Perspectives With Jeff Paul  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **How Jeff Broke Into Core Contribution** - Jeff felt like an outsider at first and shadowed deputies during the 4.7 release to learn release tasks. - He then stepped in and handled project work those engineers did not want to do, which launched his contribution path. Transcript: Jeff Paul Think my initial reaction was probably similar to theirs in a, I'm not an engineer, how could I help, right? This is back in 2016, 2017? 2016. 2016. Thank you, Jonathan. Yeah, 2016. Jonathan All right. August 18, 2016. Jeff Paul Was, yeah. Both of you were part of that origin story of sorts, right? When I was at XWP at the time with y'all and the 4.7 release was Helen Hosandi, who who was, uh, the release lead was looking for, uh, deputies to help out. And Luke, you kind of talking through, I think you should really give us a shot, Jeff. And I was like, what in the ever living are you talking about? I was like, well, how am I going to help? What am I going to do? And, uh, you were just so, uh, um, positive and like helpful. And like, no, I really do think that like your sensibilities, your capabilities would be helpful. I definitely did show up and for a while was like, I don't like, I don't even think there had been really much for like product program project managers around at that time. So I think even when I was asking. You were one of the first if not like the yeah yeah a lot of the questions i was asking people were like i don't i don't know uh how do you think you can help and so it was uh it evolved to be a bit Of seeing helen and aaron jorban who was the other deputy on that release doing things that I was like, oh, I can do that. And then asking them to be like, do you mind if I shadow you on this thing you're doing so I can learn? And they were like, I actually would love it if you just did it and I didn't have to. ([Time 0:06:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/77f89ae3-209e-433d-a567-2d9f95932619)) - **Start With Meeting And Writing Tasks** - Do start with non-technical contribution: write agendas, run meetings, and summarize dev chats to get your foot in the door. - These tasks unblock engineers and build context before tackling technical issues. Transcript: Jeff Paul I mean i think um some things like running bug scrubs and triaging things in track or github uh probably take a bit more context of the thing you're working on, right? Having a bit more knowledge about core software components. So those things probably aren't the best first path in. It's not the best front door for somebody that's like a PM that wants to contribute. Those are things that with a little bit of time and context that there are absolutely things that, you know, engineers just rather be right in code building or fixing. Some of the better things that are a first front door for folks are just like helping write agendas, helping run a meeting. Probably that one is like maybe step two, writing summaries from like dev chats or things like that. Those are all like fairly straightforward. ([Time 0:10:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2d403f6e-cfa0-41ee-9f77-ed2efc28d8b7)) - **Text Meetings Boost Accessibility** - WordPress's text-based meeting format increases accessibility by letting people lurk, translate, and catch up via scrollback. - Jeff uses the format to enable participation across time zones and non-native English speakers. Transcript: Jeff Paul They are very particular. I would say that maybe Francesca has run more than I have at this point. And I'm sure there may be some people, Jen Milo and others before me that may have also run more. But... I mean, I do like them for their... Rather particular structure, to some degree, tight confines that helped not get too far off track, although there's plenty of meetings that have gone off track that I've either tried To wind back or myself maybe have taken off track. I have used the format at Fueled and 10 up running team meetings occasionally when uh it didn't make sense to be on camera although for things where it makes sense to be synchronous and On a camera i you know enjoy that in fact the core ai team does have a weekly that is actually a video chat, which is somewhat unique within the WordPress project. Most are, like you said, Slack conversations. You know, I think one of the things that's nice about them is you can probably multitask and still be very participatory, where if you're on a video chat and multitasking, you're probably Losing context pretty quickly. ([Time 0:24:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e642c74a-434e-4ea2-8b7a-b0636eaa95c8)) - **Good Tools Still Need The Right Door** - Even well-defined tools can fail to gain adoption if they can't reach the right teams at the right time. - Jeff cites Tide as a project with clear value that struggled to unlock adoption despite funding and effort. Transcript: Jeff Paul The first one that jumped to mind was really sometimes even when, uh, it feels like sometimes even when it feels like you have the right, you know, feature or product definition, you Can see there's a market for the thing. You know, you first, you know that there's firsthand pain that you've experienced, and thus the thing makes sense and feel like others have the same problem, that even when you feel Like all those things exist, sometimes the timing isn't right, or somehow you're just not able to maybe market or explain the thing. Thinking specifically, and this might be twisting the dagger for y'all as well on the topic, is tied. And going back to the work that started internally at XWP in building that tool for ourselves and then feeling that there was value to the project and getting some agreement within the Project to bring it in. Then running into a brick wall trying to help show the value to other teams. You know, now there are things like the plugin team has their own tooling, the plugin check plugin and other tooling that they have to help identify issues in plugins that they're reviewing, Whether that's on their own or feedback to plugin developers. You know, that was definitely a thing that we were trying to describe as a functionality that Tide could perform and was able to do. But just for reasons that we were never really able, I guess, to knock on the right door and have the right person answer to help unleash some of that value. So, you know, that was a fairly hard learning of like a thing that also many of us spent a lot of time on, sometimes funded by XWP, sometimes personally contributed to, you know, see it Get kind of that first. Funds also by Google. Thank you. Yeah. ([Time 0:28:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/48a07d33-420e-469b-b732-21cd3415a837)) - **Deadlines Prevent Endless Polishing** - Release timelines matter: long delays to get 'one more thing' can break cadence and cause problems. - Jeff compared living through Gutenberg's prolonged cycle to learning that deadlines aren't arbitrary. Transcript: Jeff Paul Another one that I, that the second thing that came to mind, whether it's a great response or not, it's what came to mind. So that's what you're going to get. I love it. Is living through a version of WordPress history that kind of repeated itself, thinking specifically about the 5.0 release cycle and the introduction of Gutenberg. And that the time leading up to that release was extremely prolonged for reasons at the time. But it had been an earlier lesson in WordPress history of, you know, deadlines aren't arbitrary. And, you know, we set a release cadence and we release, you know, on that cadence. ([Time 0:33:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8179eeef-bf6e-4b33-b023-fab2808ea9c9)) - **Volunteer Time Makes Planning Fragile** - Volunteer contributors create scheduling uncertainty, which makes release planning the hardest part of the job. - Jeff relies on the project's size and committed reviewers to pivot and still ship despite volunteer churn. Transcript: Jeff Paul No that is that's literally the the response i was going to dive into there is that like that is quite literally the hardest thing of especially as a release lead or somebody on a release Squad where you're you have going into that release a set of features or things you are expecting to deliver on and there are people theoretically lined up working on it and life be that Work or personal uh may take those folks away and nobody really has control over that especially when they're volunteers uh and even when they are sponsored like sometimes things happen Right and sponsor volunteer time just retracts um and uh yeah that's definitely the hardest thing especially when you know there may be perhaps that happens across multiple features In a release and as a a lead or somebody on the release squad you start to panic a little bit and and think of like oh gosh well what's going to be the tentpole thing what's going to be the top Of the about page right like what what are we going to put on the the news blog posts about this release? But, you know, fortunately the project is large enough and there are enough people showing up day in, day out, contributing and, you know, committers that are reviewing and getting Stuff in that like, there's always something, right? There's always, you know, things that you're able to figure out. ([Time 0:35:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0c900a1f-f38b-41a7-8468-3aceac550b3b)) - **Evaluate Collab Edit During Beta** - Test collaborative editing during beta/RC and evaluate host requirements before relying on it in production. - Consider that some hosts will offer enhanced infrastructure while others will keep a simpler baseline experience. Transcript: Jeff Paul Like i was set up for this question um the so the so collaborative everything I assume you mean real-time collaboration. Real-time collaboration, yeah. And not further iterations on asynchronous of, you know, notes. The notes feature, by the way, I think is amazing. Jonathan And one of the best features added to WordPress in a long time. Jeff Paul There are a couple of things that I would have loved to have gotten into 6.9 and things that I think make it even more powerful, especially to folks who have, you know, multiple people That are working on a WordPress site, which that's for the most part the heavy users of notes. But yes, back to real-time collab. Yeah, look, VIP has had this working in their environment since last fall, right? They've had customers use it since then. They obviously have the benefit of additional infrastructure as needed to make that real-time collab feel really graceful, right? And that doesn't need to necessarily have a, you know, a progressive fallback to maybe not as graceful real-time collaboration where somebody on, you know, a VPS install or something Relatively underpowered or just doesn't understand or want to or know how to spin up a a node server kind of thing to to have that more powerful uh real-time interaction right so vip has Had this working for a while um i i've seen it in practice it's you know quite fantastic but it's also something that we have to make sure we when i say we meaning the wordpress project and And shipping it that the base experience for somebody who is non-technical uh whose host is not you know either not able to or they don't want to pay for or can't have, you know, additional Server components to help power that experience, that they still have something that's valuable and useful and that it doesn't just, you know, slow their editing experience or degrade It in a way where a 7.0 release that theoretically includes real-time collab is an absolute bomb for them, right? So it's making sure that the feature, you know, can still deliver for folks that are, you know, in that orbit. ([Time 0:38:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9ca28745-ae5e-49c9-b4f2-2c777c2c5418)) - **Core Can Coexist With Host Extras** - Feature bifurcation (advanced host features vs base core) already exists in WordPress through caching and external services. - Jeff argues real-time collaboration won't break core for the majority; advanced needs will be met by higher-tier hosts. Transcript: Jeff Paul I wouldn't worry about it, right? Here's why. One, I look at my site, jackball.com, massive traffic. Fantastic. I don't need real-time cloud for me and myself, right? You know, my friends that own a board game shop here in town and a couple others like they don't need it for their site right so there's definitely somewhere like it's almost like uh who Cares like you're reading the about page like whatever the real time collab i don't need it right uh and there are plugins in the space that you know help with caching, right? That, you know, maybe that's bundled with some plans on hosts. Maybe you get better caching on higher end ones. So like there's already things that are creating that bifurcation, if you want to use that word. But I don't think it lessens the the, the, the, the base WordPress experience, right? I think that base WordPress experience is still, um, you know, extremely useful and valuable. ([Time 0:41:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/065ebe9d-5ba9-43d7-961b-cf83994ed46e)) - **Pick A 7.0 Feature And Test It** - Do pick a 7.0-targeted feature that resonates with your site, subscribe to its ticket, and test it in the WordPress Playground during beta/RC. - Report clear feedback to help shape polish and fix issues before release. Transcript: Jeff Paul Most flush with engineers, though there's always going to be more that's out there in Tracker GitHub that somebody could pick up and work on that's a good first bug, good first issue. So certainly don't shy away if that's your bag. Again, whether that's PHP or JavaScript or what have you. You know, I think there's, I have, there was a blog post that I published back at XWP that I then kind of forked to put out on my own blog that like, no, look, really every, every role that You might envision at an agency or host or product shop, there is a need for that in the project. There is, I don't know how many teams at this point, 20, two dozen, maybe more, that on their own are very likely clamoring for contributors, right? Jonathan You know, the very... AI team not being one of them. Jeff Paul The AI team would love to have folks. I know Tammy Lester's new program team would love to have some folks there that operate in that space. I know documentation team is always looking for help folks to help either whether that's during a release cycle or outside of one. Designers, testers, you know, whatever you can think of, there is a place for your competency, your skill set, your interests in the project. Whether that is somebody who is, you know, junior in that profession or experienced, right? There are onboarding experiences for somebody that's junior and there's, you know, some really big nuts to crack for folks that are experienced. You know, I think the onboarding experience is probably different for everybody across all those teams and the different types of competencies. So, you know, it's not a one size fits all. I know there is a like onboarding wizard, a contributing wizard. I just had it up. Yeah, make.wordpress slash contribute that was put together that kind of helps walk you through like what can you do what do you like to do uh and answer a couple questions and it's like Oh well here are some teams that might be a good fit for you right or here are some things that the project needs help with so uh jonathan i don't think there's like a singular answer of we Need more you know widget makers and we only want widget makers, right? It's, it's really everything and anything. And, uh, the project I think would be foolish to turn away any contributor, right? Um, you know, you look at WP credits, they're, you know, trying to get even further into integrations with, uh, higher ed, right? Colleges and universities and bringing folks in that level. And so even people that have like, perhaps no context of WordPress, trying to get them exposed to it and contributing is fantastic. Luke What I think has been essential as well has been the work that's gone into, and you've been an important part of this as well, of recognizing those like less technical. There are some things that are a lot easier to recognize. If you have a commit, we can run that programmatically and we can like make sure that there's a reference that's made to it, right? I remember some of the work that you do early on, like, hey, like checking to make sure that folks' contributions were all recognized, even if it was small. And there's a lot that's really motivating about that. And I think that some of those less technical areas can be harder, like how do you measure that? And it requires people that are thinking more about the program, more about the project and, you know, not just looking at the commits that showed up at the end. So I think that work, and I know there's been a lot more of that lately, I think is part of what makes it, you know, because how do you, when you're volunteering, there's different, there Is something to be said about just the internal satisfaction. We as humans also care about being appreciated for what we do, even if it's not like formal public, but it's, you know, that what's expressed from one to the other. I think that's a big part of what draws folks into it. Yeah. Jeff Paul And I think that recognition, the, you know, thankfulness towards contributors for their contributions, there's still, I think, a long way for the project to go, especially for folks That are maybe not contributing directly to a major or minor release, or folks that maybe are contributing to things that aren't code-based and having the project properly capture And recognize and thank those folks. I think there's still a long way to go, but I think we do a better job with every release cycle just because that's the way kind of my brain measures progress within the project. But yeah, I think we do a decent job. Could definitely be, could be doing a great job, but we're not there yet. Luke Last thing for me is if you had one suggestion for a new contributor of like, if they're looking at the arc of their first year, maybe there's just a few hours here and there. They're going to spend a couple of hours like on one of the teams that's interesting to them and do what they can especially a non-developer yes a non-developer it's like what would you Jeff Paul Encourage them to keep in mind like any any just like one piece of like guidance so i think what i would recommend um be there's a post that Matthias has up, Matthias Ventura, from December 11th called Planning for 7.0 on make.wordpress slash core. It it might be overly dense it might be particularly technical in points that don't make sense but reading through it with a lens of you know hopefully at this point this person has a wordpress Site or they've used the word wordpress or they've published content in a cms right and read through that post and see which of those things are like oh that's interesting that sounds Really cool or oh yeah that bothers me about this you know my site or the publishing tool that I use. And then subscribe to the GitHub issue or track ticket for that thing. And when it becomes available for testing during the beta and RC cycles, give that a test on WordPress Playground, right? Down or not download, sorry, in the browser, test that feature and just give feedback of like, this perfectly solves, I have this problem, or like, here's some oddities I see. ([Time 0:46:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5fdf7164-86a6-4bbf-9889-ca995252eee1)) - **Bring Nontechnical Skills To The Project** - Try roles beyond engineering: documentation, design, testing, program management, and AI-related work are actively needed. - Use make.wordpress.org/contribute to match your skills to teams that want contributors. Transcript: Jeff Paul There is, I don't know how many teams at this point, 20, two dozen, maybe more, that on their own are very likely clamoring for contributors, right? Jonathan You know, the very... AI team not being one of them. Jeff Paul The AI team would love to have folks. I know Tammy Lester's new program team would love to have some folks there that operate in that space. I know documentation team is always looking for help folks to help either whether that's during a release cycle or outside of one. Designers, testers, you know, whatever you can think of, there is a place for your competency, your skill set, your interests in the project. Whether that is somebody who is, you know, junior in that profession or experienced, right? There are onboarding experiences for somebody that's junior and there's, you know, some really big nuts to crack for folks that are experienced. You know, I think the onboarding experience is probably different for everybody across all those teams and the different types of competencies. So, you know, it's not a one size fits all. I know there is a like onboarding wizard, a contributing wizard. I just had it up. Yeah, make.wordpress slash contribute that was put together that kind of helps walk you through like what can you do what do you like to do uh and answer a couple questions and it's like Oh well here are some teams that might be a good fit for you right or here are some things that the project needs help with so uh jonathan i don't think there's like a singular answer of we Need more you know widget makers and we only want widget makers, right? It's, it's really everything and anything. And, uh, the project I think would be foolish to turn away any contributor, right? Um, you know, you look at WP credits, they're, you know, trying to get even further into integrations with, uh, higher ed, right? Colleges and universities and bringing folks in that level. ([Time 0:46:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/474d84bb-d823-483c-b471-8723a7fcb73a)) - **Recognition Still Favors Code Work** - The project still struggles to capture and recognize non-code contributions reliably. - Jeff says recognition has improved each release but more work is needed to thank non-release contributors properly. Transcript: Jeff Paul And I think that recognition, the, you know, thankfulness towards contributors for their contributions, there's still, I think, a long way for the project to go, especially for folks That are maybe not contributing directly to a major or minor release, or folks that maybe are contributing to things that aren't code-based and having the project properly capture And recognize and thank those folks. ([Time 0:50:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a97ab2bd-ec85-42b0-826f-37dcc44fa310))