“They don’t talk about being at the summit until you’re at the top, so [getting ahead] is a process.” — Michelle Frechette
In this episode of Post Status Draft, David sits down with Michelle Frechette to talk about what Post Status is planning for its community and the WordPress crowd as a whole in the first half of 2022. They cover three new events: the Weekly WordPress Job Chat on Twitter Spaces, WP Career Summit, and the first-ever Post Status Twitter Conference. (The conference theme is “Give. Grow. Together.”)
Why This Is Important: Post Status is listening to members and watching what discussions are happening in the WordPress community. Michelle points out why each of these events is important to certain sections of the community — each event will touch the lives of many WordPress professionals in some way.
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- WP Career Summit — Save the Date!
- Post Status Twitter Conference
- Post Status Events
- David Bisset (Twitter)
- Post Status (Twitter)
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Transcript
Episode 43
David Bisset: [00:00:00] Yeah, I’m surprised people haven’t hunted me down yet. Thanks to, um, whenever a lot of the podcasts that I’m doing now, it’s like, forget to turn off slack and they get that one slack notification. I go, oh crap. All six people that listen to me, whatever how many people it is. They’ll they’ll just go did I just get a slack notification while I was out running and listening to this podcast?
Michelle Frechette: Exactly. It’s like, I, I always check and see if I just got the notification, but no, it was in the, it was in the podcast, somebody else’s.
David Bisset: So the reason why Michelle, you and I are talking here today and has nothing to do with blackmail. It has more to do though with what we want to share with our Post Status listeners.
You know, everybody’s doing these posts or visions of what’s coming in 2022. And with Post Status, we’ve got a good pulse. On the community, what they’re hoping to see what they are doing and what they probably will be looking for in 2022. I think you and I are in a good position. To talk about some of these things that post that is, is particularly planning to help out the [00:01:00] WordPress community in particular, the WordPress professionals.
So I thought that was a good way to kind of get the year started so people can mark these on their calendar. Although if you go to poststatus.com/events, it’s there to. But let’s, let’s say, where do you want to start in terms of what we’re planning for Post Status in 22? Yeah.
Michelle Frechette: So what are the things? So when I joined Post Status, uh, last, was it fall, I guess October-ish, uh, you know, Corey and I had talked about some different things in ways for me to be involved.
And part of that was writing about, um, the job situation, whether it’s about helping people with resumes or, you know, a lot of the, you can see a lot of the posts that I’ve put together. Um, the Post Status.com site. About hiring and also about getting hired. We also have a great, um, you know, podcasts. We’ve got a whole season out there from get hired.
I with Courtney and Corey about, um, getting hired in, in WordPress and, you know, Courtney does a lot of our training and things like that. And some of the ideas that I had coming in were not just writing about [00:02:00] underrepresented, underrepresented topics and job topics, but like, Hey, let’s take this kind of thing to the next level.
Let’s actually do some event. That we can get the, they, uh, not only the Post Status community involved with, with the whole WordPress community as well. And some of those things are, the WP career summit that we’ve been talking about, which I’m building the website. I promise it’s getting done this week.
Um,
David Bisset: it’s a summit, Michelle. I mean, these things take time.
Michelle Frechette: I know, but like, I should have a landing page at least. Right. So that’s what I’m working on, um, is WP career summit.com by the time this airs, it should be out there. So go to WP career summit.com and you can learn about what we’re planning to do.
It is the first ever summit or conference about working in WordPress specifically. And the goal is two tracks. We’ll have two tracks, it’ll run, uh, through the course of the day. One for employers and how to do better, hiring how to do better at evaluate, [00:03:00] evaluating applicants, how to do better recruiting, how to recruit for, you know, inclusion and . Diversity, how to do things without tokenization.
For example, how to evaluate, um, international. Applicants and those kinds of things. So we’re working on getting together some really good speakers that will speak to employers, but the other track is for job seekers. So if you are looking for a job in WordPress or tech, what are some things that will be helpful to you, understanding how to build a resume for technology, understanding how to put together your GitHub repo, to make sure that people can see the work that you’re doing.
How do you build a portfolio? what social media should you be involved in? How do you make sure that you have a good LinkedIn profile?
David Bisset: Not looking for a job and I feel like I got to go off and do that now.
Michelle Frechette: Talk to me later, I’ll help you, but having a career summit like that, where not only do we have those two tracks, but we will have 12 sponsors, uh, [00:04:00] working with us that day, who will have tables.
Um, similar, if you’ve been to WordPress, we’re going to actually use the word Fest setup. We’ve hired out, uh, Dan maybe, and his crew to create that same environment for us to use for the WP career summit. So you’ll have the tracks, you’ll be able to watch the videos as they’re, as they are, do live Q and A’s.
But then you’ll also be able to go to this open space and meet up with the different employers who are sponsoring to learn more about their companies and maybe even, you know, give them your resume and set up a time to do an interview. We’ll also have an online career fair at the same time. So any company that wants to sponsor at a smaller level will be able to have, um, their career page, their recruiting page, specifically linked on our job fair sites so that they have a better opportunity to recruit anybody who’s in attendance at the WP career summit.
The goal behind the career summit is to really bring together employers and potential employees and to [00:05:00] educate the whole WordPress space and best practices for hiring and best practices for getting hired and really start those conversations. There’s not a lot of conversations. There’s a ton of people posting jobs.
There’s a ton of people saying I need a job. It’s the idea of bringing all those things together and helping the people who are hiring of the people who are looking to get together in the same space, um, and hopefully fill each other’s needs by getting some great employees into those, into those offices.
David Bisset: I think one of the advantages of this will be, and maybe this is just a tip from somebody who’s looked for jobs before.
If you’re aware of a summit, usually it was in the context of a physical conference, but regardless if it’s physical or, or remote or virtual. If, you know, in advance, who’s going to be there. Um, it’s also, if, if you’re serious baby, maybe it’s, um, maybe it’s maybe you are, have a particular company in mind, or maybe you heard this company’s really, really good to work for, or they have exciting projects or they [00:06:00] get good PR or whatever, whatever floats your boat in terms of stuff.
We have there’s this opportunity, especially through Post Status slack to reach out to them prior to. To the summit and say, listen, I would love to talk to you at this summit about this. I just want to make sure that, you know, do an initial contact, nothing fancy in my opinion. But if you really think that you have a good shot at getting, if you want to be noticed, like.
Um, it is one of those tips where in this situation, where if, if someone remembers your resume and they’re comparing that with other people for position, somebody says, well, what w you know, which one of these was most eager? If that question ever came up, you would, it would be at least an advantage to say, this person reached out to me prior, even before coming to the summit.
They wanted to speak to us. And they were very interested who knows that could be the edge and there’s nothing, there’s no rule that says you can’t talk to these people. Until you get to the summit. I think the summits, the best [00:07:00] place to have properly a deep conversation, but just like these days, it’s whatever it takes sometimes to get noticed.
So I think, I think your summit is going to be set up very, very well for that.
Michelle Frechette: Cool. I mean, do you think about when, when you’re mountain climbing, they talk about somebody like you’re climbing Everest, for example, they don’t talk about. Being at the summit until you’re actually at the top. Right? So it’s a process you’re climbing, you’re getting to that point.
And so there’s plenty of opportunity to do that both on your way up and after the summit as well. So, um, the summit should be that focal point where everything kind of comes together, but there’s lots that you can do in advance. And there’s lots that you can do as follow up afterwards, for sure.
David Bisset: You can’t really relate to the closest thing.
I can relate to that as I got on top one time of a big pile of leaves in my yard and I was out of breath. So I, if it’s the same thing as that, I can definitely.
Michelle Frechette: Well, don’t you work in your basement. I mean, you got to climb the stairs, right?
David Bisset: Well, yeah. Yes. I’m not up to that. I’m not, I don’t have one of those elevator sit in a [00:08:00] chair and it takes me up things yet.
Although my wife that is that is, could potential 20th anniversary gift. I’ll just slip that to my wife. I’m in the DMS. I
Michelle Frechette: dunno. I just saw Gremlin’s again, recently rewatched around the holidays. And that thing was pretty scary, how I shot that we’re going to right out the windows. So it just,
David Bisset: if only it could go that fast, that would be awesome.
But yeah, there are a lot of people I get constant emails or pings on slack or something that says, Hey, we’re going to put this out there on Twitter. We know you’re going to retweet it. Or do you happen to know a recommend someone for this? It was a lot of background chatter going around and I’m, I’m getting these requests, not just.
Other employee, I’m getting these requests from like, um, head people in head WordPress agencies that ping me just because we know each other. So there is, there, there is a lot of improvement and efficiency still, I think. And I think the summits kind of help with that. And if, even if you’re not maybe looking forward to.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s [00:09:00] free to attend. It’s free to attend the summit. We’re not charging anything to be there. Um, the worst thing I think that you can do is when somebody is looking for a job is to say, Hey, pay to come learn about how to do better at getting jobs. So the sponsorship is going to cover all of the costs of it.
And so we want everybody who wants to be there. You don’t have to say you’re looking for a job or not, but you’re welcome to kind of come in and observe either track and bounce back and forth. If you want to and learn best practices on either side of things. Uh it’s uh, it’s just there for edification for anybody who wants to learn.
David Bisset: Gotcha.
Alright. Job summit. Yeah.
Michelle Frechette: So the other thing along that same lines though, is, um, starting, uh, so starting on January 12th. So this is, I think this is where Eric next week. So it’ll have been a last week already. I’m going to be doing weekly Twitter chats. About what’s happening in, uh, jobs in WordPress.
So most people are aware that every Wednesday [00:10:00] or I should say most Wednesdays, I tweet out a list of job openings that I’m aware of in the WordPress space. And some of that comes, I’ve created a site called WP career pages.com. Um, that was one of my, my pandemic projects during their initial lockdown.
Back in 2020 was to create a site where people could just go and look at. For jobs and this pin up any of the career pages that are there and see what’s available. So on Wednesdays, I go through, I pull, you know, 10 or 15 of those and I set up, send out a tweet saying, there’s all these jobs. If you’re interested in applying, you might want to apply for this job here.
That’s that’s up there. And I was approached by Daniel Schutzsmith asking if I thought that would be fun to do as a Twitter space. And so I piloted it just to see what would happen back in December, before the holidays and everything else. And we had quite a few people actually show up to hear what I had to say.
And so. I start doing that on a weekly basis. It may be five minutes. It may be half an [00:11:00] hour. It depends on who joins me and what kinds of questions they have. But I will, at that point, talk through some of the openings that I’ve seen and answer any questions that people have about getting hired and about resumes and anything else that they have to ask.
So we’ve kind of an open space on Twitter every Wednesday at 1:00 PM Eastern time, uh, as, for however long it lasts, but no more than a half an hour. Cause I do have a day job too. And we’ll see how it goes. For sure. Um, but you’ll be able to get to that, uh, through, uh, by, by looking at that events page that you mentioned, cause they’re going to be listed there, but also just going to the post status, Twitter on Wednesdays at 1:00 PM.
Excellent. Join that Twitter space.
David Bisset: Yeah. Twitter space seems to be like, if you want a casual conversation, not so much formal, but yeah, I think that works out well. I’ve had some experience with that as well. I would,
Michelle Frechette: if I’m working from home, I might add pajamas, but you’ll never know because it’s audio only, right.[00:12:00]
David Bisset: Everybody goes to Dave’s on audio. Thank God. All right. If David’s audio only, only I’ll go talk to him. I’ll go see what Dave’s doing. Sure. Why not? I’m sure they’ll work out. Fantastic. Yes. And again, if you go. I’m going to put the link to the career pages. And I remember when you started doing this, um, the career pages, um, thing, and then on the Twitter every Wednesday.
And, um, we’ll probably share link for one of the later last ones she did for that as well. That, to me, it’s always great to have something consistent like that. I’ve seen your stuff for Wednesday, for Wednesday after Wednesday after Wednesday. And I think if something ever drastically happened to my job situation, I would look and see when the next available Wednesday was.
It’s like, okay, well I know on Wednesday, I’m going to, yeah, well, I won’t even have to think about it because it’s all, it’s all. It’s, you’re, you’re very consistent on that and kudos, kudos to you for that. So I’ll share the link for the career pages. The one of the law, one of the latter ones you did on Wednesday.
Uh, into the show notes too. Yeah,
Michelle Frechette: what’s [00:13:00] interesting is, I mean, we can’t see each other’s Twitter analytics. Of course, you know, you can only see your own, uh, but I get anywhere from 3000 to 20,000 impressions on those Wednesday tweet threads, depending on who sees it, what’s going on in the day. If there’s a ton of, you know, other activities happening in the world, et cetera.
Um, and whoever’s on Twitter and happens to retweet it, but. Uh, but yeah, we’ve got as many as 20,000 impressions on those. So clearly they’re hitting the mark and people are interested in seeing what’s happening out there. And in the career field
David Bisset: these days, your situation can change at a moment’s notice.
So I think having a constant beacon every week, even if. This week, you’re fine. Next week, who knows? Oh, or you could, or you could suddenly have inspiration to look for something better or different, you know,
Michelle Frechette: exactly. No judgment. There’s no judgment,
David Bisset: no judgment here.
Michelle Frechette: They’ve just been here. And then I had an interesting idea to do yet glutton for punishment.
I put out as many conferences and things [00:14:00] I’m on. Um, I’m on the team for work camp Europe. I am on the word Fest team. Um, and I do a lot. The seller is seller WP, as far as, um, attending conference word camps and conferences. But I had an idea for another one. Which is, um, the people behind, Hey, Presto conference actually reached out to me and said, just want you to know, I know that you’ve participated in the past.
We’re not going to continue with the, Hey Presto, Twitter conferences anymore. They’re just decided to go in a different direction. They’re not going to do that. I said, Hey, would you mind if I picked up the reins and. Carried on doing something very similar and not necessarily the same exact thing that they were doing, but, um, along those lines, and they’re like with our blessing.
And so May 24th, we will have the first ever, uh, online. Post status Twitter conference. And that will be May 24th. And it’s going to run from 9:00 AM until I think, I can’t remember 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM or something like that Eastern time. And I get central and Eastern. I [00:15:00] can’t remember what I’ve scheduled when I’m, but just go to the website.
It’s there. We have it all there
David Bisset: All I know is it’s bright outside therefore I’m narrowing down what the time is. Right.
Michelle Frechette: But what it is is it’s going to be an opportunity for people to present at a conference. Ha by creating a series of 15 tweets, you’ll be assigned a particular point of time. During that day, every half hour, there will be a new presenter.
The first 15 minutes, they’ll present a tweet a minute. And the second, 15 minutes of their half hour be Q and A and opportunity to have conversation. Uh, I’m using the conference hashtag and then whatever, um, you know, um, mentioning the, uh, the particular presenter. I keep saying speaker, but you’re not technically speaking.
You’re just presenting. Um, again, this is something you could do in your pajamas too, because it’s Twitter do whatever you’d like. So, but, but we will be organizing it as a conference and have official. You know, schedule of presenters during that day. And so we [00:16:00] have people already applying to speak, uh, sorry, present.
See, it’s not easy to say. I have that
Should have a big word just printed across the screen. So I don’t mess it up, but we have people already applying to present on different topics. Our, um, and I know you’ve talked about this before, but as post status. Um, tenant for this year is give, grow together.
And so that is also the theme of the Twitter conference. And so we’re hoping that people will incorporate that into the topics that they apply to present so that we can make sure that we’re all moving together forward giving and growing together.
David Bisset: You . What does that mean to you personally?
Michelle Frechette: Um, I mean,
David Bisset: I think to me it seems to be a lot of what I already do, so I
demonstrated you give a lot.
Yeah.
Michelle Frechette: But I try to do it not in avoid. Right. So [00:17:00] I try to work with other people. That’s why I’ve joined Post Status. And that’s why I’m here. With everybody here. It’s why I am the president of big Barnhart, because I like to do things with other people and to move the community forward and to be somebody who is hopefully a catalyst for good and for more, uh, people working with one another and to build better community and a more inclusive community.
For sure. And so to me, give, grow together. Is about each of us giving what we can to grow the community and help each other grow individually and obviously doing it together so that we can, um, as one build the community to be as good as it possibly can be.
David Bisset: Right. Looking for the, looking for the good in others and looking for the good in ourselves that we can share.
That means a positive influence on as many people as possible because. Uh, in an upbuilding way too, because obviously for the past couple of years, people sorely need uplifting, positive [00:18:00] momentum. And I mean, you know, have a great tech talk. That’s fine. I, but you know, I get a feeling when word camps are fully, fully back.
Yeah, there’s going to be so many of these, um, touchy, feely, emotional dogs, where they were working at Miami. We always would sprinkle them out, you know, in, in various parts and get people motivated and stuff. Um, but now I think we need that. We need that motivation. We need that togetherness. Where we can get it, right?
It’s not, we’re not waiting for this point in the year where we’re either travel or don’t, or watch it virtually or something. We need it where we can get it. Some people even need it on a daily basis sometimes to survive mentally. So I think this, I, I think it’s something that, that, that should feel if there’s any gap in somebody’s wondering if they need to contribute or be on the receiving end to.[00:19:00]
Of that pro and give. Go ahead and check out the conference. And the best part is, are using Twitter. So, I mean, you can, you can, you can leak and look at the celebrity gossip. And then there was a tweet from this conference. And then, you know,
Michelle Frechette: You dont even have to register because like what we can’t gatekeeper Twitter.
There’s there’s, there’s no ticket selling Twitter
David Bisset: already has its claws in you. We’re not asking for anything.
Michelle Frechette: We’re just saying, go pay attention to this hashtag. And we will be turning each, um, each presentation, each presenter into Twitter moments so that we’ll be able to have all of their, um, presentation in one space so that you’ll be able to consume that at a later date, too.
Uh, but you know, considering it live while it happens is even better because you could engage with the presenter and ask any questions that you have, um, which helps you at home.
David Bisset: Plus also, it also stops that nagging question that usually people ask ever after all the other conferences, what’s your Twitter handle.
[00:20:00] If I had a dime, I can say it a bunch of times. Well, that sounds fantastic. So let’s see if I got this straight. We have the career summit. We have the, uh, live spaces. Um, I should say Twitter spaces for the, um, for the weekly WordPress jobs. And then we have the Twitter, um, conference happening. Remind me again, that what the date was May 24th, May 24th, right?
Um, at 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Currently as the time of this recording, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM Eastern time on there. And that’s what we have. That’s what we have to willing to share right now to the public. Um, and right now, but if you want to S if you’re listening to this and you want to see maybe the latest. Um, cause we’re going to be adding to this.
I mean, there’s more coming down the road. You just can’t tell me about it on a recording. That’s fine.
Michelle Frechette: I actually had a conversation this morning about something that’s probably coming up pretty soon that we’re working on. So [00:21:00] that’s all I’m going to say.
David Bisset: Stop teasing me! stop teasing me
Michelle Frechette: I’ll DM you later, but yes, there definitely will be more.
And if there are things that you, dear, dear reader, dear listener.
David Bisset: You say speaker and we always have to constant
Michelle Frechette: gentle listener, whatever whoever’s listening to us right now. If there are things that you think that we can be doing and doing better and ways that we can be meeting the needs of our community at plus status and the greater community, we want to hear about it.
If you’ve got ideas, as a matter of fact, the idea that I was kicking around this morning with some of our. Post status people was brought to me by a post status member. And so we definitely are listening to the things that you think would be edifying for our community. And if there’s some, if it’s something we can move forward with and help facilitate, we were very interested in doing that.
So we are absolutely open to ideas. The whole idea of together is an us sitting at post status, [00:22:00] handing down all of these events. But certainly doing it together with you. And we want to make sure that we’re just not guessing what might be good events, but also I’m listening to you and your needs. And so bring us your ideas.
David Bisset: Fantastic. So again, uh, once again, post-test dot com slash offense. And if you want the, like Michelle said, reach out to us with some of your ideas, uh, best way to do that is just to reach out to us via our contact, um, form. Well share let’s let’s just get this on the record. What are the ways people can reach out to, to, to learn more or to.
Michelle Frechette: Yep. So I’m on Twitter at, @michelleames or you can, I also could, uh, can get into the, @post_status so you can message us either place there. If you are on slack, you can find me on the post status lack. I I’m very easy to find and I’m, I guess, ubiquitous I’m everywhere
David Bisset: right now. Follow the rainbow of smiles and you will find it.
You’ll find Michelle. Michelle is probably one of the best people. Um, but that [00:23:00] doesn’t, that I don’t owe money to. She’s a great focal point. So I encourage you. If you have some feedback on the stuff that we were talking about or something new or need that you see in the WordPress community. I mean, we’re not the eye of Sauron here.
We can’t see everything. I’m not even sure if that’s the correct reference. I got to go through,
Michelle Frechette: go back to the books, had the word
David Bisset: that’s good. So thank you very much, Michelle, for covering all of this and, um, getting the word out about this and I’m looking forward to. One of your first, um, Wednesday Twitter spaces.
In addition to all the addition to all the other things we’ve been talking about here. So thanks again. Super excited.
Michelle Frechette: It’s my pleasure. Thanks.