Automattic

Blog: Barry on WordPress
Barry was born and raised on the banks of the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas. During the day, he makes sure the servers are zipping along while trying not to get too much BBQ sauce on his keyboard and at night… ok, well, he’s doing the same :) When he’s not on AIM, ICQ, Jabber, IRC, or reading about the latest and greatest in MySQL optimization, Barry enjoys traveling and playing a little lacrosse.

Blog: Blogwaffe
After escaping Moscow (Idaho), Mike has been hiding in academia for 20 or so years. We stole him from a PhD in Quantum Information at Caltech to join the real world, or as close as we get to the real world around here. In between carnitas tacos, because apparently there is no good BBQ in Southern California, Mike hacks on bbPress and the javascripty bits of WordPress.

Blog: Where am I…
Shaun never knew what he wanted to do. Like George Costanza, he always wanted to pretend to be an Architect. Somewhere along the way, he managed to score a B.S. in Engineering, minoring in math and physics. That degree quickly fell by the wayside, as his heart pushed him toward design. That was nearly 10 years ago. These days, Shaun can be found obsessing over details while tilting his head like a confused dog. He dribbbles way to much, and tweets continuously.

Blog: irbrad

Brad was born, raised and currently lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. He finds time to write some iOS code when he isn’t busy chasing his one year old daughter around. He loves traveling, photography, reading and pretty much anything with a tiny screen attached to it.

Blog: Karen’s Blog
Karen Arnold (pronounced Car-en) and her husband, 4 children, 4 cats, and approximately 10 chickens, live in sunny Albuquerque, New Mexico. When she isn’t engineering happiness at WordPress.com, she helps her husband homeschool their energetic kiddos, tries to blog regularly, and brainstorms ways to meet every WordPress user in New Mexico.

Blog: Noscope
Working out of Denmark, Joen loves good design and good usability, and strives for both. When he’s not wrangling design, he’s really into Sweden, science fiction books and Sonic Youth. He also does posters once in a while, just for fun.

Blog: Daniel Bachhuber’s weblog

Like a fair number of Automatticians, Daniel is a dude with a particular selection of habits. He likes to run in the countryside, ski inbounds and off-piste, travel, cook with friends and family, and use WordPress to solve the future of journalism. After a year in NYC, Daniel is back living in Portland, Oregon, the best city in the world. His mother says there’s a lot of funny things that can be said about Daniel, but we try to keep those offline.

Blogs: extrapolate.me, Аз, света и сметачите
Younger than even Matt, Nikolay is blogging from small but beautiful Bulgaria. He makes sure the eskimo teens can blog in their native language. When not in front of the computer, Nikolay is either in Sofia University, torturing freshmen, or wandering around Bulgaria. Being like House, M.D. is his secret dream, although quite unattainable, having in mind his lovable nature.

Blog: Just Hugo
Born and raised in sunny Lisbon, Portugal, Hugo has been a WordPress fanboy ever since he started using it. Some people in the Portuguese web scene call him the “WordPress guy” and he even has a couple of tattoos to prove his dedication! At Automattic he works on making things look good and more social on WordPress.com

Blog: Raanan.com
After using Gopher to impress the ladies in the 80s, and starting a web agency specializing in serving publishers and musicians in the 90s, Raanan decided to go to the dark side. Between Time Inc. and Dow Jones, Raanan worked on social media initiatives including RSS, search, podcasts, and the launch of AllThingsD.com. Now that we’ve nabbed him Raanan works on media services, partnerships, and oversees QA for the secret company BBQ sauce. (No Kool‑Aid here.)

Blogs: Aliso the Geek, Aliso the Person
Alison’s love of programming started when she got a Micro Adventure book for her seventh birthday. From there she moved on to programming her TI-85 in junior high, and eventually on to HTML and Actionscript in high school. After learning PHP in college, she fell in love with WordPress in 2007. When not wrangling code, she enjoys gaming, playing with her three cats, and watching movies on the couch with her husband.

Deborah Beckett lives with her husband and two kids in the Land of the Sky (western North Carolina). She earned a degree in Journalism, specializing in Multimedia & Web Design, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has been building web sites and training users for over 15 years. When not engineering happiness, she enjoys running, travel, and spending time with her family.

Blog: Chic & Geek
Paolo first studied mathematics and physics, finally graduated as a photographer at ENS Louis Lumière in Paris, but fell in love with the web in 1994 and hasn’t looked back. He is currently engineering happiness from the shores of Lake Geneva where he lives with his family and cats.

Blog: Jorge Bernal
Jorge is the first Automattician in Spain, and works on the mobile team making WordPress for iOS awesome. He is a WordPress user since before it was WordPress, and a big fan of everything Apple. Loves photography, good wine and discovering new cities.

Blog: Design Simply
Sheri is a designer, developer, and photographer currently living in Saratoga Springs, NY. She earned a Bachelor’s in Business and a Chemistry minor from the University of Utah before spending eight years managing websites for Myriad Genetics in Salt Lake City. She has always considered herself a WordPress evangelist, and now her endlessly positive nature makes her a perfect fit as a Happiness Engineer at Automattic.

Blog: Boren.nu
Ryan writes code, fixes bugs, and wrangles his toddlers.

Blog: Get 2 See
Jeff is a strategic electron lasso artist; a digital plumber; a keyboard cowboy. When he’s not solving data-intensive problems with code, Jeff enjoys live music, seeing the world, brewing beer, hiking, and SCUBA / freediving.

If data is a hammer and problems are nails, Greg is a carpenter. He constructs new applications using the statistics of written language. When not coding he prefers to be out hiking in the mountains of Colorado.

Blog: Sunsets & Pancakes
Hailing from the mean streets of suburban Philadelphia, Anthony proudly put on an Automattic hat just a few days shy of his graduation from Temple University. As expected, he takes the topic of cheesesteaks a little too seriously and hates traveling to places where “Wawa” is just another funny word. His wife and pekeapoo manage to keep him in check while he strives for the ultimate goal of an overall 3.0 kill-to-death ratio in the latest Call of Duty game.

Blog: alarm:clock

Jon manages the advertising programs for Automattic and WordPress.com. He lives just North of the Golden Gate Bridge with his wife and 2 kids.

Blog: Map & Menu
A misplaced North Carolinian in the original Portland (Maine, that is), Michael moved to New England after graduating from the University of North Carolina. Taking his girlfriend and dog with him, they ventured north to chase some adventure, eat some good food, and drink some great beer. When he’s not pushing pixels for the Theme Team, he’s doing just that, with maybe some kayaking and hiking thrown in.

Blog: Legend of Velda
An artist raised by geeks in the beautiful Utah mountains, Velda has been using computers as a canvas for digital expression for as long as she can remember. She loves to help others do the same. With her ridiculously long list of interests and activities, it’s best to simply say that Velda is a huge fan of the universe and the people in it. She especially loves being the mom of her two awesome kids.

Blog: Colinger.com
Brian lived in San Jose, CA for 3.5 years then hightailed it back home to Arkansas after joining Automattic. He works on various WordPress importers and is a VaultPress Safekeeper among other things.

Blog: howdiyblog.com
A lover of all things craft and music, Rebecca is an American expat living in the land down under. She now calls the lovely Adelaide, South Australia home, despite its void of a couple of life’s essential luxuries – Mexican food and late night shopping. A combined passion for the web, technology and marketing led her to join the Premium Services team at Automattic.

Born in Portland and raised in the rainy city of Seattle. Like many Seattleites he drinks too much coffee. When not hacking around on HTML/CSS/JavaScript he may be found exploring the Cascade Mountains or sipping Maker’s Mark. He is a known lover of Javascript (please don’t judge him).

Blog: Alternate.org
Kevin lives in Boulder, Colorado, where the sun shines more than 300 days out of the year, which is good because he’s originally from San Diego. After attending art school for graphic design in the late 90s, Kevin found himself caught up in the whirlwind of the web agency world during the dot-com boom. More recently, however, Kevin spent quite a while doing interface work for the financial industry and knows more about earnings per share than he’d care to admit. Happily married with three kids, Kevin plays in a band and has been blogging for more than 10 years.

Blog: Buayacorp
The first time he saw a computer was around Nov 99. He was told that Y2K was the end of computers. He naively believed, but thought it’d be fun to study CS. He started using WordPress in 2004, which introduced him to the open source. He tried to collaborate, but he was still a cowboy coder. To improve, he decided to pursue his studies in a new country, with a new language and with a different culture. He is still learning thanks to the awesome people working at Automattic.
When not in front of the computer, he enjoys reading, traveling, hiking or cooking.

Blog: Phil Crumm

Phil is a born and raised Californian. When he’s not keeping smiles on the faces of WordPress users, he’s programming, playing guitar, or working hard towards a Computer Science & Engineering degree at the University of California, Los Angeles.

When not wrangling code at WordPress, JC tests server tweaks and programs interactive elements.

Blogs: Fiend of Awesome & Surviving the Modern World

A native Missourian, it’s taken Jackie a full 20 years to learn to appreciate summers in her current hometown of Austin, TX. Evolving into what her mother once called a “nuts and berries” person, she’s studying to become an herbal medic; makes her own soap, kombucha and yogurt; and feels prepared for just about anything, even a zombie apocalypse.

Blog: tekArtist
Stephane currently lives in Montreal, Canada, where he shares his time between a family he adores and a career he is more than ecstatic about. He started working in the digital/web industry in 1994, and admits he is lucky enough to have done it all at some point or another. His favorite quote is Albert Einstein’s “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

Blog: Pete Davies
After nearly 30 years of fabulous British weather, Pete moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he was surprised to find it still rained. Unperturbed, he fell in love with the California outdoors and, among other things, learned to sail. In-between sailing trips and bike rides, he managed to get a fancy business degree from Stanford University. As a Business Engineer he builds partnerships between Automattic products and other awesome companies.

Blog: Danilo Ercoli
Danilo was born and raised in the beautiful countryside of Ciociaria, central Italy. He was adopted from Bologna and start working as GIS developer when he was very young. He currently lives in Bologna, but travels all around Italy hoping to find the right place to live. Now he’s joined the mobile crew working on our mobile apps and on other open source projects. When not coding Danilo enjoys indie music, soccer and politics. His lucky number is 8, and his favourite quote is from a Keane song: “Oh, simple thing, where have you gone?”.

Blog: egill.re
Although born and bred in Iceland, he whose name can not be spoken, bares no responsibility for ash spewing, holiday wrecking, flight grounding volcanoes with unpronounceable names. At Automattic he serves up a refreshing cocktail of data, stats and ads. While not working he can be found enjoying life with his better half, watching his three upcoming Automatticians growing up.

Blog: On/Off
He still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up, but until then, Yoav is finding happiness in making WordPress.com users happy. Happily married (+ dog) and living not too far from Tel-Aviv, Israel, Yoav also makes sure everything we do around here works in languages written from tfel ot thgir.

Blog: wordpress.mfields.org

Blog: Less Talk, More Do

When Chris is not at the computer, his hobbies include cooking, woodworking, and writing short bios about himself.

Blog: russellfreeman.me, coffeemanmatt

After studying percussion, electronic engineering, and computer science, Matt finally decided he had no idea what to do in life. This disastrous decision led to a five year stint in the US Army, where he learned how to do push ups, herd cats, and shave every day. When he isn’t busy brewing coffee and daydreaming about jazz, he engineers happiness from Copperas Cove, TX, where he lives with his beautiful wife, two crazy boys, two extra stinky dogs, and a cuddly cat.

Blog: Magpie
Eoin spent years telling robots what to do, only to realize they are bad listeners and incessant bores. So he abandoned a career in automation to eventually join Automattic. A proud Irish daddy of three girls, as well as a GAA man to the bone, he harbors ambitions of winning something before his knees give way. Career ambition now is to grok code and grow.

Blog: Urban Giraffe
Originally from the UK, John spent many years juggling pointers before outsourcing himself around the world, ending up in China and the Czech Republic. When not coding he can be seen walking at great speeds, making sandwiches, and thinking of other countries to live in that begin with a C. John has never had coffee and doesn’t really do BBQ (but thinks he should keep that quiet).

Blog: Rosemattic

Rose knows. Rose is a behind-the-scenes magician at Automattic who does experiments and blows stuff up in a secret lab. No one is really sure what she does but we’ve heard that she’s an investor in emacs. She loves to ski, backpack, travel, cook and eat. Other hobbies include internet dating, embarrassing herself in public, and trying to earn a spot on the Systems Team at Automattic.

Pyry is cool.

Blog: Nick Hamze

Nick was born and raised in South Dakota. After spending way too much time in school Nick ended up with a JD/MBA from the University of South Dakota. When not tinkering around with WordPress, Nick enjoys reading and listening to music.

Blog: Ran Yaniv Hartstein’s blog (in Hebrew)

Ran lives with his girlfriend in Tel Aviv, Israel, about four minutes away from a beautiful sandy beach which he never goes to. He maintains the Hebrew version of WordPress.org, and engineers the happiness of WordPress.com’s users for fun and profit. He is also the Automattician with the most characters in his name.

Blog: Jeremy Herve

Originally from France, Jeremy now lives in Budapest, Hungary. When he is not engineering happiness at WordPress.com, he is probably in front of another screen: his passions away from the computer are cinema, TV series, and science fiction books.

Blog: ethitter.com
It took Erick a while to figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up, which led him through a few different careers. After experiments in audio engineering and accounting, he used his long-dormant web development skills to land a few freelance gigs. One of those turned into a full-time position, where he stayed for a few years before an opportunity at Automattic came his way. When not building cool tools to let users customize their WordPress.com blogs, Erick travels to as many WordCamps as he can afford, seeks out great beer, and longs for enough free time to go hiking in New Hampshire’s White Mountains again.

Blog: Two Ells
Upon earning a degree in English literature and writing from UNC-Chapel Hill, Daryl realized he had no job prospects and decided to try his hand at computers. After short stints with a couple of small local companies, he did a long stint with a browser company and is now tickled pink to be working with WordPress on a day-to-day basis. He lives in Knoxville with his wife, two kids, dog, and fish, and he passes his time reading literary fiction. He will never give up on the Oxford comma but will happily split infinitives and end sentences prepositions with.

Blog: MacManX.com
James began using WordPress in 2004. Being new to WordPress (and blogging in general), he quickly found the WordPress Support Forums and basically never left. Today, many scholars debate whether he enjoyed volunteering his help to WordPress users, or if he simply couldn’t figure out how to close the browser window. James currently resides in sunny Southern California, where he enjoys bringing happiness to millions of WordPress.com users.

Blog: blog://dd32.id.au/
Dion was born and raised in the country side of Australia. He started his journey with WordPress in early 2005 and has never left, some debate if WordPress was simply his out from University life, but others know it as a calling. During the day he can be found making WordPress.com more awesome, and during the night, making WordPress.org even awesome-er.

Blog: locker73.com
Matt is currently in Milwaukee, WI and for some odd reason really likes to have all 4 seasons (but does wish winter was only about 3 weeks). In his free time he enjoys all things tech, and when not working on making WordPress better plays with everything from erlang to cocoa.  Fun Fact: In a previous life Matt was an avionics technician on F-16′s.

Blog: Takashi Irie
Takashi is a Japanese web designer who is now wrangling themes at Automattic. He loves house music as much as he loves WordPress. He lived in London for 7 years where he studied and started his career on the web. He met WordPress in the university and since then it has been a big part of his life, not just professional but also personal. His wife shares his addiction and they both enjoy together the wonders of WordPress. He is now living in Brighton, a seaside town in the south of UK.

Blog: JJJ Says…
A native Wisconsinite, John has natural love of beer, cheese, and a strong dislike for sub-zero temperatures. He is a lover of naps, puppies, puzzles, and things with wheels and gears. When he isn’t helping build neat stuff with code, he enjoys traveling the world, taking pictures, a good cup-o-tea, and helping people use (and extend) WordPress, BuddyPress, and bbPress.

Blog: digitalize.ca
Mo has unhealthy obsessions with cool things like ice cream, JavaScript, and books. When not off on a coding adventure, you can find him annoying people with his terrible sense of humour, or watching tv wishing he was more active. Mo lives just outside of Toronto and loves it there — despite the moderately cold winter temperatures.

Blog: Aerych’s Page
Eric is a professional coffee drinker and member of the WordPress mobile team living in tornado prone Oklahoma City. He has a degree in Political Science that he has never used because working with technology is way more fun. When he’s not coding he enjoys making a mockery of golf, frequenting coffee shops, and fussing with numerous hobby projects.

Blog: Apokalyptik
Demitrious is a self portrayed jester (certainly not jack) of all trades and master of none. Leaving the heat of central California behind him he set out to make a difference in this new age of instant information. And what better place to make a difference than here with us at Automattic, where instant information isn’t just a goal but a way of life?

Blog: Isaac Keyet
At Automattic, Isaac is determined to make the mobile blogging experience for WordPress better. In the past he co-founded IntenseDebate, a comment plugin that became a part of the Automattic family in October 2008. Isaac derives from Sweden, and participated in the TechStars program class ’07. Spends large portions of his day drinking tea and hanging out in cafés. Likes intelligent people. Has a very diverse music taste.

Blog: EaterNation

Hailing from the great state of Maryland, Warren turned his wagon west toward San Francisco where he has made his home for 8 years. He enjoys a paper copy of the New York Times, more coffee and food than he would prefer to tell his doctor about, going to the movies, and meeting new people everywhere he travels. He is the inventor of Guerrilla Scrapbooking & has one of the world’s largest fridge magnet collections. At Automattic his goal is to make sure things at the lounge get done, and done right.

Blog: Mikelberry
Michael has seen “Big Trouble In Little China” more times than anyone ever should. While he wanted to be a kung fu master, he went a less violent route and picked up a bass guitar and set of skis. Originally from Michigan, Michael now lives in Chicago, Illinois by way of Boulder, Colorado where he earned his BA in Philosophy from the University of Colorado. He joined the IntenseDebate crew (a distributed comment system now a part of the Automattic family) in March of 2008, and has since perfected the art of schmoozing kung fu.

Blog: koop
Koop works on improving WordPress using equal parts JavaScript and black magic. He is currently settling into temperate San Francisco, where he is fueled by burritos and all things musical.

Blog: kovshenin.com
Born in Nizhniy Novgorod, raised in Malta, then Magnitogorsk. Enjoying life in Moscow. Speaks English, Russian, Italian and of course WordPress. Working with the Dot Org team at Automattic, bringing joy to the WordPress Community and the Open Source world. During his free time Konstantin plays the piano, walks the dog, drinks a lot of coffee and contributes to Core.

Blog: jkudish.com

Joachim (Joey for short) is originally from Montreal, Quebec, but now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. When not writing code or fixing bugs on WordPress.com, he is likely outside with his two dogs. Joey is also an enthusiastic traveler and avid coffee drinker.

Blog: Michelle Langston
Michelle is a Tar Heel-born-and-bred web designer and developer who built her first site at the age of 14. More than a decade later, she’s still at it. She pursued her undergraduate and graduate studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, earning degrees in Multimedia Journalism and Information Science, respectively. The topic of her Master’s project? Guess! (Hint: it starts with “Word” and ends with “Press”). Michelle enjoys cute animals, reading, singing in choirs, taking long walks, watching Tar Heel basketball, and trying to relearn how to play all the songs on the piano that she pounded out in her earlier years.

Before dedicating her life to Happiness and WordPress, Jenia worked a lot of peculiar jobs and lived in places like Minsk, Budapest, Dar es Salaam, Vienna, and Boston. She loves answering questions, solving problems, and helping people become comfortable with technology — and do awesome things using it! When not engineering happiness, Jenia enjoys eating salt, practicing obscure forms of yoga, and spending time with her family.

Blog: Dented Reality
After growing up in a tiny town in rural Western Australia, Beau decided that he needed to be somewhere with a little more excitement so he could be a part of this “Internet” thing that no one was talking about at the time. After 10 years of illustrious (and sometimes not-so-illustrious) development work in a variety of companies (and freelancing), he landed his position with Automattic, beating code into shape with his mad Krav Maga skillz.

Blog: ZXCode
Lenny is the Polldaddy. His role involves keeping Polldaddyland king of planet Polling. He likes reading every 8th book he buys, collecting old computers and doing nothing with them, saving every 500th picture he takes, and coming up with movie projects he never starts. He is based in Sligo, Ireland.

Blog: Writing Through the Fog
As her blog name hints, Cheri lives in San Francisco (and for the record, is on good terms with the city’s fog). When she’s not working on editorial projects, she’s taking photographs, exploring new cities and countries with her husband, or watching baseball whilst sipping Belgian ale. She studied nonfiction in Goucher College’s MFA program and screenwriting at Loyola Marymount University and writes about culture and technology, the self and social media, and relationships in a digital world. She is a huge fan of drum & bass, pho, and squirrels.

Blog: Paul Maiorana
Paul grew up in northwestern New Jersey’s farmland, and despite now residing in Brooklyn, NY, he still considers himself a country boy. He came up through the publishing world, most recently running Fast Company and Inc.’s digital group as their CTO, and is now working with our VIP team to expand and support that program.

Blog: Ryan Markel
Ryan keeps the peace on WordPress.com from St. Louis, the Gateway to the West. He’s been blogging in some form or another since the turn of the millennium, eventually learning and loving WordPress. When he’s not patrolling for spammers and other ne’er-do-wells, he enjoys the study of games, being part of Cardinal Nation, and helping his wife (try to) control his four children.

In his move from Sydney, Australia back to the states, Dave decided to retire from his life as a nomad (52 homes in 30 years).  He has lots of passions, most of them related to the web. He loves clean, usable, bloat-less interfaces. He’s a fan of iterative design, polishing everything until it’s right, and testing changes to see what kind of impact they’ve made.

Blog: Where is Naoko?, en.naoko.cc
Born and raised in Fukuoka, Japan, Naoko went to school and lived in the US for 13 years before coming back to Tokyo, Japan. A personal blog she started in 2003 somehow led her to publish three WordPress books in Japanese, attend and organize WordCamps, and land a job at Automattic.

Blog: LoriLoo
Originally from North Carolina, Lori makes her home in San Francisco, where she hikes amongst the Redwoods, reads all things paper and electronic, goes on slow runs, and makes gingerbread houses. At Automattic she loves working with the people, figuring out all things related to HR.

Blog: Wine Scamp

Andrea will talk your ear off about wine, food, literature of all sorts, parenting, and anything else she thinks she knows a lot about. She’s lived in 5 states in the US and spent 5 years in Mexico City and the US Virgin Islands, respectively. When not engaging in WordPress community organizing high-jinks, she can be found juggling her two kids – almost never literally – and wondering what to make for dinner.

Blog: Viper007Bond.com
After a previous life as a spy with the British Secret Intelligence Service, Alex joined Automattic to provide support for our awesome WordPress.com VIPs. When not being weird enjoying rain instead sun in Portland, Oregon, he enjoys driving his sports cars, playing video games with his friends, writing WordPress plugins, or riding his mountain bike.

Blogs: Nick Momrik
Nick grew up in northern lower Michigan and currently lives in Saginaw, population 57,523. He was undercover at the Help Desk and Microlabs at Saginaw Valley State University for 8 years before joining Automattic. Nick has been using WordPress since version 0.72 and vaguely remembers life before plugins and themes. When there isn’t snow on the ground, he can usually be found on a golf course trying to get his first hole-in-one.

Blog: carolinemoore.net
A northern Maine native, Caroline has been geeking around with websites since she was 14 and posting moody teenage poetry at Geocities. Not much has changed fifteen years later (except the Geocities and moody poetry parts, thankfully). She graduated in 2005 with a B.A. in New Media from the University of Maine, where she continued to work as a web designer and developer for several years before joining Automattic in 2012. In her spare time she enjoys doodling, taking weird photographs, and hanging out with her husband, Tim, and their daughters, Ellie and Gwen.

Blog: philiparthurmoore.com

Philip is a United States-born, Hanoi-based expatriate who was born and raised in both Longview and Houston, Texas. He spends a great deal of his time making, breaking, fixing, and thinking about WordPress themes. His three greatest passions in life outside of the web are music, food, and comedy.

Blog: Dreaming of the Things In Between
Tim was born and raised in Down East Maine (in one of the small towns around Bar Harbor). He lives in Maine with his wife and two daughters. By day, he wrangles code. By night, he’s reading a book, writing his own, and spending time with his family.

Blogs: Photo Matt, Matt on WordPress
As the Chief BBQ Taste Tester of Automattic, Matt travels the world sampling cuisine and comparing it to the gold standard of Texas BBQ. Although he originally aspired to be a jazz saxophonist, Matt somehow wound up studying economics which took him to Washington D.C. where he began taking pictures and blogging. The rest, as they say, is mystery. He lives in San Francisco and has a crush on Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

George started his career in investment banking, but six years in, he realized his clients were having way more fun at the other side of the table. He jumped to the dark side of technology start-ups, and hasn’t looked back since. He currently leads the finance team at Automattic, and spends his time engineering all things finance. He also is a recipient of Automattic’s Distinguished Janitor Award (true story). George is a native San Franciscan, so trust him when he says “don’t call it Frisco”.

Blog: Чорба от греховете на dzver

Veselin is from Bulgaria. He’s been working since the early teenage years. Tried different things – writing books, making crosswords puzzles, worked a while on a construction site, then got a degree in Accounting and became a professional software engineer. Happily ever after.

Blogs: Holy Shmoly!, In Photos, Donncha’s Blog
Donncha hails from Cork City, Ireland and is currently living in the picturesque Blarney village with his wife Jacinta. He’s a slightly obsessive photographer, dragging around a camera everywhere and posting photos every day to Inphotos.org. He loves getting out and about whenever he can and enjoys relaxing walks by the sea. (Murphy’s is the stout prefered by the fine people in the real capital of Ireland, the People’s Republic of Cork.)

Blog: obenland.it

Born and raised in Constance, Germany, Konstantin moved to Southern California in September 2012. Here he enjoys the everyday sun, the beaches, burritos on fridays and football on sundays. And occasionally he drinks beer.

Blog: American Cheese

David has the uncanny ability to pair fine cheeses with finance.  Living in San Francisco, he thinks about “the big one” hitting way too often.  He is very afraid of flying and terrified of heights.  He hates bees, wind, and potholes. Nothing would please him more than to see his San Diego Chargers win the Super Bowl. In short, David is a frightened dreamer.

Karim is passionate on all things WordPress, Open Source, and Minimalism.

Blog: Chexee, in a few words
Chelsea, known to many as Chexee, is a compact time traveler who was born in Chicago, grew up in Las Vegas, went to college in Reno, and has since put her feet on the ground in San Francisco. She started out as a teenage blogger using b2, and graduated to WordPress before she graduated high school. When she’s not poking pixels, she can be found flying through time with the Doctor, exploring the fringes of the ‘verse on a Firefly class ship, or clad in black guarding an ice-covered wall.

Blogs: Andrew on WordPress, Laptop Tips
In the mid-eighties Andrew graduated in Electronics from Sofia Polytechnics and started working in the only computer company at the time in Bulgaria — Software Products and Systems. After trips through London, DEC, freelancing he finally ended up in Vancouver, where he now resides. In 2007 something possessed him to start contributing to WordPress’ TinyMCE integration, and somehow we convinced him to continue taming that beast and other WPness full-time.

Blogs: Andy on WordPress
Originally from the UK, Andy had no trouble adapting to the rain soaked life of Vancouver, BC where he now lives. Andy likes to hop between coding and designing, sometimes mixing the two together and making his code look “pretty.” He has been tinkering with WordPress for a number of years both in theme design and plugin development. When away from his screen, Andy loves to watch and play all kinds of sports. Being in Canada, hockey holds a special place in his heart.

Blogs: Gary, Gary Takes Photos
Gary can most often be found in Melbourne, Australia. He enjoys making things, breaking things and fixing things, which keeps life interesting. In his spare time, he has been known to get excited about quality food, interesting beers, strong coffee and live music.

Blogs: Michael on WordPress
Michael wrangles words and pictures in the form of videos, illustrations, visual design fandangos, and occasional voiceovers. As a “lightbulb engineer” his job at Automattic is making those lightbulb-over-head moments of epiphany, understanding and inspiration ping over our users’ heads. When he isn’t hardwired into the interwebs, you’ll find him in Sapporo, Japan drinking too much espresso, writing tales of dread-wonder, animating anything he can get his hands on, or reading geeky genre fiction by gaslight.

Iliya is a developer, systems administrator, and systems architect currently living in Sofia, Bulgaria. He strives to understand how things work and to find the best possible solutions. When not reading about the latest and coolest technical solutions, he likes to stay active by lifting weights, running, and playing sports like gymnastics, boxing, and swimming.

Kathryn spends her Montreal summers savoring a daily Vietnamese iced coffee and pondering new ways to prevent a squirrel feeding frenzy in the garden. During the wintertime she mostly hibernates and cuddles with her three demanding felines. She organizes a monthly dinner club that so far has sampled cuisines including Salvadoran, Venezuelan, Argentinian, Indonesian, British-gastropub, Thai-vegetarian, Persian, Egyptian-seafood, Egyptian-brunch, Ethiopian, and Turkish. Her biggest pet peeve on the web is bad restaurant websites.

Blog: MartinRemy.com

Martin is German, but ever since he got his hands on his first computer (while living in Saudi Arabia and attending 7th grade), he knew he’d move to Silicon Valley one day.  After ten years in said valley, he discovered that Colorado is even nicer and moved his family and his computer collection there.  Martin was a co-founder of Sphere and likes to work on things that connect people with content.

Blog: Romantic Robot
Mark is a doer of various things.

Blog: hanni.me
Tinkering with WordPress since before it was WordPress, Hanni hails from both Warwick, UK and Bordeaux, France. When not engineering happiness, she spends her time studying law. The hilarity of trying to fit everything in means she often feels the need to, in the words of Monty Python, run away.

Blog: Ms. Adventures in Italy, When I have Time, Food Blogger on a Diet

A WordPress user and enthusiast since 2006, California-bred Sara is currently in Milan, Italy craving the BBQ her colleagues enjoy daily (and Mexican food, too – please FedEx some). She works with the VIP Services team, trading stories about the Hoff, forgetting her current time zone and dreaming up new usages for WordPress – she hasn’t run out of ideas yet!

Blog: Around the Hill
Dan was born and raised in Seattle, WA so he’s fully engaged with the culture by wearing micro fleece and drinking lots of Starbucks Americanos.  He’s crazy for mobile apps and you’ll find him staring at a small screen for hours on end.  We’re OK with that though since that results in cooler WordPress apps for mobile.  During his free moments he enjoys family, photography and continuing his quest to find the best cheeseburger in the world.

Blog: Gunky.org

Having retired from zapping protozoa with electrical stimuli, Chris spends most of his time drinking chai tea at cafés and running around in parks. He studied philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh in his native city, and applied for graduation upon discovering that he doesn’t exist. If he were a car, he would probably be a yellow Volvo from the 1980s. Ideally, it would be in running condition.

Blog: toni.org
Toni books gigs for the Automattic band and makes sure everyone gets paid at the end of the night. Since the “band” is over 100 people strong these days, it’s really more like an orchestra. Toni’s bio can be found here.

Blog: Joseph Scott
Joseph is a California native, living in Utah with his wife, three daughters and one son. He got hooked on email when it meant dialing into a BBS with a 2400 baud modem and ended up memorizing way too much of the AT command set. Access to the Internet changed all that and going to work for an ISP cemented that shift. It also exposed to him to the world of open source, starting with FreeBSD in 1996. From there he spent a number of years in IT doing a little bit of everything.

Blog: Flight Path
Automattic’s first Australian, first Alex, and first vegetarian. Melbourne born and raised, Alex writes code and fights crime. He has two inventive young children, and roasts his own coffee.

Blog: Justin Shreve
Justin was born and raised in northeastern Ohio and currently lives in Kent. He has been working on WordPress projects for many years doing plugin development and writing various bits and pieces of code. When he steps away from the screen he enjoys photography, traveling, and exploring outside.

Ashish lives in Delhi, India. A hacker who advocates use of free software. He uses Emacs (and sometimes Vim ;)). He likes to chat on IRC (and XMPP) and contribute to various free software projects.

Blogs: Skeltoac, Andy on WordPress
Originally a Vermont maple syrup gargler, Andy was called by high adventure to build the Automattic Ranch in Austin where he is kept warm by the socks someone knitted him for helping her move from Blogger to WordPress. It is rumored that he has an Internet Explorer voodoo doll that he sticks pins in while muttering “box model this.” His publicist was not available for comment.

Blog: peterslutsky.com

Peter spent the better part of 9-months gestating inside a microwave-sized womb with a person who later became his twin brother. Now, 31 and married to a lovely lady, he joined Automattic to focus on expanding the WordPress footprint in politics, government and nonprofit. Peter’s career started as a staffer on John Kerry’s presidential campaign, followed by various jobs in politics, media and technology. For a hot minute, Peter was seen regularly on MSNBC as a ‘political pundit’ and along with his work at Automattic, he enjoys cycling, drinking wine and documentary film. Peter lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Blog: Evan Solomon
Photos: Frames
Evan loves marketing and technology, and he’s fascinated by design. He’s played professional poker, caddied for Bill Clinton and written a congressional testimony. He grew up in suburban New York, went to college at NYU, and since moving to San Francisco badly misses real pizza, real bagels and Yankees games.

Blog: Andrew Spittle
Andrew fights his way through an adorable posse of kittens to get to the keyboard and help WordPress.com users blog. He’s a politics graduate from Whitman College with a penchant for reading, learning, and anything outdoors. He dwells in Portland, OR and tries not to miss the California sunshine. If you’re trying to find him in a crowd, we suggest yelling ‘Spiiiittle’.

Blog: 12-inch pianist

A Southern California native, Derek has been wrangling code in one form or another since before the millennium. Otherwise, he spends most of his time thinking about family, software development, homebrewing, dachshunds, Internet culture, and gaming. Don’t get him started on opinions about Mexican food.

Blog: sysmonk
Alex lives in Lithuania. He loves open source and FreeBSD. Alex recently started in Automattic as a Systems Wrangler. When not working, Alex likes to go camping with his wife and friends.

Blog: kristastevens.com
Krista has an undying love of all things internet. In her spare time, she gives back to the community as an editor at Contents Magazine. She is the former editor-in-chief at A List Apart. She loves to read.

Blog: This is Ian Stewart
When he’s not wrangling WordPress themes for Automattic, Ian is more than likely browsing for books, thinking about books, thinking about where to store books, and—when time permits—sometimes reading books. He hails from the infamously cold and windy Winnipeg, Canada, where he lives with his beautiful wife and children.

Blog: Hew.vc
Hew lives with his wife and children in his adopted home state of North Carolina. He is an avid music fan and has dreams of being part of a band when he grows up. After being cut in a corporate layoff, Hew doggedly searched to synthesize the work part of his life with his passions and personal beliefs. Enter Automattic: WordPress, technology, music, and engineering happiness. A perfect fit.

Blog: mattnt.com
MT has been a designer since before he knew what that meant. When he was a child, his parents would often return home to find their furniture and artwork rearranged. Ever since, he’s been interested in making things simpler, more beautiful, and more fun to use. After adventuring in Savannah, Baltimore, and New Orleans, he now lives in lovely LA (Lower Alabama) with his trusty sidekick, Maggie.

Blog: Accismus
After living in Chicago and Brooklyn, Elizabeth now resides once more in her hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee. She’s not sure where she’ll move next, but she’s determined it will not be anywhere cold. Elizabeth is thrilled to spend her days engineering happiness for WordPress.com. She spends most of her nights reading novels and telling herself that she really ought to go for a run or something.

Blog: mute life *

Born and raised in a small town in Portugal, Filipe wanted to be a crazy scientist when he grew up. He then realized being a designer is that and so much more. Crazily obsessed about typography, user experience and tiny details, he loves to travel around and take photos. Also enjoys the occasional donut and cheesecake.

Blog: Greetings From, A Bronx Tail

New Jersey born and bred, Erica engineers happiness from the Garden State with her canine companion, Francis. She graduated from Drew University with a degree in Anthropology and French, which means she often references obscure societies, à la Bones, in casual conversation. In her spare time, Erica is likely reading far too many books at once or defending her home state from yet another reality TV show.

Blog: Matías’ Journal
Matías wanted to be a painter since his toddler years. In this day and age he splits his time among designing, filmmaking and philosophy. Based in a little country named after a river he began designing and working with WordPress themes many years ago. Now at Automattic he is happy to be the second red pin below the equator on the map. As of note, he began studying latin so he could eventually write his very own “lorem ipsum“.

Blog: All Narfed Up
Born and raised in Southern California, Bryan resides in a suburb outside of Pasadena, California. He’s been using WordPress since August 2004, helped as much as he could in the WordPress.org forums, and received a golden ticket to sign up for WordPress.com in 2005. After many moons, Bryan’s dream came true and finally landed a job with Automattic to help people like he always loves to do. Away from WordPress, Bryan takes photos, reads on his Kindle, watches Seinfeld reruns with his girlfriend, and occasionally practices card magic when he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

Blogs: Thursday Night Smackdown, King of States
Michelle herds words from the fine state of New Jersey with editorial assistants Chester and Felix, to whom she delegates critical nap and fart-related tasks. After accumulating a number of impractical degrees from a number of fancy-pants universities, she turned to a life of food blogging and never looked back. When Michelle isn’t helping WordPress users blog more and better, she’s reading about the medieval papacy, trying to take the perfect photograph of a bowl of soup, or complaining about something or other. Michelle totally heard that crack you made about New Jersey, and is having none of it.

Blog: Jane For Short
Her fellow Automatticians call her the UI Goddess. Prior to joining Automattic, Jane ran a media research/usability lab in New York and served as director of user experience strategy at Schematic. She’s lived everywhere, had jobs ranging from massage therapist to dude ranch cook (before her ten years in the web industry), and puts herself in the shoes of our users whenever possible. Literally… she’s always losing her sandals.

Blog: stuwest.org
Stu joined Automattic in April and spends his time measuring the awesomeness of WordPress. When not working to ensure every chart goes up and to the right, he globetrots to visit the Automattic team, customers, and the WordPress community. See Stu’s bio or his LinkedIn profile.

Blogs: Westi on WordPress, follow the white rabbit

For a while Peter lived a double life as an embedded developer by day and a WordPress lead developer by night. He then escaped from the 9-5 and switched to working with WordPress full-time. Little does he know we’ll never let him out of our sight again… He loves food, drink, photography, and classic cars but will often be found basking in the glow of a computer screen whilst trying to resolve an obscure bug.

Cat Photographer

Blogs: WiebePress, mattwie.be
Known as “Wiebe” around Automattic, Matt hails from sunny (and sometimes cold) Winnipeg, Canada, where he lives with his wife in an inner-city intentional community. He briefly studied journalism and engineering before getting a Liberal Arts degree while accidentally learning to be a web developer by tweaking his WordPress blog. He loves fine beverages (espresso, beer, scotch, and wine), reading, writing, pipe smoking, and good conversation.

Blogs: simpledream, Adventures with Lance & Erin
Hailing from the Tucson Mountains, Lance is a recovering RVer adjusting to life in a house without wheels. When unplugged Lance can be found mountain biking, disc golfing, studying foreign languages and geography, drinking craft beer, and exploring the great outdoors. Born and raised in México, he can roll a fresh corn tortilla like a pro.

Blog: Denizen
Steph spent 12 years living in Singapore’s American expat bubble, and then moved to the U.S. to attend journalism school at Northwestern University. She grew up in the publishing world by interning at The Boston Globe and working at the Chicago Tribune and America’s Test Kitchen. Steph is happiest when she is making pasta while listening to podcasts, skiing down a mountain, grooving in a dance class or hanging out with her friends in Cambridge, MA.