An interview I did with the Irish Times when I was in Dublin is now live.
Category Archives: Press
It’s never a bad time to read and learn about the life, work, and poetry of Gary Snyder.
If you’re curious what I sound like in German, here’s an interview with the German version of Wired about the future of the web and WordPress, complete with a Gutenberg reference.
When I was last in Tokyo I sat down with Lifehacker Japan and they have a long interview in Japanese and some photos from the trip. I don’t remember what I said, but the Google Translate version is pretty hilarious.
Neil Gaiman Speech at University of the Arts
“Make good art.”
Writing for the New Yorker (!) Om Malik compares and contrasts Apple and Google.
Fast Company has a great and in-depth look at the United States Digital Service (and similar programs across the government) that is really interesting. They have a number of people involved that I really respect, and I can’t wait to see the results of it not just in the remainder of Obama’s term, but the coming decade. It’s shocking how much is spent on IT at not just the federal level, but the waste at the state and municipal level is even more shocking in many ways because there is so much duplication across the country (and the world). I’ll be blogging more about this theme this week.
Pitch Perfect and its sequel, which I saw a few weekends ago, are the best geeky kind of fun (though I thought there were some jokes that fell flat in the latest). Longreads has an interview with Kay Cannon, the Pitch Perfect screenwriter, How to Be Aca-Awesome and the changing definition of cool.
SxSW, Work, and Blogging
I’ve been at the SxSW festival since Friday, it’s actually my tenth year attending. Since the first time I used my parent’s gas card and drove up from Houston this event has had a special place in my heart, even as I’ve gone in and out of love with it as it’s grown over the years. (I heard that there were more interactive badges this year than film or music.)
I’ve spoken here and there the last few days and it has generated some good blog posts, so here’s a sampling of them you may find interesting:
On the way to our interview session Kara Swisher recorded an interview on a pedi-cab.
Techcrunch TV did a nice short interview, WordPress’ Matt Mullenweg On Working From Home, Making Money Without Ads, And More [TCTV].
Paidcontent wrote on Where WordPress[.com] is headed: Longform content, curation and maybe even native ads.
Marketing Land wrote two great posts, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg At SXSW: Blogging Still Booming and Why Not Work From Home? “We Have The Technology,” Says WordPress’ Mullenweg.
Finally Access PR asked SXSW: What do WordPress and Airbnb have in common?
The coolest part about this and every year is meeting WordPress users all over — at restaurants, in the streets, at the booth… please don’t hesitate to say hi.
Automattic, Forbes, and the Future of Work
There’s a great article in Forbes today that covers some of the early days of WordPress through Automattic as a business today. I recommend everyone check it out! I wanted to respond to one bit about Automattic’s global nature though, which is actually timely because next week the entirety of Automattic is going to San Diego:
As a legacy of its open-source roots its 120 employees are spread across 26 countries and six continents. Although most work alone at home, each team–usually made up of five or six people–has a generous budget to travel. “All of the money we save on office space, we blow on travel costs,” Mullenweg laughs. Groups have gathered in Hawaii, Mexico and New Zealand. Once a year everyone meets for a week at an accessible destination with a solid Internet connection. A distributed workforce means Automattic can hire talent from around the world–without having to offer the perks and pay of Google, Facebook and Apple.
I’d like to counter the last sentence, which implies this is something we do as a cost saving scheme: being distributed is not a legacy, it’s a conscious choice. The people at Automattic are truly world-class — I invest in and advise a number of startups, and spending time in New York and the San Francisco Bay area I would put the caliber of people inside of Automattic on par or higher than anyone I’ve met from Google, Facebook, Apple, or any of the traditional tech giants.
How do we do it? Automattic offers a benefit above and beyond what they ever could: We give people the perk and the luxury of being part of an internet-changing company from anywhere in the world. This mirrors the meritocracy that makes Open Source great and treats people on the quality of their ideas and their work whether they’re in San Francisco or Argentina. (Or if they started in San Francisco and moved to Argentina.)
Even when big companies try to adopt this (sometimes under the lovely moniker “telecommute,” which reminds me of “horseless carriage”) people still face cultural resistance from their managers and teams, or find themselves as a second-tier citizen versus those in headquarters. The same often happens in “remote offices.” For it to really work it has to be part of the DNA of the company from day one. You have to be really committed to keep the creative center and soul of the organization on the internet, and not in an office.
I really believe this is the future of work, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.
WordPress (and Tumblr) got a name check by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show the other night. 🙂
I ended up on the Forbes 30 under 30 for Social / Mobile this year, which is good because I only have two more years to make this sort of thing before being demoted to less exclusive “100 under 100” lists. For something more meaty check out this in-depth interview with Japanese devleloper magazine Gijutsu-Hyoron, by Bart Eisenberg, which included some pretty thoughtful questions.
ReadWriteWeb covers the WordPress.com / Federated Media deal which will give high-end bloggers access to run advertising from FM, which is significantly higher quality than alternatives like Google Adsense, which has been declining in quality and is no longer a great choice for bloggers. Proud to be part of the empowerment of the Independent Web, which is the dark matter of the internet.
I was fortunate enough to be put on Vanity Fair’s Next Establishment list with a variety of cool people.
Alec Baldwin, my favorite character on 30 Rock, has a great-looking WordPress-powered site. It was also built by Alley Interactive who did the Observer site I blogged about the other day.
WordPress Publisher Blog: Influential Weekly The New York Observer Migrates from Drupal to WordPress. Cool!
I’m honored to be have been chosen alongside some cool folks like Kevin Rose, Dave Morin, Andrew Mason, and Charlie Cheever as one of Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs in 2011. I only have 3 more years before I’m too old for these lists. 🙂
This Week in Startups
Last week I was on This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis and Joel Spolsky. Here’s the show:
The Publisher
I’ve been dubbed The Publisher by BusinessWeek as one of their “25 Most Influential People on the Web.” Before anyone else writes in that I beat Rupert Murdoch, I think the slideshow is in alphabetical order. 🙂
In SF Chronicle
There’s an article about me in the San Francisco Chronicle, written by Chris Cadelago. It’s a good mainstream summary of what’s been going on the past few years. Chris talked to almost everyone I know, including getting Toni’s opinion of my car. You can, of course, get a paper copy in SF today.