Courtney is a tech savvy developer advocate and music lover. As a developer advocate at GoDaddy Pro, Courtney combines her passions for teaching and learning with her expertise in WordPress to empower developers. Not only does she outreach to the developer community, but she also gives back by contributing to the WordPress training team and learn WordPress. A founding board member of the WordPress community collective, Courtney is dedicated to funding WordPress contributors and fostering a vibrant community. When she's not working with her WordPress magic, you can find her attending to her garden or spreading on her seven-string electric violin. Nice. Yeah, it goes down almost to the base range. Close. It's like very close to as much as the base can get. Anyway, that's a talk for a different conference. Maybe at a WordCamp US party. I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. Hi, everyone. It's good to see you. I want to see some friends in the crowd. I want to get a gauge before we get started on this of who in the room has ever in any way contributed to WordPress, whether that is by logging in to make WordPress Slack or like running a meetup group or something like that. I see a couple of hands. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Some of you, I know you well enough that I could probably take a guess which teams or which areas of the project that you have contributed to. Who has ever hit the point as a contributor of wondering, where's all the information of missing something? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's me. So I want to say that today's talk, We Are They, is for everybody at any point along the journey of either you're new to the idea that WordPress even has contributions and what does that mean? Or you're a core committer and you're at the point where you're still lost some days and we all get there, right? So I want to say that today's talk is called We Are They and it's about fostering belonging as a WordPress contributor and what that looks like. So my background is that in 2005, I think I found WordPress in 2009, I began contributing to WordPress. What do I mean by that? Well, I wanted to get into, we can't mid-Atlantic in 2009, tickets had sold out. The only way to get in was to volunteer to do something. So I volunteered to check people in at the desk. So from the beginning of my time at a WordPress event, there I was as a contributor. I was helping this. Remember WordPress, the software is open source and we'll talk about what that means in a minute, but it's all possible because people volunteer to do things and none of this would happen if people weren't volunteering to do the thing. So that's how I got into my first WordPress event and I've been hooked on contributing since then. Through Story in 2014, I attended my very first contributor day and I'll share a photo of that experience with you and tell you what it was really like, but that's how I really got connected to teams and I'll explain again what that means soon. I became a team rep, so held a role of facilitating meetings for one of our teams in WordPress in 2015 and then I took some time off and I had kids. So my kids are now almost seven and about five and when they were little babies, it was really hard to take them to camps. I took one when a brand like six months old with me, but it really was hard to be able to get out to camps for a long time and around the time that I could start doing that again, pandemic. So I still resurfaced during the pandemic in the Make WordPress Slack for the training team. Rejoined, I was teaching at a boot camp at this time, so I have instructed in the programming languages. I know enough to ask appropriate questions to someone like Catam who spoke before me, but I would not consider myself a senior engineer by any means. I could get someone up to being advanced care support or entry junior dev in terms of my code, but it's enough to have an understanding a little bit of what's going on. I began working at GoDaddy because I really wanted to contribute more and got hooked and I flat out called my manager during a word camp event online and said, I believe so strongly in this work and I would really like to get sponsored to do this thing. And if you ever hear of an opening and wouldn't you know a few months later he said, hey, I have this developer advocate role opening up. Would you consider applying please and you'll have to contribute as part of your job? Are you okay with that? Yes. Yes, I am. So as a review, let's take a look at the mission of WordPress given that it's open source software. And this is fascinating sometimes to read. You can find it at wordpress.org slash about WordPress is designed for everyone. Who's our target audience? WordPress is designed for everyone. We believe great software should work with minimum setup emphasized accessibility, performance, security, ease of use. The basic WordPress software is simple and predictable, offering powerful features for growth and success. WordPress is open source software supporting the idea of democratizing publishing and the freedoms that come with open source is a large community of people collaborating on and contributing to this project. So whether you are checking guests in as my first spot or you are contributing to any one of the teams, that's how all of this happens. That's how this software gets released. That's how you have a piece of free software powering 43% of the internet that anyone could take and use and you don't have to pay for WordPress itself, the software, not going to have to pay for that. WordPress is welcoming and inclusive. I don't know about you, but sometimes I struggled in my journey to feel like it was welcoming and inclusive. Sometimes it was my own fears and sometimes it was something else. But the mission right now is that our contributors' passions drive the success of WordPress, which in turn helps you reach your goals. WordPress contributors' work around the globe have dedicated countless hours to build a tool that offers anyone a voice. That's powerful. That makes things possible. The flow of information possible. The way in which we understand what's happening around the globe, the concepts that if a business owner in some remote part of the world wants to set up shop and start selling things, they can do that. They need to work with WordPress a little bit and customize it to their needs. But WordPress, the tool, is what's making all of that possible around the globe. That's why we have so much of the internet share that we do. So that mission statement mentioned the four freedoms. If you're unfamiliar with it, again, it's on wordpress.org slash about. The four freedoms are to run the program for any purpose, to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. The freedom to redistribute. So you can get WordPress, put it on your client sites. You could get WordPress, change the code, and also redistribute that. There are some slight caveats. You have to credit things appropriately if you are going to fork and redistribute, but can help point you towards those things. And that freedom to redistribute copies of your modified versions. So those are the four freedoms of WordPress. That's what you are allowed to do. These are part of some of the philosophy of open source software. So understanding that, you might sometimes say, there's a release coming. Why did they do that? Have you ever asked yourself that about WordPress? Why? Why? Getting a head nod from a core committer. Why? Yes. So that's my friend James. This was taken during work in Europe, but I love the quote behind him is why. And I'll make sure that he sees this later. Think about the phrase, why did they do that? It could be read with intonation in a few different ways. Why did they do that? Why did they do that? Why did they do that? Why did they do that? Different meanings, right? So think about how that applies. About a month ago, I saw this tweet from Brad Williams on the left-hand side. And I know it's really small, but the tweet is nothing quite like logging into WordPress dashboard and seeing this, and it's a wall of notifications. Why did they do that? And that's a lot of plugins that are putting or themes that are putting those notifications all over the logged in experience of WordPress. And why is that going on? On the right side, what we see is there is a new feature coming out in 6.3. You'll be able to hit probably Command K on your keyboard, I think is going to be what the shortcut does.  There it is happening on the screen. This gif was taken from the core blog. And so that's an example of the Wayfinder, or it might also be Command Palette or Command Center or there are a few things about this name that are happening. And so these are two recent instances of why did they do that? Happening in WordPress. Just keep that part in mind. And you might say, well, okay, so it's open source software and I have opinions about this and I'm going to go do something about that. But where do I look? How do I figure it out? Well, I'm just going to go to Twitter and shout it into the ether, right? That's what we do. That's not the solution here, folks. So the solution is to find in the sea of people a way to get to your answer. This is a photo of the community at work camp Europe taken just two weeks ago. And in that mix of people are the people that have the answers. So why did they do that? Can you find a person that can help explain why they did that? In that whole picture right now, if I said, can you point out the person that I should go talk to about the core fields API? Where are they there? When I go talk to in that crowd, that was Europe. Are they in that photo? Actually, no. The person to talk to is not in that photo. Oh, okay. So now where do I go? What do I do? That crowd can be a little intimidating for a lot of reasons. Figuring out how to navigate a big sea can be intimidating. And so we have to look at this a little bit more closely. In the photo that I have of James here, in the quote above it, it is saying, action is the foundation key to all success. Together let's shape a brighter future of work, empowering our teams to thrive. So James is talking in this presentation about something he's working on, which is great. But I think about the same thing when it comes to how WordPress comes together. There are teams, there are focuses within that, and somebody is going to have the answer. So remember I showed you that tweet with all those WordPress notifications? On the left-hand side, this is technically a link. What we're using for our presentation right now is WordPress. My slides are in WordPress, and they're powered by WordPress, and I'll show the link on the screen at the end. So on the left-hand side, the reason you see a WordPress embed there, for those of you who don't know what that means, that's a link to the article about the WordPress feature notification project. So when I saw that article go up, I went back to the person and they wrote that tweet and said, could you go comment on this thing? This team is launching a survey, and they need some data back. And so there's your opportunity to be part of the solution, part of answering, why is this happening in WordPress now? On the right-hand side, there is the link to the article on GitHub. It's not an article, but it's a whole discussion thread on GitHub. You might say, oh, I'm not a developer. I don't want to touch GitHub. If you're not, it's kind of like commenting on a post. So if you go to this spot and you've got an account and you can log in, you could go in here and leave a comment. And it's kind of like going to a post and leaving a comment with your opinions about what we should name that particular feature. But it's hard to track some of that information. It could be really hard. You could see that big sea of people that I showed us from work in Europe and say, where do I even begin? How do I find out where the conversation is happening? How do I pick a team? How do I know what contribution the project wants or needs? How do I do that while I'm working? I have to pay my bills. How do I do this or that so we have barriers to entry? We absolutely need to take care of having our basic life needs met. How do we tack on this extra thing sometimes? Fear of rejection and failure, that's probably where I was stuck for a long time. For some people, it can be language. If WordPress is global and the main language that we're operating in is English, how do people get involved if that's not their first language? It could also be things like, I took time out for health and other personal reasons. And also, I just didn't understand processes. So I used to be that person that was stuck and frustrated. And why is this happening? It's madness. And I want to help them bring change. But I don't know what to do about that. So what I did was find a contributor day.  And again, some people will say, oh, that's still really big. Yeah, that's the biggest one there is. We're at Camp Europe. The first one that I found, I'll show a picture of in a minute. But there are all these tables that are there. And there's a big group photo of contributor day. And basically, there are lots of teams in this WordPress project. We have 22 of them now. And we're about to look at what their sites are. But when we look through something like this, we go into this room. And we hear a presentation, a short description, about what each of these teams do. You put a face with the team. Oh, I can do that, except that here at Montclair, we're not doing a contributor day. And many camps don't have them right now. And that's fine. So we're going to look through, if you're not able to get to a contributor day and still would like to find out where the information and the decisions are happening and have a say in that process and how to get there. So I mentioned my first contributor day. And I have a hunch that Catam might be in this photo. It's a bad photo. But I went digging through my Instagram archives for this one. My very first contributor day. And so it was summertime in New York, and it was hot. And I don't really know my way around New York City very well. And I was staying about 45 minutes by train out of the city with a friend. Because at the time, I was not sponsored to go to these things. And it was out of my own pocket. So staying in the city can be a little expensive if you're just traveling. I think most expensive city to get a hotel in in the world, probably. So I was lost, confused. I had never been to a contributor day. I've never been a part of any of the teams in WordPress. I didn't know what was going on. And I was a little intimidated about the people backed by the window. Because the people backed by the window were talking about the rest API. And I wasn't a developer. I hardly knew PHP at this point in my career. I definitely didn't know JavaScript. So I had no concept of what does the rest API even do. So I was afraid to talk to those people. True story. But then I saw these friendly people sitting at the marketing and the training table. And I'm a former high school business education teacher. I was working on my MBA at the time. So I said, I'll just sit down between these two tables and see which one seems to be talking about things that interest me most because I teach marketing. But I also teach dev. And so I was teaching HTML and CSS at that point. And that's it. So I sat down in between the two. And I drifted over towards the training team table. And very true story. I was all about teaching users how to use post-formats, highlight of my career in WordPress, and way that I started contributing. So the training team makes materials at the time. They were specifically for meetup organizers or teachers. And I'm like, perfect. I'm a teacher. I know how to write a lesson plan. We made these materials so that other people could instruct about how to do the thing. And they didn't have to plan and do all that preparation work. If someone's a meetup organizer, they're already doing a lot to set up the meetings. And so they just needed resources. And so this team began in 2013. And that's how I got involved with the training team. Why did I do it? Well, it was an area that I had expertise in. It was something that I was really passionate about helping others. I like to help teach people things. Other people, they scratch an itch with it. People contribute because they really believe that they can improve something. The project will be better by their presence there. Maybe it's because you want to learn or grow a skill. Sometimes it's because you network. How many people am I in the room with today alone that I've known since 2015? Some of you, you just start networking with people and you know them. And sometimes that network can lead to all kinds of good things, whether it's career or personal. Sometimes just the networking value alone. It could also be part of your personal purpose vision mission. For me, my life's work, I pour into how can I help improve the standard of living for others. And the way that I see to do that for me is by helping create the tools and the technology that anyone around the globe can use to better their lives. WordPress seems to fit that goal for me pretty well. Also, the sense of community. And that's where Belongi really comes in. The project is made better. When we have a diverse group of contributors around the globe reflecting different experiences, reflecting different life lessons, reflecting different cultures, reflecting different abilities in their life's work.  Because that means that more people will be able to do something better because of that learned experience that they've had and how that's impacted the project. But that also fosters community and that sense of belonging. So I want to share a few photos with you before I take you into looking at Make WordPress website. I am very blessed in my job. I contributed to the project for many, many years. I've only been employed two years where I can work expense things and go fund places. But I want to show you a couple slices of WordPress around the globe. So here at the table, we're sitting with an Israeli guy, an Italian lady that lives in Spain right now. Singapore, Leslie in the back, is Singapore Bob WP. Does a podcast about Do the Woo. So WooCommerce, he's just moved to Portugal. Yvette, it works at Yoast. Hari down here in the front, it's from India. Works at Automatic, works in Community. And this is kind of normal for me now. Is every couple of months, I get to see this. And the slices of life that these folks represent. You see Devin here who works in polyglots a lot. And Nilo who does a lot of photography of these events. But Nilo is also part of WordPress TV. My dear friends, Pooja and her husband Anand. Pooja is one of the training team reps. And at WorkCamp Asia, the after party, we were encouraged to wear culturally appropriate attire. The Americans showed up in jeans and t-shirts, of course. But it was wonderful seeing folks from around the globe coming in with different cultural attire. This is the team that I, most of this is my direct co-workers. But in the photo, you can see that I've got co-workers from around the globe there with me. And it was just an amazing experience to have that time together with them. And all of them have directly contributed to WordPress in some manner. When I was at WorkCamp Buffalo just a month ago, in the back is Toa for DeRosha. He runs HeroPress. If you haven't seen HeroPress, it is tales of WordPressers around the globe, where they're located, and their own experiences of what brought them to WordPress. We're seeing his daughter in the front, asking or sharing a great question before WorkCamp Buffalo also kicked off. In the back are William and Aida. William and Aida do a great work in their community in Jacksonville. I was teaching, when I taught at the bootcamp previously, I was teaching the equivalent of inner city Philly youth, except that they were in Wilmington, just down the road. They were getting paid to learn WordPress. And William was the one that emceed for them at WorkCamp Philly. I had a group of high school kids go speak at WorkCamp Philly, technically online, right, during COVID. But these experiences, these differences around the globe are amazing. This is my friend Sergei, pretty much everything that goes into WordPress core. After it's done in the Gutenberg plugin and it gets merged to core, Sergei lives in Russia. That makes things interesting in the project. But I had a chance to hang out with Sergei a couple of weeks ago. And everything that gets committed into the project, Sergei's got his fingers involved in, and it's great. Pretty much any hour of the day that I message Sergei, he responds as well, which he should sleep. Shanta is, no, Chaya, yeah. This was, she works at Yoast, and I just love how she lives her life. She is somebody that everybody gets to know really quickly. And this was at one of the parties that took place. And then Michelle, I think you might see, if you look out the window that way, there's Michelle and my coworker, Mike. And so again, I just love so many diverse faces of this WordPress community. And then there's Ann. Ann looks around the project and knows everything that's going on about software updates. When there's a release coming, Ann is the one that looks at all of these change logs and then disseminates that information to the docs team, to the training team, to the marketing team. These are faces of WordPress that I've had the opportunity to spend some time with lately. These are people that have chosen to say, I'm committed to what WordPress is doing and if I see something that I wanna fix, well, I'm gonna log in and figure out how to do that. So the basics, you'll need a WordPress profile. If you get stuck at this point, fair. I got stuck at this point. Making WordPress profile is sometimes tricky, believe it or not. Especially when it looks like it's 2005, we need to update that section of WordPress and I think there are folks interested in working on that. So you'll need to be able to log in and also to get to Slack. Slack is interesting for WordPress.  I'll just syndicate with my Google account, log in or something like that. No, no, no. In WordPress, we want to let, we sort of have a gated against massive bots, but the flip side is that you have to do a weird step. So read the directions really carefully and when you're like, why am I stuck? Read these directions again. It's, you have a weird username to get in. Then to find out where the teams are, you go to make.wordpress.org and you might also read around inside of the GitHub repo. So to look at the teams, I want you to kind of tuck some of these things in mind. If you have never contributed before, if you're thinking about getting started, being involved in lots of options, you'll want to think about what skills do you have? What are the areas that you're really good at? I'll give you a hint. There are 22 teams that always need people to facilitate meetings and or take notes. If you can do that, that is a great entry point or if you like cleaning up tags in posts, sometimes we need basic things like that done. Also, there can be other specialties or other areas that are really your skill sets. When we start the tour of the teams, you'll want to look at the handbooks, the welcome boxes and the meeting schedules and I'll show you where all that is. So let's open up and take a look at the Get Involved page. Again, parts of the WordPress project could use some spring cleaning. This one is one of them. All of wordpress.org is undergoing a redesign. There are folks that are interested in working on this part of WordPress because we need to change that. I'm going to scroll slowly through some of these teams that are here and I'll jump in on a couple of them. What I would challenge you to do is to think a little outside the box. So if you are a developer and you're saying I want to contribute by doing code, most people will say, oh, look, it looks like the code's going on in the core team. And sometimes people refer to all of the teams as core. It's just one big lump is called core and they forget that core is now all of these things. And so the core team, yeah, they work on the software. Yes, they need coding. But also if we wander over towards the accessibility team to the polyglots area, to the docs and to the training team, the training team is the group that makes learn.wordpress.org. So this website. So the training team's been at this. We're the ones that create material for either made up organizers to use, some short form videos for direct learners. We also have deep dive courses into particular subjects. And in addition to that, we hold online workshops, Zoom and meetup groups together. So those online workshops are happening around the globe all hours of the day. We need people to get involved in those things. But we also need devs because look at this site. Right now, I just rattled off all these content types and the site's up for redesign. I'll just say that. So we need devs, right? And so think outside the box a little bit with sometimes you've got a specific skill set. Just the other day, I was asked, let me hit back in this. This is indeed running WordPress in the browser. I was asked by a person I met in Greece that lives actually in Athens area. Said, I've got a coworker that knows Rust. Where can they contribute? Strangely, I remember hearing during opening remarks at contributor day that the Openverse team was looking for that. If you haven't found the Openverse team, they are the ones that work on openverse.org. And openverse.org is part of the WordPress project. It is a search engine that looks for CC0, Creative Commons Zero Licensed. So anyone can use these photos. It scrapes the web and finds all the CC0 things. And so apparently they needed someone that knows Rust. WordPressers often don't know Rust. But that's an area that would be needing that skill set to contribute to the project. So sometimes there are opportunities that you don't always notice. Then there's things like the photos team. And if you saw my coworker, Marcus, hanging out over at the booth, the photos team are the ones that work on WordPress.org slash photos. If you are a photographer, you can go here. And if you've got a phone even, you can take a photo and upload it. And the content that gets uploaded here, openverse later finds. And there are rules around what can be uploaded here, but you can upload something here. It can't have people's faces or logos or text really in it. Sometimes they'll let things like the WordPress logo slide because it's WordPress. But other than that, there are some rules around what you can contribute in this place. But they also need people to vet and approve those things. We have things like the plug-in review team. And when I say the different parts of the project need help, oh boy, does the plug-in review team need help. So if you have ever been to wordpress.org slash plugins, if you've been here, there have been primarily, there's primarily been one person that you could thank for about a decade running this, Mika. Mika goes by ifstinou on all the socials that she's on. Mika's been at this for a decade almost solo. One person handling all the plugins that have been submitted and that code needs to be reviewed and all of these things. We had another person that had a medical situation that was also assisting periodically, but that medical situation highlighted just how much this team needs to have some more help. So one and a half people taking care of it, I mean, that doesn't sound like a great experience overall for the project. So there are some teams that need a lot of help. Right now the plug-in review team for a few weeks will be closed for new incomeors. If you've got questions or ideas about them, please see my coworker Evan in the second row right here. Evan's one of the new folks that have joined. There are six total at this time in that group. They have a huge backlog of things to review. Huge backlog. But they also need some tooling and automation done. And so it's time that we work on that as well. Teams that might be a little, if you are at all bilingual, the polyglots group, they need folks that will translate sometimes it's code strings in a plugin.  Like they have a couple of different, there's a few spots in even English to English that they will rename bits of code. So that's WordPress polyglots area. They often translate a lot of the most popular plugins, they prioritize getting those translated, but they also need to translate things like the about page on every release. If you're bilingual, the about page needs to get translated and sometimes down to specific locales. Like you might have Spanish as the language and then a Guatemalan version might need to be different than Spain's version, right? The themes team also does a lot of reviews and betting. The support folks, they work on the forums. They do a lot of work in the forums. That sometimes could be a low lift area and sometimes it's a really low commitment. You're like, I've got an hour one time ever and I'm gonna go see if I can answer a question or two in the forums. That's fantastic. So people ask questions often in those forums and they'll give you the ones that are not just for plugins, but for other areas. Accessibility team, I can't plug them enough. You see that there are lots of teams here. But what does that have to do with a sense of belonging and how do I get over the frustration? So let's go look inside of one of the team's sites. I will jump to, actually, I'll jump in here to the training team site. This has been my home, as I've said. Couple basic terminologies. In the last session, Catam mentioned about P2s, we call them the same thing. It's the team site and the blog that runs inside of it. It's kind of also the theme, because it's the old version. So what we have in the team site, this is the training team site at the top, there's a welcome box. Every team site that you go to has a welcome box. In that welcome box, there are usually things like at the top, something like getting started, the handbook, and you can also hide this box when it gets in on your nerves, because it's in the way. Every team site has that welcome box, that welcome box you can show and hide. But there are also meetings that are listed here as well. And you notice that this team is running meetings in a couple time zones. These meetings happen in Slack. Here's what the meetings look like. You see my friend Pooja is facilitating this meeting. She was the one in the nice peach colored gown earlier. And the meetings are all text based, and you can come back asynchronously and read the meeting notes later. This can be a little challenging for folks sometimes that are not used to meetings happening in Slack. There's good and bad to it. It takes longer to say the same words as if you were saying them out loud, because now you're typing them. But it's a lower barrier to entry. People can access this information asynchronously at any time. And there's also timestamps and links that we can go directly to where that thing was said. So once you've made your way into make WordPress Slack, you find the team sites that have the channels, you join them. And what helps create the sense of belonging is by getting to know the regulars that are posting here, getting to interact with them. And sometimes that means that we are asking what might seem off topic or fluff type of questions like what's your favorite hot beverage? Well, what's that have to do with WordPress? Well, it's because we're people. We need to know each other, we need to talk. So these are some of the basic parts of this in creating a sense of belonging. It's helping people that feel intimidated about speaking up feel like they can talk in this channel. I was delighted and also surprised this morning that when I listened to Caleb give the keynote, he's like, oh yeah, I'm in the training channel. Like I had asked a question about LearnWP and he's like, yeah, I heard you say something in this other project that we're in sort of together and but I've been afraid to ask a question, right? I haven't spoken up and I think about that and think about the times when I was that person. Now granted, I was that person when we were on IRC. It wasn't as pretty as Slack back in the old, like before we all had Slack available, we were using IRC and that was a whole extra layer of complication. But when we switched over, it's having that, hey, I'm new here, can you help me? I don't know where to go for this thing. And the people that know how to help with that can certainly jump in and do that. So that's how to navigate through team sites. My plug keeps falling out. That's some of the basics that are there. I do wanna give you just a few moments before I open up for questions around navigating through the GitHub site. I might have closed my slides, but I can show us.  We use a lot of GitHub in things. And so the conversations to figure out where are the conversations happening? How will I feel it's acceptable for me to ask a question or to start talking to people about these things? Remember that everybody has a time that they are new. Everybody's going to experience something as if it's the first time experiencing that. And even the people that have been around a long time have a hard time sometimes keeping up with the quantity of noise. That's not everyone's job to do that. It's kind of my job to do that and raise awareness to certain things. It's like a river that flows over me and I try and catch the things and elevate it to people. I'm really, I really like, if I know that there's a topic that someone's interested in, calling the man about like, oh yeah, you expressed this interest in this thing. Please pay attention here. But I'm one person and so I try. But one of the things I like to do is pick out a couple of WordPress repositories in GitHub. And even if you're not very technical, you might look at this and be like, what is this? Think of it kind of like forums that will simplify it a little bit more for you. And you can navigate around in here and see like someone opened this and here's what they're talking about. And down below there are some labels on this and maybe you might have a comment that's worth sharing. So a comment that's worth sharing. How do you know if yours is or isn't? Can you reproduce an issue that's here? You're testing something. If you can reproduce the same issue that somebody's describing, you've just validated that this exists and you are confirming. If it says needs more testing or needs something, test it, see what happens. See if you can give confirmation to that. And then in addition to that, there are other parts of the WordPress GitHub repo that you can get into and see that there are lots of, I was showing you Gutenberg and it's the fastest and most active one, but there are lots of these different ones that are inside of this one. So if that doesn't particularly strike your fancy and you wanted to work on something that's happening on the wordcamp.org's websites, well, that one might be of interest to you and you just get in and navigate to the issues. And if you're a dev, you'll figure your way around for pull requests and things, but you start seeing the regulars when you just kind of skim through these things like, okay, somebody, let's see down in here. It looks like this is the same person multiple times over that is assigned to a thing to work on it and Ian logged this. So Ian logs a lot of issues. Ian might be a good person if you have a question that's something related to track down Ian in Slack and say like, hey, I'm new, I have a question. Can I ask you a thing? And then here's who this is assigned to to work on it. And that's another way. It's just to sort of track the regulars. Ultimately, what I have concluded or decided for me to help me get over my fears, let me pull the slide deck back up and jump to the end, see that is in fact WordPress running all of this, is that sometimes you believe in the cause so much that you'll get over your fears. Sometimes on the other side of it for me, it was, hey, I feel a little intimidated about doing asking questions about going up to people I don't know, overcoming these people, talking about the REST API in the back and that's intimidating as all can be. I'm too scared for that. So maybe I'll find this other team and start asking these other questions. You have to sometimes see that in order to help make a contribution, people aren't going to bite you. They aren't going to kick you. They're not going to hurt you. They're here to help. The WordPress community, you see at events like this, how much people love to help. So feel free, ask questions. And on that note, here's where you can find this information and at the very tail end, actually let me hit refresh on this one because I think I saved it since this version is visible. Nope, I must not have saved it. My slides are at CourtneyR.dev. I put it out on Twitter. The link is actually for this, CourtneyR.dev slash we dash they dash, we dash are dash they. Sorry, get it corrected. We are they. So you'll be able to find the slides there. And if you want to link to the plugin that enables presentations using WordPress, there's that too. Questions, folks? Yes, Jeff. So I remembered. Yep, I appreciate that. So just to be clear, Yep. SPN, you don't need to use it anymore. Or did we go and do that? Do you still need to use SPN? Or do you need to use SPN? There are a couple of answers to that one and I will defer to people that know core better than me. Catom, do you have any solutions? As they contribute, you do not need to use SPN. Yes. You can just submit pages through GitHub. It is up to, I believe that we still need to commit the code in SPN, but that's on the committer, not your contribution. Got it. Use the tool that works for you. Okay, so if I wanted to do all the testing and iterations, and everything, all that can be done through GitHub. See? And when you're in doubt, ask someone that might have an answer. Find the people that, yeah. I'm sorry, do you want me to do it? Yeah, the issues is the same as attractive right now? Or like... Discussion about if you, you can comment on the code in GitHub, but issues I think are disabled on the core repo and they still don't give you attractive value issues. So if you see something in track, you can go with GitHub and reference track. Jeff, I'm also gonna put in a personal plug and say, come over to help fix Learn's website. That's my solution. It's all in GitHub for that one. For those that are like, what was all, if you don't know that level of Dev and you're just like, give me something easy to do. There are these calls for testing that are included. So Ann made a post. I just showed Ann's picture a little bit ago. This is a recap of one of them, but there is a call for testing, make.wordpress.org slash test.  This is beautiful and easy. You need to set aside time and if you break things, well, that's the point. They want you to break and document what you broke. So make.wordpress.org slash test and look at any of these things that say call for testing. Do it as a group and you just created some community and you'll feel like you are part of the belonging of WordPress. Any other questions? Who can I find at a Contruder Day coming up? Who could I find in the WordPress Slack? Okay, it's good, good. Go for it. Are there any easy ways to stay in touch on other local WordPress events that might be happening that we should know about? Oh yeah, there are. One of the easier ways of knowing about your local WordPress events is if you go to, actually, I'm gonna do this one. No, I should not log in that way. If you were in the WordPress admin dashboard, let me hit log in and I will take you to one. And I go to the dashboard of this site. Let's go to the dashboard. And if I'm looking in the dashboard, I see over here on the right-hand side, WordPress events and news. That's cool. So because of where I'm located, it's telling me here the nearby events that are coming up. If you want to find a different way to get there, meetup.org slash, there's like WordPress groups or something to that effect. There's a proper official meetup listing for WordPress. But this is also the easiest way when you're talking to WordPressers where they can go. You'll find your nearest upcoming camp or meetup group or WordPress related event. When? Oh, your anniversary party on July 29th. That's two days after my wedding anniversary. I need to check in with the partner. But that does look exciting. And everybody here can also go to win's party and maybe wear some party festivities like WordPress 20th. Good plug. I like it. I like it. All right. Any other questions? Anyone need help? Like really stomped? Please see me after this. I know we're heading off to closing remarks. There will be an informal after party. Please hit me up while we're here. Yeah, when? Do you have a goal as a contributor? Do you have a personal goal? Like I want this to happen. So the way that my work works is that, and I do, this will be the last one because we need to head over for closing. The way that my goal works, and I've shared some of what I am really passionate about. Some of my goals are lined up with what my employer would like me to do. Some of my goals are like, let's get people sponsored. And because I've been that and I know that that needs to happen. Right now, I'm really passionate about the new contributor mentorship program that's kicking off. And part of that will also improve Learn's website by creating a pathway of courses that people can go through to learn how to be a new contributor. And there'll be some details coming out about that. If you're on Twitter and you connect with me on Twitter, my website has links to all those things. There is, you can find my slides that are there. You could also find the upcoming information about the new contributor mentorship program. Hari is kicking off, which will be fantastic. We're taking a group of 10 people through these, through some courses and they will get onboarded to teams and continue contributing. So I'm passionate about a lot of high level project things of helping teams collaborate and also goals that I have for fixing Learn's website in my own head. Yeah, cool. Thank you all for being here. And thank you for being with us today.


Yo, real quick, just before we even get into the video, can we take a second out just to admire how nice my video quality has gotten? Like, hey yo, OG followers are get it. But like, look at this, bro. Look at your screen. Listen to me, listen, listen to that. 2020 about to be a good year, bro. 2020 about to be a good year. What's going on? It's your man, Kory. Welcome to another episode of Counting Kory, where I pretty much just want to get your opinion, your two cents, your thoughts on a couple of topics that's been going on in music this week. See what you guys think. Then you can see what I think, man. Hopefully we can talk about it or we can debate about it in the comment section below or on one of my other socials. Speaking of, come and follow me on Instagram and Twitter at KoryDisevery. My app name will be in the description below. Like I said, come and talk to me, man. I want to know what you guys have to think about some of this stuff. It's always interesting, man. Some of y'all got some interesting opinions. I will say that. So with that being said, let's go ahead and jump into some of these topics for today. So first things first was being the big news of pretty much like the last 72 hours is the baby has gotten arrested again, man. That's right. Our new favorite charming hot rapper of the year is back in another legal dispute this time due to an alleged robbery between him and his crew. Now there's been a video that's circulating that allegedly shows the baby beating up an unknown man, robbing him for his wallet and then him and his crew just kind of leaving off, right? Now, about 10 minutes before I start making this video, more details came out, right? So now we're getting a little bit more clarity on why exactly the baby was beating up his random man. Cause if you look at the video, man, like I'm saying allegedly, but if you look at that video, it does kind of look like the baby. Like either dad or one of his friends resembles him. But apparently, man, apparently the whole authentication stemmed from a promoter not paying the baby his full amount for his booking fee. Now it's saying that the baby was scheduled to do a show on Thursday yesterday and pretty much at the, he went to meet up with the promoter and the promoter tried to short him. It's saying it's been reported that the baby was supposed to get 30K for the show. The promoter only tried to get him 20K and that's when everything just went wrong. So as we see in the video, the baby is beating up on the man. He robbed the victim of $80 a credit card and then threw apple juice on him, bro. Like just to add insult to injury. The baby also took the guy's phone and then as you can see in the video, they did. So this is pretty much the baby's strong government is promoter going like, hey, bro, you ain't about to just cheat me. I said 30K, we agreed to 30K. Give me my money, man. Give me my other 10K. So I will say this, man, this is kind of the two sides that I follow on with this, right? Is that the end of the day, yes, as an artist at some point, you gotta stand your ground, man. There are lots of shady people in this industry who will try to cheat you for the lack of better words, right? Like I've known other promoters and I've heard horror stories from artists just about promoters doing this all the time, right? Like, yo, we're gonna book you for 10K. You get there, oh man, we only got six, you know, can that work? And then like you're already there, you're on your team and flown out. You've paid for everybody to get there. You've paid for your equipment, you've paid for your DJ. And now you're mad, right? You're blown because it's coming out of your pocket. On the other hand, man, on the other hand, this is the baby's first legal situation. He just got into the authentication last week in his home time in Charlotte when he was doing that show that he was doing. And he's still, I think, going to court about the alleged murder case that he was fighting before he really started to pop. So I'm looking at it like, man, this is going to be a come up for the promoter, man. He's more than likely going to sue the baby. There's video footage very clearly showing that it's the baby doing it or at least someone that's running with him doing it. There's more details out that's pushing it back to the baby. And the legal costs and the amount of money that he would probably have to get awarded for the assault charge is going to be more than that 10K that he was going after. But if, and this is me not knowing the baby right, I don't know him personally, but I get the vibe that he doesn't care.  You need my money and eat whatever costs come with it. No, I guess for whatever brand purposes or just for whatever, I guess respect purposes, right? It is a respect thing at the end of the day. But also at the end of the day, the baby is bigger than this little financial mishap man. Like he's much bigger than this. I could kind of get it from the point of, when I saw the price, when I saw that it was only 30K, I was like, man, I would think that the baby would at least be cracking like 50, 80K. I wonder if this show was like a favor or something.  I can make a quick little 30K, little 30 racks real quick. And everything just went bad. And now I'm over here talking about the baby throwing apple juice on somebody, bro. So the baby's definitely bigger than this, man. He is, it's going to be some kickback. That promoter is definitely going too soon. I'm telling you, he's going to soon.  And as of now, the baby has a posted bail. He was arrested being connected to the robbery. He posted bail for 1500 peanuts to him, right? Especially when you just made 20K off of a show. But like I said, he's bigger than this. So hopefully they're able to move passes.  When they give you that booking fee and you tell them you're going to pay it, pay it, man, because some of these artists are not industry enough yet to where they care to be cordial, bro.  Moving on to other news, man. This has been a week that's just been filled with like a lot of beef. And I've said that all of my episodes. I think every episode that I've come in here, there's been at least one big beef that week. Right, that's crazy. But if you think I'm talking about French Montana no, I started to, but I kind of don't care. The beef that I want to get into it, I don't think any of us are coming into 2020 is DJ academics versus nav. If you follow either of them, or if you follow any music site, their beef has just been over all these pages for the last couple of days. Because like I said, it really felt like it came out of nowhere. Or at least I did a little bit of digging just to kind of see like, man, what sparked this off? What popped this off, right? So what I'm thinking popped it off is this post that DJ academic's posted on Instagram, right? And it was pretty much a screenshot of Nav's tweets where he was talking about how he doesn't really feel like he's an artist. He feels like more of a producer and he just kind of stumbled into the artist thing, right? So he tweeted, lately it's been hard for me to relax. I'm really a producer that became an artist by accident. I don't think I'm as good at the artist stuff as I am producing. I just do it for my fans. You know, a little moment of self-reflection, a little moment of clarity from Nav. DJ academic's posted it. I didn't see nothing wrong with it. I didn't see nothing crazy from it. Maybe Nav to the captioner on the way, the captioner reads, did Nav kick the door down for the brown boys to dominate the next decade in hip hop, right? So it was it. That post came out like two days later, Nav tweets, academics hops on and off Dick so much. He probably got STDs. DJ academic's response, sorry, bro. I only want Lizzo. By the way, this is the statement repeated by every rapper who's cold.   It got crazy, right? So they're going back and forth and DJ academic's brings up an interview that Nav did, I think back in March, maybe like late February, early March with Pitchfork in which he was talking about how it bothered him that the paparazzi does not pay attention to him. The exact quote being, honestly, I feel like I'm just now starting to get famous, but fame is something I want. It's a good problem to have.  I get sick.  I feel it now. I feel you, bro. I mean, it's kind of hard though when you're hanging out with the weekend, right? But so, Nav, my bad. DJ academic's brings this up. Nav plays it off, says that he wasn't talking about himself in the interview. DJ academic's response, backpedaling, address you dying for attention and being salty. You didn't get it. That's why you call out a media nigga. I ain't never seen you call out a rapper. Why?  You ain't never called him out.   So all in all, man, this is probably one of the most interesting beefs that I've seen kind of pop up. I guess it hasn't really been too many beefs pop up this year, but who expected a DJ academic to Nav beef coming in 2020? I ain't even really expect Nav to be talked about for a minute. He hasn't done anything newsworthy to me. So this right here, man, I think, I think this, I think DJ academic's kind of has this one, right? Cause like I said, looking at the tweets, I didn't really see the reason for now to pop up. Other than maybe he felt slighted by that post that DJ academic's posted. He probably knows him better than we do. Maybe he knew he was being slick when we wouldn't think that he was being slick. Either way, either way, I think that of all the things that Nav could be doing right now to better himself beefing with DJ academicism, one of them, because just my general consensus, a lot of you probably feel like this. I kind of feel like this, but I wanted to talk about it anyway. Cause like I said, it's weird, but it looks like a lot of people don't care. And it's not that a lot of people don't care because it's not big news. What I'm saying is a lot of people don't care because it's Nav, which is wild. Nav doesn't get any respect to music or it doesn't seem to get the respect that he thinks he deserves in rap music, rap culture. It doesn't seem like the right culture gives him the respect he thinks he deserves. And now we're in this loop where he's arguing with DJ academics about who's the biggest dick writer of, I don't know, I don't think they put a time stamp on it.  So I don't know, man, I'm interested to see what you guys think, man. Who you think got this beefed DJ academics? Or do you think Nav was in the right for coming to DJ academics? Do you think he should have even brought it up and addressed it and gave Nav this attention? Let me know what you think in the comment section below. Moving on, what I want to get into next is our Lennox, man. Our Lennox has started a conversation on all the black Twitter.  So what am I talking about, right?  It seemed to be a guys' real account, but we're just gonna call him a troll for the better turns. But there was a troll, right? And he tweeted, our Lennox and Tiana Taylor's ability to have dangerously high sex appeal while simultaneously looking like rock wallors will always amaze me. To which our Lennox responded, people hate blackness so bad. She didn't want to talk about how we never really see or she feels like we never really see other races downing their women in their culture. She was like, we don't see Hispanic men down in Hispanic women. We don't see white men down in white women. And she took to Twitter again to say, moms and dads, please love on your beautiful black children. Tell them they're beautiful constantly.  Tell them black features are beautiful. Now, this is not the first time that our Lennox has come at a troll or someone on her Twitter for coming at her looks, right? I remember that being a tweet a couple months ago, maybe like two or three months ago, where someone said something about her nose and she commented back, it's a black feature. Please stop hating black features. And then she kind of went on a rant about that. Now, I've been sent a lot of mixed responses about this. On one hand, there are the people that do agree with her, right?  I'm not gonna try to get too blue-glanded but the side that they're falling on with her is that it is a race thing. They don't feel like they don't see many of their other races down in their women and it's solely being black women who are attacked about their features and racial features that we see on other women just to be real, right? Now, the other side is just like, it was a joke, right? Chill out, he was trying to be funny. You two women are two very beautiful women. We love you.  Personally, I kind of follow on our Lennox's side, right? Like I said, without making this show super racial, making it super political, that's why I follow that. Like I agree with her. I agree with all the black women Twitter that are up in arms about this. We do seem to see a lot of people that like to make jokes at the expense of black women and their black features. Then not really apply those same jokes to like other tights women. I feel like I see that a lot, especially on my social media timeline, especially on meme accounts, especially from big comedians, especially from big outlets, all that stuff. So I do stand with her on that, but I also follow on the side of like our Lennox, like why do you care, right? At the end of the day, you are a superstar in the making, a very talented artist. You are one of the most successful new artists of the last two years. You make great music. You have a fan base that loves your music. Why let one troll get you riled up, right? Like I once had somebody tell me you can't get mad at other people's opinions because at the end of the day, you can't really change it. It's what they think of you. Oh, what is that? That's not what I said. I lied. What is it? I don't worry myself about other people's opinions because that's there. I don't know. I don't know the exact quote, but I'll live by it. Why concern yourself with what other people think about you, especially one or two people that seem to be downing you or coming at you when I'm pretty sure she gets hundreds of DMs and tweets today from people that love her, right? People that are trying to support her. I know I've shot her a couple of DMs just to be like, yo, you're beautiful. I love you. You know what I'm saying? Don't let these people get to you. So hopefully she's seeing those. God, I have noticed that sometimes artists do get wrapped up in like a negative box where you are only able to see the bad because when you see one bad thing, it just stands out to you so much. You kind of ignore everything else and then you dive on that. So I do think they're like, maybe she just needs to chill and social media for a minute. Clearly the fans coming at her is getting to her. Clearly like she's not one to really like take it. But as far as the broader point that she's making in the conversation that she's starting around what that guy said, I do agree with her like 100%. So interesting to see what you guys think about that. Let me know in the comment section. Are you on Ari's side? Do you side with the troll? Do you think it was just a joke? Do you think this is a conversation we need to have? Like I said, let me know. Interested to hear your two cents on that. Moving on, man. This week we had an OG apologize for just the way he's been influencing the youth and his lengthy, lengthy career, right? And I'm talking about Juicy J. Juicy J tweeted, if I inspire anybody to do drugs, I apologize. And this is why I come from Juicy J right like, this is a guy who had a tour called the Never Sober Tour, right? This is a guy whose motto is stay trippy, right? Or I don't think he's talking about falling and hitting the ground, man. I think we know he's talking about getting smacked. So it's interesting when you see the artist whose entire brands are built around drugs and drug use coming out and actively talking out against drugs and drug use. It feels a little weird at first, but I am glad that he's doing it now. I'm pretty sure that he's been inspired by the recent incident that happened with Juice Well, right? Juice Well's death due to the overdose. I'm pretty sure that's what made him want to say this. And it makes me think about an old future interview when he said like when he first met Juice Well and Juice Well was telling him about how Future's music pretty much inspired him to try lean and do these drugs. And Future was like, man, like I feel bad, bro. Like he was a kid. I wasn't thinking about it at the time. He was, here's this child that I influenced to do drugs, to want to try drugs. And like this is what he's become. So I feel like Juicy J is probably having the same remorse, man. Like when you've been around as long as he's been around with Three Six Mafia and you've talked about drugs as much as they've talked about, you've had some of your biggest songs, literally be just like the soundtrack for drug users and people who are really into some of that stuff. And then you think about all of those thousands and thousands of people or probably kids or teenagers or younger adults at the time that didn't grow up to become drug users and maybe even abuse of substance. I can see how as an artist you start to feel remorseful about that. Especially an artist at his age who's probably, you know, he's mature at this point, man. Juicy J is an older guy.   There's an interview out there of him talking about this exact same situation years ago in which he was like, look, man, it's not my job to raise these kids. It's their parents' job. If a kid listens to my music and wants to do drugs and he goes and try drugs that is not on me, that is on the parents. Fast forward five, six, seven years later and he's expressing different sentiments because he's grown, man. He's grown as a person. He's grown as an artist, I'm sure. Now, I don't think, I don't 100% believe it wholeheartedly all the way through. And this is why, I never believe artists when they start coming out, talking out against drugs, but then they still make music talking about how they use drugs. Which if it is their lifestyle, if it is something that really are doing, then I can't knock on artists for talking about their real life and their music. But then you start to look like a hypocrite, man.  It sends the wrong message to just a fan of the arts in general, right? Like I remember Trippy said something like that on his live. He was like, I'm not gonna do drugs anymore but I'm still gonna talk about it. And he's like, that's just as bad as doing it. In front of them, I will argue even worse because they're going to listen to the song more times than they see you doing the drug.  But I am glad that Juicy J does feel remorseful. I think we need more artists who have been a part of pushing the drug culture to the forefront of music, just making it as big as it is. We need to see them be remorseful. We need to see them say, hey, I was 20 something years old. I wasn't in a good space. I didn't know any better. This isn't what's up. Now I do know better and I'm trying to communicate it to you. We also need to see some of these older legacy drug artists stand with the new younger artists who are talking about it and get some of them to change their ways. Now I know it's going to be hard because it's hard to tell a 17, 18, 19, 20 year old with hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars that's having fun that you shouldn't be doing drugs. That's just not cool. It's going to be the same cycle. A lot of them are realizing that like 40, 45, like, oh shit, I shouldn't have been talking about that. But I think that if they stood with a lot of the younger artists who are taught, who have been talking about it, who are now remorseful about it, like the Trippie Reds, then we will start to see, you know, a bigger impact from artists actually saying like, oh shit, my bad. I'm sorry that I made you do drugs, right? That's what I think. Like you got to live the lifestyle.  That's the only way kids are going to listen, bro. That's the only time they ever do listen. And lastly, man, the last thing I got for you guys today is X is back in the news, kind of sorter than I really, but kind of sorter, right? So it is being reported that X's mom, Cleopatra Bernard, is countersuing or actually asking for the lawsuit from Jimmy Duvall, who is the producer of Lick and Me, the song that popped X off, right? She's asking for that lawsuit to be dropped. Man, back in March, Jimmy Duvall filed a lawsuit for $2 million, claiming that he was pretty much owed back royalties from the song and that he was not receiving his proper producer credits for the song. He felt like he wasn't been properly credited for it on anything, pretty much like he wasn't getting the clout for it. He won it, right? Now, as of this past week, like I said, X's mom, Cleo, has asked that the court dismiss the case based on the fact that she has been holding on, or they've been holding on to the original deal that Jimmy Duvall and X struck and the fact that she feels like Jimmy Duvall just is not knowledgeable on how the industry works. And what she said was apparently the original deal gave X 50% of the collaboration royalties, which whole different conversation. If you don't know about royalties, please another stuff, man. So that's the whole conversation that's too complicated for this video. But apparently X was supposed to receive 50% of the collaboration royalties while Duvall and another producer by the name of Mala was supposed to split the other 50%, both getting 25% of peace because apparently Mala felt like the beat was stolen from one of his songs. So to kind of like smooth over that whole thing and to just make it easy for him to move on with the song, that just split the other 50% 25 for Duvall, 25 for Mala. Now, Cleo is also claiming that, Jimmy, bro, you don't know how the industry works. Like you don't know what's going on, you out the loop in her claim sent about the lawsuit. There's a statement that reads, the defendant claims reveals a complete lack of understanding as to the music industry's current mechanism for attributing producer credits. It is undisputed that the recording was only released digitally. It is well known that up until very recently, the vast majority of digital content providers such as Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, SoundCloud, et cetera did not have a mechanism by which producers could be credited. She's also demanding that Duvall get nothing, not a cent, not a penny, and that her attorney fees be paid for for the duress and trouble that she's been put through dealing with this court case. Now, this is how I feel right. So as far as the agreement, like I said, royalty splits and just how that whole thing goes with the songwriter, producers can get very complicated, but if it's something that has been agreed upon and which my guess is it got agreed upon before the song started popping off, correct me if I'm wrong in the comment section below and you know a little bit more, but I'm going to assume that they struck this agreement either right before the song really popped off or as it was moving, like not before it was looking at me right, but probably when it started really making noise in the SoundCloud world, meaning that that is what you agreed on. You cannot come back later when you see the song doing better than you thought it would be or making more money than you thought it would. The bigger than you thought it was going to be and now you feel like you're cheated, you feel like the deal isn't right. That's not okay. That's why people get everything in black and white from the beginning. And that's why you gotta believe in your shit, especially when you sign a paperwork. Now on the other hand, I also feel Clio as far as the producer attributes. That is true. I think that it Spotify and Apple Music just started allowing producer credit is what, top of 2019, maybe in the 2018. Look at me by Duvall came out 2017. So that would have been something that would have really been able to be done properly, at least not the way that he's asking until about last year or until like a year and some change ago. And now if he's coming from a space of I reached out to them about that once it became available. I tried to make it happen and she was ignoring me and the label was ignoring me. Then I stand with him on that 1000% degree, man. Get your credits. If you made it, it deserves to be known that you made it to the world.  Get your clients that's gonna come from it. But if it's strictly off of it not being credited in the past, when there wasn't a system for it to be credited in the past, and Clio's in the right, man. I gotta give it to her. Surprisingly, man, to me, I felt like when I saw this, this was gonna be like another money grab. But surprisingly, man, she's not asking for any money. She's just want her attorney fees back. I thought she would kind of sue and like try to get some bread out of him off of the fact of like she's putting their estate through this and kind of dragging the name through the mud over it. Or not really dragging the name through the mud.  He was cheating producers.  It happens so much that I could completely see just Jimmy Duvall trying to protect himself, right? Like he's trying to make sure he gets paid. He's trying to make sure he gets his credit. And he's trying to make sure that he's able to eat off of it for as long as he can, right? But like I said, that's the deal, man. That's the deal. If you agree to 25%, 25% is what you get. If you're mad about you not being credited, there was no way for you to be credited. Hopefully you're getting credited now. Actually, let me look. Let me see if that changed up. Let me see. Oh, so I'm looking at him on Spotify, man. He's still not being credited, man. So I kind of feel him. Even though it's not super popular for every producer to be credited in, ah, yeah, let me backtrack a little bit. So I have noticed it's not super popular for every artist to credit every producer unless they have a big name or brand established and they're not gonna get some cloud off of it right.  If you made the beat, listen, artist, but if they made the beat, man, give them that credit. Like you'll just get so much good, come out of it, build good relationships out of it, give everyone their credit what credit is due. So I do feel Jimmy on that, man. Hopefully you get awarded your credit for it, bro. Hopefully you get your placement titles on everything. Hopefully you get the cloud that you deserve and that you work for it. As far as a deal, bro, you signed it, man. That's what you agreed to. So you stuck with it. Outside of that, man, this was a pretty dry week for music. I guess that everybody in the music industry is on vacation. Maybe every artist was too scared that other artists were gonna do New Year's album drops so they didn't drop anything, but there really wasn't any new music that came out today. So if there's anything that you checked for from an artist that maybe I just didn't see on my radar, let me know about those projects in the comment section below. I got a lot of free time, man, because usually I'm catching up on projects today, but now I can't. So I got a lot of free time. Let me know about some new stuff. Other than that, like I said, man, come and follow me on Instagram and Twitter, at COVIDSafe, if you come talk to me, let me know your opinions. Also, I have my phone number in the description below. Text me, lock in, you can text me and talk about some of this stuff all the time. Just don't be weird, bro. Like just send good vibes. Let me know what's up, lock in. We'll talk, bro, just don't be weird about it. Other than that, like I said, if you got anything from this video, like and subscribe, let your friends know about this. Looking to hear about you guys is two cents. Other than that, I will see you guys next week. Peace.


This is the SF Productions podcast network Before all the video was put directly into computer memory and the comnet, people used to tape shows. Let me see. There's a tape already in here. Let me hook this up here and let me see what we got. Back with us to the 60s and 70s, the dwelling place of the lost generation. An era whose heroes, role models, and very lives were molded and formed by weekly installments of favorite television programs. Welcome to the place your parents didn't understand. Welcome to the vast wasteland. Welcome home. Welcome to another exciting episode of Vast Wasteland. I'm your host, Mark Schminbar along with Wilbur Neal and Marty Wiley. We're here to talk about 60s and 70s television. While we jump into the big extravaganza for tonight, I just want to tell you we're on Tuesdays at 6, Wednesdays at 10, and Thursdays at 3 p.m. Here on ACTV, cable 21. Also, we have a new box number. Yes? We got kicked out of the old one, so here's our brand new box number. Ooh, box. If you want to write into us, we don't know what. Our box number is 15, 14, 11, Columbus, Ohio, 4-3-2-1-5. That's 15, 14-11, Columbus, Ohio, 4-3-2-1-5. And remember, we have that big... Oh, I can never remember the name of this. Our swap meet thing about the video. I hope that we did name it. Did we crystallize it or anything? Write in and tell us what we should call this thing. Where if you've got a show that you really want to see that's not available on video, go and write to us. Say, hey, where is this? And we'll announce it on the air. And from the half-dozen people who actually watch the show, one of them actually have a tape and will work out some sort of deal. No money. No money. This is non-profit. It's just... Friendly swap exchange. Exactly. Video swinging. Yeah. Fan mail from some clowners. Which brings us into tonight's episode. It's on J. Ward cartoons. That's right. And for those of you who don't know who J. Ward is, that's of course things like Boinkal and... Rock. And Rocky and the whole Rocky the Flying Squirrel and the whole J. Ward universe. Exactly. Captain Crunch. Oh yeah. So let's move right into that, Wilbur. What's your first point for the evening? Well, by golly, that Rocky and Boinkal, Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Boinkal J. Moose. Actually, I think it was Rocket J. Squirrel. Rocket J. Squirrel. And Boinkal J. Moose. Not that the J's really meant anything. They were just there. Just like Michael J. Fox. I think they were there because it's J. Ward. So he just read his name in. J. Michael. Rocket J. Squirrel. Boinkal. J. Moose. Anyway, the first show premiered back in 1959. Rocky and his friends. And we have Rocky and Boinkal, who are residents of Frostbite Falls. A lovely little place. And you know, actually, this was going to be... Back when they first spotted up, it was a project called the Frostbite Fall Review. And they were a group of animals that were running a television station in the Northwoods. And among the characters were Oskie Bear, the cameraman, Blackstone Crow, the fiery director, Sylvester Fox, the egotistical actor, and Flora Fana, Fox's leading lady. And there were also two other characters, Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Boinkal, the French-Canadian Moose. And actually, since the other characters, we never got to see them. It just became a Rocky and Boinkal show. So Boinkal was a French-Canadian descent. Yeah. Didn't you ever know that Moose is Canadian?  Right. Well, they have moose at the zoo, fell? They have moose and squirrel. Anyway, so... Oh, my backyard. The show came... Well, it was premiered back in 59. They didn't say A. Not all Canadians say A. Okay. Although it certainly seems so. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I've never been to Canada. He said it. Okay. So we've got... On the show, we've got Rocky and Boinkal. Oh, no! Oh! Oh! We've got... They're the bad guys. No. The Rocky and Boinkal will be the protagonists. And the antagonists would be... But it's bad enough. And Natasha... Natasha Fatali. I never knew she had a last name. I don't think they hardly ever mention her last name. They never do mention her last name. And they're fearless leader. Fearless leader. I remember... What about Mr. Big? I remember I was like... Oh, it's Mr. Big. And Mr. Big was like this two-inch tall guy or something, if I remember correctly. He was the loss of them all, but you saw him just a few times. Yeah. Well... Oh, he smokes! Mr. Big! Okay, Rocky. And Boris and Natasha. And they just had these... What should we say? Pseudo-Soviet accents? Yeah. Yeah. Cold War-era Soviet accent. Exactly. It was 59. Right. And the show came back again in... Well, 61, I believe it was. The Boinkal show. Right. By that point, Rocky had pretty much been pushed out of the spotlight. Because the enormous comedic potential of Boinkal had been realized. Yes, exactly. And that one focused more on... Like their media attention, I guess. Yeah, I think so. Because by then they were doing lots of ads. In fact, Cheerios was a big sponsor of the Alden General Mills serials. In fact, if you were able to get some of the... And this is not the stuff that's out there in video right now, which is the official stuff. Some of the unofficial, I suppose, pirated stuff, you might see at some flea market or something. Not that we would ever go to those places. That's right. If you accidentally showed up at one of those places, and you saw this, you would see things like a lot of commercials for General Mills serials thrown in. Because they were big into that. Go with Cheerios! That's right. Okay, but also on the show we had such characters, such now famous characters as... Well, Peabody and Sherman. Well, let's see. What was their segment actually called now? The Mr. Peabody Show. It's just called Mr. Peabody, I believe. Anyway, Mr. Peabody. Hello out there. Peabody here. And my boy Sherman. Mr. Peabody was a dog, and Sherman was his boy. Mr. Peabody owned Sherman. There was one cartoon where they explained... I'm trying to remember the origin story of why Peabody has a pet boy. Why not? He was walking down the street and maybe Sherman followed him home. Yeah, and he's so incredibly intelligent that they decided that... It was like, I don't know. Sherman, I think, found Peabody and tried to treat him like a dog and realized he was incredibly intelligent, in fact, smarter, a lot smarter than Sherman was. And so somehow there is the... They just reversed the rules. Gee, Mr. Peabody, you're so smart. Yeah, Sherman, now. And Mr. Peabody has this machine called the Wayback Machine, which is a time machine, and they would get in the Wayback Machine, they'd set the dials and just go way, way back in time, and they'd visit famous characters. And it was really... Yeah, it was educational. I mean, it wasn't... It wasn't incredibly accurate, but I mean, my Marco Polo, you learn names and general eras and generally what happened. Exactly. You could go to school and say, Oh yeah, Mr. Peabody and Sherman talked about that. Which is, I get the same thing kids are doing now to go to school. Oh yeah, man, so great. Bill and Ted, they talked about that. You know it. So it was kind of a little Bill and Ted excellent adventure. Yeah, kind of. Both of these two are smart, as Bill and Ted are. Smart. Not necessarily. Actually, I guess Mr. Peabody is smarter in all of them. Well, there we are. And we had other characters on there. Let's take a look at the board, shall we, so you can kind of give an idea of the people at home where the kids at home, they don't know what's going on. Well, let's see. Now along the bottom, I guess you can see Peabody and Sherman. Off to the well by golly the kind of difficult now it would be on my right hand but you at home it would probably be on your left hand. Your left hand side we've got OK, there's over there, way over to the left. With the green complexion. OK, there's Snidely. Right below. Right in back of Dudley, we have Natasha. Yeah, and next to Natasha, we have Wrong Way Peach Fuzz, just a wonderful mixed up sailor kind of character. Actually, very similar to the Wrong Way, try to remember his name, character on Gillingham Island. Conrad Conrad. Yeah. He flew a plane, but he was always landing on the island, so he was like one of the only people that could find the island. Anyway, oh boy. Back to our show here. Down in the right hand corner, I suppose, we've got there's Bordy's body and off. Right, there's Boris. And then right next to him or up above him, I guess, actually we have Esop and son. Which was, yeah, that's certainly one of the big things that was that in the Fraction Fairy Tales. Right. That also got into the literary aspect of the cartoon. It wasn't just fun. You actually learned names, you learned things. Right. So, and then next to them we will kind of in back of them over their shoulder there's No, who was Dudley's girl. No. And his horse. Horse. Right. And then over there on the other side of Esop, they're a fearless leader. Right. And then of course on top of the trash can there is Rocket J. Squirrel. Holding the what's-a-matter-you. Exactly. Bullwinkle's Alma Mater. Alma Mater. What's-a-matter-you. And then over there, they've got these two little green guys. Skidney and Chloe, who are the Moon men that appeared on the... And brought that wonderful element, Upsidasium. Upsidasium, the anti-gravity element that they brought from the Moon and just caused a whole big furor over that, I suppose. Trying to get a hold of that too. Oh, yeah. That and the Mooseberry Bush. Right. But now the Skidney and Chloe here, they're interesting characters in the fact that from them we have another offshoot of another J. Ward kind of thing that happened a few years later there, like toward the middle lens of the 60s, late 60s, early 70s actually I guess would be, when he was doing well he did some commercial products that spawned kind of commercial cartoons. There was Captain Crunch, the old Captain Crunch thing, and then there were two characters who were kind of at odds with each other. Quisp and Quake. Oh, yeah. Well, Quisp looked very much like the enormous Moon men here. Oh, yeah. When Quisp pink with a green suit, though. Yes, he was, but he was, it's the same kind of little puffy hair dude that comes out of there. He had a green turtle neck out there. He had a little blue on it, and he had a little good, and he had a little... I used to have a Quisp Cosmic Shooter Good shot bacon powder. And he had a little guy that was with him for a while there, but they kind of lost him somewhere. Of course Quake had a grandmother with him for a while. Quake had a girlfriend kind of like Nell here, and Quake himself went through a, well Quake started, let me see, now Quisp was from the Moon or some planet. Yeah. Moon or some planet. His little cereal shaped like flying saucers. Yes, his cereal shaped like flying saucers. And Quake lived underground. He was a minor kind of guy, and he would... His cereal looked like a rock. Exactly. He was a minor kind of in a volcano or something. He's a Moon man. He's a minor their detective. No, no. They were always in the odds with each other because they thought, well they each one thought that cereal was better than the other one. And then he went through this whole big change thing where well Quake started off, he was this big muscular guy wearing a little minors hat, had a little cape on the back, had like blue jeans on, and then he, when they he fell into this machine because they were reworking his cereal to make it leaner and nicer and better. And he came out as a leaner, nicer better Quake, he had on a safari hat. And he was he was shapelier, and he was more, he was like a shapelier muscle guy, instead of just a big husky muscle guy, he was a, he was a shapelier muscle guy. It was kind of funny anyway. That was, that was back in the 60s. So, when they had good commercial. They had wonderful commercial. And we, well Captain Crunch by golly, he started off, he's still going. Of course, now he's turned into and, and, and Spectre Gadget for some reason, stuff comes out of his head and he's like a robot now. What is that? Well, they're, they're trying to pick up on the things that are popular. I mean, I, I wouldn't be surprised if I saw Captain Crunch jump around and pull out a ninja sword. Oh, yeah. That's not a question. They start doing kicks and things. Against those, what are the the soggy's now that he's fighting against? Yeah, the soggy's. Cause they were, they just got through a whole list of things. There was the Crunchberry Beast, there's the, um, the peanut butter, whatever thing. Those were darn good. The peanut butter crunch, I love those. Okay. I don't think they make them anymore. No, they don't. They do not make the peanut butter crunch anymore. It's too unhealthy, I guess. They make it with NutriSleep. Yeah.  Right. Just wouldn't be the same thrill at all. And this is in no way to, uh, detriment the, uh, Back in the early 80s, I did find Quisp on a shelf and it didn't taste like Quisp anymore. It was, it was sad. It broke my heart. Well, that was, that was like the... Who did you do a whole show? Who did you do a whole show on cereal? Sure. That, that, that would actually be interesting. Cereal heroes. Food. Yeah. We'll plan our shows not on the air. Anyway, on with, on with this bullwinkle thing here. Well, you know about bullwinkles, it's a... When I saw it as a little kid, it was like... Oh, yeah. Way over my head. And then, well, older and I watched it. Ah, it's funny. Oh, yeah. And there's lots of, there's lots of adult jokes in it. Yeah. Yes, it's a lot of adult humor. There's two different levels there. And it's like little kids watch it. You watch as a girl going, 20 years ago. That's right. That's right. So, well, let's see there. We'll jump up here to the 60s. About in, um, 64, another J. Ward introduced another show, another character. The Hoppity Hooper Show. Oh, yeah. Hoppity Hooper was a frog. At my house, he was a toad. Okay. Frog toad. Let's see if you can kind of zoom in there. There he is. He's a, he's a frog. There's a little Hoppity right there. And there's Phenomore, well, Phenomore. Well, let's see here. Let me get these characters together. Waldo Wigglesworth there. And Phenomore the Bear, Philmore Bear, excuse me. And Commander McBrag. He was always around. He went on to be an underdog, too. Well, see, that was interesting because he, um... The place was India. McBrag wound up on underdog. I think I have time to just... Which, are they still running underdogs? Oh, yeah. They do run underdogs. It's like really cool. I think it's running right now in NBC, like 11.30 in the morning. This is what happens every year on Saturday morning cartoons anymore. They bring out a whole bunch of whatever the big movie or whatever the big TV show was, they flop instantaneously. They show them just long enough to pay them off. And then every year around, oh, say, March or so, you see now, every year, because they know they make money and yet they never want to start with them. It doesn't make any sense. So what they should really just do is just show the classics. Retroactive Saturday morning. Retro Saturday. Oh, man. It was great. We're available to host it. Retro Saturday. That's just hopping away back and go way, way back into 1967. Thank you so much. Oh, cartoons. Bullwinkle. You got Underdog. You got Jetsons. Some classic ones out there. Let's get on here with this show. In 1967, he came out with another show, another Introduce the More Characters, which have just gone on into comic classics. You can catch these on like TBS or something. The George of the Jungle show was just great. We have George, who lived in the Inguigui Valley of Africa. He had an elephant named Shep, who we thought was a dog. And he had the Tukitukibird, who was just kind of hung around. Ersela. There were Bella and Ersela, who were like twins. Right. And an ape named Ape. And he had the Tukitukibird, who was kind of sitting around, he was his telephone ring, Tukitukibird Ape. And I think like George of the Jungle had like, one of the coolest theme songs. Yeah. George of the Jungle Super Chicken, and Tom Slick, had like, the coolest, or probably his best theme songs that got put together. I think there was like the only theme songs. Well, Underdog had a real good one. really is. Not really? No. How did McBragg wind up on underdog? That's what I'm wondering here. Because McBragg has certainly put on the dog. That's how my kids know it. What's the name of the company? TTV. TTV. I'm assuming something like that. Something. Something happened because I know I've seen it all. Yeah, because I saw that guy on the other show and I was like, that looks a lot like the friend that come in to McBragg. Yeah. So go the Braggs of McBragg.  You watch the show now and bust around.  Quiet. Be quiet. But Georgia the Jungle was just this great guy and then there was Super Chicken who was, well, what, well, let me see. Oh, Super Chicken. Let me find the whole thing here on Super Chicken. It was just a great show, golly. Super Chicken. Here we are. Henry Cabot Hithouse III. He was a scientist who discovered Super Sauce, the liquid that turns him into a crime fighter with superpowers whenever he drinks it. When he drinks a Super Sauce, he put the bag as for a lesson. He will bring them in alive and kicking. There was one thing you should learn with. There was no one else to turn to. All for Super Chicken. So he's Super Chicken and Fred. Fred was this lion and they flew around in the Super Coupe and they would just solve crimes and it was just a great show. And there was Tom Slick. I don't think I really have a picture of Tom Slick. Tom Slick in the Thunderbolt Grease Slapper. Yeah. His Thunderbolt Grease Slapper with Granny and, oh, come on. It's not that bad.  And he would go around and he'd just be in different races and he always raced against. When there's just one guy, he always raced against. But it's like their vehicles changed. It was like if it was a water race. Yeah, he would turn the Thunderbolt Grease Slapper into a boat or they would race on a snowy Thunderbolt Grease Slapper into a snowmobile or just whatever they needed. And he would always race against a bad guy which he didn't always know. Oh, yeah. Well, there's, I mean, this was around the big racing era. I mean, a great race kind of idea, but... Yeah, the great, rather, the wacky races kind of thing here, you know, it ain't just... But much shorter and easier to watch. Because there were only two main characters. There would be other characters, but there were only two main characters, so you didn't get lost in them. And Tom always won. Exactly. Well... Well? You didn't see Boykel and Rocky Luz too often. They always were on a cliffhanger though. Right. They always... Well, that's true. The Boykel thing did pick up the serial idea from... Yeah. The announcer was William Conrad, wasn't it? Wasn't it? Yeah, William Conrad, I believe, was the announcer for that. And it was always the serious title for the next episode and the pun episode. Or... Yeah, or... Well, our friends... I think we've got a great appreciation of puns from that show. Oh, yeah.  Next week will it be Frostbite Falls or Upsidazio, you know? Yeah. That's right. William Conrad did that. Oh, yeah. Oh, Cannonball. Yeah. Yeah. Jake in the family. Well... The grumpy detector. Oh, wow. Well, they've got a picture of it. Bullwinkle balloon. I don't know if you can see this real well. It's just a little crummy thing. The backside of the Boykel balloon. It's the backside of a wonderful... The Boykel balloon in the main parade. I'm gonna take a picture. What a lovely picture. Take that picture. Take the picture. What? Picture. Oh, okay. I got him. I got him. No problem. I'm having a whole new generation. Yeah. We feel it's adult humor, but NBC can't understand the joke so they think it's a children's show. Yeah. That's a quote from J. Ward. When you consider the fact that, no, was Rocking Ball even ever on Prime Time? Or I think it was it something. Well, now let's see. I'm starting off... I'm really sure it was. Well, if it was, it was on past our bedtime. Well, now... I'm pretty sure it was, and then they took it off and it's like, you know, it's like, well, I don't like the Flintstones, which is really, you know, it was an attempt for adult humor that really didn't go past kid humor, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, this is kind of... Which was also on on Prime Time and really didn't deserve to be, but this show did. But they both went to the same fate of Saturday morning. I don't know. You know, I bet if our parents had watched it back then... Well, by golly, it did start off at Prime Time, you're right. I thought so. You know, I bet if our parents had watched it then, though, it wouldn't have lasted because it probably would have been considered controversial. That's true. And it would be canned and we wouldn't have got to watch it. That's true. And all that, you know. It used to be on it from 7 to 730 on Sunday nights in DC. I mean, now it's very mild, but back then it probably would have been controversial. No, everything was controversial back then. You can walk down the street without controversy. I remember one thing about the fractured fairy tales. I remember one, they always would do a different take on the favorite fairy tales. And the one was, they did Jack and the Beanstalk and Jack was a baseball player. And what he'd do is he was in the outfield and he became this really famous because what he'd do is he'd see a fly ball and he'd dig a hole really fast, throw the bean in and the Beanstalk would go up and he'd be able to catch the ball in the air. And then this big guy comes up at the end and it's like, he's going to just hit it really high.  By this point he's like 100 feet up and he's unable to get at it. Did Bo Winkle ever pull a rabbit out of his hat? No, it's not for sure. He pulled a lion out of that hat. He pulled a tiger out of that. He put a rhino out of that hat. Well, never a rabbit. And he pulled a rocky out. A rocky out, yeah. There's something we hope you'll really like. Three. So what else we got? Well, let's see. Okay. There's something through here. I think that's almost all that he really had. And of course, now you can see, like we mentioned earlier, the classic Bo Winkles really are now available pretty much any place on the planet. At your local gas station on video it seems like. And the first six volumes, which, and again, and another Flintstones parallel, they've gone ahead and said, hey, this Bo Winkle thing's selling like hotcakes. So now they're putting out for the 30th anniversary of the Flintstones, classic Flintstones, which I think is far too available anyways. Yeah. But. I think it was really a few years ago at this theater that's not a theater anymore because it's like a health club for the broth on campus. And remember, we took the kids and we went to see the J. Ward tribute. J. Ward festival. And it really was weird because like a lot of it's in black and white. Right. And my kids are watching it and they don't have the concept of black and white TV and they felt incredibly sorry for me and Robert because it's like. You had to watch it in black and white. You had to watch it in black and white. Where's the photo? That's so sad. Captain Crunch isn't black and white. You were deprived. You were deprived. You were so deprived. Terribly deprived. Such terribly deprived childhoods. They could hardly watch it because it was in black and white. You know, that's funny. Children born after the middle 60's like 68, 69 sounding. When everybody went and got a couple of years. When color TV was just the norm, they just have no concept really of black and white which is just really funny to me. It's like Ted Turner is their patron saint. He's laid everything in color. Now we can watch it. What I consider interesting, we mentioned that about Ted Turner, they're colorizing TV shows right now and they have not picked Steve Allen not picked Texaco Star Theater or Playhouse 90. They've picked Mikhail's Navy and Gilligan's Island. Well, they're starting small. Thank goodness they picked the absolute top of the heat. You know, the pinnacle of television. When our civilization is dust, they'll still be colorized episodes of Mikhail's Navy. You know, that colorization by Gally, I'll bet there's some radio activity in there. They'll still be seeing those from now on and it's like it's going to be imprinted on TV screens. Gilligan. Mikhail. You'll turn off your TV, it'll still be there. That's right. I won't be around. I guess it's time for us to kind of wrap it. Yeah, I think it is. Well, for our next episode, very exciting, we're very excited about this. We're so excited. NBC, the Silverman years. The late 70s, you'll see such hits as Super Train. Marvelous, fantastic shows. Wonderful shows. Wonderful use of video change. That's right. So again, want to tell you, Tuesdays at 6, Wednesdays at 10, Thursdays at 3 p.m. here on ACTV Cable 21. And now I think it's time to go to the credits. Oh. And here they are, our highly technical credit.