Episode 61: Community, Summit, All at Washington D.C.  ## Metadata - Author: [[WordPress Briefing - A WordPress Podcast]] - Full Title: Episode 61: Community, Summit, All at Washington D.C. - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/0d22be7a-3231-4602-90ca-4ca37c4b93da ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Future Focus: AI and Enterprise** - The community anticipates AI as the next major area for WordPress after Gutenberg. - Business discussions focus on appealing and selling to enterprise sectors, highlighting evolving priorities. Transcript: Speaker 1 A second thing that I noticed across multiple sessions, and this one honestly is not a surprise at all, is that there were a lot of questions about what the next big thing is after Gutenberg. I always love when people are asking big questions about what comes next because it means that we all still believe that there will be a next. And so I never hesitate when I hear these questions to give some ideas about what I think might be coming. But a lot of the discussions that we were having were around, we think this is coming, but now that we think this is coming, what should we do now to make sure that we are ready for it? One of the biggest assumptions that we all had is that for the CMS, for the software itself, probably our next big area after Gutenberg is going to be something about artificial intelligence. Matt pointed out in his presentation that he has told us twice to learn anything deeply. One was in 2016 when he said, learn JavaScript deeply, and then one was in 2022 when he said to learn AI deeply. And so we all kind of are guessing that that is our future area. And so that's an area for everyone to spend some time in, make sure you understand it, make sure you know it a bit. The second thing that came up as like a future, where are we going here? It was kind of on the business side. It was on a lot of questions about enterprise. And are we selling properly to enterprise? Can we sell? Can we appeal to enterprise? Whose job is it to sell any of these things? Questions like that. So lots of business questions. Again, this is not something that I have any concerns about. I'm very excited to see that people are talking about it. It's been a topic of conversation since I want to say February of this year. And so it also wasn't a surprise inclusion today. And I was excited to see, I am excited to see what we get out of those conversations over time. ([Time 0:03:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/61e3530a-393a-48a7-8df1-deddb1e2f2a5)) - **Tool Maintenance and Innovation** - Maintaining and improving contributor tools is a critical ongoing concern. - There is interest in developing new tools to simplify community organization and contribution. Transcript: Speaker 1 From an ecosystem perspective, like a WordPress project operations perspective, this came up a couple of times never in as clear a word, a set of words as that. But the question about like, what are we doing with our tools? Are we making sure that we are keeping the tools that our contributors use maintained and still in an excellent space with features that are useful and necessary and requested? And so that is a big question. I do have a lot of questions about that. Also, there are so many tools that I have wanted in order to make organizing the WordPress community better and easier, but also making contributing better and easier. And hopefully here soon we have an opportunity to get to some of those. ([Time 0:05:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3ee0425e-b959-4666-92fc-79b6a670aa77)) - **Sustainability Questions for Events** - WordPress debates event strategies focusing on sustainability, scale, and event formats. - Questions arise about resources, leadership pipelines, and whether to prioritize grassroots or large-scale events. Transcript: Speaker 1 So the third big trend that I kept seeing at the community summit is actually about the community itself, specifically about events. So I was part of or listened to many, many, many conversations over the course of the week that we're specifically focused on what we're going to do with the future of our events, like Our meetups still sustainable, our word camps still sustainable. And that's from not only the idea of sustainability that we all tend to know from like an ecological standpoint, but also, you know, checking in on the resources. So the kinds of questions that folks had were, is it time to have continue having many small events, or is it time to move to a few giant events? Should we bring back mid-sized WP adjacent events like press nomics or loop comp? And if we are bringing those back, do we want to have them be part of a semi-official thing along with a clearly word press event and like do joint sales in there, try to figure out how to Get people from one to the other so that it's not just word press people that we're talking to, but also business people and advanced developers, things like that. There was also a lot of discussion about whether or not we have gotten too big should we double down on our grassroots efforts, just go all the way back to like bar camp style, word press In a forest kind of thing. And yeah, and among all of these conversations, there were questions about the resources that we need. Do we have what we need now? Do we have plans for how to maintain those resources in the future? Do we have enough time? Do we have enough money? Do we have an expertise? The people. So many questions, so many questions. ([Time 0:06:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7a16dadc-5d01-49c5-858b-b11d37aafe7a)) - **Engage with Community Summit Notes** - Engage with community summit notes on make.wordpress.org/summit to understand and contribute to ongoing discussions. - Share your perspectives locally and in comment sections to influence WordPress community decisions. Transcript: Speaker 1 So we've gathered all of these things together. We've had these conversations. And now all of the notes from every conversation that we had will be put on make.wordpress.org slash summit. There you can do any of the following three things, but at least do one. Before we get any further, I think it's important to remind everyone that no decisions were made at the community summit. There are a few things that will come out of the community summit where the answer, the way forward, is really obvious. And so those probably will get done quickly thereafter because it's just an obvious thing to do. It makes sense for everyone in the project. It makes sense for everyone who's using WordPress, whatever reason. So those things will probably move quickly, but mostly, not even mostly, there were no decisions made. And so if it looks like something is moving quickly there, it is because it makes sense after the fact. So there's that. But the three things that you can do in order to take part in this information gathering and sharing that happened at the community summit. Number one, head over to make.wordpress.org slash summit and just read the notes. There are a lot of them you can pick and choose based on the teams you contribute to or the topics that are specifically interesting. Or if you have been assigned to read one of these things, obviously go ahead and read that. But find the notes, read them, take a look at the discussion as far as you can tell. It happened and get a sense for what the essential question is. The second thing that you can do while you're there is that you can join in that discussion right there in the comments, if you would like to. You can, if you feel like your perspective is not quite accounted for in that, obviously leave some comments and let folks know. But also, if you feel like your perspective was accounted for, but there's also a very specific question that was not necessarily answered or not even brought up. Share those as well. That's stuff that we would like to know as we are working through this. And then the third thing that you can do is you can take those conversations and if there's anything that looks like it's particularly relevant to your local WordPress community, absolutely Take those there and have those conversations with them. And once you've had those conversations, let us know what you thought. Also in those comments or take it directly into your weekly teams chat, either way, we want to hear what you think about the questions that were brought because you brought them to us. ([Time 0:08:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/288f4ec5-573b-4c50-9a05-04ca4d55a897)) - **Participate in WordPress Initiatives** - Provide ideas for new WordPress event features to shape future event pages and experiences. - Join core development meetings and contribute to the upcoming WordPress 6.4 release and default theme work. Transcript: Speaker 1 And so here we go. Number one, I mentioned it quite a bit. There's a conversation, an ongoing conversation about the future of events for our community. Right now, there is an open call for ideas, new features for our next gen WordPress events, especially on the page that exists on WordCamp Central. So we want to find the most useful and desirable features for a future homepage on central.org. That would host a list of all of our upcoming WordPress events. And so we want your opinion there. Please let us know what would be especially useful to you as you are looking for WordPress events to attend. The second thing is that we introduced 2024, the default theme that is coming with WordPress 6.4 was announced. We have had, I think, 32 contributors to it at the time of this recording. And yeah, it's beautiful. It's got a lot of different implementation options, a lot of default patterns and curated patterns so that you can get exactly what you want out of that theme. I think it's going to make a great default theme, a great starter theme for our final release of the year. And then speaking of 6.4 with the release of 6.3 behind us, we are working hard on bringing 6.4 to the community. You can get involved with the development of that. There is a core chat. Every Wednesday it happens, I want to say, at 2100 UTC. But I don't actually know. Off the top of my head, I just go when my calendar tells me to go and I live in the central time zone. And so my UTC conversion is not the best. But we will leave the actual information about that in the show notes so that you can see it. You can also go over to make.wordpress.org. And then there's a little card on that homepage that tells you exactly when those core meetings are, including the new contributor meeting, which happens every two weeks. And then the fourth thing is that there is a successful Word Camp US. Behind us, that is our final flagship event of the year, which is always exciting. If you missed it, for one, we missed you. And for two, we have you covered. We've got a recap of the event. There is a link to that in the show notes as well. ([Time 0:11:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/457d3f46-d719-4909-b3b6-3026056c3fdd))