What inspired or motivated you to give this talk at WordCamp?
The tools for getting your ideas and helping other people get their ideas out into the world are getting more elegant and easier to use all of the time. The real struggle, though, remains the same. What do we say? How do we say it? Understanding story structure and how it affects people helps with that.
Do you have any advice or words of encouragement for those who are thinking about getting involved in the WordPress community?
No one does it alone. You’re here and you’re creating and you’re being goofy old you because of others who have gone before you, and others who surround you today. The music that inspires you? The clothes on your back? The tools that you use to rock the Internet every day? Thousands of people helped make that happen. You can either pretend that you’re a lone wolf and try to figure stuff out on your own, or you can embrace that you’re part of something bigger and actively learn from a diverse group of people. You can keep to yourself or contribute to something that’s helping hundreds of thousands of people express who they are who they want to become.
If you could make one improvement to WordPress today, what would it be?
Honestly, I’d split it into two versions. One for super beginners and people who need to get started really quickly on something and one for designers and developers who know what they’re doing. We might not even call them the same thing. But there’s a path to more robust features as people grow with their website. They start super simple with a one-pager and when they’re ready, they get the full power of WordPress with all the add-ons and themes and customization. There are some plugins and some host providers working on this sort of thing. They’re pretty sweet. I think it would be cool if it were built in by default.
Who do you most admire and why?
Oof. Good question. I’m revisiting 1984 and I’m really digging George Orwell. Two reasons: 1) he was always willing to get in the trenches to understand and empathize with people and 2) he understood more than most that words are our most powerful weapons. The dude intentionally lived homeless to better understand what was going on in Europe. He wrote one of the best essays on language and how it manipulates how we think. I mean, I think everyone knows who he is and what he wrote, but I think he’s genuinely underrated.
What’s your favorite quote from a book or movie?
Here’s one of my favorites from Harold and Maude. If you haven’t seen it, please do. This movie changed my life. It’s just fantastic. This is Maude speaking to Harold, who continues to stage fake suicide attempts over and over again:
“A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They’re just backing away from life. Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room.”