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For long-form interviews, news, and commentary about the WordPress ecosystem. This is the companion show to The WP Minute, your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every week.
Eric Karkovack (00:01)
Hi everyone and welcome to the WP Minute. I'm your host Eric Karkovack. Today we have a very special episode lined up for you. I'm here with Mary Hubbard, the Executive Director of WordPress. We're going to learn more about what it's like to be the Executive Director of a large open source project, I can't imagine, and find out what 2026 has in store for WordPress. Mary, welcome to the WP Minute. Good to have you here.
Mary Hubbard (00:26)
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I just recognize I'm playing with one of my daughter's toys, so I should probably put that down. Yeah, I have a lot of desk toys, but none of them are mine. My daughter just continues to bring them in and leave them on my desk, and they're all minis, so I end up playing with them.
Eric Karkovack (00:34)
Hey, if it's a fidget spinner or something, that's okay. We're all about that.
Okay.
Well, that's kind of the nice thing about having kids. You get little gifts around the house and then they're better on your desk than on the floor, right? You're not gonna step on them.
Mary Hubbard (00:59)
I'm all soaked.
Yeah, yeah, they're all minis, so it is one of those things where, and then you get, you kind of keep the focus, but it's still here in your, in your peripheral, I guess, but great.
Eric Karkovack (01:16)
Well,
I wanted to ask you, you've been on this job for a little over a year, right? ⁓ How is it treating you so far? mean, how have you adjusted to it?
Mary Hubbard (01:21)
Bye.
You know, I think I'm settling in quite well. I think that the first year that I was here, I did a lot of listening. I went out, I spoke, I shared my perspective on a lot of things. People shared their perspective with me. And so I think now I have...
I feel much more involved ⁓ in the community. feel a part of it. I know got a lot of feedback last year that I needed to come in, be a part of the community before I start making community changes or request those community changes. ⁓ And a lot of things have surprised me. I think that we're at a very good position. ⁓ One of the things for 2026 that I've noticed is how quickly contributors are actually adapting to the next phase of WordPress. And there's a lot happening.
core in the ecosystem, especially around AI. And there's really no hesitation. We're seeing a lot of people step up and engage, and I'm excited about that with some of these programs. And that's a really healthy signal for a project of this size.
Eric Karkovack (02:30)
Yeah, I would think with AI, everybody's already playing with it. So we're all kind of, we're just ready to move it onto that next phase. It kind of make WordPress an AI enabled ⁓ platform. But ⁓ what's been the biggest challenge you've found so far? mean, is it integrating with the community that much or being out front a little bit more than maybe you're used to?
Mary Hubbard (02:55)
I mean, the challenge hasn't been with the project itself. The challenge is ⁓ where the project is headed versus where it has come from. And I think we saw a shift in that. And ⁓ I have a very different style of leadership and I have a very different way of communicating. And so I think that the biggest challenge is how I can adapt my skills and my expertise to an open source project of this size and really have specific focus areas that we can move things forward while
what the community wanted and needs, right? So I think that that balance and getting in there and doing it had been the biggest challenge in my first year here. ⁓ Pivoting off of that, it's really now how we can ⁓ increase contributors, make a better ecosystem and continue doubling down on the product. I think we'll have natural challenges of scale.
Eric Karkovack (03:51)
Yeah, you talked a bit about, you know, just kind of integrating with the community, being a part of the community before you started making suggestions. Have you learned anything ⁓ that you didn't realize about the community in this time?
Mary Hubbard (04:07)
I don't think it was anything I didn't realize, but there's a difference between having a logical understanding and an experience. People are passionate. This is what they love. ⁓ This is the backbone of what they do. And I think that with...
understanding that and being in it and listening to people and listening to their concerns really just helps shape a better WordPress, not just from the product, but how the ecosystem can thrive, how businesses can actually build on top of it, how the platform can grow. And so a lot of the problems that I've learned over the last year, I think we have and can have solid solutions for. ⁓ And it's going to take time to do that. But we're slowly starting to integrate and implement some of these solutions. Like, you know, a big, big part of what I heard when I first
came on was ⁓ visibility into non-code contributions. So what does that mean and why? what are we looking for just the visibility of it? Are we trying to track and understand how people contribute, why they contribute, where they fall off? ⁓ And so a lot of community members were trying to lift this off the ground. And I think visibility into that and launching the contribution platform can really help us identify some other issues or bring visibility to non-code
contributions ⁓ and show where we should put attention in the project. So things like that which sure I could have understood, but people wanted it. But like being a part of it and seeing out of how we try to lift that up and what we do and how we can do it together. I think I really learned and understood by being in it.
Eric Karkovack (05:47)
That's good to get your hands dirty once in a while with that kind of thing, right? I mean, because it's hard to make those decisions just from above and because they impact everybody, right? And and as you said, there's so much passion.
Mary Hubbard (05:58)
Yes, there's so much passion and there's great ideas. mean some of the ideas that we're pushing forward, ⁓ my understanding is that they were told no multiple times before they got guesses. Right? And so it is kind of like re-bringing things up, right? Or like my...
My whole thinking is, you know, do the meritocracy. We should just be doing, we should be doing, we should stop waiting for mission and just do. And I really want that to happen. And I say that with, you know,
wait, I don't just say it, I mean what I'm saying when I say that. Like come and do it, try it. ⁓ And we'll go from there. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, we could try something else. But there are a lot of ideas that maybe came too early or didn't have steam or didn't have the right support. And then now the environment is different or the people are different. So there's a lot of opportunity that I think we can try. And what we need to do is remember that.
know, showing up and doing is what's most important.
Eric Karkovack (07:04)
You had a recent blog post up on ⁓ the Make WordPress blog, and we'll link to it in the show notes, about the big picture goals ⁓ for 2026. And I want to get into a couple of specifics, but the first thing I really wanted to mention was the word momentum, because you used that right at the top. ⁓ talking about momentum with this project, what does that word mean to you, and what does it mean to have ⁓ momentum with a project the size of WordPress? How do you keep it? How do you get it?
Mary Hubbard (07:32)
Yeah, well I think momentum is a strong word for where we were when I joined and where we are, because it communicates forward movement.
like without sounding too defensive, overly technical, it just communicates we have momentum to move forward. ⁓ And what I'm saying is and what I'm seeing is that the project is moving forward and it's gaining energy. ⁓ It's making progress. It shows progress that's already happening, ⁓ but I'm not trying to convince anybody. So that's the momentum as I see it. I think that we have momentum, we have great culture, ⁓ but it's not just about growth. It's not about innovation.
It's not about change. ⁓ Momentum is one of these things where it signals that we're still respecting everything. The idea of how WordPress evolves gradually and there is energy behind our movement. So you can see it. Work is happening in the product, right, around the editor. ⁓ It's happening with the AI, with AI experimentation. ⁓ We're increasing ⁓ contributor infrastructure and experiences and we're launching programs and all of
that ⁓ together shows momentum.
Eric Karkovack (08:47)
It's interesting because it feels like there's a balance there, right? Because we, in the WordPress community, we always have, no matter what time in history it is, it seems like we always have the people that say, we're not moving fast enough. Like I see this with AI, we're falling behind with AI, we're doing this, we're doing that. And then there are the other people and I, one of the comments on your blog post was like, please don't make me use AI. So how do you handle that?
Mary Hubbard (09:01)
Yes.
Yeah, don't make it everywhere.
I mean, like how do we handle the feedback around? Not everybody wants to be forced to use anything, right? It's a gradual change. ⁓ And I think anytime we try to move an open source project this large, yeah, it does feel like we're going slow. And I think we are a little too slow on a lot of things and we should and could address those in different ways. But I don't think that it's, ⁓ you know, maybe it's.
lack of understanding of who makes the decision or we need Matt's eyes on this or we need xyz and that's always like we need xyz. ⁓
And instead of that slowing down our progress, how do we escalate accordingly? How do we empower people to make these decisions and how do we push? So I think that in an open source, sure, you're going to see some delays there. And when it comes to not wanting to move forward in certain directions, I think that's where WordPress is so important when it comes to flexibility. Now, we shouldn't make it to where everybody has to go into these worlds or has to try this software or has to try XYZ, but we should make it accessible.
⁓ Because this is where we're moving, like this is where society is moving. I talk a lot about AI publicly and I've met with a lot of AI experts from around the world. Nobody knows the answer, nobody knows the future. People are making a lot of guesses and I'm not afraid of it, I'm not afraid of where we're headed of what we're doing, but I do want to prepare WordPress for it and for that flexibility and for that growth, especially in the hockey stick that we're seeing. ⁓ And I don't think that...
I don't know if the reaction of, I hate it or, I love it. I think those are the two extremes. It's here. It's here. ⁓ And when you look back at technological shifts throughout our lifetime, what is most important is going to be our adaptability to it.
You can place many bets, you probably won't get it right, right? Many products will rise and fall in the age of AI. Not saying that they're good or they're bad, it's just, you you have a societal shift, you have product jumping over product, know. ⁓ So what will be that answer? It's going to be you going in and tinkering and understanding it, ⁓ adapting to the shifts and the changes. And then that adaptability will be what makes you a success, probably makes your company a success. ⁓
Helping all of us move forward. I think that's the key so I don't take that Too harshly. I don't want don't put AI everywhere. Yeah there there
Eric Karkovack (11:55)
In a way, reminds me and I'm currently reading ⁓ Tim Berners-Lee's book about the birth of the web and, know, the early days and kind of goes through today. But it was the same thing back in the day where it was like, okay, we have this new medium, we have this technology. How are we going to use it? And you're going to have a bubble and that's going to burst. And then, you know, we kind of rebuild after that type of thing.
where the best ideas start winning out over time. It doesn't necessarily happen all at once.
Mary Hubbard (12:33)
Yeah. And we don't know. when, when, I, when I worked at TikTok, ⁓ my responsibility was to build and create TikTok shop. And it was to bring it to the United States, ⁓ launch it, ⁓ and make it work. And it was met with such strong resistance, right? It's a new product. People hated it. People still do hate it. People have opinions right, wrong, or indifferent on TikTok itself. But.
What we always would talk about is that it's not just the product, how the product will change, but how society will adapt to that and what is the future and what we're betting on. But you actually have to take people with you along this evolution. And if you don't take people with you, it'll die out almost immediately. Right. And you have major AI resistors and then you have major buyers like they're, I love it. And they want to work it with everything. ⁓ But in actuality, society has to be behind what we're doing, ⁓ how we're using it.
I think, I think today we're in somewhat of a middle ground still. And so we're kind of like in the, just like that, like he was talking about the birth of the web, you're kind of in the beginning of what this is and we feel like it's taking off. It's definitely faster than anything we've seen in our history or in our lifetimes, but where are we headed? Nobody knows. Let's be adaptable.
Eric Karkovack (13:57)
Well, while we're on the subject of AI, and I think ⁓ you mentioned WordPress 7.0, we're gonna have that, I guess, AI connector in there. And there's gonna be a lot of major milestones in this release, it looks like. mean, we've got ⁓ some, I know you've mentioned some things with the media processing that's going to maybe help on server load, which is kind of an awesome, for the geek inside me, I like that. ⁓
Mary Hubbard (14:07)
Yes.
Eric Karkovack (14:26)
What else should we be looking for in 7.0? mean, know AI is part of it, but what else is going on?
Mary Hubbard (14:34)
I think that there's some really strong, we just actually had a review, the committers in the community had a review on some of those feature sets. think...
The AI connectors is really pretty. I don't know if anybody has been in there to go in and play. ⁓ I think that that's one of things that are really cool to see. ⁓ I also think that some of the more technical features that are happening behind the scenes for speed and value are gonna be really great. I was actually looking at something, ⁓ I'm on the release team this year. So this is like my first step into it and I'm learning a lot ⁓ around
Eric Karkovack (15:12)
Congratulations.
Mary Hubbard (15:13)
Thank you. The team leads or the team reps have been phenomenal with me because I'm shadowing them to see. But some of the features that are coming out in 7.0 and are going to be pretty good and stable even for how to look and feel of the admin, I think they're really pretty. I would recommend everybody go in and checking out some of the live product conversations we were having. I think that we want to bring those back to every release so people can start to see them in beta.
and see and have direct feedback around how WordPress product would change and shift. So check those things out. And then of course, all of the AI features that we had promised, ⁓ some are moving, but I think 7Auto is shaping up to be pretty good. ⁓ And I'm excited, I'm excited about it. And I'm also excited about how we're shifting into how we're announcing them. So we're taking all of the releases back into the community. So... ⁓
7-O-No will release at WordCamp Asia, I think April 9th.
And in the secondary cases, so we're trying to align all of our releases with an event to bring more community members and actually like kind of get more involved in the releases themselves. I'm really excited about that too. It kind of worked at State of the Word. The release was great. I know we had some hiccups around State of the Word itself, but I really want to try to like level that up so more people are around to do it. So I'm excited about that.
Eric Karkovack (16:47)
I hear we may get some responsive controls for design too. Is that right?
Mary Hubbard (16:52)
yes, like the, ⁓ only that, then we also have like global search. So we'll be able to have like ⁓ media handling, styling font, customization, mobile responses. And then ⁓ we're working on ⁓ what I can't think of what it's called, but actually a control on the global search on the top. So all pattern editing, new blocks, new tabs, but really.
really pretty ⁓ design. Really pretty design.
Eric Karkovack (17:25)
I'm going to have to get the beta and start playing around with it. It sounds like it's going to be like kind of a big milestone compared to some of other ones recently where we've had a lot of under the hood stuff. This is going to be a lot of out front stuff that you're going to notice right away.
Mary Hubbard (17:41)
Yeah, I think that that's the intent. ⁓
when we were discussing with 7.0 would be and look like, it's shaping up to be a very solid release and we wanna start having things that are pretty flashy and try to start to jump ahead around what we're building and why. Because the AI stuff is exciting but we still have our roadmap, ⁓ like real time collaboration and how we're working toward all of that. So we do wanna be able to give... ⁓
I shouldn't say gift, but we wanted to actually move things forward continuously while balancing all of the new stuff with Abilities API and the command palette, et cetera.
Eric Karkovack (18:26)
So have you seen any examples of AI yet that kind of blow your mind in WordPress? Have you seen anything that has really impressed you so far?
Mary Hubbard (18:38)
know, I mean, I think a lot of the work that is happening in AI is impressive, but I did get really excited about the connectors because I tested the beta. ⁓ And so I actually am really excited about that. seems like.
Yes, it seems so easy. I shouldn't say it seems just like so natural that it should be there, but I feel like it totally shifts us in a new direction that we have this. We have the actual connectors page that we can see how we can move all of these things through. So I think a lot of that I'm just excited about. like to see, you know, it wraps back up to what we're talking about with open source and how things move. I feel like we're doing a really good job moving this roadmap forward with AI and we're trying to keep up with the pace, which is very difficult to do.
So just the progress the team is doing, I'm really impressed with. That team is strong. ⁓ And you have a lot of people lifting that up. So it's not just the what's going into the product itself, but you have really strong program managers and program coordinators that are helping get this out, get it out, get it tested, documented, and connected. So I think that those things are really exciting. I'm pretty stoked about
it.
Eric Karkovack (19:53)
Yeah, we can't wait to see what 7.0 brings. It's gonna be big.
So one of the other items you mentioned in your post was community and specifically revamping the local meetups, right? And ⁓ some of the educational programs are going on. As far as meetups go, ⁓ why do you think now's the right time for a revamp?
Mary Hubbard (20:15)
Well, for multiple reasons, right? We launched the ⁓ WPCC, the Community ⁓ Campus Connect, and it just really took off. And ⁓ we gained a lot of feedback from those types of events and what they were doing, what was working. And then I looked at ⁓ some of the events that are happening in the US, or some got feedback around the events throughout the world. ⁓ And what we noticed that worked was it was when people showed up to do something.
There are like some of the
Some of the communities had sessions where it was like, hey, come and just come, these are my office hours and I'll help you build a WordPress site. Some was, hey, we're out this speaker, he's gonna talk about XYZ, come. And then some were more so of just like, hey, come together, we're all gonna work on WordPress or work on our own sites, et cetera, et cetera. And we noticed that the ones that were the best attended, that received the best feedback, were the ones that actually had a project to do in the community when they showed up. So when you think about this,
meetup is going to do XYZ. People came, they did hands-on learning, and they moved the project forward. And the feedback for that was really positive, and hopefully long term it will continue to turn over to contributors or contributions. And that was really where it came from. And after I put that post out, I got a lot of feedback from around the world. People were pinging me. And...
It was very similar to what I had found already. And it was actually our Meetup community is thriving and we have hands-on experience. Like we don't use it as a social event and we don't do this.
I don't think people were intending to use things as social events. This wasn't a call out, you know, don't use this, come and do something. It wasn't a call out of the negative way. was, no, we should make it the gear of the meetup and we should empower companies to attend meetups. we should, their employees to attend meetups. Like we should be looking at reinvigorating the community because when people show up and work together, it's a bond and it lasts. And we see that with WordCamps. That's what makes WordCamps successful.
And that's where it came from. And I think that even I put a challenge out to ⁓
not just the community, but just anybody I run into. Like, have you gone to a meetup? What was your experience? What did you take back? And I'd like to see, just to see and to hear what people are doing. ⁓ Because we know Campus Connect people are excited about. And what are they? They're like little tiny events. They're little tiny meetups. Or they're big word camps. Like that's what they are. They're a new style of event. And it's working and people love it right now because you're there to teach, to help, and there's a goal.
⁓ And so I do think that we could reinvigorate that style and try to kind of bring and either expand the best practices of the ones that are working or we can bring some of what's working on those events back into the meetups more locally, especially in the United States. Like our local meetup has... ⁓
speakers and things to do. Like there's certain tasks, but one of the meetups I went to it was just ⁓ a few folks who did office hours. And so they would say like, you know, I'm the WordPress expert and you can come in, you know, this web agency could come in and I'll help you with your site. And so it was a different vibe and sometimes nobody showed up. Right. So it's kind of like, how can we make them more proactive? And I think we should and we can.
Eric Karkovack (23:50)
I mean, I know for me personally, the early WordCamps I went to and the meetups, things like that, they really inspired me to want to do more with WordPress. And you connect with people and you become the expert over time and you get to help them. it's just a nice, that's how communities are built, right? I mean, it's not through forums, it's not through chat and Slack and that type of thing. It's really.
person to person getting together.
Mary Hubbard (24:20)
Yeah, and it's also, it's, you know.
There's so many different personality types and some people thrive in those smaller environments. And so they get to a larger WordCamp or a flagship. might not want to do the contribution day or they might, you know, they might not want to do some of those things. We should open up all of these, but you're right. It does. and, ⁓ back to, you know, not to tie back in the contributor dashboard. That's one of the things, ⁓ the team was looking at, because if you look at the life cycle of ⁓ a contributor, ⁓ getting to an event or to a meetup are extremely important.
because it is the sense of community. ⁓ And also like smaller groups allow for more mistakes, more questions, ⁓ more trial and error where somebody's with you. you know, the idea is maybe a little bit less frustration, less time alone, more time together. Yeah, I think that that, I think it's really important. I think community is very important. And I think like what we're doing to bring new folks in. ⁓
is very important.
Eric Karkovack (25:25)
Yeah, we had a recent episode about the credits program and it's nice to see that that's a way that you can get the younger generation into this because eventually we're all going to get old and retire hopefully. And you wanna leave the project in good hands, right? And to have a generation of people who came of age learning WordPress and learning how to build with it and learning how to contribute.
That's going to be essential for the future,
Mary Hubbard (25:57)
Right, and the younger generations do want to build for the future. So they like putting their stamp on something, which is a different type of ⁓ driver. When you look at Gen Z and the people who are even younger millennials coming into the workforce, yes, it's hands-on, ⁓ it's interactive, but it's ownership.
Complete ownership, it's autonomy. And I do think that when we need to get better contributor pathways, like in for them, better understanding for them, ⁓ showing them how to learn, where to learn and find that information, because we're dealing with a generation that ⁓ would rather go out and seek information and apply it. The credits program and things that we're doing for education is very much a flywheel. I think we need to meet them, meet students where they're at, teach them, show them how to contribute.
and grow them into the project successfully. And I think that with the rise of, you know, the hustle, hustle economy and how many people are doing their side hustles and doing their own thing, we should be helping young people or any contributor, right, to a pathway that's more clear for, to help them get jobs, to help them get freelance work. And WordPress should be...
a foundation for that. ⁓
like real time hands on work. And I think that we, the foundation and the project should be promoting this real time work and how valuable it is and why that matters to schools and why it should matter to future employment. And why it matters to the contributor base in the ecosystem. are helping moving, helping to move something forward that's beyond you. And so I do think that even that type of roundabout, like look at how many things you touch just by entering the program.
And we don't do a good enough job and I don't do a good enough job talking about that. But just how much this flywheel can help people and the ecosystem and open source and the project and how much it's layered on top of everything. But yeah, I'm going to do a lot more talking about that this year.
Eric Karkovack (28:16)
Well, that's awesome. We'll stay tuned and maybe we'll have you back on to talk about that.
Mary Hubbard (28:23)
Yeah, great, great.
Eric Karkovack (28:25)
Well, Mary, I appreciate your time. ⁓ Where can folks connect with you online?
Mary Hubbard (28:31)
I'm always on Make Slack. You can always talk to me there. then ⁓ feel free to email me. It's at maryatwordpress.org. I think I gave that out ⁓ in the post, actually. So anybody can. People have already done that. But I'm very accessible. So anytime you'd like to contact me, please do. And you can find me in the core and the release, like for the release this time around. And come and join us. Come and join us tomorrow.
Eric Karkovack (28:59)
Awesome, well, thank you. I appreciate you being on and ⁓ thanks to everyone who watched and listened to this episode. Visit us over at the WPMinute.com slash subscribe, get our newsletter, get some exclusive content from me. I'm actually writing into the newsletter now. We're not just posting ⁓ our latest episodes anymore. I'm writing little opinion pieces and things like that. So, ⁓ Mary's excited, I can tell. ⁓
Mary Hubbard (29:27)
I I am. I I subscribe to the majority of the WordPress ecosystems newsletter, so I will definitely be reading.
Eric Karkovack (29:37)
Well, that's awesome for all of you people out there that have newsletters. Know who's reading and then write accordingly. ⁓
Mary Hubbard (29:41)
Yeah, I'm paying attention.
Hopefully you can see that in the project changes, but yes. Great.
Eric Karkovack (29:49)
Well, there's a lot
of excitement to come, so we thank you. Everybody have a good day and thanks for being in our audience. We'll see you next time.
Mary Hubbard (29:56)
⁓
Thank you.