One of my favorite plugins in the entire WordPress blogosphere is JetPack. JetPack is plugin built by Automattic that brings in all the features of WordPress.com to your own WordPress.org site. The thing that I love so much about this plugin is that they offer some incredible free cloud services as well as a few really great simple modules (think of them as mini plugins) built the right way.
A few days ago I took part in WordSesh and was able to talk about one of my favorite topics – Why You Should or Shouldn't Use Premium Plugins. Aside from the general awesomeness of 24 hours of WordPress presentations there was another aspect that I really enjoyed – just talking.
Believe me it's not often you'll hear me say that popularity matters but sometimes in the world of programming it does.
A few days ago I talked about some of the things I'm grateful for working on the web and one of the items on that list is working remotely. To me it's an absolutely amazing experience to work from my home. I get so much out of the time I can spend focusing on my job, time at coffee shops, going to meetups (I actually run one Friday mornings), working during the hours I feel most productive, etc. But that's not the response I hear when I tell others where I work.
How do you get any work done?
Aren't you distracted!?
Don't you watch TV all day?
Most people look at me like I'm cursed! But the answer to staying on task while working from home is actually pretty simple – or at least simple to put into words. You have to enjoy what you do and find it intellectually stimulating.
Yesterday, in my post about why working on the web is so great I mentioned a tool called GitHub. While GitHub is only a tool it is a really awesome tool because it makes it unbelievably easy to version control your code and for another user to submit a patch (aka pull request) or report issues to you. Increased collaboration is important for any project but it's even more important for open source projects.
It should come as no surprise that software isn't free. It takes many programming hours to build new features, many hours to diagnose and fix bugs, hours to plan the roadmap, and many many hours of support helping your users.
There are some great open source projects that have highly efficient monetizations models. Just look at the totally free software WordPress; they have WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, Akismet, VaultPress, etc, that bring in money. But for many open source projects there isn't a good monetization model and without cash flow to support the hours of development the project dies.
Now what happens for projects that don't have a good business model? Well unless they have a dedicated community to keep it going these projects quickly become outdated and become security vulnerabilities. And the last thing that you want is an outdated piece of software that leaves your site ripe for a hack.
Four days ago it was Thanksgiving here in the USA. One of the best traditions (aside from eating copious amounts of food) is to go around the table and say one thing that you're grateful for. There's actually been quite a bit of science about gratitude and how important it is to your overall happiness. One of my favorite researchers in this area is Brene Brown. She has some amazing TED Talks and this great clip about how important it is to be grateful.
She talks about how it isn't joy that makes us grateful but gratitude that brings us joy. So to be as joyful as I can be I'm going to list several things that I'm so grateful for working on the web. These aren't in any particular order just how they come up naturally in my head.
One of the best parts about working for WooThemes is that everyone is so excited and passionate about everything they do. We're all constantly throwing new ideas out there and often you just run with them and see what happens. No red tape. JFDI.
My colleague Daniel Espinoza is really passionate about blogging. He likes it so much and finds it so rewarding that he blogs on 4 different sites at the moment. In addition to encouraging us during our weekly meetings, in the company chat, and on twitter (just press the publish button!) he just set up the Blogging for Benjamin competition!
Last week I was lucky enough to be included in panel interview for a new WooCommerce Ninja. The potential ninja did very well and talked about how he got into WordPress, working with clients, and debugging code. But it wasn't these questions that really interested me – I don't care about coding style, programming languages, or the tools that he uses. All of those can be learned on the fly. The quality that I care about more than all of the rest is passion.
Disclaimer – before anything else is said in this post I think it's important to mention that I have a hard time discussing feminism. My first reaction is to be defensive. I feel like I'm being attacked just for being a guy. It usually takes me a while to process the information and to try to begin to understand what's it like to live in a patriarchal culture. I post this not because I pretend to know what I'm talking about but because I want to express my thoughts and have a candid discussion about this really important issue.
Those of you in the WordPress world probably know the name Siobhan McKeown. She's writing the History of WordPress, she writes for Smashing Magazine, she organized WordCamp Europe, she works with all sorts of documentation projects for WordPress, and she's all around awesome. She recently wrote a post about how several members in the WordPress community went about describing herself and other women.
I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Amsterdam on a rainy Friday two days after our WooTrip 2013 ended and I've decided to take time out of my vacation to write this blog post. Why? Because I think every company needs a WooTrip.