Post Status Comments (No. 4) — State of the Word 2021 Analysis • Post Status

Members of the WordPress Community on Their Takeaways from SOTW

This episode of Post Status Comments features a live conversation in Twitter Spaces that was recorded right after Matt Mullenweg‘s State of the Word 2021 broadcast on December 14th. Bet Hannon, Eric Karkovack, Maciek Palmowski, and Rae Morey joined David to share their reactions. Others from the audience join in, including Jeff Chandler, Ryan Marks, Hazel Quimpo, Scott Kingsley Clark, Jason Taylor, and Amber Hinds.

Among the questions discussed: What stood out in the State of the Word for each of our guests? What did they think of Matt Mullenweg’s take on web3, NFTs, and ownership? Was there agreement about Matt’s points on WordPress market share, acquisitions, and contributions to WordPress core teams?

This engaging conversation went on for a little over an hour.

Bonus: Michelle Frechette caught Matt for a brief interview after the SOTW address, and we rounded up reactions to the event from the whole Post Status team.

Post Status Comments 💬 provides a stage for WordPress professionals to exchange ideas and talk about recent topics and trends.

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Transcript

David Bisset: [00:00:00] Uh, my name is David Bisset. I am one of the people at post status. Um, if you’re not familiar, go to post status.com. It’s a great community. In fact, they might as well be sponsoring this whole thing. What we do is we record, we do Twitter spaces every once in a while we record them and we make them available as podcasts.

So, um, a few rules before we get started here, as we still get a few more people coming in, um, just we’ll make it very simple, prove a code of conduct. Just pretend this is a work camp. Be nice. You try to be family friendly in terms of your language and your feedback and your comments. And be be advised that this is a public space and you will likely be recorded and used later in a podcast or something like that.

If you are listening on your mobile app, you have the opportunity to request, um, feedback. We would like to, uh, like to ask if you could limit your questions or feedback to at least 30 or 60 seconds at a time. Initially that [00:01:00] way we are only planning for maybe 30 minutes or so of discussion this evening may be a little bit longer.

So we’ll try to get to everyone. And I know people are still digesting what Matt spoke about tonight as well. I didn’t get a chance to hear everything he said either. So we’re hoping if we don’t bring up some things that were covered. And if you feel like something was important that stood out into night’s state of the word, then please feel free to bring it up.

We’re also watching the post status slack right now on the club channel. If you feel like typing rather than talk. So anyway, um, there is a distinction just once again, we had some confusion on this last month, you can listen to Twitter spaces on the desktop that does work, but you will not be able to raise your hand or talk as far as I know you need the mobile app for that.

So if you feel like you want to contribute, switch over to the mobile app. Okay. So we have with start off with our initial four, um, speakers for tonight. [00:02:00] Um, Eric, can you tell us just a few seconds of, can you unmute yourself first of all, Eric, and tell us, um, who you are in the WordPress space in 30 seconds or less.

Eric Karkovack: I’m Eric Karch, evac. I’m a web designer and writer for specie boy.com. And I’ve been using WordPress for well over a decade. And this is my 25th year in the industry overall.

David Bisset: Um, Ray, is this the F, is that your first? Am I doing that? Right? There was only three letters, but I feel like, okay. Where, where are you from right now in the world?

Rae Morey: Um, I’m based in Melbourne Australia. It’s currently just after 11:00 AM here.

David Bisset: I am so stinking jealous, but go ahead. What, what published, what publication are you from?

Rae Morey: I published the repository. It’s a weekly newsletter that, um, takes a bit of a deep dive into the news each week and, and kind of picks apart [00:03:00] with the headlines and what people are saying about

David Bisset: oh, excellent. We’ll be look forward to hearing some of your comments. Um, Mr. Palomo Palomo whiskey. I think I butchered that like some fine beef.

Uh, can you, uh, unmute yourself and tell us a few things about.

Maciek Palmowski: Yes, you did a bit. Uh and, uh, well of course, when you say it that fast, it sounds better, but go ahead. Yeah. Uh, yeah, you know, Polish is, is, is very hard. So English is hard for me, but yes, but if you’re from another publication as well. Yes. Uh, I am from WP owls, uh, which let’s say I do at night because, uh, during the day I am a hundred percent Basadur at body and, uh, w P owls.

Uh, we also try to find some interesting things that are happening in the WordPress space. Uh, we try to [00:04:00] focus a bit more on the things that happens for developers, but of course, we also find all the news and try to share everything with this interests. Hmm. Here at night. WPLS I S I see the connection.

David Bisset: All right. Finally, that Hannon welcome to the program.

Bet Hannon: Hi, David I’m Ben and I live in central Oregon and the USA. I run an agency that designs and develops WordPress does manage hosting for WordPress. So we have a specialization with accessibility. So we do a lot of things with accessibility, and I’m also a local meetup organism.

David Bisset: So we, uh, we have a little bit of a diverse bunch here in terms of, at least we have at least an agency owner. We have a couple of people from the news we have, and there’s a lot more interesting people that hopefully we’ll get to meet in the audience as well. So Eric, why don’t we start with you from maybe a developer perspective, but from any perspective, what’s the biggest thing that jumped out at you that Matt talked about tonight?[00:05:00]

Eric Karkovack: Well, first of all, I was glad that he, he kind of explained, uh, you know, the whole web series. Um, topic that, you know, we weren’t quite sure what he was going to say on that. Uh, we weren’t sure if maybe he was going to introduce NFTs to a WordPress somehow. Uh, so I was glad he kind of, um, spoke about how that already fits in with work.

WordPress, WordPress is already doing it. It is a decentralized platform. It is, um, you know, something that you own the content of your site. So I was really happy about that. And I think the other thing that really, um, interested me was when he was actually talking about his youth a little bit about his time building B2, um, those things kind of stood out to me because he started out much the same way I did no, you know, formal education and it just did it because he was passionate about it.

And I think that’s something we don’t always hear from Matt. So I thought that was, um, [00:06:00] really great to hear.

David Bisset: He seemed to be a little more personable. I mean, I don’t mean, I, you know, I guess I’ll go next and a little bit in terms of what I thought overall. Um, we’ll, I’ll let you all handle the technical, but overall, maybe it was the smaller stage.

Maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t spoken in front of people maybe in two years, I think he said, or maybe he, or at least in front of a WordPress crowd, he seemed to like be more happy or at least like a little bit more. And he seemed to be a little bit more, um, I don’t know. I can’t really put a word on it of personable or, um, maybe nervous too, maybe a little bit of that.

Maybe it could have been the most nervous. I’ve seen Matt out of state of the word in a long time and maybe that was because of the proximity or because of COVID or whatever. Um,

Bet Hannon: I think it’s really different when you’re speaking to a small. Based versus thousands, you know, thousands of people in a big auditorium, it just feels really different when you’re in front of a small audience since we, you, since we have you bet, why [00:07:00] don’t you tell us what, what’s the one thing that probably stood out to you the most now?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s actually a thing that kind of surfaces again and again for me, and it’s a little bit of a push Paul. And so, uh, uh, on the one hand, I really celebrate all the ways that we are, um, making customization so much apart. And we’re giving so much ability for people with little or no coding skills to be able to do these amazing things with their sites.

As an agency owner, you know, I have clients who have, you know, five or 10 or 15 content creators, and they don’t want to give that kind of, they don’t want their content creators necessarily going off brand for example. And so there’s, uh, I’m always kind of trying to think about, uh, you know, balancing that out or, uh, thinking about how will we help our clients work with their content creators, amid [00:08:00] all of this amazing ability to customize.

David Bisset: As an, as an agency owner where you overall satisfied with what was presented tonight.

Bet Hannon: Oh yeah. You know, uh, it’s always great to hear how things are going, looking. Uh, I thought it was really interesting the, um, the perspective that Matt was giving on some of the acquisitions, but it’s a, it’s not just happening in WordPress, that there’s a much broader kind of, um, you know, that’s happening at a much larger scale and all across many industries.

And, um, so yeah, no, I, I really was pleased.

David Bisset: So, um, our, our WP gals and our repository people here, they cover the news. They cover acquisitions as far as everything else. I’ll let you decide which one of you wants to go first, but again, same question. What was the biggest thing that stood out to you during maths?

Talk the seat.

Rae Morey: I’m happy to jump in. Um, I think, um, [00:09:00] one of the big things for me, I think, which you’ve kind of already touched on is the energy of the address today. Um, it was very obvious that Matt was really happy just to be around like-minded people who, like he said, I got him dancing, a jig as an animator, which he also pointed out or your case, but it was really nice seeing him so happy he’s been there and vocal about how uncomfortable he was last year during the prerecording.

So it was nice to see him in front of a crowd again. Um, but I, I guess just the energy of seeing things moving forward again, after a bit of a, not a stagnant past couple of years, but things have been a bit slower with contributors being involved, I guess in WordPress has been, um, a bit of a slow down in number of people contributing to the project.

Um, And I, he was feeding off the energy in the room, as bet said. Um, I guess one of the other takeaways for me was, um, just, uh, you know, uh, [00:10:00] we didn’t know what he was going to talk about, um, around web three. And, and if T’s, it was, uh, you know, there a bit of speculation around what he was going to say, few ideas floating around, but it was really nice to see or to hear him talk about, you know, basically WordPress is already leading the way when it comes to web three to centralization of the web and, and ownership over content.

So it was really nice for him to address that and, and talk about where WordPress fits into that space. Um, you know, as well as the focus on open verse and, um, you know, where that’s going to go in, in 2022 is, is really exciting.

David Bisset: Oh, and Mr. Owl, I feel like I need to ask you something about the Tootsie roll pop, but I don’t think the kids today will get that.

Maciek Palmowski: So, um, for me, uh, there were two things that really stood out. First of all, uh, when he mentioned the number of, uh, people doing translations and the languages in the repository, uh, because [00:11:00] I am a non native English speaker, which probably you can hear with my thick accent.

David Bisset: I think it’s cool.

Maciek Palmowski: Thank you. Uh, but um, I know how many people in Poland, for example, need to see their CMS in, in Polish because English, it’s not something they want to, they want to read some, some of my clients that I had don’t even knew English or just didn’t felt comfortable with it.

So, um, the, the growing number of polyglots, this is really something great. And this is really a thing that, uh, Um, that will really make WordPress bigger and bigger. Uh, w when we confronted with, uh, other CMS is out there because most of them are still mostly created and maintained [00:12:00] in English. So this is something very important.

And there was one sentence that was also very intriguing for me. Maybe I, um, I misheard it, but I thought that Matt, at some point mentioned something about breaking a bit, uh, how he called it, that backward compatibility. Yeah, he did. I remember him talking about that, what specifically thinking of exactly.

And this is, um, I know that he mentioned it, uh, in the, in the context of, uh, in the context of themes, maybe, maybe, and this is. A bigger step to some bigger changes in, in inside of core, inside of, uh, uh, of, of, uh, of the coal tooling and stuff like this. So, uh, really Matt saying, let’s break the [00:13:00] backwards compatibility.

This is something huge.

David Bisset: Did he say that though? Break? I remember I may have missed that quote.

Maciek Palmowski: You mentioned something. I mean, it wasn’t, uh, as the size, if it’s let’s break that backwards compatibility, but in terms of WordPress, when we, I would say we have a bit paranoid, backward compatibility, which is great in some cases, um, Talking about breaking any backward compatibility is something.

David Bisset: Yeah. Matt did quote, this was a quote in this again, take, take in context and keep in mind that, you know, we’ll listen to this again. And again, probably a few times to get a better understanding of what was said, but he did say in the presentation that a theme that was created with like an early version of WordPress, will it be like 1, 2 0 1, 5 or something like that would work with WordPress 5.9 next month.

That is what he said. And that’s his, and that he said, quote, that’s how serious we are about backwards compatibility. [00:14:00] Um, but like we said, that I would have to go back and listen, but I know, I know at least currently has strengthened backwards. Compatibility seemed pretty strong, at least from that statement now, whether or not it stays that way.

Maciek Palmowski: Um, but I think it was a sentence before, when he mentioned that. The developers should move from the old editor to the new one. So we should update. So this is something, uh, but, uh, yes, I, like I said, I wasn’t sure about this, but, uh, it caught my attention. So I think that, uh, yeah, I will have to relisten it once again to, to make sure.

David Bisset: So we’ll let, we’ll let that, uh, bet chime in here and then I’m going to open before you start that. I’m good. Then after you, I’m going to open the floor a little bit of a few other people who are going to raise their hands and we’re going to keep everyone on stage though. So you can keep interjecting back and forth.

We’re not kicking anybody off. I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Bet Hannon: I might be wrong, but I think that Matt was referring to the breaking the backward compatibility in terms of the introduction of Gutenberg that the Gutenberg would break a [00:15:00] backward. That that would not be backward compatible as we move forward with blocks. Well, I might be wrong.

David Bisset: Well, I don’t know about you, but some of my old themes won’t work with flux gear guaranteed. Yeah. And, and the old editor things in the old adage that use that tiny MCE editor are not going to work. And so there’s some backward compatibility that is broken with the introduction of blocks. So, um, all right.

Uh, Jeff, welcome to the show. Welcome on stage. Um, Eric Ray, Brett, and Mr. Owl. I’m going to refer to him as, um, are still on stage with us and are going to interact with anybody we bring up. Can you hear us, Jeff? Uh, absolutely I can. And Ray, you have an awesome accent. Thanks for that. She has, she’s also in the morning too, so she’s got that.

Perkiness that currently very few of us have right now, but oh, I have a coffee. So I’m doing well, sorry. You’re not making me [00:16:00] like you in any more, right. Uh, so Jeff, what for the, for us up here on stage and for the rest of the audience, what would you like to share about what you heard.

Jeff Chandler: Um, I, you know, I think people on the, in a web three space might look at what Matt said on stage as him maybe Disney web three.

But I think what he did was he cautiously tiptoed around the subject. He brought it up, he skimmed the surface. So I think at the very least people know that he’s aware of it. He’s going to keep his eye on it. And it may come up again in next year’s state of the word, but I don’t, I think you did a good job with bringing it up.

But one of the things I also enjoyed that he brought up, I’m glad that he brought up was when he went over the market share numbers. And this is something that Yoast EVOC did in his CMS market analysis posts is that he talked about how software as a service company is Wix Squarespace. And, uh, some of the other ones they’re all rapidly growing and all of the open source solutions minus WordPress are losing.

And I was glad that he brought [00:17:00] that up and that’s something that we should keep an eye on. Uh, here in the next few years,

David Bisset: He also said something interesting too. About, and this was in a different part of the presentation, but regarding Drupal and Joomla, I got him quoted as saying he thought they would be more successful if they had apps, which I thought was interesting.

Jeff Chandler: I, I thought, I thought they had the apps, but if they don’t, I think that’s a very valid point.

David Bisset: Yeah, that’s true. So market share was definitely something that, that brought up 43%. And I won’t go into it now because it’s not relevant to the state of the word precisely, but wean very soon because of an Amazon shutting down, Alexa, we may not have the privilege or the opportunity to have percentage of market share numbers like we do today, so that, you know, examining this information now for Matt, I think during the state of the word is very important because without those are W3C texts, numbers are based on Alexa and Alexa is shutting down in, I think may of next year, Amazon shutting it down, not that Alexa, [00:18:00] the other Alexa, and I’m just turned on a bunch of Alexis and people’s houses.

Jeff Chandler: And one of the last things I’ll say here before I get off, is that I think it’s obvious that 20, 22 is going to be the year of the open verse.

David Bisset: I, I can’t, I, every time I think of open verse, I think of something else and I hate myself every time. I think of that associate, thank you very much, Jeff, for, for sharing with us, Scott.

Um, let’s see. We’re inviting Scott upstage or SKC. I think he likes to, I think that’s his rap name.

Scott Kingsley: Hey, what’s up?

David Bisset: What’s up?

Scott Kingsley: Let’s say Casey, you know me?

David Bisset: Oh God. He started her up already quickly before, before he does tell us what you thought of tonight.

Scott Kingsley: Uh, the

lack of banana milkshake representation, it was kind of a disappointment, but, and wanted to run that operation banana milkshake failed.

David Bisset: It was fine. Nobody knows what we’re talking about.

Scott Kingsley: Oh, one out, but, uh, availed on asking the question. [00:19:00] So, cause he got up right near the end. I was like, oh, come on. You can get, you can get the question in there. But uh, I thought it was really interesting. Um, well obviously. I think web three is a whole thing, but I’m really glad that he brought it more towards like reminding people.

You need to remain cautiously optimistic about things and keep things open. Um, especially from the perspective of making sure things are, are done right. And you’re not watching hucksters and stuff, but, um, but I think maybe the part I really liked the most was probably all around how, um, collaboration is phase three and we’re, I know we’re still a year out now, but, uh, if we could have gotten to that in 2022, I think that would have been a pretty big thing because there’s so much about the collaboration idea of just like going into, um, uh, Figma or Google docs and you seeing everyone else were working together and, and just that collaboration aspect of things could make things so much easier, especially on the open web, we’re trying to replace something like Google docs, [00:20:00] having an experience like that inside of WordPress and being able to collaborate like that would be pretty, pretty.

David Bisset: Yeah, I wish I knew more about it in terms of, um, he did say he was going to talk about web three and he did say NFTs in his blog post, but I don’t think he said much about it unless I missed that part. I think he was just putting a bunch of keywords together. Um, yeah. Um, but he did make it a point to kind of bring up the larger issue about what those individual things stood for, at least from a philosophy philosophy standpoint, what you hear on the web in terms of, um, ownership.

And I’m drawing a blank on the other things right now, but he did really kind of go into why WordPress was representing those things. And he did make a point that you can overlook some of the things that are the WordPress has four freedoms can be overlooked if you focus too much into some of the, I don’t think he used the word hype, but I think he meant something like it.

So [00:21:00] there’s a danger there overlooking what he thinks are the critical freedoms to WordPress. Eric, did you have.

Eric Karkovack: Yeah, I think he was also talking about decentralization a little bit with that. Um, just the basic idea that, you know, you can take your WordPress website with you to any host. Um, maybe it doesn’t fit in exactly with like something like blockchain.

Um, but it does kind of speak to, you know, the danger of going with, uh, you know, his favorite, uh, competitor Wix. I think he said that WordPress grew by two Weeks’s over the last year, which was kind of a good line. Might have been my favorite of the night. I, I have a, I have a little chalkboard up here and every time he made a mark a comment about Wix, I drew a line and I’ve got a couple of lines here on the board, but yes, he did make that comparison.

David Bisset: Go ahead.

Eric Karkovack: Okay. I just going to say, I think that, that, um, you know, having that ability to move content from place to place is what’s going to [00:22:00] separate. WordPress from everything else right now. I mean, as we see Joomla and Drupal dropping down well, WordPress is kind of like the last bastion of hope for open source at this moment.

Maybe. I don’t know, like see what other people think about that

David Bisset: You need to write a transformers movie.

That was excellent.

Eric Karkovack: Well, I, I think, you know, if, if, if that’s the case, then you know, that’s going to be the big selling point. Um, I actually had someone in my family wanted to start a blog this week and I pushed him to WordPress and not to Squarespace or Wix, because if you don’t like the service, you’re not going to be able to just take the website with you.

It doesn’t work that way.

David Bisset: So let me let, speaking of that, um, let me ask a broader question. Cause I get a feeling we’re going to boomerang back to the web three stuff anyway. Matt said, and this question goes for everybody on stage or anybody in the audience. Matt did say a quote later on in his, um, I think in his Q and a about, he said that, um, [00:23:00] 85% or some big percent of the web doesn’t really care about it was either open source or owning your own content or something along those lines that most that WordPress would have in order to be usable.

WordPress would have to be a great user experience and WordPress will be invisible to those people. And that’s okay. Does, what does anybody think about that? Do you agreed, or do you, do you think that number is larger or smaller or does that seem to gel with your philosophies and your observation?

Bet Hannon: That’s true for a lot of people, they think they just, you know, uh, they just want to get the website up and they’re really, uh, a little more platform agnostic. They want to know. Is it going to be hard? Right. They want to know about ease of use. They don’t, but they don’t really care that it’s open source for not.

David Bisset: Jeff, what do you [00:24:00] think?

Jeff Chandler: Uh, I think for a lot of people that way, he said in terms of like maybe one or 2% of the people who understand TPO and its freedoms and what they mean, uh, those are the people, very, very small percentage of people. Uh, you know, it be an open source is not the concern. It’s how to get the aid to be the fastest and the easiest.

And you, that pretty much explains why a Shopify and somebody software as a service solutions are growing a market share because they’re providing a great user experience for a lot of people out there to get from a to B quickly and easily. So I think it was a nice for Matt to bring it up and saying, you know, if we’re going to, uh, become the dominant player and get open for some more hands that even if it means that we’re presses invisible.

David Bisset: That’s okay. Yeah. I think that’s reasonable. I think that’s a little hard for some of us to like we accept on the surface, but I think some of us have to kind of dig down a little bit and realize that some of the things that we’re passionate about us, not what 99% of most people passionate about. You know, they want something that works.

Ray Ray, uh, did [00:25:00] you have something to say, and then I’m going to bring in a new speaker?

Rae Morey: Yeah, no, I’d absolutely agree if you’re running a small business, you know, like my hairdresser, for example, she just built a website recently to support her new business and she’s, um, using, um, GoDaddy, um, and they’re, you know, website builder, and she built a site in an afternoon really easily with WordPress and, you know, people like that, they don’t want to muck around with something that’s really tricky to, to work with.

They, they wanna drop in their images or their content and have their website up and running with in her case. E-commerce as well, really quickly. And, um, you know, it’s important. Um, platforms like, you know, it’s not all about, um, WordPress being the center of attention in, in that space. It’s, it’s about elevating the user experience and making sure that users, um, can, um, have the tools they need to run their business without WordPress necessarily being front and center.

Maciek Palmowski: And, um, [00:26:00] I wanted to mess one more thing because when the whole COVID madness started, many people realized that their business needs a website. Right. And you all remember that this was the moment. Uh, workers had a much bigger amount of downloads. WooCommerce was downloaded the biggest amount of, uh, of times.

And this was because first of all, workers was kind of popular. So people were able to find materials about how to insulate, how to create their first e-commerce. So they could, so their business could work during the pandemic. And it seems that WordPress was easy enough for them to just start to make their business round during those, uh, those hard times.

And probably during the process, [00:27:00] they started to. More and more things, how to optimize some things. And some of them learned probably a finger to about, uh, about C, about search engine optimization about performance and stuff like this, but still, uh, we saw how many businesses started their websites on WordPress, because it was easy.

It was free.

David Bisset: Yeah. Free. In fact, a real Aruba hope. I probably butchered your name in the chat. She says, I think for a lot of folks open source means free in that vein for some folks, open source also means hard to install. And she says, when I pitched WP, I rarely talk about the open source aspect. I talk about the ease of use security, constant updates, et cetera.

So, you know, playing to the strong, playing to the strong points there. If it’s okay with you, Mr. Owl, I liked to switch over to Hazel. Who’s been waiting patiently. Hopefully she’s not mad at me.

Hazel Quimpo: Hi. I don’t get mad. Um, [00:28:00] quick. No, I mean, I think I’m on the same page with a lot of the folks is like, I don’t know.

I think of like travel agents, right? And I feel like we’re at this stage where, you know, you used to go to a travel agent to get all your stuff. And I think if you have a really small website, you don’t need to even go to like your cousin. Who’s a WordPress developer. Well, you might need to today. But I think that the expectation is you shouldn’t have to.

Um, and I like from the lay person who doesn’t know about WordPress, who doesn’t know what, whatever they think they should be able to go and set up their website and frankly they can. And I think that’s where we need to realize that’s where the people, I was recently looking at tons of web hosts. And so many of them tout like image compression.

And do you know how many people I know that start businesses every day, who care about image compression? Like zero to say a lot, but I guess I was way wrong

for touting these things. Expect. And I think we need to realize some of that when we do WordPress stuff is like, cool. Like we do believe in the open source nature of the things we believe in [00:29:00] owning your content. But I view it a lot of the way. Like, you know, my doctor tells me to drink less and eat healthier, and I think that’s a good idea, but I don’t care that much.

And I think that’s how the rest of the world is right. And Hazel, for as long as we have you in the living, as long as we have you in the living world.

David Bisset: Thank you for, thank you for that. Um, I’m gonna put, I’m gonna put you back into the audience, but for the love of God, please don’t disappear right away cause you’re scaring me now. Um, stick around please in the world that we’re living and in our, in our little chat room here, Dave, Ryan, um, you’re onstage. Welcome to whatever we’re calling this little freak show. How are you? Apparently Dave’s a quiet person. That’s fine.

Dave: Sorry, Twitter space is cut out there for a second.

David Bisset: No problem. Real quick. Tell us what you thought of that. What, what stood out to you or what did you, or maybe you’re responding to someone else’s comment?

Dave: Well, I guess on the current topic, I think of WordPress. You know, if we look at [00:30:00] automobiles, there’s a lot of different ways to get where you want to go, right?

But WordPress is ideally these sort of Toyota Camry, the undeniable, you know, lay person, car that anyone, you know, that almost just blends into the background, but is everywhere. And you live where I live with. But also, you know, like the Ford transit van, if we’re looking at blue commerce, the thing that every business needs to get, where it needs to go and, you know, it can be customized.

Um, I guess the one thing that really stood out to me about the presentation today is just kind of the talk about the open verse photo directories, digital art, the project doesn’t really have an apparatus today to do content moderation at scale. And I’m not sure that that’s something that volunteers could really easily be asked to do.

Um, you know, once you create a way for people to easily express themselves, you also open up, you know, copyright [00:31:00] issues, uh, hate, um, questions about what’s decent and what isn’t, and you have to navigate a global web of legal frameworks or. So I think as excited as I am about those ideas, and I think it’s a great opportunity.

I also think that Twitter and Facebook have proven that money and AI don’t necessarily solve those problems. And so I’m just curious how the project that going forward.

David Bisset: That’s uh, I would, I would say that too, Adam attempted to ask that toy. He did ask it, um, or attempted to address that as well. And I’m, I’ll, I’ll be honest with you.

I don’t know much about now there was a distinction between the open verse project and the, what was the other thing? Was the WordPress photo project or photo library? Something, um, I’ll admit. I admit I, I’m not really good in depth on both of those, by the way. Did I mention, I worked for post tennis? Um, But I, yeah, so there was definitely talk of like, if you uploaded a [00:32:00] photo somewhere with that data, some of the data that sticks to it, you know, like how you upload a photo, like if you upload a photo to Twitter, for example, from your phone on your phone, there’s metadata attached to that photo.

And when you upload it to Twitter, it’s gone. Um, but that’s just, that’s just one level. And what you’re talking about is the, what hits the news a lot, like in terms of, you know, you could be posting photos without people’s permission, or you could be posting hate speech or that sort of thing. So, and we all know that’s a moderation nightmare, right?

Guest: I think today, the ways that we contribute to WordPress have a steep enough curve and our barrier to entry that we don’t deal with as much of that. But I think the big question is going forward as we make it radically easier to contribute, how are we going to tackle the problem that all these other networks have had to deal with once they scale.

David Bisset: That’s an excellent question. I feel like I’m still at the Q and a part of State of the Word. I really, yeah. Subtly we should, [00:33:00] we should get that question in front of Matt and some other, some other people’s. So I think that’s an excellent question. Dale has decided they don’t have a really good answer.

A thought about that. Thank you though, for, for speaking up. Um, so one of the other things that was spoken about here, and I get a feeling this was in, in an inescapable gravitational force in 2021 was acquisitions. And we mentioned this briefly. Um, do you agree, does the, is there anybody here that maybe sees Matt’s point, but has a different opinion in terms of this is I think it’s, I think the point he was getting across was this is happening everywhere.

It’s not just in the WordPress space. Is that, is that generally something that you would agree to? Um, the way he presented it, especially with lots of nice old charts. Does anybody have an opinion on his take on acquisitions?

And if I can take a silence as a yes. If anybody wants to, [00:34:00] I, I can, uh, chime in, I guess.

Jeff Chandler: Um, I think one of the things he mentioned, he mentioned Yost by name, and I think he also talked about, you know, the number of employees and what they’re doing and kind of extrapolating the impact that, that accompany like that has like all the millions and millions of websites that are like, just for example, running Yoast right now.

Um, and I think he’s what he’s kind of getting at is that there’s a lot of responsibility in that. And for a lot of smaller entrepreneurs who started out with these plugins. You know, maybe that’s just getting to be to a point where they’re just not able to do it anymore. I know that was part of the, the case with advanced custom fields from they, they were sold, um, you know, it was a one man operation with a user base in the millions and, you know, kind of how do [00:35:00] you, how do you manage that?

How do you continue to, to support it and build the product at that scale? When, you know, you’re just a small group of people or even just an individual. Um, so it’s, it’s a matter of WordPress is growing so radically big and you can’t be a one person team, especially on something that large sure. Seems like it these days.

I mean, I I’m, I don’t doubt that, you know, individuals are still gonna come up with amazing things, but to compete at the level of a Yoast or an AC. I don’t know how that’s sustainable for a long period for such a small group of people.

David Bisset: Well, I think that also, and not to get off track here because this isn’t, I think Matt didn’t mention this at some point directly cause he ma he brought up the CD comic about, um, about it there’s I tweeted [00:36:00] it, but I’m looking, I’m trying to look at the picture right now.

It’s basically about picture a all modern digital infrastructure being a giant castle. And there’s this one little piece of the bottom that says a random, some random person in Nebraska, thankfully maintaining a project since 2003. Um, that, that is kind of also the same problem, in my opinion, in terms of like, it is this, there is a strength of open source and yet there’s this weakness.

And I think this week two, if anybody’s been following the news about the Java exploit that came out on Friday, who’s named now, I’m not remembering logs. Um,

Guest: log4j

David Bisset: yes, that’s, that’s it. So we’re beginning to see these things happening outside of WordPress and open source that we’ve been kind of contemplating now for quite some time, whether it’s bugs, whether it’s something that needs to be addressed in terms of open source manpower, or woman power human power, or it’s a, like you said, Eric, it’s an acquisition thing you absorb, somebody gets [00:37:00] acquired because they can’t physically maintain it on the same scale anymore.

Um, did that did accurately that I accurately represent you there? Eric didn’t mean to?

Eric Karkovack: Oh yeah, absolutely.

David Bisset: Okay, great. I’ve got uh, oh, Ooh. We’ve got an entire company on the line right now. It’s Pagely so this, this should be interesting. Pagely uh, who specifically inside page?

Dave from Pagely: It’s Dave struggle as I’m probably having dinner right now.

David Bisset: Bless his heart. Go ahead, sir.

Dave from Pagely: Well, it’s great to see us on the big board with the acquisitions. It’s been quite a month for us. We’ve been part of GoDaddy now for a little over four weeks, and I want to dovetail something that was said earlier, which I tweeted a Jeffer a second ago. Um, we should be concerned about closed source platforms gaining in popularity, um, because none of us want to see the depth of the open web, right.

And it’s great to see or press with the market share that it has. And you know, when everyone kind of says we need to get online, what’s the first thing I think of is usually [00:38:00] WordPress, which is great. Um, Well, we’ve been brought in to build with GoDaddy is this next generation of, of an open source commerce product on top of WooCommerce.

And that gets us excited because that is open source. That’s going to be built upon this platform and not, you know, going the way of, you know, Wix or Squarespace or any of that. So, you know, we’re, we’re still kind of committed to that, making sure everything is open source and that the open web doesn’t go away.

David Bisset: Hmm. Okay. Well, send a thank you very much and thank you for being a recognizable P avatars. I could quickly point around right here. Thank you. I mean, oh, sorry. Sorry. Going through a tunnel, going through a tunnel right now. Sorry, I can’t hear you. No, we’ll, we’ll keep you on. We’ll keep you on the stage a little longer.

Um, Ryan, welcome to the party. Do you, did you have a comment for the group, Ryan? I [00:39:00] think that’s Ryan mark. It is. Yes. Okay. Ryan, welcome. Welcome to the show.

Ryan Marks: Oh, well, thanks. Uh, the, the graphic that you were talking about and the person in Nebraska reminded me of the recent news with the PHP foundation and the fact that there was a bus factor of two, uh, with respect to how many people actually knew the code base, according to articles.

And, um, I just thought that was somewhat similar, right?

David Bisset: So, yeah, so I’m, so this was all coming to the original, um, me bringing up the acquisitions part of it. And some of it is the acquisitions that especially, I think it absorbed the one or two people. The small companies are, are probably doing WordPress a favor in some regards in the long run, because otherwise, like you get hit by a bus, what happens to advanced custom fields, which a lot of people rely on, uh, I think Matt presented that pretty well in terms [00:40:00] of, um, the numbers and some people, some people have different opinions about what is happening in the WordPress space, but there is some validation or some validity of taking a step back and looking at the largest.

There was one bar graph and I’ll be honest with you. I’m not really that business oriented again. I work at post status. Thank you very much that on 2021, a bar graph just like shot the way the heck up. I think it was the, um, think it was, it was, it was something about the money that was, that was being transferred at hand-to-hand or something along those lines.

Um, it’s just 20, 21 just basically exploded for the rest of the tech industry. And WordPress is a part of that tech industry. So it’s not just WordPress and, but at the same time, I think WordPress has its own valid reasons for why it’s happening. There were 42 logos on Matt’s slide. At one point we have a WordPress acquisition tracker.

I posted a sock hops last acquisition. So I’ll have to go back later and see if all those logos are. Otherwise, I’m not doing my job. Um, what [00:41:00] else did we, oh, bet. Did you have a common rule?

Bet Hannon: Well, I was just gonna say, I think some of the acquisitions or, you know, the pandemic really caused people to just stop and think a lot more about quality of life.

And, uh, you know, I think sometimes you stop and you take a look around and you say, I think I want to move on and do some other things, or I think I’ve done what I can do here for now. And so some of that can be there. And so I think in 2021, you know, that that’s a piece of more, more broadly. A lot of those acquisitions happening is just people thinking differently about what they want to do.

David Bisset: There was a good comment made on another podcast of there was, um, if you look at the big tech, big tech companies, now that started maybe 10 years ago, um, Amazon’s founder is no longer with the company he’s off on rocket ships or something. Um, there’s the, the original founders of Microsoft are long, no longer there.

The founders of Google are no longer there. Apple’s obviously [00:42:00] had new leadership. The only person I think running the same ship they have for awhile has been mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. So all of these people have moved on after a certain period of time and they’ve done it all within a relatively short period of time.

I think Twitter has been the latest one where Jack Dorsey just basically stepped completely away and he’s off following his next adventure. Other people have just basically retired. So it’s not just about the money in the, in the, in the acquisitions, but it sounds like to me, people, you know, you can, if you, if you’re really successful, you have the opportunity after 5, 6, 7, 8 years to say, maybe I want to do something different.

Maybe. All right. Um, Jeff, can you, what do you, what are your thoughts?

Jeff Chandler: I, in and talking about the acquisitions for a little bit, there is kind of like two separate topics for getting conflated with each other, between the five for the future and an acquisition. I dunno, I was getting little confused, but I think [00:43:00] the whole fight for the future initiative, I think is going to take on even more important as we go forward.

As we look at open source maintainers and the bus factor of two and open source is seen as something that’s free, but there’s people behind it. There were people putting in time and work and effort and the passion, and it can only go so far and somebody is going to have to flip the bill. And I’m looking forward to ma maybe putting like an executive director or somebody in charge of the five for the future initiative and get that out into the public’s eye more often because outside of web dev studios, uh, advertising what they’re doing and how they’re contributing, and then some efforts from GoDaddy and 10 up, I mean, it’s kind of like a behind the scenes thing, and I’d like to see more effort on making the whole fight for the future thing, uh, initiative, go more public, get more people involved and get more people to know about, especially companies.

David Bisset: Oh, okay. Sounds good. Sorry, [00:44:00] Jeff. A bucket, a bucket of chicken wings just went by my field of view and I got distracted for a second. Courtney, um, Robertson, let me add you as a speaker here. Um, after this, I want to talk about the next generation of WordPress users, which was part of the Q and a at the end there.

Um, and what we might think might be our thoughts on bringing in, or people attracted to WordPress for the first time, especially the next generation, but Courtney, what do you got for us?

Courtney Robertson: Hey there. So, um, one, we saw Andrea and Middleton lurking in the crowd, and I just have to say, I am so glad to see your face popping up and we all miss you as we’re talking about five for the future,

David Bisset: let’s do a show just about her.

I think that would drive her. I think that she would love it.

Courtney Robertson: I think so. So did anybody else notice piggybacking off of what Jeff just said, but the very last thing that Andrea wrote to the WordPress community, aside from a fantastic series of posts on her own site, you [00:45:00] head over, if you head over to make.wordpress.org/project suggested iterations for the five for the future program and the tool, um, and ways that we can perhaps reinvision what five for the future could look like from this point, moving forward, how to.

Do a fantastic job at connecting the five for the future initiative, with the various teams. Um, there are things in Andrea’s post on the project about the pledges to the different teams and ways to get more connected, partnering up the talents of those that are able to contribute with five for the future, with those in the teams that need to have stuff happen to get work done.

Um, I wanna say that I participated in a number. I want to say five probably contributor days over the past year on behalf of the training team, all of these being virtual summit attached to a word camp, [00:46:00] some as part of the translator day, which was really a month and a few other kinds of things. Yoast did a fantastic job at partnering the various folks with different sets.

And reaching out to the various make teams and saying, w we have this day coming up, we’re going to break into, um, a hybrid partially online, partially in person break into different groups and get to work on different things. What are some of the tasks that we can look at? I think when we look at five for the future, um, you know, my employer go, daddy has been amazing at helping fund through five for the future fund.

Part of the word camp events that we see happen, um, sponsoring some other great places like post status and other things, too. But as we’re, as we’re looking to the future, I really am excited around doing contributor days through post status, inviting all folks that are in [00:47:00] post status and the wider community.

To get connected and similar to how Yost has done it. And perhaps in conjunction with Yoast, we’ll see in the very near future. Um, but connecting with the various team reps and connecting with the teams that have needs and saying, let’s match up these skill sets of the talent that we’ve got in our company and the things that need to happen.

And also simultaneously open that thing up by calling in the wider WordPress community, because across the teams, teams are really hurting during COVID not only can we seen the attendance of things like bird camps and all of the setback, uh, you know, a number of years comparatively in the stats, but across the teams were hurting to have.

Contributors that are showing up to actually do some of the work on the teams. And there’s a lot of talent and a lot of interest in what’s going on. So, um, I just, I love the posts that Andrea left us with. I love that Andrea is in the room right now. I loved the, [00:48:00] we could do a five for the future contributor day series through post status.

So quarterly ones that will probably be hybrid. I welcome anyone that would like to help organize something like that, um, to connect with me over in post status. Oh, well, thank you very much. And, um, I’m sure Andrea is very honored. Um, I’ll speak for her a little bit here. Um, yeah, so obviously I’m a little bit biased.

David Bisset: Cause my daughter was mentioned. I don’t think she’ll be in the witness protection program anytime soon. Thanks to tonight. But she was absolutely absolutely thrilled, but she’s not like, but I don’t. I want her to be more like blending into a larger crowd of younger people that are running their own hackathons or they’re doing their own thing within the comforts of, you know, being even mildly associated with the pro WordPress community. Even if they’re not sitting down to crew to quote unquote directly contribute. Um, um, Amir, I think, do we have you [00:49:00] back on now? Can you say something, let us know that you’re still alive.

We might be having some difficulties, maybe your Mike’s not on or something. I try and again here. Um, yep. Oh, you’re muting yourself on and off. Are you, is it Morris code? I see a blinking. Nope. All right. I’m going to leave you on speaker for a second and then I’ll let Ryan cut into here, Ryan

Ryan Marks: . Um, so I had a question for those that do pledge five for the future.

Do you feel that you do it primarily with people man hours, or do you do it with dollars or is it a mix? Do you feel like you actually get the 5%, if anything, or is it more, we try to get something close. I think that has her hand, right? So we do fight for the future. Um, I don’t know that we calculate it, but you know, certainly, um, you know, [00:50:00] I contribute my time.

Bet Hannon: Um, and then our, our agency subsidizes our people as they, you know, they can, they can put in, uh, you know, time that they’re doing community work and get, um, get paid for that. Um, as a way that we try to support the wider community, I think that’s just a part of, you know, my wife is an economist, so I understand that tragedy, the commons, uh, example really well.

And I want to make sure that the ecosystem stays supported. And so that’s, that’s a really, you don’t have to be really big to do those things right. To, um, to, to make a difference. Uh, but I just feel like that’s an important part of what we do is for the community.

David Bisset: All right. So as we start to run down here, cause.

Did promise, uh, it promise someone I would be home in time for bed. I do. I want lot of stall all us to think about a maybe if, if there’s any final comments you had about what Matt talked about or Matt’s comments about uni questions or about how that [00:51:00] fits in with your version of WordPress in the future.

While you’re thinking about that, let me quickly get, um, Olivia on. I think she wanted to make a quick comment.

You’re muted. Olivia,

maybe we have a maximum number here. Maybe it’s why this isn’t working. Let me remove a speaker.

Olivia Bisset: I can speak

David Bisset: Sorry, go ahead. What’s your comment listener.

Olivia Bisset: Okay. So with five for the future, I don’t know what, but it just got the general vibe that that’s starting to head towards, like, okay.

Yeah, we got people now, but like youth, I feel like there was more of a youth focus. This state is a word, especially with the question from Allie and others. I don’t know. That’s my 2 cents.

David Bisset: I thought Allie gave an excellent question and [00:52:00] that was followed up by others as well. Um, and we’ll have to go back and review that because my memory is beginning to fade a little bit, but I thought she had a very excellent question about what Matt thought the youth, um, what his advice to you would be regarding how to use WordPress for the next generation.

So, um, let’s um, let’s take one more comment from the audience here and then we’ll see if we go around. Anybody has any final thoughts, Aaron Edwards, um, welcome to whatever we’re calling this. What, what do you have to share?

Aaron Edwards: Uh, hi, I’m the co-founder of web three WP. So of course we are very interested in what Matt had to say about web three.

I thought it was a good kind of balance, like opinion, like, like Jeff Rose said, um, just the fact comparing WordPress to kind of some of the ideals, uh, web three, I think that was kind of a good tact that he took, but it was interesting just discussing in our community. It’s like, it does follow like those ideals of data [00:53:00] ownership when you’re the site owner, but it doesn’t really address the site users, which is something that web three is kind of known for you.

It basically allows you, WordPress allows you to create your own data silo, you know, to maybe compete with the Facebooks or whatever centralized apps there are, but it doesn’t necessarily empower users to continue to have your site on their own data. So that’s kind of a interesting take that I heard in our community.

David Bisset: Interesting take at that sounded like I haven’t heard that take exactly like that before. Uh, well, I kind of wrote that same thing on our website, but, oh, would you mind sending a link to that in post at a slack or wherever your finest links are sold?

Aaron Edwards: Yeah. The web three wp.com pages talking about WordPress being, um, kind of along those ideals, but definitely it was, it was interesting to, to hear his take in that, uh, another thing he kind of made a joke about dowels and [00:54:00] domains, um, which kind of seemed like disingenuous to me personally, because I’ve had experiences where I’ve had domain registrars, uh, shut down my domain because someone filed a false abuse report, you know?

So it’s like that’s renting. That’s not really owning. As he kind of made it out to be okay.

David Bisset: I can see that point. Absolutely. And hopefully I won’t have anything shut down on my side Verde, but thanks. Thanks for sharing and feel free to ping me in post status or on Twitter. I’d like to get that link from you.

All right. So, um, it’s been about an hour. Um, so I wanted to, um, I did make, uh, wanted to see if anybody else has any last comments. Um, either somebody who hasn’t spoken yet are part of our, um, ongoing panels here, um, that I know you wanted to share. Something felt like a last lot quickly with us, and then I’ll nail a few other people that didn’t sound right in my head.

But go ahead and you under, do you [00:55:00] please take it, please take the mic from me.

Bet Hannon: Yes. Um, so I’m a little disappointed that Matt didn’t say more about accessibility. And the times when he talked about accessibility, he really meant it in the terms of just making things available to people, uh, like features available.

Um, but you know, we didn’t talk about web accessibility and we we’ve had some issues with that. Um, in the past, things are better than they were, but we still have a long way to go for web accessibility, especially in the WP admin side, in the dash, in the backend side. So Amber Heinz tried to call out Matt earlier in the week, uh, just to try and get him to speak a little bit more about accessibility, but he didn’t so well, his slides were probably already written by then too.

David Bisset: I don’t, I’m not going to speak for them

They said they were editing them

Bet Hannon: up to the last minute.

David Bisset: I know what that’s probably true too. I can’t speak to that, but no, he did mention it, but I’m getting a feeling that for some people who wanted him to mention accessibility of may not have filled their cup to. [00:56:00] It’s an important piece and growing in importance.

Bet Hannon: And so we have to pay attention to it if we want to keep that market term. Yes. Because like he said, we’re pressed should be like, for most of the people, WordPress will be invisible. Right. If the, if the user experience is done. Right. And would you bet, um, I know you’ve said many times that part of the user experience is what, well, it’s gotta be accessible.

Right. And it’s gotta be, um, and as we’re increasingly in the us having some, um, legal pieces where people are going to be required to have their sites accessible, we we’re gonna need to be ready for that. Um, so we can help people do that.

David Bisset: All right. Um, speaking of Amber, I think we said her name three times.

She’s appeared. Um, we’ll get right before we get to Ryan. Um, Amber, did you want to share something with us? I’m guessing you want to share something that starts with the letter a and it’s not your first name.

Amber: Uh, not Amber, uh, accessibility. Yeah, I think, I think the thing that’s interesting too, I [00:57:00] actually got a couple of messages from, um, some users after they read, you know, the thread and conversations and in process.

And I think maybe the contribution to core accessibility, the people on the accessibility team, particularly maybe some people that have disabilities that are part of the accessibility team. Probably I think there are some of them that feel like it’s still not as positive or as central of a focus as it as maybe Matt kind of thinks that it is.

Um, I think it still is a lot of an afterthought and really that’s, you know, one of my hopes that I’m really would love to see more. Thinking about accessibility as something you do at the beginning, not something that you do wait around at the end of the process, whether it’s in core or whether it is, you know, in plugins or themes or on the front end of the end websites, [00:58:00] let’s start at the beginning, not in the middle of the end.

David Bisset: It’s like how I should do most things in my life, especially the chores around the house. Thank you, Emery. We did see a lot of this stuff in accessibility mentioned in post status too. So we’ve been following that as well. And thanks for speaking up here today. Really appreciate it. Okay. Let’s let’s go through the rest here.

We’re going to be ending shortly, but Ryan, you are up next. Um, what closing remarks do you have for us?

Ryan Marks: So three things caught my attention. Uh, and then I’ll hang up and let you guys talk about, we’ll just pretend you’re not here. I can remove you as a speaker.

David Bisset: You don’t have to hang up, but we can ignore you easily, but go ahead.

Ryan Marks: Um, I thought that there was an open invitation for up to 50 people. So I tend to stand in the word, but then later it seemed like there were about 30 people there, there were all five for the future. And I thought that was just, that was an interesting change. Maybe a two, I thought the idea of a query block was something new and I liked it.

[00:59:00] And there was a lot of focus on multi-lingual at the beginning and towards the end. And I’m really interested to see how that will pan out. Me too. I don’t think Matt was in it. It seemed like Matt wasn’t in a position to quote a lot about phase four and rightly so, because not even phase three is happening next year officially, but I think we’re, can’t be aware of me maybe a little strange, a little bit more out of them, but I’m looking forward to the language aspect as well.

David Bisset: In fact, I’m kind of surprised I was at the phase four at the four phases when he first announced it a couple of years ago. Um, Um, let’s see who, uh, who else we got here? I think we have, um, let’s see. I think we, Eric, I think it’s down to you now. Um, you might, you might be closing here. I know no big pressure.

Eric Karkovack: For baseball fans during this lockout, I’ll try to be the closer here. Get on the mound and pitches to a victory here,

David Bisset: not a sports person, but tackle, go and tackle and hit a fuel. Go right through the goalposts for me, please.

Eric Karkovack: Okay. I’ll shoot it into the [01:00:00] net for you. All right. So my bedroom aside, I think one thing I’m interested to watch is the, um, the growth of block themes.

Matt talked about, you know, hoping to have 3000 available, uh, at the next state of the word. That’s going to be interesting because. I haven’t seen like the commercial theme market takeoff for that yet. Um, there’s a few opportunities there. I’m seeing some, you know, some new ones come out. So it’ll be very interesting to see in 2022, how much, uh, adoption rate there is for block themes and full site editing and what number of themes we actually get to buy the next state of the word.

David Bisset: What do you think? What’s your guess?

Eric Karkovack: I’m going to say somewhere around a thousand, that’ll just be my completely uneducated guests. I think there’s so many theme authors that are still kind of hanging to the classic theme, uh, you know, style and way of [01:01:00] building. Um, and it’s probably going to be a little bit slower adoption than maybe Matt hopes, but, uh, you know, I may be very wrong on that.

David Bisset: Do you think it has to do with just being, not familiar and trying to stick with what works as long as possible?

Eric Karkovack: I think so. I think it’s. If you watch how this is unfolding, it changes like almost weekly. And if I’m a theme developer, I’m probably going to hold off until I have a pretty good idea of what’s going to be required and how these themes are going to work over the long-term before I invest a bunch of time in it.

So I think we’re going to get there, but it may just take a little bit of time for people to get used to the idea and for standards to form.

David Bisset: Hmm. That sounds reasonable. That’s okay. I don’t know. Or it could be something I just drank. That’s making me agreeable to everything I’d already said right now. It’s possible. Well, anyway, I [01:02:00] really want to thank everybody who I think by the way, that was excellently, put Eric in terms of I could have been, that was just probably. 3000 sounds like an ambitious number. Who knows if we’ll get there, but, uh, I think I’ll put you down for a thousand and then this time, next year we’ll come around and we’ll see if we can collect on that bet and see if you were high or low.

So appreciate it. Oh, wait. What’s uh, let’s get Jeff here is the real closer about you or the fake closer Eric. Let’s let’s not to put any pressure on you there, but Jeff, can you, can you close this out for us here? Oh, wait, whoa, sorry, Jeff. I think I just,

okay. Jeff. Now you can go,

Jeff Chandler: uh, yeah, three words, block theme generator,

David Bisset: block theme generator. Oh, isn’t somebody working on that or is that somebody is already working on it.

Jeff Chandler: There’s going to be more of [01:03:00] those created throughout next year. And 3000 I think is easily doable and there’s going to be a bunch of them.

Bunch of themes created from these generators. That’s my take.

David Bisset: So we’re thinking, we’re thinking the themes did themes really take off after the underscore S generator or a discourse came about? Is that, is that where you’re considering more or less the equal the, was it underscore?

Jeff Chandler: Uh, I don’t underscore is just like a starter theme, but you know, what, what I’m seeing from the theme.json theme by theme generators nowadays seems to be just makes the theme generation process so much easier.

I mean, if you’re, if you’re a theme developer and you’re not excited about what’s coming down the pike in 2022, what is wrong with you?

David Bisset: Well, wow. I mean, people ask what’s wrong with me and I, they don’t literally have the, I don’t have the time to tell them all day. Um, okay, well, good. Yeah. So generator, we’ll put that down as something for 2022.

Jason, did you have something to share before [01:04:00] we close out here or did I accidentally pushed the wrong.

Jason: No, you didn’t accidentally push the wrong button. Hi everyone.

David Bisset: Hi Jason.

Jason: Hello. Well, there was a lot to, uh, digest and, um, the state of the word think it was interesting. Um, one of the things that we started noticing, uh, during our, our live broadcast of, of it was the fact that it’s really interesting to, to have Matt interact with a smaller group of people versus such a larger room of people.

And we were also very disappointed that there was no boot.

David Bisset: Well, I mean, where did it fit in the room? And that would, would’ve been a lot of polishing dude to remove any, I don’t know. I feel like I would have to be like the Adrian monk on that show where he just, you just basically have to hand wipe the entire thing.

It doesn’t seem so clean. Now after the last two years to be coming out of a boot, I mean, it was questionable to begin with. [01:05:00] Yeah, indeed. But yes, but yes, I, I think all of us are walking away here that this had a different, definitely that a different vibe. And I don’t think it was just because we have, it’s been two years since we’ve seen Matt in front of a live studio audience.

I think it was the size of the event. I think the mood was a lot lighter. Um, and there was a lot, not just because of the less people in the room. I think Matt’s attitude and his casualness were a little bit more open, a little bit more different directed, but it was still very good. So I, I agree with Jason that I think it had a lot to do with the environment on that.

And we got to see me be a little bit more open Frank. Um, I dare say even some of it was even not that even rehearsed, not saying less rehearse, but I think maybe he, this is a couple of times tonight. He did pause for a while before answering a question, usually math pretty quick, usually mats pretty quick with questions.

And he’s always been a talented speaker in that regard. Something I’ll never learn even after doing so many of these things with you people, but, but yeah, it really did see him [01:06:00] when seeing him pause and consider the questions, especially I think from Allie’s question to really. It did mean a lot more.

And I kind of enjoyed what tonight brought even though I think next time in, by if this happens at the end of 2022 and it’s in front of a larger audience, I don’t think I’d mind that either, but yes. Thanks. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. No problem. No problem at all. Okay. I think that just about, does it this time?

I promise. I want to thank everyone for joining us this evening, especially on the east coast and in where the time zones are and where the time zones, where you’re very late. Mr. Owl. Um, I just want to say thank you very much for your, um, it’s. What is it like one in the morning over there? I, I can’t imagine what.

Putting into your body right now to just doing the morning two in the morning. Oh my goodness. Oh, well, we admire your dedication, sir. Thank you for coming here and we hope to have you back soon. Uh, really, really appreciate it, Ray. Uh, on the other hand, you are bright and [01:07:00] cheery with your coffee in the morning.

So, uh, damn you my dear, but I want to thank you for coming as well.

She’s not speaking to

Bet Hannon: thanks so much for inviting me to be part of this chat David.

David Bisset: No problem. We want you back more for some of you, the more insights that you have, um, examining the entire WordPress through the repository or that’s something that’s in my inbox and I read it first. Every, every chance I get I’m going to drop in.

I think it’s Friday my time. I don’t know. Time’s a flat circle for me, but thanks for coming. Bet. Thank you for coming as well. Greatly. Appreciate you taking some viewpoints from an agency standpoint and accessibility. Thanks for coming.

Hazel Quimpo: Great. Thanks for having me.

David Bisset: Eric. Thanks for okay, now we’re even now you don’t owe me anything.

Thanks for coming.

Eric Karkovack: Hey, my pleasure.

David Bisset: And I want to thank, um, LemonadeCode, who is the cohost right now. Um, she has been my producer, my, my wing person. I want to thank her as well for her help this evening as well, making sure the equipment has been organized, pointing out when people were raising [01:08:00] their hands and criticizing me when I’ve made very, very poor means on the web tonight.

So I want to thank you as well, Olivia. Thank you very much. Um, we’re going to, this will be recorded and posted on post status in, in a day or two. So you can feel free to check out post status.com or our podcast links for that. And if you have any questions about anything we’ve shared here, you want a copy of the recording, whatever.

I’ll feel free to share it with you. I don’t want to thank everybody again and have a good evening. Goodbye.