Community + Code podcast

Community + Code podcast

@communitycode.dev

A podcast about the people behind the commits. Community + Code is dedicated to the humans that write the code that operate the systems of our lives. https://communitycode.dev

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Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

.@devopsjacquie got over her fear of public speaking by signing up for something scarier: a main stage in front of ~1,100 people. We talked stage fright, a live-coding reality show, and bringing joy back to building things.

communitycode.devJacquie Capur on turning a fear of public speaking into a career and whimsyJacquie Capur used to be so nervous about speaking in meetings that she’d lose entire mornings to it. Her fix? Something scarier. One meetup talk later, she was on the main stage at DevOps Toronto in front of about eleven hundred people. She still carries the stress stone a teammate gave her. In this episode […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

PJ Hagerty helped coin "developer relations" in 2011 and says that open source is free as in puppy, not beer. You have to take care of it. We get into punk rock, AI eating open source, and why junior devs need to be allowed to break things.

communitycode.devPJ Hagerty on punk rock, open source, and not letting AI tell you what to doPJ Hagerty has a pretty good claim to having coined the term “developer relations.” According to Wikipedia, he and Eamon Leonard landed on it around 2011. Since then, PJ’s built DevRel programs at IBM, Spotify, and a string of startups, and he currently leads DevRelate.io. But this episode isn’t really a DevRel history lesson. PJ […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

Patchstack's @maciekpalmowski.dev explains why "WordPress core is secure" stopped being true, and what AI-driven vulnerability research means for site owners now.

communitycode.devMaciek Palmowski and the five-hour zero-dayFor years, the standard line on WordPress security was: core is secure, it’s the plugins you have to worry about. Maciek Palmowski — grown-up Spectrum kid, current growth engineer at Patchstack, and newly minted conference organizer — is here to tell you that line doesn’t hold anymore. AI-assisted research just found real vulnerabilities in WordPress […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

Jonathan Wold (@jonathanwold.com) read encyclopedias for fun as a kid, mostly because his mom wouldn't let them watch TV. He's still just following the curiosity. Homeschooling, WordPress as an operating system, and never learning to ask permission.

communitycode.devJonathan Wold on curiosity, permission and the operating system of the webJonathan Wold read encyclopedias for fun as a kid. Not because he was precocious — because his mom wouldn’t let them watch much TV and he got bored, and there they were on the shelf. That’s roughly the shape of his whole career, it turns out. Homeschooled through high school, first computer an Apple IIGS, […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

Bud Kraus has been in WordPress about as long as WordPress has been legally able to drink. This week he tells me about the Uber ride that became a 110-episode podcast, why airports should be teleporters, and the one thing AI can't fake.

communitycode.dev <ab-test test-id="titles" post-id="1150" traffic-percentage="35" goal="click" closest="a" fallback="Bud Kraus on bringing the human value AI can’t fake" variants="["Bud Kraus on bringing the human value AI can't fake","Bud Kraus on teleporters, Star Trek and staying authentic","Bud Kraus on why WordPress feels like its yours","Bud Kraus on getting dumber and smarter at the same time"]" > Bud Kraus on bringing the human value AI can’t fake </ab-test> Bud Kraus will happily tell you he might be the oldest person in WordPress — he once tried the line on Matt Mullenweg, who told him he’s “getting there.” But the fun of this conversation isn’t the age jokes; it’s how much genuine curiosity he still runs on. We trace the whole arc: teaching HTML and […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

@toderash.net came to WordPress through open source, not the other way around — and he thinks that changes everything. We talked #FAIR, package management as a Lego set of proven ideas, and why AI might bring back writing code just to give it away.

communitycode.devBrent Toderash on sharing, sunk costs, and the software supply chainSpend an hour with Brent Toderash and you realize he’s the guy quietly holding a very complicated system together with clear thinking and a lot of diagrams even as he tells you that he’s not a very technical person. Brent came to WordPress through open source first. He started with Linux in the ’90s, free software, […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

Miriam Goldman calls her job "a website therapist and a website doctor at the same time." We also got into Drupal vs. WordPress, how a church band accidentally started her WordPress career, and why she's a fourth-degree black belt who plays clarinet

communitycode.devMiriam Goldman on WordPress, Drupal and website therapyMiriam Goldman has filled just about every role a WordCamp has to offer — organizer, speaker, volunteer, attendee — over more than a decade in WordPress. Lately, though, she’s been branching out, showing up at DrupalCon and DrupalCamp Ottawa to see what WordPress and Drupal can actually learn from each other. We talked about the real […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

WordPress gets blamed for security problems that are almost always the user's fault. Robert Abela has been in security since he was 19 and has a lot of thoughts about that. New Community + Code ep is out now.

communitycode.devRobert Abela on old-school hacking and why WordPress gets blamed for the wrong thingsHave you ever talked to a real live hacker? When I was a teenager, I loved reading about the early days of hacking — wardriving, phone phreaking, the wild pioneering days of the early internet. My guest this week, Robert Abela, actually lived through them. He got his start in information security following in the footsteps […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

New episode of Community + Code with @carriedils.com — WordPress educator, FAIR co-chair, and former Starbucks manager (the last one is not a bit). We talk courses, open source governance, and why you should care where your plugins come from.

communitycode.devCarrie Dils on FAIR and WordPress educationCarrie Dils has been in WordPress long enough to remember version 3, long enough to have built courses on Lynda.com before LinkedIn bought it, and long enough to have left tech entirely for a while to go learn the coffee business at Starbucks. (She came back. Obviously.) In this episode of Community + Code, Carrie and […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

Miriam Schwab went from content writer → WordPress agency owner → static site startup founder → acquired by Elementor → Head of WordPress at a 21M-install company. She calls herself a "fake developer." New episode is out now.

communitycode.devMiriam Schwab from a folding table to 21 million installsMiriam Schwab has been all in on WordPress for two decades. She started as a content writer who got distracted by the websites she was writing for, taught herself to build them, and eventually grew that into a thirteen-year agency — illuminea — serving tech companies and nonprofits in Israel. Then she went startup: Strattic was […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

This week on @communitycode.dev, @courtneyr.dev admitted she had Claude running in another tab during our conversation. To be fair, so did I. We get into DevRel, AI coding, vibe-coding WordPress plugins, and open source licensing ethics. Check it out

communitycode.devCourtney Robertson on being the glueCourtney Robertson has been in the WordPress community since 2009, when she got her start volunteering to hand out name badges at WordCamp Mid-Atlantic after missing out on getting a ticket. These days she’s a Developer Advocate at GoDaddy — a role she describes as a “dotted line,” connecting the engineering side of hosting infrastructure […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

7 out of 56 speaker applications were from women. That was Jill Binder's WordCamp. So she built what became a workshop that ran in 50 countries.

communitycode.devJill Binder and being an expert on your own experienceJill Binder didn’t plan to become a diversity advocate. She was co-organizing a WordCamp in Vancouver when she noticed that only seven of fifty-six speaker applications came from women — and decided to do something about it. What started as a local fix turned into a five-year journey: a five-hour workshop, run a hundred times, in […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

Natalie MacLees has been thinking about web accessibility since before most developers had heard the word. She's also been very patient about people mispronouncing her name. (I am one of those people.)

communitycode.devNatalie MacLees on the misinformation holding accessibility backNatalie MacLees has been thinking about web accessibility since before most developers had heard the word. It started with a phone call — a university’s Office of Disability Services telling her that students couldn’t use the websites she’d been happily building — and it never really stopped. Now she’s the founder of AAArdvark, an accessibility […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

The guy who built PublishPress reads every single support ticket himself. 10,000 customers. Probably not in any management textbook. It works though.

communitycode.devSteve Burge on iteration, local journalism and the COBOL users of WordPressSteve Burge came to open source the long way around. He was a schoolteacher in England, then in rural Georgia — the kind of rural where the starting pay for a teacher in 2004 was $27,000 a year. That math didn’t work once he had a family, so he started building websites in the evenings. […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

Four WordPress nerds walk into a Podcastathon. All of them are on the board of a nonprofit trying to fix how open source contribution works. One of them is me.

communitycode.devThe WP Community Collective on feeding humans into the boilerThis is a first for Community + Code: a full board meeting (almost), on the podcast. For this special Podcastathon episode, I sat down with three of my fellow WP Community Collective board members — Courtney Robertson, Sé Reed, and Jono Alderson — to talk about something I care about deeply and probably doesn’t get discussed […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

The person whose code silently runs in your CI every single day has thoughts on AI PRs, exploitative capitalism, and funding open source. They're spicy. You should hear them.

communitycode.devJuliette Reinders Folmer on being invisible and exploitative capitalismOpen source runs the internet. Most people who use it — including the companies profiting from it — have no idea. That’s the central tension in this conversation with Juliette Reinders Folmer, a Netherlands-based PHP developer who has quietly spent the last decade maintaining tools used by hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide. You might not […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

Fons Vandamme has a rule: if an LLM responds with "great idea," something is wrong. We talked Drupal, Webhaven, building solo with AI, and why the story might only be starting now. 🎙️

communitycode.devFons Vandamme on building without excusesThere’s a particular kind of developer story that often shows up on Community + Code. Someone falls sideways into technology, gets obsessed, spends years getting really good at one thing — and then decides to pour all of it into something they’ve been building in their head for years. Fons Vandamme’s version of that story […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

Carl Alexander on serverless WordPress, the real cost of “cheap” hosting, and why modern devs just want to deploy and go live their lives. Also: candid talk about marketing noise + staying honest when building solo. 🎧💥

communitycode.devCarl Alexander on scaling and being true to yourselfThe through-line in Carl Alexander’s career is building things that other developers don’t want to think about and making it easy for them to adopt and use and stop babysitting systems. In this episode of Community + Code, we talk about Carl’s early exposure to programming and robotics and how he fell into a WordPress […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

John Hawkins (@vegasgeek.com) is with me on the podcast this week to talk about WordCamps, teaching one small thing that changes someone’s path, and the long-tail “return on connection.”

communitycode.devJohn Hawkins and “return on connection”John Hawkins (aka VegasGeek) has been around WordPress long enough to understand the part nobody can put into a spreadsheet: that the real value of community is almost never immediate. We talk about the moment a simple plugin-development talk at a WordCamp helped flip my own identity from “designer” to “developer, actually,” and how John […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

Season 2 is here! 🎙️ First up in 2026: @tearyne.bsky.social on online identity, DevRel as “therapy,” accessibility getting real, and cozy co-working communities.

communitycode.devTearyne Almendariz on identity and intentional community spacesTearyne Almendariz has one of those internet-origin stories that makes perfect sense: Sailor Moon fandom led to learning Japanese, which led to building websites, which eventually led to Drupal — and to a career shaped as much by community as by code. In this Season 2 kickoff of Community + Code, we talk about the […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

I sat down with @thewebprincess.bsky.social to talk cultural algorithms, implicit bias, WP Includes, and why our communities thrive when we stop guarding our corner of the pie.

communitycode.devDee Teal on cultural algorithms, belonging and biasA common theme in this podcast is the way that open source brings people together and it’s those communities that become far more powerful than the software that we initially got into. In this episode, I sit down with my friend Dee Teal, a Melbourne-based project manager, delivery leader and long time WordPress community member […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

This week on C+C, I chatted with @troychaplin.bsky.social about the real work behind higher-ed WordPress, supporting huge groups of editors and why a11y has to start before you hit publish.

communitycode.devTroy Chaplin on Accessibility and WordPress in Higher EdTroy Chaplin is a WordPress developer at Carleton University and one of the organizers of WordCamp Canada. He wrote the Block Accessibility Checks plugin out of a need for his work in higher ed WordPress. In this episode, we talk about what makes building WordPress sites for higher education different and the reality of supporting […]

Community + Code podcast reposted

Chris Reynolds
@jazzsequence.com

For the past 7 months, I've been running @communitycode.dev, a podcast that gives me an excuse to talk to cool people about what inspires them. It's been a great run & I'm looking at doing it all over again in 2026. Join me and be a guest on the show! communitycode.dev/be-a-guest/

communitycode.devBe a Guest - Community + CodeEveryone has a story to tell. If you are doing things on the internet (anything…really), I want to talk to you! Community + Code is a casual conversation that focuses as much (or more) on the who and ...
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

I talked with @mike.herschel.com about Drupal’s big shift toward themes, Drupal CMS, Canvas, and what it’s like to build @dripyard.com as the ecosystem starts changing. Super thoughtful conversation about community, collaboration, and timing.

communitycode.devMike Herchel on open source and the future of commercial marketplaces for DrupalMike Herchel is a fixture in the Drupal community and the lead developer of the Olivero core theme. Now he’s building something new, a Drupal theme marketplace called Dripyard. We talk about the challenges the Drupal has faced over the years, particularly around the user experience, theme development and limitations and the culture of collaboration […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

Being number one in WordPress isn’t the point — keeping the web open is. @mikedemo.bsky.social joins Community + Code to talk about bridging open-source communities, from Joomla to WordPress, and why collaboration beats competition.

communitycode.devMike Demo on Open Source, Community and Vegan FoodIf you’ve been to more than one WordCamp, odds are you’ve seen Mike Demo. He’s a Partnerships Lead at Hosting.com and a familiar face in the open-source world—someone who thrives on connecting people, projects, and ideas. Demo describes himself as a “lead handshaker,” a title that pretty much says it all: his work is about […]

Community + Code podcast reposted

Christos Paloukas
@paloukas.com

Awesome show with an amazing host: @jazzsequence.com!!

Community + Code podcast@communitycode.dev

From Chicago to Greece, @paloukas.com talks performance engineering at @pressidium.com, WordCamps and camping with his cat. 😻

communitycode.devChristos Paloukas on Performance Engineering, Community, and CatsIn this week’s episode of Community + Code, we’re joined by Christos Paloukas, a performance engineer at Pressidium who’s as passionate about making websites faster as he is about rescuing cats. We talk about what performance engineering actually means, why “making things fast” depends more on people and process than technology, and how caching can […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

From Chicago to Greece, @paloukas.com talks performance engineering at @pressidium.com, WordCamps and camping with his cat. 😻

communitycode.devChristos Paloukas on Performance Engineering, Community, and CatsIn this week’s episode of Community + Code, we’re joined by Christos Paloukas, a performance engineer at Pressidium who’s as passionate about making websites faster as he is about rescuing cats. We talk about what performance engineering actually means, why “making things fast” depends more on people and process than technology, and how caching can […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

FusionAuth’s @maida.kim joins @jazzsequence.com and shares her path through DevRel, why identity work matters, and how art helps her stay balanced.

communitycode.devKim Maida on Identity, DevRel and Finding BalanceWhen you think of identity and authentication, “fun” might not be the first word that comes to mind. But for Kim Maida, Senior Director of Developer Relations at FusionAuth, it’s a calling. In this episode of Community + Code, Kim talks about her journey through Developer Relations and how she found herself coming back again […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

After wearing many hats within the WordPress ecosystem, my guest on this week’s episode of Community + Code, Tammie Lister, has settled on the title of Product Engineer — someone who thrives on guiding ideas from their earliest spark to scaling, while keeping people at the heart of the process. In…

communitycode.devTammie Lister on Technology, Creativity and CommunityAfter wearing many hats within the WordPress ecosystem, my guest on this week’s episode of Community + Code, Tammie Lister, has settled on the title of Product Engineer — someone who thrives on guiding ideas from their earliest spark to scaling, while keeping people at the heart of the process. In this episode, Tammie shares […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

I had the pleasure of chatting with Raquel, mastermind of @pressconf.events and founder of @wonderlandcurious.bsky.social to talk about building community and the heart of innovative events.

communitycode.devRaquel on how WordPress is about people, not just codeIf you’ve been around WordPress for a while, there is a decent chance you’ve crossed paths with Raquel. Raquel has been an agency owner, member of the Elegant Themes team and now is the creator of WonderlandCurious, a tech event consultancy. She also is responsible for bringing back PressNomics as PressConf, a professional WordPress event […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

Brendan O’Leary joins Community + Code from Kilo Code, which has — since this episode — taken my top slot for VS Code AI extensions. We talk about what developer relations looks like inside different organizations and why that matters. Brendan also reflects on the human side of tech — storytelling,…

communitycode.devBrendan O’Leary on putting developers first in an age of AI-assisted codingBrendan O’Leary joins Community + Code from Kilo Code, which has — since this episode — taken my top slot for VS Code AI extensions. We talk about what developer relations looks like inside different organizations and why that matters. Brendan also reflects on the human side of tech — storytelling, advocacy, and creating connections […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

I said I wanted to make this podcast in the open, so in the open I shall be. I did a major screw up last week. Like, near catastrophic as far as podcasts go. About as bad as you could get, really. Now, I’m taking full responsibility for this screw up, but it has been […]

communitycode.devSometimes systems fail us; sometimes we fail ourselvesI said I wanted to make this podcast in the open, so in the open I shall be. I did a major screw up last week. Like, near catastrophic as far as podcasts go. About as bad as you could get, really. Now, I’m taking full responsibility for this screw up, but it has been […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

👑 What does it mean to be a queen in the digital age? I sat down with Queen Carolyn of Ladonia to talk about micronations, crowns, community, and what leadership looks like when code meets royalty. #CommunityAndCode #WordPress #Micronations

communitycode.devQueen Carolyn on balancing crowns, community and codeWhat does it mean to be a queen in the digital age? On this episode of Community + Code, I sat down with Queen Carolyn of Ladonia to talk about her role as monarch of a micronation that thrives on art, community, and playful governance. We explored how she balances her life in tech with […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

I'm working on the next episode of Community + Code. It'll come out next week, while many of us are at #WordCampUS. I'm so, so excited to share this episode with you. I'm not going to give anything away yet, but let's just say it's a royally good time. 👑

Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

New on the pod: I talk with @willkle.in about his path from developer to DevRel, social anxiety & public speaking, and surviving burnout. We also dig into the importance of diverse communities and separating your work from your identity. #devrel

communitycode.devWill Klein on Overcoming Social Anxiety and Finding CommunityIn this episode of Community + Code, I chatted with Will Klein, a Developer Relations Engineer at North. We talked about his transition from software development to Developer Relations, imposter syndrome and overcoming social anxiety. We also talk about burnout, what it looks like and how it’s hard to see when you’re in the thick […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

From BBSes to AI-driven WordPress tools, Zach Hendershot joins Community + Code to talk about automation, education, and building responsibly with AI.

communitycode.devZach Hendershot on AI and the Future of Web DevelopmentIn this episode of Community + Code, I sat down with Zach Hendershot. Zach is the CEO of Miruni, a tool that uses AI to automate website updates and maintenance. We talked about Zach’s history in tech and spent a lot of time talking about AI — the good, the bad and the ugly — […]
Community + Code podcast
@communitycode.dev

This week, we have Patrick Rauland on the pod. Patrick is not a stranger to podcasting himself and is currently the host of Plugin.fm. We talk about his journey through open source before landing on WordPress and WooCommerce, marketing advice for creators and board games. Also: Patrick may or may…

communitycode.devPatrick Rauland on Marketing for Creators and Board GamesThis week, we have Patrick Rauland on the pod. Patrick is not a stranger to podcasting himself and is currently the host of Plugin.fm. We talk about his journey through open source before landing on WordPress and WooCommerce, marketing advice for creators and board games. Also: Patrick may or may not have recorded this episode […]