Last night we listened to Matt Mullenweg talk about the past and the future of WordPress.
Matt was in Sydney for WordCamp Australia 2008 and that was well cool; although at the time I found Jen Mylo’s talk on user testing for the dashboard redesign one of the most interesting and memorable talks that weekend. Last night was a fantastic night! We got to hear about how Automattic has grown, how the mission of WordPress (to democratise publishing) has evolved and worked out, and we got to see first-hand how the community and they way they use WordPress has grown and changed.
Attending the chat were a couple of people that had been at WordCamp Australia, lots of people who are a regular part of the WP Sydney community and some people who have been using WordPress for a time, but haven’t yet been a part of the local community. Despite the talk being of a conversational style, I think we all learned something and I, for one, am energised and keen to delve into WordPress even more.
Some of the quotes and info that I particularly enjoyed were:
https://twitter.com/tellyworth/status/478464336789139456
#codeispoetry Code could be more than a means to an end, it would be a craft that you iterate and perfect #wpsyd
— Kristen Symonds (@kristarella) June 16, 2014
That was meant to be “could be a craft”, but the point is still there.
https://twitter.com/BrendonWalker/status/478466957721604096
"It's not rocket surgery" @photomatt #wpsyd
— Kristen Symonds (@kristarella) June 16, 2014
And out of the question time:
“If we’re going to democratize publishing, we can’t expect the world to learn CSS” – @photomatt #wpsyd
— Jordan Gillman (@jordesign) June 16, 2014
The question raised was about front-end editing and the Front-End Editor that may get rolled into core. Matt responded in a way that really tied the whole idea of visual editing back to the WordPress mission and very eloquently articulated how that relates to his personal mission. Unfortunately I wasn’t prepared to record or write down his response, which just kept going and got better and better, but it was something along the lines of the following.
It’s my goal that a majority of the web will be using open source software. That’s why we need to make WordPress as easy to use as possible. Philosophy alone isn’t going to win many people over; businesses just want to reach more clients.
In some ways it’s best if WordPress is invisible…
Thanks for a great evening Matt!
Leave a Reply