Geneva WordPress Meetup
I’m currently on a fun little tour of Europe and I got invited to speak at the WordPress Meetup in Geneva, Switzerland this evening. I joined a group of about 20 developers, of all levels and talked about WordPress plugin development. We then opened up the floor for questions and had a great ongoing conversation about development in general, the WordPress ecosystem, the open-source nature of the project, multilingual solutions and I even taught the group some Quebecois swear words 🙂
The presentation is almost identical to one I gave in Winnipeg in the spring, the slides are available as a PDF from here.
Changing teams
One of the great things about working at Automattic is the flexibility that it allows. As a company, we work on many different things and we’re split into roughly 20 teams working on various projects and maintenance tasks. Occasionally a new team is formed to take over an existing set of projects or to start something new. Recently, a new partnerships team was formed at Automattic, and I decided to join it. As of last week, I’m officially part of the new team.
As part of the partnerships team I work on all the third party integrations that we have on WordPress.com and Jetpack; this ranges from things like connecting your blog to your Twitter or Facebook account, to making sure that if someone pins your blog on Pinterest it looks as good as possible! In addition to third party integrations, the team is also working on many of the APIs that we make available for developers to integrate with our systems.
Finally, I’ll also be doing more evangelizing for our platform; promoting our APIs and encouraging others to work with us and our platforms.
On a personal side, I’m excited for the change; it’s nice to work with new people once in a while, and it’s good to focus on more “project-y” type work as opposed to the daily grind of maintenance which I did a lot of previously.
If you’re a developer and think it’d be cool to integrate your project with WordPress.com or Jetpack, make sure you take a look at developer.wordpress.com or contact me if you want to chat about it 🙂
New look!
I’ve updated the theme on this blog and given it a new look. Trying a new theme the WordPress.com theme team, called Writr. I really like it’s very clean focus on the content and the blogger and that it otherwise stays out of the way. I want to start posting more content here and I’m hoping that the new theme will help bring it to light.
Also, if you don’t already, make sure you follow my photo blog too 🙂
Automattic is on Google Maps
This is about the coolest thing ever. Automattic’s office (as in the inside) is on Google Maps.
Everyone at Automattic works from wherever they are (home, cafe, or what not) but we have lounge in San Francisco for hosting local Automatticians as well as events and get togethers.
A photographer came in and mapped out the entire building, including the upstairs lounge area. It’s really neat to be able to showcase the office like this.
Here’s the upstairs:
The image above was taken during our annual company meetup a few weeks ago. If this is cool to you, or you like how the office looks, you should apply 😉
Updated to Mavericks
Just completed the update to OS X Mavericks. In a geeky way, I am particularly excited about the new mutli-display capabilities. Finally I can full screen things on my laptop display and not get a giant grey linen on my big thunderbolt display. The smallest things can make a huge difference!
The sounds of Vancouver
This is a great video showcasing not only the beauty of Vancouver but the sounds of the city that I hear every day. I love Vancouver!
The Jitterbug
Went to the Jitterbug bakery today, which my coworker Jane runs and to which I contributed to during its Kickstarter campaign. Such a lovely cafe with delicious pastries and amazing drinks. If you’re ever in the Tybee Island/Savannah, GA area, I highly recommend it!
San Diego Scavenger Hunt
I just returned from a week long company meetup with Automattic in San Diego. As a fun thing to do and to keep me alert, my partner Amy gave me a scavenger hunt for while I was there. I had to find and take a picture of the following 11 things. I got all but 1. I even crowdsourced and got some of my coworkers to help me out. It was definitely a fun activity for the trip and I feel like it kept me connected to Amy during the trip 🙂 Here’s the list:
- a coconut
- 5 different flip flops in one photo
- a beard at least 8 inches long
- a beagle
- as many mac laptops as can fit in a photo
- something turquoise
- a canadian license plate
- 3 people making a pyramid
- a lighthouse
- something with wings over something that floats
- two people kissing
I couldn’t find the coconut, but here are the other 10 photos:
Oh, and if you think that’s the kind of meetup and company you want to be part of, we’re hiring.
WordCamp & BuddyCamp Vancouver 2012
I’m excited to be on of the co-organizers of two upcoming events this fall. WordCamp Vancouver will be on October 13th; immediately followed by BuddyCamp (an event all about BuddyPress) on October 14th, which will also have a hack day on October 15th.
We’re now looking for both speakers and sponsors for both events. On the sponsorship side, you can sponsor either or both events (we have special packages if you want to sponsor both). We’re also looking for in-kind sponsorships if you have something to offer that might be useful or needed for our attendees day-of.
If you’re interested in speaking or sponsoring either or both events, please get in touch via the respective sites, 2012.vancouver.wordcamp.org and 2012.vancouver.buddypress.org.
We’ll be opening up ticket sales up soon as well, so keep an eye out for those. I bet they’ll go quick as we’re planning a great event 🙂
A distributed company
A little bit of insight into what it’s like to work at Automattic.
Joey Kudish 