Episode 169 – A Chat With Amy Kamala

Topher and Sophia met with Amy for the first time in this episode. We talked about WordPress, Linguistics, and WordCamp Europe.

Show Notes

Contact Info:

Website

WordPress

Twitter

Episode Transcript

Topher: Hey everyone, welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Topher and my co-host today is Sophia.

Sophia: Hello.

Topher: She waved. Before we get started, I want to say thanks to our sponsor Nexcess. They’ve been good to us for a couple of years now. And I’ve been really, really happy with their hosting. Their servers are really fast. They give me all the special tools that I really like in a host, and they have some really great specialized things for WooCommerce like automated testing, which is pretty unique. I’m not sure of any place else that does that. And they have a Sales Performance Monitor and a Plugin Performance Monitor. So if any of that sounds good to you, check them out, Nexcess, and tell them we sent you.

All right, our guest today is Amy Kamala. Welcome.

Amy: Thank you. And thank you so much for having me. 

Topher: You’re welcome. I did say that right, right? Because you told me just a minute ago.

Amy: Yes, you did.

Topher: Okay, good. 

Amy: You said it right. 

Topher: Good. Where are you from? 

Amy: I’m from Los Angeles, California, United States. 

Topher: Excellent. Born and raised?

Amy: Born and raised. I’m from Venice Beach, specifically.

Topher: Oh, okay. 

Amy: It’s a big place. 

Topher: I’ve never been there. Been to a lot of California but never to LA. What do you do with WordPress?

Amy: I’ve been working professionally with WordPress since 2015. I’m a full stack developer and I have a master’s degree in Fine Arts. So I work with both development and design and the back end system, Linux and pipelines, development pipelines. 

Topher: Wow, that’s super-duper cool. You are way more advanced than me.

Amy: Well, I don’t want to give that impression because I don’t know everything by any means. Every senior developer and pretty much every senior in pretty much any industry that I’ve spoken to acknowledges that there’s always more to learn and research is really important.

Topher: Oh, yes. I have a soft spot in my heart for Linux. What do you do there? 

Amy: Well, I also have a soft spot in my heart for Linux. So I’ve worked for three different web hosts, and two of them are very infrastructure based. The third one is more cloud-based, a little bit less infrastructure. But I’ve spent quite a bit of time working my way around LAMP and LEMP systems, Linux, Apache, or NGINX, MySQL, and PHP, working command line. I would say that Linux command line is probably if we can call it a language, it’s my favorite to work with. Talking to a server or computer is so much fun. 

Topher: Do you run Linux on your desktop at all? 

Amy: One of them, yes, I do. 

Topher: What distro?

Amy: Red Hat. 

Topher: Okay. I ran Red Hat for a little while until about Red Hat 6, I think.

Amy: Really? 

Topher: That gives you an idea a long time ago-

Amy: What are you running now?

Topher: I don’t really run it on my desktop anymore. My oldest stuff that I used to use, it’s not my Plex server and I run Arch on it. 

Amy: Oh nice. 

Topher: I’ve been running Arch for about 15 years. 

Amy: I won’t make any jokes about people that say, “I run Arch.”

Topher: That’s all right. I’m used to it. 

Amy: Ubuntu would be my second choice. If I were going to switch from Red Hat, I would certainly go with Ubuntu. And I would recommend that for most people.

Topher: Yeah. My big deal is rolling release. I don’t think I could ever live without a rolling release again. 

Amy: Fair enough.

Topher: That’s just a beautiful, beautiful thing. All right, we’re not talking about WordPress at all. We should get back to that. 

Amy: Okay. So I became involved in the WordPress community in I think around 2018. I was working for a web host. I started in technical support, actually in social support, which for most people, I think, it’s infinitely easy if you’re personable. If you’re an extrovert like myself, it’s fairly easy to interact with customers and to be kind and helpful. 

From social support, I started picking up tech support tickets and asking people questions. I picked a lot of people’s brains. I want to thank everybody whose brands I’ve picked because it’s really helped me a lot in my career and in life. But yeah, I have picked a lot of brains. And I would advise anybody to ask questions, ask stupid questions, ask the same questions, just ask questions, because that’s one of the best ways that you can learn.

So anyway, I started in tech support, social support, then tech support. By 2018, I had contributed to the formation of a dedicated WordPress support team at that web host. So it’s a team of 14 WordPress-specialized agents, myself being one of them. And through that, I was spending all my time at that point working with WordPress.

My love of command line kind of translated over to WordPress command line. And that really enabled me to maneuver my way around WordPress a lot, especially in the tech support arena, where you have to be really fast, you have to get answers quickly, you have to fix things quickly. WordPress command line was absolutely a key for me in becoming a little bit more advanced and capable.

So in about 2018, I was on a dedicated WordPress support team. The hosts that I was working for helped form the make.wordpress.org hosting team, was one of the main contributors at the time to the formation of that particular team. And they were really proud of it, rightfully so. They were sharing their accomplishments in all hands, meeting staff meetings. And so I became aware that this existed through that. 

Mike Schroeder was one of the people at the time. He was one of the OG, one of the original WordPress hosting team reps. And that team can be attributed to his hard work. A large percentage of it can be. So because of that, I found out that the WordPress community exists, that it’s possible to be involved in the WordPress open-source project, and I hopped on Slack and joined a wordpress.org hosting meeting. 

My first meeting was actually a Slack meeting. It was really welcoming. Everybody was really welcoming because of the hosts that I worked for was involved in the formation of the team, I already knew everybody in the room, almost everybody in the room. One of them I knew his wife, but not him. So it was really comfortable for me to just kind of jump right in. 

And I became involved in the hosting team and I’m still involved in the hosting team. This is my fifth year, I think as a make.wordpress.org hosting team rep. I’ve had my hands in other parts of WordPress as well. I’ve helped out with Core a little bit. I’ve helped out with some WordCamps. I’ve spoken at some WordCamps. I’ve helped out with some meetups, especially in the LA area and spoken at some meetups, and been involved with the LA WordPress meetups team.

So yeah, it’s been just kind of a… I started out taking notes for the hosting team. I was really proud the first time my notes were posted on make.wordress.org. It was a huge accomplishment. 

Topher: Yeah, it’s a big deal.

Amy: I felt really special. And I just, you know, kept going and kept going. And here I am. I’m still one of the team reps involved. It’s been a great experience in terms of my career.

Topher: Oh, that’s cool.

Amy: At certain points, I’ve been worried about being pigeonholed as a WordPress person in the tech industry. Because there’s so much other technology that one could get involved with. But quite frankly, that’s a really beautiful pigeonhole to be in.

Topher: It is so big. So much.

Amy: It’s a big pigeonhole. That’s right. Right. I think there’s like 800 million WordPress installs on the internet right now WordPress websites, approximately, which is insane. There’s just so many websites that the WordPress application is supporting. You know, eventually I got really familiar with the WordPress foundation values and I feel very aligned with them. Ideas like democratize publishing give everybody a voice. I don’t see how anybody could not be on board with that. But I grew up in Venice Beach, which is probably one of the most liberal parts of the planet. So it’s easy for me to, you know, kind of align myself with those type of ideas.

Topher: Sure. 

Amy: So, I have definitely-

Topher: We’re all a bunch of hippies anyway.

Amy: That’s true. The idea of open source, in general, it’s kind of a hippie concept. 

Topher: Yeah, it really is. 

Sophia: So for somebody who’s very unfamiliar with the concept, tell me the difference between social support and tech support.

Amy: I would be happy to. So social support is… it’s still technical support but it’s a little bit more on the social end and less on the technical end, where you’re kind of the frontline, the first line of action on the internet for an organization to communicate with its customers. So you’ll be interacting with customers via Twitter, via forums, via Facebook, via Instagram, social media, essentially. And it’s really important for marketing. A social support rep could make or break the PR of a company for potentially-

Sophia: For sure. 

Amy: So it’s really important to be, you know, personable, to be mature, to be reasonable and level-headed. 

Topher: And you’re able to talk to angry, angry people.

Amy: Yeah, angry people. It’s very true. That kind of gave me a system for dealing with people. I have two daughters. At the time, my daughters were babies and toddlers. So there’s a system for hand- 

Sophia: Oh. Say that again.

Amy: There’s a system for hand-

Topher: Every time you say “hand,” it breaks. 

Sophia: That literally just happened to me honestly

Amy: Really?

Sophia: Yeah.

Amy: I’m gonna put it on “Do Not Disturb” which I apologize, I should have done that before. 

Topher: It’s okay.

Sophia: That’s all right. 

Amy: So when a toddler is throwing a tantrum, there is kind of a system that you can use to help tame the tantrum. And the first thing is to acknowledge that they’re upset and validate their feelings. And with a customer, when a customer’s throwing a tantrum, the first thing you want to do is validate their feelings. It’s totally understandable that you feel this way. And often repeat the feelings back to them. “It’s understandable that you feel so angry, I would be frustrated too.” And then the next line of action would be to reassure them, I’m going to support you and do everything I can to get this resolved. 

With a toddler, it’s kind of the same. I understand that you feel that way, it’s totally understandable you feel that way, let’s figure out a way to get this fixed for you so you can feel better. You know, the language is a little bit different but nonetheless-

Topher: Let’s talk about the naptime. It does work for customers too.

Sophia: It really does.

Amy: It does. And you know, just that validation, just the acknowledgment that… and this is a concept that therapists across the board would also… That validating the feelings of somebody is the first line of action to resolving a problem. So in customer service, that’s the first line of action to resolving a problem. So at social support, you do get a lot of angry customers and I happen to be very nice person. And I kind of took my experience as a mother and applied it to social support and technical support.

So to answer your question, the difference is technical support is really more technical-based. You’re working a lot with the actual websites, or the actual tech stack, actual application, on the back end on servers, kind of more internally on the internal infrastructure, internally with other agents and technicians. And social support, there’s a little bit less of that, in my experience, at least. There’s a little bit less of that and a lot more customer-facing, a lot more soothing the customer, a lot more, making sure they’re heard, making sure that there’s a plan of action to get their needs met and their issues resolved. So it’s a little bit more on the marketing and a little bit less on the technical end.

Topher: All right. I’m gonna pivot here a little bit. You’re gonna speak at WordCamp Europe next week.

Amy: I am. I’m very excited and very nervous. 

Topher: What is your topic? 

Amy: I am talking about how to support women in tech. 

Sophia: Yay.

Topher: All right. Have you ever seen Jeeves and Wooster?

Amy: I have not but it sounds familiar. 

Topher: It’s a wonderful British TV show. It was a book. Jeeves is a socialite in England in the early 20s. And someone says to him, “How would you support a wife?” He thinks for a minute and he says, “Probably a firm grasp of the left elbow as we cross the street.” So how would you support women in tech? 

Amy: Well, I’ve got a whole list of ways that women in tech could be supported.

Topher: Don’t give a whole talk.

Amy: It is, yeah, 30-minute talk. It starts with hiring. In the technical industry, women applicants are, statistically speaking, less common. There are way fewer women applicants, especially for technical roles. Just across the board, fewer applicants that are female, and or identify as female, either one. So my first suggestion to companies is to… If you have a female applicant or women applicant, pull them out of the pile and interview them.

A lot of the time, recruiters will use an algorithm and they’re probably hopefully not really looking at gender. But in this case, I’m recommending that as a diversity practice that recruiters do take a look at gender. And if they see a women applicant to pull them out of the pile. Because if you don’t hire women into the tech industry, then they’re not going to be very many women to support.

Topher: That’s very, very true. 

Amy: Worldwide-

Topher: Yeah, go ahead. 

Amy: Worldwide, the tech industry is comprised of about 20% female, and the rest is male-dominated, and white, male-dominated. There are way fewer minorities in most industries, and also in the tech industry, including women and racial minorities as well. So the first line of action to changing that statistic.. so even though women were the first programmers on the planet, now as it stands, it is very white male dominated as an industry. So recruiters and organization leaders can change that by pulling women out of the pile, and interviewing them, and hiring them. And that’s just the first line of action.

Topher: I’m going to tip my hand a little bit and admit that I’ve seen your slides. And you have a lot of numbers. And I don’t remember…. I think I asked. I don’t remember the answer. Do your slides reflect mostly US or is it global? 

Amy: It’s both. So there are some statistics in my talk that do focus on the US. For example, the portion about family leave is mostly focused on the US. And the reason for that is because no offense to my country, but we are horrible about family leave. It’s not even legally required. What’s legally required is 12 weeks unpaid leave. And the reality is that 12 weeks unpaid leave can make a family destitute financially.

Topher: Oh, yeah.

Amy: So this is not a realistic solution for families. And it puts particularly women as, statistically speaking, the primary caretakers of their families in a position of having no other option but to choose between being a mother and their career. Another way that companies can support women and families and the continuation of the human species is definitely leave, paid family leave, not just maternity leave, but paternity leave as well, because children need their fathers and partners need each other. It’s really important. 

So offering paid leave for all genders and all different identifications is extremely important because that enables families to survive while they’re going through major life change bringing new humans into the world. And I think we all can agree that the continuation of the human species is a little bit important. 

Sophia: Yeah, we appreciate that. 

Topher: I have two questions here next for you. You’re my second WordCamp Europe speaker that I’ve spoken to this week. But I want to ask the same questions just to see how the answers compare. How many WordCamps have you spoken up before? And have any of them ever been one of the flagship?

Amy: I’m a bit of a noob at speaking at WordCamps. I’ve only spoken at two before this. WordCamp Vegas and WordCamp Santa Clarita. Pretty local to me. And the organizers are amazing. I absolutely adore them. They were fantastic experiences. Really valuable. And I would do it again, even though public speaking is not my forte. I get horrible stage fright. The first 10 minutes of those two talks were a little bit difficult. 

I’ve also spoken at some meetups. I’ve helped organize meetups. So that gave me a little bit more experience and a little bit more confidence in public speaking. So I’m pretty much a noob. Kind of jumping from being really, really like keeping to myself for the past couple of years to being on stage in front of I don’t know how many people.

Topher: You have more experience than the other person that I interviewed? 

Amy: Really? 

Topher: Yes. Europe will be his second talk ever. 

Amy: Oh, wow. Well, I appreciate that the organizers are not excluding people that don’t have as much experience. 

Topher: Soph, you had a question. Go for it. 

Sophia: So you’ve spoken at two separate WordCamps. Both you weren’t super comfortable with, you know, just public speaking and starting in a brand new space. What are some tips or suggestions you would have for somebody else who’s looking to speak at a WordCamp?

Amy: To get in the door, or once you’re in the door to be on stage.

Sophia: That usually helps. 

Topher: What are you asking about? What kind of [inaudible 00:21:40] are you asking for?

Sophia: Like something that you figured out through the process that made it easier for you to be able to speak or that was very encouraging for you.

Amy: Well, despite my massive stage fright, I actually have a decent amount of performance training. In my past, I’ve been in a couple of theater groups, a couple of plays, I was in choir when I was younger, multiple different choirs for years, like six years, I was second chair violin for a couple years. So I performed in that regard. Although I don’t play violin anymore. And also I took ballet for some years. So I did ballet recitals. And so you know, the stage fright never really went away. 

The tips that I have are actually quite personal to me, but also tips from my theatre teachers. I would say the biggest one is to remember that the audience is on your side, the audience is rooting for you, the audience wants to see you shine, wants to see you succeed, wants to hear what you have to say. And that’s why they’re there. So that can be a really soothing idea when you go up on stage, to look out at the crowd and think these people are on my side, these people are my advocates, these people are my friends, and you know, we’re in this together. They want to see me be confident. They want to see me give information and shine and be comfortable up here on stage. 

And then another line of thinking that comes directly from theater teachers is and from my education in film, as well. So when there’s an audience looking at a movie or stage, they’re projecting themselves into the character, into the person on stage, and so when you falter, they feel uncomfortable. Because they feel like it’s them faltering on some subconscious level. And when you’re confident and comfortable, they feel confident and comfortable because they’re projecting themselves into you on some unconscious level. So it’s kind of like an act of nurturing to be comfortable, confident on stage. 

And then another one, a third one, also directly from theater teacher is if you mess up, just keep going. Don’t go, “Oops, oh my gosh, Oh, no, oh my gosh, I just mess up,” because everybody’s gonna like… the whole momentum is thrown out of whack and everybody will start to feel awkward. So you just breeze right over it. You stumble, you just get up and keep going. 

Sophia: Right.

Topher: And until you tell them, they don’t know you stumbled. 

Amy: That’s true. That’s very true. 

Topher: All right, I have another question for you. So you have two camps behind you. What has it been like working with a very international organizing team? You’ve interacted with a number of people from a variety of cultures and countries and languages. 

Amy: Right. In the WordPress space?

Topher: Yeah. Has it been fine for WordCamp Europe? Any struggles. 

Amy: Oh, you know what? So the time difference I would say is the… Working with WordPress open source project, which is a sync across the globe, a synchronous across the globe and with organizers on the other side, across the pond on the other side of the planet from where I am, the time difference is really the major challenge. There’s a lot of other… I don’t speak fluently. I speak like tiny bits amount of Hebrew and Japanese, but just tiny, like, maybe the level of a two-year-old. Like I can’t even really have a real conversation other than “Hello” “how are you?” “I love you”. And like counting, you know, that type of thing. 

But other countries speak English for the most part and teach English in their schools. So that’s very helpful to have English as a primary language that opens the bridge for communication. And it’s kind of sad that in the United States, English is kind of the only language that people want and need. And it’s a lot less common for folks to be bilingual, trilingual, or anything more than that. It’s not even really encouraged that much in our education system to learn other languages. I know that a lot of people take Spanish class or French class but there isn’t necessarily… 

Topher: It’s not the same. 

Amy: Right. It’s not immersion. So speaking other languages isn’t for the United States… For folks raised in the United States, it’s kind of not that much of a thing. It’s like a novelty to speak another language. So we’re very blessed that in other countries they don’t see it the same way and English is taught in schools, and it’s very common. 

So while there are some language barriers, that’s definitely not the biggest hurdle by any means. And there are some cultural differences. But I haven’t found those to be barriers in any way, shape, or form. I find them to be really fascinating, really beautiful, really interesting. 

And WordPress, as a whole, as an organization, the WordPress Foundation, and the WordPress open source project, diversity is one of the main values. And that means that a lot of people from a lot of different places with a lot of different opinions and a lot of different attitudes, a lot of different languages, a lot of different experiences are at the table. And it’s really interesting, really eye-opening, really fascinating. You could learn a lot, you can grow a lot, and I find it incredibly valuable. So time zone difference is seriously the only real hurdle that I’ve experienced. 

Topher: All right, that’s cool. Both my wife and I had the experience of realizing that everybody else we talked to around the world that speaks English as a second or third or fourth language put in all that time and energy to be able to talk to us, and we put none to talk to them. And for us, it has led to certain amount of compassion for… Like people apologize all the time. “Oh, I’m so sorry for my English.” Like, no. 

Amy: “Your English is amazing. Are you kidding me?”

Topher: “Don’t be sorry for spending 10 years learning my language.”

Amy: Right.

Topher: You know?

Amy: That’s true. 

Topher: So, you know, I try to be really supportive of anybody who’s learned another language, because I haven’t. And I try to be-

Amy: That’s very hard to. It’s hard to learn, especially as an adult. 

Topher: Oh, yeah. I try to be really sensitive to my inability to pick out words in an accent, a heavy accent. I love accents. They’re amazing. They’re like the spice of language. But there are people who understand that language technically very well and can write it wonderfully. But maybe they don’t practice speaking and all that much, and they have a thick accent, and I can’t understand it. And I feel terrible, you know, they’re working so hard, they’re doing a great job, and I’m letting them down by not understanding. So, you know, I have auditory processing issues already. So if I’m in a loud place talking to somebody with an accent, it’s kind of a mess anyway. 

Amy: But you know, I sometimes have trouble understanding native English speakers in a loud space where there’s a lot going on. And sensory disorders are probably a little bit more common in the tech industry than in other industries. I don’t have any stats on that, but in my experience, and from what I understand, it’s a little bit more common. I don’t think that anybody would fault you for that at all. 

And it’s important for us to remember too to speak slowly, to speak clearly, and to use correct grammar. As a team rep, we’re trained in those ideas of use correct grammar. Don’t use slang, or to use as little slang as possible because the slang tends to be really confusing for non-native speakers.

Topher: Something I sort of knew about but I had to learn myself by going to another country is the mental strain that it takes to listen to another language all day. People told me, you know, I’m exhausted at the end of the day listening to all your English speakers-

Amy: Oh, wow, that makes sense. 

Topher: I didn’t really understand until I went to India. And all day long, I was sorting out accents and trying to understand. And I was exhausted at the end of the day—my brain was just tired. 

Amy: Absolutely. It’s so funny that you say that because I have a thing, like just for myself in my life that if I’m having trouble sleeping, I will find a tutorial, a technical tutorial given by an Indian person or a person of a thick accent and watch it. And every single time without fail, I end up falling asleep. 

Sophia: That’s so funny

Topher: That is funny.

Amy: And learning some things as well. But it does take so much focus to dissect a thicker accent. And there’s no doubt that accents from the United States… I tried to refrain from calling people from the United States Americans because I think it’s really narcissistic of us to refer to ourselves that way. Because Canada is part of America, South America is part of America. We’re not the only Americans. 

Topher: Right. 

Amy: So that’s why I’m saying people from the United States instead of saying Americans. But I imagine that it goes both ways where we have different accents as well. We have a New York accent, we have, you know, Minnesota, we have the South, and we have California, and I think probably west coast accent is maybe the most commonly found. And for me, of course, being from here, it’s easier to understand. But all those different dialects and different ways of speaking from different parts of such a massive, gigantic country, I can imagine it being pretty hard to decipher. 

Sophia: Oh, yeah.

Topher: Yeah. All right, we are at just about the end of our time. Is there anything that you would like to ask or say?

Amy: I wouldn’t mind hearing about some of the two of your experiences in the WordPress community, because I’ve been kicking around for some years now. And I just love meeting other people and hearing about them and their experiences, their WordPress story, how they became involved, why you’re still involved also I would be something I’d be interested in hearing if you’d like to share. 

Topher: Sure. Soph, you want to go first? 

Sophia: Sure. I’m here because of him. I grew up in the WordPress space and met people first and got to know people, and they became friends and family friends. It kind of just fit at the time. I’m about 21 so I’m the very early stage of adulthood, and I needed to be making money and didn’t want to work in retail or food service anymore. 

Amy: That’s fair. 

Sophia: So I was like, Well, what else can I do? So I quit my job and started reaching out trying to find something that I could do and turn into a career. I’m not a scholarly person for all that I am very intelligent, and I do much better putting in the work, getting my hands dirty and filling it out as I go, or maybe finding a mentor or something like that. 

So I decided to reach out to some random people, anybody that I knew to see if they could help me find something. And I found at least two people that gave me a chance. And the first one didn’t work out. The second one I’m still at. I’ve been at for maybe six months now. And I’m like slogging through content marketing and just kind of absorbing and learning everything that I can to see if it’s a career, I’d want to continue.

Amy: That’s incredible. 

Sophia: It’s been really fun. And it’s been a very healthy start for somebody my age. It’s giving me a chance to build up savings. I am finally able to like get my health under control and just build a very solid foundation for being an adult. So it’s something that I really appreciate. 

Amy: I think it’s really amazing and beautiful that you grew up in the WordPress space. That is so special. So WordPress is 20 years old now, you could have literally, and am gathering that you did literally grow up in the WordPress space. And that I can’t imagine how much that has influenced you in a positive way. Especially with… I very much agree With WordPress values. And to grow up with that, and in that environment is so special. 

Topher: It was interesting for me and my wife’s experience in the WordPress space to have our kids grew up there because they had friends, their own friends in other countries that they met at WordCamp and online and things like that. And people that we ended up getting to know and trust. And it’s interesting to know that if something happened to us, there was a global community of people who would look out for our kids. 

Amy: That is also really beautiful and amazing. And that diversity and exposure to all those different cultures and communities, I can imagine how enriching that would be for children and young adults, people growing up in that space, that the perspective that you have on the world would be so vastly different and educated compared to somebody who maybe grew up in a small town and, you know, 500 people their whole life or whatever, although there’s value in that, too. But that is really beautiful. 

The WordPress community is extremely caring, special, supportive, kind, and a great environment for children. You know, my children haven’t really been involved that much. I haven’t brought them with me to camps or meetups. But now that you’re saying that, I feel like I definitely should.

Sophia: You know, it gave us-

Amy: Oh, go ahead. 

Topher: How old were you when we went to Chicago?

Sophia: About 12, I think. 12 or 13. 

Topher: Yeah. And when we told the girls they needed to have their own blogs, and they made their own schedules at WordCamp and went to their own talks and made your own friends and all that. So that was a good time and a good way to start. 

Sophia: It gave us a lot of opportunities to put things into practice. So it helps us learn how to confidently… Not even helped us learn, but helped us develop the skill for confidently communicating and confidently communicating with adults. It broke down that barrier of Mr. or Mrs. and this person knows more than you. It helped us develop just treating people with respect and being a good human, which helped a lot in regards to like having managers at work or talking to a boss or having job interviews. 

Amy: And feeling confident, I imagine.

Sophia: And feeling confident, for sure. And it gave us those opportunities for experiencing culture and how to communicate with people. When we were talking about like, languages in various cultures, like I grew up learning two different languages kind of by choice. It was part of the world that I was living in at the time. It was interesting, and it helped me be able to do things better. It gave us a reason to be doing things as opposed to just taking a Spanish class because you have to.

Amy: Absolutely. And it’s so interesting that you say that because the WordPress community and the open source project is very much democratized. It’s not an authoritarian environment in any way, shape, or form. And I could imagine how that would affect children. Because typically in a classroom, you have the authority of the grownups, the authority of the parents, the authority of the teacher. And that puts children at a disadvantage in a way because they’re not empowered being the not… not being the authority in a situation, you know, gives you less power and takes away your power. 

So a democratized environment, like WordPress, I could see that very much empowering… It empowers adults, but quite frankly, it’s very empowering for adults and for children growing up in that space. I could see that being extremely empowering and giving folks a really well-rounded perspective on the idea of hierarchy as a fallacy, as a falsification, as a way to empower and disempower people. 

Topher: All right, my turn.

Sophia: Oh, yeah. 

Topher: I have been a web developer since 1995 or 1994, almost 30 years now. It’s funny to think the internet’s that old now. But I didn’t really get into WordPress until 2010 Custom Post Types came out. And I realized I would never have to build an administration area again. Glorious.  

Amy: That is glorious. 

Topher: And I just fell in love with it. I didn’t do anything else after that. My first WordCamp was here in our own city, WordCamp Grand Rapids. And I think it was a two of those before we, as a family, went out. No, no, my first one ever was WordCamp Austin. I went for work and then everything changed. It was glorious and magnificent. I have a friend who doesn’t WordCamp Talk titled “And then I went to WordCamp”. And anybody who’s ever been knows exactly what that talk is about.

Amy: Right. Your life kind of changes. 

Topher: It really does. I fell deeply in love with them. I think I’ve been to more than 90 WordCamps now. I’ve spoken to probably 30 or 40. 

Amy: That’s amazing.

Topher: It’s just fantastic. And you asked why I stayed. It’s 100% because of the people. I dabbled with leaving development for a while. For a couple of years, I wasn’t a developer. I focused on the people. And I just love talking to people, helping people, making relationships, that kind of thing.

Amy: Well, that is very fulfilling. 

Topher: Yeah. That’s why I stayed. 

Amy: Have you found that your own confidence level, feeling comfortable in your own skin, feeling secure in the world, feeling safe with other people, feeling safe on stage, that type of thing? Have you found that through being involved with WordPress that those healthy feelings have grown and increased because of the community and your involvement with the community and also practice speaking in front of people? 

Topher: Yeah. I can’t imagine that that hasn’t happened. But I came into WordPress a pretty confident public speaker and already really enjoying it. I spoke at things before WordPress.

Amy: Really?

Topher: But that said, I mean, I’ve been practicing now for all these years. Surely I must be better at it. I hope. 

Amy: What are your tips for public speaking?

Topher: Oh, boy, you know, I did a whole talk about this last year. Tips for public speaking. Ironically, the hardest part I had with my talk on public speaking was how to deal with jitters because I don’t deal with them myself. 

Sophia: Yeah, the [trump?] has no anxious bone in his body. 

Amy: Wow. 

Topher: So I crowdsourced that. And sadly, I can’t remember off the top of my head. I’ll see if I can find the link to that talk and put it in the show notes for this. But some of the tips, like you and I have been talking about slides recently. One tip is to have a little gadget to advance your slides back and forth so you’re not tied to your laptop. 

Another potential thing is to bring your own wireless microphone and have it synced to your laptop so that you have your own recording. 

Amy: Oh, wow. 

Topher: If the one from the venue, I don’t know, doesn’t work for some reason—it happens a lot—

Amy: It does happen. Yeah. 

Topher: …then you have your own copy.

Amy: That’s a good idea. 

Topher: And wireless mic from Amazon is 35 bucks and it’s in your pocket and it’s not a big deal. 

Amy: It’s so interesting that you say about having the pointer and your own control. We did talk about that the other day. I appreciate that tip. A lot of childhood education therapists and psychologists would say that holding on to something, putting your hands on the podium, holding something in your hand does help. Even if you’re not clicking, it does help to reduce jitters because it gives you like a solid unwavering… And even for folks who are having an anxiety attack, like actively in an anxiety attack, leaning against a wall, sitting on the floor, touching something that’s solid that isn’t moving, that isn’t changing can kind of regulate your nervous system a little bit.

Topher: That’s very interesting. 

Sophia: And it would provide a separate sensory experience for your brain to be focusing on. 

Topher: Yeah.

Amy: That’s true. That’s very true. 

Topher: That’s an interesting point because I’ve often associated anxiety attacks with vertigo. Your brain is being lied to about something. 

Amy: Right. Usually your own thoughts otherwise. 

Topher: And if you can find it was regular vertigo, you grab the counter, and you don’t fall down. 

Amy: Right.

Topher: If you can figure out whatever, whatever works for you anxiety, then you can do the same thing. And I think it’s interesting that you say that maybe just grabbing the counter is exactly the same thing. 

Amy: Absolutely. I’ve heard some tips about public speaking from, you know, random folks over the years. Putting your hands on the podium is one of the way, the suggestions that I’ve seen over and over and over again, if you’re at a podium. And you can see it, like, when the President of the United States gives a talk, their hands are on the podium. And they have trained gestures, like these are all coordinated. It’s not necessarily improvised or subconscious. But a lot of that is putting your hands on the podium, it kind of like grounds you and gives you something solid to align yourself with. 

So holding a clicker could potentially do something very similar. We have this thing in your hand that’s solid that you can hold on to. And then it also, instead of like fidgeting with your hands, you’re holding on to something.

Topher: Right. 

Amy: And for kids with autism and other disorders, fidgets have come onto the market to help… to help everybody, not just them. That’s a similar concept. Although it’s something that you play with, so it is fidgety, hence the name, it still gives like a way to kind of channel your energy and focus so that the other things that are spinning around you like vertigo, like you said, kind of fall off a little bit. 

Topher: All right, we should wrap this up. Can you tell me where we can find you on the internet? 

Amy: I have a website, a blog, although I haven’t posted in a little while. It’s kittenkamala.com. Kitten, like a baby cat. kittenkamala.com. That’s my website. You can email me through there. You could also find me on profiles.wordpress.org/amykamala, spelled the same. 

Topher: All right. Send me those links in Slack and I’ll make sure they get in the show notes. 

Amy: Awesome. I will. Thank you. 

Topher: Thank you. 

Amy: It’s been my pleasure. It’s been absolutely lovely speaking with both of you, and thank you for having me. 

Topher: Oh, you’re welcome. It’s been really fun. I enjoyed it. 

Sophia: Absolutely.

Topher: I have a little bit to read here, and then we can go. 

This has been an episode of Hallway Chats, a part of the HeroPress Network. Your hosts were Sophia DeRosia and Topher DeRosia. We’d like to thank Sophia for the music and Nexcess for hosting our network. If you liked the episode, please subscribe and mention us on social media.