Next week, I’ll be heading north to attend WordCamp Canada. Despite having lived relatively close to the Canadian border my entire life (just under a 5 hour car ride), it actually will be my first time visiting mainland Canada. In addition to attending and representing Bluehost, I’ll be speaking twice.

Talk 1: Contributor Day

On Contributor Day I’ll be presenting How does contributing to WordPress work (actually)?. The topic of “how to get started contributing to [INSERT OPEN SOURCE PROJECT HERE]” is evergreen, and I’ve given talks on the subject specifically related to WordPress for almost a decade now. This one will combine parts of my recent WordCamp Europe talk with parts from a 2019 talk that I gave at WordCamp Orange County and WordCamp Atlanta.

As an experienced contributor, it’s very easy to become desensitized to the fact that it is actually hard to get started contributing to such a large project. I always find coaching new contributors looking to get started to be a good exercise in reminding myself of that. Fresh minds also ask fantastic questions. It’s a great opportunity to find holes in our process documentation, which is a great contribution in itself!

Talk 2: Day 3 (Session Day 2)

On the last day of the event I’ll be giving a new talk, Keeping Humans in the Loop: Tactful AI in a Collaborative Community. AI has very rapidly become omnipresent. This is especially true within the tech industry. It’s important that we take the time to discuss best practices, ideal outcomes, and the potential negative side effects that may result from implementing this new technology.

I recently shared some thoughts about how to maintain the most foundational aspect of open source communities: the human touch. This talk will explore that idea a bit deeper. How can we make use of AI to become more efficient or increase the quality of our work without sacrificing valuable opportunities to provide mentorship or human interaction? Can AI actually make some things worse? Are there transition periods that we need to fight through? These are all consequential questions we need to consider now.

My first visit to Canada

I’m really looking forward to staying in downtown Ottawa and seeing some of eastern Canada. I mentioned it will be my first visit to mainland Canada above. In 2017, Victoria was a port of call for the Alaskan cruise my wife and I took. But that’s located on Vancouver Island. The Royal BC Museum was fantastic! Below are a few photos of the British Columbia Parliament Buildings I took while sightseeing in the city.