Last week, the Happiness Engineers of WordPress.com and Jetpack got together for a week of introductions, learning, and sightseeing in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Automattic is a globally distributed company, including the Happiness Engineers, so it’s nice to get together occasionally and learn from each other in person.
Throughout the trip, I did manage to snap a few photos, and you can see more in my safmeetup2013 tag.
If this looks like fun to you, we’re hiring!
The future is here, or rather the future is at the new almost-finished Automattic headquarters in San Francisco.
In case you don’t know, Automatticians are employed all throughout the world, most work from home, and only a comparatively small amount work from San Francisco (though you could say that San Francisco is the city with the highest concentration of Automatticians). Thanks to the magic of Double Robotics, any Automattician can now feel like they’re part of the crowd at the San Francisco headquarters by taking control of an iPad on wheels.
If your curiosity has been rightfully engaged, gaze in wonder as Theme Wrangler Konstantin Obenland tours the new headquarters, and check out the tweet below from Lounge Manager Warren Kleban for a quick look at the robot in action.
Robots invade @automattic. Thx @doublerobotics!! vine.co/v/bD9pFMnOnTg—
Warren Kleban (@wkleban) March 25, 2013
Believe it or not, I get asked this question quite a lot. Does WordPress.com support Macs? Well, I submit for your consideration this photo from fellow Automattician Joey Kudish and his scavenger hunt.
Yes, that’s almost every employee at Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) holding up their computer, a Mac. What about those of us not holding up our Macs? We left them back in our hotel rooms.
So, does WordPress.com support Macs? You bet we do! In fact, we pretty much support Macs first, since that’s what we use to make everything.
Anyway, this is a rather moot point these days, as most modern browsers (with the notable exception of Internet Explorer) offer very consistent rendering across all platforms, making the Mac vs. PC distinction practically unnecessary when it comes to the web.
So, what does WordPress.com support? We support any browser listed here, regardless of which platform you’re using. We also support any standards-compliant browser not listed there, including a variety of mobile browsers, and you might want to try one of the WordPress mobile apps if you’re a mobile user.
A week ago, I made it back home from my second Automattic meetup, this time in San Diego. Once again, we had a whole week to meet almost everyone (which is refreshing since we’re globally distributed), work on some awesome upcoming features (mostly for WordPress.com), and engage in some local adventures. I won’t spoil any of the upcoming new features, as they’ll be announced on the WordPress.com blog when ready, but you might actually see some in action if you have a keen eye.
I’d rather not spend time explaining why we do meetups and what goes into such a thing, since Toni (our CEO) has already done an amazing job, though I did snap some photos while I was there. I know, it’s a lot less than I usually have, but you can see more photos from Andrew, Anthony, Chelsea, Danilo, Erica, Gary, Jackie, Joachim, Joen, Jorge, Matt, and Stephane.
Lunch with almost everyone from Automattic in San Diego, California.
Last week, the Core Happiness Engineers of WordPress.com gathered for a week of work, introductions, and sightseeing in Amsterdam. In case you don’t know, Automattic is a globally distributed company and all but a few of us work from home, so it’s nice to get some face-to-face time a few weeks each year and to knock out a few projects that would otherwise take months of back-and-forth text chatter.
We made several improvements to tools on our end, so you won’t see much offhand, but you will notice much quicker support responses in the days to come. Also, you should notice some improvements to the WordPress.com signup process and the main support page in the near future.
Throughout the trip, I did manage to snap a few photos, and you can see more from my amsmeetup2012 tag, Andrew, Bryan, Erica, Jackie, Karen, Matt, and Nick.
Over the past few months, the Happiness Engineers of WordPress.com have grown to require separation into sub-teams. Enter the new Core Happiness team: the Happiness Engineers who are focussed strictly on answering support requests and creating/improving documentation.
Earlier this month, the new Core Happiness team met for our very first chance to work together as the new team. We invaded Tybee Island, Georgia, the home town of fellow Automattician Jane Wells, for a week of work, food, and some sightseeing.
As you can imagine, there was a lot of work to do. Since we mostly work on the customer service end of things, you might not see any of the week’s work outright, but you’ll probably notice that we’re able to resolve issues a bit quicker than before.
As for sightseeing, we toured the island itself and bits of Savannah, including River Street and Bonaventure Cemetery. Throughout the trip, I managed to snap a few photos, and you can also sample some of the local delicacies in my tbimeetup2012 tag.
I had one heck of a great time at my very first Automattic company meetup. As we are a globally distributed company, it was great to finally meet all of the talented folks that I had only chatted with until recently.
This year, we were in Budapest, turning out some awesome new features for WordPress.com. These features would have taken months to build and perfect over text, but we knocked them out in less than a week by working in person with small groups. I don’t want to spoil the surprises, so keep your eyes on our blog for the official announcements.
I did manage to salvage a few photos after low-light blurriness claimed most of them, and I have a few more hiding in my budmeetup2011 tag. It goes without saying that there are plenty of talented photographers at Automattic, and you can find more photos from Karim, Alex, Sheri, Erica, Lori, Krista, Anthony, Ran, Martin, Nick, Daryl, Isaac, Kevin, Dan, and Ashish.
News, status, and the future of Automattic and WordPress.com. Awesome stuff!
Ok, I’m not really back at work, but it’s hard to visit the home city of your globally distributed company without visiting the office.
