Earlier today, I did a bit of touch-up on my Writings & Drawings page to make it tidier and not too overwhelming. I know that I’m aspiring to be a children’s storybook illustrator and at the same time, I’m trying to keep the traffic to this site really minimum as I’m still not comfortable having folks looking into my site, so it’s like dealing with a super weird paradox, but yeah, we’ll get there.

Anyway, I tidied up the WP Courses area of my Drawings then I decided to check how the website is going. Now that I’m in a different role in my work, I am no longer actively involved with the WP Courses team. I kinda miss them, though. WP Courses was the first time I had public speaking and I was terrified, and the team has been super awesome in encouraging me and celebrating the fact that I finished my first time hosting a workshop without passing out in the middle of the event.

I checked WP Courses’ blog, for fun’s sake, and I found myself pleasantly surprised to see so many awesome posts and workshop replays. One of my favorites is What makes good podcast art? – workshop replay.

While the majority of your focus when starting a podcast is on creating the content of the podcast itself, thinking about what your art might look like is also worth considering.

Competition is stiff – podcast art can grab the potential listener’s attention while they’re browsing!

There is another post on How to interview people face to face – workshop replay. I personally feel it’s really neat and it covers not only the technical aspect of blogging, podcasting, and website building but on how we interview people in a general sense.

It’s easy to tell me that I might be biased since I’m working in Automattic and I was part of WP Courses team, and perhaps I am. However, there are only so many things a Happiness Engineer can do for folks on chats or emails, and there is vast information available that might suit one’s pace. I’ve been dealing with enough customer service on chats and emails with me as the end-user, and as helpful as the support staff is, the process can be quite frustrating and nerve-wracking; the feeling that you got to be “there” and “present” when responding and the waiting time until you receive the reply from the support agent.

For some urgent inquiries, such as billings, accounts, or security issues, I can understand. For some non-urgent things, or when I’m seeking tips or guidance, recorded workshop videos or blog posts like the ones in WP Courses are an excellent option. I can watch and read them on my own time and pause it whenever needed.

Also, thanks to Domestika, I am now more open to the idea of online courses. Trust me when I said that I used to doubt online courses. “Is that legit? Are the courses actually, you know, courses? This is not some kind of that hit-and-run scam, right?” (then I joined WP Courses team– I KNOW, I KNOW.)

I would say that we have been sleeping on WP Courses Blog for far too long, and it’s about time for folks to explore a bit more of WordPress and WordPress.com.

Also, all courses in WP Courses are free (you read that right.)

Anyway, fun fact, I was in the team doing illustrations for the courses and the blog posts, and here are some of the drafts I made before we changed our style to vector-look.