Like, how do you get more contributors or what is your process as in what are the steps that you take or your team takes to make sure documentation is foolproof?

Oh well, first of all, we have cookies. That’s what we are famous for, you know, giving cookies to contributors, but, Well, there’s er not enough of us in documentation team, so processes are difficult er to keep up with everything, well, documentation is not up to date, and there’s a lot of unwritten documentation, so a lot of missing pages and articles. er we are trying to do everything, but I’m the only sponsored contributor for documentation, so it’s very difficult to keep up with everything. we are trying with the WordPress releases. To at least update all of that that’s new, er, but you know, when you’re building er new stuff on something that is still not completed, it, it can fall apart easily, so yeah, it’s very difficult.

Absolutely, and you also have to make sure that all kind of audiences can find stuff that they are looking for.

I can totally imagine.

Yeah.

All right, so. All right, so we found out that you’re holding a workshop tomorrow, hosting a workshop tomorrow, WordPress through the terminal. Could you tell us a bit about that and what you are planning for that?

Well, it’s about WPCLI, so I’m on Linux for a long time, and Terminal is my favorite thing ever, and having, you know, command line interface for WordPress is like the best thing. what I love about it is that it is very, powerful, and you can do more things with WPCLI than you could in dashboard, and tomorrow we are going to see how you can make administration faster, how you can make WordPress secure, or more secure, and er how you can make development more fun, and we will build some er bash scripts er for making things easier and more fun. And I, I would suggest that people, you know, just go to documentation. There is very good documentation for WPCLI and try a few things. I’m actually surprised how many people don’t know what you can do with it and don’t use it, but once you start using it, it will be so much easier for you to do everything. So just go there and test a few commands and play around. It’s, it is terminal, people get scared of it. But you cannot break anything, so just, just play around and at any point you can use help, it will show you what you can do and what you cannot do, and there are even examples, so just play.

All right. All right, so in the past you’ve all been pretty; you have been part of the organizing team of World Camp Europe, right? Could you please tell us a bit about your experiences back then?

So in 2018 we were hosting a World Camp Europe in Belgrade, and I was part of the team that organized Contributor Day. And in 2019, I was leading the team that organized Contributor Day in Berlin, so if you remember all those balloons and everything, that was my, my baby. And yeah, it’s a unique experience. You cannot really get that experience of organizing that big event anywhere else. It’s difficult. It starts in September, and we know that the conference is in June, so it’s a lot of work, especially if you are leading the team. I, I don’t know, you learn a lot about yourself and your relationship to others, and, er, there, you know, other things. I’m a developer and contributor, but this is where you learn some very valuable skills, and you find out some skills you have that you didn’t know, and I am very happy I was able to do that, but. It was so exhausting, and I had to stop after 2 years.

I can totally imagine. I mean, pulling off an event of such a big scale, I’m sure that would need a lot of effort.

I mean, 2018 WordCamp. Europe in Belgrade was one of my favorite work camps

Also, the food was awesome.

It was awesome the concerts in concert at the end and mosh pit specifically.

Yeah, yeah, it was really good.

All right. So, what is the one thing that you love about WordPress?

I think it’s a freedom to do whatever you want, you know, it’s not, it is software, but it’s not just software, you can do so many things around it, and, options and freedom to do, as much as you want to be as professional as you want or just to keep it as a hobby. It’s fun, it’s interesting, and you learn a lot, whichever part you take.

All right, yeah, that, that totally is the case. My favorite part is community.

Oh, ok

Basically seeing all the people here working and supporting the future of WordPress, and we also saw yesterday 800 people came. That’s a massive number

1000 registered, that’s a lot. In previous years, we were limiting the number. I don’t know if they did this year; probably they did because you are limited by the space, and in 2019 we were limited to 600. And every year it’s really, you get a lot of people asking, Can I get a ticket? Can I get a ticket? It’s not about the ticket; it’s about the space. You cannot put more people than there can be. So there’s always a big interest for contributor day, and I’m glad that we have this huge venue that we could accommodate 800 people in.

Speaking about the venue, it is. Awesome.

Yeah, it is; it is amazing. Yeah, I’m going in circles and never know if I was there already. So I just know if I see sponsors or there is one. I know where I am.

It is, I mean, for us also finding this room was not that easy tends to Costa and Evans team and we were able to. All right. So, you have been to many work camps, and you’ve spoken in many work camps. You’ve organized a few of them also, as you mentioned earlier. So tell us how things have changed over time in the community as well as in the work camps.Well, er, the biggest change was this er pandemic, and we, we build a lot of er er a large team, er documentation team, er, before pandemic, but then people just, you know, life happens and they just stopped contributing. So things are shifting, er, new people are coming and, er, I see, a lot of er. Things that the focus is moved to end user and er to front end and Gutenberg. I can’t say I’m very happy about it. I’m PHP developer by default and I’m also working on documentation and I see a lot of neglecting of those parts. We just don’t have time. And nobody really cares anymore about that, so I would really love to see a bit more of backend development, focus on that. I’m not saying it’s not good to focus on front end and on new users, it’s just. Let’s keep focused on everything that WordPress is. So that that’s the the change that I see. I see new people. I see, different types of talks that are accepted at WorldComs, and it’s really opening more to community, to soft topics and to Guttenberg, basically everything is, yeah.

And what are your take about Gutenberg? Are you happy with where this is progressing?

I am happy with where it is progressing. I’m, I’m not happy about other things that are neglected. That that’s the thing. I would love to see Gutenberg being better and having more features and giving more options and, you know, going into full site editing. I think it’s great. I think it’s going to be good. I just don’t want us to, neglect too much of the other things and then when we look back and see there is a hole, I, I’m kind of afraid of that. I wouldn’t like that to happen.

Yeah. I mean, I also have talks with my clients and they are like they’re still not comfortable with Gutenberg. They, they specially request to disable it. So, yeah, it still has a long way to go in my opinion and hopefully you get

we can use what is there, it is limited, but we, we can create websites with with what is there, what is stable. I would just love to have everything integrated much better. All right.

So we also found out that you were the co-lead of WordPress 5.9 and 6.0 release cycles. How was your experience doing that?

Well, it was 5.8 and 5. co-lead for 5.9 and 6.0, but I was leading a documentation focus for 5.8. And er yeah, you’re there are no processes, you know, it it is documented what you are supposed to do, but not how to do it, and that’s a tricky part and we are trying, well I’m trying to create this workflower that will. Help people to take over and to easily take over that role. So we are trying to document, well, first to develop workflow that will be easier. So this is very difficult. You go through all the tickets on track and in GitHub and then find which one are supposed to be documented, and not all are marked, so you mark them as well while you go through them. And then you start chasing people to document, to, you know, write dev notes, if they don’t want to, well, if they don’t, can’t write it or for whichever reason they don’t write it, then you have to write it, and then everything is published in one week, and after that you have to put all of that in field guide. So, and then you have end user documentation and developer documentation, you have to update all that. So it’s a lot for one person. And especially that those processes are not documented, it can be very difficult to to find where it is, and every week you have something new happening like there is release candidate, well, first betas, but then release candidate 1 and 2 and 3 and you know. The, the freeze and everything and it’s just happening, you cannot catch up. So that’s an interesting experience for me. I love to be er in, in the loop to know what’s happening, so I, I love to go through all those tickets, but it is exhausting, and I hope to be able to document everything and to find the easiest way. er we are now moving to GitHub projects. Which is good because you can then add every pull request and every issue from every repository inside WordPress organization, you can add it to project and then you can start adding everything on one place, so that’s a start, but now we have to figure out how to make better use of it and then document everything, so people can, you know, easily take over.

You know, developers have a tendency, like, I wrote a code, somebody will figure it out.

Yeah, yeah, it’s not just that. I’ve been working with the people who were writing that notes. It’s hard, you know, they, they know what what the future is doing and how to put it in in few words, but it is hard to explain it and So I always tell them, you know, just give me the facts, I will put pretty words around it and we will have it, you know, in no time. It should be a collaboration between a code writer and documentation writer, you know, to, to communicate while it’s being developed.

Absolutely. Yeah. All right, so we are almost at the end, end of the WordPress related questions. The last question. What is the one thing you would suggest to the user who just started in the word of WordPress?
well, there, there’s, there are a lot of options for everyone, for, every experience level level for every skill set, so. If you don’t find right away what you like, what you feel good with, just keep trying to find something, you will find it and then go there for yourself. Don’t go for anyone else, you don’t need to do anything. This is open source, just go to make yourself better and with that you will make the community better.All right. Sounds fair. So now, let’s talk about life outside WordPress. What you like to do are things that are not WordPress.Well, I like To I like to read books, I like to walk, er, and I’m also doing light running, er, exercising, I like to play pool and. I don’t know, spend time with friends and family.OK, life can be stressful sometimes working in deck, and how do you de-stress yourself?

Well, with exercising, that’s a a really good way to do it, and I actually start my day with that, I start very relaxed, like first breakfast and coffee and then I take a walk or or a run, and come back home, do some training and take a shower and then I start working. And after work sometimes I take a walk, you know, some sometimes my brain is mashed potatoes, so I need to take a walk, yeah, I need to take a walk to just, you know, figure out what day it is and what time it is, and reading books help, really, just going offline.

Do you have any favorite book that you read?

My favorite book, I read it the first time when I was, I think, 13 or 14. it’s the Count of Monte Cristo.

Count of Monte Cristo, OK. And what, what this is about, if you remember

it’s about A guy who was, you know, working hard and he was supposed to get married and everything, but then, and he was supposed to get a promotion at the ship, but then people work behind his back and he ended up being in jail. And he spent there, I don’t know, 20 years or something, and you cannot run away from there, so he managed to er escape and he found a treasure and then he started his revenge, so it’s really like really good book.

Sounds interestingYeah it is.

All right, so we are at the end of the interview, and my last question is like an Easter egg, as I’d say. What is your favorite song?

My favorite song, I have so many favorites. I’m a musician. I cannot decide, yeah, I’m a classical musician, hm, I, I don’t know, I cannot decide. It’s OK.

Yeah, no, that for a musician, song is awesome

Yeah, it, it has, you know, every song has something

All right. So any song would you recommend to our listeners when they feel stressed, to be stressed themselves in the tough times.

Well, there’s a, there’s one really nice song, it’s called Close to You by Carpenters, I believe, and it’s very slow and harmony is beautiful and it, it’s relaxed.

Awesome. So we’ll try to drop the link in the description so you guys can also listen to it. Thank you, Milana Fur being part of the show.

Thank you for hosting me.

It was lovely hosting you

Yeah, thank you.

Alright guys, until next time. Bye bye