WordCamp Central is now managed by Andrea Middleton instead of Jane Wells. Within the post, Jane mentions that she will take on more of an advisory role while Andrea will be handling all of the management activities associated with the position. According to the facts presented within the introduction post, it certainly seems as though Andrea has the right credentials for the job.
Jane Wells Is Not So Bad
Jayvie Canono who operates the blog OneFineJay.com has published his personal encounter with Jane Wells during WordCamp Raleigh. Upon the announcement of the revised WordCamp Guidelines, Jay was one of the vocal opponents with a number of good questions. Jane responded to those questions in a comment which is all Jay needed.
I’ve got to hand it to Jane. Not only is she in a position where she has the impossible job of pleasing the community and trying to make sense of it all, but she is a woman operating in a male dominated open-source project. I’ve spoken with Jane on a few occasions and she admits that it was tough going when she first started to get involved with the WordPress project but since then, she has done a good job of not taking BS from anyone. There are a lot of people that get very emotional about certain aspects of WordPress whether it be decisions relating to code, guideline changes, etc and those emotions sometimes make people say things they really shouldn’t. The thing I like about Jane most is that she will go face to face with her critics to figure out why those people feel the way they do. Instead of combating people, she’ll have a chat with them and just might even buy them a drink. It’s funny in a way because while certain people will publicly denounce her and call for her to be fired, those same people sing a different tune when they are speaking face to face with her.
I hope that many in the WordPress community, especially the inner circle of developers will read the following from Jay’s post and perhaps reflect upon his words to see if they can take a similar path towards conflict resolution.
I’m moving on from the matters of GPL debates, and the conflicts between the “WordPress leadership” and other developers. I still commit to serve the truth, but the truth in this matter is that even my most fair and intellectually honest analyses will always be used as ammo by smaller minds.
No idea exists in a vacuum, and at this point, it’s better for me to channel my energy and ideas to other matters. I’ve asked Jane how I can help, and I’ve signed on to helping out with the UI/Design team. I requested no special treatment, and I fully intend to earn my keep.
This doesn’t mean I’ll be some shill with non-stop rah-rah “Automattic/WordPress/Matt/Jane/name-your-developer can do no wrong” cheerleading. Everyone makes mistakes, and I’ll hear and see things that I disagree with, but I know there are better means to address them, and taking it public should actually be the last, not the first, means of resolving an issue.
I’m glad that I had the chance to meet Jay in person.
Violet, WordPress 3.0 And Jane Wells
In this special interview with Jane Wells from WordCamp Raleigh, we discuss the prospects of WordPress 3.0. We also have a good discussion revolving the new menu system, including the question I’ve had since Beta 1 and that is, why bother going with Woo Nav if at the end of the day, there is little of Woo Nav to be seen or used? We also talked about the recent promotion assigned to John O’ Nolan who will be Jane’s assistant managing the UI group for WordPress.
The lesson I learned here is to not do an interview with someone against a bright background because as you can see, you end up not seeing the person. In this case, we now can’t debate whether Jane’s hair is Red or Violet. Perhaps we’ll take HairOfJanes word for it.
WordPress News Out Of Atlanta
Thanks to Nic who streamed the keynote for WordCamp Atlanta featuring Jane Wells. In this keynote, there is a handful of newsworthy items to mention, one of which is brand new.
WordPress 3.0 dev cycle is going through more of a formal format this time. This version will have a tight scope of features and functionality. However, the things going into 3.0 are huge such as the WordPress MU Merge.
WordPress MU will disappear without receiving a new name. It will simply be WordPress with Multi-Site capabilities.
Plugin and theme authors should closely monitor trac as there are a bunch of changes taking place at a rapid pace.
Custom post-types will be added to WordPress 3.0. Custom post-types are generally have their own taxonomies.
Media and such not going to be done in 3.0. Image editing was added into 2.9. The media section has a bunch of complications that are hard to solve thus leading to more development time. Maybe 3.1 for more media stuff.
During the presentation, canonical plugins were referred to ‘core plugins‘. This is the term people voted for in the poll and it looks like this is what they are going to be called from now on. These selected group of plugins will work closely with the core of WordPress to maintain compatibility, security, usability, etc.
The WordPress Developments blog is going to be quite busy the next few months. Make sure you are subscribed the sites RSS feed to keep tabs on the moving and shaking going on.
Two Matts are going to be working on the default theme 2010, Matt Mullenweg and Matt Thomas. (Cue how many matts does it take to make a default theme joke)
While not confirmed that it was happening, Jane mentioned that after ‘core plugins’ get rolling, she could see ‘core themes’ being worked on as well.
WordPress is going to try to get specific people to volunteer for specific features to hold more accountability and responsibility for those features. This also makes it easier to keep track on who’s doing what.
In order to get the core WordPress devs to take notice of your patch, get people behind it, write about it, spread the word, more importantly, get people to test it.
Jane Wells mentioned something quite interesting in that she may spearhead the development of a community code of conduct which would explain how to treat others within the WordPress community. She wants the WordPress community to help write it. Hopefully, this would get rid of some of the mean spiritedness that exists within the WordPress community.
The User Design/Interface aspect of the project will begin to open up to more contributors throughout the year. Look for the post on Monday for more information.
Distributed usability testing will also get going this year. For those interesting in partaking in the User Interface area of WordPress, you should join this mailing list. WP-UI
Mentoring. Jane said they are going to try and implementing a buddy or mentoring system so experience members of the community can help newcomers along. More information and feedback can be found here.
Jane will also be focusing on trying to get more Women involved with WordPress and technology in general. Some stats worth knowing: 25% Of Employed Computer Programmers in The U.S are women. Only 22% of Computer Science graduates right now are women. About 1% of the core contributions to WordPress are from women and that figure was rounded up.
The WordPress ideas forum will most likely be fixed and updated this week. The plugins running on the ideas forum behind the scenes will be updated as well. Also down the road, the Ideas forum will be integrated into Trac so that if an idea is blessed for WordPress, a Trac ticket will automatically be created for that idea. That is pretty darn slick! We can thank Mike Adams for helping to make the ideas forum usable again.
Throughout 2010, the WordPress.org website will undergo a redesign to be more of a community hub instead of a place where announcements are shared. Thanks to BuddyPress and activity streams.
WordCamps.org will have BuddyPress installed on it and the ticketing module that was used for WordCamp New York will be installed as well giving WordCamp organizers a free place to set up sites for WordCamps while also being able to sell tickets instead of relying on third parties.
One of the personal goals Jane has set out for 2010 is to convince five theme authors to go GPL.
During the Question and Answer session, someone asked a question regarding multiple distributions of WordPress and if they would be available like Linux. However, there are no plans on providing these.
Another question that was asked by an audience member dealt with the plugins from WPMU Premium Dev and putting those in the repository. I won’t spoil the answer for you, you’ll have to watch the video and see.
These are all of the newsworthy items I heard during the presentation. Give the video a watch to see and hear everything in more detail.
Your Chance To Make WordPress Better
Jane Wells who was hired on to the Automattic team because of her usability specialty has published a post on the WordPress development blog initiating phase three, Usability Testing, in her ongoing series, how to contribute to WordPress. In this post, Jane outlines what it takes to conduct a usability survey, what those results mean, and how those results can ultimately improve WordPress.
If you’re interested in contributing to WordPress by way of partaking in these usability tests, stay tuned to the WordPress development blog. However, if you have experience in conducting usability tests, consider being a testing moderator. If so, contact Jane Wells and let her know your experience level.