So, notes taking is again a very very important thing, if we if we give some level of importance to it. What is the function of notes taking, why why do people take notes? Remember and reference ok. So, at the very minimum level, notes help us to keep our self awake in the class. It not look some rambling some activity it help us keep our eyes open ok. So, that is the bare minimum basic thing which notes can do, but beyond that it help us to connect us with the subject matter. It help us to connect us with the with the area of knowledge and of course, it help us to recall. So, these are some of the things which we never teach to our students. For example, we do not teach listening is an important thing, we do not teach notes taking, we do not teach how to read book or research paper, we do not teach how to make sense of the subject. We do not teach who was the mechanical engineering, we do not teach how the whole branch of engineering actually evolved in last 100 years. This is this these are the things which are important to be shared for a person to engage with the subject and we the engagement happens not only at the we have to have some emotional connect to things. So, this is also one part of this is a very very basic thing, but perhaps help some of our students to engage with the process of learning with presentations. So, it is referred to capture what we listen, it help us in actual listening as you all said this, assist in quick mental call and audio video recording is is definitely not the answer had it been the person to person face to face interaction would have been replaced by audio recording, they joke in one American university outplayed out recordings. Assume that this teacher is wonderful, so why do not we play the recording of this his lectures and the students will listen anyway he is he is an excellent teacher generally people do not have many questions after his class, so he is a wonderful one. They tried it and after few weeks when this the the coordinators like the coordinators sitting here, they went to the class they found that there was no student they were only they were only recorders. Recording played out, student also played a recorder to record them. So, audio recording is not the answer, there is one method it is called 5 R method popularized first in this. It is called 5 R because it it it has 5 points, reducing, reciting, reflect and review. It does or help in all these things, do not get overwhelmed with this R R R it looks like this. There is a notes taking area, notes here and while if if I am taking notes and the space is is comfortable, I keep getting some idea this can happen this can help in my topic or it can help in my research or it can help in my project. So, we keep getting some ideas which are recorded here Q column and then we write the summary and the writing summary if we do it in that same class it would not take more than 5 minutes and it would not look great when we do it first or second time. It will look boring. So, I am reminded of a statement of a speaker he said that many of the things which makes people winner looks boring, but winners are those who anyway do it. So, if we do it for for a week or so and go back to this then we realize its its value because then we do not have to go through the 50 pages or 100 pages and we can just look at the summary of it. It can remain with us for years and last 3 minutes I would like to share one idea which will be very helpful and useful both. How many of you have this habit of exercising regularly and regularly means 5 days 5 days in a week 30 days at a stretch every time ok. And how many of you have seen people exercising all of us. We we have we have we have this habit of seeing people exercise is they need exercise they need to exercise. Nothing bad going to happen to me. Good you are doing it you need it. That is not the point the point is different. What happens those particular those who exercise regularly if you exercise only with the left side of the body suppose people lift dumbbells you do it like only left side one day will make a indifference no. If you do it for for a week exercising from only one side of the body what will happen? It will wear here it means one part is mustanda and another part is like but unfortunately we are doing same thing with our mind. How? There are two parts of the brain. One is brain and mind these are two different they are connected. So, one part of the brain is responsible for linear thinking logical sequential analysis is lateral creative words deal with the colors etcetera. We have practiced for a week exercise for years after years to use only one part of the brain. But great things happen with the both the parts. When someone says that in last hundred years not a single fundamental technology has originated in India it is partly because we have forgotten what we were master at. This is a great culture we never we shall it the things we always believed in the cyclicality and wholesomeness. Now people are talking about sustainability and wholesomeness this culture always promoted this idea and not only as an idea it is a way of life this is life but we have forgotten. So, if we have to change this one it won not change overnight and one way of taking notes can help us to integrate these both minds left and right brain a linear and lateral mind to a benefit of our profession as well as for life and that method is mind map because it is a graphical representation method. This is one example this is a impact of global warming and a minute on this. This is a alternate way of taking notes. How it is different and what is what is observing different ideas their connections instantaneous pictorial representation it help us memorizing better. We can look at the key words colors are inviting it is engaging more number of senses yes. So, this is the capability of zoom in and out. So, we can just look at the overview and can remember certain things and we can we can also go deeper into it. This is a way of taking notes the alternate way of taking notes. These are the creative notes. We thought that notes taking is always like a boring step by step sequential thing it cannot be it need not to be. But we have teach these creative and interesting ways students will learn that students for many years I used to take notes and for many years I left this idea I I I stopped the notes only till the time I attended a course on mind map and I start taking my notes in the form of mind map mind map. It it it happened about four five years back and since then it is joyful to take notes. For teachers it is particularly relevant if you are doing some project it is good to make the mind map of the project of that field of knowledge. If you are engaged in research it is good to make the mind map of that terrain of your knowledge. These are the branches these are the paradigm these are the things and then you point out this is the point of my contribution in research. It is such kind of notes are useful only for the theoretical subject. I think time is over but I can surely take this this question. See to start with anything there are two ways. One is how it can be useful. Another way is how it cannot be useful. If you start with how it cannot be useful will never you will never start. This is theoretical answer, practical answer. I I do not think this Boeing makes aircraft both because they are the two companies. They supply aircraft to the whole world. This engine operate we all know the six sigma. They operate at 12 sigma level that level of efficiency. You cannot afford to have one plane crash every two weeks if they operate on six sigma level you cannot afford that. So, you can understand how much training required and how much training would be required. They reduce the training number of years of training which used to be three years. They reduce it to I think 14 16 months by using more and more mind maps. So, the grasp is better people can relate to the subject better and their overall sort of development is us become much with this method. Again there can be so many methods. I have shared only two things. Bloom's taxonomy and mind map. These are so many methods out of two methods out of so many are already available. We are not discussed about five hours. Five hours is I I have not discussed because there was not time but five hours is like this. It looks like this. Record is main column. Note taking Q column summary. Record is main column. Reduce after class summarize in the margin. Recite cover main column recall this is recite when every third day or every week we can recall recite it. Reflect think about the points rate to other ideas create new. This is generally written on the margin here. So, this column can get enriched with time because we keep getting ideas and reflect and review. Reflect think about the point which is and we may get some point which we record in the Q column and then review we spend 10 minutes every week reviewing the notes. These slides are available. So, much material is already available on Google and I think I have already told you about the podcast and all that. These are good stuff to start with. There is no way I can claim that it is it is over. It is just the beginning. I am sure you will. So, all this last one what we are doing is always dead. Dead. It become alive only with your effort in involvement. So, what is in your hand if you have if you want to make it lively you combined with your own effort experience and involvement and that it become this one are will be alive in your effort in your involvement. Thank you very much for your patience.


like write it down, you try to understand it, then you say, oh yeah, yeah, I get it.  And then your developer goes, yeah, I get it. And then they build it and then you go back to your customer and then they go, this is not what we talked about. It's like, yeah, you got A, B, but where is C, D, E, F, G? You know what I mean? And that's not a rare occurrence. That happens over and over again.  I think it's just a matter of like, there's just so many things going on that you can't really focus. And then if you're having this conversation, like there's things that get missed, right? So that's the reason why we built Claritive is to be able to make it so customer facing, you know, like individuals can then just focus on the conversation.


Hi everyone, it's Leah, your lead course instructor here at Advanced E-Clinical Training. And so I just want to welcome you back to our Pharmacology series here. Today we're going to go over antibiotics. So of course by now I'm sure we all know what antibiotics are. We've probably all been on an antibiotic before, maybe once or twice or more. So antibiotics are medications that fight bacterial infections in both humans and animals. And they work by either killing the bacteria or by making the bacteria very hard to grow and to multiply. Antibiotics can be taken in several different ways. Of course, orally, they can be taken, you know, capsule pills, capsules or pills or liquids. Topically, this might be a cream or a spray or an ointment that you put on your skin. And then that antibiotic is absorbed transdermally through the skin. It could also be an eye ointment, an eye drop, or an ear drop. And then also, of course, antibiotics can also be used IV or IM. So IV meaning intravenously and IM meaning intramuscularly. And that both of those routes that IV and IM are usually used for more serious types of infections. So the different types of antibiotics, the major classes of antibiotics here include the amino glycosides, the cephalosporins, the penicillins and the penicillin-resistant drugs. We also have the sulfanomides, the tetracycline, the carbapenems, and the fluoroquinolobones. So first, we'll start by talking about the amino glycosides. So this group or this class of antibiotic is used to treat infections caused by gram-negative aerobic bacilli. And so amino glycosides are also effective against other bacteria, including this astaphylococci and mycobacterium tuberculosis. And they are often used in combination with other antibiotics as well. So examples of some common names of amino glycosides. We have Gentamiasin, Tobramiasin, Amakasin, Streptomiasin, Anomiasin as well. And here are the pharmacokinetics for the amino glycosides. But I do not want you to have to memorize this. You don't have to memorize the sparpokinetics for these antibiotics. I put this in the presentation because I thought it might be interesting to you and that, you know, it helps supplement your learning. But under no circumstances do I want you to have to remember any of these former kinetics for any of these antibiotics. This is just to really supplement your learning. So again, the amino glycosides could be given IM or IV. The onset is rapid. The peak of the medication is between 30 and 90 minutes. You know, the half-life is between two and three hours. It's metabolized through the liver and then excreted by the kidneys. Here are some contraindications and some adverse effects for the amino glycosides. I'm not going to read all of these to you because you can read on your own. But just some things to definitely consider that I want to point out. Of course, if you have a known allergy to an amino glycoside, you're not going to be prescribed one for another infection. Also lactation, so this type of antibiotic is excreted in the breast milk and then can potentially cause serious effects in the infant. So you really want to be aware of that, especially as a medical assistant and you are taking a medical history down or you're taking the patient's medication list. So if they are female and they are currently breastfeeding, definitely should not be taking an amino glycoside.  The amino glycosides tend to have more of an effect on the central nervous system. So deafness, vestibular paralysis, confusion, weakness. Definitely GI symptoms, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss. So all things to be considered here. Moving on to the carbapenems. So this is a relatively new class of broad spectrum antibiotics effective against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Broad spectrum meaning that this class of antibiotics can treat a broad spectrum or a wide variety of different types of bacteria. So some indications for this medication would include serious intra-abdominal infections, urinary tract infections, skin infections, any type of bone infection, ganalogical infection, and especially infections that are resistant to other antibiotics. And so infections, so the carbapenems will be effective or susceptible against these strains of bacteria. So that is what's important to really know about antibiotics is that a lot of these classes of antibiotics that will go over can treat an abdominal infection or a UTI or a skin infection. What's important is, is that antibiotic susceptible to that type of bacteria? So some common names here of the carbapenems. You have the brand name here, the generic name here. I've mostly only seen the generic names given, meropenem is a very popular one given. This dorapenem as well is pretty commonly given as well. Just a side note that any, when we're talking about pharmacology brand names are always going to start with a capital letter and then the generic names are always going to begin with a lowercase letter. Again, the pharmaconetics here, I don't want you to memorize this. This is just to supplement your learning. Again, these medications can be given IM or IV. It has a rapid onset because it's given IM or IV. And then the half length is around four hours and again it's greeted through the kidneys. So some contraindications and adverse effects of the carbapenems. So you'll start to see some definite trends. So contraindicated of course lactation. We don't know whether this drug can cross into the breast milk or not, but probably just to err on the safe side, we're not going to give this type of medication to somebody who is breastfeeding. So the dorapenem is not recommended for use in patients younger than 18 years of age. Adverse effects, so GI, so pseudomembrous colitis, C-diff, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, super infections. Now, a lot of times with these antibiotics that are what we call heavy hitters, they are doing what they're supposed to do. They're killing the bacteria that they were made to kill. And so you get better. But at the same time, then it's also killing the good flora or the good bacteria in your GI tract, which then can cause a C-diff infection. And when our patient has a C-diff infection, they are usually have a lot of, a lot of loose stool, very, has a very distinct smell to it. Once you know the smell of C-diff, you'll never forget it. You'll always know what that is exactly once you smell it. So something to consider. Moving on to the cephalosporins. So this class of antibiotics was first introduced in the 1960s, and there are currently four generations of the cephalosporins, each with a specific spectrum of activity. These drugs are like penicillin and structure and their activity. And again, these cephalosporins can treat bone infections, ear infections, skin infections, upper respiratory tract infections, urinary tract infections. And remember what I said that with the antibiotics, what's most important is that antibiotic susceptible to that bacteria. And how we, how we find that out is by doing a culture. So if your patient or we think they have pneumonia, yes, that can be diagnosed by an X-ray, but we want to know what kind of bacteria is causing that pneumonia, so we can give them the right antibiotics. So we'll do a sputum culture. So your patient will spit into a cup, that sample is then sent to the lab and they'll do, they'll test what type of bacteria. Same with a urinary tract infection, that urine sample will be tested to see what type of bacteria is in that urine. So we know exactly what type of bacteria to, what type of antibiotic to give to that patient to treat that specific bacteria. Seemed for a surgical site infection, we're going to do a WIM culture, which is a long Q-tip, and then we take a sample of that. Tissue or, you know, the drainage from within that surgical wound and we send that off to the lab to be tested to find out what bacteria is growing. So that's how we, that's how we find out. So some common names here of the cephalosporins, first-generation cephalozolein, cephalexin, those are very common ones that I see given very often. Second generations of the cephalosporins, cepheroxyne is a very common one. Third generation, the sephutriaxome, is very commonly given. And then the fourth generation, cephapine. But these are all cephalosporins here. Again, we have the pharma kinetics, not, you do not need to memorize this. Again, this is just to supplement your learning. So you can go ahead and look over that if you'd like. And then moving on again to the contraindications and the adverse effects. Like I said before, you're going to start to see some patterns here. Antibiotics all seem to, you know, cause the same kind of adverse effects, especially when the GI area, super infections, and especially you want to be very careful about antibiotics with pregnant women.  The fluoroquinololins. So these are relatively new synthetic class of antibiotics, which again have a broad spectrum of activity. So they can kill a broad spectrum of bacteria. But they are indicated for most following conditions. So specifically typhoid fever, anthrax, are the two biggest bacterial gastroenteritis. And again, different UTI infections, bacterial infections in the chest as well, pneumonia. Some common names here, again, here to the left are the brand names. So Avalox, Cipro, Leviquin, those are very common ones that we see given today, again, on the right side or the generic names. And here are the pharma kinetics for the fluoroquinolins. But again, you do not need to memorize this. And then some contraindications and adverse effects. Here again, we see the same patterns with the pregnancy lactation, the GI issues. One I think is pretty interesting here is the photosensitivity to sunlight and ultraviolet light. So definitely that is a good teaching moment for you.  You want to just really let them know, hey, listen, really should stay out of the sun. You know, your skin is going to be extra sensitive to the sunlight. You can develop a rash and burn very easily. So something just to keep in mind there. Now, moving on to penicillin and the penicillin-resistant antibiotic. So of course, penicillin was the very first antibiotic introduced for clinical use. And so since then, there have been various modifications to address the resistance strains of penicillin and to decrease the drug adverse effects. So the penicillin-resistant antibiotics were then developed to address the bacteria that then became resistance to penicillin. So specifically, these penicillin and the penicillin-resistant antibiotics, you know, contradental abscesses, ear infections, gonorrhea, you know, endocarditis, which is infection in the heart or an infection on the heart valve. And penicillin is also used to treat meningococcal meningitis if given at high doses. So specifically, penicillin with the immunopenicillins, they are used mostly for grand positive bacteria and some grand-negative bacteria, such as E. coli. Some of the generic name we've probably all heard of amoxicillin and ampicillin. The anti-pseudomonal penicillin, so their spectrum of activity is for most grand positive and grand-negative bacteria, anti-pseudomonal and anti-protozoal activity. And that's usually given with a beta-laptomase. So a generic name is Pipericillin. Moving on to the beta-laptomase inhibitors, which is also a penicillin, so they are affected against most grand positive and grand-negative bacteria. And especially those that produce a beta-laptomase, such as like enterococcus or staphylococcus. So the generic names of the amoxicillin collaborate and that is also known as Augmentin. The ampicillin, cell-bactam, unicin is the brand name. And then the Pipericillin, tazobactam, or otherwise known as Zocin. So unicin and Zocin are given IT. You see this in the hospital very often. Augmentin is given orally. And it's mostly seen more outside of the hospital. So keeping with the penicillins, the natural penicillin is effective against most grand-positive bacteria. And they have a limited number of gram and they're effective against a limited number of gram-negative bacteria. Generic name here, penicillin V or penicillin G. And again, staying with penicillins, the penicillin-resistant penicillins. So their spectrum of activity include their effective against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. And they're naturally resistant to beta-lactamase. So some generic names, naphycylin, oxycylin. They're two biggest ones, the most common that I've seen given in the hospital, mostly given IV. These medications are used for a very serious serious infections. And again, the contraindications and the adverse effects you see here again once again with the pregnancy and lactation and then, you know, the GI issues that can that can happen. So sulfonamides. So sulfonamides are drugs that inhibit folic acid synthesis. So it's really important for you to understand that sulfonamides are indicated. Well, before I do that, sulfonamides is a group of medications. So again, they inhibit folic acid synthesis, but there are antibiotics, sophomol, and then there are non-antibiotic sulfonamides. So something just to keep in mind, so there, like I said, are several non-antibiotic sulfonamides that have been developed to treat conditions such as diabetes and also for pain relief and some antimicrobial sulfa drug streets, some autoimmune disorders such as ulcerative colitis and rheumatoid arthritis. So I just wanted to point that out to you. I think that's pretty interesting. But some common names for the antibiotic form of the sulfonamides, Bactrim, that's a very common one, the Bactrim DS as well, Ceptra DS, and then the generic name is the same for these brand names here. Pharmacokinetics, again, this is just a supplementary learning. You don't have to memorize this. And then the contraindications and the adverse effects are, again, very, very similar to the ones all previously with the other classes of antibiotics as well. Moving on to the tetracycloins. So this is a group of broad spectrum antibiotics that have a common basic structure and are either isolated directly from several species of streptomyce bacteria or produced semi-synthetically from those isolated compounds. And tetracycloins are indicated for the following medical conditions. So UTIs lymph nodes also to treat Lyme disease, malaria, and severe acne. And then also for sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia. So here are some of the brand names you can see here on the left. I recognize them most and are most familiar with the generic names of these tetracycloins, such as doxycycline, minocycline, and then the tetracycline as well. The pharmacokinetics, here you can take a look at that if you like, just to supplement your learning for the tetracycline. And then again, here are the contraindications and the adverse effects. So again, with these antibiotics, what's most important for you to know right now is just to familiarize yourself with the different names of the medications, of the antibiotics, and the classes that they belong to, of the antibiotics. And then I would maybe just memorize or remember, you know, a certain adverse effect or contraindications contraindication for each of those classes of antibiotics. And then maybe think about a teaching moment, attach a teaching moment to that. So you know when you are working in the field, if your patient is taking Cipro, that they are likely to be photosensitive to the sun. So you want to let them know and teach them that you need to stay out of the sun while you're taking Cipro. But otherwise, again, I don't want you to spend time memorizing the pharma kinetics because that's not important right now. So if you have any questions about this or you need any clarification, you know that you can always email me or you can set up time to meet with me during office hours. But thank you all for listening and I'll see you all again soon.


Right, hello and welcome to the relaunch of developer hours. So with three minutes past, I guess we can make a start. I guess people will join as and when. Yeah, developer hours sort of initial trial happened last year, originally facilitated by Birgit Pauliak. And this is a kind of relaunch of it, and this is the first one. This first one is we're going to do the developer hours targeted at different audiences. You know, sometimes it'd be core developers. Sometimes it'll be theme developers. And for this one, it's plugin developers. And the session has a special focus on adding block functionality to an existing plugin that might have a short code or widget to render content. And you might want to add a block to render content in a block in that plugin without losing your short code or widget functionality. This session is basically about that for us to just talk about. Sorry, there's some other people joining. Let me just admit them. Okay, just welcome the new joiners that I've just admitted to the room. I'm just explaining that this session is targeted at plugin developers and is going to be about adding block functionality to an existing plugin that renders content using a short code. Or a widget and to add block functionality without losing your or replacing the short code or widget functionality. So just want to remind people that this session is being recorded and it will be uploaded to WordPress TV and YouTube. We're likely to refer to the block editor handbook throughout this session. So it might be useful for you to have that available. So I'm just going to pop that in the chat so that you can load it up and have it for reference. And at this point I'd like to introduce my co-host Ryan Welcher. Ryan's very experienced web developer used to work for at 10 up and now works for automatic. Do you want to introduce yourself Ryan? Sure, I'm Ryan Welcher. I used to work at 10 up and now I work automatic. I'm a developer for about 18 years, 19 years, I don't know, too long to want to put into a number makes me feel old. Yeah, and I don't I mean I've been doing a lot with blocks I stream weekly usually on block development stuff. So yeah, I don't know what else there is to say about me. Thank you, yeah. Yeah, Ryan's extremely experienced working with blocks and react and so on. So he'll be a valuable asset in this discussion. As you mentioned, he does a weekly Twitch stream and he also uploads the recordings from the Twitch stream to YouTube. Do you want to post a link to your YouTube channel in the chat, Ryan? Sure. Awesome. So worth the worth heading over to Ryan's YouTube channel. Lots of useful info there and you can watch him coding in real time. Okay, as for myself, I've, I was long time freelance web developer working for clients. And then I worked for Frontity and I now work for Automatic as well. Ryan and I are colleagues, we work together on the same team. So let me explain what we want to get out of the session and what we think we can offer you. The main thing we want to do is learn about your experience of working with blocks, you know what pain points you've encountered, what hurdles you've encountered, how you overcame them. Or what you got stuck on. And that's with a view that we can update the documentation and provide other resources that will help you and block developers that come after you in the learning process to help them on their way. So, you know, you know, what did you get stuck on like missing documentation with their tutorials or other resources that you felt were missing that we could provide. You know, and then we're also here to answer any questions you might have and help you or guide you to the resources that you may not have found to help you overcome any of the problems that you encountered. So if you have any questions, put them in the chat or raise your hand. Do we have the do we have that functional? Yes, we've got the reactions functionality. So yeah, you can raise your hand if you want to ask a question and hopefully we'll cover all the questions. This is going to be more of a free form discussion. It's not really a panel. There's only me and Ryan as hosts so not really considering the panel. I'm hoping everyone can chime in with their own experiences and, you know, and outline the pain points and problems that you've encountered along the way and what you think could help you. And also, you know, if you've got some experience and fairly knowledgeable, then chime in with with answers to people's problems as well. Like I said, it's not a panel. It's a conversation. So feel free to unmute and to turn on your video so we can all see each other and basically have a conversation. So it'd be awesome to to be able to see people. Okay, but before we get stuck in, let me just go through a few announcements. So WordPress 6.2 beta one launches tomorrow. I'll just post a link to that for you in the chat for the timeline for WordPress 6.2. So beta one is out tomorrow beaters two, three and four are out on successive Tuesday over each week in February. And then the final launch date is in the link I've sent you I can't remember off the top of my head and I don't have that page open right at the moment. Gutenberg 15.1 is out on Wednesday. And can be there. Here's the Gutenberg repo in case you need it. If you want to track issues and PRs that will be in the 15.1 release. What camp Asia is next weekend. It's the very first word camp Asia and I believe Ryan's going to be there. Are you speaking. I am not speaking. I will contribute today. I believe Birgit polyhack. Another one of our esteemed colleagues that will will be speaking Nick. Are you going Nicholas. No. Unfortunately, not, but I wish I was. Yeah, I wish I was going well. Sorry. I wish I was as well. Oh, right, right, right. Is anybody else going to work in Asia. No. We get a lot more in the, in the, the AMEA version of this. Yeah. It's a bit of a flight for us over of nine North America. So, yeah, so as I said, that's the very first word camp Asia and that's happening not this weekend, the following weekend. Yeah. I think it's sold out. So if you haven't really got your tickets, I don't think there's you're going to be able to get one now. Two big word camps, word camp Europe is the eighth to the 10th of June. Tickets and I think speaker applications are still open for that. And word camp US is the 24th to the 26th of August. And that's a bit earlier than in previous years. I think it's traditionally been in October. I think so. Yeah. So I think it's been scheduled a bit earlier this year. I'm not quite sure what the reason for that is. Then there's other word camp, smaller word camps. Most of the ones scheduled so far are happening in Europe. There's a few for in the US. And then there's word camp in Tebe in Africa. That's Ethiopia. Is that in Ethiopia and Tebe. Uganda. Uganda, Uganda. You're right. And there's one in Kerala, India. So if you head over to wordcamp.org, you can get a full list of all the upcoming word camps to see if there's one near you. Or as I said, there's the flagship ones, Asia, Europe and US all scheduled. Has anyone got any other announcements? Anything else they want to announce? Not for me. Okay, great. Okay, how many people have we got? We have exactly 12. I don't know. Shall we go around the room and introduce ourselves just briefly? Tell us what your background is. If you don't mind. And then we'll head on into questions. Who shall we start with? Let's start with Gerald in there. I'll just go across my screen in order. So if you could unmute. I'm Gerald Pegney. I'm in Arvada, Colorado. And I have been working with WordPress now for four years. But I've been a programmer for over 36 before I retired. So I'm not new to software. And I'm building a genealogy site and I'm working on a couple of e-commerce sites.  I have not done that. I'm just thinking about what I want to go where I want to go with that. So I thought this would be a good place just to listen and learn. Cool. Cool. Okay, next on my screen is Jean P or Jean P. Hi, I'm fairly new to WordPress. I started taking classes last year and I started doing a plugin, but I never finished it. And then I got very enamored in the blocks and full site editing and then taking a lot of WordPress meetups. And then when this come out came up, I said, Oh, maybe I'll just go back to my plugin project. So I'm mostly here to listen also. And I've really enjoyed Nick's and Ryan's presentations over the past year. So thank you guys. Thank you. So Nick, would you like to just introduce yourself? Sure. I am a developer advocate at WP Engine, doing a lot of education around WordPress. I also built my own plugins, built blocks. So I think that this topic is really interesting because there's a lot of plugins out there that were built geared towards classic audience and now they want to transition that functionality to blocks. And I think that that's what a lot of plugin developers are facing these days. So happy to be part of the conversation. I agree with that. So hence this session, or series of sessions, I should mention there's three of these sessions scheduled about a month apart at different times to cater for different time zones. This is actually the Amir one. So it's nice to see some people from the Americas joining in. Christopher Busutil is next on my screen. Hello everyone Christopher here. So we've been working with WordPress for six, seven years. Our code is a lot legacy and a lot focused on the native. We started recently really focused to start using the blocks, so converted to blocks. A couple of sites. Now using that now it's the time to start building our own. We're also finding a few troubles to customize the back end as well. So style sheets are not really that easy for us to work with, but maybe due to the large amount of legacy code we have on our WordPress sites. So very, very, very eager to learn more to avoid some mistakes we're doing. Thank you guys. Okay, cool. See how we can help you with the troubles you're encountering. Where are you joining us from. Oh, sorry, I'm from Malta, Europe. Malta. Malta, correct. Great. It's on my bucket list to visit Malta. I still haven't been there. Stuart. Hi. Where are you? Tell us about yourself. Yeah, hi. Good afternoon to all. A few people I know in here. I'm in the UK. I think you are. Are you? I'm in the UK. Yes. Yeah, sound very British. Yes. So I'm usually I'm in the UK. Why am I here? I've been doing a lot of WordPress development websites predominantly and very keen to find the time to be honest with you just start building out some block plug-in ideas and I'm struggling with the time to be honest with you because I have customers and bills to pay but I do tune into Ryan's calls. I've pretty much followed much of what Nick's been up to and hence the interest in joining today but I think my capacity today will be more listening than than bringing value to the table if I'm honest because that's where I'm at in terms of, you know, I guess my effort but but I look forward to being able to participate at a greater level over time. And indeed finding the time to move away from predominantly websites and starting to get more involved obviously from a block. I see the whole future is blocks anyway so I'm very excited by it. I've been put a little personal work into it. I'm starting to develop for end users now based on block so yeah it's some interesting stuff going on out there and I've got my foot to the metal I guess is what I'm going to say. So I leave it like that and and wish everybody well in the call today. Thank you. Thank you. Andrew slay you're next on my screen. No microphone. Okay. Andrew's replied in the chat from the UK no Mike. I've been getting into WordPress development over the last year. But many years of software experience before that. Okay, thank you. Good morning. My name is Adam. I am the lead web developer for UNC Chapel Hill in North Carolina, America. And yeah, we are working on a really really old cool base with a lot of this type of updating things and I just kind of wanted to get everyone's feel for it. My experience with Gutenberg has been if you don't do things in the right way you're going to be doing them over. Okay, thank you. Aki Hamano tell us about yourself. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Hi, I'm Aki from Japan and I'm a freelancer and I'm contributing I'm contributing to Gutenberg. And especially I'm enjoying Ryan's Twitch and unfortunately I'm not good at English so please don't mind me. Thank you. Okay. Wow. What time is it in Japan must be the middle of the night there? 11pm. Yeah. He's a freelancer. He's used to being up hours, right? And Udo, Udo, sorry. Udo said in the chat that he has no microphone. I think he's in transit. Oh, okay. Thank you for joining Udo. Yeah, thank you. Yes, and then Theo. Hello. Can you hear me? We can hear you, yes. Yeah, I'm a developer. I live in Greece and I develop websites but also plugins for customers. I've made many plugins and I'm very interested in using blogs, planning blogs. Usually I don't sell the plugins, they are only for my customers so they have some decades of installations only. And I'd like to make some things with blogs instead of shortboards. I do many things with shortboards. And having the ability to build this blog would be awesome. I build some blogs but custom blogs for specific sites. And I'd like to know how to make this more universal and I can plug it in many sites easily. Did you say you're using Greece? Yes, Greece. Okay, so we may see you at WordCamp Europe in Athens. Yes, that's right. Amazing. It's great to meet an interview there. Are you involved in the organizing team for that? Organize, no volunteer.  I'm not living in Athens, I live in Salmiki so it's not so easy but I'll see you there. Fantastic, thank you all. I think I've got everyone. Okay, let's go on to the discussion. If anybody's got any particular questions, use the reactions in the toolbar to raise your hand or just post the question in the chat. Like I said, this isn't a panel as such, it's just a discussion for us to all talk. So as I said, feel free to turn your cameras on and it'd be great to just have a chat. I guess what we could maybe talk about initially while people come up with their questions is maybe talk about the handbook, which is the official documentation for Gutenberg and the Block Editor. Maybe just talk about how you found the handbook. Did you find it useful? Did you find it difficult to navigate and find the information you wanted? Did it go in at too high a level, not sufficiently introductory? Yeah, I mean, what is good about the handbook? What is bad about the handbook? What could be improved? Any thoughts? Just to add to that, does everyone know what we're talking about and where to find that resource first? Yeah, let me post the link again, I did post it earlier. No, well, I just mean in general for developers trying to find docs, where do you go to? Like one, are you aware that it exists because it's in a slightly different place than some other things?  I guess that's sort of, and that sort of dovetails with what Michael was saying about if you use it, does it serve the needs? I don't know, maybe put a plus one in the chat or something or if anyone has any comments, jump on in. Where do you go for documentation? Do you just look for online tutorials? I mean, I know Kinster has some really excellent tutorials. Yeah, so yeah, it's a good point, Ryan. What is your source of information when you're developing, as I say, the block developer handbook is the official resource. So we'd like some feedback on what you think of it. And yeah, let us know what other resources you use. You know where you find, if you find the block handbook deficient in any way, what is your alternatives? Can we jump in? Yeah, please do. It's a conversation, not a panel. Perfect. Okay. I think that so obviously I'm a developer advocate, so I'm coming from a bit of a different perspective. I think the handbook is good in getting better. One of the things that we hear a lot is somebody might read the handbook and they take, for example, the handbook page about global settings and styles, the theme.json spec, if you will. Tons of great information in there and that's like the source of truth. How to use theme.json in practical ways. That page really isn't for that.  And so having more applicable tutorials around theme.json are really helpful. That's what I'm loving, like the new developer, sorry, I'm butchering the name, the developer. Dev blog? Dev blog, exactly. Yeah, where it's taking the basically the content in the docs and then applying them to like actual real world examples. So I think that having both of those working in tandem is like a great thing. For me personally, I started building blogs like two and a half years ago when there really was very little information out there. And I think that the Gutenberg plugin is the Gutenberg project itself is like my go to source, like if I see something in Gutenberg that I like and want to incorporate into my own plugin. I just dive into Gutenberg and figure out how it was done, what are the components being used. That's a pretty big thing to jump into. But that's, that's one of my biggest resources. I do the same, but I think that for those who maybe aren't that familiar with reactor, especially react at the Gutenberg level that could be extremely daunting. I just remember my first foray is into trying to contribute. And just, I just remember being like, this is great. I'm going to go contribute and then like, oh my God, I don't understand a single thing I just looked at, and then getting really discouraged. So yeah. Absolutely 100%. Yeah, but but I mean it's telling if people are going to the source code to get their docs, then maybe the docs need to get a bit more for both. I wanted to share this official resources as well. This is a, it's called storybook storybook jazz but it's basically you can interact with all the components that are in Gutenberg now, and you can change state and you can do things like that so you can get different sort of variations change the props and see how they interact. Again, it's more of just like a tool to explore and see what is available in the various packages in that chip with with WordPress and Gutenberg. Yeah, which can be useful if you're not sure what component you need to do a particular. Yeah, for sure. I just use a slider or a number input control or for sure to learn about the form token field which is something that I am now officially obsessed with. And it's like a multi select type ahead. Really cool but there's a bunch of different sort of variations in there so you can see how how the different props or the different like sort of properties for the component effect how the component works and things like that. I have a question. How many people have not ever built a block and are struggling with like where to get started. Is there like is have we all sort of tried. Yeah, and this isn't that this isn't out to anyone or make anyone feel embarrassed or anything because that's the whole point of this right is like if that's where you're stumbling. That's absolutely yeah I mean it's, you know, cool. It's true that the learning curve for block development can be quite steep and just getting started, you know which is hence my question earlier, does the handbook go in at to higher level and it's not sufficiently introductory. There is a course on learn.wordpress.org, which is an introductory step by step, you know, walk you through all the baby steps of building a block. Let me post a link to that. Let me just bring it up bear with me. There's also. Well, Michael finds out there's also another tool that I personally love it's a scaffolding tool basically because for me personally when I when we were at 10 up, when I was at 10 up. There's not more than one of me we when I went to 10 up we we kind I was working their rate when when when 5.0 was released in Gutenberg kind of came out and so one of the big stumbling blocks especially for larger agencies are people working with lots of blocks lots of times. How do you structure them what where does what goes where where do you keep your files what should be in different files and things like that and that and so this tool that I'm I'm about to link to link right now is it's the create block package and basically it's a scaffolding tool that will build you out a working plugin with a single block pre scaffolded and built in all the tools that you need to get the most basic block and it's working and then you just go in and add your.  And this is a great learning tool because it shows you sort of how things are like, you know, sort of a best practice around how structuring your blocks could work. You can see how block that Jason, which is a huge part of building blocks kind of works with the block system how the build process works and it's all built for you know you don't have to. You don't have to learn anything about webpack you don't have to learn anything about all this you can just focus on like how our blocks built and and so it's a really great tool for that it's very extendable as well. You can create your own templates for it which is sort of more of an on advanced topic which if you want to structure things in a very certain way you can build that out and tell this tool to use that template instead. So it's a really great starting point now the blocks that it will build you are very simple it's literally just a you know a piece of a piece of text that's output on the front end and in the block editor. It's very simple, so you can kind of build on that. That's a great tool to get started if, if you're looking for just like where do I even begin. Yeah, totally totally agree with that. And that is the create block tool is actually covered in the in that course that I've just posted. The project in the course is scaffolded with with create block and create block is great at building a standalone plug plug in that implements a block. But the focus of this session is about integrating a block into your existing plug in that uses a short code and getting the same functionality as your short code, but in a block. And in that set for that create block will get you scaffolded it takes an option which is dash dash no plug in right or something like that I think and then it just create the block implementation. Without the the plug in the PHP code I think there is a still a PHP file a render dot PHP file included if you use that that switch to the create block command. But you still need to go through quite a few steps to actually integrate that into your existing plug in. I mean one of the things I found out this is something that Ryan helped me with that something that called me out was it you'd need to put it in a the folder that you put your your block code in has to have a specific name. It doesn't have to you can give it a different name but then you have to change your config.json file to tell it where the where the where your files are. Yes, I think it needs to be now for this project I'm looking at I have actually changed it doesn't need to be src. Yeah, so by default that so there's a lot there's a lot to unpack here. So let me maybe just kind of give a bit of context and then we'll go back into it so sorry for the tangent but but for those especially those unfamiliar with sort of the the plumbing around how building works. This might help. So the the the block. So Gutenberg and the WordPress community uses a package called the scripts package and the scripts package handles all the build process. And it's very easy to use and it's very well set up and easily abstracted away and all that stuff but but there are some sort of like rules around what it's expecting with your the way the blocks are structured. The first one is that all of your JavaScript code that is going to be compiled or transpiled from sort of like ES6 and JSX. And if those things don't make any sense. Please drop a little just raise a hand or something and I'll go into what what that means but basically what I'm trying to do is transpile all that stuff from source into a build directory and build directory is actually what gets loaded into your plugin and and released, but the convention is that the folder name is src or source. You can change that but the build are the the scripts package expects that you will tell it where it's going to be and you can do that with a flag in your commands. And if none of this makes sense to anyone please let me know and I'll go into it a bit more That's what Michael saying so the script package is great and it's really configurable, but you just have to sort of know what what to tell it so it knows where to find blocks and do all those things. Yes, so yes, short answer is yes source long answer is you can make it whatever you want as long as you tell it. Yeah, yeah and then the project I just looked at that I've been working on I had done the I had done that I told it where to look and giving it my own folder name which is why I couldn't remember exactly what it but yes src or source is the It's probably the easiest way to do it when you want to integrate a block into an existing package into existing plugin. Yeah, so you would use as Ryan says you use the create block package with that switch which is hyphen hyphen no plug in I think Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so what that generates the block files and you put that put those into an src directory in your existing plugin that implements a short code or widget or whatever. And then you and then the hard part what bit starts you actually start coding up your block to do the same thing as the as the short code does, except you need to do it twice you need to do it. Once for the front end and once for the editor and for the front end you can either use a function and a PHP function and pass things like attributes and content to it, or I think now you can get there's a render dot PHP file which automatically runs and automatically gets the attributes and content and so on, and you can just access it. Yeah, behind the scenes it's basically it's, it's built it's doing the same thing sort of as if you're familiar with get template part, how it works and sort of like classic theming. It, you tell it the file and it pulls the file in. It's sort of doing the same thing so a render dot PHP file is the where your PHP goes and so if you have short code because like in your short code you've got the function that renders your short code.  And then the hard part you just need to edit it if you'd need to access attributes. Yes, so does anyone know what what we're talking about when we talk about at like block attributes and attributes in general, if it. You can assume silence means yes. So if not please put like a thumbs down or some kind of emoji or or something because because we can definitely explain that. Yeah, but the hard part will be not the hard part but the work, like you've already done your PHP's part you've you've you've already got your sort of your short code rendering function that that you built with your short code. So what you'll need to do is on in the editor side in the JavaScript side, you'll need to change that from like from sort of the short code syntax which is supported still in a block into adding each one of those items that you pass to your, your short code as as what's called an attribute so you're saving that with your block, and that's that's really the hard part and just becomes a series of controls, which there are lots of types.  And then, yeah, I suppose what we should explain here is that what we're describing is what's called a dynamic block. Correct with the, with the the code, the front end code rendered in PHP, which is usually pulling stuff from the database with a WP query or something. And then with the on the in the editor, you would normally, yeah, you create JavaScript in an edit.js file. And yeah, I mean so and if your front end PHP is getting stuff from the database with a WP query you're going to have to do the same. If you want to get if you want the users to have that whizzy with experience of seeing the same thing in the editor as in the front end. You can use the the work the Gutenberg or block editor data package to get your data into the editor as well. And it's worth pointing out that there is duplication of code because if you want to keep retain your short code functionality for the legacy editor for example. The render dot PHP for the block version that those bits of code are virtually identical.  Whereas the the short code will, you know, might be getting post matter or something to to configure settings within the short code. So yeah so there is duplication of code, which isn't isn't very what's the term dry, not very dry, as in don't repeat yourself. Yeah. Did anyone have any specific questions about the stuff that they're working on. Like, it couldn't be hard for, you know, for us to, you know, dive into the code directly but any sort of like, I tried to do this and it didn't work, or I tried to do this and or whatever like any questions are welcome obviously but you know I feel like we're doing a lot of talking and which is great. We want to make sure that you guys get some value out of this as well, beyond just sort of us throwing names and Nick's got some. Yeah, I have a quick suggestion so if you have a plugin that's rendering a short code or has a short code. Usually, there's an abstraction there right what the user is seeing in the editor just a short code and a front end is could be anything could be a fancy graphic could be could be something really complicated. In the work that I've done in my own personal stuff of converting short codes into blocks. I would strongly suggest that you simply you ignore the kind of what you see is what you get in the editor because if you have like a really complicated short code that's rendering something sophisticated on the front end, trying to replicate that in the editor. You might start pulling your hair out, you know so especially if you're new to this. So I would suggest that when you're going this process start with create block, create a dynamic block, get your short code PHP converted into the render PHP function in the create block setup, and then for the editor just worry about adding in the fields that the short code needs to function. And I've even done this this is kind of embarrassing but like for my short for my block that was once a short code. I just have a little placeholder that says like the name of the block or whatever so it sits there and you click on it then you can edit the fields, but I just don't even worry about the aesthetics in the editor, at least while I'm trying to get it working. At least as you become more comfortable and you start understanding how to interact with data in the in the editor and all sorts of stuff and you can actually build, you know, the real thing in the editor, but I would just don't get hung up on that just focus on getting the block working. I agree 100%. That's a great and especially those folks that I forget who who was saying it I think it about like, I want to do this but I also, I think it was used to it. Like, I want to learn this but I also got bills to pay in clients that won't have timelines and that's that's a huge, huge factor is like, I can do this but I don't have 1000 hours to learn all all this stuff right my client has deadlines I need to get this out so I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with a tiered approach like like when they say right so just get those just get those basic text fields and if you want to get super I wouldn't recommend doing it too much but you use the server side render component to kind of render what so that's a that's a component that kind of takes whatever the front end is doing and puts it into the back end. It's okay I wouldn't use it I wouldn't, it's certainly not a magic wand. You can run into some issues if you have too many blocks doing all that but. Yeah, sort of like you know it's a there's a big learning curve in general so take your time, just just get it working and then add the flourishes later. So I just basically copy whatever Nick said so he's smart dude I like to do that. I mean, at the end of the day it's better than just someone trying to plug in a short code into the editor right so you've made positive progress, and then in future editions you can change it in futures. Absolutely. Absolutely. If I may. Yeah, there's actually a dear for the information that you guys have created as well out there, and it's some really powerful videos as well, you know obviously with the visual learners in the room but and I have them all have them all bookmarked categorize very slightly but it's just actually I need to get to them. I'm probably a little early for this. This, I'm going to have to be more of a listener here, but as I slowly pursue the build out of a block. Obviously, I'll be able to introduce have some more input, but yeah there's some very good information available already I've seen. Well, obviously, Nick's put a lot together and Ryan's done some, some interesting stuff as well. I forget the name of the what we're using we're using editor that you set up and wasn't, it was not online editor, and you kind of set up the building out of a block there, and I kind of attended all those but I've, I've got to go back and review them all. That was Ryan, I believe. I don't know if you recollect was it was it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know that stuff was very helpful and I just need to review that and then and Nick's done a lot of video recordings as well. So it's all there as I say it's a time thing so I'm looking forward to hopefully just bring in some more value to the table in terms of just sitting here and taking it all in but that's where I'm at the moment. Thank you. Any examples of plugins that use shortcode and block editor at the same time. I will shortly. I'm rebuilding one of my shortcode plugins. I've got a video. I've got a video on my channel where I actually did I built a plugin that was a shortcode and then the stream was converting it to a to to a block. Let me dig that up. It's not. I mean it's say I think it might be a meme generator or something ridiculous like that so it's certainly not a production level thing but the concept is there. Let me just check that down. And Michael you're working on it. You're working on this now. I'm currently working on it. I'm kind of a just starting out on doing this you know I've built blocks before but this is my first time. First we're talking about converting an existing plugin and it has a shortcode. It's a plugin that I've got up in the the plugin directory. I've got quite a few users so it's something I need to get right to implement the blocks and so I haven't uploaded the blocks version I'm still working on it. It's the first time I'm doing it. So learning a psycho. Yeah I mean that's a good point I mean there's still hundreds of thousands or millions of people still using the classic the classic approach so yeah it's more code in the plugin but being able to offer both approaches that generate the same result I think is awesome. Still supporting both people both folks. Yeah and that's something to to consider as well if you have a plugin that's that's been released and you have you know any number of users on there, all of a sudden just kind of like, you know stopping them like you do have a sort of an onus on on the developer to kind of maintain some semblance of backwards compatibility and the great thing about it is you can just use the shortcode or you can use the block version. And both either in in in the block editor but also what you still have that classic editor support. I realize that this the thing that that I just linked has absolutely no channel like no time markers so have fun watching for an hour and a half. And on on 1.5 speed please no one wants no one needs to listen to me talk for an hour and a half. I just want to revisit something that Nick said earlier about don't it was good advice you know about don't worry too much about how it renders in the editor, you know which is great when you get started. It does matter how it looks in the editor that ultimately you should put effort into making it look to give the user that whizzy wig experience and what they see in the editor is what they see in the front end because that's a whole philosophy underlying the block editor anyway. And, and if you don't make that effort to to have it, you know rendering nicely in the editor, then you might as well not bother and just keep your shortcode and your user use the shortcode block which looks very clunky. So it's worth making the effort I think to make it look nice in the editor, ultimately but you know Nick's advice is still good when you're starting out.  I want to caveat that slightly so good examples I created a shortcode. I had a shortcode that printed out the current date or whatever. And so, in the editor, instead of worrying I mean it's not that hard but instead of worrying about like pulling the current day and then getting the current date, the date format that your WordPress site set up for. You know, to have like a simple like date. So it looks fine like it looks like a in the interface or something like current date. So it's like you're kind of shortcutting there but you're 100% if you can get to the point where it's 101 to one then that's the best scenario for them. But I really like your point there Nick because depending on what the block is doing, you may not be able to get a one to one like let's say that your shortcode renders a calendar with massive, you know, all sorts of JavaScript functionality and date picking and all this stuff like a really big verbose thing that might be just like hours just to implement it so you can see it so I mean you could just do a placeholder that's just a graphic of a calendar that would sort of that that shows you the like and this isn't meant to be like like a trick but it's sort of like you still get the that that whizzy wig like oh so that's what the calendar will look like in place with content above and below it. It's not a functional interactive calendar because you know that's might just be too much, but there's there's so there's like middle ground between like just fields, and you know full one to one matching. And it still looks a bit better than using the shortcode block and just yeah your shortcode into the shortblock.  Okay, somebody. Sorry, will we talking here. Yes, somebody's got some sound playing. So could we somebody's asking us to mute will. Oh, he's muted there now. Yeah, I've just done that. Yeah, personally, I am making the effort to get my project I'm currently working on to get my block to look exactly like it does in the front of the shortcode version does in the editor, because mine pools in a custom post type in and what I really want to do is get people to be able to add new posts in that in that custom post type from within the editor. Cool. And I and I also have some JavaScript because there's a small amount of interactivity in the front end and I'd like to be able to duplicate that in the editor, but haven't managed that bit yet. One of the things to note is that you might have a shortcode that does something maybe it's like dynamic text or something like that. And you might be actually able to add more functionality to your shortcode. What was a shortcode in block form, and that's by using block supports. So for example if you had a shortcode using my date example that is printed to date. You can do that in a block and then also add the block supports for typography and color and background and all of a sudden you took your shortcode not only did you make it a block but you also made it a lot more customizable just by specifying that and block that Jason. And you also have access to like block variations and the global stuff that's that's coming in. And I think it's 15.0 with sort of the global being able to to make global changes to your site that affect all of your blocks like you get all of that by moving. I mean I think now we're just sort of advocating for the block. But but but there is a lot like of easy functionality to add like it's so easy to say okay this block that I just built outputs text and I want to change the text color so you just like literally a lot I add one line to your block that Jason file and now you've got a color that inherits all all all the default colors possibly and all the colors defined will buy whatever theme you're you're using that's simple. Easy and you don't have to write any extra code other than like color is like whatever a true or whatever the object is that you're wanting like it's very very very simple, which is awesome. We're coming up to the last few minutes. So just open the floor up to any questions if anybody has anything that they want to ask or anything they want to say relate their experience any problems they've encountered just in the last few minutes. I'd also recommend in these last few minutes. If you want to save the chat, because there's a whole lot of links in there. So just take a moment to save the chat if you want to retain those links. Any last questions or any points anybody wants to make. I'm available and Michael I'm sure is available as well. I shouldn't speak for him but I mean if anyone has any questions that they just want to ask one on one. Feel free. I you can find I'm Ryan Welcher or Welcher or Welcher Ryan depending on on on the thing. I'm in WordPress Slack you can DM me at DM me on Twitter. YouTube fire comments anything. I mean I think we're like I'm more than happy to dive into some code or just like talk through something. I know sometimes in these public forums is a little bit uncomfortable asking sort of questions but feel free to reach out to myself and I'm Michael shouldn't speak for you but absolutely. Absolutely. Be very happy to help on the making WordPress Slack or on Twitter I'm emberage in most places. And. Yeah. Okay, so if there's nothing else let's let's wrap things up just want to remind everything everyone that WordPress is open source anyone can contribute. So if you find any gaps in the handbook. And you have overcome a problem and you think well this would be good to put in the handbook. You can contribute. You can even edit pages in the handbook the handbook is actually just a directory in the Gutenberg repo. There's a docs directory and the handbook is built from the docs directory in the Gutenberg repo. So if you want to make an edit to the handbook, you just submit a PR to the in the Gutenberg repo with your edits to whatever file it is in the docs directory. It's simple to, to make your own contributions to the handbook. And they'll always be welcome. Again, if anyone has is uncomfortable setting it up or has never done that before. Reach out, we're more than happy to sort of help. There's there's some, there's notes in the handbook itself on how on how to contribute and you know how to set things up. Basically if you're comfortable working with get and get hub. That's all it is just a pull request I mean. That can be daunting. What do I label it? How do I tag it? Whatever. So I mean, if anyone has PRs, you know, you can tag me on it or Michael. Yeah, we'd be happy to review it and add some, you know, if there's anything that needs to be added. Yeah, and if you're going to think there is a documentation label that you can add to your PR. And if you just look for the doc for PRs with the documentation label in the repository, you can see how other people have done it if you're not sure. Okay, thank you very much all for joining. Just want to remind everyone that the next one is scheduled for February the 27th. Ryan is going to be on that one. I won't be this one. The one on the 27th is the time it's scheduled for the Americas time zone. So I think it's a little bit late in the afternoon for me but Ryan's going to be co-hosting it with Justin Tadlock I believe. Yep, that's correct. So if that suits your time zone by all means, join that. So thank you very much for joining this, especially those people coming from America where it's still quite early I think this was scheduled for the EMEA time zones and especially thanks to Aki in Japan for whom it's the middle of the night. So yeah, thank you very much. And yeah, join us in February the 27th for the next one. Thank you very much. Bye bye. Thanks everyone. Bye bye.


Hello, I'm Marely Profitt from OCLC Research and I'm here today with Sarah Snyder from the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution and we're here today to talk about our experiences with Wikipedia, how libraries and archives are working with Wikipedia and to talk to you about our different projects. So the project that's been going forward at the Smithsonian Institution has a different flavor and nature than that which is going on within OCLC Research, but they do have some very important connections in common with one another. So I'm going to be talking about a little today about why Wikipedia is important and why this should be of interest to you. Well, the first thing is that it's really about the numbers. Wikipedia is the most highly ranked, one of the most highly ranked websites, number six in global traffic via Alexa, number five I believe in the United States. So a lot of people have their eyeballs on Wikipedia and we want for them to be able to find things in Wikipedia and then to flow into libraries. So making sure that library content, library data is represented in Wikipedia is very important just by the numbers. Another reason and perhaps just as important is that the Wikipedia community is really ideologically aligned with the library mission and that is that their tagline so to speak is really the same as ours which is to provide access to knowledge for free to our constituents. We want to be sure that we're providing access to information and making that as easy as possible and that's also the global mission of Wikipedia and the Wikipedia community. And the third thing and I think perhaps a little less known to librarians is how much Wikipedia's really share our appreciation of quality sources. So you may recall going to Wikipedia sites and you can see this little template at the top chiding the Wikipedia community. This article does not cite any references or sources. This ironically is an article on reference management software. Citing references and sources and citing reliable references and sources is incredibly important to Wikipedia's. So we too share that value of very reliable, incredible sources. So that's yet another thing that we have in common. But there are special challenges in collaborating with Wikipedia and building the types of collaborations that Sarah and I have participated in. First of all it can be really difficult to figure out who it is that you're collaborating with or negotiating with. The Wikimedia Foundation is not a place where Wikipedia's work. It's really there to kind of keep the doors open, keep the servers running, maybe identify some high priority projects for the Wikimedia projects overall. That's not who you approach if you want to collaborate with Wikipedia instead. You need to find collaborations with groups of some of the millions of editors within the community, certainly many thousands of active editors within Wikipedia. There's a problem there in that the community of editors is really distributed and virtual. Each Wikipedia editor is really motivated by their own personal reasons for participating and volunteering in this really unique and collaborative resource. So it's really quite a challenge to connect with individuals who are interested in collaborating with libraries and archives. But once you can find those people, real magic can happen. An additional challenge is this culture of combating what's known as link spam. So Wikipedia editors are very on guard for links to sources that may be really trying to promote their own search engine optimization by gaming Wikipedia in some way. So historically some cultural heritage organizations have had quite a challenge linking to resources, even resources that were highly relevant to the articles at hand because editors were overly perhaps on guard about linking. And perhaps there was some misunderstanding on the part of cultural heritage institutions as to what is appropriate linking within Wikipedia. So those are some of the challenges. An additional challenge is that library resources can be pretty hidden from a Wikipedia editor's point of view or somebody who works on Wikipedia. This is a site, WikiRank, which ranks the top sites that are linked to from Wikipedia. And you can see that Google Books and Amazon.com come in in the top 15. These are really easy sites for Wikipedia's who are looking on the web for authoritative incredible resources, easy for them to link to because they can find these sources. It is going against their own principles of giving access to free knowledge in Google Books. Of course, you will find open source content and that's terrific. In Amazon, everything that you find there is pretty much going to hit a paywall. I think that Wikipedians would prefer to link to libraries but our resources can be pretty invisible to them. So looking at this list way far down on the list, Worldcat comes in at number 81 in terms of sites that are linked to from Wikipedia and Hottie Trust is not even on the top 100. So we'd like to see what we can do to call more awareness to library resources within the Wikipedia community. So what can be done? Well fortunately, there is a group of motivated individuals within Wikipedia that refer to themselves as the Glam Wiki group and Glam is an acronym for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. And when I was able to connect with this group, I found a number of kindred spirits who were really interested in having the collections, the contents of cultural heritage institutions such as libraries and archives, better represented within Wikipedia. So this is kind of our natural home and who doesn't want to be glamorous. So this is a good place to be. An outgrowth of the Glam Wiki project is the idea of a Wikipedian in residence. The first Wikipedian in residence was at the British Museum in 2010. It was a short term assignment, I think perhaps maybe six weeks. It was conceived of by a Wikipedian who thought that this would be a great idea if he could embed himself within a cultural heritage institution and he was very interested in having the content of the British Museum better exposed in Wikipedia. So he proposed this to the British Museum and fortunately they went for it. Since that time, there have been a number of Wikipedians in residence. The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, Sarah will talk about that in just a minute. The Indianapolis Children's Museum, the National Archives in the U.S., National Library of Israel, British Library, and on and on and on. This is quite an international group not only representing a wide variety of cultural heritage institutions but also that international aspect which is quite nice. And the idea has really spread like wildfire. If you go to Wikipedia and look up Wikipedians in residence, you will see the range and number of residencies that have been developed and are in development even at the moment. So when I was looking for a way to work with Wikipedia, it struck me that having a Wikipedia in residence would really better inform our view of the opportunities for working with Wikipedia. Because what better way than to invite somebody who was quite skilled to who really knew the inner workings of Wikipedia to come work with us and tell us what they were interested in and not just work from a position of what we were interested in. So it's been a very fruitful partnership for us. So before I tell you about our story, I'm going to pause for a moment and let Sara tell you about her story. My name is Sara Snyder. I work at the Archives of American Art which is one tiny corner of the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum and research complex. The Smithsonian includes 19 museums and galleries, the National Zoo, as well as nine separate research centers of which the Archives of American Art is one. So the Smithsonian is probably best known for its museums, it is worth noting that it's home to over a dozen archival repositories and a system of 20 branch libraries. So much of my interest in getting involved with Wikipedia can be explained by this chart. The light blue bars represent monthly visitors to wikipedia.org and the dark blue bars represent monthly visitors to all of the Smithsonian's websites combined. As an information professional, I am dedicated to helping people find the resources that they need. Working on Wikipedia helps me to reach as many information seekers as possible. When I joined the Smithsonian in 2007, staff had already been experimenting with editing Wikipedia over the years with mixed results. Since many of us didn't really understand the norms of the community, we often had editors get blocked for conflict of interest. We were even accused of spamming Wikipedia with links to our websites. But in 2010, some volunteers from the DC Wikimedia chapter made contact with some Smithsonian staff members, and together they organized the beginnings of the Smithsonian Institution Wiki Project. It kicked off with an in-person training session for 30 Smithsonian staff where we were introduced to the norms and best practices of the Wikipedia community. This event was the first time that I really grasped the passion and the commitment of the community behind the online encyclopedia. I met a number of Wikipedia editors that day. One of them, Katie Philbert, paid a follow-up visit to the Archives of American Art to speak with me and my supervisor about ways that we could work together. In the spring of 2011, Katie introduced me to another Wikipedia name, Sarah Sturch, who was a grad student in museum studies at that time. And I encouraged Sarah to come an intern at the Archives of American Art in order to help us get more involved with the Glam Wiki Project, and that is how we found ourselves with a Wikipedia in residence. Our goals for our Wikipedia in residence were pretty modest. We wanted some training and mentoring. We wanted to see more of our stuff on Wikipedia, and we wanted to get to know the community. We were not really sure what to expect, but we were open to new ideas, and luckily Sarah had many. I credit our Wikipedia in residence with helping to turn me into a much more savvy Wikipedia editor and advocate, and with helping our staff understand how institutional contributions fit with the Wikipedia platform and community. She also connected us with technical experts who were able to automate both data analysis and image contributions by doing some custom scripting, which is incredibly helpful. She helped us organize backstage pass and edit-a-thon events, really fun and inspiring in-person events where experts and people who are learning got to get together and work on articles. Our events have been attended by very smart people from a range of ages and backgrounds, all volunteers. The volunteers get a behind-the-scenes peek at our collections, and they get to have a little Q&A time with staff. They always come away inspired to edit articles related to our collections. There's a great spirit of learning and curiosity in these events. And even though Sarah Sturch has now moved on to other projects, our organization now has a number of ongoing relationships with a core group of volunteer Wikipedia editors that we continue to work with on a regular basis. So after she finished working with the Archives of American Art, Sarah went on to serve as Wikipedia in residence at the Smithsonian Institution Archives for an additional semester. By the time she left in 2012, an internal Wikipedia community of staff librarians, archivists, and museum folk had emerged. Since that time, there have been two subsequent edit-a-thons at the institution at the American Art Museum last August and a Wikipedia Loves Libraries event at the Smithsonian Libraries this past October. Wikipedia Loves Libraries, which you see here, was our largest and best attended event yet, with around 40 people in attendance. It took place in the main library of the National Museum of Natural History. We even got a small grant from the DC Wikimedia chapter to help provide everybody who attended with a free lunch. The attendees were equally impressed by our collection of rare books and rare akinaderms. One of our greatest successes, in my mind, besides connecting with the community, is our foray into putting our public domain images on the Wikimedia Commons. All Archives of American Art contributed images include a custom template with our approved metadata and multiple links pointing back to our website. After we uploaded our first batch of images, we didn't really do anything else to work on them, but I'm happy to say that the Wikimedia volunteer community set right to work on their own. Hundreds of our images are now being used to illustrate numerous articles on Wikipedia sites in 25 different languages, from biography pages to articles on life drawing and art education to history articles. Let me share one example. Here is the Archives of American Arts record for one of the images that we contributed. It's a WPA photograph of the Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage. Over a 90-day period, according to Google Analytics, this page on our website had 29 page views. Could be better. But the Wikipedia article on Augusta Savage was viewed 2,706 times in the same 90-day period. And what does this article feature front and center? The photograph of her that we contributed to Wikimedia Commons with our repository citation, metadata, and multiple collection links close at hand. At this point, the Archives of American Art is getting a sizable amount of web traffic from the Wikimedia family of websites. For the past few years, Wikipedia has been our single biggest referring URL and is responsible for about 5% of our overall inbound site traffic. By comparison, Twitter brings us about 2% of site traffic and Facebook 1%. Given the relatively small amount of maintenance energy that we put into Wikipedia, given especially when compared to the upkeep required on our social media accounts, Wikipedia gives a very nice return on our investment. But even if we didn't get the visitor traffic back to our primary website, it seems to me that diffusing our digital assets to a greater audience on sites like Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons is the right thing to do. Isn't this why we digitize our collections after all, so we can share them with the broadest possible audience? Thank you, Sarah. I'm going to pick up the story here at Back at OCLC and tell you about our experience with our Wikipedia and residents. We were really interested in having a residency that focused on two dimensions. One is looking at the special role that library data could play within Wikipedia. OCLC obviously has a stake in interest and expertise in dealing with library data, so we were really interested in exploring those avenues and seeing what special role OCLC could play in this. And also looking as a nonprofit that touches many thousands of librarians worldwide, we wanted to see what we could do to develop a program that would have an educational and outreach component for librarians. So talking to librarians about Wikipedia and telling them, spreading the word more about how they could get involved, talk to them about the GLAM Wiki Project and talk to them about various ways that they could get involved and really heighten their awareness and spread some of the things that we were learning around in the community a little more. So I'm going to talk about our first project and the project that Max has mainly been involved in, which is looking at what we've called VIAFBOT. VIAF is the Virtual International Authority File. It's a project that is managed by OCLC and it is a merger of 20-some national authority files from many countries. It's multilingual, it has broad representation and really is a place for authority files to be merged. One of the things that I discovered, much to my surprise when I talk to people from the Wikipedia community, is that disambiguation is really important and disambiguation of names is really important to them. And to give you an idea of how this is handled in Wikipedia, let's take a look at this disambiguation page for John Adams. So John Adams is many people and it's important to know which John Adams you're looking for. If you search for John Adams on Wikipedia, you may get to this page disambiguation. It starts with politicians, goes on to composers and goes down even quite a ways below this. You can scroll down, down, down on this page. There are many John Adams. So there was really a growing recognition of the importance of library name authorities and Wikipedians were aware that library name authorities were out there and that they were valuable. And some Wikipedia articles had started incorporating what they call authority control into their articles. So not too surprisingly, the German language Wikipedia had already started to add in authority control. And within the German language Wikipedia, I think several thousand articles already had authority data in an authority control template. But the English language Wikipedia had only about 4,000 articles with authority data. So let's take a look at VFBOT. Let's take a look at the authority control template. So here's the lengthy article on John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States. And if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, you will see this little template, authority control. And this is where Wikipedians were starting to put links to various name authorities in national files. So we were asked to help out on this. Here is VF and John Quincy Adams records. So if you followed that link, you would wind up here on John Quincy Adams VF page. So VFBOT has now edited over a quarter of a million articles, which now have library authority data in them and links to VF. This is out of roughly a million articles that are about people on the English language Wikipedia. So you can see that this project has already had a pretty significant impact on Wikipedia. And indeed, we can see people now following those links from Wikipedia through to VF. Well, this sounds like a pretty simple thing. Like we just threw a switch like our Wikipedia and Residence Max just threw a switch, and the magic happened. But in fact, there were many, many, there was the approval process for getting a bot or a robot to do all of this editing programatically was quite slow. The Wikipedia community uses bots or approaches the use of bots quite cautiously. They have a long standing tradition of creating and editing articles by hand. Almost everything that you see on Wikipedia is done by humans who care very much about what they're doing and how they do it. So the approval process was necessarily slow and took a great deal of caution. So it went in many stages. First, there was some discussion online in a place called the Village Pump. Then there was a formal request for approval for the bot once it had gone through the discussion stage and people had generally agreed that it was a good thing. Then there was testing and more testing and then running the bot in stop and start mode along the way Max discovered that there were bugs in the bot. And as it ran across Wikipedia, it would run into those bugs and have to be stopped and fixed sort of midway. So I'm going to take you through some of the steps. And of course, the wonderful thing about Wikipedia is that everything happens on Wikipedia and you can view all parts of this. So if you're curious, you can go to the Village Pump and view the discussion on authority control integration. And you can see that back in June, this discussion started. And for the most part, this discussion was quite positive. There were a few people who were truly skeptical about this. People asked questions, very good questions. And the discussion here really helped to shape the bot creation. So it wasn't just something that Max cooked up and then went forward with. It was really shaped from the very beginning by this discussion that happened on Wikipedia. The next thing that happened was, as I mentioned, a formal request for approval. And this too had discussion and it laid out how the bot was going to proceed. And it was approved, as you can see. But again, you can go see all of the discussion there. And then once it had approved, Max was able to create an account with the username VFBot. And you can go to the VFBot user page and look at the VFBot information about VFBot. But furthermore, you can go to the talk page on VFBot and see all of the terrific feedback that we received from the Wikipedia community once the VFBot started to run. And all of the really great and concrete suggestions that we got, alerts when it wasn't working correctly, et cetera, that went on. So if you're curious about that, you can go to the VFBot user page. I'm going to switch now from talking about library data and talk about education and outreach because we think that as a library services organization at CLC, has the ability to reach many, many librarians and that we can do so at scale. And what we've really been doing is focusing on, we've had a series of webinars focusing on what we've called Wikipedia Literacy for Librarians. We had two separate webinars in July and August. One was targeted at research libraries and pushed out through OCLC research. And with the other webinar, we targeted public libraries working with OCLC's web junction, which has fantastic connections within the public library community. And there were over 500 librarians that attended the live events, so the live webcasts. And we know that these webcasts have been viewed after the fact, but just the fact that we were able to put on two webcasts and reach over 500 librarians was really great. We've also done some in-person events. We had a Wikipedia Loves Libraries event at Wikimania, which was held in Washington, D.C., during July. And filled a room, I think we had probably at peak around 100 people attending this. And this was a mix of Wikipedians and librarians, pretty easily evenly split. A lot of energy and excitement about Wikipedia collaborating with libraries. And a lot of support for our idea of working with library data in Wikipedia. We also experimented with a MOOC, a particular MOOC on the platform called P2PU, which is peer-to-peer university. This was themed around Open Access Week, but it's still available. Anybody can go and take it. And this is a six or seven-part class that you can take in components. And when you complete it, you can get a badge on your Wikipedia user page, saying that you've completed this Open Access media challenge. And this is, again, to help introduce librarians to the concepts in Wikipedia. And learn how to do a little editing, learn how to create a user account, and become acquainted with some of the concepts behind Wikipedia. Switching over to the results that we have had in VFBOT, you can see the lines at the bottom of the page are, it's kind of hard to see on your screen, perhaps. But this shows overall inbound traffic into VF, the virtual international authority file. And the purple line that you can see kind of hanging out in the middle there is the German language Wikipedia. And I mentioned a while ago that the German Wikipedia's have for some time been adding in links to library authority data, and VF was one of their sources. But right around the time that we started running the bot in October, you can see the English language Wikipedia coming in and actually lifting the curve of traffic coming into VF in a noticeable way, and then continuing right on through into the end of November. We're not sure if this is a trend that's going to hold if these are Wikipedia's who are curious about what these links are and following them through. But we think that this is probably a trend where people see the links at the bottom of the page or curious about them for one reason or another and may follow them through. I'm going to talk about kind of a more tangible sort of result. And this is a story that we heard from a cataloger named John Myers in Union, who works at Union College and connected to New York. And he wrote to us back in October to report, I had an Arabic name to enter into a record as part of a note and I wasn't confident about the diacritics. So I looked in an authority file to temporary download it, copy the file of the name and move on. And he couldn't find the name in OCLC because again he wasn't sure of the diacritics. So he looked it up in Wikipedia under his common name and bingo! He found the guy in Wikipedia, so here's his article. Even better, he continues, Wikipedia has a link to VF, double bingo. With the authorized form of the name in VF, I could readily find the record in OCLC. The miracles of an interconnected bibliographic dataverse. Thank you for your efforts. It made my work in my catalog possible. But what's really nice to us is that we got this note from him, I think, on October 12th. And when we looked back, VF Bothead added that VF link just days before. So this is a real, a fine example of how VF is working to actually help not only Wikipedians to send big U8 names, but also to help with catalogers. So looking for, oh, and here is that individual's name in VF and his VF record. So we think that there are more opportunities to extend our Wikipedia Loves Libraries events Here is a picture from an event we had just weeks ago at the Seattle Public Library. We think that public libraries are probably great spaces to bring together Wikipedians in person together with librarians. So here we had, we brought together librarians from the Seattle Public Library. A small group of very experienced Seattle Wikipedians who are really interested in working on documenting local history and culture in Seattle. Together with some people from the University of Washington who work in the University of Washington Libraries and Archives who were quite interested in learning more about Wikipedia and more about the role that their resources might play within Wikipedia. It was a small event, as you can imagine, something on a Saturday in December might be. But we had really great energy in the group and people made a lot of good connections and we're going to be following up to see how we can help encourage this group meeting and think about how we can scale out these types of meetings going forward. We also think we could perhaps develop a best practices document for librarians adding content to Wikipedia. Other suggestions we've had are how can you find Wikipedians within your local community if you're starting from scratch? How do you make those connections and contacts? So those are all things that we're thinking that we could probably help with providing some documentation and some guidance for people who want to get started. So there's certainly a lot going on there. There's also additional opportunities we think for library data. So you probably see these little sidebars within Wikipedia. They're called info boxes. If you look on an article that is about a book, you will see a template that's called info box book and it contains fields, optional fields that look a lot like metadata. So we'd like to put in ways, an OCLC number perhaps maybe help to populate these info boxes based on WorldCat data and put in easy ways for people to get to that book in their local library, which is certainly something we can help with. And I think again just making sure that library resources and the ability to get to library resources is highlighted within Wikipedia and for Wikipedians is a very positive thing and something that we can help with. So we'd like to thank you very much for your attention. Sarah and I would be very delighted to get your questions. You can feel free to email us or get in touch with us on Twitter. We hope to hear from you and thanks for attending this presentation.