Episode 7: WordPress Sustainability Team  ## Metadata - Author: [[Sustain WP]] - Full Title: Episode 7: WordPress Sustainability Team - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/bee4ba75-d9c0-45db-bde3-68060c12e86f ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Nora's Pivotal WordCamp Question** - Nora Ferreirós asked a question on sustainability at WordCamp Europe 2022 that sparked immediate community interest. - The WordPress Sustainability Slack channel was created on the spot, gaining 18 members instantly. Transcript: Speaker 1 Porto. So Nora, if it's okay, you can introduce briefly yourself and explain how you got into this mess. Speaker 2 Hello, Nauei. Hello, everybody. Well, thank you for inviting me to explain this moment of my life. So yeah, I'm basically a U.S. UI graphic designer or U.S. Designer. For lunch, I have been in the work community since 2018 or something like that. And at the World Camp Europe in Porto, Rothio Badivia asked me to like invite me to, to let me to make it. She just you. Yeah. She asked me. She's pretty good doing that. Yeah, she is. You ask a question in the Q&A session with Josepha and Matt. And I was like, yeah, sure. And then I thought, okay, what I am going to ask these people in front of, I don't know, hundreds of people. Okay, so I asked Nauei because we were together in this event, like, okay, Nauei, what can we ask in this moment? Because there will be many people listening. So let's use this opportunity in a good way. And we decided it could be a good opportunity to talk about sustainability because it was a topic that some people were talking about, but there was not any initiative or something in The work community about it. So yeah, why not? It was kind of, okay, that's the way that we were expected nothing of this. So yeah, I was there. I make the question. I basically ask, okay, and what about sustainability? So when we have a team or a Slack channel, at least, and they said, yeah, why not? And I said, what? Okay, thank you. And yeah, many people join the channel in this very moment. It was super nice because when they created the Slack channel, just live there in this moment. And when I went back to my seat, there was already 18 people in the channel. And I was like, I've been something. And that's quite the story of the creation of the channel, basically, because I made a question in the right moment, I suppose. ([Time 0:01:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c49766dc-fe1b-4a42-8275-363755e10dad)) - **Csaba Joins Sustainability Effort** - Csaba Varszegi missed the original sustainability question but quickly joined the new channel with enthusiasm. - He later met and connected with other community members excited about sustainability efforts. Transcript: Speaker 1 Venue on portal. And he says something like, wait a minute. Aren't you the person that asked about the sustainability? Then, yeah, Zaba, maybe you can introduce yourself and explain how you, how was your point of view when this was happening? Yeah. Yes. Speaker 4 Hello. Hi. Thanks also for inviting me to talk about this. Yes, it was actually a funny story because I was there, obviously, at the conference, and I was kind of listening to the questions. But for some reason, I happened to miss the question. And I think I realized that it wasn't something about sustainability because I was thinking about it and I was working at it as a sustainable web designer or a developer for some time. Also within WordPress, for example, the default teams I contributed to it. But I missed the question and I heard something like, I think, sustainability, I asked the person, I think it was Elizabeth, next to me, what, what, somebody has something about sustainability? So I kind of asked, I heard the creation of the channel as an answer and probably I was one of the 80 people then who already joined immediately. But I thought, oh no, I didn't see who asked the question. I completely missed this. I mean, the life happening around this. And so after the day at the conference when I walked to the city and I was walking back, actually, to my place, I thought, and I'm not sure how, that I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, recognize one Of you and for some reason, I, yeah, I, I said something. So it was, it was great to, yeah, to, yeah, to have something live as well. ([Time 0:05:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e760d88e-08a0-491c-bc13-b8f9f674885c)) - **Thijs Inspired and Connected** - Thijs Buijs was inspired by Nora's question and joined the new sustainability channel at WordCamp Europe in Porto. - He connected in person at an after party, forming the group's initial core momentum. Transcript: Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 3 Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for, for having me. And short introduction. My name is Thais, living in Utrecht, Netherlands. I'm the owner of the digital marketing agency called Yellow Lime. And indeed, I attended the World Camp Europe in Porto. And I saw Nora asking this question and. I've been using WordPress a lot for my work, for the work we deliver for our clients, but I've not really been contributing. I've been attending and visiting wordcams and meetups in the Netherlands as well. But this question hit me for some reason. I thought, well, this is a smart question and the right answer and the right momentum. As we all know, we should be a change behavior of people. And this might be something I can be part of. So I joined the Slack channel, what was created at that moment. And I'm not sure who raised the question. Can we meet tonight? I believe it was Charlie. Can we meet tonight? The after party. Yeah, at the after party. And we did. And it felt a little bit like a. Like meeting an anonymous person. Speaker 4 Chabat was behind. So we're blind date. Speaker 1 I'm not not dating it. You don't know who will appear. Is it a gentleman? Is it a lady? I did appear to be a very friendly people from Antwerp. Speaker 3 And I could speak Dutch with him. And there was like a click like a blind date. There was a click. We had a good conversation about sustainability and about. Yeah, maybe a shared question about making the world a better place to live on for ourselves, but also for future generations. So we had a first meeting. Maybe that was the first official meeting after the official meeting where the question was raised. ([Time 0:08:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8e7df2c5-c8b2-400f-9f24-c8ed827430c2)) - **Strong Early Community Support** - WordPress community interest in sustainability was higher than expected, showing strong demand. - Early worry existed about organizing properly due to lack of formal guidelines. Transcript: Speaker 1 OK, and during the next weeks, some people were joining. And at the time I was talking by weekly with with Hannah to about sustainability mainly. He tells the reality and I was also talking with a Nora that there were people joining and maybe some links were drop about things of sustainability. But there were not much organization. So and we were afraid that we could lose the momentum if we didn't try to put the energy together. So we started meeting the the five of us. So Hannah, Nora, Sabah, Tyson, I trying to write something. To indeed was our first post post in make WordPress that it's like it was something like, hey, we have a slack channel. What do we do now with this? So the idea behind it was just try to to have some feedback from the people that were already in the channel. All from people that never heard about the channel because that also happened. And so I remember that we posted it was a collaborative post we wrote between the five of us, mainly Hannah. She's a brilliant writer. I have to say this is also a native speaking person. And it was posted on November 2022 in in make. That was something that we for doing that we already had to do some research on how to do post in make because I was reading things in make. But I didn't know how to. So there has been a lot of learning during the journey. And since we saw Nora and I in the community summit, there is not so much documentation about this kind of process. So there is no documentation on how to start publishing or make. There is no documentation on how to become an official team. So we've been just trying to talk with people, gather information and go go with the flow. Let's say. So do you remember in November, I remember like after we posted, we had a lot of feedback, at least it was quite a lot of feedback of what I was expecting. ([Time 0:10:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d34c0f7e-d991-4d41-b53a-1cec5e93dd7b)) - **Broad Sustainability Scope Defined** - Defining sustainability in WordPress involves environmental, educational, social, and economic dimensions. - The team recognized many ongoing efforts and aimed to build broadly on existing work. Transcript: Speaker 3 Exactly the moment or the timing that's besides the posts that make, we also worked at a tiny, lightweight website called our sustainable WP dot org. Yep. Which led to interesting discussions about, well, if we would like to make WordPress more sustainable, then what's involved in which topics do we touch. And it's not only the the footprint of websites, but it's also about the way we gather. It's also about education. And I remember at that time prior to launching this time websites. We had some very good discussions about, okay, what will we focus on which are the topics we will hit and in what way and being a marketer. Maybe my approach was more bold than. And not that realistic. But if you if you want to land on the moon, maybe your intention should be to land on Mars first. By traffic to Mars, you will pass by the moon. So I remember the creation of moonshots and some very good discussions, which. The main discussion under was that we all have the same passion about making WordPress and the ecosystem more sustainable. And not to forget to mention that already a lot of things do occur. It's not that nothing has happened. No, no, no, indeed. We experience during the meetups, during word camps, but also the work that has already been done. Looking at plugins that have been developed. There's already a lot of work done by great people contributing to the community. ([Time 0:15:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c1141a6c-eb34-49ad-9438-f7709a510f34)) - **Meet Weekly to Build Momentum** - Weekly Slack meetings were established to sustain momentum and organize the initiative. - Regular meetings were seen as essential for moving towards official team recognition. Transcript: Speaker 1 But then we started to meet in the Slack channel, like a week limit. We started in this November. And that was indeed one of the moments that where we thought, okay, if this can go farther than an initiative, so if we would like to be an official team, one of the things that we knew that We have to do was the week limitings in Slack. So we started and it was a nice starting point. And we were doing it for several months. And I will not discuss all the journey because if not, it's going to be really long. ([Time 0:18:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/983cad6f-9a29-406e-a350-5f74e8ded4ff)) - **Sustainability Table at Athens WC** - At WordCamp Europe Athens, the initiative secured its own table and attracted diverse interested community members. - Josepha Chalmers visited the table, prompting constructive discussion on broad sustainability concepts. Transcript: Speaker 1 And Europe maybe it's nice to want to say something. Yeah. Speaker 3 Yeah, but prior to moving to to Athens, what was very wonderful is that there was a suggestion and I don't know who suggested it anymore. To have a table as contributed a sustainability table. So people could join forces together with with us still be in initiative to think about our road and things like that. So that was already a great great opportunity and a great event that we were having being in initiative our own table. It's contributed a lot. Speaker 1 Yeah, that's true. I didn't remember exactly the dates, how they fit, but I think they were quite together. But yeah, that opportunity of having a table on work in Europe. I think that also propel us to say, okay, let's go with it. So yeah, at that point, the contributor day we indeed we met for first time in person with ties. So I wasn't able to come sadly but we met and it was like, okay, you are even taller that I expected that was my point of view. Probably the opposite was for you. Oh, he's that tiny. I use Spanish people. I shot tiny and funny. Anyway, we were on a stage saying, hey, let's come to our first ever sustainability table, at least in our come Europe. We were super happy and nervous. A lot of people came. We were really surprised and also different profiles of people. And also sponsored people came like Nalinga, also Simon, and then people that were just interested in sustainability. The question is always, what are you doing? This is still the question because Nora and I, we've been also in Barcelona and Pontevedra and this is always the first question in the table. But it's nice and something started to happen during the contributor day. And we were explaining also this catch 22 of we've been meeting, but we cannot publish. So probably we have to talk with someone that can unblock this part. So Simon was kind enough to invite Josepha to come to the table. It was she was kind, very kind. And she asked a lot of questions to us. So it was like, okay, okay, I heard that you've been meeting. ([Time 0:22:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/21d00241-96f5-4bd5-8798-cb66caa86419)) - **Sustainability's Multi-Dimensional Nature** - Sustainability includes ecological, social, economic, and project longevity aspects. - Maintaining contributors and preventing burnout are essential for the project's long-term survival. Transcript: Speaker 3 In J. Wanted to become a team. And below this post, there was a very good discussion about, okay, but what is the focus if you speak about sustainability in relation to open source in relation to WordPress. Then it's not only the ecological topic you touched as discussed previously, but it's indeed the longevity as said by an ally socially and economically socially like, okay, who is Going to contribute in the coming months, years and decades. So there is a reason that WordPress still exists in 10 years, because we really depend on contributors. And also the economical part, because if you have contributors, ideally, you would like to compensate them for the investment they do in time, mainly in time to contribute to the projects. So that's also touching sustainability, because you don't want people to be burnt out after one year of contributing because they cannot manage things. Also, you need to get new talents being part of the WordPress ecosystem. A lot of people use WordPress and they don't even know that there's a full entire community behind meeting so many times. And even those landmark events we have in Asia and the United States and Europe. People are not aware of this. So there's quite a job to be done if we speak about sustainability. It's not only the ecological point topic. ([Time 0:26:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/23fb9824-11a3-4b68-b692-e3a2410f06f3)) - **Collaborate to Create Event Guidelines** - Collective brainstorming during meetings produced extensive guidelines for more sustainable WordPress events. - Contributors shared practical ideas, like eco-friendly swag, to minimize event footprints. Transcript: Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe there are extensions if he remembers better. Speaker 3 I remember one of those weekly meetings we had and we had this suggestion to collect ideas about how we can make word camps, but also the WordPress meetings, the meetups more sustainable. And then Google Doc was created and during this meeting of 45 minutes, I believe like 10 or 12 people were typing on this document like crazy. At the end of the meeting, we had like five pages, not only with suggestions, but also with what has already been done at different word camps. I remember a suggestion that there's always a good discussion about swag and we know the importance of sponsors during events. And one of the great suggestions I heard was like a pencil that was used as swag during conference in India. And one once you've used the entire pencil, you can put it in the ground and the tree starts growing. Awesome. Great example. Coming from India, from all over the world, people were joining forces and making this document. It's so valuable. And that's, I think, a great example of people not only joining a slack group, but also willing to contribute and to push things forward. Excellent. Awesome. Yeah. ([Time 0:32:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d6896e8d-a0b8-4dd9-b00c-47c7335e48e3)) - **Develop Plugin to Surface Sustainability** - A plugin is being developed to display hosting environmental data and estimate website carbon footprints. - The goal is to raise awareness within WordPress about sustainability impacts and improvements. Transcript: Speaker 1 A green hosting or not. So we can surface that in site health or in the dashboard, if we wanted to, and then do an estimation of CO2 and put it maybe into context. So the idea would be to surface some information about this and leave some links. So if the people are interested on saying, ah, CO2 related with my website, my website, I never thought about it. They can go. So I don't know if in this point you want to expand a little bit, so that you've been also working in one of them. And now we have to decide how is going, how we can choose because the idea and now I give you a bus. So the idea is to have a very simple, lean plugin that can be adopted inside the core of WordPress, if everything goes. Speaker 4 Yeah, that would be quite nice and we could see part of it or something, maybe never know in core, but indeed that's the main idea of the plugin is like spreading awareness about the fact That if you have a website, you have a carball footprint if you realize that that's that's that's that is like that always. What can you do about it to minimize it to make it as small as possible. And that's a very broad subject, but I think WordPress is a very great tool to surface this to website users developers first maybe and then users as well. And within WordPress, we have site health, which gives you already a lot of information about your website and how to how to because there's always, that is really great. You are always an actionable point or for most tests that are being done in site health. So one of the ideas was to first show whether it's if it's on green energy, your hosting is green energy using green energy to host your website. And then maybe to give people an idea how much carbon footprint their website has, but we are figuring that out because it's very, it's very tricky. You don't want to add a lot of the loads to to to website. ([Time 0:34:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8e53a2ec-1e0e-473d-8545-a56083eaa5a5)) - **Use Roadmap to Prioritize Projects** - The team roadmap categorizes efforts into environmental, social, and economic sustainability pillars. - Prioritizing projects from the roadmap will focus team efforts effectively with collaborative contributions. Transcript: Speaker 1 We started to write together, call about it, call our Italy, the roadmap. And it's also another link that I will drop in the in the show notes, because right there you can see that there are a lot of ideas and you will see that they are divided in the three different Pillars of sustainability that we have been talking about a lot during this podcast, that is the environmental, the social and the economic. So, if you want, we could start to wrapping up a bit on how which things do you think are more excited or more willing to work on or just something like that. And also know that if you are listening to this and now we comment things that you are not really that interested, but you find others in the roadmap. Or you have your own idea that you are more than welcome to come to this like channel and discusses, discuss it with us and a move it forward. So yeah, face, you want to start. Speaker 3 Yeah, but what I think it's important to mention, and something we are all aware of is that we cannot do it alone. So all the things on the roadmap. We can only do it with all the contributors who are willing to participate. But we shouldn't forget that there's already great work being done by other teams like the hosting team, in the like core, ([Time 0:38:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/eb727836-f98a-4317-a457-1b0cd54d0cbb)) - **Collaborate Across WordPress Teams** - Collaborate with other WordPress teams to integrate sustainability practices across the community. - Volunteer contributors from any team can help improve sustainability within their own groups and events. Transcript: Speaker 1 So maybe Nora, do you want to explain or say which things are more exciting to you or what are you looking forward to? Speaker 2 Yeah, taking the idea. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The good thing here is indeed we as a sustainability team have to collaborate with the other teams. So it's not just about random collaborators who has to come to the team to help the community to have more sustainable events or the planning or whatever. So you are participating in another team. Maybe I don't know the photo team or I don't know community team. There are many things you can do about sustainability in your team. So you have any idea on how can your team be improved from the sustainability approach. We will be more than happy to receive due because we don't know about the work every team in WordPress is making. So it will be really useful for us to have people from any other team telling okay in design photos or whatever. We can do this. We could we need help to make this team more sustainable or whatever. And something I think is quite exciting about WordPress. And on the other hand, I love the work in a meetup, sustainability, and a very good idea because it's a meetup organization. You can you can help the world you are doing in your city or your town. Like you can contribute to our team telling okay in my town we are making these things or we need help to do things or even more sustainable. So this handbook. I feel excited to contribute to the handbook because it's not just about designer for me core is something really. I don't know. I'm not trying for me because I don't know how to contribute to core because I don't know how. But if you are just a meetup organization from a little town, you can contribute to the handbook and we need you to do so. ([Time 0:41:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/65c368fa-078b-42c7-8db5-7bc585fae6ed)) - **Join Slack and Weekly Meetings** - Join the Sustainability Slack channel and weekly meetings to engage in shaping sustainable WordPress practices. - Even 30 minutes a week can allow meaningful contributions to various projects and discussions. Transcript: Speaker 3 We are a fun bunch of people. We have fun together. It's really an invitation to join the meeting, which is organized every Friday to join it on slack. It's a slack chat meeting. So you're more than welcome to join this meeting and follow the discussions, the lively discussions we have. And see if you want to contribute, only if you have like 30 minutes a week, then you're already welcome to join and to pick up some of the work. Speaker 1 Indeed. I will also put the link to the slack channel so you can go directly clicking. Speaker 4 Saba, go. Yeah, I think because just like we said, sustainability is such a broad thing. I think there is an opportunity for everyone to contribute to the team. And each idea as well, we can talk about it and start things. Speaker 1 Yeah, as not as I said, you don't have to have a technical profile. You can have indeed any kind of profile. So that's one of the cool things. Do you want to add something else before we. Speaker 2 Yeah, I just want to add that if ([Time 0:47:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1b2b7e84-7f33-4c9c-bcce-e621800912f3))