VENTURING OUT, THROUGH THE WOODS
Last Monday, I attended the Boston WordPress Meetup and got to listen to Rob Petrin talk about Gutenberg’s development roadmap within WordPress. So far, we’re on a very good path. A lot of new features have been indoctrinated into the system and are providing more options for users to build unique-looking sites.
During his presentation, he announced that he too is an organizer for a WordPress Meetup that is just outside of Boston, in Marlborough Massachusetts. I decided to pay him and his group a visit later in the week, to see who’s there and how widespread WordPress interest has grown physically ever since recovering from the pandemic.
GENERAL VIBE
The Meetup was held at Tackle Box Brewing Company. Total attendance was 10 including myself. Everyone was already situated because I came in late due to outbound traffic from Boston.
The group gathered at a corner of the venue. Single-walled section, off from the busy crowd of cornhole players over at the game room, paired with murmurs coming from the bar. Overall the general vibe was cozy.
I was greeted by Rob Petrin himself, who was helping an attendee debug an issue on the large projector screen, which during off-WordPress Meetup hours would most likely be used as a karaoke lounge.
Gutenberg settings splashed across the screen, and it looked like they were fiddling around with image block settings and, later, font issues.
Note, sadly I forgot to snap a photo of the meetup.
ALL-HANDS MEETING
Since I was late, Rob reopened the floor for me to introduce myself, after I grabbed a pint. Oh, you must try tap number 9, Captain Quint!
I started by explaining who I was and how I got started with WordPress. How I’ve evolved with the technology over the past decade and why I chose to be an organizer for the Boston WordPress Meetup group.
Things have been dormant for a while up until April of 2023 when Jonathan Desrosiers decided to revive it. Efforts have been slow, but gradual. I wanted to help contribute in any way I could back to the WordPress community for Boston.
I also put out a note to the audience that we’re actively looking for speakers to fill each month, a minimum of two, to help keep the community engaged with recent trends and newsworthy topics.
After my brief intro, I dove in and spoke with the guests. I had an absolute blast connecting with two newcomers to the WordPress platform in particular. I’ll use Guest 1 and Guest 2 to delineate the interactions for privacy’s sake.
THE attentive LISTENER
The first guest I met has only been using WordPress for the past four months. Guest 1 was looking for some local help with WordPress development and luckily, Marlborough WordPress Meetup popped up on their admin dashboard. Side note, this is another worthy point I want to bring up for a future article, and that is the eventual move from Meetup.com to GatherPress.
Guest 1 has been in the multimedia space for well over 20 years, but until recently, curiosity struck and decided to dive into the WordPress platform, utilizing it to do publishing of work that is related to video production. On top of that, their side hustle would be to work with non-profits. Developing an identity for them and getting them noticed in public.
This is where I came in and explained my experience working with non-profits over the past year. My new plan for 2024 is to develop a simple package for non-profits that would benefit them for the first year of their business.
I explained how gaining a voice in their community and subsequently requesting donations is important. My suggestion is the “non-profit MVP plan,” which is essentially a method borrowed from the start-up world.
Getting the minimum viable product for your organization out the door first, such as a strong homepage with easy contact form, donate CTA’s, payment form, Salesforce API connections for social media contact links, and mission statement. Once you have these critical pieces, we launch the site and scale up over time while we gain valuable feedback from users who visit the site.
After our conversation on how to support non-profit businesses, Guest 1 asked me a few questions about the WordPress community; how things are generally organized, where to find help, how often Meetups happen, and what are larger conferences for WordPress like.
There’s a general curiosity with the platform and I told them that they’ve entered an amazing time as WordPress has been in a technology flux for the past six years. The publishing experience has changed (Block Editor) and the code is much more simplified, structurally.
THE RESOURCEFUL GUEST
As the night progressed and beers were flowing, I got to meet another interesting patron who was attending the Marlborough WordPress Meetup that night. Guest 2 had a bold character, an enterprising and explorative individual during their career track which included traveling around the world and assisting in decision-making sessions that eventually shaped the world. Now in retirement, Guest 2 refuses to step on the breaks.
With a lifetime of knowledge, Guest 2 is venturing into different business practices to further their investment portfolio, one of them was teaching online. What better way to pour out one’s influence than by utilizing WordPress as a publishing platform? This is where I suggested that they use an LMS (Learning Management System) plugin that sits on top of an already successful CMS platform. Guest 2 is also running a side small business in the real estate world, hoping to leverage the changes within the housing market to benefit those who are traveling.
We broke down how WordPress came to be and what void it filled for the web. Guest 2 was fascinated by the fact that the platform is open-source. Such vast capabilities create so much for the web to the point where it powers 43% of it. This scalability has its advantages over proprietary software. Guest 2 started asking questions about the PHP code, “if I were to print out the open-source code on a stack of paper, how much am I looking at here?!” I told them that this code base is always changing with improvements by the community. But if they wish to track the progress, they can look up the GitHub WordPress Develop repo for core.
VALUE OF COMMUNITY
Regrettably, due to the exciting talks I had with the two patrons, I never got to meet the other individuals in the room. But that isn’t entirely a bad thing. The other guests talked amongst themselves and I even heard loud laughter come out. This tells me that people were well entertained and exchanging knowledge.
This is the same vibe I experienced at the Boston WordPress Meetup a couple of days earlier. After the speakers, we broke out into a short discussion session. There was chatter of people asking questions about WordPress technology and also providing business solutions.
Overall, I am very glad to see meetups cropping up again for WordPress in Massachusetts. It was a thriving community before the pandemic but like most places across the United States, the pandemic hit hard for everyone. Now there is a resurgence of followers who are actively coming out again. This is something I want to strongly encourage everyone to do.
Go out there! Network and meet others in person. Who knows what kind of conversation you might strike up next?