#183 – Destiny Kanno, Isotta Peira and Anand Upadhyay on how WordPress is shaping the future of education for students worldwide

Transcript

[00:00:19] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, how WordPress is shaping the future of education for students worldwide.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.

If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.

So on the podcast today, we have Destiny Kanno, Isotta Peira, and Anand Upadhyay.

Destiny is the Head of Community Education at Automattic. Isotta is the leader of the WordPress Credits Initiative for students, and Anand is the founder of WordPress Campus Connect.

This episode is all about how WordPress is not only powering websites, but also empowering the next generation of learners and creators. You’ll hear about the growing movement of education focused WordPress events happening worldwide, from hands-on workshops on university campuses in India, to student clubs designed to keep the momentum going after introductory events.

Anand shares how WP Campus Connect is bringing WordPress directly to students, reducing barriers to entry, and helping bridge the gap between academic learning and real world tech skills. We also explore the challenges of organizing these events, from convincing institutions of the value of open source, to fostering genuine community involvement among both students and educators.

Isotta then introduces us to the WordPress Credits Program, an initiative that lets students turn their contributions to the WordPress ecosystem into recognized academic credits at universities like, Pisa in Italy. It’s a win-win. Students gain practical resume worthy experience, while educational institutions get a transferable, skills focused, program that prepares learners for the jobs of the future.

Whether you’re an educator, a WordPress enthusiast, or just someone who cares about open source and community, this episode is packed with actionable insights. The guests share how flexible and resilient these education initiatives are, how you can get involved, and why engaging the next generation is not just important, but essential for the continued growth and sustainability of the WordPress community.

It’s a truly inspiring episode, and is at the intersection of so many areas of profound importance.

If you’re curious about how to bring WordPress into your local school, university, or community, or if you just want to hear how WordPress is making a difference far beyond the web, this episode is for you.

If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you Destiny Kanno, Isotta Peira and Anand Upadhyay.

I am joined on the podcast by Destiny Kanno, by Isotta Peira, and also by Anand Upadhyay. Welcome all three of you. Thanks for joining me today.

Now just before we begin this podcast, we’re going to be talking about education, the education landscape, and how WordPress combines with that. I hope during the course of this conversation, you will get an impression that this is something which is very dear to my heart. We don’t need to go into that, but this is about the most profoundly purposeful use of a CMS that I can actually imagine. I mean, I’m sure there’s other scenarios for other people, but for me, this is the perfect sweet spot. Education, WordPress, open source software. It doesn’t basically get better than that for me.

So with that out of the way, I think it would be good to go round the houses one at a time and just give a little short biography of who you are, where you work, what your history is with WordPress, something like that. You can make it as long or as short as you like, but if we keep it under a minute, maybe something like that, that would be good. So let’s go to Destiny first.

[00:04:46] Destiny Kanno: Yes. Hi there, I’m Destiny. I’m currently head of community education at Automattic. I’m a sponsored contributor in the .org space. And yes, before working on the exciting new initiatives we’re going to chat through today, I was working alongside the training team, two years as a training team rep, helping build out content, like online workshops and courses and learning pathways. And I was part of the group of folks that brought that new relaunch live last year. So yeah, exciting stuff, and that’s what I’m up to right now.

[00:05:23] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, that’s great. Thank you so much. We have some context there, that’s lovely. And okay, let’s go to Isotta. Do you want to give us your bio next?

[00:05:30] Isotta Peira: Sure. Thanks a lot Nathan for inviting us and, yeah. I’m Isotta, I’ve been around the community since, WordPress community since 2022 when I joined Automattic, and I’ve been a sponsored contributor since then. For the past year, three years, four years, I’ve been contributing full time to the community team. And recently this year I switched on to the educational initiative, and I’m currently leading the WordPress Credits program for students.

[00:06:01] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, thank you very much. And finally, Anand.

[00:06:04] Anand Upadhyay: Hi, my name is Anand, and I am running a WordPress plugin development company WPVibes. I am a user of WordPress from the last 15 years, since 2010 I’m using WordPress for various purposes.

I have been contributing to WordPress through much multiple channels like Core, docs, polyglots, jumping from one team to another. And from the last year, I have found like my new passion. Just like you, I am also passionate about education and teaching. So from the last year, I found this idea of WordPress Campus Connect, and currently I’m very much involved in trying to bring it to the broader community.

[00:06:39] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you so much. So I think we’ve established that the panelists today, there’s a lot of really meaningful contributions in all of your past, especially around WordPress and education. So let’s dig into that a little bit. As I said at the top of this show, I can’t see a more meaningful use of WordPress, frankly.

I mean, I don’t know what it’s like in the places where you live, but in the UK where I live, education is one of those things where we like to talk about it being a priority, but the finances kind of don’t really match up to that aspiration. And so things like ICT, websites, coding, all of that, it’s a nice thing to have, but I think often it gets left in the background a little bit.

And because of that, things like open source platforms, I feel there’s a really great use of that, not only from the educator’s point of view, you know, people that can use those platforms to help with their class education, maybe set up a community website, maybe set up a school website or something like that. But also from the point of view of learners, people who wish to get a leg up in life, and figure that maybe learning technology and learning how to build on the web is a credible place for them to start.

So let’s just go through, where is WordPress at the moment in the educational landscape? I know that’s incredibly broad because we haven’t sort of pinned it down to any of the projects. Where are we at? What are the initiatives that are going on at the moment? So, again, anybody that wants to jump in, if we do a bit of crosstalking, so be it. But anybody that wants to jump in, just go for it.

[00:08:13] Destiny Kanno: I’ll start from like what I’ve observed a little bit. I’m pretty new to the Community Team itself and this event space, but I have seen that there have been a few education related events happening throughout the years, regardless of WordPress Campus Connect.

Like in Africa, they recently had their, I think it’s annual event, I believe in Uganda. And that has been going on for a while. It just hasn’t been under like the name WordPress Campus Connect.

And then I believe as well, and correct me if I’m wrong, there was, with Sebastian in Poland, this like WordPress Academy, like they’re also doing like education type events and initiatives. But when it comes to now this WordPress Campus Connect, it’s an official event series, like do_action. It has like more intention around that. And I think because when you go in and you, you know, apply to organise, and now there’s this way to do it through WordPress Campus Connect, it’s just going to bring those initiatives that are already happening into like a more streamlined funnel of people seeing that it’s happening, I think, in a more, how do I say it?

[00:09:21] Nathan Wrigley: Cohesive would be the word.

[00:09:22] Destiny Kanno: Yeah, cohesive way. Thank you.

[00:09:24] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, so I guess what you’re saying there is that there’s a lot of people out there in the WordPress community, many of whom might be educators or, you know, working in a school or what have you, and that they’ve rolled their own thing like we all have with WordPress. And that’s great. That’s one of the benefits of having open source software. You download it, roll your own, what have you.

But it’s also, it’s nice, it’s meaningful, it’s impactful if everybody can see, oh, there’s a bigger, kind of more organised piece somewhere. And it may not fit exactly what I’m doing, but at least I can see that it can be deployed this way. Maybe I can talk to those people, get some intuitions and ideas from those people and what have you, yeah.

[00:10:01] Isotta Peira: I wanted to jump in and connect with what Destiny was saying because this is exactly what happened from the community perspective. So talking about events, a few years ago we were seeing the Training Team doing a lot of great progress around education and the Community Team around events. But we weren’t that connected between contribution teams. And we’ve also, as like project wise, we were seeing also the need to bring a different type of audience to the WordPress events.

And we weren’t exploring at all the education field. With all the students around the world, we weren’t like taking care of them in our programs. So from the Community Team, they kind of encourage organisers all over the world to come up with new diverse format for events. And in 2023 it was launched this, it was called at the time next generation of WordPress events.

And one of the formats that stood out was exactly the Campus Connect brought up by Anand and the community. And other events like the Website challenge, and the others that’s been mentioned. And as he was saying, then we have had the time now to come back, connect the pieces between different contribution teams, and be able to offer something recognisable, standardised, something not as overwhelming as sometimes open source programs are.

And so we hope not just to reach a wider audience of students, but also to empower more teachers, more trainings, and anybody else in the community into bringing WordPress in any different type of education at different levels. With the support of course of the community.

[00:11:47] Nathan Wrigley: We will get into the bits that WP Campus Connect do in a moment, but just coming back to something that you said there, it feels to me, if I browse around in the WordPress landscape, and trust me, I browse around in the WordPress landscape rather a lot. It always feels to me as if, how to describe this, initiatives where companies sell WordPress on, they build things and there’s a fee involved. You know, so you’re a web agency or what have you, you build the thing and you sell it on.

That seems to dominate the conversation. And the more philanthropic side of things, the education piece, the bit where you’re just, you’re doing the work because it’s meaningful, and perhaps you are not getting remunerated for it. That bit somehow gets, well, it gets ignored. It somehow is the silent relation of the for-profit things. You know, you hang out in Facebook groups and you hang out on Twitter, X, whatever, online, it’s always the for-profit bit, which seems to be making the noise, you know, the plugins, the themes, and rah, rah, rah.

And this kind of stuff seems to get left. And I don’t know why that is, but it’s, hopefully this podcast is addressing some of that.

Anyway, sorry Anand, I think it’s your turn to have a little bit of a chat with us. Tell us about, yeah, the same question really, your experience in the education space and where you think WordPress is at at the moment.

[00:13:02] Anand Upadhyay: Yeah, so just as you explained about the state of education in the UK, so the same is in our region, India as well. So students in the academic life are slightly disconnected with the, what is happening in the industry? So there is like a gap between the academics and the industry. So through these kind of events, we are empowering the students to come closer to what really happening in there.

And we are also helping them to make aware about the various carrier opportunities that WordPress ecosystem can bring to them. It’s not like about just one thing, it’s also about if someone is interested in programming, someone is interested in designing, SEO, content. So there is something for everyone, right?

So with this program, we are trying to connect the students with the various career opportunities, and also trying to bring some fresh energy to the WordPress ecosystem. They can become the contributors, they can bring their own fresh perspective. Because I have read somewhere the WordPress community in many areas is aging. We need that new fresh energy. So this kind of program can also address that problem.

It’s always good to have more people getting involved in the contribution, like sort of just started with the WP Credit, which is bringing actually students to the contribution. And the Campus program is trying to introduce them to the WordPress. So all these kind of programmers combined with working towards getting more and more people getting involved in the WordPress ecosystem, and trying to make the project more sustainable in the long run.

[00:14:28] Nathan Wrigley: It’s kind of interesting, I attend quite a lot of WordPress events, and particularly the flagship events so, you know, the WordCamp Asia’s and Europe’s and US and what have you. And, I think you’re right about the demographic. The demographic definitely skews older. It’s hard to see anything above, I would imagine 10% of the crowd that would be under the age of 20. I have no data to back any of that up. I’m kind of putting my finger in the air a little bit.

But it feels like that. It feels like the demographic is, I don’t know, 30, 35, 40 and above. And if that were the only reason that you were doing WP Campus Connect, that in itself would be a credible reason, you know? But obviously there’s a lot more to it than that. But just that alone would be significant and important.

And I think also, in a world dominated by proprietary platforms where everything is siloed, you don’t own your own data, the experience is exciting because there’s some kind of algorithm trying to hook into your brainstem, then we need to get these young people. And because we don’t have the marketing budgets of a Facebook or a TikTok or what have you, then we have to do it in different ways. And attaching an event to a campus, to a university, to an educational institution is a great way I think of doing this.

So firstly, bravo, for getting this thing off the ground. Perhaps this one is for Anand again. I don’t know if he wants to take this question, but can you just describe what WP Campus Connect is? What’s involved in that? What’s the age group? Where are you doing it predominantly? How long has it been going? As much or as little as you like. And depending on what you give back to us, we can take it from there.

[00:16:09] Anand Upadhyay: Yeah, so WordPress Campus Connect, there is no like fixed criteria on to whom you are going to deliver this. So the only thing is we are going to the students, we are going to their campus. We are not creating a kind of WordCamp kind of thing, or centralised workshop where everybody is coming to our venue and we are delivering them the knowledge, but it’s about going to their campus. And because this will reduce the friction, like if we are going to organise an event, centralised event, we are inviting everyone to join, then there will be a friction. A lot of people might not going to join. Maybe there were some valid reasons as well.

So with Campus Connect, we are going to their campus and delivering the WordPress knowledge to them. And so far we have done this in the universities, postgraduate colleges, undergraduate students. And we are helping them to understand the WordPress, how WordPress can be a career choice for them, and how WordPress can be useful for whatever their interest is.

Because as I already said, that there is students, if we are going to a college or university, that every student might have different kind of interests. Maybe they are enrolled in the same course, but still they have, might have some different kind of interests.

So we are trying to explain them that they are with various career opportunities available so you can jump in. And we are doing it through the hands-on workshops. It’s not like that we are just doing a kind of seminar or lecture kind of thing. We are doing it in form of a kind of a hands-on workshop, like five to six hour workshop where we will help them to build their first website.

And it’s not about like we want to make them expert in six hours. It’s not possible. So what we want to do is, we want to give them a feeling of accomplishment. This is something that is something interesting and this is something that we can use and build something.

So this way, if they get some, after six hour workshop or five hours workshop, if they’re coming out with kind of feeling of accomplishment that this is interesting, we should explore it further, we should explore it more. So that’s our win.

[00:18:05] Nathan Wrigley: Can I ask, in the part of the world where you are, is there a real hunger for this? Is there a real appetite for this? Because with the best will in the world, I think there might be a geographical divide in terms of interest and hunger for things like WordPress. And again, there’s no heuristics behind this, this is me supposing from what I’ve heard and conversations that I have had.

It feels like in your part of the world, and you only have to look at plugin contributions, contributions to Core, events that are taking place in your neck of the woods. It seems like there’s a real appetite for it, that there may not be quite in the part of the world where I am from. So first of all, can we speak to that? Is that the case? Is it like, you know, you put this stuff on and people show up? You build it and they come?

[00:18:56] Anand Upadhyay: Yeah, so there is a quite hunger. India is like a kind of a very large country and if you count the number of WordCamps that happening in India every year, it’s quite big. Right now, these are like two, three months where we don’t have any WordCamps because it’s mostly the rainy season in everywhere. Otherwise every month you will have one or two WordCamps. And the communities that are organising WordCamps struggle to find a date that is not conflicting with another WordCamp in the same country. So that’s how the things happen.

If you talk about the beginning of this year, first three weekends have WordCamps in India, and all were very successful. So there is a kind of WordPress community is very engaging in India, and so the way everywhere.

And also if you talk about the hunger in the students, so it can vary about what they are learning, what their background is, where they’re located. But, yeah, students from what we have interacted, because we interacted with the students who doesn’t have any knowledge. We got a very good response. We saw them talking about like, oh, this is great. We can do something amazing with this. We have a lot of ideas already. This is something that we can use to implement those ideas.

So there is surely a hunger, but we just need to give them a path like, this is the path, and you can follow this. And we need to ensure them, there’s big opportunities, big market opportunities are also waiting for them if they excellent with some skills in this segment.

[00:20:20] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think it’s true to say that more or less every young person, let’s go, child or young adult or what have you, has some sort of insatiable appetite to learn. But given the education that they’re presented with, given the opportunities that are put in front of them, their experience of life later on will be very different. And so if WordPress never comes on the menu for them, if nobody ever suggests, well, have a look at this thing, then they’ll never know about this thing. This whole wonderful world of online publishing and all of the myriad things that you can do around the WordPress ecosystem. And so WP Campus Connect, I guess is facilitating that.

Now, curiously though, you said that you go to where the educational institution is. How does that work? How do you connect, so again, this doesn’t have to go to Anand, this can go to anybody. How do you connect the educator, let’s say, or the institution that wishes to put something on because, you know, their students might like it. How do you connect the educational institution with the people who then go in and provide this WordPress workshop and training? How does that work? How does that get paid for? Is it all voluntary? There’s a lot in there to unpack, but I hope you get the thrust of my question. How do all those jigsaw pieces fit together?

[00:21:37] Anand Upadhyay: The first thing is it’s all voluntary. So just like in a WordCamp, we have an organising team, a team of organisers and speakers. Nobody’s getting paid for this. We are also doing it voluntary. We have a team of organisers, not specifically to me, every WordCamp has a team of organisers, have a team of volunteers, workshop facilitators who are organising the workshops. So it’s all voluntary, nobody’s getting paid.

And also it’s free for students as well. There is no charge for students from the WordPress Campus team. So it’s not like we are putting a kind of a ticket to them. It’s completely free. Going to your question about getting the institutes convinced for letting us do the workshop in their campus, so it’s kind of a tricky thing.

The first time we reached out to the institute, so it was very tricky. I get to the college with a pitch deck. So I pitched the complete idea, complete presentation to show them what is WordPress, what are the kind of community thing? Because every institute has this question like, why you are doing this? What are your benefit?

And It’s the same thing that you said, we have to pass that bureaucracy before getting to the better benefit of the student. We have to go to the bureaucracy. And it’s a genuine question in their mind as well, because, not a lot of such communities exist that are doing these kind of free things voluntarily. For the students. So the first question we were asked is, why are you doing this? What are your benefits? And don’t expect anything from us.

[00:22:58] Nathan Wrigley: It rings so bizarre in the world in which we live. Everything about that screams, hang on. Wait, where’s the catch? Where’s the sales pitch? What’s going to happen after the fact?

[00:23:10] Anand Upadhyay: We have to work on with this way and we have to explain like complete things. We showed them that these are the big events that in the WordCamp ecosystem happens, and we are trying to create a unique initiative for students and we’ll be delivering everything free to them. And we were not going to charge, we just need you to provide the students and the required infrastructure.

So the pitch is really tough. In some institutes we got very understanding people who understood what we are saying. Within the next 15 minutes, we got them convinced. In some places we have to discuss a lot of questions. But yeah, it was again, interesting experience as well. We got some general feedback from them as, because last time it was the very first time we were doing this kind of thing. We don’t have any reference, like we just have an idea like we are going through this thing. So we also brainstorm with them like, what are the expectation of your students? They also gave us some suggestions.

So because in every institute you’ll find different kind of students, you have to plan your workshops, you have to plan your workflow according to the interest of the students. So that’s how we approached, yeah, to convince the institute is the most tricky part. Because other than that, if you have to do workshop, we have our facilitators who are already working in WordPress. So it’s not difficult for them to deliver the same knowledge to adults. The only barrier that we have is to convince the college and universities to join and become a partner.

[00:24:32] Nathan Wrigley: And has that journey, that, I guess bridge that you’ve got to cross, has that now become more straightforward? In that, you’ve got a history of things that you’ve done. So it’s now more a case of, look, here’s the testimonials. Here’s the things that have happened. We have credibility, we’ve done it before. This is not brand new. Has that become an easier journey? In other words, the door is more open than it was the first few times around.

[00:24:54] Anand Upadhyay: Yeah, so the last year it was very tough. We have to reach up to them, take appointment, go there and spend some time there. And this year in the institute where we have done this last year, I just sent them a message like, we are doing it again, and if you want to be a part, just fill this form and we will discuss further.

It works. So it’s much easier. And to those who are not a partner last year, but they have seen our post on the social media after the event, and they reached out to us like somehow we missed it, this time connect with us whenever you are doing it again. So once you have done this thing, you have a credibility and you can just showcase them.

After that event, we have got a lot of the students joining our meetup. Before that, I’m running our city meetup from 2017, and we barely get 10 to 12 members in every meetup. Right now we are doing the meetups of 40 to 50 members. And it’s a kind of amazing thing. And it’s not only about having a lot of the students only. After seeing the students joining in, after seeing our pictures and the sort of local community going on, some professionals are also jumping in to join the meetups.

Because they see that there is something valuable going on. So they’re also joining. So this is something amazing, because this is a byproduct. You’ll be able to grow your local community. You’ll be able to strengthen your local community more.

[00:26:10] Nathan Wrigley: I have such profound respect for what you are doing. It is almost bringing tears to my eyes. It’s incredible. Everything that you say there is just so philanthropic. It’s just philanthropy all the way down. College students probably don’t have a great deal of money to throw around. They would want to consume education, which will make their life prospects better. They would like that to be as affordable as possible.

And you show up, like here’s a bunch of stuff and it’s completely free. Okay, that’s great. And then there’s this virtuous cycle of, okay, we do it each year. That becomes easier, because the testimonials work, and presumably you can spread out and the ripples will move around where you live. And then hopefully maybe hop through jurisdictions and borders and international, who knows? We can get to that.

But then also this knock on effect, which was maybe unexpected, a consequence that was unexpected of the WordPress community, the meetups that you offer, the swelling there and swelling in the, we talked about the demographics earlier, it’s skewing younger. And if you can attract a percentage of those, and keep them sticking around in the community, they can then take on these roles in the future.

And the whole thing kind of propels itself. What it needed was the prime mover, which was you, which is pretty incredible. So I don’t know if Destiny or Isotta want to add anything. I’m almost speechless.

[00:27:31] Destiny Kanno: I did have like a few points I wanted to add to what everyone’s saying. Reducing barriers has been a huge factor of setting this up. Originally we were using like the previous event organisation form and were like, actually there’s a lot of stuff in here. It doesn’t make sense for this use case. So we really paid a lot of attention to just thinking differently for this, and treating it differently. We don’t have to use the same things as we had before.

And Isotta said before, like it’s standardised in a way, but it’s flexible too. So even though we have this framework that people can come to, we don’t say, you can only do the event in this way. You can have a one day event, you could do a half day event, you could have event series over a couple weeks like Anand is doing, and that is totally cool. Like, however you want to run this, we are open to that, and we’re also here to mentor you and support you in that.

And then I, a thought came to my mind as Anand was talking, and you Nathan as well about like, you know, what’s in it for the volunteers? And I’m like, I think it’s an opportunity for volunteers just as much as it is the students, because they’re also getting exposure to these universities. And I don’t know, maybe someone has an ambition to teach at university someday, or like at least teach about WordPress at a university. So, you know, as you go into these, yes, there’s a hundred percent the philanthropic aspect, but it’s also like a learning experience for you as well as a volunteer to be in that space with the students too.

And then lastly, I wanted to say as well, like going a little bit back about the current climate and how it feels like we are kind of like aging, I’ve also noticed in my experience it’s like, we are all also just, this is probably very like, duh, but we’re all professionals, right? So we’re not really looking to talk to students most of the time. We’re looking to sell something or network or like talk to other professionals. So I do think that this is a great way to bring in that new batch of folks that are going to become professionals, hopefully in the WordPress space. But yeah, it’s just that renewal instead of like just trying to sell or buy from whoever’s there based off of whatever you’re currently working on in the WordPress space.

[00:29:46] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you. Isotta, anything you want to throw in at this point?

[00:29:49] Isotta Peira: Of course. I want to add one point about the aging discussion that we were having, because also, in my opinion, it is true what you, Nathan, said at the beginning that just only the fact of reaching younger people is a way to make the project more sustainable, long term. But also I would love everyone to think about the other way around, because what is WordPress giving to all these younger generations?

Because wins are much, I mean, for how I see it, I see like a winning opportunity everywhere. Because it’s not just about reducing the age of the people involved in the project. If we reduce the age, but people are not engaged. If they’re not getting what they need, learning opportunities, networking opportunities, even just opportunities to understand that they have a whole world around them, they didn’t even know that it existed, which happened to me before I learned about WordPress community and WordPress, this is huge.

So this is a real, like all this initiative are core of the service that will be giving to millions of students. For now, we are at thousands of students already, but, this would be available for any students worldwide. And this is a pretty big deal, I believe, for younger generation and their futures.

[00:31:12] Nathan Wrigley: I think it’s, on every level this is just so remarkably interesting, and the growth of it hopefully we’ll get into the millions. Right now you say you’re in the thousands. It’s still remarkable.

I want to sort of drill into it a little bit. So it feels like there’s this sort of double fronted marketplace aspect to it where WP Campus Connect kind of sits in the middle, and so you’ve got WP Campus Connect in the center, and then on the one side you’ve got the students and the institutions that those students attend. And then on the other side, you’ve got the educators who will come into that institution and WP Campus Connect is sort of like the fulcrum, the center, the spokes all lead into WP Campus Connect, and they do all the connecting and what have you.

Let’s talk about the educator side. So this is people who already are familiar with WordPress. Are there any constraints on who you would welcome into WP Campus Connect there? Like, is there any level of expertise that you’ve got to have, or any kind of proof that you’ve got to go through that you, yourself would be a credible educator? I don’t know, so that’s open to anybody. Is there any kind of barrier to entry if you are an existing WordPresser and want to be involved?

[00:32:20] Anand Upadhyay: Yeah, so far we have not planned any kind of a specific requirements or the limitations or criteria. So far we have picked from the local community members, like we just opened the call for facilitators, and all those who are interested in teaching. And they responded to it and we just picked them.

We are doing a kind of a series of event to, I think five to six colleges in this time and going every weekend to one college. So we have a pool of four workshop facilitators and we’ll be rotating them to multiple colleges. So this is how it is working. So there is no kind of barrier kind of thing.

We are just thinking about if they are ready for the community work, because there may be many educators, but there may not be everyone who will be doing it for free because we are not going to pay them anything. So if they have the community feeling, they have the community vibes and they can come forward for this. So that’s the only criteria we have. You have the WordPress knowledge, you have the love for community. Just come forward and join us for the event.

[00:33:19] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, that’s great. Great to hear. So staying on that side of things then, I remember my forays in education, one of the things that was kind of drummed into me was, failing to plan is planning to fail. And so there was always this aspect of, if you’re going to stand up in front of a bunch of people, you have to be ready. You can’t necessarily, I mean you can, right? A workshop environment maybe maps to that pretty well, where you stand up and it’s led by what the audience, the students in this case, would like to hear.

I’m wondering if there’s a curriculum which you have planned or do plan, or if somebody can kind of like drop in and just pick up the pieces of paper if you like and say, okay, here’s the lesson plan, if you like. WP Campus Connect has put these plans together, and we’re going to go and show these students how to do this.

So that is my ignorance. I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing that you do. Do you provide materials for wannabe educators to deliver, or is it very much you create your own curriculum on the fly or however you wish to do that?

[00:34:16] Anand Upadhyay: So we just meet together and just plan, just think about like how we can go on ahead, like what are the things that we to teach? And we just brainstorm it together. It’s not like we are giving the, because there is not much different between the organiser and workshop facilitators here. So we are all the community members, so we have just divided the roles, but we are all, they’re working towards the same goal.

So we just all sit together, brainstorm the ideas, like what should we give to the students? So for example, last year we helped them to build a kind of a business website. So all the educators plan together. So we will follow this workflow, we will follow this approach. And we went to one college, we tried to do the same thing. We came back and then we again said what went wrong? What was difficult for the students to follow? How we can overcome them in the next college? We repeat, we improvise and deliver the same thing.

This year we, again, we are planning, so we again sit together. And then we thought about, last year we helped them to create a kind of a simple business website, but we found that students were not connected with that. They built the same thing, but they didn’t utilise it later because it was not connected to them. So this year we are planning to help them to build their personal portfolio website, a kind of a resume, where they can showcase their projects, they can showcase their resume, they can showcase their work or learning what they have done. So we are planning that kind of website.

So again, our workshop facilitators are working together, all those educators, and working together to create a kind of a reference website. And then we will guide them to recreate this, the same thing, adding their own touch because this will be more personalised thing. They will get attached to this, and maybe we can have some of the students to put their websites live. So it’ll be, again, a good chance.

And we are also getting some support from the hosting companies who are offering some pre-hosting accounts so we can do kind of a competition kind of thing, or someone who has done incredible work during the workshops and post workshop, we can provide them those free hostings and they can get the chance to put their website live.

[00:36:21] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so it’s a real kind of project based education then. So you walk into the room, you interact with the educators, you ask questions, I’m struggling with this thing, I can’t make this work, and they come and step in. So you described it as a workshop and maybe the audience, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that kind of setup, but education often felt like to me, person at the front with some kind of display, whiteboard, blackboard, whatever. They talk, I listen, I fall asleep.

But this is not that. This is, okay, we have a project, we’re going to design a business website, a personal portfolio, resume kind of website. And the idea is that you interact with that and by the time you’ve left, you’ve got some useful knowledge. You’ve done a thing, not just listen to somebody talking about possibly doing a thing hands on. Okay, that’s brilliant.

Is there any kind of age restriction? Because obviously if I was to bring along a 3-year-old to this, we would question the utility of that. You kept talking about colleges and I think you mentioned universities a couple of times. So it feels to me as if we’re 18 or something is kind of where this goes, yeah?

[00:37:28] Anand Upadhyay: Yeah, most of the students we interacted with are around mostly 17 plus we can say, 17 or 18 plus. So that’s the age group. And this year we have got a student, we have got a request from one of the high school as well. So they want to, their approach was very nice. They want to give the students kind of exposure to what they are going to face after completing their high school. So they’re running kind of a program so they’re also interested in if we can just go to their school and give their students some kind of a short introduction about any skill that is relevant for them. So we’re also getting that kind of request as well.

[00:38:04] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, and that’s such an interesting age as well, because you haven’t yet kind of formulated your path. And I think maybe by the time you get to 16, 17, 18, you’re more funneled. You’ve made decisions which have led you in a certain direction. You know, I’m going to be a, I’m into agriculture, I want to do whatever it may be.

But if the high school level, everything’s wide open still, isn’t it? And if you can get them and expose somebody that’s never been on a computer even, and, oh look, I put something and people nowhere in me can suddenly see it, that may open up a completely new pathway.

But what you’ve got going at the moment, what do these students get in return? Is there like a quid pro quo? Is there some, sort of leading question here really. Is there some credit that you might get on the other end of this? Do students get to walk away with, apart from obviously the knowledge, which is now in their head for life, do they get to walk away with some kind of accreditation to say, I did this, here’s my certificate, or whatever it may be?

[00:38:59] Anand Upadhyay: Yeah. So we are again providing them certificates for the completion of attending the workshop. And, yes, obviously they are getting some amazing knowledge, amazing exposure to the community. Yeah, but as a proof of thing that they have done something, we are providing them certificates.

[00:39:14] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. And obviously, you know, if they then continue that participation in the meetups and what have you, you get the bit which is way more important than the certificate, which is the actual exposure to the people out there in the real world who can give you that leg up or point you in the right direction for the person that you need to help you on that first career step.

So I’m just going to the panel, I’m just going to say. Did you want to add anything to that? So I was talking about this sort of double fronted marketplace, you know, students, one side, educators on the other. Anything to add?

[00:39:43] Destiny Kanno: Well, I did want to add in general that we’ve been very careful to say in all of the handbooks and landing pages, educational institutions. So that could be colleges, that could be high schools, that could be technical schools or different business schools, boot camps, wherever you’re getting educated on something that WordPress can maybe be hand in hand with.

We would love you to run a WordPress Campus Connect event, so I wanted to like make sure we clarify that. And then also, anyone could put this on. A request to organise could come from like a teacher, for example, or a student even. We’re not like limiting it to local community organisers or anything like that. So if there is direct interest as well from a campus, then that’s even better because, you know, they’re going to have a venue and all they really need is like mentorship and maybe some facilitators.

And then to plug in just a bit, you were like, what kind of curriculum do they have? Don’t forget, there’s Learn WordPress, you know, .org as well where folks can definitely use the materials there to craft their own curriculum or a series of workshops or whatever they’re going to put on as well. So I do want to ensure folks know that there are resources available that are free to help you with that part of the programming too.

[00:41:00] Nathan Wrigley: I’m just going to read this into the record. If you are, I don’t know how podcasts are consumed, I just know that they’re consumed in a wide variety of ways. If you are driving the car or you are walking somewhere and you think, I’ll get to this later, stop. If you know an educator somewhere, make a point to mention this to them at some point. You know, tomorrow, get home, phone them up. They’ve probably never heard of this. They’re probably not in the WordPress space. They probably don’t have the slightest intuition that this freely available stuff could step into their institution, with what sounds like minimal work required on their part.

But it’s unlikely that they’re WordPressers in the same way that you are because you’re listening to this podcast. So that’s my request to you, that’s your philanthropic request of the day. Go and mention it to the people that you know, who work in these places and have connections with these places, because it won’t happen without those kind of things happening. So, sorry, Isotta, I didn’t allow you a chance to speak. I got all carried away.

[00:42:00] Isotta Peira: Don’t worry at all, Nathan. I believe that we’ve been saying a lot already, and there is just a good amount of information around for everyone who’s listening about how this program works, how to connect with us, and how to just launch their Campus Connect series events in their cities.

[00:42:18] Nathan Wrigley: So we’ve spent a long time thinking about WP Campus Connect, but something that was dropped into the show notes, and I confess, I don’t really have a great deal of background on this, so you’re going to have to explain it in full. WordPress Credits. The name I guess suggests something, but I don’t really know what that something is. So, Isotta, if you fancy just running with that, tell us about WordPress Credits.

[00:42:39] Isotta Peira: Of course. Big pleasure for me to share more about it. WordPress Credits, in simple words, is a contribution based practice programs by the WordPress foundation open to students to just to bridge them in the Core of WordPress. Regardless of what they’re studying, their fields, their interests, what we want to do is take one step from the WordPress skills education and show them how they can enhance, train, and gain new skills using the WordPress ecosystems, regardless their interests.

And the word credits, as you said, yes, it’s just something because we want to partner with educational institutions, universities, schools, that will recognise the practice program into their students’ curriculum.

A clear example, we’ve just launched a pilot with the University of Pisa in Italy for the Department of Translation and Communication. And for them, we are offering 150 hours of practice for the students. They will be connected with mentors. They’re going to have their virtual classrooms, and they’ll be guided since the beginning until the end. At the end, they’re going to build their website of WordPress, we teach them how to do it. You are going to use the Learn platform to guide them through the whole process. And they’re going to be involved in practical work within the community.

They get to pitch what they want to work on. So this is open for designer, translators, developers, whoever wants to practice their own skills and position themself already into the job environment. Because we noticed, I felt like livid on my skin when I was studying translation at the University of Pisa, that I had to do countless hours of practice translating things that nobody ever read, used. It was very good for me. For me it was perfect to have things to practice on, and so I could become a great translator, but I worked on stuff that nobody ever used.

And the moment I joined the WordPress community in 2022 and I found out about the Polyglots team, I start thinking, hey, I could have been translating WordPress for five years and getting real life experience, exposure to a global community of professionals in the field that I’m interested, and also connection with companies with other fields that I couldn’t even imagine it existed for me as a translator.

So the goal of this program is exactly to enable students around the world, regardless what they’re studying, to become, to shape their future through practice. And we, when I say we, I mean all the volunteers and contributors who are participating into this project. We have designed a path for each student where they not only get to practice the skills that are more relevant to the fields of study, but also transferable skills.

Like, for example, organising, working independently in a remote and async environment while keeping stakeholders updated. How to design a project, because they will have to finish the program, presenting a project that they would’ve designed, developed, and worked on. Public speaking because they would have also exposure to presenting the work to the WordPress community.

And at the end of the mentorship, of course, from experienced contributors in our community, and at the end, at the wrap up, they will receive a certificate from the WordPress Foundation, certifying the hours of contribution within the program. And at that point, the educational institution they’re studying, they’re going to recognise these as a part of their curriculum.

For some universities and schools, it translates into credits. For example, for Pisa, 150 hours of contribution translating into six credits. So students can decide to skip a traditional exam and do this practice. And for other institution might look different. But the requirement for an institution to join this program is that they have to recognise this work into the students curriculum.

[00:47:08] Nathan Wrigley: Okay so, dear listener, you may have noticed we shifted gears. We went from talking about WP Campus Connect to WordPress Credits, and we’ve now moved into a very different arena.

And so now, I’ve never been to the University of Pisa, but I’m going to guess that, just the name itself, it’s an utterly credible institution, you know, with a long history of taking in students and requiring them to work hard in order that they get some kind of qualification at the end.

So this is very different. We are now talking about doing WordPressy things, and at the end of it, it’s equal to a proportion of the stuff that they would be doing at that university already. Now that then, I guess, implies that this is a more structured thing, that there needs to be more inspection of what’s going on, that there needs to be kind of hoops to jump through that you need to be able to credibly say, we know that this person did this. We can prove it. There’s a paper trail, and at the end of it you get, with the University of Pisa, six credits, which equals whatever that equals.

So presumably there’s more backwards and forwards. Rather than the WP Campus Connect, which is more philanthropic and, you know, more community based, presumably you’ve had to have fairly lengthy conversations and dialogue with the University of Pisa so that they know that you are not giving away six credits for nothing. What’s that been like?

[00:48:39] Isotta Peira: Yes, you are absolutely right, and this is the case, and it is understandably, because we need to show them what is the potential, and what the students will gain. For me, it’s been a wonderful experience. And now I’m also in conversation with other universities and other schools. And having myself lived, like felt this gap between, oh, I’m doing practice, but it feels like it’s just useful to me, but it’s not applied in the real world.

And seeing, hey, this could bring, just basically push all these students into creating something that not only they own, because I believe the ownership is very important because most of cases, studies are a little bit passive. So as you were saying before, we have a teacher, we sit, we listen and we do what we’re asked to do.

In this case is the other way around. It’s, hey, this is a playground of learning opportunities for you. We show you everything that you can play with, and then you get to design the project. You get to experiment all this exposure to real life that usually you don’t get at university or another, let’s say, formal institutions. And for the universities, this is going to be, basically a certificate for institutional excellence for them, because right now, only the University of Pisa is offering this. In a few weeks, also the universities Fidélitas in Costa Rica will start offering this.

So just, hey, to institutions worldwide, this is something that the university, once they understand what it is, they will want to jump on it. And so as you say, it’s a lot of back and forth. It’s always a very interesting conversation because every university has some similar and some different needs for their students. And for me it’s a huge learning curve because I’m getting to learn a lot about other institutions. But at the end, everyone who I’ve been talking to so far, they are like over the moon with the idea of offering this option, this possibility to their students.

What I’m doing right now is starting connecting with teachers, schools, universities, institution that I personally, I’m already personally connected with, like the case in Pisa. And the WordPress community is key because also, in this community, there’s plenty of teachers. Everywhere you look, there is, oh, okay, I teach WordPress, I teach this other WordPress related theme. Oh, I teach at this school, I teach at this universities. Or, hey, in my kids’ school, they were looking for something like this, and it turns out that maybe you’re not a teacher, but you have kids and they’re at schools.

So it’s been key, the connection with the community. And it’s actually one of the biggest needs that we have right now. Right now, there are three, including myself, contributors focusing on this project. We need more help, also to create this connection, to get into the institution and to have them understand the offer that we’re giving to them.

[00:51:59] Nathan Wrigley: So I’m going to read into the record a recycled version of the comment that I made a moment ago about WP Campus Connect. And that is that if you know anybody who could fit into this part of the jigsaw, you know, an educator or somebody that works in a university, whatever capacity that may be, I guess you are looking for that door to be slightly pushed ajar so that you’ve got these contacts wherever they may be. Obviously you’ve got Pisa, Costa Rica and what have you. But it would be nice to spread this a little bit further.

Okay. Okay, so that bit is now done. The bit that I want to ask with this is with the university students going through the WordPress Credit system, is this kind of a distributed thing? Is it something that they can do in their own time? Or do they need to, I don’t know, attend, be in a particular lecture hall at a particular time in order to prove that they’ve done a particular thing? Or is it entirely remote with, well, basically it’s a very open-ended question. How does it work from a student point of view? How do they achieve this?

[00:52:59] Isotta Peira: This is a great question actually. The values behind this program is to keep the open source experience as real as possible. So it is a hundred percent remote. We have built the virtual classroom for each student on the Learn platform, and they will be able to self onboard themself, go through the all the steps, but at the same time, they will be paired with the mentors.

So we strongly recommend, and for this first, let’s say, round of program, we are making strong suggestion to meet with their mentor once per week, so they can learn more about each other, the mentor can help them guiding their way, but they have to complete the hours. We want to, not just respect the principle of the WordPress ecosystems, but also put students in this real life environment that they will find in their job.

Because most of the roles in different type of companies, you just don’t have to like stay there and show that they’re doing the things. You work at your pace. You have your project. You have to share updates, of course, and show that you are progressing. And for WordPress credits, if students want to work on weekends, during night, this is up to them. They just have to complete the WordPress site and the hours assigned.

And there are couple of steps that will have them syncing at a specific moment with other parts of the community. For example, participating to a discussion on Slack, or a discussion on a blog post. Because also they’re experimenting different tool and different communication styles. And if there is a meetup, local meetup active in their cities, one of the step would also be participate to one of them. Or if there is no meetup, local meetup happening, to join an online meetup.

So in this way the success of this program would reach the most, the highest point, if they have not only completed the work they decided to do, but if they also have experienced all the different parts of the ecosystem. So this way they work out the program, and they have the new world possibility open. They can decide to stay, they can decide to just focus more on one particular thing and they would’ve learned how to upload and work on WordPress, TV. How to use tools like Slack, GitHub, WordPress, the Learn platform, everything. So this is what they will get.

[00:55:32] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing. I mean, set aside the fact that when I was at university, the internet just didn’t exist because I’m of a certain age, but I would’ve loved something like this. The capacity to just sort of do things in my own time, you know, fit it around, cherry pick the bits that I want to pick. For me it was much more, you pick a course, you show up to the course, you imbibe the content, you sit and exam and so it goes. And that was what was on offer. But this is so great.

And also, I don’t know if this is something that you do do but it just came into my head, the capacity for this to be an accreditation prior to gaining access to a university. So at the minute in the UK, all of the results are coming out for the examinations which children, well, young adults require in order to get to their place at university. And then when they’re at the university, they obviously get these credits and get the degree or what have you. But something like WordPress credits, it’d be kind of fun if it could count towards that onboarding process, you know, to get you in the door of a university to show up and say, I did the WordPress thing. I did something a little bit above and beyond what everybody else is doing. I mean, I don’t know if there’s any plans for that, but that struck me as a curious option.

[00:56:45] Isotta Peira: That would be the dream. Having WordPress credits embedded into like mandatory curriculum to get to a specific level of education, or to be able to end, to graduate from a specific level of education. This is going to be the dream. Now we’ve taken the first steps, so now we’ve built up the program, we are going to gather feedback, improve it, adjust it with all these first new batch of students that are coming. And also from the sponsors, the universities, and the mentors feedback. And then little by little, this is where we want to go. Ready to bring WordPress contributions everywhere.

[00:57:22] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I mean, gosh, what an episode this has been. I thoroughly enjoyed this. However, I don’t know if we’re done yet because on the show notes that I had, we had three points that we were to mention. One was WP Campus Connect, which we did at the beginning, and then we’ve just spent a few moments talking about WordPress Credits. But there’s this other curious bit that I don’t know much about, and I don’t know if this is something we want to delve into, WordPress Student Clubs. What’s that?

[00:57:47] Destiny Kanno: Yeah, so that is, you don’t have to have a WordPress Campus Connect event to request a WordPress Student Club on your campus. But it essentially was birthed out of this idea from Anand of like, hey, you know, now that we’ve got this captive audience of students, like where do they go to continue the WordPress activities after we’re gone? And so the, yeah, WordPress Student Clubs were born.

You can now request a site created for your Student Club when you request to organise a WordPress Campus Connect event, or you can just reach out to us directly. And right now, I believe Anand is working with the Sophia Girls College right now in Ajmer to set up their WordPress Student Club. I think they’re the first actually to have one.

And the goal is that they can continue on campus, their WordPress activities. They can connect still with the local community, potentially like invite them to their student club events. It’s just like a extracurricular circle or club that now is WordPress themed that will, I think, help them continue.

And also, sorry, I just wanted bring in like the Credits portion too. Like you might have folks from different majors, right, that are using WordPress in different ways. So it’s a way for also the students to intermingle amongst different majors within their campus as well.

[00:59:08] Nathan Wrigley: It’s kind of a way to keep the conversation going, isn’t it, in a sense? It’s more opportunities to kind of keep people interested and give them opportunities. And all of that is just so necessary. We talked at the beginning about the age demographic of WordPress and how all of this stuff is just such a real credible way of trying to tackle that.

And I think if you were to put somebody that went through, let’s say, WP Campus Connect. If you were to drop them straight into a meetup, maybe that’s too much, because it can get fairly technical. You know, the presentations are often about some fairly technical things, and so this feels like a really nice bridge. It keeps it more based around the students, so they’re familiar with each other. They’re in the same institution, presumably. It’s kind of like a club. We call them afterschool clubs in the UK. It feels a little bit more like that. So it’s much more based around where they already are and that kind of thing.

[00:59:59] Destiny Kanno: It gives them a sense of ownership as well, because it’s as you said, it’s a students’ club, so, you know, there’s going to be someone that’s leading it, and maybe a co-lead as well, and a faculty member who will also be there to advise or assist.

[01:00:13] Anand Upadhyay: It’s kind of an in campus meetup group, that kind of thing. So they can, just like you said, taking them to the local community meetup will be a little bit overwhelming from them, because whatever the sessions, whatever the topics that are planned in the meetups stuff, catering to the wider audience. So in the campus club they can decide their own kind of topics. What are the topics they are interested in? And they can learn, it’s kind of a group learning as well. Someone from them is learning one topic and delivering this knowledge to the other club members. So it’s a way to keep the momentum going on that is started with WordPress Campus Connect program.

[01:00:51] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it’s absolutely wonderful. I’m going to make sure, before we finally finish this call, although we’ll end the podcast recording in a moment, I’ll make sure that I ask these panelists to send me any links that may assist you. And so what I’m going to say is if you head to the wptavern.com website, and if you search for this episode, you could probably search for WP Campus Connect or WordPress Credits or what have you, certainly it’ll be there available in search.

Head to that, look at the show notes and the links. There’ll be a transcript of this and there’ll be some show notes where I just sort of summarise what’s going on. But right at the bottom, a little way down the page will be all of the links for everything that we have discussed. Maybe some additional ones as well for things that we didn’t have.

And when I attend WordPress events, there’s always a sense of this, there’s always a sense of look around, the community’s not getting any younger. We’ve got to do something about it. Complaining is the wrong word. People are not doing that, they’re just curious about that. Well, here, you’ve been spoonfed the solution. You now know what it is that you could do to skew the demographic younger. If the WordPress project is something that you believe in, and you would like to carry on, the only way to do that is to have a funnel of younger people who will become the older people, who will then teach the younger people. And so the cycle continues.

If you want that to happen and you don’t know how to make that happen, well, now you do. You’ve got these people to reach out to. You’ve got these projects that you know about. You can get involved in any of this, at any level.

And all that it remains for me to do is to say, wow, thank you to all three of you for being interested in this. Not just interested, being active and making the effort to get these things started, to get them off the ground, which is the hardest bit, I think. And hopefully now that they have got off the ground, they will fly with wings of their own. That would be really nice. So, Destiny, Isotta and Anand, thank you so much for chatting to me today. What an episode that was.

[01:02:55] Destiny Kanno: Thank you so much, Nathan.

[01:02:57] Isotta Peira: Thank you. It’s been a huge pleasure.

[01:02:59] Anand Upadhyay: And thank you for giving us a platform to share all these initiatives.

On the podcast today we have Destiny Kanno, Isotta Peira and Anand Upadhyay.

Destiny is the head of Community Education at Automattic. Isotta is the leader of the WordPress credits initiative for students. Anand is the founder of WordPress Campus Connect.

This episode is all about how WordPress is not only powering websites but also empowering the next generation of learners and creators. You’ll hear about the growing movement of education-focused WordPress events happening worldwide, from hands-on workshops on university campuses in India, to student clubs designed to keep the momentum going after introductory events.

Anand shares how WP Campus Connect is bringing WordPress directly to students, reducing barriers to entry and helping bridge the gap between academic learning and real-world tech skills. We also explore the challenges of organising these events, from convincing institutions of the value of open source, to fostering genuine community involvement among both students and educators.

Isotta then introduces us to the WordPress Credits program, an initiative that lets students turn their contributions to the WordPress ecosystem into recognised academic credit at universities like Pisa in Italy. It’s a win-win: students gain practical, resume-worthy experience, while educational institutions get a transferable, skills-focused, program that prepares learners for the jobs of the future.

Whether you’re an educator, a WordPress enthusiast, or just someone who cares about open source and community, this episode is packed with actionable insights. The guests share how flexible and resilient these education initiatives are, how you can get involved, and why engaging the next generation is not just important, but essential for the continued growth and sustainability of the WordPress community.

It’s a truly inspiring episode, and is at the intersection of so many areas of profound importance.

If you’re curious about how to bring WordPress into your local school, university, or community, or if you just want to hear how WordPress is making a difference far beyond the web, this episode is for you.

Useful links

WordPress Credits Program

WordPress Credits: A bridge to open-source technology

WordPress Campus Connect

Learn WordPress

WordPress Student Clubs

Introducing WordPress Credits: A New Contribution Internship Program for University Students

Biographies

Destiny Kanno

Destiny Fox Kanno, sponsored contributor at Automattic with a focus on education within the WordPress community. Currently focusing on growing, enabling and amplifying the WordPress Campus Connect and Student Club initiatives.

Isotta Peira

Isotta joined the WordPress Community in 2022 as a full-time contributor to the Community Team, sponsored by Automattic. With a background in translation, sales, training, and community management, she also ran a culinary events business. She values making informed decisions by integrating data analysis into her work and believes sharing knowledge is key to fighting inequality. Isotta is currently leading the WordPress Credits program, an initiative that connects open-source contributions with academic curricula worldwide.

Anand Upadhyay

Anand Upadhyay is the founder of WPVibes, a WordPress plugin development company. He has been working with WordPress since 2010 and contributes to several Make WordPress teams, including Core, Docs, Polyglots, and Community. He also serves as an organizer for WordCamp Asia, one of the flagship events in the WordPress ecosystem.
In addition to building plugins, Anand is deeply passionate about teaching and education. He co-organizes the Ajmer WordPress Meetup and is currently contributing to the global expansion of WordPress Campus Connect, a program he initiated as a pilot in 2024 to introduce students to WordPress and open source. Through these efforts, he focuses on helping new learners and contributors discover opportunities to learn, grow, and find their place in the WordPress community.