EP440 - Year in review and forward at 2023
On this episode of WPwatercooler lots of topics were discussed looking back at 2022 and what's to come in 2023. Topics include the use of artificial intelligence in WordPress, Sé and crew launching the WP Community Collective, the possibility of a rewrite of the Media Library, the implementation of collaborative editing in WordPress, and the future of the WordPress mobile app.
Sé Reed asked the panel what is their word for tech in the new year.
- Sé mentioned impact which means to her smart operating in terms of working on things that have "the most bang for your buck"
- Jason Tucker's word is cloud, at his work he's looking to move to more cloud services and personally wants to try to use more cloud automation services in his day-to-day life.
- Jason Cosper is carry on. He wants to look further into ownership and control over the things he creates and the use of certain platforms, such as Twitter. not having a focus on making money, but rather wanting to have control over the distribution and use of the things he creates. Cosper wants to be less dependent on someone else's infrastructure, owning his own part of a social media platform such as sites that are federated like Mastodon.
Both Jasons would love to work on their show The Query and get that off the ground soon.
The discussion turned to the present and future and Sé began discussing her use of an artificial intelligence tool called Chat GPT for various tasks, such as generating content for websites, optimizing code, and writing blog posts. She mentioned that Cosper should use the tool to rewrite his speaker bio. Sé has used it to rewrite code, and express excitement about using artificial intelligence as a tool.
Launch of The WP Community Collective and the episode EP437 - Funding the Dream with the WP Community Collective.
Sé was appointed Team Rep for the Marketing Team
Jason brought up if the Media Library will get a rewrite and the group chimed in on some of the features they wanted including taxonomy, detecting and combining duplicate images, and tags. They mention the possibility of using artificial intelligence to classify and tag photos and mention the 10UP Classify plugin that leverages Microsoft's cloud AI for this purpose. The panel also discussed the possibility of bringing this functionality into WordPress core, possibly through Jet Pack or another plugin.
The panel changed subjects and focused on discussing the possibility of WordPress implementing collaborative editing in 2023. They mention that this may require the use of web RTC or other backend connections, and may not be feasible for users on certain hosting plans. They also mention that there are plans for significant changes to the WordPress site, including an overhaul of the support forums and documentation, as well as the ability to use the Gutenberg block editor in descriptions for plugins. They mention that there have been some issues with the implementation of the block editor and that there is a reliance on the Blocks Everywhere plugin from Automatic.
Lastly, the panel discussed the WordPress mobile app may be neglected now that Jetpack has separated. They believe that the mobile app should be a good and functional app, and they believe that people with mobile app skills could make a significant impact on WordPress as a whole. The speaker also mentions that they have not personally used the WordPress mobile app without Jetpack, and they encourage others to try it. The speaker also states that they are not anti-Automatic (the company behind WordPress), but they believe that the mobile app should not be neglected.
