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We are back. What is up everybody? Welcome back. It is Tuesday. It is time for a WDD live. I am fresh off the plane. I am fresh off the plane. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know how jet lag works. I don’t know how international travel works. This is my first time leaving the US. Going to Italy wasn’t too bad. It’s kind of weird. I’ll just kind of open with this and we’ll get right into it. Just while everybody, you know strolls in and whatnot. So I left Atlanta at 3.30 p.m. in the afternoon and
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I flew it’s an it’s an eight-hour flight roughly to Paris and then an hour and ten minutes into Italy from there with a three-hour layover. And so I leave at 3 30 p.m. I’m sitting in the middle seat. By the way, if you’re a Delta airline, if you’re ever considering flying Delta Airlines, you know, I thought I was I was going overseas. I mean, it’s a long trip. You know, I don’t want to sit. I don’t want to be a chump backing coach.
0:01:06
You know what I’m saying? So I was like, well, why don’t I upgrade to Comfort Plus? And yeah, by the way, I see some people in here saying, like the stream, yes, please like the stream. The stream does not like itself, okay? So you gotta click the button. As soon as you arrive, just click like on the stream.
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You know it’s gonna be fire, so you can pre-like. You can pre-like, that’s a thing, okay? Anyway, I decided, hey, you know what? I’m gonna upgrade, I’m gonna just do myself. See, I’ve got this thing about spending money on myself. I don’t like to do it all that much.
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Okay, so I didn’t want to go for like the top top seats, right? So I was like, I’ll just do the comfort plus thing. That’s good in the middle. It’s a good, it’s good, you know, it’s not overboard, but it’s not back in coach.
0:01:52
Okay, so I did the comfort plus. I didn’t know what comfort plus even meant. I don’t think I’ve ever written comfort plus before. Well, I think what it means is you get like an extra inch somewhere. I don’t even know if that’s wide, long.
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I don’t know if it’s for your feet or for your body. I don’t know what the extra inch is for. It’s about an extra inch from what I can tell. You get like a charging port, okay? And maybe like an extra snack. I don’t know.
0:02:16
It was not what I thought, you know, Comfort Plus would probably be. It wasn’t what I imagined it would be. So, you know, if you’re interested in spending the money to upgrade it’s I don’t know if it’s worth it I wasn’t stuck back in coach but it felt pretty coach it felt pretty coach okay anyway you leave at 3 30 p.m. your brain thinks
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you’re gonna be you’re flying through the night and when you when you arrive you know it’s man I thought I was gonna sleep on the plane and then I’ll wake up and I’ll figure out the time change thing. It’s a six hour difference. I did not sleep a wink on the plane. I did not sleep at all on the plane.
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Had every contraption for sleeping on a plane known to man, did not sleep at all on the plane. So I arrive like dead tired, and then the first thing I do when I get to the hotel is just take a shower, because you gotta get that ick off you,
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you know, that travel ick, you gotta get that off. So I took a shower, took a nap, fell asleep for like two hours in the hotel room, had blackout curtains, which is great. But it was weird because like when I landed, I thought I expected darkness because that’s what I was flying into. But it was daylight.
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I lost the night somewhere in there. My brain got very confused. But I did not get any jet lag. It was weird. So I just I took the nap. I pushed through the rest of that day.
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I went to bed at the normal time, Italy time. And when I woke up the next day, I mean, I was like, I was there, I’m adjusted, I’m good. Like there was no no real sense of anything like jet lag. And then on the way back, it’s a longer flight on the on the way back. And on the way back, kind of the opposite happened. So I left
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very early in the morning, Italy time, and I was going to arrive at like 7pm Atlanta time, or 8pm Atlanta time, something like that. And that’s exactly what happened again I didn’t sleep at all on the plane I arrived at 8 p.m. Atlanta time which is still light out and it was light out when I left so that made sense to my brain and then I just went to bed at like midnight Atlanta time which was
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like 6 a.m. Italy time but I wasn’t all that tired for some reason I don’t know and I just woke up this morning like normal Atlanta time I feel mostly fine. I might, I don’t know, something might happen during the stream. I don’t know. Jet lag might catch up to me. I’m not sure.
0:04:32
Comfort plus ain’t much, but it’s worth the extra inch for anything over like three hours. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s just, I guess it just wasn’t what I, I guess expected. I don’t know. I felt like, I don’t know.
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Again, I had never, I didn’t know what to expect, but it was a little less than what I expected. Okay. Anyway, next time for sure though, next time, it’s not even a question, next time my ass is in a bed, okay. They got beds, I found, they got beds up front, okay. That’s the way to go. That’s the way to go. All right, so that’s, let’s just do a little
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recap. WordCamp Europe was fantastic. Italy was fantastic. Italy was, you know, beyond my expectations. WordCamp Europe was generally beyond my expectations and just the sense of what we did as a community there and the people and the friendliness, everything was fantastic. It was a really, really great experience.
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Obviously, the conference is very, very well run, okay? It’s well organized. There’s no scheduling issues. There’s no logistics issues. There’s no, none of that stuff right. It’s very very well run once again, though
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The talks were not that great. It was not there was like maybe one or two maybe one or two the rest were like You know and and it’s not just me Okay I I made it a point to like ask many many many people like what you want any talks and talks you think you find her, and literally almost every person, almost every person was like,
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eh, you know, nobody really comes for the talks. Like I’m doing the hallway track, as they call it, right? Which is essentially just networking and talking and partying outside of the actual conference, really. And to me, this is the fundamental problem, right? If you’re gonna have a conference,
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and the general understanding of all of the people who attend that conference is that the conference part isn’t all that great. Like, it’s essentially an excuse for people to travel and meet and party. That’s essentially what it’s an excuse for. The conference is just kind of there.
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It’s just happening like off to the side. And I feel like that’s a, you know, a problem. Like it’s a missed opportunity to create a really, really like, you know, a really meaningful experience, an over-the-top experience. Now, how do you do that?
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I don’t know. From what I heard, and if this is incorrect, somebody can correct me, but I think that they had 500 submissions for talks. You can’t, you can’t tell me, I’m not, I mean, I’m not easily gaslightable, okay? Or we got a bigger problem like this is terrible, terrible submissions must have been, okay? It’s like when you’re watching your favorite sport, you know, and it’s like, why is that guy on the field? Like,
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I know they got better guys than that guy, right? Like, why is that guy on the field? It’s kind of that kind of situation, right? So I don’t know, I don’t know what goes into it. I don’t know the politics behind it. But what I do know is it’s created a situation where nearly everybody says, don’t go to the talks. And to me, it’s like that should they should make a concerted
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effort to fix that. And maybe it’s not a talks thing anymore. Maybe we create little we create group experiences of some I don’t know, it we maybe need some brainstorming, but I do think it’s a problem, it’s a red flag when you have conferences where the general consensus is that the conference itself isn’t that valuable,
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that it’s the value comes from just the people that are there and traveling and partying, right? So there’s a lot of opportunity to be had there. That’s my general synopsis of WordCamp Europe. A lot of people did ask me for a comparison between the US and the EU version. To me, they were fundamentally the same.
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To me, EU was better because of one, the location, the, I mean, obviously the US goes all around and EU goes all around, but I have a WordCamp US experience in Washington, D.C. and I have an experience in Torino, Italy. I mean, I think Torino, Italy blows the doors off of Washington, DC. So as far as location goes, EU wins that.
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As far as the diversity of the people there, I just found it really awesome, you know, in the EU. Because you’re not dealing with, you know, people, oh, it’s like, oh, you’re from fucking Tennessee. Okay, you’re from Alabama. You’re from, like, they’re all the same, right?
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But in Europe, it’s like, you’ve got all these people from different countries. It just, it creates a little bit more spice. You’re cooking with more spice, you know what I’m saying? So that part was really good too. And it was just, I don’t know,
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maybe it’s because I hadn’t been out of the US before. I just felt the experience overall was probably better. Okay, it’s a little bit more bland, the US experience, a little bit more bland. Size of the conference very similar, talks very similar, but everything outside of that I feel like the EU won. Okay? All right, so that’s my little, no I did not speak. I’m thinking about submitting for some
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talks but I’ve been reluctant to because you have to put a lot of work into it and if there’s 500 submissions and I’m looking at what’s getting, it’s not making sense to my brain why the things that are being chosen are being chosen. And it gives me a lack of confidence going, I mean, the things that I would submit surely,
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they’re not like, right? It’s like, you know, one of these things is different. The things I would submit are not like the things being selected. So it almost feels like it would be a waste of time unless I hear differently from somebody in some like, you know, decision-making sector of WordCamps.
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But I will attempt to, and I will let you know how that goes, because, you know, I guess I can’t write myself out. I have to give them the opportunity to consistently reject me year after year after year after year, if that’s what it takes. Okay, Anton says, it’s surprising that the talks were poor given the amazing talents that attended, security, page builders, plug-in makers.
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Yeah, well, they don’t want to hear from page builders is my sense. There is zero talks on page builders, zero. Every talk is on the block editor or some other general WordPress concept. You know, there’s an obvious focus, okay?
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There’s a lot of accessibility talks, but they’re all very surface level. Most of everything, the general feeling is that the talks are very surface level in general. And which is odd, because I’ve always said who goes to these things?
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It’s not, if I, for example, switched to Webflow, and I was in year one of being a Webflow person, my first thought would not be, let me attend a Webflow conference. This is not typically what the early entries into WordPress are doing, or any ecosystem, right?
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The people attending WordCamps and Webflow conferences and things like this are people that are multi-year. You know, they’re becoming veterans of that community. That’s when they start attending these things, at least if I had to guess. So it doesn’t make sense to tailor talks
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toward people who aren’t even gonna be there. It also is odd to me that you would do surface level talks because you’re asking people to travel, to stay in hotels, to be away from their family, to spend money, to do this, to what? Watch, to attend a talk that could be like a 30 minute YouTube video? That doesn’t make sense to me either. There’s just some fundamental disconnects, I feel.
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But again, I don’t know what goes into this. I don’t know the demographics behind it. I’m just questioning things because they don’t seem to add up. They don’t seem to click. Okay, yeah we need to move on. So the most awkward thing about WordCamp Europe. I’m about to show you the most awkward thing about WordCamp Europe and it’s this right here. Let’s just take a look at this
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I’ll keep using Webflow as an example, okay? If Webflow was going to have a conference, you know, in the spotlight, okay, do you think that their conference website would look anything like this? There is a value to, like, and Webflow is not a bad platform. Webflow is a very good platform. I actually have a lot of respect for Webflow as a platform
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for what they’ve done in the sense that they didn’t dumb their shit down, they didn’t make it for the lowest common denominator. They decided to make a pro-level tool and teach people how to use it. They invested millions of dollars in education
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to teach people how to use their tool. Lot of respect for that, right? The other thing that they do is they take pride in their work, they take pride in how their brand is represented, they take pride in opportunities to show off what their builder, what their platform is capable of. And on the flip side, we have this.
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This is not, to be clear, this is not just a, oh look, the design’s not great, okay? I mean, objectively we know the design, this design’s not, I mean, it looks, it’s very childish, okay? And I know somebody’s feelings are getting hurt somewhere.
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Okay, somebody involved in this somewhere, their feelings are getting hurt. I don’t know how else to do this. I don’t know how else to do this. We can just look at it together, and the facts are the facts.
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I don’t know how else to say it. I don’t know what kind of sugar needs to be sprinkled on this, or pats on the backs given, or whatever. I’m just wondering how this kind of thing happens. Now, I mean, here, well, we have schedules that are two different widths. I don’t know. Everything is a random width. Everything is a magic number. Nothing lines up. Look at this. Look at this. What is where none of this, none of this lines up. This doesn’t, that’s a bad line.
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That doesn’t even line up. Nothing lines up with this. Now, this is just, we got this and we got this. We got this situation not matching this situation. I mean, I could do this for days. I could do this, but this is the, not even the most egregious part. Not even the most egregious part.
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And this actually segues us into our main topic today, our main rant today. This is a perfect segue for this. We are told, we have been told by the core development team that breakpoints are not necessary to some degree. I don’t know. They don’t provide them in Gutenberg. They don’t provide them in Gutenberg. And the general consensus is, well, these things are, you know, we’re doing modern design. I can’t remember what they call it. It’s not, it’s another name for responsive, intrinsic, intrinsic design.
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We do intrinsic design principles, right? So we don’t need breakpoints and things like this. Okay. Okay, well, that’s a claim. I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re telling me that. But when I see, like, what appears to be a fundamental like example of
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reality going in the other direction am I the bad guy for pointing it out? Am I just automatically… and by the way I don’t want this to be an echo chamber ok if you feel like I’m like out of line in any in anything I say today by all
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means let people know in the comments ok and I’m gonna I’m gonna go through why I’m doing all of this and the context behind it and yada yada yada because I think it’s insanely important I think it’s insanely important we have so much to lose WordPress and our commute we have so much to lose they like to use the stat
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that 40% of the internet is powered by WordPress I guarantee you 40% of new projects are not done on WordPress I guarantee that I guarantee the percentage of new projects being on the WordPress platform is declining, and there could very well be a day that WordPress is not the dominant platform on the internet, and that day is gonna be a bad day for all of us.
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And that day is gonna come sooner than later if somebody doesn’t start saying something, right? Like what I’m saying today. And, but people will attack me for this, and you’ll see in a moment how that’s already been happening. But let’s just look at this.
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I want you to focus on these social share icons. Again, this is built on a platform that tells, I mean, where did it go? Where is it going right now? This is built on a platform where they’ve expressly told us that intrinsic design, I mean,
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where is the navigation going right now? Okay, now it’s starting to shrink. What what is happening here? What is happening here? I’ve also been told repeatedly that the concept of Building with sections and sections having defined gutters and things like that. This is not Anything that you know, that’s just Kevin’s opinion Kevin’s just got he’s just got opinions about these things, but then but then we see What happens when other people don’t share those opinions.
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And you use a tool that encourages you to not build in that fashion, right? This is not, and none of this, none of what I do, I don’t, unless people submit a website. If people submit a website and go, Kevin, critique this thing, tear this thing apart, right?
0:18:19
Then I will nitpick it, I will talk about every detail, okay? But I don’t do that in general. I don’t do that in general. I don’t call, I don’t just, oh, let me see what this agency is doing over here. Let me pull up their thing and, oh, let me put them on a stream. No, no, no. This is a context where people have repeatedly told me,
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these people have repeatedly, maybe not the exact people who developed this website, but this community has told me these things don’t matter. Okay. And then I’m looking at it mattering, and I don’t know what to do. Do I say something? Do I not say something? How do I show people without being the bad guy?
0:18:56
I don’t really know. But I just feel like we’re all adults. I mean, we can look at the facts. Where did the navigation go? Okay, now look at this. At this break point,
0:19:08
I mean, we’ve got severe overflow issues. The design has cut itself off at this point. And by the way, this was a usability nightmare. We were all trying to use the schedule. You’re walking around a conference. You only have a phone and a tablet,
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and you’re trying to look at the, I mean, look, this is off the screen. This is off the screen. Some font sizes get bigger. Hold on, there’s a, right here, right here. Guys, where’s the menu?
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Where did the menu go? It’s not that at this one Device size the menu is not even oh, I’m sorry. It’s right there. There’s one where it’s Maybe they fixed it. No, it’s right there Where where did the menu go at this device size? It’s gone. There’s no it’s not even I just I Right and this was a nightmare. This was an absolute nightmare, right? This is how WordPress is being represented.
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Now, the other challenge with this, a lot of people were talking about this, but the other challenge with this is like, if, and you know, like we put out a website and there’s some things you’re not gonna catch. Okay, well, these are fundamental.
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These are architectural issues, like CSS architecture, HTML architecture. These are architectural issues like 101 level architectural issues. This is not nitpicking. This is not, oh look, the website has a bug.
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This is highly consequential stuff. Okay, very, very important stuff. The fact that it never got fixed at any point during the conference even to today it hasn’t been fixed. That’s mind-boggling to me. We all know like if we put out something we’re like oh my god that’s fundamentally broken what do we all do? We rush, we rush to fix it. Oh my god before more people see it let’s fix it
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let’s fix it let’s fix it. It’s just left this way it’s just left this way and and this is how WordPress, if Webflow people saw this, I mean, they’re gonna see it now, but I mean, this is like, this would be, you’re the laughing stock, right? Like, this is a huge opportunity lost
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when we do stuff like this, and I guarantee you, it will lead to WordPress declining. I mean, you can’t take this platform seriously with stuff like this being put out into the world, right? So again, am I out of line in any form or fashion here?
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Should this stuff not be pointed out? Does this stuff not matter at all? Do you guys feel the same way that I feel? I’ve got to check in. Let’s check in with chat. I don’t know. Am I suffering from severe jet lag that is
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causing an overly critical nature? Am I low on blood sugar? What is, or is this a real problem? Or is this a real problem? Okay, and this is built with Gutenberg. This is built with their core tool.
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The tool that I’ve repeatedly said does not have the necessary architecture, the necessary things to really create good outcomes, right? And they insist that it does, they insist that it does. And it’s not like this is just a random person that we just like, oh, well, that, yeah,
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that guy just doesn’t know what he’s doing. They’re the directors of the conference for the brand. I mean, somebody at some point has to say that can’t go out, that can’t ship. Okay, I don’t know why that didn’t happen. Now, if you open bricks with automatic CSS,
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like as just a juxtaposition here, you open bricks, you start building with automatic CSS, you don’t even know what you’re doing. But you start adding sections to things, at least like content wouldn’t be touching the edge of the screen. I mean, that’s not even allowed in automatic CSS. Like this situation would never happen a lot of this stuff would never
0:23:17
happen you start using frames things like that I mean the outcomes would be tremendously better tremendously better outcomes and it’s not to say that you can’t do it right with Gutenberg I’m just saying this is a really awful representation and a lot of the problems that are happening here especially responsive problems are directly because Gutenberg does not have responsive controls, guaranteed, guaranteed.
0:23:40
Okay, all right, we need to move on. So this is a segue, as I said. So before we move on, I wanna preface some of this with, I absolutely, this is not the people I was calling out, by the way. Even though by nature, they got called out,
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this is not, when I said somebody was getting called out today, that’s not them. It’s a different person. And I really hate doing this. I do not enjoy doing this. I do not do this for likes. I do not do this for views or anything else. I wish I didn’t. I wish this situation just wasn’t a situation. It shouldn’t be a situation. Just shouldn’t be. Some people lack self-awareness. Some people are actually arrogant and if they can’t back it up that’s even worse. And I want to preface this by saying that if you look at my content, if you
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look at what I do, why I’m here, the tools that I create, whatever. Look at page building 101. Page building 101, do you think page building 101 is designed for advanced people? Or is it designed to take beginners and intermediate people and give them a lot more skills and a lot more confidence? It is designed to lift people up. It is designed to elevate anybody who wants to go through it.
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It comes from a place all of my content, when I talk extra long, the reason I make a video 30 or 45 minutes is because many times I know that people will get left behind if there isn’t more context and isn’t more details and I’m not telling them the why behind things. If I just show it, show it, show it, show it, show it, only the advanced people can keep up. If I have to talk through it so that the beginners understand the logic, the reasoning, and
0:25:34
the oh okay it’s got a click for them right that takes a little bit extra time. So to think to any capacity that I don’t like beginners or I don’t like people with quote-unquote low skill, right? That’s my favorite audience because that’s where I can have a huge impact and that’s where my content has been targeted in the past. And by the way, like from my days since I was 14 years old, I’ve been an instructor, teacher, coach of some kind. I started out with a martial arts coach,
0:26:11
and I was coaching kids, and I was coaching both kids and adults alike. I had a national level competition team, and I had kids of all calibers, beginners that can’t do a damn thing, all the way up to very advanced athletes.
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I’m able to tailor content for all of those groups. I like all of those groups. I have a firm understanding that you can’t have advanced athletes unless you have beginners. I’ve done multiple martial arts, multiple skills. I’ve done multiple things in other industries,
0:26:40
in photography. When I first got into photography 20 years ago, I acknowledged, man, I fucking suck at this. I really suck, I really do suck, and I need to find people who are better than me who can help me suck less, right? There’s a self-awareness when you go into something when I started jiu-jitsu 20 years ago when I started jiu-jitsu
0:26:58
There was a fundamental understanding of most people in jiu-jitsu that you suck and you’re going to suck for a while and life is going To suck for a while. There is a fundamental understanding of that, right? Okay So I have zero problem with beginners. I love beginners. I have zero problems when beginners do beginner type things. Like they build a website and they’re like hey, hey guys I just built this new website. I don’t, you can look at me in the comments right? When people post and they’re just like hey I just made a new website you know
0:27:29
I’m learning whatever whatever. I just come in and essentially say like great job. Okay I don’t I don’t like nitpick it, tear it apart, do this and that. You only see me do that on WDD Live because people submit that, right? They ask for that to happen and so that everybody can learn, right?
0:27:45
But in normal everyday life, I don’t pull up websites and I don’t critique them. I don’t screenshot them, I don’t nitpick them, I don’t do any of that shit. And I never say, I never pretend that websites are ever like bug-free or error-free
0:27:57
or issue-free or anything like that. So I’m not in the business of nitpicking websites. So with that said, right, we get into this conversation on Twitter. Now there are people, I want to stick with the Jiu Jitsu example, okay? In Jiu Jitsu, 99 out of 100 people that sign up to participate in that sport, in that martial art, understand that as a white belt, when you walk onto the mat and it doesn’t matter if you’ve
0:28:29
taken 8,000 other martial arts, it doesn’t matter if you are an ex-wrestler, not a lot matters. You’re gonna suck and life is gonna suck and they know that and that’s gonna be like that for like the first year at least okay. It’s probably gonna suck beyond that for a little while too. There is a ginormous gap enormous gap between Somebody starting out or just any any white belt okay, and and everybody else much less like purple brown black, okay?
0:28:57
So most white belts have a self-awareness level to go. Yeah, yeah, I suck and I don’t need to be dictating things. I don’t need to be saying how it is I don’t need to be talking shit on the mats in fact that kind of ego that kind of arrogance, guess what? They just kick you out. That’s if you’re lucky. Like the American schools, they just kick you out.
0:29:21
The Brazilian schools, they beat your ass, and then they kick you out, right? Because that kind of arrogance is not tolerated in that sport. So we’re in a situation kind of the same way, right? Anybody can walk in off the streets to web design. No code, low code, these tools have reduced the barrier to entry. Anybody can sign up for Wix, Webflow, and now even WordPress
0:29:48
and just start word pressing and just start designing and I love that. I think that’s fantastic. I think that’s great because everybody’s got to start somewhere and everybody is welcome, right? Now there is a fine line between low code and low skill. A very fine line between low code and low skill and there’s two ways you can use low code
0:30:07
tools. You can use low code tools as a beginner to help you get going and help you get started. That’s totally legitimate. You can also be a very very advanced user and use low code tools to help expedite your
0:30:18
processes. And what have I always talked about? I talked about very specific things that I say, ok, and if you just want to know what I believe you can look at the actual words and arguments that I’ve made It’s very very very simple. Don’t pretend that I’ve said things don’t make shit up. Just look at what I’ve actually said Okay, if you are going to use a tool to expedite your workflow
0:30:39
I did this comparison the beginning of page voting 101. Why do I choose bricks because it codes the thing? Essentially the way I would do it if I was doing it by hand. So therefore, it is a viable tool for expediting workflow because there’s not a reduction in quality, there’s not a bloating of the code, there’s not a messing up of the infrastructure, it’s not asking me to ignore best practices, it’s giving me all the things that I need but essentially it’s making everything faster.
0:31:11
That’s not cutting corners, that’s taking a shortcut, right? You can get from point A to B faster, and maybe the word shortcut’s not even the best word. Maybe you just go faster, that’s it. From point A to point B, you just go faster. Cutting corners, on the other hand, is skimping.
0:31:30
It’s removing things that are actually very important just so you can get to the finish line faster. We know that that, and so a lot of low-code tools do that, right? They mess up the architecture, they encourage bad practices, they destroy maintainability, they bloat the code base, they do a lot of things that they’re not supposed to be doing. There is huge differences between those two situations.
0:31:53
An advanced user who says, I know what I’m doing, and I know exactly what this tool is doing, and I’ve chosen this tool because it facilitates a professional workflow and it just allows me to get to the finish line faster. Fundamentally different between a tool over here being used by a low code slash low skill user going no, no, no, I can do it way faster over here,
0:32:15
look, and then somebody says, but look at all this stuff that’s missing. Look at all this stuff you don’t actually know that’s going wrong. And so yeah, I hear you saying that, but there is a fundamental difference between the
0:32:26
platforms. Okay that’s like a white belt that’s like a white belt walking into the jujitsu school going oh this shit doesn’t matter that doesn’t matter the technique doesn’t matter so I’m the best I do you know put me with anybody. Okay that person like you’re gonna be embarrassed very quickly very very quickly because you I know in your mind you think these things, but you can’t just manufacture the skill to back them up. The first minute somebody shakes hands with you and starts rolling, it’s a wrap.
0:32:59
And I don’t know why they think that this isn’t the case. And again, that’s not tolerated, because that level of arrogance has no actual value. It only creates problems. And these are real problems. Okay, so let me let me pull this up here. So, and this is all public, I’m not sharing you DMs or anything else, this is just this is all publicly available, so I mean the person’s going to have the public conversation, let’s have the
0:33:24
public conversation. So here’s Daniel, it starts out like this, this is the first tweet that I see. I’ve been having a lot of success with CadenceWP and Spectra for building sites, sites no code in WordPress a big proponent of no code which I still think in a lot of ways is low code but whatever as a developer this has been
0:33:44
lovely it’s like somebody petting my brain and wrapping it in a warm blanket I don’t have to think about syntax instead I can create which I understand that I understand having those warms and fuzzies okay and and if the tool can
0:33:56
give you those warms and fuzzies and but it doesn’t it doesn’t cut corners it doesn’t create fundamental problems, that would be fantastic. But cadence and spectra do create fundamental problems as we’ve discussed in the past.
0:34:09
So anyway, I just wrote a fairly innocent comment. The problem with flocking, and this goes along the lines of all the talks about AI recently. The problem with flocking to pure no-code in this fashion, besides a big lack of maintainability and best practices in most cases
0:34:27
is that you’re rushing toward AI obsolescence. The easy work workers will get replaced first, okay? So we’re going in the wrong direction. You’re racing towards the workflow that AI can easily replicate. That just seems, you know, like not a great thing to me.
0:34:44
Whereas the more skill you acquire, the more you actually know your shit, the more you can actually think at a higher level. AI can’t do that yet. It’s going to be a lot longer before it can. You’re going to stick around a lot longer. Okay? And again, we’re professionals, supposedly, and we’re going to get into this more in a minute. The idea behind professional versus professionalism and how people pretend that the word professional
0:35:10
isn’t actually related to the word professionalism. That’s a really, some of this stuff is mind-boggling. I feel like there’s a lot of gaslighting going on, but maybe it’s just, I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. I’m not gonna make assumptions about people’s motives. All I can say is the words coming out of their mouth
0:35:29
don’t make any sense. Okay, anyway, he responds with, but I don’t care. Okay, great, fantastic. Which I replied, sure, this comment was for others as well. Because this is part of like debate and I do want to say before we go any
0:35:44
further, Daniel was invited to a debate. He was invited, we, we, this could have been just a public debate, he declined. So I just have to do this as a stream because the person that was involved is not willing to actually debate. Okay, so you
0:35:58
have more, more background information. Anyway I kind of left it at that. I was like alright well I mean this comment was for others as well. So I just essentially walked away and then I come back to more things happening right. Okay so he says okay yeah he replies to this and he says so we keep making things hard on purpose for people? Okay making it hard on purpose. Remember the context is we’re trying to do professional work like with
0:36:29
some degree of professionalism and workmanship and like knowing what you’re actually doing and he sums that up as so we’re making things hard on people. That’s like if you were like hey I want to be a lawyer you know I really want to be a lawyer or or I want to be a black belt in jiu-jitsu. Okay well it takes a lot of fucking time and pain and like practice and study to do that. Whether it’s a lawyer or a black belt in Jiu Jitsu or a doctor or whatever else. And imagine a Jiu Jitsu black belt saying like, okay, and your instructor being like,
0:37:05
well, I mean it’s going to take a lot of hours on the mat, it’s going to take a lot of study, it’s going to take a lot of practice, it’s going to take a lot of grind, it’s going to be very uncomfortable, and you’re just like, we’re just going to keep making it harder on people on purpose. What value does that what does that have to do with anything? What do you want the alternative
0:37:23
to be? Do people magically know what they’re doing in this highly technical industry? I don’t know what the value of that statement is or that argument. You wouldn’t make that argument in any other industry or any other
0:37:36
context and he said the excessive tooling and memorization is ridiculous. The excessive bar exam to get this law degree is fucking ridiculous. Like, I’m sorry, there’s things you have to know. There’s prerequisites. Skill does take time to acquire.
0:37:56
You can’t just jump in and start complaining. This is literally like as we go through this, just imagine a white belt randomly walking around the mat just ranting about, like, everything’s so hard, there’s gatekeepers, there’s this and that. Just imagine that. Just imagine that in your head, because that’s exactly what’s happening.
0:38:15
And he says, that’s gatekeeping. That’s gatekeeping. We’re going to come back to this term gatekeeping, because they try to beat you over the head as if this is some awful thing. Oh my God, the gatekeeping, the gatekeepers. Okay, you wanna make your money that way,
0:38:31
still have at it. If a bot can do what I do, then I’d have 100 of them running to make my own agency and finally get out of the rat race to spend time with my family. Okay, well that’s a red flag too.
0:38:40
I came from literally food stamps and HUD housing, I’m out of here one day. Okay, I don’t know why he’s pointing all of this stuff out or what does this have to do with the conversation at hand? But anyway, I reply, it’s much harder to use tools that don’t have fundamental capabilities,
0:38:55
that don’t check massively important boxes, and that output really bad code. Like, because he’s talking about how hard it is. Well, it’s hard for somebody to use a tool that’s not actually capable of doing the job well. If I use a tool that’s capable, it’s actually much easier.
0:39:11
If I know what I’m doing, and I use a capable tool, my job is actually very easy. That’s the whole point of using the tool. We already talked about getting from point A to point B faster. But if you don’t know what you’re doing,
0:39:22
then for sure you feel like it’s extra work because that’s life. Life is to get good at something is extra work. Life to know what you’re doing in a highly technical industry is extra work. You’re right, okay?
0:39:35
And again, you don’t know because you’re a white belt. You’re a white belt. And how do we know you’re a white belt? Well, we can look. I mean, when you tap hands with somebody on the mat, it’s like, imagine somebody ranting about all these things. And then every time they tap hands, they just get destroyed. And it’s like, why is this guy here ranting? What is this guy? What is the value of this, right? Just kick him out. We don’t need this anymore. There’s no value. So we’ll look.
0:39:57
We’ll look. We’ll just see. You can tell when somebody’s a white belt, you can tell, okay? All right, so then he comes back. All right, who defines really bad code? There’s this other thing where they want, where’s the governing body? Who defines, oh, it’s you, you’re gonna define it?
0:40:16
Well, who gave you the right to define? This is like how they try to go after you, okay? He says, I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years. I hope not, I hope that’s not true. I hope that’s not true. I reckon you have as well. We’ve all seen this before. Every few years is a battle between simplicity and complexity
0:40:35
and the key tenants are always a whizzy wig makes terrible code. I mean, if it does, then it does. What else do you want somebody to say? If it does, it does. They don’t have to. As Bricks has shown, as Webflow has shown, I mean, they don’t have to, but a lot of them do. So what, do you want us to pretend like they don’t in those cases? It can’t do complex code.
0:40:59
It’s not the right way. Well, I mean, there are things that objectively aren’t the right way. You can’t change real budgets with that. Forget work, okay, I don’t know what he’s ranting about. None of that is true now.
0:41:08
Okay, he’s telling me, remember he’s defending Spectra and Astra. Okay, none of that is true now. I’m telling you, that’s all crap. Remember the white belt? Oh, all that technique shit you guys do
0:41:19
in the back room over there, you black belts, you brown belts, you purple belts, that’s all crap. That’s all crap. Tap gloves gets destroyed, okay? I’m telling you that’s all crap. I’m too old to keep playing this lie
0:41:29
to justify the gatekeeping. Here it is again, my God, their favorite word, that no code in WordPress is inferior in some way. The sites load fast, a pleasant experience for developers and designers and the client no one guys No one is left behind. No one is left behind Y’all want to keep coding every class be my guess huh y’all want to keep doing all that blackmail shit
0:41:51
Be my guess right I know the better way Tap gloves gets destroyed, okay I’ll be dragging and dropping over here and only using code in the smallest use cases where a plug-in hasn’t made a UI yet. Okay and I just go on to say like yeah okay you can say this stuff right but there’s things that are proven and not proven the proof is in the pudding my friend and if you’re putting tastes like shit then that’s a problem right okay so let’s let’s keep going so anyway I left it at
0:42:20
that I was like fuck whatever okay he’s not getting it he’s not get I just I was at the conference I was doing conference stuff I’m not trying to like have this debate, all right? Then this pops up on my screen. I don’t think people get it. Okay, what don’t we get? What don’t we get?
0:42:37
This build was made pixel perfect from designs and sketch with cadence in two weeks working at night after a full day of my nine to five. That is the power of what we can do now with WordPress. Okay? Okay, now, if somebody says,
0:42:55
now if somebody’s like, hey, just look what this tool allowed me to do. I feel like I did a fairly good job with it. It was a tight timeline or whatever. It was a low budget, whatever. I feel, no, no, no, no, no.
0:43:06
He says, I don’t think people get it. You talking about me? You like, you mean I don’t get it. Well, let me see. What don’t I get? What don’t I get? Uh, this build was made pixel perfect That’s a claim boy, that is a click. That is a that’s a tall claim
0:43:26
That’s like a white belt going like nah, my shit’s perfect dog. I got you on lockdown Okay. Okay. All right. All right, so I was like, well, let’s let’s just take a look at it. Let’s just take a look. I mean, it’s pixel perfect, right? OK. Well, I started going, I’m like, all right, on desktop.
0:43:46
All right. OK. Fine, fine. All right. I mean, it’s not super exciting. The fuck is this?
0:43:54
We have to say, this is the same problem that we just saw with the WCEU site. I mean, this points to a, this is 101, this is, again, this is not nitpicking, this is architectural failure. A fundamental failure of just general web design principles.
0:44:11
I mean you can’t tell me, if you’ve been in this game 20 years and your hero section doesn’t have a gutter, right, and then it’s just, it’s kind of random all the way down, I mean we got stuff touching the edge of the screen over here um, you know, it’s just
0:44:29
I mean you could you could You can look through again the proof is in the pudding It’s like yeah The white belt can talk and talk and talk and talk and talk but some point they got to shake hands And a match is going to happen and and then you watch them get destroyed and it’s like man that guy talked a lot for like
0:44:45
Not a lot to show for it you know what I’m saying like you know again the proof is in the pudding and again this is not nitpicking this is fundamental architectural issues if we go and and again this is a this is a pixel perfect website I’m sorry you must be you must be insulting your designer because if this was what your designer gave you they should be fired too right this I can guarantee this is not what the designer gave. So this is not pixel perfect
0:45:19
I mean we have these claims. That’s a bold claim the bold claim right bold claim We’re not seeing it. We’re not seeing it play out in real life. Okay All right. Let’s let’s look at this. This is who I mean you could because you know again measuring things, right? Let’s go compute it padding 89 89 okay I inspect this where’s the actual parent because this div section is a little bit hard to find 20 and 96 okay those don’t match check it out here okay let’s come in this one a hundred
0:45:57
and zero so we have three sections bumped up against each other that three fundamentally different values. Why does this one have zero at the bottom? Why does this one have zero? Let’s go to what’s happening here.
0:46:10
Hold on. Well let’s look at this one. By the way none of them none of them are sections. None of them are sections. You know we don’t have any there’s no summit. What? Margin top 100 pixels. Margin top 100 pixels. Why is that like that?
0:46:25
That doesn’t need to have a margin top of 100 pixels. In fact the margin top of 100 pixels creates a dead zone in this website. You can’t, that’s an unstyleable no-man’s area. We covered this in page building 101. This is stuff you would learn in year one of web design. This is, this can’t be year 20. This can’t be year 20. Again this is not nitpicking, this is like 101, not the box not checked for 101. Okay, we got all different gap values, all different font sizes going everywhere.
0:46:59
I mean, you could just continue to we don’t have to go through the whole thing. But what I’m saying is, right, imagine the white belt going around ranting, talking shit to everybody saying you don’t have to do this, you don’t have to do that. By the way, this guy personally insulted me multiple times, okay, he changed his profile to like try to clown on me. I mean look at his profile. Look at this, just updated my profile with some fresh perspective, five-star website builder, and then he’s like quoting me. You’re the white belt, right?
0:47:33
You’re going to go clown on like the brown belts and black belts? The arrogance, the arrogance. And then to, like, but you can’t back it up at all. Like you can’t even start to back it up. You can’t even start to back it up. Where’s the case study here? Now, this was another one.
0:47:52
Let me go down here. Oh, then he starts to, he gets real wild, right? Cause I pointed it out. I was like, where did I comment? Yeah, here we go, here we go. So I just screenshotted the hero and I was
0:48:04
like so can this be a case study for our previous conversation and then of course we have to challenge the idea that anything is pixel part is not even possible but like you know we know that’s that’s not a representation of what his designer designed but it’s again if this was a if this was a when a white belt goes guys I’m a white belt like I’m learning I’m trying to get better at this, like, or I’m a blue belt or whatever, like, yeah, because the culture of the other culture of jujitsu
0:48:32
is that the 99 people out of 100 who know they are white belts, and who acknowledge that they don’t know, and they definitely don’t know what’s best, right? They don’t really know all that much. They also definitely don’t know what’s best. The black belts and brown belts and purple belts and blue belts all bend over backwards to help them get better, to teach them, right?
0:48:55
To help them because there’s a, that’s the culture. The culture is, hey, we are all here to learn and grow. But when you have a white belt just walking in circles, talking shit to everybody, like they don’t like that. They don’t like that. And that’s what’s happening here, essentially.
0:49:10
This is not a good thing. Like this should be happening in the industry. So, okay, let’s keep going. He goes on a rant about, he’s asking all these questions, right? Who defines, who defines what a five-star website is?
0:49:25
Well, first of all, back up. I didn’t even say anything about five-star. Somebody else in the comments said they were trying to make an argument saying, well, not every client needs a five-star website, okay? And my point was, actually you’re right,
0:49:38
not every client needs a five star website. But the client, if they think they’re getting five stars, or they think they’re getting four stars, or they think they’re getting three stars, and the reference was related to like restaurants, like five star restaurant, right?
0:49:49
Like there’s five star restaurants and there’s McDonald’s. And the market is the market, and some people want McDonald’s, and some people want five stars. Absolutely, okay? The problem is, if a client thinks,
0:50:02
and they’re paying for and they’re expecting five stars or four stars or three stars or two stars, because you know your shit, you’ve been in the industry for 20 years, you talk so much shit on Twitter, right?
0:50:13
And then you give them McDonald’s, that’s a problem. That’s a big disconnect. And the clients don’t know. The clients don’t know how to vet developers, okay? So what does a client make this decision based on? Okay, there’s an expectation of workmanship,
0:50:34
an expectation of professionalism. Now, Daniel in here goes on to say that a professional is somebody who makes money from what they do. That’s how, and he’s not alone, a lot of people in his position,
0:50:48
that’s how they define professional and that is the most disingenuous definition of professional that there ever was. If somebody says that that’s essentially what defines a professional they are gaslighting you. They are gaslighting you because all you have to do is go define professionalism and you just read it and it says right there really fucking big The competence, competence or skill expected of a professional, root word professional,
0:51:21
right? Professionalism is the competence or skill expected. There is an expectation of skill. There’s an expectation of competence. When I go to the mechanic, okay, I don’t say, by the way, are you planning on using duct tape and bubble gum to fix my shit? No, because there’s an expectation of workmanship and competence and skill. I hand over my car to this professional mechanic thinking that professional things are going to happen under the hood while I’m not there because I don’t know if I knew I might do it myself, but I don’t so I got to drop it off with this guy. And instead of like, you know,
0:52:03
grilling him on every little detail, there’s an expectation of workmanship. Now this is a big problem in an industry where there is no oversight. There is no oversight. There’s no, there’s nobody handing out licenses
0:52:17
and degrees and all this stuff, and I don’t think there should be, that’s fine. I think we can self-regulate. And that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m self-regulating, okay? We’re self-regulating the industry.
0:52:27
When somebody is walking around in circles, talking mad shit, and they can’t back it up, and their clients are getting this kind of output, this is how we self-regulate, right? And we do it with the comments of guys, like, hey, all of us, let’s work to a higher standard.
0:52:44
Let’s work to more professional standards. Let’s get our level of workmanship up. Let’s care about the craft, okay? That kind of messaging is helping to self-regulate the industry. You know why I do this with Page Building 101?
0:53:00
Because everybody who does actually care about their own work and about their own skill and about getting better and growing and being smarter and being better and all this other stuff, like just as most humans actually do,
0:53:13
they get on board with it. And when they get on board with it, the whole industry gets better. And then there are the voices that say, no, no, no, no, no, no, there’s no standards, there’s no professionalism, who gets to define that?
0:53:25
No, everybody do your own thing, everybody use your own tools, do whatever that feels good, do whatever you like, talk mad shit on Twitter. The industry goes in the wrong direction because of those people, they’re pulling the industry down.
0:53:38
And then you see the work output and you see things like the WCEU website where we have the potential for something like WordPress to just be clowned on because because of these this kind of thinking just worming its way through the entire
0:53:53
industry and again I’m the bad guy I’m the bad guy right because this is what I got to spend my time doing on a live stream. Instead of educating now, we got to pause and we got to do this stuff. Ok, it shouldn’t be happening. Just like there shouldn’t be a white belt roaming around on the mats talking shit to everybody.
0:54:11
That should not be happening. Ok, we should all focus on learning jujitsu together, not dealing with this arrogance. That’s what we should be doing. It’s a waste of time. Ok, so but it’s got to happen. It’s got to happen. Alright, so he starts asking these other questions. What decides what the measurement of quality is? Who feels? They have the ego to dictate that on others. It’s not ego, it’s not ego to say, my guy, like there’s professional standards, we
0:54:38
should work to them. That’s not ego. Ego is the white belt walking around that doesn’t know the first thing, can’t demonstrate the first thing, who gets crushed in every match, still talking shit. That’s ego. That’s pure ego, pure arrogance, plain and simple. It’s not ego for the black belt to say, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
0:55:00
Like get off the mats, get off the mat. That’s not ego, that’s not ego. That’s leadership, that’s confidence, that’s protecting what’s going on in that gym, guaranteed. Again, I’m using examples from outside this industry because I think it makes it easy and it has a little bit of an emotional disconnect and it just should show it plain as day.
0:55:22
What gives anyone the right to criticize another peer in their profession? Now it’s going to be, oh, woe is me. Oh my God, I’m the victim now. I’m the victim now. To criticize another peer in their profession for the quality of their work without what I wasn’t. I didn’t care about the quality of his work at all until the chatter started,
0:55:46
right? Oh, no, you can do whatever you want with these. Oh, yeah, it doesn’t matter. Oh, you don’t need your standards. We don’t need your anything. That’s when that’s when you open yourself up. That’s just like the white belt. Nobody has a problem with a white belt. It’s like, guys, I’m here. I’m here to learn. I’m here to get better. I’m here to do this, I love this jujitsu thing, I love rolling with you guys. Nobody has a problem with that white belt.
0:56:07
People only have a problem with the white belt is talking shit, right? Okay, so you know, it is what it is. Who decides what corner cutting is? Who decides what success is? Who decides what tools are professional and what aren’t? I mean, I guess the people with actual experience, right? The people with actual skill who can back it up, who have backed it up,
0:56:29
right? Those people probably, like more so than the person that can’t, right? Okay, I don’t know what we’re talking about here. The answer is plain and simple is you, oh guess what guys? Guess what? Hey, all you lawyers out there, yeah, you don’t have to worry about the bar exam. You get to determine how good of a lawyer you are. Hey, all doctors out there, oh yeah, you don’t need to pass anything. You don’t need to show your skills before you go operate on somebody’s brain.
0:56:55
You get to decide. It’s you, it’s all you, it’s all you, okay? Do what empowers you to do the best work you can to achieve the best outcome for the end user and the stakeholders. Don’t listen to zealots.
0:57:06
Don’t listen to zealots putting down tools or making up rules of what a professional is. Are you getting paid? Excellent, you’re a professional now choose your tools and keep leveling up as you see fit I despise gatekeepers there’s a reason there is gatekeeping in law there’s a reason there’s gatekeeping in medicine
0:57:27
there’s a reason there’s gatekeeping in mechanics there’s a actually there it doesn’t even we don’t even need a real gatekeeper there’s no real gatekeepers in photography for example there’s no real gatekeepers. Your skill or lack thereof and the work that you put out, that’s the gatekeeper. Like, the human brain is the gatekeeper because the human brain can only learn so fast and it can only acquire skills so fast. That’s what’s gatekeeping you, okay?
0:57:54
It’s not some person going, hey, I mean, you know, you should probably know what you’re doing. You know, when you talk like this, you should probably know what you’re that’s not gatekeeping. Telling somebody hey this is a highly technical industry there’s a lot to learn. That’s not gatekeeping. That’s not gatekeeping and the no code tools the low code tools those don’t actually open the gate for people. Those do not
0:58:17
actually open the gate for people. They give people, they make people overly confident. They make people suddenly lack self-awareness. Okay, they do a lot of things, they don’t actually open the gate. They don’t actually open the gate. And to think that like saying,
0:58:35
oh well, you know, we should learn in a structured manner, we should work to these standards, oh my God, gatekeeping, gatekeeper, alert, red alert, gatekeeper. Okay, well, actually our clients need us to do a little bit of that gatekeeping.
0:58:47
Our clients, because there’s an expectation of workmanship, because there’s an expectation of professionalism, our clients as an industry kind of rely on, you know, some of the people, like you know, just like a gym relies on the black belts and brown belts and purple belts to be like, nah dog, quit walking around talking shit, okay? They need that. That’s the regulation that’s needed.
0:59:08
That’s where it comes from. So who, I mean it doesn’t have to be me, but I’m not the only one I’m not the only one and you can’t just discredit me by claiming that nobody gets to do this. What do you mean nobody gets to do this? Just like you are free to say nobody gets to do this, I’m free to say whatever I want back at you and I’m free to take a screenshot of your shit when you’re talking shit.
0:59:31
Yeah I don’t do that to anybody else but if they’re talking shit I mean you have to right? There’s only one way to show the pudding tastes like shit than to taste it. Okay. All right. He also makes this statement. Somebody said, I’ve yet to have accessibility out of the box with no code tools.
0:59:49
Curious how you get there with the blocks. Real genuine question. And then he goes on to say, like, have you built a site with these tools? Have you looked at the accessibility on the front end? Everything they provide looks to pass. At least that’s what I see with the wave tool.
1:00:04
Any errors I’ve encountered are from humans for getting alt text and skipping headings and color contrast and hiding a form. That’s where, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, well, VirtueFoundation.org, right? There’s that one and then there’s no Heritage Village.
1:00:20
There’s another one, okay? Let’s go to Heritage Village. Because you know, you might say to yourself, well, I mean, that was just one website. I mean, maybe you forgot a gutter in the hero section or something. Okay, see, I’m selecting with the keyboard, the volunteer button.
1:00:34
You see, I’m selecting the button next to it. You can’t fucking tell that I’m selecting it. It’s because that is failing accessibility. This whole website fails accessibility. I can’t see that I’m selecting half of the stuff. None of the buttons, none of the buttons have focus styles on the keyboard.
1:00:48
None of it. Oh, but these no code tools, guys, they have no problems. No problems with accessibility. I mean, ignore the fact that they’ve been accessibility tested to death. The main navigation is not accessible. I’m tabbing right now and can’t tell, right? But guys, don’t worry. These no-code tools, they make it so easy to do your thing, right? You don’t even have to know. There don’t have to be any of these standards or anything else. I mean, they don’t have any problems with accessibility. I mean,
1:01:15
nothing right. Again, again, my guy, the proof is in the pudding. Okay, it’s putting tastes like shit. All right. So what are we going to do? What are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about it? Now again, it’s like, hey, hey, I want to learn I’m just again, I think they try to act like, like, Oh, man, you’re such a bully. You just go around bullying. But no, no, no, no. Again, I don’t do this. I hate doing it.
1:01:43
But if there’s a white belt walking around in circles on the mat talking shit to people, somebody’s gotta be like, that’s not cool. Right? Stop doing that. Stop doing that.
1:01:52
This is not 20 years in the game. This right here is not 20 years in the game. This whole layout right here is not 20 years in the game. And I don’t care how much they paid for this. I would do this site for free. I didn’t care.
1:02:04
If I’m not getting paid at all it’s not going to end up like this and then we can just look I mean where the fundamental problems continue to occur what is this this is architectural a lack of 101 level understanding of web
1:02:19
design there is no ifs ands or buts about it first of all it’s over like ever there’s no gutter the website on most sections has no gutter this is content such as the gutter the gut remember I tell you how I tell you
1:02:35
guys in PB 101 like how a consistent gutter is super important we have none you got 40 pixels you got six pixels you got I mean just random it look at look at this randomness random all the spacing random all the font sizes are random.
1:02:54
Again the proof is in the pudding. Now again, it’s telling me gaslighting, gaslighting with the arrogance of all these tools. Nobody needs the standards, nobody needs to learn, quit being a gatekeeper, there’s no such thing as professional level work unless you’re getting paid, you’re a professional. You determine what professionalism is, you determine what workmanship is. This is, we are, we, all of us, are being gaslit
1:03:18
to no end by these people, okay? It’s fine, somebody’s like, no, no, no, we’re putting our foot down now. This is not, if you want to come into the game as like a top tier designer, and use it like, people in Webflow do this all the time,
1:03:33
but, you know, Webflow has educated them on how to actually do this stuff and they actually have design talent. Okay. There’s cases to be made in some of these areas, but this, you don’t get to have an opinion.
1:03:48
You don’t get to have an opinion. Okay. And again, maybe this site was donated. If I donated this site, it would still be light years better because again, it goes back to like your pride, the pride in what you do, in the work you do.
1:04:07
Okay, all right, we gotta switch gears. There’s one more thing I had to, you know, that kind of speaks to this. It’s a little bit milder, but I think it’s very important to go over because there’s the gatekeeping thing
1:04:19
and there’s the tribalism thing. You’re gonna keep hearing these key words over and over and they just beat you over the head with them. Oh, these things are so bad, they’re toxic, they’re this, they’re that, okay? All right, so what I wanna do is I wanna pull up,
1:04:32
this is a live stream, it was on Mark Szymanski’s channel. And I wrote, oh, hold on, let me see if I’m gonna be able to, hold on, hold on, hold on, mix minus, maybe, maybe. You can see his work for agencies, whatever we’re doing. All right, hold on, let’s see. We’re gonna have to try to get the audio to pull up here like through so you guys can hear it
1:04:51
let’s see let’s see let’s see let’s see so we’re gonna go to sound sound sound sound sound okay sound output input output output external headphone port maybe okay all right let’s try this let’s try this fuck okay hold on. One of these is gonna work. Just bear with me. Built-in, oh, a capture too. Maybe that’ll work. Communities on Facebook and on-
1:05:20
Okay, can you guys hear that in the stream? Like, can you hear it better? Oh, you guys can hear it? You can hear it clearly? Oh, I wasn’t hearing it. I was- okay. Can you hear it now? YouTube that watch our stuff and they’re like- Like, they’re all in a different place in the world. Okay.
1:05:40
Is it still working? I know you could hear it. I’m just saying, is it still working? Is it still working? Okay, good, good, good. I’m going to skip to 125.
1:05:56
They’re talking about tribalism and things like that. Yeah, I’ll try to bump the audio up too. I know it’s not even full volume on here. Okay, and so we’re gonna hear Jonathan’s part. Now, I’ll preface this with, I think Jonathan’s a really great guy, okay?
1:06:15
And I spent tons of time hanging out with Jonathan at WordCamp US. And I have zero problems with Jonathan, like personally, right? So we’re just gonna listen to this and I just have a strong disagreement with this outlook.
1:06:32
And I think it, again, and it’s because it’s an influencer, right? An influencer doing it, it makes it a little bit worse. It makes it a little bit worse. But let’s just go ahead and listen. I think that’s what I’ve learned, honestly,
1:06:46
in just my short time of trying to do more community stuff. So I’m just trying to share that with other people as well. I think we all should. I was gonna say, Mark, your point, speaking of resonation, I really resonated with, because the tribalism around the tools is…
1:07:07
The other thing I should probably preface this is I probably wouldn’t have played this clip if he didn’t take a cheap shot at me at the end, okay? So that’s kind of the why behind this, but it’s still important to talk about. Actually a complete waste of time.
1:07:22
Why do you need to keyboard warrior and demand everybody else use this thing that you perceive as the best? Because like you said, you’re coming from a different perspective, a different. Okay, the way people talk to a certain degree tries to get you, tries to evoke a specific
1:07:45
emotion. Okay. So let’s say that somebody is advocating for their tool. Now to be very clear, there’s bad advocation for tools. Like there are just dumb tribalist advocates for tools, like where you’re like, Oh, just bricks is the best.
1:08:00
Don’t use anything else. But they can’t articulate why. They don’t actually know why, or maybe it’s just because they prefer it, and this works both ways. There’s like Elementor users who don’t actually know what they’re doing who will tell you to the last breath that Elementor is the best page builder that ever existed.
1:08:16
But again, they can’t articulate why. They can’t articulate why. But then there are people that can tell you, guys, this tool is really superior to all the other tools on the market and then show you in detail why that’s true. Okay, those are two different people. You can’t lump those two people together
1:08:35
and talk about them as if they’re the same person, right? And he’s gonna use an example here in a minute that’s gonna dumb this down even more and make it seem like this is all just really dumb talk, right? When it’s actually very important.
1:08:47
Why do you need to keyboard warrior? So he uses that phrase, why do you need to keyboard warrior? Now, a keyboard warrior is somebody who attacks people personally, right? Who says like, Oh, yeah, if you were here, you know, I would be the shaggy that could that’s
1:09:01
keyboard warrioring, right? articulating why page builder is technically superior to another page. That’s not keyboard warrioring, right? But he’s, he’s trying to like evoke this emotion and you like, oh yeah I hate keyboard warriors, right? Yeah, so I naturally hate the people that do this kind of thing. But those are two very different things. That’s not fair. That’s a disingenuous way to represent people
1:09:25
who are involved in these discussions. And demand everybody else use this thing that you perceive is the best. Demand that everybody use what you perceive. I don’t know anybody that’s been demanding that anybody do anything, right? There are advocates, but I haven’t heard anybody demand or make any demands. Like what are the consequences of the demand?
1:09:46
I don’t know. But again, that’s it’s like loaded language trying to evoke an emotion, instead of just making an actual point. Because like you said, you’re coming from a different perspective, a different geographical location, different financial objectives and incentives, you know, your, your calculus is different. And it’s like, to me, it’s as stupid as people who are like, Ford versus Chevy.
1:10:11
Oh, my F-150 is the best truck. Hell yeah, brother. Like, hell yeah. Yeah, Chevy. Hell yeah, brother. So he reduces this whole, like, an actually very, very technical discussion down to like, oh, it’s Ford versus Chevy. Like, and, and, you know, the Southern accent is like, you know, brought in. Oh yeah.
1:10:29
Look at this dumb, this dumb ass, like discussion that everybody has is if there’s no value in it whatsoever. There’s no merit to it whatsoever. Right. Okay. Uh, let’s keep going.
1:10:42
Uh, what was the, Oh, three 41. Just fast forward a little bit. So, you know, imagine if the effort was spent like lifting each other up. Yeah, we imagine if the effort was spent lifting each other up. Okay, we can’t lift each other up if there’s people actively tearing down what the people doing the lifting up are trying to do. So again, we go back to what is page building 101 trying to do? It’s trying to take people who are newer
1:11:07
in the game and lesser skilled and who want more confidence and want more knowledge and what they want everything better for themselves. And it’s like, okay, let’s try to work on setting some standards. Let’s try to make sure that our workmanship level is high. Let’s try to put processes in place. Let’s try to put structure into this industry
1:11:26
and the workflows and the tools that we’re using. And then somebody is coming along going, no, no, no, no. And by the way, there’s thousands of people going through page voting 101, say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. This is so amazing.
1:11:36
I’m so much more confident so much more than just ignore all of that this is Ford versus Chevy bullshit right that’s you who’s doing that I’m sorry who’s doing the tearing down right now who’s right don’t we all get better when
1:11:51
the industry self-regulates and says like hey there should be some standards there should be some processes there should be a level of an expected level of workmanship that to me is how you lift. Okay. And then coming in and suggesting that that kind of conversation is dumb, or
1:12:10
valueless or a waste of time or what that seems to me like that’s actually doing the tearing down. Let’s keep going. Use different tools. But like, here’s, you know, some information on like, why you might consider using XYZ tool not you’re an idiot. You’re a dumbass for okay. I don’t know anybody that’s called anybody an idiot I don’t know anybody that’s called anybody a dumbass for using a specific tool
1:12:33
Okay using this you’re inferior to me. You know you’re a chump like all that shit is so whack okay? There’s the call-out you’re a chump And this actually does like this it irks me to no end because everybody who watches this channel Anybody who’s been following for any length of time understands the context of the word chump. It’s the same context where in jiu-jitsu, for example,
1:13:01
somebody will show a technique. And we all know, you can look up endless amount of videos, right? Of people demonstrating martial arts techniques that are absolute bullshit, right? Okay, and in jiu-jitsu, like, it’s very common where a white belt
1:13:14
will be working with a blue belt or a purple belt and they’re asking questions and they’ll be like, okay, but I found out that if I do this, it’s been working really well. And the blue belt, purple belt, whatever will say, yeah, that’s white belt bullshit, right?
1:13:27
Like, that does work on other white belts, it ain’t gonna work on anybody else, okay? And so, they use that, that’s white belt bullshit. It’s kind of like calling out white belts. Like, white belts don’t really know what they’re doing right they don’t know they don’t know much of anything um it’s not a personal attack it’s a way to to
1:13:44
show like there’s white belt shit and there’s black belt shit okay and if you’re a white belt shit and you’re doing white belt shit things you should acknowledge that yeah i’m a fucking white i’m doing white belt shit and then what you’ll hear is uh you know a brown belt going against a brown belt or something and they make a mistake and they get caught and they get tapped and they’ll be like, fuck, I did some white belt bullshit. They’ll call themselves out, just like in videos
1:14:07
where I’ve called myself out because I make a mistake on something and I gotta go back and fix like eight different elements. I’ll be like, damn, that was some chump shit right there. Call myself out because it’s just a word used in the context also, like boosting the entertainment value.
1:14:24
But if you saw the emails that I get, Kevin, before page voting one-on-one, man, I was doing so much Trump shit. I feel so much better now. Like I’m, I’m, I’m elevated my, they use the O the word on themselves. Just like I use the word on myself, just like a white belt calls themselves a white belt and doing white belt
1:14:40
bullshit. Just like a Brown belt might say, I did white belt bullshit when I made that mistake, right? It’s just a way to acknowledge that in life in skill development, there’s white belt shit and there’s black belt shit. That’s it. Okay? It’s not anything beyond that, but they try to make it beyond that like I’m like I’m bullying people like, oh man this guy’s so bad, so mean, right?
1:15:00
It’s not that. That’s why thousands and thousands of people use that term on themselves now and and continue watching my videos and playing the game as I’m playing it. And it’s why I use the word on myself so to make it seem like he’s putting it in this conversation that’s such a bad thing man it’s so disingenuous it’s so disingenuous to act like that’s what I’m doing when literally every video I create is targeted at helping beginners and
1:15:30
intermediate people get better that my entire channel is dedicated to that and they’re gonna act like like a sudden suddenly Kevin’s got this underlying, like, you know, horrible attack strategy against anybody that’s not like him. It’s so disingenuous. It’s so disingenuous. And that leads us into tribalism. Okay. The word tribalism, as it’s used in these discussions, is applied incorrectly. People will say they want you to believe that the tribe is bricks versus oxygen or bricks first breakdance or bricks first this or automatic CSS for
1:16:14
something else. That’s the tribalism that they want you to believe is happening and if that was the tribalism that was happening, if it was Ford versus Chevy style tribalism, then that probably would be unproductive. That probably would be unproductive. The problem for them is that
1:16:35
that’s not the tribalism that’s happening. Again, if you can articulate why something is better and demonstrate it time after time after time after time, the tribe is actually highly skilled versus less skilled. Now, the good thing about tribalism in terms of skill is that you get to choose.
1:16:58
Like if you want to be in the higher skilled tribe, you could do the things that are going to get you there. Right? Okay, there’s a tribe of black belts in a jujitsu gym. Okay. And obviously, obviously their stuff is better
1:17:13
than the white belt, but they want to help the white belts join them Except when the white belts talking shit and except the white except when people come in and like oh, it’s bullshit He’s tried look at this right, okay? That’s not what’s happening so we have a skill based tribe and then we have people who are like no none of that stuff matters do whatever you want and
1:17:35
That’s a fundamental difference like pretending these two things are the same is highly highly highly disingenuous so when we say hey bricks allows you to do your work faster without screwing everything up that’s a valid argument when other tools obviously and clearly do screw a lot of things up do lead to poor maintainability, do lead to poor accessibility,
1:18:03
do lead to code blow, do lead to on and on and on and on and on. Okay? It’s not tribalism. The tribe eventually becomes people doing professional level work
1:18:15
and people not doing professional level work. Okay? However you want to define that, I mean, we talked about skill, we talked about workmanship and expectation of that. Okay. I don’t have to be the only one to define it. I’m not saying that I’m
1:18:30
the only one that gets to define it, but I am saying that pretending this these things don’t exist and don’t matter, that’s going backwards. Trying to boil it down to, oh this is just stupid Apple versus Microsoft, this is stupid just Ford versus, no, it’s not. It’s absolutely not. Absolutely not. And the proof, I go back, the proof is in the pudding. Okay? And once again, the great thing about this industry,
1:18:55
just like the great thing about jujitsu, right? You can talk all the shit you want, but as soon as you shake hands and you got to roll with somebody, we’re gonna find out if your pudding tastes like shit or not, okay?
1:19:05
And the same thing is true in this industry. And so, let’s sum all of this stuff up. And I’m gonna go read the chat and I’m gonna do some Q&A. Okay But to sum all of this stuff up If you want the industry to continue going north if you want this profession
1:19:23
To have a high degree of respect about it. Okay, then we cannot race to the bottom We have to race to the top. That’s what we’re trying to do. We have to race to the top let me go back to camera for a second this is distracting me over here ok how do we race to the top well there is no governing body there is no licensing there and and to be very clear I am not advocating for any of that
1:19:54
I do feel we can self-regulate we have to promote standards we have to promote a certain level of workmanship. We have to talk about best practices versus not best practices. Black belt shit versus white belt shit. That’s got to be talked about. And we’ve got to silence the people, not silence them like, you know,
1:20:15
with any sort of like, oh, they’re not allowed here or anything like that. Just drown them out. Drown them out by clapping back and saying, no, no, no, no, no, I’m sorry. We’re not doing the everybody gets to do every anything they want and use any tool you want all the tools are the same There’s no standard. No. No, no, we’re not that’s not what’s going on here Okay, and don’t let white bells walk in circles
1:20:37
Gapping at all the other people. Okay that none of this stuff is going to lift up the industry. It’s only tearing the industry down Substance substance substance produce things with substance. Your work should have substance. Your arguments should have substance. Once again, they were invited to a debate. Not here. I mean, I’m not surprised, but it’s like, if you have something you believe in, you should be like the first one. I’m going to go back that up. Yes, sir. I’ll be there. Name the time, name the place. I’ll be there. I’m always here. I’m always where they
1:21:16
Okay, the proof is in the pudding. Once again, that’s all I can say. Let me go to the chat All right First of all, thank you for everybody that’s this year. We got good viewership today Hmm Let’s see, I’m just scanning through comments. I’m just scanning through the chat.
1:21:42
It didn’t sound like he called you a chump to me. He’s saying people will call you. No, no, no. I use that word in all of my videos to describe like white belt dev behavior where it’s like nah that’s some that’s kind of chumpy don’t do that don’t do that it’s kind of chumpy and he’s saying that that’s bad like using that word is bad in my education process that’s
1:22:18
that’s what was that’s how he was calling me out Okay, oh yeah let me, I want to go to that. It would probably be good to read what I wrote to him. So I just said, I strongly disagree with Permaslug here, that’s Jonathan, okay. And the Ford Chevy example is a bad example. Some things in life are legitimate preferences, Ford, Chevy or Apple, Android. Bad code on the other hand isn’t a preference. A complete lack of
1:22:54
maintainability isn’t a preference in any professional sense. Inaccessibility, poor performance, inconsistency, poor architecture, these things don’t fall within the preference category. Using tools that consistently fail in these categories and that actively promote bad practices have real and major consequences that our clients and ultimately our industry have to deal with later. And I said this is what you
1:23:20
get more of when you take Jonathan’s position. We just have this you know nonsense. Just absolute and it’s an epidemic guys. It’s an epidemic. It’s not like this is the rarity in our industry. There’s an epidemic of this kind of stuff in our industry. And so it comes from that kind of language and that kind of argumentation. Somebody’s literally trying to say, no, guys, this tool is technically superior. Look at I can show you in detail on a video like a video after video, I’m showing you why this tool is
1:23:51
technically superior. And he’s like, this is just a Ford versus Chevy bullshit. It’s such this. It’s so dismissive of every legitimate argument that was just given. And I just don’t feel like that’s a legitimate form of argumentation. Okay, Q&A is open to by the way, if you want to ask questions, go ahead, hashtag Q, hashtag question, and I will jump straight to those in just a second. I didn’t get time to look at the feed here. I started saying chump like behavior in front of my girlfriend.
1:24:46
I don’t know what part of it. We need more details. Mark you picked the best clip possible or I don’t speak. That’s funny. Yeah, yeah, okay. Like I said in the beginning, okay, if I don’t know how else to do this, if you feel it’s
1:25:21
out of line or whatever, we don’t have to do this again. We don’t have to do it ever again. I’ll mind my own business. I’ll live my life, make my videos, and we’ll just let other people. And you know, and I also I do I do want to again reiterate. All right. He personally attacked me multiple times as well.
1:25:43
Like, you know, I’m OK with like if you want to make your arguments, make your arguments, but don’t don’t say like, oh, you. He said, like, I’m getting all lives matter. I don’t even know what the hell that means. What does that even mean in the context of, oh, you’re a constant bully. Like just calling me names over trying to clown on me in his profile.
1:25:59
Like that’s out of that’s just out of line. That’s out of line on top of everything else on top of everything else. That’s just wrong with this situation. So that’s where it was like now, okay, this is not gonna fly. All right. Okay.
1:26:14
This idea that you’re a bully is pervasive. Do you think you sometimes go overboard? I see you napalming people every now and then I wonder sometimes think I should have been nicer. I don’t know who else I’ve napalmed. This is in my recollection, this is one of the only people that I’ve ever called out.
1:26:38
Okay, Jamie says, please do more of these. I love them. Okay, let’s see. Yeah, yeah, see. Yes, okay, so let’s talk about that. There are a bunch of people who will continue to say, oh, he’s a bully, he’s this, he’s that, he’s this. What you’ll
1:27:01
notice, okay, just taste their pudding, that’s all I’m saying. Just taste their pudding. Proof’s right there. I think everybody knows, you can see it, alright, just taste the pudding. That’s all you got to do. Taste the pudding and if you want to talk about ego once again ego is, oh man I’ve said a bunch of stuff and made a bunch of videos and
1:27:23
then it actually turns out that those actually weren’t great practices and somebody else is teaching better practices and my ego feels a little bit hurt. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to just start saying, oh no there’s
1:27:37
nobody gets to define professionalism nobody gets to define best practices, that’s easier, that’s easier than being like, fuck, I just did a bunch of videos on all those shitty practices, right? That’s a lot easier, it’s a lot easier to attack
1:27:50
the other guy than it is to admit, like man, a lot of my content, I wasn’t teaching great stuff, okay? Because here’s the thing, like when I, my early videos, like I’m perfect, I have no problem saying like my early videos,
1:28:04
I was teaching some stuff that was not clearly the best at the time, okay? The best I knew it to be, better than what a lot of other people were probably doing, but still not the best now as we know it now because everybody’s evolving, everybody’s growing.
1:28:18
That’s why we put content out there, okay? But what I’m not running around doing is going like, oh, no, this shit doesn’t matter. Professionalism doesn’t matter. That’s the really destructive stuff. Where it’s like, you know, if somebody teaches,
1:28:31
like, here’s some accessibility stuff I’ve learned, yada, yada, yada, and it’s not actually the best practice, and somebody else is like, nah, there’s a better practice for doing that. It’s like, oh, okay, thanks, that’s fantastic. Thanks for telling me whatever.
1:28:41
That’s all fine and dandy, right? It’s the destructiveness is going, no, no, no. Those processes you teach, that’s all bullshit. Nobody needs to follow that they can do whatever they want they can use whatever tool they want and then and then but you’re putting out you’re putting out garbage like for your
1:28:58
clients that’s that’s there’s a huge disconnect there that’s hugely destructive again I think it’s it’s that white belt you know if you just can continue just imagining that white belt walking in circles on the mat just saying all this shit and talking shit and that’s it that’s really destructive and that’s ego that’s ego it’s not the ego of the people that know better to go nah that’s not what we do here that’s not no there are standards there are there are techniques there are
1:29:28
there is you know there’s different degrees okay there’s different levels Ok, back to the car analogy. Lots of people choose cars despite their flaws based on what they value, Mercedes over Toyota, for prestige, tech, luxury, despite reliability and cost of ownership. I guess as long as you accept the pros and cons. Yeah, for sure, like I mentioned that earlier, right? But that assumes the
1:29:57
client knows how to choose the car. Most clients in this industry are not smart enough to know whether a what a developer is even selling them. Okay, so they have to trust the developer. And then we got developers saying, well, none of that. I mean, the tools don’t matter. Use whatever you want, do whatever you want. I mean, and then they get this kind of thing.
1:30:13
And the client ends up with paying $8,000 or whatever it was. And I mean, they got, they got amateur level stuff, right? They got white belt stuff. They thought they were buying purple belt, brown belt stuff. They got white belt stuff. That’s where it goes wrong that’s huge there’s no problem with somebody walking in and being going I got $500 in my pocket whatever you could throw together for $500 I’m okay
1:30:36
with that fine but I mean even for $500 your content still shouldn’t touch the edge the fucking screen right like that should be that’s you pay $1 now shit if you if you if you just get donated this website, the content still shouldn’t touch the edge of the screen. I mean, this is, that’s so fundamentally basic, just so fundamental.
1:30:58
That’s what’s so insane about this whole discussion. It’s like, you don’t even have to nitpick. It’s like the first step, step one box wasn’t checked. That’s crazy. And again, I didn’t, it’s not a, hey, oh, let’s go put somebody on blast.
1:31:17
They were invited to, this could have just been a discussion. This could have been a debate. But they said no. Right. So it’s like, I mean, what else? What other option do I have?
1:31:26
Okay. Q and A, search, hashtag Q. How was your father’s day? Not fantastic. Because I was stuck in an Italy hotel room on Father’s Day. So I was not with my family on Father’s Day.
1:31:47
So it wasn’t fantastic. But we are going to celebrate one day this week. Let’s see. It’s surprising the talks were poor given the amazing talents that attended. Yeah, I agree. Okay. I honestly think you should forget submitting to WordCamp and start your own.
1:32:05
A cruise would be awesome. Okay. I’m with you. I’m with you on that. How do you get expired website? How do you get expired website? I don’t know what that means. Charlie, can you rephrase the question? Let’s see. Will full ACSS 3.0 be released this week, next week? I think I know what’s going on with the idea behind this layout related to the celebration of mediocrity, similar concept to why supermodels dress to look homeless.
1:32:33
Question, Gi or no Gi? Ah, man, so good, so good. Well, I mean, you need both, obviously. The Gi to me is much more dynamic, is much more, many more control points, there’s a lot more chokes, things like that.
1:32:52
But NoGi is fantastic too. NoGi is faster paced. NoGi is probably more exciting for people to watch. But yeah, I do both. Okay, might explain the shaking of the hands and the match will start does not refer
1:33:05
to a build off between you and the no code guy, but rather to the meeting between a potential client and your website. Yeah, yes, correct. What note taking app you end up using? Have you tried any type? It’s open source. I actually I went with craft. I went with
1:33:20
craft. I actually like the it’s simple has some of the stuff from notion that I like but isn’t overboard. Because it’s just a it’s a note taking out for me. It’s I’m not trying to build huge databases with it. I’m just doing some content planning, things like that. What’s hiding in your inspiration tab on ARC? I’m working on a better alternative to
1:33:43
Lapina Ninja and Lookbook, so naturally curious. Not much. Nice, Very Nice is another one. And in this profile, that’s the only other one that’s there, actually. Let’s see. Did you get together with Tiago from Dear Designer? No, I didn’t. I actually didn’t see him there at all, but I did meet him at WordCamp US.
1:34:08
I had dinner with him at WordCamp US. He’s a good guy. We already answered that question. WCEU website, you put a lot of blame on Gutenberg not meeting the standards. How much of that onus falls to the developer
1:34:18
who either didn’t know how to use the tool better or did not put in the effort? Oh, a lot, a lot, for sure. Because if you legitimately know what you’re doing, right, then you can get around the limitations of the tool. That was the whole premise of PageBuilding 101.
1:34:35
PageBuilding 101 is the idea that you shouldn’t learn a page builder. Like, okay, go back to the initial thing that I said about fine line between low code and low skill. Okay, it’s the same thing, I use the photography analogy all the time. Anybody can buy a $5,000 mirrorless camera and call themselves a photographer. That’s
1:34:56
essentially the, and put it on auto. Just put it on auto. You got a great lens, put it on auto and go out and call yourself a professional photographer and start taking wedding photos, right? Ok? People do this by the way. They do
1:35:08
this by the way. That’s the low-code, no-code equivalent of photography. And so what is it? Is it did the camera, buying the camera on Amazon and a five thousand dollars in your bank account, did that
1:35:22
remove the gatekeeping to the photography industry for you? Did that allow you in where previously you were gate kept out? Okay, I don’t know the answer to that. Not really because what did I say? The
1:35:35
skill is the ultimate gatekeeper. You either have the skill or you don’t. Now, that doesn’t stop anybody from saying, I’m a professional photographer because I landed a photography job. I got paid, so now I’m a professional.
1:35:46
And it’s like, all right, I mean, you could say that. Now let’s see the work that you produce. You go to the wedding, you take the photos, and now we get to taste your fucking pudding, don’t we? And your pudding tastes like shit because you’re not actually a photographer.
1:35:59
You don’t actually know what you’re doing. Yeah, the tool facilitated you going and doing this travesty to this poor bride who just had her whole wedding ruined, right? All the memories of her wedding she thought she was going to get, now she’s got to taste your shitty pudding for the rest of her life. And that is a real consequence to this kind of stuff. And our clients deal with these real
1:36:22
consequences year in and year out. So let’s not forget that there are actually people being harmed by this idea that there should be no gatekeeping. The photography industry and now imagine that because cameras are so prevalent, just take your iPhone. Fuck, everybody can just show up with an iPhone.
1:36:42
Be like, well, I mean, they hired me, so I’m a professional and just start destroying people’s weddings. What would the reputation of photographers in the wedding industry start to become? of Photographers in the wedding industry start to become wouldn’t it start to go down? Wouldn’t brides start to be like man. You can’t trust anybody in this industry
1:37:04
Nobody knows what they’re doing every every I just hear you know Travesties over and over and over again is that good for our industry or is that not good for our industry? Like it’s not hard to look ahead at the actual consequences that would come from this. So the photography industry is actually better off if they gate kept. If somebody said, no, no, no, no, no,
1:37:22
you can’t just do that. You can’t just do that to people. There has to be some standards of quality. And in photography, it’s even harder because a lot of photography obviously is very subjective, but you can also see very amateur shit, right?
1:37:36
And there’s just like in code. It’s like mmm. That’s bad in photography. It’s like dog. I can’t see the fucking bride It’s our heads cut off like that’s objectively bad photography so now imagine imagine People who have been in the photography game, and they they rely on their camera heavily They don’t actually learn any real skills, and they’re chirping all the time going no no no those professional photographers are full of shit.
1:38:02
You just, you just do whatever camera you want to use. That’s the one you should use and just have fun with it. And whatever art is art, that’s your art. You call it art. You call it whatever you want. And it’s like, but guys, the, the, the bride, the bride’s not happy. Like those pictures are bad. That’s, she’s got to live with that the rest of her life. There are consequences.
1:38:22
There are real consequences. Okay. Um, and by the way, that will be a race to the bottom. All right, let’s see, next question. Let me find out where I was. How was the real pizza in Italy? All of the food in Italy was tremendous. I would say that I had one bad meal and it was at the hotel.
1:38:46
So it’s like, I don’t even know if that counts. I don’t even know if that counts. In fact, one of the best nights, one of the best nights, we had the biggest group that we had had the entire time we were there.
1:38:56
We’re walking in downtown and we’re trying to find a place to eat and we’ve got way too many people. Like, it’s just, it’s clear, it’s like a Saturday night or Friday, it was Friday night, I think, yeah, Friday night.
1:39:05
Every place was like packed, not a lot of tables and there was this little bar. Well, a bar in Italy is not a bar. It’s not like a bar in America. It’s not like you would think of a bar. A bar is like they serve coffee, they serve alcohol, sometimes they serve food, sometimes they
1:39:18
don’t serve food, whatever. And every place is a bar. That’s what they’re all called. And so there’s this bar and it doesn’t have, it has a lot of open tables and we’re like well it must have open tables because they’re only doing appetizers like they’re not actually doing meals. But it was the only place we could sit down and we were right there. So we’re like let’s just sit down, let’s order drinks, appetizers, start and we’re gonna wait for this bar next to it, this
1:39:38
restaurant next to it, to open up like some some tables for us. So we sit down and the guy comes out and he actually is like, oh by the way we have a full menu tonight. And we were like, wow that’s fantastic. Like we didn’t look at reviews, we didn’t look at anything. Best food, best food that I’ve had in Italy, right? It’s just that this random place we sat down, we’re like, I don’t even know if we’ll get food. They just happened to have food and it was like the lasagna. My gosh, it was just absolutely phenomenal. Now, that
1:40:07
was also the worst night for me. And I’ll tell you why, because we were out very late. It was 1130pm when I think we finished eating or 11pm or something like that. And I had this big thing of tiramisu. And being the gringo that I am, you know, I didn’t know that it’s can can have a lot of caffeine in it. And because it’s made with coffee. And so I ate it, it was absolutely delicious. And then fast forward to 4am. I’m still not asleep. I’m just rolling around in the bed like,
1:40:41
Oh my god, I want to go to sleep so bad. And I couldn’t. So yes, best food, and then followed by the worst night. But all in all, it was it was nothing to complain about. It’s all part of the experience. All right. Let’s see.
1:40:54
Will we see you in Switzerland WCEU next year? Yes. If everything goes according to plan. Yes. In your inner circle, do you talk about getting more clients? Oh, absolutely.
1:41:03
Absolutely. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a key focus. It’s a, it’s a lot of agency related content in the inner circle. It’s not like, you know, how to do, like there are BRICS tutorials and dev tutorials and things like that, but so much of the value,
1:41:26
if you’re an agency or a freelancer, like if you’re actually looking for ROI type value, like yeah, there’s an ROI value in increasing your skills, obviously, but tremendous ROI value in learning how to price things better, learning how to do sales
1:41:38
conversations better, learning how to do proposals and SOWs, learning how to find the best clients. That’s where I mean they’re left and right people going from $2,500 websites to $15,000 websites. Left and right in the inner circle. That’s it’s just and and for a lot of people if you implement quickly and you you know it takes time to develop more confidence but if you kind of just act a part and you kind of follow as I outline it,
1:42:08
and you just don’t trip over your words all the time and like act like, oh, oh, please, will you, will you maybe pay me 15,000? Like, if you could, you know, muster up a little bit of confidence and like use the things that I talk about,
1:42:22
sometimes it’s, you know, a month after joining, the person lands, you know, the biggest project that they’ve ever landed. And immediately, because they paid $25 to get in the end of the circle, the ROI is incalculable. And then on and on and on, they continue to get those benefits and reap those rewards. So if you’re an agency or a freelancer, now if you’re just like, I just want to learn
1:42:44
web design kind of thing and you don’t really have a business yet, the ROI is going to be less. It’s going to be a little bit limited. But if you’re already an agency or freelancer, especially if you’re like 2,500, 3,500, 4,500 in there as like your average project, the ROI is going to be insane of what you’re going to get out of the inner circle. Where’d you stay and do you speak Italian? I stayed at a Hilton and I don’t speak Italian,
1:43:10
but I did learn some words and it was it was fun. Like I, you know, I tried to I don’t want to be the American that like goes there and just forces everybody to talk in English. Like I, if I know the word, then I then I’ll use the word, right? I try my best. Did you go to the roof of Lingato? No, I did not. I did not make it up there. But I did hear there’s a racetrack up there. And it’s and it’s pretty cool. You need to see more of Europe come hang out in France. I absolutely and it’s pretty cool. You need to see more of Europe come hang out in France. I absolutely agree. I absolutely agree. I haven’t bought ACSS yet.
1:43:52
Should I wait till v3 is released? You can buy it right now and start using v3 right now. There’s no problem with it. What is the topic of the next ACSS 101 video? I’ve got to look at, oh I can look on here. I know you guys can’t see my screen, but I could probably take a peek. Let’s see if I can get to it. If
1:44:06
I can get to it quickly. Uh huh. Maybe not. I don’t have it pulled up. Okay. Yeah, I don’t know off the top of my head. I don’t even remember what the last one was. Honestly, I like you know, I’m there’s so much going on so much going on. It’s hard to keep track of everything. I rely heavily on my notes and outlines and things like that.
1:44:25
What do you think about occasionally doing pro bono work for a good cause? I really like the concept. I really like the concept. I’ve done it a couple times in the past for, you know, charitable organizations and things like that, shelters and you know, what
1:44:37
have you. You can’t, there’s no incentive really to do it. In my experience they don’t, it’s not like they’re going to like refer you to a bunch of people that have a bunch of money to pay you for stuff So if you’re looking to do it for referrals, it’s not I don’t think it’s going to do much for you There’s no in the US anyway, there’s no tax write-offs or anything like that
1:45:02
You know, I’ve talked to CPAs about it. So if you’re doing it for that reason, there’s not really much there for you but if you literally just want to be Philanthropic then absolutely. I’m all for it. And it would be really good if you’re in need of case studies or something like that, that would be a fantastic way to build a little, you know, early portfolio or have something philanthropic to put in your case study
1:45:29
because maybe that has good vibes for other people, I don’t know. Or you just like donating your time. Any of those reasons is perfectly fine. When do you think you start building sites in a scalable, maintainable, and accessible way? At what point in your 20-year journey
1:45:42
do you realize all the fundamentals from PB101 course? It’s not, there is no point at, like even, it’s like in jiu-jitsu, okay? I just love the comparison because what people will tell you in jiu-jitsu is when you get your black belt,
1:45:58
that’s when you start learning. Okay. Like that’s, that’s the, and, and if you go to a, um, if you go to a seminar, but it’s taught by like a high level black belt versus a seminar that’s taught by like a purple belt or a brown belt or something, or like a new black belt, you realize, and this is why, by the way, if you watch competitions, like high level
1:46:21
competitions, if you have a black belt, that’s like a dad, you know, like me. If I got my black, like I’m a brown belt, and if I got my black belt, I would go to a tournament and if I rolled again, so in my gym for example, I can go, you could go 50%, like most black, brown belt, even purple belts, you roll a white belt or a blue belt, you can go 30%, 20%, and they can’t do shit, right? Now, if right now if you get a black belt you could pretty much beat everybody in the gym but if you go to a tournament like you know a IBJJF tournament and you’re
1:47:03
in a good division with actual competitors they will make black belts look like fucking white belts now what why is that what is it it’s not because they’re fundamentally stronger or it’s because the intricacies of the of the technique is so there’s such a gap still there’s such a gap still so you can get your black belt and you still got like so far to go and the same thing is in web design like the more you learn and the better you get the more you realize you
1:47:30
don’t even know already right and it’s always just a game to get better and better and better and better the problem again to reiterate is when somebody is yapping saying stop doing all that. Stop. Nobody needs to get better. Nobody needs to get better. Just buy the camera and put it on auto. Just do that and just go shoot as many weddings as you can.
1:47:51
Cash as many checks as you can. That’s really, that’s all that matters here. Right. And it’s like, man, okay, that’s not what we’re doing here. Is WordCamp a good networking opportunity? Would we just be meeting other web devs?
1:48:03
We really need to network with people in marketing, copywriting, etc. No other web devs. Yeah, I mean, actually it’s kind of sad. There’s not nearly as many agency owners or freelancers as you might expect. There’s a lot of software developers. There’s a lot of people who do a lot of custom theme stuff,
1:48:32
but there’s not a lot of agencies like doing the sites we do, in my experience anyway. At least I haven’t, the ones I’ve met I already know. Like they’re in the inner circle or whatever, but they’re not like new at the conference that I’ve found. So I don’t know, I don’t know.
1:48:49
Let’s see, will Frames for Figma be released next week as well? No, no, no, no, no. Frames for Figma is an insanely complicated product and it’s waiting for 3.0 to be finalized before it can be finalized,
1:49:01
but I don’t have the timeline. There’s just, because Figma is not, it has ACSS tokens, which uses Token Studio and it’s not CSS. It’s not, so it’s a completely different workflow. It’s a completely different set of limitations
1:49:19
that we have to work around to make it work. So it just, it takes more time. Okay, let’s go back to chat and then we’ll get out of here because I think we’re bumping up on time here. Still got a really good viewership. Let me go down, down, down.
1:49:34
Wow. Okay. Chats, chats going crazy. As an agency owner, my idea of WordCamp is a lot of web devs. That’s why I don’t go. No, I mean, your ability to network, like with, you know,
1:49:50
people that can really help you in the agency work you do is tremendous. Like, the networking is one of the biggest aspects of WordCamp for sure. Okay. Spicy Kevin is great. Yes. Sometimes you have to cook with extra salt.
1:50:08
You know what I’m saying? WS form I mean, I keep adding the S, I keep finding out it doesn’t. Okay. Let’s see. What happened with DATT? You said it was going to transform to podcast,
1:50:29
which I seem to be unable to find anywhere. WDD Live took off a lot better. And I ended up realizing that I just, I just don’t have the bandwidth to do two of them. But what I have said is WDD Live is probably going to transform to something more like, you know, geary.co, like generic dev, WordPress design, just all the stuff that we focus on on a daily basis.
1:50:55
And then we can implement more things like, like it could be an actual podcast you can download. It won’t always be 100% visual. It’ll have guests, like we can do more of a variety with it. That’s probably the next iteration of this that’ll be coming soon.
1:51:14
Hmm. I got all my clients from word of mouth. Most agencies, word of mouth is gonna be the highest degree to which they get clients, but I would heavily, heavily, heavily, heavily recommend that you spread that out as early and as often
1:51:29
as you possibly can. Like you want at least like three channels that you’re getting leads from. Do not rely solely on word of mouth. That’s a huge potential problem if that is 100% of how you get leads.
1:51:47
You’ve got to have some other channels. PPC is one of the easiest ones. There’s a video I did on the three fastest ways to get web design clients. Those other two, PPC is one of them, and I’ll let you watch the video for the other two.
1:52:01
But diversify, diversify, diversify as much as you can, as fast as you can. Don’t be okay with 100% of your leads coming from referrals. Italy has Kevin pinching his fingers and saying lasagna, absolutely. Thank you for doing all of this, Kevin.
1:52:17
It’s crucial for the survival of WP, consistency and maintainability matters. Well, you are very welcome, Alex. Thank you for the support. Embarrassment of the WordCamp site is due to the organizers being forced to use
1:52:34
and customize an official WP conference theme. Ah, very interesting. But the, let me go back to the screen, right? Let’s go to WordCamp US. Let’s zoom out. We don’t need to be all zoomed in. WordCamp US. I don’t think this has the same problems, right? So yeah, I mean, this does not have the same problems. So it does,
1:53:04
you know, at some point, it’s a skill. It’s a skill issue. Now, I didn’t look. I didn’t look to see if that’s the exact same theme or whatever, but that’s an interesting theory. But as I said before, developers that know what they’re doing can work around the limitations. This is very cathartic.
1:53:25
Things I want to say to clients, competitors, chumps all the time, thank you. That is what’s happening in the industry along with devaluing the profession, absolutely. profession. Absolutely. Okay. My wife has talked to people out of doing a wedding shoot as their first shoot. Oh, yes,
1:53:41
absolutely. And yeah, thank you to your to your wife, Rob. I mean, it’s seriously, you know, a family portrait session is like one thing because like, unless it’s like they’re bringing in grandparents on their deathbed, or like, you know, people that are way out of town that aren’t going to be here again because that’s a bad situation too, right? You should do a lot of work with models. If you can’t take good photos of models,
1:54:11
because posing is a big part of photography, right? When we’re talking about portrait photography or people photography. If you can’t take good pictures of models, like you got severe, there’s no way you’re taking good pictures of real people. So start there, that’s a good place to start. And then just do a bunch of free shoots and just be honest with people. Like that’s what I’ve said in the beginning with web design, like just be honest with you. It’s like, I’m just starting out.
1:54:34
I’m probably going to make mistakes on this site, but like, you do have a low budget. And so if you’re okay with that, you know, I’m, I’m learning and growing. I’d like the opportunity. And if they’re like, yeah, I mean, all I got is 500. I can’t, I can’t go hire some top tier person. So you get the job. And then, then you guys have made an agreement and it’s like
1:54:50
everybody is good there. There’s no problem with that. The problem is when you’re doing the $5,000, $10,000 site thing and then the client’s like well you know paying that much there’s an expectation of workmanship and then the content touching the edge of the screen and there’s all these other issues with it. That’s the problem. That’s a huge problem. Okay. All right. I don’t know. I’m gonna go back and read through the chat.
1:55:18
I think we’ve done enough today. Again I’ll read through the chat, I’ll see what people said. If there’s the general consensus is that, you know, this isn’t great, we shouldn’t do this again. We don’t have to do it again. We don’t have to do it again.
1:55:35
But I thought it was important, especially in this scenario. And that’s that. It’s in the books. Nothing I can do about it now. So I do love you guys. I do appreciate the support.
1:55:47
For those of you who I met at WCEU, I can’t tag everybody. I mean, there was just so many. It was like person after person after person after person after person. And then if I try to start tagging people,
1:55:56
people are like, why didn’t I get tagged? Why didn’t I get tagged? Right? So there’s just too many people to tag, but thank you to all of you. Like the hospitality was amazing.
1:56:06
I will be, if all the stars align, I will be in Switzerland next year, and I should also be in Portland for any of you going to WordCamp US. And if you haven’t met me yet, absolutely come up to me in Portland or in Switzerland
1:56:22
and say hi. I am thinking about doing some sort of inner circle slash automatic CSS open kind of thing where people could come probably in Florida, probably near the Sarasota area. So definitely be on the lookout for that. It may be a cruise, I don’t know. It may not be a cruise.
1:56:43
I’m going to look into the possibility of a cruise thing and then I’m going to look into the possibility of just doing something kind of in the Sarasota area. I’ll weigh the pros and cons, I’ll weigh the costs, I’ll weigh the ease of getting there for everybody and doing it, and then I’ll make a decision, I’ll make an announcement, and then maybe,
1:57:01
just maybe, we can have some fun in person, together. Okay, all right guys, I love you, peace.
