photomatt
Reflecting
I know there’s been a lot of frustration directed at me specifically. Some of it, I believe, is misplaced—but I also understand where it’s coming from. The passing of Pope Francis has deeply impacted me. While I still disagree with the Church on many issues, he was the Pope who broke the mold in so many ways, inspiring me and drawing me back to the Catholic faith I grew up with, with an emphasis on service, compassion, and humility.
photomatt
Greatest Hits
I've been blogging now for approximately 8,465 days since my first post on Movable Type. My colleague Dan Luu helped me compile some of the "greatest hits" from the archives of ma.tt, perhaps some posts will stir some memories for you as well: Where Did WordCamps Come From? (2023) A look back at how Foo Camp and Bar Camp inspired WordCamps.
photomatt
6.8
WordPress 6.8 Cecil is out, and it's a great release. It's unbelievable that it's already been downloaded over 6 million times as I write this. That feeling never gets old. It's a funny time in WordPress because there are a lot of really interesting open questions: Can we iterate faster with canonical plugins? What's the fun thing we can put in to celebrate 7.0, and when will that be?
photomatt
The long-anticipated “Big Sky” AI site builder on WordPress.com went live today. It combines several models and can create logos, site designs, typography, color schemes, and content. It’s an entirely new way to interact with and edit a brand-new or existing WordPress site. This AI agent will make WordPress accessible to an entirely new generation and class of customers, and it will be a power tool for professionals to do things in minutes that used to take them hours.
photomatt
Automattic Operating System
I was interviewed by Inc magazine for almost two hours where we covered a lot of great topics for entrepreneurs but almost none of it made it into the weird hit piece they published, however since both the journalist and I had recording of the interview I've decided to adapt some parts of it into a series of blog posts, think of it as the Inc Article That Could Have Been.
photomatt
It’s so funny that my random re-engagement with Radiohead re-emergence coincides with them doing a new entity that might mean something. I did a poll on Twitter and people preferred OK Computer to Kid A 78%!
photomatt
With the world changing so quickly, it’s hard to find alpha, but the best way is by following the brightest thinkers. This CNBC interview with Ray Dalio and Marc Benioff is good, but it’s way better if you go to the livestream about 25 minutes in and see the full discussion without the editing. You hear what these great thinkers actually think, rather than what an editor thought you’d enjoy. A little bit of friction gets you a lot more information.
photomatt
Real WordPress Security
One thing you'll see on every host that offers WordPress is claims about how secure they are, however they don't put their money where their mouth is. When you dig deeper, if your site actually gets hacked they'll hit you with remediation fees that can go from hundreds to thousands of dollars. They may try to sell you a security plan that…
photomatt
On Lenny’s Podcast
One of my must-read newsletters for the past several years has been Lenny's Newsletter, probably best known for its writing on growth and product management, which really means it covered everything you need to create a great company. It expanded into a really well-done podcast; Lenny has always had a knack for finding the best guests and asking the best questions, so when he invited me on I was very excited.
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WordCamp Asia and Kumbh Mela
It's been fantastic being in the Philippines for this year's WordCamp Asia. We have attendees from 71 countries, over 1,800 tickets sold, and contributor day had over 700 people! It's an interesting contrast to US and EU WordCamps as well in that the audience is definitely a lot younger, and there's very little interest in "wpdrama" du jour, in fact I've had tons of amazing conversations of support and talking about the strength and growth…
photomatt
Sun and shadows
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In high school when 5% of your class doesn’t like you it’s like 3-5 people.
Running a company of 1,700+ when 5% doesn’t like you, that’s 85 people! That fills a room.
150k followers and 5% don’t like you now you have a small stadium of 7,500 people.
It’s still 5%.
photomatt
Hash tables
“You didn’t just come up with a cool hash table,” he remembers telling Krapivin. “You’ve actually completely wiped out a 40-year-old conjecture!” There's a delightful article on an undergraduate discovering an optimization in a very basic computer science principle.
photomatt
Ed Catmull on Change
I've been really enjoying the book Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull of Pixar, it was recommended to me by my colleague Dave Martin a while back and I finally got around to it. There's an interesting story in it where George Lucas has asked him to develop a film editing system that was digital. While George wanted this new video-editing system in place, the film editors at Lucusfilm did not.
photomatt
On Logan Bartlett Show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZaQmFQswm4 https://ma.tt/2025/02/logan-bartlett/
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My First Million http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onaLfllSBvw https://ma.tt/2025/02/my-first-million/
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Boom & Deepseek http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qisIViAHwI https://ma.tt/2025/01/boom-deepseek/
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What’s in My Bag, 2025
It's another year, I have ordered all the things and tested all the cables, there's a little bit about tech and a little bit about life. Here's what made the cut, now I'm going to be factoring in weight of everything as well. The flat-lay this year was taken at my sister Charleen's house, where she hosted Christmas for our family for the very first time.
photomatt
Matt 4.1
Forty-one is a nice birthday because it doesn't feel like too much pressure. For forty I did a big eclipse thing that ended up amazing, this year I'm replicating what I did a few years ago and celebrating in New York, Houston, and San Francisco. My birthday today has already been lovely. Saw the amazing Broadway show Maybe Happy Ending…
photomatt
I wrote over on WordPress.org about breaking the status quo with a Joost/Karim fork. It’s a perfect time as Automattic is re-focusing its work while the legal stuff is going on.
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