[00:00:21] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there and welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast. You've reached episode number 482 entitled WPOCC, rebranding and surveying the WordPress community. It was released on Thursday, the 27th of August, 2026. My name's Nathan Wrigley, and in a few short moments, I will be joined by Sé Reed, if I can pronounce that name correctly, so that we can have our discussion.
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Okay, what have we got for you today? Well, today I am chatting with, Sé Reed. Sé has been involved in the WPCC or the WP Community Collective for a little while now, but they decided for various reasons, which will become obvious during the podcast that they needed to change the name and the acronym. So it's now the WPOCC and the O stands for open, as you will hear.
So we're chatting today about what exactly went on there. Why have they decided to change the name? We get into surveying the WordPress community, finding out from the WPOCC, where we are at as a community. What are the difficulties and challenges that we're facing? Are we in decline? Are we in growth? What do people want out of the WordPress community?
And it's a really fun conversation with a really fun character, and I hope that you enjoy it.
I am joined on the podcast by Sé Reed. Hi there.
[00:02:43] Sé Reed: Hi. Hi, Nathan. It's lovely to be here.
[00:02:46] Nathan Wrigley: This is the third try had.
[00:02:49] Sé Reed: Doing well so far.
[00:02:50] Nathan Wrigley: Your name for some reason. You have the most straightforward first name.
[00:02:55] Sé Reed: It's easy to say.
[00:02:59] Nathan Wrigley: And might I add that.
[00:03:00] Sé Reed: Oh dear.
[00:03:01] Nathan Wrigley: Podcast, we, both have just been discussing how fantastic we look. It's true.
Both look absolutely remarkable, but.
[00:03:08] Sé Reed: Y- you're all missing out.
[00:03:10] Nathan Wrigley: Dear listener, you won't be able to see it. We've got lighting and everything. It's brilliant. The.
[00:03:15] Sé Reed: You'd never believe it.
[00:03:19] Nathan Wrigley: No, that's right. But we're here today to talk about.
[00:03:24] Sé Reed: Oh, or.
[00:03:26] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:03:29] Sé Reed: Or the WPOCC.
[00:03:30] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, hang on a.
[00:03:31] Sé Reed: Oh. Yeah.
[00:03:33] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so me, just get the WPCC bit out of the way. So I'm used to saying the WPCC, meaning the Community Collective. We can.
[00:03:42] Sé Reed: Correct.
[00:03:43] Nathan Wrigley: Is in a minute. So you've added an O in. Is that a rebrand or something?
[00:03:47] Sé Reed: Yes, we have added an O.
[00:03:49] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. That's it. That's.
[00:03:51] Sé Reed: That's what we did. We just added an O.
[00:03:53] Nathan Wrigley: Where...
[00:03:55] Sé Reed: That O is part of the acronym WPOCC, and it stands for open.
[00:04:02] Nathan Wrigley: I.
[00:04:02] Sé Reed: Open.
[00:04:03] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:04:04] Sé Reed: So we are rebranding as the WP Open Community Collective.
[00:04:09] Nathan Wrigley: Interesting.
[00:04:11] Sé Reed: As of right now, as of today.
[00:04:14] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, set your clocks the day that we record this. it's.
[00:04:18] Sé Reed: Yeah. It's not even...
[00:04:20] Nathan Wrigley: I'm guessing, is it?
[00:04:22] Sé Reed: No, not necessarily, but this is the first time we're talking about it. We did not want to do anything while we were, conducting the State of the Community survey. We didn't wanna, confuse anyone any more than we already were.
[00:04:38] Nathan Wrigley: Right.
[00:04:40] Sé Reed: This change has its roots in a lot of, a lot of things, honestly. But there is a catalyst. The... we have discussed, when we incorporated, we d- we, discussed changing the name, to reflect sort of our broader focus of open source. We decided not to from a branding perspective, like that's a lot of work, and that is, for minimal benefit, and there's no real reason to rebrand, right?
So we did that. That was in November of 2024, and we, did all our formal paperwork and all that. but interestingly, I, think, the other day, a, a, a couple weeks ago, Automattic, are you familiar with.
[00:05:34] Nathan Wrigley: I have heard of.
[00:05:35] Sé Reed: Automattic? Yeah, you've heard of it. they bought a web domain called webhosting.com, and I was intrigued by that.
And I was like, I wonder what the impetus of that is. and I was like, oh, they're into trademarks, right? So I, went and looked up to see if there were any pending trademarks for webhosting.com or just web hosting since there were trademarks filed for managed hosting or managed WordPress hosting.
And while I was there, I just had an idea occur to me. I was like, huh, while I'm here, I'm just gonna type my little acronym in, which I had done previously before we launched the, organization, right? You do your due diligence.
Check all the names, you check your domains, you get your social handles, right? You make sure no one else is using your name, which no one was. However, turns out there is an active live and pending and, I think slightly granted, trademark application for the acronym WPCC, filed by the WordPress Foundation.
[00:06:50] Nathan Wrigley: For what though? For,
[00:06:52] Sé Reed: F-
[00:06:52] Nathan Wrigley: Combination? for the, for.
[00:06:54] Sé Reed: For those letters.
[00:06:56] Nathan Wrigley: But presumably it's... Is it an acronym.
[00:06:59] Sé Reed: Yes.
[00:07:00] Nathan Wrigley: Those letters?
[00:07:02] Sé Reed: it is those letters, but which serve as an acronym for, the other pending, trademark, related trademark, which is for WordPress, Campus Connect.
[00:07:14] Nathan Wrigley: Oh.
[00:07:15] Sé Reed: Yes, so the kind of confusion that had been brewing from that for a long time, is, was, is clearly going to go to the person who has more money.
[00:07:30] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:07:31] Sé Reed: And.
[00:07:31] Nathan Wrigley: I actually.
[00:07:32] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:07:32] Nathan Wrigley: Seeing on... It was probably Learn or something like that. I do seeing that acronym in use, and I remember assuming it was.
[00:07:42] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:07:45] Nathan Wrigley: Time I had seen it.
[00:07:47] Sé Reed: Yeah, it was confusing.
[00:07:49] Nathan Wrigley: And.
[00:07:49] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:07:50] Nathan Wrigley: Of the article, it became clear that no, that's not what it is.
[00:07:53] Sé Reed: No.
[00:07:54] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, okay. Okay.
[00:07:57] Sé Reed: So we, we founded the WP Community Collective in December of 20... No, what year? 2022, there we go. I was like, "2002." No, just kidding. 2022. and then we incorporated in November of 2024. And I have in the interim since this, I've done some research. The, what originally started as WP Campus Connect was founded by independently, as part of the WordPress NextGen events that were try out these different events as an experiment.
Yeah. so they, it's a group of meetup organizers, WordPress meetup organizers from India. I, An- Ajmer. I don't really know how to say the city, but from India.
[00:08:48] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, Anj- Anjmir, I think it.
[00:08:49] Sé Reed: Ajmer. Oh, I did say it.
[00:08:50] Nathan Wrigley: Or.
[00:08:50] Sé Reed: Ajmer? Something like that.
[00:08:52] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:08:53] Sé Reed: There's a J.
[00:08:54] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:08:55] Sé Reed: In it, and it.
[00:08:56] Nathan Wrigley: A- Ajmir, I think.
[00:08:57] Sé Reed: Ajmer. It sounds right.
[00:08:58] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:08:59] Sé Reed: Yeah. and they, created that event, unrelated to anything formal. But they did submit that proposal, to WordCamp Central, and in Au- the end of August 2024, that became, an offic- not an official event in the way that it is now, but just they granted them the ability to do their event that they proposed. After that happened, the WP Campus Connect became a, program, an official program of WordCamp, of what do you, what, WordCamp Central.
So of WPCS, and they made it into a global program that has sponsorship, much like the WordCamps kind of global sponsorship program. So it's like baked in money for each event that happens. and then it turns out in May of 2025, so last year, the foundation filed for those trademarks.
[00:10:00] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:10:02] Sé Reed: I did not know that, clearly, until I went searching through the, searching through the database on a whim. Yeah.
[00:10:10] Nathan Wrigley: You must be... obviously, never nice to realise that there's two overlapping things with the same acronym and one of them's got a lawsuit behind it. But I, guess.
[00:10:21] Sé Reed: Or, legal. Legal.
[00:10:22] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:10:23] Sé Reed: Yeah. Don't, not a lawsuit. Not a lawsuit.
[00:10:26] Nathan Wrigley: A, a sort of pending trademark kind of.
[00:10:28] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:10:29] Nathan Wrigley: Thing going on.
[00:10:30] Sé Reed: Some, some leverage.
[00:10:31] Nathan Wrigley: So is your, is your WPOCC a way of just basically sidestepping that whole thing?
[00:10:38] Sé Reed: Correct. We are not interested in... We, had discussed it before, and it wasn't a huge... we have expanded our scope, but we don't want any more conflict in this community. it interestingly, WPCS had actually asked us about our name previously, but what they had asked us was to change it because it was too similar to WPCS.
[00:11:08] Nathan Wrigley: Oh.
[00:11:10] Sé Reed: That was the only communication we had received. So we did not know about the trademark, that it had been filed or anything like that.
[00:11:16] Nathan Wrigley: Right.
[00:11:17] Sé Reed: So I'm just pleased that I, like to search databases, and.
[00:11:22] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:11:23] Sé Reed: To make this before there were any letters sent. we just, we're like, "You know what? We're just gonna sidestep this altogether," like you said. We're just gonna.
[00:11:33] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, neat.
[00:11:34] Sé Reed: Do-si-do over this way and, yeah.
[00:11:37] Nathan Wrigley: Curious actually, whilst you were there doing... So you made WPCEC into WPOCC. Was there any bit of you which thought, "Let's just drop the WP bit"? In other words, just make it like an open, like any open source? Or are you, or is the whole thing literally bound forever and ever to the WordPress project?
Or do you have ambition to, to stray outside of, to, WordPress so that it could be, I don't know, any other project, be it a CMS or just some other open.
[00:12:11] Sé Reed: Yeah. We can just throw more letters at it.
[00:12:13] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
[00:12:16] Sé Reed: We, that discussion was actually part of the larger discussion of rebranding that we had been having over the time. do, how tied are we to, WordPress, which is a, still a significant portion and one of the largest open source projects in the world, right?
A significant portion of the internet, largest open source project, like these are big deals still, and our roots are in WordPress. and so we, w- we made this decision, not necessarily, with the amount of leeway that we would've liked to. We would like to have this conversation with the members.
We wanna, just have a whole dialogue about what this reflects. does, does changing the name, make people feel like they're not connected to it? our goal was to support the WordPress community first and foremost.
So rather than go down a whole entire, a whole world of rebrand, we, this is like a little, half-step rebrand.
[00:13:17] Nathan Wrigley: Right.
[00:13:18] Sé Reed: Where we're able to avoid any conflict, and any potential cease and desist letters that we're not interested in receiving.
the actual formal name of the organization is not a problem, right? The WP Community Collective, which is the legal entity.
[00:13:36] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, 'cause that's already filed, right? There's just.
[00:13:38] Sé Reed: That's a lot of paperwork.
[00:13:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:13:40] Sé Reed: to un-file that.
[00:13:42] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:13:42] Sé Reed: Yeah, so we, this is like I said, it's a bit of a half step, but it encompasses our, scope while also avoiding the conflict and just saying, "You know what?
WP Campus Connect or WordPress Campus Connect as it's now named, is a valid program." we don't want to also stand in the way of what it is doing. It's educating college students. the folks who started it are dedicated, were de- are dedicated con- contributors, and it did start independently.
We want to preserve community morale and harmony as much as possible, and not interested in a fight. So really just giving that up and just being, doing something really quick where we're able to not be like, "Who is this now? We don't know who this organization is," but something that's easy to, just add in there that makes sense to people. Depending on sort of the results of the survey, which we can talk about a little bit.
[00:14:50] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:14:51] Sé Reed: And how the members feel about just the, industry, that really is going to shape where we go next. Because when, we started this in 2022, this was a really different landscape. A lot has changed since we started, both in tech in general and also in WordPress specifically.
So this is a temporary thing, maybe temporary, maybe permanent, but it is definitely just a, a quick thing to, preserve community harmony.
[00:15:26] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, alright.
[00:15:27] Sé Reed: Als- also, you can say WPOC, which is really fun.
[00:15:32] Nathan Wrigley: That sounds like something out of Star Wars.
[00:15:34] Sé Reed: I know. It's like an Ewok or exactly.
[00:15:38] Nathan Wrigley: Where my head went.
[00:15:39] Sé Reed: I know.
[00:15:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:15:41] Sé Reed: Yeah, so.
[00:15:42] Nathan Wrigley: Creature.
[00:15:43] Sé Reed: WPOCC.
[00:15:43] Nathan Wrigley: A whole range of Wap- alter- rival Wapuu kind of creatures.
[00:15:46] Sé Reed: Yeah, we have WPOCs.
[00:15:48] Nathan Wrigley: Ewok kind of style creatures.
[00:15:50] Sé Reed: I love it. I'm gonna make a generator. I'm gonna write that down. Make WPOC generator with Claude. Yes.
[00:15:58] Nathan Wrigley: First, the, the thing I wanna do just before we get onto your.
[00:16:01] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:16:03] Nathan Wrigley: Let's, paint a picture. For those people who haven't heard of the, WordPress Community Collective, WPCC, now with an O in it.
[00:16:11] Sé Reed: We'll wordPress Open...
[00:16:13] Nathan Wrigley: Right?
[00:16:14] Sé Reed: It's a long name. It's a long name.
[00:16:16] Nathan Wrigley: Tell me, or the viewers should I say, the listeners, what it is that you're set up to do and how it's funded and what kind of things you've been involved in these, lo these many years. What, has it been doing, to do?
[00:16:30] Sé Reed: What are we doing anyway?
[00:16:31] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:16:32] Sé Reed: What are you, on about over there?
[00:16:34] Nathan Wrigley: You go.
[00:16:36] Sé Reed: I'm so glad you asked, Nathan.
[00:16:38] Nathan Wrigley: Good.
[00:16:39] Sé Reed: I love telling this story. no, the r- the, the... Like I said, it has changed a lot, and so how we operate and how we're going to operate in the future is changing because the nature of open source contribution is changing rapidly right now.
But our goal, our founding goal is, to support the contribution community, and so that's the WordPress contributor community as well as the greater open source contributor community of, for example, all the different software, open source software that WordPress relies on, PHP, all those, little things that are, you know, also struggling to find a contribution model that works.
So the WPOCC, our original goal... Yeah, see, I can say it. It's great. our original goal was to essentially re- redefine the contributor, matrix, I guess we could say. Just how...
[00:17:42] Nathan Wrigley: That.
[00:17:42] Sé Reed: Yeah, I just like saying that. how it works, right? and I actually recently talked about this on a, on another podcast. I don't have to name it by ear, but, if you, if you want, we can.
[00:17:55] Nathan Wrigley: Can name whatever.
[00:17:56] Sé Reed: Oh, okay.
[00:17:57] Nathan Wrigley: It's all good
[00:17:58] Sé Reed: On Crossword, I went into some, some detail.
[00:18:01] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:18:02] Sé Reed: Recently. So you can also listen to that, but, I will also explain here so I'm not forcing you to go listen to the dulcet tones of, Jonathan and Luke over there.
[00:18:13] Nathan Wrigley: So good. I love them.
[00:18:14] Sé Reed: It's- Yeah. They talk like this. It's really nice.
[00:18:17] Nathan Wrigley: Jonathan's got the smoothest.
[00:18:19] Sé Reed: Yeah. It's so smooth.
[00:18:21] Nathan Wrigley: Got a fairly nice, very, Australian, but also a smooth voice.
[00:18:25] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:18:26] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:18:26] Sé Reed: Smooth for an Australian. We'll give him that. so essentially our model is to be a catalyst for contribution. What we discovered, through both working with and, being a part of prior to founding, being a part of just the WordPress community and looking to solve those contribution issues. There's this whole concept of the, the maker-taker problem.
[00:18:56] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:18:57] Sé Reed: I do not agree with that model because it has two components. so it's not so much that I don't agree with that model, it's that I wanted to disrupt that model. So instead of having a maker and a taker, intr- introducing an organization, the WPOCC, into that factor, So we were basically looking to disrupt that model, because what we had found was that the companies wanted to contribute.
However, they didn't, they couldn't figure out how to contribute.
In this, it wasn't just oh, an individual contributor going in and having trouble finding a team. It was like, if a company is going to pay one of their full-time employees to go work on something without any metrics, without any ROI, without any supervisors, it's, really doesn't work for the model, the just general business model, especially in the US, of, every employee is encountered, is accounted for, has different, metrics they're reporting on.
And having a random contributor doing things where that company is not able to even supervise that doesn't necessarily make sense from an HR perspective.
[00:20:15] Nathan Wrigley: Right.
[00:20:16] Sé Reed: Unless you're a company that is completely, subsumed in WordPress.
[00:20:23] Nathan Wrigley: Yep.
[00:20:24] Sé Reed: It's really hard to justify that. And a lot of companies with board members, and shareholders, especially when you get to that level, now at that point, they-- how are they justifying just a, a full-time employee or more that is not working on their core product? It just doesn't make sense.
[00:20:41] Nathan Wrigley: No.
[00:20:42] Sé Reed: But it does make sense from a, a development point of view, from a marketing point of view, from all the other points of view. So the WPOCC's goal is to essentially bridge the gap between those companies and the individual contributors so that the companies don't have to manage random individual contributors and try to figure out what those reports look like or what those metrics look like, and the contributors don't have to figure out how to provide information back to their sponsors or, promote their sponsors in, their work that they're doing, which is, it's just really difficult on both sides.
So the WPOCC is able to, hire and support the contributors, pay them, and, give them the contributor support they need, while also supporting the company in achieving their goals and giving them metrics and sponsorship, which is something that a company can understand and make sense within a corporate framework.
[00:21:45] Nathan Wrigley: So the way that you're describing that is you're like the bridge between the work that needs to be done and the people who are willing to work but can't figure out what the heck, where to put themselves or.
[00:21:56] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:21:57] Nathan Wrigley: So.
[00:21:57] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:21:58] Nathan Wrigley: In the middle, you provide the structure in both directions.
[00:22:01] Sé Reed: Yes. Yes.
[00:22:02] Nathan Wrigley: Tell you what's needed more globally. You can then send somebody over, we'll tell them what needs doing, and then we'll report back what happened and all that kind of stuff, which.
[00:22:11] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:22:12] Nathan Wrigley: Of interesting. But is there a financial piece to it as well? In other words, let's say that I'm in a, I'm a company, but I don't have any free time.
A couple of thousand dollars that I know would, somewhere could make use of that. do you act in that sense as well? So like an escrow service for.
[00:22:29] Sé Reed: Yeah, we're a broker. A broker.
[00:22:31] Nathan Wrigley: Yes, yeah. So take, peop- people's money because they don't have time, but they've got, a bank account which can survive a couple of thousand dollars hit, then that money could go to somebody who's coming in who doesn't, whose company doesn't have any money.
They're just doing it, own free time, more or less freelancing, something along those.
[00:22:49] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:22:50] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, okay.
[00:22:51] Sé Reed: Exactly. So it's really bridging that gap, been there. And so it does disrupt that maker-taker model because it's not just these binary two parties anymore. Now it's, we can talk with the company and address their needs, see how that works within the system, and then the companies, and the contributors, again, don't have to have that burden of going out every six months and trying to convince people to give them money. So that's the essential model.
[00:23:20] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:23:21] Sé Reed: It hasn't necessarily worked out quite that way.
[00:23:24] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:23:24] Sé Reed: That's not the model's fault. but I don't know if you're familiar with, the WordPress ecosystem in the past year and a half or two. It's been weird. and we have been, I wouldn't say, totally waylaid or completely adrift.
I don't know. I'm feeling like I'm making like, the OdysSé is, just came out and.
[00:23:52] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's.
[00:23:53] Sé Reed: I ha- I, haven't seen it. I haven't seen it, but I, I do, I am thinking of it. So we're not, on a totally lost, we're not totally lost, but it has been, our goal is we are a member-based organization, and our goal is to advocate for and represent the needs of our members.
And our members are very confused because they want to love WordPress. They want to give, they wanna be a part of WordPress, but what has happened has really, shook everybody up. and so that actually leads right into why we launched the State of the Community survey, which ran, over the course of just under two months, and we just closed it last week.
[00:24:40] Nathan Wrigley: Before we get onto that.
[00:24:41] Sé Reed: So yeah.
[00:24:42] Nathan Wrigley: Will definitely get.
[00:24:42] Sé Reed: Did you love my segue? You're gonna just take my segue and.
[00:24:45] Nathan Wrigley: Beautiful.
[00:24:46] Sé Reed: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:24:46] Nathan Wrigley: Just gonna go back to pri- like 10 seconds prior to.
[00:24:49] Sé Reed: Oh yeah.
[00:24:49] Nathan Wrigley: W- how would you summarize that confusion for, from these companies? Is it like a, has everybody gone into some companies, let's, won't name names of people or companies necessarily, but is it like a holding pattern that.
[00:25:03] Sé Reed: Ha.
[00:25:03] Nathan Wrigley: Into? Is it like they've.
[00:25:04] Sé Reed: Yes.
[00:25:05] Nathan Wrigley: Gone into the trenches a bit and, "Okay, we're just gonna, we're just gonna look down and let's just weather this out. Give it another year, see what's happening." That's what I feel it's like.
[00:25:16] Sé Reed: It feels like everyone is in a holding pattern. Everyone is waiting. We're all like, the airport tarmac needs to clear before we can put these planes down. I don't know. that's exactly what it feels like, like we're all waiting. And to an extent we are. Now we're waiting even longer. I think the, there's the trial, the trademark trial with, WP Engine and, various WordPress entities, are, it has been pushed back to, I think, October of 2027, so we're talking about more than a year out.
And, I think we've all been waiting, as individuals in the community, as companies, for something to change in that structure, in, in that sort of standoff. And, as we continue to see, nothing has changed. No one is yielding. and I, obviously have a lot of thoughts on all of that, but it's actually irrelevant which way it even ended up to this kind of holding pattern, because it's the not knowing what is going to happen that I think has everyone frozen. I, yeah.
[00:26:25] Nathan Wrigley: Can totally get it i- in the sense-- So the bit that I don't see. I don't see companies fleeing the landscape altogether. I just-- I don't see companies saying, that's it, we're done. We're off, off, like we're gone for good." I just see of what I've just described of, okay, we don't know what to make of any of this, so we're just gonna nothing, do nothing, rein in our... So the, way it affects the people that I know, so as an example, a lot of and things, it would be things like we don't know where to put our sponsorship spend now. We're not sure if that's money that's useful to be spent at the moment, or are we better off just, we'll just keep those budgets within the company, and then we'll see what it's like, and then maybe we'll resume those in six months' time or a year's.
[00:27:13] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:27:13] Nathan Wrigley: And a half or what have you. And I imagine, so I, the sponsorship landscape is something that I know about, but I imagine that would go in all sorts of other directions, the same sort of thing. Okay. Okay, great. So we're.
[00:27:25] Sé Reed: No, I, think you're, I think you're completely right, and I, don't know that anyone knows how to do anything else. it makes, again, looking from a corporate perspective, from an individual perspective, it's like we can hold on because we believe, and it's not gonna, we'll make other spaces for our community to have conversations in the interim.
But for these, large companies that have a significant investment in infrastructure, have significant investment in products, that's a harder ask for them to just sit around and wait. So.
[00:28:00] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:28:01] Sé Reed: Yeah, I, feel like there's been some pivoting, more of a broadening. I don't think companies are, they're certainly not announcing any departures, right? They're not like, "Oh, we're out," like publishing a blog p- blog post why we no longer believe in WordPress.
[00:28:15] Nathan Wrigley: I haven't seen that.
[00:28:16] Sé Reed: Yeah, there's none of that. That was.
[00:28:18] Nathan Wrigley: Interesting.
[00:28:19] Sé Reed: In the beginning from a lot of community members to like announce your departure.
[00:28:24] Nathan Wrigley: There was a lot of that, wasn't there? I'd forgotten about that. Yeah, that happened. Didn't happen, then it stopped happening.
[00:28:32] Sé Reed: Again, I think it's because the people who, weren't necessarily directly affected, one, we, we all liked it a lot. We liked wordPress, and I don't think everyone was ready to just be like, "Oh, okay, peace out." give up on the community, give up on the career.
[00:28:52] Nathan Wrigley: No.
[00:28:52] Sé Reed: On.
[00:28:53] Nathan Wrigley: My, i'm here for the long haul. I'm.
[00:28:56] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:28:56] Nathan Wrigley: This community and I love all the things that happen and, in many ways I'm waiting for normality to return.
[00:29:03] Sé Reed: Exactly. What does that mean? What is the new normal?
[00:29:07] Nathan Wrigley: Means.
[00:29:07] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:29:08] Nathan Wrigley: For some version of that. And yeah, so anyway, we, know that we've got a fairly lengthy period of time and
[00:29:15] Sé Reed: It's hard.
[00:29:16] Nathan Wrigley: I have this vague sense, and I don't really know. I can't put my finger on it, but I mentioned it in the show that you were on Monday. Your previous Monday. That, I just get the feeling that in the last sort of s- five or six weeks, something in the water has changed a little bit.
I s- I sense a tiny bit of optimism. I want... I don't... I, can't put my finger on it. And it's not like everything's fine. It's like I think I'm done worrying. Let's just move on and get on with the busy work that we need to be getting on with. and I've.
[00:29:50] Sé Reed: Looks like.
[00:29:50] Nathan Wrigley: The, the, sort of doomer posts have dried up a little bit, and there seems to be more attention on just getting on with doing the work that WordPress requires. So anyway, whether or.
[00:30:01] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:30:01] Nathan Wrigley: Proves to be.
[00:30:02] Sé Reed: I th- I think that is partially by design, that, everyone's "Get back to work. Just go get back to what you're doing," and focus on that. But I do think that the, it really is that holding pattern. So whether it's like a, "We're just gonna wait and see what happens," or, "We're going to..."
No one's taking drastic action at this point anymore. The companies are not, the community is not, and now we're all just waiting.
[00:30:32] Nathan Wrigley: Figuring. Figuring it.
[00:30:33] Sé Reed: Figuring, "We're gonna see what happens."
[00:30:35] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, let's go back to your segue which is now, 10 minutes ago.
So looking at the website, it looks like you, you had this out for a length of time, and then you decided, you were gonna extend it, I think, n- 27th May was the first it got extended to, just literally a few days ago.
I think you like, six days ago. So it's now shut. If you go to the website and you try to fill it in, there's now a s- you know, it's gone, basically.
[00:31:02] Sé Reed: You can't do it. Your opportunity has closed.
[00:31:04] Nathan Wrigley: The moment's gone. so are you here to give us any, results, or are you still in that collation phase?
[00:31:12] Sé Reed: What both. I, wanna tease you with it really is what I.
[00:31:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, teasing will do. Let's go.
[00:31:18] Sé Reed: Want. Wanna just do some teasing.
[00:31:19] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:31:20] Sé Reed: Our goal, or our plan for the results of this, we wanna share, the entire spectrum of what people said. so we're going to be putting this into a, doing some analysis.
[00:31:33] Nathan Wrigley: I think your hand, say, is tapping something. I think one of your-- 'cause like every, like I'm getting this which wasn't.
[00:31:40] Sé Reed: Oh.
[00:31:40] Nathan Wrigley: Ago, so And it was really loud. It was like.
[00:31:44] Sé Reed: Is it still happening? I think I was doing this.
[00:31:46] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, maybe that was close to the mic. I'll, just.
[00:31:49] Sé Reed: Right.
[00:31:50] Nathan Wrigley: So the, the survey, I won't ask it again. I'll just end it where I did. So it's now closed. You can't go there anymore. It's all finished. But tell us, tease us, what, did you find?
[00:32:03] Sé Reed: Yeah, we are going to put the results into a report that we will be publishing right before WordCamp US, which is happening August 19th, I think. Something like that. 16th? 19th? Yeah. On a Sunday. Random. so we're gonna be putting that, out. Our, the president, interim president technically, of the board of directors is actually speaking at WordCamp US in his, in his role as he works at Pantheon.
He's a senior, developer advocate at Pantheon. But he will be there, and so people can talk to him about, the WPOCC, if so interested. But we will be putting out a, a report that will go into detail on what the results were. And we had some free answers, some free response answers that people could write in, and boy, did they.
[00:33:00] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, really?
[00:33:01] Sé Reed: Oh, yeah.
[00:33:01] Nathan Wrigley: With some offloading.
[00:33:03] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:33:04] Nathan Wrigley: Oh.
[00:33:05] Sé Reed: We actually included a, a question about, and said, "Can we cite your free written answers?" We wanted people to feel free to share information that might be, identifying, and if it was, we didn't wanna identify them, but we didn't wanna restrict... Yeah, we didn't wanna restrict them from sending it.
So 65% of the folks who did free response answers said that we could use their responses.
[00:33:30] Nathan Wrigley: Oh.
[00:33:32] Sé Reed: Which, is a lot of people, but you gotta think, the other 35% do not want us to share their free written answers, so perhaps that's the more interesting side. luckily I...
[00:33:47] Nathan Wrigley: Metadata behind the data, isn't.
[00:33:49] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:33:49] Nathan Wrigley: That's.
[00:33:49] Sé Reed: Exactly.
[00:33:50] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:33:52] Sé Reed: So I, I, we will have that information, and it will be synthesized into the report, while we won't be able to share, that 35%, those comments directly, because we are-- This is important to us to respect, people's, an- anonymity.
This has been a very fraught time that I feel people have been very scared to speak up, which for something that you would think is as sort of low stakes as WordPress, it's actually not, it turns out.
[00:34:23] Nathan Wrigley: Well, e- especially when your potential livelihood is on the line, like.
[00:34:27] Sé Reed: Exactly.
[00:34:28] Nathan Wrigley: Working for a company and you've got to tow the party line. All been there. It doesn't matter what line of work you're in, you sometimes you will be saying things that don't necessarily agree.
You may not at your core when you're in your quiet moments with your family, you may sh- you may share an entirely opposing view.
It- ha- having that anonymizing option is really good because people can then speak their mind and... But, they've got bigger fish to fry. They've got the food.
[00:34:56] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:34:56] Nathan Wrigley: Table, and they don't wanna.
[00:34:58] Sé Reed: And that's important to us to respect that. that is, that's something that is... And that's why we gave that option because we want the information, we want people to be able to speak out, but we also recognize the financial and social implications of being, speaking freely, which is a wild thing to say in the land of the free and the home of the brave or whatever, but we won't go off on any political side tangents right now about free speech.
[00:35:28] Nathan Wrigley: On that.
[00:35:30] Sé Reed: As do I, yeah. Laura, hello.
[00:35:32] Nathan Wrigley: Where I enter the anonymous mo.
[00:35:34] Sé Reed: Yeah. Just gonna go.
[00:35:37] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, but, politics in the US at the minute is very interesting. Let's just.
[00:35:41] Sé Reed: Isn't it? Isn't it?
[00:35:43] Nathan Wrigley: So were you.
[00:35:43] Sé Reed: Isn't it.
[00:35:44] Nathan Wrigley: With the, turnout, if you like?
Because obviously if you'd have put this out and seven people had filled it out, you probably would have felt, "Okay, I'm not sure that we're on the right lines." But did enough people turn up and give, cast their vote? I always think in WordPress, it's hard to know what a measure of success there is. Because.
[00:36:02] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:36:03] Nathan Wrigley: Really grandiose figures. "Oh, it's "There's 20 million websites on WordPress," or whatever. and then you get a, thing, and you get a plugin, and the, the plugin owner thinks, "I'm doing great. I've got 94 installs so far." And.
[00:36:16] Sé Reed: They probably won't.
[00:36:18] Nathan Wrigley: But that works, right? That is success for that person. So.
[00:36:21] Sé Reed: If, they had that data, then they might think that they don't have that data, but that's also another topic.
[00:36:26] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:36:27] Sé Reed: Sorry.
[00:36:28] Nathan Wrigley: Did you get enough to that the results that you're gonna portray are credible? Let's use that word.
[00:36:35] Sé Reed: So I, I, I am gonna be honest. I'm always, honest, but I'm gonna be frank, Instead of say, I'll be frank. No.
[00:36:45] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. It's easier for me to say.
[00:36:48] Sé Reed: Yeah. I was, I am disappointed with the amount of, responses that we had. we had 431. I was really.
[00:36:58] Nathan Wrigley: Sounds pretty good to.
[00:36:59] Sé Reed: Is that good? That's good. It's a good, it's a good representation.
I was really gunning for at least 500, and when you look at the larger WordPress community, that might feel really minimal, especially when you're talking about 20 million websites or 43% of the web. but this was, this had no support, clearly, from the official organization. So even, the, this, the annual WordPress survey that has not gone out for a few years, but used to go out through WordPress, was supported through formal posts on wordpress.org and, posts on social from the accounts that have, hundreds of thousands of followers.
For our reach, I th- I'm, it's, I'm satisfied with it, and it is a, a good, you know how surveys are like a representative slice, right? You're not, you're only getting a certain number of people. the more interesting story then of just that number, I think, is told through our sort of the, the breakdown of who took it.
[00:38:03] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:38:05] Sé Reed: I think the most interesting stat is that over more than 75% of the people who took the survey, said they had been part of the WordPress community for more than 10 years.
[00:38:18] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, that is interesting. oh.
[00:38:20] Sé Reed: And nearly 75%. Yeah, and, nearly a third were more than 15 years.
[00:38:26] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:38:29] Sé Reed: This is not randoms. This is n- this is people who have been h- been part of the community, consider themselves a part of the community, are, a core part of the community who are giving these opinions.
And to me, that's very valuable. I, I, we still have 25% who are less than that, so it's not that they weren't represented at all. But I think having the history and the knowledge of where WordPress has been and where it is now is, useful in this.
[00:39:01] Nathan Wrigley: I think, the demographics of that will be really interesting to break apart because, s- 75% of people have been doing it for 10 years or longer. That obviously tells you they've got a lot of skin in the game and they're very, they're, wedded to it, and they've probably built a career out of it.
[00:39:18] Sé Reed: Exactly.
[00:39:19] Nathan Wrigley: Though, be equally interested to know what new people, like less than two years into the project, like what they think as well. Because I, I have my opinions because I've been in the community for but it'd of interesting to see what people who haven't been in, is this all, hot air or what have you. But also, one of the things which sort of concerns me is that the, the demographic of WordPress is skewing older and, getting younger people through is important. But anyway, all of that was to say that the, the demographic and the geography and the, demographic and all of those kind of things the answers will be really interesting.
[00:40:08] Sé Reed: I know, yeah.
[00:40:09] Nathan Wrigley: A.
[00:40:09] Sé Reed: We're gonna break that down. Exactly. So you'll be like the 75% who are 10 years or more felt this way. The 10 per- or the third who were, 15 years or more feel this way. The 25% that's been there less, they felt this way. So that's the sort of... That's why, people are like, "The survey's so long," and it's like, that's how we get the data to do something with it.
It's not just like some random people answered this question. It helps us to know who is answering the question. and where are they coming from? Are they an employee?
[00:40:42] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, the.
[00:40:42] Sé Reed: They.
[00:40:43] Nathan Wrigley: Coming.
[00:40:43] Sé Reed: Owner? Yeah.
[00:40:45] Nathan Wrigley: Not just in terms of their vocation, but also where they are. Because I was in, I was in Mumbai a few months.
For WordCamp, WordCamp Asia, which I guess at some point is gonna flip into WordCamp India.
[00:40:58] Sé Reed: I think they're adding. There'll be WordCamp Asia and WordCamp India.
[00:41:03] Nathan Wrigley: Both are.
[00:41:03] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:41:04] Nathan Wrigley: It's gonna be a.
[00:41:04] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:41:05] Nathan Wrigley: Flagship event. But the, the sort of appetite for WordPress was ve- it was palpably different, and it felt like it was in my neck of the woods literally like eight or 10 years ago.
[00:41:19] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:41:20] Nathan Wrigley: There's that sense of opportunity and that sense of optimism. and it was really interesting, and I don't know quite why that is, but I would.
[00:41:31] Sé Reed: I have theories.
[00:41:32] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I'd be interested to see how that drops out in your survey and, if got anybody in that part of the world who completed it, and there was a, a whole bunch in that neck of the woods who completed it, if their answers differed to, I don't know, say European answers or North American answers or what have you. That'd be.
[00:41:47] Sé Reed: Yeah, we had respondents from 42 countries, which is.
[00:41:53] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:41:53] Sé Reed: Cool.
[00:41:54] Nathan Wrigley: That's good.
[00:41:55] Sé Reed: It is good, but though the majority of those were from the United States, 40%. and then the, the, a significant portion of the rest was basically it's white people. White people answered the survey. I'm just-- It's so the United States, Netherlands, Canada, Germany, the UK, and Australia.
[00:42:17] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:42:18] Sé Reed: Literally like that is, I'm not assuming the ethnicity of all the people who live in those places.
[00:42:24] Nathan Wrigley: No, I.
[00:42:24] Sé Reed: Those are clearly, white-dominated countries in general.
[00:42:31] Nathan Wrigley: to see if the, did you have it in a variety? Could you fill it in, for example, if.
[00:42:36] Sé Reed: Yes.
[00:42:36] Nathan Wrigley: I think you, I think I saw four languages or.
[00:42:39] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:42:39] Nathan Wrigley: Was.
[00:42:39] Sé Reed: We had French, Japanese, Hindi in order to-- Hindi, and, la, la, I think it was Russian was the last one.
[00:42:48] Nathan Wrigley: Russian? Okay.
[00:42:49] Sé Reed: Russian, I think. Oh, and Spanish. Of course there was a Spanish. Of course Spanish.
[00:42:54] Nathan Wrigley: S- yeah, I was gonna say that's a good one.
[00:42:56] Sé Reed: A whole continent of people.
[00:42:58] Nathan Wrigley: But, l- so.
[00:42:59] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:43:00] Nathan Wrigley: Least some y- you can't be a target entirely for that, the, for that being skewed. At least you provided it in a, an assemblage of different languages.
[00:43:09] Sé Reed: But, and I think this, the, sort of the where we got the, answers from and the respondents from also s- sort of parallels my theory on why the folks in, that attended WordCamp Asia or the folks that attend or, are gonna attend WordCamp India are more gung-ho about WordPress.
[00:43:32] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:43:33] Sé Reed: Is because I feel that the information that we have here in the US, like literally our reach of information in those countries is not necessarily penetrating into those other demographics.
So there's not a ton of crossover. At WordCamp Asia, I think is probably where the majority of that crossover is happening between sort of the legacy WordPress community, let's call it And the newer WordPress community in these sort of, developing communities, right? where they're having that s-surge that we saw 10 years ago.
and I think that folks don't know what's going on, and I think that to me, that is the main difference is that people here in the US have been paying attention... Not, that they have-- They have been being given the information through stories, through various news, WordPress news publications, WPwatercooler.
my old podcast was around for a long time, providing that information, and we had a very, very much skewed US and Europe as well 'cause we're speaking quickly in English, right? Really fast in English. so yeah. I think that does reflect that because at the core of it, at the core of it, WordPress is just still WordPress, and the technology is still just the technology, and that, how AI works with WordPress and all that's just a matter of technology evolving, right?
And so if we just had that, I don't think it would be the same as what's ha- what has happened in the US and in Europe in general, with the sort of like bottoming out of the community. I, I feel that we have been subject to the turmoil of the lawsuits, the turmoil of everything that's been happening in the community since late 2024.
And, I think that has been, a lot of the other parts of the world have been shielded from that. And yeah, and it's hard to go around, and it's not like you're going to WordCamp Asia being like, and this is part of why we actually ended WPwatercooler, is because-- Well, not no one. I'm sure some people want to do it, but I certainly, and I know a lot of people don't wanna go around and be like, "Hey, welcome to WordPress.
Do you know all our problems? Let me tell you about all the problems that we have."
[00:46:04] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:46:05] Sé Reed: Who wants to do that? nobody wants to be like, just "Oh, by the way, this thing you really it actually sucks. ha." so I think that's part of it. people aren't, aren't trying to do that when they're going to WordCamp Asia.
They're trying to build it up and celebrate it. So there's, I think there's a big information gap.
[00:46:26] Nathan Wrigley: Much a sense of that. You-- there was a real, oh, I don't know how to... the word that I'm reaching for, which is absolutely the wrong word, was, is, naivety is the wrong word. the innocence. That's what.
[00:46:42] Sé Reed: Innocence.
[00:46:43] Nathan Wrigley: It's.
[00:46:43] Sé Reed: You wanna preserve the innocence.
[00:46:45] Nathan Wrigley: But it.
[00:46:46] Sé Reed: I know.
[00:46:46] Nathan Wrigley: You know, there was just, there was youth there, there was a passion there.
[00:46:51] Sé Reed: Hope. Hope.
[00:46:52] Nathan Wrigley: So many people chatting to other people. and I, collided with loads of people. this one.
[00:46:59] Sé Reed: Ah.
[00:46:59] Nathan Wrigley: Who.
[00:46:59] Sé Reed: Makes me nostalgic.
[00:47:01] Nathan Wrigley: and I thought, "Oh, this'll be interesting." He had an agency. I said, "How many people have you..." "200."
[00:47:06] Sé Reed: Oh.
[00:47:06] Nathan Wrigley: What?" 200 people.
[00:47:10] Sé Reed: Of people.
[00:47:12] Nathan Wrigley: This is the sort of thing that would make you legendary in, my part of the world. No- nobody has a 200-person WordPress agency over here.
[00:47:20] Sé Reed: Well, and that's an employee, that's an employee rate thing also. you would if you had, if you had a business in the UK or the US and you outsourced all your labor, you might have a 200-person agency because the amount that you can charge for websites necessarily change even though your workforce...
There's global economic issues. It's, pretty fascinating. This is a pretty fascinating, like what other community has such a global focus?
[00:47:48] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, very few.
[00:47:49] Sé Reed: I don't even, like, soccer? I don't know. Like.
[00:47:54] Nathan Wrigley: Maybe, but the, the endeavors there is very different.
[00:47:56] Sé Reed: It's very different.
[00:47:58] Nathan Wrigley: Are in it because of the, the, sort of sporty nature of it. This is...
[00:48:02] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:48:04] Nathan Wrigley: I, remember when I dropped into this community, I was really puzzled by it 'cause I just couldn't get a handle on what it was. And actually, if the truth be told, I still don't get it, because, because it's a bunch of philanthropy with this, economic layer, just this community layer, really when you look at it from the outside, none of it fits the paradigm of, or perfectly fits the paradigm of capitalism.
[00:48:36] Sé Reed: Ah, yes.
[00:48:37] Nathan Wrigley: Know, the, the modus operandi u- under which much of the world in which I live works. You've got this philanthropic layer, this community layer where people meet up and share things. there's this sort of non-- there's this commercial non-rivalry which goes.
Which is really interesting as well. companies who talk to other hosting companies and help each other out. It-- what I'm trying to say is it's confusing.
[00:49:02] Sé Reed: It's confusing. It's confusing. It's confusing, to people, it's confusing to the community, it's confusing to companies. It's confusing to regulators, that's the thing because it had the, the ethos, the, the spirit, all of that of this h- big community project, this thing that we all owned, that we were all part of, and that is still, I believe, the vibe, the zeitgeist happening i- in India, in WordCamp Asia, and I think that's also why we're all so sad, 'cause we miss that. It was great. the,
[00:49:38] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I know what you.
[00:49:39] Sé Reed: It was, we believed in it. it made, it was, like, better, it was, like, a good, it was, like, a, a good example of humanity working together. not to get, wild about it, but honestly, like, when you're working with people on the other side of the world, I worked with, one of my, one of the biggest projects I worked on as marketing, team lead was the contributor, contributor, test quiz and how to contribute page.
And I worked on that with, a woman who lives in Russia, and we're like, our coun- we can't actually engage. our, there's, rules and sanctions on our, on, on our countries engaging. I couldn't go visit her country. And, but we could work together and achieve this dream of how other people can contribute, and that's amazing.
That is a unique human phenomenon that doesn't exist. you have local communities working together, but there's a global community connecting and knowing each other and working together on a shared project. that to me... See, I'm gonna get, verklempt or whatever about this, but, that is why WordPress to me has always been bigger than WordPress, right?
That's, I, that's a weird thing to say, but that's how I feel about it. WP is bigger than WordPress because.
[00:51:08] Nathan Wrigley: Like.
[00:51:08] Sé Reed: Yeah.
[00:51:09] Nathan Wrigley: Been somebody, I think, like I can only really do this with the benefit of hindsight. I think some part of me needs meaning what I do.
[00:51:20] Sé Reed: Yeah. Womp.
[00:51:22] Nathan Wrigley: D- but something actually significant, or at.
[00:51:25] Sé Reed: Womp. I agree.
[00:51:27] Nathan Wrigley: Version of that, right?
[00:51:28] Sé Reed: Yes. Yes.
[00:51:29] Nathan Wrigley: I, wouldn't have been able to stick at some kind of job where that, wasn't being satisfied. And so when I stumbled into WordPress and I saw this sort of philanthropic side and I saw the community side and I saw the fact that, free. All this stuff is, you can actually download it for free. It really spoke to me on a, I can't actually say any dominoes fell like at a moment and I had this epiphany.
It wasn't like, Paul on the road to Damascus or anything. But, I had, over time it built up into this edifice of, wow, this thing's really cool, and I still have that.
[00:52:06] Sé Reed: I know. Me too. That's why we're still here, Nathan.
[00:52:10] Nathan Wrigley: Right. Yeah.
[00:52:12] Sé Reed: I've, I-- it's that hope. It's that we're working together. it is that belief that this is more than just, a, a business, right? A, a way of making money. for me, as, I, started my, studied at university, I studied journalism, and information and the freedom of information, people's ability to have, to be informed.
[00:52:38] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:52:40] Sé Reed: Is the absolute fundamental component of being a free human being.
Because if you don't have the information, accurate information, you can't make choices that are informed for your life. So you're always going to be making choices that are, not optimal for you because you don't have the big picture. And so for me, that's just, always been... It's j- it's just been a big part of it, is that this greater meaning of people being able to, democratize publishing, that anyone could get a small web host or some server and get their voice out, or even more get super important information out, communic- communicate things to others.
And I still think that's crucial because especially in the era of, AI, especially now when literally, they're literally changing digital books, right? They're changing the words in the editions on the e-books, like while you're reading it. Like there's a, book I just read about that was, it's not an important book, right?
It's, it's just fiction. But they updated it to have like TikTok in it. Now it has TikTok and self-- Like it was written like 10 or 15 years ago and the new...
[00:54:03] Nathan Wrigley: To date.
[00:54:04] Sé Reed: Yeah. And when we don't have control of our information or our words, we don't know what's happening out without that, with that stuff out there.
Even the recent thing that Meta did with their ability to allow anyone to AI remix anyone else's content. Like.
[00:54:21] Nathan Wrigley: A PR snafu that was, thankfully.
[00:54:24] Sé Reed: But that's the direction that all of.
[00:54:26] Nathan Wrigley: The direction.
[00:54:26] Sé Reed: The tech company has been taking us in. They're like, "This is our content. We're doing it." So to own your own content, to have the means of production digitally, not just the means of production like here I'm holding up a zine that's a, paper zine. You can hear it. It's paper, right?
[00:54:45] Nathan Wrigley: It's.
[00:54:45] Sé Reed: I'm trying to make it loud.
[00:54:46] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:54:47] Sé Reed: But like to have ... This is, to me WordPress has been a printing press that is digital, and giving people the power to share information and get information that has been, that is fundamental to where we are going as humans right now.
[00:55:06] Nathan Wrigley: You know what? We- top of the hour, I.
[00:55:08] Sé Reed: Yeah, I know. It's a long combo.
[00:55:10] Nathan Wrigley: No, that's great. I think that's the perfect place to end it. what an aspiration that is. And, in the year 2026, going into 2027 at some point fairly soon, more important than ever. okay, so Say Reed, do you just be- wanna be- before we go, I know that we can go to the WPOCC, we can Google that and find it. else you wanna drop as a place where you hang out?
[00:55:33] Sé Reed: I'm on, I don't know. I don't know anymore on the socials.
[00:55:36] Nathan Wrigley: I.
[00:55:37] Sé Reed: But.
[00:55:37] Nathan Wrigley: Any.
[00:55:37] Sé Reed: Know.
[00:55:38] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:55:38] Sé Reed: The best way to, connect is, right now you can become a member of the WPOCC for $5. and that gives you access to our Slack. That's, I'm just there, so if you wanna talk to me, you can c- talk to me there. I'm also in the very, I'm in Post Status Slack, I'm in the Repository Slack.
I'm on LinkedIn. I am always happy to and delighted to talk to anyone who has, about WordPress, about open source, about any of this stuff, about, the future of humanity, whatever. please, if you're interested in that stuff, hit me up wherever you prefer.
Thank you, Nathan.
[00:56:20] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, that's all we've got time for today. I hope that you enjoyed that. Head to wpbuilds.com and search for episode number 482. If you do that, you can leave a comment there and we would really appreciate it.
Don't forget that we'll be back in a couple of weeks time for the This Week in WordPress show? And we'll have a podcast episode for you next Thursday. wpbuilds.com/subscribe to get subscribed and /advertise to sponsor the podcast and keep it going forwards.
Okay, I'm going to fade in some cheesy music. Say stay safe. You have a good week. Bye-bye for now.
