wordcamp asheville keynote: how did we get here? wordpress in 11 years
DESCRIPTION
A Short history of WordPress.org and WordPress.com and why so many people contribute to this Open Source community. It is more than a software platform, it is a life changing movement.TRANSCRIPT
Comfort Zone
Decision to Take Action!Where Extraordinary
Happens
And You may Find Yourself. . .
Two Stories
Matt Mullenweg Born in 1984
Parents: Chuck and Kathe !
started on computers age 3 first website at 12 plays saxophone
does photography
Matt at 18
b2 cafelog
!By November 2002, Matt had 20,000 unique visitors and over 10,000 hits a month on Photmatt.net blog.
Last Entry by michel v
Nov. 2002
Last Entry by michel v
Nov. 2002
Last Entry by michel v
Nov. 2002
Last Entry by michel v
Nov. 2002
Last Entry by michel v
Nov. 2002
b2 cafelog
Forking the Code
Open SourceGPLCopy Left
General Public License
January 24, 2003
Matt, !“Someday Right?”
January 25, 2003
Mike Little, “I’m In”
Christine Selleck “How about WordPress”
May of 2003
WordPress 1.0 Four months later May 26, 2003
!!
Last Entry by michel v
Nov. 2002
Last Entry by michel v
Nov. 2002
Last Entry by michel v
Nov. 2002
Michel V Resurfaced
b2 cafelog
Supported WordPress Fork
“WordPress community is easy to work with”
Culture of Transparency
Six Months Later October 2004 15,000 WP usersMatt Leaves School moves to San Francisco
A Year Later October 2005 Matt Leaves CNET!!Over 50,000 WordPress Users!!!Starts Automattic!
Big Decision
Started in Nov. 2005 over 100,000 blogs in 3 weeks.
First product made over 1 M first year
• Provides Hosting for Sites • Easy to set up • Uses WordPress.org code • Less access to themes and plugins • Charges for upgrades to service
Company with Employees
Volunteers Contribute -Code -Codex -Meetups -WordCamps • Access to all themes • Access to all plugins • Self-hosting & domains • Backup & Maintain • Lot of people provide people with design, development, themes, plugins and services.
Owned by
Toni Schneider and Matt Mullenweg
Story Two
Seemed like a really good idea.
PhD Clinical Community Psychology
1980 Hospital Part-time Psychologist
Product Manager for Mental Health Programs
Private Practice and Kids
Just Make it a Commercial Product
Funded with SBIR Research Grants
You’ll eventually want to find a real CEO!
10 Employees Find New Office Space
18 Employees, Needed to Find That Real CEO!
20 Employees Where is that real CEO???
18 Employees, Needed to Find That Real CEO!
Sold my shares in Company in 2000
So I Continued Building
I saw signs of trouble in housing market 2006.
I Googled My Business Name
Hated my old website had to have a CMS.
Marketing and Publishing had Changed.
My First Website Client
My First Paying Website Client
Started New Tricks 2009
Started New Tricks 2009
WordCamp NOLA April 2009
2009 50 Members
Jack Kinnard
Volunteered to Help with MeetUp
2014 1498 Members
Russell Fair and Judi Knight Jen Mylo from Automattic
WordPress has given me a Career and a Community
WordPress has included my Family
My 26 year old son is a WordPress developer and speaker
who works with me at New Tricks.
!My 28 year old daughter is a brand manager with her own website.
!My husbands side job is a triathlon coach and personal trainer.
I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything. I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation. I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.
Automattic’s Employment Manifesto
You may ask yourself, “Where does that highway go?” And you may ask yourself “Am I right? Am I wrong?” And you may tell yourself, “MY GOD! What have I done?”
You said yes when it could have been no.