Tag Archives: authenticity

[ad_1] Here is Ben reading his own story aloud. この記事は日本語でも読む事が出来ます。 My interactions with tech growing up The first time I remember interacting with tech was on my parents’ Macintosh computer when I started primary school. I loved drawing with MacPaint and found it much cooler than my Etch A Sketch. Then, my parents got a Windows 95 computer and we were connected to the internet. My parents would check for important calls before unhooking the telephone to plug in the computer. When Google search came out, my family would sit around the screen, amazed at the “dozens” of search results. We even played a game to see whose name got the most results. I won by a long shot because my middle name Luke (Japanese: ルカ) appears in the word “digital camera” (デジタルカメラ). In junior high, I joined the table tennis club but quickly realized sports weren’t my thing. I switched to the computer club, where I edited my first video, learned about spreadsheets and word processors, and built my first website using a Japanese software called Homepage Builder. I started maintaining a website for my church, self-teaching myself about staging environments and FTP through help docs and online manuals. In senior high, I started looking at the HTML code produced by Homepage Builder. I realized I didn’t have to use the drag-and-drop editor to make edits and taught myself basic HTML and CSS. That’s when I created my first game, an HTML game where players clicked on doors to navigate a maze. I remember someone “hacked” my game by figuring out the URL logic and jumping to the goal. That was my introduction to cyber security and encryption. How information ethics opened my eyes to the diversity in the world In university, I studied information science, which pulled me deeper into the tech world. I continued to master’s and doctorate programs, and started teaching tech classes at three universities. I taught in both Japanese and English to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Subjects included programming basics (C, Java), informatics, and image processing. But my most favorite subject was information ethics, which highlighted how different cultures have varying ethical values in tech. For instance, some communities pirate software out of necessity, some share login credentials to bypass censorship, while other communities consider both these practices unethical. Teaching this course really opened my eyes to global diversity. It taught me the importance of open dialogue, empathetic listening, and creative thinking. How I met WordPress I first heard about WordPress in my university lab. A senior student returning from overseas said it was all the hype in the west, so we moved our lab’s website to WordPress. I didn’t fully understand what WordPress was then, but I decided to ride the hype and move my church websites to WordPress too. Since making the switch in 2014, WordPress has become my Content Management System (CMS) of choice. I tried a brief stint with Wix, but it just confirmed my loyalty to WordPress. And after joining Automattic, I discovered the community behind the software and my love for WordPress has grown even more. How I joined Automattic and the WordPress community At one point, I installed the VideoPress plugin on one of my sites and needed support with a subscription mix-up. The agent resolved my issue in one email and signed off as a “Happiness Engineer,” which made me smile. Years later, I saw a job opening for Happiness Engineers at Automattic and remembered that interaction. I volunteered on the WordPress.com support forums for a couple months building up my support skills before getting accepted into Automattic in 2019. Soon after joining, I learned that WordPress is more than just a CMS. It’s a community built on open-source principles. I didn’t wait long to attend my local WordPress Meetups later that year, and was amazed at the selflessness and dedication of the participants. At those Meetups, I learned the WordPress ecosystem extends beyond the community that creates it. WordPress is composed of the people who use it – the developers, designers, analysts, hobbyists, hosts, marketers, etc. It is a common bond that brings people together from different walks of life to a safe space of diversity and acceptance. It was the first time I had interacted with people quite like that. My journey in the WordPress Training Team In 2020, the pandemic canceled in-person events, but I had opportunities to be part of educational projects within Automattic. I coached Japanese support agents, created internal training materials, and developed a new onboarding program for new employees. These experiences rekindled my love for education. It was around that time that WordPress launched its educational site, Learn WordPress. I was selected for an internal position at Automattic to become a full time contributor to the Learn WordPress initiative, and joined the WordPress project’s Training Team in June 2022. I started in the team by understanding the team’s values, priorities, and challenges. Over the next six months, I worked on improving team processes and documentation. At the end of 2022, I was honored to be nominated as a team rep, since which I’ve led projects like migrating from Trello to GitHub and building an onboarding program. These efforts have increased team member engagement and activity, which in turn is contributing to traffic and engagement increases on the Learn WordPress site, too. WordPress – a safe space to be authentic Reflecting on my tech journey, the moments I felt most energized were when I contributed to creating a safe space of diversity and acceptance. Teaching information ethics laid the foundation, customer support as a Happiness Engineer let me practice this in 1:1 interactions, onboarding new employees allowed me to create these spaces for larger groups, and contributing to the WordPress Training Team extended this to a global community. These were moments when I felt most authentic. Building a safe space where one can be authentic isn’t a one-time project; it’s formed through humble and curious interactions. Every conversation

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