WordPress founder Matt Maren Wegg came to Japan to talk about WordPress and the future of the Web

Popular as open source blogging softwareWordPress(WordPress). Be the founder of that WordPressMatt MarengueggMr. Today was held on Saturday, June 7, 2014WordCamp Kansai 2014We gave a keynote lecture on the stage. Matt speaks about past, present, future of WordPress and the future of the Web with a speech.

WordCamp Kansai 2014 | Share the knowledge and experience lights
http://2014.kansai.wordcamp.org/


Matt Mullenweg | Unlucky in Cards
http://ma.tt/

Arrived at Granfront Osaka.


The venue of WordCamp Kansai 2014 is 8F of Knowledge Capital Tower C.


Many people gathered at the venue, waiting for Mr. Matt's arrival.


The theme of WordCamp Kansai 2014 is "to share the knowledge and experience lights"


Before the keynote lectureWordPress AutomatticMr. Naoko Takano of Globalizer offered a presentation on the activities of WordPress.



The room is full standing at full.


After Q & A session, Mr. Matt's keynote speech is finally over.


Matt Mänrenggg appeared immediately after 11:13, "immediately after the announcement that Matt's arrival will be delayed due to traffic conditions." Speaking started, sweating.


Hello (Japanese). I am glad to have returned to Osaka. It's about 5 years ago, but at that time there were only about 40 people gathered ... .... It is nice to have gathered so much today. I want to share a story with everyone.


First of all, how did WordPress grow in 11 years since its launch, and how did I learn? I would like to talk from the starting point of WordPress. WordPress started in Texas, USA, 10,000 kilometers away from here.

I was born in January 1984, I liked music since I was a child, and I learned the piano. I dropped out quickly (lol) But I started saxophone since I was in my 3rd grade and I continued practicing it.

My father worked in oil fields and was a person with a degree in computer science. Therefore, I was living a life surrounded by computers since I was small. I began to touch nature and computers, but my father forgave me. There is only one rule, it is "to solve by yourself even if trouble occurs, to repair by the time my father comes home." An ordinary American father would repair and tamper with children and cars together, but at home my parents had been messing with computers.

Since I entered high school, I started wanting to do music seriously. The school I attended was an enviable environment where students could study music for about three or four hours a day. Graduates have Beyoncé. I was playing saxophone. But today there is no performance (lol)

Even in music, whatever it is, practice is important to improve. Lessons (lessons) are also necessary. However, music lessons are very expensive and not as much wealthy In our home, lesson fee of 50 dollars per hour (about 5000 yen) was strict. So I did business with saxophone musicians. I have them teach saxophone. Instead, I will make them a website and PC. To be honest, my skill (web building) at that time was not high, so I think that people who chose the original PC got it (laugh)


At that time the website was only static. So, I wanted to incorporate more dynamic elements into the site. For example, a forum (bulletin board) is so. I still love forums even now.

Just about the time, three "incidents" occurred that changed my life significantly. For me it is a major incident. First, I bought a Sony digital camera. The second is my fatherO'ReillyIt gave me the book on web related books. The third one was majoring in political science and economics (at university) so I began to read blogs and started writing myself. Three events that have nothing to do with each other, but for me it was all a deep relationship.

I picked up a digital camera and took pictures, but at that time I could not place many photos online. Next I noticed the beauty of regular expressions. At the same time also frightening. When I started my blog, I noticed that I could transmit opinions to people around the world like reporters. I was deeply impressed.

At that time, IMovable Type(Blogging) with a major CMS service (annotation). Have you ever used Movable Type? Several people are going. Who is still using it? (Several people raising hands) Oh. You have it. Movable Type I love you too, everyone ~ (Venue, surrounded by laughter)


My blog was named photomatt (photo matte). In English there is the word Photomap (photo map), but it is the one I multiplied by my name Matt. As I updated my blog, Movable Type gradually began to feel difficult. I also felt it was late (due to the technical problem of "rebuilding").

In those days, I got to use the blog software "b2 / cafelog (b2)" (note: WordPress is the successor of b2 / cafelog) to French engineers and used it. It was a lot of fun to join the b2 forum. I have not enough skills yet, and I have taught them variously. In the meantime, more beginners participate in the forum than I am, and I will teach you there. While I was doing that, my skills went up. I think that teaching to people is nothing more than a study method.

The skill came up, I wrote the code and contributed to b2. The first code istypographyIt was about things. Had madebatch fileSomeone in the world uses my code, reflected in b2. This was a very valuable experience. It was an experience that could be higher than going high with drugs. Of course I did not do drugs, but (laugh) I bet it is over. Everyone here wishes that we would like to have such experiences.

B2 isGPLIt was based on four philosophies. The 0th thing is OK for any purpose. The first (Japanese) is to be able to see the behavior of the software. The second (Japanese) is to be able to modify the software. The third (Japanese) is that you can freely distribute modified software. Oh, I started from the 0th because I can only count 1, 2, 3 in Japanese, so there is no deep meaning (laugh)

It is no exaggeration to say that the idea of ​​GPL is the idea that I was most influenced in my life. In order to make and distribute software, I thought that the idea of ​​GPL was the most moral.


Activities at b2 were going really well, but terrible things have happened. Michelle of b 2 (note: Michel Valdrighi, founder of b 2 / cafelog) has gone. I can not draw the future of b2. Everyone in the forum has not understood what to do. I posted on that subject to my blog. It was titled "Dilemma of blog software" (blog software dilemma). In that posting, I wrote that b2 is supposed to be very disappointing that it stopped development, and if developing a new software, b2 should match the merits of other software.

British Mike Little (Mr. Mike Little) who saw that post had actually met with Mike in the forum, but he had never actually met, "If you are serious, Would you like to develop software together? " This was a WordPress event where tree seeds were sprinkled. In this way, collaborative work began with Texas in the U.S. and England.

The first thing we worked on was "making installing software easier." It is a famous one named "5 minutes installation". It was not famous at all though (laugh) But I said that from the beginning "famous". I thought it would be famous before saying "famous." People who heard "famous" are supposed to be "famous". That will surely become famous, then. Advice to entrepreneurs is "to lie till it actually happens." (It is useless for Mr. Takano, an interpreter here) It is not rhyming, so I can not translate that into Japanese. In English you say "Fake it till you make it". I'm rhyming.


Back then, I was a college student, but I did not go to class so much (laugh) But there is one favorite lecture,T · S · EliotIt was a lecture on. Does anyone know Elliot? Oh, some people. Eliot 's poetry is very short but has a deep meaning. I liked that. About WordPress tagline. I also write it in the name tag that you are attaching today, but I believe in the idea that "CODE IS POETRY (code is a poetry)". Everyone believes that the code is practical (and maybe so), but I believe that we can make a "beautiful code (like a poem)" if it deals with coding "craftsmanly" .


I will derail for a while and talk about music. The release name of WordPress has the name of a jazz musician. They are great jazz and musicians of the past. Because I thought jazz was cool for this reason. Jazz is cool, WordPress is also cool, everyone will think of you? You might think that it is a small thing. But, I succeeded in gathering people who want to join the WordPress project, want to be part of WordPress. There were things that we gathered beyond expectation and sometimes did not go forward (laugh) In Japanese, "Boatman 's boat, ship, climb mountain." Everyone wanted a lot of functions, but we did not have resources to deal with that.

Therefore, we decided to introduce the plug-in function. It was when it was Ver1.2. WordPress began as a blogging tool to add plugin functionalityCMSIt was the opportunity I began to walk towards. In such a case, a very important event came from Japan.

At that time, WordPress had no translation function. However, there was a person translating WordPress in Japanese if I got up one morning! I translated and commented all thousands of lines of code. In very beautiful Japanese. But I thought that it was crazy (lol) (lol) Some people will do it. I felt that WordPress was amazing. I thought that WordPress would be even bigger. "If he will do translations in the future, I also thought that I had to make it easier".

Does anyone know of WordPress' mission (mission)? (Some raise hands) Yes, you, please. (Male, speak the mission in English) Correct! (All applauded) As he answered, it is to democratize Pubulishing (contribution). It is to be able to raise anyone, anywhere, any language. That's not just a website, but on a beautiful site. And a huge site like the New York Times (note: Building a site with WordPress) is OK.


We believe that nonprofit activities are important for democratizing such webs. Of course, the activities of profit organizations like companies are also important. I believe nonprofit organizations and profit organizations should be able to give a big impact to the world together. We should be able to make bigger things by coexistence of nonprofit organizations and for-profit organizations. That is WordPress' s vision. Make it easier to make the web. To be able to do with one click. That's itWordPress.comis.

When I thought about starting blogging software, I was told that "there are many other softwares so there is no room for growth". I was motivated when I told you so. When I said I wanted to do blogging software in the form of open source, I was told that "It is impossible". Then, on the contrary, I thought "Do it!


I work at home instead of going to the office. If you specify your working hours by yourself, you can work in any time you like. This is the environment of WordPress developers. WordPress focuses on output (outcome). Do you want to work only from 8 o'clock to 9 o'clock if you drink all day long? It is OK! Of course, if you can achieve the same results as ordinary people (laugh) Any style is ok. The target of the evaluation is whether it is performing outcomes, communication or professional work.

What I learned from the activity of developing with open source is that "there are many excellent engineers around the world." Discrimination (barriers) by geographical situation is not good. For example, a company that "only hire people living in San Francisco" is discriminating against 99.99 ...% of people who do not live in San Francisco. I think that this is stupid. Discrimination by geographical situation is not good.

WordPress has been developed by open source, by developers around the world. WordPress is open source and Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! I would like to fight equally with a large global company such as. At the start we had five developers. That five people wanted to compete against a big company. As you all know, large companies other than Google quit blogging system service. And now, WordPress has reached 22% of all the webs in the world. I believe we can do a good job by collaborating with everyone in open source.


I will talk about the future of WordPress. That's Ver4. I think that it will be several months away, but I think that "returning" can be made to contribute to the Japanese people's WordPress. That is to make the translation system better. I call it "LanguagePack".

The wonderful thing about WordPress is that more than 30,000 plugins are being developed. But, of them, only a few hundred plug-ins have been translated into Japanese. When everyone is using WordPress, English will always come up. sorry. It is truly frustrating (laugh) This is due to technical problems. The translation system is not moving smoothly yet. In the near future, we plan to be able to do all in Japanese, from installation to introduction of plug-in.

Oh yeah, serious things happened a few months ago. It is a historical event. Among users all over the world, the number of downloads of the English version exceeded the number of downloads in languages ​​other than English! The population distribution of WordPress users is approaching the world population distribution. Of course, the existence of "Asia" including Japan becomes increasingly important.

(Here, it is said that "5 minutes more" from the staff) Everyone. sorry. There seems to be no time. In addition to yesterday's Tokyo and today's Osaka, I plan to visit New Zealand · Australia in five Asian countries such as Singapore and Malaysia. What I want to do now is "sleeping" (laugh) That is a joke. Because joining the WordPress community is truly exciting and fun.

The spread, growth and booming of WordPress in Asia is always amazing. Last time I gathered in Osaka now is "scary" (laugh) I held it secretly in a place that does not hit the sun from the underground window. However, it was good that meals came out while I was giving a speech, everyone was able to listen while eating muddy.

I am visiting Japan as a "humble student" again this time. I would like to learn a lot from everyone. It is really regrettable that there are only a few hours left. I hope you all want to know more about WordPress' history and mission and join WordPress's open source program by all means. Working with WordPress Automattic in Japan is one way to participate. In future, I would like to hire 150 people around the world.


Now we are present at the historic moment. If you do not do anything, the web world will be closed (closed). Twitter and Facebook are looking at us as products (goods). We are on sale. I convert the conversation with my friends and sell it to advertisers. We are a product.

The Web is beautiful because "we are focused." "It's a world we can control". As I said earlier, WordPress gained 22% share. But I can not say that I am still happy. There are also 78% left. WordPress will not make the web an open world unless we make better things. Most people may not understand our philosophy. Everyone, I hope to connect to the net, I hope to move.

Let's make the best software together in the world. Let's make great plugins and a lot of themes. Like Osaka's WordCamp, people can connect with people and have a wonderful experience. If there is only one thing that you are worth learning from my speech today, it will be obvious if you look around. To say that everyone in this room is a friend. I'm coming to listen to something of myself, gathering in this small room the day of a wonderful holiday of the weekend (annotation: Saturday today). Everyone is not normal (lol) They are special (special) people.


I would like you to take advantage of the wonderful day of today. Please also talk with lots of people by all means even those who are shy (shy). Doing so will make the community stronger. Five years ago I said 40 people. Many people gathered so much today. That's amazing. If it is this growth rate, it may be held at the baseball stadium next time (laugh) I spread out a bit of a big furoshiki. Everyone, thank you so much for coming today. (Matt's speech ended with a big applause from the hall)

A memorial photo competition after the speech. Mr. Matt who responded to the visitors with a smile was impressive.