This post is just like Matt. (Also see the Forty post.)

I am too late to be included in the Pingback, but I am writing a quick post anyway.

I was one of those bloggers that was there when b2 went away and WordPress was born. (Remember having to modify core if you wanted specific things? Before plugins!) The year was 2003 and no one could have known that these two guys, Matt and Mike, were going to change everything and shape the future of the web. I have been a huge fan of WordPress ever since. During the dot-com boom I had taught myself HTML which got my foot in the door at a few start-ups. Over time I mastered HTML, Photoshop, and Illustrator to be an in demand Web Producer, a role I don’t think exists anymore really, at least not like it did back before 2000. Those dot-com companies, and later WordPress, are why I wanted to learn how to program. From learning Apache and RedHat and how the whole stack worked in the dot-coms, to learning MySQL deeply with b2 and WordPress. From my time in early WordPress I was able to build my own applications using PHP and MySQL, which in the early 2000’s was impressive. Not so much now. 🙂

I never dared to imagine I would be working with WordPress daily, and at Automattic … no way!!

I am so grateful for Matt’s vision and his dedication to Open Source.