November 10, 2025 — What does it take to lead a WordPress release or any major open-source initiative without writing a single line of code? In this talk, I’ll walk through how I’ve helped shape and ship multiple WordPress releases by leaning on product thinking, project management skills, and “glue work”.

You’ll hear the story of a contributor who moved from helper to release deputy to AI team lead all without commit access. Along the way, we’ll explore the often-invisible roles that keep WordPress moving: coordinating feedback, managing timelines, nudging consensus across Slack and GitHub, and motivating volunteers across time zones. I’ll share practical tools, patterns, and gotchas for leading distributed contributor teams, with a focus on how you can lead even if you’re not an engineer.

Whether you’re a project manager, designer, or just someone who makes things happen, this session will help you: Recognize what leadership looks like outside the code, Understand the real impact of “glue work” in open source, Find your place in the WordPress project and level up your contributions, Leave with clear ways to get involved in releases, roadmap work, or contributor organizing.

September 5, 2025 — AI is becoming standard in content workflows—but too often, it comes at the cost of data privacy, long-term ownership, and open standards. What if WordPress could help you do AI differently? In this workshop, we’ll go hands-on with ClassifAI and local LLMs to explore how AI features can be built ethically and scalably—from alt text generation to semantic classification to content summarization. You’ll learn how to configure ClassifAI with a local model via Ollama or any compatible runner, using the new AI Services plugin developed by the WordPress Core AI Team. We’ll walk through real-world use cases and show how teams can reduce third-party dependencies while speeding up editorial flow—especially useful for enterprise content teams, agencies, and hosts. You’ll leave with a working configuration (or clear path to one), plus a roadmap of how these tools are evolving across the WordPress ecosystem. Bring your laptop and a local or staging WordPress site if you’d like to follow along. Whether you’re building for one site or 10,000, this workshop will help you make AI work for you—not the other way around. Prepare for this workshop here! Presented byJeffrey Paul

September 3, 2025 — A group presentation from the Core AI team on what we’re building. Progress since the team formation, next steps, implementation examples, and an open Q&A. Read more about the formation of the WordPress AI team. Presented byJames LePageFelix ArntzJeffrey PaulMatías Ventura

October 15, 2023 — The WordPress.org plugin directory requires that all plugins must be compatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL) and recommends GPLv2 or later as the same license as WordPress itself.

This includes third-party libraries, code, and images. With today’s modern development practices and easier contributions on git-based systems like GitHub, you may not even notice a dependency being added to your project.

This talk explains how to use GitHub Actions to scan your current codebase and ensure that all future pull requests and commits similarly ensure that all third-party libraries (aka dependencies) are GPL-compatible.

September 13, 2022 — Moderated by @greenshady, the walk-through began with a planned feature review by @matveb that included the TT3 default theme, a refined template experience, fluid typography, and locking tools, amongst other features. Following the demos, the participating release squad members @davidbaumwald, @jeffpaul, @ndiego, @richtabor, @mikachan, and @desrosj spoke about the scope of their respective team’s release work. Closing out the event, the panelists fielded questions from the 80+ live attendees.

Speakers: David Baumwald, Jeff Paul, Jonathan Desrosiers, Justin Tadlock, Matías Ventura, Nicholas Diego, Sarah Norris

Thank you to the panelists, the WordPress 6.1 release squad, and contributors, @dansoschin, @priethor, and @jpantani for making this a successful walk-through.

November 13, 2019 — If you, like me, have ever thought “I’m not a developer, how could I realistically contribute to WordPress?”, then think again. Anyone can contribute to WordPress. And yes, that includes you! In this lightning talk I’ll walk you through a couple examples like coordinating component teams, gardening bugs in Trac, and getting videos submitted to WordPress.tv.