Matt Mullenweg Live in SLC
Matt Mollenweg, founder of Wordpress, is laid back. When I asked him what he was doing in Utah his reply was nonchalant. “I was in Park City to meet with existing investors” and The New York Times. Barely 24 years old his company Automattic just got 29.5 million.
This was an informal lunch spread out on six tables at a hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant which we pretty much took over (here’s where I bite my tongue about getting lost - thank you GOOG-411 or I would’ve missed the entire thing). Don’t you love the Valentine’s theme that goes nicely with the red Wordpress t-shirts.
You’d think bloggers who mostly work alone in their basements would be quiet, but we are not. It was a roar. All 18 Automattic employees, (including Joseph Scott who lives here and organized the event), work from home.
I tried to pick up on the latest details, here’s a quick rundown on some of the topics of discussion:
- Matt asked about Podango and their business model and if their podcasts were integrated with Podpress. He wants to make podcasts more core to Wordpress.Note: I blog for Podango and they recently (we begged for months) switched to Wordpress for some of their podcasts for their brief news updates called The Latest At.
- Coming in March - version 2.5 of Wordpress (they skipped version 2.4 just for fun)
- Matt talked about a Twitter-inspired Wordpress theme called Prologue. He said he’s on Twitter but I can’t find him there…
- New features coming to Wordpress: one click upgrade of your blog, new photo uploader and gallery feature inspired by Photo Matt, now with the new ultra cool URL Ma.tt- sort of hip like thelatest.at or the domain name we (Paul Wilson and I) want to sell - political.ly. Here’s where I admit that in high school I wanted to change my name to ja.net
Matt told me about a service called XHTML EZE (can’t find the exact name). They take a Photoshop file and convert it to a Wordpress theme for about $400. If you know who it is, please comment.
Fun times with Utah geeks and thanks to Ma.tt for coming. I felt like this was one of the few times I could fit in wearing my newspapergrl t-shirt. I knew we wouldn’t be in business attire or anything. I really dig the geek community here except we’re short on women - six of us out of 33.
p.s. The secret hand signs are a W for Wordpress.
Brad Baldwin filmed a quick video at the event.
The Scott family are Wordpress fans.
Popularity: 17% [?]
February 3rd, 2008 at 12:36 am
Even more reasons to like WordPress. It’s almost becoming the place to be.
February 4th, 2008 at 11:25 am
EEK that is a bad picture of me flashing the I LOVE YOU in ASL…
February 4th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Jeff,
Notice that the pictures of me are smaller than the rest? Also that Matt’s W sign for Wordpress almost look like he lost some fingers? I don’t like to get my picture taken. That one wasn’t your best but smaller it’s not bad.
Thanks for commenting. I need to add links to other’s writeups.
Next time hope we can give Matt a few moments to address everyone at once. That way we could get a quick intro and ask about the changes he’s planning for Wordpress and what they’re working on next.
Questions I would ask Matt if I had the time/nerve:
- does he support Ron Paul - since Paul seems to be popular among geeks.
- how is dating and how does he meet women? Has he ever used a dating site? I imagine he’ll be named an eligible bachelor in coming years if he’s single. That’s after Google’s most eligible bachelors got married recently.
- what has he learned from the VC process and how much of the success has affected him personally and in what ways?
- he mentioned he does well on Google AdSense - what works best and on what sites does it perform best on? (in themes that are pre-loaded?)
Maybe Joseph can pass them on to Matt
Janet
February 4th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
A 3 fingered Matt, is he human? is he scripted? LOL
I would love to hear from Matt and hear how he does all this and still has a ‘life’ outside of WP.