If you’re like me, you know Josepha Haden Chomposy is the Director for WordPress the open source project in title, but you probably don’t know what she does on a day to day basis.

Or that she’s part of the Open Source Group Division inside of Automattic. Something I always knew, but once framed that way in discussion, was more interesting to hear.

I was lucky enough to chat with Josepha for nearly an hour, so I’m breaking up the conversation in two parts. Today, part 1, we’ll cover the logistics of her role, bringing WordCamps back, and the challenges with Gutenberg.

Thanks to folks over at Malcare for supporting this episode of the Matt Report. If you want to support me, you can buy me a digital coffee or join the super-not-so-secret Discord group for $79/year at buymeacoffee.com/mattreport

[00:00:00] Josepha: You say that’s the easiest question, but like anyone who has spent any time with me knows that I also spend a lot of time, like, considering, like what, what, what are my, what am I doing? What, what purpose do I bring to the world? Who am I when I’m not trying to accomplish things? Like, yeah, it’s easy, but it’s not easy.

[00:00:17] So yeah. I show stuff. I Hayden jumbo, C a WordPress projects, executive director since 2019. So I’m starting my what third year of it is that right? Yeah. Starting my third year of it, time flies. 

[00:00:29] Matt: That’s 30 years in COVID years, by the way. 

[00:00:32] Josepha: ain’t that true? Isn’t that true? And before I did this, I actually was as my Twitter bio suggests very much into.

[00:00:43] Digital literacy and making sure that that communities were safe and sound, because I think that communities are the foundation of everything that we try to do in the world. And so, yeah, that’s me.

[00:00:53] Matt: There’s a lot of folks who think of community as well. It’s a big marketing buzzword for sure. Right. Everyone who has a product company wants a community. But they are looking at community in probably a very lesser form definition in a silo and something to just kind of prop up either their brand or product.

[00:01:12] Maybe get some feedback and get really interested. Customers. Community is a whole different ball game and scale at your level. Give us a sense of just like the daily routine. One has to go through to manage what you have to manage. 

[00:01:29] Josepha: Gosh, from a community aspect or just from like me as a 

[00:01:33] Matt: you wake up and you’re and you look at your wall-to-wall meetings. Cause I, I imagine largely that’s what you’re doing is meeting talking to people, fusing ideas, together, shaking hands, dealing with folks, maybe crying and laughing and arguing. How do you do it? 

[00:01:50] Josepha: I’ll tell you, number one, that only about a quarter of my time, these. Is spent in meetings, which is really different from, from how it used to be. I used to spend about 60% of my time in meetings. And that was really hard just cause when you’re in a meeting, you really have to stay present to, to really support the people that you’re there with.

[00:02:09] And, and also to really get that work done and be as fruitful as you can with it. And so about, about a quarter of my time now is in meetings. And actually like I’ve got, I’ve got a number of hats obviously, cause I’m the executive director of the WordPress project, but I also lead the source practice at automatic.

[00:02:29] And so there’s a lot going on there. And the best way that I have to manage it at the moment is to just kind of set focus intentions for my day. Like I used to have a day where I just worked on automatic things or when I just worked on community things. And like that’s still documented out in the world, like the, the themes that I have for each day, so that like, if people had had to work with a deadline, they knew what.

[00:02:55] Going to probably get to on various days so that they could time their information. To [00:03:00] me, it was super useful when I didn’t have quite as big a job as I have now. But now I kind of have a day where I focus on meetings. I have a day where I focus on the strategy. I try to make sure that if I have any community things that I’m blocking, I try to get those accomplished, like before the big meetings, which generally is like Wednesdays and Thursdays.

[00:03:19] So try to get and get everybody the information that they need to keep moving on time. But I actually start basically every day with about 30 minutes of mindfulness. Just no meetings, no slack open, no anything else. And just making sure that I understand what my goals are for the day, what my tasks tend to beat for the day.

[00:03:41] And then I end every day with about 30 minutes of what I like to call my ta-da list instead of a to-do list, things that I got done and that I need to get done tomorrow.

[00:03:51] Matt: Little positive affirmation to end the and the day you say that the open source practice is sort of a different approach. Maybe something that you wrangle are managed differently. Can you give us give the listener a sense of what that might be 

[00:04:04] Josepha: At automatic or just generally do I approach open-source differently? 

[00:04:07] Matt: You mentioned that you, that you either manage or work on the open source practice of WordPress is that something different than the, than the day-to-day role of the executive director? 

[00:04:17] Josepha: Huh. Yes and no. So on the one hand I do, we technically are referred to as a division inside automatic. It’s the open source group division. And I just, I don’t know, saying division seems very clinical and. Very divisive, like splitting things into when maybe we, we need to do a bit less of that right now.

[00:04:38] And so when I refer to it as open-source practice, it’s a little bit, because I’m trying to make it clear that it’s like an ongoing thing that we work on an ongoing thing that we do, but also to identify that it is that yeah, we do. We kind of approach it differently. So open source as a practice rather than open source as just a general methodology, I think has a wider application than just software or adjust your product.

[00:05:04] I think that open source, many of those 19 lessons of open source that exists out there could be seen as just like core intentions for how to accomplish things. And when you move it away from just like, this is a core directive for how to build software and instead think of it as this open source methodology that you can use to coordinate an.

[00:05:30] I think it makes a big difference to how you accomplish things in open-source projects. And so, yes, that’s, I wouldn’t say it’s different from my work as the executive director, but I do know that people don’t necessarily identify that work. 

[00:05:44] Matt: Right. How big is that division? 

[00:05:46] Josepha: that particular division is just over a hundred people at this point.

[00:05:50] And then we also have we, the WordPress project also have the five for the future contributors who work with me and that’s a little l...