One of the areas where Automattic and its products like WordPress.com have the most room for growth is in the area of marketing. It’s also an area our competitors are spending heavily in, with Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Web.com, and to a lesser extent EIG and Godaddy, spending over $350M this year in advertising. (Of course marketing is much more than just advertising, but their spend is still significant.) We’re hiring for a number of positions in this area to build up our team, including a CMO, a performance marketing specialist, marketing-oriented designer, and a role focused on events. If you know of anyone who would be ideal for these roles, or if that person is you, please read about Automattic on that page and follow the guidelines for the role to apply.
Getting Started
Well I slept a little late but now that I’m awake I’m going to get the last few things ready before I head up to Austin. I’m planning to blog everything this weekend so this should be a good opportunity to start. Most of the major stuff is done, I’m just waiting on an important letter (read: check) in the mail before I leave. I can’t dawdle for too long though, as tonight at 6 I “Break Bread with Brad“. But for now I’m running late, and need to get my rear in gear.
Budget Extraction
JS Quicktags
Fellow WP developer Alex has released his cursor-aware quicktag code under the LGPL. This is one of my very favorite features of WordPress, and its ease of use is one of the main reasons I haven’t adapted a meta-language like Markdown personally.
Man in Kilt
Heading out!
And so it begins. I’m showered, the car is washed, everything I need (I hope) is in the car, and I’m ready to roll. It’s not a short drive though, so it’s a good thing I love driving! See everyone in Austin.
Absolut Path
Performance As Design, by Brad Frost. Great thoughts and links. Performance is going to be a big focus for me in 2015.
Productive Day
I feel like I’ve had a very productive day, espescially compared to yesterday when it felt like I did nothing. Here’s a summary of the day thus far, with the boring parts (and classes) taken out:
- Good breakfast
- Human Situation Discussion class
- Re-printed some business cards for a client, had to tweak design
- Took David his graphics card
- Checked if David’s processor was just underclocked or if they actually sent him the wrong one (wrong one)
- Filled tank
- Deposited some checks
- Made some important phone calls, did email
- Installed my $7 copy of Windows XP Professional bought using UH’s new site liscene (more on this later)
- Had long lunch with Kel at a nice deli whose name escapes me, oogled at his iPod
- Picked up Kel’s grandmother’s ten-year-old computer, which she’d like me to fix. We’ll see; I’m not a miracle worker 🙂
- Took client her new business cards, decided on another change, talked about website
- Spent too long in traffic, but it’s okay because I made a new mix disc
- Finally arrived home at around 4:15 PM
Whew! I think now I could crash for the next week or so, but I’m waiting for a call from someone . . .
Work-safe
Work-safe art, John Ashcroft would approve.
Better Web Browser
How to build a better web browser, a really great essay highly relevant to several issues at hand.
Support Job
Automattic has a new position we’re hiring for.
Scott Berkun asks Why Isn’t Remote Work More Popular?
WP Blacklist
I’m not sure why they’re still working on a WordPress Blacklist when that functionality is built in to 1.2 in a very robust fashion. At this point patches to improve the included blacklist/moderation would be more useful to the average user, I think.
Trip Begins
I’m hoping to blog this trip better than my last one, so here goes. I got through security without any troubles and began the trek to my gate which was quite literally the furthest in the airport. I got here find but my shoulder hurt a bit from my carry-on, so I was glad to finally be able to sit down. This part of the airport looks like a mall, just with more places to sit. The food smells great. Anyway as I sat down and opened the Powerbook to write this entry I noticed my pants were sitting a little low — I had left my belt at security. Half an hour later I’m now back where I started. At least I got a little exercise. 🙂 This is going to be my first long trip since I got the iPod and I’m looking forward to enjoying good music and not having to worry about battery life. I’ll see you guys again when I get to the Golden State.
More Pingomatic
66,639 pings on Ping-O-Matic yesterday, let’s see if we can beat that today. 🙂 I rewrote the pinger deamon in Python, because the old PHP one was crashing the system on a regular basis. The new one is amazingly light, and was ridiculously easy to write. So now Ping-O-Matic is powered by PHP, Python, Perl, and caffeine. Right tool for the right job.
Voters boot three SOPA-sponsoring Hollywood allies from Congress, though the new people might have similar views on such legislation, don’t know yet.