All Things Open

Monet Davenport:
Welcome to Press the Issue, a podcast for MasterWP, your source for industry insights for WordPress professionals. Get show notes, transcripts and more information about the show at Masterwp.com/presstheissue. The All Things Open event just passed and MasterWP’s own Nyasha Green attended. In this episode, Nyasha chats with Allie Nimmons to share what makes this event so special, what other event organizers can learn from the event and her own personal highlights.

Allie Nimmons:
Hey, Nyasha.

Nyasha Green:
Hey, Allie. How are you?

Allie Nimmons:
I’m great. I’m so excited to be talking with you. We haven’t had time to catch up in a minute so I’m super glad that we’re on the podcast together today.

Nyasha Green:
Yes, I’ve been excited all week. So yes, me too.

Allie Nimmons:
Nice. Well, I wanted to ask you about something that you just did that is super big and fun and exciting. You went to All Things Open, which is an event I’ve never been to and I’m so curious to hear all about it. You did write an article for it for the MasterWP blog, which I’ll definitely link in the show notes of this episode, but I wanted to hear even more about your experiences. Can you tell me and everybody listening just a little bit about what All Things Open is and just describe the event a little bit?

Nyasha Green:
Yeah. So All Things Open is a tech conference and it is dedicated to all things open-source. So they are the biggest one on the East Coast and we have companies that come from all over, smaller companies, but also the big names as well. So Google sponsors the event, IBM, which has a campus in Raleigh, North Carolina as well. Oh yeah, it takes place in Raleigh, North Carolina every year.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah, we should say it was a in-person event, you actually got to go, it wasn’t an online thing.

Nyasha Green:
Yeah. And you could watch it online too if you couldn’t attend. But yeah, it definitely was in-person and this conference means a lot to me because it was the first ever tech conference I ever went to years ago.

Allie Nimmons:
Wow.

Nyasha Green:
The company I was working for at the time who taught me WordPress, they were actually there, we got to hang out as well. They sent me there and they were like, “You need to get used to tech conferences.” And I was a newbie and I was like, “Well, I guess.” It’s like a networking event and I’m an extrovert so I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll go.” And I was just in love with it, All Things Open is diverse, there are so many people that look like me there, which you don’t see a lot at a lot of tech events. It’s something that just blew my mind the first time I saw it, just the different people, people are so friendly. And that’s subjective and people are friendly or not friendly everywhere, but I don’t know if it’s the North Carolina spirit or just how awesome the conference is, the people are friendly, it’s large, it’s a lot to do, but it’s also extremely organized. So it is just an amazing, diverse ode to open-source type of conference.

Allie Nimmons:
Nice. That’s so cool. Yeah, I remember hearing about it in previous years and being really interested in it and I’m always fascinated because my introduction to tech conferences were WordCamps for sure. And I feel like I’ve only been to one in-person, non-WordPress event, that was the Grace Hopper celebration in Texas a few years ago. And I’m always so curious about what other tech conferences do that are different from WordPress events. If you could bring your experience back from ATO and sit down with a bunch of WordCamp organizers, what would you bring to that table to say, “Hey look, WordPress events are great, but here’s what ATO is really blowing out of the park that we should also be adopting as an open-source community.”

Nyasha Green:
Yeah. So the biggest thing I saw that I would love to see at more WordCamps is the way they networked. And we do a lot of networking at WordCamps, a tech conference or a get together is at its heart a networking event. But the way they do it at All Things Open, it was like I felt like I was living in the future even though it’s the now because one of the things they did was we had QR codes on our badges and you could opt-out of it if you did not want to participate, but of course I did and you could scan it and a lot of tables that you went to talk to different companies, they would scan your badge, ask you if you want to keep in touch or get more information about them and as soon as they scanned it, the information just instantly transferred.

So that cut back on a lot of carrying around business cards and trash because tech conferences, they have a lot of trash afterwards, people don’t keep all the business cards, they don’t keep all the paper. So that was very environmentally friendly, I was like, “Yes, this is great.” But also in doing that, you have but five, 10 minutes, maybe max at a conference to talk to these companies and you can’t get all of the information from them in that little bit of time. So having this fast and easy exchange of information so you can dive in a little deeper and maybe follow up with them.

And this was last week, this week Monday, I got four or five emails from companies and tables I talked to and they were like, “Hey, we wanted to give you a few days to relax, de-stress from All Things Open and we just wanted to reach out and say, ‘We appreciate you talking to us and would you like to know more?'” That was perfect. My memory is pretty good, but I didn’t remember everybody I talked to but that was just reinforcing that they want a relationship with me, they want to network, they want to grow their company, they want to grow my knowledge of them and open-source and I thought it was incredible.

Allie Nimmons:
That is really cool. That sounds like such a less stress way as well because I feel like if I’m talking to a company or if I get a marketing email like that from a company, there’s this feeling of transactionality and impersonal vibes and that just seems so much more personal, so much more respectful too of your time and stuff like that. That’s such a cool way to go about it. I’m curious about the actual subject matter of the talks and the programming and stuff like that, can you tell me about a couple? I know that you talked about some of those in your article I believe, but can you talk a little bit about maybe some of the talks or the speakers that stood out to you?

Nyasha Green:
So I had two talks in particular that I really liked. The first one, I’m willing to admit I’m biased because it was the only talk about WordPress at the conference, which it did surprise me. Yeah, it surprised me, WordPress did not have a large presence at the conference and that blew my mind because it’s WordPress, open-source.

Allie Nimmons:
Yeah, I wonder why that is.

Nyasha Green:
Yeah. But we did have Colby, I think his name is Colby Fayock, he did a talk about scaling WordPress with Next.js, which is an extremely technical talk, unless it’s something I’m specifically doing at a conference, I don’t super-duper, specific technical talks or if it’s something I’m interested in, a side project. But I wanted to check it out again because it was the only thing that talked about WordPress, but his talk was actually really amazing and he talked about how there are many content management systems out there, but you have to know, even though WordPress is I guess older in tech years now, it’s still king. That was what he said. And it was awesome because he was doing things with WordPress that I had never done and he was coding, integrating more JavaScript into WordPress and I thought it was great and we fight with people on Twitter about that because we’re loyal to PHP.

But the way he sat down, there was no arguing, there was no saying this is better, it was just like, “Hey, you should try this out.” And that was pretty much the attitude of the conference. I go to some conferences and there’s this attitude that if you’re not doing this then you’re old fashioned, you’re old, you’re not doing the best, you’re not using the best technology. And it was nothing like that because I never would’ve tried to try gelling WordPress with Next.js. But listening to him, it was something I said, once I make time in my busy life that I actually really want to try. So that was a really awesome talk. My second, which was my most favorite, was going beyond code, why all contributions matter in open-source. And this is by, I think her name is Nithya Ruff, I’m so sorry if I get your name wrong.

But she did an awesome talk, basically it was a pitch to get people or how you pitch people into getting more involved in open-source contribution. And it stuck out a lot to me because in WordPress recently we’ve been arguing about Five for the Future and just overall, how do we get more people to contribute to the WordPress project? And although this was about open-source in general, so many things she said can apply to how we talk to people when we want them to contribute to the WordPress project more. She talked about, you get to work with people all over the world. If you’re, again, a people person like me, I love meeting people, especially from different places, from different cultures who speak different languages, who do different things. That’s something you can work on and collaborate and know that you’re not just doing something in a bubble, you’re working on a project with people all over the world.

She also talked about how it helped imposter syndrome. Everybody goes through it sometimes, I go through it sometimes, my mentees, they tell me all the time they go through it. She talked about how contributions helped with imposter syndrome because you could take that contribution and look at it like this, “Hey, I’m in the midst of hundreds or thousands of people all over the world who are contributing to this big thing. It’s important, I’m important and I belong here.” And I thought that was amazing, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to the WordPress core right now to start [inaudible 00:10:43].”

Allie Nimmons:
Yes. I love that.

Nyasha Green:
And it wasn’t even about WordPress. So her talk was so motivating and I had one of my mentees actually got to drive up too and go to the conference and she sat in the talk with me and imposter syndrome was something she was dealing with very badly. And even coming to the conference, she was like, “I think I’m going to be overwhelmed, I’m not going to belong.” And she got up and was clapping at the end of the talk because she was like, “Yeah, I know what I want to do, I’m motivated, I can do this.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’ve been telling you that. But it’s okay.”

Allie Nimmons:
That’s the best part of going to any event is that sense of motivation that you get.

Monet Davenport:
Thank you for listening up to this point. Press the Issue by MasterWP is sponsored by LearnDash. Your expertise makes you money doing what you do, now let it make you money teaching what you do. To create a course with LearnDash, visit Learndash.com. Press the Issue is also sponsored by Gravity Forms. For a limited time from November 21st to 30th, get 50% off all new Gravity Forms licenses during Black Friday. Capture leads, create surveys, accept payments or design complex custom solutions with Gravity Forms, the number one form builder for WordPress. The sale runs from November 21st to 30th, don’t miss out. Our mission at MasterWP is to bring new voices into WordPress and tech every day. The new MasterWP Workshop series does just that. Our new live and recorded workshops on everything from code to design, to business, turn WordPress fans into WordPress experts. Find the workshop for you at Workshops.masterwp.com. Use the code Podcast 10 for a 10% discount. Now back to the podcast.

Allie Nimmons:
Not to go too off topic, but I just feel like when people come in to these events and they talk about… It’s like they point at you and they say, “I know what your fear is or I know what your reservation is and here’s why you should just do it.” It feels like they’re talking directly to you. And I remember at WordCamp US a couple months ago, going to see our friend Ebony talk about streaming as a developer. And it was like a lightning talk, it was 15 minutes. By the end of it, I’m looking, how do you start a Twitch channel? I want to start streaming.

I don’t even know what I would talk about on a Twitch stream, but I was like, “I want to do what she’s doing” I was so inspired and I think that I was going to ask you how it felt. I mean, you went to WordCamp US, we were both there together, in this glorious post-pandemic world that we’re in right now, how did it feel just being around all of these other people in person and hearing and seeing all of this content in person as opposed to a Twitter thread or a blog post or online workshop or something like that?

Nyasha Green:
You could feel the energy being around the people. The motivation, the passion, you can tell people really cared about what they were doing and also that they cared about getting you to care about what they’re doing. Sometimes we see speakers that get up, they talk just to talk because they love to hear their own their voices or they’re just, “I’m important.” These people were like, “Yeah, this is rad, but what if you thought it was rad?” You’re like, “Me?” And they’re like, “Yeah, you.” And I’m like, “I don’t know. Yeah, let’s do this.” So the energy just being in person was unreal. And again, just culminating with seeing so many diverse groups of people, like brown and black people and women.

And another thing about All Things Open, they have a large commitment to diversity. The first day of the conference, the entire day is dedicated to diversity, to inclusion, to why it matters. Not just saying, “Diversity, let’s do it, yeah.” No, there are talks on why they matter, why you should attend DEI talks, why diversity and inclusion makes your company better, why it makes the world better. They get people to talk, they sponsor an underrepresented tech scholarship, which my mentee actually got, where they’ll pay for your ticket. They put their money where their mouths are, which is big here at MasterWP, we really feel for that and they do it. I never felt like I was not wanted at this tech conference or that I was a number or that I was a figure. Every person I met, every booth I went to, every person I talked to, they were like, “You know what? We’re so glad you here, we want you to keep coming back and this is why.” And it blew my mind, I felt so loved.

Allie Nimmons:
It really amplifies the vibes when there’s people around you, that look like you and talk like you and sound like you and that you can find that. I mean, I definitely felt that with WordCamp US this year, having our Black Press group there. It was unlike anything I’d experienced at a camp because of that level of diversity and that feeling of belonging. And that’s just so cool to know that the whole event was like that, it wasn’t just one group, the whole event was that welcoming. That’s so beautiful.

I also wanted to ask you, you mentioned there was some special programming or there was a special kind of way that they did a panel that you started telling me about and I wanted to hear more about that because I always get really excited when conference organizers are able to think outside the box and think, “Okay. Well, the bread and butter of the event is people sitting in a room watching a person speak about XYZ for 30 minutes to an hour.” But I love when they’re able to come up with other ways to either deliver that information or allow people to connect. So what is some of the special programming that you hadn’t seen before that they did at ATO?

Nyasha Green:
Yes. So this was probably my favorite thing about ATO. One of the nights of the conference, they had part of a hallway blocked off and it was for people who had startups and they wanted to get funding for. So the purpose of it was to help them learn how to market and sell their startups. They actually went through a program and it was sponsored by a company called RIoT Labs based out of Raleigh, North Carolina. But we went through and there was a hallway with booths on both sides, they had refreshments as well. And they gave us fake money, they gave us bucks to give to those startups. So we would go to the table, they would pitch their ideas to us, if we liked it, we would give them some of the fake money as a way of financing their startup.

Allie Nimmons:
So pretend Shark Tank sort of?

Nyasha Green:
Yes, it was like Shark Tank. And they actually had a Shark Tank too, honestly.

Allie Nimmons:
What?

Nyasha Green:
Yeah, they had a Shark Tank type of thing too.

Allie Nimmons:
With real money?

Nyasha Green:
I don’t know, I think it was. I missed that one, I think it was the second day, I came in the third day, but they had a Shark Tank too. But yeah, that was a group Shark Tank where people walked around and it was so cool because it helped them, but it also helped us as well as people in tech going around to see that and to see how maybe we have ideas of our own that we want to get started. And it was just so creative and the three that I gave my money to were incredible. There was one who developed a program to help doctors gauge the pain of patients so that they can cut back on people who are getting addicted to opiates.

And it came from them being first responders, these guys were first responders and also in tech and they used that to come up with a program or technology that they want to use to do a startup now. And I was blown away, I was like, “This is freaking amazing.” And even if they didn’t win the contest and have the most fake bucks, they were exposed to all of these tech professionals from all over, major companies like Google, Amazon, IBM, even if they didn’t win the contest, I’m pretty sure that these little startups still will get some type of funding and attention and it’s amazing to put on something like that. And again, it goes into their networking and community feel like, “Hey, you’re important. Let’s be a part of this, let’s work together, let’s get your ideas out there.”

Allie Nimmons:
That’s what I was thinking too, as an attendee, I feel like there’s such empowerment in that in terms of reminding you that as a user of open-source software or any software or any technology, you’re buying power is important, right?

Nyasha Green:
Yes.

Allie Nimmons:
Your money is important, where you decide to spend your money and investments is super important. And there are other real people on the other side of that investment that you should be considering. And I feel like that’s such a cool almost social experiment because it would totally make me think about, “Oh man, I just be throwing my money all over the place.” I need to be thinking more about how I’m investing in myself and in other people and stuff like that. So cool.

Nyasha Green:
It definitely did and it gave me the chance to pretend to be a venture capitalist and that was pretty cool.

Allie Nimmons:
To see your future ahead of you, right?

Nyasha Green:
Oh, sure. Yeah.

Allie Nimmons:
All right. Well, Nyasha, thank you so much for telling me about this conference. I mean, you’ve passed on the vibes, you’ve passed on the inspiration. After we hit stop on the recording, I’m about to go and try and figure out how I’m going to get to see the event next year because I’ve always wanted to go and I’ve always been like, “I’ll go eventually.” But 2023, I’ll be there.

Nyasha Green:
Awesome. And so we will link up, it’ll be great.

Allie Nimmons:
Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you everyone so much for listening, I hope everyone has found it helpful. If you went to All Things Open and you’re listening, tweet at us at MasterWP or me and Nyasha and let us know what you think.

Monet Davenport:
Thank you for listening to this episode. Press the Issue is a production of MasterWP. Produced by Allie Nimmons. Hosted, edited and musically supervised by Monet Davenport. And mixed and mastered by Teron Bullock. Please visit MasterWP.com/presstheissue to find more episodes. Subscribe to our newsletter for more WordPress news at Masterwp.com.