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Making our home in Portland

Taylor Dewey on September 20, 2013

A few months ago, as 10up’s Portland contingent continued to grow, we decided that it was time to put down roots in the city and set up our first brick-and-mortar office. To celebrate our new space, we hosted an open house on the eve of this year’s WordCamp Portland. We invited the Portland and WordPress community to come check out our new office, and meet some of our team.

Senior Designer Megan Gray (visiting from Orange Country) and I spent the week preparing the office for the open house. Located in the former Oregon Cracker Building, our space was very much a blank canvas. With a nod to the history of the space – and the work ahead of us – we set out give the office an industrial vibe.

In just one week’s time, we transformed the office into a warm, welcoming atmosphere for Portland 10uppers (and their guests) to collaborate and host community events. By the end of the week, the office was full of 10uppers – both local and out-of-town – enjoying the space and the opportunity to collaborate under one roof.

Jason Clarke on September 13, 2013

10up’s John James Jacoby is the guest for this week’s episode of WordPress Weekly, WP Tavern’s live Friday night podcast (think Wayne’s World for WordPress, but smarter), airing this Friday, September 13th at 9pm EDT. Likely topics of conversation include John’s move from Automattic to 10up and what’s in the cards for BuddyPress and bbPress. Submit your questions for JJJ via a comment on WP Tavern, and be sure to tune into WordPress Weekly this Friday the 13th at 9pm EDT!

Meet a few WordPress filters (and folks) in Albuquerque

Drew Jaynes on September 11, 2013 • 1 Comment

After a rare couple of weekends in a row with no 10uppers speaking at a WordCamp (largely because there were none in session!), we’re back in action this weekend at WordCamp Albuquerque, happening Friday through Sunday, September 13-15. Located in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, this particularly packed WordCamp features three days of programming, including a Sunday Hackathon and a WordPress for Kids session. Not to mention, a new talk by yours truly!

On Saturday morning, I’ll be presenting There’s a Filter for That, focusing on the ins and outs of the WordPress Filters API. In this developer-focused talk, I’ll introduce some common (and uncommon) filters designed to spark discussion.

The timing of this talk is exciting for me, in part due to my heavy involvement in the inline-docs initiative planned for WordPress 3.7. In this new and, frankly, huge undertaking, the team is attempting to document all actions and filters in WordPress core in the new WordPress Developer Resources announced at WordCamp San Francisco this year. This talk also goes hand-in-hand with the Filters of the Day blog series I started earlier this summer.

There are still a few tickets left, so come out to the beautiful Duke City this weekend and catch me and my fellow community members at WordCamp Albuquerque!

Thorsten Ott brings years of senior WordPress engineering cred to 10up

Thorsten Ott on September 4, 2013

Ahoi! I’m Thorsten Ott and I’m 10up’s newest Senior Web Engineer and first European employee. I live near Cologne, Germany with my wife, son and a crazy Beagle. When I was 8, I was given my first computer and quickly discovered that making software is more fun than using it.

After studying communication electronics and developing on assembly languages with microcontrollers, I quickly switched to systems administration and web development.

After leading the web development department for a large dedicated hosting company in Germany from 2000 to 2007, I started an agency in Bulgaria, which I ran for two years, employing 6 developers at its peak. The agency focused on web-based video processing and archiving solutions leveraging the Zend Framework, but also executed some projects on WordPress.

I finally had a chance to focus on WordPress full-time when I joined Automattic in 2008, becoming one of the earliest engineers on the WordPress.com VIP team. During my tenure at Automattic, I met Jake and 10up, and in reviewing their projects, developed a great deal of respect for the quality of their code. While at Automattic, I wrote and contributed to a handful of WordPress plugins and tools, including the Exploit Scanner, Debug Bar Extender, WordPress-CLI-Exporter, and WordPress-CLI-Importer.

I did a quick detour into Cloud Computing, OpenStack and Python over the last year while working at a start-up called PistonCloud. I became relatively fluent in Python and improved my Linux skills, but my heart never left WordPress and PHP.

Welcome “WordPress Rockstar” Adam Silverstein

Thorsten Ott on August 30, 2013

My name is Adam Silverstein, and I started tinkering with code when I was 10 years old and began building websites for small business clients in 1996. I tackled everything from front end design, to custom Java client/server code, to web server management, building a huge range of sites for clients large and small, and eventually choosing WordPress as my platform of choice. WordPress was perfect for quickly building rock-solid sites that were easy to extend and enhance with custom code.

Not one year ago, I jumped full force into contributing to WordPress Core. Finding real room for improvement and a chance to hone my programming skills, I spearheaded the rewrite of the new Backbone.js based revision system for WordPress 3.6 – earning me the humbling title of ‘Recent Rockstar’ on the credits page. I’m hooked (no pun intended), and plan to stay an active contributor to WordPress Core – I love the feeling of community, collaborative effort and helping a platform doing no less than democratizing the web.

When I’m not reading programming books and writing code, you can probably find me on a rafting trip with my two teenage kids, playing mbira (african thumb piano), taking a walk with my wife and dogs, or tending to my oversized garden.

Grab a Snack and Catch Up on WordCamp San Francisco on WordPress.tv

Elizabeth Hillis on August 22, 2013

About one month ago, the 8th annual WordCamp San Francisco brought WordPress fans from all over the world together for two days of talks and a Contributor Day, one of the largest single gatherings of WordPress volunteers ever. 10up was proud to feature four team members as presenters this year – more than any company, with the exception of Automattic. Several other team members came along for the ride, hailing from places like Chicago, Colorado, Washington, and Virginia. Web Engineer Aaron Holbrook even joined the conference volunteer crew!

If you were unable to attend – or if you attended, but missed a session – have no fear: thanks to WordPress.tv, you can watch any of the 25+ talks from the comfort of your office or living room. One of the lesser-known community resources for staying in the loop and learning new skills, WordPress.tv features hundreds of high-quality videos, including recorded WordCamp talks from across the globe. Most WordCamp talks are posted within a few weeks following a camp, so while you miss out on the community aspects of a WordCamp, you can still get the knowledge and put faces to names. Read More on Grab a Snack and Catch Up on WordCamp San Francisco on WordPress.tv

10up at WordCamp Birmingham, Y’all

on August 22, 2013

Another weekend, another WordCamp: WordCamp Birmingham – AKA #WC Y’all! — is August 24th-25th, in beautiful downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Interspersed across two full days of programming are presentations by myself and two other 10uppers.

On Saturday, Design Engineer Daniel Immke is presenting WordPress and the Command Line, a talk for theme developers hesitant to go anywhere near the terminal in support of their development process. My talk, 5 Things you should know about Responsive Web Design, covers strategies for building fluid layouts using techniques like media queries and JavaScript that make for a great experience across every device and screen size.

On Sunday, Senior Strategic Engineer Taylor Lovett Brings his popular What you Missed in Computer Science talk to the south, sharing computer science theories that make sites better and faster.

Daniel and I will also be volunteering at the Happiness Bar, so please be sure to stop by with your questions or just to say a quick hello. Hope to see you at WC Y’all!

Will Seyffer brings digital advertising and monetization strategy to 10up

on August 21, 2013

My name is Will Seyffer, and I’m 10up’s first Senior Monetization Strategist. I’m thrilled to announce the addition of strategic monetization to 10up’s core competencies; allow me to tell you a bit more.

I’ve spent the last five years guiding and managing operations for organizations that struggled to monetize online publishing, or simply needed support to maximize existing efforts. Advertiser management is the life blood of most online publications, and yet the required specialization has resulted in very few web agencies offering a meaningful understanding of those challenges, beyond superficial placement of ad calls within their designs. At 10up I’ll be collaborating with publishers, analyzing their web properties and providing strategic guidance and support that will maximize their profitability, all in harmony with the efforts of our first class design, strategy, and engineering teams.

As Senior Monetization Strategist, I’ll be collaborating with clients providing such services as:

Establishing robust advertising strategies and tools for the first time
Migrating away from ad networks to direct advertiser relationships
Analyzing and optimizing current advertising and partnership offerings
Critiquing, revising, and / or creating media kits
Creating entirely new monetization models to take advantage of new and unique opportunities
Configuration and troubleshooting of ad management platforms (e.g. DFP)
Complete management of monetization operations (DFP management, advertiser relationships, etc)

Our goal is to offer publishers a tightly managed, end-to-end solution that ensures success for their online properties. 10up began with a focus on superb software engineering and publishing strategy, empowering content creators by getting web publishing software out-of-the-way. Since our inception, we’ve extended our in-house breadth with services like beautiful creative design that keeps readers coming back and systems engineering that ensures high performance, reliable scaling for millions of visitors. Now, we’re in-housing specialized expertise to maximize the way these customers actually pay our bills: advertising strategy. I can’t wait to get started.

Coast to Coast WordCamps: Providence & Vancouver

Luke Gedeon on August 15, 2013

This weekend, 10up is sponsoring WordCamps on both North American coasts, as WordCamp Providence and WordCamp Vancouver host their annual conference. 10uppers are also busy preparing to play their part at both camps.

As an organizer for WordCamp Providence – an outgrowth of my organizer role at our local meet up – I have the honor of delivering opening remarks for Friday’s sessions and closing remarks for the entire camp on Saturday. Providence is close to our team’s heart. Our President started the meet up here back in 2010, and lived here for over 10 years. John Jacoby, our new Director of Web Engineering, lived in the city for two years, from late 2010 to early 2013, and helped organize last year’s WordCamp. Jess Jurick, Director of Web Strategy, started her career at 10up while living here. We couldn’t help but step up with a top-level, Anchor Sponsorship. The camp has a great line up, including a number of 10uppers.

Rachel Baker brings engineering expertise to 10up

Rachel Baker on August 14, 2013 • 4 Comments

Oh hey, I didn’t see you there. My name is Rachel Baker, and I am overjoyed to be joining 10up as the newest Senior Strategic Engineer. I am the third 10upper located in the Windy City of Chicago, IL.

My fascination with web development began in 1996, when I learned HTML and FTP from a unique writing course at the University of Illinois in Chicago. I began teaching myself anything I could from the college computer lab including computer networking and CGI scripting, and landed a job doing IT support for the failed Kozmo.com. I started using WordPress for a personal site using the timeless Kubrick theme in 2005, but focused on Drupal for my freelance client work. Through a strange twist of fate, a friend and fellow web engineer gave me his ticket to the first WordCamp Chicago in 2009. After surrounding myself with the amazing WordPress community I turned my full-time and attention to WordPress. Since than, I’ve worked in a few WordPress and BuddyPress core contributions, was a Dev Bootcamp mentor, spoke at a few WordCamps, and even released some popular plug-ins and themes.

Over the past 4 years, I have led engineering on WordPress projects for start-ups, small-business, non-profits, and large enterprise clients. My desire to be a polyglot has taken me to other back-end platforms such as Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Zend, CodeIgniter and Laravel; but I always come back to WordPress, largely because it’s just so friendly for the publishers and content managers that interact with the software every day. I am really looking forward to being a part of the great work being done here at 10up, and learning from my super smart co-workers.