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An unexpected conversation with a woman who is not a very structured person but is good at organizing things.

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Anchen le Roux joins host, Bud Kraus, from Tauranga, New Zealand, for an engaging conversation about family, creativity, entrepreneurship, and the power of bringing people together. Originally from Pretoria, South Africa, Anchen reflects on growing up during the historic transition from apartheid, including singing at Nelson Mandela’s presidential inauguration. She shares her family's journey from South Africa to Portugal and eventually New Zealand, along with memories of her unusual childhood living among university students and the challenges of raising three children while building a career. With a background in programming and information technology, Anchen eventually followed her creative instincts into web design, establishing Simply Digital Design and Simply Digital Shops. A longtime contributor to the WordPress community, she discusses organizing WordCamps and co-hosting the Page Builder Summit with Nathan Wrigley, an event that has expanded beyond WordPress to embrace a wider world of website creators. When asked about her greatest superpower, Anchen identifies her ability to bring people together, particularly through selecting speakers, creating opportunities, and building lasting relationships. Throughout the conversation, her humor, warmth, and enthusiasm reveal someone whose greatest satisfaction comes not simply from technology or business, but from connecting people and helping communities thrive.

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An unexpected conversation with a funny bad guy who's been married twice - so far.

Raitis Sevelis joins Bud from Riga, Latvia, for a candid, humorous conversation about travel, family, and the experiences that shaped him. He shares stories of hiking in Iceland, exploring Spain, and growing up during Latvia’s transition from Soviet rule, reflecting on how happy childhood memories can obscure the hardships of that era. With Latvian and Russian heritage, he values speaking multiple languages and discusses regional security concerns, emphasizing that protecting his family comes first. Raitis also explains how boxing helps him stay focused, touches on his work at WPBakery, and speaks openly about divorce, remarriage, and the challenges of living with his own demanding personality. Throughout, his willingness to laugh at himself brings warmth and humor to even the most serious subjects.

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An unexpected conversation with a first-rate multimedia artist who brought a traditional touch to cross-stitched QR codes.

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Eleonora Anzini joins Bud to talk about a creative life spanning music, graphic design, photography, and contemporary art. A longtime brand designer and WordCamp Europe contributor, she shares her journey from studying piano and playing bass in rock bands to creating photography exhibitions and hand cross-stitched QR codes. She discusses her travels, her years living in Berlin, and her belief that art should communicate emotion rather than simply achieve technical perfection. Along the way, they explore client relationships, her personal life, the story behind her “Dog Faced Boy” nickname, and her memorable trip to Washington, D.C., fo

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An unexpected conversation with a trustworthy hombre who prefers no drama when it comes to romance.

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In Episode 123 of Seriously, BUD?, Bud talks with Jos Velasco, a fellow WP Credits mentor from Guadalajara. Jos explains the university-based program, which guides students into the WordPress community. He talks about Mexican food and travel, recommending Oaxaca, and says he learned English from online video games. He met his wife, a visual artist who exhibits in museums, at a launch party for a WordPress multisite blog network, and their calm relationship centers on their senior dogs and long trips, including six visits to Japan. He also covers his family, his partying high school days, and how he went from disliking coding as an engineering student to building everything in WordPress. He now handles escalated page-builder support cases at DreamHost. Jos names reading people as his superpower, recommends WP Credits' Rita Robles as a future guest, and explains that dropping the "e" from José was his own choice.

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An unexpected conversation with an 8th-generation Texan who hangs around the WordPress Community because she loves it.

Bud finally lands Charleen Mullenweg after two years of asking, and it's her first podcast ever. A professional genealogist and lifelong database enthusiast, Charleen explains how feeling like the odd one out in her mother's family led her to research her late father's side. She describes her work today, which includes tracing Texas mineral-rights owners for law firms, researching historic houses, occasional forensic genealogy, and most often helping clients qualify for lineage societies. She also offers beginners tips like starting with FamilySearch and Ancestry. Along the way, she talks about 43 years of embroidery, her love of spicy cooking, her career in healthcare and oil and gas informatics, and her role as the big sister who first went to WordCamps to support her brother Matt and stayed for the community. Her travels range from an opera-filled solo trip to Vienna, where she dined at the hotel where her great-great-grandmother once worked as a maid, to a long-delayed trip to Portugal. The conversation includes the show's signature "Seriously, Bud?" moment and wraps up with her guest recommendations, including Carolyn Shelby, the queen of a micronation.

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An unexpected conversation about resilience - across countries, careers, cultures, and whatever comes next.

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Robert Abela traces his journey from growing up on the small island of Malta to eventually settling in the Netherlands, with stops in Cyprus (where he reconnected with his now-wife Charlene) and Scotland (where Brexit ultimately pushed the family to relocate) along the way. A self-described college dropout, he built an accidental career in WordPress security, growing his company Melapress and its plugins WP Activity Log and WP2FA into a stable business despite industry-wide headwinds from AI disruption. An avid outdoorsman and self-taught polyglot (fluent in Maltese, English, Italian, and Dutch), Robert credits his adaptability across countries and cultures as his defining strength, and closes the episode previewing his upcoming talk at WordCamp US in Phoenix while recommending Milana Cap, Matt Cromwell, and Francisco Torres as future guests.

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Vancouver-based Jill Binder shares highlights from her pre-COVID life as a digital nomad who traveled to 10 countries in 11 months, tracing her parallel passions for coding and poetry back to a 1990 teacher strike in 10th grade. She talks candidly about choosing to stay single, her deep ties to the WordPress community despite stepping back from WordPress-specific work, and her current venture, Tech Differently — an accessible speaker accelerator and conference (techdifferently.com, October 27, 2026) built around a five-module curriculum and sponsor-subsidized pricing. The episode wraps with lighter talk about her hobbies, including digital art and competitive Rubik's Cube solving, and her recommendation of WordCamp Asia organizer O'Neil Rosero as a future guest.

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An unexpected conversation with a rock climber who was pulled to the Philippines for a very good reason.

Casey Burridge joined Seriously, BUD? to share his globetrotting background, winding career trajectory, and "go with the flow" philosophy on life. Driven to indoor rock climbing in Manila to relieve screen-induced migraines, Casey approaches the sport as a strategic route-reading puzzle that appeals to his love of strategy games. Born in South Africa with family roots in England and Zambia, he spent his childhood split between rural England and South Africa before moving to Beijing after high school to teach English, where he became conversationally fluent in Mandarin. His academic and professional path took an equally non-linear route: after his dream of becoming a doctor was derailed and he left a biochemistry program, he went on to earn a master's degree in information systems management without ever finishing an undergraduate degree. Introduced to WordPress by his father to blog about his years in China, Casey built a career spanning London ad-tech, data analysis, and marketing, leading to his current role as strategic growth and operations manager at GravityKit alongside founder Zach Katz. Now living in Manila with his girlfriend, Casey embraces how abandoning rigid plans led to a rich life of remote collaboration and international living, while recommending Sam Wains from Bantu as a future guest.

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