Wide ranging and insightful Q&A with Matt

This is a really excellent write-up of a Q&A with Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, that took place at the Orlando WordPress Meetup last week. The questions for Matt were pretty tough and wide ranging, and his answers were equally insightful. This is a text write-up rather than a video of the event, so you’re not quite getting what happened word-for-word, but there’s enough detail to get a good grasp of what was said.

There were some tough questions on Gutenberg, but I found the questions and answers on “WordPress and the future” just as interesting. These touched on thinking into the future, PHP 7.0 and WordPress hosting in general, and revealed a bit about how Matt thinks about WordPress vs Drupal, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, and the like. His answer spoke to what I think a lot of us see as the core strengths of WordPress:
 The benefit to WordPress over the other DIY options is that eventually there is a ceiling that his hit on the Wix sites that inhibit continued growth. WordPress is scaleable. It provides a long-term viability than other options on the market just do not offer. The WordPress community itself offers a level of support unlike any other.

There were also questions about encouraging innovation in remote work, and remote work in general. I thought it was interesting Matt reports spinning his WordCamp Europe trip last year out into a seven week stay, and that he took a writing class in this time.

I must admit I struggled slightly with the idea “[Matt] didn’t take time off of work to do this class but rather worked 20 hour days to ensure that everything got handled”. It’s really cool that the CEO of Automattic can travel, take a class, and work remotely, but four hours of sleep a night is certainly intense. I hope Matt got to sleep on the plane. - Alex