It’s just a question of following the right people. For instance, Karen Alma. I found a Matt Mullemnberg quote about distributed working (even if there are some opinions postulating this should be called disperse, that changes essentially nothing here) by reading her blog.
In a world where at offices, everyone has headphones on and stares at screens anyway, and you have software that enables meetings online — whether that’s Zoom or Google Hangouts or Slack connecting people — you can create not just a distributed workforce, but one that’s more global and diverse. [link]
Bravo! Nothing escapes Matt’s eye. Let’s pinpoint “diverse.”
Let me explain that: the word “diverse” has the same origin as divergent. You need a global mindfulness of divergently challenging points of view to be able to build a product with the aspiration to be global. This is WordPress: a globally conceived tool reaching more than 25 percent of global traffic and with the aim to reach 51 percent.
And diverse also has the same origin as a beautiful Spanish word: “divertir,” meaning “to amuse.” I can assure you that working in WordPress IS amusing. It’s like feeling in real-time how creativity is boiling in a global pot with the rhythm of your colleagues connecting to Slack from each time zone.
There should be a way to bridle all this chaos and creativity.
Not sure if the correct term is “to bridle”; I would use “to take care.” But, yes, it is. You can focus this power, adding soul, with a bunch of soulful proposals.
And here it is: Meetamattician. Thinking about a way to populate tables with people who haven’t yet met in global Automattic meetings is amazing. Implementing it rocks. But, putting the CEO on the list to try to sit him among “newbies”… That’s chocolate topping on the icing on the cake.
Automattic: chapeau. Again.
