Good morning everybody. Today we're going to be hearing from Kyle Maurer. His talk is what I learned from interviewing 200 plus people in WordPress. Kyle works for Sandhills Development, which is a WordPress plug-in company with a variety of popular products including easy digital downloads, which Kyle spends most of his time working on. Kyle strongly believes that humans are not meant to live in bubbles. He's grateful that he has found a profession and an employer which permit him a lifestyle filled with freedoms including the ability to travel frequently and explore new pursuits. Assumption challenging and horizon problems are among Kyle's favorite pastimes. The only conspiracy theory Kyle really and truly believes in is that printers are actually artificially intelligent, malevolent machines designed to crush our spirits. Please give a warm welcome to Kyle. Thank you. Can you guys feel good? Yeah. All right, good. Really excited to be with you. About a quarter and a half years ago, I was getting involved in the WordPress community just a little bit more. I started attending work camps, speaking at Meetups, and speaking at some work camps, and publishing some plugins that I have made. And really starting to invest in this community I had discovered and I wanted to go a little deeper and do a little more. And one day I saw someone post on Google Plus of all places. Do you guys remember that? Do you remember Google Plus? It was a thing for a little while. And so somebody posted there that they were thinking about starting a WordPress show and would anybody want to join them? And I thought this would be perfect. So I responded, I joined, and for the next couple of years I co-hosted the WP Roundtable show, along with a revolving door of co-hosts. I was the only person who really stuck around in that period. And after a couple of years, the last co-host stopped showing up. And so for the two or three years since then, I've just been hosting the show on my own. And it's basically a get to know the community type show. That's what I've made it into. I have never repeated a guest. I've interviewed a whole lot of people, including some people who are in this room right now, as a matter of fact. And it's been a very special experience. Somehow in that time I've had an opportunity to talk one-on-one with a whole lot of fascinating people in this WordPress space and get to learn things from them and about them. And I was hoping that I could just take this opportunity to share some of my reflections on this experience with all of you. And I want to break those reflections into these three categories. I learned a couple of things about just being generally the people who are successful and upon success in this industry. A lot of things that they have explicitly told me or that I have interpreted from their experiences and stories. I've learned a lot of things about the makeup of this community and the people that it consists of. And along the way I also learned a few things about myself in managing to maintain this science project of sorts. Which is where I want to start briefly and just talk about a couple of things that I learned about managing a science project and learning to engage this community a little bit better. So, first off, the other day I went into my favorite coffee shop and the barista greeted me and said, Good morning, Kyle, the usual. And this was me because I thought this was a big moment. Like, I've done it, achievement unlocked, I successfully went one place enough times and wanted the same thing that someone asked me if I wanted the usual. That was really special because it's a good feeling. You know what I'm talking about, that familiarity which we all love. We all want to go places that feel like we're in the cheers all of the time. And unfortunately, much more often instead of cheers where we go, we feel more like the first day of a new school freshman year. You guys should know what I'm talking about. I think probably some of you feel like that right now if you're at your first work camp. Conferences are a great example of that feeling where at the same time you're thinking to yourself, please, someone notice me. But also, please, I hope no one notices me. That feeling of being a stranger. So I'm very familiar with that. But somehow, well, it reminds me a lot of the Council of Elrond, you know, where Frodo is there, like a habit of all creatures. It's a beautiful scene that just paints the picture to me, like how we all feel at events like this. That's where a habit, a habit of all creatures is sitting next to like dwarves and living legends, talking about things that he doesn't understand at all, way above his head. Super cool scene. That's how we feel. Somehow, through a lot of persistence, I was able to largely overcome this feeling, this sense of imposter syndrome like everything's over my head and everybody else knows more than I do. And that was pretty hard, but a lot of it had to do with me learning to find my own place and appreciating the fact that my place isn't the same as anybody else's place. I learned over the time that I'm not the charismatic life of the party kind of person who's been walking and just making friends with everyone, like other people that I know. But I am capable of running this one-on-one conversation show and getting to talk to people and have conversations in this format. I can do that. And so that's my experience finding where I am able to fit in and do something that works for me. Another thing that I found to be really effective was scheduling with guests. Scheduling this show really forced me to honor the commitment more than any other side project, and the truth is I had a lot of side projects.  But this is one that somehow, against the odds, I was able to stick to for multiple years and I'm still doing it. And I think the reason is when I schedule months in advance in appointment to record the show live with the guests, it's really awkward for me to bail on that and wake up one day to say I'm not in the mood or I'm too busy. And so somehow I keep doing it. I think this has taught me a little bit about strategically tricking myself into being forced, honor a commitment, and not just trying to fit things in when they're convenient. I also have learned a lot about the importance of quality, but balancing that with the importance of shipping. And I think that in the end of the day, perfectionism is a real danger that a lot of us are susceptible to. And I'm no exception, but I have learned, looking back, there were a lot of times where I didn't put in that much effort. But I'm glad I released stuff anyways. I'm glad I put it out there. I look at a lot of the things that I've created and said that I could have done that so much better. But I have now learned to be at peace with the fact that at least I released it. At least I published this content, or at least I did, as opposed to not because it wasn't good enough. That would have been much greater regret for us sitting in that situation right now. Those are just a few of the things that I took away. But one of the big picture things is just comparing the difference between what I expected to get, what I actually did from this experience. I think this is important to reflect on this a little bit. It was a show that we were going to release to the world, and maybe a lot of people would watch this and it would become popular. There were other shows that we thought were going to be the next such and such. And it's going to be neat. This is going to catapult us to relevance in this community. Well, not really. It didn't. But I'm not bummed about that, even at all. Because I got, in the end, some things that are better than that. That are better than just a lot of views on our videos and downloads on our feed. I got really valuable relationships with people. I was able to approach so many people in the community and say, you know, I'm just talking to you for a little while. And I've made a lot of friends in this process. I've got a lot of really great advice from the best minds in the industry to very valuable contacts. And it's just been really fun to hear the stories. Well, the fascinating people in this community has given me such a great appreciation of the diversity of this group and the varied backgrounds that everyone has. That's been really fun to experience. Now, I'm going to talk a little bit about some of my reflections on the makeup of this community, which I should practice by stating first and foremost that the makeup of this group, the people that I have interviewed, reflects my network. And my network reflects me. And I fit a profile. I'm a white 30-something male from Middle America in the Midwest and from Michigan. And my network kind of reflects that profile, a lot of contacts in my geographical region, and a lot of people who fit a similar profile to me, like attending the same types of events and going to the same types of parties and interested in the same topics. And so my network is generally lacking in the diversity that maybe it could have, though, something I work on. But even so, I do think there are some useful observations to make from this network. And it is a large network, but compared to the global community, it's quite small. So we're going to just take it for what it's worth. First of all, I want to talk a little bit about the age of the WordPress industry. So this market is still young. The WordPress space has not been around for a really long time. There are a lot of ways, a lot of symptoms, a lot of ways that we can read into this. For example, a large percentage of the people in this industry are self-employed. There are a huge number of very small micro-businesses making up this industry still. And this is gradually changing over time. Almost every industry follows the same trajectory. When it is a very young industry, every single one is highly fragmented. I mean, all the players are small, and many of them are doing essentially the same thing as each other. A lot of different small players. Gradually, as the market begins to grow and mature, you see some bigger players begin to grow. And then it continues to go in that trajectory where the market itself becomes more consolidated. So if you think of very old, extremely well-established industries, you will see them as being very different pies than this, where old-established industries like the auto industry or the banking industry would see virtually no self-employment and all employment. That's a very established industry with only a handful of players. It makes it extremely difficult for new players to enter the market because the established players are so entrenched and have so many more resources. WordPress is still young but is maturing. So we are starting to see a lot of the companies in this space begin to grow. And we're seeing companies that have hundreds and very civil-seed companies that have thousands of employees. And gradually, as each year goes by, it's a little more difficult for new, brand-new small players to come in and really disrupt things and offer something that hasn't been done. That becomes a little more difficult as time goes by. We see companies begin to acquire smaller businesses and merge. And small players who can't compete go out of business. And before you know it, there are fewer businesses in the market. And this is something that I've observed after getting to know a lot of the people in this industry and watching them change jobs and so forth. There's definitely still a significant gender gap. There is, in all sectors of tech, WordPress is no exception. I have been repeatedly told by women that I've talked to on this show and it's for them to tell me, and not for me really to relay, but I've just been told that anecdotally that WordPress is pretty good compared to a lot of other tech sectors. And that's really all I have to say about that. This is the makeup of the guests that I have on my show. I've worked pretty hard to diversify this as much as I can. And that's really the makeup. The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics said that last year, the national turnover rate was about 18%, like 18% of people in any sector ended up changing jobs in a year. And so it wasn't too surprising to me that in our space, there's a much higher number, almost twice as many. But I think that that reflects the makeup of the type of industry it is, its technology, and a little bit dominated by younger people in the early stages or middle stages of their career. Let's get a profile of people who do change jobs a little more frequently. And also, the market is a little bit volatile still because a lot of changes are occurring. So we're seeing more and more business acquisitions every year. So a lot of people are essentially changing their employers for reasons like that. And there's definitely a serious age gap. This is a little bit interesting, but there's some stuff to cover here. An overwhelming majority of the people that I have interacted with interviewing are in their 30s for sure. And pretty small numbers in some of the other age groups. I think this is for a couple reasons. One is it is a reflection of my network and the types of places I go and things that I do and the people that I have been meet. So a lot of the types of events that I attend and a lot of the types of after parties that I frequent and a lot of the introductions that get made to me are people ending up fitting a similar profile to myself, like someone in their 30s, and doing similar things, going on similar activities. So it's not surprising that my network is predominantly people in my age group. But also like people who attend conferences is another factor as well. Because I have found that people kind of in this age group are the group most able to attend events frequently. Like they are not in their 20s or teens. They're old enough to have the means to travel a little bit and actually go do things. They're a little bit established in their careers maybe. But not quite so anchored down as people a little bit older who find it more difficult to get away and travel to events. So this is an age group that is most well represented at conferences just because they're most able to go and enthusiastic about going. So I say that to convey that this is not really a reflection of the global WordPress industry, it's just a makeup of people that I encounter mostly at events because I almost never invited guests on my show that I have met in person that's quite uncommon. Usually form relationships before conducting an interview with somebody. But at the same time I do think that this pie would be similarly reflected in the makeup of a lot of the established players in this industry. And that is for a couple of reasons. One, the WordPress thing itself is a little bit too new to be really infiltrating more established markets and industries because it's basically well established but it is still a fairly new and evolving technology. It hasn't been around for decades and so enterprise level businesses and the corporate world is not even paying any attention to WordPress currently at all but it's also bold in the sense that it's not the hot new thing that kids are doing. WordPress has been around for a while and there are newer, more attractive and exciting technologies popping up more recently. And so it doesn't surprise me that the age groups are not well represented in younger generation, younger than myself and the older generation is kind of like our generation who was young, all of these people in their 30s were in their 20s when they discovered WordPress and it was like this new exploding thing. And then it was like a fertile market where the demand was so much higher than the supply for services and products and if you made something that was even a piece of junk people would buy it, that was an exciting time to be getting into WordPress and riding that wave. And a lot of the people right now running the successful brands in WordPress that you recognize came in at the right time were like in their 20s experimenting the new stuff writing the blog, figured out how to make it plug in and boom, the next thing you know they've got a business under their hands and I'm in a story that I can count on. Also not too surprising, the global community is huge. The US does not make up a majority of the WordPress community at all but the other non-US communities are not very well represented both in my own personal network unfortunately but also I would argue in the WordPress community overall the US is heavily emphasized and gets really kind of all the attention. A lot of those other communities are big, are thriving but really do not get a whole lot of recognition. It's something that I wouldn't work on personally in my own small way and it's something that I think that we the whole WordPress community can do better and do my best to respond to map all the people. I just love the fact that I'm developing a network of people all over the place and anywhere I go every one of these blue pins represents somebody that I would probably hit up and say hey, let's hang out, I'm in your town virtually everywhere in the country, that's really fun for me but I'm working my way around this to be surprising that most of the people are like a center room in Michigan that I was able to communicate with. Now just a few things that I took away pretty frequently as I look back. I spent a lot of time just thinking about what I heard a lot from the people that I've interviewed and one of the things that I grew over and over was how they got into this by accident. Does anybody feel this way, like I use WordPress and they kind of got into this by accident? Yeah, if you haven't, you probably do feel that way because it's not established and old enough that anybody was getting into it deliberately or planning to dive into this. That can be happening now. It's conceivable that there are people right now figuring things out and saying, you know, that WordPress market looks really exciting. I want to deliberately pursue that with the skills necessary. That's possible but it wasn't ever before, especially for the people who have been doing it professionally for a while. The majority of the people that I talk to have some college experience but a lot of them are completely unrelated and many people that I interviewed had very unrelated careers so it was a very recurring theme that I would talk to somebody and ask them their story and they're succeeding in WordPress right now, running an agency or a theme business or something like that and they're like, well, I used to be an airplane pilot or a firefighter or I was in the military or all these different things and then somehow, I don't know, everybody just has a different story accidentally to stumble upon this technology, found it easy and fun and before you know it, they were making websites for their nieces' business and the big read on the street. I heard kind of commonly that a lot, especially the people who have been doing this a long time, a lot of people when I asked, so what events are you going to, well, I'm kind of easing back on the travel for a little while because I interpret it often for a couple reasons. One, a lot of people that I talked to have been doing this a long time and when WordPress was kind of exploding and like the 2009, 10, 11, 12 years was really blowing up then word games were kind of new and popping up all over the place and a lot of these brand new businesses were finding unprecedented success and growing and a lot of people were just like diving in and going to every word camp they could and just like contributing to the WordPress project and just on fire with it and kind of went a little too hot, too fast and got worked out for a while so a lot of people thought that has been their experience now like there are word camps every single weekend and it's just overload but also I think it reflects kind of the age group as well where a lot of the people who like in 2010 were going to every word camp now are like in their late 30s and have kids in a home and find it much more difficult to get out and attend every event that they'd like to and virtually everyone was self-taught there was almost no one that I talked to it was very rare to hear that I studied web design and development in college nobody said that everybody learned this kind of on their own learning tutorials and whatnot online building GeoCities sites and learning HTML within the MySpace days and so on and this should be something for you to reflect on if you're not someone who's frequent in a lot of word camps maybe if this is your first time I heard over and over again a lot of people said something to the effect of their first word camp being a big turning point that was a very special moment that changed the trajectory of their careers that's something to reflect on a little bit like what happened for them the people that they met their eyes were open to how welcoming and supportive and huge this community actually is and the fact that whatever problems you're going through there are other people here going through the same problems that was really important for a lot of people last time in too just a little bit about the valuable lessons I've taken away from the stories of the people who were really successful that my interpret is having been successful I started something that is a sustainable business went from nothing to growing something that's big that's well recognized in the industry like those success stories what did they have in common let's start with what they said what I heard over and over from them when I said how did you get here how did you pull this off finish and build something from nothing that really works that people pay you for people said over and over and over specialization is a broken record advice that I've heard so much don't be a jack of all trades generalist is a really hard to market if you want to be able to charge a lot of money if you want to really be less vulnerable to disruptions in the market and have job security the way to do it is to be super good at something just provide an exceptional thing that's narrow a lot of people said that they heard over and over that raising your prices is super important and that all of us charge too little with almost no exception and that's kind of a problem that the WordPress economy has faced for years that almost everything is like underpriced and a lot of professionals compare to non-wordpress where if you were to go and pay for this plug in the SharePoint or Magento space it would be so much more money so much more but WordPress is $19 that's ridiculous and a whole lot of professional developers will say I could get paid so much more if I'm working in non-wordpress but I work in WordPress where people are just not willing to pay very much money it's plagued the WordPress space for years and we're still kind of struggling with that like I said before perfectionism is dangerous and a lot of the people that I heard who have been successful said repeatedly that it's just important to release stuff and not just iterate indefinitely until some day is perfect and ready to go by that time way too late knowing when to give up is an important lesson that I learned from so many people have moved on from things when it was time and that's one of the characteristics I have observed from the people that I think are the most wise and experienced and who have done some of the biggest things they did not blindly persist forever on something that wasn't working they knew how to understand what's happening in the market and went to sell something off and just be done with it or went to just quit something and move on to another project or went to totally reinvent their product and do things differently these are some of the people who have had the most success they knew when it was time to move on instead of just like the thing is I used to run a business too and I know what it feels like to always feel like you're so close you can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it's right there if you just try a little harder just keep going a little more you'll get there that vision never goes away no matter what happens in the business and a lot of us are kind of put on blinders and just follow that light until it's a little bit too late I've heard over and over when I've asked questions about what are some of the problems you've had to overcome or the challenges you've had with hiring and employees and bad clients and projects that didn't go well I've heard essentially my interpretation of the advice that I've heard over and over it all comes down to communicating to the clients up front more about their expectations that will solve a lot of problems down the road communicating expectations with employees and then sitting down with them after communicating what wasn't working basically all those problems that are painful and awkward that we encounter with our businesses are essentially solved at the end of the day and better communication this community will really help you if you let it and I heard this very much so many people said something that if you really want to go far what was the yeah if you want to go fast we'll go alone if you want to go far go together like an African proverb a lot of people say it's a super good one so lean on this community and it will help you almost everybody says I got as much or more back from the community as I put into it these are some of the things which are more beyond our control these are things that people didn't say so much as what I interpreted and looking at in their story and I think this is the stuff that is good to keep in mind when we fall into that trap of like comparing ourselves to other people's stories some of them just got it at the right time not much you can do about that they were just doing the right thing at the right time for the right people and fortunately for them WordPress took off there are all these other people out there who made things for other platforms that didn't take off and they forgot about it and dropped it but WordPress did explode and some of those people were there at the right time they capitalized on all of them who were really successful had a lot of stories of failure so this is something really important to keep in mind if you look at somebody else who is similar to you and you think that they are more successful than you are and you are scratching your head and wondering why well this is important to keep in mind all of those people that I look at they are doing such great stuff right now they are just rolling and their business is soaring and they have made it if you listen to them tell their story they will go back to the times where they had nothing it was terrible they were at the bottom and they just everything was failing and somehow they persisted nonetheless and eventually something worked I worked with a guy called Pippin Williamson he has made a few plugins over the years and a total of like four of them have ever had any commercial success and he has published probably more than 80 that are out in the wild being used by people and those aren't necessarily failures but it's a similar it's just a way to remind us that not everything you make is going to explode and it's important to keep trying things there were a lot of people that I talked to who are doing well having a lot of success and a lot of credit can be given to the situation that they fortunately found themselves in some had great partners some had funding that they were able to work with some kind of a financial cushion which meant they could invest in this project that's earning no money for an extended period of time and still be okay a lot of us never find ourselves in that situation and so we don't have the opportunity to build an equivalent project and that's too bad some people have had that privilege and made the most of it so that's just another thing to keep in mind great partnerships are really important very consistently and almost all of them can be traced back to days like today where good relationships were formed at in-person events and of course all of these people really worked their butts off staying up late working on the weekend, sacrificing a lot of their social experiences that was a very work-oriented theme now just to wrap up I want to go over a few of my favorite points that I just think are worth and long for the strategies that I've used to trick myself into being consistent really good scheduling a life time with a guest that is too uncomfortable for me to just cancel because I'm not in the mood that works really well for me so I think we need to learn a little more about ourselves and find creative strategies to trick ourselves into consistency what has worked in the past in WordPress is it always going to continue working equally well so it's not going to be an effective strategy for us to just model our plan after what other people have done I work on a product called Easy Digital Downloads which is a pretty well-established popular plugin and our business model has evolved over the years and there are a lot of younger smaller plugin companies who say things like we're trying out this because EDV used to do it or does do it and I'll say that worked at the time it doesn't work anymore I recommend a different strategy that we're changing as well so just be aware of the market changes I think all of us need to chip in and help in the diversity efforts as I said before this community is really special this moment that you're in right now here at this event is something to really really take advantage of and I encourage you to get lunch with other people here and take the time to talk with whoever you're next to these moments are just really impactful I can trace so many of the great experiences that I had and the positive directions that my career has taken just to days like today where I found myself talking to the right people and things I never predicted ended up happening that speaks for itself if you're not successful as you would like to be I'm sure the reason is you just haven't failed enough times keep at it and get there and with this I think it's time for questions if anyone has an agent yes sir yeah I look here if you have any tips for interviewers or anything you learned early on or later particularly in terms of helping with a difficult interview or getting information out yeah okay I'll repeat a question along the lines of wanting tips for interviewing people especially in cases where maybe someone is difficult to interview or just generally conducting a good interview for recorded programs I would imagine yeah we're not talking about job interviews we're talking about peers in the industry okay I love this topic I didn't care anything about it when I started the show but now it's become a passion of mine interviewing people is something that I love doing and so much fun it's a skill that I want to continue to develop and I have so much respect for the people who conduct great interviews that I listen to like Terry Gross and Iron Blast and Joe Rogan and Mark Marin just like have great shows and pull out the best stuff from their people it doesn't hurt that they always get great people on their shows it's a privilege we might not always have but still they have skills and are really good at just like extracting the good stories and making any interview work watching and listening to you want some tips I think I've always had more success when I was more prepared there's no question about that so the more homework I did about my guests the better I was able to take the conversation in a good direction and maybe the more conversation I had in advance of the show that was really good too like just chatting with them and then before or just like signing on to view a technical system check before we go live for the show small talk the more I can learn about them interact with them the more likely I was able to successfully get a conversation in a good direction and like pull out really interesting stories and find the really compelling points in their story as otherwise that can be really difficult to consistently do on the fly sometimes I'll have a guest a question that's a little bit too open-ended and they go on a long spiel and I'm like I've got six questions in here but where do I even take this from now that can be a difficult moment if you don't have a plan and you haven't already learned some of this information because it's not that important for you to learn it during the recording as you probably know a lot of it already not all guests are equal in terms of what they're going to give you and definitely I've had guests who I asked maybe three questions in an hour because they just got a lot to stay and I have other guests who give extremely short answers and I'm reaching and they're not giving me anything I know what that's like but that's that's fine in my case because this is just a show about like who these people are with no no real other objective in this case as I said the purpose is really to just get to know these people and what they care about what they're trying to do without a real goal without like a point that we're trying to make in the end that's different than a lot of other shows a lot of shows there might be an emphasis here like this is a business strategy show and we're going to talk about our monthly recovery revenue and here we've got so and so there's an expert on the topic it's like you have an objective that can really guide you and you can mold your questions around that a lot of my guests I had found were much better if they asked some questions that they needed to know what was coming and I always appreciate that too because I've been interviewing a number of times as well and the times where I knew a little bit about what was coming I was better I was a better guest and I had a better story the thing is stories are like some of the best content but they're also like the hardest to come up with on the fly and tell them wow they used to teach job interviews skills with people and there are those like situational type questions tell me about a time when and those are some of the most valuable questions some of like the fastball down the mill opportunity for us to score and illustrate like how capable we are and yet there's some of the hardest to answer on the fly because we have to not only process like heavy computing power like all our collective experiences to find one that fits the question we also have to tell it in a clear way so that there's a logical progression to the story so I think sharing questions in advance of your guess is a really good strategy those are just a few tips but I think all our questions are and I'd love to talk to you more about it so what you said about how we're sort of stuck in this situation where we're unable to sell plugins and and sort of like accessories and even services for as high as we are probably valued at like compared to like SharePoint which was we're looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars or something and then like if you take a look at other communities like the triple community you don't sell things like plugins like that's completely unheard of but then we have WordPress which is sort of you know in between those two and we have such a low barrier to entry for so many people and so we're getting all levels of people creating plugins and services so my question is I agree that we've kind of gotten to this mindset where you have a lot of people that are even thinking paying ten dollars for plugins too much and they're like no I need a free one so we're our services and our products are valued and people's minds are valued so low but what people are getting is actually a lot of money so how do you how do you think that maybe we can work towards solving that or maybe trying to value our services and our offerings at what they should be at and kind of change that expectation of you know users and customers yeah thanks for the great question Jay we're creating this website two minutes that's not a two minute question a very good one I'll try to be as concise as possible cause I think there's like two other questions this is definitely a challenge and one could argue that it's not as big a problem as those of us profiting from the success of WordPress and make it to be because it's great for users to have for small business owners we get warriors and people trying to do something special to have an opportunity to make something without like user investment that's that's the case with WordPress right now and it's kind of cool that people have that opportunity but at the same time that makes it really hard for legitimate businesses to be sustainable in this space and so what we have is this problem that eventually breaks down where in the in the early days it's kind of fine because there's a lot of stuff that a lot of people are making and much of it's cheap and it's pretty affordable to get started but a lot of that stuff can't be well sustained because it doesn't earn enough and so these these products are being sold like once if not recurring or for low prices and whoever's behind the products can't afford to run a business on that maybe they didn't even intend to run a business but it doesn't matter they eventually abandon the product or maybe they don't have the resources to put in the product actually make it really good and so what we see eventually it kind of breaks down because a lot of people are relying on either abandoned technologies or technologies that we're not developed very well we have quality issues performance issues are always like problem because those working in the industry and making the pretty good stuff couldn't really invest heavily and it's making it very much better it wasn't enough money and there's not enough money for like outside companies with top talent and top resources to even have a dream of diving into the workplace space that would make no sense to them we can obviously make amazing stuff we've got the best people and all the resources in the world but there's no return where we're at elsewhere and eventually, like as years go by we're just kind of like getting decayed on and we become less attractive well that could go in a lot of directions but I definitely think that that's kind of the problem and we have to maybe paint a better picture like why WordPress can be a high quality premium solution for people like you it's really difficult in a long discussion but I know that should be a talk and so really yeah, thanks then to questions also like talk questions or like 30 second questions yeah, well if you're interested in the data or if you have a question like where I came up with all this stuff mostly I did it all myself I'm like a big spreadsheet I try to like all the guests that I've ever had and then like their location and then they go to college what guests do they recommend and what do they say to this and that this is just super tedious so I just have a big spreadsheet which I don't think is private I guess I could share it with anybody who's curious okay, I think we're out of time there's going to be another great talk in a minute so thank you guys for being out


As aripo, since 2008, we are organising jointly with the Awaipo Academy and the Africa University which is based in Mutare in Zimbabwe. This master programme on intellectual property. This programme once again had a great impact in the whole continent. In nine editions we have trained more than 247 people who are now graduated as master degree programme on intellectual property. Now these 247 people we just conducted a trace study and we discovered that almost all of them are active in the area of intellectual property. Some are now in the intellectual property office working there as examiners offices and some of them they became the heads of the AP office due to this programme. Some are patent agents, trade marker, some other in the courts. Some courts we had the case of the commercial court in Ghana for example that directly requested us to train the judges and after training those judges with the course they created the section on intellectual property in the commercial court in Ghana. This is happening in many other countries. These people that we trained by the Awaipo Academy in collaboration with Aripo and the Africa University are changing the landscape of IP in the continent. They are not coming from the Aripo Member States only but they come from more than 25 countries in the African continent. So this is a programme that is open to anyone in the continent to attend. We have even people, candidates from other countries outside Africa who are interested in the programme but because of the limitations that we have in terms of funding we cannot take them and we have limited ourselves in training people from Africa. Every year we receive more than 100 applications for this programme but we only have the capacity to receive 30 to 40 students. That means that more than 60 people every year fail to have the opportunity to be trained and that shows that we need to come out with other solutions in terms of offering this programme to more people because they are interested and they want to work in this area. The MIP programme in Mutare in Zimbabwe indeed is a success story once again because from this programme really we have been able to capacity create those skills that the continent is in need. It's one of the platforms that really allows African people today to dialogue and discuss about the intellectual property issues. We have just established a journal, it's called African Journal on Intellectual Property. We are now in a second issue, the first one was launched last year and this is again the platform that we are providing to our master programme student and any other academic people who want to write articles that are focusing on intellectual property in Africa. We believe that will be again another platform, intellectual platform, academic platform that will allow us to mainstream discuss issues related to the continent. We would like to see these initiatives growing and having more and more of these opportunities. We have been in touch with some university who would be interested in establishing a master's degree programme on intellectual property. We know that there are limitations, the YAP Academy cannot be everywhere in the world but I think we need to be creative in coming out with other initiatives. We cannot every year leave out more than 60 people who would like to learn about intellectual property and we are interested in having people who are educated about intellectual property and they are out there and they cannot access this opportunity. So once again this is something that is open to debate and how do we reach out to those people who would like to learn more about intellectual property. We believe that more will come, more can happen in terms of the development of IP but I think the basic ingredient for the development of IP in the African continent is education about IP. It's creating awareness, it's involving more and more university and research institutions in intellectual property.


What's going on everyone? Sam here at late sports gardens We're ripping two boxes of 23 top Star Wars chrome galaxy hobbies for Justin w. It's good luck here Justin Let's see it, buddy. See something big He's been fun, man Yeah, these are These are as as expected and as always a good product I'm a buyer on any of the topics I'd say that's sick most rage that in red would be insane dude The masters of evil stormtrooper I told I said this looks like Sean We're up close do and see palace That is a best-been bounty hunter and A return of the Jedi poster card. That's a cool one. It's a bit redeemed. Oh Yeah That's nice Vader shuttle Teal is to 199 that is a squad of bounty hunters. That's really sweet. Yeah. Oh man Sabin Ren it's too late for your nonsense right in there. Say it right Sabine Ren Sabine Ren Oh, yeah, you had a recipe and run. Oh, yeah That is a tolerate the Empire's forces. That's pretty sick and base base Had her late than never Gonna get this guy out of here.  That's like not for sale just for show. So I said how much Sounds all right, but it was the fun. I thought it was pretty funny. I got it I got a good shuffle out of that sneaking around danger That is gonna be galactic visions And base That's the one that Sean said I'm Luke and Sean and Sam's Yoda. I'm carrying them on my back a little warp Is that card this one's cool too from the depths? Base and base A lot of boba fendis. Yeah, a lot of boba an upset wookie Uh Is that boss correct and base a lot of bounty like I think there's a lot of Boba because there's a lot of bounty hunter stuff in it too. Yeah, but the bounty hunters have their own insert set right right I guess I'm there's a lot of boba in like the normal base that beggars Canyon run Well, I sure the Jedi stuff to you. Yeah, because of the forward for you. I think that's the reason yeah Probably good guess that is the princess in the scoundrel The saga continues revenge of the Jedi and he's all yours bounty hunter green coming up that is Ravenous rancor and green to 99 that is Darth Vader and his stormtroopers 95 of 99 over the cloud make your frown turn upside down I Had a from the top row A stew observation from mr. Couch there. Yeah, what do you think got a nice one here 10 of 150 on solo draws on the atomic Yeah, that's how much it's really Alisa Kira. Oh She'll be pulled a sketch of hers. Oh, really? Yeah, that's pretty sweet.  What that's a cyber crystal a cyber crystal in the and it's so damaged Dang, those are hard to hit. I know to look at like you could tell that just got absolutely mauled Well, I'm sorry about that Justin.  Yeah. Yeah No, Kyber crystals.  I hope the whole run isn't like this. I know There's blasphemous that's annoying. I'd be so I know I know it's such a cool-looking car, dude That is Luke stands ready. There's a wingman Refractor one of the biggest cars in the set Galactic visions and base that's like one of those things where like I don't know how you'd let that go I know I mean well because you could tell to like with the way that the packs are designed right there Like you could tell it was put it was like sticking up when they packed it in Cuz it's like crimped perfectly to look like the like it's got like the packs like that like imprint I've got a I've got a bad feeling about the rest of the fiber I know That does not make me optimistic That's that's rough it's in the link odd couple For turn of the shadow Still a sick card though. Like I said that should be able to be replaced Luke and peril You can replace no problem. That's oh, yeah Then you're good, but there's the torture droid galactic visions insert and base That's one of the issue on some of the sketches too. It's like the bottom part is like up a little bit There's atomic Django draws his pistols. That was awesome. That's so cool 38 of 150 congrats Justin. I saw one there, buddy That's Kenobi's visage look how Rizzi another Star Wars visions. That was cool and So This is our visions. It's just like a Japanese like style to I'm assuming most likely It's a 199 that is a shiny return on the teal. That's pretty Nice one there. Congrats, Justin. It's K. Y. B. E. R. You said sigh, right? What does a K make a sigh? See them sunset?  That's what it makes it 99 reimagined art is um Good one. What's it called? Galactic visions insert Who come back there? Man, I'm so hurt Got him Yeah, I got there's a battle of Yavin. Is it yavin or yavin? Yavin. Yavin. Thank you Um reimagined art. Yavin. There You're good This is fun. That's all. That's Planetissimals Now let's get let's get a hockey break in here real quick. Let Donnie take the reins. There you go Yeah, I'll mispronounce everything and I'll be proud of it. There's a the pursuit That is Zuckus So one fun time that I have when uh, Sam Ripps Star Wars, I get the top. I know yeah true, uh queen in portrait Basin base That is a flight of the millennium falcon There's master of evil. What was that from? Uh robot chicken. There's a dark vader Star Wars a new hope That is a battle of Endor Yeah, it's a step up from last year in my opinion and last year's is good too. Yeah, right 74 z speeder bike Return a galaxy far far away. That's not always like that. That's not a knock on last year Right. Yeah, that's you're saying it's that it's even better. Right. There's a dark side Is all yours, Donnie Hunter? And last pack good luck here Justin That's a the Star Wars saga That is Kira and base. I'll do it for your break there Justin. Thanks again for the support buddy. Do appreciate it I'm gonna write out to my friend


Hi guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosal here. I want to record a video today about a function within KadenLive's color correction settings that I discovered yesterday. Thought it was really, really useful and wanted to just pass on the information slash tip. Want to point out as well, I am a KadenLive rookie myself at the moment I'm using it probably more days than not because I'm on kind of a push at the moment. I'm learning video, I'm learning video editing, I'm trying to really improve this YouTube channel and getting more into it by the day. So I'm doing a lot of work in KadenLive and something I'm doing or I've started doing is a color, basic color correction. If I have some footage and the colors just look a bit off or the lighting looks a bit off, I can do some adjustments in post-production in order to make that look better. And for my particular camera, the Femi-Pam II that I'm starting to shoot a lot of video with, I find that the day and nighttime performance is so variable that I often have to do some of that color correction on the footage I take as the sun is going down or as the sun's already gone down. In other words, the low light footage, I'm doing a bit of work on that. So let's jump into Kaden here. And I'm just gonna, this is just a completely random clip. I pulled in from my media drive here. Let's just look through it firstly. So I'm just gonna go ahead and cut this here. Something I do find really useful in KadenLive is that custom keyboard shortcuts or I've started using them a ton as well. All right, so I've cut that in two. Now let's say I want to apply some color correction onto the first part of this clip. Now the one I'm using as a rookie for my basics, et cetera, is lift, gamma, and gain. I find this really helpful. So I'm just kind of dragging that down. And now I have my three wheels for lift, gamma, and gain and I have my three brightness meters on the side, ranging all the way from fully dark here, 0.000, up to 3.7 is as far as it'll go here. Now that's starting to look completely crazy. Okay, so let's do some, just edits to this clip. I've already, the gain is way too high and it's starting to look kind of very glaring and weird. Let's just say we can play around with these abyss or let's go for something a little bit more adventurous. Let's say we want to color the footage red, so that it's one of those kind of kitschy murder scenes where the protagonist's world goes red for a second and we don't want to shoot that with an actual lens, tint, lens, tinted lens filter on the camera we wanted to do in post-production. So let's take a look at this footage here, walking into, I don't know, it's a supermarket I think. And I'm gonna just bring this down to just try and get rid of that stuff a little bit. Okay, it's starting to there, it's a battle. Anyway, all right, so let's now turn the gamma towards the red setting. And now you can see in my project monitor on the right, that clip has now got this kind of red tint to it. So let's say I wanted to use this color correction, this lift gamma gain setting for multiple clips throughout this our project. So one way to do that, I can copy and paste the effect, the way to do this is to do control C. And again, why I mentioned that keyboard shortcuts and cadence live being so useful is I've configured a custom one for pasting the effects, control B is what I have it on my computer. So without even touching the context menu, I can just move up here and go control B. And now as you can see, I've dropped on the any effects. Now I'm not sure if there's a way to just paste a particular effect or if you have to paste every effect on that clip. So that's why it's less useful to me in some circumstances because I have to like paste a couple of effects and then delete a fade or something like that. But that's one way to do it. You can see now I have that red tint of the footage throughout this entire clip. Now let's just delete this from the second clip and now it's just on the first. So another thing I can do, and that's what I wanted to show in this video is create a preset. So the way to do this is let's use the same setting. So let's say I really like these and I'm, oh, this looks great for this camera in this lighting setting. And I think I'm going to want to use this exact few settings. Again, and that's kind of what I found this useful for is as I said, if you have a kind of constant problem with a camera, not really a problem, just something that could look a little bit better in a certain light condition and you've just kind of nailed exactly what settings will fix that, let's say.  You can see there is an eye icon for visibility. Next to that, there is a setting icon and you wouldn't know that it's a preset icon until you click it and you can click save presetting. I'm going to call this red tint. And now I've created a preset. Now what that has done has, it's saved the RGB settings on all three of lift gamma and gain as well as the brightness settings. So basically six numbers in total and it's saved to preset and that can be applied. So let's go now to the second clip here. I can go and add lift gamma gain. I'm just going to drag and drop that onto the clip. And now instead of doing the exact same thing, I can click on this and I can click into red tint. And as you can see, it's the same color correction settings on the first and the second half of this clip. Now, there's just a couple more things for the sake of completion to show here. Firstly, if you want to update the preset, you can do that. So let's say I want to take off lift gamma gain on the first part of this clip. So now the first part is as I came out of the camera and on the second part, we've got this kind of weird red coloration going on. So what I can do is move, let's say I want to just make it even more red. So now it's really, really red, okay? I've just kind of shifted towards red on gamma. So what I can do now is go back up to the top and click red tint. Sorry, I needed to be in there from the start. So go into the preset, then make your changes to the preset, then go back up to presets and then click on update current preset. And now it's, so now that's configured to save presets. What I can do is go lift gamma gain. I'm going to go into the first clip and I click on presets and I click on red tint. And now you can see the updated preset has applied there. It's just, it's a lot more red than the first adjustment we did and that's now throughout. Final thing you can do is because I don't want to actually save this preset, you can go back to it. Because I don't want to actually save this preset, I can delete preset here. And now that preset is no longer available, but it's still going to be left on the first clip because it was saved. And now it's just kept these, it's kept the original settings. Let's say I wanted to create a new preset instead of going all the way to red. I want to go all the way to, whoops. There we go. I want to go all the way to green. So what I can do is click on presets, save preset and save green tint. Okay, I went for Tine instead, that was a typo. And now I can go on to the first clip and click into green tint. And now that's been tinted green. So these, this ability to save color correction presets and apply them to clips is a really, really useful way.  Thank you guys for watching. If you'd like to get more videos, please subscribe to this YouTube channel.