Yesterday had the chance to meet some of the nice folks at Automattic (the company behind WordPress.org and WordPress.com), including Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress and one of the Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 by Inc. Magazine.
The invite came via the WP Portugal community site since Automattic decided to spend a week working and socializing together in Portugal.
The environment was very informal which was good for people to know each other. It’s a pity more people didn’t show up (we were about 6 or 7 outsiders visiting) and a lot of people (like 20) said they would come and didn’t. I particularly enjoyed meeting some of the Happiness Engineers around and discuss some of their day-to-day support and dev work. Some of the stuff we talked about:
- Admin themes in WordPress: are they coming? are they needed?
- Having a plugin talking to another plugin remotely
- Creating a custom plugin repository mimicking the official .org repo.
- WordPress vs Drupal
- etc.
It was also good to know the people behind WP Portugal and I hope to give them a hand more often now that I know their faces.
Matt came to Portugal and people don't show up? Enough said
Damiansen,
No, Matt came to *Lisbon*, in *August*, and people didn't show up.
It was great meeting everybody that came. :) I think this was our favorite part of the trip.
Keep us posted on your startup!
Being there even just seven was an achievement taking in consideration that August IS the month most of the people go on vacations. Estoril is not so near transportation for those that come from outside Lisboa. Estoril is not so near Lisboa. Friday is a bad day. 17h is a real bad time for the ones that were working. It was a sunny beachy day. It was an event for mingling and not an working event, so… for most people there was no real attractive to go there, sorry!
For me it took about one hour to arrive there and have to take the afternoon off. And I went by car and not using public transportation.
tchii gostava mesmo de ter estado presente. muito interessante conhecer um pouco mais o fenómeno wordpress. abraço
Shure it wasn't the ideal day for the meet-up. (But folks didn't have to say yes if they weren't intending to go, right?) Anyway, nice meeting the happiness engineers and, of course, Matt (I almost rehearsed a bow but, then, when Matt came into the room I was handling a cold beer and some peanuts, not to much of respect shown there…). I hope they came back. Next time, more people will attend, for certain.