Press This: What Happens at the Intersection of Culture, Creativity, and Tech

Welcome to Press This, the WordPress community podcast from WMR. Each episode features guests from around the community and discussions of the largest issues facing WordPress developers. The following is a transcription of the original recording.

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Doc Pop: You’re listening to Press This, a WordPress community podcast on WMR. Each week, we spotlight members of the WordPress community. I’m your host, Doc Pop, I support the WordPress community through my role at WP Engine and my contributions on Torquemag.io. You can subscribe to Press This on RedCircle, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasting apps. You can also download the episodes directly from WMR.fm. 

Now on Press This, we often talk about how new technologies can change your WordPress business, but today I’d like to switch things up and talk about how technology can help fuel creativity and culture, and how those things can all go hand in hand. 

Joining me today is Lawrence Edmondson, a Founder at Eat Big Digital, to talk about what happens at the intersection of culture, creativity, and tech.

Lawrence, how are you doing today?

Lawrence Edmondson: Hey, Doc, I’m doing well. How are you?

Doc Pop: I’m doing really well. Thanks so much for joining us. Why don’t we kick this off with just; I’d like to hear your WordPress origin story. 

Lawrence Edmondson: Yeah, sure thing. So, first and foremost, Eat Big Digital is a software consultancy. We’re a small group based in New York, and we’re ex-agency folks that understand technology and love technology, but really see an opportunity where technology and creativity intersect, especially when culture is involved as well.

So our, you know, our technology story has actually been two and a half decades in the making, right. And the first time I got into content management, per se, I think it was early—well, later 90s, early 2000s, right? 

This is when content management was in a very brutal state, you know? When there was no such thing as headless, everything was a monolith. But that’s kind of when I got into it. 

But then ‘03, when WordPress came out, you know, we jumped on that. So my WordPress origin story is I’ve been using it since day one, literally, right? You know, at the time, as I mentioned, there were other tools, but they were very brutal and nothing was open source.

Nothing offered the flexibility of WordPress, which I’m really happy that WordPress has stayed true to its roots to this day.

Doc Pop: And thinking back in terms of the early days of websites and early days of WordPress and thinking about it with creativity in mind, I actually kind of think of how technology inspired creativity in its limitations. 

Back then it was all about “you can’t really do much, but let’s kind of figure out what we can do” with, you know, with GIFs or things like that.

I feel like technology in a way has always kind of fueled creativity in its limitations, and now it’s kind of switching around a little bit, and it’s becoming much more open as websites can become easier for anyone to build and to be able to really build the website that they envision, not just, kind of like “stick around to a template.”

So yeah, let’s just start off with that. What’s, what’s coming to your mind there?

Lawrence Edmondson: Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, I have an exercise for the audience. And I definitely, you know, like you mentioned, right, what happens at the intersection of culture, creativity, and tech? 

Let’s talk about websites, as well, right, as a tangible output of that thing, of technology.

But for the audience, if you’re able to take out a piece of pen and paper, I want you to write down the past three decades. And if you want to do this on your phone, or however you want to do it. But let’s start with 1990, so write that down, then put 2000, and then 2010, and then 2020.

So we’re looking back at three decades, right? Now, what I’d like to do is start with each I’ll—let’s throw it back to 1990, right? 

Let’s jump in the time machine and go back. Let’s go back to when Gen Z were born, so Gen Z is anyone born between 1997 and 2012. Let’s go back to 1990, right? That decade. And let’s talk about something that you touched on. Websites, and how creativity and technology and culture kind of blends together. 

Now, the reason why I love this topic is because I think something really interesting happens when culture, creativity, and technology all kind of merge and blend in and play off of each other.

And I’ve been watching this for a while, and I think that something really interesting happens at that intersection. Technology moves at its own pace. Technology, as we’ve seen, empowers businesses, sometimes creates entirely new business opportunities, right? We’ve seen that a few times and I’ll mention a few of those.

Which sometimes, you know, technology oftentimes fuels creativity, right? And then, as a result of those two things coming together, we have cultural shifts. 

So, we have things in culture that sometimes weren’t there before that are created. We have different perspectives or different ways of people engaging with things as a result of technology and creativity coming together.

Make sense?

Doc Pop: Mm-hmm.

Lawrence Edmondson: Cool. So, let’s start back to 1990. So, 1990 gave us—the 1990 decade gave us, I’ll talk about these three buckets. 

Tech gave us the internet, gave us Java, Google, and Amazon, right? Back then, a website was very simple. There were a few things you could do on websites, and we were all scrambling to figure out “how do you get your content on a site? How do you get video on there?” 

This is pre-YouTube, right? We had GIFs—or JIFs, the debate still continues. The proper way to say that word—but, you know, any kind of motion graphics was very 2D. Right? There was no 3D, really, at the time. There was, but it was very limited to desktop computers, not really the web, per se. 

Culturally, this was the rise of hip hop, right? Grunge was a huge part of that. Sitcoms, indie films, all happened culturally. And then creativity-wise, we had Photoshop. That’s when Photoshop was born, which gave room to web design, right? And everything started to happen at that point where web started to challenge print.

So going back to your question, that’s when website design was an actual thing, right? And a lot of people came into it because the technology was now there that fueled the creativity, which made a huge impact on culture. 

Who are some of the winners that we saw that came out of that decade? Obviously, Google and Amazon, and Amazon started as a very different company back then, right? There was no Amazon Web Services at the beginning. Amazon was a place where we’d go to buy books, right? And then they started to, you know, they were delivering things it was—it just grew, right? 

So Amazon, Google, Oracle, Intel, and Microsoft, I think, were the biggest winners because all of those companies realized that this technology that they were sitting on allowed them to affect some societal change and change culture in a way that the later decades with everything that came later on would be a direct result of that. 

At that time, Apple was barely surviving, right? In the 1990s if you look at the Fortune 100 list from that time, Apple was at 96, like on that hundred of, you know, the fortune hundred list. They were near death, right? This is when they had fired Steve Jobs and he had come back and he started to breathe new life into the company.

The next decade. So, going on along in our paper, 2000s, right? The new millennium or the dawn of social media and mobile.

As I like to call it, the Golden Age of Tech, right? That was the decade of disruptions, you know, according to Walter Isaacson.

From the tech perspective, that’s when we had WordPress, right? ‘03. Python, Git, Open Source, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, Airbnb, and Uber, right? Netflix, Airbnb, and Uber were all created, again, based on technology unlocking brand new sectors. 

If it wasn’t for the technology that’s mobile and, you know, and web services and things like that—like having this decentralized model—Airbnb and Uber would not have been possible. A hundred percent.

And Netflix, as we all know, came about and kind of killed Blockbuster. So the technology, the, you know—shipping DVDs right through the internet was a way to create this cultural shift. And as we all know, like, Netflix moved away from DVDs to streaming once bandwidth wasn’t an issue anymore.

So again, technology and culture kind of blending in and creativity being a byproduct of that. You with me so far?

Doc Pop: Yeah, absolutely. We’re in the 2000s now, Golden Age, and coming into 2010s, right? 

Lawrence Edmondson: Right, 2010s coming up. 

So in the 2000s, right? We—this was the age of social media. So this is when all these social media platforms came about and really started to take hold.We started to notice them then.

That’s when hip hop culture became pop culture, right? So everything changed then in terms of just music. Spotify—Spotify came a little bit later, but it was the dawn of things to come, right? 

From a creativity standpoint, remember, Flash? This is when everything was 2D. Flash made that possible for us to move into 3D on the web, something that wasn’t possible before. You’re a big gamer, so game consoles, right? The game console wars was around that time.

And from a brand perspective, what that unlocked creativity-wise, was reality TV and everything was unscripted. So authenticity became a big deal because now people were on social—influencers and celebrities were on social—so they didn’t need an agency to tell their story anymore. They could just go online and just tell and connect directly with their fans. Right? 

So it all changed, again, creativity, culture, and tech all blending together. Apple, Cisco, Walmart, and Nokia, I think, came out as big winners around that time, oddly enough. 

Because Facebook and those companies, the F.A.N.G. wasn’t—they were just starting. So they didn’t come out as big winners until The 2010 era.

Doc Pop: Let’s take a quick break here and we’re going to come back and pick up on 2010s. Is that all right, Lawrence? 

Lawrence Edmondson: Okay let’s do it.

Doc Pop: All right. Well, we’re going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we’ll pick up on this interesting discussion on the intersection of creativity, tech, and culture. 

So stay tuned for more after this short break.

Welcome back to Press This, a WordPress community podcast. My name is Doc. Today, I’m talking to Lawrence Edmondson, the founder at Eat Big Digital. 

Lawrence was walking us through a lot of interesting points of technology meeting culture and creativity from the 90s to 2000s. 

And speaking of 2000s, we had Chris Messina on the show last week talking about how he created the hashtag, which you know, started off in the 2000s on Twitter and it’s now everywhere.

And Lawrence, you were about to bring us into the 2010s. Why don’t we pick up there?

Lawrence Edmondson: Yes, yes. So this is—the 2010 from a tech perspective is when we saw social media now really started to dominate and take shape. 

So that’s when Instagram, Snapchat came out. I forgot we had the iPhone. The iPhone came out in the previous decade. So that really made social media take off because now everyone was mobile, right? And the smartphone was out.

2010 gave us the iPad. And 2010 also gave us this notion of headless commerce, right? From Dirk Hoerig, the CEO and Founder of Commerce Tools.

Headless commerce was now a thing. Obviously, WordPress was on fire, right? You know, we’re creating content left and right. UGC was a huge deal.

But also, now, there is a need to tie content and commerce together. And that’s when WooCommerce was born: one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there.

Microsecond Trading, Brexit, Occupy Wall Street, all those things were happening around the same time. So culturally, there was a lot of uprisings and things of that nature.

Black Lives Matter actually started in 2013. And I think if it weren’t for social media, and the access to data and the ability to connect people, movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter would not have been as successful, right? Because there was no way to connect and mobilize people.

Every movement that we’ve seen since the civil rights—from the civil rights movement until now, there’s always been two major components. One is getting the word out. Right? Just communicating, letting people know. 

And the second aspect is mobilizing people, right? Once the word is out, how do we mobilize people? So social media made that a possibility during that time. 

One of the most interesting things I realized from that era, from that decade, is that because of the iPad now, there’s this whole need to have responsive web design, and that’s when responsive web design was born. Everything was now going to a flat design system and things were not as 1990s, 2000-ish.

The 2010s had its own identity, right? That decade had its own identity. And that’s when we saw the F.A.N.G.: Facebook, Apple, Netflix, and Google. They dominate. 

So the previous decade, they were just getting started, and 2010 is when they dominated industry and became the big four that they are today. 

2020 until now, right? We had to grapple with everything from COVID to God-knows-what from 2020. But from a tech perspective, AI, I think that’s when AI became a thing that started to pop up on a lot of people’s radar. 

NFTs, Blockchain, and Web3 all became huge things in tech that were happening. But more importantly, targeting and personalization with third-party cookies started to go away, right? It’s been a while now, but you know, hopefully they will eventually go away.

Getting that first-party and zero-party data for marketers was super important. Because now we couldn’t rely on third-party data anymore—the cookie, hopefully going away. So targeting and personalization, especially when it comes to NFTs and Web3—like everyone wanted to be in the Metaverse, but no one knew how to get there. I can’t tell you how many brands came to us asking to create some Web3 experience in the Metaverse. And 9 out of 10 times, they ended up in Roblox, you know? 

But it all goes back to personalization and wanting to create this extended experience, right? You’re a gamer, you know. At that time, you could purchase an outfit for your avatar in whatever the, you know, your game of choice was—Fortnite, for instance.

And you know, we dream of a world where you could actually—if I were purchasing a pair of jeans in the real world, it’d be dope if I could actually purchase a pair of jeans for my avatar in the Metaverse. 

Never really quite came to fruition. I mean, we saw different brands—Gucci for instance did some interesting stuff in Roblox—but it was all very campaign-based.

But again, this was tech kind of driving culture. This is when we saw—in the past four years is when we saw the dominance of social media overtaking TV, right? It eclipsed TV. 

In the past four years, the average user spends 30 percent more time on social media than they do on TV, right? So TV is, while still relevant, it’s not as important for big brands to reach an audience as social media is.

That goes back to WordPress and content management, right? And UGC. Now, the past four years, headless content management has become a thing.

It actually started in the 2010s, but really picked up steam, I would say, the last eight, nine years, probably, right? Where now we have these decoupled experiences where it wasn’t just headless commerce anymore, but actually there’s headless content management.

So there’s an omnichannel play that brands have been hoping for for years. Now, an omnichannel experience is actually possible. Why? Because of the technology. 

So those are just some of the things, you know—and obviously, I’d be remiss, I know everyone’s been talking about AI lately, so I’m not going to beat a dead horse—but I think from a creativity standpoint, the biggest thing in the past decade has been AI.

And in the past few years, the past two years, it’s been generative AI. So, I’ll take a pause right there.

Doc Pop: Well, I feel like you were talking about, like, some of the changes that have happened and how they shaped culture. 

And I think there was a few moments where culture, you know, came back and shaped technology. Like you mentioned Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter starting in 2013, and, like, people kind of using their phone more, and Twitter was the place to kind of follow news. 

And as a result of that cultural shift, all websites were now going, “Oh, we need to be mobile. We need to have responsive web design.” 

So that seems like a very good example of the web reacting to a cultural shift versus, you know, just causing “Oh responsive design came around, thus people went on the web.”

No, it was the opposite way. The, you know, the culture forced it.

Lawrence Edmondson: It’s interesting you say that because I think as technologists, sometimes we create a solution that’s seeking a problem to solve, right?

And I think what happened, you’re exactly right, right? All those movements that happened around that time, and then responsive web design and the ability, well the need, to now deliver content independent of the—to have content not being tied to a monolith, right? So independent of the business logic, to sort of separate those concerns.

And that’s why one of the reasons I love WP Engine and WordPress is because of that, right? Now, you could kind of decouple it and have a very lightweight content management system that’s not very overbearing. 

So for the first time during the 2010s is when we actually saw that promise fulfilled of having content being pushed out independent of, “Oh, I’ve got to have this thing installed to render my content,” you know what I mean? It made a huge difference. 

A few things that we’ve seen also in the past decade is—as many advancements as we’ve had in AI, there’s also been some course correcting that needs to happen and that’s still happening right now. 

So obviously AI went from just creating, from being a chatbot to like—when I say “AI,” I’m painting in broad strokes—but speaking about ChatGPT specifically, right?

You know, being a chatbot, to creating images, to now with Sora and creating video. And now I think audio is like the next threshold, right? 

And when you put all those things together—it’s funny, Tyler Perry just halted production on his $800 million expansion to his studios, his Tyler Perry Studios, because he actually got wind of what AI could do in the production space, like creating AI-generated video.

So I think this technology is causing a cultural shift, causing people to pay attention and go, “Wait a second, how can we use this thing as opposed to running away from it? How can we leverage it?”

Doc Pop: I want to take a quick break here and when we come back, we’re going to wrap up our conversation and I want to pick up on the advice, Lawrence, that you have for people who are navigating this intersection of culture and technology. 

So stay tuned for more after the short break.

Welcome back to Press This, the WordPress Community Podcast. 

Right before the break, Lawrence, you were talking about the complexities of merging culture, creativity, and technology all together. What advice do you have for creators or website builders or agency owners who are trying to navigate the complexities of technology and culture and where they meet?

Lawrence Edmondson: So, great question. I think the advice I would give would be to be in tune.

So for brands, specifically, because a large part of what we do at Eat Big Digital is partnering with agencies and platforms such as yourself. By the way, shout out to Wes and the entire WP Engine partnership team, they have been great partners.

Doc Pop: Right on.

Lawrence Edmondson: But we either deal with platforms or we’ll go in with an agency or sometimes we go client direct. 

One of the things that we’ve seen is that brands are often—there’s not a lack of data. The problem is understanding how to interpret the data and how to make use of that data, right? 

So oftentimes we’ll have a client that’s sitting on a mountain of data. Or there might be data silos within their organization, and they typically run the risk, if they’re creating campaigns, they run the risk of being tone deaf, right?

Or not understanding what they need to be talking about when they’re speaking to certain demographics, right? If you’re—if you want to reach Gen Z, two thirds of Gen Z are fans of hip hop culture, okay. 

Hip hop culture transcends the music. Hip hop culture is the music, it’s sports, it’s fashion, it’s the lifestyle, it’s your attitude and thoughts on, you know, society on a whole.

But two thirds of those people, two thirds of Gen Z, are fans of hip hop culture. So, typically, we find brands that are trying to reach Gen Z, but are just struggling because they really have a hard time interpreting the data. 

So, the advice I would give brands, specifically, that are trying to understand and best leverage culture, creativity, and technology is: Hire people that represent the audience that you’re trying to reach.

If you keep hiring the same type of people over and over that fit the mold, you’re going to be getting the same type of results, you know? DE&I was a huge thing a couple years ago, and then everyone started laying off their head or chief diversity officers, right? So now we’re back to where we started.

Currently, what’s happening is there’s a lot of cultural cues that are out there. But brands are just not picking up on them. So they have to pay attention. And the way to do that: Get a more diverse talent pool in the room, number one. 

Number two: Start listening to these folks. 

And number three: Innovate. Innovate or die, right? Innovate or die. Make use of this new technology that’s coming out, right? And don’t be afraid. Commit at least 20 percent of your R&D budget, if you have one, or your product development budget, commit 20 percent of that to innovation.

So that would be my advice.

Doc Pop: Well, thanks so much for your thoughts there and your suggestions, Lawrence. If people want to find more about what you’re working on at Eat Big Digital, what’s a good place to find y’all online?

Lawrence Edmondson: The best place would be LinkedIn. So on LinkedIn, Lawrence Edmondson on LinkedIn. And then our website, weeatbig.com. Those are the two places that you could find me. 

Thank you so much, Doc. It’s been a pleasure.

Doc Pop: It’s been a pleasure. Yeah. 

And thanks to the listeners for listening to this episode of Press This, a WordPress community podcast on WMR. Please visit Torquemag.io to see transcribed versions of these podcasts, plus more WordPress news and tutorials. You can also subscribe to Press This on RedCircle, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts.

I’m your host, Dr. Popular. I support the WordPress community through my role at WP Engine, and I love spotlighting members of that community each and every week on Press This.

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