Crossword Perspectives with Jeff Paul
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Jan 30, 2026 Jeff Paul, VP of Open Source Solutions at Fueled and long-time WordPress contributor, shares his contributor origin story and non-developer ways to help. He explains project-management roles in Core and why text-based meetings boost accessibility. They discuss release cadence, volunteer management, hosting differences, and what roles are most needed now.
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Start With Meeting And Writing Tasks
- Do start with non-technical contribution: write agendas, run meetings, and summarize dev chats to get your foot in the door.
- These tasks unblock engineers and build context before tackling technical issues.
Text Meetings Boost Accessibility
- WordPress's text-based meeting format increases accessibility by letting people lurk, translate, and catch up via scrollback.
- Jeff uses the format to enable participation across time zones and non-native English speakers.
Good Tools Still Need The Right Door
- Even well-defined tools can fail to gain adoption if they can't reach the right teams at the right time.
- Jeff cites Tide as a project with clear value that struggled to unlock adoption despite funding and effort.