Preparing for WCUS as Introverts and Extroverts

Allie:
Welcome to the Underrepresented in Tech podcast, hosted by Michelle Frechette and Allie Nimmons. Underrepresented in Tech is a free database, built with the goal of helping people find new opportunities in WordPress and tech overall.

Michelle:
Hi, Allie.

Allie:
Hi, Michelle. How are you?

Michelle:
I’m doing okay. It’s raining and thundering here today, so that may come through at some point.

Allie:
Can I please have some? It’s been over a hundred degrees every day for two months, and it’s getting a little ridiculous.

Michelle:
Yeah. It’s 78 and raining here today, so you can have it if you want it, but I don’t know how to get it to you. That’s the only problem.

Allie:
Yeah, I’d love some rain. I live out in the desert here in Texas, so it’s just dry and hot all the time.

Michelle:
It’s like when somebody… you’ve lived in New York before, you’ve lived in colder climates before. It’s like when somebody says, “Oh, I’m going to Florida for vacation,” and somebody goes, “Oh, bring back some sunshine with you.” It’s like, first of all, that’s so corny, so overdone. But that wasn’t even possible. I’ll bring back my smile. It’ll light you up. It’ll light up your world. I don’t know.

Allie:
It’s like I would get so embarrassed-

Michelle:
I can bring back oranges. Is that the same?

Allie:
Yeah, it’s the same. I would get so embarrassed at the grocery store if they’re scanning something and they’d be like, “Oh, it’s not scanning properly.” And my mom would go, “Oh, does that mean it’s free?”

Michelle:
Oh yeah, like, “Oh, Mom, cringe.”

Allie:
Yeah, by the six times she said that, I’m like, God, can you please… But we all have our little cliches that we say.

Michelle:
When you go out to dinner and whoever you’re eating with, whether it’s your dad, your mom, or a romantic interest or whatever, cleans their whole plate and the waitress comes up and goes, “How was it?” And they’re like, “Oh, it was terrible.”

Allie:
Sure.

Michelle:
Oh my God. All right, yeah.

Allie:
Let’s just have an episode about weird idioms that get on our nerves.

Michelle:
I’m sure they’ve never heard that one before. Okay, we’ll save that. We’ll save that for another time.

Allie:
Perfect. That has nothing to do with what we’re talking about today, but it doesn’t matter.

Michelle:
That’s just our little banter. It’s our witty banter at the beginning.

Allie:
Yes. So WordCamp US is back around. It literally feels like I was just in San Diego for the last one, like no time has passed. It’s very eerie. But we’re coming up close to WordCamp US, which is one of the big of three flagship WordPress events. And I thought it would be really fun if we talked about our individual approaches to a gigantic multi-day, out-of-state event like that because you have hundreds of people. I would say for you more than me, you have people constantly coming up to you to talk to you and wanting to take a picture with you or whatever. And there are so many things to do. It’s not just the sessions. There’s people to talk to and there’s booths to go to and there are parties and there are panels, and there’s all this other stuff going on.
And I think that one of the few differences between you and I, at least personality wise, I definitely see you as more of an extrovert and I identify as more of an introvert. And I think the WordPress community has definitely helped me become more extroverted and more comfortable in these spaces, but I’ve had to learn through trial and error to embrace my introvert rather than try to be an extrovert and approach events like this in strategic ways to make sure that I don’t have a mental breakdown, that I don’t get so tired that I have to miss the entire last day of the conference, that I don’t get cranky, that I don’t get sick. Because I’m one of those people, I think a lot of people are like this, or if I get really stressed or high energy for a long time, my body will just kind of quit on me and I will get sick no matter what.

Michelle:
Yeah.

Allie:
So I thought it’d be fun if we talked about our extrovert versus introvert approaches. And I’m sure there’s going to be overlap, because these are not black and white terms. But I feel like I hear a lot of people talk about generally what should you do when you go to an event, but it’s so different for different kinds of people.

Michelle:
Absolutely.

Allie:
So do you want to go first or do you want me to go first?

Michelle:
Sure. Well, let me say for years I identified myself as an extroverted introvert, meaning that I can be an extrovert and I absolutely have those tendencies and I want to be places and see people and do things, but there’ve been times where I’m driving somewhere and I wait till the very last possible minute to get in the car and begin the journey. Because once I’m there, I’m having a grand time and loving it, but I do have anxiety about getting into those places first. So whether it’s getting ready to go to a picnic with friends even, or out to dinner, I am watching the clock and I’m like, what’s the last possible minute I can change my mind? What’s the last possible minute I can get in the car and still be there on time? Because it’s hard to start, right? It’s hard to just get going. But once I’m out and doing things, I’m having a blast. So that’s what I thought.
I also now though, really identify more as a spoony, and I know it’s not so much an anxiety about being with people and out and doing those things, so it isn’t an introversion as much as it’s a, I only have so much energy every day to get me through the day. If you don’t know spoon… I know you know what spoon theory is, but if you’re listening, you don’t know what spoon theory is, it’s the idea that people with chronic illnesses have only so much energy, units of energy a day, and we call them spoons. You can read about it online. There’s a whole thing about why it’s spoons. But you’re given 12 spoons a day and you have to decide what you’re going to use them on. Taking a shower and getting ready in the morning is at least a spoon, if not a spoon and a half. Going to work is like six spoons out of your 12 spoons, maybe seven. Making dinner, doing the things that you do uses up those units of energy.
And so we can sometimes, if we have to, borrow tomorrow’s spoons today, meaning we know that we’re going to hurt more tomorrow than we do today, we’re going to lack more energy tomorrow if we push forth that energy today. And I think that that’s what often has kept me from wanting to get in the car and go and do those things, because I know it’s going to cost me in the end. What I do is I go full bore at these events, but then I have borrowed spoons for a month and I get home and I literally, sometimes I come home sick and I spend a couple days in bed. Or at the very least, I end up not going to the office, only working from home and taking a nap between meetings just to catch up so that I don’t get sick.
And so for me, it’s trying to figure out where to use that energy. There’s times I haven’t gone to a contributor day because I needed a day in bed before I actually got on a plane and headed home, things like that. Or I missed after parties. I didn’t do the after party in Asia. I didn’t have the energy to do it, I just didn’t. And so things like that affect me, but it’s not so much an introvert extrovert for me, because I am definitely an extrovert and I acknowledge that. What about you?

Allie:
So I made a little list of all of the things that I prioritize when I go to an event like this, right. So I make sure to look at the schedule beforehand, and a lot of people do this, but I didn’t do this the first few WordCamps I went to. Literally decide which talks I want to go to, circle them and decide also which ones I would be okay missing if I decide I’m tired, I want to leave, I want to take a break, I want to go in a quiet room, whatever. And I also try to make sure that I plan a break for myself at some point during the day. There is a period of time, it’s 1:00 usually, honestly, it happens after lunch because you get that kind of drowsy feeling. Making sure that I know in my head that I have time later to rest. That I’m not scrambling for a time to rest, but I know it’s coming and it makes me feel a little bit more at ease.
And the great thing with WordCamp events is we usually have a quiet space or a space that people can go to work. Last WordCamp US, I was on the organizing team, so sometimes I would just hide in the organizer room where it was super quiet and just rest for a little bit. So knowing where those places are is really important, looking at the maps.
Sleeping, making sure that I get a really good night’s sleep the night before. And then if it’s a multi-day thing… I slept so much in Asia, partially because I was incredibly jet-lagged. I was on the opposite side of my sleep schedule. But sleeping as much as I can, which often means either not going to an after party, leaving an after party early. And honestly, I would prioritize, and I’m not recommending this, especially not if you are not old enough, but drinking alcohol when I’m at an after party so that I know when my head hits the pillow, I will be done. Giving myself a little bit of a headstart and being like, I need to sleep. I can’t afford to be up on that wired emotional high that you get. Your body’s tired, but you’re like, oh, I’m so ramped up from the day. No, I need to go to sleep. So if that means I have a extra glass of wine, that’s fine.
I make sure that I’m kind of aware of the comfort people that I have, because there are so many people in this community that I love. Some people require a lot of my energy to spend time with, which is fine. It’s energy I’m usually willing to spend. Some people are, I can just sit and we can be quiet. You are one of those people for sure, where I can just come sit with you, I can put my head on your shoulder for a couple of minutes and I can be in the presence of someone, but I don’t have to be on. I don’t have to be performing in that way.
I try to make sure, especially if I’m speaking, that I get everything done beforehand. It makes me super anxious to, and I made this mistake in Asia to have to be scrambling on the day of to find a charger so that I can work on my slides or make last minute changes or whatever, because that’s energy that I’m expending that I don’t have to, that’s focus I’m losing from what I need to do. That’s people I’m not talking to. And it’s additional anxiety that I don’t have to cause myself.
And like you said, I have a similar time afterwards. When I come home, I tend to get really depressed. I’m on this very positive emotional high for three days. I feel like my emotions don’t have the normal kind of up and down that you would in your everyday life. And so when I get home, I feel like I swing super hard in the other direction, and I get really depressed and I get really sad and I miss that feeling and all of that love and all of that excitement. And so I always make sure to either plan a day off for myself, or if I’ve been working places sometimes where I say I need two days, I’ll use sick days, I’ll use, whatever, vacation days. I need two days to just be sad and be weird and then be able to come back and be myself again.
But knowing ahead of time that I’m going to have that time to rest, alleviates that fear on the last day of like, oh God, tomorrow I have to go back to work. And I have to completely switch gears back into where I was before. So anticipating that, because the first time that that happened terrified me. I was like, why am I so sad? And I realized it was just the backswing of emotion. So planning for that helps a lot. And I’ve needed less of that time the more camps I go to because I know it’s coming.

Michelle:
Figured out. Yeah.

Allie:
Little bit better about it.
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Michelle:
I wrote an article in 2019 about the post WordCamp emotions and how you can go through. It’s like when I was a kid, I used to go to summer camp every summer and it was like the highlight of my year. And we call those mountaintop experiences. You can’t live on the mountaintop experiences, you have to come down. And sometimes you come down into that valley of like, well, now what? Brides experience that after they’ve finished their wedding planning, it’s like, well, now what? I’ve done all of that. I’m not in the spotlight anymore. I’m not working on this big event. It’s over. Now what do I do?
We used to have that in high school. I was in plays and musicals. We used to call it letdown. It’s done, and now there’s this letdown afterwards. Well, we’re done. We struck the scenes and everything’s over, kind of thing. So yeah, so it’s not easy for sure, especially the more invested in the time that you are. So if you are a speaker, if you’re an organizer, if you are a vendor, so you’re on, on, on, on, on the whole time. You get back and it’s like you’re not just tired, there’s a little bit of emotion that goes with that too. And that’s normal.

Allie:
Yeah. Especially for a lot of people like us in tech who work from home or work in very limited workspaces with very limited people around us. And then all of a sudden we’re in these spaces with hundreds of other people. I feel like something chemically happens to your brain where you’re like, okay, my neurons need to fire more than usual to keep up with all the stimuli. And then it just kind of suddenly stops and you have to give yourself time to readjust. And I feel like a lot of people don’t take enough time. And I mean it is in some ways a luxury to be able to take that time. I definitely understand there’s circumstances where you can’t just, I’m going to take two days off. You have to go back to what you’re doing. But finding any way to self-care and relax, and whether that’s… maybe that’s on your flight home, you go to the airport early and you visit the airport spa or something and you just-

Michelle:
Yeah, something.

Allie:
Give yourself a little break.

Michelle:
A little massage.

Allie:
Yeah, exactly.

Michelle:
So can I tell you something about myself that people are going to be like, what? I don’t get jet lag.

Allie:
You don’t?

Michelle:
I don’t. And I think it’s because I average about four hours of sleep a night. So I’m used to just flexing when that four hours is, four to five hours. So when I was on the other side of the world, I didn’t have jet lag. I stepped right into it. When I was in, that was [inaudible 00:15:11]. When I was in Athens, same thing. It’s like, what? It was a six or seven hour difference and I did not jet lag. I had trouble figuring out what time it was at home, can I text my mom now or not kind of thing, because time zones are the bane of my existence. But they do suck.
But yeah, I don’t get jet lag. I never have. And I sleep on the plane, I try to assimilate those four or five hours so that it would be when I would normally be sleeping. And then when I get to where I’m going, it’s like I try to just step into the time that it is. Not everybody can do that. And I’m not suggesting that that’s the thing people can do, but I’m really, really lucky that that’s how my body works.

Allie:
Yeah, no, I had never experienced jet lag before because I’ve never left the country. The farthest I’ve been is maybe two or three hours outside of my normal time zone. So going 12 hours difference was super jarring. But the timing of when we arrived very late at night, it was like 2:00 AM or something, so we were able to sleep and then wake up. And that kind of already started the natural rhythm more in motion. It was more so having to sleep on the plane for a total of 12 hours or trying to sleep on the plane. It was almost worse than not getting sleep at all because I was so uncomfortable.
So I guess that’s another good thing to put into consideration is understanding your circadian rhythm and what you need in terms of sleep and rest and those things. And when it comes to travel, trying to get ahead of those things. So it’s like one fewer challenge you have when you’re actually at the event is like, I’m drop dead tired. I want to go back to the hotel and sleep.

Michelle:
Right, right. No, I totally get that. And we’re all different. We’re all different. What works for you is different than works for me, and which I love that, that was exactly how you started this is by saying we have these ideas of things that work for us, and they may help you or they may not. But everybody’s different.
And yeah, there’s been so many articles out there of how to prepare for WordPress or WordPress event or WordCamp and all of this stuff, and you may read that and be like, okay, I’m going to do this and it just doesn’t work for you because you process things differently than other people do, or than the average human or whatever the right terminologies are today. But yeah, it’s definitely, it’s different. I just go, go, go, go, go, go the whole time I’m there, I don’t even think about it. I’m excited. I get to see people. And not that you aren’t, I’m not saying suggesting that, but [inaudible 00:17:38].

Allie:
But it’s true though. I do love the people, but I’m not a go go, go go person. I’m like, I’ll go over here and then I’m going to sit down, and then I’m going to go over here and then I’m going to sit down. I operate much better in spurts rather than-

Michelle:
Maybe it’s because I’m sitting all the time on my scooter that I don’t… I just go, go, go and I’m sitting.

Allie:
I mean, you could get places faster than me with your scooter, so. It’s so funny.

Michelle:
But it is probably true, and I think it’s wonderful, especially the flagship events. Not every event thinks about it or has the capability or whatever, depending on the cost, whatever. But the flagship events do build in quiet rooms, which I think is a wonderful thing. So if you are somebody who needs some quiet time, you can seek out these rooms and people aren’t talking in there. They might be working quietly. They might have their eyes closed and their headphones on or their earbuds in or whatever, just detaching from what’s happening at the big hubbub that’s happening at work camps. And take advantage of that, if that’s you.
If you’ve driven to a WordCamp and you need to go sit in your car for an hour, do it. Go for a walk. Whatever you need to do for yourself. If you’re not in your own hometown, be safe wherever it is that you’re walking to or whatever, we’ll always exercise safety and security for yourself and your belongings, but take what you need. If you need to leave early, if you need to skip a party, it’s not going to be the end of the world. I promise you that people, they might notice that you’re gone and to say, “Oh, are you okay?” But nobody’s going to feel badly toward you if you have to miss a party.

Allie:
No one’s going to judge you. Yeah.

Michelle:
No, thank you. That’s right.

Allie:
That’s a perfect point. I feel like people think, oh, I’m going to miss out on an opportunity. I’m going to miss out on a conversation. I’m going to miss out on networking. So many of the how to prepare for a WordCamp articles I see are about more of the business side of things and how to prepare for whatever business goals it is that you hope to achieve by attending.
And while all of those are very important and very valid, it’s not more important than your health. And if you run yourself ragged trying to make sure you squeeze every single opportunity out of the event, it’s not going to be worth it. You’re going to be miserable. So yeah, nobody’s going to judge you. Anyone I feel like would agree with us in that it’s a non-issue. I feel like it’s the opposite. If somebody asks, “Oh, where’s Michelle?” And I’m like, “Oh, she went back to her room to lie down.” They would be like, “Oh, good for her.”

Michelle:
Yeah, exactly.

Allie:
I wish I could be there too.

Michelle:
Let me tell you, there are people that I want to see at every WordCamp, and there are people, like I spent days over in Athens, and there are people that I was hoping to see and I never ran into once, and guess what? I can still chat them up on Twitter. I can still DM them on Slack. We can still have a Zoom call. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t see every single person face-to-face that you’re hoping to see either. But the people that you really, really, really want to see, make plans in advance. Say, “Hey, I’m going to be at this. Let’s have lunch together. Let’s look for each other on Thursday at lunch,” whatever it is, and make plans to do that so that you don’t miss the people that you really, really want to see.

Allie:
Yeah, that’s a really good tip too. Making plans ahead of time so that you don’t miss the things that you really want. And people really appreciate that. I love when people reach out to me and are like, “Hey, I want to see you. I want to hang out with you. I want to talk to you,” and are proactive about that and provide a plan. I’m like, yeah, thank you for making it easier for me-

Michelle:
Yeah, exactly.

Allie:
To connect with you. That’s really awesome.

Michelle:
Yeah, absolutely.

Allie:
Yeah.

Michelle:
Awesome.

Allie:
That’s all I got.

Michelle:
That’s all I got too. I’m looking forward to… I know you won’t be there. I’m sorry. I’ll miss you at WordCamp US this year. It’s not going to be the same without you. But I am looking forward to it and looking forward to seeing a lot of people. And of course, I’ll be like, I should do for you what they did for Nathan Wrigley over at WordCamp Asia, which is have your head printed out, like a picture of your face printed out and put it on a stick and be like, “Allie’s here too”.

Allie:
I would love that. I would be so-

Michelle:
I’ll see what I can do.

Allie:
I would be so unbelievably… Or make a little voodoo doll of me and carry it around with you or something. So I’m there in spirit.

Michelle:
Exactly.

Allie:
And someone can come and shake the hand of my voodoo doll, and that’s actually shaking my hand.

Michelle:
I’ll see what I can do. I’ll see what I can do.

Allie:
Nice. Cool. Well, that’s all we got for this week. I believe we have a guest next week, mystery guest.

Michelle:
I’m working on it. I’m working on it. So we should have a couple of guests next week, and I’ve invited two people to come and talk to us, so very exciting. So we’ll see if it pans out. If not, it’ll just be you and me again, but we’ll see if we can get a couple people here to talk about some recent experiences and some exciting things coming up.

Allie:
Yay. Lovely. Alrighty. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll see you next week.

Michelle:
Bye.

Allie:
Bye.
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