Introducing June Liu

June Liu is the Creative Strategist at backpocket ACE, where she helps projects run smoothly and accessibly. She’s also the co-editor of WP Wonder Women and co-founder of Speed Network Online.

Show Notes

Backpocket Ace

LinkedIn

WP Accessibility Day Bio

Transcript:

Topher DeRosia: Hey everybody. Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m your host Topher, and my guest today is June, and I’m going to make you say your last name.

June Liu: Okay. Hi everybody. I’m June Liu. Yep, Liu. It’s the easier way to pronounce it. You don’t want to do the Mandarin way.

Topher: I do. What is it?

June: “Leo”.

Topher: Liu. Okay. Fair enough.

June: Yeah. Good enough? It’s not an easy sound to make. I enjoy hearing it as Liu over the Mandarin way, so don’t worry about it.

Topher: All right.

June: So, it’s good to be here.

Topher: Yeah, thank you for coming. 

June: Sure.

Topher: I had never heard of you before recently when you and Michelle did the speed, not dating, networking thing. And I thought, “Hey, somebody new. We should get to know her.” So I literally know essentially nothing about you. So who are you? Where are you from? What do you do? Etc.

June: Okay. My name is June Liu. Let’s start there. I’m outside of Washington D.C. in a little tiny place called Vienna, Virginia, if you’re familiar with it. It’s a small township outside of a very big metropolis area. But it still has a small-town feel, so I’m happy with this area. 

The reason probably why you never heard of me because I’ve only really returned to work in the last three years. So that’s… 

Topher: Okay. 

June: Yeah. I met Michelle working through WordPress Accessibility Day. Last year, I was selected as one of the organizers. And that’s where Michelle and I met. I had the bandwidth to do more for WPAD last year. So I just kind of put my hand up anywhere they said, “We could use somebody.” And I was like, “I got time. I’ll do it. I’ll try it. I don’t know how to do it, but I’ll try it.”

Topher: Stand back.

June: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Last year too I was also working with Bet Hannon on the sponsorship process of the WPAD event and helping her just getting all that information together for sponsors and contacting sponsors and just kind of working through that process. And it allowed me also, because I knew who the sponsors were, it helped me be a liaison into the marketing team. So that’s how I started working with Michelle there. She was the lead for marketing team last year. 

This year, Michelle and I co-lead the marketing team, and I still am on the sponsorship team working with Bet. So that’s kind of my happy place recently. 

But as for what I do, I am a marketing consultant. It won’t be too far of a stretch here to imagine that my focus is on accessibility in marketing. What that all means is putting together a marketing campaign. When you put it all together, you want to make sure that you have the accessibility features in mind. 

Much like how you do a website and you make sure that you have alt tags in your pictures, you have the right heading, structures, etc. For marketing campaigns, we want to make sure that the message that you’re sending is inclusive, first of all, and then if you have any subsequent links that goes with it, that it is understandable what you’re trying to promote and it’s just not a blank link that says, “click here.” So that’s kind of where my world merge between where my happy place is and what I’m trying to build. 

My agency is called Backpocket ACE. It’s a nickname given to me by a former supervisor. So I thought it was a pretty cool little name for a company, and the domain name was ready. So it was mine. How can I resist that? 

Topher: Nice. 

June: That’s a little bit about me.

Topher: Okay. So what I’m hearing is you do marketing stuff. How does that relate to WordPress? Did you just happen to choose WordPress as an area?

June: Well, I kind of stumbled upon WordPress about, oh, I guess it was like 15 years ago now. I was working for an association management company. And it was a former client there that said, “Hey, we need to figure out how to get your system to work with our system.” And I was like, “Well, what’s your system?” And they said, ‘WordPress.” That was probably around 2014 or so. Oh, yeah, that’s 10 years or so. Back then, I was like, “Oh, what is that?” 

So that was my first introduction into WordPress. And then a few years after that, I didn’t really get a chance to work with WordPress too much more. After that, I left the company and I became a caregiver for my mom. So that was the reason for my long hiatus. But when I came back, I was kind of like, “Well, I don’t want to go back into a corporation. I want to try to do something on my own.” And so I was like, “Well, what little organization, what little group is out there?” 

And in the back of my mind I kept thinking, “WordPress. WordPress.” That was kind of the unfinished business and unfinished research that I didn’t get to finish. So I was like, “Well, let’s look into this.” So I found that’s how I kind of… when I said I stumbled onto WordPress, yes. 

So I landed on WordPress.com first, like a lot of people, and then realized, no, that’s not what I want. And then I found my way through a couple of friends who introduced me to different networking groups. And then I was like, “Okay, I’m on the right path of creating my own website and, you know, finding WordPress network groups that allowed me to learn more about WordPress, learn about other people and what they do in WordPress and how. And still I’m trying to figure out how I fit into the WordPress world, essentially. 

Knowing Michelle has given me a leg up this year. I’m just going to praise her right now for a moment. But she really has given me a platform to find myself and to find my voice. In addition to Speed Network Online, she and I also work on WPWonderWoman, the newsletter. So I get to find out a lot about women in WordPress. And I’m happy to hear that there are so many women that is in the periphery and in the core of WordPress. 

I’m very happy to hear that since when I started learning how to code and stuff, I was really just the only woman in a company of pretty much all men. And for me to learn how to do what I did eons ago, it was at W3 Schools. That’s how I learned HTML and CSS.

But it was nice to see that there’s so many women involved in WordPress. It’s just nice to kind of, you know, you turn around and you find another woman there. So yeah, so that.

Back to Michelle, though, she’s kind of pushed me a little bit and say, “Okay, come on, get out of your comfort zone. You know, you can do this.” And being able to be code lead with her in WPAD, the Accessibility Day event, she gives me latitude to try different things, but she’s right there to support when I need it, and being that sounding board. 

So it’s finding my skill set again and being more confident with my own skill set and having opportunities to meet people like you, and then eventually into a podcast. Hey, look at that.

Topher: Yeah.

June: That’s how I found WordPress.

Topher: That’s really, really cool. 

June: Yeah, thanks. 

Topher: Have you been to a WordCamp yet?

June: In 2023, I went to the first… That was my first WordCamp. That’s the one in Washington, D.C. It was kind of like nearby. 

Topher: Yeah, WordCamp US. 

June: It was nearby. So I was kind of like, “Yeah, I think I’m supposed to go.” I think my stars aligned and I’m supposed to go. So that’s what I did. 

I met a lot of people, but it was a star align that I should go. And I’m glad I went. But on the flip side of that is I met too many people that I didn’t know how to follow up yet.

Topher: Oh, yeah. 

June: When I came back from WordCamp, I was kind of like paralyzed. I wasn’t sure how to advance. Then from there, it was a lot of baby steps, you know, and a lot of trial and error and trying to formulate my voice and then eventually still reaching out with people that I met there and say, “Oh, yeah, I remember meeting you there. I’m not sure if you remember me, but this is what I do now.” 

I should back up when I went to that WordCamp, I probably had just come back with the idea of the business, and it had been like three months. So, yeah, so I really jumped in and said, “I had no idea what I’m doing.” But, hey, you know, in that WordCamp, I met lots of people that I’m still in touch with now, and I’m pretty happy with that. And I even got my Michelle and me selfie.

Topher: Oh, nice. Excellent. Are you going to Portland in a couple of weeks, days?

June: No. No. Unfortunately, no. It’s a little cost-prohibitive. The event itself isn’t that high of a cost for the entry fee. It’s the flight. It’s the hotels. It’s the transportation.

Topher: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 

June: And then, of course, my own, shall we say selfish desire to stay in Portland another week. And I have family out there on the West Coast, so I’m like, “Well, I can’t go to the West Coast and not see them, you know?”

Topher: Not say hi. Yeah. 

June: So that would have extended all my time. And then I’m like, Mm. Hmm. I do plan to do it again one day. It also is, you know, once I have a bit more budget to spend on networking possibilities and events. But it’s in my mind to do so.

Topher: The big WordCamps can be very overwhelming. They get easier as you go to more because you see people that you saw last time. And that’s fun. But I would really recommend you try a small one. WordCamp Montclair isn’t that far from you. I think they’ve already done it this year, but-

June: They have. 

Topher: There was like 150 people. You can easily meet everyone and have a great conversation, you know?

June: Yeah. For this year, Montclair, it was on my to-do list. It’s driving distance for me. So I was thinking about doing it, but it fell on a bad weekend for me so I wasn’t able to. But yes, it’s always on my mind to figure out, well, which events can I go to?

And even like Buffalo, when they had color code, I thought about going there. And again, it was another bad weekend, you know, scheduling-wise for me. But I think with more advanced planning and with event being more top priority for me as an agency, I will definitely be going more often.

Topher: Nice. That’s pretty cool. 

June: So are you going to WordCamp?

Topher: I am going. It normally would also be prohibitive for me, but I got a sponsor. So that helped a lot.

June: I’ll plug another Michelle project. She and Marcus Burnette did SponsorMeWP. That is a way for people to get sponsorship as they contribute to WordPress Core or make WordPress. So yeah. That’s another plug. Maybe we should call this the Michelle Love Fest.

Topher: Yeah. She has her own podcast. We could just go be on that.

June: That’s true too. She’s interviewed me for Women in WordPress. And then when we launched Speed Network Online, she also did that for in post status. Happiness-

Topher: Gotcha. 

June: That was fun. Yeah.

Topher: That is cool. Wow.

June: So if people who are listening to this is interested in Speed Network Online, our next event is next Thursday, August 21st at 10 a.m. Eastern time. I don’t know when you’re putting this out, but Speed Network Online is going to be monthly. So check us out online. Speednetworknetworkonline.com. You can find our schedule there too.

Topher: If people are going to listen in the future, is it the same like third Thursday or something so that people could just go or is it a dated thing?

June: It’s not. We’re trying to randomize it because, you know, there’s time zone differences, which we’re trying to give opportunities to people on the APAC side of the world and Europe and even in like the West Coast. You know, sometimes when we do it at 10 a.m., it’s really early for them. And people are probably not the most comfortable to network at 6 a.m. or such. So we try to randomize it. 

We’ve done one at… I think it was 2 p.m. And then we’ve done one… Oh, I don’t remember anymore. But this is our third so far. So we’re really hoping that people find value in this and then we can continue. There is a small fee.

Topher: I did one and I-

June: Yes, I know.

Topher: I did one and it was a great value.

June: I mean, I understand that if you’re… it does move kind of fast. So if you’re somebody who wants to take it a little slower, it may feel a little overwhelming. But, you know, Michelle is in the main room and everyone else is in breakout rooms during the one-on-one conversations. And if it’s too overwhelming, you can just kind of stay in the main room with Michelle and that way you won’t feel like… you can catch your breath, basically.

Topher: Right. Yeah. That’s cool. Something else I was about to say, and I don’t remember what it was. Oh, well, I know. I’m going to put the link to the Speed Networking in the description of the podcast so we’ll be able to find it.

June: Thank you. I appreciate that.

Topher: Yeah. So we’ve talked about what you do for a living, what you do in WordPress, talked about Michelle. I remember what else I was going to say. I’ve seen posts occasionally, like on LinkedIn or Twitter or whatever, where somebody says every day or every week, I try to pick one person and say wonderful things about them. I think it’d be interesting to have a podcast where you get several people together and pick a person and just talk about how great that person is for a while.

June: Like we’re doing for Michelle right now.

Topher: Exactly. And they don’t have to be there. They can come along later and say, “Oh, look, people said nice things about me. That’s great.”

June: Well, I think I do think that would be fine. I also think that, you know, some people aren’t as… they don’t promote themselves as much, even though they do a lot of good things, you know? That’s definitely an opportunity to kind of shower some love on somebody who’s quietly doing the behind-the-scenes things.

Topher: Sure. Yeah. I know a lot of people who do really amazing things. And within the right circle, they’re very well-known because they do great things. But outside of that, not so much. And it would be interesting to highlight those people.

June: Oh, absolutely.

Topher: So there you go. There’s two podcast ideas. So I expect to see those from you.

June: So you’re teaming up with me to do that, right?

Topher: Oh, sure. Well, if I started another podcast, I think my wife would be grumpy. This is only the second episode we’ve done since 2023.

June: Oh, really?

Topher: Yeah. We just kind of, just kind of put it down for a while and didn’t do it again. And then somebody said to me, “Hey, can I be on your podcast?” And I thought, “Sure, let’s do it right now.”

June: Yeah.

Topher: Like with you, like I contacted you this morning and said, “Hey, want to do it?”

June: Yeah, exactly. You also do HeroPress, right?

Topher: I do. I’m delighted to hear you’re familiar with it.

June: Yes, I am. I am. Tell me more about Hero Press.

Topher: Okay. So Hero Press is a blog, I guess you could say. It’s a collection of essays from people who’ve leveraged WordPress to make their lives better. So I have people from all over the world, all ages, genders, languages, cultures. I work really hard to access diversity in as many intersections as possible. So yeah, like everything I mentioned, age, gender, height, culture, ability, all that stuff, I really reach for that. 

You know, it’s people in repressed economies making great money remote working. It’s older people on their fourth career. It’s single moms who don’t have to put their kids in daycare because they can work from home with them. 

And each essay is written to their peers. But they get to decide who that is. I mean, everybody has a really diverse peer set. Some people have done exactly what I expect and some people have really surprised me. 

June: How so? 

Topher: I had a blind person once do an essay and I assumed that they would write to other blind people and it never occurred to them.

June: Yeah. 

Topher: I work really hard not to suggest too much, not to make assumptions. Sometimes people ask, you know, what should I do? And I say, well, you’re this and you’re that, and you’re here and you speak this language and you know, you’ve moved different countries, you know, whatever. But for the most part, I try to let people think themselves. 

And the whole idea is for them to suggest to their peers, I did this, maybe you could too. It’s whoever they identify with, whoever they want to speak to.

June: I mean, you’re definitely giving a platform to people to share their voice. Everybody has a voice. Sometimes it needs to be encouraged to let them share and that it’s okay for them to share.

Topher: Yes. Yeah. Many people say, “Oh, my story is not interesting. No one wants to hear it. I don’t have a story.” Like, “Hogwash. I’ve been talking to you for three minutes and I’m fascinated already.”

June: I don’t know if you follow Humans of New York.

Topher: No.

June: You don’t know that one? 

Topher: No. 

June: Humans of New York started as a social media platform. I think it was on Instagram and this person went onto the streets of New York and just interviewed people that this person found interesting. I can’t remember who the creator was. I don’t even remember if they were male, female, or what they identify as. And they had such a following on social media that they created both… I haven’t heard a lot of them recently, so it’s a little fuzzy. Details are a little fuzzy. But I think they had enough for a book definitely and possibly like a DVD.

But Humans of New York, it’s all these interesting stories of people. And New York has the feel of interesting people, but the level of how interesting they are is just like, wow.

Topher: Yeah, you know-

June: That goes to everybody has a voice and everybody has a story that people would love to hear about.

Topher: Yeah. When I started HeroPress, I used to research people before asking them to write. Partly I wanted to know, is this an interesting person, and we’ll talk about that in a sec, probably to make sure they weren’t a horrible person, you know? 

June: Understood.

Topher: But I’ve backed away from that a little bit because what I’m finding is that everyone is interesting. Everyone has an interesting story, even people who think they don’t. Sometimes I’ve noticed that me telling their story back to them helps them realize how interesting it is. Like, wow, I never thought of that. I didn’t think about that. I guess not many people have done this, you know? That’s interesting too. So a lot of the joy I get from it is while meeting people I hear a lot of backstory that doesn’t make it into essays. I’ve met a lot of people that never did essays.

But seeing, now through Slack, seeing the light in their eyes when they realize that it is a good story and they are significant and they do bring meaning to the community. You know, they’re not just a random user out there with no connection to the rest of us.

June: Right.

Topher: So it’s very, very rewarding.

June: Well, I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad to know a little bit more about HeroPress too. 

Topher: Have you ever read it?

June: I have. I have. I often visit because I want to feature the women that you post on there. 

Topher: Oh, yeah. 

June: Yes. I can’t remember what the name of the last one is, but when you did the photo, Lydia’s photo-

Topher: Lydia’s photo?

June: Yes. You posted about a photo.

Topher: Oh, like on wpphotos.info? 

June: Mm-hmm. 

Topher: Yeah.

June: So when that was posted, I grabbed that information and posted it into the WPWonderWoman.

Topher: Oh, that’s super cool. I didn’t know that.

June: Yeah. So if you didn’t know how you got that one little tick in your statistics, that’s me. That’s my tick.

Topher: I don’t very often look at the stats. They tend to be disappointing.

June: But isn’t it fun though? Isn’t it fun though? Yes, statistics is… we shouldn’t put weight on a lot of statistics. It should be just kind of like informational. But a lot of people do lean into, oh, I got how many visitors. Oh, I got how many clicks. And I don’t know. I kind of follow that up with, okay, did it turn into a purchase? Did it turn into… you know? And they’re like, “Oh, no.” I was like, “Okay, well, let’s look at the end result first.

Topher: Google kind of broke this, but it used to be really fun to go to the real-time and watch the bubbles pop up. So I would do a release and then go watch. Oh, look, there’s somebody in Azerbaijan. There’s somebody in Faso. There’s somebody in Mexico, you know? That interface is not as cool anymore, but that used to be really fun.

June: I agree with you. It’s not as fun anymore.

Topher: It’s funny because HeroPress sometimes feels extremely popular. Everybody loves it. But my stats are really low. On a release day, I get 150 visits a day. On a random Sunday when I haven’t done a release, I’ll get two or three visits total. And for a while that was pretty depressing. I felt like nobody cared, nobody wanted to read. 

And then one day I asked a friend who’s very strong supporter of HeroPress. He loves it. Talks about it all the time. I said, “Do you read every week?” He said, “Oh, no.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “I’m busy. I don’t get around to it.” But every now and again, I get really depressed about the WordPress community, people fighting, WP drama, whatever, and I go read five or six essays at once.” And it renews my faith.

And somebody else, who used to work at Automattic and doesn’t anymore, said that she would have people, she was a manager, she would have people come to her doing support and say, “I hate this job. People are terrible. You know, I’m doing support, I’m trying to help them, and they’re calling me names and they’re telling me my product is junk. I just hate it.” 

And she doesn’t even have to say anything. She just listens. And at the end they go, “Okay, thanks for letting me rant. I’m going to go read HeroPress now and then everything will be all better.” She found me to tell me this, that people say that. And I thought, “Wow, that’s worth it.”

June: But that’s the goal of your, you know… I think when people start leaning into statistics, they forget what the goal of the original project is. And your HeroPress is to uplift. It’s not artificially uplift people. It’s when they need it, they have it.

Topher: Yeah.

June: So, you know, I’m going to say it this way and see if you can find relatable nugget there. When there is less depression in the world, then HeroPress will have lower visitors. 

Topher: Oh, yeah. I see that. 

June: So you’re that lifeline, that life vest that helps people out. So HeroPress is a very good apt name for this site. You know? I don’t know how you got to that conclusion with HeroPress, but, yeah, it’s definitely a mean and you match the goal with that. So Kudos. Kudos to you. 

Topher: Thank you. It originally started out to be a video project.

June: A video project? So the essays were gonna be videos? 

Topher: Yeah. And they were gonna be big elaborate productions with a film crew and traveling the world and costing tons of money. And we did a Kickstarter, and it failed. People weren’t interested. 

June: So does that mean your background is in video production? 

Topher: Not at all. 

June: We never end up where we think we are. Right? 

Topher: Yeah. These days I make a lot of screencasts for WordPress, but nothing like cameras and lights and, you know, sound systems and whatnot. 

June: Right. Right. Do you think that because more people are working from home and just the advancement of technology in the last ten years? Do you feel like it’s easier to produce videos and podcasts because everyones’ equipments are better or do you think it has been more difficult? 

Topher: I don’t know. I’m gonna say it’s probably easier. I’ve noticed the kind of content has been changing. More people are making vertical style shorts on their phones and using Descript or whatever to put text on them. It’s very accessible. Super easy for just somebody with their phone to just go. With that said, I’m not seeing a lessening of people like me using this $2,000 microphone — It’s not a $2,000. It’s an $800 microphone — and high def widescreen, blah blah blah. That’s still out there. I just think there’s still a place for it. But I do think better tools are making it more accessible to more people.

Definitely the smartphone has made a change in how people do streaming and live streaming too. You go on to social media nowadays and definitely use… you’re two clicks away from a live feed somewhere. Yeah.

Topher: Yeah. This could be live if I click the right button. 

June: Surprise a lot of people, including me. Yeah.

Topher: So All right. Well, we’ve been doing this for more than half an hour now, which is past how long we usually do it. So I’m gonna wrap it up. It’s been a delight talking to you. 

June: Well, I enjoyed it myself, Topher. 

Topher: Someday, I will see you at an event somewhere. 

June: Yes. And we’ll shake hands.

Topher: Yes.

June: And be face-to-face without a screen in between. 

Topher: Yeah.

June: Well, thank you very much for having me. 

Topher: Thank you. 

June: All right. 

Topher: This has been an episode of the Hallway Chats Podcast. I’m your host Topher DeRosia. Many, many thanks to our sponsor Nexcess. If you’d like to hear more hallway chats, please let us know on Hallwaychats.com.