Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. I’m Nathan Wrigley. Today’s episode features Jonathan Desrosiers—principal software engineer at Bluehost, sponsored through Five for the Future, Core committer, and long-time WordPress contributor. We discuss synchronizing WordPress releases with flagship community events, rebuilding contributor momentum after COVID, mentorship and education initiatives, and how AI and open source intersect to empower builders.
Jonathan: I’ve been contributing to WordPress for over a decade and using it for nearly 20 years. At Bluehost I’m sponsored to work on WordPress; I focus on contributor experience, automation, clarifying processes, and mentorship so more people can participate effectively.
Release moments and community events
In December 2025 a major WordPress release coincided with State of the Word in San Francisco. The team staged a live release moment—people gathered and pressed a big red button—creating a sense of theatre and celebration. That experiment sparked the idea: why not align future major releases with flagship events like WordCamp Asia, WordCamp Europe, and WordCamp US to create synchronized community moments?
Logistics and constraints
Timing releases around events sounds appealing but is difficult in practice. WordCamp organizers set dates based on budgets, venue availability, regional holidays, and travel concerns, not the Core release cadence. Religious holidays, vacations, and year-end breaks also impact developer availability. For example, decembers are often low-productivity months because people take time off.
Another factor is global coverage: release squads must include contributors across time zones so work and monitoring can continue when some team members are offline or traveling. Being at an event should not be a requirement to participate; offline contributors are critical to handle issues if connectivity or other constraints affect those on-site.
Creating memorable, useful release experiences
The goal isn’t just theatrics. Jonathan wants releases to be community celebrations that make people feel part of something larger. There’s value in both paced, meaningful releases and faster feedback cycles. Ideally, users and contributors would both be more aware of upcoming features—like a “coming soon” experience in the dashboard—so people can opt in to test and contribute earlier, rather than only seeing change after auto-updates occur.
Feature branch model and release cadence
One approach is feature-specific branches and releases that let people opt into testing individual features earlier. This model could help advertise specific capabilities and prevent unfinished pieces from slipping into a major release unintentionally. Architectural constraints exist though: many editor components are tightly coupled as packages, so isolating single features for separate release is non-trivial.
Auto-updates and adoption trends
Auto updates have made upgrades seamless for many users, which is partly why users don’t always notice releases. Jonathan looked at adoption data: recent major versions are being adopted faster. For instance, WordPress 6.9 reached 50% of sites in ten days—faster than previous releases—suggesting confidence in stability and auto-updates. This accelerating adoption is a signal that release quality is improving and a point to lean into.
Community health and rebuilding
The community is vital—the code and license matter less without people. COVID disrupted local meetups and WordCamp leadership pipelines: many organizers burned out or stepped away, leaving gaps. Rebuilding requires renewed enthusiasm and deliberate pathways to bring in new contributors.
Global differences matter: APAC communities often show growth and strong meetup activity, whereas parts of the U.S. and Europe have struggled to regain pre-COVID momentum. Societal shifts in how people learn and socialize compound this.
Education, mentorship, and WP initiatives
To attract new contributors, WordPress initiatives are emphasizing education and mentorship: the WP Credits program, contributor mentorship cycles, Campus Connect, and other learning efforts. Successful contributor journeys often start in mentorship programs—mentees become mentors and eventually team leads. But awareness alone isn’t enough; WordPress must be ready to activate newcomers with clear tasks, support, and pathways to continued contribution beyond a single Contributor Day.
Using release events to onboard contributors
Synchronized release events offer opportunities to pilot approaches to onboarding and sustaining contributions. For example, making release testing accessible—providing a zip of the upcoming release, encouraging attendees to install and report compatibility data—can be a low-friction entry point. The challenge is capturing and making meaningful use of that testing data and converting casual testers into repeat contributors.
Appealing to younger generations and changing motivations
Younger people have different habits and expectations. They grew up with powerful, always-connected devices and large closed platforms. Convincing them of open source’s value takes more than rhetoric: it requires showing tangible benefits, career pathways, and experiences that feel relevant and rewarding.
We must also be willing to rethink events and formats. If meetups and WordCamps don’t match what new contributors find exciting—formats, topics, or benefits—attendance will lag. Combining community moments with practical learning (e.g., workshops, contribution sprints) and modern tooling may better attract younger contributors.
AI, empowerment, and open source
AI is changing the landscape. It empowers more people to build and iterate quickly by summarizing and distilling complex information. That lowers barriers to trying things and experimenting with WordPress—people can prototype sites or tools faster. While AI can generate rough solutions, scaling, security, accessibility, and robustness still require human expertise. That ongoing demand for skilled contributors is a positive: tools will change the nature of work but won’t eliminate the need for builders.
There’s also broader appetite for alternatives to walled gardens: renewed interest in RSS, blogging, and decentralised platforms shows people want more control. When closed platforms change policies or limit access, it reinforces open web values and the importance of projects like WordPress.
Looking ahead
2026’s plans—attempting synchronized releases with flagship events, pushing education programs, and experimenting with ways to onboard contributors—are part of a broader effort to reinvigorate community participation and make release moments meaningful. The experiment will teach lessons about logistics, engagement, and how best to scale welcoming pathways for new contributors.
Where to find Jonathan
jonathandesrosiers.com, and he’s desrosej across many platforms. He’s also active in the wordpress.org Slack.
Thanks to Jonathan for sharing insights on release strategies, community rebuilding, mentoring, and the interplay of AI and open source. If you’d like the links and more, check the show notes at wptavern.com/podcast.
