#129 – Eneko Garrido on How WordPress Transformed His Life

[00:00:00] 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 a visit to a WordCamp profoundly changed a life.

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So on the podcast today, we have Eneko Garrido. Eneko is a full stack developer who has made

significant contributions to the WordPress community since attending his first WordCamp in 2019. Eneko’s journey with WordPress began when he attended WordCamp Bilbao during a challenging time in his life, marked by anxiety and depression. This pivotal experience, not only transformed his career, but also enriched his personal life. Leading him to become a passionate contributor and advocate for the WordPress community.

We start off by discussing Eneko’s initial encounter with WordCamp Bilbao, where he felt a profound sense of belonging, and support from the vibrant WordPress community. Despite his initial hesitations, Eneko was drawn to the inclusive and welcoming environment, which motivated him to participate more actively in future WordCamps.

Eneko goes on to share how his role as a polyglot contributor for the Basque locale has been a consistent source of joy and purpose. His commitment to translating WordPress into Basque has not only helped the community, but also deepened his connection to his cultural heritage.

We get into the impact that word process had on Eneko’s life, from opening new career opportunities to fostering lasting friendships. Eneko credits the WordPress community with providing him with a supportive network that has helped him navigate various challenges, including his autism diagnosis in 2021.

Towards the end of the podcast we discuss Eneko’s preparations for delivering a talk at WordCamp Europe, a testament to his growth and confidence since this first WordCamp experience. Despite the daunting prospect of speaking to a large audience, Eneko remains resolute and grateful for the supportive community that has been instrumental in his journey.

If you’re interested in hearing a heartfelt story about the life-changing potential of the WordPress community, this episode is for you.

If you’d like to find 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 Eneko Garrido.

I am joined on the podcast by Eneko Garrido. How are you doing?

[00:03:38] Eneko Garrido: I’m fine. I’m here in Torino today, and we are enjoying WordCamp Europe together.

[00:03:43] Nathan Wrigley: Have you been to any WordCamps before?

[00:03:46] Eneko Garrido: Yes. WordCamps, yes, but this is my first WordCamp Europe. My first WordCamp was in 2019, that was WordCamp Bilbao. And since then, I tried to go to any WordCamp that I could. Today I’m here thanks to Yoast, because Yoast fund me with the diversity fund.

[00:04:04] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, nice. I did not know that, but that’s really nice to know.

The WordPress community in Spain, by all accounts, is really strong at the moment. I know that a lot of countries have gone into a state of decline, really. Certainly in the UK, a lot of the events that were happening, 2019 was the last time they happened, and then Covid came and it didn’t really come back. But my understanding is that in Spain, it’s still a very vibrant community.

Now, you mentioned WordCamp in Bilbao. That’s going to be the main thing that we’re going to talk about today, because you’re doing an intriguing talk at WordCamp Europe. But before we get into that, will you just tell us a little bit about you. Stay away from the WordCamp Bilbao thing, but just tell us what you do on a daily basis. What’s your relationship with WordPress?

[00:04:46] Eneko Garrido: Okay, so I am a full stack developer. I have been working for the Renfe Group as a full stack developer. The Renfe Group is the Spanish railway company, the Spanish state owned railway company. Nowadays, I am not working because I left that job, and I live in Bilbao. So I am currently searching for new opportunities.

[00:05:08] Nathan Wrigley: Well, thank you for telling us all about that. So first of all, I’m just going to read off my piece of paper in front of me, about what the subject is going to be. And just to let you know, dear listener, I often go through the WordCamp presentation titles, and I find ones that I think are going to be of interest to the listeners to this podcast, and I picked Eneko’s one, and let’s see how this conversation goes.

Normally I write down a whole ton of questions, and I know more or less what I’m going to ask. But in this case, it’s going to be more of a conversation. We’ll see where it goes. And it goes like this. So the podcast discussion subject, how the WordPress community changed my life: how joining the community after having a bad lifetime changed the way to see the world. And it sounds like, at some point in the past, you were having a difficult time. And then you discovered that there was a thing called WordCamp Bilbao, you attended, and in your own words, the community changed your life. So let’s go back, rewind the clock, tell us the story.

[00:06:09] Eneko Garrido: So in 2019 I was finishing my compulsory studies in Spain. I was 16 year old little person that was simply trying to finish the studies, and because of some sort of depression, anxiety, I had to leave the college. I repeated that course okay. Then I was at home, and I seen on the WordPress dashboard of my own website that I run, that one event was near me, that was WordCamp Bilbao.

At that moment, I was living in Pamplona, the city that I have born on. I seen WordCamp Bilbao, and I thought, what is this? I asked my parents, and they looked me like, where are you going? They said to me, do whatever you want. As you are not going classes and you are all day in bed, you can take the bus, go to the grandfather’s house that is in Bilbao, it’s the place that I am currently living, and go to that WordCamp.

The first day of that WordCamp was a little bit strange, because was in a maritime museum. I didn’t went there in my life. There was three tracks. One that was announced as basic. The other one was as advanced, and the other one was, I don’t know what was announced like. It was a little bit strange because I was there alone, didn’t know anything and anyone.

The day passed with some few things that I remember. The person that was here seated, Fernando Tellado, he wasn’t going to that specific WordCamp, and that was a little strange thing, because Fernando Tellado has normally goes to every WordCamp in Spain, and I didn’t know who was Fernando Tellado. And I remember the moment that someone went to the stage and said, now we are going to call Fernando Tellado by phone, because Fernando Tellado is not here. We are going to call him, and talk with him in a moment. And was like, but who is Fernando Tellado? And later on I discovered who was Fernando Tellado, and then I understand everything.

I remember the moment when I connected really with the community. Was a moment on the contributor day. On the contributor day, I didn’t know neither what it was. In Bilbao 2019, the contributor day was on the Sunday, okay? So the talks were on Saturday, and the contributor today on Sunday. Because in Spain, normally we do like that. Here in Torino has been the other way. Going to the contributor day, didn’t know what that was, with my computer on the backpack.

I’ve seen that was like some tables, with some topics like community, core, polyglots, design, all sort of things like that. And I choose the polyglots table. That was my first contributor day table. And then on the contributor day table, I met Luis Rull, that is also from the Spanish community. He’s a local manager of Spanish from Spain. He taught me to translate WordPress. And since then, every month I contribute to the WordPress translations.

I remember that he took a photo, and published it on Twitter, and said, here is Eneko Garrido, 16 year old person that is a few months older than WordPress, and he’s here contributing to WordPress. And I remember that he mentioned to Matt. And that moment, I was like, who is Matt? So that was my first WordCamp experience. Until the contributor day, I didn’t network with anyone really.

So that is one thing that I said, all the WordCamps, it must be compulsory to go to contributor day, especially for the new people on the community, on the new people that is the first WordPress event. They have to be on the contributor day, because it’s the day where people is talking, is doing networking. It’s not like in that hour I have to be on that room, because here talks, I don’t know. Francisco Torres, who is a very plugin guy, who’s going to talk about the plugins team. I don’t know, I think that the contributor day should be mandatory for the first time persons on WordPress event.

[00:10:36] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. So the event that we are at now is three days long. The main event is two days long, and then there’s contributor day at the beginning. And exactly as you said, it’s the one day where more or less everybody’s in the same room at the same time, and they’re free to divert their attention, if you walk over and have a conversation with them.

Whereas, on the other two days, a lot of people are in conversations in the hallway, but also a lot of people are in presentations, and everybody’s got to be quiet, and you’re listening to the speaker and all that. So I completely get what you mean. The contributor day is a really important thing if you want to socialise.

Can I just go back, and you may not wish to reveal any of what I’m about to ask, and if you don’t, that’s fine, and we’ll exclude it from the podcast. But I’m just curious as to what was going on in your life at that time? Because I want to get to a point where we see the contrast between then and now. Because it feels like that is the story, the contrast of what you were like as that 16 year old, spending time in the house. It sounds from what you were saying that you didn’t get up, and didn’t have a lot of motivation, or interest and what have you. Are you willing to tell us what was going on? You don’t have to give us everything. You don’t have to give us anything, but if you are willing, then please feel free.

[00:11:49] Eneko Garrido: At that time, I was, as I said, finishing the studies. Through all my life, practically, I have suffered from bullying at the school. So going to school was, every day was, making harder for me. At that time I was having anxiety issues, some anxiety attacks in class. I had to quit from classes in the middle of the explanations of the teacher. And that was also because of my autism. I am autistic, and until 2021 I didn’t get an official diagnosis. That was the time that I went to the adult psychiatrist, because the young people psychiatrist of the public Spanish system, if you don’t say that you’re autistic when you born, they don’t say until you are 18 years old.

So at 2021 my psychiatrist said that, and from that time I started knowing me more, and understanding more things about me, like my ironies that I don’t catch. The ironies that people don’t catch about me. My really fear to socialise, fear and difficulty also to socialise. And until then I didn’t understand that much about me. That was probably why I was passing a bad time, and I decided to go to a WordCamp that I saw on my webpage.

[00:13:16] Nathan Wrigley: Let’s just unpack that a little bit. So you’re obviously inside WordPress, you must have a website or something at this point, because you can see the dashboard. It may be that if you’re listening to this, you may have disabled this feature, but there’s a feature in the dashboard by default of WordPress, which is events. And it will geolocate, and it will tell you if there’s things coming up nearby.

It’s text on a screen. How on earth did you summon up the, let’s use the word courage, to see the text on the screen and think, yeah, that sounds like it could be, I don’t know, fun or whatever? Because, from everything that you said, my imagination goes to, you’ll see that, think, okay, there’s a WordCamp in Bilbao, I’m not going to that. What pushed you over the edge, because that sounds like an incredibly big jump?

[00:14:03] Eneko Garrido: The thing that pushed me to the edge really was the, not the word, the camp. So the part camp of the word WordCamp was what pushed me to the edge, because sounds like something more interesting than meet up. When I listen meet up, I say, okay, so meet up. People join together, and people that know each other join together to talk about something, okay. But when you listen the WordCamp, you think about the school camps. The camps that your parents send you on in summer. And I said, oh, that WordPress camp, oh, that must be very interesting. I could learn about it.

I clicked on WordCamp Bilbao, on the link, and that sent me to the WordCamp Bilbao page. And I saw, oh, there is a program with two days of things. I don’t know who is going to talk about, I don’t know, SEO, or security, or performance, but it seems very interesting this. That pushed me, and I said, okay, 20 Euros, perfect. The best 20 Euros I have spent on my life really.

[00:15:10] Nathan Wrigley: Really remarkable. Also I’ve never heard it, you know, the WordCamp being such a profound change there. It associated in your head with, I don’t know, fun, or having something a little bit different. So you took yourself there, you got in the room, it was the contributor day, and I’m guessing from everything that you described about your relationship with being sociable, and I think you said you find that difficult to do.

How did you overcome that? Because I can also imagine you arriving at the venue and getting to the stairs and thinking, I’m just going to go home. So in you go. Was it a welcoming environment? Did you immediately connect with people, or was it a much more slow process? Where at the end of it you thought, well, that wasn’t too bad, or was it, well, that was fabulous, or somewhere in between?

[00:16:00] Eneko Garrido: The first thing that I think of when I arrived to WordCamp Bilbao was the doors opening, because I arrived like five minutes before the opening, so I was like the first after the volunteers and organisers. I’ve seen ,the sponsors stands and I was like, woah, this is serious. This is a conference. Woah, there are hosting companies here. I have a contract with that people.

Was like, I don’t know, they give me a bag, they give me a T-shirt, they give me some stickers. I saw also the WordPress logo with the pride flag on a pin. And that was like, woah, what is this? This is very cool. And the people was always with a smile, even when there were bad moments on the event, I don’t know, because something broke, or something like that, or people running because they arrived late for, I don’t know, always with a smile.

And that was one thing that caught me the attention because I thought I was, I’m not going to start a conversation with anyone. I feel like I could have done that, and that people that was on a small groups, if I started and go to any group, the group will open and take me into that group. And that was one thing that WordCamp Bilbao showed me about, you have to try to be more open.

Also it is one thing that WordPress is showing me, that I have to be more open and more, I don’t know how to say it, more helpful with each other, yeah. If someone comes here for talking with me, it’s like, oh yeah, probably I interest him or she to talk with me about, I don’t know, WordPress, my life or, I don’t know, anything, or his life. Here at WordCamp Turin I have met, I don’t know how many people, but nowadays we have NFC tags that gives you the contact details of the people, and that is awesome because if I don’t feel like I want to interact with anyone, I say, I don’t have social energy, but here you have my contact, here you have my Instagram account, my X account. X account, that sounds very bad, my Twitter account please. I don’t know, it’s like, we could talk tomorrow, or I don’t know, who knows? In the next WordCamp we could meet up.

[00:18:21] Nathan Wrigley: I think one of the nice things about these events, that you learn over time is that, quite a few people that you meet at one event, will actually be at the next event. And there’s also a different philosophy. So if you go to an event, let’s say, oh, I don’t know, a networking event that’s got nothing to do with WordPress, that’s in a for-profit industry, everybody’s there for the reason of selling you something, or promoting something, and the whole setup feels different. Whereas at these WordCamps, most people who are wearing the T-shirts saying that they’re organising the event, are volunteers, they’re giving up their time for free. And it’s for the greater good of this project.

I often talk about this, but I still can’t work it out. I don’t know what it is about this community, but it seems to attract a whole bunch of nice people. And I think that’s one of the things, when I first attended a WordCamp, I immediately got that feeling. Just, wow, like you said, there’s smiling faces and, you know, if you wander near them, they open up, and what have you. And I just got the feeling, like a much more friendly feeling, and it stuck with me. So my first event was a WordCamp in London, and it left me with the impression, I want to do that again.

Did you have that? I imagine it wasn’t perfect. There are probably things where you thought, oh, that was a bit, you know, I wish that would’ve gone better, or maybe you didn’t attend everything that you wished to, whatever it may be. But at the end of that, did you come away thinking, right, this is my clan, this is my group, I’m going to go to more of those?

[00:19:51] Eneko Garrido: Yeah, I feel that. After WordCamp Bilbao, I feel like, yeah, I want more of this. The next day of the contributor day, I signed up for WordCamp Irun 2019, that was next month if I don’t remember. And I was like, woah, WordCamp Irun 2019, that also was a very special WordCamp because was a WordCamp where they invented, I think, a new format for the WordCamps, that was called WordPress on the Street.

So that was, one day, the Friday. They put it on, place to talk on the street, on the very big street of Irun. And there was people talking there about WordPress, and there was people on the bars that were in that place looking and saying, I don’t know what is WordPress, but I am enjoying of this. And there was people of the community that I didn’t know at that time. But I remember that Joan Boluda, who is very known on this WordPress world, was talking on the street for free.

One guy that sells courses online was talking about, I don’t remember what, on the street. It is a format that hasn’t been done again on Irun, and I think that could be done again, because that attracted a lot of people of Irun.

[00:21:20] Nathan Wrigley: I’ve never heard of that, and I think that’s such a neat idea. If you get the location just right, and I guess you’ve got to have it near the venue, or what have you, and there are people passing by. Yeah, that’s really fascinating. I genuinely haven’t heard of that before.

What are the bits that you found yourself being drawn towards in the community? You obviously showed up at that event, and you didn’t know which bits, well, you probably didn’t even know what tables there were going to be. After that, where have you found yourself being drawn to? Is there a bit of the community that you enjoy more, I don’t know, security, core, or whatever?

[00:21:49] Eneko Garrido: I always have enjoyed polyglots team. I am also currently a GT of the Basque locale. So I submit and I approve the changes on the Basque locale translations. Since then, every WordCamp, I have been on the Polyglots table. In Bilbao, I manage myself in Bilbao, this year, I managed myself the Polyglot’s table. And we recruited new translators for Basque. Because Basque is a locale that is a little bit, not very translated. Needs a very big push.

But the thing is that, not too much people know Basque. In Spain, if you don’t do that in Bilbao, in the Basque country, you will never get someone that will translate to Basque. And I’ve been on the Core table for my first time, and that was a very good experience because I sent a pull request for Gutenberg, for making the interactivity API from JavaScript to TypeScript, for making the types, and type checking, and all sort of things to prepare it for the 6.6 release.

[00:23:02] Nathan Wrigley: So you said that, since Bilbao, you’ve been to more or less all the local WordCamps. You haven’t missed anything. I guess what I’m trying to tease out of this episode, and we’re getting to that point now is, has it changed your life? Do you feel that, because it’s so difficult to imagine, when we say WordPress, it’s software. You download it from the internet, and you put it on a server, and you have a website of some kind. But it isn’t that, it’s much more than that. It’s this community, it’s a philosophy, it’s events.

How profound has it been? If you were to trace it back to that moment at Bilbao, can you honestly say that it is WordPress, and all that means, that has transformed things. And, has it made your life better? Have you got new friendships, and a better quality of life because of those friendships and so on?

[00:23:50] Eneko Garrido: Yeah. If I hadn’t go to WordCamp Bilbao, I wouldn’t be here probably. And also, probably, I wouldn’t have work at the place that I was working until a few months. And I wouldn’t met a lot of people that is very good people. All people in the Spanish communities is very good people. I love them so much.

[00:24:14] Nathan Wrigley: So you’ve made real friendships. Because you can make a lot of acquaintances in the WordPress space. People that you know, you know their face. You can say hi to them, but you might not, I don’t know, go out for a meal with them or something like that, and really class them as friends. But you’ve managed to make those relationships real friendships.

[00:24:29] Eneko Garrido: Yeah, I made very strong relationships. For instance, with Paco Marchante, who is from the plugins team, with his girlfriend Paula Carmona. We have a group, and we talk every day. They are like my reference in friends, and I have made a very strong friendship relationship with them.

[00:24:51] Nathan Wrigley: You mentioned some of the things that you have to deal with. Do you find that the way that you can communicate with your friends in WordPress, because often a lot of it’ll be, I don’t know, Slack channels or something like that, does that work better for you? So it’s not like you’re always going to be, I don’t know, meeting up in a bar, or going to a live event. A lot of it will take place on text-based things, where you can do that in the comfort of your own home. Does that aspect of it make it easier for you?

[00:25:18] Eneko Garrido: Yeah, a lot. A lot because it’s like, today I don’t want to socialise, so I don’t look my phone, and everything perfect. Instead, if we meet on a bar, it’s like, no guys, I won’t be going today, sorry. And it’s like more for that. I don’t meet up at the bar for that.

With WordPress, the Slack channels are like my newsletter for all days. I try to maintain myself reading every day the Making WordPress Core Slack channel, because it’s like newsletter of WordPress, using new PRs, using new features, new bugs. Someone says one day, today is hunting day, so we are going to meet up here to review, I don’t know, review issues. Sometimes it’s like, I don’t going to text because I am a little bit shy, but I am going to read you, and I am going to follow you, and probably someday I will say something.

[00:26:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I mean, it really does feel like, the way that people communicate in the WordPress community, I mean, obviously there are events like this, where you can meet up people face-to-face and what have you. But it does lend itself really well to, you can do it whilst you’re in the comfort of your own home, you can be sitting eating breakfast and having these conversations. You can have your laptop, watching the telly at the same time. You can really make the environment that you’re in really comfortable, and exactly what you want, and be socialising at the same time.

Now, everything that you’ve said, we’re at the biggest WordCamp there is. It’s about 3000 people. It’s really big. And you’ve laid out this story, and yet you’re going to be given a presentation here. And first of all, how are you feeling about that? Are you feeling okay about that? Let’s just leave it like that.

[00:26:58] Eneko Garrido: When I arrived the first day here, that was on the contributor day, and I saw the track one, that is the place where I am going to talk, that was like, oh, yeah, it was that big. Here fit probably 2000 people, and was like, woah. And on contributor day, when I was on the photography team as a volunteer, I went up on the stage to do some photos, to do the family photo. And I’ve seen all people there, I was like, oh, I want to go now to a local store, buy some Apple Vision Pro glasses, or something like that, that is very new. And they announce like, you won’t see anything from outside, put some images from the Alps or something like that, and start doing my slides. Because that is like, woah, I don’t know how I am going to feel tomorrow to do this.

[00:27:53] Nathan Wrigley: I hope it goes well. I mean, I really do. From everything that you’ve told me, it seems like you’ve come on a really profoundly life-changing journey. Honestly, it is very, very rare that I talk to somebody, and I talk to a lot of people, whose actual life has been kind of turned upside down in a good way by the software, and the community around the software.

More often than not we’re talking about plugins, or themes, or code, or what have you. It’s deeply affecting me this story, I think it’s really amazing. And it sounds like it’s allowing you to do a lot of things that you wish to do. The community supporting you, helping you, and I hope that it goes well tomorrow. I’m sure that it’ll be fine because you know that, despite the fact that there might be large numbers of people in the audience, all of those people are, it sounds a bit corny, but all of those people are nice people, and they’re wishing you the best. So I really hope it goes well tomorrow. And I’d just like to say thank you for sharing your story. That was really interesting.

[00:28:51] Eneko Garrido: Thank you for you for this opportunity for me talking here, because this was like, oh, someone wants for me to talk on a podcast. I received an Slack message, and I was like, woah, what is this? I am dreaming or something like that. This only happens to the big talkers, to the biggest speakers of WordCamps. Thank you for you, for this opportunity to be here today.

[00:29:16] Nathan Wrigley: You are very, very, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Really appreciate it.