Tag: Travel

Wally goes to Kampala

Last week I got to visit Uganda for the first time.

WordPress (in case you didn’t know) is open source software made by a community of thousands of people from across the world. And the members of this community like to come together from time to time at events called WordCamps to connect, network, and learn from one another.

Last week, the Uganda WordPress community hosted the Uganda Website Projects Competition 2024 , a so-called NextGen WordCamp–that is a WordCamp with a twist, not just bringing together people around WordPress, but around a specific topic or use of WordPress–in the capital city, Kampala. This competition is all about equipping young people to use WordPress to solve problems in their communities.

As one of the biggest contributors to the WordPress software, and members of the WordPress community ourselves, Automattic regularly sponsors WordCamps, and this competition was no different. But not only do we sponsor the events. We also try to actually attend, so we can connect with members of the community, learn from them, hear what they need, and chat about our products for WordPress.

I volunteered to help staff this event, and at the last moment the organisers asked if I might be willing to give a talk to the students and other attendees on the day.

Not one to back down from a challenge I said yes. What followed was a hectic week trying to put together a half-hour talk, for a bunch of students ranging from primary school to college-age, from an entirely different cultural background than me, that would hopefully inspire them in some way. I was almost done with the talk when I decided it can be improved by including a puppet (anything is better with a puppet…just compare A Christmas Carol to A Muppet Christmas Carol, for example…and my job title is Puppetmattician, after all).

So Wally went with me to Uganda.

Here’s a live-stream recording of the talk, if you’d like to watch it. I had to trim it a bit for time due to a change in the event schedule, so I’ll post the full version underneath, for posterity and all that.

Continue reading “Wally goes to Kampala” →

Trans-Atlantic Movie Reviews

It’s that time of the year again when Automattic flies all of us from our 70 different countries around the world to one place for our annual Grand Meetup. Located at the southern end of Africa as I am, that means quite a lot of flying for me – around 21 hours flight time, with 33 hours total travel time for me this time around.

Being stuck in an uncomfortable chair with a stranger in your lap and a man-spreader digging his elbows into your ribs, you do what you can to maintain your sanity. For me, that’s making full use of the in-flight entertainment system to catch up on some movies.

Here’s what I watched on my way to Orlando, and what I thought:

Continue reading “Trans-Atlantic Movie Reviews” →
A-travelling we go

A-travelling we go

Has it been a year already?

Once a year all of Automattic comes together in the same place for a week of bonding, planning and working where we can actually see each other (prompting several of my colleagues to go pants-shopping this past week). So here I am again, waiting to board a plane to Amsterdam so I can board a plane to Vancouver so I can get on a bus to the beautiful village of Whistler nestled between Whistler and Blackcomb mountains in British Columbia, Canada.

It’s actually my second plane of the day – my day started with a text message that my flight from my home airport had been downgraded to a smaller aircraft and that there were more people with tickets than there were seats. As I had a very long layover ahead of me, I volunteered to take a two-hour bus ride to another airport to catch a later flight to Johannesburg.

After a relaxing few hours at the airport (said no one, ever, but I’m trying to be positive, given all the travel I still have ahead of me) and now I’m waiting for my first of two international flights, at the end of which I’ll have been in transit for a total of 39 hours.

You may now feel sorry for me.

I know, I know. First world problems, but it’s brutal. And apparently people do this for fun?

Leaving home was hard, as always. I’m really worried about the Minion this time around, as we’re really close and she’s now big enough to really understand that I’m not there, but nowhere near big enough to understand why I’m not there or that I’m coming back. Thankfully the wife’s parents have driven down to stay with them for the week, so she won’t have to deal on her own.

I’ll also be celebrating my birthday away from them for the second time in a row, which sucks, and the Minion’s first steps are imminent and I really don’t want to miss that.

On the other hand, I get to spend some time with my team again, and with the other great people I work with, in a very beautiful place. I get to eat that amazing bacon at the hotel we’re staying at again. And apparently there’s a chance I’ll get to see the Northern Lights (if the weather is clear and the smoke from wildfires in BC isn’t too bad), so hopefully all the airporting is worth it in the end.

On the road again

Has this been a busy two months. Since you last heard from me we’ve welcomed tooth number two into the world, I’ve bought a house, the wife finished her last day as a teacher, we’ve moved to a different part of the country, and I’m about to spend about 20 hours on uncomfortable airport chairs and even more uncomfortable airplane chairs.

You’re right, that’s way too much for one blog post, to let me focus on the present for now.

One of the drawbacks of working for a distributed company like Automattic is that you don’t get to see your co-workers very often. We’re constantly communicating with each other online, and most teams have a video chat once a week just so we don’t completely forget how to communicate verbally, but it’s not the same as the dynamic you get when sitting in the same room with someone, chatting with them.

So at least once a year (aside from the big all-company meetup in September) each team gets an opportunity to get together somewhere in the world and have some face-time while working on a project to either improve our own skills or do something that benefits our company and our users.

Last week this time I was locking the door of my empty apartment, my home for seven years, to start a new chapter on  South Africa’s east coast. Now I’m sitting at Durban International Airport waiting to board my first flight of three that will take me to Lisbon, Portugal, to spend a week the people I work with most closely every day.

I must confess, it gets harder to leave each time. Due to complications with our house buy (watch this space) we couldn’t move in on the date we’d planned to, so we’re currently staying with the wife’s brother and his family. It’s a tad chaotic, and we suspect the Minion is spawning some more teeth, which doesn’t help the situation much. So I feel bad leaving the wife with all that while I jet off to an exotic location for a week.

And I always have this nagging fear in the darkest corners of my mind that something will happen that will prevent me from coming home to them. I know. It’s silly.

But hey, they just announced boarding for my flight so I gotta run. See y’all soon!