Hi everybody. We're so happy to see you here. Welcome. I'm Jenn Gattart. I work for the California Bicycle Coalition and I'm here with Forrest Barnes from SFMTA with Julia Campbell from Alta Planning, Jason Henderson from SF State, and Laura McKamey also Caldike. And we're doing something a little bit different for this session as you might have noticed in the session description. This is really all about the conversation in the room. We are going to kind of set up the topic and then we're going to, and each person is going to kind of introduce their own specific interest in this sort of broad topic of climate change and culture change. And then we're going to break out into five groups. But one of the groups is going to be a Zoom group, which is going to be everybody who's joining on Zoom, which I don't know if there is anybody. And then there will be five groups in the room. And so what we're going to do is when we get to that point in the discussion, we're going to move our chairs into circles and we're going to have five little breakout sessions. And then we're going to come back together and we're going to share out what we talked about and hopefully come away from this session with some really exciting ideas to bring back to our communities and also some exciting opportunities for collaboration among us here in this room. So I'm going to leave, I'm going to give it to Forrest now who's going to introduce a little bit further the topic of today and what we're kind of hoping to accomplish. Hi, I am Forrest Barnes. I am a transportation planner with the SMTA. Currently I work on some more new mobility regulation and planning, including scooters, Uber, Lyft, taxi planning, and then commuter shuttles, which is not really important in the context of this conversation because actually I'm putting on my former cowboy hat and advocate hat. And today I actually want to encourage everyone to think big in this session. As everyone knows, we are in a climate emergency. We've already blown through our carbon budget, as everyone knows, but every degree matters. And really in this session, I want to encourage us to think about ways that the Overton window, which is this idea of what is possible in the discourse, what are things that people are talking about. And so I want to encourage all of us to put our hats on and think about how to stretch that window wide open in regard to climate action and biking and active transportation. What are the ways in which we can bring our communities and our governments together in order to really address this pristine issue and in my personal opinion, probably the biggest issue addressing humanity overall. And it's very exciting on a bike summit because we're going to really all bring all of the different intersectional issues that we've been discussing and really think about how they interact with climate and what we actually will be doing. And so in terms of the sessions and the breakouts, I will actually be talking about things in terms of the dream bigger category. So in my group, we'll be having discussions about things like, well, what if we actually just demanded that like the city ran the bike share system and it was free and part of transit or you know, even looking at things like the recent COVID bill and the stimulus checks, you know, that was enough money basically to buy everyone in the United States in e-bike. What would that look like if everyone and so I think really because of the emergency that we're in really thinking in terms of how things change, I want to encourage us to listen to the other speakers and think about the infrastructure change, the government change that's needed, but also the culture change. So we're going to have some discussion about open streets, quick build and the history of how other cities like Copenhagen and the Netherlands actually became such bike friendly places. And we're going to do our best to learn from what they did and to think about how we can most quickly and effectively bring that back to our own communities. And so as Jen said, we're going to be planning. It can be actions, art pieces, etc. And Jen's session actually will be around art and culture and sort of the changing culture around biking. But I really just want to take a quick moment to think about how radically different our government acted in COVID, how many trillions of dollars it was able to spend just like that, how much money it was able to send out, unemployment, those things. And so really, that level of emergency where Congress gets together within one month and passes trillions of dollars, like we really needed that decades ago for climate mitigations. And so again, I really encourage us to think big. And you know, if not at the federal level, because it's really looking kind of bleak there at the moment, what can we also demand of the state, which we know is loaded right now, and of our local governments and even our own community, what does radical mutual aid and respect to biking look like and how quickly can we encourage change. And so with that, I'm going to pass it over to Julia, who's going to talk about how open streets and the culture around them are quickly changing and what we can learn from that. Thank you, Forrest. Yeah, so if that wasn't clear, what we're going to do is we're each going to introduce kind of a topic of focus, and then we're going to break out into groups, and we're going to have, you know, more focused discussions. So we're each kind of pitching you our own ideas of what we want to talk about. And so the thing I want to talk with you all about today is, you know, this is the first big conference I've been to since the pandemic that we're here in person. And that's exciting. And that means that we're exiting out of the pandemic maybe, you know, fingers crossed. But what we've all been experiencing for the last couple of years has been a different way of life. And what we're talking about when we're talking about behavior change and travel change is we're talking about trying something new. You know, the hill that we're trying to get everybody over is to, you know, try not driving every once in a while for a certain trip all the time, whatever it is. But usually if you're trying to get somebody to behave differently, the biggest challenge is just that first step. And we know that through all the behavior research, you know, at places like TRB at other conferences and things like that, the best way to get somebody to try to do something new is to take them in a safe environment, take them by hand, somebody who trusts them and they trust the other person, try that new experience together. That's the way that we get people to actually try riding a bike, try not taking the car, try something different. It's in this supportive environment. And open streets are really the gateway drug for riding a bike. I live in Los Angeles, I didn't do my intro, I'm sorry. And we have Ciclovillas, which are, you know, our way of interpreting what Bogotá started many decades ago, everybody knows the story of how transformative open streets can be. So even in the city of Los Angeles, which still to this day, very car centric, come on a Ciclovilla day. It is a different city. I love LA on Ciclovilla days. It's a completely different world. And, you know, you think like nobody drives, I mean, nobody rides bikes in LA, like come out, watch it, watch hundreds of thousands of people take that bike out of their garage or whatever and ride it around the city all day for hours and hours. It is life changing.  How many people had a city that you live in where maybe something different happened in the street?  Was there an alfresco program? Was there sidewalk dining that spilled out into the parking lane? Yeah. Is that stuff made out of concrete yet? No. Is it made out of at least like pop-up materials, maybe, still? If it's still around, maybe? Yeah. So we have this moment right now as we exit out of the pandemic. Where's all that stuff going to go? Is it all going to go back to being a parking lane? Is it all going to go back to being a general purpose traveling? Are we going to lose that space for people? It doesn't have to. And so that's, you know, my pitch to everybody in this room today is, you know, let's hear about what everybody's cities and communities have done during the pandemic. And there are tools to make it permanent. In my previous role, I'm now with Alta Planning and some of our team, like yesterday, if you heard Vincent Helens talking about some of the quick build stuff that we did in the city of Glendora down in Southern California, they have made some of their silhouettes more permanent already, but they're a very small city, very motivated. They moved really quickly. It's beautiful. They've already made it into like a really nice environment that's going to be around for some years. Most cities can't move that quickly. And now we do have the pandemic executive orders have been lifted. And so now, if cities do want to keep that temporary infrastructure around some of it, which was actually barricades and things that are only made to be up for 72 hours, some of them have been up for two years now. Equipment that's not meant to last more than a couple of days has in sometimes lasted this long. In other cases, not. But this is our chance. And we do have a law that I want to tell everybody about. I had an opportunity to work on this in my previous role with the city of Los Angeles. It's called AB 773. And it allows each city in the state of California to create what's called a slow streets program in your city with an ordinance. And the city gets gets to make its own rules for how to remove cars off the road. It's a tool that I wish everybody would take home lobby your city council, make sure they know about it. It's a tool you can use that makes it easier to make a slow street program more permanent. And that, you know, that word slow streets can apply to any of the different variations that have happened. It's called AB assembly bill 773. So that's my pitch is let's talk about that. Awesome. Thank you, Julia. And first. Okay, good afternoon. My name is Jason Henderson, and I am a geography professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at San Francisco State University. I mainly my research mainly focuses on the politics of mobility. And I get into the questions of political ideology and how political ideology shapes the built environment and shapes the transportation system. So for example, you know, just as a quick overview, you know, progressive politics has a more sort of, you know, the public public realm public regulation public transportation.  Ironically, conservatives and progressives have one big thing in common in American politics of mobility. And that is that the government should intervene. Conservatives believe that the government should intervene to make sure that car driving is as easy and cheap and unfettered as possible. So, you know, the most active government probably in the world in terms of shaping people's behavior is this kind of conservative thread in American politics. So I did a book on San Francisco called Street Fights in San Francisco. And that book looked at things like the freeway revolts. It looked at the conflicts over parking and the litigation against San Francisco's bicycle plan in the 2000s and more. And I followed up with a Street Fight in Copenhagen book where I went to Copenhagen because so many people were talking about Copenhagen, but it stops at, you know, Copenhagen did a very good job of sustaining cycling. But no one really explains why. No one gets into the politics. And what I found when I was in Copenhagen was that it's an extremely ideological, there's a diverse array of opinions. It has to be defended. It's not a done deal. It probably won't be taken away. But within Denmark, there are actually remarkably very similar debates over streets, even widening a bike lane in a neighborhood in Copenhagen. You have the merchants, you have, you know, a perspective from transit, you have all kinds of different perspectives. So it's actually quite politically charged. It's not like, oh, this is just how it is. So what I'm interested in today, though, is what kind of precedence is this moment with the Ukraine and fossil fuels and this discussion, this post pandemic uptick and driving. We have a crisis. And, you know, I look at historical crises like World War Two in the United States reduced driving by 35% during World War Two through a very aggressive rationing program. The 1957 Suez crisis, which was the closing of the Suez canal cut off the Netherlands to oil. And that actually triggered a revisiting of the bicycle in the Netherlands. And in the 1970s, there were these two pronged energy crises that really became localized in Copenhagen politics. And by the end of the 70s, you had huge massive demonstrations of cyclists in front of Copenhagen City Hall, sort of like critical mass. In the Netherlands, there was a massive crisis of violence, of vehicular violence, and lots of children were being killed in the 70s. And that led to a citizen led response that resulted in cycling infrastructure. We heard about Cuba this morning. And when the Soviets stopped sending oil to Cuba in 1990, they got a million bikes from China and then instilled a cycling culture. The pandemic, especially the first year of the pandemic, you know, really we saw the results of what happens when driving is cut 30, 40, 50%. So what my question is, is, you know, what are our, what is this political inflection point? I think we need to take advantage of it and make, you know, what is the opportunity out of the crisis? And how can we redirect this to not decarbonization, but decar, because that's what we really need to do. So hopefully, some of you will offer some ideas that maybe we can think about an opportunity this summer to respond to this crisis with the fossil fuels, climate, and the post pandemic recovery. Awesome. Thank you, Jason. And I just want to give a brief note on time. We have 10 minutes till we want to do breakout. So Laura and I are going to try to stick to four minutes, five minutes, so we have time to move chairs and stuff. And I will be repeating what the different breakout rooms are at the end. I mean, breakout groups are at the end. So don't feel like you have to remember them all. I'm Laura McKamey. And I do communications at Cal Bike. And I used to work for the Center for Biological Diversity in the climate change group. So this is a topic that's really close to my heart. It's very important to me. And the thing that I've been thinking about is QuickBuild. And I'm sure you're all familiar with QuickBuild as far as putting infrastructure on the street quickly. But I think QuickBuild is an approach we can take to a lot of things. We QuickBuild changed our lives in March 2020 in ways that we didn't think we could do. And I think, and QuickBuild enjoyed. And I just want to give an example. It's not from the biking world, but an example that it was in my life. My wife and I got married in 1995, but we couldn't really get married. We got some kind of lame thing from the city of San Francisco. They didn't even have a ceremony for us.  And we really thought at that point that maybe when we were 90, we'd be legally married, but we were not very hopeful about it. And there was a lot that went into the marriage equality movement, but there was one moment that I think was really important. And it was a moment that defied logic. And I know there's a lot of planners and engineers here. And I love all of you and your logic is really important. But, and I'm very, I like to be logical. It's important to leave that behind sometimes.  And it was illegal in California to do that then. But they were just like, come on down. And I told my partner, no, it's going to get shot down. I was very logical about it. And she, thank God, is not very logical. She was like, no, we have to do it. It'll be great.  It was amazing. There were people from Nevada, people that come from all over. And 4,000 couples got married in San Francisco before the court shot us down. It was the result of that and the litigation that came out of that that allowed us to get legally married in 2008. But even more importantly, I think, and that was a quick build action. I mean, I'm sure there was a lot that went into it, but it was like, boom, we're doing this. We're not asking permission. We're just effing doing it. And what it did is it made a big difference to all of us who were there, but it also made a bigger difference to the whole country because the whole country got to witness gay couples just wanting to be the same, wanting to be recognized, wanting people who had been together for decades, wanting to be legally recognized and the joy in that. And having witnessed that, I think that really made a big difference in shifting public opinion, that public opinion on same sex marriage shifted much more quickly than it has on other social issues. And so I think where can we get points, pivot points like that where we can do something that shows people the joy. And I think joy is really important to getting people out of their cars because that's why I bike, even though I'm an anxious person, I had to take an anxiety class the first year that I started, I got rid of my car 15 years ago, because riding on the streets was terrifying me and my wife was like, you're dangerous, you're going to go with this. And today I rode here with not looking over my shoulder because the overton window was moved by bikey space, amazing work. I rode on Telegraph Avenue on a protected bike lane where I didn't think I was going to be killed at every minute. So how do we get more people to experience that joy? How do we show the world that joy? So everyone's like, yeah, I want that, hey, city government, give me that joy on my street, even if it's not there right now. Like what big action can we take? What quick build kind of actions can we take to just like flip the picture because we don't have time to mess around. And I also think it's very powerful to bring people with you.  People don't believe you, but you do it while they kick and scream. And then they're like, oh yeah, the first year of Open Streets in San Francisco, the merchants in the Barcadero said no way, I'm not in Barcadero, the fishermen's work, they were like, do not come here, we don't want you. The next year they begged Open Streets, please, please come here. I have never seen so many people in Fisherman's Wharf. So we just have to show people, not tell, show, quick build. That's awesome. Thank you, Laura. I have a mic, so. So I work for CalVike. I'm the director of advancement, which is kind of the fundraiser and list builder and communications person. And also, in addition to doing that, many of you know that I write songs and make music videos. And so I want to lead a discussion about, and oh, and I wanted to add a little more to my history than just that. I have written a lot of songs about biking, ever since I started working at CalVike seven years ago. And I started writing songs about climate. Some of them are incredibly nerdy. I have an idea to write a song about that sort of breaks down the math behind why we cannot expect electric vehicles to solve our transportation problems and climate, you know, and our climate carbon emissions problems. And I also have a history in my youth. I have my recent work with CalVike is very, you know, I think we all know that bike advocacy is, I mean, it's really important, but it also can feel really frustratingly slow at times. And it's like we're doing this kind of incremental work. And we need really radical changes right now to have healthy, equitable, sustainable communities and to not completely ruin our climate. And so some of the kinds of activism that I used to do as a younger person were more like, you know, I was working on AIDS activism in the 90s.  We'd have gravestones and we'd scream and shout and get the media there.  I was a teenager at the time, so it wasn't like creepy. I would arrive at a prom, I'll dress up in, you know, a prom outfit, even though it wasn't my prom, and maybe handing out condoms and safe sex literature and stuff like that. So, you know, sort of like these kind of creative, like, let's, let's do something that sort of draws attention to the issue that gets people really excited about it that kind of changes the way that people think. And, you know, that's, so that's kind of the topic that I want to talk about today if you're interested in sort of brainstorming ideas for sort of like creative, just ways to kind of change the conversation and get people thinking about, you know, what they can do differently and sort of like what, and sort of to wake up a little bit.  So that's kind of, that's going to be my group. So I'm going to quickly, I want to have time for us to just get together and groups and talk. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to quickly just give a three-word or forward reminder of everybody's topics. And then you can, we're going to spread out, Laura's going to take the people on Zoom and you have the, you have the situation worked out there, right? So I guess, Jason, why don't you be over in that corner? And Julia, you can be in this corner. And for us, you can be in that corner and I'll be in this corner. And what we're going to do is we're going to make a circle. You just come to the corner that you want to be in and we're going to just circle up the chairs. And, yeah, and so I'm going to be talking about art and activism. Well, maybe I should just pass it down. Everybody can really quickly remind people in a couple of words. I'm going to be talking about art, creative expression and sort of bold activism. I'm going to be talking about just ideas that are going to be radical demands. So what can we demand that we don't currently have that's, you know, really on like, like Jason said, like a World War II level demand. Sorry, I meant to say I'm not, I'm going to be talking about what we're going to be talking about because it's not me. It's us. Sorry. Yeah. And so for my group, that'll be like things that think things that like would be like in a Green New Deal type demand. And my group will be talking about, you know, taking advantage of the temporary changes to our streets during the pandemic and trying to figure out ways to make them more permanent. How to leverage opportunity out of this current fuel crisis, I guess would be the main thing that based on the precedents of previous events, similar events. And I'll be talking about Crickville, but since the Zoom group doesn't have a choice, whatever, if any of these topics move you, we'll definitely talk about them and I'll just bring you back to Crickville. And then we have a little worksheet and so we hope somebody in the group will volunteer to write stuff down on the worksheet or it can be also the facilitator. And so let's do it. Let's break out. And I think, oh yeah, sorry, I forgot we were going to take questions first if people wanted clarification about what we're doing now or about the topics or that kind of thing. Don't mean to point anything out exactly, but I'm just like, it's going to share that it just feels like maybe a section for like racial equity since folks in Brown and Black neighborhoods get affected the most by this kind of changes would be a good conversation as well. And just kind of pointing out something that at least I'm kind of feeling at the moment. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I would like to encourage us all to incorporate that. I mean, I plan on talking about that for sure in our group and I want that to be part of the conversation. So if people want to talk about that, I also am not sure how many people here want to talk about art and activism. So we can take that as part of our conversation topic as well kind of effects your main concern and you feel like the other groups, the other areas don't speak to that come to me. Other questions or concerns or thoughts or just, I mean, I love that you suggested an additional topic that we can add. And I'm psyched about that if other people have just an angle you want to say like, I want to be in that group, but I want to add this thing. Yes. Well, this was in the description. So I guess you all had already come up with it but like the tactical urbanism kind of things like crosswalk LA stuff things. Where would that, where should people go for that discussion? Who wants to take that? I kind of feel like Jason or Forrest, depending on, I don't know, we've got to sort of fit into those. We could have more groups, but I just worry because we don't have like, well, it looks like we have about, we could have another group. We could add, I mean, we could add like, we could, maybe we could have six groups and we add those two ideas as additional groups. Let's take a vote. What do people think? Should we raise your hand if you think we should have six groups? Raise your hand if you think that we should just add those topics to the four existing groups. Okay, it looks like people are kind of in that. Okay, cool. So we'll do that. And yeah. So I'm going to be talking about art, activism and racial equity and inclusion. What are we talking about radical demands? And I also feel like tactical urbanism can fit into that if you want as well. And I'm talking about the, you know, catalyzing on the changes in the pandemic, which was a form of, you know, city sponsored tactical urbanism, but like, it was flexible. People did what they wanted. So it could include that. And I'll be talking about how we should be responding as in, you know, the cycling community with broader green mobility to the fossil fuel crisis that's unfolding this summer in front of us. And I'll be doing quick build plus all of the above topics. And I love the ideas of adding tactical urbanism to that. And, and racial and social equity. Yeah. Okay, thank you. I'm sorry. The chance even if there's one person. Well, they can hear us now. Hello, everyone. I'm going to be bringing you all up to panelists so that you can speak. So you'll see this thing on your screen says allowed to be a panelist. You can accept that gallery. Thank you. Yeah, I'm happy to be here with you. I'm going to turn up the volume a little. It's loud in here. I know I was I thought about that. Yeah, I can hear you guys now. That's why I've got my headset on so I can hear you and not everything else. I'm going to take I'll be the note taker. So I've got the doc here ready to take notes. So we're just brainstorming whatever whatever you guys want to throw out. I'll just start I because I was really just listening to what all of the sort of main big topics were. And I kind of did like the idea of the basis idea of I kind of heard of an action that we could all be taking this summer and some climate action or other group effort like all of the bike coalitions doing something together around climate action and fossil fuels and the climate crisis. I like that idea. I'm love to think about quick build as part of that. Just so you know, I'm the president of the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition up here in Sonoma County. And Iris Weaver is there. He might have met her. She's our executive director. I probably emailed with you guys because I sent out emails to various partners. So probably met over email in the past. Excellent. So yeah, those are the two quick things I'll just start with. What was I got one so I'm sorry. What's the second thing? I got climate action this summer all the bike coalitions coordinating action. The other thing is just a more quick build projects. I would love to see the quick build separated bike lanes, a low stress network that just gets put up in the city. You know, overnight would be nice. But some sort of quick build low stress protected bike way that everybody can very quickly experience what we're talking about. I think we'll be event. I would love that. That's going to take a year to plan. We actually have one coming up and probably in June that it'll be a smaller one in Petaluma. But I think if we can demonstrate, that's just a one day event. If we can demonstrate with the quick build some protected bike ways and have everybody get it and have just some key corridors identified and a quick build protected bike way put up quickly. Sounds radical and achievable. I love it. Audrey, did you want to throw out some brainstorm ideas? I'm open to any conversation really. And just to use myself, I work for Caltrans here in the Sacramento headquarters office. I think I kind of want to more so participate in the conversations that everyone else wants to have and see how that can impact my work. So yeah, I like both of those ideas. Well, and let me ask you a question because I have to say that I really am taken. I just am having a visual of you wake up one morning and there's a quick build bike way network that takes you safely all the way to work. And maybe it's only up for two weeks. It's a demonstration project. Like, is that something that's legal under current California regulations? If a city wanted to do that, could they do that? I don't personally, I don't know if that is something I think it kind of depends on the community and the context really. So it's not a state law? I don't think so. Yeah, that sounds. Yeah, I think it just really depends on the community or so more so like the city. That makes sense. That makes sense. Love that. And you know, I keep thinking about this sort of relates more to what Jen is talking about. There used to be just bringing humor into it, bringing fun into it. Like at the movie night, there was one of the movies that really stuck with me at we review at the movie night before I okay. So at the movie night, there was one short that was on Valencia Street in San Francisco. Valencia Street has bike lanes, but at least I don't know if they're protected now. I haven't been to San Francisco in so long because of the pandemic, but they have bike lanes and people are parking in them constantly. And so these people went out with signs that said just a minute and they were like, they went and blocked the traffic lane so that when somebody parked in the bike lane, so the bikes could come in a traffic lane and the cars had to wait. And they just said, just a minute, they'll just be there, just be a minute, just a minute and they held up these signs. And I thought that was great because it took something really annoying and angering and they treated it with humor. And I keep thinking like how can we, because I think I think it's easy to be, for me at least as a bicycle advocate, to be a little bit I'm angry, sure, because you just almost ran me over or whatever, you know, like my adrenaline's up, my life is threatened, like how can I step back from that and do something that allows people to come in because it's more welcoming, it's funny, it may be challenging them in some way, challenging their underlying assumptions, but with humor as opposed to like you're killing the planet with your car, you know, or something, you know, like that's not a message that's going to make anyone get out of their car. Like, I don't know, I just, humor seems like a really important element, humor and fun. I think what you said, I believe you said it, something that shows people joy. And I do think that's really important. And the bike, our bike coalition just put out our teacher with bicycle and the word joy was the largest word that you can see on the, on the bike. And so one of the things that I've heard from these two days are just the amazing things that these bike, the bike parties are doing, the easy way bike party, but also just very fun bike rides that bring out people and that allows them to feel safe and have fun. And we have a ride that's growing like that. It's called our Taco Tuesday ride and it's open to anybody and people are now like decorating their bikes with lights. So when we're out at night, it's all this, and they have, all everybody brings boom boxes and, and they go and get tacos together and stop it at the brewery on the way. So that to me is a really good way to get on a bike having fun that this, as they said, that kind of first experience, that first step is getting out there on a bike, having fun. So I think, you know, building a more successful bike, this, this bike experience, and maybe I'm just thinking, you know, really get the city behind it to promote it to do more for it.  You know, they have 30 or 40 people, maybe 60 on a good day, but it could easily be 100 or 1000 if there was a lot of energy put into promoting it. Yeah, it just made me think one of the things that, and I forgot to mention this, but I was thinking bike party is a great example of bringing the joy and scraper bikes too. It's like that artistic decorative like this isn't just a bike, this is an expression of who I am. It's expression of my spirit of fun. And like who wouldn't want to join bike party? Like when at first, I don't know if it was, how new it was when I was on it a few years ago, a number of years ago now, but it was one of the things that blew me away is that we'd ride through these residential neighborhoods and there's loud music and everyone's ringing their bells and yelling bike party. People would come out of their houses and stand for the entire time. And just happy, not mad, like thrilled, like people came out of restaurants, like people just poured out and it went by my house a few months ago. And we just came and hollered in the street the whole time. Because it was so exciting.  But what I think, and I think that's the kind of thing that teaches people that bike riding is fun, but I could see, like I've ridden places with bike party, like on San Pablo Avenue and the East Bay, which is a big, you know, Caltrans through street. And I wouldn't do it without them. Right. So, so how do we bridge that gap? Like if I had a car, I might go out with bike party and have a great time. But that doesn't translate to like, how do you translate that culture to know that's how I want to get to work tomorrow. That's how I want to pick up my kids. If we can turn them into advocates, so we show them that this is a very, very fun event. And then if we could say, hey, we need your help to advocate. So it's a big leap, you know, most people don't want to advocate, you know, it's a lot of work. It's hard. It takes a certain kind of personality to be an advocate. And so that has to come organically. But hopefully, it can be made easy to advocate. I think I think that is a key that I don't think it's realistic to expect the world to become advocates. But if we can provide easy ways for them to action that sort of accomplishes the same thing, then we can build more voice for the protected network, protected bikeways, the things that we need that they can see easily that we're making it. One thought I have is a holathon. Because one of the big objections people have is, well, I can't get my groceries on my bike. I can't get, you know, blah, blah. I've been grocery shopping on my bike for a long time. And it would be kind of fun to have an event where people brought their cargo bikes, their bike trailers, you know, whatever, just their regular panniers, and maybe put weird random stuff in it, not groceries, but like tubas or, you know, big lightweight sculptures stuck up like just something that was like shows that you can do it on a bike. Just weigh in on that. I think that one is kind of hard, because you also have to, I guess, prepare people to be able to have a cargo bike. Those are super expensive and not super accessible. So I think it would have to start smaller than that with, you know, those simple trips, like you said, like to work, like trying it once a week, where there are like programs in place with those employers, for example, with Caltrans. We have an incentive if we actually work in person, we work virtually at this point. But when we did work in person, if you liked to work at least half of the days of your month of work, you would get a certain stipend back, and you would just fill out this form pretty much once a month, and you would get a little paycheck for money, right, like riding your bike. And that's only half the time, you don't even have to do it full time. I think that that is like the key right there. But then it can move on later once they have those simple trips, the everyday trip back and forth to this place that they go to, that may be pretty close, where it's as simple as just getting to and from. And then once you do the shopping type of trips, that one's a little bit more challenging just because, yeah, like they do have to carry some stuff, maybe they have a big family, they can't have five acts of groceries on their bike. So I think you have to start smaller than that. Yeah. We can even have people with standard bikes, not cargo bikes, I agree that is the higher lift. And even a car, I used to use a trailer with a standard bike, but you know that costs money too. But even just panniers on your bike, like you can put a lot on a standard bike. I used to do my grocery shopping on my standard bike with panniers and baskets and stuff. And just to put if we got styrofoam sculptures or something, you know, just something kind of attention grabbing and outrageous to say, I can do it by bike, sort of you can, you know, to raise awareness of everything that you can put on a bike. But with a sense of humor, like with some, you know, goofiness, just a thought, I kind of want to go on that, right. But I love that. So I wrote down state programs to incentivize employers to provide programs like the one Caltrans has. And I don't know if there's already something in California like that, but just if the state said, if X number of your employees bike, you get this money and you pass it on to your, you know, the state will give the employer money to pass on to the employees or whatever. And there could even be like credits or something too, because we're also assuming everyone has a bike. Depending on what city you live in, if it's an urban area, there's probably, you know, the jump bikes, the little bikes, all of those if there was maybe some type of employer program where on like certain days of the week, they get a certain credit to try a jump bike for free to get to and from work for the day. That could be a really good start. And I think though those types of trips where they can just, you know, they don't need to have a bike right now, they can use a jump bike, they can get to and from because the stations that are, you know, where they get charged stuff are probably near where they work in theory, right. So something like that would be a really good start to start really small. Well, I think that's a great idea. I love that idea. And I also, I want to bring us back to like bigger ideas, because we started really big and then we've gotten very practical. And I think that part of the point of this is to be impractical, which not, these are all awesome ideas. I'm not no, no criticism of any of the ideas, but I guess the question is, because I'm thinking of all the ideas to get people on a bike, which is awesome. But people, when I talk to people about it, they and I have done a lot of this, you know, with the kids and my neighbors like going on bike rides together to get ice cream, just to get people more into it. But if I, when I talk to people, sometimes they're like, yeah, that would be nice, but I'm not doing that. People drive crazy, you know, and and so without those safe facilities, it's really hard. You know, I was just even riding here today, even though I had bike lanes, protected bike lanes, like pretty good facilities that end quiet neighborhood streets, the whole way. I still had a couple of times when a car, I'm right next to a car, it's starting to pull out, it doesn't see me, stuff like that, that I've got me going. And if I were less committed, that might be it.  The first few years I was riding more, I just was, I was thinking of all the ways I could. It was unnerving, you know, and so how do we, how do we do something that connects that like, this really isn't a choice, because we have the climate crisis, and it's going to be fun, it's going to be okay. Like, how do we do something dramatic that shows people, you know, this is it, like, is it a demonstration where we get a few hundred people on bikes, and they're just like, nobody's driving on X street or X, you know, doing, like, what, what do we do that sort of says, no business as usual, like, this has got to change, and it's going to be positive fun, you know, do we do a renegade quick build without any permission? People do that around here sometimes. I mean, I'm thinking like, if, if there is existing infrastructure in place, like a class two bike lane, if you could do pop up class four bike lanes with, you know, very simple plastic barriers, and potentially maybe closing lane on a certain way, just to show them like, this is what it could be if people were more interested in biking, like, and you advocated for this in your community, because I think a lot of the times there's, there's room for things like that, a class four bike lane, let's say we have a class two covered bike lane, it's as simple as putting up a vertical barrier to make a class four. So if there were more advocates in the community, even if they don't actually bike right now, if they advocated for it vocally, then maybe they could get that type of infrastructure and then they would start using it, because that those types of facilities are what we're going to see, like, everyday average people using not a two bike lanes on a road. Right. Yeah, totally. We did a, in my town, we did a ride to assess different bike infrastructure and there's a street I ride on all the time without thinking about it, but other people were like, no, the cars were too close and they were going too fast. So that street is actually getting a separated two way bikeway, protected bikeway in the future, which is very nice. And partly because of that kind of feedback. Yeah, I love that idea. The AB 773 that Julia was talking about, I had not heard of that, but it does sound like, at least it allows cities to, it says create a slow streets program with an ordinance and you can make your own rules to how to move cars off the road. I was curious, just learning more about that, because maybe we can, you know, definitely bring that to our city and ask to say, this would allow you to put up barriers on a class two, to turn it into a class four. I don't know what it allows actually. So I'm just wondering. Yeah, I think AB 7, my understanding, and I may be wrong, is that AB 773 is more related to the slow streets that a lot of cities did where they restricted traffic on certain neighborhood streets and that that could become permanent.  And so I think AB 773 would allow more cities to more easily do something like that, where they, you know, in Emoryville they did a, where I live, they did a temporary slow street and then they turned it with QuickBuild and the grant, they turned it permanent where they closed a couple blocks and they turned a couple blocks into one way. So projects like that, I think AB 773 would just be, you know, any kind of long-term QuickBuild. Yeah. Right, because I, you know, I'm trying to think like back to the question of what radical thing could we just ask for right now. And, you know, I think it would be for the city to say, you know, we're going to take cars off of, you know, this street this week and just have hikes, just to put it out there. And it's not a. So instead of a C-Covilla have a C-Covilla. Yes. Right. And all they would have, they wouldn't have to, you know, they wouldn't have to, you know, hopefully they wouldn't have to police it and do all the things that they do, but just say this is now going to be for bikes. And the thing is merchants tend to scream about that kind of thing because they're like, my customers can't get to me. But if you say it's for a week, they get to experience how many people are going to come to them by bike and on foot. And so they have that lived experience of like, oh, maybe it's not Armageddon. If the two cars that could park outside can't do that anymore. And instead I have 20 people on bikes come in, you know, to shop at my store. I feel like I want to sign this as I bike and I shop. Like, really, I want to go to your store, but I can't get there because you're on another good street for me. I love that idea. Yeah. So and what about connecting some of these actions to climate change? Like, like, I think that's part of the idea behind this is like, the discussion has been all around electric cars. And, you know, this and that sort of like taking what we have now and just electrifying it, everything will be okay and climate. And like, we want to put bikes into the discussion because we can't all drive electric cars, you know. I just want to mention there's people in the chat that are asking to be made panelists. Oh, okay. Let me, let me allow a talk. Okay. Mary, can we talk now? Yeah, I'm sorry about that. And let's say, and I, I, that's my, okay, I did not realize I'm so sorry, you guys, this is my Zoom ignorance. So thank you for pointing that out, Audrey. You know, it shouldn't be radical. Audrey, you're with Caltrans D five, right? I was and I'm with headquarters now. Okay, so I'm, I'm in D five. And, you know, it shouldn't be radical, but I think one of the biggest obstacles I see locally in Monterey County for people doing more commuting is, you know, those of us who are passionate advocates are going to push, push and push on a particular infrastructure need something as small as a pothole. I'm not top pothole.  I'm talking about simple things that should not be that hard to get. It takes a huge amount of time and energy and persistence often to get action taken. That's not reasonable. So I, I don't know that some people consider it radical, but I have many local people who say to me they gave up by commuting because they keep trying to get potholes fixed. They never get an answer back. And if someone like myself who is willing to put, you know, tons of hours of time into this as a volunteer gets frustrated on fixing some of these issues, how are we going to expect to build up more advocates and build up more people commuting when, when our agencies, our public agencies and our municipalities are so unresponsive? And I've been at, as a volunteer for 14 years. Well, I'll tell you that in Oakland, because there's very much the same problem in Oakland. There are potholes you could like fall into and never get out of here. And there was somebody going around for a while. It was, I think it wasn't just one person and they had cement or asphalt or something and they were fixing potholes. They were like, tell us about a pothole, we'll go fill it because the city wasn't doing it. So that's a possible renegade action is just to go fill the F in pothole. Well, seriously, I've thought of things like that, but I don't know that I'm willing to take the little risk of doing some of these things. So. Well, and I think, I guess that's the question, like, and I think that's part of the reason that cities are averse to some of these things like, Oh, what if we do this and there's an accident or whatever? Anyway, I've talked too much, Taylor, go ahead. I'm sorry. I could give another example and I'd love some feedback from other areas to tell their results. Go ahead, Mary. And then I know Taylor wanted to say something. So I'm sorry. Go ahead. Okay, good. I'll mute. Go ahead, Taylor. Taylor, I don't know. It looks like you're unmuted, but I can't hear you.  Hang on. Let me see. I'm going to promote everybody to panelist. I think that might be what I need to do. Okay, now try it again. Let's see. So Taylor, did you want to chime in? Did anyone else want to? Yes. Apologies. I have way too many input and output devices hooked up to this. I just wanted to chime in because I'm actually from New Orleans, the city for its potholes. And we, now I was not personally involved in this, but there was actually, and I'm trying to recall the details, but there was a private, not one of these people who jumps in and tries to offer a privatized solution to everything. But in the case of New Orleans, there was a private company operating a short, very quick turnaround, localized pothole repair with a piece of heavy equipment that actually they could drive it out. And obviously this isn't ad hoc. This is a bit more of an operation, but they could drive it out.  New Orleans had to basically rebuild every single street that was under water in Katrina because water is heavy. And while a lot of that money came from the federal government, it also took a while. So there were some of these kind of ad hoc and temporary operations on top of, of course, our tendency to decorate and throw a party around just about anything. So there's some really epic photographs floating around the internet of what people did to some of these really large potholes. But yeah, no, it's some potholes drive me nuts because I do have a conventional utility bike with relatively narrow 700 C tires. And it really is an obstacle, especially with how rare actual utility bikes are because like I have a heavy sprung saddle. So it's even as uncomfortable as it is for me. I actually had for a brief period of time this year a unsprung saddle on this bike because I had swapped the sprung one onto my new e-bike because the one that came on it was horrible. And you know, so many bikes that people are picking up at stores have these very uncomfortable saddles that are very sporty and it just exacerbates the problem of comfort and just being put off of riding a bicycle when rough pavement. And I'm in Chico, California right now, which has a lot of problems with road maintenance. And so I absolutely agree that, you know, at least arriving at some semblance of a minimum acceptable level of repair is a critical part of any sort of movement to get more people on bikes because Chico is incredibly bike friendly in terms of just the size of the city. But, you know, they were very famous for a long time for building infrastructure early in like the Davis era. But then they just kind of stopped. So they're still kind of building outdated infrastructure when they put new stuff in and the old stuff has been allowed to deteriorate. And yeah, that comfort comfort can't be the role that comfort plays in people's willingness to ride. It can't be underestimated. That's great. Thank you. And there's one more person I'm sorry. I can't see. Oh, Anthony, did you want to chime in because we haven't heard from you? Any big ideas? Well, let's see. There was kind of one thing I saw floating around on Facebook there about using hairdryers for like radar guns and stuff. I thought that was kind of a cute idea. I don't know if anybody else saw that. But we love to do that when we've had issues with, you know, kind of speeding on certain corridors and things. So that way you could kind of get away with without getting dinged for putting something down. We have had some success with some of our city council members have been supportive of doing crosswalk, you know, decorating contests and things like that. So that's been one way to kind of get some high visibility crosswalk down to. So if you can get your city council person on board, you can help with that. So, you know, that's been productive. You know, that gives me an idea that, you know, and it would be something not permanent and you could use chalk to just cover a whole block with a mural, which is I think a good traffic calming and also, you know, could be a vehicle for political expression like in the Black Lives Matter movement when people started painting that on the streets. But, you know, that was a really great way to spread the message. Yeah. The one other thing we did was like yard signs, like slow down yard signs. You can buy them on Amazon. So we try to get as many neighbors as possible to, you know, kind of put them out on the street. So I don't know if, you know, people see them or not. Well, I was in a quick build seminar yesterday and one of the things that Mr. Barricade said is signs don't work. He was talking about street signs, but I think people don't see them. After all, he said you need physical infrastructure to slow down cars. You need, you know, speed tables and speed homes and stuff like that. That was his thought. So we're just to refocus us back on the idea and I see Taylor and I think Mary, just to refocus us back, we're talking about climate crisis. Like what big actions can we take quickly to help? Like we need to shift our transportation modes really fast. What kind of ideas do you have for actions that we could take to do? So Taylor, go ahead. Well, I mean, building off of just what we were generally talking about, making it easy, but also, you know, there's a major problem with perception with a lot of people like was being discussed before. I remember some, a friend of mine, I think in Kansas City, has started doing something interesting. Now, I'm no longer on Facebook. So I've been debating whether or not to dive back into that. However, she's gone on her neighborhood Facebook and basically made herself available for, for lack of a better phrase, commuter tutoring, tutoring. And, you know, because people really, I guess it's sort of like that, you know, the 60th percentile interested with concern. People are interested, but they also, and I've done a lot of exploring personally into the types of bikes that are out there that you wouldn't ever find in a, in a shop in the United States. And people don't even realize sometimes that like, they genuinely don't know that that's a thing.  I've got it. We're being called back together. And I see Marie and Audrey both have their hands up.  If it's okay. Okay. You know what? I can't hear you. And it might be that the sound is coming from the microphone. If you guys can put comments in the chat, I'll go ahead. Shall I go ahead? Yeah, go ahead. So again, I don't think it should have to be a radical act, but it apparently it is. I, I feel it's an urgent thing that will make a big difference. And we have a bringing back. If we can find a way for vouchers and local cities to do a much better job with responding to residents concerns about specific infrastructure issues, as he was mentioning tutoring, I do that too. And in Monterey County, I get together with people who are wanting to talk to you, wanting me to go with them on the route. And they point out to me, a lot of these things are quick and easy to fix. If they can just be, you know, if we can get these agencies to respond. So Audrey, maybe you can give, and look at the example I put in the chat, with Caroline. That woman is like there. She's lived there, I think 50 years now, like that, not for that long. And they've been stripping and repainting. She's had to press on that since. That's how. Thank you. Thanks. So, Audrey, did you want to put something in the chat? Also, kind of using the existing tools, like our commercials, like how people in some way connect with it, turning that on. And then the last thing we're going to talk about, like going to like the public forums, and they take up the street, and these demonstrations, you know, if things are big and like people can see, then it's kind of like this conversation we started and write some papers. And then that's going to be an opportunity to talk to people about it. Two, one. We have a lot of friends here, too. Can we go to you guys now? Thank you for being our facilitator. So, I'll just kind of move back. So, we kind of went around our support. We shared like what we're all different installations of sidewalk dining, but outward dining, and so it seems that happened in various cities all across the state. We got a pretty good sample, I think. And I think what we discovered as we talked to each other is that there was a real difference in the longevity of something like a neighborhood traffic calming program, like most street services, and the dining department. And we kind of talked about there was a built-in support. There was, you know, financial aid we had by this city saying, okay, this is to get more space to make more money. And that allowed these all rest of any programs to just kind of have a longer life and have a built-in support and have a pressure on the city to make it more permanent. Whereas, there were, you know, much more mixed results with neighborhood traffic calming. So, it really took a whole way specific neighborhoods that tried resources at the organization, active support and lobbying of the city board to keep them in neighborhoods. And sometimes the structure of the program actually worked against slow streets staying because they were volunteering or required to go out there to care for them. And that wasn't necessarily possible. So, those are some of the things that I'll talk about later. And then we talked about, like, well, what do we want to do forward?  Like, really, that's what streets was, was discouraging cars to get more difficult so that you would want to, like, we'll see her. And most communities are okay about it, but maybe there are things that are not as successful as it is, just like, you know, weekends, Viet-Nay, you know, something like that. But maybe that's just going back to some things to be more like, okay. And we also talked about where does it go? How do we overcome some of these aspects of racial equality and resources and ability to successfully lobby your government? I don't know who had answers for that, but we recognize that the simple experiment that we ran during COVID had different efforts based on this. No, I'm not ready. Sorry. Well, our group, it was going to see the government here, but I guess it's all of our party and the discourse. So maybe some of the ones that we had as opposed to what I'm thinking as like a really good navigator plan. But things like pre-public transit, like having government people of the profits to pay back for communities or oil structure, carbon dividend tax and like all carbonist tax that's given back to the people. I sort of like the stimulus data to make up for that. I think it's not only flowing more, it's also ideas of like the city, even on a local level, we're like two lanes off the Bay Bridge, one for bikes, one for transit. But I think we ended up deciding that actually we got a really powerful step and the evening coalition is a part expansion moratorium. So basically there's like two versions. One is just like a light version, which is state law, no new government fund will go toward expanding roadways around the bills. And basically the coalition that has all of the money that's set aside for that this thing to pick up among communities to decide like how they can spend their money locally, housing, other groups. And it's made that there's always going to be money coming in. And so like it just doesn't require the report that everybody wants to be care about. And then like the sort of more intensive and something that we can help with the state or local level, but just like it was like, just simply we will not permit any gas stations, we will not perfect any, you know, like oil cheap places, you know, and even so far as like potentially you could expand back to like working lots and partnerships. Just, we really needed a consensus that we should stop doing the bad things first, you know, like we need to do that. And we think that it's definitely a potential way to go, which is because of all the money that goes for automobiles. If you could split that in a lot of different, you know, communities, I think that that's a very nice message. So, okay. So, so just hyper hyper visibility, consistency, sustain school bus, the light, lighting school buses, other kinds of visibility, corporate art and music to glorify bicycle, bike to work weeks instead of bike to work days, and closed off streets on those days to cars, and really encourage the idea that more people see bikes and a positive, joyous, but also usually to a very comfortable way. The more it will get other people to bike here, it's made for stillness, apprehensive. And then the other side of that coin was the decor for our car. And to use this moment where every work, everyone's attention is on, you know, these fuel prices and the kind of albatross that the current car system can be. And so people are finding the car, we've got some ideas like having bicycles, swarm car shows, a Detroit car show or an LA car show. And also a concerted campaign to actually shame Hollywood for glorifying the car, for example, Fast and Furious in other movies where this gas-fuzzing vehicles are, you know, associated with sex and machoism and all that kind of stuff. So some sort of a creative AT car machine mode kind of campaign. And then we also got on the car attacks and with a social justice angle where there will be some sort of a rebate and then taking this opportunity to point out that fossil fuel prices are going to just continue to go up. And that, you know, talked about at the very end having larger employers, people who are responsible for their workers' needs, instead of just kind of throwing it out. Then when we did talk about displacement and the problem with a lot of folks being displaced and unable to just quickly switch to a bike because they work really far from where they live. So we have to have some sort of equity social justice as well. So if you do do a carbon tax, you have to be with a social justice aspect where it's maybe it's a progressive carbon tax or, you know, the tax on the carbon and then the rebate change or something. Okay, thank you. So the Zoom group came up with a whole bunch of ideas.  Another thought was to do, take, build a low stress network, complete connected low stress network as a pop up, temporary have it up for a week or two so people could get to have that experience without putting in the infrastructure yet, but they could get that to feel it to like identify key corridors and do this. That would take obviously coordination with the local government. Another thought was something I heard expressed in by other people was fun bike rides like colorful lights like show the fun and biking get out this one group has a taco Tuesday ride bike party, deck place making culture making with bikes, building a more successful experience to get cities behind those fun bike rides. So it's not just independent nonprofits and volunteers who are putting them up but cities are promoting them so more people know about them and more people can go on them. One idea was to do a hall of fun to show the utility of bikes by having people hall maybe ridiculous things on a variety of different kinds of bikes, like giant styrofoam sculptures or whatever. Another thought was Caltrans has a program or did have a program when everyone was working remotely where if an employee bicycles to work at least half the days in a month, they get a stipend for that and so the idea was to maybe make that a state initiative so that that would go to employers all over the state that the state could be involved in that employer credits for bike share. So employers could help people ride bikes to work by giving employees bike share credits. Another pop up idea was to turn class two bike lanes in a pop up class four bike lanes with just temporary cones or bollards of some kind, maybe close a traffic lane so people can experience this is what it would be like if this crappy lane was a really great bike lane. Another idea is to take cars off the street for a week in a particular spot like no cars, instead of just see Livia do it for a whole week and give that space over to biking and walking. One thing that came up as a big problem for people, a big obstacle to biking is getting potholes fixed, it can be very slow with local governments and so there was some discussion about renegade going out yourself and doing it. I know that happened actually in Oakland because Oakland has a huge pothole issue but apparently it's happened in New Orleans as well that private companies will come and fix potholes for you so not waiting on the city. Another idea was crosswalk decorating contests to sort of rate slowdown cars and raise awareness or using chalk to create a mural on the street overnight. And another thought was to make yourself available on social media as a commuter tutor so that individuals can reach out to the to the interested but concerned population and say I'm here I'll help you and that was it. Great thank you so much everybody this was super fun thank you Julia, Laura, Susan and Laura and thank all of you really really inspiring to hear all those ideas.


Oh, everybody, welcome back to the auditorium. The best room at WordCamp Phoenix, for sure. Up next, we are talking a little bit about WordPress Multisite. And to do that is the CTO of WPMU Dev, and also the CEO of? No. No? Just part of it? Well, CTO of all of those. All right. Well, anyway, talking about WordPress Multisite, Aaron Edwards. How are you guys doing? All right. WordPress Multisite. How many of you have heard of that? Yes, maybe? Good. Well, let's get started. First, who am I? As you said, I'm a CTO of Inksub, which is a funny name company. And it's the parent of WPMU Dev, which is more familiar, and edgy blogs and campus press. And make a lot of plug-ins, services. I love building things for WordPress, and I've been doing that for 10, 11 years now. So what is WordPress Multisite? Multisite is a network, a multisite network, is a collection of virtual sites that all share the same WordPress installation. So there's actually this really interesting feature hidden away in WordPress that a lot of people don't know about. And if you enable it, suddenly WordPress can be not just one site, but that same installed WordPress core files. It can power multiple to hundreds to thousands to even millions of WordPress sites all using the same set of core files on the same server. So it's a really powerful thing. A lot of people don't know about it. And I'll just give you a really brief history of that. It used to be called, way back in the day, WordPress MU, which is for multi-user. And it was actually a fork of WordPress that was maintained alongside. And it had all those multisite features in it. And then in WordPress 3.0 is when they decided to merge the two together and to include multisite inside of WordPress core itself. And that's when they renamed it to multisite. That's actually where my company, WPMU Dev, got its name. It's because it used to be called WordPress MU, multi-user, WPMU. And we were first started by providing plugins and services for multisite. So that's where it is, a brief overall picture. And it's kind of a redheaded step child to WordPress because not many people know about it. It doesn't really get that much attention. Even since WordPress 3.0, there's pretty much been no new features added to it. It still functions the exact same way. But there is a core set of people that use it and it is really useful for some key things. So first of all, when you create a multisite, there's a few examples of how it's usually used. So I'll give you the first one, which is open registration type networks. And a lot of you are probably familiar with WordPress.com, which is actually one WordPress installs, this huge WordPress install. And it has tens of millions of WordPress websites that are all running on the same set of core files. And they actually, you can sign up for free and create your own blog on there. And it's running on their same WordPress install. And then of course, they can sell paid upgrades to you. Hey, if I want more storage space, I want a custom domain, all these different things. They sell that to you on top of that normal package. So WordPress.com is a good example. edublogs.org, which is a large WordPress multisite install that my company maintains and manages for educators, teachers, students. And we have about four million WordPress sites hosted on that, four million blogs. And that's all on the same set of core files, all hosted together in one thing. And then my own personal little multisite install that I do kind of on the side of my free time. And it's actually what introduced me to WordPress in the first place, which is missionsplace.com. And it's an open network where missionaries can sign up to have a free website. The other type of network is much more common and much more used, and that's closed registration networks. So wordcamp.org is a really good example of that. How many of you went to the WordCamp website today to look at the schedule? Probably a lot of you. That's actually a WordPress multisite install. And what they do is this one hosted WordPress install. And every time there's a new WordCamp each year, they create a new sub-site. And that sub-site has its own theme and its own everything that the organizers of that WordCamp can control. But it's all hosted in one multisite install. One of them that we host through our CampusPress enterprise hosting is osu.edu. And that's Ohio State University. And they have a really large WordPress multisite install and they use that so that they can easily provide quick sites for the faculty, for different departments of the school, even for different campuses. Because the problem they had before was someone would always be saying, oh, I need a website. Some teachers, some class, whatever it was, I need a website. And instead of having to manage thousands of websites, they just have one WordPress multisite install that we host and then they can easily create sub-sites for each of those different departments that can have their own theme and control everything themselves. BBC America, that's a big website. They actually have a sub-site for every TV show that they host. So each one can have a slightly different theme and different things like that. Another common use case is company internets. So if they have like an internal site for their employees and everything, that's the same thing they could do. They don't even have to host it on the public internet. So that's the most common use case for multisite is these kind of private closed registration type ones. Now, when you're first enabling WordPress multisite, the first thing it's gonna ask you is do you want it to be sub-domain or subdirectory? And a lot of people don't really understand what the difference is. And just if you look right here, sub-domain, your main site will be like your domain, mysite.com, and then when a sub-site is created, it will be a sub-domain of that, like site1.mysite.com, site2.mysite.com, et cetera. And if you choose subdirectory, it's kind of the opposite. The site name comes afterwards in the directory name. And a lot of people love the sub-domain because it looks really clean and stuff, but in most cases I actually recommend against using that because there's a lot of things that you have to deal with when you do a sub-domain. First of all, it's a lot harder to set up because you have to do tricky things like wildcard DNS and you have to get a wildcard SSL certificate that can work for all those sub-domains, which is extra costs, and a lot of hosting providers don't provide wildcard sub-domains for free, and a lot of hosting providers that work with multisite, they don't even work with sub-domain by site. That's something to consider. Also in the future, if you wanna add like a CDN or a web application firewall in the cloud, those kind of things, a lot of them don't support a wildcard sub-domain, and so that can cause you a lot of trouble down the road. So in most cases, I recommend doing subdirectory if you can, unless you really want to deal with the trouble with that. Oh, and another thing I almost forgot about is security. So when it's a sub-domain bots and all the bad actors out there on the internet, it looks like a different WordPress installed to them. So they may have, say you have a login bot that's trying all these user names or whatever on your website to try to hack into it. They think that all those sub-domains are a different site, so they might be attacking all those different ones at different times or all at the same time, and so essentially when it comes to bots, even Google bots, search engine bots, things like that, they see them as distinct websites when it's sub-domain, and so you have to deal with a whole lot more load, a whole lot more traffic, and a whole lot more security implications. All right, now when you first create a site, you create what's called a network, and this is the default structure. You have your main site, which is kind of the parent at the top, and then you have all these subsites that are underneath it, and the whole thing together is called a network. That network has its own settings that reference that entire network of subsites that are underneath it. There's actually a hidden feature in multi-site itself that you can enable with plugins called multi-network that allows you to have multiple main domains with their own subsites underneath it, all in that same WordPress install. That's a little bit more advanced and less common to use, but just showing you how the structure works. So I wanna give you a very quick demo of what multi-site looks like after you enable it. So once you enable it, it actually creates a whole new section called the network admin, and see that all right? Okay, so this right here is what you would normally see, well, you would normally see the dashboard when you log into your WordPress site, right? The back end, you have all your normal things, post pages, that kinds of things, but when you have a multi-site enabled, you have this new menu up here, it says My Sites, and you can see all the different sites that my user has permissions for, and you can go to the dashboard of each of those things, or you can go up to network admin, which is a whole other section that has network after the URL, after the WP admin, and this is where you can manage your entire network. So you can see you have like a little widget here to manage your sites, users, if I go to the sites list, then I can see all the different sites that I've created under this multi-site network, what their URL is, you can do things like deactivating them, marking them as spam, you can even go in and edit them and control like some of the settings, like what users are assigned to it, and because each of these is a different WordPress site, you may have a user that's the same login for all these sites, but that user could be an admin on one of them, they could be a subscriber level on one of them, they can have different permissions for all different sites depending on what they're assigned to. So you can manage all that in the network admin, even what themes they have access to enable and other different settings like that, you can all control that in sites, and of course, you can create a new site here on the backend if you wanted. The users works very similar to the normal users panel in WordPress, except that you can see here what sites they have permissions for, see my user, I have three sites that I can access, and also we have a new user type, a new user level called super admin. Now super admin is a level above the normal WordPress admin, and that's the super administrator, and they're able to manage all the sites, they have full permissions to everything, it's like root access, and that's something that you can enable just in a user's profile like normal. And when it comes to themes and plugins in multi-site, they work a little bit differently too. So on the backend here, instead of activating a theme, I'm actually enabling it, which means I'm giving other sites permission to use that theme. So you can see network enable or network disable. So right now, the only enabled ones I have is 2019 and 2017. So if I go in here and look at one of my subsites, and go to the dashboard, open that up in another tab, I go down to themes and say I'm that user on that subsite and say, oh, even though there's 20 themes installed, I only can see an access to them. So that's kind of how permissions work a little bit differently in multi-site with themes. With plugins, it's a little bit different, this is a weird thing that I don't know why it's still in core. Some of us need to update it to get it working normally, but with plugins, on the network side, you can control only network activating, which means activating it across every site, and then the subsites, they don't have any control of that, or it being network deactivated across every site. So that's all that you can control from here, but there are plugins that I will talk about that allow you to change that behavior and give you more control of what plugins each site is allowed to enable. All right, now I'll drop back over to my slides. Some of the reasons why you might wanna use multi-site, some of the use cases that we're talking about, if you want each subsite to be able to have its own theme, maybe a different domain, its own permissions, even maybe the SEO power of having all these different sites all under one domain, the multi-site might be good for you. If you want to share your user accounts across multiple sites, for example, on wordcamp.org, like when you go to register, it says, enter your wordpress.org username, and that username that you log in is the same no matter what wordcamp site you're at, because they all share the same user database. So that can be a good feature of multi-site. If you want users to be able to create blogs or sites on demand, like you have an open registration thing like wordpress.com, it's a great fit for that. Internet sites, as we talked about, development and test sites, some people use it, they just have a multi-site, and they have a staging version of their site and a development version or whatever, and those are just sub-sites, and then that allows them to easily test on the same wordpress install, and then there's plugins that allow them to merge those changes back to the main blog. And probably the most common use case is if you have multiple personal or client sites. Say you're tired of having to deal with updates across all these different sites and all these different hosts. Maybe it may be more useful for you to merge all your clients into one wordpress install, then they can each have their own sub-site with their own permissions, and you can use an awesome plugin called the Domain Mac in Plugin that allows them to have a custom domain. And multi-lingual is another use case I've seen. People will have their main site as the main blog, maybe in English, and then they'll create sub-sites that are basically just a copy of that main one in a different language. And the best benefit is you have one wordpress install and codebase to maintain for updates and things like that. Now, multi-site might be too much for you if users shouldn't be all shared. For example, say you have WooCommerce or membership plugin on a sub-site where people have to register, like the public has to register. That might be really confusing to them if they try to register on the site when they had previously registered on some other site which they don't know are related at all. It's a completely different company or client or whatever, and that could be really confusing. It says, oh, your email's already taken because the user is shared between multiple sites on that same network. So sometimes that could be a little bit trouble there. Sometimes I've seen people, they just go overkill and say, oh, multi-site, I need multi-site. When really what they need to do is just use the core wordpress features of categories, tags, post types because they just are just trying to categorize content differently. Because in multi-site, every site has its own unique content and database, and there isn't really any clean way to be able to merge all the posts from multiple sites and display them in one place. You have to just think of each site is completely separated other than sharing user passwords is completely separated in every other way. So you have to consider that when you're making that decision. Also, like you're doing it for clients or something like that, if you need to give someone access to the file system, like to upload their own plugins or themes or different things like that or edit files, that it doesn't really work in multi-site because whatever they do, those files are shared between all the sub-sites. So if they upload a plugin or change some code somewhere that could take down or cause a hack or problem on all the other sub-sites. So it's really only good if you're gonna be with the one that's in charge of managing the code. When you're installing a multi-site, hosting is something that's a little bit different than just traditional wordpress. We're still not all hosts support it. I really don't recommend using shared hosting because with multi-site, even though you're using the same set of core files, every site has its own database tables, it has its own uploads. So you have to think about it resource-wise that it's using the same amount of resources as if you had multiple sites installed on that server. It's not just one site, it's amount of resources. So the amount of traffic they get, all those different things like that, it's gonna be multiplied by the number of sites. That's why some hosting providers, if they support multi-site, usually it's on a higher paid plan or even some hosts you have to pay for however many subsites you have, almost like you're just creating separate wordpress installs. And there's a good reason for that. Small networks, you can get started with a lot of the managed hosting providers like WPMU DevUs or WP Engine, or if you're a technical type and you wanna run your own virtual private server, that might be a good fit for just your entry-level multi-site. If you have a really large network, like in the thousands of sites, then you really want to get a real enterprise-level hosting provider that can handle that kind of load, that kind of technicality stuff. Or high-resist admin, if you get that big. Security is something that you also have to consider in multi-site. So if you have public registration enabled where they can create their own subsites, that means those are untrusted users and you have to be careful at what permissions you allow them. So there's things that you can set for what file types they're allowed to upload. You don't want them to upload any code or edit code, things like that. Embedding scripts, so this is an interesting thing. The admin user in multi-site is actually not as powerful as in single-site because the admin user in normal WordPress, they can upload any code. They can embed JavaScript code into a post or page, that kind of stuff. Which is fine because they're an admin, right? But in multi-site, admins suddenly aren't really trusted anymore because if they upload some JavaScript there, that could cause a hack that could affect all the other subsites on the network. So they actually take away the unfiltered HTML permission for that in multi-site. But the problem is, a lot of plugins and themes, they don't really understand that. So they might work fine in multi-site, but they're actually not really built to check that capability properly. They just assume, oh, it's an admin user. It's okay if they enter some code into this text field in the back of the theme options. Even though that's not really secure anymore because that user is untrusted now. So that's something to consider and to think about when you have an open registration. Also, just some things that you have to deal with, like content, like if you have untrusted users, I think on WordPress.com, how many people tried to create spam blogs or things like that to post spam or bad things or copyright suddenly are getting these DMCA takedown notices, people saying, oh, someone posted some copyrighted thing here. You gotta take it down. It's a lot of work and a lot of stuff to deal with when you're hosting a multi-site like that. It's open. Backups is another consideration. So with multi-site, as I said, the tables are duplicated for every site plus files, uploads for every site. So using like a plugin, like most of the backup plugins actually they don't even work with multi-site. Or if they do, you have to pay like a license for every sub-site. Because every site is considered separate really in practical terms. And so even if they do work, they can be unreliable, especially as you start getting into the tens or hundreds of blogs and that starts creating large databases that can take your site down if you try to back them up in a traditional way. So I recommend using your hosting backup solution, things that run on the server side, not plugins for those kind of backups from multi-site. Now upgrades and updates. It is great that you can update all the sites at once. So if you update a theme on your multi-site, it's actually updating it for every single sub-site that's using that theme because the code is shared between them all. So that's a good part. But also you have to figure out if you're gonna update that, that could affect every single site on the network, you know, not just the one. So that makes things a little bit tricky, things that you have to worry about. And if you have a really large network, there's a lot of scaling concerns because everything has to be updated separately. So here's a few like defines that we often use like in the WP config file that you can add. And that turns off some of the auto updates and things like that. So it won't take your site down necessarily when you're updating in the traditional way. Also, when you're getting to something that scale of a multi-site, using version control like git to manage your site, that's a really good idea. It's top doing like installing things and doing things from the dashboard, but actually doing things in a more tracked and reversible way using version control. And I'll just go through a few recommended plugins that a lot of people need or use on WordPress multi-site. So here's, you can look on the WordPress.org repo, they have a nice tag multi-site and that's a lot of plugins that are built for or support multi-site specifically. And there's a blog post, I'll have the link to the slides up after this so that you don't have to copy this whole town right now. One of the most common and most used plugins is the domain mapping plugin. As I talked about, if you need a separate custom domain, vanity domain for some of the subsites on your network, then the domain mapping plugin is the tool that you use for that. And there's a free version on WordPress.org which works pretty good. And there's a premium version that our company actually produces that has more bells and whistles and features like that. And that's really widely used, almost anyone that has a multi-site uses domain mapping plugin. New blog templates, it allows you to set like certain settings, plugins, themes, different things like that and have it so if someone creates a new site or you create a new site for a client, it could have that template already set up for them. That's a really useful tool. There's a free version and there's a premium version that we have. Anti-splog, if you allow open registration where the public can sign up and create their own site, suddenly, you know how bad comment spam is now?  Accusement is a lifesaver there but there wasn't really an alternative for blog spam which we call splogs instead of spam. So spam blog, splog. And so I actually created a plugin called Anti-splog and it works kind of like Accusement but it's geared towards blog registration. So if people sign up for a blog it'll actually like scan the posts that they create and if it looks like spam it can mark those blogs spam, different things like that. So that can be a really useful plugin. Multisite Plugin Manager, that's another plugin that I made and that was the one I was referring to before where plugins in the network admin it doesn't behave the same way as themes and so this plugin here, Multisite Plugin Manager it allows you to choose which subsites can access certain plugins. It can choose, oh, this plugin should be auto activated on all these subsites when they're created. Different things like that. You can all manage that through using this third-party plugin that's on the repo. And now we have a little bit of time for questions because you probably have some questions and I'd love to answer them. He's coming with the microphone to you. Anywhere? Right up here in the front. Thanks. I might try and get a couple questions because the first one's fast. If you're doing top-level domains for all your subsites, does it matter whether you're using subdomains or subdirectories? It wouldn't really, no. Okay. But it would be easier to use subdirectories first. Sure. All right, that's good to know. And then that was a fast one. So is it possible to do Multisite across servers, mainly to deal with database sizes and that sort of thing? Yes, like for example, edgibogs.org that we host, edgibogs.org. That runs across, I think, we have like seven application servers. Then we have 10 database servers that it's divided across. Plus we have varnish caching servers and then CDN and then S3 uploads. I'm guessing that's all custom. Not all of it actually. There's a few tools. There's one called for dividing a database is the technical term is called sharding. And so what it does is it says, okay, this blog, we're gonna put this table on another database server somewhere else. So it allows you to scale to an unlimited amount of sites. So there's a plugin that's really awesome out there. Well, one that we coded called Multidb. That's free on github.org. We don't really support it very well anymore. The only place we use it really is edgibogs that we made custom. But there's a great one out there called ludicrousdb. If you wanna look at that and that allows you to divide your database into unlimited amount of servers. To scale unlimited, basically. Anyone else with the question? Right here in the front. We had that slide up. And I think you had the sub, earlier we had that slide up showed I think sub-domains on the left and sub-directories on the right. Yes.  Yes. If a system has been set up with sub-domains, is it possible to convert it to sub-directories? It's possible, but it's not easy. How many blogs do you have? Six sites. Six, that wouldn't be too bad. Would be doable. If you Google, there's tutorials that people have made. You basically just have to change various things in the database. Using the tool WPCLI, which I think there's actually a session about that after this one, that could be really useful in helping you make some of those adjustments because you have to find and replace a lot of the URLs in the database that were already set up. Yeah, I've thought about doing the same on my multi-site, which is about 1,000 sites, but I haven't gotten around to it. Anyone else in the back? What about campaign micro-sites? Would multi-site be a good usage for a product micro-site or, I mean, I know the WordCamp event website is perfect, but a company that might do different micro-sites for different purposes, would multi-site be a good use for that? Yeah, that's a great use for that. Micro-sites, like I've seen companies where they have, they use a multi-site network and it's basically the same company, but they just kind of rebrand it for every city. So they have a Dallas version and a Washington DC version or whatever, and they use the same theme activated across the both, but it can change the design and different things like that, and that way they can just use the main one as a template and copy it over to the sub-site, and it makes it really easy to manage all that in one place with the same users that have access to all of them. Yeah, so that's a great use case, for sure. Anyone else in the front here making them run? So you mentioned one of the most commonly used is like people who do client sites or manage multiple sites, right? Yes. How easy or difficult is it if there's a separation of service to pull that client site and give it to them? Well, I wouldn't say it's super easy. Yeah, it's definitely, I mean, you can do obviously the traditional export, import, and WordPress, that's not very reliable for larger things, but it definitely is possible. Some of the backup plugins support that, some of the migration plugins support that, like moving a regular site into a multi-site or out into a single site, and of course you can do it manually. I'm sure there's tutorials online that I've seen before that kind of walk you through how to do that. But the tables themselves are not really very different at all. So like moving it out, it's not that hard of a process. Anyone else? All right, well thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned something about multi-site. Maybe a cool tool that you can use for your businesses. And there's a link to the slides there. And I'll leave that up for you guys if you want to download that later. And if you have any more questions, you can find me at our WPMU Dev booth right here. I'll be there most of the day and tomorrow too. Thank you. Awesome, you took care of all of my closing statements. Let's hear it one more time for Aaron. Are you gonna be hanging out at the Happiness Bar at all? Or just mostly at the WPMU Dev table? Perfect.


What's up guys welcome back to the channel so as you guys can see this video is going to be for that autographed postcard of Frederick Osbone that Toyota I am I did not have time to get a full recording done here this weekend I've been doing a lot of vinyl work for holiday season and stuff like that trying to get gifts and stuff done so that's why I did not have time to do full game content but this buddy's sleeping so that's why today's video is just a quick little little video to have up for today is the 18th day of my 25 days giveaway for this Frederick Osbone autographed postcard so if you guys want a chance comment down below let me know if you guys like Frederick Osbone's new cars Toyota I am and stuff as far as the giveaway for the Hamilton poster there was only one comment on that video so I didn't really feel I had to do a giveaway video I'll just be contacting the winner of that poster to get it to him so until tomorrow guys back to normal game content tomorrow so until then I'll catch you guys later.