Episode 1: How I learned what sustainability is
Sustain WP
Sparking Digital Sustainability
This chapter chronicles the speaker's journey into digital sustainability, beginning with their experiences at WordCamp Europe and the lack of sustainability discussions. They highlight key moments and presentations that fueled their passion for incorporating sustainability into the WordPress community.
Welcome to Sustain WP, a limited series podcast about digital sustainability and WordPress. I'm your host Nahuai Badiola and in this episode I will explain how I got into WordPress and sustainability, and more importantly how I learned what sustainability is. For this part I'll be joined by Hannah Smith who had a key role on how I approach the topic nowadays.
In the previous episode I promised you to tell you who the hell I I'm, and since you will be experiencing this journey through my lens I think it makes sense to know, at least, how I got into WordPress and sustainability.
I have a degree on biology, so you could think, aha! that's where environmental care/interest come from. I'm no saying no but my PhD was on neuroscience, so the link it's not that obvious.
I also did some post-docs but even if I loved doing research the scientist lifestyle was not align with how I wanted to live. So I decided to become a freelance to have more time and freedom. You can laugh, I'm aware that I'm an optimist, grounded, but an optimist nevertheless.
Long story short, around 2014 I found WordPress and I fell in love with it's community. Don't get me wrong, the software was great (it's even better now) but the people involved with the project tops that.
I took me some time to learn the ropes of been a freelance and become a WordPress developer, but I could say I managed to do it.
I also started to get involved with the community, been a Meetup and WordCamp speaker, a volunteer or organizing a Meetup in my town.
Ok that covers pretty much the WordPress part, but what about the sustainability?
The inflexion point was when I attended to a talk on WordCamp Pontevedra 2019 by Roberto Vazquez who talked about the environmental impact of websites.
The rationale behind it's quite simple and obvious, the websites are hosted in servers that need energy and most of it comes from fossil fuels, but I never thought about it before. So in that moment I decided to investigate more about it.
During the last years I've been sharing my learnings through my blog, newsletter and podcast. I also gave some talks on Meetups and WordCamps about the topic.
The second tipping point
During this learning I participated in two workshops that impacted me and made me change the perspective on digital sustainability. One of them was the Digital Collage, I did the online version before conducted by Gäel Duez, it was great and then the in person one conducted by Margaux Maugeais on Barcelona. I highly recommend attending to it in the format that is easier for you.
And the other workshop was Doing the Doughnut Tech created by Hannah Smith and facilitated by her and Alistair Alexander.
This was created on the frame of the Green Web Foundation fellowship. But I think it's best if Hannah explains her experience creating and conducting it.
You can find the audio transcript of the talk with Hannah Smith below.
Resources
- Our Sustainable WP
- Doing the doughnut website
- Doughnut Economics website
- Now we have a sustainability channel in Making WordPress Slack, what should we do?
- Digital Collage
- https://wordpress.tv/2019/09/22/roberto-vazquez-desarrollo-sostenible/
- Hannah Smith's posts on the Green Web Foundation
- Call for applications Green Web Fellowship 2023/24
- Sustainability definition in Wikipedia
- Sustainability as an umbrella term post (GWF)
- Green IO (podcast)
- Environmental variables (podcast)
Transcript
Nahuai Badiola I'm a WordPress developer, theme and plugin creator, I also write WP code tutorials and I'm passionate about web sustainability.Guest
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