We’re making an improvement to our process and it was born out of a team meeting we had in December. One of our goals for this year is to be more consistent and predictable. It’s almost ironic considering my post on Monday.

From this point forward updates to our products will be on a quarterly release schedule.

To be specific:

• As we patch and fix minor bugs throughout the month, we will not release-as-we-go. Instead, we will batch them into a “versioned release.”
• As we create new features we will include them in these versioned releases.
• Releases will be deployed to the support community’s download area at the beginning of the quarter.

I don’t mean to infer that we will always have a release for every product at the beginning of every quarter, but if we do have releasable fixes or changes, they will happen at predictable intervals.

As usual you can find release information in the release notes for each product. Standard’s notes, for example, can be found at http://standardtheme.com/releases. So you see we’ve been doing versioned releases all along. Now, you’ll be able to predict when it will happen next.

See you in April!

Yesterday John posted about his best idea ever. From this side of the curtain I can tell you… it’s phenomenal. It has become a new lens by which we filter all decisions.

His idea is that good.

As a team we are all excellent in our individual disciplines. Design, development, operations, support, editorial. You name it. And we each have enough overlap in our secondary skills to fill in for (or even challenge) each other’s primary. In fact, if you look hard enough, there are a few places where you might even think we have redundancy within our team. To an outsider looking in, it may seem like we could accomplish the same thing with fewer people.

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We’ve been working like mad dogs on not only a host of new product concepts but a thread of continuity between all of them that will provide an incredible “solution” to the publisher’s most basic and most felt needs.

And I’m proud to say that it might just be my best and most original idea that I’ve ever had. But here’s the truth: It didn’t become great until the rest of the team spoke into it. In fact, my idea was just a vision of what might be while the team systematically scrutinized it, put “meat on the bones” so to speak, and really gave it life.

Without a team we’d never have a clear picture of execution. Without a team my small seed of an idea wouldn’t be keeping most of us up at night. Without my team I’d never be able to see it work.

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We’ll be at the Atlanta WordCamp this Friday and Saturday and we couldn’t be more pumped! The culture surrounding WordPress has grown leaps and bounds from when I first started and I’m so proud to be a part of a business founded on incredible people (not just a product).

I’ll be speaking specifically on Friday at 11:00am on using a blog effectively for growing traffic, an audience, and business and although I’m not a professional speaker I’m more than happy to be do it since it’s part of my role for this team. And heck, I can’t stop talking about blogs, publishing, and building successful businesses! It’s just what we do, as a team, and I happen to be a spokesperson this week for it.

But I know that many of you are speakers, even professional speakers, and that you’re using your blogs as marketing and communication channels for your brand, your business, and your speaking careers to hook more opportunities to share with others what you’ve learned and what you’ve got to give.

This is an area that we’re going to be watching as we flesh out our new products since we want you to be the very best communicators possible (at least online as we can’t coach you on public speaking methodology!).

Are there any areas within online publishing that you wish would improve, especially if you’re a public speaker? Are there any features, functionalities, design aesthetics which you’d love to see? Any “widgets,” so to speak? Love to hear your thoughts!

Never promise to deliver an unfinished piece of software within 2 weeks. If you do, you’ll surely be wrong. For example, here is something I said on November 30th with regards to Standard 3.

 The beta will be available in the forums in ~2 weeks. So you will be able to start your dev efforts.

Alternatively, if you do decide to make such a direct and resolute promise, be sure to announce any deviations when it they become apparent and certain. Customers make plans based on information of this nature, and it’s common courtesy to keep them updated (thank you for reminding me of this, James).

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We spent a considerable amount of time last Friday “sprucing” up our temporary office environment to give it a bit more character and class.

If you remember what it used to look like (here and here) then you’ll be surprised with what we were able (allowed?) to do in our limited space.

We’ve added some wood-like panelling, a couch, some musical gear and even a nice “mural” on the wall. Take a look:

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We like Jimmy John’s. Why? Because they are so convenient and they deliver. Their pricing is pretty slick too which is good because we’re a bootstrapped technology startup with not much cash.

But hey, we don’t want to eat pizza all the time. That’s just not healthy!

So, we’d like to ask Jimmy John’s to sponsor our efforts this year. Honestly? We’d like a sweet hookup and in return we’ll share with our followers every single week how awesome Mr. J J is to us. And we have a lot of followers.

See? All smiles!

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We take our craft very seriously – and yesterday was a great example of that as our entire team sat in front of the new iteration of our product and scrutinized every single pixel, from the inside to the outside, and found that we couldn’t compromise any of them.

This is not a matter of “getting things out the door” or “shipping” but rather an intensely-deep love for our products (and our customers who will use it). We want to spend the laborious time sweating the small stuff so that they don’t have to – and so that they get to enjoy our work as much as we enjoyed making it a reality.

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Look what came in the mail yesterday – a little taste of Italy!

Did you know that we’ve got some international team members? Yeah, it’s pretty slick – the internet is allows us to do this; the internet is so amazing!

Thanks Eric for sending ups some sweet “Pocket Coffee Espresso” – although you addressed it to all of the team I think I’m going to be a jerk and keep it all for myself.

Sorry guys. My bad.

Butterflies, Rainbows, and Unicorns!

Win.

Go figure, right?

We work hard. We play hard. It’s the only successful formula we know.

We are currently in the process of crafting the best publishing platform that you’ve ever encountered. I cannot even wait to show you – and there’s even bigger plans this year to provide the most comprehensive end-to-end publishing ecosystem for your needs.

It’s ok if you have no idea what I’m talking about – we’ve never seen it done either, but we’re going to build it just for you. In the mean time we’ll continue to work and play hard for you!

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