One WordPress.com staffer challenged the others to a month-long blogging challenge... and you'll never guess what happened next! (Spoiler: we blogged a lot.)
Another month is in the books! The WordPress.com community made March a month to remember with an avalanche of great achievements. Here's a look at some of the highlights.
No matter where you are in the world, you’ll find people working on WordPress.com: Developers deploying lines of code. Designers tinkering with themes. Engineers working one-on-one with users to help make their websites just so. (Want to join in? We’re hiring.)
One cool thing about Automatticians? We care about WordPress.com so much that we’re always thinking about ways to make it better, online and off. Here’s a glimpse at the 230 Automatticians around the globe — and things we’re working on and thinking about right now.
At Automattic, we’re constantly communicating, breaking and fixing, and iterating and improving. Communication tools like the P2 theme, Skype, and IRC channels allow ideas and conversations to flow at all times, while our own blogs are spaces to reflect on and share the things we’ve learned.
In Moscow, Code Wrangler Konstantin Kovshenin works on the Dot Org Team, writing themes and plugins and contributing to WordPress Core. On his personal blog, he shares tips, code snippets, and even videos of his talks at WordCamps, like WordCamp Sofia 2013 in Bulgaria.
Meta Engineer Nikolay Bachiyski chatting with others. (Image by Sheri Bigelow.)
Colorado-based Automattician Greg Brown works on search, natural language processing, and machine learning; his team wrangles data (and launched the Related Posts feature last November). On Greg’s blog, you can follow his recent posts on Elasticsearch, indexing, and the future:
Humans express their dreams, opinions, and ideas in hundreds of languages. Bridging that gap between humans and computers — and ultimately between humans — is a noble endeavor that will subtly shape the next century. I’d like to see Elasticsearch be a force in democratizing the use of natural language processing and machine learning.
At Unencumbered By Facts, Code Wrangler (and Linux Geek) Jason Munro muses on a mix of topics, from programming to data, and even on moving from Wall Street to WordPress.
Over in Taipei, Taiwan, Growth Engineer Ben Thompson focuses on attracting new users to WordPress.com, and improving their experience, on Team Triton. Ben actively writes about technology from a strategic perspective at Stratechery, like his recent thoughts on messaging on mobile, and his follow-up piece on this week’s Facebook and WhatsApp deal.
On ebeab (or eight beats equals a byte), Marcus Kazmierczak publishes newsletters about trends around open source, web development, Linux, and more. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Marcus works on Team Tinker — a team focused on creating new products — and covers more than just your usual technology news: his latest edition dives into the world of crypto-currency and Dogecoin, and past editions focus on productivity and hacking and security.
Theme Wranglers Kirk Wight and Michelle Langston. (Image by Sheri Bigelow.)
Over on the east coast of the US, Sheri Bigelow (who snapped the images you see in this post) is a New York-based photographer and designer who strives to make the WordPress.com theme and customization experience the best it can be, and shares techniques and ideas on her site, Design Simply. We especially like her tips on photography workflows and themes.
Theme Team Lead Ian Stewart. (Image by Sheri Bigelow.)
Likewise, it’s cool to read design ideas from Theme Team Lead Ian Stewart from Winnipeg, Manitoba, whose crew of wranglers launches the new themes you see in the Theme Showcase.
This week, Ian ponders the principles of good design, but he also writes on general best practices and other interests, like writing. If you’ve not seen it, Ian’s talk at WordCamp San Francisco 2013 resonates as an inspiring, big-picture, yet personal talk on themes and web design.
Automatticians write about all sorts of topics — from tread desking to fatherhood to musings on love and life to gaming to reading and writing. And even if we’re not working on WordPress.com, we bring the same curiosity and motivation to our other passions — and find that much of what we do and enjoy here overlaps in side projects.
Isaac Keyet, a Product Designer living in Sweden and working on the Data Team, writes on a variety of subjects. In his recent post on light, color, work, and sleep, he talks about the types of light that affect our sleep/wake patterns (and recommends f.lux, an app that changes your screen temperature to best fit your location).
Tokyo-based Automattician Naoko Takano, from Team Global, engineering happiness. (Image by Sheri Bigelow.)
Karen Arnold, who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and works on the Happiness Team, started a blogging class as an experiment for a homeschooling group. (Karen also led a workshop last fall at the Digital Family Summit to teach kids and their families how to get started blogging on WordPress.com.)
Further north in Quebec, Canada, Kathryn Presner, a member of the Theme Team, recaps her experience mentoring students at Ladies Learning Code. Being a Happiness Engineer and WordCamp speaker, educating others is nothing new to Kathryn — it’s a perfect example of open source education in action, and how the skills and passions of Automatticians aren’t restricted to “the workplace.”
Are you interested in working alongside these and many other talented folks? We’re hiring for numerous positions — consider applying!
After a red-hot August of publishing news and impressive numbers, we wondered what was next for the WordPress.com community. Here’s a snapshot of September: You blew up the internet. Again. Month after month, we’re blown away by what you publish. Talk show host Matt Walsh‘s post, “Dear parents, you need …
Every once in a while, we sit down with an Automattician to help you get to know the people who work behind the scenes to build new features, keep Automattic’s wheels turning, and make WordPress.com the best it can be. In this installment, we’re delighted to introduce you to music …
Welcome to a new feature on WordPress.com News. Every couple weeks, we’ll sit down with an Automattician to help you get to know the people who work behind the scenes to build new features, keep Automattic’s wheels turning, and make WordPress.com the best it can be. Mr. Tim Moore suggested this new feature and so we thought it only fitting that he should be first. Everybody, say hey to Tim!
Tim Moore
At Automattic, I’m a member of Team Social. We handle projects like Publicize, Post by Email, Sharing, the new WordPress.com comments UI, and Gravatar, among others.
I also do a lot of work on Automattic’s Jetpack plugin. I have a toe in each part of Jetpack; I started out doing mostly development, though now I help with support, maintenance, and any aspect of the plugin that needs work.
For development work, I maintained virtual machines. Usually, beyond the basic web server software (LAMP or similar), I didn’t get involved in other software packages that could be run (email, for example). I used to do this, but haven’t in a long time.
In light of some of the recent privacy policy rigamarole that has been going around in the tech world, I decided to brush up on my skills to see what I could do. I ended up setting up my own email server to handle email for several of my domains that, until then, I had piped into a Google Apps account. Because they’re low volume email accounts, I don’t need Google’s vast data centers. I ended up with a functional email server and I learned that email, a thing we take for granted, is a complicated beast.
If you have an interest in how something works, take the time to learn about it. It’s going to be frustrating (My email server certainly frustrated me!), and you’ll probably feel like you’d be better off leaving it to someone else (I felt like that too).
When you’re done, you’ll have learned something new, you’ll understand a service you’ve (maybe) taken for granted in the past, and you’ll have a new appreciation for how hard folks work to make these things available.
I love having instant access to some of the best brilliant minds in the field. I’m an autodidact* and love to learn; there’s nothing better than being able to jump on IRC or Skype to ask a question or have a discussion about something I don’t understand and coming away having learned something new.
I also like that my commute to my office can be different each day. Not just in, “Let’s take a different route to the office today,” but in that I can stay in bed and open the laptop, I can work in my home office, I can go to the café or restaurant. My commute can be different each night, too, if I choose to work at night.
In my spare time (hah!), I write fiction (speculative fiction or science fiction or fantasy) and read just about anything that captures my interest. I currently have a novel and several short stories in progress and I usually read about one book a week (this week I’ve knocked off Gun Machine by Warren Ellis, the B-Team by John Scalzi, and am working on the Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey).
I’m also a family person. I like to spend as much time with my wife, Caroline (also an Automattician!), and two daughters (ages four and one) as I can. One of the things I like to do with them, to relax after work, is cook dinner for the family.
*Fun fact: Leonardo da Vinci is one of the world’s best known autodidacts.
Did you know that Automattic is hiring? We want people who are willing to work hard, share their ideas, learn from their colleagues, take initiative to get things done without being told, and those who aren’t afraid to ask questions. Think you fit the bill? Work with us.
Reblogged this on Automattically Kraft and commented:
Automatticans are fun people. Read about some of our postings (including my friendship with Kraft Cheese) on today’s en.blog post!
A great post about cool people at an awesome company. I absolutely love that you have added such a genuine human element to your company. Everyone who posts seems so approachable, and you practice what you preach… and those are just two of many reasons that I love blogging and WordPress so much.
Thanks guys and gals! :)
Reblogged this on Peter Slutsky.
Reblogged this on BinarySmash and commented:
A feature on the blogging challenge. Shows some of the top posts by my friends and colleagues over at WordPress.com.
My own analysis post is coming tomorrow – including winners. I forgot that I need to wait for everyone to post today’s post before picking winners :). I already have a script ready to do it though.
Y’all are so cute!!! Thanks for the warm fuzzies and the BIG smiles!
Happiness Engineer. Hahahaha, I love it :D
Reblogged this on a fiend of awesome and commented:
My little ol’ blog got a mention on the WordPress.com blog today! Check it out! :)
I have sooo many blog post in my head that I can’t make myself sit down and write and create. I would love to challenge myself to do this, but problem is I also have to accept the challenge!
The best way to start is to take it one post at a time :)
Always good to see what Automatticians are up to in front of the scenes. :-)