WPCoffeeTalk: Courtney P.K.

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[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to WPCoffeeTalk with your podcast Barista Michelle Frechette, where we interview people in the WordPress community from all over the world. Every guest is asked the same questions and every guest has wonderful and varied answers about their history and their hopes. Special thanks to our espresso level sponsors, Bluehost, WS form and Beaver Builder. And now on with the show.

Welcome to WPCoffeeTalk. I’m your podcast Barista Michelle Frechette, serving up the WordPress stories from around the world. And today I am speaking to my friend Courtney Patubo Kranzke. Courtney PK, as she is known in the WordPress community.

And let’s see, you work at Automattic, but you do a lot in the make WordPress space, especially the education space. And so I think we’re going to talk about that a little bit later. But your title is community education manager. Sounds really important. Courtney, welcome to the show.

[00:01:02] Speaker C: Thanks, Michelle. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. As you said, I am employed by Automattic. I am very fortunate to be sponsored by automatic to contribute full time to the open source project.

As you mentioned, I have the title community education manager.

That is. Well, we will talk about that later, but I actually currently have a new title of community engagement specialist. Ooh, yeah, that’s.

[00:01:41] Speaker B: I have a very similar title over at stellar WP, which is director of community engagement. So we’ll have to compare notes later and we will some best practices and all that stuff. That’s awesome. And that seems like the perfect role for you because you are just like, like you epitomize community to me.

And I have stories to tell about our meeting as we go through later too. But first, I want people to just know a little bit more about you. So, like, in a nutshell, your elevator pitch. Who is Courtney? Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

[00:02:13] Speaker C: Hmm.

Well, I am.

Well, as we said, I am a community person. So in the WordPress space, I am definitely a community person.

Me, as a person, I am, um, I’m a creative person at heart. So I am into like photography and visual arts.

And I’ve been starting to dabble in a little bit of watercolor painting lately. So, yeah, creativity is just such a big part of my identity. I can’t stop doing that.

[00:02:50] Speaker B: And you shouldn’t.

[00:02:52] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. I encourage everyone to just embrace your, your creativity, even if you think, oh, I am horrible, I can’t draw straight lines. Well, you only need to draw a straight line if you’re trying to draw straight lines. Like, if you’re trying to draw a square or something.

[00:03:11] Speaker B: Exactly.

[00:03:11] Speaker C: I just have fun with it. And I have struggled with that over the years, but I recently just enjoyed the journey of just painting something or creating something and not worry about, like, oh, I need to display this or share this online or anything.

[00:03:30] Speaker B: I love that. But I took a watercolor class, oh, gosh, maybe 15 years ago or more, and I made this. You know, they walked us through the whole thing. It was like three week class or something every Wednesday night, and my cat’s just walking by, and it was like a tree and it was in the snow, and they showed us how to use salt to make snow and all this other stuff. And I was so excited about it. I was like, I was really proud of it, and I gave it to my mother, and the next time I came over, it was hanging on the refrigerator, so I was like.

It was just like, going back to being a kid again.

[00:04:02] Speaker C: That’s really cute.

[00:04:03] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:04:03] Speaker C: We’re forever providing the wall art and fridge art for our parents, no matter how old we get.

[00:04:10] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. And now she sends me little messages about how proud she is of the work I do, which is very cool.

[00:04:16] Speaker C: So.

[00:04:17] Speaker B: And you are located in Hawaii, if I’m not mistaken. Are you still there, or did you move?

[00:04:22] Speaker C: That’s correct. I am still in Hawaii. Been here for about two years.

I actually did live here over 20 years ago for a few years as well, so kind of a return for me, but first time for my spouse.

And, yeah, we came here because it was important to us to surround ourselves with beauty, but also be in a place where we felt represented. So we were in a place where our community looks like us and has a lot of similar cultural background.

[00:04:56] Speaker B: There’s a lot to say for feeling comfortable in your surroundings and being with people that make you feel comfortable. So I’m happy for you that you’re someplace that does that. That’s awesome. Well, I want to. I always ask everybody to show us your mug and tell us what you’re drinking. So let’s see what you. What you got today.

[00:05:12] Speaker C: Yeah. So this is my mug.

[00:05:14] Speaker B: Pretty.

[00:05:16] Speaker C: The color of it actually reflects what’s inside. I have a mocha inside, so today’s a little bit special. So I made myself mocha, not just because we’re recording this on Valentine’s Day, but also because, you know, because I’m doing this in general. I’m talking with my friend. So this is a. Yeah. Handcrafted piece by an artist.

I think they go by, hey, sunny in Portland, Oregon. So Portland is where I lived previously before moving to Hawaii.

And yeah, I need to decap because I am trying to cut down on my caffeine.

[00:05:55] Speaker B: When I record in the evening because this is 06:00 for me. I definitely do. Well, I would say 90% of the time do decaf as well. I have a mug that’s also a handcrafted mug, but not by somebody I know. Pretty wrong direction. And it has this little, this little flap on the side. It’s a finger warmer mug, so you.

[00:06:14] Speaker C: Can keep your hand so cozy.

[00:06:16] Speaker B: Isn’t that fun? And I’m drinking turmeric honey tea because I like it.

[00:06:21] Speaker C: That sounds soothing.

[00:06:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It’s a good evening tea because it’s not going to keep me awake, which is a good thing. So I always ask everybody, how did you get started with WordPress? I’d love to hear that. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that story before.

[00:06:34] Speaker C: Oh, okay.

Well, I started with WordPress as a blogger, so I was a blogger before WordPress even. So I was using other tools like, um, gritty matter, even just like coding it by myself, um, in movable type. And, uh, it was in like 2004 or so when I got turned on to WordPress. Um, mostly because a lot of people from movable type were coming over to WordPress because of some licensing, uh, issues. Um, so I was part of that influx, but it was, uh, because I had met a young man named Matt.

I think I’ve met like a blogger meetup.

[00:07:18] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:07:19] Speaker C: And yeah, back in 2004, we were at, I think at a blogger meetup in the San Francisco Bay area, and you turned me on to WordPress. All of like, our friends at this meetup got turned on to WordPress and, yeah, haven’t looked back since then.

[00:07:37] Speaker B: I love that. And that’s, you’re definitely one of the early adopters. Like, for me it was 2012, so it hasn’t been nearly as long.

But it’s funny because I think of myself as newer to the community still, but I’m not new to the community anymore. But I, there are so many people who started before me that it still feels like. But then I look at all the people who are new, new to the community, and it’s exciting to welcome them in and pretend that I know what I’m doing.

[00:07:59] Speaker C: So you do know what you’re doing. Yeah, the community.

[00:08:05] Speaker B: I love this community and I love the people in it. And even when we’re having tough times and people aren’t in agreement, it still is, you know, the stall mark of what I do and, you know, my day. And so it’s a pretty exciting thing.

So when you look at websites across the board, what do you think is something that people skip or don’t focus enough attention on that would make our sites better in the long run if we did?

[00:08:36] Speaker C: Immediately I thought of accessibility because I feel like not enough people pay attention to accessibility.

I learned in one of the workshops I did a few months ago with Alicia St. Rose. She mentioned that something like two point five, two point six percent of the web is truly accessible and that is a very low number. We could do better and people could stand to focus on making their sites more accessible to all sorts of people.

[00:09:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree 100%. I think that we’ve been focusing more on it and trying to make more people aware, but they’re still just. I think part of it is people think it’s hard and it’s not hard, it’s just that it takes some attention and focus and you need to learn it, but then it becomes easier as you go. And I’m by no means an expert, but yeah, I agree 100%.

We definitely need to do that. And, you know, I’m an accessibility, um, what’s the word I want? I will sing the praises of accessibility and ask for it whenever we can. For sure.

Absolutely. What is something. You’ve been in WordPress a while, so this question might be different for you than it is for some people who’ve joined more recently, but what’s something that you wish you had known earlier in your WordPress journey that you came to later that would have made life a whole lot easier had you known it sooner?

[00:10:01] Speaker C: Well, this is, this is a really interesting and good question, and as you mentioned, because of like my long history with WordPress, and I honestly don’t know if this existed at the time, but I’m going to say the community, it’s like, I wish I knew of a big, wide community like WordPress has now.

I don’t think it existed at this scale back in 2004, but, you know, if I was getting started more recently, someone that’s just getting started should really know that. Like, there’s this vast community out there that have lots of knowledge to share and someone might even have the same question as you, and you can find the answers within the community and get your support on whatever you’re trying to do, whatever you’re trying to accomplish. There’s going to be someone out there that can help you along.

[00:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that’s my answer too. I think it was several years before I actually, number one, knew there was a community, and then the first meetup I ever went to was in a kind of a dark room so that they could see the projector, and I was the only woman there. And they were talking about, like, CSS and digital ocean to this person who had literally just started their first website and had no idea what either of those two things were. And it took me two years to go back because I thought, oh, this is over my head. And so I agree. We, number one, need to be really welcoming to people who join for the first time, but also just, you know, people help people find it and, and thrive through it. So. Absolutely.

What’s something.

Oh, I’m sorry, I’m looking at the wrong question again.

What are some of your favorite Wordcamp or meetup talks or experiences? Or maybe it was something that happened that kind of, like, was an aha moment, or as I like to joke, like the angel sang when this happened. Could you tell us a little bit about it?

[00:11:56] Speaker C: Oh, man. So I’ve always admired people that speak at word camps, and I actually spoke for the very first time in, like, my long history of WordPress and wordcamps. I spoke last year, Wordcampus. And so that was kind of this pivotal experience for me. And, you know, the thing is, like, I’ve mentored so many people in the project. I’ve helped some folks out along their journey, and I’ve always told them, you know, the WordPress audience, the WordPress community, is going to be one of the most accepting and forgiving audiences out there, and patient.

And so, like, if something goes wrong with the technical difficulties or anything which happened to me, that, like, people are, they’re okay with it. They’re not going to be all up in arms about it or get upset. People be like, you’re doing great. And so I would tell people that. Yet I had a hard time telling myself that and convincing that, like, it will be okay if whenever I get up there on the stage that I will be facing that same community that I keep telling other people about, that they’re going to be forgiving. And not just forgiving, just friendly and accepting.

And so, yeah, that ended up being a really great experience for me.

That’s like we said, almost 20 years after using WordPress and almost that long ago in the word camps.

Yeah, it took me that long. And it was not as bad as I let my brain convince me that it was gonna be.

But I always lean towards being in the background. I lean towards mentoring people.

I’m attracted to that kind of work. I like being behind the scenes and being kind of like the silent, a strong partner in things. So I was, like, also a lead organizer for Wordcamp Portland in 2017 and 18, which was a great experience. And I had a lot of fun with that.

And something else I wanted to add. Some of my favorite moments in WordPress have been when someone acknowledges me or like, mentions me in, like, their word can’t talk or something. And there have been a lot of those. And it just, like, it warmed my heart, makes me feel good about the work I’m doing.

An example was when Joe Simpson gave a talk about finding your place in the community.

I think this was back in 2018, and he mentioned me, and he said, like, I was such a welcoming presence in the community, and I helped him along his journey. He helped him start his meetup.

And just seeing and hearing about that journey and being a part of that journey, I was just very honored.

[00:15:01] Speaker B: That’s wonderful. It is exciting. And you are one of the, I want to say the reasons I continue to, I do, but you contributed to my feeling comfortable in the community. And part of that was, and I’ve talked to you about this before, so you might know what I’m about to say. But when I spoke at Wordcamp San Diego in 2018, it was the biggest camp I’d ever spoken at to that point. Like, I’d spoken at camps that had maybe 100 people, 150 people in them. That was a big camp. And I was giving a talk called the hidden, the hidden, like, the secrets, the hidden secrets of WordPress. And just like, people don’t really know to look for when you’re first starting and how I discovered some of them and those kinds of things. And like that, there’s one thing that you have to know the link for. There’s no button in WordPress. Like, all of those kinds of things I was talking about, and I talked about it. Oh, and there’s this new thing on the word press dashboard that tells you about upcoming meetups and things like that. So I was, I mentioned that in my talk. But first of all, like I said, I sat in the talk thinking, oh, 20 people might come in. And, like, that room was packed and there were people standing across the back of it. And I was just like, I don’t normally get nervous, but I’m a little nervous today. And, you know, I gave my talk, once I get into it, I’m really good and go, and it doesn’t bother me, but at the end of it, I was like, phew. And I didn’t know a lot of, like, key players at automatic. I didn’t know key players in the community yet. I was still learning my way. And you came up to me after I talked and you were like, thank you for mentioning that block. That was one of my projects. And I was like, oh, that’s really cool. I’m like, who are you? Like, you introduced yourself and afterwards people are like, that was Courtney PK. And I was like, who’s Courtney PK? I didn’t know. And I know it’s so cute that I was like, but it made me feel so good that you came up to me and were like, thank you for doing that. And I was like, that’s so exciting. And, and then I do have to tell you that my very first ever contributor day, you made me comfortable and you were the reason that I kept going to contributor days because I was really nervous to go to a contributor day. This was in Nashville and I had skipped them to that point because I thought, I don’t know enough to be a contributor. And you were the person who made me feel comfortable, gave me a task that I could handle and feel good about having contributed to it, and then I was like, hooked and I kept going. So thank you for the community work that you do that make people like me, that people don’t even think ever get nervous, because we do, right? We do. That made me feel comfortable and made me feel, like, valuable in the community when I didn’t feel valuable in the community. So thank you for that.

[00:17:35] Speaker C: You’re so welcome.

I’m happy, happy to hear those stories and to see how you’ve, you’ve grown into this community and you’re just, like I said before, you’re an important part of this community and everyone out there is, and everyone has something to share. And I hope more people realize that. And that’s kind of like my own personal mission is like, you don’t have to be a developer or anything. It’s like you’ll have some sort of talent, some skill that you can contribute to the project.

[00:18:13] Speaker B: Absolutely. And it was, it’s good to know that. And for people to not think that you only have to code to be able to contribute. There’s so many teams that you could be part of without ever having to know how to do CSS or anything else, which is pretty cool.

So tell me a little bit about what you do on the day to day, what your job is, especially now that you’re working within community and what you’re looking forward to this year.

[00:18:39] Speaker C: Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, I started out with doing more community work during my time at automatic and during like the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, we weren’t having any community events. And so a lot of our focus started going on to virtual events and focusing on learn WordPress.org, where there’s educational resources and live workshops and stuff.

And so I focused on that side of things for a couple of years and that was the community education manager position that I was in for a while.

But as we’ve been seeing in person events returning in the past year or so, I found myself being attracted towards those events again and doing more like community, deep in community work. And so I’ve returned to doing more stuff with the community team again and focusing mostly on community events. These days. It’s an exciting time for WordPress events.

You know, not just meetups and Wordcamps, but different formats that people in the community are coming up with. It’s really exciting time for our event. So that’s really what I’m looking forward to this year is seeing like the great ideas people come up with for WordPress events and making them happen. And, you know, me and my team just being there to support people along that journey.

[00:20:27] Speaker B: You mentioned some of the different kinds of events. We just finished last week. I know this will, it won’t be last week when you’re listening to it, people, but it was last week when we recorded it that Kerala had a photo festival online and that was super cool. I think we had close to 3000 photos contributed in one week. Now, all 3000 were not approved into the directory because we do have a process and we have guidelines that we have to abide by in order to include a photo. But over 3000 photos were submitted, which grew us to, I think, over 14,000 we have right now in the photo directory, which is just a two and a half year old project. Yeah. So it’s pretty amazing. And the team in Kerala was just like, what can we do? What kind of event can we have that can not only help people learn and grow, but can contribute back to the project as well? And so that’s the kind of event I think you’re talking about. And I know there’s going to be more and those kinds of things very, very. I like, I sit here and go, what could I think of that? We could do like that. And then these teams are just like creating and that’s so fun to watch.

[00:21:35] Speaker C: Yeah, I love that. And yeah, these ideas are coming from the community and they’re doing these events with the things that they’re most interested in.

Again, this goes along with what I was saying about contributing. It’s like you have a voice, you have skills to share, you have interests to share. So if, like, you are interested in podcasting or something, like, make a podcasting event happen.

[00:22:00] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

[00:22:02] Speaker C: So, so much fun. If y’all have ideas, anyone listening, please, please reach out to the community team because we’re looking for all sorts of cool ideas for WordPress events. And sky’s the limit, really.

[00:22:15] Speaker B: It’s exciting to think of the different ideas and to hear the different ideas that people come up with and then actually watch them kind of come to fruition and see the people. It was the team in Kerala, so there was definitely a heavy indian attendance. Right. But it was global, and there were people contributing photos from all over the world, which was super cool. It just makes me happy. Yeah, it’s so cool to go to WordPress.org photos and see what people have submitted and know that it came out of just people like us wanting to include people and teach people and have an event that really works, which is very cool.

[00:22:52] Speaker C: Yeah, that’s very cool.

[00:22:54] Speaker B: So what will you be at all the flagship events this year? Will we see you there?

[00:23:00] Speaker C: I’ll definitely be a word campus because that’s in my former hometown of Portland.

[00:23:07] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:23:09] Speaker C: And I think that’s all I have planned for flagships. I might try to go to a few local word camps if more happen in the US, but yeah, keeping it local for now.

[00:23:22] Speaker B: I don’t blame you. I look forward to seeing you in Portland. I’ve never been there, so it’ll be fun to visit that city.

Yes.

[00:23:30] Speaker C: That’ll be exciting.

[00:23:31] Speaker B: Looking forward to it. I heard you should bring an umbrella. I don’t know if that’s true.

[00:23:38] Speaker C: It is true because it rains a lot, but September should be nice.

There is kind of a joke that most people in Portland that live in Portland never carry an umbrella. So they can tell it’s like that person’s a visitor because they have an umbrella.

[00:23:54] Speaker B: Okay. If I want to blend in, don’t bring an umbrella. Got it.

[00:23:58] Speaker C: Anybody? It’s a good excuse to get a really cute rain hat.

[00:24:02] Speaker B: True, very true. And with purple hair, I have to wear a rain hat. Otherwise the color starts to run. Right.

[00:24:09] Speaker C: So that’s right.

[00:24:10] Speaker B: Right. I’m going to start looking for a rain hat as soon as we get off Amazon.com rain hat. Got it.

Well, let me move into our rapid fire questions. They aren’t really rapid. I just the whole idea is like the James Lipton, like ask the actors inside the Actors studio kind of thing, and everybody gets the same questions, so you take the time you need to answer them. There’s no, it’s not a rush.

Okay.

What are two or three plugins that you would recommend to somebody building their own website?

[00:24:40] Speaker C: So this is going to be very specific to people that have been using WordPress for a long time or have been blogging a long time.

I’ve had to change hosts multiple times over the years for a multitudes of reasons, but so the essential plugin for me during those times have been using all in one WP migration.

That has given me a seamless migration experience between hosts and makes it easy.

And then another plugin for that kind of process that has helped me is the categories to tags converter.

So, you know, I used to use categories really heavily in the early days of blogging, but then tags got introduced and I never really converted them over. I thought I’d have to do it manually. And then this plugin happened where I can convert everything to tags because I love tagging things. I like having very specific ways of finding what I’m looking for, and tags have helped a lot with that. So yeah, those are the two plugins that I recommend for people in that situation.

[00:25:56] Speaker B: I love when you visit a site and you can search and you get results based on the words, the keywords that you’re searching for. So tags are so helpful for that, for sure.

I attended a meetup that had the topic was pages versus posts and tags versus categories, and it was such a wonderful explanation of when to use one versus the other. I mean, you can break the rules if you want, right? Like it’s your site, but just to have a basic idea of why they, they are created the way that they are and what the purpose is. Gosh, that was so helpful, for sure.

So did you have a mentor when you started working in WordPress or at any point along the way, whether it was official or unofficial? Maybe somebody that kind of took you under their wing, even if it wasn’t an official mentor and who was it?

[00:26:44] Speaker C: Yeah, I wouldn’t say I had an official mentor, but someone that I looked at as a mentor. And I don’t know if they even know this. Andrea Middleton was instrumental in my journey.

It helped me tackle a lot of like, my self doubt when it came to just moving forward with my ideas.

And yeah, she was great and she definitely made an impression on myself and the rest of the community. So her touch her touches are seen.

[00:27:18] Speaker B: Everywhere, and even though she’s been outside of the community for a while now, I think that’s true for a lot of people. Her name comes up with somewhat frequency, maybe not as much as it did five years ago, but it is exciting to think back on the way she got me involved in WordPress and other people. And yeah, she definitely understood how to use community and work with the community and foster and grow it as well. So, yeah, great person to name as a mentor.

So you can’t name her. But for the next question, who’s somebody that you admire in the WordPress community and why?

[00:27:55] Speaker C: So this was a hard one for me to decide on. I can’t decide on one person. I will say that it’s a type of person or someone because of the work I do. It’s usually people in the community, people that are very community minded, people that advocate for underrepresented folks. So, including you, including Allie Ann McCarthy, people that advocate for accessibility, like Joe Simpson.

These are the types of people that I just really admire because they’re advocating for others and for themselves.

And that’s something that I find really inspiring, inspires me to advocate for myself.

[00:28:41] Speaker B: So, yeah, I think I agree, and I love that Joe led the charge to include so much accessibility in Wordcamp us last year by creating a team for accessibility, by creating a page in the Wordcamp handbook about accessibility, and just really has been on the ground floor doing a lot of tireless work. So, yeah, definitely people like Joe have inspired me as well. So, yeah, you have such good answers.

What’s something that you’d like to learn in WordPress but you haven’t tackled yet?

[00:29:19] Speaker C: So I consider this a pretty rapid fire question because my only answer is, I think that sometimes I would like to learn a little bit more about development, but I just haven’t had the mind space or the time.

[00:29:35] Speaker B: I joke, I was telling you before we started recording, I joke that I’m a developer because there’s guitars on the wall behind me and because I have a plugin in the repo, but it’s just a fork of hello, dolly. So it really isn’t all that, you know, it’s not as many lines of code. It’s not really. I mean, yes, technically it’s coding, but. But I would like to learn more as well. I think it’s, when you work in community, it’s kind of nice to know what other people in the community experience. And so that’s why I did hello, Dolly. That’s why I submitted it to the repo. That’s why I keep it up, just so that I have those experiences that I understand to a small degree what that part of our community experiences in getting their jobs done. So, yeah, development, coding, it’s cool stuff.

Yes, for sure.

What’s one of the biggest mistakes you’ve ever made in WordPress, and what did you learn from it?

[00:30:27] Speaker C: I can’t recall a specific moment, but I am pretty sure that I’ve deleted a database on a client site before or even just like gotten white screen to death on client sites. But the reason why I can’t think of a particular moment where this happened is because I was smart enough and thank you past me for constantly backing stuff up. I am that person whose finger hovers on the save button all the time when I’m working on a project. So those experiences have really reinforced that. I have this good instinct to just save often, just all the time.

[00:31:17] Speaker B: When hosting companies introduced staging, I was like, oh, praise the Lord. That is something that so many of us are going to rely on if we learn to use it properly. If you don’t use it, then of course it doesn’t help you at all. But definitely. And backups, backups, backups, backups, backup, backup.

Never too many. I know I can look at a page or even a post in a site that I’ve been working on, and if I look at the revisions, it could be like 30 revisions. And I’ve only been working on it a little like 15 minutes to an hour. And it’s like, because I’m constantly afraid to miss, to lose what I just did. So I’m with you on the constant updates and saving.

Yes, for sure.

What is your proudest WordPress moment? It’s more fun to talk about that than mistakes.

[00:32:06] Speaker C: Yeah, I feel like I’m a broken record a bit. I keep repeating similar things, but there are a lot of proud moments, I think, in my time with WordPress or in time with the community.

But a lot of those, what those moments seem to have in common is when it’s about a contributor that I’ve worked with personally and that I’ve mentored or inspired, when they grow and flourish. And I see that happen. I have this really great sense of pride that I was a part of their journey. I love that.

[00:32:46] Speaker B: That’s wonderful. And that tells you that you’re a wonderful person, because it’s not even about yourself, it’s about other people, which I love that. I love that.

[00:32:55] Speaker C: I like you as community people.

[00:32:58] Speaker B: That’s right. We love to see it. Somebody said to me once that I shouldn’t be applying to speak at word camps. I should make room for other people. But that person was a white man. And I said, you can stop applying to speak and make room for other women like me. And when we see more women like me, then I’ll stop too.

[00:33:16] Speaker C: So, yeah, good answer.

[00:33:20] Speaker B: Right? If you weren’t working in web or web tech at all, what’s another career that you might like to attempt? Watercolor?

[00:33:28] Speaker C: I don’t know.

Not quite there yet. But I mean, something, like I said, creativity is important to me, but I’ve always been interested in doing things with food.

So I don’t know, opening something like a food truck or art or even just like a pop up. That sounds like fun, but yeah. My spouse and I had this idea once that we would try to combine these interests and open, like a coworking space slash, like cafe slash bar, even. It’s like, it goes from day to night.

So that was something that we dreamt about when we were in Portland.

It’s still in the back of our mind. It’s like doing something with food has always been interesting to me.

And another thing I’d like to revisit is my previous path of working in film and tv.

[00:34:28] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:34:29] Speaker C: Used to want to like make movies or documentaries so you could do the next word.

[00:34:36] Speaker B: The next WordPress documentary could be maybe done by you about the community. You never know. That could be fun.

[00:34:42] Speaker C: Yeah.

[00:34:44] Speaker B: What’s something on your bucket list?

[00:34:50] Speaker C: So I like, I really like seeing like natural wonders.

So seeing more of those maybe specifically, like, the northern lights are some that I’d like to see. The Great Barrier Reef.

So like the stars and the sea are like, man, my, my two loves in nature.

[00:35:10] Speaker B: I love that. That’s a nice balance too. The stars in the sea, for sure.

Show us or tell us about a hidden talent you have that the WordPress community might not know about.

[00:35:23] Speaker C: So this is kind of related to what I was saying previously about, like, if I wasn’t working in tech, and I don’t know how hidden this talent is, I don’t know why I’m putting in quotes, but like, so I have this food blog that is sorely, any updates? But you know, I love cooking and I’ve been told that I have a great talent for it.

And yeah, I don’t. I guess maybe I just don’t get an opportunity to cook for people in the WordPress community so that maybe that’s why it’s hidden.

But I also enjoy mixing cocktails and specifically, I like creating them. I like coming up with drinks, even mocktails I do for people that cater to their tastes and their likes. I kind of interview them a little bit and say, like, what are these kind of flavors that you like? And then I come up with something, and it’s almost always a hit.

[00:36:20] Speaker B: That sounds wonderful. If you cook it, I will eat it. I promise you that. And if you create the cocktail, I will drink it. I will be your biggest fan.

How can people find you online if they’re interested in learning more or connecting with you?

[00:36:37] Speaker C: So, LinkedIn. I’m Courtney P. On LinkedIn.

I post a lot about, like, events or when I was doing more of, like, the educational stuff, I’d be promoting them there, and I would say that’s a pretty good way to get in touch with me. And I have been trying to get into the habit of using mastodon more, so I’m on Fostodon as Courtney, but yeah. And right now I’m actually currently on a bit of a social media break. So I peek in every once in a while, see if I’ve gotten, like, direct messages or something. But it’s something I do every February, is to just take a break from social media, just have a bit of a digital detox. And that’s why I’ve been painting more lately.

[00:37:29] Speaker B: Oh, I love that. That’s wonderful. It is good to have a little break now and then from things that are. Can get overwhelming and especially community stuff can be. Can live online a lot of the time. So if you can give yourself a little bit of a detox now and then, that’s not a bad thing, for sure.

[00:37:44] Speaker C: It’s nice. Yeah, it gives me a little bit more. More space to just even just breathe and just stare. Sometimes I just need to do nothing.

[00:37:54] Speaker B: Exactly.

It’s one of those things. When I was younger, I didn’t understand how, like, my grandmother could just sit in a chair and watch out the window for an hour. I thought, oh, my gosh, that’s got to be so boring. And now I sit and I look out my window, and I watch out my window for an hour, and I’m like, wow, an hour went by, and I just watched the leaves on the tree. I didn’t even see a bird or anything. But I think we learn as we get older to find those moments of silence and solitude to be incredibly comforting if we know how to lean into them.

[00:38:26] Speaker C: Absolutely, yes.

[00:38:28] Speaker B: So I love that. And painting is wonderful, too, and you can do that in solitude as well. So is there anything. I didn’t ask you that. You’re like, I wish that we could have talked about this, that or the other thing.

[00:38:40] Speaker C: You ask such good questions that I honestly can’t think of anything.

[00:38:45] Speaker B: That’s fine. Sometimes people are like, oh, I wish you’d ask me such and such. And I’m like, now’s your chance.

I look forward to seeing you at Wordcamp us, if not before then some other meeting, event, whatever it will, it might be. And thank you. And of course, you know, chatting with you online every now and then because I know you’re in make WordPress slack so you can’t get away from.

[00:39:07] Speaker C: That’s right. That’s something I should have mentioned that in people’s confining on the make WordPress slack. I am there all the time.

[00:39:15] Speaker B: We have to be because that’s where we work. So that’s okay. Yes. Anyway, if anybody is interested in those links, they will be in the show notes. Just go to wPcoffeetalk, find Courtney’s episode. We will have all of those links in the show notes, including a transcript of today’s episode. If you’d rather read it than listen to it, I know you’ve listened this far, probably kind of like too late for that, but if you wanted to look at it again, you’re welcome to do that. Courtney, thank you so much for taking the time today. It was great to see you and talk to you and really talk to you since I think we’re campus last year, so that’s great. Yeah. So it’s good to, it’s good to see you. Thank you so much for taking the time to spend with us today. I appreciate it.

[00:39:54] Speaker C: Yeah. Thank you for having me on and asking me to be here. I’m honored.

[00:39:59] Speaker B: Thank you. I’m the one who’s honored. Thank you for joining us. And we’ll see everybody else on the next episode of WP Coffee Talk.

[00:40:09] Speaker A: We hope you enjoyed this episode of WP Coffee Talk. Please share it with others who you know would enjoy hearing from the people who make the WordPress community the wonderful.

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