Sé Reed took this picture of my water bottle at PressConf. “That’s epic,” she said. I agree. I assume she saw in it the same thing I did when I found it — ourselves. The funny thing is, despite this sentiment being prevalent amonst those of us that have been in the WordPress community for a decade or more, I picked the sticker up from DrupalCon Atlanta.
I’ve been threatening to start a podcast for a few months. But I couldn’t settle on a theme. All I knew was that I wanted to use it as an opportunity to talk to interesting people. I knew it would be techy, but I’m not interested in a tech podcast. I’m interested in stories. I’m interested in people.
Over the last several months of hosting livestreams on the Pantheon YouTube channel, I’ve discovered that my style is to give guests the freedom to tell their stories. We’ll make sure there’s a call to action, some way of showing the topic’s relevance to Pantheon and our developer community, but I want to give them the flexibility to vibe, to do their thing, to show their stuff. As DevRel is “customer zero”, I want to be “audience member zero”.
PressConf was a differnet kind of event. It honestly shared more with AlterConf than it did with a WordCamp. The stories were personal, raw and honest. That didn’t mean there wasn’t technical content. But there was frequently a human story that wrapped around the technology. And somewhere along the way, ideas started forming in my head. About the theme that would tie the types of conversations and types of people I would like to talk to for this hypothetical podcast. And, really, it comes down to this sticker that resonated with me and other WordPressers despite its origin in the Drupal ecosystem.
At the heart of Community + Code
Community + Code will be a podcast focused on exploring the human stories behind the technology we build. Technology shapes much of the world around us, but frequently we forget about the humans that orchestrate the code. How did they come to the decisions and choices and learnings that make whatever it is that they’re passionate about?
I want to create something where I can have real, honest conversations with people. I want to ask people their opinions and their feelings about the technologies that are shaping our world. I have a lot of questions. In learning these stories, maybe we can cultivate a little empathy and understanding in the communities we’re part of.
Code
I’ll invite people from the ecosystems around me, connected by technology and the developer communities.
Community
We’ll connect as humans to tell the stories about the people behind the commits to show that we’re more similar than different and we can learn by sharing with each other.
Community first
The mantra is “Come for the code, stay for the community.” But to me, that puts too much emphasis on the technology. Community should come first. We’re people before we’re coders.
The future
I can’t predict the future, but my hope is for a regular schedule of interesting guests and conversations that are appealing to anyone in our space. Ultimately, this podcast is intended to serve as a call for collaboration and empathy, and a reminder that behind every line of code is a human story waiting to be told.