I spent this afternoon with some really cool and interesting individuals from around utah. Matt Mullenweg, the original developer of WordPress was in town and was willing to come and hang out, each lunch and chat for a couple of hours about anything. Matt is a very cool guy not only because he created the best blogging platform of all time, but also because he is just a plain nice guy.
It is to bad that Salt Lake is as far away as it is. These kinds of events are a great chance to meet other people with similar interests and to generate ideas. It is also important to break out of your own personal sphere every now and then so that you can see what the outside world looks like.
A couple of highlights:
1. Matt said that he prefers a business model that works off the ubiquity of the software rather than a model that limits your ability when using the open source version so that it can charge for more functionality/license (think Mysql)
2. Holding a Word Camp here in Utah wouldn’t be difficult especially if we can find a few sponsors to help offset the cost. Joseph Scott is an Automatic developer in the area and would be a great contact to make something like that happen.
3. Tech companies can be successful in Utah (Mozy)
4. Drink lots of water when eating spicy Indian food.
5. Figuring out how to monetize a blog that appeals to a niche market can be difficult.
6. Most (90% ish) of what is hitting ping-o-matic is spam – no big surprise there.
And pictures to prove that I really did go:
