In this episode, Malcom Peralty and I are joined by Andrea Middleton, Community organizer for Automattic, at least until the end of September. We begin the episode with Andrea describing what it was like to receive so much praise and goodwill from her announcement on Twitter that she was leaving Automattic to pursue a role on the Community team at Reddit. It’s clear that after ten years of working in and around the WordPress project, she’s positively impacted a number of people.

Andrea described some of the personal and professional challenges she encountered during her tenure at Automattic. She also shared advice for those involved in open-source and you can read her ongoing series, Letters to an Open Source contributor via her personal blog. We also talked about the pandemic and its impact on the event side of WordPress and how it has provided a unique opportunity for in-person event organizers to rethink the way things are done and to try new things.

Last but not least, we learned what her role will be at Reddit and wished her a farewell as she moves on to a new professional chapter of her life. I think I speak for many when I say good luck Andrea! All the best to you on your journey! We’re rooting for you!

Stories Discussed:

WordPress 5.8.1 Released, Squashes 60 Bugs and Patches Three Security VulnerabilitiesINPUT: A WordPress Lifestyle YouTube channel by rocketgenius

Click to View Transcript:

Speaker 1 00:00:19 Welcome everybody to episode 11 of WP mainline for Thursday, September 9th, 2021. I’m your host, Jeff Chandler. Join my by my favorite Canadian Malcolm Peralta, Malcolm, sir. How are you doing this week? I’m doing well. I’m your favorite Canadian share? Why not? I appreciate that. How are you doing? I’m doing fine. Hey, wait, that’s your line? I mean, that’s, that’s your word? I’m doing okay. Here we are on a Thursday afternoon. It, um, we have a brief reprieve from late summer heat and, uh, it looks like follow the clouds look like fall. I don’t know about you, but fall has this distinct kind of look outside. It has its distinct look. It has the smelling of the leaves and everything, and we got the cooler going over the lake. I’m hoping that later on today, I can get up to the lake shore and try and see my first water spot.Speaker 1 00:01:09 I’ve never seen a water spot even though I live by the lake. Um, so it’d be really cool to finally get one of those on camera. Hmm. Sounds like a good way to spend your time. Not too bad. Blustery breezy, windy cold fall. Yeah. Sounds great. Right. Sounds like pumpkin spice latte weather. Oh my, but I don’t, but I don’t treat pumpkin spice lattes. My wife does. I don’t, uh, any who we’re going to have an awesome guest on today. It’s going to be an epic show for stay tuned. But first a WordPress 5.8 0.1 has been released this a minor release squash is 60 bucks and patches three security vulnerabilities. Uh, the three security issues that were addressed where it cross site scripting vulnerability in the black editor, uh, data exposure vulnerability in the rest API. And then there were some fixes that were implemented by updating the low dash library to, uh, to the newest version.Speaker 1 00:02:06 So they’re just