January 29, 2020 — We used to control our online identities, content, and experience. We now share Twitter names instead of domains; even web developers tweet and post on Medium instead of their own sites. We scroll social media and feel empty instead of reading news & blogs to feel informed and connected. Algorithmic feeds amplify rage & conspiracies, enabling tribal ad-targeting to polarise and spread misinformation, threatening democracy itself.

What happened? And what are we doing to fix it?

That’s a big question that will require all of us, our communities, our employers, to shift. I don’t want to wait, and you probably don’t either.

What can you do for yourself, today?

Own your domain. Own your content. Own your social connections. Own your reading experience. IndieWeb services, tools, and standards enable you to take back your web.

November 12, 2019 — This talk about – WordPress. How “open” is WordPress, anyway? What makes WordPress open source, how open is the process, and how does the project participate in the open web?

November 4, 2019 — A panel discussion with members of the WordPress community exploring ethical issues that can arise when working with clients, with each other, and within the WordPress community at large.

April 24, 2019 — Lightning Talk
The good, bad and the ugly of contributing to open source.

Ulrich has been contributing to open source for the last 6 years in different ways, from support to documentation to bug fixes, and organising events.

He will talk about how this has helped him but also about the challenges involved to contributing to open source.

April 17, 2019 — Open Source is an incredibly powerful concept that can be seen at the heart of progress and advancement in many spheres of life. The idea that people from every corner of the globe can come together to exchange ideas and build products that profoundly affect our lives is as crazy as it is exciting.

I’m fascinated by the fact that people who have never met can come together to form a community that produces software and/or hardware products like CMSs, cars, building equipment, AI appliances and apparel that help to enable whole swaths of people with limited financial, physical or other resources make meaningful contributions and improve their quality of life.

I talk briefly about the concept of Open source and specifically about how WordPress has played a significant part in taking this Nigerian university dropout around the world and exposing him to a community of the most incredible human beings at the forefront of democratising publishing and why Open Source should be near and dear to your heart.

January 2, 2019 — For an open source community to thrive, it’s important that valid business models surround it. In this talk Marieke and I will discuss why a business model around open source projects is so important. The money that funds further development, but also funds conferences, marketing and education, has to be made somehow. We will cover the several large open source communities that exist today and discuss how successful the business models around them are.

But it’s not all about making money: it’s about giving back too. If every company in an open source community gives back, that community becomes unstoppable. The idea of five for the future is built on that. Other communities have similar ideas, and reward them in other ways, which we’ll discuss. We’ll also show why at Yoast, we think 5% is not enough.

December 31, 2018 — Visiting a foreign open source community is kind of like traveling to a foreign country! It may be difficult if you don’t speak the language or share the same culture, but you’re guaranteed to return home with a new perspective and interesting experiences.

It’s easy to get comfortable and stay in your own community bubble. Breaking outside of that allows you to see how others solve problems and tackle new opportunities. And, it turns out that other open source communities are generally welcoming and interested in your perspective as well!

We’ll share high-level overviews of popular open source projects to help you plan your itinerary. Attendees will leave with knowledge about what’s out there, recommendations on how to prepare, and confidence to your own start journey.

July 30, 2018 — WordPress is better!
Drupal is better!
Joomla! is better!

Sound familiar? The open source community has the habit only to look inside ourselves and never look what else might be going on in the other communities or projects. As someone who currently serves on leadership for Joomla and also the evangelist of BoldGrid has seen the best of multiple open source communities. I have seen patterns emerge across our communities.

This talk will explore my experience being married to open source. I will also explore the ways the communities support each other through initiatives such as CMS Garden (An initiative to promote all major open source CMS projects). I will also share the top things I learned about myself and the combined future of an open source web.

Presentation Slides »

July 11, 2018

July 5, 2018 — Leading a cross-functional group of skilled individuals from all around the world, in front of their computers, hands on the keyboard, a headset on, solving together complex problems in a limited timeframe.

This description covers my activities for the past ten years, from online gaming to the WordPress community, to my work at Automattic.

Technology has blurred the lines between playing, working, and contributing to an open source project, I will use my experience leading a distributed team to show you how to professionally grow while having fun, and giving back to the community that changed your life.

Presentation Slides »