Category Archives: Asides

Interesting links.

Extended Interview with Forbes

Asides

J. J. Colao, who covered Automattic for Forbes Magazine in 2012 and has a long history and experience with WordPress and Automattic, sat down with me for close to three hours in March and somehow managed to distill it down to just a few thousand words of interview. (“13,500 words down to 2,800.”) I’m sheepish to link it because there are a lot of “I” statements and some nuance lost in the distillation, but JJ asks great questions and we cover a lot of ground that anyone who follows Automattic or the WordPress ecosystem I think will find interesting. You can check it out here.

Seoul, Jakarta, Singapore, Tokyo, Osaka, Manila, Melbourne, Sydney, Wellington, and Auckland

Asides

Later this week I’m heading on a speaking tour of a number of cities in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand talking about the past and future of WordPress and some of the things I’ve learned in the past few years of building WordPress and Automattic. It’s been a number of years since I’ve visited these countries, and I’ve never been to Korea, Singapore, Melbourne, or Auckland before, so really looking forward to meeting the local communities in each of these cities and learning about how we can best set up WordPress for the coming decade of growth, especially in languages other than English.

If you’re near any of these cities and want to come by check out the following links for more information. Even if it says “sold out” already, as many are, put your name on the waitlist anyway because I know some places are already searching for larger venues, and there could always be cancellations or spaces open up at the last minute.

Asia

Australia & New Zealand

The schedule might be a little exhausting, but I wanted to make it as many communities as possible in the short window of time I have before I need to be stateside again.

Scrollkit and Longreads at Automattic

Asides

You might have seen the news last week that Longreads is joining Automattic’s editorial team. Today I’m excited to announce that we’ve acquired Scroll Kit and they’re joining Automattic as well, and will be focused on making customization more visual and intuitive. We’re barely on the second inning of what WordPress could be, and the impact it can have on the world, and I consider myself very lucky to be working with the best and brightest on transforming the way the world publishes.

In April and May, there are Automattic team meetups and events happening in Budapest, Napa Valley, Pender Island, New Orleans, Barbados, Cardiff, Konstanz, Playa Del Carmen, Portland, Toronto, Saratoga Springs, Palermo, Edinburgh, and Lisbon. Did I mention that we’re hiring?

Whole Foods and Pseudoscience

Asides

Michael Schulson takes a great look at the contrast between Whole Foods and the Creationist Museum in Whole Foods: America’s Temple of Pseudoscience. It is a good reminder that we must try to use the best available data in decisions regardless of our preëxisting proclivities. Also good to check out is Grist’s series on GMOs, probably best summarized in What I learned from six months of GMO research: None of it matters or the NY Times A Lonely Quest for Facts on Genetically Modified Crops.

Two cool new WordPresses launched on VIP: Nate Silver’s new FiveThirtyEight site, and the Facebook Newsroom, which I believe is the first WP-powered Facebook site. (Hopefully the first of many!) Also congrats to 10up and Beyond respectively for working on each of these sites.