CloudFest  ## Metadata - Author: [[Crossword]] - Full Title: CloudFest - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/ef9b2c1b-2e57-4742-80a2-838c1608014f ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Impromptu Interview** - Jonathan was emceeing at CloudFest and had extra time to fill. - Luke jumped on stage for an impromptu interview, saving the day. Transcript: Luke So I quite enjoyed that. Yeah, I missed that one. I think my favorite part was when you started to stumble over your words because you had like a five minute between speakers there was like 10 minutes left so for context my job as an emcee Is to keep the thing keep things on time right so if a speaker ends too soon then my job is to ask them some questions and i do that quite well i can fill the time or move things along. Suddenly I'm on stage with 10 minutes to go and the seat is locked off, the speaker's gone and I'm not quite sure what to do yet. And then suddenly, suddenly I see you panicking. You're going for the water. I know that's not a good sign. And everybody in the crowd is getting sort of awkward, you know, like uh what are we gonna do for 10 minutes sit here and watch him panic and sweat so it seems a little ungenerous but sorry I because my inclination was to help a friend yes and so i jumped up on stage and we had a little impromptu interview lightning talk. ([Time 0:02:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fe81d0d6-7d61-4257-ac6f-b0a1500c51e5)) - **CloudFest's Value Proposition** - Jonathan questions CloudFest being the premier WordPress business event, desiring more intentional programming. - He acknowledges the high attendee count as a key benefit, despite sponsor-driven content. Transcript: Luke All right. So let's talk about WordPress. What changed in WordPress at CloudFest? I'm not sure I would agree that it's the premier WordPress event for business. One of the things that I would love to see more of is intentionality on the programming side of things. CloudFest is still very like sponsor-driven and there can be some beautiful things that come out of it. Like VeriSign's in particular has a good example of this. I'm excited to see what happens with PressConf coming up. Yeah, that'll be interesting. I suspect that PressConf in particular is positioned to be like the premier sort of business context. I'm not remembering right now. Yeah,. But Cloudfest has, how many would you say, like, there wasn't a huge amount of WordPress booths, but no, what Cloudfest has for it, though, is over 10,000 attendees. Yeah. So that's what makes it unique. Like, and if you were, if you could have a magic wand and see all the business that's happening here in that sense i think i would agree with you it's there's so much that's going on yeah And i mean obviously you're biased in that you recognize people and you're not talking to people who are not in your field and you know things like you don't go into the areas that are selling Literal hardware server i actually quite enjoyed that. Yeah, but well, sure, maybe I'm an exception. But it felt like half or maybe a third of the event was WordPress related. Interesting. ([Time 0:04:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/96d93273-58cd-4911-9a62-512e1a4e181d)) - **Meeting Mary Hubbard** - Luke and Tammy Lister interviewed Mary Hubbard, the Executive Director of WordPress, at CloudFest. - Luke was impressed by Hubbard's experience, including her time at TikTok, eBay, Walmart, and Automattic, and enjoyed chatting with her about family and sneakers. Transcript: Luke So one of the big things that happened at Cloudfest for me was you and Tammy Lister had an interview sort of session talk with Mary Hubbard, the executive director of WordPress. How do you think the interview? I quite enjoyed it. I got a chance to meet with Mary several times prior, Tammy and I both, in just preparation and going over what we wanted to cover. And I'm quite impressed with the range of her experience, especially coming from these proprietary ecosystems that she's worked in. TikTok most recently, but before that, she also worked at, I think it was eBay, if I'm recalling, Walmart as well. And she also has direct experience. She'd been at Automatic previously. Right. Well, actually, from what I understand, she's still with TikTok. Yes, she's still connected to yeah so I thought that that talk ([Time 0:06:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/91dc470f-8de6-486c-ae53-0106a4f60adc)) - **Interview with Mary Hubbard** - Jonathan and Tammy Lister interviewed Mary Hubbard, the WordPress Executive Director, at CloudFest. - Jonathan highlights Hubbard's diverse experience and sneakerhead style. Transcript: Luke So one of the big things that happened at Cloudfest for me was you and Tammy Lister had an interview sort of session talk with Mary Hubbard, the executive director of WordPress. How do you think the interview? I quite enjoyed it. I got a chance to meet with Mary several times prior, Tammy and I both, in just preparation and going over what we wanted to cover. And I'm quite impressed with the range of her experience, especially coming from these proprietary ecosystems that she's worked in. TikTok most recently, but before that, she also worked at, I think it was eBay, if I'm recalling, Walmart as well. And she also has direct experience. She'd been at Automatic previously. Right. Well, actually, from what I understand, she's still with TikTok. Yes, she's still connected to yeah so I thought that that talk was amazing I got to spend about an hour just chatting with her afterwards about you know family sneakers wife she's a bit Of a sneakerhead um she always wears the coolest shoes and you know one thing I learned actually and this reminds me we we've got to make a couple of retractions okay oh this is good let's Hear it yeah well i mean the first retraction is in the last episode sorry this is off topic but we'll come back around yes uh we mentioned that nobody else is even thinking about pulling Back from their core contributions but that turned out not to be true because a couple of days after we posted that episode, New Fold Digital, they also announced that they're retracting Their core contributions, the Fight for the Future pledge. So we were wrong. I was wrong specifically. So apologies. Multiple people apparently are. That sounded good hearing you say that. Obviously you represented both of our interests, but it sounded good to hear you say that you were wrong. I'm glad you enjoyed it and then the other thing that i was wrong about is i i mean wrong i'm not sure i remember in a previous episode i'd just been to state of the word in uh in tokyo and i said That mary stock was really good she seemed really nervous turns, I was talking to her about it, and it turns out what happened was all of her notes, what do you call that screen that goes In front of you when you're talking about it? Teleprompter. Teleprompter. It went out, and so she wasn't prepared. She was expecting the teleprompter. Oh, wow. That changes. Yeah, and so a lot of that talk was... Improvised. Improvised based on the slides. It recontextualized it for me. Mary's amazing. Like she's a, she's a really interesting person. And I enjoyed getting to know her more on the personal level. ([Time 0:06:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/42963a5b-db7e-4dfe-8109-db5497a9b3b5)) - **Hubbard's Approach** - Mary Hubbard focuses on behind-the-scenes work, unlike the previous director's public approach. - Jonathan suggests the community mistakenly expects her to fill the same role as Josefa. Transcript: Luke And one of the things that I said to her, this was a lot of, it seems like a lot of what you're doing despite the fact that on stage you were talking about transparency it's hard to know what It is that you're doing we don't see a lot of you in the project and she said yeah a lot of what I'm doing is work behind the scenes okay and I think she she elaborated on that and what that means. I probably won't mention that on the podcast because I feel like that maybe was a bit more supposed to be a bit more private. But I'm much more confident now, having talked to Mary, that she is acting in her role of the executive director of WordPress. She's doing a good job and it's a lot of behind the scenes work. And we've made a mistake as a community, I think. We've made a mistake, which is that, and it's understandable, Josefa had a particular take on this role, right? Okay. And her take was very public, very visible. She had the podcast, she would show up to core meetings and she was a little bit like the face of the project. But Mary doesn't want to be that. That's not what's interesting to her. And I think a lot of people have expected, because it's the same job title. Sure. Yeah. It's the same job title. People expected her to try to do the job exactly the same. That's a fair point. And she's not doing it for a long time. And for many of us, like that's all we've known. That's all we've known. Yeah. And, and she is doing the job, but she's doing it in a different way. And from what she described to me, she's doing very important work, but it's behind the scenes work and it might not be so visible. How do you reckon that based on what you know now, because it's something I'll have a good sense for, how do you reckon that you'd be able to evaluate the success of someone in the role? That's a good question. And I think based on the conversation, my takeaway was that success looks like the development pace of WordPress continuing and making it easier for new contributors to come into the Project. ([Time 0:09:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e59eb7eb-ec3f-41e1-a35f-2cc687f18bf8)) - **Hubbard's Anonymous Experience** - Mary Hubbard joined the WordPress community anonymously and faced negative experiences. - When she revealed her identity as Executive Director, the community's tone shifted dramatically. Transcript: Luke Okay. One of the things that Mary did, and she shared this openly in a group of people, so I feel like it's okay to share it here. One of the things that she did was before she was announced, you know, as the executive director of WordPress, she signed up for an account to come onto the WordPress community. Actually, it was her existing account, but it didn't, well, it wasn't recognizable as it was directed to her. Right. Okay. So she signed in with an account that wasn't her name, didn't have her name attached to it, and tried to get involved tried to get involved with a few communities and was just shut down And mansplained and you know like was had a horrible experience trying to come into the community and then she signed in with mary hubbard with her name and a photo and was introduced As the new executive director and of course everyone was lovely to her. So what actually happened is that in her announcement post, it was connected to her username, which was like fourth Hubbard or something. And it wasn't, and then in that, and there it was like, oh, wow, this is who this person is like, refers post. ([Time 0:11:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/686c6d85-f58b-47c5-ad48-0fa637559abc)) - **Future of WordPress** - An upcoming core committers meeting with Mary and Matt will determine WordPress's roadmap. - This negotiation will set the tone for the next few years of WordPress development. Transcript: Luke Yeah, so everything is about to come to a head, Jonathan. We've got the core committers meeting coming up where the core committers are going to meet with Mary and with Matt, decide what the roadmap looks like for the next, for this current Release. It's going to be one release. Is it going to be more than one? I think that that negotiation, which is essentially what it is, with the project leadership, is going to really set the tone for the next couple of years. ([Time 0:13:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0cab7307-b294-4854-be67-2f044c235e35))