Daniel Schutzsmith Shares Thoughts on the Upcoming State of the Word

Bob: Hey, Bob WP here. I am still in New York City. Of course I am, because it’s only about an hour later since I talked to you last time and yeah, still in my room doing these things and this time I have the pleasure of having Daniel with me, another State of the Word attendee and yeah, we’re just…

Daniel: Yeah.

Bob: … streaming through these people and trying to find anybody who will be sucker enough to come up into Bob’s hotel room, which is really strange to even say, but it works. Daniel, how are you doing?

Daniel: Good. Good. Thanks for having me. Daniel Schutzsmith. I’ve been in the WordPress industry for about 10 plus years, but only recently, I’d say in the past six months, having really started doing things around the industry. I work for Pinellas County Government in Florida, beautiful west side of Florida. But then on my spare time, I’m doing WP live streams, which is like a directory of all the live streams that are out there and things like that. And I believe we’re both on the WP Minute as well, being part of that.

Bob: Yeah. Cool. How’s the WP Live? How’s that going?

Daniel: Purely a passion project.

Bob: Yeah. Just something to get stuff out there.

Daniel: Well, one of the things I like to do is when I’m coding, my position was really for project management, but I ended up becoming more of a developer and getting back into that again, and when I’m coding, I like to have something playing in the background or like to watch different things. And so I started realizing that we had a lot of these different live streams across the WordPress ecosystem that people just didn’t realize we had. And a lot of people were doing them and they’d have like two or three viewers, but we didn’t even realize that they were there.

Bob: Yeah.

Daniel: And so really that’s the whole premise, just to get some exposure for them. But also to just put it in one place so we know what’s going on, what’s out there.

Bob: Yeah. I’m actually surprised nobody’s done it before now because there’s a lot of little ones going here and there and you just don’t hear about them and they don’t… It’s hard for them to get the word out.

Daniel: And I think there’s a good symbiotic relationship too, with what Kate and Topher are doing over with the WP podcasts, that’s another resource where it’s like, “wow, we didn’t do that already?”

Bob: Yeah, really? And then you look at it and you think, “oh, is there really that many?”, especially for a lot of people that aren’t even aware of it. So that’s cool. Well, we’re at The State of the Word and yeah, I just thought I’d have a few people chime in on… I don’t know, what you’re thinking about what you want to hear, just give us some thoughts.

Daniel: Thoughts. Yeah. I mean, I’m sure you’ve had people already talking about full site editing and all kinds of stuff like that. My side, being that I’m in… My main job’s in government, I’m really big on accessibility and being able to make WordPress successful websites. And so it’s actually been a pretty big topic as of late, only in the past 48 hours on the post status slack, Amber Heinz from Equalized Digital brought up the whole conversation of will Matt actually talk about and address accessibility at the event. I think he will just because it became such a big thing. I think maybe he’ll say a sentence or two, but I don’t think we’re going to be getting anything more than that out of this.

Bob: Yeah.

Daniel: But I think that what’s really interesting is there’s a valid community behind it that’s really kind of pushing that.

Bob: Yeah.

Daniel: And for people like Amber, who… She does an accessibility meetup, they’re also doing accessibility word camp, basically, when they’re putting all those things together I think it’s just giving us more and more kind of fire to be able to, to reinforce that.

Bob: Yeah. It’s interesting. Because Adam, who was on, I had before this, he brought up accessibility and actually somebody on the train brought it up and I’m trying to think who it was. Because I had a couple interviews on the train and I’m thinking somehow I need to… I wish I could see Matt beforehand and say, “I’ve had four podcasts and three of them want to hear about accessibility, dude, the pressure’s on”. No, but it’s interesting because then I’m going to be talking tomorrow to some people and probably at the thing, maybe I’ll catch you even after we’re at the reception and get some feedback for that. So what’s happening in New York while you’re here? Anything exciting?

Daniel: Well, I worked in New York City for about 13 years or so after college and last night before we had dinner there, I was actually taking a walk around the old neighborhoods of where I worked.

Bob: Oh cool.

Daniel: In the old digital agencies. One’s a Starbucks, one’s still above the Moji place on Broadway, but yeah, a lot of different places that I had worked at before, and it’s weird to see the neighborhoods change a little bit, for some of them, lower east side has completely changed from what it was for me 10 years ago. But yet, Broadway right around NoHo and Soho, it was kind of the same, it was always a little bit of commercial, but also a little bit of art and creativity.

Bob: Yeah. When you were living here, I’m just curious because I… Last time I was in New York was, actually my wife and I were here like five or six months after 9/11.

Daniel: Oh, okay.

Bob: And it was a book thing that we… It was a very interesting time to come here. One of the times we came here, we did all the tourist things. We just thought, “okay, we’re going to do…”

Daniel: Sure.

Bob: When you were living here, 13 years, I’m curious. What was your most recommended, like, “okay, this is what you got to do while you’re in New York.” What would you say that is?

Daniel: Oh.

Bob: Yeah. Is there something that’s like, “okay. You’ve got all these, you got the empire state building, you got statue of Liberty, you got central park. You got museums”.

Daniel: Yeah. Depends on the season.

Bob: Yeah.

Daniel: Totally. So, in the winter, and I think someone actually asked this on Twitter and I chimed in with, “go to Serendipity and get the hot chocolate” and things like that.

Bob: Yeah.

Daniel: Go to Rockefeller Center and check out the ice skating and the tree. Even if you don’t ice skate, just check it out.

Bob: Yeah. You got to see that. Yeah.

Daniel: Central Park, too, is also really nice, but Central Park’s pretty interesting though, because it’s not really nice during the winter because it’s a lot of brown.

Bob: That’s true.

Daniel: It’s only nice if it snowed. If it snowed, go to Central Park and check it out.

Bob: Yeah.

Daniel: And then, for summer months and stuff like that, I mean the biggest thing I’ve always loved was just going to Central Park and hanging out. Most people don’t realize that there’s WiFi in the park in different spots.

Bob: Oh, is there now?

Daniel: So you can actually sit on one of those big rocks, pick up WiFi and just work and relax.

Bob: Oh that’s cool.

Daniel: Yeah. It’s pretty cool.

Bob: That’s good to know. Yeah. I think when we were here last time it was… Well, I think the first time or something was September and it was unseasonably warm because we went down to Central Park because we wanted to see the leaves changing and everything. And they were kind of behind on things because it was just that particular year. It was kind of off and stuff and they were having the marathon. So it was all sorts of stuff going on there. They were all sweating like dogs and it was crazy. So, well, I appreciate you popping in and yeah… Is there anything else in the WordPress space you just want to shout out to, or anything on your mind before we close out?

Daniel: No, I think we’re just going to have a really interesting 2022. Interesting to see where it goes.

Bob: Yeah, cool. Well, thank you very much, Daniel and everybody, I do always want to remind you. I have four sponsors, Cloudways, GoDaddy Pro, Mindsize and Post Status. And that’s why I was able to do this. And they’re actually… We’re going to be going to lunch after this, Daniel and I, hopefully some people will join us. So I’m making good use of the sponsorship dollars. So, until next time. Alrighty.