Panel: Democratising Opportunities  ## Metadata - Author: [[YouTube]] - Full Title: Panel: Democratising Opportunities - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [wordpress-community, open-source-contribution, democratizing-opportunities] author: WordCamp Europe source: YouTube reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg date created: 2024-12-19 10:30 --- # 🏷️ Title: Panel: Democratising Opportunities - WordCamp Connect ## 🧰 Action Inbox - [H1] Create business track at flagship WordCamps — enable transparent business-community conversations #wordcamps #business - [H2] Implement contributor profile opt-in funding indicators — help match sponsors with contributors #funding #profiles - [H3] Establish tiered ticket pricing for agencies — increase event budgets through role modeling #events #pricing ## 🧭 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 - [WordPress Community Collective](https://thewpcommunityccollective.com) - [Five for the Future](https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/) ## 📝 Summary - Panel discussion on democratizing contribution opportunities in WordPress community - Key barriers: lack of funding transparency, invisible work not being valued, privileged "inner circle" dynamics - Multiple stakeholders present solutions: businesses need clear ROI, contributors need sustainable funding, community needs better onboarding - Proposals include business tracks at WordCamps, contributor funding profiles, tiered pricing models - Bottom line: Need systematic changes to make contribution sustainable and accessible beyond privileged participants ## 📖 Main Content This WordCamp Connect panel brought together diverse perspectives on making WordPress contribution more accessible and sustainable. The discussion revealed fundamental tensions between community ideals and business realities, with panelists sharing personal experiences of burnout, underfunding, and barriers to participation. Carol Olinger highlighted the "intoxicating" nature of the WordPress community that can lead to unsustainable contribution patterns and mental health impacts. Karim Maruki represented enterprise perspectives, noting the gap between corporate procurement processes and open source contribution models. Courtney Robertson bridged multiple roles as educator, developer advocate, and WP Community Collective co-founder, emphasizing the need for data-driven contribution tracking. A critical moment came when Aaron Jorbin, WordPress core security lead, revealed earning only $25/hour through GitHub sponsors for security work that protects the entire ecosystem. This stark example crystallized the funding crisis facing essential but invisible contributors. The panel identified several root causes: the privilege required to "show up" for decision-making, lack of clear ROI metrics for businesses, absence of systematic onboarding for corporate contributors, and the community's discomfort discussing money transparently. ## 🗒️ Notes #### ⏱️ [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=0) — [H1] WordCamp Connect Format Introduction - Key idea: Open conversation format encouraging audience participation and personal story sharing - Evidence: "You are as much speakers as we are, no one here is more of a speaker than anyone else" #### ⏱️ [02:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=150) — [H2] Carol's Community Addiction Story - Key idea: WordPress community can be "intoxicating" leading to unsustainable contribution patterns - Evidence: "You are easily drawn too deeply into contributions and maybe at some point not seeing the cost of those contributions for yourself" #### ⏱️ [05:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=345) — [H2] Enterprise WordPress Adoption Challenges - Key idea: Large corporations struggle with community contribution models despite benefiting from WordPress - Evidence: "It can be very intimidating outside...they have a hard time understanding how to approach this model of community" #### ⏱️ [09:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=552) — [H2] Courtney's Multi-Hat Contributor Journey - Key idea: Contributors often wear multiple hats and need to step back periodically for life balance - Evidence: "I too have needed to step back from contributing for balancing just life for a season" #### ⏱️ [12:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=750) — [H2] WordPress Sustainability Team Focus - Key idea: Need for data synthesis to tell story of WordPress contribution across all types - Evidence: "Getting data and metrics as much as we can to synthesize the amount of contribution" #### ⏱️ [15:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=920) — [H3] DEIB Work Funding Challenges - Key idea: Diversity, equity, inclusion work is difficult to fund because it's not easily measurable - Evidence: "It's really difficult to justify expenses or sponsoring for those types of works which is not that measurable for data gathering" #### ⏱️ [18:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=1125) — [H3] Enterprise Onboarding Process Gaps - Key idea: No clear process exists for enterprise employees to contribute back to WordPress - Evidence: "There is no set process to welcome them...whether they're technical or they want to do any sort of testing" #### ⏱️ [22:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=1330) — [H1] WP Community Collective Launch - Key idea: New nonprofit launched to help fund contributors through organizational partnerships - Evidence: "Incentivizing DEIB initiative that was launched this morning...will help get folks funded in various forms" #### ⏱️ [26:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=1590) — [H3] Company Onboarding for Community - Key idea: Companies need guidance when first engaging with WordPress community to avoid reputation damage - Evidence: "Companies that would show up for the very first time...made a mistake which immediately turned out to become a big drama" #### ⏱️ [29:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=1755) — [H2] Business-Community Bridge Building - Key idea: Need transparent conversations between business world and community beyond inner circles - Evidence: "There is a noticeable gap between the community that we all love and the business world" #### ⏱️ [32:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=1960) — [H1] Red Dot Map Experiment Results - Key idea: Visual demonstration shows more contributors seeking sponsorship than regular attendees - Evidence: "The map is a lot more red than green" (red = seeking sponsorship, green = attendee) #### ⏱️ [38:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=2305) — [H1] Aaron's Security Work Funding Crisis - Key idea: Critical WordPress security work funded at only $25/hour through individual sponsors - Evidence: "Last month I made $25 an hour to ensure that WordPress stayed secure" #### ⏱️ [42:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=2570) — [H2] "Decisions Made by Those Who Show Up" Critique - Key idea: This principle favors privileged contributors who can afford to participate in real-time - Evidence: "How privileged has one to be to be able to show up...you have to earn a life besides contributing" #### ⏱️ [47:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg?t=2830) — [H3] Business Track Proposal for WordCamps - Key idea: Flagship events should include dedicated business tracks for transparent money conversations - Evidence: "I would love to see a business track over two days where we could bring in the hosting companies together" ## 📚 References - [WordPress Community Collective](https://thewpcommunityccollective.com) - [Five for the Future](https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/) - [GitHub Sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors) - [Scale Consortium](https://scaleconsortium.com/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - The WordPress community attracts passionate contributors but can become unsustainable without proper funding structures, leading to burnout and mental health impacts for volunteers - Enterprise organizations benefit from WordPress but struggle to understand community contribution models, creating missed opportunities for systematic funding of contributors - Essential work like security and DEIB initiatives remains severely underfunded because it's either invisible or difficult to measure with traditional ROI metrics ## 📰 Newsletter **WordPress Contribution Funding Crisis Demands Systematic Solutions** A powerful WordCamp Connect panel revealed the stark realities facing WordPress contributors: essential security work funded at $25/hour, DEIB initiatives struggling for sponsorship, and a community map showing more red dots (seeking funding) than green (regular attendees). The discussion highlighted how the WordPress community's "decisions made by those who show up" principle inadvertently excludes contributors who can't afford unpaid participation. Meanwhile, enterprises struggle to onboard their own employees as contributors due to unclear processes and ROI metrics. **Key Takeaways:** - **WP Community Collective** launched new DEIB funding initiatives - **Business tracks** proposed for flagship WordCamps to bridge community-enterprise gaps - **Contributor profiles** should include opt-in funding status indicators - **Tiered pricing** for agencies could model sustainable event funding The path forward requires transparent conversations about money, systematic onboarding processes, and recognition that "open source is not free - you're just not the one paying the price." Resources: [WP Community Collective](https://thewpcommunityccollective.com), [Five for the Future](https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/), [Contributor Handbook](https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/) ## ✅ Action Items #### WordPress - Core: Implement contributor funding status in WordPress.org profiles - Community: Create business tracks at flagship WordCamps for transparent funding conversations - Marketing: Develop "We Fund WordPress" badges for Five for the Future participants - Meta: Build contributor work dashboards with manual logging for invisible contributions - Events: Establish tiered ticket pricing with premium business rates #### The WPCC - Programs: Scale DEIB funding initiative based on initial launch success - Projects: Create enterprise onboarding guides for systematic contributor integration - Funding: Develop nonprofit framework for organizational contribution routing #### Community - Maintainers: Document ROI metrics for invisible work like security and DEIB - Contributors: Create directory of contributors seeking sponsorship with skill/time preferences - Sponsors: Implement systematic acknowledgment in releases for all contribution types #### DevRel - Developer advocacy: Present WordPress security value in enterprise competitive pitches - Education: Create onboarding workshops for corporate contributor programs - Community management: Facilitate business-community bridge building conversations ## 🧪 Hypotheses - Business tracks at WordCamps will increase enterprise understanding and contribution to WordPress - Contributor funding profiles will improve matching between sponsors and contributors seeking support - Tiered agency pricing will create sustainable funding models that other events can replicate - Systematic acknowledgment of invisible work will increase business willingness to fund security and DEIB initiatives ### 📊 Methodology - A/B test business track implementation at select flagship WordCamps measuring sponsor engagement - Survey enterprise attendees before/after business track participation on contribution likelihood - Track funding matches through contributor profile opt-in system over 12-month period - Measure event budget increases from tiered pricing implementation ### ❓ Questions - How can WordPress systematically value and fund invisible work like security and DEIB without compromising operational security? - What specific ROI metrics would convince enterprise procurement teams to include open source contribution in annual budgets? - How might contributor funding profiles balance transparency with privacy for those seeking sponsorship? ### 🔮 Future Research - Cross-project analysis of successful enterprise contribution models in other open source ecosystems - Economic impact study of WordPress security vulnerabilities on business bottom lines - Longitudinal study of contributor burnout patterns and sustainable engagement models ### 💡 Implications - Practice: Contributors need multiple funding pathways beyond employer sponsorship to ensure project sustainability - Policy: "Decisions made by those who show up" requires revision to address inherent privilege requirements - Security: Critical infrastructure work demands dedicated funding streams independent of individual charity - Education: Enterprise onboarding programs must bridge cultural gaps between corporate and community values - Funding: Systematic approaches to contribution funding will determine WordPress's long-term viability ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment Reading level estimate: Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 12 #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: Community booth red/green dot map experiment, panelist diversity - Improve: Funding flow diagrams, contribution pathway visualizations #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: Full video discussion with multiple speaker perspectives - Improve: Podcast-style summary, key quote audio highlights #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: Personal narratives, community terminology explanations - Improve: Funding model analogies, business case templates #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: Interactive audience participation format - Improve: Contribution onboarding checklists, funding application workflows #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: ROI discussions, systematic problem analysis - Improve: Decision trees for funding paths, contribution impact metrics #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: Panel format with community interaction - Improve: Breakout session guides, peer mentoring frameworks #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: Individual contributor stories, self-reflection moments - Improve: Personal contribution assessment tools, funding readiness checklists #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: Ecosystem thinking about WordPress project sustainability - Improve: Community health indicators, contribution lifecycle models ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: Video has speakers clearly identified, structured conversation flow - Improve: Transcript with speaker labels, topic headings for navigation #### Keyboard navigation - Present: Standard YouTube video controls accessible - Improve: Timestamped chapter navigation, transcript search functionality #### Contrast and readability - Present: Video quality allows lip reading for hard of hearing - Improve: Higher contrast slides, larger text in presentation materials #### Text resizing and reflow - Present: Transcript text can be resized in browsers - Improve: Responsive transcript layout, line spacing options #### Media and captions - Present: Full transcript provided for accessibility - Improve: Professional captions with speaker identification, audio descriptions #### Forms and interactions - Present: Standard video playback controls - Improve: Accessible feedback forms for session topics ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: International perspectives (German contributor, enterprise global experience) - Improve: More geographic diversity in panelist selection, translation availability #### Inclusive language - Present: Personal vulnerability shared respectfully, jargon explained - Improve: Clearer definitions of enterprise terms, community-specific language #### Neurodiversity support - Present: Multiple communication styles accommodated in panel format - Improve: Structured topic transitions, consistent heading formats #### Representation - Present: Women in leadership roles, diverse professional backgrounds - Improve: More varied contributor types, underrepresented community voices #### Psychological safety - Present: Personal struggles shared without judgment, supportive responses - Improve: Content warnings for mental health discussions, resource links ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - Deductive strength: If WordPress powers 43% of web and relies on volunteers, then funding crisis threatens entire ecosystem - Inductive strength: Multiple contributor burnout stories suggest systematic problem requiring systematic solutions - - Document Tags: [[events]] [[funding]] [[business]] [[profiles]] [[wordcamps]] - Summary: Panel: Democratising Opportunities - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr_ho4zulg hello and welcome everyone to word Camp connect thank you for joining us for this last panel of the day and first a little bit of background on what word Camp connect is so you all know that this format is a bit different from regular panels we are here with a panel of esteemed guests with unique perspectives and ample knowledge on the topic to facil itate an open conversation you are as much speakers as we are no one here um is more of a speaker than anyone else this is a conversation for all you are not only allowed but encouraged to interject at any time if you have a personal story to share uh on the topic if you have a question to ask just raise your hand you will get a mic and you will be able to speak up this is an open conversation for everyone to participate in on a number of community related topics and the topic of the day is how we can democratize opportunities and make contribution available to more people within the WordPress Community to Future proof the WordPress project and with us we have a panel of esteemed guests like I told told before who have encountered this problem uh before in one way or the other and I will let them introduce themselves and we can start with Carol Olinger who is partner manager at yast and has a lot of experience with mental health and well-being Carol do you mind telling us a little bit more about yourself and how you came into contact with this topic and how you developed an interest in this yeah uh yeah first of all thanks for me to for thanks for me thanks for me to have me on the panel thanks to you uh for having me on the panel um I got involved uh with WordPress community in 2016 as a non-technical woman and what I noticed uh in the very beginning is that this community has a special kind of Allure so I didn't look uh to be involved in Tech I didn't look for new friends in my life but I just found them so this community is very inspiring very passionate about what they doing and um it attracts people not only to uh become a member of the community but also to become and to stay engaged um but what I also noticed is that in some way it can be a little bit uh yeah of a an intoxicating Community uh where it's very hard to uh respect your own limits and uh with all the passion and success stories and inspiring people that you meet uh you are easily um drawn too deeply into uh contributions and maybe at some point not seeing the cost of those contributions for yourself and once you are engaged and once you developed your your uh your own passion that is when uh you won't leave easily anymore so that happened to me at some point but I also draw a line um pretty early for myself because I notic that it had tremendous effects on my mental health so I stepped back from from active contributions in 20189 so I occasionally I'm occasionally speaking I am occasionally helping in the background but I am not actively contributing as much as I maybe wanted to in the very beginning so that is my story and since then I am advocating for a positive mental health um and inclusion and diversity and so many interesting topics that we still can do better as a community so that's a little bit of my background like I am I am very passionate about trying to help people to find their balance between their personal lives their professional lives because we all need to pay our invoices in the end of the month right and and uh contributing to uh such an amazing project thank you for that and thank you for the work you're doing because this is something that the project is heavily reliant on we we heard this earlier in the keynote in the opening keynote of this very event and we have one of the keynote speakers Juliet with us uh this project is uh heavily dependent on personal contributions and we have with us a business representative who has a uh completely different perspective on sponsoring contributors and contributing from a business perspective kareim would you mind introducing yourself and telling us about how you came into contact with this issue and how you developed your interest in this absolutely uh thank you uh hi everybody my name is Karim maruki um very proud to have a uh word Camp Europe come to uh my original Home Country I hope you're all enjoying it um so I had the pleasure of discovering WordPress in 2007 uh and I fell in love with it instantly as a concept because for years I'd been selling licensed content Management Systems to the Enterprise spent my entire existence in the Enterprise space and um in about 2010 or so is when I joined the team that helped decide to um transition all of the Walt Disney Company from a closed Source system to Wordpress Enterprise wide globally and the architectural challenges were immense and at the time trying to find enough experienced people in the community to help transition was a giant feet which is how I met Alex King and I got involved working with crowd favorite um at the very very beginning but it was a beautiful thing just to see how the community was coming together as we progressed on this project over the years there's been multiple efforts to bring the Enterprise back into contributing and there's been all sorts of challenges as much as it's been easy for this group to get into the community and to take charge and help um it can be very intimidating outside now I should I should say the the Enterprise that I speak about has to do with sort of a lot of Fortune companies and a lot of sort of organizations with multiple departments and business units and they have a hard time understanding how to approach this model of community um I I've seen a lot more success with some of the universities even Sometimes some of the the the Publishers and some of the nonprofit profits you see them more in this community but if somebody's used to working in some of the organizations that we deal with a lot it it can be daunting um and we're just trying to make it happen and you see this every day in your current role as CEO of crowd favorite yes and you also co-founded the uh scale Consortium yes right yes so this is right up your alley so exactly but especially because um we we saw need with the scale Consortium to try and Market back out to the Enterprise not from an engineering point of view not from a Pure open- Source point of view of but what are the benefits for the different aspects of their organizations of using Wordpress and open source because sometimes we get a little bit too caught up in releases and engineering and what's next and not focusing on how are they going to use it not what are they going to use so we're trying to give them a here's why and how you can use it not a here's what it is right thank you and with us we also have a woman who wears many hats me Doo none today none today me neither many imaginary hats um Courtney Robertson welcome hello do you mind telling us a little bit more about yourself and your current role uh roles and how you came into contact with this problem and what you are doing currently so I started using Wordpress uh 2. two maybe there was a number in there in the two dot that I that didn't exist and I came into WordPress right before that um and then I was teaching in a classroom High School business teacher was teaching and needed a Blog so I found WordPress after a few other cms's I then went to my first word camp in 2009 I failed to buy tickets in time so from the beginning I was a contributor because the only way to get in was to volunteer to do something so I was at the booth checking all the people in and met a lot of people that thought I knew something about word press which was not true then um later started joining the training team uh in 2014 have contributed periodically to the training team throughout that time I too have needed to step back from contributing for balancing just life for a season so I was returning to contributing in 2020 I had worked for the events calendar at a plug-in company then I went back to teaching in a boot camp environment and I needed all the lesson plans that I helped to write because we wanted as close to the official source of curriculum as we could get at the boot camp R teaching uh fast forward to right now um what do you do with a teacher and somebody that understands the development life cycle well they become a devell so these days at GoDaddy I am a developer relations or developer Advocate I I I focus on more than just WordPress but obviously WordPress is a big part I look at open source holistically and so the many hats that I wear have me telling my internal co-workers hey there is this thing that needs an update please go look into that right now or you I need a comment over in the core Channel come on in and leave the comments here about where the fonts should go or something like that um but then additionally I participate in releases I often am running tests when we have a Beta release coming out uh I contribute to the training team some but not much these times a little bit to meta and lately the sustainability team really has my focus which is very related to what we're doing now the sustainability team is focused on three areas economic social and uh environmental and so that's social component specifically I've been working on an initiative uh getting data and metrics as much as we can to synthesize the amount of contribution you know we go to meetings in slack gosh wouldn't it be fun if that counted towards when we're evaluating our how we're contributing like any points of data about the work that we all do synthesizing that together and then being able to tell a story out of that data um whether you are a team in WordPress and you need to say here is the work that's being done and what needs to be done if you are an individual that is sponsored wants to be sponsored or does not want to be sponsored we have all of those organizations like my employer who do make it possible for us to contribute to Wordpress helping to advise on our strategy about further contribution uh and then project leadership and what data they need to know about the contributor base and do we have the contributor base so that the future of Wordpress is strong for the foreseeable future and how are we growing the newcomers into the community around contribution so yes I wear many hats sometimes a pirate hat like in my profile photo uh just not today right thank you for the coordin and uh thank you for your expertise uh as every panelist here has mentioned we all have experience with contribution in one way or the other and some of us come from a more privileged position than the other I'm one of them I'm fully sponsored by my employer as well and I'm very lucky to be sponsored but uh from what I understand uh not everyone has the same opportunity which we're here to discuss so what I would like to ask is is there anyone in the audience who has experience with contribution seeking contribution or not getting contribution funding that you would like to share yes we'll get into that yeah right hi uh my name is buret uh from Germany and I'm also long-term contributor to Wordpress I had some opportunities to was get sponsored by an employee uh employer but in the mtime I'm freelancing and uh funding my time myself uh sometimes I felt lucky to get some Travel Assistance funds um but I had to apply to that uh but I'm working in a field in the WordPress Community which is not that popular by companies to get interest into sponsoring because I'm working in the diversity Equity inclusion and belonging working group and it is really difficult to justify expenses or sponsoring for those types of Works which is not that um measurable for data Gathering because it contains a lot of conceptual work and um brain work and um talking to people cross connection and it's difficult or even to find funding on a part-time uh amount I'm not looking for full-time sponsoring I'm just looking for some support to work on for instance a contributor handbook just for the next couple of months to to do my work without um juggling my time around with maybe getting client projects or neglecting as Carl also said I'm one of the person I'm so passionate I sometimes forget to um make a living with my work instead of um yeah and prioritizing my work so if there are any ideas kareim I would love to to hear your thought on that um what do companies need to to get the point to decide about funding an individual contributor or like Courtney you're running the wp Community Collective what it does it takes to get someone on board to find funds oh U go first all right thank you um so it's been our experience that when we engage with some of our clients a lot of them say okay we have an army of people on staff already Let's test something out baby step number one How could somebody we have already on payroll contribute there is no set process to welcome them at the moment this is a long answer so I'm going to cut it short I'll go into details if somebody asks but whether they're technical or they want to do any sort of testing or anything else um content even it doesn't appear easy and there's no process to get it involved where the manager of a department within a corporation can say here's an Roi but not here's an Roi as in what are we going to get out of it MoneyWise here's an Roi of how is that manager going to tell their manager yeah the resource below them had time that was worthwhile other than their contributing to open source one of the conversations we've been having is that that you're going to hear it in a second but that dashboard that idea that reporting another thing is the cash contributions we'll get into that but really the first baby step they said is I'm not going to write a check until I understand what's left and there's all sorts of conversations at different open source projects and different teams about especially for the Enterprise having a tithe back to the project I support that um but that also gets complicated so it starts with this Community Helping creating an easier path and a clear path to somebody outside the community of how to do that you know we joke about the onboarding of Wordpress when you first turn it on what about the onboarding of getting into the community right yeah yeah uh so one of the hats I didn't mention mention is WP Community Collective the website is the wp Community collective.com today I share with with v that uh there is an incentivizing deib initiative that was launched this morning Tada um that will help get folks funded uh in various forms and a lot of that came about because I saw when beer get posted oh hey I'm a table lead and here I am trying to find funding to get to lead the table about the initiative and I know how important diversity is in the project because I was one of four women at the first word press conference that I went to and it matters to me to have more women visible in the project more diversity overall right so as I look back at that experience I was really timid yes I checked everybody in that day but I was really timid I think Brad Williams had hair and sat in front of me at the time um and if anybody knows Brad from web dev Studios you know he hasn't had hair in some time so um hi Brad uh but but aside from that you know H this is the wp Community Collective Milana called it out last year during our Q&A with time with Matt um contributors need to stop funding each other and we need to do more to help contributors be funded so I also looked around and part of my job is at goded We sponsor some people that are full-time as staff Kira is here as one of those thank you very much friend uh but we have a couple of other people that we sponsor specifically in the WordPress space and Kira and I had to go to our CEO directly repeatedly uh not to say that our CEO is not listening the fact that our CEO cares enough to listen to us about this is significant and to understand why historically there were others before our CEO other CEOs before my manager other managers and similar roles in this company and the challenges that we're faced to try and get that unblocked it is in our developers leveling guide to even contribute to open source as a career progression that's the developers what about everybody else that's in the division related to Wordpress or what about open source holistically right not just WordPress and so I then took I I Adore Juliet by the way I I took the situation that was going on with wpcs where this was not being maintained without funding and said red alarm and started escalating that and then that snowballed into phpcs which is wpcs depends heavily entirely on phpcs and said you know it's not just WordPress that's at stake or this plugin that plugin whatever it is the whole of anything using phpcs and let's look at what we're offering in our plans so I had to make a very clear business case for some of this but I also looked at the challenges where we can't just write as a company checks out to a bunch of individuals that doesn't work uh it just for when you get to a company of that scale and size it doesn't work small companies I've worked as in small companies before they can do it and they can pivot really easily but when you start dealing with budgets that are set a year in advance you don't get that opportunity and you have to be very explicit about where the money goes so putting money in an envelope and sticking it in the mailbox doesn't happen that's also part of the impetus to start the wp Community Collective because with that we can open it up so that organizations can contribute by means of the wpcc through a nonprofit approach and it does not have to be just my employer though thank goodness my manager supports me so thoroughly and my employer is part of that initiative um through that we're funding speakers at all of the flagship camps for the next year uh but there are other opportunities that abound and part of what the wpcc would like to do eventually is to help uh the organizations that struggle with how to onboard their own staff so Kira and I have been mentors in the WordPress project to on board new contributors but how how do we on board when organizations would like to send their staff in how do we on board those folks and do they come in in an ongoing way or do they come in for a Sprint if you're in the dev system you might come in as a Sprint and say I'm going to do the thing and then when I know that our schedule is slow and then I'm out so there's a lot of considerations that go into this I don't know if that opens up more worms or not may I add one last thing that I might not have been clear on I did not mean to go around your question about getting funded because as you just said if we can onboard the organization and they start seeing that Roi then the next step is to say okay my people are busy yet it's easier to write a check right so there's different things on the agency level we're doing right there's a few of us uh uh with the scale Consortium part of our MSA our Master service agreement with our clients is they don't have work product ownership over anything therefore we are contributing back the actual libraries of code from the entire project we're making it available so that if there is something that can be cherry-picked it can be cherry-picked but there's no way to right now to submit a really cool project we might have done for Mega Corporation X and have it taken a look at so to speak because we're on the ticket system only at the moment right and you know the the road map y so there's all sorts of things that could happen but that first step is getting that onboarding which is why beets work is so important why it's so important to get the communications out there sorry I didn't yeah I'd like to add something about onboarding I also think that it should start with onboarding new companies into our community so I um I've been seeing a lot of um minor major issues with with companies that would show up for the very first time at a word camp that wanted to become involved and did not have the right guidance maybe um in understanding what what this community is like and what community Gatherings are like um and then just made a mistake which immediately turned out to become a big drama and then these companies already burned their reputation at the first try but there was maybe a big potential for for them to become engaged on a deeper level and maybe also become uh involved in funding contributors so that's a big issue that I see and it also brings me to I think the most important thing that I want to uh that I want to say on this panel there is a noticeable gap between the community that we all love and the business world and I truly believe that if we manage to build those bridges between these two major players uh of the WordPress project there's so much opportunity there to make all the contributions more sustainable um and it's starts with word camps like I personally I would love to have a business track so all the people that are coming here that that are like I see this as 100% of a community Gathering that's totally fine so you don't have to go to a business track if that's not of interest for you but if you have the opportunity to come in touch with the big players of this industry and to find out what and how they see the community and how you can become involved with them and when we start having open and transparent conversations that is actually democratizing opportunities because all these business conversations are already happening especially at Flagship events only it's mostly the Inner Circle that some of us are fortunate to be a part of that are actually involved very true going to speak to looking Beyond WordPress uh in the open source project my employer GoDaddy sponsors and was a founding sponsor of the JavaScript Foundation open JSF dorg and that pulled together node and jQuery and all of these sub projects to be one Foundation uh and that sits within a Linux Foundation entity and people don't know that about us uh it's really easy or it was really easy when when it is being created for my employer to see the value of that it is very explicit on the JavaScript Foundation what you get for your contribution whether that be labor or money it was very explicitly laid out what you get for that and I think that in WordPress we would do well to learn from other open source projects that um have been explicit about the value of it I support the idea of five for the future um I may have a personal Quirk about calling it a tithe that brings up some connotations Etc but I support that idea that anyone that is profiting off of this stuff should look at and to Juliet's point this morning uh I I support looking back further in the chain you've got WordPress what is WordPress dependent upon it's got all of these other open- source projects that it depends upon to exist I think that WordPress the project needs to do better at communicating with the things we depend upon and fostering that relationship but also learning from a lot of those places where we say well why is it easier for organizations to understand the value of contributing to this but yet it's muddy in inward press about why and how and right we need to be more more detailed about that Juliet had a question yeah jul had a question you good all right we'll come back to Juliet later yeah just all right uh thank you and here we touched on two very important things we seem to see the problem the same and if you go to the community booth for example we have a little experiment going on we asked people to uh mark their location on the the world map we gave them two colors of dots if you are a contributor seeking sponsorship we asked them to use a red dot and if you are just an attendee uh please use a a Green Dot the map is a lot more red than green so we do see the problems the same and we have touched on a few important root causes so uh I'm happy that there is we're reaching more and more consensus about this and to go back to these root causes I would like to bounce it back to you kareim because we were talking about different incentives for companies to sponsor individuals right Carol you mentioned something very important here with marketing incentives but if we look Beyond marketing what do we have what can we do as a community what can we do uh in our individual teams or the way the project is set up right now to incentivize businesses to see the business value of contributing to workus okay so um I love this morning's quote of Open Source is not free yeah and um thank you so much Courtney for reminding me of that uh before we got on stage because um one of the principal slides that our organization uses when we're um competing against one of those monolithic platforms or a publishing system out there um one of the slides is basically um how much less maintenance of open- source costs than licensing of Monolithic systems right we try to explain that to them because we're not saying that you install it and you're done and we're gonna move on the please the original quote we only use part of it this morning is open source is not free you are just not the one paying the price I love it it's true very it's true um so what we try to do is we we try to explain to them that part of the process of the the maintenance of your particular installation is to understand what you're changing about it and through those ideas of what we do with the MSA and other things some of those things might contribute back to the project but what could you do to contribute the project right I'm not sure what the exact example is um I'm not I I know there's been a lot of success around trying to bring light to it in some of the University projects um but it's it's hard it's hard to figure out how do we walk them from they understand that they have to pay for maintenance to if you add on a price does that price go directly to funding a free freance contributor does that price go into how do we bring on board a a existing resource a company might have so they get a feeling for it because like that price Go to paying for tools like the tools needed to collect all the data that's a cost that the project would have to absorb right well yes yes and um it's about showing success if we can show that first baby step of success of oh look they contributed uh they contributed an edit to an open document that beer get started and there was recognition of that that it doesn't have to be on social media but at the next release there's a thank you from soand so at this company for this they can show that back to their manager and their ma here's the key point and their manager shows it to their manager because in these organizations that's what it's about right I would encourage us to also not only tie it to releases certainly if it's properly release related then yes there is so much work in this project that for instance the deib area I could see a little bit of relation to releases but on the whole maybe not all the time but I think just that acknowledgement to what you're saying absolutely true and having that reporting mechanism back and forth would be really valuable yeah um yeah there's something I I want to add it's just a question that I I have in my head for a very long time already and I feel that sometimes as a community we are doing a terrible job when it comes to setting the the right expectations so for example the de initiative is right down my alley I deeply care but I I am also aware that for many companies that don't that are really really chasing the return on investment and B already mentioned it it's not measurable so do I like that I don't but that doesn't change the reality that most of the businesses out there have not understood what for example Juliet said earlier today that they should see investment into open source in general as an insurance so that their business can continue it means that they want to see the numbers and at the moment the reality is if you want to get like part-time or fulltime funding for something that you are working on this project your chances are considerably higher or when it is in an area that is more visible again I'm not saying I like that I'm not saying that is how I want this project to work but it is the truth and I feel that we are not taking the best care of ourselves and of the people around us that we respect and sometimes have friendships with by not telling them the truth like please do not continue to do the same thing every day and expect a different result at the moment the truth TR is it's hard to find fundings for invisible areas and yeah it's interactive these and some of those invisible areas are things which people don't realize are really important like security where people can't even talk about what they're doing oh that's a good call that's a good call but how um how would you uh for this specific example like do you see uh do you see a solution there if they can't talk about what they are doing like is there is there any way about raising awareness would that be again like for example taxes like what what y uh uh uh suggested that that would be a solution for that problem wouldn't it or do you see a different one it it hooks into the anything that just works only works because someone puts a shitload of work in it when a project is invisible when some role is invisible it's because people are doing the work yeah yeah yeah and re recognizing that yeah is something which is not easy but it is essential MH to get the funding sorted and I think Aon might want to add something to this do you please do yeah we all helping each other I love that I was D to ask him a question earlier hi my name is Aaron jorban I am a core committer um I've also led the last uh handful of security releases in WordPress I'm independent developer um funded via GitHub uh last month I made $25 an hour to ensure that WordPress stayed secure let's clarify on funded by GitHub who GitHub you a check uh GitHub sponsors thank you individuals yes uh through individuals about 15 individuals are funding my time right now um and my work in this area cannot be public and in fact if I am doing a good job it is incredibly invisible um and if I am not doing a good job it probably directly affects the bottom lines of two if not all three of your companies yes um how do we make sure that this work is funded well on the one hand I will be taking I I it's on me to take some information back about what I did why it was valuable to send me to this event so I think sharing the replay with a couple of key stakeholders will be part of that and I've got my next two level of managers in the room with me um to help me make the case for those instances for sure um I absolutely want to support furthering that work yes we're going to talk some more Erin if I if I may um i' I've known Erin for years we've had a few conversations but um here's a commitment I can make if we can put together a presentation of past now non-relevant instances where that's made a difference I am willing to make that part of the rep the the presentation publicly when we are pitching WordPress against these other systems and through her organization the the I'm wpcc thank you through the wpcc through conversations that many are having about an Enterprise tax other things those things can be routed because I just want to call out again one more time he said 25 not too 250 an hour 25 an hour and that is not acceptable okay so as while as an agency I can't write a check at the 10 times rate directly to you and sustain my bottom line it's my responsibility to help with that and so should the others so finding out about that understanding how can we make that and communicate it effectively because I don't have access to social media or TV commercials but I get invited to Rooms where we're presentation presenting against you know the the big bad amem and other things that's the perfect opportunity to say look let's explain the difference one step further than what we have on the difference between free and somebody else is paying for it right I support that so let's have a conversation I think also what I would like to call for in the project I know um beet is working on a a side project a directory of those that wish to be sponsored um and I know that Aruba many of us know Aruba in the room it's great to walk into a word camp in a country that's not mine and feel like you're all friends yeah I can't tell you how great that is um those are some areas but honestly what I really want to see is a way of notating this in your WordPress profile I know that um a dear friend of mine Scott Clark who is lead Dev at pods opened up a uh place on their GitHub profile to receive funding and one of the major car companies I forget which one but just decided to to their funding of Open Source just scattered their funding of Open Source and so Scott Clark receives I think $10 a month from some organization um Scott can correct me on the exact details of this but it's like a it's a minimal but I would like to instead of having to know someone instead of me having to continually go find and I I love to do this please no I love people I love to know people and to help people in all of the thing devil uh so I also would like something at the project level maybe on our profiles that you could opt in and say I want full-time or I want part-time here's the area that I'm doing and then I would want you to have some data what could be available so for those that can't have hard metrics I'm still proposing along the way as we build out these dashboards of manually logging some things and it doesn't have to be like here's the security bug that I was in the group chat with and someone's no but just like security work D du and then sort of tally up for things that can't be tracked things that must be hidden for reasons or it's just simply that your job is to read and research and think a lot you know to be able to have some tracked metrics like that so that when you want to go make the case maybe toss that behind your fi your individual five for the future listing so that it will be SE private enough but you would have a source of data for your own purposes uh to be able to then go to individuals and say and then also call in the five for the future companies and say here are the ones you either need here's what the teams need Andor here are the people that are already doing the work and saying that they're open to be sponsored and do that within the project MH so a lot of what Courtney said goes back to that inner circle also that I mentioned because it makes a difference if you can for example show up at word camps or if you are in the right time zone that for specific slack channels you are able to show up when decisions are being made which reminds me of one of the principles that I am not so much a fan of in this project with which is decisions are made by those who show up I said it on several occasions already I I not so certain that this is how decisions are made in this project to start with but the other thing is how privileged has one to be to be able to show up like there's so many factors uh that that that come in that yeah like for example you have to earn a life besides contributing you might have a family you might be neurod divergent or have language barriers which makes it so much more difficult to uh to make sure that you are going to be hurt and what what if you can't show up or what if you feel that you have to show up when you actually can't because the time that you're spending on that is just uh uh not going towards your health or your family so um yeah this so that's why I love the the the the project that that Courtney is currently working on and what bate is doing because in the end uh democratizing opportunity uh democratizing opportunity means that uh we have to have access um to those and open and transparent conversations that go beyond uh the privileged ones that can actually um show up in person or online when it seems to be important can I share a a personal story in the process Erin I think it was New York 2014 contributor day that I joined the training team I have a photo that's really blurry I wandered AC cross town then pregnant with my second I had already lost a baby I went home later and found out that I was losing that one too I was intimidated as all could be with a lot of personal stuff going on and I was sleeping on the couch of a friend where I had to take a train an hour to get into the city to get there that day I used to be intimidated to not know anyone that was talking about core things um I think I got the guts up when I saw you wearing a hockey jersey to say hi once I've only worked at GoDaddy for 3 years I've loved those three years when I was contributing I had three miscarriages there was a lot of personal toll and I'm grateful somehow for all of these experiences because I will never forget why it matters that we fund contributors why why it is that we do the work that we do why it is that I'm really glad now that I'm not intimidated to say hi to Aaron and admit here's how much code I do or don't know but you know more so please help um codee's a little bit of my job I need to speak enough about it to know what I need to know um but it's the people that makes this all possible and we're the people that are powering 43% of the web and I saw this week that it's growing again just a little bit but it's growing again according to the same source so it really matters and I will do everything I can as you can see but there will come a point where I cannot do it all and yeah I should not do it all no you're absolutely right you should not do it all and that experience that you've had I am terribly sorry for that and I wish it did not happen to you and I wish that it does not happen to anyone else absolutely I also have two little ones now at home this week that I'm hoping to start bring into camps yeah congratulations I have mine in here yeah we need Next Generation for sure right so than myself on that note I hear that we have we're facing transparency issues we're facing transparency issues uh for the businesses for those who uh ultimately fund the whole project and the people who make the project so I would like to ask you in the audience if you have any ideas on how to increase transparency even the the smallest change it matters so what can you do in your make teams what can you do in your site projects that you're working on any ideas at all how we can better connect businesses and the value that the people of this project deliver so the people the the companies who are within the five for the Futures uh when they are with in the five for the Futures they could get like a badge or something that they can put on their websites where it says we are contributing to Wordpress or we are making WordPress possible or something like this good marketing initiative and about that Carol you have some ideas around marketing initiatives um yeah I I mean those are more tied to uh word camps because that's more my area of expertise where um where I think that the conversations can start happening more transparently so I mentioned it earlier um I believe that if we are stratching to destigmatize the topic of money please let's do that um because that in the end it all ties back to money right I mean instead of paying uh uh with your time you should be able to get uh a financial uh yeah that you have the financial uh safety and uh yeah feeling feeling feeling good about what you're doing and also being able to pay the bills at the end of your of the month so I I still feel that we as a community are not not doing the best we can to build the bridge to the to the to the business World from our end um so when we have these gatherings when we have these big Flagship events there's so much opportunity in bringing the businesses and the community together and have conversations about the business topics so that we can start understanding what the companies need so that we can determine the return on investment or the insurance case and in Ideal World bringing those together but to be able to do that there needs to be a safe place for that and at the moment and please in the audience this is interactive correct me if I'm wrong and I'm ready to learn I personally I'm not feeling that at word camps yet and I'm not saying that there shouldn't be like 100% Community Gatherings but the flagship events they are already commercial and business Centric and again it's just a part of us that is at the moment um able to grab those opportunities so for example the business track I would love to see um a business track over two days where we could bring in the hosting companies together and we would give them the opportunity to bring on stage what is important for them and then we would bring them together with the community and we could also discuss with the hosting companies just to name those what is your incent what would be your incentive to become more involved and there were also pretty good suggestions earlier this morning uh in the in the first session what would what could be your incentive or how could you help uh with what you are doing in your business to raise fundings for contributors and then we do for the next three hours we invite the plugin companies and do the same and then we bring in the agencies maybe also talk to the Publishers and bring the agencies and Publishers together as our word Camp I would love to see that so there is much potential that there and again this doesn't mean that we are completely changing the character of what word camps are because nobody's forcing anyone to go to a business track if that is not your alley right like nobody a quick uh tag off of what Carol sh shared a few of you in the room No Tara Clays uh Tara and I were hanging out on the back deck at the beach last summer at her house because where I go to vacation is close to her family home Tara shared with me after I had subcontracted things for her I shared with her about what I was doing with the wpcc and I please know I am not receiving funds from this this is just this is extra this is not my GoDaddy time either this is extra time so through the wpcc terara saw oh you want to fund somebody parttime to contribute to accessibility in the WordPress project I would certainly on an annual basis pay a premium license fee like an agency level premium license fee I would be willing to donate that once a year so even when we're dealing with smaller agencies I me terara has quite a few clients that she is maintaining their websites and usually a half dozen or so active projects in flight at some point but that idea that even at a small business level scale you know there's ways of helping to fund contributors through that process that still would be valuable to their business and I think helping to educate others on that is really important Tara's great folks should meet her if they can yeah well I had a oh there's a question good hi everyone uh I just want to call out a few things these these are not the only solutions but I think this is a multifaceted subject and I think there are a lot of things that are already in motion that can help convince leadership of larger companies to contribute funding to contributors um one of those things and and I apologize that this has already been surfaced in other talks one of those things is to perhaps consider stop calling word camps word camps use the word conference because if you think of I'll I'll challenge you all to remove yourselves from the WordPress Community for a moment and think of yourself as someone who is a traditional um uh salesperson or business person VP of a company who has only been to trade shows where it's all about scanning Badges and making deals and selling things um and they have no concept uh I'm not saying my particular leadership does but um many people have no concept of community like we all understand it in the WordPress space and what the importance of of this community is so when we come to uh uh our leadership and we say it's important to fund this part of the project because the immediate question is what is the ROI on that what do we get back like Kim and and others on on stage of mentioned so uh people like uh Courtney and Carol and uh and others we we have to make a business case and turn or translate what we all know to be important and true into a financial business case and an Roi on what it means uh and what the cost is for not uh contributing to a project so um there was more I wanted to say but I don't want to talk too much but it's I think it's a little things about changing perception uh of what word camps are um especially Flagship events yeah because they hear the word Camp they go camp okay that's not a conference it doesn't sound as professional as what I'm used to uh hearing and going to um and it also comes down to uh people within these larger companies uh continually advocating and making these business cases um in our case we very specifically ask uh leadership to come to these events uh we set up meetings we um educate educate educate um about the importance of Open Source uh in general the WordPress project specifically uh and it's something that we continually hammer on um so I don't know if that's helpful to anyone else here but um it it it's about translating it's about perception first and then the cost of of not yeah uh being involved I think I would just like to add one sentence to what uh what um Adam just said I would also recommend everyone who can to grab the opportunity to walk outside of our bubble occasionally like there's other events out there um so it can be other open source communities it can also be uh commercial events cloudfest to name just one and just go there dip your toes see what it's like take out what you like don't don't imitate what you don't like but it is always going to be uh a big win to just broaden the Horizon and and and see what else is out there and I find it sometimes yeah I don't know a little a little limiting when you oh when when you only see uh WordPress events so I'm here from uh non-wordpress Community the type of three community and uh well I was I can stand up uh I was really happy because of the keynote that I saw this morning because this is one of the topics that I keep talking about and what I see at events I mean I visit a lot of different open source communities and what I see is very often we don't think that talking about open source like at the keynote today we don't think that that's interesting well it is interesting and hey it's also necessary we have to keep repeating this because in a community setting like this and we're actually dealing with humans you have to repeat things and you have to remember remember that things take time uh so you know if you go out there and you keep talking to businesses I think it's a really good idea and then yes tell them your message then listen to what they say back try to modify your message next time and refine it and make it even better but keep doing it because that's the only thing that's going to work keep it up resilience for the win so I couldn't agree more um honestly it does come back to communication um when we were start we started the session talking about how to communicate this we talked about onboarding and it it's back to how do we get out there I mean specifically I'm about to call out the the gentleman sitting next to you who's also part of the scale Consortium um you're not getting out of here Robert without opening your mouth um but what can organizations do for instance scale Consortium was founded specifically to talk to um procurement of Enterprise and stakeholders so non-engineering topics mostly non- toopics around where are we going but a topic of what's the benefit going to be to them part of that messaging could be quite literally you can contribute and that brings things back into your realm you you can be part of the road map you're not going to get that from an international monolithic you're just not going to uh so I'm going to ask Robert Robert what did I miss what did we on the panel Miss um what else can we do whether it's scale Consortium or in the Enterprise space to help um your fault um um one easy thing easy thing um I thought about it's um it's very easy like being the role model so um we had this conversation that word cam like word cam Europe has not a budget let's say that way that that would could be better if we have more budget we can do it differently and we can fund other people and some something like that so to solve that um like being the role model Karim you you asked for that um would be what if all agencies simply do not buy the normal price ticket but they price a normal business price ticket so we requ like let's say we request like a 300 500 bucks ticket that we didn't buy we want not be listed differently we just want to be listed like in a way that we know who's not who's coming who's not doing that in our realm so that we simply ask like other agencies like you you you bought this I saw you on the attende list with like you're not buying like the other ticket why so in terms of like um simply being our own role model and and our with our peers with the agencies and with like the other businesses simply by um like improving the World by ourselves and by then um showing that to other people MH I like that I think it's a great idea yeah I know it was discussed in community Summit like 2013 14 whenever that was and it was put away at the time I think it's a great idea to resurface can I ask because there was before my time why it was put away do you know that former leadership that's not around thinking that that would communicate that there's different tiers of attendees and Robert's idea solves that of saying we're not asking to be listed we're not asking for special recognition yeah but we are different that's the thing yeah like I said it's non equal playing field like um I'm I'm I'm coming here because my I'm fortunate enough to work for a company this is not only sponsoring or funding contributors I learned that I find I find that brilliant to use the word funding against the word sponsoring so I work for a company that is funding contributors but I am also here because my company sent me here and uh that is a very different uh uh very different privilege position to other people and so we are not we are not equal no so we can then also pay different different prices and maybe support other people there those voices need to be heard because they are valuable so that they can show up where decisions are possibly being made excellent right and we have now reached our time limit so it's time to wrap up and we've heard many very very interesting suggestions and actionable steps that we can take to increase transparency to increase uh in to incen iiz uh sponsors to keep sponsoring and I have a final question for you uh for those of you who do organize and participate in community events has anything during this talk um inspired you to take action to uh connect sponsors and contributors I've been inspired I've been inspired by what jban said to not only work it back into the crowd favorite information that we're giving customers but to give that back to the project to say other people should put this in their decks of how they explain WordPress absolutely wonderful thank you everyone thank you, Panel: Democratising Opportunities, YouTube, 01ka7ezte23p4wz20wn9fx0b30.