Official Blog
Community rockstar Drew Jaynes joins 10up
Drew Jaynes on
I never seriously considered web development to be a career path, since tinkering with it off and on as a hobby for nearly 10 years. It all began when I built a static tournament portal for a Yahoo! pool league I played in when I was 16. In 2008, many websites and lessons learned later, I retrofitted my college newspaper’s website to run on WordPress. Needless to say, I was hooked.
When I started actively contributing to the project in 2010, the community’s vibrancy left an impression. Here you have this mass of publishers, developers, designers and volunteers all working to make something that was already great even greater. I’d found my people.
These days, when I introduce myself to people at community events like WordCamps, the top two responses are: “Oh, so you’re DrewAPicture! I’ve seen your tweets or your work on [insert project here],” or, “Drew Jaynes … now where have I heard that name before?!” The answer to that second question, if you’re wondering: probably all over the place.
A big part of what drew me to 10up is their commitment to giving back to the very project that gives them life. When I saw that they donated significant employee time to WordPress I thought, “I want to do that!” And now I am doing it!
Vasken Hauri joins 10up as Director of Strategic Engineering
Vasken Hauri on
If you’re the kind of person who frequents WordCamps, jQuery conferences, or higher ed tech events, there’s a chance you may have already met me. If not, here’s a quick rundown of the diverse, wide-ranging, and somewhat eclectic set of skills I’ve honed over 12 years, and why I’m excited to bring them to 10up.
I’ve been working with WordPress since 2006, when I began using it for my personal blog. Since then, I’ve engineered WordPress to create everything from order fulfillment and tracking applications to APIs that withstand several hundred thousand hits per day. I’m proud to have been able to contribute some of the more generally useful pieces of this work back to the community, including several plugins hosted on the WordPress repository, changes to WordPress core, and assorted open-source Github projects.
A previous job in higher ed afforded me an opportunity to pursue and earn a Master’s Degree in Business Administration, and I was able to leverage those skills while working as a developer and Team Leader at GigaOM over the past two years. I’ve worked on every stage of major projects, from data modeling and wireframes to final style tweaks and coordination of release marketing. Having spent nine years working in higher education technology, I know from experience what it takes to engineer successful projects while remaining cognizant of the unique challenges faced by larger institutions when implementing technology solutions.
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10up sponsors & organizes WordPress Boston Hack Day
Hands down, one of my favorite parts about working at 10up is our commitment to enhancing and improving the WordPress community. As a part of team 10up, we’re encouraged to get involved, contribute to core, and help shape WordPress. In fact, in WordPress 3.5, you can find 10 of us on the credits screen, including Helen, a Director at 10up, and one of only 20 faces on that screen!
I recently became a part of the WordPress Boston organizing team. My first organizing event is also the first ever WordPress Boston Hack Day, which is taking place next Saturday from 10am-6pm at Bocoup. It’s a day dedicated to developers working together on core WordPress tickets. We’re going to start with an introduction by lead developers Mark Jaquith and Andrew Nacin. Mark will fill everyone in on the state of the development cycle since WordPress 3.5 came out, and tell us how we can help. It’s a great opportunity for new contributors to get their feet wet, as we spend the day coding, testing, and documenting.
I’m really happy to announce that 10up is going to be sponsoring the hackathon! This is sure to be a productive day, so if you’re in the Boston area and looking to get your name in the credits, join us at Bocoup. And if you love hacking core, and want to do more of that, get in touch – we’re always looking for your type!
10up Sponsors, Attending Converge SE
We are proud to be a sponsor of this year’s Converge SE, a popular annual conference for web professionals held in Columbia, South Carolina that covers topics ranging from web design and development to business and marketing. Converge SE attracts top tier speakers and sponsors from companies like Google, 37signals, and MailChimp. Converge SE has always included sponsoring agencies and participants from first tier agencies specializing in Drupal, and more platform agnostic creative services, and we thought they were overdue for some WordPress-specialist love.
As a Design Engineer here at 10up, I’m looking forward to bringing ideas back from sessions like “Responsive JavaScript”, “Performance in a Responsive World”, and “Building Animations with CSS3.” It looks to be a fun weekend filled with learning from peers, networking, and experiencing everything that the event has to offer.
10up Sponsors HigherEdWeb New England
Jake Goldman on
I’m proud to announce that 10up will be a 2013 Bronze Sponsor of The HighEdWeb New England conference. We’ll be sponsoring the post-conference reception, which will take place on March 18 at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Conferences like HigherEdWeb New England inspire schools to implement smarter, more engaging websites that better tout the outstanding education New England schools deliver, attract superior applicants in the age of social media and smartphones, and increase administrative efficiency. The values of openness, community, and meritocracy espoused by open source projects like WordPress are shared by higher education and shared by 10up. As a graduate of a New England university, the University of Rhode Island, I’m especially proud that our team is supporting a conference that shares our values and pushes large institutions like universities to embrace the benefits of changing technology.
You can catch Jess, our Director of Web Strategy, and Craig, a Senior Web Strategist, at the conference. Craig in particular is no stranger to higher ed websites, having led projects for the University of Vermont and The New England Culinary Institute.
Celebrate 10up’s Birthday – Three WordPress Events
Jake Goldman on
On Monday, February 18, 10up will turn 2 years old (more on that in a future post). On Tuesday, February 19, a handful of team 10up employees will celebrate across the country by doing what we’ve done all along – playing an active role in the WordPress community at three different meet ups on the 19th (plus a belated fourth event on the 26th)!
Be sure to check out my interview with WPDaily.co and Helen’s recent interview on Code Poet. We also noticed WordPress.com VIP plugging our ongoing contributions to WordPress 3.6, and we’re flattered by WPMayor listing us on their Best WordPress Agencies round up. And if you’re in the mood for a fun watch, Taylor guest co-hosts an episode of the WPWatercoolor he “inspired”!
John Bloch joins 10up
Jake Goldman on
Hi! If you don’t know me from a WordCamp, the WordPress DC meetup, or the broader WordPress community, my name is John and I love LAMP. Building websites started as a hobby for me, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that this was my professional calling. I’ve always been fascinated by the process of architecting software; watching something I’ve helped craft come to life from mere concept still fills me with wonder.
I started working with WordPress in 2008 and it quickly became my platform of choice for building websites. After publishing plugins and engaging the WordPress community, both online and at the local DC meetup, I quickly became hooked. I started attending more WordCamps, and even had the privilege of speaking at a few. From multilingual sites to multisite networks, from store locators to TinyMCE extensions to combat shortcode madness, the applications and sites I’ve built upon WordPress testify to its flexibility and power.
Come Work With Us: WordPress developer with a front-end focus
Jake Goldman on
At 10up, we say we’re always hiring, and it’s true. We’re always looking for WordPress engineers and web strategists, but right now we’ve especially got our eyes on hiring another WordPress developer with a focus on the front-end. We offer a competitive full-time salary and benefits. If you’re interested, send a resumé and code samples (like a WordPress theme) to jobs@dev.10up.com.
Returning to the desert; my start with 10up and WordCamp Phoenix
Taylor Dewey on
About a year ago I took two arbitrary vacation days that coincidentally aligned with WordCamp Phoenix 2012. As it happened, a long time friend of mine, Eric Mann, was flying out as a speaker. At the conference, in between sessions, Eric introduced me to Jake and a few weeks later I’m working for 10up. Eric joined 10up a few months later.
It seems fitting, then, that the three of us: Jake, Eric, and myself are returning to WordCamp Phoenix 2013 as speakers.
Jake is attending as a rockstar presenter. Eric and I are teaching Friday classes and Sunday sessions. I’ll be talking about developer tools and techniques. Eric will talk about leveraging WordPress and open source publishing in developing or low-tech environments. Jake will dive into the “core of WordPress core”, studying its most base level information architecture and database schema.
If you happen to be headed to WordCamp Phoenix this January, we’d love to meet up and say hello. We’re always looking for new employees and great WordPress stories.