more than a decade, including co-organizing WordCamp Canada and volunteer team lead at WordCamp US. She's now deliberately "wetting her feet" in Drupal (DrupalCon two weeks prior, Drupal Camp Ottawa twice) because "I don't feel it's good just to limit yourself just to one CMS." > - Her core DrupalCon takeaway is affective, not technical: the Drupal community shows "genuine excitement for the technology," in contrast to the "exhaustion in the WordPress community with some of the unfortunate drama over the past couple of years." Nobody gatekept her for being a WordPress person. > - The main technical difference she identifies is dependency management. Drupal's Composer-based workflow forces version awareness — pinning issues, module conflicts — but keeps sites current: "as long as you run your composer update... it's easier to just stay relevant and modern." WordPress plugins invite set-and-forget: "You could just leave it on an old version for decades." > - Chris frames the cultural difference: in Drupal, two SEO module authors are "more likely to collaborate and make a better SEO plugin"; in WordPress, competing plugin authors hold IP they may want to sell, which "creates more of this competition in the WordPress world and less collaboration." Drupal CMS recipes (SEO recipe, AI recipe) institutionalize that collectivism — but he notes it sits at odds with monetization, and the Drupal marketplace conversation Dries opened a year ago is the attempted reconciliation. > - The sustainability argument: DrupalCon (~$1,000 ticket) and WordCamp US (~$50–$100) feel identical as events at the same 1,200–1,500-person scale. The Drupal Association exists because Dries didn't want to organize everything himself; DrupalCon revenue pays board positions and funds targeted Drupal development. Chris argues flagship WordCamps "can probably charge more" — a couple hundred dollars — to pay event organizers and direct surplus to community-priority projects. Miriam agrees from experience: volunteer organizing "just felt thankless." > - Case study in fragility: Chris lead-organized WordCamp Salt Lake City for four years; when he stepped back, no one took the reins, then COVID hit, and local momentum never recovered. Miriam names the catch-22: "people burn out so easily when they put so much of themselves into this," and burnt-out organizers don't train the next generation. > - Origin story: Miriam entered WordPress around the late 2000s building a self-updatable website for her friend's church band (she played clarinet in it), after evaluating Drupal 5/6, Joomla, and Moodle. Government work paused professional use; a private-sector WordPress job turned it into a career — "a happy accident." Both host and guest credit the Codex and Stack Overflow era: WordPress always had an answer findable somewhere, which smaller CMSes lacked. > - Word camps as career infrastructure: her last two jobs — Canopy Studios and Pantheon — both came through WordCamp connections. > - Beyond WordPress: 30 years of clarinet, three years as a community-band percussionist ("everything but drum kit"), two bands on different weeknights; a fourth-degree black belt 19 years into karate (origin: a sensei who resembled the Green Power Ranger actor). Her WordCamp talk ~7 years ago mapped martial arts to tech careers: katas are ordered, orchestrated sequences like procedural programming — done out of order, both "go belly up." > - Teaching pre-teen karate students maps to debugging, but for people it's "finding the best solution for them" — repetition for some, four-moves-at-a-time for others. She "hates one-size-fits-all." Chris extends this to tech support: what people say with their words isn't always what they want or need; the skill is listening for clues to the underlying problem. > - Uncertainty to note: attendance figures, ticket prices, and Drupal Association history are recalled conversationally, not cited; Miriam explicitly caveats that she saw DrupalCon mostly from the sponsor booth. > ## 🗒️ Notes > #### ⏱️ [00:00:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXyG-AxjypU&t=19) Intro — every WordCamp hat, now watching Drupal > - Chris frames Miriam as someone who has "filled every role a word camp has to offer" over 10+ years. > - Episode agenda: dependency handling differences, module collaboration vs plugin competition, WordCamps "leaving money and organizer sustainability on the table," plus church band and Power Ranger origin stories. > - Both host and guest work at Pantheon; matching hoodies unplanned. > #### ⏱️ [00:02:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXyG-AxjypU&t=128) Miriam's background and deliberate cross-CMS strategy > - Developer, WordCamp organizer, speaker, volunteer, attendee — "you name it." > - Attending DrupalCon and Drupal Camp Ottawa (twice) because limiting yourself to one CMS isn't good. > - Her top takeaway: "more WordPress people need to be going to Drupalcon and vice versa." > #### ⏱️ [00:03:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXyG-AxjypU&t=204) Drupal vibrancy vs WordPress exhaustion > - Developers, PMs, and agency owners at DrupalCon were "really passionate" — versus the "exhaustion in the WordPress community with some of the unfortunate drama over the past couple of years." > - Quote: "I saw a genuine excitement for the technology and how they can really make it gr Hey, welcome back to Community and Code. I'm Chris Reynolds. My guest today has basically filled every role a word camp has to offer. organizer, speaker, volunteer, attendee, you name it. Over more than 10 years in the WordPress community. But lately, she's been doing something a little bit different, showing up at Drupalcon and Drupal camps, taking notes, and coming back with some observations about what Drupal and WordPress could learn from each other. Miriam Goldman is a senior solutions architect at Pantheon. And yes, we did happen to be showing up to this recording wearing matching company hoodies. That wasn't planned, I promise. We get into the technical differences between how Drupal and WordPress handle dependencies and updates, why Drupal's module culture tends towards collaboration while WordPress's plug-in culture trends towards competition, and why Word Camps might be leaving money and organizer sustainability on the table. We also talk about how she stumbled into WordPress in the first place trying to build a website for her friend's church band. But the most fun part is talking about the non-wordpress stuff. Miriam is a fourthderee black belt with a very specific origin story involving the green power ranger and a weekly schedule that has her switching between clarinet and percussion in two different community bands. Let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Miriam Goldman. Welcome to Community and Code, the podcast where we talk to the humans behind the commits. And the human I'm talking to today is Miriam Goldman. Miriam is a longtime WordPress developer and community member uh word camp organizer and uh senior solutions architect at a company called Pantheon where I also happen to work and we also happen to be match matching today with Pantheon sweatshirts. So welcome to the show Miriam. Tell us about yourself. >> Thanks Chris. So yeah um I've been involved with the WordPress community for over 10 years now and I've been a developer. I've been a work camp organizer, word camp speaker, word camp volunteer, word camp attendee, you name it, with word camps. I have been involved with them. And recently, um, I've started to branch out more into the Drupal side as well, just because I don't feel it's good just to limit yourself just to one uh, CMS. So, I was at Drupalcon 2 weeks ago. I've been to Drupal Camp Ottawa twice and I'm just kind of like wetting my feet into that community just right now just attending or supporting Pantheon and just learning what WordPress can learn from Drupal and vice versa. I found when I went to Drupal Con, um, I found there's a lot of things that WordPress can learn and my one of my takeaways from being there was that more WordPress people need to be going to Drupalcon and vice versa. Um, what was your sort of uh takeaway from from going to your first Drupal Con? >> I would say is how vibrant the Drupal community is. There were so many conversations I had with developers and project managers and agency owners who were just really passionate about how Drupal is and just the excitement rather than just sometimes I've seen in the past couple of years just kind of exhaustion >> in the WordPress community with some of the unfortunate drama over the past couple of years. I didn't see that in Drupal. I saw a genuine excitement for the technology and how they can really make it grow and make it better for everybody. >> What being someone who's been in in WordPress for a long time, this is a tangent that I'm just personally interested in, so like we'll get to the other stuff soon, but like I really want to get get into this. um being someone who's been in the WordPress uh world for a long time, um what sort of uh like differences and similarities did you observe from uh in in the Drupal space from your experience of the WordPress community? >> Well, uh to be honest, I was mainly just um at the Pantheon booth most of the time, but I did get to chat with uh folks over lunch and just if they needed help with something. The similarities I saw was again just a passionate and really caring about the technology and just how nice everybody was. I did not meet one rude or a mean person when I was there. People were genuinely excited. And even when I'm like, "Yeah, well, I I'll be honest, WordPress is my background." I didn't get, "Oh, no, your WordPress. Get away." I got people who were genuinely excited that I was kind of like dipping my toes into Drupal. >> Mhm. And the main difference honestly really comes down to the technology I found is just a lot of things about composer differences and just really getting down to the nittygritty about how there's certain things like what happens if you pin composer to this and you have a issue with one of your composer plugins or um something's going on with one of the modules and everything and versioning wasn't as much of an issue I found with um WordPress plugins because WordPress plugins it's a lot easier just to set it and forget it and especially if you decide not to put auto updates. You could just leave it on an old version for decades. >> Mhm. >> With Drupal, as long as you run your composer update, you're going to get more things and it's easier to just stay relevant and modern with Drupal. One of the things that um I took away or one of the the conversations that I was having when I was at Drupal con um they had just started talking about maybe well I mean it was in in the Dre note but even before the Dre note um they were talking about the idea of like the commercial ecosystem around Drupal as composed to WordPress but also just the module ecosystem as it was uh as it stood um and as it stands. now I think um which is that um there is this culture of um if if I have an SEO plugin and you have an SEO plugin. This is something I've talked about on the show before um then we're more likely to collaborate and make a better SEO plugin um rather than be in competition with each other um in the Drupal ecosystem. But that's and and within WordPress that is kind of uh I mean by and large in the WordPress ecosystem if I have an SEO plugin, you have an SEO plugin, we're going to hold on to that IP that is our you know our in intellectual property and we might want to sell that at some point. Um, so that creates more of this competition in the WordPress world and less collaboration, which is good for for commerce and good for like selling your plug-in down the road, but maybe not good for the solution like making the a better SEO plugin or whatever. And that's also I mean that's that's at the time what was new uh was there was the SEO recipe, there was the AI, all the recipes are coming out with Drupal CMS. Um, and that was kind of how those things evolved is like, let's figure out what the best things are that relate to this thing. Let's bring them all in from a variety of different sources and then let's also collaborate and make it better. Um, and and that's that sort of energy of of a collectivism um was really sort of refreshing. Um, but also it's at odds with making money on the thing. It's the joke of of you know, WordPress developers make money. Um, so now, uh, you know, we've had a year since, uh, Dre first said, "Hey, let's let's think about how to build a a Drupal marketplace, uh, and what that looks like." Um, I imagine that there, uh, is a little bit more energy, a little bit more conversation around that happening in in the Drupal ecosystem. Did you have any conversations around that when you were there? >> Not really. Most of my conversations were more about just like I'm having this issue. It was more like tech support stuff. Just like >> I'm having an issue with um upgrading to D11 from D10 on this multiddv or um I'm having git workflow issues and everything. So that's what most of my conversations were, but I'm sure they were out there. >> Yeah, I need to watch this year's DE note. I haven't I haven't yet. I've been a little busy. Um, but >> I hear that. >> Uh, but, uh, so longtime Word Camp person, uh, what got you involved in Word Camps? You've had so much uh, involvement in word camps for so long and so many different hats in in word camps. And you also were one of the organizers, I believe, of Word Camp Canada, uh, this last year. So, so what what pulled you into that besides just >> WordPress? >> So, um let's go back to 2013. Um that's when work camp Ottawa first came uh to the city. We really didn't have too big of a work camp scene back then in Canada. So, at the time, uh, my manager where I worked was just like, "Hey, there's this thing called Word Camp coming to Ottawa. I've been to the one in Toronto. You should go to it." And so, I went and I really enjoyed it. So, I attended in 2013, 2014, 2015, I had to go to Montreal because we didn't have one in Ottawa. And then in 2016, my manager is like, "Hey, you know what? You should, you know, your stuff. you should speak at a word camp. So I did my first talk. I chose doing multilingual plugins in Ottawa in the nation's capital which can be a very fiery thing. So at the time I was just like gh I don't know if I want to do this. So then I'm like but I'll organize. But then I also was like, "Hey, I can talk, but I'm horrible at slides." So, I did a whole bunch of panels about women in WordPress 2017, 2018, and I kept organizing. And I just added that and then it just built up from there. And honestly, word camps have gotten me two of my past jobs. It got me my job here at Pantheon and it got me my job at Canopy Studios where I worked before coming to Pantheon. So, it's just kind of like that alone kind of makes me want to stay involved cuz I'm like, hey, it's got to me network connections and it's got to be employed. >> Mhm. >> But it's also just the amount of things you can learn and how it can push you. having been on the organizing side of of word camps and granted, you know, even Word Camp Canada is is a scale or two smaller than uh something at Drupalcon scale, but um what having just come back from Drupal Con, what do you like in terms of like how the event was organized, did you see any sort of like differences that kind of uh jumped out at you in how Drupal Con was organized or built or collected or you know you know or versus how uh word camps are kind of handled and organized. >> It was hard to say because I was just there kind of on as a sponsor. >> Mhm. >> And but overall it looked like pretty organized. Like if I compare it to when I did where Camp US is an organizer a couple of years ago, I would say it's very similar to that. However, I would say that things were just a lot more organized. And I don't know who the actual organizers are at Drupal, but I did see some board members come around like some are just like, "Hey, we have these extra Drupal beers. do you want one? And I'm like, yeah, that wouldn't have flown at work out. >> Uh yeah. So, so when I went, uh I spent a lot of time, so I went to the community summit and um and I spent a lot of time trying to just have conversations that weren't necessarily about troubleshooting um at at the event and really try to take in as much as I could. And and part of what I had learned and came away with was well a yes they they feel very similar. One of the one of the big takeaways was uh like yeah this feels like this doesn't feel any different. This doesn't feel any different. And I expected it to feel different because different community, different technology, but also it's a what $1,000 conference versus a like $50 $100 conference for Word Camp US. Um, so like there's a major difference in in cost. Um, but it doesn't feel any different as an event and that was interesting. Um, because it kind of let me led me to the idea I mean an idea that I've had for a while which is >> word cavs can probably charge more >> like especially especially the the the flagship ones they could probably charge more. You could probably charge a couple hundred bucks. And part of the the observation that I made uh some of the stuff that was talked about at the community summit was around like well the reason why um the reason why the Drupal association exists is in part because when Drupal con Drupal camp started happening and then Drupal con started happening Dre realized pretty quickly that he didn't want to organize everything himself and so he formed a body a board uh and basically made it one of the jobs of the board to do the organizing for the Drupal Cons. And then all the money that is generated from Drupal Con goes to the board to actually pay positions and people that are on the board and and to do things, but also so the board has financial ability to put that money towards specific Drupal development. Um, and uh, I've always thought that it because the two events are so similar, because they're basically the same scale. Um, and because like we obviously have this thing over here, uh, a model for a CMS that powers what, two or 3% of the web, generating a lot of revenue and basically having the same number of people coming, 12, 13, 14, 1500 people. We're not that that's almost like a lost uh opportunity in the WordPress space to have a similar sort of model where again we could just bump the price up a little bit, pay people to actually event organize and then also maybe have some stuff left over to direct funds towards actual projects that the community cares about. >> Yeah. No, I agree cuz having been an organizer because sometimes like it's all volunteer on the work camp and I was the volunteer team lead like actually both for work camp and work camp US and just sometimes it just felt thankless >> to be perfectly honest and it's like yeah you've got the volunteers and you're encouraging and everything but and there's that whole thing about Okay, I'm giving back to the community. This feels good. But beyond that, how can you help it grow? Because you can give back to the community, but if the community doesn't want to embrace it, then it's just going to be dead in the water. >> Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um that's I feel that really hard. Um I was involved in Word Camp Salt Lake City for a really long time. Um and I was an organizer. I was co-organizer for two years and then I was lead organizer for two years. So I did four years of of basically lead organizing um Word Camp Salt Lake City. And so after I was done after that that second year of being solo lead I was like okay uh someone else can can do this. Um and I think the year after that uh it sort of just stuttered. We didn't have anybody that was able to that was willing to take up the reigns uh to to lead organize. And then after that was COVID. And then that was just like there hasn't been momentum in in the local community since then. And it's that thing of where like yeah, like you need you need to like figure out like a a chain of command, like a passing on the torch sort of thing, but also like if if there aren't people involved that are like putting a ton of themselves into this mostly invisible labor, then yeah, it's just going to it's just going to stall. >> Yeah. And then there's the risk of those people getting burnt out. Like I have seen like we're we're lucky up here in Canada that we have uh this year they're having work camp out in Vancouver in November. I'm actually not an organizer this year and as of right now I'm not a volunteer. That might change. We'll see what happens. But it's just people burn out so easily when they put so much of themselves into this. And if people are burnt out, they don't want to train the next generation, for lack of better words, to do it. And it's kind of like this catch 22 almost. >> Yeah. Or even have like the energy even like if you're if you're burning out or if you've done it long enough that you're now like sort of feeling cynical about the whole thing, you're probably not the best person to be training the next uh the next generation either. Um, so beyond WordPress, well, let's go back. What uh what was the first thing that like led you into WordPress to begin with? >> Um, it was the fact that I was playing with my friend's church band. >> I was playing clarinet with them and they wanted to make a website and they knew I was just starting out in web development. I think I was 3 4 years out of college at that point and they're like, "Hey, can you build us a website, but we want to update it ourselves?" So, I looked into WordPress. I looked into Drupal. I think I don't even remember what version Drupal was like at Drupal 5 or six back then. Looked at Joomla, I think back then, Moodle. I looked at a whole bunch of different options and WordPress seemed like it was the best option because I'd been just doing some blogging about like when I was in university being like hey I wrote this school paper >> and then I just started falling into it and for about 3 4 years I was working for the Canadian government so I couldn't use it professionally and then I got a job back in the private sector and it was with WordPress and I'm like, "Hey, cool. This can be my career." And then almost every single job just kept doing PHP developer, WordPress developer, and I'm just like, "Cool. I like this. I can really build some cool stuff with it." And she was kind of like a happy accident in a way. >> Mhm. Yeah. I think uh I think one of the things that that I noticed the most and and one of the main things that led me to when I was freelancing decide that I wanted to just focus on WordPress was um a how easy it was to use and how easy it was to teach to people who didn't have a lot of technical experience but also that um whenever I had a question there was always an answer somewhere. If I had a question about Jumla or if I had a question about some other like smaller thing and I I would do a search and maybe I would find an answer or maybe I wouldn't. But if I had a question about anything that I needed to do in WordPress, there was always an answer either in the codeex or on a blog or somewhere, there was always an answer out there. Um, so it was always easy to just find support for whatever I happened to need to be doing. >> Yeah, exactly. That was definitely one of the most helpful things when I was a junior dev was just okay, it's either the codeex or stack overflow. Those were my two those were clutch. >> Mhm. Okay, they still are clutch to this day, but it's just they were so helpful when I was really active in dev. And you're right, just like there is an answer or there are multiple answers and you could do trial and error instead of just so this is before the days of AI before Google really got good. It was just like you could spend like a week doing trial and error or you could have these things and you could spend a day uh trial and error. And let's be real, I'd rather do the day than a week. >> Yeah, for sure. Um you mentioned uh that you were in your church band. I know you still uh do musical performance still. What uh talk about uh do a total uh uh tangent. What instruments do you play and what do you still play and and and how did that sort of uh become be a thing? I I don't meet very many adults that are still in sort of like marching band type things. >> Yeah. >> So um I play a lot. Um clarinet is my main instrument. I've played that for about 30 years now since grade seven. Uh that came about. I was in I was a band nerd, band geek, all that kind of stuff. Kept that up through high school. Um moved to Ottawa, played with my friend's church band, did a few musical um local musical theater pit orchestras and then I found um a community band and they were looking for clarinet players. So I did that for 2 and 1/2 years, took a pause and then about 10 year pause and then I went back to a different community band and so I joined that in 2018 and then 3 years ago um we lost a percussion player and the percussion section leader was like, "Hey Miriam, you played Tiffany on this one piece. Do you want to move to percussion?" I'm like, "Sure. So I've been a percussionist in that band for 3 years. Everything but drum kit. So that includes like the xylophone, the vibrophone, um crash symbols, bongos, you name it. Everything but an actual drum kit. And then last year I got asked to join another community band on a different day back on clarinet. So it's very interesting. every week in like Tuesday it's percussion. I don't need to worry about breath control. I just got to worry about rhythm and then Thursday it's my clarinet one and it's just like looking at the music like well I'm going to be out of breath by the end of the night. >> Yeah. I uh I mean I was also uh I picked up the saxophone in sixth grade uh because no fifth grade because I had just uh I went to Catholic school first through fourth and in fifth grade I we moved and I went to public school and then and they also like on I don't know the first week of school or something had the music teacher come in and say this is this instrument this is this instrument and you can join and you can learn about these things and um and saxophone like he played all the instruments uh and demoed them for everyone and saxophone uh sounded cool and looked cool. Uh so I decided yeah I want to do that. Uh and I did that until uh seventh grade when I moved again and then I and then I was too cool to do uh saxophone. Um and then I was too cool to do saxophone for most of high school. But in my senior year, um I decided that um I mean I I basically my senior year I I I was taking as many just like fun whatever classes as I could. Um so band sounded cool. Um so I I joined marching band as a saxophone player when marching band did both like competitions as an actual marching band and also like uh the band at like the football games. Um so I did that. But I got back into it uh and did marching band uh which is a whole other like way of like even thinking about things. It's like skills that I've like kind of even kept to this day to a degree. Um but that was also like a lot of fun to like be out in with it was I mean the whole point was like to hang out with people and like marching band and and the the football band at the football games was like so much about like just hanging out. Um, and that was what I like. It wasn't jazz band. Jazz band is super like technical and and and very like specific and it wasn't like the pit band for like, you know, concerts and and orchestras type stuff. It was more like, yeah, we're we're loud and maybe playing off key and that's okay. >> Yeah, I wish we'd had marching band in my high school. That would have been Fanton, but I hear you. It's about hanging out. Like when I had spirit periods, when I didn't have a class in grade 11 and grade 12, we would just hang out in our band room. We had a ginormous band room at my high school. I'm pretty sure it's still the same size there. And we had a big big big band program. So our band teachers were so chill about it. They're just, "Yeah, just come hang out. Do your homework in here. Let's just hang out." And because of that, it's like unfortunately one of the band teachers passed away um in 2019, but the other one I'm still friends with. So I like if I am ever back in Calgary, I'm like, "Hey, Mr. Mac, I'm in town. Do you want to go grab a coffee?" And so that's kind of cool. Like over 20 years after graduation, I can still keep in touch with that. And it's like seriously, music got me through high school. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. The the thing that I I I always find really interesting when you say that you're going to like band rehearsal or band practice is that like I haven't thought about band practice since high school, which is like more than 20 years ago. So like how did someone find uh a a an outlet for that type of performance? Like did you just like stumble into that or just would you >> I just Googled it. I was just like >> I was just like I miss playing my clarinet cuz I hadn't been I had taken a break from doing some pit orchestras cuz that I got through said friends band. Um this was 2009. It was before my first black belt. So anyways, long story short, I got asked to play clarinet in a production of Beauty and the Beast. And they're just like, "You're amazing. can you do a few more shows? So over the next couple of years I did a couple of shows. They didn't need me anymore, which is fine. And so I had about four years of not playing my clarinet and I'm like, I miss this. I need to do this. Wait, are there community bands for adults? I've heard of this thing. And so I just Googled it and I found one. And I found one not too far from me. I was like, "Yep, we're looking for clarinet players." And then I joined. If you if you look for it, it will come apparently. >> Exactly. You just got to be persistent. You got to know the right keywords. >> Um well, you you mentioned something in there offhand that I also wanted to talk about, which is uh you are a black belt. >> Yes. Um as you can probably see in my background, uh there we go back there. I have been doing martial arts for 19 years. So almost 20 years now. So I'm a fourth degree black belt. And so I got my first degree black belt in 2010. And the way I got into that was um I used to work at a grocery store in college. And made friends and moved on, started my career. And one's like, "Hey, do you want to come to a cardio kickboxing class with me?" I'm like, "I would love to, but it's too far for me." But then I'm like, "Hey, I want to get in shape." So I found a cardio kickboxing place, like a 50-minute walk from my place at the time. I did that. It was fun. And then I watched the karate class that was right um before my kickboxing class. I'm like, "That looks cool. I want to try that." And >> he's going to hate me for this. He's never going to watch this. One of my senses looked at the time when he was younger looked a lot like Jason David Frank from Mighty Morph and Power Rangers who played the Green Ranger and I had a crush on that actor when I was younger. So that probably played a decision. So, I started in 2007 and then I just fell in love with it and I had, I guess, a natural skill for it and I just kept going and honestly, it's one of the best decisions I've made cuz I did a talk at Word Camp about 7 years ago about how being a martial artist and especially an instructor can help your tech career because there's so much correlation with the confidence and it's just like katas. It's in a specific order. It's an orchestrated fight against an imaginary opponent. You might not think that that relates to tech, but in a way it does because of the logic in tech that think of going back to procedural programming back in the day. You need to do it in a certain order or else things are going to go belly up. And if you don't do things properly in karate, it's injuries, but still goes belly up. >> I Yeah, I've I've I think that's a fascinating story, and that's a really interesting uh correlation um between karate and and tech and sort of just the programmatic thinking, I guess, like the the sort of developer brain. Um I think that makes a lot of sense. and that and and I don't think you're the first person to have made that connection specifically with katas. I've read that before. Um just like katas for like development like you know sort of a practice. Um I've uh I started doing tai chi over the summer last year. Um, and I've been doing that once a week and um, I've I've really been enjoying that in part because um, I there's not a lot of times well I've started doing aerials like a a year ago and like aerial uh, aerial arts are like on hammocks and silks and and hoops and stuff and you've seen videos of this. Um, and that puts you, it forces you to think about like what your body is actually doing. Um, which is not a thing that my brain often does. Um, but Tai Chi really gets you into that space. Like you have to like because it's the whole point and you're going very slowly and you're like trying to make your movements fluid and also you're trying to pay attention to what the instructor is doing because nobody's actually telling you what you're supposed to be doing. Um, and I I imagine that it's a similar uh a similar headsp space when you're doing karate as well. >> It is because um not so much when you're like a lower bell cuz you're just learning it and you're just trying to get your body do it, but at my level it's now a point like listening to your body >> and being like adapting like looking around. is like, "Oh no, there's like 35 people in class and I barely have enough room. I need to just adjust how I do it or else I'm going to get hit by somebody who may not have the same awareness of their personal space as you do, which is fine. Everybody does it basically for themselves really, and they train how they train. But it's just one of those like you have to know how your body feels and you don't want to get injured. So, especially now that I'm not in my 20s anymore, it's kind of like you got to listen to what your body does and it has the added layer of being an advanced black bonus cuz you have to teach it too. >> Mhm. So I teach um uh basically pre-teens once a week and so it's very interesting like sometimes we have like seven 8 year olds and you got to also think on your feeds like okay how old is this person? How do they learn? Do they pick up on things fast? Are they very shy? Are they kind of bombastic and everything? So, it's kind of like you have to know how to adapt. And again, bringing it back to attack, I see that as kind of um debugging. >> Mhm. >> So, you're debugging code like I'm was that's what I'm going to be doing once um we finish chatting is I'm going back to debugging some code. But with people, it's not so much debugging them. It's kind of like finding the best solution for them. So, some people like repetition and doing it over and over and over again and doing like a full cat. Some people like you to only do four moves and then when they feel comfortable, you move on. So, it's not like one sizefits-all, which I kind of like. >> Mhm. >> I like that it's not one size fit all. I I hate one size fits all. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I one of my uh one of my first real jobs out of uh college was working in tech support and uh tech support sucks. Um and I have a lot of empathy for folks that that that do it. Um but one of the things that um I learned doing tech support was a similar sort of lesson, right? were like I you need to have a lot of empathy and you need to have really good listening skills. Um because and and this like led into how I approached working at WordPress agencies and how I approached like product development and design and building things. The things that that people are saying with their words is not always the things that they want or need. They're just they're responding to the thing that they see in front of them and it they you know even even sometimes they think they want a thing or they think they want a particular outcome but actually that's just like the surface level of something else that's happening. Um, and and the trick, if you get really if you're good at doing the support stuff, the trick is being able to listen for those clues that that tell you that inform like, oh, actually, there's something else going on. >> Yeah, exactly. That's why like I have mad respect for the people at our company who are in technical support and especially for those who sometimes just have to deal with the chats just like mad respect for what they have to do and just figure it out and be like can we help you with this or do we need to escalate it up the chain? Mhm. What sorts of things uh because you do what you do uh at Pantheon is a little bit of uh support adjacent. Um what what sorts of things characterize the work that that you do here? >> It's a lot now. So if we go back to my role purely as a solutions architect is basically I look to help improve performance and so what I look at is since I'm a subject matter expert at WordPress that's what I specialize, Episode 30: Miriam Goldman, Chris Reynolds, 01kxsdj2jahgvhz3p4gm7h0trt.