Welcome to Community & Code,
the podcast where we talk to the human
beings behind the commits.
I am here today with Mike Demo,
who is a technical account manager at
Hosting.com.
Although,
we actually met up last week in WordCamp
Canada and, like,
I want to let you explain what it
is that you actually do,
because I don't know that the words that,
uh,
are in your title necessarily represent,
uh, accurately the things that you do.
Yeah.
So my title has actually been updated
since I filled out your form.
Um, uh, I'm going off of LinkedIn.
So you need to update that buddy.
I updated LinkedIn.
Um,
At least I thought I did.
Anyway, whatever.
So, yeah.
Partnerships lead.
Okay.
You updated your title.
You didn't update your headline.
That's the thing.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
So I did not update my headline.
I do need to do that.
Yes.
So partnerships lead North America.
Yeah.
slash technical account manager line is I
help agencies and their developers be more
efficient in what they do.
So that could mean helping them get set
up on the right type of server or
helping them optimize their RFP process so
they can sell more.
slash basically just connecting people and
trying to help humans meet other humans in
a very non-sales way.
So that's basically what I do.
My title at InMotion Hosting when I worked
there was lead handshaker,
and that's basically still my role today.
That sounds appropriate.
What you're not saying is that we see
each other basically at every WordPress
event that I go to,
and I'm sure there are many that I
don't go to.
So also,
I understand that there is a fair amount
of travel,
which makes it feel to me as someone
who is in DevRel,
that you kind of do a lot of
like the dev rally stuff,
maybe not the developer advocacy stuff,
but definitely like the going places and
talking to people and trying to figure out
solutions and best practices for what
works for the people that you're talking
to at things like this.
Is that not accurate?
No, I would say that's very accurate.
Definitely not like pushing like a set of
APIs or anything like that.
But I'm talking to developers that work at
agencies,
specifically larger agencies about their
pain points.
What do they like with their existing
provider?
What don't they like?
What do they wish they could do from
a platform perspective?
And then, you know, helping them,
if it makes sense,
utilizing some of our services, or if not,
you know, making recommendations for,
different things that might help fulfill
their needs.
And a lot of the time,
it's just edge case stuff where, hey,
I have this client who needs this
certification I've never heard of.
Do you have this?
And I'm like, yes, yes, we do.
Here's the documentation.
Okay, great.
So it really just depends.
But bottom line, just trying to add value
Wherever it makes sense.
Sometimes that involves our products.
Sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes that means recommending other
providers.
It just depends on what's best for the
people I'm talking to.
And at the end of the day,
that's what people remember is you being
helpful, not product A or product B. Yeah,
yeah.
Well,
I have the extra bonus benefit of knowing
you from the very beginnings of your
WordPress origin story because what folks
who don't know either of us or both
of us might not know is that Mike's
first WordCamp was my WordCamp,
WordCamp Salt Lake City, that I was...
either organizing or co organizing.
I can't remember what I was doing then.
If it was, I'm looking at your thing,
if it's was,
if that's the year I probably was probably
lead organizing that one.
I don't remember.
It was a long, long time ago.
But yeah, so like, tell the story of,
of,
of your how that how that became your
entry point into WordPress.
Yeah,
so I've been in open source a very
long time.
I steal a quote from Jessica Dunbar,
who was the evangelist for Concrete Five
CMS.
I'm not married to a CMS.
I'm in an open source relationship.
And I started in Joomla.
Well, technically,
from a community standpoint,
I started in Joomla.
So I was in the Joomla community a
very long time,
and I was doing senior dev stuff at
agencies,
mostly Joomla sites for banks and credit
unions and then private equity portfolios
and things like that.
And I ran into Todd at a hosting
conference.
It was Hosting Con in New Orleans.
And I was speaking there on behalf of
Joomla because I was the finance team lead
at the time,
which basically means selling sponsorships
to, you know, companies I want to sponsor,
which basically means selling to hosting
companies to sponsor the project,
just like hosting.
all the open source projects still do um
and i ran into todd and i met
todd before at the jumla world conference
um he's the co-founder of in motion and
they were promoting bold grid which was
their big uh a new push into wordpress
at the time we started talking they were
looking for an evangelist he said it's not
jumla i said that's fine and uh
I basically was offered a job,
but he wanted to make sure I wouldn't
burst into flames if I walked into a
WordCamp.
So he sent me to Salt Lake City
as kind of like an interview.
And yeah, that was my first WordCamp.
And the funny part about that is the
agency I was at was a downtown agency
in Minneapolis.
They were a WordPress agency,
and I just finished a year-long project
converting them all to Joomla.
I left to go work at InMotion as
a WordPress evangelist.
So that's kind of how I started in
WordPress,
and the rest is kind of history.
I don't know that we've ever talked about
this, but that just makes me wonder...
Why Salt Lake City?
Why was my WordCamp the WordCamp that you
got sent to?
Is there any particular reason?
I don't think so.
I think InMotion,
they were a global sponsor,
or at least a North American global
sponsor.
Yeah, I think I remember their logo.
and i think it was just the closest
the neck whatever the next one was yeah
they had people going to um i don't
think there was any specific reason um it
was my first time in salt lake city
so that was cool i got to see
the tabernacle choir so that was exciting
um did you get to do anything fun
in salt lake city though uh
That first trip,
not so much because I came in so
late at night.
And I was also nervous because it was
a job interview.
I didn't really know what to expect.
So I didn't really do a lot of
that trip.
I did the Tabernacle Choir and Temple
Square and that was better.
From an architecture standpoint,
it was super pretty.
But future trips,
I've been to Salt Lake many,
many times since then.
And I've done lots of other things like
Park City and all that.
Yeah.
Yeah, I always, like I said,
we just came back from WordCamp Canada,
and I always have this problem with going
out to events because, like,
unless you're going to tack on a day
or two or something, basically, like,
you're not going to a place,
you're going to a conference center and a
hotel, you know, like,
I didn't see Ottawa.
I saw the inside of my hotel.
I saw about one block's worth of downtown.
I saw a small corner of Carleton
University.
And, like, I saw a... What was...
I guess...
a pool place.
Dooley's is, I think, a Canadian thing,
but I didn't have the context for that.
And then, like, a bar.
That's what I saw.
And a very eclectic vegan fast food
restaurant.
And a very eclectic vegan fast food
restaurant.
Yes, correct.
Yeah, so people are like, oh, man,
you're so lucky.
I travel way less than I used to,
but at the height of my travel was
one hundred and fifty seven days a year.
and so that had good and bad parts
of it but i would always say yep
conference rooms around the world you know
so what i always try to do although
i've been doing this less the older i
get is i try to get the latest
flight out on the last day and try
to have like
a half day to do something in the
city.
And I still always try to do something,
but it doesn't always work out.
And I also find myself going back to
the hotel and sleeping when I plan to
like,
but I had these grand visions in my
head to,
do this or that.
But I was in London a few weeks
ago with some coworkers and we went to
the Jurassic world expedition exhibit.
So we did that for a couple of
hours.
So little things like that,
but definitely it's not,
it's not a vacation,
but the art works with it.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, I feel that way too.
Yeah,
when I went to Atlanta for DrupalCon,
I would like to be able to say
that, at least for some of these places,
I would like to be able to say
that I've been there and done things.
And for some WordCamps,
particularly when I was at Human Made,
When we went as like sort of a
big group,
we would do stuff together as a group
that often meant like, you know,
things outside of the conference.
So I think that in Nashville,
one of the engineers,
principal engineer at Human Made now,
had a contact at like one of the
record pressing plants.
And so they gave us a tour of
the record pressing plant.
That was pretty cool.
I think I had a couple extra days.
So like went to the museums and went
to the Johnny Cash Museum,
went to like a Museum of Modern Art
or something.
And that was cool.
St.
Louis got to go to City Museum.
That was where the after party was,
but I didn't go to the after party.
But I then heard so many good things
about the after party at City Museum that
like I had brought my family out there
with me.
So like we all went then on a
separate day.
And then I think we went again because
it was so cool.
In Nashville,
did you get a chance to go to
tour Hatch Show Print,
the print shop in the Country Music Hall
of Fame?
I did not.
So this might be a deep cut,
but do you remember the giveaway,
the little poster we had at Bold Grid?
I don't think that I do.
um anyway long story short uh they're the
oldest uh um uh printing company in uh
tennessee is called hat show print and
they do wood block carve printing and they
do it to this day now it's part
of the country music hall of fame um
which is a non-profit and uh we hired
them to do our giveaway posters for uh
word camp that year and it was funny
because everyone that wasn't local was
like
It's a cool design,
but I don't get it.
But then all the locals were like,
is that Hatch?
And I'm like, yeah,
because it's like people that are into it.
Oh, I remember that now.
And I totally remember not getting it at
the time.
Yeah.
So anyway,
they also do a tour and you can
make your own little poster and you learn
about how they carve out the wood and
stuff.
So that was that's super interesting.
Yeah, there's good memories everywhere.
I do have a question for you.
So I don't like traveling with my family
at work things because I feel like one
or two things happens.
Either I ignore my family or I feel
like I'm ignoring my job.
So what are your thoughts on that?
Yes.
My thoughts are yes.
It's rough.
And that's a conversation that we have
ongoing with my partner.
Like...
There's a bunch,
there's various different layers, right?
One of the levels is like the places
that events are aren't always or
necessarily places that we,
either her and I,
or we as a family would want to
go.
So, there's that thing.
So, like,
if it's not a place that's interesting,
I mean, we had a lot of flexibility,
you know, more years ago when,
because we were homeschooling our kids.
So,
we could pretty much pick up and go
wherever.
Now, my daughter's in high school.
My son's not in school, but, like,
my daughter's in high school.
And so, like, we have to,
that would also be a conflicting factor.
First of all, it's the place,
and is the place interesting?
And then secondly, yes,
there's always the problem.
Obviously now,
and particularly since I've put on the
developer advocate hat,
where going to the event is much more
a distinct responsibility of my job.
then I feel more compelled to be present
at all of the other things,
like the after parties and the hangouts
and whatever, because I'm on the clock.
I'm here.
I might just be hanging out,
but I'm wearing my swag.
I've got my Pantheon stuff on.
i'm having conversations i'm looking for
people probably to have a particular
conversation with even if it's just to
like make a connection but just you know
to to be able to bring back to
to work or you know just to have
that sort of like good pantheon vibe uh
at the event um and that's something that
um when i did go to things with
um with my family i was doing much
less of because we'd want to do stuff
you know
like it's you know the conference is what
five six seven hours or something and so
like the rest of the time it's like
okay we should do something together um
there's like then you can do the sort
of thing where like you you kind of
offset it like you know we'll there's a
couple days of the conference but then you
know the weekend after or a couple days
before whatever you can do stuff um and
i've done that too but this is that's
that's sort of a like a it's an
ongoing conversation um
And, like,
there are places that I'd like to go.
Like, I would have loved to, like,
have hung out in Ottawa for a couple
days and, like,
done stuff with my partner.
Because I wouldn't want to do it alone.
But also, like, in the future, like,
will I go back to Ottawa?
I don't know.
Maybe.
But it's probably not high on the bucket
list.
Like, there's other places.
So then it's, like, you know, yeah,
then it's just, like,
going to a traveling on an airplane to
go to a hotel.
Yeah.
But yeah, Nashville and St.
Louis brought the fam.
I have gone to,
I don't think I brought anyone to Portland
for a WordCamp,
but we've been to Portland.
Um,
we all went to San Diego for WordCamp
US when it was in San Diego, um,
because that was a cheaper for us.
Um, and also like San Diego is awesome.
And that's sort of the other thing too,
is like how much stuff is there where,
yes,
I'm going to be gone doing work things.
So how many things are there available for
everyone else to go and have a good
time?
Yeah.
WordCamp US San Diego.
I loved that year.
It gets,
it gets knocked down a lot because it
was small.
It was all like tickets sold out within
seconds or whatever it was.
Yeah.
It was hundreds of people, not thousands,
you know, it was, but,
The venue was at that really cool
mid-century modern hotel,
which definitely had its flaws as far as
modern hotel amenities.
But being somebody who likes tiki culture,
that is the same hotel that they hold
the annual Tiki Oasis convention in.
So I was in love with it.
I was super happy with it.
I did not know that was a thing.
Um, yeah.
Uh, so I, uh,
which is why I stayed there and didn't
try to stay at a Marriott.
Like I always try to do simply because
I wanted to be at that hotel and
I don't know,
it was one of my best word camps.
I feel from a, from a work perspective,
the people that came were super,
were like there to have conversations.
It was a lot less, uh,
people that might've founded or decided to
come like, you know, uh,
The side effect of it,
I feel like there was a lot less
users,
but there was a lot more BD conversations
happening that year.
And I think it was just a side
effect of the people that knew to watch
the drop with the people that are doing
all the time.
So but I liked that.
Yeah,
I thought it was a really good year
and the venue was really nice.
Yeah.
Yeah, no,
I have good memories of that event,
but part of that is just because it
was in San Diego,
and San Diego is awesome.
I find excuses to go to San Diego,
like, on any day.
Yeah.
And I, I mean, honestly, like, um,
WordCamp Long Beach, uh, I spoke at, um,
this would have been twenty, um,
seventeen, maybe, I think,
maybe twenty-nineteen.
Um, somewhere in there, in the,
in the pre-COVID days.
But, like, really,
the only reason why I was even, like,
the only reason why it was on my
radar is because it was in Long Beach
and, like, it could, we could, like,
justify, like,
just going to California and going to the
beach.
So that WordCamp and that year was the
camp I turned vegan.
I literally decided to be vegan.
Cold turkey.
Well, cold tofu.
That's even worse.
But you went full stop.
You just like, I'm vegan today.
I did because I have a lot of
allergies.
Huge long allergy list.
So I was basically only eating dairy and
eggs and poultry because I was allergic to
everything else.
But I was still getting sick all the
time.
So I googled morning sickness and I ended
up on PETA's website.
Of course,
they're talking a different thing.
They were talking about when you're
pregnant.
But
I was like, well, I'm in California,
good as places any to try and.
And yeah.
Um, I was friends with, uh,
I don't know, uh, Tommy Tallarico.
Uh, he, uh,
is the person who created video games
live, the orchestra touring thing.
He was vegan.
And so he gave me some tips and
yeah, the rest is a history.
I've since done other testing with my
doctor and I also have allergies to dairy
and other, you know, as well.
So basically, uh,
most everything animal related.
I'm alert.
I'm actually allergic to,
and I have tests to prove that, um,
they're different things.
Like I have the tick bite allergy for
the red meat and then, okay.
Yeah.
Um, but yeah,
so I stopped getting sick all the time.
So, but yeah,
but that was the word camp where I
tried to go vegan and, uh, uh,
it it stuck so yeah that's uh i
mean speaking of travel and going to
events like that's that's often how how i
rank uh the places that the events are
is how easy it is to find vegan
food um and i feel like you probably
travel a lot more than me um what
what
I guess an interesting thing to think
about are what places have you been where
there was a surprising lack of
availability of vegan food?
Maybe surprising is not the correct word,
but it might be.
And what places were surprising in the
availability of vegan food for you?
Yeah, so first off,
shout out to the Happy Cow app.
If anyone for sure.
Yep.
If anyone needs to find vegan or vegan
friendly options,
like not even full vegan restaurants,
like let's say you have, you know,
a friend or something visiting wherever
you are.
it's amazing it saves so much time but
anyway uh so as far as a place
i was really surprised that had a lot
of options i would say uh um when
i was in bangalore india so i was
surprised all the vegan options there
which again shouldn't be surprising um
thinking about it now but like
at the time i wasn't thinking about that
same with like island and like israel and
things so like um like tel aviv had
tons of options and i didn't even think
about that but then looking back i'm like
well
it kind of makes sense because a lot
of these places,
vegan checks a lot of the boxes, right?
So it can be halal,
it can be kosher.
Now, granted,
there's certifications and different
levels of that depending on what you
follow,
but it was way easier in Asia and
the Middle East type area than I ever
thought it would be.
Where it's really hard is...
like Eastern Europe is really hard as well
as like coastal Europe like Barcelona and
things because a lot of many things are
marked vegetarian or vegan that have fish
in them and things like that so
and that i was really surprised about so
i was at a conference once it was
a jumla conference and i was in barcelona
and there was nothing in the hotel where
the conference was that i could eat not
a single item um besides just like a
roll so literally what i did is every
day
I ordered Domino's pizza because they had
vegan cheese.
By the way,
how do these American companies in every
other country have vegan options on the
regular menu,
but we don't get that in the States?
I don't understand that.
Yeah, right.
So I would literally just order a Domino's
pizza every single day of this week-long
conference.
People made fun of me because I was
doing that, but there was...
literally nothing else around and where
the hotel was there was nothing walkable
so I find that's why I try to
stick with Marriott's a lot people make
fun of me they're like you only want
American chains when you travel to Europe
in Asia and I'm like yeah two reasons
one points and
And two, I,
I know there's going to be options at
a full service Marriott or Sheridan or
West.
Right.
I understand it's not the most exciting
menu at the restaurants, but at least,
you know, there's something.
So what about you?
What have you been surprised on?
Like,
I think when I think the first I
think sort of the origin story of this
question or thinking about this was when I
went to WordCamp Denver,
because I didn't necessarily expect that
Denver would be a really good place for
vegan food.
But it had lots of stuff.
And again, it's like,
It's not super surprising, surprising,
but, you know, because it's a hip, cool,
free weed sort of place.
Like, you know,
there's a lot of hippies and the hippie
and vegan overlap is pretty,
the Venn diagram is pretty strong.
Also,
like I went to Sri Lanka and that
wasn't hard at all.
I did a retreat there.
Hardest was definitely,
and surprisingly hardest, Italy was hard.
I did a human-made retreat there.
I think my first human-made retreat.
And it was the same sort of like
European thing where like they don't
really get the criteria and trying to
explain it and like all the things.
And also there's often a language
difference and like things it's like,
It was, it was rough.
Um, Japan wasn't super easy.
Like I,
we went to Japan as a family last
year.
Um, we, we had like an Airbnb,
so we ended up like cooking a lot
of stuff, but like going out was like,
we had to be very careful,
like happy cow again.
Uh, but also there's like, there's like,
I think there was some, uh,
Google maps thing that somebody made of
like all the vegan places and like all
of the, all of Japan.
And that was very helpful that other
people had done that homework.
Hong Kong was similarly hard for me when
I was in Hong Kong.
Although, thankfully,
I was staying at the Disneyland Resort.
So it was,
Disney's always been very good in all
their parks, so there's options there.
But I think it was funny, like,
I was in Adventureland and, you know,
they had a squid on a stick.
And not because it was an adventure land,
just because that was, you know,
you're in Hong Kong.
So that was interesting.
So that wasn't too hard,
but only at the sit down restaurants.
It was almost impossible to do the counter
service or fast food.
Right.
And that's I feel like to like that
was it was a little bit for me
anyway.
It was a little bit of a bummer
because you hear and you read so much
stuff about like
um, street food, um, in,
in these places and like going down
through an area where there is street food
everywhere and being like, can't eat that,
can't eat that, can't eat that,
can't eat that.
Like when you finally land on something
where you can eat, it's like,
Oh my God.
Yeah.
And it's good to have people that like
are local too.
Like I had a,
when I was at Codable and I was
in, um, Thailand, he's like, Oh, just,
he's like, just,
When you get to any restaurant,
say you want to prepare J,
which is a type of preparation for.
one of the common religions there.
I don't remember exactly which one.
But he's like, it's super common.
If you say that, you'll be fine.
Because he's like,
that excludes all of these things,
which basically makes it vegan for you.
And I was at a lot of places
that I had nothing on the menu.
Then I'd be like, Jay.
And they'd be like, oh, OK.
And then they were bringing me a different
menu.
And it was interesting.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Uh, even if I didn't speak the language,
he,
he told me how to pronounce the thing
to say.
And it was like,
it was like a secret password to vegan
in Thailand.
Um, but, uh,
Which funny story on that is we took
a lot of our developers who are local
to Trader Vic's Tiki restaurant.
And a lot of the devs weren't,
they don't drink alcohol.
So I was like, I told my boss,
oh yeah, it'll be fine.
You know, it won't be that bad.
Little did I know that they had the
entire menu with a zero proof version.
So it was the most expensive tiki night
I've ever seen because nobody had alcohol
charged tiki prices.
So that was that was fun.
But everyone had a good time,
which is what's important.
So a question I ask a lot of
the guests that come on this show is
what brought you, what got you into,
interested in tech,
whatever that tech may be.
And I think for you, I'm interested in,
well, we can talk about it later,
but I'm also interested in like how you
got to Joomla to begin with and what
sorts of things
like the sort of differences between
WordPress and Joomla that you've seen,
but, but we'll start, start with like,
what, what, how did you,
what is your sort of origin story for
getting into technology broadly?
Yeah.
So my dad used to work for data
general, which then got bought by GE.
And we had the first Apple to compute
home computer in the state of Minnesota.
Oh.
In the early, early in like,
eighties or nineties or whatever it was.
Um,
so I've always been really big in the
tech and he,
my dad was like the president of the
local rocketry club.
And, um, he was an engineer on the,
for NASA before working for data general
for the Viking satellite project.
And, um, so I, I get it.
I've always been introduced to it a lot
from my dad.
So, uh,
I was always trying to make websites and
things like that.
So like in middle school,
I wrote my papers in HTML.
And then when I was a freshman in
high school,
I took HTML one and I finished the
entire course in three days.
It was my first ever elective in high
school.
And then my teacher sent me to a
college course
got the school to pay for it.
And then he had me help him write
HTML two, the next HTML two or one,
which they never even had yet.
So I basically was a TA the rest
of the course,
because I literally completed the entire
class in
three days.
And so I've had a lot of great
teachers.
And then I got into DECA,
which is a business club group,
which I have a funny story about that,
which I'll tell you in a second.
But they had website development and
something called the seven up challenge.
And so I would enter that and I
won my senior year of college.
high school,
I won at the International Career
Development Conference,
first place for the seven up challenge
banner ad design and website campaign
design.
I built that in flash.
Super, super fancy.
And the deca still exists in college,
it was called collegiate deca.
I ended up winning first place for website
development there.
I built that in PHP Nuke, I think.
Funny story, Jesse from Automatic,
he was also competing that same year,
and I beat him.
Just saying.
I mean,
you can argue that he ended up way
more successful than I did,
but I beat him.
at uh that year so and we didn't
figure this out till like two years ago
when he's like i've only been at
disneyland once it was have you heard of
something called deca i'm like two
thousand five career developed
international career development
conference collegiate he's like yeah like
and then he's like i've never anyway long
story short so uh and then from there
uh i i was an intern
I went to college for website development,
but I knew a lot of the stuff
already and just super into it.
How I found Joomla was SiteGround was my
first host.
So if you don't count like AngelFire and
some of those other like shared services,
right?
So I was like a customer of SiteGround
back when they only had one product,
you know, it was just hosting.
And they had cPanel with Fantastico for
the auto installer because it didn't
exist.
And I was just installing CMS is playing
around with it.
And then I found on Mambo and fell
in love.
And then I noticed Mambo wasn't getting a
lot of
development after a while uh and then i
started clicking around again and found
joomla i'm like this is a lot like
mambo i didn't know it was a fork
at the time um because i wasn't in
the community and then i just kept
building websites for small businesses and
then started freelancing and just kept
doing that.
And I self-taught myself all the Joomla
and then PHP and stuff and then started
using it in my job.
And then that's how I ended up in
the agency life.
And then
The more I got into Joomla,
the more I went to the conferences and
met people who helped me volunteer.
Because I still think the biggest,
hardest part of all these projects is
contributing.
We all say it's easy to contribute.
Like, oh, you need to contribute.
You need to contribute.
Go to Contributor Day.
It's really,
really hard for somebody brand new to our
community to contribute.
Like, for me, for Joomla,
I sent email and email and email,
filled out forms,
and no one would get back to me.
It wasn't until I went to a Joomla
conference and said the team leader and
said,
I want to join your team that anything
happened.
And it's not a knock.
It's just everyone's volunteering.
So it's just the onboarding process of any
of this.
Even at WordCamps,
it's not easy for someone just to show
up and contribute because it's still
clicky.
yeah like uh you have to really push
hard and i feel like that's a huge
opportunity that nobody's cracked the nut
on yet i feel like there needs to
be an onboarding path for people that want
to volunteer uh like oh what are you
interested in what do you want to do
oh let me introduce you to so and
so and whatever um you know just throwing
a big doc and saying here's how to
prep for contributor day pick your team
good luck it's it's intimidating uh
Anyway, so that's how I got into tech.
That's a very long answer.
On the contributing topic,
so I went to DrupalCon for the first
time this last year.
I stayed for Contributor Day.
Contributor Day at DrupalCon is the last
day.
At WordCamps, it's often the first day,
although it's kind of been either way.
And...
DrupalCon sort of starts off,
Contributor Day starts off,
like you kind of figure out where, what,
if you're a developer,
you go with the developers,
if you're marketing,
you go with like marketers, and if you're,
you know, other things,
I don't know where you go.
But they kind of divide people up a
little bit.
And then at least for the developer track,
you, for first time contributors,
you are paired with a mentor.
Um, so every new contributor has somebody,
one person who has at least gone through
it and probably has gone through it a
couple of times, um,
sitting with you and like, this is,
we're going to look for an easy ticket
for you to work on.
We're going to like read up on what's
needed.
We're going to find the line of code
or whatever.
Uh,
and then you make your first merge request
and, um,
Um,
walks you through the whole sort of
process and the mentor is also,
there's like a,
there's like mentor leads and all the
tables or whatever.
So like, you know,
like when they have questions, they go,
so like there's a,
there's a whole process.
And I think that like that level of
one-on-one, uh, interaction, like,
like mentorship is really, uh,
really valuable.
Um,
it's also something that gets tracked on
drupal.org.
So like you, like my drupal.org, uh,
profile now says who my mentor was at
DrupalCon Atlanta.
And his Drupal.org profile will show that
he was a mentor and maybe the event,
I don't know.
And then, yeah, like you,
you do your thing.
And then like a lot of the stuff
that I feel like
in WordPress is, is standardized now,
but like maybe at one point in time
was,
was more like ad hoc or like at
the, uh, like for props and things, uh,
like all that stuff is, uh,
is sort of like built into like how
they've integrated with like GitLab and
things like that.
Like it's,
It's, it's, it's actually a pretty good,
like it's far, it feels far less like,
I don't know,
chaotic and you're kind of left to your
own devices then, uh,
then contributor days that I've been to at
WordCamps.
Yeah.
So I think that's great.
Cause I agree.
Like when I was at the Doomload World
Conference and I met, um, uh,
Tessa Mero, who was in charge,
her and her partner at the time,
were in charge of the Gmail extension
directory because I thought that's what I
wanted to do because I liked, you know,
learn very quickly.
That was not the place for me.
I was much better at the asking for
money part.
looking at code quality and standards and
for plugin submissions, sorry,
extension submissions.
But she sat down and showed me the
whole process and it was way less
intimidating.
That mentor idea is great.
I know that they started kind of like
a WordCamp mentorship thing at WordCamp
U.S., WordCamp U.S.
um so there's definitely a lot of good
ideas that's going around at like joomla
does this thing called pizza bugs and fun
uh and that is like basically bug
squashing and uh you can do it remotely
or in person and then you get some
cash to you know buy pizza or whatever
that's very easy to join because somebody
who's new can just do the testing part
or you know whatever uh
It's very set process wise.
I feel like there needs to be good
on ramps for people who are interested
because I feel like it's still the onus
is still on the volunteer to really push.
And I feel like that's too bad because
I feel like a lot of people would
give a couple hours a week if there
was just an easier on ramp.
for lack of a better analogy,
I feel like when you show up to
a contributor day,
it should feel like you're walking into a
church for the first time where everyone
is overly happy to see you do whatever
they can to make sure you have a
great experience.
Uh, uh, I don't, you know, I'm not,
not to knock anything,
but you know what I mean?
Like there's like that, that,
that culturally, you know,
over welcoming culture.
Yeah.
And, uh,
I think we can all kind of learn
from each other and make best practices.
But that Drupal process you're talking
about sounds awesome.
And at the end of the day,
I think a lot more,
there's a lot of ways people can
contribute.
It's not just code.
And that's what I always try to tell
people is you can contribute to projects
in lots of ways.
It's not just sitting there and working on
code or documentation.
There's lots of ways you can use your
skills in.
whatever that may be.
Yeah, for sure.
So yeah,
getting back to the last part of the
very long question that was actually three
questions.
Having come from Joomla,
I'm interested in what parts of Joomla you
really appreciated
Well, Joomla, Mambo, whatever.
And what sort of you see as kind
of fundamental differences in either the
approach or things that are just different
between Joomla and WordPress.
I was on a panel recently.
at Badcamp,
where we had somebody who had experience
with Joomla and me as the WordPress guy.
And then there's a DrupalCon or camp.
So obviously everyone else is
understanding things from a Drupal
context.
And so it was interesting having the
conversation about like,
how do each CMS kind of approach things
differently?
And I'm interested in sort of like your
take from particularly from being so
embedded in Joomla.
Yeah,
so I used to be on the board
of Joomla, well, technically,
of Open Source Matters,
which is the legal entity.
But anyway,
we don't need to get into governance.
I think from a code perspective,
what Joomla has that's really interesting
is they are not afraid to be beyond
modern.
be on modern code bases and modern
frameworks.
That's also could be, you could argue,
be the detriment to the project because,
you know,
breaking BC has kind of become a meme
in Gen one.
It's gotten better.
especially more recently.
It's very easy to, well,
it's much less painful than it used to
be, from what I understand.
Obviously,
I'm now using it more as a hobby
instead of as a daily thing.
So I think that's super interesting.
Joomla was the first ever open source CMS
to mandate PHP seven.
Um, and host hated us,
like tons of hosts were mad,
hundreds of hosts were upset.
Um,
but the project made that decision and
because of that, it may, it,
it pulled up the standard for everyone
else.
Um, and so it all, we all,
all the projects,
especially in the PHP open source world.
So, you know,
affect each other in different ways in
ways that we might not even think about.
Um,
Uh, so I,
I really liked that about it.
Um,
what I like about Joomla is that the
governance is cause I was there when it
was reorganized.
Um, the governance is very public.
Um,
you can see how the government is set
up and it's all laid out.
And, uh,
as far as how voting goes and things
like that,
similar to Drupal where you can join and
get, you know, vote and things like that.
So, uh, I appreciated that,
but on the flip side,
On the reorg,
Joomla became a very flat organization and
I've seen lots of stuff stall.
So where other projects like Drupal and
WordPress have, I would say,
more clear direction because they have a
lead and that has significant benefits
too.
I'm just a, you know,
my whole philosophy is figuring out what
makes sense for open source in general,
because I think the battle is not with
each other.
It's with closed source systems that
um can hijack your data or can you
know handcuff you and make it very
expensive very quickly and shopify is a
perfect example of that shopify is a great
user experience i'm not it's an amazing
user experience for a store owner and it's
very easy to enter but then when you
have success it gets very expensive very
quickly um and that is where i feel
like um
we need to focus on.
And there's been initiatives like this.
like there's All Things Open and other
like open source conferences where people
try to come together and share best
practices and things.
And there's been nonprofits,
like in Germany,
there was a nonprofit called the CMS
Garden, which had, I think,
twelve open source projects part of it.
So there's been initiatives and things.
But I feel like in every open source
project,
there's so much tribalism and I feel like
it doesn't help anybody.
being number one in WordPress,
that's amazing.
WordPress is great.
I love WordPress.
Uh, but does it,
is that what's really important or is
getting more people onto the open web
regardless of what that means more
important?
Yeah.
Well, thank you, Mike, for coming, uh,
that we're kind of at time at this
point.
Uh, but before we go, uh,
where can people find you on the internet?
Sure.
So you can find me on my website,
Mike demo.com.
MP Mike on X.
And that's where I'm most active.
And yeah, I'm also can,
you can find me at hosting.com and
different webinars and things over time.
But pretty much all my links from Mike
demo.com will get you to all of the
socials and all of the things.
Awesome.
Well, thanks again for coming on.
It was a pleasure to have you on
the show.
And yeah,
for everyone else that is watching or
listening to this,
we will see you on the internet.
Awesome.
Thanks.