Post Status Happiness Hour Session Thirteen

Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette interviews Topher DeRosa, founder of Hero Press, about his journey and the platform’s impact on the WordPress community. They discuss HeroPress’s origins, challenges, and successes, highlighting its role in amplifying diverse voices through published essays. Topher shares inspiring stories from contributors worldwide and touches on fundraising efforts and the community’s support. The episode underscores the importance of inclusivity and the transformative power of sharing personal experiences within the WordPress ecosystem. The conversation concludes with reflections on community events and the significance of connection and support.

Top Takeaways:

• Community and Connection at Events: They discuss the importance of events like WordCamp as spaces for learning, networking, and finding belonging. Michelle emphasizes that these gatherings reinforce the idea that the WordPress community is friendly, welcoming, and eager to support each other.
• Language as a Tool for Inclusion: Topher talks about making HeroPress content available in multiple languages to cater to non-English speakers. He learned that people, even if fluent in English, often prefer reading in their native language, feeling a stronger connection to the content. His approach shows how inclusive language access can make individuals feel valued.
• Genuine Diversity Efforts: Topher initially counted contributors by gender to ensure balance, but he eventually stopped tracking as inclusivity became natural. This shift demonstrates that diversity efforts, when sustained, can evolve into an ingrained organizational culture.
• Personal Stories as Inspiration: Michelle highlighted how HeroPress stories provide valuable insights into people’s journeys, which can be inspiring and informative for others, especially when considering hiring or collaborating. These stories create a sense of community by showcasing the resilience and achievements of individuals across different backgrounds.

Mentioned In The Show:

• Topher DeRosa
• Hero Press
• Andrey Shevchenko
• WordCamp Pune
• Slack
• Twitter
• Nexcess
• LiquidWeb
• Human Made
• WP Coffee Talk
• Automattic
• Collins Agbonghama
• Tijana Andrejic
• Thabo Tswana
• Robert Cheleuka
• WordPress.org
• Morten Rand-Hendriksen
• Josepha Haden Chomphosy
• Weglot
• Yoast
• BlackPress

🐦 You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:

• Topher DeRosa (Founder, HeroPress)
• Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status)
• Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

Transcript

Michelle Frechette 00:00:00  Welcome to Post Status Happiness Hour. I am here on October 30th. It’s almost Halloween with Topher DeRosa of HeroPress. Topher, how are you?

Topher DeRosa 00:00:10  I’m doing all right. Yeah. I recently moved to a farm next to a forest, and, I’m I’m sitting here with the door standing open and beautiful, cool autumn air coming in.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:24  Looks like you’re camping. It looks like camp beds.

Topher DeRosa 00:00:27  Yeah. Yeah, they’re they’re pretty cool log beds. Somebody made them and, and gave them to us.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:33  That’s very cool. And that was it. Two weeks ago we tried to do this. But you didn’t have internet then. But you’ve got a great, great internet now. So here we are.

Topher DeRosa 00:00:43  Yep. Starlink came the other day. 

Michelle Frechette: Nice. 

Topher DeRosa: And, it only took a few minutes to set up and I was really happy with it so far.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:50  Fantastic. So so good. So tell us. Well, let me tell us first. The first time I ever met you was whatever WordCamp US.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:00  Was it the first one or the second one that you spoke?

Topher DeRosa 00:01:02  Very first one.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:03  Very first one, which was what, 2014 2015? I lost track.

Topher DeRosa 00:01:07  20 a long time ago.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:09  20 a long time ago. Almost ten years, if not ten years ago. And you had done a talk on Hero Press. And I sat in that room and I thought, this is really cool. I’ve never heard of that before. And so I talked to you afterwards. I was thinking about starting a similar website, not WordPress related, but on a WordPress website, and asked you some questions. And, I think it was several years between then and us actually knowing each other as friends. but I had never forgotten about that. And then one day when I was working at Give WP, you said, hey, I would love for you to write your story for a HeroPress. And I was like, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Topher DeRosa 00:01:51  Yes, I remember, I remember you from that talk because I remember standing on stage and you.

Topher DeRosa 00:01:57  it’s a great question. And I thought, I need to find that person talking about an essay. And then I don’t think I don’t think I put it together like when you came up to after, I don’t think I put it together that you were the one that had asked the question. And so it just moved on for a couple of years.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:15  And here we are. I love it. So tell us a little bit. I know that you have, given us the story of HeroPress in a bunch of different places, but, you know, for posterity, give us a story of HeroPress here today.

Topher DeRosa 00:02:28  All right. In, 2014, right before Thanksgiving, I woke up to an email that said, you’re not working for XWP anymore. You’re working. I want you to do something great for WordPress. And that was it.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:48  End of story. That was really boring. Goodbye, everybody. Have a good night.

Topher DeRosa 00:02:53  Yeah. So I wrote I wrote back and I said, what is it? And he said, that’s your your journey to discover.

Topher DeRosa 00:03:03  Which was both a blessing and a curse at the same time. I had I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted, and I had all the rope I needed to hang myself.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:14  I always say it’s harder to spend a gift certificate than your own money. And that sounds like exactly what you were handed, like this giant gift certificate. And you’re like, but, but, but, but what do I do with it? Right?

Topher DeRosa 00:03:24  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, we came up with, something like Ted. And we were going to travel the world and have people talk to their peers. I had, I had been asked by an Indian guy some advice and I didn’t have any good advice. And so I helped him find some good advice from other Indians. And I thought, boy, I’d really like to help people all over the world, but I don’t. I didn’t want to be the great white savior coming in from America. And I’m an older white dude. Kind of a stereotype.

Michelle Frechette: A little bit.

Topher DeRosa 00:04:07  so I thought, well, maybe I just riff on what we did before, and I will get people already there, who’ve already succeeded to talk about what they think is important rather than what I think is important. That has always been key. I tell people when they’re doing their essay, you write what you think is important because I don’t know. I mean, I have my ideas, but what do I know? It’s surprisingly I’ve consistently had people with physical limitations not write about them. It’s not what’s important. It’s not what. It’s not what’s going on in their life. It’s not what they need to tell other people. And I’m like, okay, you know, it’s that’s yours. So we’re going to do Ted and, we did a Kickstarter for 60,000 AUD because the company was Australian. It was not my company. It was a registered Australian business. and, the goal, the goal was not necessarily like we needed the money. The money was good, but what we really wanted was 60,000 $1 donations.

Topher DeRosa 00:05:26  We wanted 60,000 people to say, I like this idea well enough to give you a dollar. And that fell wildly short. We had three companies give $5,000 each and then 20 or 30 people give $20 or $30 each. And And then that was it. The time ran out. Something about Kickstarter. You can. If it fails, you can never try again. If you cancel it, you can try again. So most, most people, if it looks like it’s not going to work, they cancel it and then maybe try and pivot or something. So we canceled hours a few days before the end. And and that was supposed to be the end. Dave, the guy who had commissioned me originally, he and I had a previous agreement that if this didn’t work out, then we walk our separate ways, and I didn’t have a job anymore. And, we had some long, hard talks in our house about what to do next and what we should have done different. And, you know, all of that, people said, you know, this was such a great idea.

Topher DeRosa 00:06:43  You can’t let it go. And I thought, well, that’s cool, but I can’t travel the world with a with a video team. You know, I’m unemployed. so I thought about different ways I could do it. And I ended up with the idea of doing it in text. And then we’re not doing six months of video editing. We’re not traveling. We’re not. I mean, the costs are infinitely less. The person writes it themselves and the bandwidth is so much lower. The people we were targeting were, we said at the time, people on the fringes of WordPress, non-Western. Over time, I realized that, everybody’s on a fringe of something. and so, you know, the target shifted a little, but the point at the time was we wanted people who probably didn’t have great bandwidth. Okay. And text is much better on 3G than a 4K video. 

Michelle Frechette: Sure. 

Topher DeRosa: You know. So, that that brought that way down. I made it way more accessible. So I went to Andre Shevchenko in the WordPress community, and he had been on the list to do a video.

Topher DeRosa 00:08:09  And I said, would you do it in text instead? And he said, sure. And it was wildly popular. Maybe the most popular post ever. And I was really excited. I thought, wow, this is really great. I should get another one for next week. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. It’s so, I got another one really quick. And then I thought, oh, no, I need another one. It was like three months before I thought I should get ahead of this. 

Michelle Frechette 00:08:47  Yeah, we. We tend to plan for failure. And when we meet with success, we’re like, oh, what now?

Topher DeRosa 00:08:52  Yes, exactly. and so we just started doing them and I, I wrote to Dave and asked him, is this okay? Because he owned the business. He owned the domain name. He owned everything. And he didn’t write back. I assumed he’d moved on to the next big thing. And so I just kept doing it. And after about six months, he wrote back and said, I like what you’re doing.

Topher DeRosa 00:09:18  Keep it up. And so we did. And he owned it for probably 5 or 6 years before we finally said, hey, you know, we should probably transfer this. But, boy, in 2015, the, the organizers from WordCamp Pune emailed me and said, hey, would you like to come speak? This is like two months before WordCamp. 

Michelle Frechette: Oh, wow. 

Topher DeRosa: And I thought, oh, that’d be cool. Still unemployed. But I did a Go Fund Me and I got enough money to go to work at Puna in 24 hours. 

Michelle Frechette: Wow. That’s awesome. 

Topher DeRosa: Which is, very impressive to me at the time. So I went and, I was I didn’t want to vacation on, on other people’s money, so I was there for about 48 hours. Which is a, a whirlwind. I mean, the flight was 16. 

Michelle Frechette: I was gonna say. 

Topher DeRosaSot It was pretty incredible.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:27  You got home and you had no idea what time of day it was.

Topher DeRosa 00:10:30  No. Not really. It really didn’t matter. I slept when I needed to sleep, and I got up and I did stuff when I was when when that happened. I was in my hotel for probably ten hours the whole time. But. Yeah. So ever since then, I mean, HeroPress has brought me so many blessings. I can’t even explain it. The people I’ve met, the places I’ve gone, the jobs I’ve gotten. Because. Because people knew who I was. It’s just it’s it’s crazy.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:11  So let’s talk numbers a little bit. So how many? I hope you have the stats, but if you can’t, if you don’t look them up quick. How many.

Topher DeRosa 00:11:19  Make it fast.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:20  How many essays are there at this point?

Topher DeRosa 00:11:25  Let me look here. So just the other day, I did a post called 10 Years of HeroPress and it has a bunch of stats, but also has a cool thing where I made a grid of  the icon that icons, featured images for each contributor. So it’s their faces.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:49  I saw that.

Topher DeRosa 00:11:50  And it’s not just one giant image, it’s actually a flex grid. And you can hover over them and see the name and click them and stuff like that. Which is pretty cool. So, there’s 278 essays right now in 29 languages from 66 countries.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:10  That’s a lot.

Topher DeRosa 00:12:11  Yeah. And I didn’t start asking for other languages till maybe more than halfway through. And so there are a bunch in from the early days that are just English that could be in other languages if I wanted to go back and do that. I have 136 women and 134 men and three non-binary folks. The longest it ever took someone to get me an essay. It was nine years and.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:42 they had to think about what to write. It was. It was changing every day.

Topher DeRosa 00:12:46  Yep. And the shortest was two hours.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:48  Oh my goodness, that’s pretty quick.

Topher DeRosa 00:12:50  Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:52  What’s the average time?

Topher DeRosa 00:12:54  Well you know, it really varies. For many years people would say, you know, I need a couple of weeks.

Topher DeRosa 00:13:01  And that was it. But these days it’s very, very common for people to say I’m busy right now. I will get back to you in 3 or 4 months. 

Michelle Frechette: Okay. 

Topher DeRosa: And then often they forget. And so it’s a month after that.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:23  Gotcha. Do you do reminders or do you just wait for people to come?

Topher DeRosa 00:13:26  I usually wait. iIt’s extremely common for me to see someone interesting look them up on Slack or Twitter or something, and see a conversation from last year about about it. And then and then I said, hey, what do you think? They’re like, oh, I forgot, I’m so sorry. Every WordCamp I go to, some stranger will walk up to me and say, I promised you an essay two years ago and I’m so sorry. I’m like, I don’t remember, so that’s okay. Yeah. 

Michelle Frechette 00:13:56  Who are you again?

Topher DeRosa 00:13:57  Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:59  I think, you know, when I think back on writing mine, it’s a lot like writing your own bio, right? Like it’s really hard to write your own bio because when you write about yourself, you feel like you’re bragging.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:11  You feel like you’re just, you know, you’re you’re putting yourself as much bigger than you actually are when the truth is you’re just writing your story. So I think sometimes you gotta people might have to get over the the that hurdle of being okay with writing about their own journey, which isn’t always easy to do.

Topher DeRosa 00:14:28  Yeah. And a lot of times, in fact, most people say no one is interested in my story.  And a lot of times I have to. I have to. I have to show people that their own story is cool. And often it’s not necessarily their own story I’m looking for. I want them to inspire people like them to do things like they did. So I say, have you ever. Have you ever contributed to WordPress. Well yeah. Well what was that like. And 20 minutes later we have a story, you know. Have you ever, ever written a plugin? Released it? Yeah. What was that like? Have you ever. Have you ever been to WordCamp for the first time? What was that like? 

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Topher DeRosa 00:15:23  You know.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:25 Yeah. Has anybody ever done more than one, or is it like a one time deal?

Topher DeRosa 00:15:29  I, I have 3 or 4 sequels. Yeah. and I’m always open to them. I know some people that have said recently that they want to do a sequel. People are pretty different, like, most people are pretty different now than they were eight years ago. Different jobs, different experiences. there’s a there’s a luster to the WordPress community when you’re new and it always changes. Some people learn to hate the community. Some people learn to love it a different way. But it’s always different. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:14  That’s pretty cool. And you’ve always been sponsored by donations since that time. Is that true?

Topher DeRosa 00:16:19  Oh, Wow. No. Well, so I haven’t I haven’t had money other than donations since then. I, we did our first fundraiser. Two years ago. And at the time, I thought, everybody loves HeroPress. Every person in the whole world loves HeroPress.

Topher DeRosa 00:16:46  How can this not turn out wonderfully? And, we got. Him at the time. About $1,500 in one time donations. Well, I had been thinking at the time, I’m going to get enough to make this my full time job. You know, I’m going to get I’m going to get $80,000. So we got $1500 in one-time, and we got about $300 a month. Recurring. Okay. And that’s been two years. So, I mean, it’s not insignificant. It’s been helping to pay the bills. But it wasn’t like.

Michelle Frechette: I’m one of them.

Topher De Rosa: Yes. You are. Yeah. Not only that, but in testing for this most recent one, you gave me some Euro. So thank you for that. Thank you for the Euro.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:36  You’re welcome. You can use that at WordCamp Europe next year.

Topher DeRosa 00:17:39  That’s right. So on the one hand, I mean, it was cool that people gave money that people wanted to be behind it, but it wasn’t $60,00 $1 donations.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah. 

Topher DeRosa 00:17:52  You know, I would still rather see that any old day of the week. So we recently, did another one. It’s the ten year anniversary. We’ve had some hard times recently. Illnesses, medical bills. Our car died. Just a whole bunch of stuff all happen at once. And so I put up a donation form, and it’s different this time. Not necessarily the way I wanted. We’re getting even fewer individual donations. By far, I mean, I think maybe 20 or 30 so far. Very like thoughtful gifts, like people are writing about it when they give and that’s really, really cool. But I’ve been asking companies to do a $1,000 one time donation.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:53  How’s that going?

Topher DeRosa 00:18:55  Much better than expected. Last year I asked maybe 4 or 5 companies and they all did it. So this year actually several of them have, have done it again. So it’s not necessarily one time, but well, let me look here. they’re all listed on the donate page at HeroPress.com/donate.

Topher DeRosa 00:19:19  We’re at 12% right now. So, Nexcess and Liquid Web each gave a thousand. RKeyCamp gave a thousand. Human Made gave a thousand. Kori Ashton, the most beautiful person in the world. 

Michelle Frechette: She’s amazing. 

Topher DeRosa: She gave it not from her company, but out of her own. Her own wallet, $1,000. So that’s, that’s 4 or 5 right now, and I think, like several others have haven’t been able to get ahold of yet this this month, but I suspect there will be some more. So that’s cool. I mean, it’s been really helpful. We’ve we’ve gotten almost $6,000 for $70 short of $6,000 right now, in one month. And that has been huge this month. So, like a super blessing. 

Michelle Frechette: Incredibly helpful, I’m sure. 

Topher DeRosa: Yeah. We have a goal up there of $50,000, which was completely arbitrary. Last time, I didn’t have a goal at all. And people said, well, you might have might’ve gotten more if you had a target for people that aim at.

Topher DeRosa 00:20:40  So I just picked one this time, and my wife’s, like 50,000? Why on earth? What makes you think we’re going to get that? I said, I don’t know. What if I what if I pick ten? 

Michelle Frechette 00:20:51  Wouldn’t it be nice?

Topher DeRosa 00:20:52  Yeah. You know what? If I pick ten and people were like, oh, I would’ve given a lot more if you’d ask for more. So, you know, I’m being optimistic. 

Michelle Frechette: Sure. Optimismus  good. 

Topher DeRosa: Yeah. But, the whole process of of asking for money is difficult. And I’ve learned a lot about how it’s done, about how I feel about it, how other people feel about it. Yeah. It’s just, I’ve learned a lot.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:27  It’s pretty cool. I don’t want to say, like, do you have favorite stories? But what are some of the, like, ones that just surprised you? Like you read it and you were like, Holy cow, I had no idea, or this is such an interesting journey or something that was just so out of the ordinary that you just, like, think about it often.

Topher DeRosa 00:21:47  Tijana was really interesting. She’s one of the very few people. 

Michelle Frechette: That was recent too. 

Topher DeRoda: Nope. That was years ago.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:54  Oh, that’s right, it was just republished. That’s right. Yeah. You put it out again. Yeah.

Topher DeRosa 00:21:58  Yeah, I put it out again. On weeks when I don’t have one, I often will will recycle one.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:03  Reach into the archive. That’s what we call it.

Topher DeRosa 00:22:05  Yes. She’s one of the few people that approached me and said, hey, I want to be on HeroPress. The vast majority of them are people I track down. And her story is that she died. And was dead for a long time. Like in like, not a long time. Okay. So hours.

Michelle Frechette: Three weeks! 

Topher DeRosa: No hours. Yeah. No. And and was resuscitated and her illness was gone. She, she had been going downhill for several years. And when she woke up, she was all better. And, she got into WordPress while recovering from that, I mean, for other illness was gone.

Topher DeRosa 00:22:56  Her body was a mess from years of illness. So she got into WordPress then, and, And that was cool. There’s another one. Let me make sure I get names and dates right here. 

Michelle FrechetteL Sure. 

Topher DeRosa: Yeah. Okay. So. Collins Agbonghama from Benin City in Nigeria. He started his his business as a web developer, building websites on a Nokia 3120 cell phone. 

Michelle Frechette: Wow. 

Topher DeRosa: He’s got a picture of it right on this. On his essay here. I don’t remember what they used to call that. What do you call that when you’re typing on a number pad on a phone? Remember on the phone.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:55  Wasn’t it like t something? T12 or T two. Yeah.

Topher DeRosa 00:23:58  T two. Yeah. So he that’s what he used to build websites and, there used to be a technology called WAP. And you would build websites and the information was organized with the metaphor of a deck of cards. And so you would you would build cards of information.

Topher DeRosa 00:24:19  And they were built. They were built for websites or for cell phones. not non-internet cell phones. 

Michelle Frechette 00:24:27  Okay. So this is. This is pre-smartphone wouldn’t it be.

Topher DeRosa 00:24:30  Yeah. And there’s a, there’s a screenshot here of one of his websites. It’s a black background with neon green and red and blue text. 

Michelle Frechette 00:24:40  And you can share your screen if you’d like. Let’s take a look at it.

Topher DeRosa 00:24:43  Yeah. But I was just blown away that he was able to do this on a Nokia phone.

Michelle Frechette 00:24:51  Amazing. Yeah. For sure.

Topher DeRosa 00:24:56  Another good one. Again, let me resurrect my information and get it right. Thabo from Zimbabwe. You know her?

Michelle Frechette 00:25:11  Yes. As a matter of fact, I have a WP Coffee Talk recorded that I’m still going to put out that she and I did. Not too far, not too long ago, is what I’m trying to say.

Topher DeRosa 00:25:22  Zimbabwe is one of the poorest countries in the world, and when I met her, she was building websites for local businesses for  you know, fair local money.

Topher DeRosa 00:25:33  But compared to what we would make, not much. And because she wrote an essay, she was seen and asked to be on the All Women Release Team for whatever version that was at the time. And because of that, was able to get a job at Automattic, which pays way better than her neighbors are making. And so she’s supporting her family and, and getting stuff done.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:09  And she’s a very nice person.

Topher DeRosa 00:26:11  One more I want to tell you about. I’m clicking my map. Where is there? It is Malawi. Robert is from Malawi. Malawi is officially the world’s poorest country, and it’s so poor that you can only get a bank account if you have, like, $1 million US. Literally a million. And so it’s it’s only the super oligarchs who own all the money in the country, who have bank accounts at all. And that means you can’t get a PayPal account. You can’t get any of the other any of the other online accounts. So it is impossible for WordPressers in Malawi to buy plugins or themes.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:02  Or hosting.

Topher DeRosa 00:27:03  Or hosting or any of it. Yeah, they’re really, really stuck. And so, I have a longtime dream that is not never happened yet. I want to build a, a license gift basket with license keys to all the big plugins and some free hosting and just give it away to people like him. Because there are other countries that that are not that poor. Obviously it’s the poorest, but there are lots of countries where people are struggling to come up with 30 bucks a month for hosting, and stuff like that. So, that’s a someday project, but we’ll see. But those are some of my those are some of my favorites.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:52  That’s very cool. I, I just I love that there’s like so many different countries, so many different people, so many different backgrounds and socioeconomic levels and all of that that makes Post or Post Status here I am in my own little world here that makes HeroPress everything that it is. I think that’s really neat.

Topher DeRosa 00:28:14  It’s pretty fun when I when I introduce someone and they go to the map and they see their own country and they’re just so delighted.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, yeah.

Topher DeRosa 00:28:25  You know.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:27  Yeah. And I know that most people don’t think that they can just be like, I’m going to do a HeroPress story, but you literally invite them right on the website. Just go to HeroPress com slash contribute. And anybody anybody can tell their story on HeroPress. It doesn’t have to be it’s not invitation only. It’s not you know something that’s that’s impossible to attain. It’s like you want stories, you want people to tell their stories. And so anybody anybody can do it. I think that’s really cool.

Topher DeRosa 00:28:58  Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:58  And I don’t think I knew that back in the day. So when you asked me, I was like, oh, wow, this is really cool. But yeah, I’ve actually pushed some people towards you. I’m like, hey, we love your story. I talked to Topher and he said, I can invite anybody I want.

Topher DeRosa 00:29:14  Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:16  Which is very cool.

Topher DeRosa 00:29:17  Yeah. And it’s been great.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:20  Yeah, I think it’s awesome.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:21  I love, I love what I see people’s news when you put a new post out and people have. I love reading about them and seeing what they’re doing and all of and with their stories, how they’ve arrived, where they are today. It’s just yeah, it’s really cool stuff. Very, very, very interesting. And is this another part of this. I call us like gap filling projects, right? Like HeroPress is not part of WordPress.org. It isn’t part it isn’t an official anything to do with WordPress, just like my stuff isn’t either. But we contribute to the community and we help build the community with these projects that just tell stories and like, like, you know, WP Coffee Talk does. I talk to people all over the world the same way that you’re getting their, their, their essays from all over the world. And it’s just a way that it makes the world feel a little bit smaller, a little bit closer knit. And I think that’s pretty cool.

Topher DeRosa 00:30:10  Yeah. yeah.

Topher DeRosa 00:30:13  The stories are important. I used to think for years I thought that the world rushed to read every episode or every essay as it was published. And I never I’ve never gotten huge hits. My, my, my standard for success is, 100 page views by noon on, on release day. And they’re, it’s very common on a Sunday I’ll get 2 or 3 visitors to the site in the entire day from the entire world. And, I was a little depressed about that for a while, but, I was talking to Morten Rand-Hendriksen one time, and he’s a huge fan. He loves it. He tells people about it all the time. And I said, do you read? Every Wednesday. He said, no, no, not even close. I don’t have time for that. I was like, oh man, somebody who loves it doesn’t read it. Who’s reading this thing? Why do I bother? And then he said, but I do read whenever I get down about the WordPress community, about what we’re doing and about, you know, why? Why does any of this matter? I go on and read 5 or 6 essays at once.

Topher DeRosa 00:31:31  And I and it fixes everything. And then in that same year, so several years ago I was at WordCamp Ann Arbor and Josepha came to me and said, I have to tell you something. She said often I am, the mother of WordPress. Employees will come to me and say, I work support and people are mean. My life sucks and I hate this and I’m just so depressed I can’t even stand it, and I, I hate this. And she doesn’t even have to say that much. She just listens. And at the end they often say, I’m just going to go read HeroPress now and then things will be all better. 

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, I like that.

Topher DeRosa: And and it made me realize that the value of HeroPress is less as a publication and more of an encyclopedia, a tome, a record of our history. And a library. And people go there looking for specific inspirations, not necessarily the latest one. And to be fair, I mean, I asked people to write to their peers.

Topher DeRosa 00:32:55  So someone wrote to the Zimbabwe and WordPress community and they’re not going to blow out my stats, you know.  I’m not going to get 100,000 visitors from Zimbabwe because because of that. And so it’s much more about the small scale, the value, making little ripples, you know, rather than throwing a boulder in the lake, I’m throwing in a lot of pebbles. And the and the ripples just go on and on and on.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:33  And the level rises little by little.

Topher DeRosa 00:33:36  Yeah. I’ve had a lot of people come to me over the years and say, listen, I read an essay ten years ago, eight, eight, five, six, whatever years ago. And it really changed things for me. You know, again from Eujan from Bhutan.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:54  I don’t believe so.

Topher DeRosa 00:33:57  I’m trying to get an essay from every country in the world. That’s one of my diversity markers. And so I saw somebody from Bhutan. I’m like, oh, there we go. And so I wrote to him and he’s a very nice, very nice man.

Topher DeRosa 00:34:12  And he just regular WordPresser. And he did an essay and and that was cool. And then I met him at WordCamp Asia in Thailand. And he was an organizer. And he said if it were not for you, I would never have volunteered for anything like this. I would not be here. I would not be part of the community. I wouldn’t be involved with any of this. And you know, you gonna make me cry. And it was it was it was moving for me. To know that that happened and, you know, he said he said it was my it was me. It was something I did. But all I did is send him an email and say, hey, we do an essay. And I posted it. And so, you know, I don’t know what credit I want to take for that.

Michelle Frechette4 00:35:10  Right. The keeper of the stories, you’re the keeper of the tales. You’re the the archivist.

Topher DeRosa 00:35:17  Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:18  The librarian. Jeroen says, hey, Belgium is still down on your country list, Topher.

Topher DeRosa 00:35:25  Well, you can tell him that I have asked him to do an essay before, and I’m still waiting.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:32  You’re telling him right now.

Topher DeRosa 00:35:33  That’s right. I think we talked about it at breakfast in Berlin.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:38  There you go. So I did ask people if they have questions for us. This is a question that’s not necessarily related to HeroPress, and I don’t know if it’s all going to show up on the screen. Oh, yeah, it does. We have to sit a little higher though so that we can be seen. But so so the title of this is Happiness Hour. So here’s his question. how did the two of us, how did the two of us feel about or get excited about going to another WordPress community event next week? He’s on his way to Rome, but actually not all that excited.

Topher DeRosa 00:36:07  Yeah. So, I’ve been thinking about this a lot for the last couple of weeks. There’s a song. Should I stay or should I go now. From the Ramones?

Michelle Frechette 00:36:21  I remember. Yeah.

Topher DeRosa 00:36:22  And, And so I did a blog post about this, too, just the other day, when this whole thing started, Dave sent me a photo of a small Indian child being bathed in an alley. And he said, I don’t care what you do, but whatever it is, somehow I wanted to help this kid. And, it’s a stock photo. We don’t know who that kid is. But he looks to be 3 to 5 years old. And I realized just the other day that it’s been ten years. It’s entirely possible that kid is getting into WordPress right now as a 15 year old, and we could be directly helping him. And that kid doesn’t know anything about hosting companies, about licenses, about trademarks. He doesn’t care. He’s fooling around on the computer and he’s building cool stuff. And maybe someday, maybe someday soon, maybe when he is 16. He’ll be supporting his family building websites with WordPress.

Topher DeRosa 00:37:35  And those are the people I care about. Those are the people I still get excited about. I still I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to let go and walk away, regardless of who does what in the community. Because there’s so many more people like that kid.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:58  Yeah.

Topher DeRosa 00:37:59  That I just I just want to I, I want to go to every WordCamp in the world and stick my hand out and say, hey, I’m Topher. Tell me your story. How can I help you? Once upon a time when I thought I might get significant money for HeroPress, one of my goals was to go to small camps around the world. Still be a lot of travel, but not necessarily the big ones. Because the people who need it the most can’t afford to go there. You know, I wanted, I wanted to go to Nepal and work my way south to Sri Lanka visiting all the camps I could. I wanted to go to Africa and just bop around the continent visiting the camps that I could find.

Topher DeRosa 00:38:51  I thought I was going to WordCamp Romania in two weeks, but, that fell through for a lot of different reasons. Just to, just to meet people. You know, the people who don’t care about trademarks.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:06  Right.

Topher DeRosa 00:39:08 I mean. It’s just. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:09  Yeah. No.

Topher DeRosa 00:39:11  So the question was how? The question was, how do I get excited? I’m excited about those people. I’m excited about the people who just want to go build cool stuff.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:22  Yeah.

Topher DeRosa 00:39:22  And and help people around them and make the world a better place. And we can we can still do that.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:32  I was looking for the person’s name and I apologize. I hope he’s not listening because I’m not going to recall his name right off the bat. But I was I met somebody at WordCamp Asia two years ago. And then this year at WordCamp Asia, he came up to me with his cell phone on FaceTime and had his nine year old daughter who wanted to meet me because he talked about the woman who was inspirational.

Michelle Frechette 00:40:00  And so his daughter. Every once in a while, he still sends me a message and says his daughter says hello, because somehow I inspired his nine year old to want to do things like I do and like, oh my gosh, I was never so humbled as that particular moment. and for me, that’s what our WordPress community is about. So, so I, you know, just like everybody else, I get frustrated, I get sad, I get worried, I get everything, you know, with with what’s going on in WordPress sometimes. But it’s the people more than it is any particular way that we’re organizing things. That makes me excited about WordPress. And so, it doesn’t matter what’s going on. I still want to go and I still want to talk to people, and I still want to be part of that community. And so I would be excited to go next week if I were two weeks. If I was going to Rome. If anybody wants to send me, give me my PayPal.

Michelle Frechette 00:40:59  Like, but, but seriously, that would be something that would be very exciting to do. And so I hope you do get excited Jeroen and I want you to be excited about going to those things and, and and not feel discouraged because the people are still people and we also love each other. So at least most of us, I think. So, I don’t know.

Topher DeRosa 00:41:21  Maybe grumpy people.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:22  Maybe I’m Pollyanna, but yeah, yeah, I do get excited about it. So, he does say that, you know, he’s he says said that that’s true. But he got excited that way back in 2016, in his first camp, too. So and appreciates your appreciates your views which is nice. 

Topher DeRosa 00:41:42  Thank you.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:43  And you need to do you rHeroPress story. I’m talking to you right now. You’re. You’re the one I’m talking to you. Jeroen. And you need to write your HeroPress story. Do it. Get on there, buddy. I’m going to start messaging you every week.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:59  Have you written it yet? Have you written it yet? I’ll be the thorn in your side. Oh, yeah. But. But for real, I won’t do that. But, But I do love having those come out. And I do love. I don’t like, like Morton. I don’t read them every week because life is crazy busy, and I’m writing more than I’m reading lately. But, But yeah, when you want to, you you want to. When you need that, pick me up to to read somebody else’s story. Or let’s say, even if you’re thinking about hiring somebody and you want to learn more about somebody, if they’re essays out there, you get a real insight into who they are. Anybody who writes their story on HeroPress really is somebody who cares. And that’s I mean, just by being on there. It feels like they’ve been vetted already a little bit. So, Yeah. 

Topher DeRosa  00:42:49  Yeah, as long. As we’re talking about stuff.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:51  Yes.

Topher DeRosa 00:42:53  I want to talk about languages.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:55  Okay.

Topher DeRosa 00:42:57  Very early on, I looked at doing multilingual, and, Weglot very kindly offered me their highest plan for free.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:07  They’re pretty awesome.

Topher DeRosa 00:43:10  But not with paid translators, because  Weglot don’t own them. And so I started looking at it, and I realized that the languages it’s best at are Western, and we kind of need them the least. And I looked at India with 8,500 languages, and, Weglot uses as AI service. Sure. And they’re pretty terrible at Hindi. At, Urdu. Gujarati. They’re they’re not good at all. And so, you know, I asked around in India and I said, how important is it that that we have other languages? They said don’t worry about it everybody speaks English. And but I learned it working at Pune from a Sri Lankan speaker. It’s something like, 60% or 70% of Indians don’t speak English. Which is interesting. but I quickly realized I couldn’t afford it.

Topher DeRosa 00:44:17  I couldn’t afford to do that. But then I started asking people to translate their own, which is why we have multilingual today. And it’s not true multilingual. In fact Yoast was telling me that the way I’m doing it is probably hurting me from a Google standpoint, having two different languages on one page. Google gets confused, but I don’t care.

Michelle Frechette00:44:41  Yeah. That’s less important than the fact that people can read it.

Topher DeRosa 00:44:45  It is. And, the the most valuable thing I learned is that still, most of my readers speak English, but being able to read it in their own language feels special. Somebody cared enough to make it happen. And then something else really valuable I learned is that if English is your second language, no matter how good you are at it, you’re going to be more expressive in your own first language.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:19  Makes sense to me.

Topher DeRosa 00:45:21  And so. People, people who speak both will choose to read it in their own first. First they you know, they could read it in English just fine. But they’d rather read it in their own language.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:38  Yeah.

Topher DeRosa 00:45:38  And so that’s something that cost me nothing, essentially. That I can give to people to make them feel wanted, special, important. And in many ways convey the story better to the people who are trying to read it. It’s, it’s the peers of the writer. You know.

Michelle Frechette 00:46:00  Absolutely.

Topher DeRosa 00:46:01  And it’s more important that the peers of the writer understand it most clearly than me.

Michelle Frechette 00:46:10  RIght. Absolutely. Well, I’m going to say here I’m going to put up a couple banners. So for more information, of course, HeroPress.com is the main thing if you would like to donate. It’s been ten years of HeroPress. And they’re doing a fundraiser right now. So just go to HeroPress.com/donate. And as I’ve been saying if you would like to contribute your own story it’s HeroPress.com/contribute. All of those site visits would be welcome and just go to HeroPress.com if you want to read some interesting stories and and be inspired by other people’s journeys in your own country or beyond your borders, because there’s a lot of good stuff in there.

Michelle Frechette 00:46:48  How many? 200. And what did you say two seventy? Two seventy six

Topher DeRosa: 278.

Michelle Frechette: I was off by two. Maybe I wasn’t counting my own and some, I don’t know somebody else’s, but it’s 278. But that would take a while to read them all. But I challenge you to do it. Give it a chance. over the. 

Topher DeRosa: I’ve read them all. 

Michelle Frechette 00:47:06  Of course you have, of course. But the rest of us, take a take a look. And if you do decide to contribute your story based on today’s streaming, let me know, because if I inspired you to write your story, I want to know about it, and I promise to read it.

Topher DeRosa 00:47:23  I have one more little story. It’s about diversity. I always wanted to be as diverse as possible across as many different activities as possible. And so, low hanging fruit was gender. And for a long time I was very careful. I watched and I counted. How many men do I have? How many women do I have? Okay, I need to go find a woman.

Topher DeRosa 00:47:46  I need to go find a man. So I want to keep it in balance. And then I quit. I quit paying attention altogether. I didn’t look, and for 4 or 5 years, I didn’t look at all. And then just a few months ago, I looked and we were exactly 50/50.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:04  And you told me about that when that happened, you messaged me because that was really cool.

Topher DeRosa 00:48:08  And the lesson I learned was that it is a learned skill. Like it sounds hard at first. I’m like, oh, I got to do this work to make sure we’re diverse somehow.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:22  Yeah.

Topher DeRosa 00:48:23  But it is learned. And once you’re good at it, you don’t have to think about it. And it isn’t work.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:29 Right. It turns out that when women see other women and when people of color see other people of color, they don’t. They learn that it’s a safe space. And then they also know that it’s okay to contribute.

Topher DeRosa 00:48:39  Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:41  And that creating a safe space is pretty cool. So I appreciate that you do that. Thank you.

Topher DeRosa 00:48:46  Yeah I, I feel blessed. I mean, I I’ll say it over and over again, I feel blessed, by how many, underrepresented communities. Let’s I’ll just say it out. Abused communities, have accepted me, given me, member status, as it were. Guest status?

Michelle Frechette 00:49:09  Yeah. Ally status

Topher DeRosa 00:49:10  Because I treat them properly. You know, I’m a member of BlackPress and I am the whitest boy, you know. yeah. It’s just it it’s interesting you treat people right and, and they treat you back right.It’s nice.

Michelle Frechette 00:49:31  Pretty. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

Topher DeRosa 00:49:33  It is.

Michelle Frechette 00:49:34  Awesome. Well, I don’t know who’s going to be my guest next week. I’m still working on that, but I hope whoever’s around will tune in to watch it, because I’m sure I’ll get somebody good. I always have good guests, I always have. I know a lot of people.

Topher DeRosa 00:49:47  May I suggest getting some ahead?

Michelle Frechette 00:49:50  Yeah, I usually do, but I’ve had a death of a family and I’ve been a little bit away from my desk the last couple of weeks.

Topher DeRosa: Yes, I heard. I’m so sorry.

Michelle Frechette 00:49:56  So, so forgive me for not being that far ahead on things, but I, I will catch up again and get some more people on the schedule. But we will we will be back next week. And, it’s a surprise to me as well. Who will be with you next week. But thanks for listening, everybody. Topher thank you so much for being an awesome guest. Topher stick around. I got a couple things I want to chat with you about after we’re off the air. 

Topher DeRosa: All right. 

Michelle Frechette: We’ll see everybody else next week. Thank you. Bye.

Topher DeRosa 00:50:25 See ya.