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WordCamp Vancouver Organizer Jill Binder Talks About Women In WordPress

Updated on March 4, 2020

3 Min Read

One of the most interesting lists we built was The Everlasting List Of Women In WordPress, a reactionary post that we created after the ladies were not impressed by our tribute to Women in WordPress.

However, lists do not tell you about the people and their perceptions. This is why I took it upon myself to contact these great individuals.

Personally, I have been following Jill for a past few months now. She is a WordPress developer as well as one of the organizers for WordCamp Vancouver. I absolutely love her work, especially the talks she gives during the WordCamps. She is also passionate about woman actively participating in the WordPress ecosystem.

I contacted her for a small Q&A. I am really happy that she took out time for this interview. So, happy reading!

Jill Binder

Cloudways: How WordPress industry has evolved during all these years?

Jill Binder: One of the main ways it has evolved is it’s moved from being a blogging platform to creating complex, beautiful websites.

Cloudways: How do you see the future of WordPress industry?

Jill Binder: We’re going to see WordPress being used more and more as a framework for applications.

Cloudways: Which plugins you have found interesting? Which theme would you recommend to your followers?

Jill Binder: Black Studio TinyMCE Widget allows the users to have a visual editor [for widgets just like the one they have in their main content posts and pages]. The Events Calendar is a flexible way to display their events in the way that they wish.

For themes, it’s really a case-by-case basis, depending on the needs of the business and for the users for that particular site. I’m less familiar with pre-made themes because I usually create themes from scratch using a base such as _s.

Cloudways: Any message you would like to share with your followers and WordPress lovers?

Jill Binder: WordPress is as easy or as complex as you’d like it to be and you can go in any direction you like with it. Start with a simple site and just give it a go!

Cloudways: Lastly, what do you think about the female participation in WordPress?

Jill Binder: There are not nearly as many women speakers at tech conferences as there are men. WordPress is no exception. As a WordCamp Vancouver co-organizer and after speaking with other WordCamp organizers, I’ve learned that it’s not that the women aren’t being accepted, it is that not as many are applying in the first place.

There are many reasons for this, most of which we can’t do anything about in the immediate future. If you’re unaware of them, watch my video: Women Speak Up: Where Are The Women Tech Conference Speakers?

However, there is one thing that we can work on now: Women feeling like they have nothing valuable to share like “other experts.”

So, we piloted a basic brainstorming workshop here in Vancouver for people who identify as women. Our idea was to encourage them to speak at our local WordPress meetup, so that they can start building their confidence for bigger WordCamps. It was a great success! Most signed up to speak at an upcoming meetup and two have already given their first talks.

Other cities will be testing out this workshop as well, and if it’s successful, WordCamp Central will be creating a curriculum, so that any city can run it on their own.

If you’d like to be kept in the loop on developments, please add Jill on Twitter: @jillbinder or visit her website for her contact details.

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Concluding remarks

Jill is very right when she says there is no lack of talent when it comes to women in WordPress. There are many ladies who are doing excellent work on WordPress; however, they need to come forward now. Hopefully, this interview with Jill might inspire them to do so.

You can follow Jill Binder (@jillbinder) on Twitter.

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Waseem Abbas

Waseem Abbas was WordPress Community Manager at Cloudways. He loves to help people with their WordPress worries. He is a self-proclaimed "food explorer".

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