This Week in WordPress #317

[00:00:04] Nathan Wrigley: It's time for this week in WordPress, episode number 317, entitled, buy what you don't need.

It was recorded on Monday the 2nd of December, 2024. My name's Nathan Wrigley, and today I am joined by Kathy Zant. I'm also joined by Ross Morsali, and by Raquel Manriquez. We're here to talk about WordPress because we're a WordPress podcast after all, but what do we get into?

we go off the rails right at the beginning and spent absolutely ages talking about Black Friday, and all of the different bits and pieces that we bought that we didn't need.

Then we talk about Mary Hubbard as the new Executive Director of the WordPress project.

We then move into WPCampus and the fact that they're looking for new Directors.

Events come under the microscope, so things like WordCamp Asia, you can buy tickets. But also they need a new venue.

And then we also spend a little bit of time talking about where WordCamp events are happening in the year 2025.

We look at the new Query Loop Filter Plugin by Human Made, and also Ross's search and filter plugin, which does more or less the same thing, but with a pro version, and a Black Friday deal to boot.

Then we're onto Autoblue, which enables you to post your WordPress posts and pages, and what have you on Bluesky? It's a brand new plugin, so there's a lot of development happening.

And also Nag Me Not is going to tuck away all of the notices that you don't want to see in your WordPress websites. It's by Dave Gray, who's often on the podcast, so really enjoyable talking about that.

Then there's a couple of plugins which are tackling the building your own community inside of WordPress. They're both lifetime deals available for the next few days.

And then back to AI, we come, as always. Talking about a survey from 20i, and about how positive people are about what AI is doing for them.

It's all coming up next on this week. In WordPress.

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I've started with the wrong view. Look, that's hopeless. I'm so bad. There we go. That's better. look, it's this week in WordPress, episode number 317. I'm joined. I was very high pitched. Sorry, I'm having that teenage throat crack moment. Oh, dear. I'm joined by Kathy's, how you doing, Kathy?

I am doing great. How are you? Yeah, good. I'm, very, happy to have you with us. We're gonna chat about the word pressy stuff. but first of all, let's do the introduction. Kathy, over there, she's been on the show many, times before. is the Director of Content and Community at Motivations ai.

Go google it right away. It's really interesting. the creator of Motivation Code. Motivation Code is an assessment that explains who we are, what motivates us, and how to live a more fulfilling life tied to our individual motivation dimensions. She's passionate about WordPress stories and beliefs.

Anyone's voice should be heard. It's genuinely really intriguing. Are you, are you into psychology or meditation or something like that on the side outside of the WordPress stuff, I. Yeah, I was hacking my brain before I started hacking computers. Okay. Getting really young into all that kind of stuff.

[00:04:53] Kathy Zant: yeah. So it's up my alley. Very interesting stuff. Oh yeah, definitely. go check it out. Anyway, go. Go Google. it's motivations, plural. AI without a space. so go check that out. We're also joined by, Ross, Ross Morsali. Have I pronounced that right, Ross? I do. That's all right. Yeah, yeah.

[00:05:12] Nathan Wrigley: Good enough. Yeah. Okay. Good enough. Yeah, good enough. And Ross has got a very excavated, pithy, bio and it goes like this lead developer founder of the Search and Filter Pro plugin. thank you. We'll talk about that later. Cool. Actually, we'll get it on the screen and you can show us what it can do and things like that, so that'll be nice.

Oh, nice. but yeah, we're, joined by these two and then just now, Raquel is here, but I've gotta press the button. Hold on. Where? Where's Raquel, there's Raquel. How you doing? Raquel? You are all right. I am. Yeah, it's 7:00

[00:05:47] Raquel Manriquez: AM

[00:05:47] Nathan Wrigley: here. Oh, and Raquel, I've gotta say that is, I'm so pleased that all the tech is hanging off, hanging together as well.

'cause the, the mic is working and the camera's working. It's great. Oh, it often doesn't, oh,

[00:06:02] Raquel Manriquez: interesting.

[00:06:03] Nathan Wrigley: In the background, we often have, why isn't my camera working in this way? And why doesn't my mic work? So you've just, rocked up and e everything works. I have no bio for Raquel, but I've got a feeling it might well include an event, these days.

I'm not entirely sure if it does, but is that the thing now is press comp, the thing

[00:06:23] Raquel Manriquez: it is. the thing. It is the thing today. yeah, my bio drastically changed recently Uhhuh. and think we just hosted, had Thanksgiving and I hosted Thanksgiving. That meant like 20 people in my place with a 25 pound Turkey.

So I, have been mad and I mean that in the British sense, being mad. but yeah, so I, founded Press Comp, which is the resurrection of an old beloved conference called Omics. And that's what I'm doing now.

[00:07:00] Nathan Wrigley: Is that the, is that kind of basically the full-time gig from now until when it happened? Am I right?

Is it April? Have I got that right? It's

[00:07:07] Raquel Manriquez: April Uhhuh and the full-time gig is now, events consultant. So press comp is my baby, but I'm also for hire For your events,

[00:07:19] Nathan Wrigley: huh? nice. Oh, that's really cool. Have you forgive me, Raquel? Yes. Have you organized lots of sort of events in the past? 'cause I only do this one, which is an online one, which makes the whole.

Wrangling of it, probably an awful lot easier. But even that is just there's so many moving parts. I can imagine a real world thing is a lot.

[00:07:40] Raquel Manriquez: Yeah, No, totally. So yes. actually countless word camps, with Kathy. That's how Kathy and I met actually, when she still live in Phoenix for a hot minute.

Literal hot minute. and I, we at Work Camp Phoenix, we've always been a cut above as Kathy can attest to, so we really put on a good show. Nice. And we do all of the extras and we usually hold, it at a convention center. So it's been a quite a fun event. And after doing it for free for a decade, I'm like, oh my gosh, we have so much skills we've built up.

Why am I not just doing this for me? which is also my gift to the world because I love it. And we tend to have such a good time at the events that I've organized.

[00:08:27] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, nice. we featured it, last week or the week before when? Whenever the week was after the initial announcement. And, just shout out the URL so that people can check it out.

Was it, what was it again? It was press conf events, wasn't it? Yeah. Very simple. That's the only thing I've remembered, like more or less this month. And I've managed to remember your URL. So something went right. No, I honestly have the worst memory, but somehow that's, I get it. It's got lodged. Yeah, I get it.

[00:08:55] Raquel Manriquez: thanks. Thanks Nick. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it's a

[00:08:57] Nathan Wrigley: miracle that came into my head. Press con events. Go check it out. yes, and you'll be able to sign up there and hopefully, attend in April, 2025. So there's Raquel joining us at the 11th hour, so that's brilliant. Thank you. So there's our panel.

Today, I should probably do the housekeeping, the boring bits, if that's all right. So here we go. I'll just do this as quickly as I can. If you are watching this, honestly, the best way to watch it is, at this URL go to WP Build. he says this URL and then can't find it. Where is it? there wp build.com/live.

Gonna say, sorry, Ross. It's managed to obliterate your lovely beard. wp builds.com/live. All the platforms have just got so many different rules about what they'll allow these days. Twitter won't allow this and Facebook won't allow that. So just go there. And then you can comment using the Google comments.

It's YouTube comments on the right or there's a little box inside the video player. Top it says live chat or something like that. And you don't need to be logged into anything. you just type in your name and click go. So wp builds.com/live. And you know what they say? The kids say all the clever people like and subscribe.

Do all that. do that. Try that, hit the bell, whatever. somewhere my

[00:10:11] Ross Morsali: beard.

[00:10:12] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. so that's it, that's the, basic housekeeping done. And then just a couple of bits of quick sort of WP builds promotional stuff, if that's all right with you. Here's our website, wp builds.com.

if you're fancy, keeping up to date with what we're doing, like a few of you did this morning, that's always nice on a Monday to wake up to a few of those little informational emails saying somebody subscribed, hit this. Put your email address in there and then click subscribe. and we'll send you two emails a week.

One, two, say that we've produced this thing. This will get repurposed as a podcast tomorrow morning. And then we'll also produce a podcast on Thursday. The last one we did was 400. Check it out. We did the 400th episode of the podcast and we're on 316 of this new show. So combined, that's a total of a lot.

That's a big number. actually that's probably the easiest time I'll ever get to. It's 716. I can actually do that in my head. If it was anything different, it would be hard. So yeah, go and check 'em out. The episodes are here. And also, if you are in the Black Friday buying purchasing mode, which let's be honest, we all have been head to this wp builds.com/black.

We've got just shy of 400 deals on this page. it's brought to you by WS form, real cookie, banner and gravity forms. And if you go here and type something in, oh, I don't know. Let's try, search, let's try searching for search, see what we get. we get super speedy search. Yeah. So the idea is you go in here and search for something and whit it down.

there's no affiliate links or anything like that. It's just a thing that we put on. But there's nearly 400 there. And if, it's on this page, it's still live, they'll start to expire and disappear from this page when they've all had their moment in time. But my first question then, panelists got nothing to do with WordPress.

How much money did you waste on Black Friday? What, myriad of things are lying around your house now that you didn't need? Didn't really want, but got suckered in surviving at some point. I'll start. so I bought a boom mic arm that I don't need. It's got the mic on it. Matt had a perfectly good one, but this one is a different shape.

Shape.

[00:12:34] Raquel Manriquez: Does that help in any way? Yeah, it's

[00:12:35] Nathan Wrigley: like it's, not better, it's not worse, it's just different. But I got totally suckered into buying it. I'll tell you what it does do. The old one used to go up and then down and it used to come into the video like, here this one is all down there, look and you can't see it.

So that was my, ah, that's all it took for me to be suckered in. It's worse in almost every respect, apart from the fact that it, it doesn't do that. And also I bought loads of lights. I don't know what went wrong. I just got into lights that you can, like the Phillips HU lights that you can change with your phone.

I bought one about a week ago. I got it, turned it on. I was like, it's the best thing ever. And then bought about 12 more for no reason. I've got nowhere to put them, but I've got them now.

[00:13:23] Kathy Zant: You'll find a place.

[00:13:24] Nathan Wrigley: I know. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. What else did I buy? Oh, loads of audio equipment and stuff like that.

Anyway, that's me. You bought a lot. Oh, no, Raquel, most of it hasn't arrived yet. I'm getting a today after I decided I need to get fit. I'm a bit fat and I've got a bit of middle aged spread going on, and I thought, what? I'm always at my desk, so I've got a standing desk and a treadmill. So next week maybe I'll be doing this.

Yeah.

[00:13:56] Kathy Zant: Are you gonna live stream, man? The treadmill? I

[00:13:58] Nathan Wrigley: don't know. I don't think, I think what will happen is I'll forget and then just slowly go backwards and fall off. but the, but yeah, I bought those, but I know what will happen six months from now. The treadmill will be gathering dust in the corner and the desk will be back to down to normal height, and I'll be on a chair.

It felt like a good idea and it was like 18% almost.

[00:14:20] Ross Morsali: You've just inspired me to waste some money.

[00:14:23] Kathy Zant: Yeah, just get

[00:14:24] Nathan Wrigley: in. We can do it together, Ross. Anyway, I need really great

[00:14:26] Kathy Zant: coat racks.

[00:14:27] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. coat rack. I don't need a coat rack. Don't stop me on that. I'm gonna get a coat rack now. There's no way I'm gonna knock, get a coat rack.

I do need a coat rack. the treadmill

[00:14:38] Kathy Zant: works as a coat rack. Oh, I

[00:14:39] Nathan Wrigley: see. Yeah, Okay. Okay. Okay. So that's what I got. Let's go to Kathy. Did you get suckered in like I did.

[00:14:46] Kathy Zant: I bought, I'm embarrassed 'cause I needed furnace filters and they were on Black Friday special at Amazon, so I got furnace filters.

[00:14:54] Nathan Wrigley: What's a furnace filter? Sounds

[00:14:56] Kathy Zant: great. for the HVAC system, for the air that blows. No, we

[00:15:00] Nathan Wrigley: don't do, we don't do any kind of air system of any kind in the uk. Nobody has Ross back me up. Nobody has air con do they? What is ever met a human being in this country who has air conditioning in their house?

[00:15:18] Ross Morsali: No,

[00:15:19] Kathy Zant: Texas and Arizona, we will cover that for, you'll

[00:15:21] Nathan Wrigley: see we need the opposite. We need heating. We just need it otter. okay, so you bought filters.

[00:15:27] Kathy Zant: Okay. Get it? Yes. So exciting. I know. It is

[00:15:30] Nathan Wrigley: exciting. Yeah, you'll have nice clean air to breathe. That's good. Yeah. Okay, Ross, your turn.

[00:15:36] Ross Morsali: I don't think I wasted any money.

I think I invested well. so I've got this, I was hoping to use it for today's show.

[00:15:44] Nathan Wrigley: Oh.

[00:15:45] Ross Morsali: a new camera for doing some streaming and taking some photos.

[00:15:48] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.

[00:15:48] Ross Morsali: But I don't have a capture card, which I'm about to order today on Cyber Monday. and yeah, guess what I thought last year, Ross. What was that?

The elto capture card I've never used. Yeah. I'm wondering if I actually even need a capture card. 'cause I think you can do HDMI to USBC now anyway.

[00:16:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, O often the account's like a 10 pound table, you perhaps won't need it.

[00:16:12] Ross Morsali: Okay. So one of those things is probably going back next week. So prob I did, waste some money then probably.

and then I also managed to buy my girlfriend's birthday present on Black Friday sales.

[00:16:23] Nathan Wrigley: Nice. Whoa, don't say it. Don't say what it is. There's a very,

[00:16:27] Ross Morsali: no, it's a birthday today and I've already given it, Oh

[00:16:30] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. It's actually, apparently

[00:16:32] Ross Morsali: it's a pair of these headphones, but wa waterproof ones so she can go swimming with 'em.

[00:16:37] Nathan Wrigley: What? Wait.

[00:16:38] Ross Morsali: Yeah, you can, so these are, you can swim with he, these are showings on headphones. No, and they're like bone conductions, so they don't go in your ears. And they have a swimming model so you can swim underwater, listen to your music. She's big into swimming. Is

[00:16:53] Raquel Manriquez: it connected? How does it not fall off?

Yes.

[00:16:56] Ross Morsali: Oh, you just, I can do some demos, but it really sticks on really well. So it's not

[00:17:01] Nathan Wrigley: going into your ear, it's just bone connectivity. It's just Yeah.

[00:17:04] Ross Morsali: Yeah. It's just at the front, just in front of your ear, through the bone. Just here.

[00:17:08] Nathan Wrigley: That's another, thing I'm gonna buy before the end of today Amazon Steel.

And today that's

[00:17:13] Ross Morsali: stopping probably one of my best buyers of last year. Oh my God. He's no endorsement as well.

[00:17:17] Nathan Wrigley: I'm so gonna buy it by the end of this. I swim regularly. and Oh really? And I would love to have audio. That would be really nice. And I didn't think it was possible. I think

[00:17:27] Ross Morsali: when, which in there for 40 minutes or so, it gets a bit repetitive.

If you're on your own.

[00:17:32] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. I'm gonna look into that as well. Okay. Thank you for that. And lastly, but by no means least Raquel, what did you buy? What did you buy?

[00:17:41] Raquel Manriquez: I feel like I need to like, put on the TikTok film, I mean recording right now and bring out my bags of hut. Oh. And show everybody because it's been long tradition.

To go actual Black Friday shopping. It started with like, when I was a teenager with my mom and now my teenage slash adult daughter. We go together. And so really I look at Black Friday mostly for getting my shopping, my Christmas shopping done,

[00:18:08] Nathan Wrigley: of

[00:18:08] Raquel Manriquez: all the gifts that I need to get for everybody. So I can't talk too much about it right now because if you not see, I have a busy hospital.

[00:18:15] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. No, but I did

[00:18:17] Raquel Manriquez: get some good deals in the stores. this is boring.

[00:18:24] Ross Morsali: no. Yeah.

[00:18:26] Raquel Manriquez: And I did definitely do some Amazon just okay, boom, get all those. But anything for me, not really, other than some much needed leggings. so

[00:18:41] Nathan Wrigley: you're too, good.

The rest of us have. it's been, all about me, no, to be fair, Kathy's all about filtering for the entire house. See, perhaps. And Ross is all about his wife. So it's basically me. That's been selfish,

[00:18:55] Raquel Manriquez: but if you wait all year to do it during Black Friday, why not?

[00:18:59] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's true.

That's exactly, that's it. Raquel. I don't buy a, I am like a zen monk during the rest of the year. I never buy a thing. And then it all happens on this. Just do people still do that crazy thing where they pile in on like the department stores and the doors open and everybody falls in over? No, that's, I,

[00:19:17] Raquel Manriquez: one, I've never done Walmart ever.

I don't want to die. So there's that. because I don't wanna die. I used to do Target. That was fun. And you would definitely line up at 4:00 AM You would for sure like line up and. Totally.

[00:19:31] Nathan Wrigley: Amazon have got it nailed and it starts like, yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. It starts really early, doesn't it? Okay.

So there we go. There's, our wasteful, black Friday segment. That was good. I enjoyed it. I, hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll have a, I'll be walking and I'll be so much slimmer. I've lost the jowls and the middle age spread. Like I said. We'll see. right here we go. Let's see who's joined us.

Today we have Tammy Lister. She's saying, good afternoon. Hello, Tammy. Courtney Robertson joined us with a cup of. Tea. I'm going, no, it's coffee. I'm gonna guess, who else have we got? Atif is joining us saying Good afternoon. We have Chatal Marna coming from India. We're gonna talk about India in a bit.

Actually, that's interesting. Hello? Says Jerome. That's nice. whoops. Caps says Jerome again. And then Tim Nash. I just got about 15 email from Tim Nash. He can vouch that's true. It just, it was ridiculous. About 10 minutes ago, I got like 15 email in a row. It was a bit crazy. and he's drinking tea, drinking, whether it is tea drinking, whether it's horrible beer's, tea, drinking, weather.

Yeah. afternoon. So sometimes you won't know this. Raquel. People tell us what the weather is like, where they live. it started with Peter Ingersol, but here we go. Jerome's telling us that from that word. Anybody want to go at that word? I'm not able to cook. Ji Cork. Dr. It's I, yeah, that, that place, wherever that is.

It's on the screen. it's cloudy and sunny. Fourth coffee of the day. Ah, nice. Insta influence. WP is joining us. Hello? Jerome says, okay. The way you say Thursday, Nathan was really cool. What Thursday? Why do I say Thursday? that's how I, everybody says it, isn't it? Don't they all say that word the same.

hello from Germany says beer. It. What else have we got? Jerome, you are on fire giving us the comments. Cammy McNamara defrosting the car outside the house. It's 36 in Seattle this morning. I've got a couple of TVs on Black Friday. Okay, nice. I hung over the TV thing. It nearly got in, but I managed to save myself.

I expunged it from the cart moments with moments to spare. da What can I say? I really like you. Yeah, You did send me that many emails. It's totally true. Carol's joining us from Arizona and drinking homemade latte and Oh,

[00:21:57] Raquel Manriquez: Carol.

[00:21:58] Nathan Wrigley: Carol?

[00:21:59] Raquel Manriquez: Yes.

[00:22:00] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, nice.

[00:22:01] Raquel Manriquez: We know Carol. Okay.

[00:22:02] Nathan Wrigley: All right. There she is.

She's right. Carol's amazing. She's joining us. She's Okay. So we've already got to 21 minutes and we haven't said a word about actual word for us. That's how this goes most of the time. So let's begin, shall we? Let's actually start, here's the first one. Bit of community news. okay, so let's, couch this in all the positives that we can 'cause I think really the, conversation a around all of the dark things happening in WordPress maintained their darkness.

And, let's concentrate on the lightness. So when Joseph er stepped down in September as the chief executive of the WordPress project, I guess people were wondering who would take the place of Gier. I think it's fair to say that Gier did an incredible job, and, but we have somebody, and this is that person.

It's Mary Hubbard. Hubbard I don't know, but, appointed to the role a little while ago. So the name's not new, but, I guess as with all automations had to go through the whole two week onboarding process where you have to take support tickets and all that kind of stuff. But, reporting for the repository, Ray, Maray is telling us a little bit about it because they did, or Mary did, and a, call, like a Zoom call, and it sounds like a lot of people showed up, 80 or 90 people showed up.

just addressing the questions. Everybody had a chance to say what they thought. And interestingly, the bits that came out for Ray were these, Mary faced tough questions and addressed them head on even in even offering an apology for the alien alienation. Many feel amid WordPress's co-founders Matt Mullen me's war with WPN Engine as she describes it.

And I think Ray is quoting, I apologize that a large percentage of the WP community has felt alienated. I recognize that. I feel it and I hear it in the conversations that I'm having. Interestingly, Mary used to be, now I wanna get the role exactly right. Da, she was a toker and I know that TikTok, can you see the word TikTok anymore?

Anyway, she was very, senior in TikTok and my understanding is that in America, TikTok is like facing quite a lot of, trouble from all sorts of different angles. So she's nos stranger to all of that. anyway, there she is. She is now here. I dunno if anybody attended that call, hung out and asked the questions, but, I guess we can all just say, congratulations for getting the job and good luck. Anybody wanna throw their weight behind that?

[00:24:46] Raquel Manriquez: I can tell the

[00:24:47] Nathan Wrigley: answer to that is no.

[00:24:49] Raquel Manriquez: I did attend it.

[00:24:51] Nathan Wrigley: You did, you?

[00:24:52] Raquel Manriquez: Yeah, I did. And it was a lot, of questions, just rapid fire questions. Mostly her saying the questions and answering them and, Matt Linig was there. Present as well. Okay. And honestly, it was, really tame, I thought. And there was a couple of pointed questions, ala Jeff Row, our beloved Jeff Row, asking the tough questions.

and I probably the most, yeah, question that was a little on the like, pointed side was, is there going to be a process for those who were banned to come back and be unbound? And the answer was yes.

[00:25:31] Nathan Wrigley: okay, so what, just the one word, or was it qualified in some way?

[00:25:37] Raquel Manriquez: it was, yeah, it, was basically saying that yes, and there's a process, but she wasn't exactly sure and that we're to contact, I don't remember the name, but Aian, and

[00:25:49] Nathan Wrigley: okay.

[00:25:49] Raquel Manriquez: I'm sure you'll be able to see the, the process if you Yeah, you can, blocked

[00:25:55] Nathan Wrigley: if you go to this page on the repository is the, whole thing is linked here. obviously I'm not gonna play it all, but, yeah. So for those of you in confusion about Mary's past, let's just, Mary was previously the general manager of the WooCommerce marketplace, later a chief product [email protected], and I can't find the TikTok bit now, lemme just search for TikTok and see if I couldn't find it in the page.

Oh, there we go. her most recent role involved overseeing governance of and experience of TikTok. A company she said was not very well liked in the United States, which meant she had to deal with angry people. Which, so she's ready. Yeah. Yeah. trained. Yep.

[00:26:37] Raquel Manriquez: And governance. That's a word we wanna hear.

[00:26:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. And that was mentioned as well in this article of, I really did wanna go to that call, but I had, I just had prior plans so I wasn't able to make it. But, like I said, search on the repository. That's the name of the piece. And you can, the repositories, URL is the repository email. You'll be able to find it over there.

So if, everybody's happy with that, we'll move on. Yeah. Okay. Alright. That's a nod from everybody. Good. Okay. I love this sort of stuff. I love all these community bits. Honestly, this is why I get up in the morning. I think, the community bit interests me so much. I know the code and everything's fascinating for some people, but it is the community bit that gets me going.

so this is WP Campus and the tagline is where WordPress meets higher education. What more useful thing could you have? Than an open source CMS project and education. I just think they, just, the collision of those two things is so cool. and they are looking, for directors for their board. I'll just give you a bit of background.

I'll just quote what it says. WP Campus is an organization and a community. they are dedicated to the confluence of WordPress and accessibility in higher education. That's a good qualification. So it's higher education with a mission to advance higher education by providing a support structure and a wealth of knowledge and networking.

For anybody who uses or is interested in using WordPress in the world of higher education, we are seeking new directors. I think it's fair to say that if you do take this job, there's probably a fair bit of work to do because there are pains to say that, if you, really get it, says we hope director applicants will be excited to get involved more fully than the minimum requirement, which is, they currently meet between four and 5:00 PM on the third Friday of each month, and that's the only actual requirement, but I'm imagining they want people to do more than that. they've got 2:00 AM a sessions if you wanna get the skinny on what the role might require. 22nd of November. That's obviously already gone, but there's one tomorrow.

the 3rd of December, it's at five o'clock EST and the applications, if you want to submit one, would be by the 6th of December, 2024. community news, dunno if anybody wants to jump in on that one. If not, I'll move on.

[00:28:58] Ross Morsali: that's just in the US is it? The, these, this. WP Campus is based there?

[00:29:03] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I guess so.

Yeah. it's

[00:29:04] Ross Morsali: not, it's not

[00:29:05] Nathan Wrigley: really one that it's Eastern Time, so that's what I'm guessing. Yeah. Eastern standard. Yeah. but I, don't know if it has like a, how to describe it, I dunno if it's purview or it's remit is tied broadly to higher education in the us I'm guessing it could be international in scope.

Interests go on Kathy.

[00:29:23] Kathy Zant: Yeah. There's another organization, I think it's called Higher Ed Web that does events too. And WP Campus does some stuff associated with them, but they're not like under them. Okay. but there's a lot of, a lot of attention being placed on just bringing web. Into higher ed and the people who have, Rachel Cherry was, oh yeah.

Leading WP Campus for a long time and just did tremendous work. so it has been a great organization that has done some great events at some really cool colleges that I've got to go to because Nice went to a bunch of them. So it's a good organization.

[00:30:05] Raquel Manriquez: is Rachel not involved anymore?

[00:30:08] Kathy Zant: She's been, because she's been like you recall, the person who's like pushing word Camp Phoenix.

She was like that for a WP Campus. Yeah, she was the person, who made sure that things happened and it was just so much on one person. And I think she has been trying to, bring in new people so that she could have a smaller role. over the past few years she's been attempting to do that.

[00:30:39] Nathan Wrigley: The, the form that you'll see.

There's quite a lot of questions. I don't know, there's maybe 15 or so questions. Most of them text boxes, so you've got plenty of opportunity to write. But, yeah, if that interests you and, you haven't thought about it, give it a go. Also, apropos of nothing, I had a really cool interview coming out on the, tavern on Wednesday, and it's gonna be all about education and WordPress, but in Uganda.

and it's a really interesting conversation with a chap called Steven Dunbar. and I've just been editing it this morning, and I, it was so interesting, like just so profoundly different, the way that WordPress and education works over there, so well worth the listen. I'll obviously post links to that, during the week, but it'll be coming out on Wednesday.

Okay. Shall I move on? Sure. Yeah. Okay. All right. So word camps. if you are in the mind of going to Word Camp Asia, which is in Manila, I've forgotten the date actually 28th of, I can't remember the day. There's a ping. I dunno if anybody else is getting that ping. Yeah. Did anybody hear the ping hearing that?

Who's, whos the ping paying me? Okay, Raquel, through

[00:31:52] Raquel Manriquez: that,

[00:31:53] Nathan Wrigley: is there a way that we can minimize the ping? Yes. Oh, thank you. That's great. okay, third batch of tickets. If you are interested in attending, they are now available. I dunno how many tranches are coming out. But anyway, there's more tickets available.

Da duh. You can claim you seat. Now it's gonna be in Manila and it looks, yeah, we go February 21st to the 22nd. 2025. I went to the last one in type, Raquel was there. That's where we met. yeah, in, Tai a I didn't go to the previous one in Bangkok, but, this will be in the, Philippines as I said.

But I don't know. Not sure if I'm gonna go to this one or not just yet. But you can get some tickets. Anybody wanna add anything? I don't think there's much in that, apart from just go buy your tickets.

[00:32:38] Raquel Manriquez: No. Okay.

[00:32:39] Nathan Wrigley: All righty. I'll be there. Go on. Raquel, what were you gonna say?

[00:32:44] Raquel Manriquez: I was just gonna say, I'll be there.

I work. Oh, you'll

[00:32:46] Nathan Wrigley: be okay.

[00:32:47] Raquel Manriquez: And I'm MCing again, Yay.

[00:32:49] Nathan Wrigley: You. What again?

[00:32:50] Raquel Manriquez: Yeah. Oh,

[00:32:51] Nathan Wrigley: MCing.

[00:32:52] Raquel Manriquez: Yeah. Okay.

[00:32:53] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. What, Like, a whole day, A whole stage? Or how does it work? How do they break it down?

[00:32:59] Raquel Manriquez: They haven't assigned yet. but yeah, you usually get a track that UMC and you usually either do the whole day or, half.

[00:33:07] Nathan Wrigley: So do you get nervous?

[00:33:10] Raquel Manriquez: No,

[00:33:11] Nathan Wrigley: not even. I love the stage. Yeah. Do you? Okay. Yeah. do you speak ever?

[00:33:17] Raquel Manriquez: Sometimes, yeah. I have some word can't talks that I Does that make

[00:33:21] Nathan Wrigley: you nervous?

[00:33:23] Raquel Manriquez: yeah. That one's a little bit more 'cause Mc iss the best. 'cause you just talk off the cuff and just make everybody laugh and feel welcome down.

[00:33:30] Nathan Wrigley: So it's just introducing who's about to come up and timings and fire drills and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's nice.

[00:33:37] Raquel Manriquez: Yeah.

[00:33:38] Nathan Wrigley: But alrighty. yeah, I couldn't do the speaking despite the fact that I'm constantly on video. I just couldn't, literally couldn't do it. It would, I think you'd be great.

Oh no, it would honestly, it would terrify me and I'm not. Exaggerating. I would be a shaking mess. I would not be able to do it. So I haven't and probably never will 'cause it, honestly. I'd literally crawl onto the stage quiver at the lectern and then crawl off again. and nobody wants to see that.

[00:34:09] Raquel Manriquez: I do actually.

[00:34:10] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, you do? Okay. I do. The highlight gonna happen. We'll use an AI video generator. okay, so here's something different. This is on the WP Mayor, mayor website. I dunno how you pronounce that. Me. We say me. and, this is something called Blink and I really don't know what I'm gonna make of it, but it sounds a little bit like, influence wp, which, has been mentioned recently all over the place.

So how to describe it, I'll just quote, it says, how often do you receive an email asking for backlinks, guest posts or expert quotes? And how many do you actually respond to? So maybe it's, maybe this is unique to me. given what I do, but the answer to me is all the time. like every day I get these, so that was hooked me in right away.

If you are like uss, you probably ignore 99% of them, and that's why I want to connect you directly to the 1% that matter. Introducing Blink, it's a can of acronym business links. In. So that's the I end Bit Insights and knowledge. And it says, blink is all about creating connections and discovering new collaboration opportunities.

Think of it as HARO or ha, I don't even know what that is. Is that another acronym? Me neither. No

[00:35:25] Kathy Zant: help a Reporter Out. It was, oh, A method of linking up reporters to people who were experts or had information. Okay. pr

[00:35:34] Nathan Wrigley: I thought it was some manga cartoon or something like that. think of it as HH Help a reporter out for what?

For the WordPress community. And they say for example, and ask for expert quotes for your blog post. Look for guest posting opportunities. Request a product inclusion on another blog. So the idea really is, it's like connecting people who want to be connected in a meaningful way. And I guess they're gonna be the conduit, the go-between, and all you have to do is put your name and email address in here and they say it's free.

Presumably they're gonna curate that whole experience. I don't know. I guess if, you're on the receiving end, hopefully this would make that whole thing a little bit easier and there'd be less email coming into your inbox, which you just feel bad about ignoring. But maybe if you're on the, end where I don't know, you've got a product or a service and you want to market it and find people with a bit of reach, maybe this is gonna help out with that.

Anyway, it's on wp mayor.com/blink. Ross, a bit later we're gonna talk about your plugin. I'm guessing marketing plugins. If that's not your full-time gig and you don't have a dedicated member of staff for that, must be a bit of a nightmare. So stuff like this, would that interest you at all? Yeah,

[00:36:45] Ross Morsali: exactly.

yeah, I'm, looking at it now. I'm looking at a big signup box there thinking I might just drop my details in. I think anything to help people, especially with juggling, multiple things like development and marketing. It's gonna be good. It reminds me maybe of I think you've had one before.

Is it Corey Mass?

[00:37:06] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.

[00:37:07] Ross Morsali: he's got this, he set up this thing called IPA WP and that's like kind of connecting WordPress businesses together as well. I think maybe Michelle's got a hand in that as well. and I signed up for that. So I think the more the merrier really. And any kind of methods to link you up with other people to do, good collaborative marketing.

it's win-win. Really? Yeah. Especially if there's no cost.

[00:37:31] Nathan Wrigley: And, WP may have a really long heritage of, creating WordPress content. I, I, know, there's loads of people that do similar things, but obviously maybe they're pitching it as a way to get onto their own website and things like that.

I don't really know. Anyway, I'm not

[00:37:45] Ross Morsali: curious what's behind the signup form now, how it works. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be

[00:37:49] Nathan Wrigley: interesting. A real mystery. Yeah. okay. have you on in a few weeks and you can tell us how it went. I, you, I, then you'll be a millionaire and it'll have all worked out perfectly in the blink.

Yeah, that's right. In the blink of an eye. Yeah. wp.com/blink. Now I'm paranoid that I can't say the word Thursday or me, I dunno, Every time I said, when you say a word so often, you just lose all sense of meaning. I've just done that with the word me. I can't Now imagine

[00:38:22] Raquel Manriquez: it sounds the same to me.

[00:38:23] Nathan Wrigley: Does it? Okay. I feel like I'm leaning into May or something like Mayo. Mayo. I

[00:38:28] Raquel Manriquez: guess it's American, British.

[00:38:30] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah. Me like a horse. Exactly that.

[00:38:33] Raquel Manriquez: Oh yeah.

[00:38:34] Nathan Wrigley: Landed into that. Anyway, blink. There you go. Apart from Ross, does anybody wanna mention that? Raquel, would you, for example, use up valuable minutes in your day to sign up for something like that, for Press Con, or have you got that whole piece of the jigsaw nailed?

[00:38:49] Raquel Manriquez: no, I have nothing nailed.

[00:38:53] Nathan Wrigley: Very honest.

[00:38:55] Raquel Manriquez: yeah, I'm a just do. I am a, The sense of Myers-Briggs of prospector when it comes to all that. But, no, I'm, that's actually what I'm doing right now is, signing up for all the tools. Like literally I've, all the tools that I've seen, I've never signed up for, and now I'm like, boom, tell me all the recommendations.

So I would definitely give it a look.

[00:39:18] Nathan Wrigley: I'm curious. So for press conf, what, does your intuition tell you is the biggest bang for your buck, if What would, where would be the first avenue of attack for a marketing strategy? What would, you do?

[00:39:34] Raquel Manriquez: right now we de definitely started with word of mouth.

okay. Like just reputation, knowing Pronos, knowing me, and knowing the crew that's helping and, Twitter and all the socials and email. So right now we're really focusing on getting our speakers locked in. Then announcing, 'cause we know that speakers bring people out, And then we have some other, campaign and marketing assets that we're working on, to just a lot give a lot of the story behind how this came to be, and definitely some podcasts and things like that.

but there's a lot in the arsenal right now that we're s getting ready to punch out.

[00:40:20] Nathan Wrigley: I'm certainly guessing that for you, relying on your heritage of attending events and like networking in person and meeting all the people will pay real dividends. You would've thought that in your email list and what have you.

You've, got all the people that you know over the years you've met because you've, you attend so much stuff, don't you?

[00:40:40] Raquel Manriquez: Sure. But I, don't, put anybody on the email list. so I, do have a little word. Camp esque going on inside of me where there's some things I'm still like, oh, I want everyone to opt in.

I don't wanna add. but yeah, I don't know that's been my own personal journey, like of really knowing how much I am loved and 'cause I, learned to love myself. And that's a little on the, soft side, but that's also kind of me. I do think that peop I've proven and I've become this trusted friend, of WordPress and.

yeah, there's definitely a lot there to be said. And just the fact people know me and like me. Oh no, we lost.

[00:41:29] Nathan Wrigley: Ross has just decided. He is. Yeah, he is pushed the, he's pushed the button. He's had enough. And we had a little bit of this before he joined, before we clicked. Oh no. That's why it was so amazing that you showed up and it all just worked.

That's actually pretty miraculous. No doubt Ross will come back, apropos of nothing. here we go. Marcus Burnett, now of Bluehost, no longer of GoDaddy. he's been lurking the whole show and he's got no issues with the way I say Thor Day or me, or, however, he doesn't like the way I say aluminum.

'cause he finds that offensive. It's spelt

[00:42:03] Raquel Manriquez: so different.

[00:42:04] Nathan Wrigley: It is. He's got an eye in it. You say aluminum, but you don't. No. What is it you are missing? Allium. You don't have the eye between the n the U Do you?

[00:42:12] Raquel Manriquez: We right? Yeah. Okay.

[00:42:13] Nathan Wrigley: So Yeah, he's back. He's back. Look, here he is. Woo. What happened, Ross?

[00:42:18] Ross Morsali: No idea. You, guys all froze.

I've been here all along.

[00:42:22] Nathan Wrigley: that, that was intentional. We collaborated before the show started and said it exactly. I just wanted to get out of the, at 42 minutes in, we're just gonna all present to freeze. No, I'm glad you're back. apparently we can't say aluminum right in the uk, Ross.

there is that just,

[00:42:38] Ross Morsali: aluminum?

[00:42:39] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, exactly. I they say aluminum.

[00:42:42] Ross Morsali: I like how

[00:42:43] Nathan Wrigley: market. Oh, aluminum. I know. What happened to spelling across the pond. It all just went all different, didn't it? Anyway, there you go. Blink, check out. Blink. It's on the WP Mayor website. Ah, done it again in my own head.

If there was a winner. For WordCamp ness, if you could select a con. You all know the answer now, 'cause I'm showing it on the screen. I, where would you imagine would be the winner? And the answer is in a letters on a postcard. It's Asia. Yeah, Asia. Asia. Asia is totally killing it. So this is, WordCamp Central.

It's, central.wordcamp.org/schedule. Now, it may well be that there is a bunch of stuff that hasn't made it onto this page, but in theory, all the official in air quotes, WordCamps are on here. And here we go. Check it out. so we've got 1, 2, 3, 4. The first four happening this year, are all in India.

Calta, AABA, I dunno if I'm pronouncing these right. kpo and Poon. And then we got, obviously we've mentioned it already, Manila. then we go to Spain, Nepal, Spain, Switzerland, USA. Maybe it's a function of the weather. Maybe that's what it is. I'm gonna maybe in, Europe. It's just 'cause the weather's poor that we're not winning.

But anyway, congratulations India, for winning in the battle of early 2025 word count. I just thought that was quite an interesting statistic that a load of stuff's.

[00:44:08] Kathy Zant: But there's a bunch on the right side though, that just there's, they haven't made it across a certain finish line that they're coming.

[00:44:17] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. What's there? Yeah. What's, what is that? Is these, oh, planned. Yeah. Do you know, honestly, I always ignore the sidebar.

[00:44:25] Raquel Manriquez: It means they're approved but they haven't had their budget approved and Oh, their venues contract signed.

[00:44:32] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. alright. Okay. In that case, get to

[00:44:35] Kathy Zant: the, yeah, I

[00:44:36] Nathan Wrigley: think that this is why we need

[00:44:37] Kathy Zant: the event expert on this show.

All

[00:44:40] Nathan Wrigley: that's right. Summer. Yeah. Thank you. It's so good. so look, I wonder if that redresses the balance. okay, so let's, imagine it does. So we've got Europe, us Europe, Europe, That's, I dunno what that one is. Asia, us. Where's that? Don't know. Asia, us, India. I still think India's doing pretty well.

Yeah. But I think, you, the u the European, the European cohort and not doing too bad either. so there we go. That's what's going on this year. It's worth checking out central dot word wordcamp.org/schedule. you gonna go to any of these? Apart from that? We own? You mentioned the, the one that's, in, the word Camp Asia that's happening in the Philippines.

Yeah. Do you intend to go to any of these kind of events this year? You are opting out because of all the drama that's been happening recently. Anybody wanna stick their neck out?

[00:45:42] Kathy Zant: I'm going ask half.

[00:45:49] Raquel Manriquez: yeah, I, still plan to go to the flagships, Europe, more than likely us. but. There's, and you're

[00:46:00] Nathan Wrigley: going to Asia, you said that one already.

[00:46:02] Raquel Manriquez: Yeah, But a good, key indicator, and I've got sun coming right on me, is that, the, especially in the US it just, it's not remotely, cheap to put on event in the us and that was really what I mean, word Camp Phoenix is no longer happening.

We just had ours, this still this year, 2024. But there, it's just so expensive and the way that they want the budgets to work, it just does not fit in the US hardly anymore.

[00:46:36] Nathan Wrigley: So what has been, so WordCamp Phoenix has been pulled for the year 2025 as far as, because of the financial burden of doing it.

It's the, numbers just don't add up.

[00:46:46] Raquel Manriquez: Yeah. and then also, the, I would've been the lead again this year. you lead two years in a row and then you take a break. and it just. This last one was really put us through the ringer. It was rough, let's just say that. Okay. And we're seasoned organizers, so it was really rough.

And it just got to the point of is it worth it? Is it not worth it? And for how much? I bled and cried and sweated last year. I was like, and, normally I love it, but it just. There was some definite changes to everything that made it not worth it.

[00:47:24] Nathan Wrigley: Oh gosh. I'm sorry to hear that. That's, and then maybe, did that then propel you more fully into press conference?

Hundred percent. Oh, okay. Got it.

[00:47:32] Raquel Manriquez: Yes, a hundred percent.

[00:47:33] Nathan Wrigley: Shifted your endeavors in a different direction. And

[00:47:37] Raquel Manriquez: the climate, I mean of WordPress as a whole and not re regard in regards to the recent drama. 'cause we, we announced before that happened. but, it, really though our community has been really crying out for another business of WordPress conference.

So

[00:47:56] Nathan Wrigley: I remember having a, I remember we, you and I and a bunch of other people went for that hike where many of us nearly died in, in t just outside Taipei. We honestly thought we were going for this like little level war, and we were. It was fairly intense, wasn't it? and you, I remember you saying, at the time, I'm thinking of doing this, and I, remember thinking, oh, I hope that comes off.

And then here we are, lo and behold, less than a year later, and you've got it all in. Yeah,

[00:48:21] Raquel Manriquez: I, referenced that hike. I remember two things. Zach Katz, if anyone could do it, Raquel, you can do it. That, and then, Robert Windish said that. That, cloud Fest was the new omics and I was like not having it.

[00:48:38] Nathan Wrigley: No, it's

[00:48:38] Raquel Manriquez: not.

[00:48:40] Nathan Wrigley: The more we got into that mor walk, the more it was we have to go. It can't be worse than turning back. Like we have to just keep going forward. We did it and we all, yeah, it was, fun. It was good. anyway, there you go. check 'em out. That's the place for looking at all the events and obviously, slightly light your heart light heartedly comparing different parts of the world.

That's not really the point. but you can see, all of these ones, definitely confirmed and you've got a ton of these going on. I see there's

[00:49:09] Ross Morsali: a good few in Spain though. I

[00:49:15] Nathan Wrigley: Madrid. Where do you, what was that about? Spain? Do you, go there?

[00:49:20] Ross Morsali: I'm living in Spain at the moment. Yeah. You are living in Spain. Yeah, I know we were talking about the UK earlier. That's where I've been for most of my life. But yeah, last few years I've been in Spain. Yeah.

[00:49:28] Nathan Wrigley: Honestly. And here I am trying to pretend that we're like UK bodies in, you've left.

I still drink tea.

[00:49:34] Ross Morsali: I still drink tea. that's where it's in my heart. Yeah. Where in Spain? I'm the north coast. in a region called Asteria. You leave made the greenest part of Spain, I would say.

[00:49:45] Nathan Wrigley: Why

[00:49:45] Ross Morsali: did

[00:49:45] Nathan Wrigley: you leave

[00:49:46] Ross Morsali: the uk?

[00:49:46] Nathan Wrigley: for the obvious, like long list of reasons. What did we It was

[00:49:51] Ross Morsali: just a personal thing.

It was a long time ago. I was living in London for a while. and then I just wanted to explore, so I was gonna, I had this hit list of different countries to go visit, and live in or go work in some place for six months with my laptop and move on.

I can't what the name is right now. It's a very common word. If someone wants to interject of. And people that go, do working remotely. Yeah, no, working remotely and hopping around country to country. Oh, digital nomad. There we go. That's the one I was looking for. Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna do that for a while, but then I met my girlfriend here and she's convinced me to stay put in Spain.

So we moved from, Barcelona to the North Coast. Recently. Nice, Just there.

[00:50:36] Nathan Wrigley: I ask, did you, are you, did you do all of that before? The whole fun of what we call, oh, this, is another longest, this is another longest story. Okay. No, we won't get into

[00:50:44] Ross Morsali: it. I don't, actually have an English passport, have a European passport, Oh,

[00:50:48] Nathan Wrigley: okay. Alright. it's

[00:50:49] Ross Morsali: easy for me to leave. It's harder for me to go back.

[00:50:52] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, okay. Alright. anyway, there you go. Whole list of, WordPress events happening and so go and check 'em out. Obviously, hopefully those things on the sidebar will move over into the, main section as time goes on, but that's what's happening.

Gosh, we are. Really using up the time today. speaking of WordCamp Asia, as we were, WordCamp Asia 2026, gosh, we're already thinking about that. a new city, is required. So WordCamp Asia has been in three separate locations on three different years. I know that in u the US it's traditional to have sort of two years in the same place like Portland and then Portland again, and then, somewhere else.

But, it looks like Asia is setting a pattern of just somewhere different each year. Bangkok, Manila, Taipei have all been done and they're looking for applications for a new host city. The application process ends December the 31st. I'm gonna imagine that, it's hard work. This is from the tavern website.

It says here, it's a significant undertaking, but there are people there to help you. So if you, are in for that. head here, wp tavern.com. And then they've got links for how you can apply and I'll just keep cracking on. this is the actual, piece, asia.wordcamp.org. And then you can search, it's called Host for Next City.

And the, the Apply Now button is right there. Okie doke. Just to make Ross happy, we thought we'd, we thought we'd, we thought we'd mention, a plugin, which is a. Which is new and interesting, but in order to redress the balance, we'll then talk about Ross's plugin, which does a similar thing. this came, I dunno how I caught sight of this today, but Human Made this week have introduced something which they're calling, the WordPress Query Loop filter.

And, the idea being, we've got the query loop block where you can set up queries, but in WordPress core there's no way of faceted searching those, you can't say it actually, now that I've seen all of those. Things in the loop, just show me the ones of a certain category, of a certain taxonomy or what have you.

you can drill down into different bits and pieces. human made have decided to, make something. And if I just scroll down to the bottom, where's it? Gone. Can't remember. It does tell me somewhere exactly what you're able to do with it at the moment. I guess maybe they were waiting for this thing to happen.

they were waiting for the, interactivity. API I'm guessing, Ross, you tell us in a minute that you had to build your own sort of interactivity, API in order to do something like this. But the interactivity, API en enables you to update things on the page in real time. if you add something to a shopping cart, you can increment the number by one or if you want something to be refreshed automatically on the page, that can be handled.

So there it is. they've released it into the wild and it [email protected] on their blog. Introducing the WordPress query loop. I'm gonna guess Ross, because you have. a rival product. Yours is a commercial product, but you've also got a healthy, free offering called Search and Filter. Yep. Search Filter Pro is the premium one.

Search and Filter is the free one. How, first of all, how does it make you feel when you see something like that come along? Do you, does it well, when you see,

[00:54:14] Ross Morsali: when, it's by someone like Human Made, it is not the best because those, guys make really great software. but yeah, it's good. I think it's healthy.

I think it's inevitable that we're gonna get more and more products like this in the block editor. the query Loop has turned out to be super popular, super, everybody's using it. so yeah, more and more of these kind of plugins are gonna pop up. I don't see any kind of pro angle from theirs, so for me it's not really too an issue from a business kind of side of things.

As long as we offer more things for, in the Pro plugin, I. I think we're good. Yeah.

[00:54:52] Nathan Wrigley: Can I ask, a question about that whole interactivity API thing? Would you reckon you'll end up, would you, ever port your code into that to make it Yeah,

[00:55:00] Ross Morsali: it's, actually on, on a, on the roadmap.

yeah, so we're searching filter, we're not doing like a Gutenberg or block editor only approach. we've got years worth of users using Elementor and Beaver Builder and all kinds of things like that. so we've got our own kind of Ajax system for doing that interactivity, but also we've been waiting for the interactivity, API to be a bit more stable, and usable and out in the wild.

I think we're 6.5. Was it where we could start using it? I'm not sure. So it's on our roadmap as well. yeah. So we'll be porting over what we can to that. So our blockout as users get like a first class experience too.

[00:55:42] Nathan Wrigley: And just because we were talking about it earlier, black Friday and all.

Look, you've got eight hours, four minutes, and 30. Cyber Monday. 30. Oh cyber. Yeah. Cyber Monday now. Sorry. Yeah. I think I dropped

[00:55:54] Ross Morsali: off your Black Friday deals page. Yeah. What the

[00:55:56] Nathan Wrigley: heck happened there? I was searching thinking you'd be on there, but yeah, I was hoping I, what happened there. but yeah, Ross has got a deal at the moment.

You've got, eight hours and four minutes left to get 30% off for Cyber Monday. No cyber. I can't say what the actual cyber is what I said there.

Wait,

[00:56:17] Nathan Wrigley: what's wrong? I need to go and have an orange juice. Lie down Wrigley and have an orange juice. Just calm down. anyway, you can go and check it out.

Search, search and filter.com. tried and tested for

[00:56:28] Ross Morsali: how long have you been doing it

[00:56:29] Nathan Wrigley: and the free version?

[00:56:31] Ross Morsali: I think, this is our 10th year. Oh gosh.

[00:56:34] Nathan Wrigley: So been

[00:56:35] Ross Morsali: around for a while. Yeah.

[00:56:36] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. You really do know what you're doing over there. So if you want to. Check it out, search and filter.com, slash free in this case for the free version, works for the query loop.

Ah, nice. Okay. Okay. That's good. I'm sorry to hijack your, your story there with, with the free version, but the human made story came my way. One thing in the block editor, which I think is really not great, at the moment is navigation. And there's a couple of solutions which have popped up recently.

the one that I saw a little while ago was the new cadence, header, and navigation builder. They've got this nice visual ui, which I, haven't got on the screen, but we mentioned it in a previous iteration. Basically, they take what they've done in their theme. Then drop that into the go, into the block editor, the site editor ui, the very similar UI and experience, and it enables you to build mega menus and all that kind of thing.

However, because we mentioned that before this came along, this suite, which I thought was interesting, and it's by, post X, WP XBO and it's the mega menu builder. so it's a very similar idea. And, I would imagine that this is gonna be like some really fertile ground for plugin developers at the moment because if you, honestly, if you try to build a navigation structure with default WordPress.

just say, you're not gonna get very far. You're not gonna do anything particularly elaborate. So having tools like the Cadence one and this one, is cool. So you can go and check it out. I'll link to it in the show notes for tomorrow. I don't suppose anybody's got anything they want to add to that.

Do they? Maybe they,

[00:58:19] Ross Morsali: just, that it seems like a lot of the people that were making mega menus in the pre block editor era have not really been porting their plugins over to the block editor. I think that's why there's some room in the market for these guys. Yeah. Because, yeah. Yeah. There's a few really big ones like Max Mega Menu and I haven't seen them around in the Blockhead, a kind of era.

[00:58:41] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. basically you can do dropdowns and all, like obviously with code you can do whatever you like, but if you, the, promise of doing everything inside a point and click UI. it doesn't seem to be offering too much in terms of navigation. I know that everybody working on Core knows that and they're obviously just picking their battles and it'll come.

but for now, third party replacements, like this one seem to be, yeah, anyway, and it's, you've got one day, nine hours, one minute, and 13 seconds to get that deal. If you want to do that. who has moved part of their social life online over to Blue Sky. I'm raising my hand. Raquel's hand's gone up Kathy's hand.

okay, it's four out of four. I really like it. I don't know why I like it. I do like it. It seems like all the WordPresses have gone over there. That seems to be my impression anyway, of every single person that I want to find in the WordPress space. As soon as I've started typing in something akin to their name, they've cropped up.

I haven't a single instance yet. So the, migration from X, 'cause it basically is in every way, shape, or form it. The interface even just mimics X. Yeah. it's really credible. it's called Blue Sky. It's totally free. The best bit is that your domain can be your handle. I dunno if you've done that, Kathy or Ross or Ric.

Yeah. Yeah. Did you do zant.com or.

[01:00:11] Kathy Zant: Yeah, I did zant.com. 'cause yeah, it was so easy to do. You need to set up your dn know how to do DNS setup. But

[01:00:20] Nathan Wrigley: yeah,

[01:00:20] Kathy Zant: it was easy.

[01:00:21] Nathan Wrigley: It's a text record, isn't it? It takes about a minute to do, probably less than a minute. And then you can bag that as your handle. So you would [email protected], I would [email protected] and, what have you.

But the, obviously the, problem with all of these things is Twitter's just got so many tendrils out there in the world. everybody's embedded stuff on Twitter and there's like buttons everywhere and, post to Twitter things and all of that ecosystem is missing, especially connecting WordPress sites to, all of that.

And Daniel, and for some reason Daniel's surname has gone outta my head. Oh, I feel bad post. I think it's Daniel Post Great. Daniel Post took it on himself to launch this. It's called Auto Blue cc, and it's totally free at the moment. and I imagine what you see here will be free forever. I think he's gonna add on some other things, but it enables you to cross to post things to your Blue Sky account from your WordPress platform.

So post something and it'll share it out onto Blue Sky. And I think the intention is so that you could also receive comments. So if somebody replies on Blue Sky, it'll drop in as a comment onto your blog post, which is really neat. so anyway, it is called Auto Blue cc. Can we just quickly go round? Why, do you, if you like it, why do you like it?

Kathy, can we start with you? Blue Sky? Yeah.

[01:01:55] Kathy Zant: okay, so Twitter's changed a lot. I think what Elon's trying to do with Twitter is let's have broad conversations about everything and when sometimes you just wanna talk to people in your niche or talk to people in your social group. And, right now for me, I don't, I go on Twitter and it's just like I get sucked into these broader conversations about everything and then it's just like, where are my people?

And I go over to Blue Sky and it's oh, there's Rick, Colin Carroll and everybody else I know and Nathan and, Ross, you guys are all there. And so if I wanna have conversations within my niche that's there, but then I'm, I've been really thinking about like, how do I wanna use. Like social media, like Facebook has just been like people I've known since I was five and, seriously, like my best friend from kindergarten, like we're still friends on, Facebook and LinkedIn, like everybody I've ever worked with.

And it's like interesting how it's just like these different, like microcosms of my life. and right now Blue Sky is my WordPress microcosm. Like I, I, a couple of college friends just friended me on over there and I'm like, oh, okay, maybe this is gonna be broader. But I liked it just to be like the WordPress people.

if I wanted to jump into WordPress, there they are. So

[01:03:14] Nathan Wrigley: that's why I like it. I like it. Okay. So it's like a different silo. It's not that sort of professional crowd, which is still over at LinkedIn. It's not your family. Yeah. And schoolmates, which is over on Facebook. It's more kind of related to the work that you do.

So in this case, WordPress. Okay. Interesting. Raquel, any thoughts?

[01:03:31] Raquel Manriquez: Yeah, Twitter for me was always, now X was always. WordPress, and yeah, there's definitely some crossover, but it was, that was why I was there. It was WordPress and I actually signed on to Blue Sky earlier where you had to have a.

Like a, referral code to get your handle. And I was, I'm like, I just wanna squat on my handle everywhere I go. So I'm like, okay, I even if I don't plan on using the platform, I'll still just go grab my handle. And definitely after, was that now two weeks ago in America, just this mass exodus, just it's blue, everybody's signing up to Blue Sky.

It's like I'm now getting all these notifications of just all these now follows from WordPress. So

[01:04:14] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, that's nice. Yeah, that's the sort of sense that I've got as well is that it seems to be on the rise and I didn't really join Twitter for a long time. So I think that sort of heyday that everybody thinks about Twitter, that when it was really, fascinating 'cause it was brand new, I never really got to experience that and I never, I've never really had a polluted relationship with Twitter because, I dunno, I just used it as an inbox really.

I didn't really ever look at the feed or anything like that. So I don't really have any ax to grind, but I am finding there is something very nice and emergent about blue sky and everybody seems to be quite happy over there. Just before we come to Ross, Elliot just says he likes it for a start, so thank you, Elliot.

But he also says, no ads, less trolls, nicer algo algorithm, I'm guessing. How long can that last though, Elliot, I guess how, long can Blue Sky keep going without ads? Yeah, what's the

[01:05:11] Ross Morsali: monetization?

[01:05:12] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. especially now that they've decided to, I think it was a couple of weeks ago or maybe a month ago that decided that you were gonna be able to post video and of course the cost of hosting all that video ever and ever.

And but the algorithm that is obviously something in their control and I, I don't know if this has been launched like even vaguely yet, but apparently you're gonna be able to bring your own algorithm so you'll be able to build an algorithm and I'm sure generators will pop up online. Then you can tell blue sky, okay, this is what I want blue sky to be for me.

So it might be, I don't know anything with this word in it, kill it. Anything with this word in it? Yeah, show me that 10 outta 10 times, so you can build your own, which is interesting. The bit that puzzles me is I want it to federate. I wanna be able to take everything that's on blue sky and take that content somewhere else.

So I know that is something which they've talked about, but all the people that I know who are very nerdy about this kind of stuff say none of that has really happened yet. So we'll see. Anyway, Ross gone.

[01:06:20] Ross Morsali: Yeah. Kathy, if you wanna go.

[01:06:23] Kathy Zant: Oh, I was gonna mention with the federation, we were talking before the show about, where Jack Dorsey was off to, and I looked it up.

It's called Noster and it's block chainy. And so it, but it looks super new, but I'm watching this one and Raquel's gonna have to go grab her. And

[01:06:40] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, it looks

[01:06:41] Kathy Zant: really interesting because it's, they're talking about like the problems with, with how, important social media is and then how, important it is to have it be more decentralized.

And so it's, there's a lot of blockchain type of things happening over there. And so it looks really interesting and I think people should look at it,

[01:07:04] Nathan Wrigley: Jack Dorsey, how many ideas can one person have? and for them to be like, barnstorming really successful. It's not fair, Jack. Share it, out a bit.

[01:07:15] Raquel Manriquez: I think that's like the key 'cause going forward is, especially because of social media, we really got to see how much our data is worth. And it's mine, it's mine. Pay me for my data.

[01:07:29] Nathan Wrigley: Did you see, the, there was something quite recently and, we'll get into territory that we, I don't really wanna get into the territory, but the context is interesting.

the Onion bought the info was Oh, yeah. web, website, and I guess all their property. And that whole process was weird anyway, but as part of buying it, their Twitter handle was obviously rolled up in all of that. And, my understanding is that, Elon, AKA X, has said no, Those tweets, they, belong to us. So that's interesting 'cause obviously, Yeah. if that's the case, then all of the content that you've put on Twitter, right? you know that it's not yours, don't you, on some level, but to hear it said out loud that it's not yours. And that's what I mean by federated.

I want that idea, that mastered on kind of idea that exactly what you said, Raquel, that I wanna download it all and erase it and then I wanna put it onto something else and then it be there. Now that would be nice. This sort of, for the same reason you have a WordPress website, you want it to be yours and under your control and we've given it all away to social networks.

Sorry, Ross, what were you gonna say?

[01:08:42] Ross Morsali: Oh, good. I'll, I think I'd be quite quick. for me, blue Skies yeah, has been said in this chat, there is, less trolls. it just seems a bit more simple, less, agendas. Actually, I feel like maybe I. It is, you probably shouldn't be pushing like kind of salesy stuff too much that I think people are there for that at the moment.

It's, it feels just more like conversations, with less agendas. Yeah. you mentioned about the algorithm thing. I think that's already like partially possible because I found this, I dunno how to use it very well, but this feed I can subscribe to and it's, what's it called? And I've got like a tab now on my home screen and it's called Quiet Posters.

And what it does is it shows me, people that I follow who don't post very much. Huh. So there's a crazy kind of algorithm going on there. Nice. So it's gives some light to somebody who doesn't, overly post or, push, an agenda or, I don't know. So that's, I've got that feed in. There's

[01:09:44] Nathan Wrigley: fascinating.

Yeah. That genuinely that must be possible

[01:09:46] Ross Morsali: already. Yeah.

[01:09:47] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, because I, think Twitter is basically won by the loudest, isn't it? That seems to be my intuition that the winners over there are people who have buckets, loads of time to post lots and lots, but also, can say things that get, get everybody riled up and what have you.

And the algorithm obviously promotes that. Kami says, thank you, Kami. She says, if you use your domain, so in my case Nathan wrigley.com, as your handle, then what you had previously would've been open for somebody to have. Okay? So that's fine. so she says, recommends going and getting those as well.

oh, I should, you can have lots and lots of accounts all combined under one login as well. So it's all dead easy. So anyway, Daniel's plugin auto blue. Allows you to automate a lot of the bits and pieces that are happening and the idea in the future is that you'll be able to schedule things. he's only got regular posts, no pages or custom post types at the moment, but you can use hashtags and things like that.

But there's gonna be lots more coming and I can't remember where I saw it. He's intimating that he is gonna build a pro version as well, but I love the idea of comments. Coming in from Blue Sky into my website. I think that's a really neat idea. okay, there we go. That's that. And, UK developer, he is been on the show a few times.

Dave Gray. I think it's Dave Gray, if I've got that wrong. Dave, I really, apologize. I'm pretty sure it's Dave. he's built a plugin that he's released in the recent past last week or so called Nag Me Knot. And if you're looking at the screen, you know what this feels like, logging into your WordPress website and you see a bunch of, ads.

sometimes they are genuinely of importance, do this, update the database, whatever it may be. But very often we know what it feels like. You get banner ads and all sorts of upsells and things like that. Is plugin does one thing. It just makes 'em go away. Shoves them in a container where you can look at them at a later date.

It is interesting. He says once in a while you should switch the plugin off so that you can, you can see if there's anything of any value in there and then immediately turn it on again. so it's available at the moment. It's Black Friday style thing, it's 1999, one-off. so I dunno if that means like a lifetime deal or if that's 1999, that's the price that you've locked in.

But there's an offer to get that if you wanna buy it for your client websites or what have you. And it looks like he's building a Chrome extension as well. So you should be able to, Use this without needing a plugin. Be able to just do it from a browser. Ah,

[01:12:19] Ross Morsali: so it'd be good for doing tech support when you're going through different people's website and

[01:12:24] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, You wanna avoid the nine page scroll of really? How many plugins do you have? So there you, oh, it is me. There he is. He's there. Woo. that's him. It is. You is So is it is 99 9, Dave. Is that for life? Like one off, or is that 1999? 1999. That you have to pay, each year. and he says there's a Black Friday code at the top.

It's, I can see the comments coming in more quickly on YouTube, so they haven't come. Oh, there it is. It's there now. show that Black Friday code at the top. okay. There you go. Anybody wanna add anything to that? Nag Me not, thanks. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Isn't it funny that there's an ecosystem so big that you can have a plugin.

To make the interface of the niche product, which you are working in better than it was 'cause it's so annoying as I just find that fascinating. How is that possible? a couple of, things on lifetime deal. Also, at the moment, if you wanna build a community like a Facebook group kind of thing, but you wanna do it inside of WordPress, there's a couple of offerings out at the moment.

They're brand new, both of them. And so they're offering lifetime pricing. Here's the first one. We mentioned it last week, this one. It's called Fluent Community, built by the same people who build fluent forms and all of the fluent things, fluent CRM and things like that. at the moment it starts at one site for 1 99.

This is lifetime pricing. So you pay it once and obviously you can see the numbers going up, $400 for five sites and so on so there's that. And, but then this one popped up on my radar like about an hour ago, and I thought I'd throw that in as well. And sure Dash. I'm presuming it's the people that are behind the Sure things, so the Sure cart and Sure.

Other things. I'm not quite sure God. Oh, I feel so bad. That wasn't intentional, but there we go. I'm not actually too certain what their other offerings are, but here we go. They've got arrival product and obviously, they're offering lifetime pricing as well. 'cause they're in a competitive marketplace, although I can't see what their pricing is.

There you go. 1 99 for one site, 10 sites 2 99 and then a hundred sites 3 99. So go check 'em both out shore dash.com and fluent community. I think this is, for me personally, I think it's, it is hard work doing this kind of thing outside of the big platforms like Facebook. 'cause getting people to opt into your own system, I think's quite hard.

I dunno if you've ever tried to build a community, but it's tough. Tough stuff. anything else on that? No. Patricia says she's catching up on 1.5 speed. What do we all sound like? That'd be a bit demoralizing. Okay. Let's move away from WordPress. We all love ai, don't we?

[01:15:23] Ross Morsali: Do we?

[01:15:25] Nathan Wrigley: this survey says you do Ross.

Alright. That's just whatever you think you love ai because this survey says, so this is from, a company called 20 I, they're a hosting company. I think they're based outta the uk. Certainly the dealings that I've had have been with UK people and, they've, had a survey and honestly, so it's, 500 web developers and designers.

So it's, it's a limited range of people, but it's still a significant number. the data is like relentlessly positive to the point where I'm like, what the heck? Could that be true? Let's just go through a few things. so according to this, so if you take the first two, this is the question.

How often is AI used by web professionals? And honestly, I would've put it in the I don't know, once a month, couple of times a month to solve something, which was difficult. I'm so wrong. 70% of people, it was weekly. Every week they're doing something with ai who used AI This week on our panel. Yeah.

Yeah, I used it this

[01:16:26] Kathy Zant: morning. I use it every day.

[01:16:29] Nathan Wrigley: I'm using it right now. That's so wrong. Yeah. We'll, get into what you do with it in a minute, but, okay. all right, that's holding up at the moment. So what kind of jobs do you do it for? Web designers say that 51% of the time they're using it daily.

Web developers, basically the same. 48 marketers, 30% daily, 43% weekly, and then copywriters much less. So they seem to be going into it weekly, more like 50%. What tools are you, what kind of things are you getting out of it on the other end? code generation, copywriting, design automation and so on and so forth.

Here we go though. This is the interesting bit. Satisfaction, impressed, which is their highest metric. 92%. When do you get a survey where 92% of people think the same thing? Unimpressed 2%. So only 2% of people thought that it wasn't compelling and 6% were neither impressed nor unimpressed. So that's pretty significant.

web designers, 97% of them are using it. Web developers, 87% digital marketers, 94% copywriters, 84%. How much has it impacted on quality? This is the bit that I would've thought would've been much lower web designers saying 78% of people thought it was cracking. really good. 78 again for web developers, digital marketers, 73 copywriters.

67. and so we go on and it's all relentlessly positive. I think we should all just give up now. There's no point in doing anything anymore 'cause we just knew that Kathy's, Kathy's not convinced. I am very surprised that it's as positive as this though. I would've thought like a bunch of web developers would've trusted AI to do something and it would've spat out absolute junk.

Which, came back to invite them and there would've been some cost to that, but no. Kathy, what did you do with it this morning?

[01:18:25] Kathy Zant: I have an idea for doing something, and I wanted to, gut check my idea, and then I wanted ideas of what to call this super secret thing that I'm trying to do and, give me 15 ideas.

This, that's what I did when I was at Cadence and I wanted to do an event a day long, like online event. I wanted a name for it, and Cadence Amplify was an AI generated name, and I'm like, I like it. That works. That's what I'm trying to do. That just encapsulated everything that I was, I, do it for Id, it, never, I, use it for writing.

I use it for cooking Turkey. I'm like, how do you do this? Again? I asked ai. I didn't go to Google to search it. I asked AI, how do I do this? And it never gets me a hundred percent there, but it helps me. gut check ideas. It helps me get 80% of the way there and then I can, then I, just feel like this, I feel this fulfillment in making it better.

Nice. It could be there. Yeah. But then I'm like, oh, but it could be better if we do this. And so it's like my coworker is oh, you've such a great, and I don't have to compliment it. It's just like, all right, great. I'm gonna take that and make it

[01:19:44] Nathan Wrigley: better. That bit's coming. That bit will come probably.

Yeah. It won't. I'll you the answer. Say please, Kathy. Say please. Yeah. I'll give you the answer. oh. That's really positive though. That's really nice. So it basically compliments you and ideation sort of stuff, it gives you ideas. Yeah. For things that you would have to sweat blonde tears and, wake up in the middle of the night and quickly scribble at something down on the pad or what have you.

Okay. That's really interesting. Here's my question though. Has it now become like the default. So if you want ideas, do you immediately reach for ai or do you still rely on yourself a little bit?

[01:20:20] Kathy Zant: I'd still get, the shower downloads and stuff. When I'm out on walks with dogs and stuff like that, that still happens.

but when I sit down, I'm like, I'll take that idea that hits and then I'll ask AI to, I, asked it to, to write a business plan for me, and that was really interesting. that's interesting. I didn't realize it could do that too. And, so like just gut checking ideas and then thinking of the things that you haven't thought of and, yeah, it just, it makes me, it gives me this sense of hope for the future because it is you don't, it doesn't feel like this giant, monumental thing you have to create.

It's okay, I can have an idea and this can flesh out all of the different pieces that go into building out that idea. And I don't have to like. I don't have to ask anybody else. It's just like there. And sometimes I disagree with it, and sometimes I'm like, oh, I know where you got that. That's not true.

Like it, it's, I don't know. It's like a coworker. It's, I, and I don't have to, deal with no

[01:21:26] Nathan Wrigley: compliments required. Yeah, you don't have to make it. No compliments, no arguments or anything. No breaks. Yeah. Yeah. No Christmas presents. No breaks. What the heck we're doomed. I, I do wonder, Kathy, seriously, this is an interesting point.

So it made you the, what did you say? See? Job. Job. What was it? Job. Description or job? oh. A business

[01:21:45] Kathy Zant: plan. Business plan. Yeah. 'cause I had an idea and I'm like, can this really happen? Write a business plan for this. And one of the, so I used multiple different tools and one of 'em was like super optimistic and I'm like, yeah, I don't know about that.

And I went to another one and it was much more, if these factors were, and it was more realistic. So I gut check against a number of different ones now. Okay. Because some of them are overly optimistic and just You can do anything, honey. And I'm,

[01:22:14] Nathan Wrigley: that's nice. That was the nice ai. Yeah, that's my nice coworker.

Oh, beautiful. ai. The one that I want, one that's gonna tell me the truth. That's the one you wanna give breaks and buy T four and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah. I just wonder though, if, the, loop is gonna be completed where, let's say you write a CV or something like that and, it does a cracking job and lays it all out for you and it gives you great ideas.

My fear though, is that on the other end, it'll be consumed by an ai, that in the end it's already happening. Yeah. So the AI will consume the AI generated content and make decisions about AI, generated content about whether you are a worthy human being or not. And I do wonder if, the humans step out of the equation so much, if we're so satisfied with it, like 92%.

We just do, get a bit lazy with the, with the, fact checking and the, just the reality checking of it. Like, you said, you do it a couple of times and, just pick your favorite one anyway. Thank you. That was fascinating. Raquel, do you use it?

[01:23:13] Raquel Manriquez: Yeah. mostly yeah. For writing, Okay. And yeah, and I'll ask instead of going to Google sometimes, but I tend to be, I guess where you both lie. Same thing. It's like I, I want to take advantage of the tool and I'm very pro efficiency. I love that. but I always say please and thank you.

[01:23:37] Nathan Wrigley: Nice. Even like with

[01:23:38] Raquel Manriquez: Siri, because Siri now has like ai and, so I'm like, thank you.

[01:23:44] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if somewhere, yes, apple are keeping a track of that. It's like Raquel. Polite. Give her the good ai, give

[01:23:54] Raquel Manriquez: her

[01:23:54] Nathan Wrigley: the

[01:23:54] Raquel Manriquez: good. Yeah. When I'm like, I joke, I'm a when AI takes over, when judgment day comes, I will be spared and will be made a slaves.

[01:24:03] Nathan Wrigley: That's right. Yeah, you'll own It's bleak, but not that bleak.

Yeah, I get it. Oh, that's brilliant. And Ross, as a coder, you fit right into this. Do you, use it? You generate? Yeah.

[01:24:15] Ross Morsali: Yeah. I've been using it in, my coding tools for, a long time. I basically just use it as a glorified auto complete. So as I'm typing something, it will suggest something and I can just ignore it.

And if it's what I was gonna do, I'll just press tab and it just completes it for me. some people use it for building whole applications and, oh, I put this into cloud and, I've built this thing and I'm not even a coder. I don't know how they did that because, that's not the kind of experience I usually get.

Okay. But occasionally I throw something left field out there, like something complicated that I know I'm gonna be able to figure out. and I just give it a go and sometimes it fails and yeah, sometimes it just comes back with something crazy. I'm like, oh wow, that's just saved me like half an afternoon.

Oh, I need to even go down that road Now.

[01:25:04] Nathan Wrigley: It happened the other

[01:25:04] Ross Morsali: day and probably last time it happened a few weeks ago. It's quite rare that it is the complicated stuff the way I want it to do, but the auto complete stuff's a lifesaver. yeah, it's just little minutes here every day. all adds up.

I've gotta grow up. I've gotta

[01:25:21] Nathan Wrigley: learn that this, stop being so objectionable about it and just start to use it. My favorite application of it is creating songs with suno. Oh yeah. I dunno if you've been to that website. suno.com. SUN o.com. Honestly, I have just used up the rest of your day. The minute you go to that website, that's it.

There's nothing else happening. You're just gonna go and write songs about your cats and things like that, your beautiful cats and it will do it for you for free. And they're all really good. Oh dear.

[01:25:53] Ross Morsali: I think you might have used it, for editing videos and things, Nathan. Yeah. And you can do things like for cleaning audio.

Yeah. Like getting rid of, noises you don't want in the background Yeah. And things like that.

[01:26:03] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it does do that. And it was a remarkable job of it actually. It, cleans up the audio really well. but it doesn't, there's still a lot of manual editing, but it'll come, I'm sure it'll come that a one click solution for, cleaning up your video, clean this video all the way down.

Yeah, okay. So actually.

[01:26:22] Kathy Zant: More fun thing. I created an AI clone of my husband since he, I took all of his, I, because he had a stroke three years ago, Yes. So I took all of his old audios and fed them into Delphi ai. Oh gosh. And I can actually have a conversa. He thinks it's hilarious.

'cause his voice just isn't the same, 'cause he, it affected his speech. And so people can have an actual conversation with him now. It's like his old voice and everything. It's really fun. Gosh.

[01:26:51] Nathan Wrigley: Like I, I was beginning that whole thing. I assumed it was going in a sort of comedy direction, but it actually didn't end up there.

Did it? It, that's quite profound. That's almost like put in a time. Capsules.

[01:27:02] Kathy Zant: Yeah. it's fun too. 'cause we use it sometimes to prank people. Okay. Because it sounds just like him. It is crazy how much it sounds just like him. And so we'll call people in the family and it's like his old voice and.

It freaks people out and that's fun. Yeah,

[01:27:20] Nathan Wrigley: man. Anyway, it turns out, and Ross can confirm that, for, the web developer side of things, the, the, jury's decided it's good. It's 90% excellent all the time. carry on using it. Don't worry about the future or the robots or, any of that.

We're all fine. I feel like the more we use

[01:27:40] Ross Morsali: it, the, more we're just training it to replace us. But anyway, let's see how that goes.

[01:27:45] Nathan Wrigley: That's right. Yeah, it'll come, but it's, I think there's a, at least 12 or 13 days till that happens, live it up. okay. Moving on quickly, very quickly 'cause we're running outta time.

the Cloud Fest hackathon is happening. just, I presume this information is widely dispersed, but I, guess this is new 'cause it came up on my RSS feed March 15th to the 17th, 2025. I've never been. Apparently it is a riot. And yeah, you can join, I'll post the link into the show notes, but if you just google hackathon.cloud fest.com, you'll be able to register.

And apparently it's the whole thing is inside a theme park. What the heck? What more fun could you want? Fine. yeah, I know. And ending on a fun note, this, is so weird, right? I'm gonna refresh the page 'cause it's that good. Did, did you send us this Ross? Was it you? Yeah, So this is BFCM, black Friday, cyber monday, stripe.com.

And I just refre, I'm gonna do it again 'cause it's cool and it looks like, I don't know, the command line or some Linux system booting up and it and then it, shows us a machine, right? Which is giving us Black Friday information and you can click on the various different bits of pieces and it tells you what's going on.

22 billion. Is the current number and it's going up all the time. 22.6 billion, transactions have happened. cross border transaction volume is 2 billion. There's total transactions. I dunno how long that period of time is. Anyway, the point is it looks like a, it looks like a fun website that somebody's put together.

And you can imagine the CSS and HTML that was went in to create that. No, that's not what happened. Somebody actually built it. There it is. That's actually what you're looking at. Apparently. It's a feed's, a live feed. Look there. That's, there's, that's it. Let me press play. It's, a camera. Looking at the machine.

Somebody at strike got paid to build a machine. That gig. A very retro

[01:29:55] Ross Morsali: machine.

[01:29:55] Nathan Wrigley: A very retro machine. Anyway, there you go. So 22 billion transactions. You just see the number crawling up by literally. What, 200,000 a second? Isn't that insane? Isn't that insane? Anyway, I'll put the links to the show notes in there.

And we have, we have basically run outta time, but I just thought that was absolutely brilliant. like I say, no, not cloud for us links will come in the show notes tomorrow, but brilliant. What fun that is the things that people will do to, Use up their time at work. That's it. That's all we've got for you this week.

We won't be here next week because we'll have been taken over by the AI overlords. I'll just give you a, ble, I give you an impression of how bleak it is in the uk. I'm gonna turn my little lights out here and you'll see what we have to live with in the UK at this time of year. That's what it's actually like.

Wow. Isn't because you're in the

[01:30:50] Ross Morsali: basement.

[01:30:52] Nathan Wrigley: No, I'm not. I'm no. I can tell there's a window right there. So it's more or less pitch black here. I know. That's it. We've only got one thing remaining first. No, I've got two. First one is to say thank you to Kathy to say thank you to Raquel. I remembered your name.

Raquel. Can we just acknowledge that? And and Ross as well. Thank you for joining us. And the other thing to say is we always do this, we just put our hands up. Before we go and everybody at the same time. So yeah, go for it, Ross. Go on. There we go, And I will make that into the album art for this.

So thank you very much. Thank you to those of you who joined me. I'm sorry I only put a proportion of the comments up and I apologize about that. But really appreciate it. you guys, when I click stop, a little video will run for a couple of seconds. if you wanna stick around another natter afterwards, feel free.

That would be lovely. But we'll see you next week for another this week in WordPress. Thank you so much. We will be back next week. Take care. Bye-Bye bye.