In fall 2015, we held the first diversity and inclusion workshop at Automattic’s annual Grand Meetup. As part of a breakout session, we brainstormed around what we could do to give people a good sense of what it’s like to work here. And more specifically, how could we better attract diverse candidates to join us and thrive?
An idea that came up was to collect written testimonials from Automatticians — what we call people who work at Automattic — to use in recruitment efforts, and I volunteered to spearhead that effort. A couple of my colleagues immediately offered to help. Later during the session, our CEO, Matt Mullenweg, suggested that video interviews could be even more effective than written testimonials, and I agreed. Before I knew it, the Meet Our Colleagues video series was born.
Since then, we’ve conducted over 30 interviews, from developers, data scientists and designers, to HR wranglers and business folks. Colleagues volunteered to edit the interviews, and I’m especially grateful to Nancy Thanki, Tish Briseno, Ryan Ray, and our current editor, Glenn Pearson, for their work. Special thanks to my fellow Happiness Engineer Sarah Blackstock, who’s been been my right-hand woman on the project from the start.
Waiting to board the plane from Vancouver to Montreal – on my way home from this year’s Automattic Grand Meetup (GM) – my colleague told me how much he appreciated what I do to welcome fellow Canadians to Automattic. “It might not be said often, but it’s always appreciated.” An older man also waiting to get on the plane turned to me and asked, with a smile, “Your boss?” I was confused at first. Why would he assume he was my boss? Maybe because he was a man? Or maybe it’s just uncommon for colleagues – without a hierarchical boss/employee relationship – to show overt appreciation for each others’ work. In any case, I found it interesting, and it made me think.
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Last week, nearly 600 of my co-workers and I gathered again in Whistler, British Columbia, to spend time with each other at our annual all-company get-together. For the first time, I decided to teach a class (CSS: Basics and Beyond) instead of attending one myself or doing a project. While it was a lot of work to put together three days of material for the workshop, I had a ton of help from three wonderful colleagues, and it was a gratifying experience to help boost the CSS coding skills of our co-workers.
Other highlights include an attempt to see the aurora borealis (we didn’t – but the clear sky and endless stars were still breathtaking), a hike to Brandywine Falls with some of my theme-team colleagues, and a nice walk to Alta Lake.
It was a low-key GM for me this year – full of reflections on how it could possibly be my sixth one, how quickly the time passes, what the future holds for me, and how much I appreciate my friends and colleagues at Automattic. People who appreciate me in turn.
Want to see more from Automatticians about this year’s Grand Meetup? Check out the #a8cgm tag on WordPress.com or Instagram.
The Canucks (Canadians)
Closing-party shenanigans with my team
My friend Val and I
My team with someone who couldn’t be at the GM Photoshopped in!
If you know what these are, you’re probably Canadian! Courtesy of my teammate Laurel.
#a8gm social media stream
Posing with the PM, who upstaged the bear this year
At the 2016 Automattic Grand Meetup (GM) in Whistler, British Columbia, I did a joint flash talk for the first time, with my awesome colleague Laurel Fulford. Since we were hosting 500+ colleagues in our own country, we used the opportunity to share eight minutes of Canadiana with our co-workers. And now we’re sharing it with you!
Transcript
We’re really excited to be hosting everyone here for the GM this year and we wanted to take the opportunity to tell you a little bit about Canada. I’m Laurel and this is Kathryn, and we’re both members of the Theme Team. [Audience cheers.] Woo! And we’re both Canadians, or Canucks. I’m from just west of here on Vancouver Island, and Kathryn’s from 5000 kilometres east in Montréal, Québec.
To start, there are some stereotypes about Canada that you probably are familiar with – and some of them are even a little bit true. But it’s a big country, and even the ones that are true are not true everywhere. With that in mind, let’s go.
Metric Mixup, or How to measure up to Canadians!
Let’s talk a little bit about the Metric system. In 1970, Prime Minister Trudeau began a process called “Metrication,” which attempted to convert Canada over to the metric system.
But by 1985, we’d only gone about half-way, so the government kind of gave up.
As a result, we use a total mix of metric and imperial measurements, in a very Canadian sort of compromise.
We can tell you the temperature in Celsius – but don’t ask us how tall we are in metres, or how many kilos we weigh, cause we can only tell you that in feet and pounds.
Gas and milk are sold by the litre – but we still talk about mileage.
Canada in Writing, or Use your “U”s, love your “L”s
Similar to the whole metric/imperial thing, we also mix up our spelling. Like the UK, we love our U’s! So we use them as much as humanly possible. We also share some other spellings with the UK. But to make it confusing, we follow the US, as well. And as you can tell, our accents are closer to our American neighbours than not.
Canadian Food, or Friendly refreshments to eat or drink
Looking at food, Canada has some unique food items, with some pretty passionate advocates.
One you might have heard of is poutine – a concoction of fries, cheese curds, and gravy. Delicious or disgusting? You be the judge! [Delicious!]
We’re not the only country with Kraft Dinner (or KD) but the we do tend to use the term interchangeably with any macaroni-and-cheese product.
And what about satisfying our sweet tooth. We’ve got butter tarts, which are little sweet, gooey pies. We also have Nanaimo bars, which are chocolate, custard, and coconut – named after a town on Vancouver Island.
How about some uniquely Canadian booze terminology? Here we have a Caesar, which is kind of like a Bloody Mary… but with clam juice! We also have the term Mickey – which doesn’t refer to this guy – but it’s what we call 375ml of alcohol.
Now let’s say you pick up a case of 24 cans of beer – that’s called a two-four. And let’s say you happen to pick up that beer on the national Victoria Day holiday weekend in May – that makes it a May Two-Four.
Getting away from the booze, in parts of Canada – not here – you can buy your milk in a bag. And if you’re looking for whole milk, we don’t actually call it that. It tends to be called homogenized milk.
Canada is a little bit obsessed with Tim Hortons – you might have stopped off there on the way from the airport. It’s our national doughnut chain named after who else, but a hockey player.
We’ve got Timbits, which are little doughnut holes, similar to munchkins from Dunkin Donuts. A coffee with two creams and two sugars at Tim Hortons is a double-double. And don’t forget to “roll up the rim to win”! Also, this is real, you can get a Tim Horton’s Double Double credit card.
Canadian Money, or Canuck Bucks
Let’s look a little bit at Canadian money. It also has some unique characteristics.
We used to have one-dollar and two-dollar bills, but we got rid of them and replaced them with coins. So now we’ve got loonies – because look at the loon on the front! And then a couple of years later, we came out with the toonie… because it rhymes with loonie. We also got rid of our pennies fairly recently. So don’t be surprised if your change gets rounded up or down if you’re paying for something with cash.
We still haven’t gotten rid of the five-dollar bill, but take a look in your wallet, you might find a “Spocked” five if you’re lucky.
If you happen see one of these things, this is called Canadian Tire Money, which was an early loyalty program from our beloved national hardware, auto parts, and sporting goods chain. You used to get “cash back” in the form of this little funny money, but they got rid of that too, and now they use a refillable card like everyone else.
Canadian Words, or Creative Canadianisms
There are some words Canadians use that tend to make other English-speakers raise an eyebrow.
The first one, we’re kind of infamous for – it’s the toque, instead of a wool hat.
We don’t get into the queue or line, we join a lineup. Look at this long lineup! (Even if we’re not being accused of committing a crime.)
Instead of parking in a parking garage, we use a parkade.
Look at this kid, what a keener! He’s doing his homework during recess. Keener. Not even sure that word even has an equivalent.
I’m not sure you’ve noticed here, instead of restroom or toilet, we tend to label it as a washroom.
And the pièce de résistance. This is not a garbage disposal, at least that’s not what we call it. We call it a garburator. I’m not making this up! This is what we call it, not a joke!
Canadian Music, or Rocking out to “Oh Canada”
Canadian artists have produced a lot of great music over the years, you might be familiar with some of it, from Neil Young to Joni Mitchell to Arcade Fire.
But if you listen to the radio, you may notice a lot of Canadian music. That’s because of a regulation called Cancon, which tries to protect and promote Canadian culture. Commercial radio stations must play at least 35% Canadian content every weekday from 6am to 6pm. Because of this, every Canadian here can probably sing you any top-40 song by a Canadian artist from the past 30 years. [That’s Bryan Adams, by the way.]
Canadian Sports, or Competitive apologizing
Most people associate two sports with Canada: hockey and curling.
But actually, our national sport until quite recently was lacrosse, which is an aboriginal sport that’s been around – at least documented – for almost 1000 years.
In 1994, hockey was added as our national sport of winter, but our national sport of summer is still lacrosse.
Sorry about that, Eh?, or The True North, Strong and Apologetic
Some of the most well known Canadian stereotypes, true or otherwise, can be summed up in three words. The first one…
Canadians apologize a lot. We’re really sorry about that. We can’t help it, it’s compulsive, as soon as we have the opportunity, even if we’re not at fault, we bust out the “S” word.
“Eh” is a handy little multipurpose syllable and we use in many different ways. So let’s look at some of them.
Statement of opinion – La Banquise has the best poutine in Montreal, eh?
Statements of fact – P2 or it didn’t happen, eh?
Questions – Not an awesome idea to deploy on Friday at 5pm, eh?
Exclamation – Best meetup ever, eh!
In fixed expressions – I know, eh?
Telling a story [the narrative eh] – So I deployed this big commit, eh? And it brought down all of WordPress.com, eh? And we had to this really big revert, eh?
So, now we come to about.
No, we don’t really say “a boot”
But there are areas of Canada that pronounce “out” a little differently than your ear might be used to, and it even varies across the country.
So we conducted a highly scientific study, looking at a cross-section of our fellow Canadians to see how they say “About.” Based on the results we are confident in our conclusion that “Peak About” is located in none other than Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the vowel sound is most pronounced.
We hope this gave you a good intro to some of the things that make Canada unique. And if you have any questions, you can ask any of these Canuckamatticians and they’ll be happy to answer for you.
This year I got to experience an Automattic Grand Meetup in my homeland for the first time. Granted, it took place in Whistler, British Columbia, 5000 km away from where I live, but it was still Canada! It was fun to watch nearly 500 of my colleagues encountering everything from poutine to the stunning Coast mountain range for the first time. They were even struck by small things I take for granted, like the ubiquitous Canuck politeness, in the form of “sorry” and “please” on signage.
The week was jam-packed, even more so than my last four Grand Meetups. (Has it really been five already? Seems impossible!) Highlights of the week include a class on WordPress plugin development taught by code wrangler Jennifer (I made something! And it’s on GitHub!); icebreakers and brainstorming with my theme division-mates; organizing an afternoon of painting for my colleagues, who blew me away with their creativity!); spotting a black bear (OMG!) munching on foliage by the side of the highway; swooping across mountaintops in the spectacular Peak to Peak gondola; and attending a thought-provoking workshop about diversity and inclusion by an outstanding facilitator, Y-Vonne Hutchison. And of course, countless chats with friends/co-workers from all over the world and a lot of good food. Oh, and I invented a cocktail that was one of three chosen to to be served at the closing party. (Automojitto! It was blue and yummy!)
As we’re a company full of bloggers, many of my colleagues have posted accounts of their week in Whistler as well. You can check out some of them under the #a8cgm tag on WordPress.com.
Every year at the Automattic all-company Grand Meetup, we each have to give a short presentation in front of our colleagues. This “flash talk” can be about anything at all – and it can be in any format we like, whether a more traditional talk with slides, a song, video, or interpretive dance: pretty much anything goes.
This year was my fourth Grand Meetup flash talk, and I decided I was finally ready to do something more personal. My past flash talks had been about growing garlic, the peculiarities of Quebec English, and foods from Quebec that everyone should try at least once… but this time would be different — it would be a story about me, my dad, and our hair.
I hope you like it.
Transcript
Last year, my flash talk was on growing garlic. This year, I’m going to talk about growing hair.
Even before my birth, the subject of hair in my family was fraught with anxiety. You see, my dad Bob had an autoimmune condition called alopecia areata. By age six he’d already lost much of his hair.
He wore a hat constantly from 6 to 13 so the other kids wouldn’t bully him. They bullied him anyway; they knew what the hat must be hiding.
By 14 he began wearing a wig.
A pretty bad wig.
What had started out as alopecia areata was becoming alopecia universalis – as in hair loss everywhere. Eyebrows, eyelashes, leg hair, my dad was losing it all.
By his early twenties when he married my mom Ellie, he’d ditched the wig, and was attempting to pencil in the missing patches on his head instead.
Doctors didn’t know very much about alopecia back then – they don’t know much more today – but they thought there MIGHT be a genetic component, so my parents were understandably concerned this condition might be passed on to their kids.
So when their firstborn – me – came out with a small little head of dark hair, my folks were pretty relieved that I appeared to take after my mother in the hair department.
Still, my parents held their breath a bit as I grew older. Watching. Waiting.
The hair grew. And grew.
My dad stopped penciling in his head every day and eventually shaved off the last stubborn locks. They never grew back.
By the time I got to elementary school, it was clear that my thick, curly, unruly, hair was here to stay. My parents were very happy.
Ironically, I decided around that point I hated my frizz and wished I could just have straight hair, like the rest of my friends. My mom would blow-dry it for me in a vain attempt to turn tight curls into the straight hair I’d never have.
After certain really terrible haircuts – by hairdressers who hadn’t the faintest idea how to cut curly hair – I would go home feeling like I looked like Little Orphan Annie – but with MUCH less optimism.
After one particularly horrific haircut I professed to my mother quite earnestly that I needed to become a nun so I could hide my hair every day. Never mind that we were Jewish, that was just a detail. The Catholics needed nuns, surely something could be worked out.
When I got into acting, my hair took on a leading role.
Hair got big.
Hair got short.
I went through my own hat phase.
My yearbook photo was a big disappointment. I detested it so much I covered it up with a retake. This time, with a hat.
I went prematurely grey the summer I was 17. But it was just for a play.
As I got older, I gradually began to hate my hair less and less. Adolescent angst turned to adult apathy. It just didn’t matter so much anymore.
After meeting a cartoonist named Shane, he took a stab at drawing me. My hair had made an impact. You can see how he was trying to get it just right.
Five years later when we got married… he made this for our wedding cake
These days, my dad & I are both pretty accepting of our heads and our hair.
As I get older, grey hairs have come along. Real ones this time. I used to pull them out as they appeared, but in the wise words of a former hairdresser, “That’s probably not a good coping strategy.”
Will I dye my hair? Time will tell.
A few years back, a relative shared this picture of my great-grandmother Rose. I wouldn’t mind rocking the grey frizzy look as well as her someday.
Kathryn Presner 