In this episode, Allie speaks with James Giroux (Director of Brand & Product Marketing at Stellar WP) about ways in which one can be an ally for others – even when things don’t go as planned.
Episode Transcript:
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Underrepresented in Tech podcast, hosted by Michelle Frechette and Allie Nimmons. Underrepresented in Tech is a free database but with the goal of helping people find new opportunities in WordPress and tech overall.
Speaker 1:
Welcome back, everyone. Welcome to the Underrepresented in Tech podcast. We aren’t starting today’s episode with our typical, “Hi, Allie. Hi, Michelle,” because Michelle’s not here with us today, but I do have a very, very, very special guest. Guest, please introduce yourself to the listeners.
Speaker 2:
Hi, everyone. My name is James Giroux, and I am the Director of Brand and Product Marketing over at StellarWP, part of the Liquid Web Family of Brands.
Speaker 1:
Hooray. Yay. Thank you so much, James, for being here with us.
Speaker 2:
No problem.
Speaker 1:
So quick preface, I’ve worked with James a couple of times over the past couple of months because one of the StellarWP projects, LearnDash, is a sponsor of this podcast. It is a sponsor of another podcast that I work on at MasterWP, and it is a future sponsor of Black Press, which is a project that I work on. So chatting with James about sponsorships and whatnot has become a common occurrence in my life over the months. I’m so grateful and appreciative. And so, yeah, I’m really happy to have you on. Through those conversations and through those opportunities and so on, there’s lots of different kinds of allyship, and there’s lots of different kinds of ways to show support for diverse initiatives. Money is definitely one of the ways to show support. I’m not going to lie, sometimes just being able to reach out and say, “Hey, we need help paying to be able to make this work.” And sometimes allyship is saying like, “Yes, I will support you in that way.”
Speaker 1:
So I’m curious to learn just a little bit from your perspective as somebody who makes these decisions about what to sponsor and where to sponsor and how to sponsor and those sorts of things. I don’t know exactly how much of that at StellarWP is you and how much of it is you and other folks, but I’m really curious to learn about like what kind of processes and conversations go into a decision to sponsor projects like ours.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, no, I think that’s a great question. There’s two sides to it. Anytime you’re doing any kind of sponsorship and marketing, there’s, “What are we giving?” question and, “What are we getting back?” Question, and both of those need to be answered. I think they need to be answered before you even go out and start looking for potential partnerships and sponsorships because you have to have as an organization a clear sense of the why, right? Why are you doing something before you jump in?
Speaker 2:
From my perspective, one of the really neat things about Stellar and Liquid Web in general is that its scale gives it a big lift in terms of the impact that it can have for organizations and podcasts and creators in the WordPress ecosystem. The first thing that I always do is I go, “Okay, what are they saying? Who is their audience? What is it that they’re trying to accomplish? Is what they’re doing in alignment with who we are as an organization? Do we align voice and tone wise? Are they saying things in a way that we would want to be represented by or be associated with? Is the conversations, or are the conversations that they’re having the kinds of conversations we want to be a part of?” And if those are yes, then we move on to other things like, let me think, how big is the audience, or does that even matter? Or is it just about making sure that when people in the audience are thinking about the kinds of things that are being spoken about on a podcast, we want to be front of mind for that.
Speaker 2:
And it takes different forms, right? When it comes to this podcast in particular, I think the thing for me is when I came on at Stellar, I did a little bit of thinking about, “From a brand perspective, what is it that we can do as a brand that maybe not a lot of others, smaller brands can do?” And that is to actually really lean in hard and heavy in the diversity and inclusion space. Not a lot of companies in WordPress are big enough where they have the capacity to really think and be selective that way. We have that advantage, and so why not lean in? Why not do what we can to celebrate diverse voices, to raise up diverse voices within the WordPress ecosystem?
Speaker 2:
So when we went out to do our initial search for partners and sponsors or sponsorships, that was the first thing that I was looking for, was where are these other voices out there, not the typical white male in their forties type of creator out there that we could find? So that was the first thing. And then, obviously, some of these other things like, “Is this the right audience for us? Are we going to get any value out of it?” and go from there.
Speaker 1:
That makes so much sense. And yeah, that’s such a simple thing to do, right, is just to say, “Well, where are other people saying things that are not really being said and what do they need? Those seem like the main two steps to take. I mean, me personally in the past ’20, ’21, 22, three years of being super active in this community, I’ve seen such an increase in that mindset and such an increase in people being proactive about how they can support others, even if it is just a DM, that’s saying, “How can I support you?” We’ve talked a little bit on the podcast about that kind of thing before, like sometimes it’s just a, “How can I support you?” or sometimes it’s a, “I’d like to support you in this way. Is that something that you could use?” And both of those things are really powerful.
Speaker 1:
Outside of sponsorships because those are the three projects that we’ve worked on at together have been sponsorship based, are there other ways in which StellarWP or LearnDash or Liquid Web, from your perspective, have been trying to habitually support other voices outside of monetary sponsorships?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. I think the big one is leveraging our audience to actually raise awareness. We can amplify what others are doing with our existing customer base and the audience acquisition that we do. So looking for opportunities to do that, to celebrate voices, to put our own focus on people that are in our network or in our ecosystem. A good example of that, for example, is Cory Ashton. Cory Ashton is an amazing creator. She’s based out of Texas. She has her own YouTube channel. At LearnDash, we sponsored her to do a number of videos for us. We brought her into our team to do some consulting with us, and any chance I get, and I know any chance our team gets, we are looking for opportunities to celebrate her and the work that she’s doing both for Stellar but just on her own as well, and getting out there and doing things like that. Those are the kinds of things that I look for. I like to see us doing across our different brands, is looking for those opportunities to really amplify what people are already doing.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I love Cory Ashton. She’s kind of a powerhouse and it’s amazing to see all of the things that she works on and that she creates. Definitely an inspiration for me as a WordPress educator. There’s a subset of us out there who focus on educational content a lot. She’s a huge inspiration to me for that. You mentioned smaller companies focusing on, well, what can we do as a larger brand that some smaller brands maybe can’t swing at the moment, what kind of work would you recommend for smaller brands to do? Maybe it’s not a matter of sponsoring a podcast or sponsoring a project, but what do you think that smaller brands could be doing instead to push these diverse voices forward and help the community to become and stay more diverse?
Speaker 2:
I think that’s a really great question. I think the first thing is to acknowledge that WordPress is not diverse. That might be a bit extreme to say because there’s lots of people from different backgrounds in it, but I think in terms of influence and leadership and who gets the megaphone, we need to do more in that space. I can tell a story. I was working on a podcast last year for Gravity Forms. While there, one of the things I did was I actually developed just a spreadsheet for all of the guests that were coming on the show that I was planning. It was my own personal little diversity score. So depending on whether they were different gender, different ethnic background, different language background, all of those things became my own personal diversity points.
Speaker 2:
And so, I would be rating myself and rating the show on an episode by episode basis to try to increase the score of diversity. It didn’t cost me anything. It was really just about being aware and looking for those opportunities to find those voices and going out and doing that. That, for me, I think, is the first step that any business can be doing, any organization can be doing no matter how big they are, is creating those checkpoints within their systems to ask questions around diversity like, “Am I doing something that will reflect me or that only I will connect to? Is there something I can be doing? Is there somebody I can be talking to run this by to say, ‘Hey, yeah, you’re basically talking to a bunch of white dudes here. Can you maybe change this and actually come up with a different angle?’?” So yeah, that, to me, I think is probably the first thing that smaller organizations smaller businesses can do, is start to put those checkpoints in for diversity and inclusion.
Speaker 1:
I definitely heard all of what you said, but I’ve definitely hung up on that very first thing of acknowledging that the community is not diverse. That to me is so important because you can’t fix a problem unless you acknowledge that there’s a problem, right?
Speaker 2:
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:
I definitely think that our community is more diverse than some, but it’s not as diverse as it could be. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have half of what my job is. I wouldn’t have a lot of things to do and talk about. I think two things can be true, right? You can love this community and still acknowledge the downsides of it. I think a lot of people have so much love and affinity and loyalty to the project and the community of WordPress that they almost don’t want to almost insult it in that way and point out the things that are wrong, which to me is so backwards. Constructive criticism and pointing out the uncomfortable things is how you grow and how things become better.
Speaker 2:
I couldn’t agree more. It’s about resilience, right? When you think about the story of WordPress and the story of open source, there’s an innate resilience required for survival. Because it’s literally open, it’s transparent. Everything is out there for people to inspect, to have an opinion on, to bring change to. I think that there’s a really interesting, maybe parallel, there where we talk about open source and open community, and what does it look like to have open community that takes on some of the tenants of open source where we say, “Okay, here’s how the community works today. Here’s how things are. Could we do our own like pull requests or whatever they are, whatever the get stuff is that people talk about to actually push change, right?” Let’s make a recommendation to make this change that’s going to be added into the open community core values of who we are or the community that we’re creating and make those kinds of changes that actually support the WordPress community becoming what we want it to become?”
Speaker 2:
That’s been my thing over the last little while, is I’ve been trying to figure out my own voice within WordPress. Because it’s scary, it’s scary to put yourself out there. It’s scary to have an opinion in general. But then to do it in such a passionate and flag-waving community as WordPress, it’s even scarier. I think there’s opportunity here for us to shape the community, to shape what WordPress is becoming, and not at the code level, but just at how we talk to each other, how we connect with each other level and how we represent ourselves level.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. I love the idea of there being a GitHub repository for diversity, right?
Speaker 2:
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:
Like every time a new person with a new type of background is approved as an event speaker, that’s like a commit to the project as far as increasing the amount of diversity. Obviously, it’d be impossible to quantify something like that, but I do like the idea and I do believe it is happening. I’m not a developer, but I understand the meme of the grid with all of the green squares and stuff as far as how much you’ve been doing. I do think that the overall diversity WordPress repository is getting greener and greener and greener. But yeah, I wish there was a way we could quantify that and visualize that.
Speaker 1:
You mentioned it being so scary to put your thoughts and opinions out there and things like that, and I totally agree. I mean, I’ve definitely had had moments where I’ve said stuff that I wish either I hadn’t said or that I hadn’t said in the way that I said it. I just call it caring loudly, right?
Speaker 2:
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:
Like caring really, really loudly about the way that this community works and the ways that it could be better. I know that a while back at some point last year you had an instance on Twitter where somebody cared very loudly at you. I didn’t realize that it was that long ago, that it was last year, I thought it was recent, so I got really honestly angry for you and up in arms and wanted to come to your defense. I was like, “Okay, I shouldn’t put any more fuel on this fire.” But can you tell us a little bit about that instance and what you learned and what your reaction was to that exchange?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so recently I wrote a blog post called WordPress Isn’t Safe, But It Can Be, And It Starts With You. In that I told this story, which is where this all resurfaced, but basically last year as I was gearing up to launch Input with Gravity Forms, as I said, I had this diversity score card that I had put together and I was noticing a lot of the people that were saying yes were people that looked and sounded like me and I was going, “I just need to figure out how to do this.” I was struggling because normally the way that I would do that is through WordCamps and meetups, places that I could go to connect with people and where I could ask them in a much more individualized way if they’d be willing and comfortable to come on a show and participate.
Speaker 2:
But because of the pandemic and being locked down and locked up kind of thing, I didn’t have those outlets for building my network. I’d been a bit dormant as I was working for Envato previously, so I didn’t have the network that were really deep in the WordPress space at the time that I thought I did. And so, I decided the only thing I can do right now is expand my network and do that through Twitter. I really worried about this because I know that the best way to grow your list of guests is to just ask people individually to be on the show. But I didn’t have people that I could ask as I was looking at my network who were going to fit the profile of what I was looking for. I said, “Okay, well, let me see if I can go onto Twitter and see if anybody knows of anybody else who might fit the bill for what I’m looking for. And then I would go out and reach out to them.”
Speaker 2:
So I did that as well as doing my own private outreach as well behind the scenes. In doing that Twitter ask, somebody basically came at me saying that I was doing it wrong, that I should be going and asking them individually and not expecting other people to do the work for me. It was really scary for me, I remember the conversations, because that was exactly the opposite reaction. That was my worst fear, was that somebody would take that stand because I knew, obviously, ahead of time, and I knew that was a risk, but I just thought, “No, I have to because if I don’t take the step, it’s just not going to happen. Because there’s no WordCamps, there’s nothing happening, so I’ve got to do this virtually.”
Speaker 2:
I can remember even internally at Gravity Forms at the time I shared the tweet with my team or with the team at the time, and I was just like, “Did I do something wrong here? Did I say something wrong?” And got, “No, I think that was okay.” Obviously, we don’t know because everybody filters things through their own lens. But I tried to graciously respond and they just weren’t having it. Eventually you just have to stop, right?
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
I don’t like having fights on Twitter. I like having conversations on Twitter. But if somebody’s not willing to engage in a conversation and all they want to do is score points, that’s usually when I disengage. That’s what happened. I felt awful, felt a lot of shame actually. Here I had been trying to do it the right way or what I thought was the right way or a right way. I wasn’t looking to be celebrated like that. I wasn’t looking for visibility in that way. I was just looking genuinely to find guests for the show. So that scared me a lot.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it was a scary conversation. I mean, that person was very emotional. That’s what I’ll say. They were very emotional, and it wasn’t a constructive like, “Well, hey, I see what you’re doing, but-
Speaker 2:
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Speaker 1:
That’s okay.
Speaker 2:
Somebody’s doorbell rang.
Speaker 1:
Extra doggy guest on the show, I love it. Yeah, it definitely was not a constructive like, “Hey, I see what you’re doing and here’s a better way to do it.” It was not helpful. I mean, I read that tweet a couple times even because I read it and my initial reaction was like, “I definitely don’t agree with this person, and it’s making me upset.” I reread it to be like, “Okay, well, is there something that James did say or didn’t say that I’m not getting that’s making this person upset?” And I tried to read it through that lens, like through their point of view, and, yeah, couldn’t find really their perspective. Twitter is so great for so many things, but it’s so limiting. It gives you such a narrow view and perspective of somebody else’s thoughts and intentions and feelings. I mean, I stand by your thread. I think you did it the right way. After that thread, did you still pursue that show and getting those guests on that show?
Speaker 2:
I definitely did. I think it worked out really well actually. We ended up with some really great guests. In fact, my first guest on the show was a person of color. So for me, that was really, really cool. It was a statement, however subtly. After the founders came on, the first episode I did was a person of color, and that to me was really, really important because, at least for me, it said this matters enough to me to shape the whole order and change it up. Let’s do that. It was a fun show. I enjoyed doing it.
Speaker 1:
Good. I’m really glad that it worked out. I feel like there are definitely times where people might have an interaction like that and be then just too scared to pursue it, which I think is totally valid, right? If somebody is basically telling you, “If you try, you will be attacked. If you try, you will be attacked,” why would you pursue it? It makes sense to me why somebody would be scared off from continuing to advocate if they just feel like every step that they take, even if they feel like it’s the right one, is going to be met with anger and pushback and things like that.
Speaker 1:
I’m super glad to hear, I didn’t know this, that you had sent that tweet out to your work support system and gotten feedback. That, to me, is so valuable, to have people that you can ask to look at something and say, “Well, was I being tone deaf here? Was this wrong? How can I improve?” Because then the other, the other side of that is digging your heels in and saying, “Well, no, I did it the right way, and you’re being X, Y, Z, and blah, blah, blah.” And that can never end well. I think you did it all the right way.
Speaker 2:
One of the big things I learned, or I think as I’ve been reflecting on it even now and thinking about, is I think for people like me, and when I say people like me, I mean people with very privileged experience, one of the things that makes diversity and inclusion conversation so challenging is that we don’t know how to speak the language properly. I was thinking about that because I’ve been trying to teach myself Korean and getting-
Speaker 1:
Cool.
Speaker 2:
… into the whole language learning thing. Language learning is one of those things, and every language teacher will tell you, the best way to learn a language is just to speak it, to go out and talk to people who speak the language and make mistakes and let them correct you. And if you have a safe environment where you can be corrected and where they can help you get the language right, you get more confidence and you actually get better at the language.
Speaker 2:
I was thinking about that in the context of diversity and inclusion and how so much of the challenge I think that we have is, anytime we go out and we try to speak the language, if we don’t get it right the first time, we get jumped on, as this situation happened. And rather than it being a learning experience and an educational experience for people who are trying to learn this new language, they run away, right? They go scared. So that was the thing for me that I was like, “Oh, that makes a lot of sense. What we’re doing is we’re teaching a new language.” Giving people the space and the opportunity to learn the language would be really interesting. Just wondering out loud what that might look like if we were to actually create space even in our meetups or our WordCamps for this kind of, “Come learn how to speak the language of diversity. Come learn how to speak the language of inclusion. We’re going to practice it together and give you space to try it out and feedback.
Speaker 1:
That makes total sense. I mean, we have that to some degree in the WPDiversity meetups that Jill Binder has created and hosted. Those are really focused on speaker training, event organizer training. Talking about learning a new language, you can’t really learn a language unless you change the way that you’re thinking, right? I remember in high school taking Spanish and my teacher saying, “You can’t look at a window and think, ‘Window, oh, window is ventana.’ You have to just think ventana. You have to kind of re-pathway your brain in that way.”
Speaker 1:
And I think that you’re totally right in that there is a language of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and a lot of it starts with changing the way that you think about things, which takes practice and is difficult. It means you’re going to mess up sometimes. I think that there are definitely people in this community, myself included, who are willing to do the work of gentle correction and saying… Well, looking at the intention first and saying, “Okay, this person’s intention was good. They said something not great. Let me help them.” But the catch 22 in all of this is that for so many underrepresented people, that is so much work. That is emotional labor that-
Speaker 2:
Absolutely.
Speaker 1:
… a lot of times we’re not willing to do. That is also valid, but also sometimes we have to step up and say, “Okay, well, we’re going to try to teach the allies how to be a little bit better sometimes. You said something really important too, it’s a safe space. If you reached out to me in a DM and said, “Hey, I’m thinking of posting this.” or “I posted this and I got this feedback, what do you think?” I know you well enough now… I don’t think we’ve ever actually met in person, but I know you well enough now through the internet and I know your intentions well enough that I feel like doing the emotional labor is worth it. But if it’s just somebody I’d never spoken to or never met before, it’s just like, “Dude, I don’t know, ask someone else.” There’s certain people and there are certain instances in which that emotional labor is more possible and more comfortable than just doing it for everyone. I feel like a lot of underrepresented folks in the community are just not open and willing to doing that work. And so, that’s why we need things like Jill’s workshops and why I think that what Michelle and I do with the podcast is important, is we try to indirectly give that information to people.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely, yeah, you’re doing it at scale.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, no, what you’re saying makes a ton of sense. I think allyship is proactive, not reactive. We as allies need to be willing to jump in and educate ourselves and learn. That is what allyship is, in my opinion, and standing up, of course. I don’t know, allyship, it’s an interesting thing, you know talking about standing up for people, but part of my thinking on allyship, and I’m willing to be corrected here as well if this is wrong or not 100% correct, but allyship is not just about me as the white guy screaming loudly, because that’s still the same voice being heard. But it’s actually about looking for opportunities to amplify and raise up those voices that don’t get heard. Because the world doesn’t need more of my voice, the world needs more of other voices. So for me, allyship is about being proactive and learning, educating myself, standing up where it makes sense to stand up and supporting where it makes sense to support as well.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. I totally agree with that. I mean, I wrote a blog post a couple years ago about WordPress allyship, and I have a whole section about speaking up, and I have a whole section about shutting up. Privilege is power. That’s really all it is. It’s an almost quantifiable amount of power that somebody has in a given situation or society. And so, you have in many ways more power than I do. And so, if I’m trying to do something or get something out there or shared, for you to use your power to help that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:
To me, it’s a balancing act of, “When do I use this power, and when do I reign my power in or bring that power back so that this other person can exert more of the power that they do have?” I don’t believe that anyone is completely powerless. I will always say, and I will die on this hill, that even as a queer black woman, I have privilege because I am not neuro-divergent, I am able-bodied. I am young. I am audibly white passing, right? And so, there are all of these things that I have in terms of power that I can use. A lot of times what happens is not necessarily an underrepresented person doesn’t have power, but their power is drowned out by somebody who has more power than them. Yeah, it’s a balancing act of all of these things, which to some people comes really naturally and to some people you have to practice at it and figure it out. I think for some people it’s upbringing, it’s background, it’s unlearning things that they were taught, but I always think that it’s possible. I really appreciate folks like you who are eager to learn and use that power for good, for lack of a less comic booky way of saying it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
So, yeah. Well, I think we’re going to go ahead and wrap up there, but I really, really, really appreciate you taking some time to be on the podcast. Where can people find you or connect with you if they have additional questions about the stuff that you do?
Speaker 2:
Oh, that’s a great question. I’ve started blogging again, so you can just find me on my website, jamesgiroux.ca. On Twitter, Instagram-
Speaker 1:
Can you spell Giroux for us?
Speaker 2:
I certainly can. It’s James, J-A-M-E-S, Giroux, G-I-R-O-U-X as in x-ray .ca.
Speaker 1:
Perfect.
Speaker 2:
And just jamesgiroux is my handle pretty much everywhere. I managed to squeeze in most of those before somebody else grabbed them. I always thought I had a unique name till I found 10 other people with the same name.
Speaker 1:
Oh, wow, really?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it’s funny, right? You think it’s a really rare last name, and it’s French Canadian as well, which is its own thing, but yeah, no, there’s a lot of us out there apparently, including a lawyer I found in Hawaii, the same name as I have.
Speaker 1:
That’s funny. That’s crazy. Yeah, we’re definitely in the unique last name gang. My last name is very unusual. I have found lots of other Nimmons, but I’ve never found another Allie or Alexandra Nimmons before. So I tend to have an easy time with usernames too. Well, thank you so much for being on. Thank you so much, everybody, for listening. You know where to find us, underrepresentedintech.com. Please let us know what you thought of the episode, and we will see you next week.
Speaker 1:
This episode was sponsored by the following companies: WP Wallet. WP wallet is a free, simple, intelligent tool that helps WordPress professionals effortlessly manage all of their license keys and invoices for all sites and clients. Never forget a renewal, lose a license key, or miss out on a reimbursement again. Join WP Wallet for free today. LearnDash. LearnDash is taking cutting edge e-learning methodology and infusing it into WordPress. More than just a plugin, LearnDash is trusted to power the learning programs for major universities, small to mid-size companies, startups, entrepreneurs, and bloggers worldwide. If you’re interested in sponsoring an episode, using our database, or just want to say hi, go to underrepresentedintech.com. See you next week.