Automattic Map

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

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: 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.)

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: ScottBerkun.com
Scott worked on v1 to v5 of Internet explorer (not 6) before becoming a writer of bestselling books on management, innovation and creativity. He’s one of the team leads for wordpress.com.

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
Widely known for his support of Microsoft products, Anthony doesn’t fit into many social circles anymore. But what he lacks in popularity, we like to think he makes up for in apparent Halo skills, wiffle ball prowess, and undying love for WordPress. A graduate of Temple University, Anthony currently resides in King of Prussia, PA. He hopes someday to move to San Francisco to be with all the other cool people and never deal with seasons again.

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: The Woodwork

Terry was born in Pittsburgh. He rants a lot about PHP, but other than that, he’s mostly harmless.

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.

Born and raised in the rainy town of Seattle, Washington. 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: 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.

Anne is best known for founding a 225 acre avocado/kiwi/Hereford cattle farm and a mobile auto body frame shop, but at some point in 1976 she fell in with the wrong crowd at Arthur Young & Company. After a short 9-year stint there, Anne began working with start-ups from 9-person operations like Automattic was when she joined to start-ups with hundreds of employees. Anne spends her time undoing the damage Matt did in the few months before she joined.

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.me
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: Everywhere Else
Initially convinced that he was applying for a drumming gig with The Dave Matthews Band, Zé landed at Automattic after a long time spent trying to solve people’s WordPress-related problems in five continents and as many languages. Since he grew up in Portugal, Angola and Belgium, went to school and worked in Austria and the U.S., and one of his daughters is American, he gets where most people are coming from. He’s still trying to figure out what any one of his three daughters wants, though.

Blog: John Ford
After receiving an expensive piece of paper claiming he knew B.S. about Computer Science and Mathematics (no, really, he LOVED school), John realized he had to start drinking the Kool-Aid, so he is fueled by passion for coding. However, some people are beginning to question his seemingly unnatural attachment to his iPad. Mix equal parts beautiful code writer, lover of healthy living, world traveler, living room DJ, and community giver and you’ll have the geek we know as John Ford.

Blog: russellfreeman.me, coffeemanmatt

After studying percussion, electronic engineering, and computer science, Russell 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. Upon accepting a position at Automattic, he had to agree to change his first name from Matt to Russell.  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, and two extra stinky dogs.

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: 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: 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 and IntenseDebate 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: 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: Hapa Voice
Erica is a communication strategist, content curator, and community builder. She graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Communication, Professional Writing, and Technology Management. Currently she lives in New York City, but only says “on line” when she’s talking about the interwebs.

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: Inside The Debate, MK
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: 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: 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: detlog.org
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 Middleton will talk your ear off about wine, food, literature of all sorts (including sci-fi), parenting, and anything else she think 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 open source community organizing high-jinks, she can be found pointing out good examples of American Craftsman architecture to her pre-schooler and gestating her second child.

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 car, 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: 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 currently lives in Orono Maine with his wife and, soon to be, two daughters. By day, he’s writing new code, fixing broken code, or updating code. By night, he’s either reading a book (science fiction/fantasy) or trying to write his own.

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.

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: Kar.im
Karim is from Dutch-Egyptian-Chinese descent living in the Netherlands. He’s a computer geek with dancing skills and loves traveling, WordPress, Linux, and photography.

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.

Blog: WebZappr
Thorsten has been in the IT business for 10 years, including work as the head of the development department at one of Europe’s biggest dedicated server hosts. Most recently, he ran his own web development agency. He’s an internet maniac who is proud to say he has a geeky family: He met his wife via ICQ and bought his son his first notebook when he was seven months old (broken, of course). The three of them live together in Sofia, Bulgaria.

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.

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: Plainly.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 close to 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, two 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.

Blogs: Threshold State, Flight Path
A former Textpattern developer, ultra-low-speed communications engineer, corporate code monkey, and Python programmer, Alex has been writing software since before he even had a computer. He enjoys taking photographs and finding old risque music. Briefly a Sydneysider, he recently moved back to Melbourne with his wife and son. He doesn’t eat shrimp or own a BBQ.

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: 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: kristastevens.com
Krista has an undying love of all things internet. Her mission at Automattic is to help Polldaddy users get the most they can out of the application. In her spare time, she gives back to the web community as editor-in-chief at A List Apart and as a copy editor for A Book 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: burning cubicle
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 frequently return home to find their furniture and artwork re-arranged. 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 L.A. (lower Alabama) with his trusty sidekick, Maggie. And most importantly, he doesn’t mind being the “other Matt” at Automattic.

Blog: Erica Varlese, 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: 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.

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.

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.