What REALLY Happened at PressConf (LIVE)  ## Metadata - Author: [[Mark Szymanski]] - Full Title: What REALLY Happened at PressConf (LIVE) - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #PressConf - #WordPress - #Community Author: Mark Szymanski Source: YouTube (What REALLY Happened at PressConf (LIVE)) Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAPn9sc7zDU date created: 2025-05-07 11:35 --- # 🚀 Title: A Personal Recap of PressConf 2025 ## 🗂 Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#📝-Summary) - [📖 Main Content](#📖-Main-Content) - [🗒️ Notes](#🗒️-Notes) - [🗣️ 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) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#🔍-SEO-Evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#🎯-Conclusion) ### 📝 Summary: Mark Szymanski shares behind-the-scenes moments from PressConf 2025. He covers travel hacks, venue vibes, AI trials, community meals, panel insights, and personal growth. This vivid recap underscores networking’s power, the rise of AI, and sustaining the WordPress ecosystem. ## 📖 Main Content: Mark’s journey highlights: 1. **Travel & Gear** - Google Photos auto-sync, Samsonite hardshell, AirPack clip mount. - First-class trade-offs: comfort vs. cost, meal perks vs. Wi-Fi fees. - Whole Foods week → improved post-flight well-being. 2. **Venue Atmosphere** - Tempe Mission Palms courtyard: palm hazards, buffet corners, bar nooks. - Snack shack magnetizes attendees with free drinks, pastries, healthy bites. - Swag table: Kinsta books, blankets, succulents from lulazgarden.com. 3. **Community Moments** - White Castle group lunch: sliders thin, fries uneven, laughter abundant. - In-N-Out debut: secret menus, “animal style” confusion, west-coast buzz. - New local eatery: Sexy Burger’s Wagyu blends and beef-tallow fries. 4. **Tech & Panels** - Autonomous Whimo rides: AI navigation’s patient edge-case handling. - Blocking metrics: 30K unblocked on WP.com; .org staff of three. - Agency panel: “Don’t launch a site shop in 2025”—need differentiation. 5. **AI Adoption** - “AI or die” chalkboard sketch: embrace LLMs for 80–90% of routine tasks. - Real-life case: diet planning via ChatGPT vs. dietitian research. 6. **Wellness & Reflection** - 5K run and mountain jaunt sparked Miam’s war-zone resilience talk. - VC funding vs. dirty dishes anecdote underscores humility at success. 7. **Networking Strategies** - Late-night courtyard chats foster genuine bonds beyond stage talks. - VIP golf & go-karts extend rapport in informal, fun settings. ## 🗒️ Notes #### 1. Travel & Logistics - **Photo Workflow** - Google Photos auto-upload saved transfer time. - Immediate cloud sync. - Multi-camera management remains a pain. - Future: invest in Wi-Fi SD cards or tethered uplinks. - **Luggage & Gear** - Samsonite hardshell: durable, affordable. - AirPack backpack clip mount: ideal for action cams. - Action cam rental: LensRentals.com POV footage. - **First-Class Insights** - Upgrade cost ≈ \$50/hr for priority boarding, meal service. - Seat pitch improved legroom; Wi-Fi still \$25+ for a few hours. - Hot towel service: novelty vs. functionality. #### 2. Venue Setup & Experience - **Tempe Mission Palms Layout** - Central courtyard: conference rooms on north side. - Dining corners: breakfast buffet, snack shack, evening bar. - Palm fronds hazard: test knocks from falling fronds. - **Snack Shack Highlights** - Rotating offerings: cookies, pretzels, fruit, yogurt. - Beverage station: coffee, tea, water, sodas, kombucha. - Attracts ongoing small-group meetups. - **Swag & Gifts** - Kinsta-branded book “PressConf 2025.” - PressConf blankets: branded, high-quality fleece. - Succulent plants: lulazgarden.com eco-friendly branding. #### 3. Community & Food Adventures - **White Castle Excursion** - Sliders: too thin, bread-to-meat ratio off. - Fries: bland, prone to sogginess. - Bucket-list value: wins camaraderie despite quality. - **Loco Patrón Dinner** - Chicken bowl, avocado, chips—solid Mexican flavors. - Good venue for group photos with peers (Kevin, Chris, Matt). - **In-N-Out Discovery** - Limited menu: burgers, fries, shakes. - Secret “animal style” request confusion; staff guidance needed. - West Coast hype: long lines justify quality. - **Sexy Burger Pop-Up** - Soft open two weeks prior; flagship ambitions. - Wagyu-beef patty blend; beef-tallow fries. - Manager’s origin story: scaling plans, quality focus. - **Café Boa Finale** - Unexpected whole-chicken entrée: portion shock. - Sides: roasted potatoes, charred veggies. - Restaurant vibe: cozy indoor/outdoor seating. #### 4. Conference Sessions & Panels - **Automatic Transparency Talk** - Revenue vs. community focus debate. - Matt Mullenweg’s Pope-post anecdote: humanizing moment. - **Blocking Stats** - WordPress.com unblocked 30K users; indicates moderation shift. - WordPress.org team size = 3; raises sustainability questions. - **Agency Owner Panel** - Panelists: Jake Goldman, Mike Mallister, Chris (Extendify). - Key takeaway: starting a site-build shop demands niche value. - **AI or Die** - Sketch on conference notebook: urgency of AI adoption. - Real-world: ChatGPT-driven nutrition planning vs. traditional research. #### 5. AI & Future Trends - **Autonomous Whimo Rides** - Jaguar-based robotaxi; polite but overly deferential in queues. - Max speed ≈ 40 mph in urban zones; advanced UI displays. - **LLM Workflow Use Cases** - Personalized diet guidance: 80–90% accuracy for seed-oil avoidance. - Content planning: outline generation, grammar edits, tone shifts. - **Page Builder Evolution** - Speaker Kevin on stage: three CMS buyer personas (designer, hybrid, technologist). - Emerging tools: Sanity, Payload as headless alternatives. #### 6. Wellness & Personal Growth - **Whole Foods Diet Week** - Focus: no gluten, minimal dairy, zero seed oils. - Post-trip slump → immediate health boost on return. - **5K Run & Mountain Hike** - 3 mi river run pre-breakfast; gentle summit trek. - Physical challenge underscores mindfulness talk by Miam. - **Humility Reminder** - VC funding vs. home dishes anecdote → universal human tasks. - Tedious chores anchor even top entrepreneurs. #### 7. Networking & Community Building - **Late-Night Courtyard Chats** - Organic mentor matches; cross-company dialogues. - Forged bonds often outweigh formal session takeaways. - **VIP Day Activities** - 9-hole golf course: casual play, action-cam head mount. - Go-karts: informal competition fosters team spirit. - **Poolside Mingling** - Rooftop pool gatherings: fireworks backdrop, ice-breaker chit-chat. - Trust formation in relaxed, non-agenda settings. #### 8. Equipment & Workflow Lessons - **Multi-Camera Footage** - Google Photos covers phone; external cameras need faster workflow. - Explore tethered routers or Wi-Fi SD cards for DSLR uploads. - **Audio & Studio Setup** - Shure MV7 USB mic upgrade; plan for basement sound treatment. - Future: SM7B XLR integration for richer broadcast audio. #### 9. Event Logistics & Recommendations - **Next Steps** - PressConf likely returns next year at same venue—follow Raquel on X for updates. - Consider CloudFest USA in Miami; schedule accordingly. - **Travel Planning** - Use pre-check TSA for tight connections after Whimo rides. - Allocate buffer time for missed shuttles. #### 10. Miscellaneous Highlights - **Pop Culture Invitations** - CGI cheetah invite to White Castle—lightens conference mood. - **Found Cross in Pool** - Unexpected discovery sparks humorous reflexion on signs. - **Crispy Cone Dessert** - Novel cone-shaped dessert with ice cream; size vs. practicality debate. ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: > **Original (00:04–00:11):** > “Hey there…welcome back. It’s been a little bit…I’m not in my normal time…traveling as you can see by the title of this stream…” > **Paraphrase:** > “Welcome back! I’ve been on the move—traveling as the title suggests—so today I’ll show you PressConf through my phone’s snapshots for a candid view.” > **Original (48:29–48:35):** > “I think you need to embrace this. It is not going away…I’m not saying don’t go to a doctor…but for most of those…you can get like 80%–90% of the way there now with a large language model rather than scouring the internet.” > **Paraphrase:** > “We must adopt AI—it’s here to stay. While experts remain crucial, generative models now handle 80–90% of routine queries without endless web searches.” ## 📰 Newsletter: Get your WordPress fix with our May issue: we unpack Mark Szymanski’s PressConf 2025 photo diary—autonomous Whimo rides, snake-bite White Castle adventures, and “AI or die” chalk sketches. Plus, community wins like Automatic unblocking 30K users and insights on new CMS buyer personas. Dive into our friendly, witty roundup at wp.news.com 🔗 [Read more](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAPn9sc7zDU). ## ✅ Action Items: Tell me how this PressConf recap informs my OSPO goals, contributor strategy, and inclusive advocacy plan. ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - H1: Informal social settings increase contributor sign-up rates by 25%. - H2: AI workflow demos in sessions raise LLM adoption among attendees by 50%. ## 📊 Methodology: - **Design:** Pre/post surveys on networking and AI use. - **Data:** Contributor sign-ups, session attendance logs. - **Analysis:** Chi-square tests for engagement differences. ## ❓ Questions: - Which community moment most inspired contributor follow-through? - How do AI success stories influence participant tool adoption? ## 🔮 Future Research: - Measure long-term OSS contributions from event attendees. - Test AI mentorship bots for open-source onboarding efficiency. ## 💡 Implications: Optimizing informal networking could boost contributor retention. Integrating AI demos may transform open-source training. ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: 1. **Visual:** Strong photo usage—add flowcharts on AI steps. 2. **Aural:** No audio embed—link to podcast recap. 3. **Verbal:** Rich in narratives—include glossary for technical terms. 4. **Kinesthetic:** No hands-on labs—propose post-event coding challenges. 5. **Logical:** Statistics present—add decision trees for panel outcomes. 6. **Social:** Late-night chats—formalize mentor-mentee lounges. 7. **Solitary:** Reflection prompts lacking—insert journaling questions. 8. **Naturalistic:** Minimal—tie desert ecosystem parallels to project sustainability. ## 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - **Screen Reader:** Use proper headings, alt text for all images. - **Keyboard:** Ensure focus states on links and media. - **Contrast:** Verify text/background contrast ≥4.5:1. - **Resizing:** Test at 200% zoom for layout integrity. ## 🌍 DEIB Assessment: - **Cultural:** Add global case studies beyond US-centric examples. - **Language:** Replace colloquialisms (“bro”) with inclusive terms. - **Neurodiversity:** Break text into <20-word sentences. - **Representation:** Feature speakers of diverse backgrounds. - **Safety:** Trigger warnings for war-zone narratives. ## ✅ Logical validity: - **Strong Induction:** Travel tips→broad event prep advice. - **Causal:** AI demo→higher tool adoption. - **Fallacy (Hasty Generalization):** “LLMs know all nutrition”—test across conditions. ## 🔍 DARVO Analysis: No denial, attack, or reverse-victim tactics detected. Tone stays celebratory. ## 🔍 SEO Evaluation: - **Keywords:** “PressConf,” “WordPress community” in title, headers. - **Meta:** Needs a 150-160 char synopsis. - **URL:** /pressconf-2025-recap—concise, contains keyword. - **Schema:** Implement Article and FAQ JSON-LD. - **Links:** Internal to wp.news.com, external YouTube. - **Images:** Alt text uses keywords. - **Mobile:** Responsive with readable font sizes. - **Engagement:** CTAs for comments and subscriptions. ## 🎯 Conclusion: PressConf 2025 blended candid snapshots, AI foresight, and real-world connection. It reinforced that technology and personal rapport drive WordPress’s inclusive, sustainable future. - Document Tags: [[pressconf]] - Summary: I have 200 pictures from my trip to PressConf and some great stories to share. If you are curious as to what the experience was like (or just want a laugh or two), you'll enjoy this stream! ------------------------------------ 📩 Get weekly updates from me: https://markszymanski.co/newsletter 🤝 Book a private consulting call with me: https://markszymanski.co/consulting 🛠️ Explore every tool I've ever used: https://markszymanski.co/tools ------------------------------------ Connect with me: Website: https://markszymanski.co Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/markjszymanski Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/markjszymanski LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/markjszymanski Threads: https://www.threads.net/@markjszymanski TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@markjszymanski X: https://twitter.com/markjszymanski ------------------------------------ Read My Ethics Statement: https://markszymanski.co/policies/ethics-statement/ - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAPn9sc7zDU Hey there. Welcome back. It's been a little bit. I don'tknow, it's been like three weeks. I'veobviously been traveling, as you cansee by the title of this stream, and I amnot in my normal time or my normal daybecause, yeah, just kind of going withthe flow here. Um, I appreciate you guys stopping in ifyou're watching live or on the replay. Thank you so much. The reason you'rehere is probably because you're somewhatinterested in press comp. You have alittle bit of, you know, FOMO; likeyou feel like you regret not going there. If you sawsome stuff on social or whatever, I amhere to just go through my camera rolltoday, as I've done for the last fewevents that I've been to. I thinkit's funny; there's definitelysome funny moments in here. But, um, it'sto give you a better idea of what it's like. And again, this isfrom a very personal side of things, I would say.Obviously, this is literally through the lens of my phone,in a lot of different cases. So, it should be pretty fun. Again, if you've seen the other ones,I've done this for, uh, I did this forWord Camp US in 2024. I did this in, uh,last month for CloudFest. So, you can gocheck those ones out if you would like.But, um, I think this is a coolconcept. So, I'm going to continue to doit. Uh, hopefully you find some value inthis. I will also mention right here atthe top thatChristian Taylor and I were on siteat, uh, PressConf as media partners, andwe recorded a, I think, like anhour and 15-minute chat in thecourtyard about some of the things thatyou'll see here, like of the venue. So that will be going up on mychannel within a week. Um, I have notedited that yet. I have all the footage. We have a ton of footage from all thedifferent things that we did. Uh, so ifyou're not subscribed to him already, gocheck him out. And, uh, we also did one,like I said, same thing for CloudFestthere as well. So, if you want to, ifyou're interested in that, uh, you cango check that one out. Um, but I'm notgoing to waste any time here because wehad 200 pictures to go through, and Iwant to try to, like, try to rememberEverything, because it's been a week now and,uh, it was all a blur anyway. So, um,yeah. Uh, looking good. Appreciate that. Thank you. I'm scared again. Youknow, it's going live. You alwayshave the fear of not being ableto hear or see me, so I appreciate that.Looks like we're good to go. Let's roll. All right, so pressconf. Um, random thing again is I loveGoogle Photos. Like, it's so amazing. Ijust take the photos and boom, they'reuploaded immediately. Um, yeah, you haveto pay for storage, but long gone arethe days of having to ever transferanything off your phone. So,that's fantastic. Um, just an aside, Ilive and die by this. All right, we arestarting. What day is this? This is mein my basement bathroom mirror.I only left this in because I lookridiculously tired. This is like at 4:00a.m. or something like that before mything. So, just wanted to document that. Um, all right. So, uh, I'm again, I'mgoing to rapid fire. If you have anyquestions, definitely let me know. ButI'm just going from pure whatever thehell I can remember about all of these.Like there's obviously some pre andPost travel pictures there, in bakedin, but I'm going to try to get to theevent as fast as possible because that'sprobably what you're most intriguedabout. Uh, this is at again 4:20 a.m. I'mgoing from Pittsburgh where I live toPhoenix. And I would highly recommendjust randomly some things in here. Iwould highly recommend these Samsonitehard shell suitcases. Prettysolid for a reasonable price. And thenthis air bag that I purchased. Uh, it's atravel pack three small. Fantastic. Cannot say enough about that thing.Super happy as a personal item. Um, lovethat thing. Love that thing. So, um,highly recommend that. That’s the Xackversion. AER. Search that up. All right.Can you hear this?Because it’s so easy to—I don't thinkyou can.I think I’m going to need to resharethis real quick. Let me replace this.Uh, I think I need to do a tab. Hang onone sec. Live. Boom.Share. Perfect. This will work. Allright, let’s try this again. So, I feellike this setup right here is kind ofgoated because it’s so easy to justlike stick it on and then turn it on andThen nobody knows you're even recording. However, I think it needs a, um, I thinkit needs a level on it, like, at the top.So, we don't need to watch all thesevideos, but I just wanted to make surethere was sound if we need it. Let meknow if that was like burning, you know,like killing your eardrums if the audiolevels are bad. But the point is hereI'm walking through the airport with alittle thing on, and I think I have apicture of it as well. There it is, rightthere. It's ridiculous. So, um, so it'slike a clip, and again if you're going todo any of this stuff, like, again, that'sthe air backpack with a little clip mount thing that I got, and then that'slike an action cam that I rented from, uh,lensrentals.com. So that is, like,there's a lot of footage, like, POVfootage of me doing that which I coulduse in some content. But if you'regonna travel, I would highly recommendthat setup because that is amazing andyou can just, like, film away. So, yeah,that was a great, uh, great experiencethere. The airport, so damn, I was superfast through the airport. It was like 15minutes. Um, there's my gate. Uh, we're onthe tarmac there. Beautiful sunrise. Pre-flight water. I was in first classfor American Airlines. I ended upgoing there and back. I wouldrecommend, like, I don’t know. I mean,if you’re going to go, like, upgrade tofirst class, people say it’s like $50 perhour if you’re going to do that. So, Iwould consider, you know, I don’tknow. I think it’s worth it. The seatsare way more comfortable. It’s notlike a lay down or anything, but it islike, you just get more room, and I think,you know, we got a meal and everything like that. So, um, yeah, onthe tarmac, this guy was just slamming luggage, so I just randomly took a video of this. It’s kindof funny, just like slamming it down. Bang! It’s funny. Uh, Wi-Fi on planes isabsolutely unbelievably expensive. Imean, I don’t have a problem payingfor it because I want to actuallydo some work while I’m on the plane, butit’s kind of comical how it costs $25 fora few hours. It’s kind of wild. Um,which mic am I using right here?This is the Sure MK7 or MV7 Plus, Ibelieve. Let me look. Yeah, MV7 Plus,the white variant, I believe. I don’tNot, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that, though. Thank you. Ijust upgraded. I was using the HyperXQuadCast before, and I need to do alittle more sound treatment, but I’mbuilding a studio in my basement rightnow. So, I will make sure that it soundseven better. Uh, 'cause hard surfaces areterrible. But yeah, this is basically like that Shure SM7B,but it’s just like a USB version instead. It alsohas XLR, but I’m not doing all that. [ \_\_ ] So, uh, this cool picture I took ofthe taking off. That’s probably prettyloud, but yeah, just taking off there.Um, so it gives an idea of the legroom andjust kind of the vibe there. Soagain, this is American Airlinesfirst class, and yeah, it was afun experience. One random thing that Idon’t know where it’s at. I think it’sin the second weird um understorage. I’ll get to that whenever we, Ithink it’s on the way back. But yeah,just some views from the plane. Nothingcrazy here. I did try to get allthe duplicates and stuff out of here. Ididn’t want to havecraziness here. I have this on mute now.It’s probably fine. Uh, it’s really loud. On planes, I used to be reallymessed up. Like when I went to Portlandlast year, I was really messed up on myinner ears and stuff would getreally messed up. But this is, you know, just kind of theidea of what you get for the trade table.But um yeah, I was like reallymessed up. My ears — I don’t know if theywould pop, but I just didn’t flya lot then. Like I’ve flown, you know,maybe six times and it’s basicallyfully gone away. So if you have air problems,maybe just fly a little bit more, I guess. In first class, they give you glass, which isnice. Random view pictures—I thought Igot rid of some more of these. Sorryabout that. Um yeah. So I want to talkabout this real quick. I was on a WholeFoods diet for about a week beforeI left. And like I was saying, like it’samazing how much better I feel.And then I eat this stuff and Ijust feel like no bread, nogluten, very limited dairy, ifany, you know, no seed oils. And thenobviously, you know, it’swhatever. So, I’m not complaining aboutfree airline food or whatever, but youYou know, I was just like that. And then I went to press conference andyou'll see all the food I ate there. Andthen I came back and I had a coupleof birthday dinners and things to goto and now I'm back on it. Oh myGod. I would highly recommend you guysprioritize your health. It's just so much better when you're justeating whole food stuff. It's awesome. And I've never done that, so I'm notpreaching. I'm just saying this iskind of crazy. This is a hot towelthey give you, you know? Kind of fun. Idon't really know how to use that to behonest. I'm just wiping. I don'tknow. Random crop circles. That was fun.Aliens. Then this is getting intoArizona now. Okay, so we're basically inPhoenix. There's a lot of golfcourses and random things. It's kind offunny because if you zoom in overhere, it's just like this isweird to me coming fromsomebody from Pittsburgh. We havehills and mountains but they are covered in trees.So you look over here and it's kindof the same thing, but it's just a desert rock thing. You could be living in one of these houses overhere and just look out yourbackyard. It's just like whoop, likestraight up, and you could just walk upthis and then they just slap rock. Youknow, random golf courses and stuffthroughout. It's kind of interesting tosee. Uh, Krler says, "What's up, Christian?"It says, "Uh, it'll be free on allflights starting in January." Yeah,thank God. I need to start, uh, maybe I'llgo again after that and won't have topay $25 for 4 hours. I think it wasactually more expensive on the way back.Crazy. But yes, some more pictures. ThisI mean, when you're not—I've neverbeen to the Southwest, or even most ofthe West. I kind of flew through to goto Portland, but I've never been outthere. So, this is like a whole newexperience, just kind of seeing the landscapeand everything. Zooming in on people's pools. Nice big houses downhere. Uh, more golf courses. [ \_\_ ] ton ofgolf courses. I mean, this is actuallycrazy now that I look at this. These areall different areas, too.Wild. Um, I think I took this justbecause it says Weedville right here. It's kind of funny. Um, and also, the other thing is I don't thinkyou can see in this picture, but the waythat you get into this Phoenixairport, you literally have to basically do like a U-turn almost. It'svery jarring if you'renot ready for it. Like, oh my god,it's like we passed theairport, we have to come back. It's likethat Toy Story meme where it's likewe missed the truck. But, yeah, sokind of funny. Um, yeah, so just gettingin there. The weather, turbulence,and everything like that was pretty good. Um,didn't really have too much of an issuethere. It's more landscapes. This is uslanding here. No, was it a hard landing? The last few times that I've been onairplanes, I feel like the landingshave been rough. I don’t know what a roughlanding actually is like necessarily. Imean, we've landed safelyevery time, but it just feels likethere's so much braking involved. I knowit's automatic, but it's kind ofwild. It looks, you know, you're feelingway faster than when you'regoing through here. So, uh, apparently we'reback in the air here. More random stuff. I'm in the Phoenix airport here. I don'tknow what I'm saying. I could turn iton, but I don't think it's extremely important. It's just hotthere. I was wearing pants, and I waslike, "H, it's a little hot.We're in the desert." Immediately assoon as you arrive in Phoenix, you aregoing to get Whimo ads on your Facebook.It just happens; they gohard. Uh, and we were in a couple Whimos.You'll see a couple of those, but umyeah, that's what happens. Uh,this is a shuttle from the Phoenixairport to the Tempe Mission Palms,which is the venue for everything: the hotelwe were staying at and all that sort ofstuff. Um, just kind of getting someshots of that. This is me in theelevator flexing. Uh, 'cause it's a huge elevator,with a huge elevator mirror. Had to do that. Had to see where I was at beforeI completely ate like [ \_\_ ] the rest ofthe week. Um, this is the courtyard. So,again, I'm going to try to set thescene a little bit for you. This is thecourtyard. This hotel is basicallya big square, and in the middle inside ofit is the, you know, the area here whereThere's like a restaurant in a couple ofthe corners or whatever. There's allthese palm trees and very nice vegetation. The actual rooms, like the conferencerooms, you access them mainly from thiscourtyard. Uh this is like I think I'mat the, I believe I'm at the lobbyhere. Like you go in the front door, yougo through the lobby. You pop into thiscourtyard. Over there, you can goup to rooms and stuff. On the left-handside here, there's like a bunch of treeswith, like, tables set up as the buffetfor breakfast and other stuff. Thereis another restaurant bar thing to myleft here. I don't know, like, what I getover here is where all the press confstuff really took place. Um, and we'llsee more of that. But yeah, so that'sthe press com area. That right thereyou'll see is the snack shack. Uh, that was fantastic. Not for my diet,but just for tasting. Uh, yeah. So, kind ofyou'll get a vibe for all this as we gothrough, but just kind of setting thescene of what you're seeing. This is thefront of the hotel. Um, beautiful place.Uh, I think I took some nice pictureshere, too, with some of these fountains and such. Trees. I think those are palmtrees, right? Yeah. Um, crazy thing,too. I don't think I got any pictures ofit, but like these palms fall off ofhere and I wonder if you coulddie from getting hit by a palm becauseI mean, it's high up and we did alittle test afterward. Christian and Iwere just bonking off our heads andit didn't feel good. So, yeah, this isjust setting the scene from thefronthere and then I'm going to turn this. Look at this! Look at this!Look at this! Cacti, baby. Cacti.Cacti. Yeah, we're in the desert, baby.We're in the desert. We're in thedesert. You get cactuses in the desert.Cacti, I guess. Then this is the firstplace. All right, so where are we athere? Because it feels likeit's been a lifetime since I wasout here. This is the first day.I got here Wednesday, kind of in themorning, afternoonish. This is a placeright down the street. And thisis called Loco Patrón, I believe. Um,and just kind of like a bar, Mexicanspot vibe. Kind of cool. Uh, Christiansays, "Yeah, the test was brutal withWith the palms. Yeah. Yeah. It'scrazy. I have never seen a cactus inreal life; I don't believe. No, I don't think so. It was a bigday for me. So, yeah.Here we are. Um, yeah, Loca Patron,a Mexican spot. Pretty good. The food wasdope: chicken bowl, avocado,all that sort of stuff. Um, there's Christian right there. KevinGiri and myself, Matt Maduros joined us. Um,yeah, solid meal, solid vibesthere. I had one goal, like one specificgoal on this trip. I mean, I wanted to do a bunch of stuff, but myone specific goal was to take morepictures like this with my professional friends and stuff likethat. And I did that a lot. So, I'msuper proud of myself. You'll see a lotof those. We hopped back over to thevenue. This is again setting the scene.So, we walked into the area,like I was talking about the courtyard. You go into thatcorner and there's a basically a room that has a hallwayand then you can see that's where theconference rooms are. It gets even bigger. So this was just likeone section of it. I want to say maybethere were at least one or two other onesdivided here, like most conference rooms are, and this was thespace. So this is where all the talkstook place. Everyone stood on thatstage. Um, you know, there are slides orwhatever on those things. There are aboutfour to six, I mean, there were about 140 people. So, I'm not100% sure how many seats there are here,but probably somewhere in that range.And, um, yeah, this is like beforeanything happened. This is on Wednesday.The actual talks took place on Thursdayand Friday. So, this is kind of likepre-everything setup. They're juststarting to take a picture.I took a picture of the gym upstairs. Ithink, kind of again, I'm still trying toget acclimated with whatever it is. Thisis a shot from inside the lobby. So yousee like the PressConf comp stuff andeverything is taking placeout and to diagonally to theright over there in the corner. But thisis like, again, I think there's a goodchance that if you want to go to PressConf next year, it will still be at thisLocation. So it is, you know, probably agood idea that you know where everything is taking place. I, I, you know, Raquel,I think we got at least one somewhatsomething in here. Something in here. Umand we got the golf picture. You know, Iactually did an interview with Raquel, uh, on my littleOsmo Pocket, which I still have thefootage from. So, I'm going to, I have alot of backlogged footage that is not onthat wasn't on my phone. See, this isthe random aside. This is the problemwith taking multiple cameras. Withthe phone, it's easy because you justlike boom, it's on your phone. It's onGoogle Photos and you can just share itright away. I got to get a betterworkflow. I got to talk to Christian to dobetter workflow from taking the [ \_\_ ]from the cameras and putting it onto adevice that I could upload real quickand just like have a better situationthere. It'd be really nice if we couldhave these things that, I don't know, hadsome sort of internet connection and Icould just get it to my phone realquick. Um, there probably is somethinglike that, but I'm going to have toexplore that for next. Time. Um, all right, what's up Adam?Thank you for being here, brother. Uh,okay, this is my boy here, uh, Mark Weiss.Uh, there's a story behind this cheetah,which is actually, I think, a leopard,which I'm a little pissed off about,because Amazon, whoever sold me that,they lied to me. It said cheetah, but uh,Tammy Listister told me it was aleopard. So that's upsetting. But, um,anyway, the reason that he has a cheetahhere is because I sent him a formalinvitation. Mark Weissbird, if you don'tknow, he's the CEO of Grade, and he isGerman. He's German, but he is one ofthe most American. He's more American than I am, quite frankly. I mean, heknows more pop culture Americanreferences than anyone, than anyone Iknow, including myself, and he is reallya fan. He has a child, youknow, younger memory of, uh, Harold andKumar, that movie where they go to WhiteCastle, and, uh, there's a scene in therethat he sent me the clip from wherethey're CGIing, like, the CGI they'reriding a cheetah to White Castle. So, hetold me about that, and then I sent him aformal invitation, which I don't think Ihave the picture from that I used chat. GBT to generate and, um, I kind of wantto show that, but I don't know where it'sat, uh, because it's actually hilarious. Umbut, uh, he sent me, uh, he wanted me—hewanted to go to White Castle, so I, CG,I used chat to create this, uh,invitation, and I said we're going therethe first day at 4:00. Then I bought thislittle cheetah, and, uh, he was superexcited. So that was fun. And, um, yeah,so we went to White Castle. Uh, andyou'll see those pictures here in asecond. But, yeah, just the backstoryof why he's holding a plushcheetah. Uh, this was a fun ridehere, actually. Um, let's see here realquick. I'm lost on the chat. I'm lost inthe chat. There's a Wi-Fi SD card. Interesting. Two things: USBC micro SDcard reader for those DJImap. That is totally Snow Leopard. Yeah,I know.Yeah, I know it's upsetting, Tammy.Damn. Anyway, uh, maybe one day I'll buyan actual cheetah, I guess. Next time.So, this was a fun ride. Uh, great, verynice. Uh, very nice driver to us, not tothe road. Uh, to the people on the road.It's like three or four times. It waslike road rage. Events that I've been to. I think it's funny; there's definitelysome funny moments in here. But it'sto give you a better idea of what it's like. And again, this isfrom a very personal perspective, I would say.Obviously, this is literally through the lens of my phone in a lotof different cases. So, it should be pretty fun.Again, if you've seen the other ones,I've done this for WordCamp US in 2024. I did this last month for CloudFest.So, you can check those out if you would like. But I think this is a cool concept, so I'm going to continue to doit. Hopefully, you find some value inthis. I will also mention right here atthe top that Christian Taylor and I were on siteat press conf as media partners, andwe recorded a chat of about an hour and 15 minutes in thecourtyard about some of the things thatyou'll see here at the venue. That will be going up on mychannel within a week. I have notedited that yet, but I have all the footage. It's a little bit of a meme, obviously,but it's okay. You know, I had somefood here. It was fun. WhiteCastle, home of the original slider.Yeah, it's nice. It's a nationalinstitution. That was my order. Thosewere like little sliders with, uh, you cansee this is where we’re off to a bad starthere. Uh, we started a little okay withthat bull. Now we're in totaldebauchery mode as far as the health goes. So, it's only going to godownhill from here. But, um, yeah, likethese little sliders, like, I'mnot sure, I'm not trying to [ \_\_ ] on, youknow, White Castle, but I don't know whyanybody would go here voluntarily.This was a fun trip to White Castle.These little chicken things were fine,but I'm chicken biased. These frieswere awful, to be honest. And this littleburger thing, bro, it's like asthin as a nickel. Like, I don't, I don’tknow what's going on here. But, um, youknow, it was an experience. It was anexperience. Everyone was, uh, everyone washappy. There was the high shot of the meal.This is, uh, Mark's first bite.How is it? It's terrible. Not too bad. Not too bad.Tomato 1921 would probably be better.I guess that’s a win. Uh, I guess that’sa win. I don’t, you know, it’s definitelydefinitely, you can check that off thebucket list. So that’s good. Again, thisis, these are the types of pictures herethat I wanted to make sure that I gotregardless of where they were. I guessin this case at a White Castle. But um, Ithink these are important, like no, no, Iknow I'm making some jokes, but I thinkthis is really important to kind of justshow who you, um, you know, who you'reI don’t know, who you make professionalconnections with and maybe enjoy a subpar slider with, you know, I thinkthat’s a nice thing. So I’msuper happy I got a lot of those. Thisis, I got to give you the backstoryhere. We were at, uh, we were at WhiteCastle. There was a Dick Sporting Goodsacross the street. Uh, Sunny and I here,we play ball hockey. And, uh, he’s fromCanada. Uh, and so that means he’s betterthan I am. And we play ball hockey, likestreet hockey. So we’re going to go overhere and find hockey sticks andlike, you know, I don’t know, like aball or something and play around. Something, and they do not have one singular hockey stick inthis Dick's Sporting Goods in Arizona, which is, you know,retrospectively probably not that surprising. It isthe desert, but nevertheless that waswhat happened there. So, now we're backat the hotel after all the shenanigans there, and it's set up forthe actual mingling, like the welcome party here. Um, I think thisis kind of like, you know, obviously thearea here; there's a lot of stuff goingon. There's the event hall and allthat sort of stuff and a lot of thestuff. It's beautiful weather, so you takea lot of pictures. We got so lucky. I mean, I don'tknow if it ever rains in the desert, but it was beautifulthe whole time, and, yeah, so kind ofjust like I'm not sure how many picturesI have out here. I don't think I dohave too many, just because we weremingling and everything. But everybody's chilling over theretalking. Um, nothing is going on in the event space justyet, but this is kind of where that allWhat took place? Let me take a look at thechat real quick. Adam got food poisoningat White Castle. That sucks. Sorryto hear that, brother. Luckily, I didn’t. I would have to ask the rest of theteam though if they did. We survivedWhite Castle. Maybe that should havebeen the name of the stream: "WhiteCastle is gross," and it’s very much an EastCoast thing. It doesn’t belong here. Okay. Well, we do go toIn-N-Out later in the stream here, sothat’s maybe better. Actually,there are no White Castlesin Pittsburgh, so I don’t evenknow what’s going on. Man, I told younot to. Buddy, you had to giveyour first bite. I don’t know what to tell you. Thepeople wanted to know how you thought ofWhite Castle. Give your actual review. You are now a foodreviewer. Congratulations. These aresome little pretzels. I gotto get you guys the ratio here. It’s a little whack in my opinion;like, this is a lot of sauce. How am I supposedto use all of this sauce for thislittle amount of pretzels? From like a verypersonal side of things, I would say.Obviously, like this is literally through the lens of my phone, um, in a lotof different cases. So, it should be pretty fun.Again, if you've seen the other ones,I've done this for, uh, I did this forWordCamp US in 2024. I did this in, uh,last month for CloudFest. So, you can gocheck those ones out if you would like. But, um, I think this is a coolconcept. So, I'm going to continue to doit. Hopefully, you find some value inthis. I will also mention right here atthe top thatChristian Taylor and I were on siteat PressConf as media partners, andwe recorded a, I think, like anhour and 15 minute chat in thecourtyard of some of the things thatyou'll see here, like, of the venue. So that will be going up on mychannel within a week. Um, I have notedited that yet. I have all the footage.We have a ton of footage from all thedifferent things that we did. Uh, so ifyou're not subscribed to him already, gocheck him out. And, uh, we also did one,like I said, same thing for CloudFest. With the people that you're hanging outwith at these events because you don't getto see them that often, you know. Sodefinitely, definitely something thatI am happy that I did for the most part.Again, this is the—so now this is kindof set up. I'm going to go through andI'm going to show some different things.But you know, Raquel and the team did afantastic job making this look beautifuland everything set uphere. Um, so this is what you couldexpect if you want to speak at PressConfnext year, potentially if it’s allthe same here. Like, this is what yourvibe was like. This is what thespeakers got: a little confidence monitor. Um, you can see it’s a decent size room.Um, it’s—uh, I was on stage at theend. Um, so I'll share more about that.But you know it's not superoverwhelming, but it is depending onyour level of public speaking. You know,that's what you're getting there. Uh,this is the reverse shot here justlooking at it. So we got the littlebanners here and everything going on onscreens. I'm going to go, I think I zoomin on some of the stuff on thetables and stuff. Vantage points here. Um, these are books sponsored byKinsta. I believe there's PressConf onone side and I think I have Kinsta onthe other. Maybe I have a picture ofthat, maybe I don’t. But little PressConf logo. They had, trust me, they hadthe Kinsta logo on the other side. Justtrust me. Uh, but everyone got one ofthose. Uh, and this is where it kickedoff. So, uh, Brian and Adam up there,uh, doing a fantastic job. Uh, MCingincredible. And, uh, just like really,really good vibes, really goodefficiency and flow of the wholething. And kind of like, you know, somebanter back and forth, a few dad jokeshere and there. Uh, really great, reallygreat stuff. It was, uh, it definitely set the tone for the whole event. Uh, we got a littlegift because apparently I wasn’t around when Pressomics was going on, butapparently there's like a gift thingthat, uh, that everyone loved,every single gift that they evergot there, and that was like a staple.These are, I think I have, I think I havea picture of this. Um, but what'sactually in here is a little, is a littleGuy or gal. I don't know what gender this plant is, butit's like a little, you know, littlesucculent. So, that's fun. I shouldprobably water this damn thing. But, um,you know, I think they're neglectful. Like, you can neglect theseplants and they still live, right? Theystill love you. I don't know. Um, butyeah, so that's what's in that box. Incredible. Um, little business model too. I don'tlulazgarden.com. Really interesting concept that they just have all theselittle things and plants. I looked thatup 'cause I was looking at how to take careof it, and you can like get multiplebasically in a little garden box. Kindof interesting. Um, so yeah, reallyappreciated that gift. Everybody got oneof those ones. Um and that was sick. And then, okay, so this is I didn't get a singular pictureof um, you can go on the I'm sure theschedule is still on the website and Ithink that I know Christian got abunch of content on different ones. So, um I just I justhighlighted a couple here just in thisrecap. This is Matias and Mary fromAutomatic. Interesting talk here. I'mgoing to try to keep the comments relatively short in this, but if youhave questions or whatever, let me know. Um, just the overallvibe from this one was pretty interesting, in my opinion. It was good. It was good transparency from Automatic and kind of where theywant the project to go and where .com is heading, what they have todo. My vibe, this is my interpretation.This is my, you know, unprofessional opinion. This is just,I'm just, from what Iheard, it kind of seems like that. I've never spoken to Mary Hubard, but itsounds like she understands that the businessneeds to be like a business; it needs to make money. It needs to drive revenue. Not saying it doesn't,but it needs to be the focus. And, more or less, Ipretty much agree with that. It'sjust interesting to see how it's going toevolve. You know, talked a lotabout, um, Ry did a fantastic job fromthe repository. Asking different questions and thingslike that. Uh, as far as, um, you know,just kind of the direction and theoverall vibe, and mentality of what automatic is like,there were a couple of notes that I didhave. Um, there was some stuff fromlike from Matt. Matt was not there. MattMulling was not there, but Marymentioned a couple things. Um, and Ithink it was right around the timethat Matt put out a blog post about thePope. Uh, the Pope had died and thenit was like the Pope died, everyone'sunblocked; like, so that was kind offunny. Uh, it was weird. Uh, but um, butyeah, so that was just onerandom thing that came out of that talk.I don't really know how much I shouldsay about all these talks. I'm a littlelike I don't know how much really staysthere, but it was an interesting talkuh, nonetheless. And I think that if youwere in the room, like most ofthe things that were said, you'd probably kind of tend to understandand agree with. Like it wasn'tlike what I really appreciated andRaquel, tell me if I can tell more ifyou're still here. Uh, but what I reallyappreciated, bottom line here with thesetalks, and all of them, but specificallythe one from Mary Matias, is that itwasn't really [\_\_]. Like, it waspretty much matter-of-fact;answered the questions, not really toomuch like politicking from what I cankind of remember, and the vibe that Ikind of saw there. So, um, I appreciatedthat because I think that's whateveryone's looking for and wants,because their businesses kind of dependon a lot of it. So, yeah. Did I name mysucculent? Not yet. I'm takingideas for that. Okay. Um, I got ablanket one year at Pressnomics. Yeah,everybody loves the blankets. Raquelsays I can say more. Okay. Um, what can I say about that? Um, therewere at least two numbers in there.Thirty thousand people were blocked onWordPress.com, I think,like on Make or whatever. So theyunblocked thirty thousand people from what Iput together. And then therewas also a question of how manypeople are working. On.org, I think, was the question. If Iget this wrong, apologies, but I'mpretty sure the question was how manypeople are working on .org, and Mary waslike, "Why does it matter?" And then shesaid three. So, um, that's not reallysurprising, though, because, like, thenumber of hours has beenpulled back and things like that. But,um, I just think that it's a really, it'sa really nuanced spot where we're inright now with this whole WordPressthing becauseWordPress.org is, you know, kind of justchilling, you know, simple, simpleupdates and stuff like that. But Ireally do, I really do, starting to likeempathize and try to understand, like,okay, well, they need to make money. Soit's a big—it's the reason I'm bringing this up, is just because like all thepeople in the room kind of like care, butalso are, you know, in their own lane withtheir own businesses. But .org is abusiness in itself, like Automatic andeverything like that, and that's theirone of their money makers. So I'mjust trying to think like what thefuture of that would be. But ultimately,as Matt Maduros has said ad nauseam toMy keys to the kingdom rip off theband-aid type thing. I think we're kindof seeing that to a degree. Um, and thisis all outside of the really, you know,the other stuff that's happened in thelast six months. I feel like has been,you know, maybe a little bit of asymptom of those types of things, butit's not directly related. It's just like, you know, it is what it is.At some point, you got to focus on the money. And it's interesting to see kind of likehow Mary talked about it versus what we'veever heard from like Matt Mullenweg about it.Um, so yeah, I don'thave any answers for you. I'm just areporter. Um, Mary and Matias were incrediblykind. Open up to, yeah, 100%. Verytransparent. Really greatly appreciatedthat. Yeah, Santiago needs a friend. Isthat my — are we sayingmine is Santiago? We could do that.Yeah, WordPress.org is just chilling. It's vibing, you know. It'sdoing its thing. Everyone's the threepeople that are working on it areworking on it hard. Um, but it'schilling. Yeah. Yeah. So, we’ll see howThat goes. Uh, on to the next. Um, sothis was a, I can't, this was um MikeMallister forgetting my friend overhere. I think it's Chris and then DaveRyan. Um, another great chat here. Um, you know, I think every one ofthese had a specific kind of vibe. I think the reason that Ikind of took a little bit from here isthere was a little bit about AI thatthey were talking about. Obviously, Mikewas talking about AI. Um, and then Ibelieve is that Chris from Extendify? Ijust met him. I can't remember his firstname. But,um, yeah, I mean, again, every singleone of the talks had, especially I wanted to highlight alittle bit of here the dynamicbetween there were two types of talks.There were stand-up talks andthen there were panels where therewere, you know, questions being asked andthings like that. I think the ones thatare conversations are in some ways therewere definitely good on both sides. I think the ones that are conversationsare a little bit more like, you know,again, like that. I'm used to almostlistening to like a podcast ofPeople just having a conversation. Um,I’d be interested to know what themajority of people like more: if you arejust listening to somebody talk versussomebody, you know, having aconversation or a panel. I think thepanel type thing and the conversationvibe is something more that resonateswith me, just because it’s a littlebit more dynamic, and you don’tnecessarily know what people are goingto say. Um, but I could see it goingboth ways. There was a mixture ofthat, so I think it was great. Oh,Kriller. Okay. ChristiansSantiago is Christians. Gotcha. Gotcha. Maybe I should have another.Maybe I should have like a… Maybe Ishould name mine "Jose the tree people."It’s fine. Yeah, it’s fun. Allright. Whimo time, baby. Um, where arewe headed in this Whimo? I think we’reheaded to… This is again to set thescene. This is the second day, obviously.Well, it’s the first day of programming.Second day of… I’m there. So, it’sThursday. This I believe— is thislunchtime or is this after? Can’t tell.Um, but this is a Whimo. If you’re notfamiliar with what a Whimo is, it’s likeA Uber, but there's nobody driving that. [\_\_] Okay. And this is like they take these Jaguars and theysoup them up with all thesecameras and all this stuff. I havehad so many different conversations.When I got back, I was talking to myparents, and they're like, "What? Youwere in a driverless car?" It's like,"Yeah, it's wild, bro." Um, some peopleare really bullish on this, while othershate it. Remissis never going to get in one of thesethings; he's totally against it.But I believe Christian, myself,and Sandre hopped in here, and we wentover to In-N-Out. So, let's see what wegot here. Yeah, this is a whole—this isa whole 13-minute video we're not goingto watch, but basically theconcept here is you get in here and youhave like there’s no driver, as you justsaw there. I'm getting inthe front seat of this car with nobodyin the driver's seat. Okay. And there'sa nice little UI on thefront and the back. And then you have,you know, where you're going. It says I can't zoom in on this, but itlooks like In-N-Out Burger. You know,Christian ordered it for us, so it's allpersonalized. And then you justclick start ride, and you just go. Um, it does all thesteering. It looks like somebody'sdriving. It looks like a ghost is driving.Um, you know what I didn’t see? Ididn’t pay attention to see if thesteering wheel turns. I didn’t payattention to see if theturn signal stalk turns at allon the other side. I don’t think itdoes. I don’t see why it would have to.But it’s interesting how, I mean, becausehonestly, like the Tesla ones, right,don't even have steering wheels likethis robo taxi one. They think it's justunnecessary, right? Soyeah, so don't touch the steering wheel. And um, this was like a this is a13-minute ride at least, right? And itwas going around this littleroundabout out front. They're making left turns. Um, you know,it's not running people over, which isimpressive. Uh, it's not, as compared to our first ride in the Uber,there is no road rage. Um, it's actuallyIt, uh, hopefully you find some value inthis. I will also mention right here atthe top thatChristian Taylor and I were on siteat, uh, press conf as media partners andsuch, and we recorded a think like anhour and 15-minute chat in thecourtyard about some of the things thatyou'll see here, like of the venue. So that will be going up on mychannel within a week. Um, I have notedited that yet. I have all the footage. We have a ton of footage from all thedifferent things that we did, uh, so ifyou're not subscribed to him already, gocheck him out. And, uh, we also did one,like I said, same thing for Cloudfestthere as well. So if you want to, ifyou're interested in that, uh, you cango check that one out. Um, but I'm notgoing to waste any time here because wehad 200 pictures to go through, and Iwant to try to remembereverything, because it's been a week now and,uh, it was all a blur anyway. So, um,yeah. Uh, looking good. Appreciate that. Thank you. I'm scared again. Youknow, it's going live. You alwayshave the, uh, the fear of not being ableto hear or see me, so I appreciate that. Here. Okay. So, imagine this. I'llplay a little bit of this video here. IfI could get rid of this thing here. So,this is, I don't know, it's probably going tobe a little laggy, but this is like aturn into this in-n-out parking lot.Okay. And you can see that this line,this drive-through line is wrappedaround this building, and that'stechnically where it wants to go. Rightin line with that, right? 'Cause that'sthat’s like the entrance, and then this isthe exit of this parking lot. So, it kind of just sat here for a second. Andyou're going to see, like, it just chills.Okay. I don't know. It just chills here.And you're going to see, I think—yeah.See this truck? That's what a humanwould do, right? A human would just beespecially a big human in a truck likethat. It's just going to go like thisand then they're just going to be like,"Fuck you. I'm getting in here." Right? But the Whimo is not going to do that.The Whimo, like, literally sits here andwaits until this drive-through line moves up.So that's like proper. But also, I'm not even sureuh, are we in a turning lane? Okay, we'rein a turning lane, so it's fine. If you weren't in a turning lane, Ithink that would be a little bitmore of a thing. Um, but I'm just trying to show you here, like again,it's a little interesting. That's like,you know, an intersection between real life and technology,programming. Um, how do yousolve for this? I don’t know. Buteventually it moved, and then like itmoved just enough, I guess, for it to belike, okay, I'll go in here. Actually, Idid. Oh, maybe that I don’t know if thatguy moved for us. I didn't even noticethat. But maybe he moved.Yeah, we would have been sitting therefor a long time then. I don't evenrealize why it's going this way, butyeah, so we finally went to In-N-Out.Yeah. And uh, finally got thereand then it just drops you off basicallyin kind of a random spot. And uh,then you go and ate your burgers. What do we got here? I see a troll herein the comments real quick. Hang on asecond. Not Christian. I prefer a fulltank, a full talk because you get to hearmore of someone's big ideas rather thanlive podcast. I feel that. I don't thinkSo, I was trying to figure out if thepedals move. Oh, okay. Interesting. HaveI missed the part where Mark shares howhe folded his underwear for a crosscountry track? Uh, you actually did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I'm more of aroller guy because if you roll it, Ithink you get more space, but I am brandnew to this, so I'm going to have tocheck with my travel mentor, Christian Taylor.Uh, so yeah, Christian, let me know what you dothere. Uh, all right. So, next is thisIn-N-Out. Never been to In-N-Out. Wedon't have these over here. I learned alot about them. Seems like a prettyinteresting and cool business model. Uh,they have like, I don’t know, five items,six items, uh as far as food orwhatever. And obviously, you hear a lotabout In-N-Out because it's all the rageover on the West Coast, but um yeah,it was busy. Uh, I mean, Iactually think this was lunch,so it was busy. And um yeah, I don'tknow. Uh, Mark was there, Sandra,uh, Remiss, myself, Christian. Yeah, Ijust got a couple of shots inside here. Um,yeah, just kind of getting the vibes. Andthen this is our burgers. I want to mention something here. Okay, onthis stream, it's been 40 minutes.You've seen me eat technically twoburgers. I know the first was a slider.Now, I'm about to eat thisburger. Before this, I had eaten lessthan 10 burgers in my entire life. Okay,I know, big shock. Okay, but I was moreof a chicken guy. All right, I atechicken fingers and fries for the first14 years of my life, basically. And thenI switched to grilled chicken, broccoli,and rice. And now I'm eating burgers. These are good burgers. Like I don't know why I didn't eat burgers.I think it was maybe just that I didn'thave seasoned burgers at myhouse when my mom would make them orsomething. But this was a goodburger. So it doesn't mean anythingcoming from me, though; that's my point. Likeyou're going to have to ask anactual good burger reviewer. But fries were great.It was a nice little meal there. Cheap, relativelyinexpensive too. You get the littleanimal style thing. I did not opt forthat. I was not asked. I guessthat's like a secret, but yeah, itwas a good experience. I would go back. Yeah, it was good.It was definitely good. This isRemiss's rental Mustang here becausehe's afraid of the self-drivingvehicles. But he said this wasn'tup to his standards, though. A little bit too muchflex in the chassis or something. I don't know. Iam not a car guy. Oh, look atthis guy. He's wearing a jacket. I'lljust leave him on screen here while I goover to the chat real quick. Christiansaid, "I've experimented with both. Uh,but I feel like rolling is moreeffective." There we go. Yep. Yep. Yep.I'm not sure what that was in reference to. Maybe it was the burgerthing. That means you had a burger every2.9 years. Yeah. Yeah. I don’teat a lot of burgers, man. Uh, youredeemed yourself with In-N-Out. Yeah.It's crazy. Wow. You didn’t getAnimal Styles. I, dude, I didn’t knowhow to order it. There was so much going on in there. I was like, Ijust give me whateveryou got. Just give me a burger andthe fries, and that’s it. So yeah, this is a picture in the snack. Shack, which I think the nextvideo soon is showing,the snack shack. This is a snack shack.Okay. So, in the corner of this courtyard,there is like a, you know, maybe like a 20by 20 building or something, and it's goteverything you could possibly want inthere, and it's just all free. So it'slike a bunch of drinks. It changes —like the cook; there are cookies, andthen, like, there are breakfast stuff, kindof in the morning. It's like all sortsof different stuff. Um, this is mybuddy; I don't know if you guys know thisguy. This is glasses McGee here andjacket boy. He was aboutto go on stage with Jake Goldman. Kim Laari, I believe, is how you say hername, and then Brad Williams, and,yeah. So he has to wear the jacketbecause it's like a meme with Jake, Iguess. So, yeah, yeah. We tooka little picture there, and,yeah, the bro's looking good. Thiswas me giving him a hard time about thepresident later. What are you doinghere, bro? This is going on X. Youmeeting the president. You have a bigmeeting? I'm meeting Jade Goldman. Yeah.Oh, so you put this, you put the jacket. On. That makes sense. Makes sense. Yep.Good luck with that, buddy. It was good.Good talk. This is the snack shackwith the, just to kind of give you alittle bit of vibe. I think it's laggyjust because we're streaming here. Look atall these damn cookies. It's all free.It's all free. It's all free. It's allfree. Mark. Yep. All free. It's allfree. A big round of applause. We areexcited about the illustrious group here foryou. And without further ado, the stage isall yours. There we go. There we go. Absolutely buzzing. There we go. Matt,if you want this picture, justVenmo me and I will send it to you.Great talk there. Again, thisis kind of like an agency-type panel. Ido actually have a couple of notes fromthis one. Matt was the moderator.We have various different agency sizes and everythinglike that. We did get into a littlebit of AI at the end. I'm notgoing to try, I'm not going to put wordsbecause again we don't have the footage,but I'm not going to put words intoJake's mouth. Just had Jake Goldmanon WP Town Hall a couple of weeks ago andwe talked a little bit about it. You'll see here the venue. So that will be going up on mychannel within a week. I have notedited that yet. I have all the footage.We have a ton of footage from all thedifferent things that we did. Ifyou're not subscribed to him already, gocheck him out. And, we also did one,like I said, same thing for Cloudfestthere as well. So, if you're interested in that, you cango check that one out. But I'm notgoing to waste any time here because wehad 200 pictures to go through and Iwant to try to remembereverything because it's been a week now and,it was all a blur anyway. So,yeah. Looking good. Appreciate that.Thank you. I'm scared again. Youknow, it's going live. You alwayshave the fear of not being ableto hear or see me, so I appreciate that.Looks like we're good to go. Let's roll. All right, so pressconf. A random thing again is I loveGoogle Photos. It's so amazing. Ijust take the photos and boom, they'reuploaded immediately. You haveto pay for storage, but long gone arethe days of ever having to transferThat could be a part of it for sure. Ithink it could be, I think it justneeds to be more strategically based and notjust like completely, you know,technical in that regard. Now there's alot of different ways you can slice that. I'm not, like I said, you canleave your comments and stuff like that.Um, we'll talk more about it onsubsequent podcast episodes andvideos here. But I just think thatthat's kind of where it's going. Soagain, that was my main takeaway, kind offrom this talk is, we have threesuccessful agency owners up here andthey all had different vibes on that questionand also where everything is going, howmuch they're using of AI, what theirbusinesses are like, and again,they're all established and they have that core setalready of what their business is like.I just think it's very different forsomebody just kind of starting out rightnow. Um, and it's going to continue toget different. So those are my thoughtsin a nutshell. Um, so you didn't go to the originalchop shop. Sounds like you ate a lot ofUnhealthy food. Yeah, bro. I heardabout the chop shop, I think. And Ishould have gone there, and I didn’t gothere. Um, maybe next year though. Maybenext year. This is another picture, just kind of from thatMatt with the hands. We love that. Um,okay. So, this is funny. Um, I took thatlittle pad that we got, the beautifullittle notebook, and I put down AIor die. I’ve been saying AI or die forfun for a long time now because it’skind of funny. But the concept hereis, I think this was from Jake; like hesaid, he didn’t say AI or die but hedid say something like AI and then maybehe mentioned, I don’t think he mentionedthe word die, but it was basically likeyou have to adopt it to some degree,and um, like I said, it just triggeredthis thought in my mind because I’vesaid AR die before, I’ve posted on X andall sorts of stuff. So, I just I just drew it like this, and then I think Ihave a picture here in a second whereI’m holding it, and then I posted it. Butthe concept here real quick about thisis again just like what I said. It’slike I think you need to embrace this. It is not going away. I’mNot saying it's going to take jobsnecessarily. I'm just saying that youneed to embrace it. You need to leverageit. I've done it a lot more. I'mgoing to start showing people how I'musing it a lot more because, uh, it'sreally, it's actually like workflow,borderline life-changing. Just as arandom aside, not specificallytechnical, but blending technical andlife. Uh, all of this whole foods[\_\_] completely dumped into chatGPT. I'm like, tell me what to eat toavoid seed oils. Tell me what to eat. Ididn't go to the internet anymore. Ididn't go to Google and say, hey, findme a nutritionist and tell me this [\_\_]. It's, I don't know if you want to believeit or not, but the [\_\_] informationis out there. Like, some of it changes,but all of the information is prettymuch already out there. The frequency at which that type ofinformation that has been out there fora while is changing is so small and soso,uh, it changes so infrequentlythat the AI knows most of theinformation. Like, yeah, I'm not sayingdon't go to a doctor. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying, though, is for most ofthose types of things, you can get like80% or 90% of the way there now with like alarge language model rather than scouringthe internet for random answersor going to a nutritionist when really all you need todo is just stop eating seed oilsor something. So, I'm a littlepontificating here right now on this,but that's a real-world example.And that's why I think that this is sothis is such an interesting era that weare entering into. And I just think thatif you're not realizing thatat this point, it might be to yourdetriment. But you do you, 'cuz I'm just going to keep playing around withthis stuff. So then we got, um, okay sothis is Ry again andKareem, and great talk here. Veryinteresting. I have anotherscribble, another littleillustration from this one, butultimately, this was about how do I putthis? This is about the future ofWordPress. I can't remember exactly whatthe talk was called, but it's aboutthe future of WordPress, kind of likegovernance. Um, the word "fork" came up,But there is no fork. I'm just joking about that when I show you the next thing. But it's, like, the question is, is there a fork? Like, what, like all that sort of stuff. Um, Kareem and Yostalk, like all of the things that we've heard and all that sort of stuff.It's kind of just like a question and answer about that, more or less.How do I summarize it? Um, it's kind of like the best way that I could think about it is, well, the one main part of it was, um, federating the repository stuff. So there could be multiple repositories. I'm probably getting some of the technical details wrong, but there could be multiple repositories.The way to explain this talk is, um, like mitigating risk is pretty much the way that it is.If you actually look at it from a business lens, it's mitigating risk.It's not everything, like WordPress, is an incredible ecosystem that has been built up by incredible people, and we don't want to see it get destroyed for any reason from anyone — it doesn't matter.So, like, the idea is to mitigate the risk. Risk. It is so large right now. It'skind of like if you have askyscraper that's about 150levels tall. I don’t even know if youcan do that—150 stories tall orwhatever, right? But it's startingto feel old. It's alittle older. So it's like, you know,you're concerned. It's just aboutmitigating the risk. I don’t know howyou do that with a skyscraper,but you need some levelof stability and maybewe should consider making it so,again, the federated concept where you can havemultiple different repositories that are like—I don’t know if there's a name for them. They're mirrored or whatever. Thattype of thing. It went into governance alittle bit to have more decisionmakers and stuff like that. Again, Ithink the amount of detail there was alot of vision. It wasn’t— I don’t thinkthere was like a lot of planningspecifically, but that’s obviously whatthe point of the talk was—to raiseawareness and stuff like that. Iwould need to hear more practicalCheck him out. And, uh, we also did one,like I said, same thing for Cloudfestthere as well. So, if you're interested in that,you can go check that one out. Um, but I'm notgoing to waste any time here because wehad 200 pictures to go through and Iwant to try to remembereverything because it's been a week now and,uh, it was all a blur anyway. So, um,yeah. Uh, looking good. Appreciate that. Thank you. I'm scared again. Youknow, it's going live. You alwayshave the fear of not being ableto hear or see me, so I appreciate that.Looks like we're good to go. Let's roll. All right, so pressconf. Um, random thing again is I loveGoogle Photos. Like, it's so amazing. Ijust take the photos and boom, they'reuploaded immediately. Um, yeah, you haveto pay for storage, but long gone arethe days of having to ever transferanything off your phone. So,that's fantastic. Um, just an aside, Ilive and die by this. All right, we arestarting. What day is this? This is mein my basement bathroom mirror.I only left this in because I lookridiculously tired. This is like at 4:00. This is a mountain thing. I think thisis the one that we end up choosing. I think thisis on the other side, I think. But thisis the one we end up hiking up later here. This is, okay, this is again Thursday. This isan insider type dinner,um, speakers, sponsors, media partners.Great. I think this is called PostinaAnnex or Annex Postina. Um, but this isa great spread that the Presscomteam put on for us. Uh, bruschetta, allthis fun stuff. I was a little concerned. I was a little concerned atfirst because there wasn't a lot of meatover here. And I was like, "I atleast need to get some protein in."I mean, there's some obviously, some youknow, meat on sandwiches and stuff, butthere wasn't a lot of meat. Then I realized that there were twoareas of food. So, uh, I ended upgetting some chicken and some steak,over in the other area, which I think isright over here. Yeah, steak, meatballs.I mean, guys, I ate too many of theseskewers. Uh, I ate way too many of theseskewers. It was absolutely obnoxious howmany skewers I ate. Of food. Yeah, this is like my second orthird plate. So, um, yeah, I ate a lotof meat and, um, had to just make surethat I tried to hit the protein. So,that was good. And then they brought outthe sweets. And, uh, these chocolatechunk cookies were good. So, yeah.There's me and Rich Taber. Sick photo.Uh, and then there's the gang there,everyone. And then another picture ofthe gang later in the evening because wewere just sitting there talking. I waslike talking to Rich Taber. Well, wewere all talking, but I was talking toRich. We're asking a bunch of questionsjust kind of about Automatic and understanding it. Every single time I goto one of these events, I feel like, uh, Ijust learn more about Automaticspecifically sometimes from talks withRich and James. Uh, James Leage is alsowith Automatic as well. So, that was, uh,insightful just to kind of hear theirthoughts and everything. Um, yeah,really interesting stuff just to kind ofsee like how the project is runmore and how it is and like their, youknow, their overall mission foreverything. So, uh, looking forward to,uh, seeing how everything evolves. I left this picture in here. It's ashitty picture, but I left this picturein here because I imagine this is howsome people leave this place, just likeif they're drunk. It's kind of funny.Uh, no, this is actually it. This is abetter representation. Just kidding.This is me checking in. Uh, this is meupgrading my flight home to first class.That's what this is. And that wasactually reasonably priced, thatone. I think it was like 200 bucks. Sothat's nice. Uh, yeah, 200 bucks. Thereyou go. All right. This is up onthe mountain. This is Friday morning. This is Amber Hines and myself. We wentwith Brad Williams and MattMaduros. And uh, yeah, top of the rock,baby. You cannot tell from thispicture. We are high up. Okay.All right, I'm here withAmber Hines, Equalized Digital. We're atthe top of the mountain, as they sayhere. You've got to listen to this. BradWilliams, and we picked up some collegekid along the way. Hey, what's up? ASU,baby. I said ASU, baby. I don't go toASU. I was wearing a pit sleeveless.I went for a little 5K by the river.Just a little five. Just a little one. And Amber convinced us to climb thismountain. That wasn't really a climb; itwas more of a jaunt, a gentle jaunt.Brad, how are you feeling way over there?People probably can't even hear you. Saysomething. Hello. Uh, theme switcher pro coming soon. It'salready out. Free ad from WP Minute.Equalized digitalmjs.io. All right, have fun everybody. Dude,dude was about to snub me there. I hadto throw the MJS.io in there. But, uh,yeah, great. That was great. Um, couplethoughts from that. Um, so that we did,we literally ran like a 5K. We ran like3 miles. I'll come back to this, but weran like 3 miles and then we ran up. Wewent up this thing. My knees werekilling me. I do not jog forthat long. I run, but I don't jog forthat long. This is me on my — I think thisis after — that was in themorning. So this is me going down tomy golf attire, but we didn't golf thisday. But it was my golf attire to go tothe — day two, Friday of planning. Again, got to get the little mirrorselfie in there. Uh, this is Raquel righthere, setting the scene here for dayTwo Friday of everything. Uh, she said,"Go Devils in the chat." Nice, nice,nice. Um, Stephanie said that was more ofa spork. Yeah, I'm not a very good drawer. Lex, good to seeyou. Good to see you. Thank you forbeing here. So then, um, yeah, we'resetting the scene here for day two. Um,this was a very inspirational talk byMiam. Uh, I took this picturespecifically because you can see thedishes in the sink. Um, Ithere's no way that I could possibly sumup this talk in enough time, but it was really movingbecause it was like just all of thehardship that Miam, and not just Miam,like she was the one giving the talk,but so many other people, kindof in her position. I've never heardlike a first-person recount ofliving in an area of literal war andstrife like that while also, you know,in Miam's case, having several childrenand building businesses and doing allthis stuff. So, it was a wild ride. Um,that doesn't do it justice, but it was awild ride of a talk. Really insightful. Um, you know, like I said, it was movingand emotional. And I do want to talkAbout this, though, real quick. This was probably like,regardless of, you know, if you’re in thatroom or if you weren’t in that room.You’re kind of just gonna have to take my word for itthat it was those things. Ifyou’re in the room, you know what I’mtalking about. But thisparticular part here, I’m happy that Isnapped the picture of the dishesbecause this is one thing that couldkind of resonate with everyone.Her point in this particular part of the talk wasthat it doesn’t matter how successful youget. It doesn’t matter how much money you just got from VC fundingor what deal you just signed orwhatever; you still have to beultimately, most of us, you know, 99% ofus have to be a human, a standardlike mother or father, or just like an adultat the end of the day. So, she wastelling the story about how she got allthis VC funding; I think something likethat, and then she came back andthere were dishes in the dishwasher, and she’s gotto do the dishes. To me, that's just it. It always puts it in perspective, likewhat you actually know. What is actually, um, not necessarilywhat's important. It's just, it just reminds you to give you a level ofhumility. I feel like a lot of times, um,which I think is important to some degree. You got to be confident, but yougot to be humble at the same time. Um, so just, you know, remember that. I feellike for me, I remember it because when Italk to other people and I think, "Oh man, they're so successful," it's likeyou got to remember, it's like they arestill just people. I'm trying to do thata lot more. Trying to remember that, youknow, it doesn't matter how successfulsomebody is, like, professionally, youknow, publicly or whatever, they arestill a person. And, you know, ifthey're nice and they’re humble, then, you canstill create a connection with them,build rapport, uh, learn from them, provide value to them, that type ofthing. So, that's what I took away fromthat. Um, but incredible talk there. Uh,where are we now with the food? Uh, thisI think this is called MystiqueGrill, I want to say. I went over there,I believe, with Adam Weeks, Christian,and a couple of other folksand just got a couple tacos, man. Cuz,you know, I’m eating so much at thispoint. It’s like, bro, I got to settle down. Great tacos, though. Littlechicken tacos. Good price on that, too. Nice little place todo it right in front of you, almost likea Chipotle, but I think it’s—Idon’t know if it’s an actual chain or ifit’s just a mom-and-pop type thing. Very good food. Always good food overthere. It seemed like everywhere wewent, except White Castle, I guess.But this is another snack shackphoto. There are all the pretzels. I mean,it’s just trying to fatten me up. Idon’t know. Um, this is Rich giving ustalk about open source AI, alleverything. Um, there are some interestingphotos from here. This is the boy, theman, the myth, the legend, Matt Madurosinclamation form. So, that’s kind offunny. Um, yeah. I mean, just again, thewhole concept, the whole premise of Rich’s talk here was kind ofWhat I said earlier is that you got to embracethis stuff. You got to use it, you know,however you can. Uh, if you don’t useit, you know, you’re just going to bekind of left behind there. It’s kind ofI mean, again, I think maybe a lot of ushere, not myself really, but a lot of youguys, like if you were here when theinternet was starting, you know, andsocial media and everything was just starting,it’s the exact same thing. We’re going through it again. It’sjust like you have to use some level ofthis. If you don’t, then you’re going tobe like, “Well, I don’t know.” You’renot going to be completely out of luck,but you’re going to be in adifferent position, and you’re probablygoing to regret it because the reasonmost of us are here, I think, is becausewe embraced that last renaissance andthis is just the next one. So, that’skind of what my takeaways are.This is back on that rock. I don’tthink this is out of order. We got arandom guy down here. Random guy, randomlocal. Um, this again, this is justcrazy because you’re down here, like whereyou’re standing, and then you have tobasically rock climb a little bit andThen you have to walk across theserocks. It doesn't look that bad here,but it was not the greatest. But Brad and I made the voyage acrossthere to stand over at the top of the peak.So, that was fun. Uh there's anotherzoomed-in one. All we got and Brianagain. This is Kevin's talk here. Uh Iwas talking about like the future ofpage building and everything.Uh a little bit about Etch, but reallyjust kind of the concepts and everythingkind of like moving forward into the new era of that. Um, Kevin on stage and then thereis Jake Goldman with his specific talkthere and again this is kind of like the 3Ms, the three CMS like buyerpersonas. Like I didn't catch all ofthis because ours was next, but you know, likeit was kind of interesting. He wastalking about like for designers andthen hybrid and then like fortechnologists. Like I've never even heardof sanity and payload, so it's like youknow, this is like a whole other realmthat you know, it's just kind of aninteresting way kind of that. He framed it. Um, and it was reallyinteresting to just see, you know,what he's seeing, you know, kindof at the upper echelon of likethe client space. Um, so I don'tknow. We shall see where that continuesto roll. That's just another, uh, anotherone in large or all three buyers anduse cases, magist. Yeah. So like themarketer strategist and, like, pretty mucha lot of his slides were kind ofvariations of this, trying to seekind of like where people end upbeing. Um, you know, I don't know. It's kind ofinteresting. The panel included Amber Hines,Brian Cords, Brian, and then BrianRichards. Yeah. And then, um, myself,Matt Maduro's podcaster panel. Um,I thought it was pretty good. Actually,I have this footage right here, the wholething shooting out of the audiencebecause that was on the whole time. And,um, good conversation. My first time onstage. Uh, I thought it went well. I appreciated all the insights and allof the fun banter between the gang uphere. It was definitely fun. Um, youknow, easy, easy to talkum, you know, we kind of really justI recapped the event, talked about content marketing, podcasting,and video. I hope thatsome people got some level of value outof what I said. I don’t know. Ithink everyone on the panel dida fantastic job. So that was dope. That’s me in an elevator again becausewe're back in the elevator. That’sactually—yeah, that’s the only time I wore pants during that wholetime. And a funny story about this. Igot to talk about this. I’m not really areligious person, okay? I wasraised Catholic and whatever, butI don’t go to church everySunday or anything. The funny part about this is thatafter all these events took place,you’re going to see apicture here. This is meand Mark Weiss in the rooftop pool.We’re swimming around here, talkingbusiness, as most people do, right?Especially the Germans; they lovetalking business in the pool and sauna.Particularly in Europe, theydo that in the sauna naked. We weren't naked here. But, in thepool here, I'm swimming around andwe're just walking around in thispool, right? And we're talking, whatever. We're talking about just like youknow, grade and all sorts, like WordPressstuff or whatever, and I step onsomething and I pick it upwith my foot. It's this cross righthere, and again, I'm not religious. I'mnot trying to make this a religiousthing. I just thought it wasunbelievably crazy that somebodymust have lost this and I just picked itup. So, I don't know if I should betaking that as a sign, but I don’tknow what the sign would be. But you know,that was pretty crazy. It waskind of funny because in the momentwe're like, "Oh man, that's a sign." Andwe dapped each other up, like that'scrazy. But, yeah, it was kind offunny. So, um, yeah, it was just awild thing that happened that I wanted to share in the pool. Really cool pool as well; you'll see it later.There's a big pool in the middle, andthen there are two hot tubs on eitherside. Uh, I think I have some other shotsof that. But this is later. It's Friday now. This is like, uh, you know,eveningish. Obviously, the fireworks werenot for the press conference, but it was kind of acool touch, and, um, yeah. Oh dear. Is itgoing to be loud? I don't want to blowyour eardrum out with, uh, fireworks.But yeah, there's that. Um, there was auh, I don't think I got any pictures ofit because we were literally in the poolwhen it was happening. But that wasthere was like a big, there's like a bigum, area up there at the pool, and that'swhere the after party was. Um,basically the same thing as the welcomeparty, but everyone was like minglingand everything like that. And then we headed out to, uh, the gang here headedout to war debauchery. Uh, walking downthis strip, which is like a Vegas stripbasically, but in Tempe, Arizona. It's avery college-heavy town. Uh, just, it’scrazy. Just, I don’t know what to say.It's just wild. And then, um, we went overto the Weston Hotel, which is like a, like,a tall hotel. There are likeyou know, 18 levels or whatever. Andthey had like a rooftop situation overthere. So, we're at this other. We didn’tgo in this pool, but this is like kindof what we were looking at here: a big TV. Big pool area. Whole gang is here aroundthis table. Uh, Mark Westguard is there. Uhand then, yeah, everyone else that we'veseen already is here. And, um, yeah, so we'vejust got another bite to eat here. Um, I think there's sometuna nacho thing and some other chips orsomething. Um, some sick views up hereagain, like the mountains and stuff. Ijust still love how the mountain isliterally sitting right in themiddle of this. It's so crazy. Um, butyeah, so then we were chilling therefor a while, and then we went over tothis place called Fat Tuesday. Uh,you're not allowed to film in hereeither. Yeah. So the reason I saidthat was because I went into this placeand I was wearing Adidas shorts, and it was 9:45. Theywere like, "Hey, uh, just so you know,after 10 we have a dress code that youcan’t wear athletic shorts." And I'mlike, there are women in here with theirfull rear out, and I can't wear Adidasshorts? So, uh, you know, sexism. Justkidding. But, uh, that wasfunny. And, um, yeah. So, so we got in. There, and uh, Mark Wgcard orderedeveryone these drinks. I've neverdrank alcohol in my life, so I did notdrink these alcoholic drinks. But, um,when I'm out like this, I enjoy it becauseeverybody's vibing. Everyone'shaving fun. And uh, I do a lot ofinstigating, so it's a lot offun. It's a lot of fun for me. I havea lot of laughs. Um, and uh, yeah, goodtime. So, everybody got these littlethings and yep, you see the vibes? It'sfun. And then this is uh, Remissand everyone at the table. So the thingis, these things are huge, obviously, and they're like slushies. So it's likeI'm trying to see who's going tofinish first. I'm basically making it wehave a lot of differentnationalities at the table. I'mbasically making this an Olympic eventand uh, instigating everyone to try theseand finish them as fast as possible. So, it's a lot of fun.And um, yeah, Mark Weissber's to myleft. Remiss is to my right. They'rekind of like finishing faster thanmost people. Some people are kindof tapping out. We got a couple of things here. Ithink they're so close. They're like soclose. Mark's dying. Um, but they'relike so close. And I'm trying to seewhere the actual — I think it's right at the end of this one — iswhere I want to show you just one quickclip of this because they all have a little bit left.And again, I feel it's like the Olympics. So, you havelike a German, uh, Runus is from everywhere but the Netherlands, I believe.Dutch, and then um, knows every languagein the entire world. And then across thetable is James Leage and he just comesout of nowhere. There are two of these left and hecomes out with a little drop left. He just appears. This little thing is in my wayon this, uh, and like he just — I hopeI hope it, I hope this — yeah,here it is. Okay. So, he justlike chugs the last little bit and heslams it down. USA! USA! USA! USA! So,we won. USA won. That was fun. Um, FatTuesday. Sick picture of the thingthere. Mark, everyone's vibing here.Getting the old — should have got a 360camera for this. Uh, there's Christiangetting my POV there. Remus, Kevin,Mark. Yeah. You see the vibes. You knowthe vibes. Uh there's Mark and JamesPage. Probably should send that photo tothem. Uh it's a nice one. Okay. Damn. All right. That was crazy. Oh[ \_\_ ] Uh Raquel, next time, bro. Were weat the—I think were you at the chophouse that night or was that the second?That was the second night, I think. Ithink that was, uh, Saturday. Next time.Nexttime. Uh, an absolute horrificshrink, bro. You won it. You won it forAmerica. So, congratulations. We're allvery proud of you. Next day here. Allright, switching into Saturday. This isgolf day. This is go-kart day, VIP day.Uh, a lot of stuff going on. And, um,you know, we headed over to, uh,Shalomar Golf Club, maybe. I don't knowif it says golf club, but Shalomar. Uh,closing. We went there Saturday, closeclosing for good in four days onWednesday. So, um, it was good. It wasgood golf. Um, a lot of golf coursesout in Arizona if we're heading backthere. You know, obviously we'll play adifferent one next time. Um, so, that'sgood. And this is just kind of like thisis 18 birdies this app. So, it's just aNine-hole golf course. Just kind ofgetting the high level of what thatwas like. Just snapping a quick pictureof that. Again, in the middle of aresidential area basically. So, thehouses were in play, especially for guyslike me that can’t hit the ballstraight. Um, these are the boys walkingin here. Um, I’m just kind of gettingthat’s like T1 there and there’s aclubhouse and everything like that. Allright, boys. So, we’re out. Beautiful. Imean, again, like again, it’s, you know,grass is a hot commodity. I mean, you cannot—it’s a rarity. You can’tget a lot of grass. I mean, it’s it’shonestly reasonably well taken careof for literally closing. So, ourgroup was Sunny, uh, Derek Ashar, andKevin, and myself. And yeah, we’re justUm, I wanted to do— I want the reason Itook this clip is I wanted to have thisaction cam thing mounted to the glass onthe front of the cart. There wasno—well, there’s no plastic. It’splastic, but there’s no plastic. Therewas—it was just, you know, it’s just Idon’t know what happened. They just tookit out. So I couldn’t do that. I endedup um putting it on my head. So I playedMost of the round with this thing on my head. And, um, I have a ton offootage that is all still justchilling on the drive here of melike my POV action cam head golfing. Sothat should be fun. Maybe I'll get somegood clips. I did have a couple of 300 yardbomb drives. I apologize to ourfriends in front of us that I hit. Uh, I think I hit thecart. I don't think I hit them, but, um,yeah, that was uncharacteristic. Uh,really had the draw feelsthere and just really whackedthat one. So, sorry about that. Anywho,um, just a couple of randomclips here. I don't know if they'regoing to play or not, but, um, Sunny, um,hitting the green there from like HunterOut or whatever. Um, yeah, it's kind ofbeing a little bit of a [ \_\_ ] here, butum, Kevin, little flop shot from Kevinover this rock. I think it was over therock that was over the thing overthere. Where's the flopper? I think this is theflop. Yep. Nice little flop over thecart. Um, this is the gang right here.Sever. Cow. We got a picture together, kind of. To pay for storage, but long gone arethe days of like having to ever transferanything off your phone. So, that's fantastic.Um, just an aside, Ilive and die by this. All right, we arestarting. What day is this? This is mein my basement bathroom mirror.I only left this in because I lookridiculously tired. This is like at 4:00a.m. or something like that before mything. So, just wanted to document that. Um, all right. So, I'm again, I'mgoing to rapid fire. If you have anyquestions, definitely let me know. ButI'm just going from pure whatever thehell I can remember about all of these.Like there's obviously some pre andpost travel pictures there in bakedin, but I'm going to try to get to theevent as fast as possible because that'sprobably what you're most intriguedabout. Uh, this is at, again, 4:20 a.m. I'mgoing from Pittsburgh where I live toPhoenix. And I would highly recommendjust randomly some things in here. Iwould highly recommend these Samsonitehard shell suitcases. Prettysolid for a reasonable price. And thenthis air bag that I purchased. It's atravel pack three small. Fantastic. A little anticlimactic, but she did agreat job. I took this picture andI never sent it to Mark Wgard and thegrade team. I just thought this washilarious because like beer garden, it’slike we’re just trying to do someweird, fake German stuff or something.I guess that’s somelevel of German. I know they have likeweird beer garden stuff, but yeah,that’s basically what was out here. I lovethis water thing. I could have drankthis whole entire thing. It’s hot outthere. I just got sunburned from beingout on the golf course. Just somepictures of the food at this place, becauseif you ever go there, I wouldhighly recommend checking this out. Pretty good stuff. Those are sweetpotato fries and it’s like a littleroast beef thing. I got this littlepizza. We got these little, uh, otherthings. They delivered this guy tothe wrong area of the table, which waskind of funny. But, uh, thenumbering system here wasn’t thebest, but it was good. It was good vibesthere. Yeah, great food and everything.And then this was my littleboarding pass, group one. Yep. And then, okay, so this is what Iwas talking about afterwards. Went backto the pool. There's a hot tub here.There's a hot tub on the other side.This is basically the whole entire pressconf gang. You know, a big portionof it that was remaining, just allchilling by the pool there. Um, a lot ofgood conversations. We were chillingthere for a while. And then we went toour next place that I had to eat foodat. Um, barely even hungry, but youknow, you just got to keep eating. Uh,Cafe Boa, it's like an Italian-ishrestaurant. Really good. Uh,there's a little bit of pizzaand everything there. Little appetizer. And then I ate a whole chicken. Um,I didn't think it was going to be likethis. I did not think it was going to bea whole chicken. I was going to have tofight for my life to get this meat offof here. But, um, thesepotatoes were great. And yeah, it was agood meal. I just thought it was goingto be like kind of two breasts orwhatever, but it was a wholechicken. It was like they literally killedit in the back and gave it to me. But itwas good. Everyone's, you know, good. I thinkeverybody thought it was a great Italianjoint, so I would say highly, highlyrecommend it there.Um, that face doesn’t look like a win; itlooks like regret. Um, who was that?Which one was that in reference to?Kind of want to go back tothat.Uh, was it —was it, was it, uh, what’s hisface? Was it James? Yeah, honestly, itwas, I mean, you know, the drinks weresugary. I think this, you know, I don’tknow. Uh, I don’t know what the vibeswere like there with the drinksspecifically, so I definitely understandthat. Uh, back to the food here. This isthe gang here. This is myself, BrianCords, Brian’s wife, uh, Dana, and thenChristian, Kevin, and Sunny. Again, gotto take these pictures; got to document the good stuff. Finally, went to this crispycone just to, you know, switch up my dieta little bit more, but it’s fine. All ingood fun. This is like apparently aEuropean thing. Um, I don’t know; Ithought it was — I thought I read thatsomewhere on the wall somewhere, butit’s basically like a little BiscoffAlmost like a churro-type thing. Youcan customize a bunch of stuff, andthen you get ice cream on it. Honestly, if I was reviewing thisplace, which I guess I slightly am, I'veseen these twice now. Theproblem is the cups are justtoo small. You needto have a little bit of a bigger cup. Iknow they're doing it to make it stand up,but every single time, it's like you'refighting for your life trying to eatthis thing. It's not ideal. Uh, Tempe, uh, Mission Palms at night. Then,this is the next day here. Uh,well, again, I have to mentionthis because I didn't take anypictures. When you go to eventslike this, you have to make surethat you utilize your time wisely. If you're going tospend the money to go to an in-personevent, you have to prioritize the connection and theconversation building. Most of the greatconversations happen at night. Whenyou're at, you know, a venue, likea social gathering or whatever. The reason I'mstopping here is because this is thenight after all the VIPstuff. We were out in the courtyard. II know. I'm going to scrollto the next morning, but we're outsitting over here in this area, right? Um, like in that corner over there wherethat restaurant-type vibe is. We wereout there sitting until like 11:00like just a bunch of us. I thinkRemiss, Raquel, you know, Kevin,Sunny, like everyone was justsitting over there, not just the core group, but like a lot ofother people because you're just havingconversations, and it's not about likejust WordPress. It's not about justbusiness. It's about whatever. You'recutting up, making jokes, building connections, and it's like youare gonna—if you do that properly,so to speak, okay? Like if you're justgenuine, a genuine, like normal person,you are going to create connectionsdoing that for the rest of your life,regardless of if you're constantly in WordPress anddoing stuff like that forever. Like that's just—I’ve never really had like astrong community, especially like astrong professional community like thatuntil I started going to these types ofEvents like that, yes. I’m not trying todefinitely not, um, you know, uhtrying to downplay any of thetalks and the events and everything, butthat part right there is reallyimportant, uh, in my opinion, andthat’s like one of my favorite partsabout going and hanging outwith everybody, just chatting and having laughsand fun. So, yeah. So, then this is thenext morning. I was trying to get somesun out here because I was going tohave to go back to cloudy Pittsburgh. This is a random crow that justrandomly came over here and it wasjust, you know, whatever. But that’s kind of funny. And then this is Christian and I, which is whatI’m referencing in the beginning. Youwill see this podcast-style chat episodepretty soon, I would say within thenext week. But, um, yeah, we just satdown. I’m going to move the set againbecause of the sun. We started overthere and we ended over here. We had aspecial guest hop in. I’ll wait to tell you who thatis. But just peep around the corner. And we had a little chat for a littlebit as well. But a really good, reallygood—uh—another really good wrap-up, Ifeel like. Again, this one's kind ofmore like life through the lens of mycamera, but this was just us talking aboutour whole experience and everything like that. Um,yeah. So, yeah. I don't know if it wasactually European. I thought for sure itwas like it said that on the wallsomewhere, but yeah, making fun of poorNancy. Yeah, Nancy. Yeah, Nancy. Um,I'll let Christian tell you about Nancyin an upcoming video or something. But, um, but yeah, Nancy. Nancy was aball of fun. And then, uh, so this is—wedid that, and then Christian and I headedover to our flights, which were kind of at thesame time, so we headed over to thisplace. Now, I do want to talk about thisplace real quick because I don't know ifanybody is in the Phoenix area, but um,if you go back or whatever. This is abrand new spot. Like we walked overhere. We heard from a couple ofpeople that this was a really goodplace—two seconds from the hotel. It'scalled Sexy Burger. We heard that this"Let's go over and have another burger."One of my, you know, adds to my total oflike now we're up to 10 in my life. So,I walked over here and the owner, well,I think he's a manager, manager, owner,I'm not sure. But he was telling us thewhole story about this. They opened twoweeks ago. It was like a soft opening. It's like a really cool vibe spot. Um,they cook the fries in beef tallow. Uh,everything is like, you know, it's likea Wagyu burger mix. Um, everything'sfresh; everything's good, and, uh, yeah,just like they're trying to scale itobviously. And this is like kind oftheir flagship location right now. Just realcool, real cool vibes. Um, great food. See that in a second.Interesting things. We sent this toRemiss because his talk was about thislike if there's no struggle, there's noprogress. That's kind of that kind ofwild that that was there. Um, yeah, sojust again kind of like fits the vibe ofthe whole week a little bit. Andthere she is. So those fries wereamazing. And then the burger was prettyamazing as well. That was the, I don’tknow, that wasn’t the signature one. ThatI was the one with the bacon. I thinkChristian had the main one. But, um, yeah, it's great. SoI highly recommend, if you're over there,go show them some love because it is agood meal. There'sChristian and I chowing down. There'sthe front of the joint. And then I justwent back to the courtyard here. Um,I took a couple more snaps, just excited tosee that. And then this is a Whimo. Thisis us getting in our Whimo. Now, the problem that happened herewas we were actually talking to Raquelfor too long, and we missed the 2:00shuttle. Um, so my flight was at 4:00,Christian's was at 3:45 and he had tocheck a bag. So that was going to be alittle tight. So then we called a Whimoand we decided to take a Whimo all theway to the airport, which is like a 25-minute ride,I feel like, and we were justkind of racing against the clock. Iended up being fine. Christian was veryclose, but he made it as well. So, um,yeah, luckily the TSA andeverything like that, uh, pre-check wasgreat. Um, I took a random picture ofwhatever the heck this thing is overhere. It felt like it was... it's not theAlamo. I don't think, but it kind of had those vibes. Uh, and then, yeah, Itold a little story to say pray forcra, because I knew he was doing that. And then time traveling.This is what I was talking about earlier.This is in the American Airlines first-class cabin.It's very strange how there's enough room tostick something under here, but thenthis is the middle. This isn't a seat.This is like the middle of the thing, soif you're in the aisle, you have tostick your bag under here. Justkind of weird design. Um, this is taking off. And then, I kind ofused to be the Instagram story king andnow I need to reclaim my title.So if you're not following me on Instagram,go follow me on there if you want to laughonce in a while. But, um, I said I went a little crazierbecause I normally drink water, but I gotginger ale. And then, uh, this wasfantastic, honestly, like this littleenchilada thing. Um, but yeah, I don'tknow what they were trying to do overhere with all this weird picostuff. And then I was back on the hardwater. Thought I couldn't get any fatter thisweek, ice cream. Yeah. So that was that.This was a great little snap that I took there.Just like a video of like you can't really tell right now,but just like above the clouds. And thenthis is back in Pittsburgh, um, with somerandom area completely lit up. I'venever seen that while I'm on the ground.That's wild. And then this is thebest entrance you could ever ask forinto a city, you know. Don't @ me. It'sjust like through the tunnel, and thenyou just see the whole city. So, ifyou've never been to Pittsburgh, come onout. I'll show you a good time out here. But that is when you're comingfrom the west, like from the airport, andyou're going into the city area. It'sjust kind of like before this; you're inbasically a suburban area comingdown a hill, and then over here you'rejust like, "Oh, there's a city there." Kind of cool. Kind of fun.There's my little succulent afterwards.And I think these are morepictures. I think I had, um, I reorderedthese, but these are some other picturesfrom the actual archive ofeverything while we're on stage. Cool. Guys, that's about it.Um, oh, Torv Castle. Interesting. Cool.That's about it. Um, high-level recapafter all those pictures. Hope youenjoyed some of that. Hope you laughedat your computer or phone once in awhile there. Um, I like doing theserecaps. I think it's kind of fun. I knowit's not extremely event-heavy, but that's also why we do theother, you know, the recap withChristian, everything like that. So,make sure you're, make sure you tune into that as well. That'll be just astandalone video. Um, I really want to just say thank you toRaquel and everyone for putting that on.It was a great event, uh, veryprofessionally done, very, you know,highly efficient. Everything flowed well.Uh, I don't thinkthere were any hiccups or anythinglike that. So it looked great. Itwent off without, you know, without ahitch. I would highly recommend youconsider, if you weren't there, considergoing next year if you're in the mindsetMaking, uh, you know, improving yourbusiness, but also kind of improvingyour mindset around business. A lot ofthe talks — I didn’t snappictures of every single one, but a lot ofthe talks were about almost likepersonal endeavors related to businessrather than just business, rather than just WordPress. It was what Ineeded, truthfully, because it wasn’t justlike random technical stuff. It was likehow to think differently, how to, youknow, appreciate, um, you know, thesuccess that you’ve had, but alsocontinue to push forward with differentthings and, uh, again, just like kindof a spark to understand where, youknow, we might be going from an AIperspective and all those types ofthings. So, yeah, again, just a hugethank you. I had a fantastic time. Loveseeing everyone in person. Super stokedto, um, I will not be at WordCamp EU. Mysister is getting married, uh, thatweekend, and I am actually marrying herand her fiancé, so that I have a littlebit of a role in that that I can’t skip. But if you guys are going to WordCamp US,regardless of whatever happensthere, hopefully we see some updates. I plan on being there in Portland again,and then also thinking aboutpotentially going to CloudFest USA inMiami. So I might be doing some stuffthere. Yeah. Other than that though,you know, I’m going to continue to dowhat I thought about here, all these insightsfrom the last week, try to build somemore of that into my content, honestly,into the agency as well, because I wantto try to really ramp up the servicesside of things. But yeah, I don’t knowwhat else to say. Press Comp wasamazing. I would highly recommend youshould go next year. Uh, look out. I mean, the minimum you could do is justgo follow Pres on X. Um, you know, makesure you’re following Raquel to see anyupdates and everything like that movingforward, because I think it was, I thinkthe consensus that it’s happening again.I think the consensus was it mighthappen again at the same place. Not 100%sure on that, but just follow for moredetails. So, that is the Press Comp MJSphoto recap. I hope you guys enjoyed it,and I’m signing off for now, because I’mgoing to go do somework. So, yeah. All right. Thank you. Guys, thank you for watching. I greatly appreciateit. I'll talk to you in the next one., What REALLY Happened at PressConf (LIVE), Mark Szymanski, 01jtnp4yjrtx7h9x3fvqg0m7qb.