49:3 Bridging gaps, building community

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Lee:

Welcome to the Trailblazer FM podcast. This is your host, Mr. Lee Matthew Jackson. And today we have on the show the busiest woman in WordPress, none other than Michelle Frechette. How are you today?

Michelle:

I am doing very well. Thank you for having me here. It's good to see you.

Lee:

It is wonderful to have you. And folks, if you want to know a little bit more about Michelle, you can check out meetmichelle.online. There will be a link in the show notes because when I was thinking, how should I describe Michelle? I suddenly realized when I saw her bio that Matt Mullenweg was indeed correct. She is indeed the busiest woman in WordPress and has many different projects to her name. So go down that rabbit hole and enjoy because there is a lot of good stuff on that website to explore. For the folks that don't have enough time to go through your website, could you please give us just a little bit of a bio so the folks who don't know you can get to know you a little bit?

Michelle:

So my full-time job is I am the director of community engagement for stellar WP at liquid Web. I get to work with Kadence theme and all of our different plug ins, including give WP, the events calendar, LearnDash, and all of the others. There's seven of them. I always forget at least one. I apologize to my group, but you can head over to stellarwp.com if you're interested in learning more about that. But I do a lot of other things, too, because I'm a 54 year old woman who lives with three cats. And so I have plenty of time on my hands to get involved with things that I that I enjoy, including Lego, which you'll see behind me over here, a little bit of Lego. It's so fun, right? But also, I have a few side projects. I like to look at the community and see where are there gaps that I could help fill? And so a few years ago, Ali Nimans and I founded underrepresentedintech.com . A few weeks ago, I launched WPSpeakers.Com, finding different ways to help the community within itself. So for example, WPSpeakers.Com is because I, as a meet up organizer, I'm always looking for speakers to present to my group because there's basically 15 of us that meet on a regular basis.

Michelle:

And we've heard each other talk an awful lot over the years. And 15 people can't encompass all of the information that all of us would like to learn. So I am fairly well connected in the WordPress community, and I can tap on friends and say, Hey, would you have time to present to my group? But not everybody has that ability. Not everybody has a network that's global like that. I don't know everybody. There's so many people who have so many interesting things to share. I started to think, Well, how could I build a list for myself? Then how could I build a list that others could use? That's just one example of finding a gap that can be filled to benefit the whole community. Underrepresentedintech.com does the same thing. Wp Motivate is my podcast with Kathy Zant, where literally we just meet once a week and talk about whatever is on the top of our heads. Always try to frame things in a positive way and hope that it inspires other people within WordPress as well. Just some of those things are what I enjoy and what motivates me to get up every day.

Lee:

That is awesome. Can we jump in a time machine a little bit and go all the way back to your first earliest experiences of WordPress as well, just so that we can see how you got engaged with both the product and also the community?

Michelle:

Well, it's a story about spaghetti and massage, if you must know the truth. And that sounds very odd. But my best friend and I worked in higher education for almost 25 years before I got into tech at all. And my best friend was a massage therapist and I worked as the director of a massage school. And she said to me, there are so many people who graduate and don't know how to run businesses and be business owners. They've learned their craft and then they're turned out into the world and been like, Go be successful without any support system. She and I founded, it's no longer in existence, but we founded a nonprofit to help massage therapists be successful in business, have continuing education. Her husband, who worked in WordPress, said, I'll build you a website. We were so excited about that. This was in 2012. We started sending him the content, and he's like, Whoa, ladies, I don't have enough time to actually put the content. I built you the frame. Here's your login. Figure it out. By the way.

Lee:

Every web developer's dream, isn't it? Hey, I got you started. Off you go.

Michelle:

Yeah, because we weren't paying him. Maybe she was paying him a massage and spaghetti, but the whole idea was that we just had to log in and figure it out. So I logged in and it was like I equate it to when Dorothy opens the door and she goes from sepia tones and black and white. And all of a sudden there's this technicolor world of, Wow. But the music playing in my head was the Willy Wonka dream stuff. So I was like, this is a mishmash of all the wonderful movies that I saw growing up. So here I am logged in terrified that I am going to press something or click something and the whole site is going to implode. That did not happen. I started to put information on the home screen. I pressed publish or update, I think at that point, and I quickly switched over to look at the homepage and I was like, it's there. I just put information on the internet that other people will see. It was so heady. It felt so important. Literally, nobody saw it at first. We had to do the marketing and do all the things that go behind it.

Michelle:

But the idea that you could publish something and other people were privy to the information that you just shared was incredibly exciting to me. And so I thought, I love this. I had an MBA in marketing, of all things, and e-commerce, where we had just built little HTML sites. So I didn't have any idea what this WordPress stuff was. So I said to her husband, I really like this. I understand buying a domain and I understand hosting, but how do I get my domain into WordPress and hosting? I didn't understand what that whole process was. It was huge like brick wall in between purchasing a domain. And so he said, tell you what, Christine's working nights this week. If you come over and make dinner for us and the kids, I will then show you what you need to do to be able to go from having a domain to having a website. I went over and made spaghetti and we all ate spaghetti and then the kids cleaned up while he showed me. Basically, I wish I still had it, a little piece of paper that had four things written on it. And one of them was don't forget to change the salt keys, which we don't.

Michelle:

One button installs now nobody even remembers the salt keys were probably back then. But yeah, that's what we did. It was exciting to me. I purchased a domain and hosting that night and was well on my way to starting freelancing in WordPress. And the rest has brought me to where.

Lee:

I am. I think we could literally end the podcast just there and have the biggest take away, sorry, and have the biggest take away as that we as web agencies, we as web developers, we as freelancers so often forget the incredible privilege and excitement that we have in just being able to publish content online. I had forgotten it. When you just described everything from beginning to end, I had goosebumps at the Dorothy moment and I just thought, I just take this for granted. I write stuff, I record stuff with you right now and again, I'll hit publish at some point in the next few weeks. But that's an incredible privilege. It's incredibly exciting. It's incredibly cool. Maybe not many people will view it, but that doesn't matter. Some people will and they will listen to it and they will take something from that, isn't it? Exceptionally exciting. I'd forgotten. Thank you.

Michelle:

It was. And at that point, I didn't even know that WordPress had a tagline of democratizing publishing. And it was like, once you learn that, you're like, oh, it all falls. The code is poetry part, like non developer. I was like, okay, that's cool, whatever. But the democratizing publishing part was truly inspiring to me to know that unless you're in a country that completely locks down the internet, and there are some, but the rest of the world is able to create without very much expense. Yes, you could go to WordPress.Com and create a whole site with no expense. I think sometimes when we say you can build a WordPress site for free, it's a little bit of like a free puppy. Well, yeah, I can. But if I really want to do what I want to do, I've got to pay for hosting. I might have to pay for some plug ins or a theme. My free puppy, the vet bills just went up on it. Wordpress can be a little bit like a free puppy, depending on how much you're willing to and want to invest in making it bigger and better, etc.

Michelle:

But you can absolutely, with WordPress.Com at least, create for free. I think that that's a beautiful thing.

Lee:

I was just remembering the free dog that my mom got, of which she then had to pay for an extensive amount of dental treatment for, which was a big surprise. I did tell her not to get the puppy. Mom, you should have listened. But anyway, no worries. Well, it sounds like then you were exposed to the world of publishing, the world of WordPress, and you started to hone some skills. You've connected domain and hosting. You now know that you definitely need to have some unique salt keys. Very, very important. I think we all again forget those nowadays. I think it's all pretty much generates itself now. But at what point did you then start to find that there was a community behind this? Because right now this is just you making spaghetti and learning on your own and a project with your partner there. At what point, where was the exposure to the community? Where did you find this incredible group of people that we're all now part of?

Michelle:

Yeah. So Rob was his name, the spaghetti guy. And he said, Oh, by the way, we have a meet up in Rochester where we talk about WordPress. And you might want to attend because you might learn a few things. I said, When's the next one? They were very bad about organizing. By the way, it was like, Hey, we haven't had a meet up in a while. Why don't we have one next Tuesday? Everybody making all right, this is where we're going to be. I went to my first meet up and I was the only woman in the room. The lights were dimmed so that you could see what was projected on the screen. They were talking about inspect elements, CSS, they were talking about digital ocean, they were talking about all of these things that were so over my head of having just worked on my first site. I was like, Well, maybe this isn't for me. It feels like more of a tech bro event. I didn't go back to another one for almost two years. At which point he said, You really should come back. That was an outlier. Most of the time we have topics that I think would appeal to you.

Michelle:

I started going back, but it was so erratic as when they would have meetings. Then he said, Does anybody else want to take over planning and coordinating these meetings? I was like, If it means we have them regularly and I know when to plan on them, I'll do that. I have been coordinating the Rochester meet up for, oh gosh, probably eight years at least at this point. We have a regular meeting first Monday of every month. We know what the topics are in advance. It's not just a show up and learn. If it is going to be a show up and just share and whatever, you know that in advance as well. Of course, over the last three years, we've been online. But that's actually given us opportunity to learn from more people and have more people join us, which has been very good as well. I would say that was my gateway into it. Then he said, Hey, I just came back from whatever word camp he'd been to. If you ever think about it, you should go to a word camp sometime. I was like, What's a word camp? Then I'm online searching what word camps are.

Michelle:

Word Camp Buffalo was coming up and it was, I think this was 2015. I went to my first word camp and I remember tweeting and posting on Facebook that I was at WordPress camp because I still didn't quite understand what was going on. At the end of that day, mind blown because back then it was $20 for a full day, including coffee and lunch and an after party. I was just like, This is amazing. I remember them saying, There's 50 % women here. This is the first time we've ever had a clean split of 50 % women showing up. Now, there weren't 50 % women presenting yet, but there were 50 % women actually at the event. I was literally, off that date, so excited. I was like, When is the next one? Where can I go? Two months later, I was at WordCamp Toronto learning there. I had been bit by the WordCamp bug. Now, I don't know, 60, 70 camps later after all these years, I absolutely will drive to anything that's close enough and attend, speak, help organize, lend a hand, volunteer, whatever I can do to help other work camp succeed.

Lee:

As well. That's incredible. 50-50 in the room. I know for myself, my very first agency transformation live event, I really tried to get a good representation of everybody there. We did manage to get about 60 40 in the room. It was 60 % male, 40 % female. Again, with the show itself, the actual podcast itself, that's been something I've really battled with for many years. I think you used the word bro earlier on. In the very early stages of my own experience with the WordPress community, it did feel a very bro environment, very male orientated. A gain, we were all gathering around computers looking at code and making things do things that they weren't meant to and getting all very excited about that. But it's incredible to hear that. But again, I guess it... Sorry, I'm stuttering of my words here, but it makes you wonder, how can we make WordPress even more inclusive? How can we learn the lessons from that event that did manage to get 50-50 50 at least in the room rather than just on stage? What lessons do you think we have that we can draw from that? Sorry, to make the WordPress community more inclusive?

Michelle:

Well, we know that when people see themselves in the event, so you see the event coming up and you look at the speakers, you look at the organizers, if you can see representation of who you are, you're much more likely to attend and much more likely to engage. Having more diversity and underrepresentedintech.com people included in all aspects of a word camp, for example, is super important. If your organizers are 20 % women and all white, you are less likely to appeal to an audience of women and underrepresentedintech.com folks. It's really important to have representation at all levels of the things that we're doing. Is it easy to do that? Not necessarily, because we have a history of not doing that. And so it does present some challenges. I've recently pointed out in some areas where there is less inclusivity and come under fire for it a little bit, but also opened up conversations. I'm willing to be the person, I'm willing to be the Maverick, if you will, the trailblazer who points things out. I love the phrase suffers the slings and it an errors. I don't even know if it's biblical or if it's Shakespearean or what it is, but I have broad shoulders, I have thick skin.

Michelle:

If I can be the icebreaking boat that opens up the waters for other people to follow behind me, I'm willing to do that because I think it's important that people see themselves and have opportunities. One of the things that I've said over and over and over again is that when you have inclusivity at the top levels of an organization, whether that be your business or whether that be your local meetup or whatever the organization is, you actually will appeal to a broader audience for even your sales and marketing. If people see themselves in your team. And if your team is able to represent who they are, they are going to bring more ideas to the table that will appeal to that broader audience. I often talk about the fact that in the 60s, advertising for women's products, which were considered women's products, I'm not saying they are now, of course, but vacuum cleaners, frigid air, all of those things appeal to men. She'll find it so awesome if you give her a vacuum cleaner for Christmas. Now, as soon as women started joining the marketing teams, it's like, That is not how you sell vacuum cleaners.

Michelle:

If you want to sell a vacuum cleaner, show me that it picks up all the stuff that my kids leave on the floor. Show me it. Show me that the kitty litter that got spilled over gets cleaned up quickly and easily. That's going to sell a vacuum cleaner to a woman, not because a man says, Oh, and how many fights do you think happened because a vacuum cleaner was under the Christmas tree or the Valentine's gift? Unless a woman asks for something like that, it does not make a good gift. When you get more people around the table who represent your buyers, you have opened up your sofa the opportunities to sell to more people. That's just one way that we could start to really build better marketing and why inclusivity matters. But it also just matters because it matters. We don't want other people, we don't want to alienate people out of anything that we do. Having the ability for people to be involved and making sure that we're inviting people in is so important if we want to make sure that our community grows the way it is. Furthermore, I don't know how old you are, but I'm 54 and I know that I don't represent the 20 somethings and the teens that are coming into WordPress and coming into technology.

Michelle:

I don't represent everything that they want to see. It's important that inclusivity is something that we include because the next generation will demand it. I feel very strongly that the next generations that are coming behind us are the ones that are looking to make sure that we're socially just, that we have equity, that we are looking at diversity, inclusion, and that everybody feels like they belong. They're going to start making decisions based not only on what a product does, but on who is involved in making it and how ethical it is. I think it's important for a lot of reasons that we're looking for inclusion and diversity.

Lee:

Well, here's another big question then. I was very conscious when doing ATL 2022 that I did need to make sure that there was better representation on stage and also within the actual community of people gathering together. So I was very conscious of that. But then I also had this weird guilt that I was purposefully choosing people because I knew there would be better representation in there. Can you speak into that? What was that that's going on inside of me? Why do you think I was feeling like that?

Michelle:

I think in a lot of respects that we feel like we're tokenizing people. So if I'm only looking to bring somebody in because they have brown skin and I'm not looking at who the complete person is, we can't tokenize people and say, I just need more brown faces on stage. You'll do, you'll do, you'll do. Come on, tell us what you have to talk about. That's never the right way to do it. The right way is to find people who are absolutely qualified, who also meet those diversity and inclusion. Some of the things that we look at, it's not enough to say anybody can apply. I have an application out there, anybody can apply. I'm not stopping black people from applying to my event, for example, but it's not enough to do that. You actually have to invite people. You have to say, I would love to have you speak. Will you please apply? Let's talk about topic topics. Or I know somebody that's really good speaker and I could reach out to them and say, I'd love to have you at this event. Blind speaker selection in and of itself is not enough because we're not encouraging enough people and enough diversity in the application pool.

Michelle:

If we just say anybody can apply and we're doing a blind speaker selection, you really have to be more intentional about diversity and not tokenizing. It starts with intentionality. It starts with a plan and a strategy to make sure that you are inclusive, but for all of the right reasons and not just because somebody's a woman or because they have different colored skin than you do. There have been events in the past, and I'm sure you're aware where it was, people say, I see the entire speaker lineup and there's only one woman. Events have been canceled for that before because then everybody's like, Oh, we need to get some more women on here. E very woman goes, I'm not touching that. I'm not going to be the tokenized person because you just said we don't have enough diversity. It needs to start at the beginning and it needs to be intentional and part of your plan and your strategy from the beginning.

Lee:

I think then you are totally right and it was the word token that was worrying me. I didn't want to tokenize people. I was really keen on getting people with real talent on the stage. And yet, though, I was still aware that I needed to create an event where people from all walks of life can recognize and resonate and say, Yes, I can be a part of this community. I am welcome here. As opposed to the bro culture that we may have had 15 or 20 years ago. But it was certainly this guilt and worry that I was perhaps tokenizing at times. Thankfully, we had an amazing lineup. We had great speakers, a very diverse range of speakers, but I still struggled with that guilt the whole time and the whole worry and kept trying to talk to myself, analyze my thought process every time, probably as an overthinker because I really wanted to get it right. But I guess you said right from the get go, it's the intentionality. As long as there is the intentionality in there and it's not the afterthought when somebody says, Whoa, wait a minute, you've got either no representation there or who's the one person, why is there only one person there, etc.

Michelle:

Okay. One of the other things that can feel like a hurdle is if you yourself are leading a team and you don't feel like you have access to the, I'll call, say sub communities. We have Black press in WordPress, and there is a complete community within the community of WordPress that specifically for black and brown faces. We're developing LGBTQ press right now, which is a safe community, a safe space for people who are in the LGBTQ community to be able to speak freely and share experiences. And having access to those spaces is definitely something that can help you build. If you are building an event or a podcast or a blog or whatever it is and you don't feel like you have the right access or you don't know how to access communities and people, it's worth investing. There's nothing wrong with hiring somebody or tapping somebody or finding a mentor or a coach or whatever works to be able to grow into those connections, to tap into other networks, to be able to make sure that those things happen. I think in WordPress, we try so hard to make sure everything is free and that we don't pay for a whole lot of things because we're trying to give access for free.

Michelle:

But I think in some cases it's absolutely worthwhile in hiring experts that can help you do things. For example, word camps are not always disability accommodating. We make sure that there's captions and things like that where we can. But can I get on the stage in my mobility device? Am I going to have to try to walk upstairs when stairs are something that I can't do? Can I get in the building? Do I have to come in through the kitchen thing to even be able to have access? We have to think about those things. You as somebody who's not a disabled person may not even be able to think of all the questions that you should ask of a venue. In that case, either finding somebody who's willing to volunteer their time or paying for a disability expert is absolutely the right way to go to make sure that you have the inclusive event that you want and not just rely on the fact that we look for everything that's free. I'm all.

Lee:

Too aware as well that I, as an event organizer or as a podcaster, etc, also have tons of inherent biases, etc. I don't have access to all of this information. I wasn't aware of black press that you've just shared with me just now, which blew my mind. So where could listeners and myself go to find out more information about all of this?

Michelle:

Absolutely. Underrepresentedintech.com is a great place to start. Ali and I work very much in the community to try to help educate. We do have a podcast as part of underrepresentedintech.com . We talk about the hard things, we talk about the hard hitting issues, and we're not afraid to really put it out there. There's a lot of learning that can go on there. There's a huge resource page on underrepresentedintech.com as well. There's plenty of opportunities there. I always tell people my Twitter is open, my DMs are open. I'm always happy to answer questions and send people in the right direction. If there's anything that I can help you answer in the future, please feel free to reach out and I will do my best to connect you to the resources that you need.

Lee:

Michelle, thank you so much for your time. This has been Eyeopening. Thank you again as well for reminding us how incredibly exciting it is to be each other's to be able to publish content online. We are so lucky in our community. A lso, thank you for reminding us about how wonderful a community we have. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful time and take care. Cheerio. Thank you.

Michelle:

Bye.