Tag: community

Joining Tumblr

Thrilled to announce I’ve joined Tumblr as head of product and technology. This new role means I get to work alongside industry veterans on a brand and a platform that I’ve admired for years — all while engaging with and creating new experiences for an amazing and diverse community of fans, creators, and brands.

With Automattic and Tumblr joining forces in September 2019, we’re keeping momentum going as we build products and experiences together. Tumblr is alive and kickin’! Especially recommend checking out the mobile apps (available in App Store and Google Play Store) as strong evidence of a thriving product development culture that deeply understands its user base.

What most excites me is the fit of my skills and experience with this new challenge. New learnings. Combines years of experience as a hands-on product developer with cross-functional operations at the executive level. My full range! Success means nurturing and developing an outstanding technical organization, purpose-driven to support a thriving online community and grow a healthy, sustainable business.

For product news and updates follow the Tumblr blog to keep up with the latest and greatest. Y también hablamos español, síganos en Tumblr: El blog del equipo.

Visita el blog del equipo de Tumblr.

For a brief taste of Tumblr:

Explore the archives on this isn’t happiness — an art scrapbook that’s curiously addicting…

Find the warm fuzzies on cozy.tumblr.com, as an alternative to news-obsessed social media…

Hear stories of discovering a community around shared interests at explore what you love;

And, enjoy Garfield Minus Garfield. (I love this one).

Follow me on Tumblr, too.

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  • nanobar
Two nascent Tumblr blogs picking up steam.

Two blogs going so far, with a few more in the works: nanobar.tumblr.com (main) and blackedoutrims.tumblr.com (side obsession número uno).

So many fun features to discover including this never-ending TV show and — for pros — lesser-known features like the dogear, fast reblog (use a long press on mobile), and fancy archive pages.

Tucson Parks Foundation

I’m proud to announce I’ve joined the Tucson Parks Foundation as board member.

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Screenshot of the Tucson Parks Foundation website.

The Foundation supplements and supports the City of Tucson Parks & Recreation’s programs, services, and capital projects: particularly for children, at-risk youth, seniors, and the disabled.

In my years in Tucson I’ve enjoyed the beautiful parks, sports fields, attending a wide variety of events — so I’m proud and happy to give back to the cause.

Since the website is powered by WordPress, naturally my role includes webmaster duties (grin). More broadly, I’m serving on the marketing and promotion committee: helping to communicate and engage with our community via social media, the website, email, and other traditional channels.

Are you a non-profit in Tucson or Southern Arizona? I’d love to interview you briefly on how you use your website to collect payments, such as donations and member dues. Please contact me if you’re interested in chatting about this.

 

Gutenberg is the Next-Generation Engine for WordPress

If you use and love WordPress, this is must-watch TV: Gutenberg showcased during the annual State of the Word including a bit of amazing live editing by Matías Ventura. We’ll be seeing much more in 2018, and as everyone starts testing it more — the team improves it daily and progress ramps up — and eventually it comes to the rest of the world via an official WordPress release.

Matt previously laid out the vision with We Called it Gutenberg for a Reason (August 2017).

The Automattic VIP team shared a useful overview: The New WordPress Editor: What You Need to Know about Gutenberg. My colleague Ian Stewart gives his angle in Why I’m so excited about the Gutenberg Editor for WordPress.

I also highly recommend watching Morten Rand-Hendriksen’s Gutenberg and the WordPress of Tomorrow presentation from WordCamp US 2017.

If you’re brand new to the project, start here: Introducing a new way to WordPress.

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Introducing a new way to WordPress: Gutenberg.

 

 

 

To get involved with Gutenberg, head over to GitHub for design and development, follow along with team updates on Make WordPress, and — of course install the plugin and start using it if you haven’t already.

 

Get Involved: Engineering Managers Community

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If you manage technical teams, are looking to grow and learn and broaden your network — you might enjoy connecting with this community of peers from all around the world: Engineering Manager Slack.

I’ve enjoyed participating in the discussions around books, conferences, remote companies, and more. Useful to both get a new perspective once in a while as I’m exposed to fresh ideas outside my own company’s culture and norms. And also to get a zeitgeist feel of my industry, my “people.”

Co-organizer Cate’s put up a brief recap of the first year or so in New-ish Eng-Manager Slack, >1 Year On.

I believe in community, and the value of peer-mentoring, and it’s been great to create a space for that and have others value it too.

Join us!

Get Involved: WordPress App Testing

Want to contribute to WordPress apps on Android and iOS? If you aren’t a developer or designer, no worries, we need your help as a tester. Anyone and everyone is welcome to pitch in — all you need is a keen eye and a iOS or Android phone or tablet.

Head over to Make WordPress Mobile and subscribe to receive email updates. Notice certain posts are titled “Call for Testing” — that’s where you can jump in, read the testing notes, and test the new beta versions on your device.

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For both iOS and Android there’s a one-time step to join as a beta tester via TestFlight or Google Play Store. After you join, you’ll have access to download and use — and test — the latest and greatest versions of the WordPress apps before they are available to the public.

Help us make WordPress better on mobile!

P.S. WordPress is also now on desktop for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Hacker Manual Social Rules

These social rules from the Recurse (formerly Hacker School) community’s guidelines describe an excellent model for open source citizenship and interacting with others in a positive way.

These rules are intended to be lightweight, and to make more explicit certain social norms that are normally implicit. Most of our social rules really boil down to “don’t be a jerk” or “don’t be annoying.”

The list includes no feigning surprise, no well-actually, no back-seat driving, and no subtle isms.

Bookmarked.

WordPress Core Responsive Image Support

Testing this plugin to improve responsive image support for WordPress is a great way for front-end designers and developers to get involved in core WordPress, modernizing the platform that powers almost 25% of the web.

Via WordPress › Update: Responsive Image Support for Core « Make WordPress Core.

WordPress Edinburgh

I spoke with the Edinburgh WordPress meetup today via Skype video. It was a fun and engaging group! Thanks to Iain Taylor for inviting me to share about Automattic products and WordPress happenings, and for everyone’s questions and discussion.

Discussing everything from the new WordPress.com dashboard, Jetpack and Photon, to the Underscores theme and good plugins for custom post types, to the WP REST API.

Notes and slides on the WordPress Edinburgh Meetup.com page.

WordCamp Buenos Aires 2015

I gave a talk at WordCamp Buenos Aires in May 2015 on finding and choosing the perfect theme.

Slides (in Spanish) are available here: Encontrar el diseño perfecto para tu sitio WordPress. For similar information in English, check out these Jumpstart resources on ThemeShaper.

It was a great event! Well organized and well attended; I was also impressed with the quality level of the presentations: from project management to extending the Customizer to web development psychology. Met a few people I’d emailed or seen online a bit in the WordPress.org community, and I’m very happy to see the WordPress community in South America growing and strong, and it was great to connect with the Argentinean open source community a bit more.

To see more about the event, here’s the #wcba15 hashtag on Twitter and the official WordCampBsAs stream.

(Photo credit: Zulema Ayala.)

Tucson WordPress Meetup: Showcase

Tim recapped our Tucson WordPress meetup for January 2015 nicely, with the winners of the “Best of 2014” showcase.