Hunter Walk is Not Just a WordPress User, Now Also an Advisor to Automattic. Really excited to have him involved!
I was a weird kid.
I’d write and painstakingly edit endless paragraphs in which I’d riff on current events and major news items. Then I’d take a floppy disk to my local copy store where I’d print out the pages and bind them with card stock covers, before heading to the post office to mail the completed tome to just about everyone I knew.
Dave Pell: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Post Office.
I’m really excited about Simplenote for Android, better than any similar app I’ve seen on the platform.
Dave Pell on building the NextDraft platform. Spoiler: It’s WordPress, but a really cool implementation of it across a blog, iOS app, and newsletter. I wish more publishers worked the same way.
I spoke to Robin Hough at the Guardian about WordPress and Automattic’s mission to democratize publishing.
Bruce Schneier has a remarkably clear essay on Our Newfound Fear of Risk which could as easily be about corporations, finance, or relationships as it is about its chosen topic. It reminded me a lot of one of the better books I read this year, Antifragile by Nassim Taleb.
Burning Man 2013
I went to Burning Man for the first time in 2013. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. It is probably the most visually stimulating place on the planet for the week it goes on, but I resisted the temptation to take too many photos and just tried to take it all in. I was mostly successful, here are some snaps I couldn’t resist taken over the course of a few days.
Jay Rosen (and Barry Eisler) on the surveillance state’s efforts to make journalism harder, slower, less secure. The gist: why would they destroy hard drives they know there are copies of, and detain couriers they know they’ll have to release?
Rachael Chong has an article on Fast Company Co.exist that includes my thoughts on giving, charity, and impact in the world.
I’m really excited about the launch of WordPress.com Connect. Yes Facebook et al offer similar APIs and have more users, but there are two key differences. First is Automattic is not an advertising-driven company, so our priorities around users are different than ones who are. Second is that these APIs are the basis for interacting with any element of an entire website hosted on WP.com or not, meaning themes, widgets, posts, content, CSS… any company that does something that ultimately ends up on a website should be looking at the APIs on developer.wordpress.com and pushing us where there isn’t one yet.
Anil Dash has A Brief History of Apple’s iWatch — a must-read if you follow tech news like I do.
Business Insider has a fun article on Automattic’s Awesome Remote Work Culture. Includes some quotes from me about how we work, including “Rather than being anti-office, we’re more location agnostic” and the top five meetup locations so far (Lisbon, Portugal; Kauai; San Francisco; Amsterdam; Tybee Island, Georgia).
Bruce Schneier on The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership. Packed with good links as well.
WordCamp SF Jazz Playlist
A lot of people have been asking about the playlist from WordCamp San Francisco last weekend, and thanks to some help from Rose here it is:
If you want to subscribe to it (or my other playlists on Spotify) I’ll be updating a bit throughout the year so we can have something fresh come 2014.
3.6 and State of the Word
3.6 has been released and has a groovy video to go with it:
It’s been a busy week, WordCamp San Francisco 2013 went off without a hitch. Here’s the State of the Word presentation, which covered quite a bit of material and talks about the plans for WordPress 3.7 and 3.8:
And here’s the question and answer session:
There was a pretty good summary of the presentation in infographic form. A bit more about this next week, and some more announcements in store as well.
WordCamp San Francisco Contributor Day 2013
Photos from WordCamp San Francisco Contributor Day 2013 taken by Sheri Bigelow, Kevin Conboy, and Aaron Hockley.
WordCamp San Francisco 2013
WordCamp San Francisco 2013 was wonderfully photographed this year by Sheri Bigelow, Kevin Conboy, and Aaron Hockley. (I didn’t take any of these.)
The 2013 Emmy nominations have been announced and included among the nominees is the Lift-built AMC The Walking Dead StorySync, which is nominated in the Outstanding Interactive Program category.
Jay Z + Me
I think it was Dustin Curtis who said something along the lines of “you can learn a lot about someone by their bucket list,” and he had posted his publicly recently. (Posting it is a great idea by the way, people will help you with it.) I began to think about mine, which was a little strange because I’ve been trying to move away from desiring things or experiences and just be more grateful in the present, but immediately a few music ones came to mind: have WordPress name-checked in a major hip-hop song, be in a rap video, and perform with one of my favorite artists (somehow).
It was less than a week later I got an email from a friend who was helping organize a hush-hush event where Jay-Z would sing his song Picasso Baby over and over 6 hours while interacting with various artists and an audience as a performance piece, and there might even be an opportunity to be one of the people he interacted with. My jaw dropped.
Continue reading Jay Z + MeSteve Denning writes convincingly on the crumbling myth of shareholder value as the primary driver of companies.