How Will WordPress & Education Adapt in a World of AI?

Discover how WordPress & education can adapt in a world of AI — future-proof your site and teaching strategies before AI leaves you behind.

With Special Guest Isotta Peira, Open Source Program Manager, Automattic

https://wordpressfoundation.org/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/peiraisotta/

This Week’s Sponsors

Kinta: Kinta

LifterLMS: LifterLMS

Rollback Pro: Rollback Pro

The Show’s Main Transcript

[00:00:22.400] -Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic Show. This is episode 1002. In this episode, we’ve got a special guest, Zotta Perea, Open source program manager at Automatic. She deals with outreach and building more resources around education, and WordPress should be a great show. We’ve got a lot to talk about. So Ezotta, would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?

[00:00:59.180] – Isotta Peira

Sure. Thank you so much, and first of all, thanks for having me. I’m a little bit nervous, as I believe everyone can tell. And also, spoiler, I might make up words in English. If I do and if it doesn’t make sense, let me know and correct me. So yes, I am. I’m an Italian living in Spain. I moved abroad 13 years ago because I really wanted to explore more parts of the world and connect with as many diverse people as possible. And I love this place. And I stayed in Spain, and one of the reasons I got into cultures and foreign countries is that I started studying languages at school, and I became very passionate. This led me to study translation and interpreting. And so that opened up an old world for me, and hence traveling, getting into languages, learning English, because in Italy we don’t, or at least when I was young, we don’t learn English that well. And so here I am, currently working to support and create educational programs for the WordPress community.

[00:02:24.900] -Jonathan Denwood

All right, we’re going into more detail in the main part of the show, but that’s a good intro, and I got my co-host, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself?

[00:02:36.340] – Kurt von Ahnen

Sure thing, Jonathan. My name is Kurt Von Anan. I own an agency called Manana Nomas. We also work directly with the great folks at Lifter, LMS, and WP Tonic.

[00:02:46.100] -Jonathan Denwood

Fine and bit. As I say, it should be a great show. Before we go into the meat and potatoes, I got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks.

[00:02:57.800] – Kurt von Ahnen

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[00:03:32.650] -Jonathan Denwood

Also want to point out we’ve got some great special offers from the show’s sponsors, plus a curated list of the best WordPress plugins and services, all tried out by Kirk and me. You can get all these goodies at wp-tonic.com/deals. What more could you ask for, my beloved WordPress professionals? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get on that page. So, this so let’s go into a little bit more detail. So, you know how you get into the world of WordPress, really? Was it solely when you applied and got your position with Automatic, or were you involved in the WordPress community before that?

[00:04:27.960] – Isotta Peira

I wasn’t involved in the WordPress community before. I learned about WordPress a few years ago because I needed a website for a business. I started and reached out to a professional, and they told me, “Okay, I work with WordPress.” They explained what WordPress was to me and eventually taught me how to use my website. At that moment, I had no idea it was 2018 or 2019. I had no idea that there was an immense community beyond that, and my only interaction wasn’t a real interaction I found on a time forums, and I got scared because I didn’t feel comfortable. I didn’t even know how like what the problems I had like how to explain the problems I was facing. So I basically okay no no no, let’s leave it. And years later, when well life happened, because of my business, I also got into online community management. I got trained and work as a community manager for for years and then Covid hit there wasn’t space anymore for me to have in person events which like my business was about culinary in person events and I started looking for joining a company where I could use transferable skills let’s say and at that point is where I found these openings At Automatic I had in my mind two main areas either tech or nonprofit world and the universe sent me a job openings where Automatic was looking for community managers to support the WordPress community and contribute full time to the community team.

[00:06:28.120] – Isotta Peira

That moment is where a whole world opened to me, and I started learning about the community, and everything that goes behind the is behind WordPress itself. And yeah, I applied, it went well, and here we are. That was in 2023. First.

[00:06:44.690] -Jonathan Denwood

All right, over to you, Kurt.

[00:06:47.730] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, it’s just interesting because when we moved to Kansas, there was no local WordPress meetup. So my agency signed up with Automatic and we do the WordPress meetup here in Hutchinson, Kansas. And one of the first things I got invited to on the Slack channel was a team of people that were building online courses for WordPress. And it really struck me for a couple of reasons. And that was a. I had been in an agency since 2007 and I didn’t realize we had all that training available. Right. So. So that was one thing and then the other thing was the depth of the training. There is a lot of training available with WordPress. So can you give us and, and our listeners and our, and our viewers kind of like more detailed information on the WordPress education programs and stuff that you’re trying to promote?

[00:07:43.080] – Isotta Peira

Of course, I don’t know if we have then a way or to share links or anything in case there are folks interested in the resources you mentioned because you mentioned the training materials. So you’re referring to the learn.WordPress.org page where there is in fact a variety of training material available for different needs. The training team, the WordPress training team, made of volunteer like any other teams elsewhere, have been working so hard in the past year to also create specific pathways and give a continuity between the different type of trainings. This is one of the tools that we currently use. In regards of the new education programs that were launched last year, I would love to highlight three programs. All three programs are connected to community. Some of them, they focus on different goals, they aim to fill different gaps. First program I’d mention is an event series, WordPress Campus Connect. This event series was tested and piloted in 2024 after the community team had worked in 2022 and 2023, encouraging brainstorming with the organizers, trying to come up with new event formats that could help the community reach new and different audiences because they were seeing a similar profile of people attending work camps.

[00:09:23.710] – Isotta Peira

And we ask ourselves, okay, where can we find other people who can really benefit from WordPress? And they are not. No matter how try we, how hard we try, they’re not coming to work. So a workshop, a workshop style of event happening on campus, targeting only students was one of the format that we tried. It showed to be successful. The first great pilot happened in India and then in the Ajmer community, and then it was extended to the rest of the community. And right now there are many, many events happening worldwide. The format is pretty simple, yet flexible. The idea is that the event must happen on campus. There must be a certain degree of engagement and collaboration with teachers and faculty members. Because we don’t want this to be something like one one off activity and then they don’t really know or understand what is going on. And so we help teachers or students organize one or multiple days or workshop of course focusing on WordPress where the topic can vary depending of the need of the school and the students. And this is one from this we did what I said we, I mean the word was community.

[00:10:56.570] – Isotta Peira

And everyone else who has been working on coming up with idea and test and testing formats. We saw an opportunity to encourage students to take on more leadership roles and also try to organize their own event. Experimenting with the peer to peer type of learning. And so we launched the student clubs. Student clubs for people who are not familiar with the concept as I was for example because in Italy student clubs were never thing at school so they had to explain me what they meant. Students club are opportunity for students to create events on campus for other students. So it’s not a top down style of learning. They can run their own, let’s call them meetups on campus.

[00:11:52.990] – Kurt von Ahnen

So they have the campus initiative. Teachers are required to be part of it, professors are required to be part of it. But student camps are led just by students.

[00:12:04.270] – Isotta Peira

They’re led by students. We always ask to have one faculty member as also point of contact for the club also because theoretically students at some point will leave college or school and hopefully teachers will stay. But yes, the idea is that the students can run their own events for other students and they can decide if they want to co work, they want to study, they want to showcase. But the idea is peer to peer.

[00:12:34.470] – Kurt von Ahnen

So I have a question about that then especially for the peer to peer thing for younger folks because a lot of people would struggle with trying to figure out like what to actually talk about. Does Automatic provide like a curriculum or a suggestions list or something for topics that they should focus on for each meeting?

[00:12:57.120] – Isotta Peira

One presentation like one thing that love to correct in this context, automattiq acts as sponsor. Like other companies in the system, I’m sponsored by Automatti. Other program admin are sponsored by Cloud86 or Weglot. So automatic doesn’t provide content or have any specific guidelines for the students. The WordPress community with a whole those who embody in the education program we work together to provide resources for students. We don’t have Mandatory actions on activities that can organize. We do have suggestions similar to what has happened with meetups. So depending on the needs and the interest of who wants to start the club and their peers, we try to support them suggesting what they should start with or what they can do. A practical example, there are students who attend participate in Campus Connect workshops and then they have a few months later or weeks later, they’re going to have a competition on campus on the website that they have created. While the student club could be a great place for them to gather and work on the website in the moment together. Or we have with the third program, WordPress credits, we introduce students to WordPress contribution teams.

[00:14:30.360] – Isotta Peira

And so we have students joining contribution teams and work on tangible tasks for these teams. They could use the student club to work under tasks together and so move from online online work. It can become mostly a little bit isolating. Sometimes we want to bring them together, give them a space to connect while working on different projects. These are just two examples that are happening. But then if they have their own initiatives or they want to work on other school projects related to worst of course the clubs, it’s the clubs are there for them.

[00:15:09.270] – Kurt von Ahnen

Nice. Thanks, Jonathan.

[00:15:12.790] -Jonathan Denwood

Great Zeta. So let’s move on. You know, I personally think I just get the impression from various people in the WordPress community that meetups are really struggling after Covid. So I use that word after that. They’re really struggling to get people turning up. And also that affects the word camps as well. What’s your own thoughts? Would you agree with that and do you think there’s any way that that situation could be reversed?

[00:16:01.380] – Isotta Peira

Yeah, I appreciate this question because this has been a constant in my mind and in the community team for a pretty long time. Yes. First of all, I not only agree with your feeling, there are numbers and Data available on meetup.com for us about number of events. And there’s been a decrease in events in total events every year from 2019, which has been one of the top years up to like these days. Even though there was a moment after Covid where okay, the community was able to support meetup Organizer, encourage them to restart again the activities and in person events. It is a challenge that affects all type of communities. We’ve had several meetings in the past years with Meetup.com to analyze the trends of other types of community and regional trends. And this is a concept everywhere. So it is pretty clear that something shifted. In a way, we like humans, we approach events and how we in what we choose to participate in person versus online because on the other hand was a single spike, as you can imagine on the participation in online meetings. So this is something that I don’t believe is going to change without taking any action for what it concerns the WordPress community.

[00:17:50.610] – Isotta Peira

It’s one of the goal of this year. It has been shared at the beginning of the year the big picture goals for WordPress in 2026. One of the focus is supporting meetups and find way to help organizers also find like reach their goals through meetup. Because you can have one size fits all depending on the city you are, the country, the needs of learners or professionals, you have different goals. This is normal. So one of the, one of the way the community, the community team, the world’s community team is focusing this year for meetups is into helping organizers identify what they are working for. So okay, what is the goal? You want to be a meetup organizer or you’ve been a meetup organizer? What brings you fulfillment? What fills the needs of the people attending your meetups and do you have the resources to reach your goals? Let’s help you create those resources. You need a different purpose. Let’s support you into find these different purpose. And also I’d say it’s not most importantly, but it’s very, very relevant. Now we have a huge influx of students and new people coming from these other programs that didn’t exist before.

[00:19:28.680] – Isotta Peira

We have to connect those people with the meetups in a way that they can also feed like feed themselves and students and new contributors can find in person spaces and they can help also evolve meetups in what meetups will look like at the end of this year. For example.

[00:19:51.560] -Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I want to bring Kirk into this discussion because he actually runs a meetup. I don’t. But one thing that this just comes off the top of mind is that I think meetups, I think promoting, talking about AI at the meetups might be a good idea. It’s a very popular subject. You know, obviously WordPress is integrating AI into itself. Various leading hosting companies, page builders, they’re all integrating AI into their offering. But if I was doing a meetup, I would promote the AI with WordPress because I think a lot of, there’s a lot of business people in general interested in the subject, but I don’t know. So Kurt, what, what do you, what do you, what’s your response to what I outlined and what’s your own conclusions about meetups?

[00:21:08.900] – Kurt von Ahnen

I think there is such a great variety in the meetups that it is very, very difficult to like lay out a prescription for it in our market here. Just to be honest, if we were to focus our talk on AI incorporated with WordPress, we would be skipping over everything that people that would come to our meetup would need to know. Like, a lot of these folks don’t even really understand what WordPress really is. They don’t, they don’t know what it is in terms of using it against WIX or Squarespace or, you know, so they basically just need like an orientation from the word go. And that’s. We found here in our little space. The people that have attended. Let, let’s leave it at that. Right? So I don’t want to, I don’t want to label our whole region, but people that have attended have been very basic in the approach. But then I think of our friend Devin, Devin Walker out in San Diego is running a meetup that’s got, I don’t know, 50 or 70 people coming to the thing now. And they are at a whole different level of activity. Right. Of, of integration.

[00:22:12.910] – Kurt von Ahnen

So I could see where they, they would be able to have conversations about advanced things in WordPress. The. When I first started getting into the meetups, it was after 2018, when I went to no, 2020, when we did the San Diego Word Camp, that was at 2021. I started going to the meetups after that and they were doing a lot of them on Zoom. And I was really impressed because it was like really smart people covering like really deep subjects on working with WordPress. And it was, it was awesome. But I started to attend different ones in different towns because it was on Zoom. And I noticed it was like the same 10 or 12 people going to all these different meetups. And I was like, well, if I run a meetup, I’m going to do a live meetup. I don’t want to do a Zoom meetup because I don’t, I don’t need to talk to the same 10 people I’ve seen in the other meetups. So it’s very, very difficult. That’s why I was asking about curriculum or suggested talking points or, or whatnot. We, we’ve tried some different themes here at our local meetup and we’ve just really struggled for attendance.

[00:23:23.470] – Isotta Peira

Can I ask you how much is on average, your attendance?

[00:23:28.750] – Kurt von Ahnen

Three people. Yeah. And that would be average. A lot of times I get one person and they’re already a customer at my agency.

[00:23:37.790] -Jonathan Denwood

Right.

[00:23:38.150] – Kurt von Ahnen

And so we end up working on their website for an hour, you know, and it’s. And in that situation, it’s like they’re getting my attention for free.

[00:23:45.310] -Jonathan Denwood

Right.

[00:23:45.670] – Kurt von Ahnen

Like there’s a benefit for them and I’m not upset as the agency owner, I’m not upset. I’m doing this to pay it forward in the community anyway. So. So that’s totally fine. We had a meetup where we had like eight people show up one night and I was like this is going to be amazing. And then half of them never came back.

[00:24:06.010] – Isotta Peira

What was. I don’t mean to go deeper into analyzing this right now, but if you haven’t tried any of those things yet I would consider. But first the time that eight people showed up, what was the topic about or the activity and did you or other organizers ask them what would make them come back? Like what they were looking for and what do they do? Like knowing the better and what they’re trying to learn or do or find by attending meetups and. And then if fear of seeing meetup. But I. I don’t say that this is the case but this is the case of another meetup in Italy where organizers are agency owner and they host the meetup in their agency spaces and they have found reluctance from other professionals from others agency to attend meetups at their agency. While they’re not pushing for giving their agency any more visibilities than any other sponsors, they are organizing great events. And yet in that city there is a sort of lack of trust and seeing something. I know it’s not neutral if I go to my competitors place while the reason is that there are no other free venues or they even suggest okay, let’s change.

[00:25:41.750] – Isotta Peira

We can do one month here, one month or at your agencies. And they didn’t really find a good answer.

[00:25:50.680] – Kurt von Ahnen

My meetup is held at a tap room where they have cold beer.

[00:25:55.000] – Isotta Peira

So why is not.

[00:26:01.240] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yes, there should be no reluctance. It’s. We live in a small town. It’s. I shouldn’t say small town. We have 40000 people. But it’s. It’s not like Kansas City. Right. It’s. It’s definitely a smaller town and I think the ones the meetups that got the most attention were like how to start your business website from scratch. You know small businesses that want to know how can I get a website up cheaply, affordably and maybe hook up some E commerce or sell something or at least schedule appointments and so we can cover that pretty quickly and it goes well. But I’d like to cover more than that in the meetups, you know.

[00:26:43.050] – Isotta Peira

Yeah. And also you probably want to also have people then become from passive learners also active participants of the meetup. And this is, this is a good one to like tackle. I would recommend to introduce some sort of inquiring phase when you do, if you’re doing different types of outreach to reach like the type of the type of audience that you’re interested to and really ask them what they’re looking for and see if what they’re looking for also aligns with what you are looking for. And that is starting from that trying different type of activity leader.

[00:27:29.220] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah.

[00:27:30.900] -Jonathan Denwood

All right. I think that’s a good place for us to go for our middle break. It’s been a fantastic discussion. When we come back we’re going to be talking about AI, about where we think WordPress is going in the next 18 months. Should be a great discussion. We’re going for our middle break. We will be back in a few moments folks.

[00:27:51.060] – Kurt von Ahnen

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[00:28:28.680] -Jonathan Denwood

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[00:28:37.400] – Isotta Peira

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[00:28:45.560] -Jonathan Denwood

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[00:28:53.490] – Isotta Peira

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[00:28:57.570] -Jonathan Denwood

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[00:29:03.330] – Isotta Peira

enjoy the rest of your show.

[00:29:05.970] -Jonathan Denwood

We’re coming back folks. Just want to point out if you’re looking for a great hosting partner and much more your tech partner, why don’t you look and you’re building a membership, a community website for a client. Or why don’t you look at WP Tonic as your hosting and tech partner? You can find more details by going over to wp-tonic.com partners wp-tonic.com Partners let’s build something special together. So let’s go into the next question. So how do you see AI affecting education, especially online education in general? Have you got any thoughts about that?

[00:29:59.960] – Isotta Peira

Yes, many. And in some cases I haven’t come to a specific position yet because it’s a Very broad topic and it touches so different types of likes at different areas of education. There are a few things though that I’m very passionate about, which is leverage AI to start doing more critical thinking. And so okay, coming back, I’m gonna take a couple of steps back. AI right now when it comes to education looking for information, it’s taking on a role similar to what Internet took ages ago. So we, we need like it’s way, way less the need to have to memorize things and learn by heart how something works. And we have way more access to this type of information, but we have also a lot more access to fake information or biased information. So I really love how institutions and in person and online platform help learners using AI to also help them think more on the information that we’re fed up and to start learning more how to investigate instead of learn something and okay, applied it well. Ask yourself some questions and become, become better at creating with what you got. So I would, I’d say that even though.

[00:31:57.450] -Jonathan Denwood

Sorry, sorry, I apologize.

[00:32:00.970] – Isotta Peira

Don’t try it on. All right. So I would recommend and I love when I see teachers helping learners how to use AI to fasten up processes, find the answers to the questions and then use those to create whatever they need to create. Because it could be when they have to prepare the presentations or I need to learn a piece of code. I won’t go into this direction because I have not technical background. But it is a great tool AI in education to move way faster with all the steps that doesn’t really add a meaningful value to the learner to the learner pathway. At the same time, there is something super cool that many, many, many, many are experimenting with including we would love to experiment the same with the WP Credits program which AI tutors. So leveraging AI to fix solve quickly. Most of the like the most common doubts and questions learners have. So then we can have humans can be teachers or mentors if we’re talking about communities spending more time with students doing mentoring, understanding what they’re looking for, sharing advice and also the type of transferable skills. So I really love how like the opportunity here to use AI to okay, make very, very fast everything that it’s more admin or it’s not fostering a meaningful human relationship.

[00:33:52.000] – Isotta Peira

And so we can leave the machine doing this part so we can save time and invest more time into building relationships.

[00:34:01.220] -Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think that that was some great insight. I think we’re in very early days. I don’t think anybody knows, but I was watching probably watch too much YouTube. But I was watching a top YouTube influencer. He’s built some massive YouTube channels, a guy called Ed Lawrence. And he does a course where he and his team help people build. If you’re a business owner and you actually want to get leads from your YouTube channel, him and his team help. And I think he’s got a lot of credibility. But he was being interviewed and he said that they were looking. Their course is about $10,000 and so it’s not cheap. But he was saying that like it’s got a hundred people that. Hundred students, business owners that giving him a. Giving him and his team $10,000 and part the package, they can have group discussions with him direct. And he said that only about five people turn up on average. And even though, and I presume they do get success stories. But he said there is amazing, even at that price point, the amount of people that kind of don’t go through the whole course. And so he’s looking at AI to AI product to productize in.

[00:36:04.280] -Jonathan Denwood

That actually is a kind of AI assistant to these people that kind of customizes the training for the. Each business owner. So we have to see what he comes up with because he’s. But I, I see that more happening in the online training space. You have a community, you have, like you said, onetoone mentorship. But the actual teaching was probably done with the assistance of AI. What do you reckon, Kurt?

[00:36:49.120] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, it’s weird because I’m, you know, all the things I’ve said about AI on our show in the past. I’m currently using AI to, to build a tool that’ll be voice activated and give people vocal feedback through an elearning platform. So. And it’s been promising. So it looks like it’s coming together actually pretty quickly. So. But that’s the rub, right? So we used to do training in person and you know, sometimes getting people show up to class was a challenge, but for the most part, people had attendance and they came to class and they finished. And then we moved things online. And at first, people like the novelty of it or the convenience of it, people were finishing classes at first, but as time’s gone on, course completion has become one of the biggest benchmarks to whether a course is actually successful or not. And most, most courses deal with an incompletion problem where people, again, no matter what they pay. To your own point, Jonathan, no matter what people pay, they take the first 30, 40% of it and then they just drop off and stop coming. And so I think the challenge, especially in consideration of AI is what interactivities or tools can we build that will almost hold people to it.

[00:38:11.240] – Kurt von Ahnen

More like people will death scroll themselves to death on TikTok or Instagram or something like that and not finish their training, which is actually making them better and more profitable. It’s a very strange situation.

[00:38:24.280] -Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. So shall we move on to the next question, Kurt?

[00:38:30.450] – Isotta Peira

Sure.

[00:38:30.810] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, absolutely. This is more of a WordPress general question. Right. So. And you kind of have a unique perspective, but for you, where do you think like the biggest challenges for WordPress are in the next year and a half or so?

[00:38:51.500] – Isotta Peira

Well, earn a half. It’s a very long period in an environment that changes and evolves constantly. So I’m unsure if yearnaf would cover exactly what the challenges I see right now could be something like more short term. But there are a few challenges we are currently facing and across different types of area. I’d love to focus on precisely what it’s more close to my expertise and my experience in the community. So talking about programs and the contribution experience, what I see right now has the biggest challenge is contribution retention is making sure that people who are now currently contributing to WordPress stay and also find new ways to fulfill their needs, to learn more, to maybe grow, not necessarily vertically, but grow in their contribution experience and to ensure that all these huge massive pool of students that will come into the project find their way to stay, find ways to connect with meetups, to connect with other contributors worldwide and find ways to build their own path into WordPress. I would consider any actions that the community is going to take successful if students or first time contributors don’t disappear because we as we also see or end up seeing these at work camps in the past, many new people at Contributor Day and then only a small percentage of them being staying in the community and finding ways to contribute and learn and grow.

[00:40:56.110] – Isotta Peira

And so I personally think that this is going to be a big one across all contribution types and teams. So making sure whoever is new to WordPress contributions, they not only feel that they belong to the space, but they can own a piece of it and move forward with project they have, they can lead initiatives and they can ensure that WordPress will be moving in different ways because there are new people who want to stay and, and create it.

[00:41:32.350] – Kurt von Ahnen

The contributions, to me it seems like someone that’s been contributing for a long time, at some point they’re going to go, I’ve been doing this for five years, I’ve been doing this for eight years. You know, I got to Take some time off or I got to bail out. Is there an influx of new people coming to contribute or at some point are we kind of cycling out of people?

[00:42:00.200] – Isotta Peira

There is a new influx of people and this is gonna, is gonna be increasing, increasing this year and the next because of specific programs that the community launched. With WordPress credits program specifically is has been built to offer schools and colleges a practice program for their students where instead of spending 100 or 50 or 300 hours per semester working for companies, they can contribute to WordPress in different teams, depending their field of studies. And the college or the institution recognize the time they spent on contribution as part of their curriculum. So this is where, this is something that we are already doing. Right now There are around 280 students enrolled in this program in different regions and we’re doing our best to ensure that then at least a percentage of them will stay.

[00:43:01.810] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, I, in my personal experience, I would, I would tell you the schools here, they don’t teach anything about WordPress like their IT classes and stuff. When I, when I speak at the school, I say, you know, how many people are familiar with WordPress and if there’s 60 people in a room, only two people put their hands up. And that to me is, you know, it obviously makes me a little sad, right, because it’s what pays my bills. And so, you know, I’m always trying to promote WordPress as an option, but I just don’t think that we’ve done a very good job of letting young people know that it’s a viable option.

[00:43:41.840] – Isotta Peira

300%. This is one of the reasons behind the community’s efforts to enter traditional education on different levels. Because what you say is true, if teachers don’t know something, they won’t teach it. So there are different ways that we’ve taken to overcome these problems. On one end, we’re developing programs for teachers. So we want to train teachers on WordPress itself and WordPress contributions so they can also integrate this into their, into their professions. And we are approaching students in fields outside IT and Computer science as well, showing them that they can develop skills within the WordPress community by doing things other than coding. For example, this was the first idea that helped create the WordPress credits. So, inviting students of translation to translate plugins, themes, and dashboards instead of translating text that nobody would ever read, in addition to their teachers. And so, in some cases, when we approach schools, we intentionally use very simple, neutral words. We don’t go specifically into more computer science-related terminologies so even teachers who are not familiar with it don’t feel threatened or scared, and they feel comfortable, and they might see the value.

[00:45:36.500] – Isotta Peira

But this is still a work in progress. But if we succeed at entering traditional education at the elementary level and then continue this path, this could be a game-changer.

[00:45:53.380] – Kurt von Ahnen

Nice. Nice. Jonathan, last question.

[00:45:56.660] -Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Kurt. So are there any kind of influencers, people online, or people in the WordPress community? One or two people that really you follow their video or blog content you really follow and like to share with the audience

[00:46:18.840] – Isotta Peira

Inside the WordPress community, there are many. So I don’t want to decide to mention someone and leave others out. I’m a huge fan of, like, two types of publications. I really love reading Hero Press. The stories published there have been diverse and inspiring. I really love learning more about the people who are building WordPress. This is one of my favorites. I also like reading anything, like I’m subscribed to this letter WP women. I love reading about women in WordPress, but I also love talking about people outside the WordPress community who are related to AI, which is also something that’s on our minds all the time. I am loving seeing how engineers, developers, and other professionals are really experts in ethics. They are looking into AI as a way to prevent machines from guiding consumers with bias. I would love to just mention the algorithm, Justice League Dr. Joy Bulawini. She’s an engineer and she’s really into the world and she’s basing her work into ensuring that engineers and company build any type of automated systems that aren’t hard coding racial and gender bias because we’ve seen that there is a massive use from governments and other type of organization of AI to profiles and attack or exclude minorities from the from the society.

[00:48:35.810] – Isotta Peira

So this is a type of people in tech that I really hope succeed and can have a positive impact on the rest of the world.

[00:48:48.150] -Jonathan Denwood

All right, thanks so much. It’s been a great discussion. I think we covered a lot of stuff. What’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?

[00:49:02.310] – Isotta Peira

Well they can find me, of course, in the workspaces. I’m on Slack as is, and I can also be on LinkedIn. My username is the same across all platforms inside WordPress, and outside, it’s always pe isota my last name and my name, and thank you so much for having me and for your patience with my English, and it’s been lovely discussing

[00:49:33.330] -Jonathan Denwood, with you think it’s better than mine. All right, anchor, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you?

[00:49:40.990] – Kurt von Ahnen

Kurt, for personal connections, just hit me up on LinkedIn. I’m the only Kurt Von on there, and I’m easy to find.

[00:49:47.150] -Jonathan Denwood

And if you want to support the show and you’re listening on your mobile device or not on iTunes or Spotify, why don’t you leave us a review really does help the show. It only takes you a couple of minutes at the most. So if you’re listening on your mobile device on iTunes or Spotify, leave us a review that really does support the show. We will be back next week with our roundtable show. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.

[00:50:14.830] – Isotta Peira

Hey, thanks for listening.

[00:50:16.110] -Jonathan Denwood

We really do appreciate it. Why not visit the Mastermind Facebook group and also to keep up with the latest news, click wp-tonic.com forward/newsletter. We’ll see you next time.

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