WordPress Weekly News 015: Open Collective, Yoast Host Parents and more

Let’s start this week’s WordPress Weekly with another WTF news. A few weeks back, I mentioned Starbucks and how they are serving avocado spread. Well they caught my attention yet again with their limited edition Unicorn Frappuccino. No it doesn’t have Unicorn extracts, but the appearance of this beverage makes it look a lot like the magical creature it is named after.

Credits: Buzzfeed

As much as I want to dive into this magic, I will get back to bringing you all the latest WordPress talking points from the week that just passed us by.

In this week’s WordPress roundup, we will talk about the latest addition in open-source project funding; Automattic says farewell to San Francisco and Yoast is hosting a “bring your parents to work” day.

Let’s start!

Introducing Open Collective

Open Collective is a new way to fund open-source projects.The service aims to make it simpler for individuals and companies to fund their projects in a more transparent manner. There are already many projects with communities that are more than willing to fund projects. So what makes Open Collective stand out?

Open Collective omits the need to register as a legal entity to collect funds. That means a huge amount of money which is needed before collecting funds, is no longer needed. Groups can set up a collective and start collecting funds almost immediately. Xavier Damman, Open Collective co-founder, aims to curb the huge amounts of overheads that upcoming projects have to face.

“So far, the Internet has been very good at helping people do things together,” Xavier said. “But once it involves money, there is no good solution. Creating a new legal entity is too much overhead, too early. What if we could create a virtual entity that can collect money as easily as creating a Facebook Group?”

Another key feature is complete transparency. All the expenses are approved by the members of the collective and the unpaid expenses and funding are open to the public. Open Collective currently have 228 active collectives with 196 being open-source projects.

Automattic Says Farewell To San Francisco

Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, recently announced that they will be closing their San Francisco office. During episode 101 of Stack Overflow, Mullenweg said “Yeah, in fact, we’re looking at shutting down our San Francisco office,” He further stressed the point that the space is being underutilized by saying:

“We got an office there about six or seven years ago, pretty good lease, but nobody goes in it. Five people go in it and it’s 15,000 square feet. There are as many gaming tables as there are people.”

San Francisco is not cheap by any means. In 2016, the city was named the most expensive city to conduct business. If the office is not being used by enough people daily, then it makes more sense to invest the money somewhere else.

This will leave Automattic with two other physical offices. One in CapeTown, South Africa and the other in Westbrook, Maine.

Yoast Office Hosts Employee’s Parents

As a digital marketer myself, I can safely say that my parents find it difficult to explain what I do. “He works in some sort of a computer company” is how they answer questions related to my work.

Yoast decided to take a step to educate an employee’s parents as to what the company is and what they do. They hosted a “bring your parents to work” day. Yoast has around 50 employees with 40 working in the central office in Wijchen, Netherlands, while the other 10 are working remotely. The event saw 42 parents coming in and getting a better understanding about the company and the jobs that people do.

CEO, Joost de Valk, expressed his support by saying “It’s just awesome to have everyone’s ‘home’ team understand what we do and relate to it,”

Yoast Community Manager, Taco Verdonschot, brought his father.  “Most parents didn’t know too much about WordPress and/or open-source”, said Verdonschot. They told the parents about our mission to make the web a better place for everyone and to make SEO available for everyone.”

The day ended with snacks and drinks. These types of initiatives give parents a closer look into their children’s lives and as parents, they have the right to know about what their children do and where they work.

Automattic To Host Conference On Design And Exclusion

Technology has provided solutions over the years and has given us the ultimate in ease and convenience. But all this has come at the expense of people.

It has been a busy week for Automattic as they take a step to address the solutions to the problems of digital products excluding people. Ashleigh Axios, lead organizer, said that the inspiration for the event came from the exclusion that we witness throughout the industry.

The event will take place on April 21st and will be conducted in partnership with Mash-Up Americans and MIT Center for Civic Media.

“Exclusion is all around us, but we don’t often take the time to understand how it’s come to be this way, our place in its existence, and our place in combating it,” Axios said. “Together, we’re using research, design, and conversational narrative to open-source the prompt to understand the issue of exclusion for further community involvement and refinement.”

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That’s all WordPress folks! If you have any WordPress news worth sharing, do let us know  in the comments below.