[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there and welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast.
you have reached episode number, wait for it. 400, entitled from WordCamps to podcasts, but Kraus' is adventures in WordPress. It was published on Thursday, the 28th of November, 2024.
My name's Nathan Wrigley and a few bits of housekeeping before we begin. The first thing to say is that yes, it's episode 400. It's such an enormous milestone, but I'm not going to celebrate it in any way, shape or form. So there we go. Hm.
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We have a WordPress specific page just for you. WP Builds.com forward slash black. Once more WP Builds.com forward slash black.
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Okay. What have we got for you today? Well, today I am joined for a very nice conversation with Bud Kraus.
Bud is the person behind Joy of WP. It's a website where you can find his educational content. He's also got a podcast Seriously BUD? Which I'm going to link to in the show notes as well. And today is a bit of a chat.
I chat to Bud about podcasting, about WordPress, about the community. And it's just really nice to sit down and have a natter with somebody in the WordPress space, not about a product, or a service or anything like that. Just a community member chatting with another community member. And I hope that you enjoy it.
I'm joined on the podcast today by Bud Kraus. How yoyou doing Bud?
[00:05:02] Bud Kraus: Nathan, I am doing fine. How about you?
[00:05:04] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, we're both tired, aren't we, Bud?
[00:05:06] Bud Kraus: You are, not me.
[00:05:07] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, you are a bit. Tell me you are not even slightly tired.
[00:05:11] Bud Kraus: No, I am as fresh a daisy.
[00:05:13] Nathan Wrigley: Darn. Yeah. But then again, you didn't have to fly halfway across the world. You did have to go halfway across the country, I'm guessing, but.
[00:05:19] Bud Kraus: That's all the way
[00:05:20] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, we should talk about what we're on about. both Bud and I were last week in Portland, in Oregon.
We'll get onto that in a minute, but it was all to do with, word Camp us. Get onto that in a moment. Before we get onto that, bud and I are gonna have a chat about his, it's not that new anymore, but it's still fairly shiny. Bud's got himself a new podcast and we're gonna talk about that and it's got a great name and it's also.
It's quite a, conversational podcast, which is something that I appreciate. So it's not, not high and mighty not trying to teach you all the bits and pieces of code. It's, it's more jocular than that. Let's get into that in a minute, Bo, first of all, tell us about yourself. Give us your, give your two minute potted bio.
[00:06:03] Bud Kraus: two minutes. Okay. I've been using WordPress. Can I do that story?
[00:06:07] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. Do it.
[00:06:08] Bud Kraus: years, I was, forced to learn, not forced, but compelled to learn WordPress, and I'm glad I did. Once I understood what a child theme was, the way I was going, and then very gradually, year by year, I got more involved.
Sucked into, if you will, the WordPress community. And of course it is the best part of WordPress is the community. Everybody knows that.
[00:06:32] Nathan Wrigley: There you go. You had two minutes. You've still got one minute 30 left. If you unsee it.
[00:06:36] Bud Kraus: What is this a presidential
[00:06:37] Nathan Wrigley: That's right. Yeah. You go, that's right. I'm holding up cards now. If you're done, That's fine. where are you? where are you hailing from?
[00:06:44] Bud Kraus: sure. I, I Hailing is Cleveland, Ohio, excuse me. And the other, I've lived on the East Coast for 45 years. I live in, Nutley, New Jersey, 12 miles west, directly west of Times Square.
[00:07:00] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, okay. Yeah. You, I'm, pretty ignorant of, American accents, American Canadian. I, really couldn't spot one from another. But your one, I, think I would've understood to be like a new Yorkie type accent. Is that about right? No. Okay. Shaking
[00:07:17] Bud Kraus: not at all.
[00:07:18] Nathan Wrigley: dear.
[00:07:19] Bud Kraus: Nope. Midwest, generic American accent.
[00:07:24] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. I, there we go.
There's my, there's my thoughts about accents out the window. but, you started a new podcast. You've obviously been in the WordPress space for ages. Tell us about the itch that you're scratching. If it's anything like me. Did you step into podcasting accidentally, or was yours actually in intentional,
[00:07:43] Bud Kraus: It's very simple. I, for years told Bob Dunn, I think you know the
[00:07:47] Nathan Wrigley: the bulb? Yeah.
[00:07:48] Bud Kraus: the Bob. I told the Bob, and that's a whole nother story, but I told him for years, the last thing I will ever do is a podcast. why would anybody do a podcast? there's a million of 'em. What would I podcast about?
On and on, and then last year. Excuse me. Last year we had, work camp US in Washington and I walked away thinking, I wish I had more time talking with. Nathan Wrigley. I only got to wave to him, which is usually the truth. And that's it. And I just wish I had more time. And then I thought in five seconds, the entire idea was born to do a podcast where I would interview people to have an unexpected conversation about their life.
Not to do your typical WordPress podcast like about your journey, your code, your plugin, whatever. But where were you born? What do you do when you're not doing work? And. things like asking maybe some kooky questions or their life story questions, any just conversation and it just. and I thought about it for a while, was I gonna do this and not do this?
And eventually I got to the go decision. then I spoke with a very good friend of mine who's a graphic designer in Atlantic, Georgia, and she came up with the name and the art direction and the whole thing because I had a very, I. Corny, stupid name for it. And she goes, no, It's called Seriously bud.
And with a question mark and all that. And that every time somebody comes on the show, they have to, in response to one of my questions, say, seriously, bud. and it's just been a lot of fun. And I've interviewed now this week is episode number 29, so to me it's still pretty new. It's Rich Tabor and it's, At the end, I always ask, who would you, who do you think I should interview for an episode? Now, I, am just saying this, but I have about two year supply of people to interview. I think I'm gonna have to live to be about a hundred in order to get everybody in because I, when I started this, I thought.
Getting people to talk about themselves should be pretty easy to do. If that's hard to do, then we're not going anywhere with this podcast. So getting people to come on the show and do this has been really, it's been a lot of fun and it's people I know very well, or people I hardly know at all. It doesn't matter.
[00:10:22] Nathan Wrigley: It is a really nice idea, isn't it? Because the, it's one of the things which makes. An event, which we're gonna talk about later. a real in-person event, like a word camp. One of the best bits is not actually for me at least anyway. The best bit isn't always the presentations, although they can be marvelous.
It does tend to be the sort of dwelling in the hall that we call it the hallway track. And it's the sort of serendipitous. Bumping into somebody who then no doubt will introduce you to the person they're standing next to. You've never met before. And very often you get into conversations about who knows what.
sometimes it's related to WordPress, but often it doesn't end up like that, and you just end up having a chat and what have you. And so that's, the premise of the Seriously Bud Podcast. Just here's a person that you may have heard of, but now we're gonna ask them a bunch of questions that have got potentially nothing to do with WordPress.
I'm sure that WordPress creeps into it from time to time 'cause of
[00:11:10] Bud Kraus: Yes, I allow, yeah, I allow people to talk. A minute or two, I'll even say, this is the time. You can talk about
[00:11:16] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And, and have you found it to be an enjoyable enterprise? Because one of the, one of the only things in life I've ever stuck at is this podcast. I'm quite good at flitting from thing to thing.
You, you, I don't know if you are the same as me, you begin a project, you get a quarter of the way through the execution of it, and you lose interest in a shiny new idea. Crops up and off you go. But for some reason I've managed to keep this podcast going for well many years now, and I can only draw the conclusion is because I really like it.
And that for me is clearly the case. I like doing it. I like talking to people. I enjoy the. I know the fact that I can do it from the quietness of my own home or I can take a microphone onto an event and do it and, I just like it. And I wondered if 29 episodes in you are still enjoying it in the same way that you did, or is it becoming a bit more of a kind of worky chore kind of thing now?
[00:12:10] Bud Kraus: I like it more
[00:12:11] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, nice.
[00:12:12] Bud Kraus: and it's hard to believe I was meant to do this. I was. I, first of all, I've always loved interviews, people's stories, biographies, history, radio, all that stuff. That's me. So I was made to do this. And the truth of the matter is a year ago when I start, I, my first. One was Marcus Burnett in, March when I first started this, I, thought I don't even care if I ever get a sponsor, and now I'm getting sponsors because I just said, I love doing this so much.
I don't care. And I still, now I'm starting to care because it takes a lot of time. Okay, let's face it. It's, it does, it just takes time. And so you do wanna get compensated for the time, but I think it's really cool to give. It's not really, sure I love doing it, but I also know I'm giving people an opportunity to talk about themselves in a way that they normally don't talk about to the WordPress community.
That's the idea. To make it a platform for you to come on and talk about yourself, and you're coming on in a couple weeks, I know to talk about. To get, for people to get to know you in a way that they may not get to know. So I think that's really cool. And speaking of Marcus, you know what he always says to me, I can't believe you thought of this idea. And I look at that and go, it's amazing that it took this long for somebody to come up with this idea. It is. It's just, one of
[00:13:40] Nathan Wrigley: The idea feels very portable as well, in that you wouldn't really be confined to WordPress. You could, do it with almost anything, couldn't you? it could be, film stars or musicians or whatever, and you just ask the questions, which just pry open their personal life a little bit.
And obviously they can give away the amount that they want and what have you. But I guess nice to, frequent a community that you already know and, and what
have
[00:14:02] Bud Kraus: that's, yeah, that's true. And of course there's a lot of commonality
[00:14:05] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:07] Bud Kraus: in the, community and, people will come out and say, I'm an open book. And of course, they're not an open book. Nobody's an open book. That's ridiculous. They're not gonna tell me stuff that they don't wanna tell me, even though I'm gonna try to get them to, but, I, yeah, that's, people are too smart for that kind of thing.
[00:14:24] Nathan Wrigley: Can I ask you a question? when you decided to do it, did you have all the equipment and processes mapped out or have you gone on a bit of a journey with that?
[00:14:33] Bud Kraus: I knew nothing. Okay. Nothing. I didn't know software. I didn't know anything. I had to ask around should I use this? That I'm still learning, obviously the landscape, but I feel much more comfortable now. And what does this do? What does that do? How do you do this? How do you do that? That sort of fundamental, blocking and tackling of this.
I pretty much have that down.
[00:14:56] Nathan Wrigley: I was exactly the same. I had a mic lying around when I began episode one, probably episodes one through, I don't know, a hundred. with a mic that I had lying around. it wasn't a good mic, but it wasn't terrible. I think it was like something I got on Black Friday 'cause I, I just wanted a microphone, but it wasn't particularly good.
And then I didn't have any software of at all, so I used this free thing called Audacity. So you throw the, the, soft, your audio files that you've recorded with your mic into Audacity, and then that was free to use. it's got the bells and whistles that you need to do a podcast, not necessarily the easiest thing.
And then, and then I used, SoundCloud, which. I don't use anymore as the way to get the actual episodes out there. And most of it I stumbled across through a Google article, or Google search I should say. And, and so I was up and running. So if you are listening to this and you're thinking, I wanna do a podcast a bit like Bo Yeah, just, yeah, just don't, yeah, don't, don't, be put off.
It's, really trivially easy. So, we got out the way that I use a lying around mic, I used Audacity and SoundCloud to begin with. What are you, what's your current. Little tech stack. I know that's a bit, nerdy, but we're both podcasters, bud. We've gotta nerd
[00:16:11] Bud Kraus: No be. Yeah. Yeah. I guess so before, before I answer that, I wanna ask you, when did you get
[00:16:17] Nathan Wrigley: 2016.
[00:16:19] Bud Kraus: So you've been doing this for quite a while and I think it probably helped you get your name out, 'cause everybody knows who you are.
I wouldn't have known you
[00:16:29] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, I guess so. Yeah, it definitely helps getting your, name out. Actually, a curious thing about like this shouldn't be an episode about me, by the way. that's not the
[00:16:38] Bud Kraus: I can't help it,
[00:16:41] Nathan Wrigley: I, didn't attach my, face. I. To, to anything for a long time. I, had this notion that it was better to in, insulate myself from that.
but I noticed that on your album, you've gone for the opposite and, I think in the end I decided probably it's better to have my face on it. 'cause then I could turn up to things like word camps and it, would be all right, me carrying a mic around and shoving it in people's faces and they wouldn't think anything was quite so weird about it.
But anyway. Sorry, what's
[00:17:07] Bud Kraus: So A by the, okay, I will tell you. But after 10,000 images, they finally found one that works.
[00:17:14] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:17] Bud Kraus: and I distinctly remember where that was taken in Athens, Greece
[00:17:21] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, okay.
[00:17:22] Bud Kraus: at, Mount Libellus. There was a restaurant at the very top of, Greece, Athens, and I am sipping a, cafe, to espresso martini.
[00:17:32] Nathan Wrigley: is that what it is you're doing?
[00:17:34] Bud Kraus: yeah, that's what it is. All right. tech Stack. Yeah, not much. I have a, Mac computer.
I, I have these crummy headphones, which I'm gonna replace with a real professional microphone shortly. Thanks to my first sponsor. Can I mention
[00:17:51] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, if you like,
[00:17:53] Bud Kraus: of course. Omni Send. And they
[00:17:55] Nathan Wrigley: okay 'cause they're a sponsor of this podcast as well, so we're on a double win there.
[00:18:00] Bud Kraus: Okay.
[00:18:01] Nathan Wrigley: double duty that sponsorship is doing. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. Carry on.
[00:18:04] Bud Kraus: So they, yeah, so they said, we think you need a better microphone, so we'll help you out with that.
So I said, okay. And I, agree. And, that's really about it. I use, squad, cast script Buzz Sprout to, to, disseminate the, the shows and they're on all the. apple, Spotify, they're on wherever you get your podcasts, you can subscribe to Seriously. Bud drops once a week and it's about, 30 minutes or so of a conversation with somebody in the WordPress
[00:18:37] Nathan Wrigley: The, the nice thing about, being a podcaster is there's no gatekeeper. You don't need to be, I don't know, taken on by a giant media entity for it to work. So long as you've recorded some typically MP three files and you are prepared to pay a small amount of money, you. You could actually get away with it without paying any money apart from your hosting, but it's not recommended to do it that way.
Typically, you, pay, I don't know, $20 a month or something like that to a hosting company who host your audio, and then you're off to the races and the, gatekeeping is done by the, either knowing or not knowing that your podcast exists. you don't have to switch on the B, B, C or whatever channels you've got over there in, in the US to find your show.
If you've got an RSS feed, which is what a podcast player basically is, it's a fancy RSS feed
[00:19:28] Bud Kraus: Right.
[00:19:29] Nathan Wrigley: then, you can consume it. And I just think that's such a cool democratization of, it. You so long as you've recorded it and you willing to upload it somewhere, then you're off to the races.
It's great.
[00:19:41] Bud Kraus: you could actually say that this has a lower, barrier to entry than doing a
[00:19:46] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, yeah,
[00:19:48] Bud Kraus: Yeah, for sure.
[00:19:49] Nathan Wrigley: I, sus, I suspect that anybody in the WordPress space who's got a podcast, probably has a WordPress. Site at some point attached to it, but you don't need that because all you need is the RSS feed with the audio on it. I've, I listen to plenty of podcasts where there's no, website that I can discover.
Anyway, they've just got a podcast and, they promote it by going onto YouTube videos of other people a bit, a bit like you are doing at the moment. So what kind of, what kind of questions are you asking then, if they're tangential to WordPress? what inane are you asking?
[00:20:22] Bud Kraus: they're not really tangent, tangential by the way you use the word promoting. So I have to get back to this. You could go to my site seriously bud.com and sign up for my newsletter. Okay. That's seriously bud.com. Okay. Now what was the
[00:20:35] Nathan Wrigley: what, kind of subjects are you, what kind of questions are you asking?
[00:20:40] Bud Kraus: it just, it's really. There is no, it's biographical in nature. There's no question about that. your family, your life, your this, your that. I, like to ask about high school experiences because I'm interested in that. I'm interested in, love relationships. I'm interested in, those are the main, I'm, a people interested. I like people's stories. 'cause I think they're the best stories of all. And every single person I think has, I know this sounds corny, but I know this to be true. Amazing stories. Amazing. So my job is to get that amazing stuff out that, maybe.
You worked for so and or you did this, or you did that in your life, or you traveled there, or, my job is to just get, it is I'll tell you, there's so many things now that I see that people have in common. Can I just list them real quick? All right. We're all introverts except for one
[00:21:46] Nathan Wrigley: So I was gonna say some of us are,
[00:21:49] Bud Kraus: Yeah, I am, I'm an introvert, so I do that. yeah, some of, yeah, most of us are introverts. Many of us come from families whose mother was born in one country and father was born in another. That's
[00:22:03] Nathan Wrigley: and Okay, that's
[00:22:04] Bud Kraus: very most people, especially Europeans, of course, they speak. Multiple languages, that's pretty obvious.
most of them did not study anything to do with design development or
[00:22:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I fell into
[00:22:17] Bud Kraus: other things. Yeah, yeah. Or they studied international relations or they studied maybe communications, and, there's other characteristics.
[00:22:29] Nathan Wrigley: Can I drop one, which I'm sure you'll find to be true. A, non, statistically this, it can't be random, that loads of people that make things for the WordPress, space play a musical instrument.
[00:22:44] Bud Kraus: Oh yeah, absolutely. And also our photographers, big
[00:22:48] Nathan Wrigley: amount of people who I interview. And of course when I record my podcast, I never record the video.
It's just the, audio as we're doing now. the guitar nailed to the wall in the background. Oh, have you got, one?
[00:23:00] Bud Kraus: I. No, I, have, I don't know if you can see
[00:23:03] Nathan Wrigley: No, I can't quite, I can't see a guitar, but honestly it's it, but it's literally 50%,
[00:23:10] Bud Kraus: I'm not,
[00:23:11] Nathan Wrigley: so I.
[00:23:11] Bud Kraus: rich Taber told me he
[00:23:13] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah. He's got the guitars. I've seen them, but the
um,
[00:23:17] Bud Kraus: Vito.
that's how I, he was doing his agency summit like a year or two ago, and I said, and I started messaging him. I go, what's that guitar behind you? And we became friends.
[00:23:27] Nathan Wrigley: Are you, are, you not surprised by that then? Because I think it goes hand in hand with being creative. the, fact that you are, you've, had a, I dunno, probably a, an experience in childhood where you wish to be creative, but there's a kind of limited subset what you can do.
And playing musical instruments is just such a fabulous way of being creative. You do it with your friends and you get some product at the end of it and it's. But, just enjoyable. And then when you end up being a little bit older, you're casting around for things to do. And just like you said, most of the people that I've interviewed didn't have any formal training.
in fact, when I was growing up the internet, firstly it didn't exist. There's that, no, no. it.
[00:24:10] Bud Kraus: seriously, Nathan.
[00:24:11] Nathan Wrigley: did come about when I was about 20, so I'd got through that called of formal schooling, but it, a lot of people just fell into it because they realized it was something that they wanted to do and they tinkered with it in the evenings.
And the skill level back then was really much lower. So long as you could learn a bit of HTML and CSS, you were off to the races and, and then they fell into it. Like I fell into it and then, yeah. Oh, okay.
[00:24:34] Bud Kraus: I, when I saw, see I was in another career, I had another life and I wasn't too happy with it. And when I saw the internet in 1994,
[00:24:43] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:24:44] Bud Kraus: great background. I. Black text, blue links that
[00:24:48] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:24:49] Bud Kraus: I said, how do they do this? And I want to do that.
So it was like so gravitating to me. I just become obsessed and then I started teaching it and doing it and all that other stuff. 'cause I was older than most people, that's, I was born 20 years too early. So I have, I always feel like I have to make up for
[00:25:10] Nathan Wrigley: Dare I ask what year you were born?
[00:25:13] Bud Kraus: 1953.
Everybody wants to, everybody asked me
that question.
[00:25:18] Nathan Wrigley: your kind of into what may for many people be like a time to down tools and quit work and be more sedate retired, for want of a better word. Do you, is that not part of your makeup, are you, ever gonna be able to put your tools down and say, no, it's over now?
Or are you just gonna keep working?
[00:25:38] Bud Kraus: Can I swear now? No, I'm not gonna swear. not a chance. Okay. I, can't. I was, I got out of an Uber the other day and said, so are you drawing your pension now? You want me to what? I'm not. No, I am no, no. I am busier now and happier now, and more productive now than I've ever been in my life.
How
[00:26:04] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I like that. And also with this new venture that you've got with the podcast, it's also something that you are entirely in control of, and it's not client facing. so you can, judge what you wanna do and how much you wanna do it and how often you want to do it. Do you get the feeling that you'll take it on the road a bit like nowadays, we've got so many great bits of.
Technical equipment that you can just put in the back of a backpack that enables you to do a YouTube or a, or a recording of audio like we're doing now. with almost nothing of, you've got like something the size of, I don't know, it's like the size of a couple of playing card packs, of playing cards and and you can get everything recorded.
And you were just at Word Camp, us. I dunno if you did anything like that. Do you fancy
[00:26:48] Bud Kraus: No, I don't like that. But you know what, so Bob's walking around with a microphone, the whole time, and he is like asking people questions. I said, you probably got this thing running the whole time and just pretending that you're just turning on and off. I gu I said, are you probably gonna have 16 hours of people's.
Chit chat and we don't know about this 'cause there's no way to know that the microphone
[00:27:12] Nathan Wrigley: Switched off or on? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:15] Bud Kraus: So anyway, no, I don't wanna, do, I wanna do it the way I'm doing it. I'm not, I don't wanna do it in person. I want to con continue to do it, through squad cast or remotely.
[00:27:28] Nathan Wrigley: a nine. A nice lease of life though. It's something that you've got going on, which is, which wasn't with you last year. So this is really
[00:27:36] Bud Kraus: I was, I'm very fortunate to be doing the work that I love, which is this. And also I write and create content for web hosts and other businesses. I create WordPress content for WordPress businesses
and.
[00:27:51] Nathan Wrigley: Sorry. Go on. Carry on.
[00:27:53] Bud Kraus: There is a surprisingly huge market for this huge, if I was a kid right now, I'd be thinking about creating a, agency to do this kinda work.
'cause I can only do one thing at a time. But I have all kinds of companies now that are, asking me to do stuff. It's amazing. It's, crazy.
[00:28:15] Nathan Wrigley: we're, what we're doing here, Bo if you think about it, we're poisoning the well a little bit because we're encouraging everybody in the WordPress space to go out and start a podcast, and then the, landscape will get flooded and you and I. We'll have no, nothing else to do.
[00:28:30] Bud Kraus: Okay. Can we start over now
[00:28:31] Nathan Wrigley: basically, if you're listening to this, don't go and do a podcast.
Stop right now. If you, it's really hard. It's incredibly difficult.
[00:28:40] Bud Kraus: And expensive
[00:28:41] Nathan Wrigley: it costs so much money and so much thought needs to go into it. And yeah, just don't do it. it's a noose around your neck. No it isn't. Do a podcast. It's great fun. You might enjoy it, but, but maybe not in the WordPress space is all we need to say, go and do it about racing cars or musicians or something like
[00:28:57] Bud Kraus: I agree.
[00:28:58] Nathan Wrigley: So you and I, changing subject for the last few minutes. You and I were at an event last week and it was Word Camp us. It was in Portland, Oregon, which we'll date this recording 'cause it'll probably be several weeks before it comes out. But, there was, something which happened at that event, which we're not gonna talk about.
It'll be covered endlessly between the time that we're recording it and the time that this episode airs. We're not gonna get into that. But instead, let's just talk about the event for my part. that was the best WordPress event. Word Camp. I've been to lots of WordPress events, not all of them.
Word camps. That was my favorite word, camp bar none. I absolutely loved it, and I think you did too. What did you make of it?
[00:29:39] Bud Kraus: did you get to, see, I always ask the
Did you get to go to, did you go to sessions?
[00:29:46] Nathan Wrigley: went to a couple and I never managed to get to more than a couple. 'cause these days at the flagship events, my, my destiny is usually inside of a small room with microphones. so I, I didn't get to many and even the ones that I got to, I couldn't stay till the end. So I only saw the beginnings and the endings of bits.
[00:30:04] Bud Kraus: So I'm guessing you saw some of your friends. Who did you
[00:30:07] Nathan Wrigley: Yep. I saw, a bit of Michelle Fette, and I watched a bit of the, the speed builds that Jamie Marsden was doing with Brian Cords, and Amber Hines, which is a, nice new entertainment, feature of Word Camp. So it's more, he calls it edutainment, but the point is it's, it's education wrapped up in a bit of fun.
So those are
the ones.
[00:30:29] Bud Kraus: yeah, so I have never met Jamie, but I started calling it edutainment. 15, 20 years ago when I was teaching in
[00:30:38] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:30:40] Bud Kraus: and I realized if you're going to teach, you have to be an, an edu an entertainer too.
[00:30:46] Nathan Wrigley: he is definitely got that in spades. Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:30:48] Bud Kraus: Yeah. He sure does. So I'll meet him. I would think one day.
But anyway, I only went to one talk. It was Carrie Dills.
[00:30:58] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, nice.
[00:31:00] Bud Kraus: I love her accent and I love her too. And I finally got to meet her last year at Work Camp Europe and, She and my wife took a liking to each other, so I, she remembers and all that, that stuff. So I have a nice picture with me and Carrie and I was a huge, and still am a huge fan of her style, her teaching her all that stuff, love her.
big admirer of Carrie. but that's the only talk I wanted to go to Robbie Adair, but I'm gonna see Robbie. Next week, end at Work Camp Rochester. She's the keynote speaker and I am a speaker, I see her like all the time. One way or the
other, it seems
[00:31:45] Nathan Wrigley: So it's not for you. It's not for you about the presentations, then it's more about
[00:31:48] Bud Kraus: no, I always say, what do we even need those for?
why don't we just have parties and vendor track, and I'm happy. That's all I
need.
[00:31:58] Nathan Wrigley: What did, you take out of it as why, if you enjoyed it as much as I did and I made the bold claim that it was one of the best ones I've ever been to, what would, your intuition be as to why it was so good? for me, the venue was spectacular. It was absolutely huge.
But rather than being huge and spread out all over the place, like a spider diagram where, you go for a big walk and you get to one thing, then you gotta come back to the hub and go for another walk. All of this was. On a massive scale, but everything was in the exact same spot so you didn't have to go, like the sponsors must have found it amazing because everything, the sponsor booths were really close to where everything was happening, including the food.
And I think if you put the food near the sponsor booths, that's quite a win for the sponsors. 'cause everybody goes through the sponsors to get to the food and all that kind of thing. So I think it was the venue itself really big, really comfy loads of space. and obviously lots of nice people.
But that was my take.
[00:32:53] Bud Kraus: I think, first of all, I don't know where you, I was staying right across the street at the Hyatt.
[00:32:58] Nathan Wrigley: I was next door to
that. Yeah.
[00:32:59] Bud Kraus: So that was convenient. and it was just, I don't know. It's just the fact that, I've hung around the WordPress community for so long now and know so many people that.
It's just really nice when people come up to me and say hi and talk and stuff like that, And, it was a very productive in terms of getting sponsors and getting new work and getting all that stuff. It was, it was, that's the stuff my wife is interested in. Not all the chitchat that we do, all the.
F but it's, all the parties that I went to, last year, I don't think I went to any, maybe one or two this year. It was like, every night was a, they were overlapping each other. I'm sure you had the same
[00:33:52] Nathan Wrigley: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I had to make some real choices and it was, that's nice. But, I, for me those are great fun, but the, the event, yeah. Often the event isn't quite as fun as the after event things, if But in this particular case it was so much, so Bo this is how sad I am.
I, after the event had finished on, so it was four days long, which is not typical 'cause they crammed this other thing in called the Showcase Day where they had a bunch of websites that were being, demonstrated for kind of use cases to show off what WordPress could do. And I think that was a cool idea.
But I am on two of the days. I just sat there and carried on in the venue working like editing audio and things for podcasts long after most people had left.
And, it is a bit sad and but I really enjoyed it. I just enjoyed being in that space and, I was watching everybody filing out and I thought, I'm gonna do another couple of hours.
And so it proved to be, and, didn't feel weird at all. I really enjoyed it.
[00:34:57] Bud Kraus: it was, it, I, it was really good. I'm not really cra I'd like to do something different for the after party or now known as the social, because I think it's alright, maybe it's me, but I would like to go dancing.
[00:35:14] Nathan Wrigley: Oh,
[00:35:15] Bud Kraus: So that's, I would love to have a social where people could dance.
That's me. and I could dance with, Raquel Manriquez,
who's
[00:35:25] Nathan Wrigley: you mean dancing? Like where there's a prescribed way of doing it, like a band
[00:35:29] Bud Kraus: No, any kind. I generally,
[00:35:31] Nathan Wrigley: like that?
[00:35:32] Bud Kraus: I'm a crazy
[00:35:34] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:35:34] Bud Kraus: like, I dance man, that kind of stuff or, formal. I could dance formal
[00:35:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:35:42] Bud Kraus: but, I'm concerned that these are getting, I was joking around like maybe next year it will be in a library,
[00:35:52] Nathan Wrigley: Wait, it was in a museum this time.
[00:35:54] Bud Kraus: I know.
one more, last year was a museum. This year is a museum. What's next? A library, a
[00:35:59] Nathan Wrigley: did you by any chance, this is so tangential. Did you go on the submarine?
[00:36:05] Bud Kraus: No, and I heard about it. Camie McNamara said, you gotta do this, and I
[00:36:09] Nathan Wrigley: I arrived and somebody said, there's a submarine. And I thought, sure, there's a submarine. Of course there is. and then I said, what do you mean? And they said, no, like a submarine. And I said, do you mean like a, fairly tin pot, rinky-dink little submarine?
They were like, no, an actual real full on massive submarine. And that.
[00:36:28] Bud Kraus: Was it under the water?
[00:36:30] Nathan Wrigley: half of it was, you obviously had to get into it and you, got in by going in the top, not quite the top. They'd taken a bit of the side out, but it's a decommissioned, military submarine, but it's massive. It's obviously huge and you could walk around and see all the different bits and pieces and and to me it was, one of the highlights of the after party.
I know it seems a bit weird and nothing to do with WordPress, but it emphasized for me. Okay. This is the kind of flavor of things you can get. And obviously the fact that it was held in a museum meant that there were loads of other different things that you could do as well, but I enjoyed that tremendously.
My personal preference is away from loud music, and I stress, that's my personal preference. I'm, I've got gray hair, and those days are
[00:37:13] Bud Kraus: I could be, I'm old enough to be your
[00:37:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yes, exactly. exactly you see. But,
[00:37:18] Bud Kraus: mean, on.
[00:37:20] Nathan Wrigley: like maybe if you were, if you were, very, quick off the, start. But,
[00:37:27] Bud Kraus: I'm old enough to be everybody's father and now it's turning out to be grandfather. Not
[00:37:32] Nathan Wrigley: it was, it emphasized for me that I, I didn't really wanna do the whole loud music dancey thing and I enjoy stuff like that. So it was really nice.
[00:37:40] Bud Kraus: they had a, I don't know if you saw this, they had the, one of the space
capsules with two seats. So Mervin Hernandez, my friend gets in there, And I was thinking about getting in there.
I said, I'll never get outta here if I get into that thing. And he's talking about what a tight fitted is. He ends up leaving his. Wallet on the seat. We go back to the hotel. He goes, oh, I left my wallet on this. And luckily Cat, what's his name? K, I don't even know his name. K Adam, from, human Made.
anyway, he found the wallet, but it was like we figured out where the wallet was because he got into this little cramped
[00:38:18] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. What a place to leave a wallet. I le I just casually left my wallet on a space vehicle. Yeah, of course you did. no. I really
did. I. Yeah. In my case, it could have been a submarine. Yeah, I just left my wallet on a submarine. That's the kind of thing you do, but it was thoroughly enjoyable.
The whole event from
start to
[00:38:37] Bud Kraus: It was. It
[00:38:39] Nathan Wrigley: if you, wanna know what kind of things I do, I, go and record episodes for a different podcast, the Tavern podcast, which, by the way, if you don't know, you can find at wp tavern.com/podcast. Bud. We're at 35 minutes. We're supposed to go for about 30 odd minutes.
So I'm gonna, as we say in the uk, knock it on the head. But I've enjoyed chatting to you today all about, all of the different bits and pieces that you are up to. Congratulations on getting the podcast, going. I know exactly what it's like to keep it going. So fingers crossed that you managed to, keep the cadence up and enjoy it in a few years time, as much as I'm enjoying mine.
So where can we find you apart from simply bud.com? Sorry. Seriously bud.com. Where else can we find you?
[00:39:23] Bud Kraus: I actually, my business, although this is the podcast, is starting to turn into the business, but my business is joy of wp.com. I write and create WordPress content for WordPress businesses. That means blog articles, that means instructional videos, all that kind of stuff. Mostly in the. Not entertainment, but mostly in the, hopefully a little entertainment, but in the, education field of WordPress.
[00:39:50] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:39:51] Bud Kraus: And you can get all my articles and videos. They're all, it's like a, it's like a portfolio.
[00:39:56] Nathan Wrigley: there. It's been a long time in common. I've had to cancel Bud many times because of my, things going on with my family life. So I'm pleased that we finally got it over the line. thank you for joining me today, bud. Really appreciate it. Have a nice day
[00:40:09] Bud Kraus: Thank you. You too.
[00:40:11] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. I hope you enjoyed that. Very nice chatting to Bud today. I hope you enjoyed that too. If you did head over to episode number 400 on the WP Builds.com website. Search for it in the main navigation and leave us a comment there. We'd really appreciate it.
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Okay. That's all I've got for you today. Don't forget. Head over to our Black Friday page, WP Builds.com forward slash black. Bookmark that, and use it in your search, your hunt for WordPressy deals over the black Friday, which is really, really, really, really close now, just a few hours away.
They're really remains nothing else for me to say, except we'll be back on Monday for This Week in WordPress show. We'll be back next Thursday for a podcast episode.
I hope that you stay safe. Have a good week. Here comes some cheesy music. Bye-bye for now.
