Episode 62: Ian Dunn

Ian Dunn is a plugin developer who has sponsored to contribute to the WordPress project full time. Most of his work is focused on building tools to support the community, particularly through WordCamps and Meetups. 

Introducing Ian Dunn

Ian Dunn is a plugin developer who has sponsored to contribute to the WordPress project full time. Most of his work is focused on building tools to support the community, particularly through WordCamps and Meetups.

Show Notes

Website | Ian Dunn

Website | 5 for the Future

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions, and our guests share their stories, ideas and perspectives. And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 62.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Ian Dunn. Ian is a plugin developer who is sponsored to contribute to the WordPress project full time. Most of his work is focused on building tools to support the community, particularly through WordCamps and Meetups. Hi, Ian, welcome.

Ian: Hey, thanks for having me.

Liam: You’re very welcome, Ian. Thanks for joining us today out here in the hallway. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Ian: Yeah, sure. I live in downtown Seattle in a studio apartment. It’s one of those classic older brick buildings, it has a lot of character. If you know anything about Seattle’s rent scene market, it’s also a lot cheaper so it’s very important. I grew up in Ohio and I moved out here about eight years ago. I just kind of fell in love with Pacific Northwest. It’s my favorite part of the country. You’ve got some great cities like Seattle and Portland, but then you’re always close to mountains, and forests, and lots of places to explore. I also work remotely from home and I love that because it just gives me so much flexibility and autonomy and how I structure my day. It just kind of feels like a more humane way to work. So I can’t match never going back to an office.

Tara: Did you use to work in an office?

Ian: Yeah, I think the first– in high school, I started working doing tech support and then up through college in my first job. Probably the first 10-12 years of working was office-based. And since I moved back here, past eight years, it’s been from home.

Tara: In high school, you started doing tech support? Tell us a little bit about that.

Ian: Yeah, my junior and senior year, I did this tech prep program where kind of half the day was like your normal classes like English and whatever. Then the other half was IT classes, programming, and networking, and systems, all that kind of stuff. Part of that, I think it was second half of my senior year was like an internship and I did that at a local community college, just kind of– there’s lots of computer labs and lots of staff and other things. So if the help desk couldn’t solve a problem, I would go out to the person’s office and I would kind of fix it physically. Then after high school, I went to that community college and started kind of doing the same kind of work as a student worker, and then eventually I got hired as a part-time worker. It was all kind of doing the same work, it was just the pay kept going up.

Liam: Right.

Tara: That’s great. Sounds like a great program that you had. So you knew from an early age that you were interested in computers and tech? And you sort of must have to be somewhat self-motivated or driven, or were your parents sort of keeping their eye out for that spark and pushing you in that direction, what do you remember about that choice to go to that school?

Ian: It was more of– this was back in mid-90s, so in hindsight, kind of tech renaissance or whatever had already started. But it didn’t feel like it. It was just always a hobby to me, it wasn’t something that I ever thought would be a career. It’s just a lot of my friends were in that class and it was better than going to gym or whatever. It kind of became a career, I kind of lept into it but it wasn’t ever something that I was real intentional about until kind of later on.

Tara: I think that’s fascinating. So you did that while other kids were in the marching band, and doing theater, and playing soccer and all those things. This was your passion at an earlier age, even when you didn’t realize it was going to turn into your career. Very cool. That’s great that they had that for you in the 90s in your community.

Ian: Yeah, definitely. I was very lucky.

Liam: Yeah, that is really neat. Ian, let me ask you this. You said you moved out to Seattle years ago from Ohio. Out of curiosity, where in Ohio, and was the move to Seattle work-related or you went out to a vacation there and said, “Wow, this is cool, I’ve got to move here.” Tell us about that, how did it come together?

Ian: Yeah, it was Dayton, Ohio which is about halfway between Cincinnati and Columbus. I just kind of moved out here because after college, a lot of my friends had scattered around the country and I just didn’t have a lot holding me in Ohio anymore. A couple of my friends had grown up here and moved back or had been out in Ohio and moved out here. I always thought that it seemed like a great city and was on my list to visit and everything. Having all that happen bumped into the top of the list and I just figured out– I basically sold everything that wouldn’t fit in my car and drove out here and decided that I would give it a shot and it kind of ended up being a really good thing.

Liam: That’s cool. Did you go out with a job already, were you remote working by then so you could have gone to Denver, you could have gone to Chicago, and you just wanted to go to Seattle? It sounds like that might have been where you were at, you were working remotely so you could work wherever, right?

Ian: Yeah, exactly. I think senior year of college, I started my first web development job and I did that for about six years. But it was a few years into that where I decided to move out here. At first, I was thinking that I might have to find a job out here just because the cost of living out here is so much higher. But then I kind of ended up– I sold my car because I live downtown and can walk everywhere, which I love. That saves a lot of money every month. Then I started landing some clients out here which we could charge them more because of the market rates and everything. I guess I never really thought about working from home, it was kind of like, “Oh, I’ll just do this temporarily until I kind of settle in and I can find an office.” But then I just discovered that I really love it and why would I want to go back to an office?

Liam: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I’ve worked from home since 2006 full-time, and part-time since 2004. I couldn’t imagine leaving the house every day for work. That would be a challenge. Let me circle back to something that Tara read about you, is that you’re a plugin developer and you’re sponsored to contribute to the WordPress project full-time. Can you talk about that, please?

Ian: Yeah. For a while now, the WordPress project has had these concepts called ‘Five for The Future’. I think Matt Mullenweg talked about it at one of the State of The Words a few years ago. It’s basically the idea that companies that are really active in the WordPress community or kind of get a lot out of it, it’s a way to give back. The idea is to contribute 5% of your time back to the project. A lot of companies do this. The company that I work for is called Automattic. Basically, instead of working on WordPress.com or Gravatar or all the other things that they do, my whole team and a few other teams as well are dedicated full-time to various parts of the WordPress project. The one that my team focuses on is the community team and the meta team. So the community team is kind of focused on fostering and kind of supporting the community that’s grown up around WordPress, and then meta team is responsible for all of the official websites like WordPress.org and Wordcamp.org. Those two teams work closely together a lot of the time.

Tara: I’d like to talk a little bit more about Five For The Future because I have heard about it but I’m wondering how you get involved in that, how you got yourself in that trajectory and how that relates to yourself as a developer. Because to me, it sounds like you’re contributing but as a community person, maybe it’s not so much code as what you’ve done before. You can clear that up if I’m completely wrong, I’m making a guess there.

Ian: Yeah, I guess I got into it– once I moved out to Seattle, I got pretty involved in the local community here and was kind of contributing in various ways. But I wasn’t too involved in the more global community or the online community. But I’ve always been aware of Automattic and kind of been impressed with some of the philosophies that they have towards work. It never really occurred to me to apply because I just thought– I mean, they have this reputation for being really good in everything. A lot of that is just hype but not seeing inside of that, all you see is the hype and it’s kind of intimidating. I just never kind of thought to apply, but then one day, I just saw this listing for a position that was kind of describing what I do now and it just was like, “This is too good. I’ll regret it if I don’t at least try.” So I ended up getting that position and kind of transitioning into– contributing in a more kind of intentional and focused and full-time way. There were a couple of other parts to your question but now I’ve forgotten them.

Tara: I guess I’m just curious as to what the responsibilities of that job are as a developer, as somebody who’s a plugin developer, defining yourself that way. But you’re working on community, you say you build tools for that. Are you building plugins related to WordCamp websites or what is your role as a developer, as it relates to a community?

Ian: Yeah, a lot of it is building plugins for Wordcamp.org or– for example, there’s some things that are kind of for all the local organizing teams. We have a plugin that lets them kind of build their custom CSS for the website on GitHub and kind of automatically sync it.

Liam: Yeah, thank you for that.

Ian: [laughs] Yeah, people love that one. And the other side of it is things that allow the community team to kind of manage some of the centralized logistics. There’s a tool where each WordCamp can enter its budget and then their mentor can kind of work through them and kind of manage that with them. And there’s some ways to sync– when we reimburse an organizer for expenses that they paid, you can kind of sync that to QuickBooks and to bank accounts and kind of help all the accounting get done efficiently.

Tara: Yeah, I think I’ve seen that. And isn’t there a plugin that does that sort of the whole RSVP attendee list management as well?

Ian: Yeah, we have a plugin for all of the ticketing and it includes a lot of features like RSVPs, and printing Gravatars for badges, and that kind of stuff.

Tara: Okay. Is there anything that falls outside the realm of WordCamps and meetups as it relates to community and development that you’re doing? Plugin or code development?

Ian: Yeah, there’s always random stuff. Most of my time is spent on WordCamps and meetups, but I also every once in a while kind of dabble in core with the Events widget in WordPress 4.8, or the GDPR tools in 4.9.6. Sometimes, I’ll help out on the security teams, just triaging reports. And then just random stuff like the WordPress 15th anniversary this year, I helped build a website for that. There’s always like the core of kind of community stuff, and then there’s always stuff that kind of falls on my plate.

Liam: “Help, we need you over here!” [laughter]

Tara: So we had someone on recently who talked about her recent involvement with Contributor Day, and that it took a while to sort of connect with people in person at contributor day. And I know because WordPress is open-source. There are contributors who want to help and want to do things. How do you interact with them? How does that work? I know sometimes when I’ve gone to Contributor Days, it’s kind of hard to know sort of who’s giving the marching orders or who’s organizing everybody there, and if what you’re doing is actually going to be taken into core or anywhere else. Do you participate in those Contributor Days? Do you get things from Contributor Days that then you need to incorporate, or manage, or vet? how do you interact with those people who are either at Contributor Day or maybe on Slack, in the Slack teams adding and contributing?

Ian: Yeah, that’s a big part of– there’s always contributions coming in, whether it’s from a contributor day or just somebody kind of in their day-to-day life. It’s always kind of a balance of trying to– because I kind of have my own projects that I think me and my team kind of think these are some of the big long-term things that are going to make a big impact. But then there’s also that kind of aspect where we want to be– we don’t want to dictate what happens, we want to be part of the conversation and part of that is kind of– when contributions come in, trying to give feedback and immerse them if we can. Contributor Days are usually very chaotic and it’s hard to– I’ve tried to organize a couple of them over the years and it’s kind of that open-source chaos. There are good things and bad things to it. And there are some things you kind of learn along the way about– like, it’s always good to have somebody at the door greeting people and saying like, “Hey, how are you? I’m so and so. What are you kind of looking to get into?” And then kind of helping them find a table where there are other people working on that thing. There are some kind of technical ways that we’ve tried to make it easier. We have this thing called the meta environment which tries to– if you’re familiar with varying vagrant vagrants – the kind of automated provision local virtual system, we have a thing that kind of tries to automatically provision all of the official websites into something like that so people don’t have to spend a whole day just downloading code and trying to get it set up with a database and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, there’s always lots of challenges surrounding all that.

Liam: I think it’s a very nature of the beast. You’ve got a project that’s been around now for 15 years and some people know exactly what to do and how they want to help, and what they don’t want to do. Other people are brand new and have a range of skillsets but might not know anybody, and it’s trying that, “Are we going to get milestones done today or are we going to welcome new people to the team to grow it, to share the work, to help them enable them to embrace it?” It’s a challenge and it’s difficult to get perfectly right. With that, I’m going to change gears on this a little bit and I’m going to ask you about success.

Tara: Yeah, we need to get away from the talk about varying vagrant because this is not a tech show. [laughs]

Liam: Let me ask you about success. Let me just finish the question if I can. and it’s, how do you define success? It can be a personal definition, a professional, or maybe for you, it’s a mix of both.

Ian: Yeah, I think I do tend to think of them in different ways. From a professional sense, I think I’m probably similar to a lot of your guests that I’ve heard where I don’t really think of it in terms of money or status or titles or anything like that, it’s more about having work that I enjoy doing and work that I think makes kind of a positive impact on the world, even if that’s kind of subtle or, you know. And then on the personal side, I would say it’s probably the two things that I really think of. Building healthy relationships with people around me and then kind of orienting my life around the things that I really value. I mean, relationships are kind of obvious. It’s like, that’s maybe the most difficult part of life but it’s also kind of the most fulfilling and– values is more harder to pin down. When I look at the world, I kind of see a lot of people suffering and whether that’s homelessness in my own neighborhood, or it’s human trafficking on the other side of the world, I mean, there’s human trafficking in Seattle too, but– or malnutrition, disease, extreme poverty. There’s all these ways that people all around the world don’t have the privileges and comfort that I do. So when I contrast that to my own life, it just creates this visceral feeling that there’s something deeply wrong about that. The world wasn’t meant to be a place where some people starve to death and other people drive around in BMWs. And that’s not to shame people who own BMWs, there are things in my own life that are just as selfish and everything. But when I think about what would be a successful life, I can’t imagine that it doesn’t, in some kind of significant way, focus on using my privilege to alleviate the suffering of others.

Liam: That’s a very genuine definition I can tell just from watching you speak and listening to you talk about it, you’ve spent some time thinking about that and you very much believe that. So thank you for sharing that. Given that personal definition, which I think is really powerful, what’s the most important thing you can do every day to achieve that success?

Ian: Yeah, that’s a harder one.

Liam: Yeah, sorry.

Ian: [laughs] No, that’s fine. I don’t know that I have a lot of habits or anything that I try to do. In terms of the more idealistic side of things, like what I try to do to alleviate suffering in the world– the two main things that I always focused on are time and money. Money’s the pretty straightforward one. I’m an overpaid tech worker and I was raised to be very frugal, and I’m kind of a minimalist anyways. I don’t really want a lot of stuff so it’s easy for me to kind of just give a lot of this disposable income to all these organizations around the world that are doing great things. The harder part has always been volunteering and using my time to do that. It’s just been hard to find things that I feel fit and that I can kind of sustain emotionally over the long-term. Lately, I’ve been getting more involved in– homelessness in Seattle is a big thing just because of a lot of different kind dynamics at play. And there’s a couple of different shelters, one in my neighborhood and one in the neighborhood next door that I’ve gotten involved with. I’ve always liked cooking for friends and stuff, so I found ways to get involved with planning meals and cooking and serving. That feels like a tangible way for me to do something to help those things.

Liam: Yeah, that’s great. And I think I’d agree with you that homelessness is kind of an all-encompassing need, right? It’s shelter, it’s food, kind of really immediate real need. But there’s a lot of mental health, there’s a lot of addiction issues, there’s a lot of historical family troubles. There’s a lot of different ways to involve ourselves and to support people on that. I think there’s something very satisfying about meeting a very corporal need of feeding people. The conversations and the human connection that comes through that, especially where you in your privileged state, to use your words-

Ian: Definitely.

Liam: – are serving. You’re not just writing the check and somebody else is getting food, you’re down there and you’re making the food and you’re putting it on the plate, and presumably, you’re helping to clean up too. That’s really amazing, I love that. Thank you.

Ian: Yeah, I think it’s just– it is that tangible thing and then it also has kind of the intangible aspects to it, too. Like, people really notice even small things like using real silverware that you didn’t have to wash afterwards, rather than disposable stuff. That makes it feel– or cooking a meal that’s kind of not just something from a box but really spend five hours to really plan out something in the way that you would do for your family. I feel like people really notice that and it makes them be kind of– world’s values are so upside down a lot of times and it kind of in some ways shifts that around makes people feel like they’re recognized as a human being and they’re kind of giving back some of the dignity that was taken from them.

Tara: Yeah. What I love about this is the fact that you’re here talking about it and we haven’t had a lot of conversations that have gone in this direction on this show, but it’s definitely something that’s very top of mind in our current climate in this country, so it’s nice to hear someone talking about it. I think that we have finite resources when it comes to money and time, so I think for me, personally, and I think this is not unusual, is that you sort of feel– I know the cliche is one person can make a change but it’s really easy, I think, to feel overwhelmed by the number of things that are wrong in the world and a number of people who were suffering, and where do you start, and what’s your one issue, if you can focus on one or do you give 25$ to 50 different organizations, or do you give one big sum, or you’re donating your time to one shelter. How do you make a bigger difference and the line, “If not you, who?” You have to take that one step first, and then when you start talking about it and sharing, and I’m really happy to be doing this here today with you, is that you may inspire someone else and so then it kind of spreads that way, so I really appreciate your sharing that on our show today because I think it’s great to hear you doing whatever you’re doing. Whether you’re serving at a homeless shelter or you’re reading stories to children in an afterschool care place, or helping with the immigrant crisis or whatever your choice is, but there are so many things to choose from. It is overwhelming sometimes so thanks for taking that step and making it important part of your values and how you view success and what’s important to you. I think that’s helpful here and always.

Ian: Definitely, it is like a very personal thing. I think everybody has to find– there’s not that one thing that everybody should do. It’s more like, what are the things in your life that– for me, I live in a neighborhood of Seattle where on the one hand, there are people who live in these luxury apartments that are 2000$ a month. And then there’s also people in the same neighborhood on the same street living in a tent on the sidewalk. That juxtaposition is very motivating. It’s like, I can– but if I were in a different context, it could be something totally different and it’s just about, everybody has to kind of find that part of their life where their talents meet the needs of the people around them, or the people that they can impact.

Tara: Yeah. It’s also a good reminder of the blessings that we have, right, when you see that, too, is to be grateful for the things that we have and to work hard to be mindful of that.

Liam: Ian, that was awesome. I won’t say more. I’ll just thank Tara for thanking you because I echo many of her sentiments. Let me ask you the second of our signature questions, and I’m really interested to hear your answer on this one. What is the single most valuable piece of advice, be it personal or professional, that you ever received and implemented in your life?

Ian: It’s latter part that’s the hard one, implementing. [laughs]

Tara: It sounds like you’re doing some things already, so– [laughter]

Ian: Yeah, I guess maybe to jump back to the professional side of things. I think one thing that sticks out, just recently, one of my teammates told me that– he kind of encouraged me to make a habit of being proactive about mental health and self-care. I don’t do a great job of that, but I think the one thing that I kind of think about, and sometimes I do it, is just going for a walk during the day. After I kind of wake up and I go through my email and Slack and all that, things I have to respond to, then I have the rest of the day to try to build something or whatever. I think if I can kind of take some time after that initial rush of emails and whatever, take some time and just go for a walk and not listen to a podcast, which is what I normally do when I’m walking. But just kind of let my mind wander and kind of maul things over in the background. It’s hard to do that because I always feel like there’s so much work to do and there’s so much work that I want to do. And it’s like excercising in a way, you feel really good when you do it but there’s that innertia that you have to get over it before you will do it. That’s probably the thing that I think would make the most difference if I could make it more of a habit.

Liam: Yeah, I think that ties into what you mentioned when you were thinking about how to give your time in a sustainable way. Something like homelesness, especially when you’re right there and you’re kind of on the front-line, if you will, and you’re seeing people in all their grandure and all their challenges. If you don’t take care of yourself, that can be really emotionally and psychologically overwhelming. Not to paint you into a corner, I don’t mean to say it’s something that will only happen to you, but we can all, if we don’t take care of ourselves, end up right next them in the homeless shelter. To your point, it seems like, “Well, I just really want to help them all the time. No, if I help them all the time, I will end up there and I need to help them in a way that is sustainable. I love that advice. I think it’s really valuable and I like that way that your framed it and positioned it.

Ian: It’s like that old saying about you have to fix your own oxygen mask before you do your kids or whatever.

Tara: Yes, I love that analogy. I think we are beyond time because this has been so enriching. I really have enjoyed this. Ian, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your thoughts and inspiring us to be better people and better members of our communities and of the world. Thank you very much for doing that.

Ian: Thank you.

Tara: Where can people find you online?

Ian: I don’t really do social media all that much.

Tara: Good.

Ian: [laughs] Yeah. The main thing I do is I have a blog at Iandunn.name. It’s just about WordPress development and whenever I can’t find the answer to something that I need and I figure it out, I’ll write a blog post about it.

Tara: Cool.

Liam: Ian, thank you so much for joining us out here in the hallway, it’s been an absolute pleasure. We really enjoyed having you on today. Thank you.

Tara: Great meeting you. Thanks so much.

Ian: Yeah, thank you.

Liam: Bye-bye.

Ian: Bye.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.