Matt Mullenweg will be in Wellington and Auckland on June 17th and 18th this year. It is Matts second visit to New Zealand and five years since he came to the first ever NZ wordcamp held in Wellington in 2009.
Since then WordPress has continued to grow to the point where it now powers something like 22% of the websites out there. As co-founder of WordPress and owner of Automattic Matt leads a global community. So we are delighted to have him back here in New Zealand to give a localised update on the world as seen by WordPress users.
My first experience of Matt came in November 2008 when I went to the second wordcamp held in Australia in Sydney. Despite staying close to the venue, I managed to pick the only cab driver in Sydney who couldn’t read a map and so ended up being late to the event. The cab had a GPS but only to track its location if stolen not for navigation – doh…
Eventually I arrived at WordCamp Australia (Sydney) and got my coffee. Looking around I spotted a camera at the back so large it appeared to be wearing a person. Nek minnit I tripped over and spilled half my coffee and a kind person helped me up. It was Matt. Not the way I wanted to arrive but one of those things. Later on Matt gave us one of his now well known “state of the word” talks and I realised I was totally in the right place.
2008 was when I stopped most of my other projects to begin working on WordPress projects full time and since then I have worked on hundreds of sites. WordPress has transformed my world and made web content management much easier for millions of users around the world. I’m grateful that I get to help so many people with their websites and that is all enabled by WordPress.
Automattic / WordPress Auckland User Group
Auckland – Venue TBA“Please join us as we welcome Matt Mullenweg to New Zealand for a special conversation with the local tech and WordPress community.
Matt Mullenweg is the co-founder of the open-source blogging platform, WordPress, the most popular publishing platform on the web, and the founder & CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and Jetpack. Additionally, Matt is a principal and founder of Audrey Capital, an investment and research company. He has been recognised for his leadership and success by Forbes, Time, BusinessWeek, INC., PC World, and Vanity Fair.”
The event is being held at the Ray Freedman Arts Centre at EGGS and for tickets click on book now link below here “A Conversation with Matt Mullenweg” runs from 7pm till 9pm on Wednesday 18th of June.
For tickets Book now
Matt will also be speaking in Sydney, Melbourne and Wellington on this trip if you have friends in those locations who may be interested.
http://www.meetup.com/WordPress-Sydney/events/182574892/ Monday, June 16, 2014 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM
http://www.meetup.com/WordPress-Melbourne/events/181846182/ Thursday, June 12, 2014 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-conversation-with-matt-mullenweg-tickets-11675865829 Tuesday, 17 June 2014 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Regarding wordcamps – there have now been 6 of these in New Zealand. Wordcamps are informal gatherings of WordPress users and there is another wordcamp planned for Auckland in late July.
Update: The photo at top was taken at the actual event after this blog post went live. It shows Matt Mullenweg and Poutaua Biasney-Tule who presented Matt with a Greenstone gift and an appropriate Māori welcome.
