Episode 443 WordPress Governance With Marc Benzakein

Show Summary

Rob Cairns talks to Marc Benzakein as a follow-up to his presentation at WordCamp Canada.

Show Highlights:

The issues with WordPress governance.
The for-profit and non-profit sides should be split.
What the future looks like.

Show Notes

Hey Everybody Rob Cairns here and today I’ve got my guest Mark Benzakein. How are? You today, Mark?

I’m doing really well. Thank you. How are you?

Not too bad. Doing better. We were gonna hook up at work Camp Canada, and that didn’t quite happen. And you? You posted a tweet saying you wish you had met me. And I said to you, well, let’s do the next best thing. Let’s jump on a virtual.

Now.

Call right?

Yep, and that was pretty cool. It was. It was nice to actually meet you. I I’ve known who you are for a long time. The I don’t think we’ve ever been in the same circle at the same time, so it was it was a disappointment. You missed a really good time. Where Camp Canada was fantastic. Those organizers did a very lot with them. Very little. I can’t believe what they did. So yeah.

So I hear I and I love Ottawa as a city, so I want to send my kudos out to the. Organizer sorry guys but. Health reasons get in the way sometimes.

Yeah, sometimes.

And it’s just. The but otherwise I’ve got family in Ottawa. Ottawa is one of. My favorite places so. God willing, I’ll be in Ottawa in September, so there you go. I thought you’ve been around the WordPress page for a long time. You do some work with Main WP, you do some dev work, you know the community well and I thought I’d ask you how’d you get involved in WordPress? Like, what’s your origin story?

Right.

I think like many people, it was an accident. It was purely accidental. I actually was liquidating Harley-Davidson motorcycle parts on eBay.

Hmm.

And and I had kind of. I I’ve I’ve always had a technology background, but I was kind of stepping away and and while Harley was not my first thing, uh. You know, we were doing pretty well at it, but then Harley changed their fees and I I woke up one day. And. I said, you know, why am I going through all the the heartache and and brain damage of like buying these parts, having to identify them? Because I mean, we were getting parts all the way from World War Two era and having to identify them and. Say what they would fit, and when it was very time consuming and then the shipping and the cost and and and and warehousing and I I just. Like I do usually at 3:00 in the morning have this epiphany. I’m like, why am I bothering to do all this when I can make money off of my competitors with the eBay affiliate program? And so I thought, well, maybe I can just build a website that brings in an eBay feed and I just put in keywords. And and it’ll bring in the feed for what I want, and then I’ll just and it’ll have my affiliate link in there. And and I thought about it. I’m like, yeah, I can program this from the ground up. And so I was, I was starting to poke around. And I found this plug in for $49.00 that was already built to do it in WordPress and that was my, you know, I like everybody else. I thought, well, WordPress is just blogging software. And then I saw this plug in and I’m like, well, I don’t care if it’s just blogging software and it will do this, then I’ll then I’ll throw this in there. So for 49 bucks I. I you know, this is like 2009, I think 2010 somewhere in there and uh. And I threw this plug in. I I I had a server uh there that I had built. Uh. And I I had never touched WordPress. I did the five minute install I got a WordPress site up and running. I had it figured out inside of an hour and I had my inside of two hours. I actually had my site running that was just bringing in the eBay feed. Exactly how I wanted it, and I didn’t care about how it looked because I was just wanting to make, you know, get referrals off of Google, which at the time did not have the. The the algorithms that it does now that kind of prevent that kind of thing from happening. So I was able to get up on the search engines. I was able to do everything and within a month I was actually making more money off of affiliate dollars without lifting a finger then that I was doing all the by the time. I considered eBay fees and the time it takes to catalog and identify and warehouse all these parts and I was like, I’m just going to do this and then I looked at WordPress deeper and deeper said there’s a lot more to WordPress than. This and then I called the, you know Greg Franklin and I have a long standing relationship and and he he now works with Groundhog but but Greg and I go back to Circuit City days which is where we met back in the 80s and we had had partnerships and things like that and I you know Greg and I are really good. Friends and I called Greg. I said, hey, have you looked at WordPress? You know, I hadn’t talked to Greg in a couple of months, and he’s like, oh, I’m doing WordPress right now, too. And so he said, you need to come out and go to a word camp in San Diego, which. So I, he said, I’ll pay for your word camp ticket if you if you pay for the plane ticket. Well, I’m thinking that it’s a conference. And so it was going to be costly, so I thought, OK. That’s probably equal. I didn’t realize it back then. Tickets were like 25 bucks or something like that to get into work. But then I discovered the community and that’s kind of what hooked me into like, WordPress. As as more than just a piece of software that was a means to an end to what I wanted. So that’s that’s the long version of kind of a, you know, short story I guess.

It it’s funny, you mentioned the community and a lot of us see that a lot of us know the. A lot of people that go way back in the community, like I, I was thinking, you know, of people I know in their community and some of these people go back ten and I’ve been in the community over 15 years, so I’ve been in a long time as well and some people go back like 1516 and 17 years. Last week I had a.

Yeah.

To catch up with my good friend Bob Dunn in Portugal and Bob and I were saying surmising was known each other about 17 years now and this that there’s a lot of that in the communities, a lot of long time people in the community. I think the hard part is.

Mm-hmm. Wow, yeah.

The people in that community are actually the minority of people in WordPress, so by that I mean WordPress powers about 40% of the Internet, give or take 45% depending on who you listen to. The the vocal community is that community of devs, designers.

Correct. Yeah.

People in the know on either X or LinkedIn, I would say or Facebook in some group.

MM.

I would say that. Vocal group probably accounts for. Probably 1 to 2% maybe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.

But they didn’t. They’re the ones that seem to make all the noise right. So yeah.

Yeah. No, I I agree. And and I think that that is something that we. The. Those of us who are vocal and active and and connected and and kind of I don’t know that I’d say where the engine but where at least the transmission, you know that drives WordPress and and we need to keep in mind that out of that 43%.

Oh yeah.

Or 44 percent or, you know, whatever it. Because. Not only are we the minority, but we have to keep in mind that the rest of those people may not even know that they’re on WordPress, you know or or something like that. And and and it’s really easy, especially I think anytime that you’re in a community of people, whether it’s you’re a community of wealthy people or a community of people who have a passion for any one thing. If you only surround yourself with those people, you start to believe that that’s what the whole world is. And the reality is you’re still just within a bubble, and unless you make an act.

Yes.

Active effort to reach outside of your bubble and and step outside of that you, you brainwash yourself into believing that this is the way that things are and and I think. And I know we’re gonna get into this a little bit, but I think that that is one of the issues that we have with with WordPress. Because we are kind of unaware, those of us who are vocal are probably a little bit unaware of of. How we are seeing optically from outside of our bubble and and and that’s a big problem and and one that we need to. I think that we need to focus harder on. It’s not just a matter of whether or not our software is easy to use or whether or not it’s sexy. It’s a matter of the public. Image that we that we put out there about what WordPress is as well if people are. Well, after 20 years are still saying it’s just blogging software. It means we’ve done a really crappy job of putting out the image of what WordPress is.

Yeah, it’s like I’ve got this client who’s a good friend of mine too. So we’ve known each other for over 25 years. They run a jewelry store in the Toronto area and. And and they have a website websites based on WordPress. What a? Shot. They have the new store being launched in October. It’s a whole store. I will tell you of their current website, they almost never log into that website. So one of the problems we see. And you probably see this with your work. Is no matter how many times I hear ohh teach the client how to do stuff, the clients almost never do. The stuff so.

No.

They they don’t, yeah.

No, no, they don’t update the website. They don’t do any of that. They they don’t make quick changes. They won’t even make quick hour changes. They just. And partially for that is they’re frankly, they’re busy concentrating on running their businesses. They don’t have time to do that, right, so.

Absolutely. There’s there’s a reason that a doctor is a doctor and they’re not a technologist. They’re not interested in being a technologist. There’s a reason I’m a technologist and not a doctor. I’m interested in technology. I’m not interested in being a doctor. I’m not, you know, I’ll go to a doctor and a doctor will say, oh, you can do this and this and this. Right. Which is the basics like here’s a here’s a pill. Or here’s some lifestyle changes you can make, but you still have to go to the doctor. You know, and and teaching people how to maintain their own websites when they have zero desire. I mean, we’re not even talking about a 1% desire. We’re talking zero desire with a lot of these people. We’re trying to force. We’re trying to force feed them and.

So.

That’s because we project, I think. I think we’re really good at projecting. That whole why wouldn’t you want to do it? You know, because we would want to do it. But the reality is most people aren’t that way. They like to focus on one thing, one thing only. They’re good at that one thing, and it may not be what we do. And that’s why they hired us. In. The first place I have I have a a couple of. I mean, I don’t do a lot of client work, but one of my clients is is a a. A gym in Milwaukee and. You know, I at the beginning I made that same mistake I said. Let me teach you how to write your own blog post. Let me teach you. And like you said, ask me how many times he’s logged in. To the site.

Yeah.

You know, and this man has administrative privileges and he has not even logged in once. I mean, he could go in and blow his site up. He has zero desire. He’s. He’s just like. Just do what I need to do to drive traffic to my my gym because my gym is what what my issue is.

They don’t care. That’s true. So you were just recently at Work Campaign Canada, which was in Ottawa, our nation’s capital. I didn’t get there, unfortunately.

Correct.

I have to ask, you said they did a great job. What do you think of the city itself?

You know, I didn’t get to see a lot of the city. I did get to go to Parliament Hill. I love architecture. I thought it was amazing. I liked my rides in the Ubers where I saw how green everything was and and I thought, man, this is a this is a gorgeous place to live. I do realize that winters are different. I’m from Wisconsin. I know that. I know that winters and summers can look completely different, but the time and what I saw, I really, really enjoyed. I probably could have.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh, if I had had my professional camera equipment with me, I probably could have spent two days walking around Parliament Hill just just getting pictures of the architecture. I love architecture and and and so I I did enjoy it and and the people I was with Dennis. Who’s the founder of Main WP, and we were we went out to dinner and Dennis says, you know, one of the things that I’ve noticed here is nobody honks their horn.

Yeah.

And and I hadn’t noticed it until then. And we actually witnessed a couple situations where we were like. If that situation happened back home, people would be honking at each other. Not the only time we heard a horn honk was when someone set their alarm on their car and we thought that’s just crazy that that. People are that patient and and you know, there’s a world out there of people that are patient and kind and understanding and and think in terms of, you know, what I make mistakes when I drive too. So I’d be a hypocrite to honk. I don’t know what’s going on, but it sure seemed like people were. So they really that that reputation of Canadians. Being nice and I know that. As long as you’re not talking about hockey, you know, I think in general Canadians are pretty nice.

But.

Just witnessing it first hand, and like we’re talking about the capital city of of Canada. So it’s, you know a good sized city. And all the things that I’m used to seeing in American cities, the impatience and the and the and and all of those things I just didn’t see it there and I just felt even though there was a lot, there were a lot of people around me. I felt calm the whole time as a result of this, and it was very nice.

Yeah, that’s good city work and tender and needed to talk. And I’m just kind of want to jump in that talk and.

I did. I did do a talk.

Part of the reason I wanna jump in that is I think it’s been really important what you talked about #1 and we’ll get to talk in a moment. And #2 there’s because of the topic there seems seems to be some resistance to getting this talk up on WordPress TV. So.

That is the rumor that I have heard.

So let’s jump. Let’s jump into what was your talk and what did you talk about? What? What was the? Purpose was it?

Let me see if I can remember everything. It’s been a week and I have a short memory, but.

Yeah.

It’s been actually two weeks now, I guess so the talk is called the problem with. The. Parent the parenthetical S so the problems with WordPress. Yeah, and. The idea was that I would. Consult with the community so actually on the on the title slide in the byline. It actually says, you know presentation by Mark benzocaine and the WordPress community. Because I actually reached out to members of the WordPress community and once again is that you know obviously that vocal group that. We were talking about and I said, you know, what do you see as problems with WordPress? And I wasn’t just talking about the software. I’m talking about WordPress as a whole because as we’ve talked about, there’s more to it than just the. Software. It’s software, it’s community, it’s leadership. Public image and there was a fifth thing and I can’t remember what it is but. And so my goal was to talk about all of these things and but not from the point of view of here is my opinion of what’s wrong with WordPress. But from the point of view of. Of this is what the Community what we you know what people I have pulled and spoken to think of, and it was really some of it was eye opening and some of it wasn’t and but it was it was. That’s what it was, and so. As a result, I think I I I can’t speak to exactly why. They why there’s a discussion about whether or not it should go up on WordPress TV other than I’m I might have ruffled the feather too because I was very frank and I and and honest because. Right. I look at it as you know, let’s just use a metaphor of of it being code. Let’s just say that WordPress all, all five things that I’ve encompassed, let’s say that they’re a big piece of code. OK, when when you’re a coder. You either fix the code. Or you deprecate the code or the software doesn’t work at some point in time, you can leave the code in and it may work. Mostly it may work mostly, but at some point in time it’s going to break. And so, in my opinion, if you look at WordPress as an ecosystem, as a piece of code. If we don’t look at these issues that we face, it doesn’t mean that by and large, WordPress isn’t great. WordPress is fantastic, but if we don’t look at these pieces of code within the ecosystem that are that are broken or need some attention, then eventually the ecosystem’s gonna break. And and so I felt. You know, uh, compelled, especially after reaching out to the community and everything to get up and and talk frankly about what the issues were that we had and and that might that might not have sat it might not, you know, not sit well with with. You know, with some people. But but it’s it, it was not from. None of it was a from a position of maliciousness or anything. It was. These are issues that need to be addressed and hopefully we can fix it and and you know the reality.

This.

There was enough there for a 2 hour presentation. And so I didn’t get to discuss the solutions and and by the way, the solutions were me operating in a vacuum. So I proposed solutions at the end of the presentation to the problems. However, those were me operating in a vacuum. Those were me saying these are potential solutions that I see, but it’s really solutions are always this is a place to start. Discussion. And then when you when you come up with solutions, that’s a discussion that everybody has to have and everybody has to get involved in and it’s not something that you can do in a 50 minute or one hour presentation. But hopefully I gave people enough things to think about that they could start talking about solutions. Better solutions than I came up with and and and something to to make the whole world better. And when I talk about the community. I’m talking about everybody. You know, one of the things is is and and I’ll just say it because it’s kind of the elephant in the room. A lot of people come down hard on Matt, OK, because he’s leadership and he is that central point. And there are some issues there. But one thing we have to remember as the community is Matt is still part of the community and and so. We don’t want to really ostracize them, but but at the same time Matt needs to be open to. Uh people saying, hey, we don’t like that you’re doing this and and he has to be open to that because the reality is this community really kind of can’t survive without Matt. And and in a way, we’re kind of can’t survive without the community. So we need, you know, it’s it’s very symbiotic and right now.

Matt.

My observation and the feedback that I got from a lot of people is that symbiosis isn’t working and we need to make adjustments in order to bring it back into harmony.

I would agree with that. I think since we’re talking about leadership and I wanted to go there anyway. One of the things I believe for a long, long time, and I’m not, I’m at detractor, I think he’s done a really good job. I don’t think our community overall, I don’t think our community would be where it is if we’re going through his leadership. So I have to be fair. But I also think running a for profit company and running a nonprofit company. They should be run under separate umbrellas, with separate executive directors, I really believe. That.

I do think there’s a conflict there, I agree.

I do. I do, and I think where we’re seeing some of this as well in the tech spaces with a company called Open AI and MI notes with open AI is now checked. He he and if you know the structure of open AI, they have a nonprofit board that basically supports a. CEO, who was ousted. That and that CEO’s job is to make money. What a conflict. So the minute you start tying profit and nonprofits together. And I years ago I did a contract with a guy for his for profit side of the business and he had a nonprofit side. And I actually refused to do any work for the nonprofit company. Even though I was working for the for profit company, I just outright refused because I it was a comfort and I think it’s time for word press governance to sit down. And and break the two apart. What do you think about that?

I I agree with it in concept and we and you bring up this word governance and and The thing is the thing about governance and and I think Morton probably discovered this you know first hand. But the thing about governance is governance has to have some teeth. It has to have bite in order to be effective and and that’s probably a strong term because I am all for peaceful solutions to things. But but you know, when you talk about government governance, you’re talking about oversight you’re talking about. You know somebody coming in and saying. Look, this is a violation or this is, you know, and and you’re talking about regulating something and. The issue that we have, and this is purely practical, it has nothing to do with the person who has all the keys of the. Kingdom. But on a practical on paper, if you took all the names out of it and. You. Said here’s the org chart and this person here has every single key and all the real estate. OK. How do you govern that?

Yes.

And and the and the reality is, the practical reality is that person in that square on the on the org chart has to be willing. To give some of that up, in order for governance to exist and and so I agree with you, I kind of look at it as like. OK, if you when you, you’re right that there is this conflict. You have a for profit and a nonprofit. If I’m a parent. And I’ve got two children and one child gives me all the love and attention and everything that I need. Right. So we’ll call that the Prophet and then we have the child who is kind of running on their own and doing their own thing and all that. As a parent, which one am I more likely? To. You know, put my attention and to quote UN quote like more I as a parent of many kids. I don’t like any of my kids more than others. But there are times that one kid is more favorite than the other. And so it’s the same sort of thing. We’ve got this community that is nonprofit. And then we’ve got this, this business that is generating billions and billions of dollars and creating billion, you know, lots of jobs and all these things. And don’t get me wrong, the community is creating jobs too, but that, that community is becoming more and more like that child that’s running wild on its own. And you know, in a way, if I were the person at the head, I’d be putting my effort into the for profit thing too, because that for profit is giving me what I need. You know, it’s giving me the feedback. It’s I’m surrounding myself with people who are or who are telling me what I want to hear. Maybe, I don’t know. I’m not. I’m not in any. Of that I have. Very detached from that. But you I have more control over that situation than the other. And so that may not be the best metaphor, but it’s the best one that I can come up with because I’m a parent of a lot of kids and I know kind of how, you know, hey, for me, the kid who’s coming up and wanting to sit on my lap and give me attention and things like that, those are the kids. That I put my effort well that I that that I get my dopamine, you know from right and so so my I guess my suggestion here is maybe we as a community the the the nonprofit side. Could be a little bit more. I know this sounds like I’m an apologist, but we could be a little bit more empathetic to. The position our parent is at, but at the same time. You know, maybe figure out ways to. Make him accountable or make leadership more accountable and and once again it goes back to that governance thing. But I don’t know how you govern until the person in charge, the person with all the power, is willing to give some of that up. And say you know what this is for the betterment of all of us, that I give some of this up and.

It’s a bit a bit of an issue to. Saving and I.

Yeah, yeah.

I think. I think it’s just a bad model doing it. This way you know.

Yeah. Well, yeah, like I said, on a purely piece of paper, take the names out. Of. It. Most people would. Most people would look at and go this this can’t work. This isn’t sustainable.

Yeah.

I would, I would think you know.

And I think we have to do it to future proof the project and the future proof to software. I think that’s part of it. I mean, you know, Matt’s still young. I think he’s. If I’m wrong, he’s in his 40s now, I believe. But the point is what’s gonna happen in 10 years or 15 years? I think we need to look on how we we future proof this down the road.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think it’s really important.

Yeah.

As well in the community, since we’re on the subject, because this is all about community, one of the things that’s kind of I think really split this community up in the last couple of years is the whole blocks, full site editing, Gutenberg project. I think it really. With the people in the know. And. I think what we gotta realize is there’s multiple ways of doing WordPress and Brockway over at. Now San Munoz over at WP engine has a really good saying. Saying do WordPress it your way and I really believe that. So if you wanna do Gutenberg and blocks and full sighted and go ahead and do it. If you want to work with the classic thing, go ahead and do it and then.

Mm-hmm.

Some features in six, six that actually benefit classic themes like some of the styles. If you turn them on, apply to classic themes now. So that’s really that’s really interesting if you want to do headless, go ahead and do it. If you want to write code, go ahead and do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I believe as a as a community, we need to stop fighting about what our choices are and ripping somebody up for their choices. Do you have any thoughts of not homeless?

Right. Uhm, yes, I I I do. I think that. You know, to me it’s the same as if you tell me you like Taylor Swift. It’s not my position to tell you you can’t like Taylor Swift, you know, like the music that you like like. The way you do and and when I was doing server press and even now with main WP I tell people the same thing. I say do workflow your way. OK. OK, it’s it’s your life. It’s your lifestyle. It’s the way you think. We all think differently and it’s what works for you, you know. Now I also, like, encourage people to be open minded and say, hey, if somebody shows you another way that can benefit you, be open to it. But no one says your way is wrong. And once again, going back to the original thing we talked about, which is the people out there. On WordPress, don’t even know they’re on WordPress. They don’t give a crap if you’re using full site editor, Gutenberg or classic editor or whatever. They don’t care if you’re using. 2016 theme if you know it was that a theme I can’t even remember now, but anyway, they don’t care what theme you’re using. They don’t care if you’re using Genesis framework. They don’t care about any of that stuff. All they care about is does my site run? Am I getting visitors? That’s what they care about. And so all this infighting. You know, and and and I understand that the concern is if we have people over here working on this and people over here working on this and people over here working on this, then it spreads us too thin and and and I understand that argument and and it’s you know probably a a valid argument. But are we going to sit around and argue all day about which one is best? Or are we just, you know, when we could put that that bandwidth into, you know, just making whatever our focus is better? I I’d rather spend my time working on whatever I’m doing and making it better. Then arguing back and forth about opinions, which is all these are, these are just opinions and the reality is. Are we making it, in my opinion, and this is me offering my opinion, as I said, we’re just talking opinions, but in my opinion, are we making this? A viable product for the future that people will continue to want to use. That’s all that matters.

Yeah.

And I think the advantage of open source software. Is to make it open, so you can. Do what you wanna do and how you wanna do it. And I think it’s really important and I think that’s what people are missing. The other thing I think people are missing going back to this whole community group is as a group we sell ourselves. We undervalue what we offer, we undervalue our products. We undervalue what we charge. I will tell you I am as a digital concierge, I do not brand myself as an agency. I am not on the low end. And people say, excuse me, I wouldn’t charge that. Well, that’s nice, because why do we keep fighting in our community, this race to? Bought Robert Bloom wrote a really good book called The Inside Advantage in late 2000s and he said don’t fight the race to the bottom. Yeah. Yeah, I’m not sure a dollar store chain, by the way. Yeah, you know. And he said make your business different and make you stand out. Why do people in the WordPress.

Hmm.

Community not get that and to add to that. And you’ll get what I’m gonna say, cause you have a marketing background. They don’t do a good job. Of marketing their own products.

Right. Right. So obviously when you market your own products, it’s a matter of creating value. But I think that I think that this is all kind of a a byproduct of us being in this bubble, this this OK, first of all, we all got into WordPress and it was free, OK, so it didn’t cost us anything. And there’s there’s an old story that one of my old business partners told me years and years ago and and it stuck with me. And this has to do with how you, you know, how you create value for yourself. But you have to believe that that value is there. Well, if I have a natural inclination to. Tech with technical things you can give me almost anything technical and if I know nothing about it right now, within an hour I’ll have it figured out because I understand how things work and because I have 40 years of experience in technology and and I can put the pieces together and and make something work. I. My natural inclination is. I take that knowledge for granted. So because I take it for granted, it’s not that valuable. But the reality is, if I sit down and think of it, I have over 40 years of experience that no one else has. And that’s where the value is, and so the the story that I was alluding to was.

Yes.

This man is running a factory and there’s different variations of the story, but the one. That. I heard is this man is is running a factory and one day the factory goes down like it’s building widgets. It doesn’t really matter what it’s producing, but all of a sudden this big machine goes down. He calls the guy in the guy comes in, looks at it for 5 minutes, pulls out a screwdriver, turns a screw. And and and fixes it. And the owner of the factory says that’s great. Give me a bill. And he gives him a bill for 10,000.

Effect.

Dollars and and the owner of the factory says $10,000, but you only spent a minute on. It. And, he says, can you itemize why it costs $10,000? And so he writes on the bill and what the bill says is turn screw $1.00 knowing which screw to to turn $9999. And.

Right.

And that’s where I think this race to the bottom is, is we we do want to provide value to our customers. But what we don’t realize is that the value we’re providing is intellectual value. It is not. It is not, you know. A value of, you know, an item. It is not tangible and.

So.

And and as a result, we tend to undervalue ourselves because we’ve taken that knowledge that we’ve gained because it was our passion and because we like it and because we have an inclination for it and all these things, we take it so for granted because. For us, it was all in the fun of learning it, but we don’t realize that that fun and that passion and all those things are what turns into value to a person who doesn’t have fun doing that. Who doesn’t want to do all that, but recognizes the need for it?

Yeah, it’s one of the reasons why I don’t call my business an agency anymore. I called the concierge because the concierge does is it takes all these pieces and puts them all together. And the problem is, most people, most small business owners have no clue what piece goes here, what piece goes here, what’s in the middle.

Right. Right, right.

They and they don’t realize. And people always saying to me, why are you so pricey? And I said because I have expertise that a student coming out of school at call it $20.00 an hour doesn’t.

Have right, right, exactly, exactly.

So we move forward in WordPress you know coming out of your talk. And coming out of how you feel cause I think you’ve really hit the right notes here. What are like three or four quick take. That you would, you would say to the community if you had a chance.

If I had a chance three or four takeaways, can you be more specific?

About about how you feel about the community, how you feel about where we’re going, how you feel about where WordPress is at you do.

Yeah. So I I feel like I feel like. There’s a tremendous amount of kind of renewed passion within the community, which is exciting. I for 1:00 AM. A person that is kind of renewing when I when we closed down server Press of course I had to deal with all the emotional baggage that goes along with with shuttering a business you’ve been running and putting your heart and soul into for 10 years. And I stepped out of WordPress altogether and and I had reached a little bit of burnout, which you’ll hear a lot of people talk about, and I’m starting to see a lot of us who have been in the community for a long time, who may have kind of reached that point. Of disillusionment and frustration and all these things, you’re starting to see a little bit more energy there. What I would say to those of us who are. Are. Finding a spark of energy that we that we thought was gone or something like that is find new people to bring into the community because if you look at, if you look at any movement that goes in the right direction, you know whether it’s civil rights or whatever you may have had older people that kind of started the movement. That it was the younger people that energized the move. And. There’s a there’s a lot of reasons for that. One is I’m at an age where I just don’t have that much energy. I don’t have that kind of energy anymore. That kind of, you know, vibrance and all that. And the other thing is bringing new people in means fresh ideas. It means fresh passions. It means fresh everything, and it’s upon us. If we really do want. The WordPress community to sustain and grow and continue. It’s up to us that have been around to bring people in that that. Might be looking for a community and they just don’t know what it is or whatever, and it’s up to us to mentor them and to onboard them and to and to make, you know, make get younger people to say why not WordPress, you know, and and all of those things so. So I I would say that my big take away is for us as a community, if we really want to remain strong, I agree, stop with the fighting. And let’s focus on what it takes to grow a community and and build each other up and realize that, yes, the community has evolved, OK, and WordPress has evolved to where you’ve got the big money and you’ve got the, you know, the people who are struggling to make it and everything in between. But, but that’s still all part of the community. And so let’s work on on figuring out ways to integrate all aspects of that and include all of that, because one of the things that has been preached in WordPress since day one is inclusiveness. Well, that includes the haves and the have nots that include. That includes, you know, the marginalized communities. That includes everything and. And so that includes young people, old people, all of us. It is really cool that I’m on the higher end of the age scale of people in technology at this point. And yet I get to go. To you know, to events where people half my age actually want to talk to me. You know, that’s actually kind of cool. And I feel like they have something to say, every bit as much as I have something to say. And so we’re very fortunate to have this kind of environment and I think that that’s the thing that some of us have been around are trying to hold on to and trying to foster to make it bigger and better.

Yeah, that that is so well said. Hey, Mark, if somebody wants to get a hold of you to talk about this or your talk or anything else, where’s the best way and how?

Mm-hmm.

UM, you can reach me on Twitter. I’m Mark Benzac on Twitter. I am uh Mark benzocaine on LinkedIn. You can find me on Facebook. I do work with Main WP with the with the group there and you know main WP is a great product and and very supportive. You know I just want to say this and I’m not really here to pitch a product, but what I do want to do is is I want to thank Dennis in particular. Because he supported me going to work Camp Canada, he did not know what I was going to talk about. He did not make me submit my presentation to him first, he said. I’m sponsoring you to go to Canada and you talk about what you need to talk about and I really appreciate that. The that he gave me the. You know the license to to talk about something that I do feel is very important and needs to be spoken about, so.

And what I’ll tell you is from my knowing and knowing dentist as well as I do, he’s a pretty. Supportive guys, I mean, you guys are lucky. Yeah, he’s been on this show. It was funny when they did this show. The first thing he said to me is I’m not used to doing podcasts. Can I just talk? And I said, yeah, that’s all I want you to do. Yeah. And. And and he was great. So thanks, Dennis. And and thank you. Mark. You have a wonderful day, my friend.