Transcription

VINEETA:  We are starting in about two minutes.  We are starting in about two minutes.  Thanks again for joining for the lightning talks we have two today firstly from Denise VanDeCruze.  He has building sites for over 20 years.  She is very passionate.  She has spear headed mentorship programme for young people as well.  You are the leading organiser for Paris WordCamp.

DENISE VANDECRUZE:  No Vienna.

VINEETA:  And she builds sites through a company called Girlbot.  Today she will be talking about working across different time zones.

DENISE VANDECRUZE:  Hi everybody.  We had three lightning sessions planned, now we have two, so it means I get to go a little bit longer.  About 15 minutes and then I will be taking questions for five minutes and then a talk after me.  So I will be talking about working across time zones.  At the last few years I have been working on the go systems.  WPML and tool sets and it is an entirely remote company and I love to travel.  So this year no last year 2016 I spent the entire summer in the Caribbean.  South America and have IT I and the to mini can republic I am in Scotland a lot and Copenhagen a lot.  This is something near and dear to my heart, wherever I go I have to work my full day.  So today will be talking about working across time zones not just for your company put your clients’ sake.  How many of you work remotely?  Good that is great.  I think that is one of the great opportunities that jobs within WordPress create.  So that is the slide about me, you can reach me @solchica on Twitter.  So let’s talk about structuring a remote project.  Your remote island and you want to work with collaborators to get something done in WordPress.  What do you have to make sure happens.  So the first thing that you have to think about is your legal structure.  How will you set yourself up legally to work with people all across the world.  There are different models for doing that.  Some people organise in a particular country that allows them to do that is contract with other people other people do it so that people are actually recognised employees with no fixed place.  It really just depends how you want to organise yourself for legal and tax purposes and it depends on your particular situation.  This is something you really need to think about.  Specially within the EU we have pretty strict labour laws in Austria and Vienna particularly, you want to make sure you are not running foul of that.  Another thing that needs to happen your version needs to be clearly defined.  How many of you have gotten asked to do something and some one talk to you for about two hours or so and at the end of the two hours you weren’t quite sure what you were just asked to do?  That happens a lot, that happens a lot.  Sometimes we get really fired up about doing something and we get people on board, but we are not really sure what we are asking people to do and this is very very important specially in this ecology of WordPress, because you are dealing with people with multiple skills.  So someone who could be a developer, maybe they could be a supporter, or a project lead.  They need to know exactly what you needs for your project.  So that is key you have to define your vision and where you want people to come in on that vision with you.  And in accordance with that the roles have to be spelled out, what do you do in the project?  Are you just the guys that has ideas or will you be working alongside everybody else.  That also has been to be spelled out.  The thing about remote projects is that they cannot be as nebulous as projects based on a physical location.  If we are in an office I am unsure I say hey I am unsure about this what are we doing.  If we are working remotely and perhaps we don’t overlap the entire day, those opportunities are not as plenty full.  So a lot of time may get wasted in a lack of clarity.  And the last thing I would say that is really important here when you are structuring remote project is to think about culture.  Culture I think people think culture is something that you can only really influence if you are in people’s presence.  Even when you have a remote team you still can really determine what your company culture, what your project culture will look like.  That has to do with things like how you communicate with people.  How are you asking people for things.  What does it look like in terms of are you talking to them every they, do you have a daily check in, or talk to people months and you see them in a month when the deadline happens.  So think about how the culture is going to play itself out and if that will meet your needs.  So I made a little tool kit here if I knew I would be taking up this much time I would have done it much more bulleted.  I love slides, but, at first I had so many slides and they were like you have to pair down the slides, so I have to tell you a lot I would love to give you bulleted points for.  I have a lot of recommendations about everything here I am sure that you guys have recommendations too since so many of you have worked remotely.  If you are working remotely and across time zones what is important.  One is a scheduling system.  If you are in Asia and I am in Europe we need to be clear how we are organising our times so we have at least some overlap.  In my old position I had to on board people coming in from all across the would.  That would mean if I had to deal with someone in Asia for example I would have to get up early and they would have to stay late a bit, so I can walk them true certain things.  So scheduling system is really important, specially in the beginning.  There are some companies that don’t really allow remote employees until they have been working at a company for some years or for a significant amount of time.  And the reason that happens is because when you have this overlapping time you are able to establish certain things with people you can pin them for questions and orientation and do training with them.  This is a really important building time.  Specially in the beginning of a relationship what I would recommend no matter where you are in the world that you find period of time and you both sort of meet halfway so that you can have some significant overlap.  Even if that significant overlap only happens for a period of weeks or the first couple of months.  And another thing that is important is a project or bug system.  So who here has used base camp?  Jack brains right.  Whatever it is it has to be consistent and with your needs.  What the system has to do is to track issues.  And to track accountability of those issues.  So who is working on it when and how long are they working on it, what AA are the important resources that need to be logged with this issue whatever tool you use it has to have those things.  Another thing I recommend is a document bank.  A lot of people use Google docs for this.  You can use whatever works Dropbox or online cloud source system or even a host system.  There has to be a place where you have your virtual file cabinet.  Chat tool.  Live conferencing, so that can be Skype, that can be Slack for the chat tool for example.  And client management and back up information.  So what kind of tools could we use for client management?  Can you guys?  What kind of tools do you guys use for client management.

NEW SPEAKER:  TRELLO.

FROM THE FLOOR:  Confluence.

DENISE VANDECRUZE:  Okay cool.  Some people use asylum, I have just started using TRELLO it is a great tool.  Back up is essential.  You don’t want the bulk of your data to be sitting in anyone person’s computer.  Anything can happen to that person’s computer.  So when you are hiring remotely and you are dealing with remote collaborators one thing to realise is the most essential element of dealing with these people will be trust.  These have to be people that you can trust and they need to be able to trust you.  And how does that happen?  It happens through accountability, following through and making sure you are very clear with each other and about what needs to happen.  So when you are hiring and looking for someone make sure that there are people that have a proven tack record and the next part of that is that you have to have to have to allow them to take ownership of what they are suppose to do.  So one thing that is very hard to do with remote team is micromanaging.  You would not want to do that anyway.  But it is specially hard to do with a remote team.  So this all kind of leads into managing expectations, that getting to know you phase in the remote relationship is as important as anything you will do afterwards that is the period that you clarify how you are going to be working wit them and how they are going to be working with you.  This is something that is important for your client relationships as well.  If you are dealing with clients outside of a time zone that you have full support of they need to know what window within their time zone can they expect immediate support.  So managing expectations of your clients and of your collaborators is a huge part of successfully managing a remote team.  How am I doing on time?  Okay good.  So the happy ending.  When all of these things are done you should have a mutually beneficial relationship and look back on it and have freedom that you would not normally have within a physical location.  And I think I am out of time because it is a lightning session.  Thank you so much for listening (Applause) does any one have anything else to add or questions?

FROM THE FLOOR:  You mentioned scheduling time zones have you got any tips on how to schedule the work of the remote team.

DENISE VANDECRUZE:  How to manage the work load of the remote team.

FROM THE FLOOR:  You can’t see people so you don’t get a sense when they are stressed or over loaded, or similarly when they are twiddling their thumbs and don’t have enough to do.

DENISE VANDECRUZE:  The first thing is because you have this tracking system or bug system or ticket system everything is very transparent.  One of the things you should think about you are dealing with very smart people Bob in Utah knows how much work his counterpart in Egypt did.  It has to be equitable and feel fair, when it starts to not feel fair you have other problems in your company culture.  That its first part.  Then again not every one may have equal capabilities, you want to make sure they are supported and there is adequate train in and systems in place so that when they don’t feel like they have the tools that they need to do their job that they can get those tools.

FROM THE FLOOR:  Thank you.

DENISE VANDECRUZE:  Welcome.

FROM THE FLOOR:  My question is quite similar.

NEW SPEAKER:  Any other questions?

FROM THE FLOOR:  How do your clients feel about you being on the beach when you are working?

DENISE VANDECRUZE:  Yeah how do you focus do you mean.

FROM THE FLOOR:  That as well but how do your clients feel about it and how do you deal with it.

DENISE VANDECRUZE:  In my position I did not do a ton of video chat the video with our internal team, they were like great send pictures, every one understood.  We had team members that just travel the would they did not have a fixed place they lived, they would spend a month here two month here’s.  One thing I would say about being in different parts of the world the summer I was in places that I was in for the very first time.  What that means is that I ran into odd situations where my Internet access did not always work the way I needed to it work.  And that is the hardest thing.  Always try to go into a situation where you have some certainty around what your access is going to be, even if that means that you find a relationship with a hotel whether you stay there or not that you have a relationship with them okay I can use you are internet or possible a business with a high speed internet connection.  Because I was there during hurricane season and a strong wind I was like oh no, that is the only thing I can warn against.

FROM THE FLOOR:  And discipline to get a  full eight hours day.

DENISE VANDECRUZE:  For me the way I dealt with it, when most people travel if they are having a nice vacation they would sleep into say ten or eleven.  The way that I would deal with wanting to go out and see new places yet at the same time needing to get some work done was I wake up very early and start my day at like five Am and in the afternoon I could actually just go and enjoy things.  So it really just depends if you are a morning person use that to your advantage.  Figure out when is this town sleeping.  Not only will it be great for you to do your work because you can focus and everyone is quite and you don’t have a lot of noise around you, put then you still get to go out and explore.  Okay.  I am going to pass the mic.  Thank you so much for listening.  (Applause).

VINEETA:  Thank you Denise.  The next speaker..  I will not start to introduce you yet.  This the last talk of the day so stick around, don’t go anywhere.

DENISE VANDECRUZE:  While we are waiting for the second lighting round does anyone have a particular remote working challenge they want to share?  Like what are the hardest things for you about working remotely?

FROM THE FLOOR:  So yes so one of the problems that I have had both working for myself on my own and working for a partner is the focus and just being able to stay focused even though I have got a separate room operate from the house it is still quite difficult to stay focused on one specific thing, specially if it is a bigger company with a lot of communication.  That is one of the issues.

DENISE VANDECRUZE:  I have a couple of tips about that.  You have to have a work pace that works for you.  If you live in a place where maybe at home it is not so conducive work you might want to think about finding a coworking space and working from there.  Another thing that is important there is a lot of communication coming from you at all times is to channel communication, maybe it does not make sense to have steady streams of emails, so maybe at the end of each hour I will check emails, otherwise you get caught up in this series of try doing put out fires, so instead of focusing on your list of priorities you focus on priorities that people give you and the squeaky wheel that comes in front of you.  And who has ever read a book called The power of habit?  It talks about the way our brains are set up, we can hack our discipline by developing habits.  If we know 10 to 12 is project time, decode time that is what you do.  But you have to develop that habit by not doing anything else and really kind of treating through it for let’s say I think how many days was it, 30 days, about 30 days, those first 30 days will be really hard, after that you will find yourself doing it from 10 until 12 and you will not even notice it, it will come from our sub conscious brain and so we will just be moving through it.  So discipline is something you can hack.

VINEETA:  Any more questions.  It is something you talk about discipline.  My husband Tom hates bananas, he taught himself to eat bananas by discipline, you can change your mind set to do anything, you can learn to like things if you eat them every day.  Literally eat vegetables every day and you learn to like them, it does work.  It is discipline.  Are you happy to go?  Shall I start introducing Mark I am hoping it is not long.  So Mark is a former geography and ICT teacher and started using WordPress in 2005.  Now a WordPress developer and business owner of high rise digital.  Fun fact of the day that Mark and Keith, Keith Devan Mark’s business partner they both are really tall people, that is why they called them self high rise digital.  So Mark is going to talk about how computing is done in UK schools.  Take it away.

MARK: First of all apologies it is a all a bit rushed, apologies if it is not as polished as it would be.  I am also having to present on this different screen.

I am going to talk about computing in UK schools and maybe about what WordPress’ role in that could be.  As you just heard I used to be a teacher.  From 2002 to 2014, so I have  experience about what this is about I am now a developer and business order I have been using WordPress for quite a while.  Why is it important that you guys want to know about what is important about it being taught in UK schools or schools around the would in terms of computing I think obviously as the web gets bigger and starts to grow we are going to need more and more people working in the web and those people are going to come from schools and colleges, what they are taught there now is of good interest to most of us in terms of what can they do, what skills have they got coming out of skills and colleges and how we can use those skills for people look doing employ those people etcetera.  It is important we have a broad knowledge like we do with other objects.  The reason why this might be important particularly now is that there has been a massive change with the ICT and computers and the way it has been taught in UK schools in the last three or four years.  So pre-2013 the actual subject was called ICT information and communication technology.  There was very little computing in that curriculum at all.  Essentially it was like using computers and using software to solve problems and do different tasks.  So previous to 2013 this document was the government document the National Curriculum which told teachers what they had to deliver in those lessons, so a very pretty design, very old now.  These are the things that ass teachers we had to deliver.  It was split into key concepts and sigh key processes.  So how we communicate with each under tools we can use to do that.  And manipulating information, and spreadsheets and using spreadsheets and formulas and functions.  So a lot of Excel stuff in there.  The impact that technology has had on the world.  When this curriculum was designed it was in the mid- to late 90s when technology had really just started in terms of computers and the Internet, so teaching what impact that might have on society and that is still relevant today but slightly different ways in which it is relevant.  And the key process was finding information so we had this vast new web we had never come across before and how on earth do we use to it find information and stuff we want.  So how to search for things, relevant stuff I guess.  And then communicating information is twice never mind.  And then developing ideas, so the ideas of things using different pieces of software.  And it came to about 2011, 2012 a lot of discontent with this curriculum, so a few quotes from some people, from Ian Livingstone who was I don’t know if he still is, has his own games workshop company and also a government and business adviser on technology.  He wrote the flight and fantasy books, you used to roll a dice and fight different things with it, with Steve Jackson, so he had good experience this.  “Children have been forced to learn how to use apps rather than make them.”  So we are training a lot of people who can use things rather than make them. “Slaves to the user interface and totally bored by it.”   Quite a bold statement, I think what he said did have some merit and we are teaching kids to use Microsoft office and these pieces of software rather than thing about how they are built and can we make our own and what can we do with them.  This is a quote from the Head of computing.  There is much greater need to develop for the future.  Problem solving skills.  Create software and not just use it.”  So instead of using these pieces of software to teach them the skills to create things for themselves to solve problems with.  That is how the curriculum has changed really.  So we have moved from ICT into computing and you will have to bear with me, I have to catch up on this laptop for my speaker notes.  And obviously that raised some challenges in schools because we had a set of staff that were delivering ICT, a lot of the time a lot of those weren’t particularly ICT focused they were from other subjects and all of a sudden they were being told you need to know how to programme and how to teach this, that was a big big shock for a lot of people including me.  So we moved over to a computing curriculum, so we completely changed the name of this subject it was no longer information communication technology it was now computing and even today you get teachers still calling itself ICT when it changed its name four years ago now.  So it just shows how long it has to change to become engrained.  This kind of what the curriculum now looks like.  It is actually much simpler.  Less documents about what you have to do.  It goes through some of the things you need to cover as a teacher.  So key stage one on the left.  That is from the years of four to six years old.  Key stage two from six to eleven.  Key stage 3 is eleven to 14.  And key stage 4 is from years 14-16.  That gives you some of the ideas about the age of some of the people learning these things.  You see the stuff here and some of it is quite surprising.  Algorithms is key stage 1.  You are four to six years old and looking at algorithms, that is highly customised for those kids.  They are teaching them to debug simple programmes, so getting that engrained and using technology to create store manipulate and use things safely.  So we are try doing deliver that early on which I think is a good idea.  Key stage 2 more advance variables inputs and outputs, logical reasons to explain algorithms, not just using them, trying to get them understand what they are.  Understand how networks and internet works, between the age of six and eleven.  The later stages of primary school.  And effective use of search technology.  Some of the things have remained.  They have not got rid of everything.  And safely using a range of software in a range of devices, e-safety and they know what they are doing online.  Moving into key stage 3.  Design and use of modelling systems things around the world what happens if you do this so forth.  And understanding algorithms, sorting and selecting and they have to use in key stage three two programming language.  Like we do with Java script and PHP.  One of them has to be text best, proper coding in a text editor which is quite unique and different.  And sometimes when we first start teaching this the reaction of the kids was what, you want me to do this?  This is something that people far more important and intelligent than me do, no no you are going to do it they got through it quite well.  Procedures and logic.  Boolean logic.  And a bit of binary as well.  And then key stage four.  Like your GCSE type years it is a bit sparse, they don’t stipulate very much.  Computer science, you have to do computer science.  You can take that in lots of ways.  Digital media, linking to the web.  Computational thinking and problem solving, online privacy, so they are fully aware of that all the time and how technology changes and impacts us over time.  I think when that first came into the curriculum it was the introduction of technology, now it is how technology is changing over time and how it will impact society and social media in the last five or six years and how that has changed everybody’s lives.  So that is what they are teaching at the moment.  So I have mentioned the challenges this faced in staffing in particular and a lot of money was spent on retraining staff, getting new staff into teach this curriculum and you have got people going around schools asking does anybody know how to do this and they were brought into teach those things.  And also software, schools had basically a Microsoft licence to run Microsoft office, they had other software as well, which actually costs quite a lot of money.  And a lot of this can be taught open source stuff and free.  We had to find out what software there was, would it be installed okay on a network in a school.  So a lot of change and the problem of expertise, do we know how to teach this, that took a long while to solve in schools.

So let’s look at the tools and software they use now to teach the coding aspects of the course or curriculum.  So I don’t know if you have seen this scratch, it actually an online tool.  It is to teach the principles of coding to young people it is actually quite good fun if you have never used it, have a go and create in games it is quite good fun.  It is an online tool, you don’t have to create an account but you can’t save it if you don’t create an account.  It is all free under, the creative commons licence, so this is scratch.  I will show you what some of it looks like.  It tries to teach coding by showing code blocks like this and these are split into different groupings, as you can see like a jigsaw puzzle they have got to put together the pieces of the jigsaw to build up a game or something a maze game is popular where you have to navigate around a maze.  And you have ifs and loops and if else and repeat and some of the general coding things you will see in other languages, trying to make it intuitive and get them to understand what is happening more easily.  So that is some of the examples of that.  The way it works is like this, a graphical interface where you build your game, this is a game to get mouse from the red screen to the blue screen if you touch the walls it will take you back to the start.  The code is on the right hand side using the different blocks and they are split into different parts,  events, controls operators and stuff like variables and put things into functions that run more than once, a really nice little tool and they found this fun, go create a game and they can pretty much do what they want.  This is a tool called flow rule.  Flow charts with code and you have got your flow-chart symbols and essentially they have to process through the different things to make the wheel go round and let everybody through the gate, there is like a traffic light one where you have to work the traffic lights, which is surprise singly difficult, particularly when you have more than two sets of traffic lights.  So flowol is quite a popular one.  And the last one, I mentioned they had to use a text base language.  Most schools have opted for python, I am not entirely sure why, there are quite easy tools you can install which is pretty good to install and runs.  So I don’t know if anybody has coded in python, in year nines and tens key stage three and four are using python to build things and solve problems and a lot of this comes into GCSE courses where they have to produce something.  I would love to see them use Java script.  All you need is a browser and a tech editor that is something they can have a look at in the future and I think that would help.  So the last part is WordPress’ role, what sort of role have we got to contribute to this, that is a tricky one, getting kid toss use WordPress is quite a barrier a therapy up from using these tools.  But getting kids to have a go with WordPress.  There is really nice stuff in the customiser in CSS if you teach them basic CSS.  But also things like code clubs you can get involved with if you want to help out your local school.  They would snap your hand off if you said you would run a school code club.  So maybe our role as the community to try and get involved and help out teaching the up and coming stars of the future in our industry and Inspire them to become the next us lot sat in this room perhaps and going for that career.  And that is me.  Thank you.  (Applause).

VINEETA:  Any questions?

FROM THE FLOOR:  Hi our eldest daughter is in year one at Primary school, she is already using scratch junior on the Ipads there.  What its best way to support her at home to encourage it as well.

MARK:  Good question.  My kids one in year one and one in year five, they haven’t used that, you have a good school that is pushing it a lot.  I think for me ass as a teacher it was showing the kids the end product first of all, so because I think if you just show them like look at a load of code, boring, but show them the end product and say do you want to make that, do you want to do something similar to that, or change it to pink or blue and get them to understand how to do that.  That could be a way of encouraging them to get involved and delve in to the code and say you can do this, this is how you do it.  That is something to think about, good to see they are using stuff like that so early on.  Any others?  You all want to rush off to the party.  Cool thanks a lot.  (Applause).

VINEETA: I will check what the time is for the after party.

NEW SPEAKER:  Go down for six o’clock.

VINEETA:  Go down for six o’clock to the main room.  Thanks again for joining the first day of WordCamp.