fidzu : WordPress

[00:00:19] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, what goes into organizing a flagship WordCamp.

If you'd like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.

If you have a topic that you'd like us to feature on the podcast, I'm keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.

So on the podcast today we have Karla Campos. Karla has been involved in the WordPress community for over 10 years. Starting out in Miami, and taking part in meetups and word camps before stepping into larger organizational roles. With a background in media and marketing, Karla brings plenty of experience in both web and events to the world of WordPress.

Karla joins us today as a lead organizer for the upcoming WordCamp US 2025, which will take place in Portland at the end of August. Remarkably, this is her first flagship WordCamp, and she's organizing before ever attending.

We discuss what motivated Karla to take on this major responsibility, how she balances the volunteer work with her professional life, and the challenges, expected and unexpected, along the way.

We discuss the organization of such a huge event from working with a professional production company to handling the logistics, communications, accessibility requests, visas, and more, for a thousand plus attendees. Karla shares how the community side of the event is managed, the late night worries, and what it really takes, both in time and personal commitment, to make a WordCamp US happen, especially as a volunteer.

She also highlights some of the initiatives for this year's event, renewed efforts to welcome students and first time attendees, including student ticket pricing and the WP Trail Buddies Program to help newcomers feel at home. She also teases the introduction of a hackathon style contributor today, and new remote collaboration options.

If you've ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of a WordCamp US, how it's organized, how volunteers are supported, and what motivates people like Karla to invest their own time and resources, this episode is for you.

If you're interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you'll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you Karla Campos.

I am joined on the podcast by Karla Campos. Hello, Karla.

[00:03:21] Karla Campos: Hello. How are you, Nathan?

[00:03:23] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, good thank you. Very nice for you to join us today. I really appreciate it. Karla's here today, we're going to talk about WordCamp US, which is happening in Portland. Actually, I was going to say later this month, almost later this month. We're recording it right at the very, very end July, 2025. It's taking place toward the end of August, 2025. So it's pretty soon.

But before we get into that, Karla, will you just give us your little potted bio. Tell us who you are, what you do in the WordPress space, and maybe very quickly just tell us how the heck you came to be organising a WordCamp, one of these flagship WordCamps.

[00:03:56] Karla Campos: I always like to say that my involvement in projects sometimes comes about serendipitously. Just kind of like, hey, look, I saw that on the internet, it looked interesting, and I decided to join.

I actually have about more than 10 years with the WordPress community in Miami. When I first moved to Florida, I started going to meetup groups and then I met the WordPress Miami organisers and started really getting involved with them.

My ex-colleague and coworker, her name was Jackie Jimenez, she unfortunately passed away, but we had a lot of great moments building things together in the WordPress Miami community. And when I saw the announcement online, I said, you know, she would've loved to do this with me. Let me check it out. And then that's how I kind of just decided to join the organizer group.

So I've been with WordPress for over 10 years. I've been working in marketing. I used to work for Telemundo here in the Florida area. I used to work for iHeartRadio. So I have a lot of the media marketing background as well as the working on websites and copy. So I've been around for a while, just I'm more of like a quiet, in the background type of person.

[00:05:09] Nathan Wrigley: And have you attended any of these flagship, so the flagship ones are obviously WordCamp Asia, WordCamp Europe, WordCamp US. Have you attended any of those flagship ones in the past?

[00:05:18] Karla Campos: Is it odd that this is my first flagship and I'm organising it?

[00:05:21] Nathan Wrigley: I think it's great.

[00:05:22] Karla Campos: It feels almost surreal.

[00:05:23] Nathan Wrigley: So just before we hit record, you said that, I don't know, something like a month ago, you caught wind of the fact that WordCamp US still needed some volunteers. Have I got that about right? It's about a month ago that you became involved in the organisation of the upcoming event.

[00:05:38] Karla Campos: I would say May, I think May. You know, the dates are all come together. We don't even know what month it is. Because we're working on it so much in the backend. So I would say around May, when I first saw the, or when I got pulled into the organiser group.

[00:05:53] Nathan Wrigley: Since then, has it kind of taken over your life? I don't mean that to sort of sound disparaging, but has it kind of crept in into all the different parts of your life? So you've basically got no free time left anymore.

[00:06:04] Karla Campos: It has because you'd think, okay, you know, even because we do have a production team that's helping organise the event to make sure it's properly handled for all the attendees, because we do expect around a thousand, it's always been that amount for a flagship.

So we have a production company working on the backend helping us with the production to make sure everything is smooth. But still, with that going on, I still feel like at 2:00 AM I'm thinking WordCamp US, WordCamp US. I know there's something I have to do. So yeah.

[00:06:34] Nathan Wrigley: Let's split out what the production company do first of all. So I genuinely don't know what that even means. So, a production company, I'm guessing you offload something, all the tasks that you can to them. I'm guessing they're a commercial entity and they get paid to fulfill whatever contractual obligations that you've got. What is it that they handle? And then we'll get into what the community side of things, the team of community, volunteers, and so on are doing.

[00:06:59] Karla Campos: So the production team is making sure that the venue and everything that happens at the venue is organised. So from some of the room logistics, so more on the venue side, that they're handling that part to make sure that we can handle everything else that comes with organising, including all the planning around contributor day, showcase day, the photographers. So that's our side, and then their side, the production team, is more of venue logistics.

[00:07:27] Nathan Wrigley: And so do they handle things like, oh, I don't know, the building of the sponsor booths and things like that? Because when you attend these events, there's a very, very professional feel to them. So it's not like you just show up and, you know, it's kind of thrown together at the last minute. It really does feel, when you actually stop and think about it, you have a great sense of, gosh, there's months, possibly years of organising that's gone on in the background. Is it that kind of thing? You know, making sure that essentially when you walk in, everything looks right, everything that you can see, they do.

[00:07:57] Karla Campos: Yes. And then Megan Marcel, which is my co-lead organiser, she's heading that part. So she's managing that production company to make sure the venue and all the booths are on point, that they look like what they cost. Because, you know, those booths and everything that the sponsors spend, it's not cheap things. They're very luxurious. Sometimes more than others. But yeah, so she's making sure that that's covered with the production team. That it looks a hundred percent what the sponsors expect.

[00:08:25] Nathan Wrigley: And, okay then, let's flip to the more community side. So everything that is not part of the production team's remit. What are some of the tasks that you are finding yourself worrying about at 2:00 AM in the morning?

[00:08:36] Karla Campos: Actually just making sure the communications, and all the attendees are getting service. So I am the lead organiser in charge of communications and marketing, and I have other team leaders under me, like Caroline Harrison, who is the team lead for the attendee communications. So we're getting a lot of requests when it comes to accessibility, food that they have allergies or that they need visas.

A lot of traffic, of course, right now, I told you we had about 730 attendees already registered, so that email traffic is coming into our teams. So I'm just like, I saw an email and I know my team handled it, and I know they're prompt but, you know, I wake up at 2:00 AM. Did I answer that email? Was that a nightmare? Did I miss something?

That's how it's been in my life, you know, like I'm having these nightmares that I didn't do something, but I did, because I'm a very responsible individual. But it just feels like that. It's become so intertwined in my life that I'm having nightmares that I didn't do a task.

[00:09:33] Nathan Wrigley: When you get involved in the WordPress community, there's obviously so many bits and pieces that you can get involved in, but very many of them don't really, at the beginning, at least anyway of community involvement, don't necessarily have crunch points in time. Obviously, as you get more into the community, there might be moments. You might be, I don't know, a release lead or something like that, in which case there will be a date in the calendar where things have got to be all tied off.

But mostly, there's never that calendar moment where everything's got to be finished. But you very, very much are faced with a ticking clock, aren't you? Because come the date that the first people are arriving, the attendees are arriving, and presumably, before that the production team need to get in, and set up all the sponsor booths and make sure all of that's taken care of and what have you.

That's a curious thing. So the stress, I guess, does pile up a little bit. And it would behoove all of us who attend events like this, just to pause for a moment and remember that it is done by a bunch of volunteers who have this ticking time bomb, if you know what I mean, in the back, where everything's got to be finished by a certain date. And so I would just like to express my gratitude for the fact that you've stepped up basically and tried to fulfill that role. Appreciate it.

[00:10:40] Karla Campos: Thank you. I appreciate the nice kind words, because it's been a little bit hectic and, you know, it's good to hear that people appreciate your work.

[00:10:48] Nathan Wrigley: Have you actually had a chance to go around the building yet? I know we discussed this prior to hitting record, but is this more of a kind of, you'll be showing up the first time in the same way that everybody else will, or have you managed to sort of walk the floorboards as it were?

[00:11:00] Karla Campos: Like I mentioned earlier, but we weren't live, I've seen personally the venue in virtual tours and et cetera, but I'm coming to the Oregon area a week before. So I'll be there earlier to see the venue. Go through the walkthroughs and do what the team does earlier, so that everything's on point. But from what I've seen, everything's going great.

[00:11:22] Nathan Wrigley: Do you get any sort of remuneration for any of the work that you do? So by remuneration, I'm specifically talking about finance. Does anything get offset? So for example, if you are based in Florida, presumably you're going to be hopping on a plane, and there'll be the food that you've got to eat during the time that you're there, and the accommodation, the hotels and so on. Does somebody at the level of volunteering that you have nominated yourself for, does any of that get offset, or is this completely voluntary, where you've got to dig into your pocket for every single expense?

[00:11:50] Karla Campos: This is voluntary. So yeah, I'm just putting in from my end to support the community. So if ever you are planning on joining something like the WordCamp organisation groups, it usually is a volunteer thing. There are some scholarships but that's, you have to apply for and it's very competitive. So I don't think everyone gets one. But yeah, no, everything that I'm putting in personally is through my own finances.

[00:12:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, again, obviously I gave you some thanks a moment ago and I'm about to do it again. Thank you for that commitment as well, because it's not nothing. You know, going to Portland on an airplane from where you are, you know, it's all the way across the country. It's not a cheap place to reside in. Accommodation in and around the venue is probably at a premium, you know, it's summertime, everything's quite expensive around there. So it's not inconsiderable, and there is an impact to that. So again, once again, thank you for taking the time, and also allocating the funds to make that possible. Obviously, events like this cannot happen without people like you doing it.

[00:12:51] Karla Campos: Yes. And I think they must be done. You know, sometimes we have to make sacrifices to bring together something that brings people together around WordPress, which powers people's businesses, their livelihoods. So, you know, I don't mind putting in when I know that I make an impact in a community and helping those people with their livelihoods.

[00:13:12] Nathan Wrigley: Now you said that this all began for you in May, and we could get into what it was that exactly prompted you to do that. It sounds like somebody kind of sent something in your direction, which you responded to. So what have we had May, June, July, basically, you've been into this for a couple of months.

Any intuitions now of regret? That's probably not something that we want to get into too much, but do you know what I mean? If you could rewind the clock to, let's say April during 2025, did you get into this with your eyes wide open, or has it ended up being much more of a task than you imagined? What I'm basically trying to ask is, are there any bits of this that you think, gosh, I didn't really anticipate that was going to be involved? This is way more than I was imagining biting off.

[00:13:54] Karla Campos: Yeah, the time required to do all the work that needs to be done, and I'm a confident person, so I went in this, I have experience organising events for Telemundo, big concerts of 50,000 people plus. So I went in confident thinking, I got this. But as I got more into it, I just started to notice, okay, well, this is taking a lot of my time that I wasn't prepared for.

But I've adapted and I'm good now. It's been a rollercoaster ride, but it's fun for me because I'm that type of person who enjoys the challenge.

Yeah, it's been fun, it's been unexpected for sure. So we've had ups and downs, but we're getting through it, you know, and that's the fun of a rollercoaster ride, so yeah.

[00:14:31] Nathan Wrigley: What are some of the things that you didn't anticipate? Obviously, you said it's ended up being more time, so yeah, more time has been required of you. But what beyond that? What are some of the things that you didn't anticipate that you would need to do, that you have in fact ended up doing?

[00:14:44] Karla Campos: I think all the time spent talking to people, it's been really crazy. So I think I just didn't anticipate the timing. So I think I originally volunteered for about 10 hours per week. Leading up to the event I think, a week before the event we're supposed, or a month before the event, we're supposed to be putting more in time, but this feels like a full-time job.

Oh my gosh, you know, like I just didn't anticipate for that. So it's been kind of, like we talked about before, merging with my normal life where I'm just like, oh wait, my to-do list for my regular projects, and my family and everything is now part of WordCamp, if that makes sense.

[00:15:19] Nathan Wrigley: So during the onboarding process that you've had over the last couple of months, how have you learnt what you needed to know? Because this event, I mean, it can't have been thrown together in the last couple of months. Presumably you came along and joined at some point where many things had been set in motion. But how did you acquire the knowledge that you needed to do the work that you are now doing? Who taught you all of this and so on?

[00:15:43] Karla Campos: Well, we do get the last year's folder with all the information. So it came about from a lot of reading, asking past team members. So we do have some people who were part of the organizing team last year. Gail Wallace, one of our co-leads, she's doing contributor day, she's doing photography, she's also helping with the lead organising. So she was very helpful in just kind of letting us know about the previous year.

We have mentors like Kevin Christiano and Aaron Campbell from hosting.com, who also worked with WordCamps in the past. And there are mentors who we can always contact on Slack. So we do a lot of work on Slack, and we can always message them back and forth with any information any, hey, we need help with this. They're always there to just say, hey, this would be a better practice from our experience last year. So we do have mentors there that help us, and that's been a big relief.

[00:16:37] Nathan Wrigley: How much time do you imagine, if I was to ask you on a, let's go for a weekly basis. At the moment, so we're three-ish weeks away from the event, something like that, how much time are you spending during the previous week? So the last seven days, how many hours do you think you've clocked up working towards this event?

[00:16:53] Karla Campos: At least, I would say 30 hours.

[00:16:55] Nathan Wrigley: Wow, okay. And so that then presumably has had a material impact upon the regular work that you do. Now, either you are just superhuman and can add 30 hours into your working week with no perceived, you know, there's just, that's fine. I can just add 30 hours in. Most of us, including myself, could not do that. I would have to kind of offset one thing with the other. Have you done that? Has it had an impact on the business, the work that you normally do? Have you had to sort of downgrade the amount of time you've been spending recently on that kind of work?

[00:17:22] Karla Campos: Not on my business, more on my free time, so I'm not getting out this summer to the pool as I would have last year. But luckily, we're having a super heat wave in Florida, so it's too hot outside anyway.

[00:17:33] Nathan Wrigley: It's like it's been planned, yeah.

[00:17:35] Karla Campos: It's been planned. The universe is putting a heat wave out there, so now I can't outside in the pool, but I would probably still take my devices out there.

[00:17:42] Nathan Wrigley: Has the team had any concerns around attendee numbers? Because I remember I went to this event last year, and I actually don't know what the numbers are, but I'm going to guess it was in the region of, I don't know, 1,300 to 1,500, something like that, attendees.

There's obviously been a lot of controversy in the WordPress space since that event. I wondered if there has been some anxiety? I have a recollection that the event, the planning of the event probably would've been happening earlier than it did for this event.

So I'm just wondering if you could speak to that, whether or not the team itself are happy with the numbers that you've got so far? And whether or not things are kind of late in the planning, let's put it that way. Do you feel that it's all being put together in a rushed way?

[00:18:23] Karla Campos: No, I think we're on track. I mean, we expected the event to be smaller this year because there have been discussions around different things that are happening in just the space, like traveling restrictions, people being scared to fly to the US, different things that we knew it was going to make the numbers less.

But right now we're up to 730 registered attendees. So we are planning for a thousand attendees. That's our goal. Hopefully more. But yeah, we expected that it was going to be a little bit less than last year for the various reasons, including the travel restrictions and things that people do not want to come to the US for.

But, Portland is ultimately a very friendly place and I think our concern is that everyone is safe and happy at the event. So I think we're doing a very good job with that right now.

[00:19:11] Nathan Wrigley: I guess also there's maybe, the fact that an event like this has happened in the previous year at the exact same venue. There's maybe a little bit that would be squandered there, if you know what I mean?

So the idea that you'd get a similar number of the exact same people, plus others, coming back to the same venue. I know for me at least anyway, it is quite nice to have the opportunity to go to different places. I'm going to be in attendance, so it hasn't put me off. I'm still going to be there. But I think some people do like the fact that, you know, it's in Portland one year and it's in, I don't know, Texas or California or whatever it may be in different years.

So maybe that kind of speaks into it a little bit as well. But yeah, the whole thing around traveling to the US, plus the obvious problems that we've had in the WordPress space around the community and so on. And then maybe this third piece of it being in the same venue and in the same location, maybe all of those conspire to not make it as big as last year. But still, a thousand, which seems to be the target number, is pretty credible.

Do you anticipate getting to a thousand? Is the trajectory at the moment, if you were to map that forward, do you think you'll actually manage that? Despite the fact that it's an aspirational target? Are you fairly confident you'll get there?

[00:20:14] Karla Campos: Yeah, I'm confident. But I told you earlier, I'm a confident person, I'm always thinking positive. And we do have a lot of student initiatives, because we want to bring more people into the WordPress community, more students that perhaps haven't even had the opportunity to experience WordPress, and the community, and how that can help them build their career.

So, our topic is sort of like the future of WordPress. And we're doing a lot of student initiatives so that, you know, everybody gets a little bit of that WordPress community feel and that would, there's a lot of students very interested, so I think we can reach the number.

[00:20:48] Nathan Wrigley: I certainly hope so. I mean, when you say students, I'm presuming from that, that you mean younger people by that as well. So not just people that are in education, but really aiming that target at young people in education.

It always struck me when you go to these events that the demographic definitely skews older. I don't mean, you know, particularly old, but you don't tend to find a bunch of 18 to 20 year olds wandering around in large proportion.

It seems to me, it's definitely in the late twenties, early thirties, forties, fifties and and upwards. So that's been a definite charge that you've had then has it, to try and get younger people? Have I got that right? When you said student, did you mean younger people?

[00:21:29] Karla Campos: Well, we are working with colleges because they're very interested in how AI and WordPress are evolving, and everything that's going around that. And through our event, the teachers that work at the colleges are very excited to connect the students with the future of the web and whatever's happening with web development and AI.

They're really interested in sending the students there because even though they're educators, they're not the innovators. So they want to come to WordCamp to connect with those innovators, including Google. Google's liaison of search, Danny Sullivan, that was amazing to the students. They wanted to meet people in charge of the tech industry and connect there. So I'm talking about those students, yeah, the students that are in the tech industry that want to connect with the industry leaders.

[00:22:17] Nathan Wrigley: I think things work slightly differently over here in the UK, but I know that in the US there's this sort of concept of college credits, where you do a certain thing and it can count towards part of your educational program. You know, you can tick some boxes and it will get you to jump over some hurdles.

Do you know if an event like WordCamp, in this case WordCamp US, do you know if an event like that can count? And does that in some way then kind of make it slightly easier to sell a WordPress event into that student marketplace, if you like?

[00:22:47] Karla Campos: It can, depending on the teachers. Some of the universities and colleges already have their structured standards on how credits work. But if we're working with the teachers, sometimes they have summer school projects that they get extra credit, that helps their grades. So we can tie that in with that.

We're welcome to working with any teacher who wants to help their students grow their career and willing to give them extra credit and opportunities. So it depends on the college and the teacher and what already they have established.

[00:23:17] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, like I said, we don't kind of operate that system, certainly for WordCamp US, I don't think that would particularly count. But I know that those kind of systems exist.

Just pivoting to you a little bit and the work that you did in the past. Obviously it sounds like you've got a heritage in being involved in sizable events, credible events in the tech space, and perhaps other spaces as well.

What do you make of this event? How do you sort of see it? Do you see it as a sort of professional tech event, something that you may have attended on behalf of organisations that you were working for before? Or is this much more of a kind of community event?

I can't really sum up the exact target of what I'm trying to say there, but I'm just really after a feel of what you make of the event in terms of whether it's more, I don't know, more friendly, a little bit less business orientated, and perhaps skewing more to community, that kind of thing.

[00:24:05] Karla Campos: I think it's a little bit of both. It is a friendlier atmosphere from the different tech events that I've been involved in that feel more serious. Because when you go to a WordCamp, you automatically feel that it's a little friendlier, a little bit less corporate.

Yes, everyone is very skilled. They're very like awesome in their profession, but they're also very down to earth and just willing to, hey, share a tidbit here, a tip here. I've even seen people help other people with their websites live at the events. Hey, look, I'm having a problem with my website. It's not doing something on mobile. It's not responding the way I want it to. It's not responsive. Can you help me? And someone will stop and say, yeah, let's sit down here in this corner. Let's go to that room, and let me look at it and help you a little bit. And it's something that I don't see at other conferences where people have this community feel. So I've always admired that about WordCamps.

[00:24:56] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it's really hard to encapsulate, isn't it? What that thing is. But that thing is a thing. And what I mean by that is there is some quality of community spirit that definitely hasn't existed at any event that I've been to outside of the WordPress space. It feels a little bit more like, heads down, you're there for work, you must concentrate entirely on work, and maybe you'll attend some kind of, I don't know, after party or something like that. But again, the entire purpose of that will be business, business as usual.

And there is much more of sense of camaraderie. And really, I suppose if somebody is listening to this and is kind of on the fence about these events, definitely I would draw your attention to that fact. And although if you are perhaps slightly more on the introverted side, it doesn't necessarily make it a hundred percent easier to attend, and this feeling that you'll just suddenly be embraced by everybody in the hallway, it probably won't work that way. But there is definitely a more friendly atmosphere. There's a different, and dare I say it, vibe going on, which I have always really appreciated. It definitely feels less corporate, more friendly. There's more of an opportunity to make friendships, for want of a better way of describing it.

[00:26:07] Karla Campos: Yes. And also, I'm sure you know Michelle Frechette.

[00:26:10] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, yeah.

[00:26:11] Karla Campos: I think everyone knows Michelle. She's organising something called WP Trail Buddies. So she's actually connecting veteran WordCamp attendees with new attendees, so that they can have like a friend, a buddy at the WordCamp that they can do things with, so they don't feel alone and they feel welcome.

So that's a new thing, and that sounds, you know, if a person is coming to WordCamp for the first time, they can go that route, you know, they can actually have somebody there with them.

[00:26:37] Nathan Wrigley: I would draw everybody's attention, if you've never been to one of these flagship WordPress events before, there is something particularly good about this Portland one. And the thing that I enjoyed so much last year, I enjoyed the event, but the venue itself was so brilliant, so enormous. There was never this hint of falling over people. There was quite literally acres of space to mill around.

And so the hallway track felt very much, you know, you could take five minutes out and go and sit in the corner over there and get on with your own stuff, what have you. But this would be a really good one to attend. So I would definitely advise people, if you're on the fence and you kind of think, I maybe should go, I'm not entirely sure. Everything is geared up. We know what that place is like, the conference center is absolutely magnificent. So I would definitely urge people who are wavering, who aren't entirely sure to give it a go.

And I will put a link into the show notes for the initiative that Michelle Frechette is leading, the WP Trail Buddies. And if you've got concerns about showing up and just hanging out and feeling a little bit isolated, then Michelle will be able to introduce you to somebody who has been there, done that, for want of a better word. Again, another reason to have a little look.

And the tickets are really inexpensive. It's not nothing, but at the moment, I don't think there's going to be any change in this. But it's a flat hundred bucks. And, in all honesty, you'll probably eat more than a hundred dollars worth of food in the time that you're there. So the ticket price is just absurdly low.

[00:28:02] Karla Campos: Yes, and we do also have a student pricing of $25, if the students show ID, or proof that they're enrolled in school. So that's also like an amazing deal.

[00:28:12] Nathan Wrigley: Now, the events often have a bit of a formula to them. There'll be presentations, and they will run over a couple of days. So you'll pick various tracks and you can go and see this person, and then come out into the hallway and hang out in the hallway.

But then also there's this idea of contributor day. And in contributor day, typically you would select a table, that table will be aligned to some core part of the project. So it could be photography, it could be Core, it could be, I don't know, polyglots, something like that. And you would allocate your time and decide to work on that for the day.

I have a feeling that you are doing something a little bit different on contributor day this time around. Do you know about that? Do you want to speak about that?

[00:28:51] Karla Campos: We are, but it's a secret.

[00:28:53] Nathan Wrigley: Is it? Okay.

[00:28:54] Karla Campos: No, it's a hackathon, but Gail Wallace is going to speak more about that in the coming weeks. So we're just waiting for her to share all the information about what she's been working on with that.

But there is something new, which is collaborating remotely for the Testing Team. So that's fun. That hasn't been done before.

[00:29:14] Nathan Wrigley: So the Testing Team will be open to kind of like a, more of like a Zoom approach. So it won't just be people that are attending in the room. They'll be able to offer the opportunity for people to join live, but remotely. Yeah, that's really nice. That's a really nice idea.

The hackathon, I was lucky enough to go to a hackathon earlier this year. I attended CloudFest in Germany, in Rust in Germany. Obviously you are not able to reveal whether you know or otherwise what that will involve. For the people listening to this, I'll just give you some indication of what that might involve.

And a hackathon, rather than just showing up and deciding on the spur of the moment what it is that you're going to be involved with. A hackathon is more of a kind of project based thing, where you come to the hackathon with a project that you would like to see finished in a certain way. So you might come and say, during the next day, we're going to try and do this thing, so we're going to move from here to here.

And in that way, everybody coalesces on the exact same purpose, and tries to push that thing over the line. And in the hackathons that I've been to, again, there's this sort of slightly tongue in cheek, fun, competitive edge as well, where at the end of the day, different people from the different teams sort of stand up and say exactly what they did and how they did.

And then there's kind of like a voting, there's a panel of people who decide who the, and I'm doing air quotes, who the winner is. So, again, obviously I'm not going to try and get you to reveal any details, but that kind of component, if it is anything like that, that really does bring something new and a bit of fun, I think.

[00:30:40] Karla Campos: Yeah, I think people enjoy, when it's friendly competition on something that they're passionate about building, I think they enjoy that, like sports. So it's exciting.

[00:30:49] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's a good way of describing it, sporty, competitive edge kind of thing, isn't it? Just sort of rehashing a bit of a question I asked a minute ago though. Obviously, like I said, you've been involved in these kind of events before in different spheres. Is there anything that you think, if you were to rerun your time, and maybe you'll be involved in next year's WordCamp US, I don't know. Is there anything where you think, do you know what, I think we could try this, or we should jettison that? Obviously nobody's implying that you are going to be the decision maker in any of this, but are there any bits and pieces that you think, well, we should definitely try that, or we should definitely maybe lose that?

[00:31:23] Karla Campos: I think we've had so many ideas, and we were all just kind of thrown together as a new team. And there were so many ideas flying around that we just couldn't get to. So we're doing the best ones that we thought about, but like there were so many others that we could've included.

So I'm not sure if I'm going to be joining next year or not, I haven't planned that out yet. But I think we're going to at least have a discussion with the organisers about just kind of like looking back, hey, what did we like. Let's leave little notes for the next year's organising team so that they can, you know, they can know what to expect.

But now we have a roadmap together as a team. So I think it's fun. And we'll be way more prepared next year and add more fun stuff that we just didn't have time for. But we're all very creative, so you know how those discussions go when everybody's creative, throwing ideas. And it's like, all right, we have to pick just three because all of these are great but, you know, we're on a time constraint, so we just execute these.

So I think it's been fun all around. But yeah, just kind of getting all the ideas that we had together and executing them next year.

[00:32:23] Nathan Wrigley: I think it's kind of an important moment for these kind of events because they've been running largely on the same format for a really long time. And there's definitely, in events outside of the WordPress space, there definitely are some of these fun ideas kind of creeping in, making it a little bit more entertainment, if you know what I mean, at the same time as being educational and informative. And I think it would be interesting to sound some of those different organisations out. Maybe go to the different events like DrupalCon and things like that, and see how they do things differently. See how sponsorship works and so on and so forth.

Now, one question, which I think probably will be rounding off the episode, if that's all right with you, would be to ask you, when does your involvement with this end? And I don't mean, you know, that you might get involved next year. Because obviously I'm going to attend, and the minute the whole thing is finished, it's kind of more or less over for me. I may go back to the hotel or spend a few days in Portland having a look around or what have you. But for me, the event has kind of finished at that moment. For you, I'm guessing that's not the case. Do you have any anticipation of what it will involve in terms of collapsing the event down? At what point it will be considered to be finished by the team?

[00:33:28] Karla Campos: Well, physically we have to be out by a certain date and everything cleaned out. So I am planning to stay there a little bit longer to handle that with the rest of the team. But I think we should be done by the 31st. Everything should be cleared out, physically.

But then of course we're going to reunite and just kind of have a meeting and talk about the experience. And like we were talking about, what can we do better next year? And I think maybe, I think we're still going to be in talks at least two weeks after the event is over to kind of close that out as a team.

[00:33:59] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. So it definitely doesn't end on the day that it's going to end for me. So, yeah, there's another example of the amount that people like you are doing.

I would just draw attention to the fact that clearly this is not an event which is being organised entirely by you. There's obviously a huge team of people going on in the background. And it would be remiss of us not to thank all of them. Can't mention them all by name, but if you go to the website, I'm sure there'll be places where you can go and find out who is involved in the team.

Don't forget that if you want to get tickets and you're a student, you can pay just $25 for a, basically three day event. I mean, that's nuts. Or if you are not a student and you want to attend, then $100. And there are still, I think, some additional options that you can explore, perhaps sponsorship options and things like that, above and beyond that as well.

So, Karla, that's all the questions I've got. Is there anything that I've missed? Is there anything prior to recording to this you thought, ah, I must remember to say that, but didn't get a chance to say it?

[00:34:57] Karla Campos: I just want to say thank you everyone for even thinking of attending. It's going to be a great event. We have amazing speakers all about the future of WordPress and AI. How everything in technology is changing, what that means for your business now. Or if you have plans for a new business, what it means for you in your career. It's going to be just a great place to network with people in the field, and I'm extremely excited. So I hope you're excited just like I am. And I hope to see you guys at the WordCamp US 2025.

[00:35:26] Nathan Wrigley: So I should probably at this point mention that the links to anything that we've mentioned so far will be in the show notes. But if you do wish to find out more about it, head to us.wordcamp.org/2025. And as is usually the case, there's a whole bunch of links at the top of that website.

So for example, you can look at the schedule, so see who's speaking. You can look and dig into the location and about it. And obviously buying the tickets as well, that's all going to be there. So us.wordcamp.org/2025, the numbers.

There we go. Thank you very much for chatting to me today, Karla Campos. Really, really appreciate it. And very, very best of luck with the event. I hope to see you there.

[00:36:07] Karla Campos: Thank you, Nathan.

[00:00:19] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, how the Google Site Kit plugin is attempting to simplify their product offering, right inside of WordPress.

If you'd like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.

If you have a topic that you'd like us to feature on the podcast, I'm keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea. Featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.

So on the podcast today we have Mariya Moeva. Mariya has more than 15 years of experience in tech across search quality, developer advocacy, community building and outreach, and product management. Currently, she's the product lead for Site Kit, Google's official WordPress plugin.

She's presented at Word Camp Europe in Basel this year and joins us to talk about the journey from studying classical Japanese literature to fighting web spam at Google, and eventually shaping open source tools for the web.

Mariya talks about her passion for the open web, and how years of direct feedback from site owners shaped the vision for Site Kit. Making complex analytics accessible and actionable for everyone, from solo bloggers to agencies and hosting providers.

Site Kit has had impressive growth for a WordPress plugin, currently there are 5 million active installs and a monthly user base of 700,000.

We learn how Site Kit bundles core Google products like Search Console, Analytics, Page Speed Insights, AdSense into a simpler, curated WordPress dashboard, giving actionable insights without the need to trawl through multiple complex interfaces.

Mariya explains how the plugin is intentionally beginner friendly with features like role-based dashboard sharing, integration with WordPress' author and category systems, and some newer additions like Reader Revenue Manager to help site owners become more sustainable.

She shares Google's motivations for investing so much in WordPress and the open web, and how her team is committed to active support, trying to respond rapidly on forums and listening closely to feedback.

We discussed Site Kit's roadmap, from benchmarking and reporting features, to smarter, more personalized recommendations in the future.

If you've ever felt overwhelmed by analytics dashboards, or are looking for ways to make data more practical and valuable inside WordPress, this episode is for you.

If you're interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you'll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you Mariya Moeva.

I'm joined on the podcast by Mariya Moeva. Hello, Mariya. Nice to meet you.

[00:03:35] Mariya Moeva: Nice to be here.

[00:03:36] Nathan Wrigley: Mariya is doing a presentation at WordCamp Europe. That's where we are at the moment, and we're going to be talking about the bits and the pieces that she does around Site Kit, the work that she does for Google. Given that you are a Googler, and that we're going to be talking about a product that you have, will you just give us your bio? I've got it written here, you obviously put one on the WordCamp Europe website. But just roughly what is your place in WordPress and Google and Site Kit and all of that?

[00:04:05] Mariya Moeva: Yeah. I mean, I've had a very meandering path. When you would look back to what I studied, which was, you know, classical Japanese literature, all these poems about the moon and the cherry blossoms, who would've thought at that time that I would end up building open source plugins? But I did have a meandering path and I ended up here because, mostly because of passion for the open web, and for all kinds of weird websites that exist out there. I really love stumbling upon something great.

I started Google on the web spam team, actually looking into the Japanese spam market, because of this classical Japanese literature degree and the Japanese skills. And then after a couple years or so, I basically despaired of humanity because all you look at is spam every day. Bad sites, hacked sites, malicious pages. And I just wanted to do something that makes the web better rather than removing all the bad stuff.

And so I switched over to an advocacy role, and in that role I essentially was traveling, maybe attending 20, 30 conferences every year, talking to a lot of people about their needs, what they have to complain about Google, what requests they have. And I would collect all of this feedback, and then I would go back to the product teams and I would say, hey, this and this is something that people really want. And they would say, thank you for your feedback.

Essentially at one point I said, okay, we're going to build this thing, and that's why I switched into product role. And I was able to take all the feedback over the years, that we've gotten from developers and site owners, and to try to build something that makes sense for them. So that's how I ended up in the product role for building Site Kit.

And the idea from the very beginning was to make it beginner friendly and to make it from their perspective to match that feedback, rather than doing something that is like, here's your stuff from analytics, here's your stuff from Search Console, figure it out. That's how we ended up building this and it's been now five years. And it actually just a month ago entered the top 10 plugins. So clearly people find some value in it.

We have 700,000 people that use it every month. And overall it's currently at 5 million active installs, meaning that these sites are kind of pinging WordPress so they're alive and kicking. It's been very encouraging to see that what we're doing is helpful to people and we will keep going. There's a lot to do.

[00:06:29] Nathan Wrigley: I think it's kind of amazing because in the WordPress space, there are some of the, let's call them the heavy hitters. You know, the big plugins that we've all heard of, the Yoasts of this world that kind of thing. Jetpack, all those kind of things. This, honestly has gone under the radar a bit for me, and yet those numbers are truly huge. Four and a half to 5 million people over a span of five years is really rather incredible.

[00:06:54] Mariya Moeva: It grew very fast, yeah.

[00:06:55] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. And yet it's not one that, well, I guess most people are reaching out to plugins to solve a problem, often a business problem. So, you know, there's this idea of, I install this and there's an ROI on that. This is not really that, not really ROI, it's more site improvement. Okay, here's a site that needs things fixing on it. Here's some data about what can be fixed. And so maybe for that reason and that reason alone, it's flown under the radar for me because it doesn't have that commercial component to it.

[00:07:24] Mariya Moeva: Yeah, for sure. It's for free and it's not something that, yeah, sells features or has like a premium model and we don't market it so much. But I run a little survey in the product where people tell us where they heard from it, and a lot of the responses are either YouTube video, or like blog posts or word of mouth. So it seems to be spreading more that way.

[00:07:46] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, no kidding. I'll just say the URL out loud in case you're at a computer when you're listening to this. It's SiteKit, as one word, dot withgoogle.com. I don't know if that's the canonical URL, but that's where I ended up when I did a quick search for it. So sitekit.withgoogle.com. And over there you'll be able to download well, as it labels itself, Google's official WordPress plugin.

The first thing that surprises me is, a, Google's interest in WordPress. That is fascinating to me. I mean, obviously we all know, Google is this giant, this leviathan. Maybe you've got interest in other CMSs, maybe not. I don't really know. But I think that's curious. But obviously 43% of the web, kind of makes sense to partner with WordPress, doesn't it? To improve websites.

[00:08:31] Mariya Moeva: Yeah. I work with plenty of CMSs. I work with Wix, with Squarespace, and we essentially what I try to do and what my team tries to do, we are called the Ecosystem Team. So we want to bring the things that we think would be useful to site owners and businesses directly to where they are.

So if you are in your Wix dashboard, you should be able to see the things from Google that are useful. And same if you are in WordPress. And obviously WordPress is, orders of magnitude, a bigger footprint than any of the others. And also it has this special structure where everything is decentralised and people kind of mix and match. So that's why we went with the plugin model. And using the public APIs, we want to show what's possible.

Because all the data that we use is public data. There's no special Google feature that only the Google product gets, right? We are just combining it in interesting ways because I've spent so much time talking to people, like what they need. And so we just curate and combine in ways that are actually helping people to make decisions and to kind of clear the clutter.

Because when you go to analytics, it's like 50 reports and so many menus and it's like, where do I start? So we try to give a starting point in Site Kit. And we also try to help with other things like make people sustainable. One thing that we recently launched just a month ago is called Reader Revenue Manager. So you can put a little prompt on your site, which asks people to give you like $2 or whatever currency you are in, or even put like a subscription.

And so the idea is you don't have to have massive traffic in order to generate revenue from your content. If you have your hundred thousand loyal readers, they can help you be more sustainable. So we're looking at these kind of features, like what can we launch that is more for small and medium sites and would be helpful? And how can we make it as simple as possible? So that people don't kind of drop off during the setup because it's too complicated.

[00:10:33] Nathan Wrigley: Would it be fair to summarise the plugin's initial purpose as kind of binding a bunch of Google products, which otherwise you would have to go and navigate to elsewhere? So for example, I'm looking at the website now, Search Console, Analytics, Page Speed Insights, AdSense, Google Ads, and all of those kind of things. Typically we'd have to go and, you know, set up an account. I guess we'd have to do that with Site Kit anyway. But we'd have to go to the different URLs and do all of that.

The intention of this then is to bind that inside of the WordPress UI, so it's not just the person who's the admin of that account. You can open it up so that people who have the right permissions inside of WordPress, they can see, for example, Google Analytics data. And it gets presented on the backend of WordPress rather than having to go to these other URLs. Is that how it all began as a way of sort of surfacing Google product data inside the UI of WordPress?

[00:11:21] Mariya Moeva: Yeah, we wanted to bring the most important things directly to where people are, so they don't have to bother going to 15 places. And we wanted to drastically decrease and curate the information so that it's easy to understand, because when you have 15 dashboards in Analytics and 15 dashboards in Search Console, and then you have to figure out what to download and in which spreadsheet to merge and how to compare, then this is. Maybe if you have an agency taken care of, they can help you. But if you don't, which 70% of our users say that they're one person operation, so they're taking care of their business, and on top of that, the website. We wanted to make it simpler to understand how you're doing, and what you should do next with Google data.

[00:12:02] Nathan Wrigley: So it's a curated interface. So it's not, I mean, maybe you can pull in every single thing if you so wish. But the idea is you give a, I don't know, an easier to understand interface to, for example, Google Analytics.

That was always the thing for me in Google Analytics. I'm sure that if you have the time and the expertise, like you're an agency that deals with all of that, then all of that data is probably useful and credible. But for me, I just want to know some top level items. I don't need to dig into the weeds of everything.

And there was menus within menus, within menus, and I would get lost very quickly, and dispirited and essentially give up. So I guess this is an endeavor to get you what you need quickly inside the WordPress admin, so you don't have to be an expert.

[00:12:43] Mariya Moeva: Yeah. And then it gets more powerful when you are able to combine data from different products. So, for example, we have a feature called Search Funnel in the dashboard, which lets you, it combines data from Search Console on search impressions and search clicks, and then it combines data from Analytics on visitors on the site and conversions. So it kind of helps you map out the entire path, versus having to go over here, having to go over there, having to combine everything yourself. So when you combine things, then it gets also more powerful.

We have another feature which lets you combine data from AdSense and Analytics. So if you have AdSense on your site, you can then see which pages earn you the most revenue. So when you have that, suddenly you can see, okay, so I have now these pages here, what queries are they ranking for? How much time people spend on them? Can I expand my content in that direction? It helps you to be more focused in kind of the strategy that you have for your site.

[00:13:45] Nathan Wrigley: Is it just making, I mean, I say just, is it making API calls backwards and forwards to Google's Analytics, Search Console, whatever, and then displaying that information, or is it kind of keeping it inside the WordPress database?

[00:13:58] Mariya Moeva: We don't store anything, well, almost anything. Yeah, we wanted to keep the data as secure as possible, so we created this proxy service, which kind of helps to exchange the credentials. So the person can authenticate with their Google account, and then from there, the data is pulled via API, and we cache the dashboard for one hour. After that we refreshed authentication token. From the data itself, nothing is stored.

[00:14:23] Nathan Wrigley: So it's just authentication information really that's stored. Well, that's kind of a given, I suppose. Otherwise you'll be logging in every two minutes.

[00:14:29] Mariya Moeva: Right. So that's the model that we have because we really wanted people to be able to access this data, but also to keep it secure. And because of how the WordPress database is, we didn't feel like we could save it there.

[00:14:41] Nathan Wrigley: It sounds from what you've just said, it's as if it's combining things from a variety of different services, kind of linking them up in a structured way so that somebody who's not particularly experienced can make connections between, I don't know, ads and analytics. The spend on the ads and the analytics, you know, the ROI if you like.

Does it do things uniquely? Is there something you can get inside of Site Kit which you could not get out of the individual products if you went there? Or is it just more of a, well, we've done the hard work for you, we've mapped these things together so you don't have to think about it?

[00:15:10] Mariya Moeva: The one thing that it does that I'm super excited about, and we'll build on that, but we have the fundamental of it now, is it actually creates data for you. Because in contrast to Search Console or Analytics or all these other, which are kind of Google hosted, they can only tell you like a long help center article, go there on your site, then click this, then paste this code, right? They cannot help you with this, whereas Site Kit is on the website.

So if you agree, which we don't install anything without people's consent, like they have to activate the feature, but if you agree, then we can do things on your behalf. So for example, we can track every time someone clicks the signup button and we can generate an analytics event for you, even if that plugin normally doesn't send analytics events. And that way, suddenly you have your conversion data available.

So very often people look to the top of the funnel, like how many people came to my site? But they don't look to what these people did beyond kind of, oh, they stayed two minutes. So what does this mean? You want to see, did they buy the thing? Did they sign up for the thing, or subscribe or whatever it is? And we help create this data because we have this unique access to the source code of the site.

So we create, for example, on leads generation or purchases. We also, every time that a specific page is viewed, we will generate an event about the author of the page. So then we can aggregate the data, which authors bring in the most page views. Let's say you have like a site with five, six, whatever authors. Or which categories are bringing in the most engagement and these kind of things.

[00:16:52] Nathan Wrigley: So it really does get very WordPressy. It's not just to do with the Google side of things. It is mapping information from Google, so categories, author profiles, that kind of thing, and mapping them into the analytics that you get. Okay, that's interesting. So it's a two-way process, not just a one-way process.

[00:17:09] Mariya Moeva: Yeah. It's very much integrated with WordPress. We have also a lot of other features, like for example, that kind of stretch into other parts of the website. So this Reader Revenue Manager that I mentioned before with the prompts that you can put on your pages. You can go to the individual post and for every post there's like a little piece of control UI that we've added there in the compose screen, where you can say, this is excluded from this prompt, or, you know, you can control from there.

So we try to integrate where it makes sense, like where the person would want to take this action. And again, because it's on the website, we can kind of spread out beyond just this one dashboard.

[00:17:48] Nathan Wrigley: And would I, as a site admin, would I be able to assign permissions to different user roles within WordPress? So for example, an editor, or a certain user profile, may be able to see a subset of data. You know, for example, I don't know, you are involved in the spending on AdSense. But you, other user over there, you've got nothing to do with that. But you are into the analytics, so you can see that, and you over there you can see that. Is that possible?

[00:18:12] Mariya Moeva: We have something called dashboard sharing. So it has the same, like if you use Google Docs or anything like that, it has this little person with a plus in the corner, icon. And then from there, if you are the admin who set up this particular Google Service, who connected it to Site Kit, then you're able to say who should be able to see it. So you essentially grant view only access to, let's say all the editors, or all the contributors or whatever. And then you can choose which Google service's data they can see.

[00:18:44] Nathan Wrigley: So yes is the answer to that, yeah.

[00:18:46] Mariya Moeva: Yeah, yeah. So they don't have to set it up, I mean, they have to go through a very simplified setup, and then they basically get a kind of a screenshot. I mean it's, you can still click on things, but you can't change anything, so it's kind of a view-only dashboard.

[00:18:59] Nathan Wrigley: I'm kind of curious about the market that you pitch this to. So sell is the wrong word because it's a free plugin, but who you're pitching it at. So obviously if you've got that end user, the site owner. Maybe they've got a site and they've got a small business with a team. Maybe it's just them, so there's the whole permissions thing there.

But also I know that Google, there are whole agencies out there who just specialise in Google products, and analysing the data that comes out of Analytics. Can you do that as well as an agency? Could I set this up for my clients and have some, you know, I've got my agency dashboard and I want to give this client access to this website, and this website and this website, but not these other ones? Can it be deployed on a sort of agency basis like that?

[00:19:38] Mariya Moeva: You would still have to activate it for every individual site. So in that sense, there's a bunch of steps that you have to go through. But once it's activated, you can then share with any kind of client. And actually we have a lot of agencies that can install it for every site that they have.

Just today someone came and after he saw the demo, he was like, okay, I'm going to install it for all my clients. Because what we've heard is that it's exactly the level of information that a client would benefit from. And this means then that they pester the agency less. So we've literally heard people saying, you're saving me a lot of phone calls. So that's why agencies really like it.

And the next big feature request, which we're working on right now, is to generate like an email report out of that. So for those who don't even want to log into WordPress to see, there will be a possibility to get this in their inbox.

[00:20:30] Nathan Wrigley: So you could get it like a weekly summary, whatever it that wish to trigger. And, okay, so that could go anywhere really. And then your clients don't even need to phone you about that.

[00:20:41] Mariya Moeva: Yeah. So we are trying to really actively reach people where they are, even if that's their email inbox.

[00:20:49] Nathan Wrigley: And the other question I have is around your relationship with some of the bigger players, maybe hosting companies. Do you have this pre-installed on hosting cPanels and their, you know, whatever it is that they've got in their back end?

[00:21:02] Mariya Moeva: Yeah, we have quite a few hosting providers that pre-install it for their WordPress customers. The reason for this is that they see better lifetime value for those customers that have a good idea of how their site is doing. And yeah, Hostinger is one of those. cPanel. Elementor pre-installs it for all of their users. And they see very good feedback because again, it's super simple to set up and super easy to understand once you have it. So for them it's kind of like an extra feature that they can offer, extra value to their users for free.

[00:21:32] Nathan Wrigley: We know Google's a fabulous company, but you don't do things for nothing. So what's the return? How does it work in reverse? So we know that presumably there must be an exchange of data. What are we signing up for if we install Site Kit?

[00:21:47] Mariya Moeva: So, at least, I mean, Google is a huge company, right? There's hundreds of thousands of people working. So I can't speak for the whole of Google, but I can speak for the Ecosystem Team, which I'm part of, like the web ecosystem.

The main investment here, or the main goal for us is that the open web continues to thrive, because if people don't put content, interesting, relevant content on the open web, the search results are going to be very poor and that's not a good product.

So our idea is to support all the people who create content to make sure that they're found, like if you're a local business, that people can find you when they need stuff from that particular local business. And what we see is that, especially for smaller and medium sites, they really struggle, first with going online, and then with figuring out what they're supposed to do. And so a lot of them give up because in comparison to other platforms, it's a little bit of an upfront investment, right? Like you have to pay for hosting, you have to set up the site, you have to add content.

So we try to help people as much as we can to see the value that the open web brings to them, so that they can continue to create for the open web. So that's our hidden motivation. I think in that sense, we're very much aligned with the WordPress community because here everybody cares about the open web and for all kind of small, weird websites to continue flourishing and get their like 100 or 300 or 1,000 readers that they deserve.

So that's the motivation. I think because it includes other things like AdSense and AdWords, like people can set up a ads campaign directly from Site Kit in a very simplified flow, and the same thing for AdSense. Obviously some money exchanges hands, but this is relatively minor compared to the benefit that we think there is for the web in general.

[00:23:35] Nathan Wrigley: Google really does seem to have a very large presence at WordPress events. I mean, I don't know about the smaller ones, you know, the regional sort of city based events, but at the, what they call flagship events, so WordCamp Asia and WordCamp Europe and US, there's the whole sponsor area. And it's usual to see one of the larger booths being occupied by Google. And I wonder, is it Site Kit that you are talking about when you are here or is it other things as well?

But also it's curious to me that Google would be here in that presence, because those things are not cheap to maintain. So there must be somebody up in Google somewhere saying, okay, this is something we want to invest in. So is it Site Kit that you are basically at the booth talking about?

[00:24:19] Mariya Moeva: So me, yes, or people on my team. We have like a Site Kit section this year. There's also Google Trends. There's also some other people talking about user experience and on search. And this changes depending on which teams within Google want to reach out to the WordPress community.

But with Site Kit, we've been pretty consistent for the last six years. We are always part of the booth. But the kind of whole team, like the whole Google booth content has kind of changed over the years as well depending on who's coming.

[00:24:51] Nathan Wrigley: I know that a lot of work being done is surrounding performance and things like that, and a lot of the Google staff that are in the WordPress space seem to be focused on that kind of thing, talking about the new APIs that are shipping in the browsers and all of those kind of things.

Okay, so on the face of it, a fairly straightforward product to use. But I'm guessing the devil is in the detail. How do you go about supporting this? So for example, if I was to install it and to run into some problems, do you have like a, I don't know, a documentation area or do you have support, or chat or anything like that? Because I know that with the best will in the world, people are going to run into problems. How do people manage that kind of thing?

[00:25:27] Mariya Moeva: Yeah, this was something that I was super, I felt really strongly about based on my previous experience in the developer advocate world. Because very often I got feedback that it's super hard to reach Google. And it's also understandable given the scale of some of the products.

But when I started this project I insisted that we allocate resources for support. So we have two people full-time support. One of them is upstairs, the support lead. He knows the product inside and out. They're always on the forum, the plugin forum, support forum. And they answer usually within 24 hours. So everybody who has a question gets their question answered.

We've also created the very detailed additions. When you have Site Kit, you also get a few additions to the Site Health forum, so you can share that information with them and they see like detailed stuff about the website so they can help debug. And in many, many cases, I've seen people coming pretty angry, leave a one star review, then James or Adam who are support people, engage with them, and then it turns into a five star review because they feel like, okay, someone listened to me and helped me figure out what is going on.

We have real people answering questions relatively quickly. And they don't just go, of course they focus on the WordPress support forum, but they also check Reddit and other places where people like mentioned Site Kit, and they try to help and to direct them to the right place. So for Site Kit, we have very robust support.

Now, when it's an issue with a product, a Google product that is connected to Site Kit, so it's not a Site Kit problem, let's say you got some kind of strange message from AdSense about your account status changing. Then we would have to hand over to the AdSense account manager or support team that they have, because we don't know everything, like how AdSense makes decisions and stuff like that. But for anything Site Kit related, we are very fast to answer.

[00:27:22] Nathan Wrigley: That's good to hear because I think you're right. I think the perception with any giant company is that it kind of becomes a bit impersonal, and Google would be no exception. And having just a forum which never seems to get an answer, you drop something in, six months later, you go back and nobody's done anything in there except close the thread, kind of slightly annoying. But something like this. So 24 hours, roughly speaking, is the turnaround time.

[00:27:45] Mariya Moeva: Yeah. I mean, not on the weekend, but yeah.

[00:27:46] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Still, that's pretty amazing.

[00:27:47] Mariya Moeva: Yeah, yeah. We are very serious about this because, I mean, also the WordPress community is really strong, right? So you want to show that we care. We want to hear from people. A lot of bugs then also turn into feature requests and get prioritised to be developed. So, yeah, we really value when people come to complain. It's a good thing.

[00:28:03] Nathan Wrigley: Excellent. Okay, well, we won't open that as a goal, please send in your complaints. But nevertheless, it's nice that you take it seriously.

So it sounds like it's under active development. You sound like this is basically what you're doing over at Google. Do you have a roadmap? Do you have a sort of laundry list of things that you want to achieve over the next six months? Interesting things that we might want to hear about.

[00:28:21] Mariya Moeva: Sure, yeah. I mean, my ultimate vision, which is not the next six months, I would love to move away as much as possible from just stats. As curated and as kind of structured as it is right now, and get more into like recommendations, and like to-do list. Because what I hear from people again and again, it's like, I have two hours this month, tell me what should I do with those two hours?

So they're asking a lot from us. They're asking essentially to look, analyse everything and to prioritise their tasks, to tell them which one is the most important or most impactful. And this is like several levels of analysis further than where we are now.

So one thing that we are looking to work on is benchmarking, because you cannot know are you growing or not, unless you know how you're doing on average. And today, people who are a little bit more savvy can do this of course, but a lot of people don't. And so for us to be able to tell you, not just you got 20 clicks this week, but also this is okay for you, or this is better than last year, this time, or this is better than your competitors. I think that's a really valuable way to interpret the data and to help people understand what it means.

[00:29:38] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. And really, Google is one of the only entities that can provide that kind of data.

[00:29:44] Mariya Moeva: Especially for search.

[00:29:45] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, especially against competitors. That's really interesting because analysing the data, whilst it's fun for some people, I feel it's not that interesting for most people. And so just having spreadsheets of data, charts of data, it's interesting and you no doubt gain some important knowledge from it. But being told, here's the outcomes of that data, try doing this thing and try doing that thing, that is much more profound than just demonstrating the data.

And I'm guessing, I could be wrong about this, and I've more or less said this in every interview over the last year, I'm guessing there's an AI component to all of that. Getting AI to sort of analyse the data and give useful feedback.

[00:30:22] Mariya Moeva: I mean, we are investigating how to do all of these things. I think in the case of WordPress, it's a little bit trickier again, because of the distributed nature, and the fact that all the site information lives on the site and then all the Google information. So we're not like fully hosted where you can access everything and control everything, something like a Squarespace or a Wix.

But there's definitely, like AI is a perfect use case for this, right? Like benchmarking, you can bucket sites into relevant groups and then see, are they performing better or worse? That's like classic machine learning case. And we will see exactly, technically, how we're going to reach this, but that's one of the things that we're working on right now.

Another thing is to expand much more the conversion reporting and to help people understand, are they achieving their goals? Because this is something that surprisingly to me, so many people pay money and invest time in the site, and they cannot articulate what the site is doing. Is it working? Is it doing its job? And they're like, well, like I got some people visiting. And I'm like, did they buy the thing? So you have to know what to

track, and then also to take action after you see the metrics, like to move them in one direction or another. And so helping people like map out this full funnel is one thing that we're working on. And the other thing is also this email report.

[00:31:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's amazing. So really under active development. And you sound very impassioned about it. You sound like this has become your mission, you know?

[00:31:47] Mariya Moeva: I think, nobody ever complained that something is easy, right? When you make things simple and easy for people, they appreciate, even if they're more knowledgeable than if they can do more advanced things themselves.

And I personally really care, like every time that I find a random website with really strange content, but just, someone put their soul into it. I recently found something in Zurich of like tours of Zurich, walking tours, by someone who really cares about history and architecture.

And it's a terrible website design wise, but the content is amazing. And I was like, okay, this person could use some help, but he's doing, or she's doing like a great job at the content part, and then should get the traffic that they deserve for this. So that's what motivates me also to come here.

One person, two or three WordCamps ago came over and was saying, everything about Google is hard except Site Kit. And I was like, yeah, that's what we are trying to do. We really want to simplify things for you. So, yeah, being here is also super motivating. To talk to people and to hear feedback and feature requests. And again, we like when people come to complain.

[00:32:54] Nathan Wrigley: Well, I was just speaking to a few people prior to you entering the room and those few people all have Site Kit installed on their site. So you're doing something right.

[00:33:02] Mariya Moeva: I hope it's helpful. I hope it answers some questions and saves people some time. That's what we are trying to do. Yeah, we are in the part of Google that has the ecosystem focus, so we know that ecosystem changes take longer. I mean, still it's a fast growing plugin. It got to 5 million in 5 years, but still that's 5 years. And in the context of software companies which move very fast, 5 years is a long time.

Yeah, we will keep going and hopefully more people can benefit from it. But we do have, yeah, still there are many people who come by and they're like, whoa, what is this? Show me.

[00:33:36] Nathan Wrigley: Well, that's nice. There's for growth as well.

[00:33:38] Mariya Moeva: Yeah, yeah. For sure. I mean, for sure there's always, and more people create new sites. So, again, going back to that hosting provider question of like, can we bring it to them at the moment of creation so that they know this is something I can use?

[00:33:50] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. So one more time, the URL is sitekit.withgoogle.com. I will place that into the show notes as well.

Mariya, I think that's everything that I have to ask. Thank you so much for chatting to me about Site Kit.

[00:34:01] Mariya Moeva: Yeah, thank you for the invitation. It's been a pleasure to talk about the ecosystem. And, yeah, if people have feature requests, they can always write us either on GitHub in the Site Kit repo, or on the support forum, or if they are coming to any WordCamp where we also are, we are also super happy to hear. So we always love to know what people struggle with, so that we can build it for them and make it easy.

[00:34:23] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you very much indeed.