Perfect. All right. This is start blogging in 2023 part two, planning to reach your audience. So, if you have not been here before, I'm sorry, this is part two, you did not have to attend part one, if you would like to see part one, if you get a lot out of this or you're just curious. If you scroll down on learn.wordpress.org and head to view all online workshops, click on view recorded online workshops. You can find a series of start blogging on this page here. Yeah, so this was part one here. Again, you do not need to have attended that to understand this today, but you are welcome to join us there at some point. Okay, as far as the transcripts go and that's a great question they should be. They are all subtitled so. Each of these videos is subtitled. That's a good question about the transcripts though I do believe we have those somewhere. We will save that for the end. Okay, I will double check that it could be that they just haven't been approved yet. So I will make sure that I take care of that at the end of today thank you so much for being that's my intention. All right, start blogging in 2023 part two, planning to reach your audience. I'm Sarah snow I'm a Florida resident by weekday traveler by weekend when time allows I'm a former middle school teacher and the parrot and Sharpe mom so you will hear some barking in the background most likely and definitely some parents whistling. But those are just my birds. I love cooking learning languages and currently studying American Sign Language in French in the ocean. I'm a training team contributor slash mad scientist when things go interestingly so I'm very lucky to be sponsored by automatic. So let's talk about today's goals. We're going to explore different content types. We are going to brainstorm lists of potential future topics. Let's try some top level categories maybe some categories and tags, explore content design, and ultimately today is about your ideas so this is a writing process workshop. Yeah, so with that in mind. I don't know has anyone participated in national novel writing month. I'm just curious about writing content like that that's the biggie right every November, people from around the world get together and write a 50,000 word novel. I'm just curious has anyone heard of it. Catherine dropped a link to it. Okay john says yes you've either heard of it or you participated in it so there's this idea with writing and this is true for blogs for stories for screenplays for, I don't know hallmark Channel films. But there are two types of writers right there are the plotters and the planners right who meticulously plan everything out, and then there are the panzers and they fly by the seat of their pants and just write whatever comes to their mind. So, what are these things can be a little bit more successful when it comes to blogging than the others today, we are not going to fly by the seat of our pants for our 2023 blog, we are going to plot and plan and create strategies. Let's talk first about some expectations today please stay courteous. The most important rule is this respect yourself and everyone in this room. We all come in with varying levels of knowledge and background and abilities and all of that so you will definitely know some things that I don't know, and I will be learning from you as well. So, we are going to bring some together and separately. So, please keep your play definitely participate we want to hear your voice if you're so inclined or you can type in the chat as so many of you are. But this type of brainstorming really works best with kind, deliberate participation. And also there are no wrong ideas this is a writing workshop. Throw out kind of whatever comes to mind. So, this is an interactive experiment so we're going to see how this goes together. The first one of these was pretty successful, I really liked it so we're trying another experiment this way. Yeah, and again this is recorded at the end. I will say hey should we put this at the library at learn.wordpress.org. Just if there's anything that someone shares that's just a little too personal or something like that if that happens then, you know, I'm definitely open to being like hey, well, I'll meet either that part or this entire so. Yeah, so those are, did I do that thing again. So I get for not double checking my things here again. All right. So we are not going to cover how to set up your blog we did cover that last week. So if you are looking to set up your name. And again I will double check the subtitles on this because they should be there if they're not there might be a problem with the file but I will fix that today. So if you're looking to set up your blog I dropped a link in there today. We covered that last week I would apparently put a link there whoops. So if you are looking for WordPress basics we do have some courses for you for getting started with WordPress if you don't have a host or domain name or these are totally new words to you this course that I just posted is a text based course self paced you can definitely do that. We're also not going to be covering the basics of block themes today but we do have once again more excellent courses for you that can get you set up to design your blog using the block editor. So just to clarify that we are learning writing workshop what we're not learning like specifically like deep WordPress tool so you will be seeing a little bit of a dashboard today. So before we get started you are going to need either access to Google Docs. So you can copy this Google document I'm about to share with you or a place to write down your ideas can be a notebook this can be a word processor this can be a napkin like whatever you have around you're going to want to do some actual writing today. So, I do have a notebook because I saw.  So, let's start with this how much do you already know about blogging with WordPress one is I know almost nothing and that is a okay. Three things about blogging. And if I was hey I have an active blog or I've had one in the past like I know a lot about blogging where do you fall. Yes, excellent. I'm going to learn so much from you probably. I see some threes, vibes you have active blog yes I see a two beautiful okay so threes fours all right. Perfect and we don't have to cover the absolute basics that's great. And we will not get into the difference between post pages and things like that. Excuse me. Okay. I have a lot of coffee today I need to slow down that's what I'm going to do. So let's start with the topic of your blog.  All the various like I think the last one I have to do my parent blog was like three years ago. I have a family recipe blog there's a random personal one for whatever's on my mind and the latest that I'm probably going to start in the future. Actually I did start. I haven't started writing yet which is, this is going to be helpful for that, but it's about like open source teaching contributing to WordPress adventures and WordPress. What's the topic of your blog. Let's start there drop that in the chat box. The topic of your 2023 block is curious. The themes, recipes, technical info. Yes, those are great wall topics. The interesting Laura if you did a blog about like using the 2023 themes and like different ways, like I would be so fascinated by that as a WordPress user. Travel writing yes. Food art and life. How to take control of your concept of WordPress adventures and WordPress awesome. A new site and travel site. A new blog will be about how to use each block in WordPress. Ah, this is so cool. Okay, I'm actually going to I'm seeing a lot of people being like hey I want to help with WordPress if you are interested in, you know, contributing to learn WordPress.org. What I'm looking for is looking for lesson plans and tutorials and other people to run online workshops like this, or co host them like Catherine is doing for me so if you're really passionate about WordPress like if you're actually excited to write a blog about what each does like come join us I would love to see some of that content on here too. If you would like. Okay, that plug is done now. Let's see there's a blog about accessibility. Oh but the site itself is not accessible yeah there's so much there a blog about that is so important because there's just there's so much there and it's ever evolving. WordPress performance tricks yes okay cool. Oh I love it I love how enthusiastic y'all are. Okay. So whatever the topic of your blog is we are going to head to a link here and you're going to print this. Well you don't actually have to print this out this is from a former thing. And this is the graphic organizer we're going to use today so I'm going to copy this link and drop it in here. If you have Google Docs, please open this open the stock. And then you're going to go up here to file. To click this make a copy button. And it's going to copy that to your Google Docs. If you are using a pen and paper. I'm just going to start at the very top of my, my notebook and I'm just going to write down my blog topic which was my blog topic again see. My blog topic was it's adventures and WordPress but it's specifically about like contributing and like teaching WordPress so that's what I'm going to write across the top of my is teaching WordPress teaching word press. So and this is for any of one of us who is using like a mobile phone. I don't know if you can see it I just wrote it across the top. Oh my gosh this blur features ruining my best late plans okay. I like the idea. So this is my copy. So I'm just going to write my blog's topic teaching WordPress in open source that's what my blog topic is my actual blog is called adventures and WordPress land. But like this is what it's actually about. So we're going to start there we're going to start with our blog topic. And once you have done that yep. So you write that down there. And the other tool that we're going to use in addition to this copy is this collaborative workspace this collaborative workspace looks like this. So, at the end of the sections where I say hey like you can contribute to this, we're going to have a sheet that looks like this. And so what you're going to do for this and we're going to practice this really quick is you're going to take a sticky note. And then you're going to answer the problem so the first one is hey where do you find writing inspiration, and this can be anything so long as it is courteous and respectful so for me like my first blog was like my pets inspired me. And so it could just be something simple as birds. Other things that inspire me quotes, and you're just going to write your ideas right here. Now if you are on a cell phone, you can also write this in the chat here. And where I find writing inspiration is I don't know the sky is my inspiration and I can take it from the chat there. So let's start by practicing this here and again the benefits of this is that it's anonymous so that like if you're a little shy, your name's not necessarily attached to it. But if you, you know if you have the limitation where you're not able to use Google Docs for whatever reason, you can also post that in the chat so you can participate, either way, chat, or right here. So let's start here and just open this up anyone should be able. Oh, I need to fix that can edit it there we go. Now you can edit it. This collaborative workspace is separate from the Google sheet so we're going to switch back and forth a little bit we're going to have our copy here. This is what we're going to work on this is just for us, and our collaborative workspace is in another tab over here. So first off, where do you find writing inspiration. Take, take a minute. Grab a note, grab one of these note crash from the top, middle or bottom, just right. See for people on this document. Thank you for your participation y'all. So head down yet to number two beautiful people are making their way down they're well done. Where do you find inspiration.  Um, other WordPress users or else do I find inspiration. Listening to the radio Oh what a great idea. When I have a problem up cooking and recipes yep. Oh I love other people's cooking blogs I always make these intense changes to every recipe and that's what I put on my family blog is making it as spicy as I, as I like it. And I have a solution to a problem. Yes. Oh I love that you find some some way to make something like extra wonderful or better solving problems is a really good space. I'm using books yes podcast. Okay one person writes down their ideas on a notebook for veterans that's fantastic. I try to think I can sometimes be hard to sleep for me if I have something really exciting I have a notepad inside of my bed where I write down a lot of things they don't always make sense the next morning though. There's there's a couple of interesting things also coming in in the chat so one person says my blog is work related so from my work environment. Someone else said books as well and Mark Andrew said on mobile I find inspiration from others in the WordPress space yourself these group podcasts and from philosophy slash books talks on our motivations. Yeah. I'm going to write down 10 talks in this box to because like 10 talks have inspired me so much they definitely give me food for thought. Okay. So inspiration comes from everywhere let's let's finish up on here. I love it someone uses learn wordpress for their inspiration. Yes, do use learn wordpress that is what it's here for. Awesome. Okay. All right, and says it's much easier to be inspired by others but much harder to write something that inspires others well said that is very true. Oh, what do you do with the inspiration how do you write in a way that inspires others that is what today's workshop is a little bit about my clients yeah my clients inspire you have to do this for work like that's a great inspiration to right because they don't all have to be like these like grand noble things sometimes it's a hey like I run a dentist's office and I have to figure out how to run my dentist's office blog like my friend is in that boat. Alright, so this is funny yeah for skipping my directions Catherine, I wrote them in today to. Okay. Let's get through to the next one. So we're going to start now that we've thought about me what inspires us we're going to head to our Google Docs, our notepad our journal. And we're going to write we're going to just start by brainstorming some topics. So we're going to try and think okay what are some individual post ideas that you can think about here. So if you get started writing the first like I realized that I had a really tough time with this because one of the things that I do as I prep these as I go through the steps myself and I looked at this blank screen here and what I can think of like one thing that I want to write like I'm very passionate about it but that was a little bit tricky. So we're going to brainstorm and it's going to be a little bit of a guided brainstorm. I don't have any right or wrong answers here so if something that pops into your mind is like, I don't know teaching people from an RV. That's the first thing that pops into my head I don't know that I'm going to write about it but it can absolutely deserves a place on this list so there are no right or wrong answers here. You can jot down anything that comes to mind. No topic is too large, or too small. I'll end for a blog file that we made the first part yes to copy that link if you have joined us later on here is our collaborative document. So we are going to look for a little bit of inspiration we're going to look for inspiration in some specific places. So the first one I'm going to give you one minute. What is something that most people would be surprised by or get wrong about your topic. So I'm going to give you one minute and I'm going to write with you. What is something that most people would be surprised by or get wrong about your topic to come up with one thing if you come up with a many that's totally fine. Let's do one minute to think what is something that would surprise. I'm going to write with you what would surprise. And that is time. Let's see so someone's asking how can I edit the Google document so you're not going to edit this document itself go to file. Make a copy and this will make a copy in your Google Drive or again you can do this on a piece of paper or Microsoft Word and just kind of whichever way you want. So I've written down a couple of things. So what I'm going to do is this by itself is my first topic. So we're going to do that so that that was one thing is hey what what can some of these challenges be. And you'll notice that I started. I started with just the topic and then I just started writing down here. There's no wrong way to do this this is for you. Yeah and the other thing that you can do is you can go to file. It looks like we're having a couple of problems you can also download this in a variety of different formats so if you have like Microsoft Word you can download that there. If you've got just a standard text document you can download it with plain.txt this will save it onto your computer specifically rather than Google Docs so you have two options there. And now I know that and we'll make sure that I talk about that for next time thank you all so much for that feedback. Alright so the next place we're going to look for inspiration. So we're going to use Google and Google has this thing where it predicts certain things so if I go to Google. And I'm going to write. I'm interested in both teaching and learning WordPress and just a lot of WordPress right so I'm going to look teaching WordPress. And then you'll notice that it auto corrects. Or like maybe how to learn WordPress. And then I've got this entire list here. Of things here like how to learn WordPress development. How to learn WordPress web design how to learn WordPress for beginners step by step how to learn WordPress Reddit interesting I wonder how read it. And WordPress like and learn WordPress overall anyway. So all of this is starting to generate some ideas here. So we're going to start we're going to take three minutes for this because you kind of have to go you know back and forth. I'm going to go to Google. I'm going to go to Google and I'm just going to type in something like WordPress is or is WordPress is your topic. And then see what Google does and as you read through it you're going to head back over to yours. And you're going to just write down any topics that it spurs for you just what what. And the other thing that's really beneficial about this is if you're saying hey is WordPress. Google is going to auto predict based on what is most often searched by users. So these topics are really valuable because people are looking for that information which means if you write it. And it's popular. You're going to connect with a lot of people. So it's very targeted this way. So looks like Catherine has created some options again, you can always do this on a piece of paper as well. So it doesn't have to be online. Let's take three minutes for this and let's just see what you can come up with. Let Google predict what you want. So I'm just going to type in my own here. I'm going to start this timer. Let's take a few minutes. I'm going to write with you that is time finish sentence you are on. All right, I've got a ton of different topics here some of these are more interesting than others but that's okay. Let's do one last brainstorm. So I'm going to use openverse to look for related reference images. So one thing that's really cool that not a lot of people know about. I need WordPress is this new feature called openverse it's not brand new it's pretty new it's new as of like 2022 like recent 2022. It is an extensive open source library of free stock photos images audio and you're, it's all available for you to use it for free now there are some rules there sometimes they want like attributions so like if I Sarah took a picture of something like one of the one of the rules might be hey you have to say that I did it and you look back to my profiles but at the same time like it's super free. So I want you to head to openverse. And I want you to type either your topic here or something related to your topic here. I'm just going to say WordPress meetup right because that's like one of the places where people are I'm just going to see what I can find. So you can do images you can do audio like there's all kinds of stuff for me I'm just going to select images, but I'm going to search here and I'm just going to see what comes up here. And as you can see we've got all kinds of stuff here and this this tells me a little bit about my audience but also like the idea here is that it's going to help me generate some ideas here. And there's no right or wrong answer just you're going to use these images to inspire yourself so when I see this here I think about like mentorship and the importance of empowering women in WordPress specifically and how that's how I got there right. So I'm just going to write down mentorship and WordPress. That'll why it matters right. And it's just based off of an image there. It's only two minutes. You're going to head to open verse, and you're going to search things and if you're initially like I don't see anything here. You can definitely type something else here. So we're going to do that. And I'm going to give you two minutes. Where is my timer. Did I lose my timer. Two minutes. Any topics that come to mind here we go. You're not wrong Laura, he might look forward to us. I mean there's no images of that but I could see different inspirations here, like different styles that might have been inspired here. I don't know. We want to talk a little bit more there's a lot of questions coming in about copyright and whether they're free and I know you mentioned briefly. I mean maybe you can just say a few words while people are typing if that's okay Sarah. Yeah, go for it and then like there's also use here right like you can use commercially here like I'm only looking for images like that if I'm trying to make money. There's a filter for that but go ahead and speak to that Catherine. Exactly. These images are called creative comments, which is a type of type of license that allows anyone to use a document. But there are different types and that's where the CC is. There's different types of creators commons licenses and as Sarah is sort of showing you those question marks will show you what the requirements are for each type of license so when you find an image you want you're going to want to check the license, and see what the terms of use are so they're all free, but some of them are in the public domain if they're over a certain age in a particular country. So you're allowed to use it for free with no restrictions. Some of them you're allowed to use it with no restrictions except you need to give a credit to the creator like here. So there's that's what you'll want to look for it and if you for example have specific requirements for example you want to use it commercially and you want to adapt it. Then you'll want to check those boxes like Sarah showed to find the images that meet your requirements because no point sifting through a bunch of images that you can't use commercially if you're needing it for commercial use. So you can access m set free as long as you know which rules to follow exactly. So if there are other questions about that you can pop them in the chat or unmute. And it have said they need the file, again for the first part. So just scroll up in the chat. And I pasted the link a bunch of times I don't I don't know if you can still see it. There's the collaborative doc PDF doc, the word copy the workshop copy of the worksheet sorry. There's another link with a worksheet so they should all be there just a little bit further up in the chat. Yep. And then the open verse if you're looking for this specifically it is here. So yeah so definitely use these these filters so if you search for something you if you're looking at this and you're like wow this is such a great picture for the blog that I want to write, you can absolutely do that. And you just want to double check what's going on here. But the other thing is if you're just being inspired by images. As long as you don't you know, copy the image and put it onto your blog like you can really pull inspiration from everywhere. Like I could pull inspiration from I don't know there's a movie. I don't know freedom writers or stand and deliver any of those teaching movies the Robin Williams movie where. Oh what is it called. I can't remember but any of the teaching movies like if I'm watching one of those movies and I suddenly am like how I inspire students using WordPress like I can do that, provided I don't like put the movie itself on my blog. So there's a difference between actually downloading and using this image and being inspired by it as well. Okay, so I think that we're talking so you have looking for the, the part one of the series I think over on learn WordPress Catherine, you wanted to grab that one more time. Thank you. Okay, so now you should have a good long list of of topic ideas. And for me and a lot of people out there, this is the hardest part, figuring out what to write because when I first said I was like okay well just brainstorm you guys for like five minutes and think of anything, but doing it this way really looking at these different places for inspiration. This is where we come up with a beautiful list of topics. So I'm going to remove some stuff here. Now that we have our topic list. We're going to start looking at what is it. We're going to start looking at different types of blog content. What types of blog content when you think of a blog, at least when I think of a blog I think about articles that will probably take me between like three to five minutes to read like maybe they're like a magazine article or a newspaper article in length.  There are more than just those block types like technically speaking, like Instagram is a type of blog isn't it and it's like the most bare bones blog you can have it's an image and a caption tumblers the same way image caption. That's a type of micro blog. So I want us to think about what types of blogs have you really seen in the wild because when I really think about this, there are so many different options. So we're going to head to our handy dandy collaboration here and I'm going to share this link again and again if you are participating via mobile please drop your answers in the chat, and we will put them here. So for example, listicles I think about like BuzzFeed right BuzzFeed is like 10 things I hate about you or like five ways to entertain your parent like you see a lot of listicles out there. So what other types of blogs have you seen let's head here and head to slide number three. What are types of blog posts that you've just seen out now. Grab the sticky note, move it and type it or just write on the one that I just moved. Sarah. Well folks are doing that. Looks like it has looking for the worksheet that was used in part one of the workshop so the other workshop we did the worksheet that was used there. Yeah, is that correct. You said you're looking for the file not the video itself. Is that what you mean the worksheet file from part one last week. You're looking for this that you're looking for. Awesome. I should add that somehow maybe. Yeah, yeah, in the comment on the video. Okay so I've got captions and I've got TV. Alright. Yeah, thanks. You'll remind me. Okay, so we are back here. What types of blog posts have you seen in the wild so this could be topics this could also be like let's talk about recipes right when you think about a recipe blog. One of the things that has annoyed me more than words can say which is why I have a private recipe blog is that those tend to be really long. I compare it like some of my favorite blogs, my recipe blogs to like, I don't know like New York Times recipe blogs and the ones that are the ones that are like official news blogs tend to be really short and it's because you pay for them. And if I want a New York Times recipe it'll like tease what it is and then the rest of it's behind the paywall that's how they make money, whereas someone who is a blogger relying on ads will they need a lot more of that long form there in order to generate that revenue from those ads. So, I'm happy to go and visit those, those pages but for me personally like I, if I really just want to make something in 15 minutes I don't want to spend five minutes reading about it. Those are two different types of recipes there's just the recipe, and there's the really long form ones that both do different things. So, let's see worker task listicles okay cool technical blogs. Perfect. Alright, let's let's talk about then let's actually think about like different blogging formats so there's all kinds of different types of writing right there's short little tweets on Twitter. There are giant essays on long reads there are entire encyclopedias of books. That's what we're going to be looking at next. Let's take a look at that. It was just like me I just want the recipe. I love photos and stuff by stuff you have those are great. So photo blocks are definitely a type as well. So we're going to start a short form articles. So, for search optimization, most. It's generally a best practice to make sure that your blog posts are at least 300 words in length. It makes Google and other search engines a lot happier. However, not every bit of content has to be 100% perfect for SEO for you to still get ranked and found and things like that. So variety when you really think about your readers, it's the spice of life. Right. So what happens to your readers in every single article is going to take them five to 10 minutes. And what I found with my parent blog which is my most successful blog accidentally was that I just kind of, I had a lot of length variation sometimes it was a picture of my birds. Sometimes it was an entire article, but it definitely I definitely had more people coming to my site. Google M says Google wants a ton of text to show authority to rank higher in search engines and because you are here with us for today's workshop we're going to be talking about some SEO tips that you're going to be using as well. So, it's a really good idea to mix in some shorter posts with 150 words and maybe like a half dozen images. I mean at bare minimum you could definitely have a picture and a line of text, and that might be really interesting. So my point to this type of blog is that it's a lot faster to write so if you have a goal of 12 blog posts a year or maybe maybe I'll double mine because mine was originally 12 because I was like okay every single blog post of mine is going to be super long and it's going to have all the images and do all the things. Suddenly, I feel like maybe I can post more regularly, which is good for search engines if occasionally I have shorter blog posts 300 words or less. So now we're going to head to our topics here. And we're going to look at our topics that we generated, and we're going to decide hey, which of these topics might make for a good short form article. So a lot of these that I wrote down are pretty long. So your idea here is to say hey what are some short form articles that might be really useful really just really short. Yeah, and you're just going to think which topics would work here so we're just going to brainstorm let's do two minutes you can look at your existing list, and just move it in here, or you can come up with new topics entirely. So timer, let's take two minutes I'm going to write with you. I'm actually going to pull out some stuff in the chat Lord says my website gets low scores because I don't write a lot yeah so like short form articles just posting something regularly even if it short can be really really good for that. All right, I'm going to press start. Let's take a minute to write down hey what would be some good short form articles at this time. So I didn't get much here because I was also there's some really great chat interaction going on here you can see I wrote down some things that could make a really good short form article. This is really pretty straightforward this is something that I could do pretty easily and now it makes me want to double my goal from 12 blog posts a year to 24. That by itself is a great idea. I'm going to back up in the chat and see if I can get caught up where was I. So I'm says each website should have its own concept and blog topics for both search engines and site viewers to understand and that is such a great point. I have a blog where I just write whatever comes into my head and let me tell you like it does not exist on Google as far as I will because it's like everything, everything under the sun. So here is my parent blog that is very specifically about birds actually ranks on Google, having like a contained topic or related topics and we're going to get into categories and some categories a little later. It's a really good, good idea. Video transcripts are also great for page count numbers or word count numbers. Catherine did say in general yes if you have very like separate topics a separate blog is ideal. I said what I just said, but if you have two blogs and end up hardly posting on either one is better to combine them and blog more frequently so there are no hard and fast rules that you're totally right. And if you don't rely on search engines for traffic, if you don't care about that really for search engines you don't need to worry about search engines so. Yeah, that's actually a really good point Catherine. And there, there's I can get this at the end but there is a great online workshop that was done in the past by Courtney PK, and it talks about how you own your content and how to share it everywhere. So that's another option. So we'll find that link in a little bit. So now this next one's a little bit easier a little bit more straightforward. This next one is long form articles. So let's talk about what that looks like and it's going to make me go through this again. Oh, why do I do this there we go. So long form content, these can be 500 800 or even 1000 words, some best practices for this. I mean if you've seen blogs and all you'll notice that you want to break a pretext into short paragraphs it was definitely news to students that I've taught that you need to break up chunks of things because you don't want just like a giant wall of text. You do want to use headings appropriately and we're going to go over that if there is time at the end about how to do that for each blog post. And you definitely want to vary your paragraph length you don't want every paragraph to be exactly the same size some should be nice and short. Some should be longer, some should maybe have an image like you definitely want to do that. So let's just take a minute. I want you to think about look at your topics and decide hey, which of these would make really good long form articles which of these speak the most to you of your topics, and just put three to five here in your long form articles.  I think it is time. Finish the sentence you're on. Next we're going to think about some additional types of content because again variety is really the spice of life. One thing that can be really exciting about teaching WordPress. Not teaching WordPress blogging is just having variety for yourself as well I don't know about you but like I get tired of writing the same type of format all the time. So if you have a blog content you might consider our interviews and again this can be short for three question. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, or it could be as long as 14 questions. So, and the other thing that's really cool about this is that there's some format flexibility here so you can definitely write this down like I can interview Catherine Presner here about what what she's enjoying with teaching WordPress co hosting with me right that can be written or maybe I hop on a zoom with her or maybe make a podcast. And this can be recorded or maybe even a video video SEO tip, make sure it has captions and a transcript, both of those things are very helpful, both for accessibility and SEO. And it also adds ethos and in your credibility. So for people who have blogs outside of you like if you interview someone who is well known in your field and WordPress. They can link to your blog post. So for example, my former teammate Hugh Lashbrook, he has a really great blog. I could definitely interview him about creating a learning community and he would probably link it on his blog and because his blog has is pretty highly ranked, as far as like open source stuff. That would actually boost my credibility as well with search engines. So that's also really good for search engine optimization. And it brings in experts beyond you. Like I'm obviously here teaching WordPress but Catherine for example by interview her she's been in this space for much longer than I have been and like people know her. In a lot of ways like I knew about who she was before I joined my current job with automatic. So, saying hey, I'm a learning expert, and here she is, like a long time expert that can be really really good. So I take two minutes, and I was just like, who might you interview for a blog post just brainstorm a couple of ideas here about who might be a good person, or two or three, two minutes, just jot down some ideas. I'm just going to write down Catherine because I've been using you as an example. Okay, that is time. So we've got these comps now man, these are more people that I would have ever have thought to do for cool. These ideas. At some point maybe I'll interview one of you what it's like to attend these regularly. I just your community we adore you thank you so much. And then the last one and we're going to get into categories and taxing but again we've really just want you to have a really meaty base to pull from here. So that way when you're saying okay I need to write, we're going to make a plan here and we're going to use it really really well. So the next one is just other forms of blog content so this can be list of goals like five to 10 ways to teach WordPress or letters. I really like letters to people. For example I wrote one blog post about my birds and it was an open letter to my new parents I rescued a parent she was 26 years old, and I wanted to make promises to her in a way that other people, rescuing parents could as well. So. Yeah, I'm trying to think of there. Are there any other like content types. We could do things like, I don't know. Images right image plus captions. This could be podcasts. This could be videos yes. So consider what other forms of blog content that you want to write and this could be very personal to you there's no. Again there's no real wrong way to do this this is just a brainstorm you can do this or you can choose not to a short essay dramatic story ooh yes. dramatic story anecdotes. I'm just adding some stuff in here so you can kind of see it. dramatic story. Personal account. You can write a fable. I don't know with animals. There's all kinds of stuff reviews yes beautiful. Any other forms of blog content. We're going to take three minutes for this one. And I want you to just list out what what feels good to you so I really like listicles. I grew up on BuzzFeeds. 10 things I need about you or whatever I love about you are wonderful I also really like. There's people. I also really just I really like images. I don't know I like to take pictures. And I really like not a big fan of podcasts for myself stand up comedy. I'm going to just stick with those three so maybe pick one maybe two additional forms of like types of blog content. We're going to take three minutes here. Just to jot down some ideas and again you can pull from up top. You can come up with brand new ones. No wrong way to do this. So three minutes. That's right. If you're just joining us. You're currently working on this document here. We're down here in box number four what other forms of blog content. Like you want to write and we're just coming up with a big old list of ideas. That's time. Finish the sentence you're on. Y'all are doing a fantastic job I hope that you're coming up with lots of great things. All right so at this point you have probably more ideas than you could write about in all of 2023 and that's a good thing because then you can pick the very best ones. So as you're looking at your ideas. WordPress offers a way to categorize and tag your your posts in different ways. So we're really think about how to group our categories. It's going to be an experiment I forgot to look at this before I did this. So my current website there's nothing on it you don't need to go there. This is the website that I created for my adventures in WordPress land it's just a basic stock theme like none of this is my stuff yet. And I've got, you can see I've got several different categories that I eventually want to write about. So this is just my basic theme but the main thing that I want you to think of as you're looking at your categories is what are kind of the different buckets the different categories that your work falls into. So, originally I was like okay my work learning WordPress together. The second category would be like hey working remotely from the road. And then the third one. Did it again with my mouse Catherine how do I do this is what I get for using my smart mouse. And it was like hey my journey to remote work. So this was initially what I thought I was going to be writing about. But if I actually look at my topics. I feel like I may have different categories and what I originally thought now I can still have those categories you can have, I mean, a ton of different categories right so categories you separate content so that people who are interested in you know how to start working remotely. You can click on that right there and they can be taken to blog post specifically about that, or people who are like hey, how do I work on work on WordPress like from my RV or from the road or whatever your travel been. They can click on that and find just post related to that, or hey, learning WordPress together. This is, I feel like this encompasses everything though so that might be just my general category. So what you want to do now is you want to think hey, what are the three categories that you're tending to break up into. So you're going to take a minute or two, and you're going to look at this. And you're going to see hey which of these fit into into what. So I'm looking at mine for example. I'm seeing a lot of like challenges of learning WordPress development. I see creating lesson plans in your own classroom so I'm seeing some teacher things teaching WordPress. And I see some stuff about learners right like when I scroll down to like my interviews like I've got, I want to interview about accessibility or you know some of our training team reps or just interviewing the learners like what's it like to be here. So I feel like my categories might actually be something like challenges in teaching WordPress category two might be learning WordPress. And then category three, I haven't figured out yet I definitely have some if we've got contributing to WordPress I see that a lot contributing to WordPress stories like that could be something maybe just not stories just contributing to WordPress. And these are the different ways that I'm separating my different topics out. That helps me plan pretty well. I definitely want like working in WordPress from the road. That's going to be one that I'm really interested in. And yeah you're just gonna you're going to take two minutes and just kind of come up with your categories and if you're not sure you're welcome to ask in the chat. Let's let's take to really just analyze our things and group them. So I've written mine down I'm actually going to go through right down my categories here. Once you have your categories here. Consider like if you can group each of these in here. You know as I'm looking at this one of my passions is WordPress. So rather than just teaching WordPress, most of your topic should go into one of your categories right. But this might actually be a subcategory because we've got teaching WordPress WordPress for teachers. I'm going to say this is a subcategory teaching and finish where you are do you if you need more time do speak up and say hey I need a little bit more we're just being mindful about 20 minutes. So now that you have your categories like you should be able to go through and figure out hey which one of these fits in these different buckets right. Um, I really struggle so I was initially going to be like okay like let's brainstorm. Let's brainstorm some potential tags and we can do that but I really hard time doing that. Before I actually write the post now you can't and so categories separate tags are like the things that really right. The things that link that link things in your post so for example I've got these categories like teaching WordPress learning WordPress contributing to WordPress, working in WordPress for the road. So, one, like one tag that might join all of these. I was thinking about like WordCamp photos right. I might have a tag that's like hey this is at WordCamp US or WordCamp Asia or WordCamp Europe, I could have a tag that links these different things. It's just definitely more granular. Oh, big question do we this is something that I'm thinking do we have a categories versus tags online WordPress. Let's find out we have a lesson plan. We don't have a tutorial about this now okay that's going to go to my list then we should definitely have a tutorial about the different categories and tags I think that this group is pretty advanced though so we probably don't need to get granular and like go into the list of topics speak now if that is not the case. But let's keep that in mind so now that we're doing this. I think it's a really good idea to start planning out your potential posting calendar. So let's take two minutes and you're going to look at your list of topics. And you're going to write down what the topic is you're going to go back up here. You're going to pick something. So like five ways to contribute to the WordPress training team. That's a good topic I mean it's not the one that speaks to my heart yet but you're just going to pick something. I'm going to pick a topic and you're saying hey, in the next three weeks I'm going to write that down. This is a listicle. The category is contributing to the WordPress training team. So I think the potential tags might be something like word camps or word camps. Training team. Open source like again I'm really bad about this like again this is there's no right or wrong way to do this if you're like me you might skip this until the end if you like to plan your writing good no I want it to include the following things you can, but I want you to just take two minutes and say hey what's really speaking to you here. And if you're like me I was planning on doing one post a month but maybe I'll do two and one of them will be an image. I want you to go through your list and really decide hey what am I going to do in January. What am I going to do in February, and what am I going to do in March. So take two minutes. All right, we're running out of time so finish the symptoms you're on, you're like me you didn't quite finish up but you can definitely do this after this workshop. I too have a meeting after this so it's good to keep us all accountable. But yeah you definitely want to plan this and if you're like me it's a good idea to actually put this into your actual work calendar. So highly recommend that when you have fleshed this out and you're committed. Put these posts in your calendar and stay true to that. All right, with our last little bit. So we're going to take our first blog article, and we're going to talk about. Instead of we have time because I think we do. We're going to talk about planning for success because if you're a pancer like me you tend to like why first did this, I use headings for visual effect instead of for accessibility. So that was not a good thing to do search engines don't like that and my bird website was not accessible to people who own birds who use screen readers. So, the headings that you use in WordPress are really really so be two seconds. What is it called Google I'm going to show you a WordPress installation. It's a really good idea. Where's my local. Two seconds it's a really good idea to plan out your blog post much like planning out an essay I don't know if in high school or middle school your teachers were like here's how to plan an essay. This is how to plan a blog post so that your posts are accessible, which also means that search engines like Google are going to like your website, a lot more. So, I'm going to open up a random sample site. The admin. There it goes. All right, let's make sure I've got a theme where everyone can see. I do perfect. Okay, so if I'm going to write a new post. I'm going to write a new post. It can be really tempting to be a national novel writing month pancer and just start writing highly recommend actually planning out your headings first so your first heading is is known as your age one so when I talk about headings I'm going to talk about this block right here specifically so I typed in slash heading. That's one way to do that if you look at your insert or which is this little blue button up here and type in heading. You'll notice that the first one that's selected is your age to heading so these will be varying sizes. So this is this for visual effect you want to use these to plan out your writing. So one best practice that I've heard and there are some exceptions to this is to only have one h1 heading and so your h1 heading is the title of your blog post. That was when a good reason to have more than one title is please put that in the chat. But generally speaking this first heading is the title of your blog post this tells screen readers that hey, this is the overall topic of this specific post. So if you're planning this out on your sheet. The first heading is going to be your first blog's title so whatever you put up here in January how I transitioned from teaching eighth grade to teaching wordpress that's fine I'm going to copy this here, or just type it in here. If I copy it it's not going to show up. That's so good let me fix that there we go. Alright, so how I transitioned from teaching eighth graders to teaching wordpress this is going to be what I put in this first title up here. Then we start to break this down. So I want you to picture your first blog article, as if you're looking as if it were appearing in a magazine, or in a newspaper so when you're reading a magazine or a newspaper. What we usually tend to do is skim to see if they like to see if that's an interesting blog article right so I think back to like my teen days where I was always reading glamour magazine. And if an article is relevant to me I would skim the bolded headings right. Um, I would skim those bolded headings. So and within each of those headings there might be some subheadings there. But you generally want to plan out what those headings would be so if I were to write this for a magazine. This first article how I transitioned teaching eighth graders to teaching wordpress. It's a really good idea to sit down and figure out what you want it to to say so some of my headings might be something like why I loved teaching teaching kids right. That would be one of my headings here. Now, I don't know that I would say as much about like what it meant to be like teaching kids like I wouldn't have any subheadings underneath it so I think what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to put another one here why I love teaching kids. Why I wanted to transition. Oh, maybe. I'm trying I'm trying to give a good example you know what I'm actually going to give an example that is a little different just because this is this is going to take a little bit more brainpower than the nine minutes we have will allow so I'm going to do it for my parent blog right. One of my the title for my parent blog that I want to write is how I get my parents to eat their fruit and vegetables, or maybe just their vegetables right. It's a little bit easier for me this is a blog post I've had percolating for a minute. If I'm scanning this it's an article in a magazine in my brain the first thing is like my parents hate vegetables right. And I can talk about like what those challenges are that's going to be one of the first headings. Another heading is how I, maybe mash I use it, or hiding vegetables. Now this one's a good one because it might talk about why right so I've got some stuff about like hiding vegetables but specifically hiding leafy green because my parents won't touch it. So heading three is a subheading of heading to so getting a lot of direct messages, very helpful things are very distracting. You, this would be a smaller heading than having to appear, and it's a good way to basically just just plan out your writing so if I'm doing this over here title my blog post. I can get my parents to eat their vegetables. I can workshop this how to get picky parents to eat their vegetables. My first heading here is going to be a keys and Amazon parrots need greens. I can put some things in here, I can talk about. So I would probably write. Here is an introduction where I write about why parents need their greens. So the second one is going to be a subheading of this so this the second heading is going to relate to this up here I'm going to talk about eclectus parrots dietary needs calcium and weird feather mulch. So this relates specifically to parents needing their greens right it's a subheading of this. So now I would write the story of my bird who lost all his feathers on his head true story happens to eclectus parrots. Plus also said because of a calcium deficiency. So I would go through this and I, you know, my content goes here. When I transition to another heading. I'm going to want another NH2 right because this doesn't fall underneath this and I'm explaining this very poorly because I don't have nearly as much time as I want but let's say like how I hide food. How I hide greens in mash. Yeah, you use your headings that way so something so Catherine is answering a really great questions Linda said hey let's say you're writing a list to collect six blocks and two template parts that make a killer home page. Wow, I want to read that great topic Linda. Then would you list each type of block as a heading. So, yeah, I would say so you could list every single one that way so if I was writing that. It would be the title there, the title would be six blocks and two template parts that make a killer home page and then every single one of those would be its own heading to. Now if you're confused about this if you're new to WordPress and you're like I don't really understand the difference between age two and age three it's okay you can stick with h2s. This is just how someone who's using a screen reader is going to skim your contents the screen reader is just going to read on the heading so if I had someone who was using a screen reader they couldn't see clearly what was on my screen. And they wanted to figure out hey is this article worth my time. The screen reader is going to start with the h1 how to get picky parents to eat their vegetables, and then it's just going to read the headings. The problem equies and Amazon parents they need their greens eclectus parents dietary needs calcium and weird feather bolts how I had greens and mash so that all of this content here. Like, it doesn't read it from start to finish it's how people who use screen readers skim your website. It's also how search engines search your website as well. The search engines will be able to identify a lot faster what your site is about and let's sit a lot higher. I need to need to definitely do a little bit more prep work for this and I'm going to include this in my search engine optimization one but we've got four minutes. So, I think that brings us kind of to the end of it so the last little bit on yours is basically just hey, plan out your headings and decide what do you want this to be if this is newspaper article what do you want the speed optional tool for that. Linda, I will write that article for you, Catherine go for it. Yeah, there was a request to either send out the completed form that the one we're looking at here so people can see an example or perhaps if this does get posted on the video site you can put out a link there to it, whatever is here. So I felt like this one didn't get like super personal. Would anyone have a problem with me posting this like I learned all WordPress I'm feeling like I want to upload it. So, Laura says no we're good to go. So let me know either here or if you go to the meet up. If you go to meet up here. You can leave a comment here if, if there's an issue at the very bottom down here in slide now when this work schedule reschedule to it's now we're good. Okay. I always want to run these for two hours because y'all are so wonderful let's go ahead and skip to the very very end here. I definitely want to do a session on SEO. I have a quick link to how was today's session. She probably click the link in my document that'll probably help. So this is a link to a quick Google forum the only required question is hey how was it for to great. If you would like to answer what was the most valuable part of today and what is one question you still have. I would love that they help me to frame future workshops I do know that we definitely want to go more into depth about search engine optimization in the future. And then this one is really optional like what is the link to your blog like I would love to follow your adventures and see kind of your work in action so if you're comfortable with that you don't have to do that but I would love to see the link to your blog and see how this. I think you might need to just change permissions on that so people can see. Of course I do. Where is that setting point let me. Anyone with the link there we go please refresh that page and you should be able to see it just let me know how today went this will help me plan for future ones and give me feedback. Yeah, so. Cool I apologize for the rush wrap up but I really hope that at the end of today. You are able to look at this and look at what you've created. And get get started blocking you have a ton of different topics here lots of ideas, and I would really look forward to seeing what you do in the future, you can see mine here, just as an example, but all right. I have to go have a great one everyone I will see you next time. Cheers, I've lost my scene again.


Hello and welcome to the Donahue Group. We're coming to you the day after the mayoral and city elections and the April elections in general in Sheboygan.  We'll start with my friend, Cal Potter. Cal Potter. I'm pleased to be here and this is our third taping. Yes. And we're pleased to have one of the winning candidates with us today. That's... I'm pleased to try to follow local politics extensively and this is going to be a real pleasure to see one of the winners. Exactly. We'll know who he is. Tom? Tom Paneski at UW Sheboygan, a mathematics professor and a former alderman, former city alderman. We're going to skip over our special guest and our next panelist. I'm Ken Risto. I'm an employee of the Sheboygan Area School District and the only one who's got a bad cold here this afternoon. And the only... Well, I'm done. I'm going to spread it around here. Tan, too. Yeah. Just came back from Mexico. You lucky school teacher. Oh, I'm sorry. That wasn't a nice thing to say. And I'm Mary Lynn Donahue. I'm a humble city lawyer. And a hugger at night. Our special guest today is Alderman Juan Perez, now mayor-elect Juan Perez. We're delighted that you've joined us. I think we're your first television program as mayor-elect and may you come back many other times, but we have tons of questions for you and welcome. I'm sure you will. Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. And it's always a pleasure to be in a position to be able to talk to the community as we're doing today. So I'm happy to be here. Well, very good. Great victory last night, 54% to 46%. Ken has lots of statistics for us at a certain point, but tell us how you're feeling. Tired? Tired first, very happy second, but I'm actually more pleased with the community in general, because I think the community made a statement last night that they want their government back. They want their government to be responsive to their needs. And I think the people took a huge step in that direction last night. And that's what I'm most happy about about the election. And we'll all feel free to chime in with questions, but it was certainly a spirited campaign, a couple of press conferences that you held. Those of us who lived in the city got lots of literature in the mail and dropped at the doors, and some of us even had phone calls and so forth. From your perspective, what were the issues that were the most important to your campaign? Well, there were several issues, but one issue seemed to surface the most, and that was the Sheridan Park issue, when the council made a decision to destroy a park, a historic park in my mind, and one of our most important parks that's in central, central Sheboygan. When the council made that decision, I think the people realized that the council was not going to be responsive to their pleas. But the Sheridan Park issue, actually it was not a one issue campaign type of thing. It was the Sheridan Park issue embodied a lot of what's wrong with the city council now and the city hall. For example, it reflected on how the council and city hall were not being responsive to the people and not listening when we had three thousand signatures, three thousand plus signatures come in and ask just simply for a referendum, and they refused to do that, and it also reflected on how the city council is not fiscally responsible before they could even read and evaluate a second study on Sheridan Park. They went ahead and spent a lot of money and contracted an architect for over half a million dollars, sort of reflected a lot on their fiscal responsibility or should I say lack of, and it also reflected on their lack of seriousness and focusing on shared services also because Sheridan Park, as we know, there's a second report that says it will not provide for optimum shared services, and yet they kept insisting that they were going to build it there. So it reflected a lot of their unwillingness to support shared services. So all those three, at least those three main issues were embodied in the Sheridan Park issue. And then the final one is you don't take away parts from the people. The parts are for the people and they're in perpetuity and they remain for future generations to enjoy. So that's pretty much how it boiled up. Yeah. It's interesting. Did you see any, and folks just feel free to chime in with questions, but did you see any particular pockets of strength in your campaign, or was it more broad-based? Well, at times people said, part people are on your side, but I think that it was a very broad base. You know, I think you see that reflected in the way the words came out. I took several words in terms of higher votes. So it reflected the general attitude and the sentiment of the community. I think a lot of the people, whether you live near Sheridan Park or not, we're just bothered that how dare you take our part. And if that's the part you're going to take now, which one will you take later? Because it'll become so easy to do. Yeah, I heard another word just by talking to people, and you probably said it in so many words, that the council was arrogant. They just tended to shun the community. I think it was the sense of arrogance, because what people did to me was extraordinary. For the longest time we've heard about political apathy. People just don't want to get involved. They don't care. They don't think that they matter. When they found out that the park was going to be destroyed to put a police station, they actually went out and organized and collected all these signatures within a two-month period. So political apathy was no longer there. They wanted to be a part of the decision-making process. And that was extraordinary. But what was more extraordinary is for the council to file a resolution calling for a referendum to let the people decide. And that was filed on the council floor without going to any committee at all. So that demonstrated that arrogance that you're talking about. Instead of saying thank you to the people who are finally getting involved in our process, they said, how dare you?  So that was very disturbing to me. And I think it was disturbing to the people. And they proved it last night. They just didn't get it. I think it was a good way to put it. And I think the letters to the editor and other communications that were out there just show that the people were saying, if this were the only property in the whole community where you could build something on it would be different. But they were suggesting the Rice Building and the Sentry Store on the North 23rd Street. You could just see the sense that the people saying, I drive around this city. I know this city. There are other options that ought to be looked at. And don't tell me that this has to be. And I think it was arrogance. But just didn't get that the people were really serious about this matter. And they numbered, I think, greater than what some of the minority, they portrayed it as a minority of the population. But there was a greater percentage of people out there who were really concerned. And they just didn't read that, not read it at all. That's pretty good acting reading. How critical was the Moose study in terms of your campaign, do you think? Well, we're going to find out how really critical it is because we're going to have a second run at it to compare both studies at Kimming Report and the, I don't call it, it's the independent study, the Moire study for a better term. But it's going to play a key role because what that report does, it points out that first of all, Sheridan Park is too small and it doesn't provide for optimum shared services and it's going to cost, Sheridan Park is going to cost a site is going to cost us $3 million more. And we're also going to build a police station in a small park. It's going to become obsolete in two, three years after we build it. There's no room for growth and there's no room for expansion in terms of the neighborhoods or where are you going to go? You're going to start destroying homes, the limited parking, invading the area of the school district. It's going to cause a lot of problems. So that report is going to be critical. I want to get back a little bit to this whole issue of people not listening on the council level. Is that a function of, because you were there through all of that, was that a function of those who've been there a little too long versus the newcomers and newcomers being more open or why that unwillingness to put it up to a referendum or a willingness to kind of, why the sense of rush to judgment at that time? Well, I have my personal theories, but I think one of them is that it has a lot to do with somebody being entrenched politically, but it also has a lot to do with somebody saying, I have the vote, I have the power, I can do what I want. And what I say all along the election is you need to say what you're going to say before the election and keep saying it after. A lot of people will tell you anything they want, you want to hear just to get elected. And after that, they forget. And two years later they start telling it to you again and then they forget again.  And that shows your character and integrity. Well, building on that, it's the morning after, the afternoon after, what are your thoughts about what's next? What's next is I need to meet with the mayor and find out how we can create this smooth transition that we need to create. There's a lot of groundwork that's got to be done. There's committees that need to be appointed, there's people that need to be considered. One of the things that I'm going to put on fast track is a budget prioritization program that I've been talking about. We're going to go out there into the community, into every department, talk to every employee and every employee's input will be given equal weight. Doesn't matter if you're here or here. Everybody's going to have a say so. I think we're going to get some very interesting ideas, very good cost saving ideas. I think the money is there, it just hasn't been allocated correctly. So I don't know that we need to generate more revenue. I don't know that we need to go and tax people anymore, creating even more fees. I think the money is there, we just need to rearrange it, reallocate it. And we'll do that based on the results of the budget prioritization. On a day to day operation kind of basis, have you thought about who might be your secretary or what about assistant? My administrative assistant, actually I have not. I have not given that any thought because that's been probably the least in my mind right now. But I think the first thing I need to do is how willing is the individual is there now, willing to cooperate and carry out the work that I need done. That's going to take a meeting with the individual, sit down and talk and see where things are going to go from there. I want to be as far as I can to that individual so that we're on good terms. If people are interested in serving on commissions and committees in the city, because there's a process where they get appointed, are you going to be soliciting an appointment? Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question, Tom. What I plan to do is actually put out an announcement in the Sheboygan Press and WHBL and list the committees that are going to be available and ask people to chime in and see if they want to participate in it. And once they call in, not only will they say, well, I want to be a part of the ex-committee, we'll be able to tell them this is ex-committee and these are some of the responsibilities that will be expected of you if you're willing to do it. That'll, again, it'll tie in with my community involvement, get engaged in the community and critical decision-making that I've been talking about. A lot of times people aren't even, we've got some good people out there in the community that can be great contributors to our government. They haven't been reached out to, and that's what we need to do. And we need to reach out to them and say, you are welcome. You're a key critical part of my, of the government here and my administration. I need your help. Do you want to help? Now, if they say no, it's another issue, but at least you extend your hand out there to people. I think that's true of the employees, too. I think we underestimate, oftentimes, people who do the job day-to-day and what they have to offer to make their job more efficient and run the department that they work in. You'd be surprised sometimes what creative ideas and how helpful they can be and how, once you empower them, how participatory they want to be. Absolutely, and it's pretty interesting because when I started talking about this budget prioritization process or plan that I'm going to put in place, people started already calling with ideas and sending little anonymous letters and looking to this, looking to that, try this, try that. It catches on. People really want to help. They want to be contributors. They want to be listened to. They want to be respected. They want to be treated fairly. They want to be a part of us. We just haven't let them yet. This is what I want to do. I want to let the people be a part of us. There's not only the change in the top leader in the city, but really a sea change in the common council. Lots of new faces and those of us who are watching the election returns last night were frankly a little astonished by the winners and the losers on the council. With a lot of new people on board, how do you think, what kind of relationship do you see developing with new, older people and how is all that going to work out for you? Well, there's obviously going to be a little bit of resistance. There was a, as you all know, there was a majority there in the council at times a pretty distinct split. But I think most of the older men are willing to work together towards a common goal. If you're able to present them with a plan that makes sense, that's workable, that's doable, I think if you explain it to them, if they're able to buy into something, I think they would be willing to work. There may be one or two that don't. And that's okay too, we're just going to move on. But we need to get enough people on board to say this is where we're going folks, we're here and this is where we're going to end up. I need your help to help me get there and I think a lot of them will buy into that. Well, I think the message of change was shown by the victors. So I think those who might be reluctant to be participatory are going to see, have evidence that they ought to be. Exactly. I think that's called writing on the wall or writing in the voting booth. When I was on the council and Dick Susha was mayor and then Dick Schneider ran against him and won and there was a majority of the council who favored Dick Susha. And of course they, we faced that same kind of situation. We got a new mayor and we were pro Susha and how we were going to react. It worked its way out over time, but not initially. There's a little. But the good where Cal was from, I mean, without making Juan's case for him here, but this is a pretty strong victory. 54% of the vote, I'm looking at the three, if you want to call them challengers, Susha, Meyer and Radke. When you look at their aldermanic districts, Juan got more votes than they did. And so you start wondering about co-tail effects and he was really very close to the Kittleson in the third. And actually, the only ones where Juan really didn't do as well was, you know, we got two unopposed, you know, Montemire was running unopposed, Davis was running unopposed. Even Alderman Berg in the first district, he hadn't, it's 973, if I did my adding real quickly here and you had 986. So I guess I have a question I want to ask you, Tom is, I mean, when you start seeing a mayor elect come into office with that kind of strength, and got more votes than you did in your own, don't you pay attention to that? You have built-in biases from the day before the election, let's put it that way. You are campaigning for your candidate, working for your candidate, and you just come with a built-in bias. It shouldn't have happened that way. Well, and I will say that when we, all of us who have run for school board or other elections, it is gratifying to come in as the front-runner or the top vote-getter, but once you're sworn in and you're voting, that doesn't make any difference. And trust me, nobody remembers that you got that much more of the vote than somebody else. So I think- But you're one of X number and a born, everybody gets one vote. Right, exactly. You know, in Sheboygan, we don't have a particularly strong mayoral system, but still, and I'm just thinking about the coalitions and everything, your old seat really comes kind of important. I don't know, you've been so busy probably running for mayor, or you haven't thought about it, but Machiavelli types like me do. That's right, he's gonna be the- Machiavelli. I mean, that seat, Italy, is kind of important. You've got three people that you suspect will be coming in and more or less agreeing with you on most issues, you hope. You know, so- Yeah, my position obviously is gonna be very, very critical. And I'm very cognizant of the fact that 10 Alderman endorsed Ram publicly. Now does that mean that they will not work with me? I don't think so. I think they endorsed him because at that time they just felt that they wanted to be loyal to him and they, hey, he had a good chance of winning. That's human nature. Human nature tends to do that to you, but I think now it's definitive. Now they know he didn't win. There's a new mayor. So I think some of those sentiments will change and hopefully we'll be able to get somebody and to replace me in my district that there will be an independent thinker and a thinker with the council. Are you hearing anything about who might be interested? Not at all. I don't think anybody, many or very many people are thinking about it because a lot of people don't even realize that I have to resign my position to be mayor. People haven't thought about it, but it's gonna hit pretty soon. It will, it will. And of course it's gonna change some of the politics. Politics is gonna change things a little bit on the school board as well because a new president will have to be chosen. Well I think I created maybe a mess there because I gotta be replaced in the council and the school board. So now there's two positions that have to be replaced. And at the university as well. And the university as well, that's three of them. You're getting a job right off the bat. Exactly, exactly. High paying jobs. We had a lot of students from the university campaigning for you. Now, did that mean they wanted you to win? It's like you wouldn't be here? Or because you were so good here that we got away, we got away. Actually it's because of the results. Yeah, that's why you got so much teachers so far. Yeah. Well, but it is interesting to, I mean, so many more people are willing to be appointed to a position rather than to actually have to run for it. And so we often find, or did find it with school board, positions that are a vast, well not vast number, but a substantial number of people would apply for an open candidacy. And the same things happen in the olden times. At least at the offside because that gives them a year in as an incumbent for a year and it gives them a little bit of the background and so forth. But running for office, and again, depending on which office it is, can be brutal sometimes. You get more where you don't. There's a lot of pressure on the candidate. You know, I wanna try to, we had another election out there and it seemed like it should have the town of Sheboygan chairman. And with the Walmart decision, the big hullabaloo about why did they approve the Walmart application, et cetera, et cetera. The town of Sheboygan chairman won. And there was a big outcry and everybody thought maybe the town of Sheboygan chairman would lose. Just like Sheridan. So Sheridan was a big outcry. So it wasn't more than Sheridan that because you just had this little single event the town of Sheboygan Walmart decision and they still won. But the thing that happened with Sheridan Park and I think I've shared it before is that when my 83-year-old mother-in-law will circulate a petition, not only sign one, but actually circulate a petition to change the decision on Sheridan Park, that's pretty broad-based and pretty grassroots. But just because our time runs quicker than we think, you talked about campaigning being a fairly brutal process and those of us who have campaigned for things, everyone but you, I think, can attest to that. Behind the scenes kind of guy. There you go. I'm not electable, that's not electable. I'm just not electable. That's just a plain fact of the matter. Well, we know that. But how's your family doing? It's a wonderful family if we didn't hear much about them in the election. Sylvia is still walking and talking. Oh, she's still walking and talking to me, I should say. She's doing real well. My kids are handling themselves really well. You've got three boys? Three boys. One lives in Madison and two lives here in Sheboygan. And we have a first-grandson who learned to walk about three weeks. They go and hand-stop sense and he learned to say his first word. He's mayor. Did you have the grandson leafleting? Did you have the grandson leafleting now that he's walking? Yeah. So he said his first word. That wasn't, no, I'm just kidding, that's a joke. But it can be very difficult for families, for spouses and for children, because the pressures, you're in a goldfish bowl, essentially, or a fish bowl of any kind. And it can be unpleasant at times. I think, as you know, there's no secret anymore at times that this mayoral election had a tendency to go into the ugly part, the negative part. I'm glad that it really didn't, but it was attempted and I stayed my course. I remained steadfast with my promise to the people that I was gonna keep it clean. And I did, and my campaign committee did too. And I think the people responded to that, too. Exactly. We don't wanna strip the mayoral election of its integrity and honor. And you do that when you get dirty and fight any way you can to win. I don't think that's the most important thing. The most important thing is to maintain that integrity and honor in that office. Because when it's all over and done and smoke is gone, that office has to shine. And well, and of course we're all the victims of nasty, unpleasant, dishonest, untruthful, not helpful political campaigns where television ads are decide issues that certainly shouldn't be decided. But it seems to me that one of the new campaign tools just in recent years, particularly in the April non-partisan elections are letters to the editor. That's new to me. I mean, there were always- Yeah, early in the past, they usually cut those off because they didn't want sort of the people stacking the mailbox one way or the other. But I think by opening it up, it allowed people an avenue of expression that they hadn't had before. And it was a pretty wide range back and forth. There's something else happening. I thought it was extraordinary with the park. And again, as I said, the parking body, a lot of the issues and concerns citizens have. But the press, the Sheboygan press itself did about the non-president at four editorials on just that issue itself, which they've never done before. So it was extraordinary from their part to be able to go out on the limb and say the council is wrong. The council needs to reverse its decision. I think it was a unique perception on the part of the incumbents in any case is saying that they made a difficult decision and they were statesmen. But in actuality, that wasn't the case. There aren't cases where you do have to make difficult decisions. But this was just a wrong decision. It was a wrong difficult decision. And sometimes you have to admit that. We all make mistakes. And I was surprised in a way by the fact that when you had this new report, it was really another open door for many of those people to say, yeah, maybe we made a mistake. Maybe we ought to put this off in the committee or off to the side, let's take it up. Let's see if we can save money. Let's see if we can have a different course. But again, enough people didn't get it. And you got it apparently, and obviously, and you ran with it. Let me ask one more about finances. Did you have a sense you were winning or winning the discussion amongst the people?  As that sort of way, as you're moving through the campaign from January to February to March, did you feel that there were? Actually, yes, it was quite complimentary. When I ran for school board both times and even Alderman for school board, when I ran the last time, and I think the time before that, I came in with about 6,700 votes. Not once. Not once. And anybody call and say, how can I help? Not once. And anybody knock on my door and say, how can I help? Here's a check, or I want a sign. Not once. This time was extraordinary. I must have had hundreds of people call me. I mean, there was a pattern. At one time it was five calls a day for signs and then it got down to at least two a day. And I was getting calls for signs a day before the election. That's how people were encouraging. It was just awesome. And the phone call the day after the election was just today. It was phenomenal. It started when my phone started ringing at six o'clock. All congratulatory. I haven't gotten a bad one yet. You're sworn in on April 18th. I believe so. Give us, if you can, this is a little tough and we're coming down to our last minutes. Three months, six months, one year, where you think you'll be in terms of accomplishing what you're looking to do in those time frames? Well, I know that we can break it in those segments, Marilyn. I think it's gonna take at least a year to put everything in place and maybe another year to get it to work. And that's being realistic because there's a lot of work that needs to be done. Moods and attitudes that need to be worked on and that'll take about a year. Given that you and the police chief are kind of a part of this police on the department issue, how does that go to play out? How do you work? How do you work with someone who's diametrically opposed? It seems at least on this one issue. Well, it's gonna take a lot of talking. We're gonna be meeting quite a bit and we'll see where that could take us. And I think a reminder that when you're elected is different than someone who's in a pointed position. And I think that that's oftentimes you have to bring that forth to the people who are appointed. That when you're elected person, you behave differently. Oftentimes you look at things differently because you have a lot of bosses. Whereas an appointed person may have just a few bosses. Exactly. And an appointed person really does not, it's not in his or her mind to represent the interests of the people. They represent the interests of the department. Elected officials have to represent the interests of the people. And they can't forget that. They can never forget that. When they do, that's when they get in trouble. That's right. And we're getting really close to the end here. But given how the Sheridan Park issue played out and its importance in your campaign one, how is the ethanol situation gonna have to play out for you? Or how do you, how are you gonna approach that in your mind as you have another concern almost a similar community. It's just a couple blocks away. Concern community about that issue. Well, the way it will play out is the process that we're gonna put in place. And that's what, a lot of what went wrong with the Sheridan Park issue. The process was not there. There was no fairness in how they handled the situation. There was never community input. There was no listening to the people. We need to put a process in place where everybody knows what to expect. Here's what we got. Now we make a decision. People want to be involved. We just never reached out and gotten people involved. And that's what I intend to do. In critical decisions. Sounds good. Sounds good. So, well, we wish you the very best in your new endeavor. And this is a big new opportunity for you. And so we think that it'll be terrific and got speed. I look forward to it. All right. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you.


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