Last month I traveled to Europe to speak at WordCamp Netherlands in Utrecht. It was a great experience and I had the chance to meet a number of awesome WordPress developers and users.
I’ve forgotten to post my presentation until now, so here it is. The video of the talk should be online soon enough. I’m excited about that, because despite giving somewhere around two-dozen presentations since August, none of them have been successfully recorded yet. I’d really like to watch it and study how I can improve.
My favorite talk at NL was one on designing for WordPress (and how decisions are made) by my friend John O’Nolan. I’m really excited to see his posted as well.
My main presentation was on what’s next for WordPress. (I gave the same talk in WordCamp Philadelphia the week before.) For my developer talk on APIs, see my post from WordCamp Mid-Atlantic.
Sometimes, it takes a horror story to realize even the smallest enhancements can make the biggest differences.
My friend Lauren Rabaino updated a client’s site to WordPress 3.0.2, updating Twenty Ten in the process. She was using a child theme, but had been accidentally making modifications to Twenty Ten instead, because the theme editor shows you the files of both themes at once.
She was forced to redo some work, even though she believed — and rightfully so — that she was doing everything right.
This really bothered me. I spent a long time with the theme editor over the summer, but too little of it was ready for 3.1. (I plan to revisit it all for 3.2.)
At first, I suggested a quick fix in the form of a small warning. But talking with Jane Wells led to a series of small enhancements that make the theme editor experience just a little bit better. Every incremental improvement counts.
It was exactly one year ago today that my first patch made it into WordPress.
I can’t believe it’s been only 12 months, and I’m willing to bet you can’t either. I definitely took to the community — and the community to me — in a very unorthodox and lightning-fast way. It’s been one hell of a ride, and I don’t intend to slow down. But for now, let me offer a window into my first year.
WordPress was the first open source project, of any size, to which I contributed. Overall, it’s been an incredibly humbling experience. The learning curve can be steep. It’s taught me a lot about the open source development process. I’ve learned a lot about programming. I’ve had the chance to walk into a room — many times, both in real life and virtually — with the honest belief that everyone is smarter than you. I know my limits, but I’ve continued to push them at the same time. I’ve learned what it means to have an opinion without having a personal agenda.
I contributed because I wanted to. I didn’t have a reason otherwise. I had never heard about Google Summer of Code until Dion Hulse mentioned it to me a month after I began contributing, when I was already a dozen or two accepted patches deep.
I’ll take that back — I heard of Google Summer of Code in passing from my predecessor at The Hatchet, the student newspaper I worked for in college. That’s where I started, and I owe that paper basically everything — many of my friends and most of my skills. It took me more than two years using WordPress, and learning it from my good friend Ben Balter, for me to finally step up and contribute. Worth every second.
Yes, my first patch really was just 12 characters. It was pretty much useless. I found a ticket I could assist in, and so I assisted. I even screwed up Trac along the way.
When it was committed three days later, first thing I did was forward it to Ben. (The apprentice had become the master. Heh.) I’ve since had the chance to partake in other people’s first patches. A favorite one might be the story of Aaron Jorbin’s first patch. To boot, he’s since moved to the D.C. area. And John O’Nolan got involved after I worked with him to fix a bug. Now he runs the UI group. Just two of many good friends I’ve gained.
Less than three months later, after a serious blitz of more than 100 patches at just the right time, I was asked to become a committer. It wasn’t just the svn ci command that was intimidating. Of anyone who may have watched my contributions and didn’t think I was ready, I was first in line. But Ryan had faith, so I told him I’d do my best.
How do I learn? I learn first by reading, and second by doing. If you want to contribute, I strongly encourage it. More important is when you submit that first bug report or patch, not necessarily when it makes it into WordPress — it’s a community effort, and that first step is important. (I wish I had published this post three days ago to emphasize that.)
But also take the time to read. I spent two weeks reading every Trac comment and patch before contributing, and six weeks reading every commit, and 10 weeks reading every hackers thread. I still read every commit, comment, and thread.
So what’s next? Well, the core contributor handbook, for one, which I hope to get out by the end of the year. It’s only fitting that I can write down whatever I’ve learned in this whirlwind year in a manual for the next person to use as a guideline.
My accomplishments may include more than a thousand commits and 700 individual contributions, but I still haven’t proven myself anything. There are still deep, dark areas of WordPress to which I haven’t ventured. More and more things click, thankfully — far more than they did twelve months ago.
I’m also editing a book, and I’ve participated in Google Summer of Code, spoken at 6 WordCamps, traveled to 9 cities in the name of WordPress, and I’m up to more than a dozen T-shirts. That’s not a bad deal for one year.
I’m representing WordPress.org at a conference in D.C. next week, and I’ve been presented the following questionnaire to submit beforehand. I’m working on my responses, but I’m curious to hear yours. I’ll follow up with my responses and more about the conference.
1. What are the most significant new forms of news, journalism, and reporting that you see in the current Web landscape? Which ones are of potential long-term value for research, education, and cultural purposes and why?
2. What trends do you see in community, hyperlocal, and citizen journalism that you anticipate will have significant impact in the near and mid–term (5-10 years)?
3. Describe briefly how your consumption of news has changed in the past 5 years. As a rule, where to you turn to for news—local, national, international, and among professional colleagues?
I’m attending WordCamp NYC at Baruch College this weekend, where I’ll be presenting advanced WordPress APIs. I gave this talk at WordCamp Mid-Atlantic (check out the slides) but I’ve promised to mix it up quite a bit for the New York crowd. That means new functions, new use cases, new plugins. From my speaker proposal: “This talk will be high tempo, engaging, challenging, and fun. The goal is to expose the potential of WordPress to new, skeptical, or even advanced developers. While a high-level talk, beginning developers are sure to find inspiration. Advanced individuals new to WordPress development, or considering WP for their next project, will ideally be convinced it is a worthy development tool.” Woo.
I also plan to hold an unconference session on contributing to WordPress. I have it on good authority that I may also be confined to a room at one point to work on WordPress 3.1 feature development with Aaron Jorbin, Daryl Koopersmith, Matt Martz, and others. Which sounds awesome. You know what else is awesome? The lineup of speakers, a bunch of whom I’ll be meeting for the first time.
On Saturday, October 30, I was asked to present what’s next for WordPress at WordCamp Philly. In this shared session, I’ll be able to talk about WordPress 3.1 with a lot more substance than I had at WordCamp Birmingham last month, as we expect to freeze feature development next week. Check out the program and speakers.
After Philly(’s after-party), I’ll be taking a redeye train or bus back to D.C. to participate in Hacks/Hackers/Hacking. This hackathon is hosted by Hacks/Hackers — journalists and developers — and timed for the annual Online News Association conference taking place in D.C. that weekend. I won’t be at ONA10, but there’s no way I would miss out on a journalism-themed hackathon in my backyard. I’ll be attending as the resident WordPress plugin developer, of course. 🙂