During the past year, we submitted to some people we really appreciate an interview shaped as a questionnaire. Chic & Geek could not dream of a nicer gift for its first birthday than proposing this little game to Matt Mullenweg and that he took the time to play it and answer the questions.
Matt Mullenweg is an american entrepreneur, born and raised in Texas and now living in San Francisco.
Matt is 26, and since 8 years he influenced the day to day lives of millions of people like you and me by developing WordPress and by founding Automattic in 2005.
Matt has been featured as one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the web and Business Week’s 25 more Influential People on the Web.
I wrote about WordPress here and here and we will talk about it again soon, but today it was too good of an occasion to talk, not about the product, but about the person behind it and his way to achieve such a success while remaining someone pleasant and accessible.
Photography, jazz music, typography, BBQs, poetry and coding are his passions and the reasons he started, back in 2002 to contribute to the source code of b2, the platfomr he used to blog, to improve the management of typographic entities.
A few month later, b2 development’s stopped, as it sometime happens, and Matt decided to fork the code of b2 (which was Open Source) and start the development of WordPress.
Eight years have passed, Matt is not alone anymore behind WordPress, obviously, Automattic counts now more than 50 passionate employees, spread around the world (you should read here the list of their roles, who else’s got an « Happiness engineer » in his company?) and develops other products than WordPress.com (the hosted blogging platform) and WordPress.org (the standalone software), some of which may sound familiar to you like Aksmet, the antispam solution for WordPress or Gravatar, the unified avatar management platform.
There is a common point among all Automattic’s products, they are simple to utilize, each one of them fulfilling a precise function that fits the users’ needs instead of creating them, and are very well coded, faithfully to WordPress’ motto: CODE IS POETRY
True to its origins, Matt has open sourced WordPress under the GPL license, which guarantees it will remain so, and this contributes greatly to its success, fueling users confidence.
I should confess one thing though, Matt has something that makes me really jealous… his website address: http://ma.tt, simplicity, again and again, devilishly effective.
If you want to learn more about Matt Mullenweg, Automattic’s President, I let you watch the video of his « State of the Word » keynote at Wordcamp 2010 in San Francisco (please click on the link below to view it):
Matt Mullenweg, State of the Word, Wordcamp 2010, SF
If you want to learn more about Matt, the blogger or Matt the photographer, please click on these links.
But if you want to know more about Matt Mullenweg, please allow me to introduce him through the questionary he accepted to fill, playing our game until the end.
Nothing could have made me happier for Chic & Geek, proudly powered by WordPress …
Chic & Geek Questionnaire
1. Marital Status
Bachelor.
2. One book
Black Swan, by Nasim Taleb.
3. One movie
Fight Club.
4. One website
news.ycombinator.com
5. One hero
Jeff Bezos.
6. One perfume
Elixir Des Merveilles Perfume by Hermes.
7. piece of jewelry
IWC Portuguese Mystere.
8. work of art
Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly backstage at the 28th Annual Academy Awards, March 21, 1956 by Alan Grant.
9. One gadget
Kindle.
10. One side of the bed
Left.
11. One desire
Patience!
12. One noise
Airplane engines revving up.
13. One secret
Maroon 5.
14. One bag
Bottega Veneta men’s duffel.
15. One pair of shoes
Berluti.
16. One store you like
Barney’s in SF.
17. One essential luxury
Wireless data.
18. Last gift you made
A Sony laptop for my sister.
19. Last gift you received
A mix CD.
20. Last geek whim
Vibram 5-finger shoes.
21. Last chic whim
A nice hotel in Lisbon.
22. First love
Emily Ramirez.
23. First disappointment
Spanish class.
24. Best friend
Om Malik.
25. depilation method
Barbers in random countries.
26. Ridiculous love nickname
Matt.
27. Favorite drug
Twitter.
28. One ambition
To write a book.
30. Your breakfast
Scrambled eggs and bacon, herbal tea.
31. Next trip
Savannah, Georgia.
32. One gift you would like to be given today
A great jazz CD.
34. Favorite occupation
Musician.
35. Main occupation
Founder.
36. Top 3 in your wardrobe
Pink shirt, Icebreaker socks, J. Brand denim.
37. Top 3 in your toilet bag
Anthony Logistics moisturizer w/ 15spf, Bumble and Bumble grooming creme.
38. What you like about your friends
Sense of humor, trust, and loyalty.
39. One quotation, catch phrase or motto
“We shall not cease from exploration,
and the end of all our exploring will be to
arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time”
T.S. Eliot
40. Last day without Internet
Cannot recall, perhaps in Bali.
42. Sun or rain
Rain.
43. City or countryside
City.
44. One fantasy?
Hanging out with musicians.
45. Family or friends
Family.
46. Blonde or brown
Brown.
47. There’s a fire. You can save just one thing. Which one ?
Nothing material. Any people or pets, of course.
48. Mac or PC
PC.
49. Yellow gold, pink gold or platinum
Yellow gold.
50. iPhone or Blackberry
iPhone.
51. Something you are proud of
The breadth of people involved with WordPress.
52. Caviar or pizza
Pizza.
53. DVD or movie theater
Movie theatre.
54. Night or day
Night.
55. What would you like people to say about you when you leave the room ?
What a nice guy.
56. cherish or scrape
No idea what this means. we neither but the translator ran away 😉
57. Carrie Bradshaw or Bree Van de Kamp
Abstain.
58. Digital or analogic
Analog.
59. Jogging or television
TV.
60. You felt totally ridiculous when…
I can’t pronounce words, usually French.
61. Drink or drive
Drink.
62. Poker or legos
Legos.
63. One question we should have asked you
Something about music.
64. Current state of your mind
Very relaxed.
Chic & Geek 
You should seriously think about steering this site into a major voice in this niche. You obviously have a concrete knowledge of the areas everyone is browsing for on this blog anyways and you could maybe even earn a buck or two from some offers. I would dive into following recent headlines and increasing the number of blog posts you put up and I bet you’d start receiving some nice traffic soon. Just a thought, good luck regardless!
Thanks a lot!
Great Job, Paolo !
We have here precious informations to seduce one of the most coveted bachelors on earth…
He’s so cute, and adorable and brilliant and also funny !
Knows Berluti and Hermes (really chic… the last gift I made was a pair of Berluti for my husband… Oups I remember now that I am already married, what a pity !)
I hope that all our fans are occupied trying to learn how to play the saxophone !
Well I guess you all know why MY articles are not in english…
Matt, thank you so much (and I love you ;))
XOXO
Anne
What a fun little game. I gained a new insight into Matt because of this. Cheers!
We were doing some browsing and came across this website. Must say that this info is great! Keep up the good info. We will be reading your posts
great blog thank you
Hi, I actually saw this post only bc the Google translate sys, just a great tool for everyone who want’s to be opended to full world of info on other lang’.
Anywho, loves your point of view. could i quote some of the things here with link back and credit?
Thanks,
Hi,
Thanks and yes, of course, you can 😉
good points and the details are more precise than somewhere else, thanks.
– Norman
Hey Blogger,When you write some blogs and share with us,that is a hard work for you but share makes you
happly right?
good luck and cheers!
Awesome blog thank you!
Hello
Awesome post, just want to say thanks for the share