#223 - Ivana Ćirković on How WordPress Credits Bridges Education and Industry in the WordPress Ecosystem

Speaker A: Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, how. Uh, WordPress credits bridges education and industry in the WordPress ecosystem. If you'd like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WPTAven in your podcast player of choice or by going to wptavern.com feed forward slash podcast and you can copy that URL and into most podcast players. If you have a topic that you'd like us to feature on the podcast, I'm keen to hear from you and hopefully get you or your idea featured on the Show. Head to WPTAvern.com contact Jukebox and use the form there. So on the podcast today we have Ivana Cjerkovic. Ivana is a Digital Marketer with 18 years of experience working both in and out of the tech industry and currently leads marketing at UH WP Bakery. She's an active participant in WordPress events, having attended and spoken at numerous local and international wordcamps over the years. In this episode our focus is on the WordPress credits initiative. We learn how this program, launched by the WordPress foundation, connects students with real world opportunities to contribute to the WordPress ecosystem, earn certifications and increase their competitiveness in the job market. Ivana discusses her own experience as a WP Credits mentor, working with students as they learn about digital marketing, remote work and other open source contributions. We explore how universities can modernize their curriculums and real world value for students by participating in the initiative and how businesses can get involved not just to support the community, but to help shape and discover future talent. The program's evolving structure also gets attention and we learn how students are guided through hands on activities such as translation or documentation, and how their progress is tracked publicly via Profiles on WordPress.org Ivana shares the opportunities and challenges for both educators and businesses with thoughts on accountability, mentorship and the need to bring new faces into the WordPress community. If you're interested in the future of WordPress education, education or bridging the gap between academia and industry. This episode is for you. If you'd like to find out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to WPTAvern.com podcast where you'll find all the other episodes as well. And so without further delay, I bring you Ivana Tjerkovic.

Speaker B: I am joined on the podcast by Ivana Cjerkovic Did I get that right?

Speaker C: Yes. Excellent.

Speaker B: Thank you. This is my first interview at, uh, WordCamp Europe 2026. I'm guessing because we're on the first day of the event and it's quite early in the morning. It's 10 in the morning, I'm guessing. You cannot have done your presentation yet.

Speaker C: Not yet, tomorrow.

Speaker B: Do you get nervous with these kind of things?

Speaker C: I get nervous all the time. I've been doing this for 12 years. It never gets easier. It is what it is.

Speaker B: Well, the presentation that you're doing is going to be the focus of what we're talking about today. So do you just want to tell us a little bit about the topic that you're talking about, but also just give us a bit of a general bio about who you are and what you do? So just tell us about you and about your presentation, basically.

Speaker C: Okay. First thing first, I would like to introduce my presentation or the talk that is built up around WordPress credits initiative, which is something that WordPress has rolled out. Late last year in December, and I applied to be a mentor to support students into their entering into WordPress got accepted, did my courses, passed them, and started working with students on their first entering the WordPress society. How everything works, contributing. And out of all of this, I came up with the idea of sharing the story about WordPress credits. What it is, why it is important not just for the WordPress community, but also for universities all around the world for businesses to support, because there is an angle and huge opportunity for them too and hopefully inspire people to join and become part of it more as far as I'm concerned. My name is Ivana Cirkovic and I am a, uh, Digital Marketer. For 18 years I've been working inside tech organizations, tech industry, but also outside of it. So I'm the multiverse. And lately for past couple of years, I've been working in WP Bakery in marketing their product and talking to people, sharing knowledge of what we do, how we do it and so on. In the meantime, I'm attending many, many work, local and international ones, giving lectures, giving talks about digital marketing and all things.

Speaker B: So are you here at this event not just to give your presentation, are you also here on behalf of WP Bakery to represent them and the products that they have as well?

Speaker C: Yes, we are sponsors. I am speaker, I was table lead for marketing on contributors day. So we are wide into the ecosystem.

Speaker B: I have to say, having only been in this event space for about an hour, I'm actually deeply impressed by this particular event. It really is a gigantic venue. It's so pleasurable as well to see the WordPress community in such large numbers here.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: And, uh, so we're looking forward to a really good event. Okay, let's kick off with the topic at hand then. So it occurs to me that many people listening Whilst they're using WordPress and they're kind of, I don't know, they're building websites for people and they've got products and plugins and they're just general users. It may be that the community piece and the educational piece is nothing that they've heard of before. So would you just tell us a little bit about what WP Credits is as far as you're concerned, just to give us that broad background of what it is.

Speaker C: Okay, so WP Credits program is initially made to bring new young people into the WordPress, to broaden the ecosystem with, uh, new, fresh blood, new contributors. And to do so, WordPress foundation initiated this program to connect with universities all across the world, to connect students to some programs to learn about WordPress through contribution. For that they will get graded and get certification, which in the end will help them be more marketable and have more modern knowledge of what is needed in today's job market and to be more competitive and more appealing to potential employers. So by doing so, WordPress credits aims to broaden the ecosystem, to strengthen the WordPress community and WordPress itself, but also to put new generations in more marketable place and to help them get more profitable jobs.

Speaker B: Thank you. That was a really nice summary in terms of your personal commitment to it and what have you, how did you fall into it as a thing that you were doing? And is this something that you get sponsored for from WP Bakery, or is it personal and simply a sort of philanthropic thing that you're doing on the side?

Speaker C: Yes. So basically I've been doing education my whole professional life, so it's something that comes natural to me. In my local country in Serbia, I do informal education for high schoolers and primary school children about digital marketing, digital literacy. This is like very natural to me. I'm being sponsored by WP Bakery to do so. And the program works like initiative, needs people, needs more mentors to get involved more than it needs like product and businesses to support with their products. So if there are businesses who are, uh, maybe interested in support through their product, know that you need to put your people first to actually get involved and contribute and then you can offer products as the side piece, so to say.

Speaker B: So, yeah, it seems that you've got a lifelong interest in education as well. Okay, that gives me some sort of hook there. Okay. If I was to say WP credits to the people outside, the people who already knew about it, I think would probably peg it as entirely educational in nature, just an education initiative. But curiously your presentation, the notes that went with that and the blurb that went on the wordcamp Europe website, you kind of make the point that it's much bigger than that and you, you get into businesses and the students themselves and universities. So the students in universities bit. Well that's the education piece, but the business bit. What's going on there? Because I definitely hadn't drawn that intuition. I thought education from top to bottom, but business, okay, where does that fit in?

Speaker C: I will get the hot insights from the talk. So basically there is more than the meets the eye, so to speak. Businesses have unique opportunity to shape people they want to employ by getting involved as mentors. They also get the chance to see firsthanded how those young minds work in real environments, in real contribution. And they get the chance to pick and choose who they want to employ by seeing them work on some real things, whether it's documentation, whether it's translation or programming, developing something AI we need more people who know what they do although they are young. By having students in this program, they are working on uh, not fictional things but actual things that really contribute to community and businesses as a whole. By supporting this initiative, businesses then in relation to that can get more insights into who they want to employ. So on top of that they are building the better market for themselves as well.

Speaker B: I guess the student university piece is fairly obvious, you know, M. WP credits and the people working on that project communicate with university universities. They're probably easy to find, you know that if you go to a phone directory for example, they'll all be there.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And it's an easy thing to do. You phone up the university and see if there's interest. And I know that some universities have taken up the WP credits program and it seems to be as far as I can work out, it seems to be working very successfully. How are you going to make the connection with businesses? Because that seems like a much more scattered. I don't know if you're going to be working with big businesses, you know, huge companies, or if it's going to be kind of more the businesses on the street, the smaller businesses, that kind of thing. So I'll just sort of hand it over at that point.

Speaker C: So basically web agencies, businesses around WordPress, we know they have an issue with new employees. Onboarding lasts, let's say three to six months. That cost time and money and other people who are teaching them what needs to be done and how. Then we have WordPress credit students who are already doing that junior type of work within contribution. They are already onboarded through using Slack, knowing how to do remote work. What needs to be done. So businesses supporting WordPress credits initiative can choose those students and spend less time and money and energy in onboarding them because they already went through that by doing WordPress credits program.

Speaker B: Yeah, I guess if you're a small web agency, it's highly likely that you won't necessarily have an induction program finely tuned so that the young people that are coming through have this sort of specialized system where they can get some accreditation. It's probably more. Okay, I'm going to assign you to John this week and then next week you're going to go over to Susan and follow what they're doing. So is there a sort of structured program that let's say a web agency based in London could drop into and receive documentation about? Where are we at with that whole process?

Speaker C: Since this initiative is still fairly new and we already have just one generation of students that are past the program, this is something in development. So at the moment we still don't have like a, uh, specific structure that is based just for agencies and businesses in general, but it is something that we are considering and working towards too. So definitely. On the other hand, the upper management organizational team might not be aware to the fullest what am I about to talk? So it might come as a surprise to them, but also it is something in the works as well. So give us some time and we will come up with something.

Speaker B: Yeah, it feels like that would be something really credible because if you're a small business owner, the last thing you want to be doing is kind of wasting time. And onboarding somebody might be something that you'd have to divert weeks into, you know, siphoning employees off, writing documentation, SOPs, those kind of things. And if you could just pick something up off the shelf that was tried and tested over many years, that would actually be really handy. So, yeah, good luck. I hope that that initiative comes off.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker B: In terms of students, if you were a student, let's say you're at a, uh, university or you're looking for work, what would you say would be some of the top line items that you would mention as to why WP Credits is worth looking at? Because, you know, if I'm at A university, there's probably a thousand different things that I could be doing. WP credits would be in competition with all of those. Why? Do you think it's something that young people should be taking care to look at?

Speaker C: Yeah, I would think differently in that sense. Universities curriculums are outdated comparing to the industry that we are living and working in. So WordPress credits gives something that is in trend, that is happening now, that people are using and working now. So students who choose to go to this program are gaining the most efficient and not outdated curriculum and things that are being worked on in this moment. And this is bigger than WordPress. It is initially for WordPress, but the knowledge students get, nobody can take that away. They learn to be outspoken, they learn to use all the necessary remote work tools that is applicable in all the industry. So we are really encouraging them to be very marketable employees and people who have portfolios, whether they choose that category that brings a portfolio that is very transparent throughout, whatever they do. Because on, um, WordPressorg, every contribution is noted. So they're building their own business brand by doing WordPress credits. And in that way they are more marketable and can get more business opportunities.

Speaker B: I didn't realize that the WordPress.org profile, is it the profile you mean? Each time you participate in one of these credit programs, that will be a badge, for want of a better word, that you can display and it will be freely available for the public and presumably that will be difficult to acquire. That's the wrong word. What I mean is it won't be simple to acquire. You will genuinely have to.

Speaker C: Yes, you need to do the work. Let's say students are interested in translation, so they go to polyglot's team and they get assigned to a mentor who is on weekly basis working with them on onboarding, helping them how to navigate WordPressorg website translation, what needs to be done? And basically for that students, they need to translate, to have approved translation, 150 strings approved. So that doesn't mean, okay, I will translate 150 words. No, no, you might need to translate 500 words, out of which 150 is approved. And this is the bare minimum you need to do in order to get that badge that you contributed. Because that contribution, each contribution needs to be something very specific and tailored to help other people. That is very open and helpful.

Speaker B: So you mentioned translations there, which obviously is just one of multiple things that you could do and we could list them all out, but we won't. How is that curriculum? I'm doing air quotes. How Is that curriculum decided upon? In other words, how do you decide? Okay, I'm going to do a bit of translation, I'm going to do a bit of work on core, I'm going to work for the plugin review team. How is that decided and how is it decided by the institution? I guess that that's going to equal something which our university will stamp as part of your degree, let's say.

Speaker C: Yeah, so basically that is all arranged between the foundation and universities. You won't get it students doing marketing if that's not their preferable choice. So students opt in, they are given the whole like curriculum categories of things they can contribute to and the one they choose, this is the one they stick to throughout all the programs. So you cannot switch in between like translation and documentation or plugins or WP Klee, whatever. The whole program stick to one chosen category. And that is all aligned with the, let's say topic of university. So it is preferable for it related contributions. Communications are also uh, more favorable towards translation, community marketing. So, so it's aligned that way.

Speaker B: So flipping that round. So we've been talking about it from the point of view of the students, now let's just flip it around to the point of view of the university. I guess the same thing applies. They would have to communicate with the foundation and say, okay, these are the kind of things that we wish our students to do. These particular strands we will, you know, if they do 500 translation strings, that will count as something. I guess there's got to be some interface between the foundation and each university to establish what a, uh, credit equals.

Speaker C: Yeah, common ground as to how WordPress credits adds to the official curriculum of the university and the thing that university get out of it. They are in position to offer modern in trend teachings and that makes them more appealing to next generation of students because the more their existing students who are in the WordPress credits program are succeeding, the more desirable the university gets to newer generations because they don't teach outdated curriculums. They are aligning to what is now efficient and needed in the job market.

Speaker B: I suppose also as well. When I was at university there was a choice of about, I don't know, four things to do each year. Something like that you could do this or this or this and you had to pick one of them and that was your pathway. This feels much more wide open because uh, knowing the WordPress ecosystem, I know that there's dozens, maybe multiple dozens of different things that you could be involved in. So that's quite appealing as well. Isn't it? You know, you can just take a little nibble of this one thing and another nibble of this. And so there's potentially multiple dozens of different pathways that you could pick. And whilst you say that, once you've decided you've got to stick to that. Well, that's fair enough. But the fact that you've got so many different ways that you could choose that, to me as a university student, would have been really appealing. The fact that there's so many different things that you could do.

Speaker C: Yeah. And once they got in the overall input that we get from students that first they don't know that something like this exists and once they go deep and start work, it's like, wow, the whole mind just shifts and they are amazed by all the possibilities that they can do within WordPress that isn't talked about.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I presume they get to do it in the way that the WordPress community works, which is remotely distributed and when you wish to do it. So so long as I. You make the end of the university period of whatever a semester is or something, so long as you make the deadline, you can do it at night or in the early morning or.

Speaker C: Exactly. So they are training to be like workers, as we all are today, that are not restrained with some, um, deadlines or by official university rules. They are accountable for the final output. How will they come to that output? It's entirely up to them because, yes, they are young, but they are not so young that they cannot be held accountable for their actions. So they need to do the work. We got weekly mentorships and assessments, so it's a fun ride.

Speaker B: So just touching on that, the sort of ongoing support that every student needs, because with the best one in the world, there's a proportion of students who will leave everything to the last minute. I'm looking at myself in the mirror when I say that. So that ongoing support, it's a weekly sort of huddle. And is that like a one to one thing or is it a one to many thing?

Speaker C: Yes. So depending on the number of students, if a mentor has one or two students, it can be one to one. If there are more like five or six, it's better to have a group meeting on a weekly basis and then, um, slack chats in between, if anything is more needed than that. So basically we go through what they did last week. Are there any setbacks or they need additional help or do they need information from other parts of the team? Are they interested in something else? So we are really trying to get them involved in a way that matters to them. One of the things that each student needs to do, no matter section they chose, is to create a blog and to have weekly blog posts. So we discuss about that, what interests them, whether they want to be something personal like, or professional like. So it's very interesting to see how they think and how they express themselves and how they built their online Persona.

Speaker B: Do those huddles take place on a, let's say, university by university basis? So, for example, when you join and you mentor students, are they from the entire WP campus project, or are you doing it from the university of this town and the university of that town?

Speaker C: No, it's mixed. Mixed and matched.

Speaker B: M. Okay, well, that's a real strength as well, it feels, because presumably then you're on a call with people potentially from all over the world, certainly people that you may not have encountered before. And those sort of serendipitous chance encounters can sometimes be some of the more meaningful ones. You know, work comes out of those things, and meetups come out of those things, and unexpected things come out of those things. So that must be really nice as well, watching those kind of things happen.

Speaker C: Uh, yeah. It's like nothing I experienced before. And just to have the privilege to talk and work with those people, you never know what can come up out of them and, and out of our connections. And I get inspired every time we had chats, and they make me want to be a better educator.

Speaker B: Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker C: So, yeah, that's my take out of all this.

Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, so there's actually some psychological benefit for you as well. You get a real nice feeling out of it. Okay, that's really good. So with the best will in the world, a, uh, university every year, there's a cohort of children, young adults, whatever it may be, whichever institution it is, and a proportion of them will work diligently and hard and they will succeed. And some others maybe not so much. How does that work? How do you ensure that everybody gets through it? And I don't know if there's enough data to answer this question. Again, I'm doing air quotes. How is the pass rate? Do most people that embark on this get through the necessary things, or is there a fair bit of, I don't know, discipline, for want of a better word, that needs to be applied, and cajoling people to get through it?

Speaker C: Yes. So I touched based on the accountability. So we have not strict rules, but recommendations. Weekly mentor chats, async, uh, communication through Slack. They all have weekly tasks that needed to be done. So if a student don't answer the message or come to weekly mentor call three times, they are no longer WordPress credit students. And that is the accountability. You need to show yourself that you are willing to do the work. So if you don't care, we won't force you to do that if you don't want to. We will set reminders, we will call back, we will reach out. But if you are no show, no tell anything for three times, then evidently you are not for that. You don't wish to be there and we won't force you to be there.

Speaker B: And then in some way are uh, you required then to report that back to the institution and, and sort of say, um, okay, we've reached the end of the road here. And then it's for them to figure out how that impacts and presumably the students can get their grades and what have you. Okay, touching back on the sort of business side because we've dwelt a lot with students and universities and we're going to stay with students because that's really the underpinning of the whole thing. How has the business side of things, is it taking off? You were describing that it's kind of like a new thing. Have you got any sort of success stories or anecdotal evidence that people do in fact want this?

Speaker C: Yeah, so it's still fairly new, so we don't have those anecdotes yet. One of the reasons why I'm um, here at the World Camp Europe is to find out and to get new perspective from businesses, to reach out to them, to see what they think about the program, would they want to be involved and how to give tips, maybe how we can improve. So stay tuned for more.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it is interesting when you walk around an event like this, I don't have the exact numbers, but the demographic is definitely skewing older M. There's not so many 18 year olds. And if this community wishes to carry on at some point the age demographic will get to retirement age.

Speaker C: Yeah, just last night we were talking. I've been in the community for 11 years and for 11 years all the same faces are here and we really need new faces. But to get new faces, WordPress credit is one part of the solution. But then again we need to meet young people where they are and they are not on the conferences, they are not on websites, they don't use websites, they don't care about websites. They are on very specific social media channels. And if we want to get Fresh, new young blood. We need to go there and to present what we do in a way that matters to those kids.

Speaker B: In terms of success, if you were to, I don't know, let's imagine that we could cast our minds forwards five years. Let's go for that. What would you like to have happened with WP credits? Would you like, for example, to see a bunch of 20 somethings wandering around in an event like this? Does it matter that they're involved in the community and doing WordPress events and contributing to core and those kind of things? Or is success just more broadly? People are using WordPress, you know, it's still a project. What's your take on, um, what does success look like in five years?

Speaker C: For me, I would like to see more young people involved. Yes, we will always have users because in its core, WordPress is a very useful tool and I'm happy to stumble upon that tool many, many years ago to use it both personally and professionally. But I really want to see young people involved in a way that we were involved 10, 15 years ago. And to see what can happen. With WordPress, I strongly believe it will be transformed. Not with AI or all other flashy trends. WordPress has always been about people and we need new people, we need young people to get it where it needs to be. We are getting older and don't have strength or stamina to do so for how many long years by having new kids. Fresh perspectives. I'm really excited to see what they can come up with next.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's kind of handing over the baton in a way, isn't it? It's seeing what the future holds. Yeah. I definitely have concerns that the age demographic is skewing and no matter what has happened in the past, I don't see it being backfilled with younger people at the moment. But I think that's largely because we just assumed that that age demographic would fill itself because we were excited about it. So the younger generation will be excited about it. Well, it turns out the world moved on and TikTok came along and YouTube became a massive thing and mobile phones and all the different platforms became a thing. And so the attention was put elsewhere by many young people. And so I suppose we needed to come up with a system where we are, uh, in a sense just putting it in front of their face and saying, look, it's here. You know, you're a university student, you're somebody looking for work in a small business. Here's a credible way of getting involved in something which potentially could change your life. That seems like the most credible way of doing it at the moment. And I guess we'll just have to see what the next five years brings. In which case, is there anything that you felt you wanted to touch on that you wanted to get out of this chat before?

Speaker C: I think you did it masterfully and we touch base on everything that needed to be said.

Speaker B: Perfect. In that case, I will say, Ivana, thank you for chatting to me today. Fingers crossed that your presentation goes well tomorrow and that you packed the place out and that, uh, by this time next week you're extremely busy with the WP credits program. Thanks for joining me.

Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you for inviting m me.

Speaker B: Sam. Mhm.