Welcome to the Pantheon Community Hub!
Word on the street is you’re new around here! Here at Pantheon, community is everything. It s a personal goal of mine to get to know each & everyone of you so I would love for you to share 1-3 things about yourself! Please Take a Moment to Introduce Yourself 
To kick things off, let me take a moment to introduce myself! I am McKenna, your friendly Community Admin. To learn a little bit more about me, grab a snack & watch this short 3 minute video, that I only attempted to record 15 times! But who’s counting, right? 
It’s safe to say I am really excited to have you here and cannot wait to embark on this exciting journey with you. 
If you need help navigating the Hub or are having difficulty finding an answer to your question, feel free to tag me in your thread. 
First! 
My name is Rob Watson. I’m the owner of a small, lean agency called Webidextrous.com. I’ve been a Pantheon Partner since 2014 and a Pantheon Hero since 2019. Webidextrous is a funny name I came up with when I founded the agency. It’s a play on “ambidextrous”, or being able to use both hands (and both the creative and analytical sides of the brain) equally well. Our focus is to ensure that anyone we host on Pantheon is having the most seamless and high-performance experience possible, with maintenance packages and add-ons that do the work for you so you can concentrate on higher-priority business needs. We help both B2C and B2B clients as well as do off-label services for other Pantheon agencies seeking to maximize their billable hours by outsourcing their maintenance work.
Hey Rob! 
Thanks for joining the new community hub! 
Thanks for sharing a little about yourself! Lucky me, I already had the honor of getting to know you!
Also that is so funny! I cannot believe I never knew that is how you came up with “Webidextrous” 
That is so fitting!
Our focus is to ensure that anyone we host on Pantheon is having the most seamless and high-performance experience possible, with maintenance packages and add-ons that do the work for you so you can concentrate on higher-priority business needs.
Love hearing this! You have been on the platform for such a long tome! Do you have any best practices and or/tips for or new Pantheon customers?
Best practice is to learn the Terminus and Quicksilver stuff early on. Get into the new education modules and really practice what you’re learning to build “muscle memory” of where things are and how to do them. Keep notes of things that you learn that aren’t necessarily documented or that are not easy to remember but that you’ll be using frequently.
Hi McKenna & all 
@mckenna.regets. Friend. I’VE BEEN TO ALASKA!
I haven’t been to 49 states, but that’s one that I have been to. We were lucky enough to go on a National Geographic Expedition cruise (I think it was this one, but they have many) which meant that we had professional naturalists on board, a much smaller boat so we could get closer to shore (with fewer people aboard) and a much more active itinerary than a typical cruise. I definitely recommend if you can scrape together the funds. (although we went in the summer, so no ice fishing – maybe their Antarctica cruise?)
I’m Chris, a Senior Software Engineer and tech lead on the CMS Platform team at Pantheon. You can learn a little about me (until such time that the link no longer works) on the AMA I did a year ago on the other forums. I work on a lot of the stuff that you might interface with on Pantheon – particularly for WordPress. I had a big part in pushing the WordPress (Composer Managed) upstream out the door and continue to monitor and maintain it as we tweak and refine it in Early Access, I am one of the folks who contributes to and maintains the Pantheon plugins in the WordPress plugin repository, and my team is broadly responsible for a lot of the EA programs for WordPress related stuff that are active now (or are forthcoming).
I’ve been working with WordPress for a long time – something like 15 years – and in that time I’ve freelanced, worked for a premium WordPress plugin, developed online training courses about WordPress, then moved into the agency world at WebDevStudios and Human Made before joining Pantheon. I’ve seen a lot of the WordPress world, how it’s evolved, how to extend it into territories it was never really intended to go, and how it’s grown from just another CMS on the market, to THE CMS of choice for both small biz and individuals as well as enterprise organizations – and I’ve personally worked on sites across the whole gamut.
I’m based in Salt Lake City, Utah, where I’ve lived for over 20 years now, but I was born and raised in the SF Bay Area. My partner and I have two teenagers and three cats (Gavin, Lilah, Luna, Star and Juniper, respectively). I’m a huge D&D and TTRPG nerd and have been learning 3d printing as a means to have miniatures for the ongoing D&D campaign I’ve been running for ~3 years for my kids and their friends (as opposed to shelling out wads of cash for official minis, although those are nice, too). When I’m not working, I’m probably planning my next D&D session, or thinking about D&D, or watching/listening to some D&D or TTRPG actual play podcast – Matt Mercer, Brennan Lee Mulligan and Griffin McElroy are all frequent (virtual) visitors into our household.
I like to go on outdoor adventures – hiking and exploring the desert or tidepooling along the coast – and you can see some evidence of those travels on my Instagram, although we’ve been traveling a bit less since the pandemic.
You’ll probably see me in the Pantheon Community Slack, but I’m always happy to talk about role playing as much as (if not more than) talking about WordPress. 
That is a really great point! I will have to keep that little tip in my back pocket if someone ever asks Thank you!
Hiiii friend!
Thanks for popping in to share a little bit about yourself (again 
). Okay, so for starters I did NOT know that National Geographic did tours!! 
As of today, my life is changed forever! Probably goignto spend a whole day now looking for trips I can go on! Another fun fact about myself, I love nature & am pretty much obsessed with every survival show known to man. In fact, the show “Alone” inspired me to sign up for survival courses here in Arizona. This is the course I enrolled in! Kind of nervous but also stoked at the same time!
I’ve seen a lot of the WordPress world, how it’s evolved, how to extend it into territories it was never really intended to go, and how it’s grown from just another CMS on the market, to THE CMS of choice for both small biz and individuals as well as enterprise organizations – and I’ve personally worked on sites across the whole gamut.
You know I have to ask this — where do you see WordPress 5 years from now? I almost said 25 years, but let’s face it 5 years in tech is like 100! But having the extensive experience you do, I am interested!
Okay I don’t know a lot about D&D but I am intrigued. Do you have any photos or anything to share? Maybe of those miniatures? 
For real! The folks that Nat Geo has partnered with are really cool and have been doing this for a long time and they have so many trips that just look amazing. My partner and I really want to go on the Galapagos one, but there are so many. 
My partner Erin and the kids have been doing this nature/survival skills class for the last several years. This was actually the last year they’ll be doing it because my son’s planning on going to college in the fall and my daughter is going to be going full time into high school (after doing homeschooling for forever). So watching Alone is a thing that we’ve done together as well and a lot of the basic skills (fire building, making traps, making rope and baskets) are all things that they’ve at least touched on. All three of them have (I believe) successfully made file with a bow drill and no other materials (other than tinder), which is just amazing to me. 
I feel like WordPress is at an inflection point. Putting aside the AI stuff for a minute – which is interesting, sure, but feels very much like just “the new shiny” – the bigger question is the degree to which WordPress is able to be adopted by enterprise consumers. Speaking as someone who’s worked for those sorts of agencies, historically, site owners would come in and say “I want a WordPress site” and an agency would build it for them. That’s great. But WordPress needs to expose itself more to an audience who just says “I want a website”. And, on the small scale, because it’s free, and because you can find stuff for it, if you’re a mom & pop shop needing to just build a website, maybe that’s a thing you can do, but also, it’s probably easier to build it in Wix or Squarespace and not need to worry about hosting and maintenance and all that stuff. On the larger scale, you’re more familiar with buzzwords and capabilities like Digital Experience Platform and Digital Asset Management and probably have a laundry list of integrations and a desire to better personalize your site for the huge customer lists you compile. WordPress is just barely entering that space now, and it’s hard – partially because there isn’t a sort of unified product owner you can just go to like Adobe Experience Manager. Maybe AEM has more stuff than you need, and is more complicated than you need it to be, but you know it has all the stuff (probably). So the challenge is in convincing those consumers that WordPress is the right choice for them, too. That you can scale it to handle all those requirements, have a slimmer and more streamlined site that’s actually tailored to your needs, and be able to move faster when there are new things that you want to add or experiment with. If WordPress can continue to gain adoption in that space, then I think it will continue to grow and dominate the market, but if that adoption is particularly challenging or difficult, I think those growth numbers are likely to stall.
For the software itself, I think that the ultimate goal is to compete with the visual page builders like Wix and Squarespace, so there will be even more JavaScript and React layers built on top of Gutenberg and cover more parts of the site and how you build sites. It’s starting already, with block-based themes, where you have themes that are just a bunch of javascript templates and some json files as opposed to layers and layers of PHP files. That means that developers need to grow and “learn JavaScript deeply” to keep up, but it also means that JS devs can enter into WordPress without necessarily having to have the 10-15 years of WordPress experience that I have, and start hammering away at things. The future WordPress will be even more JavaScript-based and the lines between “front-end” and “back-end” will be drawn along the JS/PHP boundaries.
Of course!
This is just a dice rolling tower that my son found and printed and Erin painted as a gift a couple years ago. There’s a window in the back to drop your die into, and it rolls down a spiral staircase inside and comes out of the doorway at the bottom.
These are a few of the creatures I’ve printed for my campaign:
I’ve also written an adventure and a homebrew race that can be found on DMsGuild and made just a whole bunch of other rules and items and creatures that I haven’t put up for sale yet that I keep on a site called Homebrewery.
AMAZINGGGGGG!! Parenting level 100 unlocked! Wow, you have to share photos of those as well. I still have yet to even do that! 
In terms of the WordPress stuff, I need to unpack all of that more. I have some feelings too 
I cannot believe those are all made by a 3D printer. Just, UNREAL. I am obsessed with the jabberwocki! I actually love that movie! And the mawmouth looks terrifying but in the best way! Seriously, this is such a neat hobby! It’s making me want to get back into my creative side. I don’t get to exercise that part of my brain lately as much as I would like to! Thank you for sharing these!!
Yeah, D&D became my pandemic hobby, just doubling down. When we weren’t able to play in person I really realized how much I needed it to express my creative impulses. There are so many facets between brainstorming new ideas, taking inspiration from existing stuff and tweaking it for our game, and then finding and printing all the minis. And of course coming up with the perfect soundtrack! I’ve also been using it to experiment with AI, having robots do images for me to show locations the players are visiting and having a robot come up with ideas for things to add into the game. It’s pretty good at coming up with lists of characters and places, which are often really time consuming to write on your own (especially as a lot of the time they might never actually be seen in game).
Hi everyone!
My name is Heidi, and I work here at Pantheon on the team responsible for Pantheon Learning. Super excited to leverage this community for content ideas, to share what we’re working on, and more!
Here are a few things about me: 1. I live just East of Cleveland, Ohio with my 6-year-old son, Henry and my elderly cat, Sophie. My long-distance partner lives about an hour West of Melbourne, Australia with his 3 daughters, so I like to say that I have a summer home in Australia. 2. I love all things making and crafting – I’m into crocheting, making jewelry out of beads and sculpting with polymer clay, making things that aren’t flowers look like flowers, acrylic pour painting, and more. 3. I am a huge book nerd (my undergrad degree is in English Lit), and I enjoy playing video games with my kiddo in our spare time.
Happy to meet all of you!
I have wanted to try D&D for some time now… I missed my opportunity when I was young, and now I feel like it’s a bit like gambling – you can’t just go up to the table if you don’t know Blackjack!
Well howdy there @heidi.kirby! 
Thanks for sharing a little bit about yourself with the community! I am sure our customers will be more that excited to share their thoughts on the content/courses within Pantheon Learning!
Cleveland in the house! Also Henry is the cutest! Totally your mini-me!
MELBOURNE! Hot off the barbie! 
Oh how I miss Australia! The people, the food – all of it! Although I must say Aruba beaches have Australia & New Zealand beat.
One Happy Island, Aruba
Speaking of photos! Do you have any to share from your visits across the pond @heidi.kirby?
It’s literally never too late, @heidi.kirby. You can absolutely start now knowing nothing. In fact, I signed my son and I up for a D&D Dungeon Mastering class at the University of Utah – this is the last week, but they basically got a bunch of new-ish DMs and brand new players and put them together. We’ll be wrapping up our short adventure this weekend at a super cool, very nerdy book store.
Hi friends! My name is Kristi, and I’m a growth designer here at Pantheon. I was also a Pantheon customer myself for 8 years, at 2 different companies, before I joined the team.
In my role as growth designer, I use traditional UX skills alongside specialized training that includes conversion optimization, experimentation, UX writing, and digital psychology.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the first time user experience and onboarding. So if you have feedback on any of those things, please reach out!
Besides that, I have a number of side projects and hobby websites that provide even more of a creative outlet. I am a “retired” wedding and portrait photographer, although I still have a camera and dabble from time to time. I love nature and art, and I live in beautiful Minnesota lake country. I also have two very fluffy and very adorable cats, as pictured here. They are brothers, and their names are Grizzly and Lou. 
Hi @kristi.whitman!
Thanks for sharing a little bit about yourself with the rest of the Community!
In my role as growth designer, I use traditional UX skills alongside specialized training that includes conversion optimization, experimentation, UX writing, and digital psychology.
I find the work you do so interesting and undoubtedly impactful! Can you share a little bit more about how you this idea of digital psychology. How does this work & how do growth designers use this to help improve the UX?
Also Grizzly & Lou are ADORABLE!! 
Oh my goshhh look at the joeys!!! 
I am very jealous now!
Hi everyone, my name is Kyle Skibbe (rhymes with ‘Libby’ ). I’m a Product Management leader here at Pantheon. I can’t wait to get to know many of you in our shiny new Community Hub!
