This week I interview first time WordCamper Peter Malick
Upcoming Events
- WordCamp New York July 15- 17
- WordCamp Lima – July 16
- WordCamp Lehigh Valley, PA – July 16
Segment 1: In the News
- WPSiteSync version 1.1 released.
- WordPress 4.6 Beta 2
- WCEU – Matt Mullenweg sat down with Brian Krosgaurd for Q/A
Segment 2: Interview first time WordCamper Peter Malick
Twitter: @Silvertone
Segment 3: Tool of the Week
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Adam: This is the Kitchen Sink WP podcast, Episode 124. [Opening Sequence]
Hello there, this Adam Silver, host of the KitchenSinkWP podcast. Thanks for being here. Let's get started. Upcoming events, as always, WordCamp New York is coming up, July 15-17, a three day camp. Looks like they're doing a development community day as well. That's July 15-17. WordCamp Lima, in Peru, July 16, a one day event, and WordCamp Lehigh Valley, that's in Pennsylvania, I don't know if saying that right. I think it's LEE Valley, L-E-H-I-G-H, also a one day event, July 16. It looked like there were tickets available for all three of those camps. If you are in New York or Lima or Leigh Valley, Pennsylvania, by all means you should go. If you're in New York, I want you to do me a favor, and if you see Kari Leigh, the photographer, say, “Hi,” to her for me. That'd be awesome. Give her a hug. I just saw her this past weekend at WordCamp Orange County, which I just got back from. My voice is a little hoarse, and we'll talk more about that in a minute here. Those are the upcoming events.
Moving on to segment one: In the News, a couple of things here. I've got four things to share with you. WordPress Site Sync, WPSiteSync, it's called, version 1.1 is released. It updated some updates, squashed some bugs, some API things were done to it. If you don't know what WPSiteSync is, it's awesome. It helps you sync from local development. It's from the guys from Desktop Server, Server Press, to a live site. It's free. The base of it is free, and there will be add-ons to it. That also came out, as well some Pro addon VIP package. Check that out. I'll put a link in the show notes. It's awesome. WPSiteSync v. 1.1 was released. Additionally in the news, WordPress 4.6 beta 2 is now out. It was beta 1 last week, and now it's beta 2. I barely downloaded beta 1 and started looking at it, and now it's already beta 2, so I will have some time this week to look at this. I would foresee more betas, 3, 4, then maybe release candidates 1, 2, 3 in the next few weeks here, since we're on track to release next month? Yeah, next month. Crazy.
Finally in the news, WordCamp Europe videos are up, but the one I want to share with you this morning is Matt Mullenweg sat down with Brian Krogsgard, or the other way around. They had about an hour chat, interview, and Q,A with Matt. If you recall, Matt was on my podcast, Episode 48, way back when. Check that out if you want to go back and listen to it. Things have changed. It's an hour talk. I listened to parts of it, I'm going to listen to the rest of it, probably tomorrow, actually, but it's on wordpress.tv, I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
Finally, actually, fifth thing, is I just returned from WordCamp Orange County 2016, had a great time. Thanks to the organizers for having me. David Margowsky was an awesome lead organizer. He is termed out now, so there will be a new organizer next year. I believe it's going to be Steve Zehngut, looking forward to having him running that show the next two years, possibly. It was awesome. We had a great time. I think my talk went well, about podcasting, WordPress, and marketing. The feedback I got … It was a really nice time. It was a nice conversation, was not a traditional talk with slides, per se. It was a conversation with about thirty people in the room, two hours. It was great, had a good time.
That won't be on WordPressTV, There was no recording in that room, so it's okay. You missed out, but I'm looking forward to doing that again sometime soon in the near future.
Moving on to segment two, but before that I want to mention our sponsor. Last week I mentioned an article I read about 65 million passwords from a famous blogging platform being stolen back in 2013. Turns out hackers haven't stopped. Literally, just June of this year, money.com reported that hackers stole 45 million passwords from over 1,100 websites. On July 10, just last week, there was reports that Twitter was hacked. I'm still a little freaked out. Are you? I am. I really am. Enter SnapID. With SnapID I never have to remember my username and password. All I do is click a button, text a code, and I'm logged in. It's that easy. It really is. I do love it. I've been using it on some test sites. I'm now using it over on one of my other client sites, testing them out, seeing if they'd like to use it as well. Currently still only available in the US and Canada. It's a WordPress plugin. It's completely free, so give it a shot, and thanks again for sponsoring the podcast over to SnapID.
Moving on to segment two, Meat and Potatoes. This week I am going to do what I've done in the past. I interviewed somebody that was at WordCamp Orange County, a first time WordCamper. This interview was with Peter Malick. Peter was a really nice guy. He sat in on my session, and he then volunteered to be the person to be interviewed. He's been doing WordPress for a while, but never been to WordCamp, so take a listen to the interview, and we'll come back with the Tip and Tool of the Week. We'll wrap things up. Here you go.
Adam: Today I am sitting here at WordCamp Orange County, I'm talking to Peter Malick. He is a first time WordCamper, as I like to do a few times a year, especially at WordCamp Orange County, is to interview somebody for you, the audience. Welcome to the show.
Peter: Thanks, Adam. Great to be here.
Adam: It's awesome to have you . We met an hour and a half a go? Two hours ago?
Peter: Yes.
Adam: You sat in on my session.
Peter: I did.
Adam: Thank you for that. We'll talk about that, maybe, if we get to it. It's not about me, it's about you. That said, how did you find out about WordCamp?
Peter: I've sort of been tangentially involved in WordPress community for a long time. My wife and I started an indie music blog in 2008. When we started it we didn't even know what a blog was. Actually, we had an indie band that was making some noise in LA come into – I had a recording studio at the time – come into the studio and said, “Hey, you know, you should check out this thing called blogging.” We ended up starting a WordPress blog.
Adam: Was that over on WordPress.com, or was it always self hosted?
Peter: No. We were Luxury Wafers. It was luxurywafers.net, and we actually recorded indie music. Indy bands would come into our studio and we would post them, that was the blog.
Adam: You say you started doing WordPress work, or connected to it in 2008, 2009 even, but this is your first WordCamp, and we're in 2016. What happened in the last ten years, nine years, whatever it is?
Peter: I've produced a lot of music. I have a family. Is this the first weekend I've had in eight years? Maybe so.
Adam: There are WordCamps closer to you. You still live in Southern California, but up in the LA area.
Peter: I plan on attending –
Adam: There's WordCamp Los Angeles, for those of you listening, coming up in eight weeks. You going to be there?
Peter: I certainly am.
Adam: Good. I know the lead organizer. You might be able to get in a pretty good deal there.
Peter: All right.
Adam: For those of you that can't see, obviously since it's audio, it's me.
Peter: Pointing at himself. Yes.
Adam: What made you come to this one. You had the availability, but were you here to learn something specifically?
Peter: Definitely to learn something specifically, but also to become more connected to the community. For about the last three years I've done marketing for a company that, actually, I was a customer of, that sells pro audio gear. They're called West Lake Pro, we're in Universal City, and my wife built their e-commerce platform, and that's kind of what I oversee. The company's growing, and my interest in being connected to the WordPress community is also growing.
Adam: Why didn't your wife come?
Peter: She's in Toronto at the moment. She's actually planning on coming to WordPress LA.
Adam: That makes sense. She knows how to design sites …
Peter: Also, we have a five-year-old. That creates it's own set of issues.
Adam: Actually, people have brought kids. I almost brought mine.
Peter: Really?
Adam: Yeah. It depends on the age and what the needs are. Babies are welcome, of course. If you need to be there, you need to be there. We had someone at WordCamp LA last year … was it last year? Maybe it was two years ago, that was about nine. He was a coder. The kid was brilliant. He was a very smart kid. He was welcome. He came to the developer day, beginner day, developer day, he'd do his stuff. CSS. My old joke was it was like his first language, it's kind of crazy. PHP close second.
Peter: Mine will be six by the time of the LA camp, and would probably be a great assistant.
Adam: Yeah. It'd be interesting. My thirteen-and-a-half-year-old wanted to come. He's been listening to my podcast, this show. He's been binging, lately, on it. He realized WordPress is as old as him, and he's like, “Can I come?” And I'm like, I want to encourage that and have an in-house developer for myself, literally, but this WordCamp … I didn't feel there was enough beginner level topics and talks that would help him get a grasp on anything. I think, for kids, you really want to have a specific beginner day, one of those kind of things, so LA may very well have that, as well, but six might be on the younger age of things.
Peter: She actually might think it's kind of boring.
Adam: It's very possible. You say why you didn't come for a few years. What's your goals, now, with WordPress? Just to learn more core? Besides the community, are you planning on doing more dev work yourself?
Peter: I am. I'm actually considering, with my wife, of starting an agency. In my job at West Lake we've recently gotten into inbound marketing. I'm also kind of interest in this open source inbound marketing platform called Mautic, which looks really interesting. We're really interested in started a WordPress agency, essentially.
Adam: That's awesome. If someone said to you, now you've been here once, and you're going to go to a second one eight weeks later, if someone said, “Hey should I go to WordCamp?” What would you say about that?
Peter: I would, unequivocably, I'll even create a new word to say it, but absolutely, yes.
Adam: For what purpose?
Peter: A number of purposes. First of all, the content, especially yesterday, was awesome. It was really at a level that, at least for me, was just really helpful and educational. Probably even the larger reason is the community. It's just an incredible community. It's a very diverse community. Age wise, gender wise, race wise.
Adam: It's very open. I'm trying to figure out how I want to ask you this next question. You have the experience from 2008-2009, you work at an agency, you want to start your own agency. Do you feel that the topics, the sessions from yesterday and today, this is day two, and I waited for the second day to interview somebody, covered the bases of the gambit of levels and knowledge base?
Peter: Yeah. I really do. Obviously I can only pick one at a time, but the ones that I picked I felt like I made good choices and I got a lot of value. I really enjoyed yours, by the way.
Adam: Thank you very much. Which one from yesterday, from Saturday, which was your favorite, or what did you gain … What's a takeaway, actually. You don't have to pick a favorite, but what's a takeaway that you've learned that you want to go implement?
Peter: I attended two different sessions on design, and just really … a lot of takeaway. Michelle Schulp, who is very articulate about describing her craft, really gave me a lot more insight into UXUI. That is something that I'm very much involved in in the company I'm in right now. We have a website that started out, I think, with a very solid vision, and then the CEO and the president, “Hey, we need this on the home page, we need this on the home page,” and we ended up with – and I can say this because we've come to realize it's true – but we ended up with a mess.
Adam: Yeah. It happens. The company I do work some day work for social media marketing, that website's not WordPress. It's run by ASP on the back end, and the front end is just a mess, because they keep adding stuff, for the past, literally, twelve years. Whatever 2002 was called, they want everything back, is my joke. Unfortunately it's not my job to go fix it, at all. It's a mess. All right. Last question here, I think it's the last question. So we got you audience, how, why, goals, moving forward. Here's a question for you, not to be so focused on, but you came to my podcasting talk today. Why?
Peter: In the last few months I've been really fascinated with podcasts. I think it's a really growing medium. As you said during the presentation, that you listen to podcasting as opposed to radio, which is basically what I've done now, too. I listen to it in the car, exclusively. I've been fascinated by it. Walking into the session today I really didn't have in my mind that I want to start a podcast, but just find the platform fascinating, and walked out thinking, “Yeah, maybe I do want to start a podcast.”
Adam: That's what I want to hear. Awesome. It's interesting. Podcasting, like we're doing right now, recording this, it's just a different medium to share information. The mission of WordPress is Democratize Publishing, but not everybody can read or has accessibility to read, versus iPhones or any mobile device that has the audio built into it. It's just a different way, so I definitely see growth WordPressing. The numbers … WordPressing? I mean podcasting. The numbers are clear. You have millions upon millions more blogs than podcasts.
Peter: And you talked about podcast could be a video or could be audio. To me the really engaging podcasts are really strictly audio.
Adam: I think so, too. Some people disagree with me. The definition's there, and it can be either/or, but since it started as audio only … Not that I need to be so caught up on that aspect of it, I just feel like that works for me, for one. That's fine, but I definitely think there's more that can be learned and garnered and captured with the audio only, without having to visually see something. It's up to you to decide if it's a story, if it's an experience, if it's describing something, or even learning via audio versus the visual aspect. You can do something else. To my mind that is a positive.
Peter: It's incredible. It kind of flies in the face of virtual reality, ever more realistic –
Adam: It goes back to the days … My dad's eighty-five years old. He grew up without TV. They had radio shows. It goes back to that. Look what happened. Podcasting's big again because of serial, because of NPR. That's been a big explosion this last year and a half, because of those shows.
Peter: There was a beautiful thing about what your father listened to, and the fact that he could paint the picture himself.
Adam: I want to thank you for being here. Where can people reach out if they want to follow you, see the designs or anything you're going to do in the future, where can they find you online?
Peter: Online @silvertone is my Twitter handle. Peter Malick Facebook, LinkedIn, you can find me.
Adam: Thanks so much for being here, thanks for taking the time. Welcome to the WordPress community. We're looking forward to seeing you in Los Angeles.
Peter: You will see me in Los Angeles.
Adam: Awesome. See you there.
Thanks again to Peter for doing that. I really do appreciate his time. It was funny. We actually spoke another half hour, forty-five minutes afterwards. He is really cool. He's a musician. He's been around the industry of music for a long time. I hadn't Googled him before the interview. He actually asked me if I had, I'm like, “No. Why? Should I?” The name sounded familiar. He's been doing some amazing work in the music industry for a long time. So you can check him out, and there'll be links in the show notes to how to find him, et cetera.
Moving right along, segment three, Tip and Tool of the Week. This week I want to share a website. It's called … it's over at URAFI, the letters U, the letter R, the letter A F I, as in Frank and Igloo dot com (URAFI.com) It stands for, “You are a fantastic individual.” It's a little site that Lauren Nason put up, and he talked about over at the meetup a few weeks back in Orange County, actually. It's funny. The key here is … I just want to share it to you, it's kind of funny. You are a fantastic individual, or you are a something else individual. The tagline is, “Want to make your friends happy or just annoy people? Choose to send three days of motivational or demotivational text messages today.” I think it's working now. I did it as a test. I think it's … It's $1.99. He actually has it working. And $4.99. Motivation is $1.99 for the month, daily texts. Demotivation is $4.99, which is awesome. The person can opt out by texting back a certain word that you have to look up to say on the radio to keep the show clean. Check that out. It's over at URAFI.com. That is the letters URAFI.com. Just fun, funny. Maybe I'll do it, maybe I won't. I actually have it running for motivation. I don't need any demotivation, that's for sure. Check that out.
As always, go out this week, do some awesome things with WordPress. If you have any questions use the Speak Pipe functionality of the website or email me at adam@kitchensinkwp.com. Thanks again, talk to you next week. Bye bye.
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