The following post will be be a double hitter. Rather then two separate posts on the same event, we’ve commissioned two of our team leads (Jillian & Lori) who attended last night’s Refresh Houston meeting with Matt Mullenweg at our offices.

A Pre-Holiday Treat

Santa came early this year, in the form of our good friend Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt), founder of blogging platform Wordpress and Chief BBQ Taste Tester of Automattic (just kidding… sort of).

Matt, armed with one of Pop Labs’ famous margaritas, delivered an informative and entertaining Q&A for Refresh Houston. Having seen Matt last year at his HTC presentation, I thought that maybe this year’s presentation/gab fest was going to be similar. Talk about the future of open source. Talk about online liberties. That sort of thing.

I should have known not to underestimate Matt Mullenweg. Silly rabbit!

Matt, as always, reinforced his authority in the interactive arena. His Q&A alone got me excited about 2010 and all the things to which to look forward, such as how Wordpress is changing, and where he’d like to take both Wordpress and Automattic in the future. He discussed real-time search and relevancy of search results., as well as how social networks are changing the world with things like Foursquare (which, along with reinforcement from @ericaogrady, is thought to be what will take Twitter’s place) and Facebook Connect. And, not to be lost in all the chatter about Native Mobile, non-profits, the Kindle and book recommendations, Matt also alluded to his love for jazz by recommending his favorite jazz musician, Dexter Gordon.

Although Matt was definitely the focal point of the evening, it has to be said that the Refresh Houston group definitely lifted my spirits before this holiday. It was a treat seeing familiar faces and meeting tweeps that I’ve been looking forward to meet for ages (I legitimately earned my spot on @elegantmachines‘ “met-irl” list, though he swears we had met before! =P). Can’t wait for the next Refresh; it’ll be a tough act to follow after last night!

Love, kisses and rainbows,
Jill the Superstar

Refreshing Q&A with Matt

Last night Matt Mullenweg held a Q&A session at Pop Labs as a quest speaker for Refresh Houston. He started with a brief, visual introduction describing the specific locations of where his journey began in Sugarland, Texas.

After reminiscing, causally, in his tennis shoes; sports jacket; laid back personality and margarita in hand, he rolled into the 1st question of the evening. An attendee broke the ice by asking “Who is your favorite Jazz Musician?” Matt’s answer? “Dexter Gordon.” Watch the movie Round Midnight to get a feel for his personality and style.

With an intro like this, I knew the evening would not be boring. The crowd consisted mainly of like-minded folk so there were a lot of good questions. Some of course about Wordpress, some about entrepreneurship, and some about technology in general. Matt’s answers were thorough and insightful. What I liked the most is that he asked the audience questions. He wanted to know what we want to see in the Wordpress 3.0 release and also what we like about the 2.9 release. He was quite receptive to the feedback and appreciated it. He graciously gave recognition to the teams of people who help him run his company, Automattic. However; it is apparent to me that Matt is quite the entrepreneur at his young age of 26. This is quite intriguing. He understands the value of acquisitions in the environment of where his product is free to the public and he can appreciate being involved in every component of what is happening. If you get an e-mail from Wordpress, it actually comes from Matt and when you reply your e-mail shows up in HIS inbox.

All in all, the atmosphere was laid back with space, appetizers and margaritas provided by Frozen2Perfection & Pop Labs and great topics of discussion from intelligent people. If you have the opportunity to hear Matt Mullenweg speak, I wouldn’t miss it!

That’s a Wrap

Thank you to all those who were in attendance last night. We hope you enjoyed yourselves! A big thank you to Matt and Refresh Houston for using our space to host the meetup.

Want to read a play-by-play of the night? Check out Colin Lowenberg’s live-blogging from last night

Did you attend? We’d love to hear your thoughts on the event itself, the Westchase Technology Center (our home) and what you’d like to see coming out of the Houston Tech Community.

Flickr Slideshow

A Little Jazz for Matt

Share on Facebook