Sponsor Wrangler Maddy Osman talks with Marco Berrocal, a sponsor representative who works for GreenGeeks.
We talked about Marco’s role at GreenGeeks (and other ways he gets involved in the WordPress security), how they’re adapting to virtual events and some exciting features that they’re working on.
(Unedited) Transcript:
Hello, I’m Maddie Osman, the sponsor Wrangler for word camp Denver.
I am joined by Marco here today, who is from green geeks.
he’s, we’re just going to talk about what we can expect from green geeks and about Marco I’m.
let’s just start with, what does green geeks do?
well, hello everybody, from Denver and abroad because that’s, what’s happening right now with all WordCamps.
well, we are a hosting company.
we’re a green hosting company and by green, what we mean is, what, our company, as a whole consumes, we offset and give back in the forms of renewable energy sources by 300% as much.
obviously the hosting industry is, like it or not, it’s including industry because of all the information that travels back and forth.
as a social, community commitment that we have, we do this, by partnering up with, nonprofit organizations and, they give us like a bill of how much we consumed.
after that, we offset and get that back three times as much.
And yeah, we’re green, we’re geeks.
We’re very secure and, we’re very, really cool people.
yeah, were pretty active at word camps we’re still on, but, things have changed, so we’re still waiting to see what’s going to happen.
Yeah.
Maybe that’s a good question to veer off, which is just, yeah.
What what have you seen, that’s interesting with the virtual word camps that have happened so far, and I don’t know if there’s anything worth mentioning about like what green geeks has been doing to participate virtually.
Well, initially we started to, kind of, participate to see how it unfolded, how everything turned out.
Obviously it’s a different thing.
we’ve had to pivot with that and, right now, I don’t know, we’re just kind of, working on a camp by camp basis because it’s so few of them also that, we make the decisions as to whether we’re going to be there or not.
unfortunately for this one, I, I don’t think we can attend because we have, well, I have other stuff to do with green geeks for that day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Definitely like speaking with some of our international sponsors, it’s a weird time slot for them.
and that’s half, Friday, half, Saturday.
It also creates some other challenges, but, it’ll definitely be interesting to see how it all unfolds.
I wanted to talk to you about, like, what do you do specifically for green geeks and then, tell me as well, what you do in the WordPress community.
Okay.
first of all, I work for partner relations at green geeks.
what that basically means is what’s the whole title that, in, it comes a lot of things, but basically I liaison with different developers and designers all over the world and, we, engage them and we talk about our platform and we are in the midst of creating this, agency, program.
We’re going to have multiple benefits for our fellow developers and designers all over the world.
we’re kind of, getting that going, obviously this, situation that has happened has kind of accelerated that process, but, yeah, that’s what I’m currently doing right now.
I’m also, we’re having this new, I would say program, we’re having this new thing that we’re going to do.
we’re going to go back to our basics and we’re going to focus a lot with our current customers.
we’re going to teach them a lot about what we know best, which is obviously hosting and we’re priests platforms.
we’re going to offer our customers, webinars as well to teach them about different things about WordPress, and hosting in general, but more geared towards the day by day business that they have to do and things that they need to do, using our hosting platform, no matter what your industry is, it could be a small business owner, or it could be a full time agency or a freelance designer.
we’re gonna start picking the month one by one, these segments, and we’re gonna, you offer training on an ongoing basis in order to make everything grow with the Wipro.
I think that’s kind of the spirit that we had, we need to still do, and that we had workshops were present because we truly believe in the social, contribution that we give, by having a presence there and speaking, and being all excited about WordPress and whatnot.
we want to continue to do that.
I know this word cat situation has changed a little, so we’re going to shift there as well and see what happens.
Yeah.
Nice.
you had mentioned that you’re an organizer.
Yes.
I’m an organizer out of, San Jose, Costa Rica.
part of the things I also do for green geeks, I speak at different meetups online.
This is, has been a tremendous benefit after I have to say the fact that the meetups are now online because, we’ve made a lot of friends, over the course of years for the workers community.
And, they’re Hey, to benefit not coming this year, can you at least help us with the beat ups? And, this is something that I agreed each that they’re like, absolutely they would speak about it.
I’m currently speaking about a lot of meet ups.
for example, this week I had to, I was in Santa Clarita and I, I also I’ll say, it’s I speak Spanish.
I also, I speak at the meet ups and in Latin America.
I speak in Ecuador on that day, but, for meetup, Ecuador this upcoming, first day as an organizer, we are not going to have a word camp this year.
it was a voting thing.
I’m sure you can relate to that we all voted like the online, no go or next year.
we, we kind of said may, but now, thinking about it, I’m not even sure if it’s going to happen, but we’ll see.
We’ll see.
But yeah,
No, I totally understand the struggle when were in our initial plans or planning stages for word camp Denver, we threw out a lot of scenarios and one of them was just give to the year and I was one of the ones who pushed for it to happen.
yeah, I couldn’t see the year go by, I guess.
Well, I was the one that pushed the opposite direction where like, guys that have camps are all about hugs, parties, talks, a lot of hugs and whatnot.
I was like, I don’t know, I’m not sure about this.
How are we going to do with sponsors? It’s going to be hurt all the technology.
I said, I was in the camp of that, finally voted to have it next year, but, yeah.
Now and I’m not even sure if it’s going to happen.
No, I don’t think there’s any right or wrong answer.
It’s just, what can you handle? And what can you do really well to try to make up for the lack of the in person stuff? So I hope whoever is watching this video knows that we’ve put a lot of heart and effort into this and we have a couple of surprises.
So I think it’ll be,
Yeah, well, like I said, one of the positive things that came out of this, I think was the fact that the meetups are now online.
I don’t know, in Denver, but in Costa Rica, traffic is an issue.
when you said 7:00 PM to someone going into certain part of the city, people were like, eh, but now since everybody is home, everybody’s like, Oh, so we pretty much have packed meetups.
around 50 to 60 people, which is amazing and it’s from different parts of the world.
I hope because I don’t know what’s going to happen.
I hope to meet up thinking could stay like we could do some of them online and some of them physically present.
I think that was positive.
I think so too.
That’s it’s a great silver lining to the situation.
Yes, yes, absolutely.
you’ve talked about this, but anything in particular you want to share in terms of like any cool new features green geeks is working on.
Well, aside from the feature that I’m working on, which is webinets well, yeah, that, everybody’s invited still, not just our customers, we’re going to have that on social media and all that stuff, but it’s really cool thing.
It’s kind of has the same spirit as word catching, sharing the knowledge and sharing the love that we have, for what we do.
like I said, we also do at the agency partner program here at green geeks.
we’ve been working like, I would have to give the analogy as with hotels, here in Costa Rica, hotels kind of took it.
They kind of did it, they took her whole time and some them have been working, behind the scenes to improve things, to bolster some things up.
I think that’s many, some of the things that we’ve been doing here, we’re working behind the scenes on the backend stuff, to make, the process of, hosting a, your website with us far easier, far more streamlined, far better and better.
we’ve kind of taken the opportunity that this pandemic has brought us to do that.
we are still, we still offer, hosting that ranges from, the very basic to professional, agencies that need to host, hundreds of websites with us.
So yeah.
that’s part of what we’re doing.
Cool.
Very nice.
just one or two more questions here, what kind of attendees look forward to in terms of green geeks is word camp, Denver sponsorship.
Well, I don’t know.
See it’s going to be presently.
You’re going to have to skip that one up, sir.
I want to be somewhere else.
So yeah.
I don’t think we’re going to have a booth presence, right? Correct.
I’m not sure.
Yeah.
I don’t believe so, but I’m sorry.
I think I’ve been there.
I would have lobbied for it.
I think you guys do have something in our nifty swag bag, which if you don’t know we’re doing like a password protected swag bag page.
Right, right.
And it did mention that to me.
Sorry I’ve been so consumed with this.
I am actually,
For anyone listening, you can look forward to, with you’ll get it via email as an attendee access to this exclusive swag bag.
There’s a lot of cool offerings.
Well, one of the things I love the book readings we’ll start swag.
I’ve been fine now.
It was awesome.
It was awesome.
it still is, it’s just sitting there waiting for the Gates though.
I know that’s probably the thing I’m going to miss the most about word camp dungaree this year.
Not being able to distribute and collect all the swag we had just this,
Oh, were even making new pins and stuff, for this year were making, well, we’re going to use them eventually, but still, everybody loved her kids, ? Yeah.
But all right.
Well anything else you want to say just about word press community or green geeks or anything that,
I would say to the WordPress community? No.
Keep on fighting.
we’ve been, 12 years of WordCamps and 12 years of heart fighting, we’re going to make it through this.
I think the spirit is still intact.
I had my tremendously people such as yourself and such as Joe, people from San Antonio, that despite the blow they decided to carry on with it, I think that’s tremendously remarkable if you guys and the people that attend call.
because it shows a commitment to learning, to improving.
that’s the spirit that I think is still there, even the hogs and the smiles aren’t there, but the spirit is still there.
I am relieved personally that it’s still there despite the hardships.
as a hosting company, we have the same decision about it.
we’re kind of happy, with that, despite, what’s going on.
Well, I think that’s a great way to end it off.
thank you so much for green geeks sponsoring our humble event.
And also for joining me here today.
Thank you.