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Future of Work Ideas

Farnam Street’s Great Mental Models, Presented by Automattic

I’ve been a fan of Shane Parrish and his indispensable Farnam Street for many years now. Shane is a fascinating person ā€” he’s a former cybersecurity expert for the Canadian intelligence agency and occasional blogger who turned his website into a full-time career. Oh and fs.blog is on WordPress, too. šŸ˜Ž

His book, The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts, has been tremendously valuable to me in my work. So valuable, in fact, that Automattic is now sponsoring the next printing of the hardcover edition. You can pre-order it here, then learn more about the mental models outlined in it.

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WordCamp WordPress

State of the Word 2019

In case you missed it, here’s the first-ever State of the Word… designed completely in Gutenberg:

WordCamp US was a fantastic experience, as always. Thank you again to the hundreds of organizers and volunteers who made it happen, to the thousands who attended, and to the city of St. Louis for hosting us. We’ll be back there again next year.

And special thanks to this next generation of WordPress contributors. So exciting to see KidsCamps continue to expand and thrive:

As you can see, my site is now featuring the new WordPress Twenty Twenty theme. And for more coverage from my State of the Word, check out the recaps from WP Tavern and Post Status. Here’s my full audience Q&A below:

You can see my previous State of the Word keynotes here.

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Asides

New Automattic CFO

As Venturebeat has picked up, Mark Davies will be leaving Vivint and joining the merry band. Automattic is creating the operating system for the web, from websites to ecommerce to social networks. As we zoom past 1,100 employees in over 70 countries, we wanted a financial leader with experience taking businesses from hundreds of millions in revenue to billions (Vivint) and even tens of billions (Alcoa and Dell), as Mark has. Iā€™m excited about working alongside such an experienced leader day-to-day to build what I hope will become one of the defining technology companies of the open web era.

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Asides

Debating OSS with DHH

The other week I ended up going back and forth in tweets with David Heinemeier Hansson, it wasn’t going anywhere but he graciously invited me to their podcast and we were able to expand the discussion in a way I found really refreshing and mind-opening.

DHH and I have philosophies around work and open source that I believe overlap 95% or more, so that makes where we have differences all that more interesting to mine. Although we would see each other logged into the same server 15 years ago, we haven’t actually spoken directly until this podcast started, but the conversation flowed so naturally you’d think we have been talking since then.

Check out the episode on Open Source and Power on the Rework Podcast, hopefully you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed recording it.

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Asides

Automatticā€™s Series D

Today Automattic announced it has closed a new $300 million Series D, with Salesforce Ventures taking the entire round. This puts us at a post-round valuation of $3 billion, three times what it was after our last fundraising round in 2014. It’s a tremendous vote of confidence for Automattic and for the open web.

I met Marc Benioff earlier this year, and it became obvious to both of us that Salesforce and Automattic shared a lot of principles and philosophies. Marc is a mindful leader and his sensibilities and sense of purpose feel well aligned with our own mission to make the web a better place. He also helped open my eyes to the incredible traction WordPress and WP VIP has seen in the enterprise market, and how much potential there still is there. Iā€™ve also loved re-connecting with Bret Taylor who is now Salesforceā€™s President and Chief Product Officer. Bretā€™s experience across Google Maps, Friendfeed, Facebook, Quip, and now transforming Salesforce makes him one of the singular product thinkers out there and our discussion of Automatticā€™s portfolio of services have been very helpful already.

For Automattic, the funding will allow us to accelerate our roadmap (perhaps by double) and scale up our existing productsā€”including WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, WooCommerce, Jetpack, and (in a few days when it closes) Tumblr. It will also allow us to increase investing our time and energy into the future of the open source WordPress and Gutenberg.

The Salesforce funding is also a vote of confidence for the future of work. Automattic has grown to more than 950 employees working from 71 countries, with no central office for several years now. Distributed work is going to reshape how we spread opportunity more equitably around the world. There continue to be new heights shown of what can be achieved in a distributed fashion, with Gitlab announcing a round at $2.75B earlier this week.

Next year Automattic celebrates 15 years as a company! The timing is fortuitous as we’ve all just returned from Automattic’s annual Grand Meetup, where more than 800 of us got together in person to share our experiences, explore new ideas, and have some fun. I am giddy to work alongside these wonderful people for another 15 years and beyond.

If you’re curious my previous posts on our fundraising, here’s our 2006 Series A, 2008 Series B, 2013 secondary, and 2014 Series C. As before, happy to answer questions in the comments here. I also did an exclusive interview with Romain Dillet on (WP-powered) Techcrunch.

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Asides

On Vergecast

If you’d like some more background and context on Tumblr and Automattic coming together I had a chance to have a short but nuanced conversation with Nilay Patel and Julia Alexander on The Verge’s podcast, Vergecast. I love how great journalists are able to really dive into the heart of issues, and I really enjoyed the conversation.

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Asides

Tumblr the Day After

It is not surprising that the news about Automattic buying Tumblr has picked up a lot of coverage. I especially appreciated the notes of support from Tumblr founder David Karp, former CTO Marco Arment, and investor Bijan Sabet. I am beyond excited to see what the Tumblr team creates next, and I will definitely be connecting with alumni to hear their perspective.

There has also been a lot of speculation on the purchase price, which I think is missing the real story. I would like to take this opportunity to express my respect for Verizon and how they approached this entire process. They inherited Tumblr through an acquisition of a merger, a few steps removed from its initial sale; it’s probably not a company they would have bought on its own, but they nonetheless recognized that there is a very special community and team behind the product. It’s also worth noting at this point that Verizon is a company that will do over $130B in revenue this year and has over 139,000 employees.

First, they chose to find a new home for Tumblr instead of shutting it down. Second, they considered not just how much cash they would get on day one, but also — and especially — what would happen to the team afterward, and how the product and the team would be invested in going forward. Third, they thought about the sort of steward of the community the new owner would be. They didn’t have to do any of that, and I commend them for making all three points a priority.

Automattic is still a startup — I’m sure there are deep-pocketed private equity firms that could have outbid us, but the most likely outcome then would have been an “asset” getting chopped up and sold for parts. (This is a caricature and there are PE firms I like, but it’s not a terrible stretch of the imagination.) Instead, Tumblr has a new chance to redefine itself in 2019 and beyond. Its community is joining with WordPress’ 16-year commitment to open source and the open web.

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Asides

Animated WordPress Wallpaper

I didn’t realize this, but apparently macOS has a built-in ability to show really stunning animated wallpapers, like this one created by Folletto that subtly changes colors throughout the day in an incredibly engaging well:

Check out Folletto’s blog for another dynamic wallpaper and some of process behind creating it. This would be awesome to have for iPhones as well.

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Asides

Just Write with David Perell

I had an interesting conversation with David Perell on his North Star Podcast that I recommend checking out. He’s also leading a really interesting program called Write of Passage which is an online course which helps people grow their career by writing and sharing online, which I think is brilliant and a big source of my career growth over the years. I’ve heard he has another coming soon around information organization. David is someone to watch and follow.

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Asides

Vast, Unbroken Slabs

Writing novels is hard, and requires vast, unbroken slabs of time. Four quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use. Two slabs of time, each two hours long, might add up to the same four hours, but are not nearly as productive as an unbroken four.

Neil Stephenson on Why I’m a Bad Correspondent
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Asides

Diversifying WordPress

WordPress is about democratizing publishing, removing barriers to getting your words on the web. Thereā€™s a cool effort underway right now to remove some barriers that people from groups underrepresented in tech might face when becoming a WordCamp speaker. Automattic is supporting this by sponsoring Jill Binderā€™s work on the WordPress Diverse Speakers Training Group.

I would love to see the WordPress contributor base become more diverse, and training people from marginalized communities to speak at WordCamps is a great way to help that along. Check out that effort if youā€™d like to get involved.

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Personal

The Houston Doberge Project

Every year for my Mom’s birthday lunch she has a Doberge cake from Gambino’s in New Orleans, but this year there was a Fedex snafu and it arrived spoiled. We found a last-minute replacement, but it piqued my curiosity as to better alternatives and I commissioned this survey of eight bakeries to answer the question: What’s the best Doberge cake in Houston or New Orleans? The article and pictures that follow are from food critic, travel journalist, and medical science writer Alice Levitt. I hope you enjoy the history, reviews, and surprise winner.

1885, Budapest. Franz Josef I and his wife, Elizabeth, rulers of Austro-Hungary, are attending the National General Exhibition of Budapest. There is much to see, but the emperorā€™s sweet tooth is pulling him toward one particular display. He simply must taste this new cake heā€™s been hearing about. He must find the Dobos torte.

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Asides

Prospress joining Automattic

As you may have read on the WooCommerce blog, Prospress blog, WP Tavern, Post Status, or Techcrunch, the team at Prospress is joining forces with WooCommerce at Automattic to help accelerate the adoption and democratization of ecommerce across the web. Whew that’s a lot of links! Prospress was best known for their extension that allowed many types of Subscriptions on top of WooCommerce, but also has some cool marketing automation and automated testing tools as well. I love that Prospress was already a Five for the Future company, which aligns really well with Automattic’s long-term goals and contributions to the wider community.

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Podcast

Introducing the Distributed Podcast

Distributed podcast

Iā€™ve been meeting with some brilliant people for Distributed, my new podcast dedicated to exploring the future of work. The first episode is a conversation with Stephane Kasriel, CEO of Upwork, about how they built a distributed culture, and how flexible work will shape the future of the global economy.

Unlike Automattic, Upwork does have an office in Silicon Valley (albeit one with a remote receptionist!). It was interesting to hear how Stephaneā€™s teams balance in-person culture with inclusiveness for all employees, no matter where they live. Read more about Stephaneā€™s work at Distributed.blog, and subscribe at Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Automattic Future of Work

Happy Tools, for the Future of Work

Distributed work is becoming a reality for more companies. Automattic has been operating in a distributed-first fashion for more than 13 years now — we’re now up to more than 850 employees in 68 countries. But even in companies with physical offices, more employees are distributed around the globe and working together. Google just shared some fascinating stats about its work culture, with 100,000 employees working across 150 cities. Two out of five work groups have employees working from more than one location:

We’re a more connected world, so it makes sense that global business wouldn’t be confined to just one physical space. I often use Google as an example because I’ve been in meetings there where people were one building away from each other but still using video chat because of the time required to walk between meetings on their campus.

With that in mind, the team at Automattic has decided to start sharing our expertise and the technology that makes it all work. Introducing Happy Tools:

Our first product is Happy Schedule, which helps teams manage flexible schedules across time zones. Right now we’re rolling it out in a consultative way with just a few early customers to make sure the team can be totally responsive to their needs. We’re excited about this and other upcoming tools, because we believe that this is the future of work. We’re excited to have other companies give it a try.

Keep an eye on this space: There’s an entire suite of tools that make up the operating system of what has helped Automattic scale so effectively over the years. I’ve always believed it’s important to invest in your internal tools, and I’m excited to release more of them. If there’s something better in the market, we won’t release a tool for itā€”I’d rather use something external than have to build things ourselvesā€”but where the industry still has a gap after such a long time, we’ll throw our hat into the ring.

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Open Source WordPress

The Web Turns 30

“Vague, but exciting.” Thirty years ago yesterday, Sir Tim Berners-Lee submitted his original proposal for an information management system to his boss at CERN — what would later become the World Wide Web (and, it turns out, a huge influence on my life and career).

To help celebrate, I tweeted WordPress’s contribution to the web’s grand timeline (above), and I got to participate in The Economist’s Babbage podcast looking back at the pioneers of the early web. Listen to the whole episode below:

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Asides

A Meditation on the Open Web

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Asides

39 Books in 2018

Here’s what I read in 2018, in chronological order of when I finished it, as promised in my birthday post. I’ve highlighted a few in bold but in general I was pretty satisfied with almost all of my book choices this year. I’ve put a lot more time into the “deciding what to read” phase of things, and have also had some great help from friends there, and have been trying to balance and alternate titles that have stood the test of time and newer au courant books.

  1. Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook by Dan Shapiro
  2. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (audio)
  3. A Higher Standard by Ann E. Dunwoody
  4. Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin (audio)
  5. The Boat by Nam Le
  6. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
  7. Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg
  8. How to Say Goodbye by Wendy Macnaughton
  9. When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chƶdrƶn
  10. Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery
  11. Poor Charlieā€™s Almanack by Charlie Munger and Peter Kaufman
  12. Sam the Cat by Matthew Klam
  13. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
  14. The Vegetarian by Han Kang
  15. The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu
  16. After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley by Rob Reid
  17. The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell
  18. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee
  19. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
  20. Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed
  21. Darkness Visible by William Styron
  22. Tin Man by Sarah Winman
  23. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
  24. Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard
  25. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (Update: On Obama’s 2019 book list.)
  26. Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
  27. The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant
  28. Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
  29. So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
  30. Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu
  31. How to Fix a Broken Heart by Guy Winch
  32. Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
  33. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
  34. Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
  35. Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most by Steven Johnson
  36. Severance: A Novel by Ling Ma
  37. On the Shortness of Life by Seneca
  38. It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
  39. Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
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Asides

All Your Might

Julie Sugar has a beautiful piece in Lilith Magazine about miscarriage and faith.

Categories
Quote

Thich Nhat Hanh on Tea

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.

ā€” Thich Nhat Hanh in The Miracle of Mindfulness