Transcript
[00:00:19] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.
Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case WordPress sustainability, community engagement and release strategies.
If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice. Or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.
If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.
So on the podcast today, we have Jonathan Desrosiers. Jonathan has been involved with WordPress for almost two decades, both as a user and a contributor. He’s a principal software engineer at Bluehost, where his role sees him sponsored to work on WordPress through the Five for the Future program. Over the years, he’s become a Core committer, and has spent many hours thinking about how to enhance the contributor experience, and make it easier for people to get involved in the project.
In this episode we discuss how WordPress releases might become more impactful by synchronizing them with flagship community events like WordCamps and State of the Word. A recent experiment of combining a major release with a live event spark some excitement, and Jonathan shares insights on the logistics behind such synchronized moments, the challenges posed by international holidays, and regional scheduling, and the broader vision for connecting releases with community gatherings.
We also get into the challenging landscape of the WordPress community, how it’s recovering from the effects of COVID, the