{"id":1178,"date":"2017-03-29T23:27:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-30T04:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2017.kansascity.wordcamp.org\/?p=1178"},"modified":"2017-03-30T00:08:44","modified_gmt":"2017-03-30T05:08:44","slug":"konstantin-obenland-wordcamp-kansas-city-keynote-speaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kansascity.wordcamp.org\/2017\/konstantin-obenland-wordcamp-kansas-city-keynote-speaker\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Konstantin – WP Core Contributor and Keynote Speaker"},"content":{"rendered":"

You are sure\u00a0to take away plenty of\u00a0actionable knowledge and ideas from this year’s WordCamp Kansas City. We have a stellar lineup of speakers<\/a> – many of whom are locally-based, thought leaders in their field. They are out there, walking the walk, every day.<\/p>\n

Kicking off our agenda\u00a0is our keynote speaker, Konstantin Obenland. He is a WordPress Core contributor at Automattic, and has been involved in the organization in a number of different roles. This is a guy who knows WordPress inside and out. But don’t just take our word for it – let’s hear it from the man himself in this Q&A.<\/p>\n

\"Find<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Please introduce yourself.<\/h3>\n

My name is Konstantin Obenland, I\u2019m a guest committer to WordPress and a member of both the core and meta teams. At Automattic my job is to work on WordPress Core<\/a> and the WordPress.org platform. I\u2019ve been playing around with WordPress for about eight years now, but at what point I became a developer though is hard to say. Let\u2019s say somewhere along the way.<\/p>\n

What do you like best about what you do?<\/h3>\n

There are quite a few things that I like about what I do, but the single best thing is probably that I get paid to work on my hobby. I feel passionate about WordPress\u2019 mission, its values, and the opportunities it provides to people. What\u2019s better than to have advancing that to be your day job?<\/p>\n

What have you enjoyed the most about the growth of WP\/Automattic in recent years?<\/h3>\n

The influx of new contributors to the project and what they\u2019ve accomplished over my time here has been great to see. A great in-state example is Joe McGill. I met him at WordCamp St. Louis in 2014 where he worked as a Web Designer at Washington University\u2014a couple of years later he\u2019s a core committer and leads the media component! (And he just joined Humanmade<\/a>) These are the kinds of stories that I love seeing and sharing.<\/p>\n

What made you want to become a Core Contributor?<\/h3>\n

When I first started out using WordPress, I couldn\u2019t believe that people would put work into a project like this, their time and energy, and then give it away for free. Especially since it\u2019s software, an area where their skills are highly sought after and are worth a lot of money. It didn\u2019t feel right to me to just take their work for my benefit and not give something back in return.<\/p>\n

In the beginning my technical ability to contribute was very limited, so I submitted a few plugins to the directory as my way of giving back. Over time however, as I got a better feel for the community, I wanted to get involved more and more. And eventually that meant to contribute to WordPress Core.<\/p>\n

What topics have you addressed previously at previous WordCamps?<\/h3>\n

I\u2019ve always spoken about projects that I\u2019m working on, or APIs that I\u2019ve used, or Core initiatives that I feel didn\u2019t get enough attention. At my first ever WordCamp I talked about the approval process for the theme directory, since I was a fairly active theme reviewer at the time. Over the years I talked about the Customizer, default themes, Automattic\u2019s starter theme Underscores, leading WordPress 4.3, the new theme and plugin directories, and now the three core focusses. A lot of my talks can be found on WordPress TV too: https:\/\/wordpress.tv\/speaker\/konstantin-obenland<\/a><\/p>\n

What will you be speaking about in the WordCamp Kansas City 2017 keynote?<\/h3>\n

I\u2019ll be speaking about a fundamental shift in how WordPress tackles its releases. It\u2019s a new approach that goes away from incremental improvements for the software overall, towards really focussing on three aspects of WordPress<\/strong><\/a> and doing a deep-dive. I\u2018ve been excited about it since Matt Mullenweg first announced it at State of the Word in December last year and I can\u2019t wait to find out what we can accomplish through that.<\/p>\n

Why do you believe this is an important topic?<\/h3>\n

I think it is important to every WordPress user to understand where the project is headed and why the decision was made to change and try something new. The processes and tools that brought us where we are today might not take us where we want to go, and having a broad understanding and community buy-in and support will make it that much easier to achieve our goals.<\/p>\n

What do you think people will take away from this session?<\/h3>\n

I hope it\u2019ll further strengthen people\u2019s confidence in the future of WordPress. There is a pretty clear agreement among project leads in terms of necessary changes in order for WordPress to stay competitive and continue to lead the market. So I hope attendees can take away a shared understanding of that.<\/p>\n

What do you enjoy doing outside of work\/WP?<\/h3>\n

I love barbecue and I\u2019m not going to lie, part of why I wanted to come to WordCamp Kansas City was to try some of Joe\u2019s and Arthur Bryant\u2019s (tweet at @obenland<\/a> for other places I should check out!). Apart from that, I enjoy getting my hands dirty while working on my home, power out at crossfit, and travel to see new places.<\/p>\n

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We hope you’ve enjoyed this chance to get to know our keynote speaker a bit – be sure to get your tickets now<\/a><\/strong> to hear him in person, April 28th!<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You are sure\u00a0to take away plenty of\u00a0actionable knowledge and ideas from this year’s WordCamp Kansas City. We have a stellar lineup of speakers – many of whom are locally-based, thought leaders in their field. They are out there, walking the walk, every day. Kicking off our agenda\u00a0is our keynote speaker, Konstantin Obenland. He is a … Continue reading Meet Konstantin – WP Core Contributor and Keynote Speaker<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":170562,"featured_media":1182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9463],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-1178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-speaker-spotlight","tag-speakers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kansascity.wordcamp.org\/2017\/files\/2017\/03\/konstantin-wordcampus-2015-.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pheOPK-j0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kansascity.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kansascity.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kansascity.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kansascity.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/170562"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kansascity.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1178"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/kansascity.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1189,"href":"https:\/\/kansascity.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions\/1189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kansascity.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kansascity.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kansascity.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kansascity.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}