Our last Buffalo WP Meetup reported in as being packed with cheerful help. The February 2 2023 meetup took a thoughtful turn as major questions got discussed in a surprising turn of events. It started innocently enough with Spokane’s Mark Noder citing an updated Gutenberg roadmap and strategic direction statement in January 16th 2023 by Josepha, the Executive Director of the Gutenberg Team. But upon investigation, the statement has a distinct plunging down-the-rabbit-hole aspect to it.
Yes, Josepha once again cites the virtues and many flavors of Open Source but she also notes:
As we prepare for the third phase of the Gutenberg project, we are putting on our backend developer hats and working on the APIs that power our workflows. Releases during Phase 3 will focus on the main elements of collaborative user workflows. If that doesn’t make sense, think of built-in real-time collaboration, commenting options in drafts, easier browsing of post revisions, and programmatic editorial and pre-launch checklists. If Phases 1 and 2 had a “blocks everywhere” vision, think of Phase 3 with more of a “works with the way you work” vision.
However, there was not much more details on the Gutenberg Development Balloons, not even a 60,000 foot view. Attendees were notably silent [like me, most had not read the statement]. Co-organizer Ben Dunkle had to pick up the silence slack and commented that Gutenberg was still seeing difficult times in the broader WP community despite valiant efforts to make it more approachable and easy to use. This idea seemed to coincide with a my review, WordPress Is Not in Kansas Anymore which proposes that due to a wide range of factors Matt Mullenweg and the WordPress Team no longer have exclusive control over the fate and direction of WordPress. So I added the link to the Zoom Chat Window and expected that would conclude this topic.
But Erik raised the percolating Buffalo municipal construction issue of Rondo which seeks to restore streat connections that had been severed by Expressway projects. Behind the scene Ben Dunkle cited the NYTimes report on how this type of project is being contemplated across the US:
An that unleashed three more Buffalo city remodeling studies:
From Mike Noder to Everyone: https://www.olmstedinbuffalo.com/
From Carl Skompinski to Everyone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I93-bLU9Zic
From randy to Everyone: https://s3.amazonaws.com/bncore/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/ScienceMuseum012.jpg
And so you thought the Buffalo Meetup was exclusively about WordPress