EP303 – 2019 WordPress Predictions

(00:00) is you sit on a throne of lies 303 is that awesome yeah three that’s here at coda member Wow Wow we are in 303 are in Eriko territories that’s it that works out pretty good all the threes so today we’re gonna do a little bit of predicting of the future of what’s going on in WordPress here for this particular year I I do want to I do want to make sure that before we begin that that I do mention the fact that Jonathan was the one that brought up this particular topic it is him for it his oh I just want to
(00:35) make sure that that’s that’s out there in that and that we’re all aware of the fact that it may be Jonathan’s fault if this is what happens here that server press makers of desktop server are the sponsor of this particular episode I wanna say thank you very much for them also make sure that we get the stream button so thank you for that I appreciate that you’re gonna be you’re gonna be first George I’m gonna let you before us first how about it myself that like forth but first Forrest he’s gonna be forced I’ll be
(01:18) forced to go first gosh okay hi I’m Georgia fan us i play pokemon and build random things for automatic what master i just like playing it but yeah communities coming up on the 12th so get out there and catch the little pokey monsters random jokes ignore me they were by baby number in the chat what dawn how about you tell us about yourself where you’re out what you’re doing all those fun things we have to Jones which Sean John Brown oh we do that’s true technically I’m John Brown always hated
(02:09) me what yeah I run a company called nine seeds we sell themes we develop custom websites for folks I am also a full-time nomad currently residing in Austin Texas couple months we need to parody the song mr. John Brown always ran nine seeds what I’d say what’s your what’s your jingle tell us about yourself for so keep up with George I am Keith Craig oh I’m from
(03:18) Hollister California fairly new to the WordPress community and mmm thank you for having me here we like we like new folks to be on the show and if they if you want to be on the show please make sure you reply to our emails all those from Hollister Keith as someone is fairly new to the show it was a lot scarier the first time than I thought it would actually it turned out a lot better than I thought it would yeah so Jonathan old I live up in beautiful North Idaho my game of the week has been pub key doing a lot of that lately I’m
(04:05) terrible at it comparatively but having some fun doing it and Smash Bros with my son and what WordPress awesome over at our house we call it pub cheese I tend to main snake or Bowser important – no Jason Packer on Twitter my website Jason tuckered-out blog in this show and the other show that I do here on dipey water core network is called WP blab before you go take a look at that we we skipped this week I had stuff going on and just things happen and I don’t care if it’s the first a year or not but you
(04:44) know if I can’t hit record we’re not hitting records responsibilities man I did so let’s talk a little bit about this this this this idea of what are the things that are going to be happening here in WordPress in in 2019 what do you guys got what’s what’s something out there that you’re looking at that that should be something that might happen [Laughter] say Jonathan I think it did you to talk about the nature predictions for a moment like do you go for like because I’m kind of as I’m thinking about
(05:23) putting something permanently in the record because this is like the wreck it’s less risky animation because there’s things that like yeah that’s that’s a pretty safe prediction WordPress is gonna grow in 2019 so I’m curious like I’ve got one that I think is yeah I mean I wasn’t offering to go first though stop of the meta of traditions I mean like impersonate Nostradamus or something right we’re just wordpress predictions right we’re not pretty big me into the world we’re not like athletes very seriously
(06:01) look before we started I even said you know what let’s cry let’s crank out George’s tarot card reader deck and we’ll play with that and figure out if it’s something that that’s going to help us with determine what’s gonna happen in this particular year in WordPress I think I think if that’s going to happen in this particular year in WordPress it’s going to be the fact that the the editor itself is going to obviously it’s changed but I think that you’re gonna have these like various camps that are
(06:30) that are cropping up you already seen it yeah people that are like I’m not gonna install this ever ever ever and then you have the which I would I would for the most part call them the classic pressors the people that just are not gonna change anything and then you have the folks that are like I’m embracing it I’m gonna use it I mean I wrote a blog posted it took me a little while to write it but and to get all my stuff kind of figured out but overall I think that’s what’s gonna end up happening is
(06:55) that editor is gonna be like the thing that is really gonna kind of start changing things in WordPress yeah I predict by the middle of the year everyone 95% of people will be greatly in favor of whether we’re better and faster adoption than the customizer as an example I think that’s a no-brainer like it it’s good it’s just buggy like there’s a few little bugs here and there so but in terms of overall experiences I think that either will be that will be well embraced in a few months the good
(07:35) no John please you’re on a roll oh I think one of the predictions that I’m curious about and this is like how we do this is question is I’m sure everybody here heard about the proposal for the WordPress governance project I’m curious what the predictions are I am super excited by it but I am Supre conflicted over where it will actually go I can’t make a prediction because it’s like well I’m super conflicted because apparently that meetings happening the community team slack channel and now I was exposed
(08:20) to all of the theme betting or there was something betting happening and I was like black notifications so I’m I’m intrigued that it has been put with that group for community teams because it kind of seems like it might be overlapping existing functionality within that team um so I’m interested to see if it ends up there or with its own channel or where that turns into because I think there’s a lot of people who are interested in and I think a lot of people a lot more people than we might expect
(08:55) yeah actually go to to it and want to be involved except to use a slack and slack because you gotta just jump in you just go do it I I come from the land of IRC that what’s my roots as IRC and talking about governance for a moment I think for me I think part of it it’s very hard because it’s so much it’s about people right it’s very hard to predict where something like that is gonna go for me personally I’m excited that there’s light being shone on the topic because ultimately whatever the outcome is the
(09:36) more people that are understanding like there’s a lot of like just misunderstanding about how things work how they don’t work so you know for me it’s like oh I’m excited to see this as a topic because now that the lights are turned on and people are paying attention to there’s gonna be a chance for more understanding whatever the outcome ends up being I think if there’s probably some reasonable predictions that could be made if you’re really kind of deeply embedded in the topic which
(10:00) I’m not right now started January in a.m. Pacific time well but obviously people have been thinking I mean some sense had already started that we can have us right like there’s there’s movement happening around it have been for a while like it’s yeah like been driven by specific concerns and and as WordPress grows these are the type of topics that need to be addressed we have other models to look out one of things that stood out to me earlier last year I had the chance to go to the CMS summit
(10:31) and talk to something that Google held and there’s a bunch of folks from different projects that were there and just talking to other open-source project leaders about how they do governance it was all one thing that stood out to me is all it’s all very different from one project to the next and one of the I think that we benefit from more which I think a project like this highlights is the opportunity to see what are other people doing what’s working what’s not working what are the ramifications of this decision in that
(10:56) decision and I think we’re more than bit as a community to get the benefit of that being brought together and then make some educated decisions about what’s best for us I think it’s probably useful for the people watching this who never even heard of it maybe know a little bit of background so google it but every kept us it was proposed that there be a governance project kind of there are two sides to that both the WordPress taking a role in shaping standards bodies of the wider web as well as having a guiding role of the
(11:30) overarching project yeah and I think the issue is is that a lot of people say we everyone who’s ever contributed to WordPress right like has a role in shaping WordPress but WordPress really lacks a lot of clear leadership and direction like we we go release quarterly so they’re very incremental even if you want to do release like the Guttenberg 5.
(11:56) 0 release it’s really hard it takes a really long time there isn’t a good management structure that transitions between releases and they can do big things and then the other issue is just simply not being represented at to be he in the accessibility standards bodies at the web working groups all of these it’d be useful to have a unified voice that says hey we represent 30% of the web it’s a pretty sizable chunk and we think that this serves democratizing publishing this you know accessibility or language translation or you know better UI UX
(12:32) whatever performance improvements reducing data usage for data constrained viewers like all of these things are important and WordPress ought to shape not just react to what the standard bodies do but help reshape I think it’s really important to note this right I said the order of those is because I think it’s really important to note that because we got to get our own house in order first because if we don’t we meaning the WordPress community you know Gutenberg created a lot of animosity a lot of
(13:14) distrust in the community lot of skepticism I would say even a lot of fear as to the it used to be I think that people had this sort of unn unwielding face that WordPress would be there and that it was gonna continue and it would be this strong platform and I think the Gutenberg rollout caused some doubt there and I think that it’s that doubt kind of affects people’s willingness to be involved to go full-throttle to you know there may be looking at other stuff instead of contributing so I think that we really
(13:53) need to get our own house in order and repair that and you know what you said first John is that you know by the mid year you think most people will be on board and I think that it’s really important too that we do that because we have to get everything we got to get ourselves together so that we can keep moving forward and then so that we can do that because the issues of larger web governance are big issues that we need to get to and need to use our voice to and but we perform that we all have some big issues of transparency and
(14:24) leadership to deal with in the WordPress community so it’s it’s a tall order do we feel good we’re at that at the end of this year it’s gonna sting do we feel that it’s okay to have these discussions outside of slack outside of you know make WordPress have it on places like this have it on places like Twitter have it on places like Facebook or is that something that’s because I’ve been seeing a few posts about this on especially on Twitter and I only look at Twitter every once in a while but when I
(14:56) do I’m stuck there for 30 minutes because there’s this like epic thread that’s going on and all these people are kind of branching off of it but from what I’ve been seeing it’s like it seems like like Twitter isn’t the right place to be doing this type of discussion and I don’t understand why that is I think a discussion regardless of where it’s happening as long as there’s a good discussion happening we should be okay with it I mean I think there’s a few there’s different types of discussions
(15:18) right like I think Twitter is great for promoting awareness of the topic and like and putting questions out there but ultimately I think one and this is part of the challenge of being this large open-source community sometimes yeah a discussion so hey that’s really your insights are really valuable why don’t you bring them to this this next conversation that’s happening I think it’s like that they shouldn’t be happening on Twitter or they shouldn’t be happening on Facebook or in person or
(15:41) whatever it’s that we need we all us here the people conversating on Twitter need to show up for that meeting and also say that stuff there because if we’re all just saying stuff out here and then relying on who to say that stuff in the meeting I mean Morton’s really smart but like he literally can’t know everything you know so we all have to take the responsibility of if we’re going to be having that conversation to show up to that meeting and participate well and I think that’s the thing is
(16:12) what with Jason was saying is I think the conversations happen everywhere like that’s how conversations happen they just happen where they happen like I don’t think there’s long with that the issue is that and this is just the issue of open-source software right we all see it people like to say thing more than they do things and this is like so many things in open-source people need to do things and just saying we think this should happen isn’t it’s a vote but it’s a very weak vote it’s like being one of
(16:43) millions of people voting for something else like ultimately the people who get stuff done or the people who take an active role and do stuff I wanna I would like to actually make a little caveat there because I think that concept actually prevents people from joining in a conversation because contributing if it’s in a place where people contribution is happening within a select channel within the meeting we need we need opinions we need concepts it doesn’t have to be that everybody has to be able to or be you know time wise
(17:17) or skill wise be able to implement the thing that they’re commenting on that’s the the beauty of having all of us I think participating and the doing can also be having the opinions and contributing as long as it’s happening in a place where that’s actually happening you’re not contributing if you’re just talking on Twitter and then not not bringing that in and make you know following that thread and make sure that it’s being discussed where the stuff is happening but I just think it’s
(17:45) important to do that because I think people self exclude and myself included self exclude their opinion because even though they may have great insight or they may have they might have an idea or they may have found something they feel like if they can’t fix it or if they can’t contribute past the information then they shouldn’t contribute and I think is a misnomer in our community specifically we need people to come be part of the conversation show their opinion and if they are able to pick up some of the work also and implement I
(18:17) think that’s what I’m saying though is that that conversation happens everywhere and all of that is contribution rights like Twitter a few things I want to add like first there’s this idea that I think right now we’re very like code heavy in terms of contribution and it’s it’s still difficult for designers for you know the X the what yes of people who can bring a lot of value to the project that there’s not clear paths to doing so it’s very uphill right now and that’s being
(18:46) addressed by it like people people are paying attention to that there’s also there’s something about like so so that as if we need to get better about that like how do we get a lot more the codes important it’s not going away how do we get a lot more than that into the project a lot of the conversations that I have with like tech companies about getting involved in WordPress they’re like what can we bring what can we do and it’s like they don’t have a plain cord press developers and staff so what
(19:11) can what can they bring a lot of that’s about bringing expertise the other part of this though is that there’s something to be said about like how with the attitude that people bring to bring it because you’re right say I agree entirely like people need to be bringing their perspective and representation like but but the way they do that can make a big difference in terms of our people putting up their guard because of how its brought to them or down and that’s there’s a responsibility on the
(19:34) part of like and it’s you know we need to encourage and and like try to have thick skin about some of those things and be patient with people and ultimately I think there’s a lot of opportunity for people to think about how can they bring their ideas and what matters to them more productive way where it’s like hey just want like and maybe able to perhaps say I don’t know how to fix this but I wonder bring this awareness I’m open to anyone suggestions about what I could do so I think there’s the we need to do
(20:04) better about encouraging and supporting people who aren’t bringing just code to the project cuz we need a lot more of that for this thing to do I think that’s a huge part of what the whole point of the governance project is is to bring people in who want to govern and leave and there’s a point like those are the people that need those people need to exist and then those people need to listen and act but right now there’s a lot of people talking and I value those opinions but they’re talking to other
(20:34) people who are talking they’re not talking to people who are listening and that’s that’s a fundamental disconnect is that yeah nobody’s listening I think that’s called Twitter well that is the entirety of Twitter but there we need a structure where there are people who listen who parse all of those things that people are saying into actionable stuff and take some action on it and I think that there’s a little bit too much of like I said there’s there’s too much people talking to other people who are
(21:09) talking and there’s not enough people who are there listening and taking action and it’s not to say that we don’t need more people talking but there needs to be somebody listening to those people right now really good at that who are good at like taking in all the inputs emphasizing who aren’t currently and I mean there’s a lot of good things happening I know some of those types of people and they’re doing good things but to do that in a bigger way to shine more light on it I think there’s a lot that
(21:33) can be done to put people like because you have some brilliant programmers who they’re not good at that nor are they ever going to be good at like take it listening and hearing all the things or should they have to so anyway a lot of the issue with this that people feel that it’s not transparent or they’re not participating you know like because you know developers can can be grouchy about stuff like that you know when I talked to my brother about stuff and I say something that he deems you know not
(22:02) smart enough he’s like you don’t know that already or of course that’s something you know I’ve gotten used to it because you know I grew up with the developer and a programmer but there’s a lot of people who don’t who are like oh and I’m like offended and feel like oh I’m not worthy and so you know that’s something I think the developer community is also in WordPress is gonna have to get a little bit better at and I know that that’s a lot a lot of people are doing that and it I think
(22:29) that this WordPress governance project will help with that and I think that is going to be really strengthening to the community as a whole I’m very excited about it navigation the community will be strengthened in 2019 I think that will happen I do think like I this goes back a good break thing I think we will heal our wounds and all pull together I do too really good let’s be real come on what do you what are you thinking about all this I’m just trying to take it all in he’s one of the well I’m I feel like
(23:12) I’m one of the listeners as well in this I mean I like I don’t have enough time to sit there and watch slack go by especially and I’m not productive at 8 o’clock in the morning so that’s not gonna happen for me either but just the the idea of that being the only place that can have that type of conversation I just I don’t have enough time energy or willpower to be able to really jump in there and and watch that type of transaction happen you know you know these these people kind of talking back
(23:39) and forth about this stuff in a slack environment I I’m just I’m not I’m not yeah you know to a two-degree that actually goes back to what we were talking about last week where we touched a little bit on accessibility and you know we were talking about in terms of websites and different ways of approaching publishing content and whatnot but I think that that’s actually it’s kind of what we were just talking about it’s like we have to make in the WordPress accessibility word world it’s
(24:05) not just for users it’s for participants you know what I mean like slack is actually a problem accessibility wise because if you thread the comments apparently it’s not accessible so a core component which would the conversations of slack more MORE you know organized in a bunch of the meetings that I’ve been in you can’t thread because of the accessibility so slack just becomes a seed of nonsense without even reading capability so I think maybe you know the conversation about where the conversation is
(24:40) happening should be cuts I’ve heard some great folks that have been really filling out like it’s for like matter most as a hosing option instead of slack just because it is open source and there’s a lot more customized ability we could do and we could have the like logs of the chats publicly indexable like we used to have on IRC back in the day whereas now you need to log into slack to actually see the logs and use their amazing search feature which to be fair is pretty good I’m sure a message on
(25:22) slack with someone like on the org and to make slack it’s like yeah that’s not gonna load the list of individuals on my phone like I wanna send that’s somebody they’re like now it just crashes I can’t handle ten thousand next prediction I predict that amp is gonna grow a lot in 2019 and WordPress will do I yeah so on that front I predict that amp first websites will become a thing a big thing yeah and that’s role growth is that sites will be built yes it’s gonna super mobile first is
(26:07) kind of just the thing like I think a lot of this can be driven by themes specifically where they’re now offering that as an option and a lot of users just won’t care or notice it’s just going to look like they expect it to look but it’s all in is it weird that I’ve never worked on a project that uses amp that’s part of why like it hasn’t really recently again that’s part of why like intelligent because they don’t know how to monetize and a lot of is it don’t need to be that aware you stand there
(26:48) are plugins you can just install and suddenly your website works for amp oh yes no that’s not true but my 19 is that that those gaps will be addressed because up until that’s addressed like amp couldn’t take off in WordPress until I can’t click and it works but if you address that then I think that’s gonna be people are like yeah I mean when I show it to users at meetups etc like wow this is a lot faster this looks a lot better like and and if you can make it accessible where people can just turn it
(27:20) on and not even think about it then I think you’re gonna see a lot of traction all am does to me well what amp signifies to me is that people want content with not all of everyone’s crap I just want the one thing ok it does reduce crap but it also implements kind of like what progressive web apps do where there’s a service work on things load faster because they lazy load and less kind of random JavaScript stuff like you to use JavaScript but there’s it’s a simplified experience which goes
(27:55) to minimalist design all these other things that are already in the mainstream and again I think people want that and so I think it’s not just the faster thing because I don’t think users will notice that as much they’re like oh I think that was faster you know it’s almost imperceptible because they don’t notice unless it’s long people want as a consistent experience right so the advertiser aspect right is I don’t want to have to monetize mine on am site differently than my amp site I wanted to
(28:31) just work and if you do ant first and then you monetize it with ads or whatever else that are fully amp compliant then you still have a single ecosystem to deal with it’s a lot easier than we currently do which is like two of them right I just want to say thank amp is one of the best name things on the web know what George said I gotta correct something cuz we we tried turning amp on a lot of sites and there are so many validation errors xwp one yeah the automatic one the XIV P one there’s another one that who did it the
(29:14) other one got massively hacked maybe the problem is is not like you can put amp on a site and that will if your content is currently compliant which means like you don’t have anything weird like images or a from P tags or you don’t have inline styling or stuff that happens a lot on big sites then yeah sure it kind of just works and it gives you a minimally support of the apps experience but what most of us are doing that work for big publishers is you do a lot of customization to get that amp experience
(29:53) to look right now and you do a lot of existing content cleanup to get it the Valerie I think the amp is going to be and our next topic I think we should just say it I want I’d love to talk a little bit more about it but we’re at a time it’s 11:30 John thank you very much for I mean I I really want to talk about that and I want you to come back in Jonathan obviously I mean you guys had some involvement in any of that maybe it might be something you can talk about as well all right unless a thank you very
(30:23) much for all you folks for coming hanging out with us folks in the chat rooms folks to you know talking with us over on all the different social media places I want to say thank you for my panel here for coming out and hanging out with us as well I appreciate that go over to our website at Dave you work or comment on to subscribe to this and all the other things that are happening no idea what se is doing over there but all right folks talk to you later