This past week, I was happy to attend the WordPress.com VIP Intensive Workshop with my colleagues and some of our clients, spend time with them chatting about all things WordPress and VIP (and even some things not), and learn a ton of things myself—including attending a security workshop taught by my colleague Mike Adams.
The last dinner we had as a big group (both the VIP team and our clients) was a fantastic time and we had some great conversation. (Special guest photographer on some of these shots is the one, the only Peter Slutsky.)
As you can see, the grounds where we stayed, learned, and worked for three nights are just fantastic. It rained a bit much in the early going, but once the sun came out it was beautiful and just a great place to retreat and spend time building relationships with the people who make WordPress.com VIP what it is.
Some shout-outs are due post-event:
- Scott Taylor for, when I asked him about the groovy new MCE Views that are coming in WordPress 3.9, didn’t even blink but launched into an explanation and then thirty minutes later had produced a plugin example and put it on GitHub. I don’t understand half of it but it’s super-cool. And also for chatting about music tons.
- Konstantin Kovshenin and Corey Gilmore for having the patience to sit with me and help me understand regular expressions. I’m now at a point where I think I can use them and have some additional resources to help me the rest of the way.
- Samantha Geitz and Adam Tow (among others) for chatting with me probably way too much about Mass Effect. Rinat Khaziev for putting up with us always talking about it whenever he was around.
- Matthew Boynes for, after we had a conversation about the likely best way to go about it, whipping up a cool plugin for migrating option data from one WordPress installation to another.
All these people (and more) had a bigger impact on me than they probably think. I saw—time and time again—people talking about problems and then going and starting to solve them, collaborating on the potential solutions, and walking away having learned something.
It was the first time it struck me how much of a community WordPress developers (and really, developers of all stripes) tend to be. And it was about fixing real problems not just for themselves, but for other people who would run in to those same things down the line.
This is why I’m renewing my effort at upping my game, engineer-wise. This is something I want to be a part of and contribute to. I want to have these conversations more often.
Now, if I can just clone myself so I have enough time to get everything done…
