Benefit of the Doubt  🔗 **Source:** [Benefit of the Doubt](https://share.snipd.com/episode/ac309087-6f05-4fb8-a098-f6539c5ab50e) ## Highlights - **Luke’s Unusually Awkward WordCamp Keynote** - Luke experienced an unusually informal and confusing WordCamp US keynote, including a late start, improvised conversation, and unexpected release-button moment. - He initially defended the experience as authentic before reconsidering whether that response reflected naivety. Transcript: Luke And, uh, as I'm sitting there about 20 minutes pass and Matt still has not come on stage. Okay. And at this point I'm like, Oh, interesting. Like the room is now full and I'm kind of looking around and just taking it in. And I'm chill. Like I'm having a final time, just, just hanging out there. And then, um, Robert Jacoby comes out and, uh, he does a little like MC thing and he's, uh, good vibe. Matt comes out not too long after. And how do I put this? He seemed disheveled, not quite the right word, but like it just, I was like, oh, okay. This is a very, there was a very like informal vibe. He first came out after the spokesperson for the city of Phoenix had declared it to be like a board camp day. I'm forgetting exactly what they said, but it was kind of a strange, in my head, I'm like, are we going to have it here again next year? Or what's up? It was very hot, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like, okay i'm just taking it all in and then matt comes on stage like takes photos of the uh of the gentleman and there's some like just mildly awkward stuff that uh is added to the Fact that like in my head like there's the there was a button on stage as well because i was watching.org slack and i thought like there's a release that's going to coincide to it. I had this sort of expectation of a higher level production, I guess. And I'm like, okay, we're just rolling with it. And Matt comes out and then he sits down and there's a little bit of back and forth with Jacoby. And, uh, and at one point, um, Matt like pulls up the cords on the ground because he's trying to reconfigure a laptop or whatever. Just an interesting experience. So when it's all done, I go out into the hall afterwards and I'm hanging out with a group of folks. And someone asks me what I thought of the experience. And I was like, well, you know, it was pretty good. Of course it did. Yeah. I can't imagine you saying anything else. And I, you know, I was reflecting on some of the things that I liked about, there was a, there was some things that were interesting. Uh, and this person proceeds to call me naive, I took some offense to at first. And then upon further reflection, I was like, well, maybe so. And maybe that's just part of this general baseline of how I approach these things. In retrospect of recent news, I think, yeah, I don't know. It was quite the WordCamp experience. ([Time 0:00:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a2aed266-bed4-4ef9-b795-9fbcd98ccb9d)) - **Grace Cannot Explain A Repeated Pattern** - Matt may deserve grace for an awkward keynote, but repeated strange incidents make a broader leadership pattern harder to dismiss. - Jonathan compares the situation with WordCamp Asia, where illness explained Mary’s awkward presentation but did not explain the wider pattern. Transcript: Jonathan I mean, we can give, we can give him, we can extend a little bit of slack towards that. You know, I, I think we can give him the benefit of the doubt is that a saying that you guys have or is that a cricket thing that's a general saying luke just checking all right because it's Wait a minute how do you use benefit the doubt in cricket just to be clear uh if so if there is uh a close call for say i don't know an lbw and the umpire is not sure whether it's uh out or if if It's fine then the umpire might choose to give the batter the benefit of the doubt the batter always gets the benefit of the doubt fair enough carry on i can't wait to have you come to australia And sit through an entire test match we're going to do a crossword every day it's going to be so good um anyway i can afford him some grace is what i'm trying to say i think that's fine you Know like this is hard it is hard to do a keynote especially coinciding with a major release i know that that was a goal for WordCamp Asia, and it wasn't able to happen. And I mean, again, at WordCamp Asia, you could come out of that saying, oh, Mary's behavior was a little awkward. But man, she was so sick. You know, she was really sick, and she had to do the keynote because Matt didn't show up. Hold on. And then, then on the other hand you get this pattern you get this pattern of weird strange awkward behavior and yeah you don't know what to make of it and perhaps the automatic board of Directors doesn't know what to make of it either. ([Time 0:03:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/418e6eb1-5a39-41b0-91ae-8e510b6175a1)) - **Anne McCarthy Salvaged The Release Moment** - The WordPress release had already gone live when Matt discovered the planned button moment had changed. - Anne McCarthy handled the confusion publicly and pressed the button, while Matt later took ownership in a blog comment. Transcript: Luke At one point during the keynote, Anne McCarthy, who was the release lead, comes out on stage because it turned out, like Matt discovered halfway through, it's still a little bit confusing To me what happened, but that the release had already gone out and apparently the plan had changed to not do the button. And Anne did a great blog post afterwards and Matt dropped a comment on there taking ownership of saying like, hey, this was on me. But for someone in the audience, it was confusing. And at one point, Ann comes out and does press the button. And so kudos to her for navigating the process. Clear like this was intended to be something different and it felt like matt was trying to like lower the stakes and like maybe enjoy something like a bit more informal that was me making The best of it um and so i could i could i ([Time 0:05:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/deeef892-7da0-40fd-b91c-51515bf8a193)) - **Improvisation Revealed A Different WordPress Direction** - Matt’s proposed .org short links and self-contained PHP tools suggested experimentation around simplicity and possibly social networking. - Luke valued the keynote’s apparent authenticity, even though its improvisation contrasted sharply with past polished presentations. Transcript: Luke Found some things that were interesting he introduced this idea of us all having like dot org like short links which i thought was kind of interesting it immediately prompted in my head Of like is he trying to build like a social network? Like what? It had a little, a little bit, uh, reminded me of, uh, Apple with their like ping thing, like way back in the day. Yeah. So like just, yeah, just, uh, there was some interesting memes that he had up on screen. Jonathan Jacoby hadn't seen the deck beforehand and so they were just kind of usually these things are really polished right right in the past every word camp us and word camp san francisco before That has been a very polished affair i don't know um like and i'm not here to judge or critique the man's outfit but he comes up on stage usually with a tie and he's a fresh haircut and he's Looking great and he's he's very smooth talker he's a great presenter matt he's really good at it and he comes up with a slide deck that's been rehearsed and rehearsed and that tammy has Worked on and designed and designed and designed. I wonder if Tammy designed the WordCamp US deck. Luke No, she hasn't. She is as great as she is at that. She has not been involved in making those for a bit, although she did our slides for our talk, which was awesome. Jonathan Of course. Yeah. How did your talk go, by the way? Luke I really enjoyed it. We got some great feedback afterwards. We did it together, which was a first for myself. And it's available now on WordPress TV. I think it is, actually. You know, speaking about polish, I think part of what was the tension in my head is that we would be the last to speak against polish. We improvise crossword. Yeah, right, obviously. And so there's something about that improvisation that i do find like oh i like there's like a this authenticity and i think that's the best that i could like take is like it was an attempt To what i took as a genuine attempt to be like authentic and connect and and take some risks like that was i think the the upside for me that i was seeing throughout, ([Time 0:06:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/21371621-e831-4dfb-b657-327099552ab4)) - **Good Intentions Still Break The China Shop** - A project leader’s hard decisions carry wider consequences because even careful movement can cause disruption. - Luke uses Ferdinand and a bull in a china shop to describe how intent matters less than the damage leadership creates. Transcript: Luke Um, but yeah, I think part of what's tricky is that when you're the leader of a project and you've taken such hard positions, there's just a lot more that is expected of you. And, um, uh, are you familiar with the, uh, the story of Ferdinand, the no it's um it's the story of um this this bull who is in Spain and like is being raised to like fight and sort of do all This stuff and he doesn't want to do that he wants to smell the flowers he's this it's this whole story of this yeah it's a children's story and at the end of the day like he doesn't want to Be a fighter he just wants to smell the flowers And is Matt Ferdinand? Well, I was mixing metaphors in my head where I'm like, it feels like Matt sometimes is unintentionally like a bull in like a china cabinet where it doesn't really matter. Even if it's Ferdinand and it's your chill, it doesn't really matter what you're doing. You're still a bull in a china cabinet. And as you move as delicately as you may attempt to, you're going to cause trouble and you're going to break things. Jonathan I think it's a China shop, but yeah. I guess like the difficult tension for us to navigate, and by us, I mean the WordPress community, is how do we, with respect, with grace, with patience, with kindness, how do we notice That the wheels kind of seem to be coming off? ([Time 0:08:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6f1facac-4f16-4e41-9463-388f6d0ea395)) - **Matt’s Role Change Could Clarify WordPress Governance** - Matt leaving Automattic’s CEO role may finally clarify the boundary between the company and WordPress.org. - His continued BDFL role and upcoming release leadership will reveal whether greater focus on .org helps or harms the project. Transcript: Luke Yeah, because for the first time, there actually may be a distinct clarity between the role of Automatic, the company, and the project. One of the messages that I saw Matt put on X is that he had some personal websites that he needed to move out of Automatic, by which I could only infer that he was referring to.org. I don't know. He talked about wanting to hire a sysadmin immediately. Oh, no. He'll be talking about WordPress.com websites, surely..org, not.com. Jonathan Or who knows? If they moved off automatic, whatever. Luke Yeah, okay. So it's clear that even as he's made positive statements, that he's not just going to stand around and do nothing. Like, he is the release lead for the upcoming, like, WordPress release. So, yeah it's gonna be interesting to see i think in the past there's been this ambiguity that suddenly between automatic and dot org and how this all works and suddenly that seems like Jonathan This has been a forcing function to remove that ambiguity because and that's the key thing, is Matt is no longer the CEO of Automatic, but he is still the benevolent dictator for life Of WordPress. Yes. And so let's watch this release closely because he's the release lead. This is not the first time he's been released lead, but it is the first time he's been released lead and not also the CEO of Automatic, at least in recent memory. And so that will be interesting. Is Matt now that he's no longer burdened by all of the responsibilities that CEO requires, especially a CEO trying to navigate a difficult lawsuit, is that going to mean that he's going To spend more time and more devoted effort to WordPress.org or not? And if it is that he spends more time focused on.org, is that going to be beneficial for the project or not? ([Time 0:10:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4a14ccaa-9534-4645-910e-d316db12bc20)) - **WordPress Innovation Meets A Trust Problem** - Luke saw promising signs in Matt’s emphasis on simplicity, including small self-contained PHP tools called Piplets. - Yet Automattic’s actions under Matt’s leadership make it difficult for Luke to fully trust the same open-web vision. Transcript: Luke It could go one of any four ways. One of the things I actually enjoyed during the WordCamp US talk is he seemed focused on this idea of bringing back a simplicity or recognizing that there's value in things like being Simple. He talked about this new thing that I think he was calling it Piplets, this idea of these self-contained little PHP things. And it seemed like, just at face value, it seemed interesting. And for me, just as an observer, naive or not, just taking it in, I'm like, okay, I like that the leader of the project is like thinking it felt like that there was some innovative thoughts Going into it where I couldn't quite see the whole picture. But I like that sense of direction that there's this attempt to recognize like, I don't think Matt is blindly watching the, I think, Luke, this is a lot of what I've struggled with is like, I've always wanted to I've always cheered for the project and where it feels like it fits within this broader open web context intention against the proprietary platforms. And I see Matt like raising that standard still. And yet I'm finding myself less enthusiastic about a wholehearted like, yes, I'm with you on this. I think in that keynote, I saw what felt to me some glimpses of that Matt that, uh, is thinking about like the future of the open web. ([Time 0:12:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a40c993d-f8f2-4466-a3cf-38d7675b3b16)) - **Lead Decisively Without Leaving Users Behind** - Use decisive leadership when core changes are necessary, but bring enough of the community along to preserve critical mass. - Jonathan points to the editor transition as an example where disruption may be unavoidable, while abandoning too many users is not. Transcript: Jonathan And right it's kind of like as the has the benevolent dictator for life of an open source project and i don't mean that in a diminishing way bdfl i think is a completely reasonable governance Model uh if you're the bdfl then yes sometimes sometimes you need to take a stance and you need to make a hard decision all right sometimes you have to go you know what we need to update uh The core editor it's not working it's not gonna be the editor in the future we need it and there's gonna be pushback there's going to be you know people upset about it there's going to be People have to change their workflow people have to learn new things javascript deeply and that's that's part of the job and that's where it goes but another part of that bdfl role is That you also have to take the community along with you you can't leave too many people behind. ([Time 0:13:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/203b3a23-fd7a-4bf1-82bf-af35ec5dd4eb))