In 2011, I sent my very first email to the wp-hackers mailing list. I wasn’t sure if it was the right place to introduce myself, but I had to start somewhere. In the years since, I’ve gone from being a tentative new contributor to being one of the release leads for WordPress 3.9. In this presentation, I’ll talk about my journey through the WordPress project. I’ll focus on some of the problems I encountered as a contributor and how I dealt with them. I’ll also look at how, more recently, the project has removed some of those barriers, making it simpler than ever for newcomers to get involved.