The Benefits of WordPress Community Relationships ![rw-book-cover](https://img.youtube.com/vi/huF-uAcDo0E/maxresdefault.jpg) Hi everyone and welcome to the WP minute. I'm Eric Caravac. Today's episode features a segment from Matt's conversation with Remis Dere. You may know Remus as a WordPress performance expert and as co-founder of Scanfully. Now be sure to catch the entire interview over on our WP Minute Plus podcast. Visit the wpmin.com for all the details with the stuff that you and I are doing right now. you're on this podcast, you know, amplifying your message. We have courses together. Maybe I could say when you finish the hosting course, now go take this performance course uh over here with Remis uh within within WP. Like there are ways that we can help each other, but I feel like sometimes we don't reach out to each other to help each other. And I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that, being in the community and and organizing events and doing this stuff for so long. And do you see that as a content creator and be like, I could help you if you help me a little bit? Like, do you have any of that feeling? >> I do. I do. Um, I think this this started specifically when I uh turned the my newsletter attempts into a serious one and um which ultimately became uh the within WordPress newsletter. Uh that's when more people started to reach out to me like, "Hey, could you fe feature this?" And I go, "Uh, so I I well, when that started happening, I had already figured this was going to happen because I had seen slivers of it already. Um, I I I made a conscious decision saying, and I I I literally have a um um a canned reply that says uh something along the lines of, I appreciate you reaching out. Um I have decided to have a black and white line between what I accept as hey can you mention this uh in terms of if you're new to me I'd like to have as a relationship first. So as long as you're new to me the easiest way for me to develop the relationship is asking you to sponsor me to do this. And that may sound weird because I'm very likely throwing off people and going like, "Dude, I'm just asking you to highlight this something in your newsletter. It's newsletter worthy, so why wouldn't you?" But my logic is if it's if there's a commercial value attached to it on your end, then I think I'm in my rights to have that as a minimum request. If it's a friend that replies to my newsletter that I know for for many many years, even I'm much more inclined to already see the benefit of the collaboration. Uh, and which in in in some cases when somebody replies to a newsletter and goes like, I saw you mention this, but I built this cool neat little tool. Maybe maybe that's of interest of your your audience as well. That's a very different approach to me already because there's already a back and forth, right? So, I approach that already differently. That's on the other side of the black and white line for me. Um, then there is the layer where I go, you're in it to make money. You're in it to feed your family. Um, if if and when you need help, I'm more than happy to u amplify your message, but it needs to be in balance. And a a wonderful example is uh is Marco from Portugal who saw me tweet about a missing functionality that I had inside of WooCommerce. I was looking at solutions, didn't find what I needed because it was yeah like four or five uh different solutions and none of them fully captured what I needed and he went out of his way uh to create a entirely new plugin that did exactly what I needed. Now, for me, that is like a no-brainer to amplify his messages. And that doesn't mean that I just share the plug-in that he created and has uh uh you know, he sells that on his website. Uh but that also means that when I see his content on X now or LinkedIn, uh I am more inclined to retweet it, repost it, share it because that's how this this symbiosis work uh works. So, if if you don't get that as a as a content creator or a a service or product builder, I think you're missing out tremendously on the type of um credit that you can build up. And I'm aware that I'm I'm in this community for uh 20 years now, longer, that I've had the the benefit of knowing a lot of people who are now uh visible, let's call it that. uh that I have an easy access to certain people at whatever uh position in whatever WordPress related company. Uh but then I also go I think I work for that. I think I I like for the 15 years that I spent organizing meetups uh setting up word camps, starting Word Camp Europe and everything that came with that. Uh I've never cashed in from that. Never once. and I'm no longer currently contributing to um a a word camp or a meetup or anything like that. Um but I do think I still bring that credit that I have that came from that. Uh, and I'm not here to capitalize on it necessarily, but I do do think it's normal to use it in some way if that means I have through that experience a connection to somebody that I can ask a question directly, which otherwise would probably be, you know, through four or five layers as I just knock on the door of some company. So, just all of this to say, uh, it needs to be a back and forth. There needs to be interplay. And I I see too little of this happening for from from small from indie developers to just larger companies who just just don't seem to get it. Like why aren't you treating it from a symbiotic perspective? It doesn't need to be all just money connected. It's not cuz it really isn't., The Benefits of WordPress Community Relationships, YouTube, 01kfxb00jr44j64bp25n3cax5s.