Matt Mullenweg, WordPress founder - Wikimedia Commons image

I wanted put up a quick post to reflect on a recent round of inspiration that has hit me, thanks in large part to people in my industry, my geographic community, and circle of friends who are “killing it.”

I am so blessed to be surrounded by such positive and inspiring entrepreneurs in my life (a few examples):

- Kent J. Lewis (@kentjlewis), owner of Anvil Media and Formic Media – SEO/SEM and social media marketing

- Steve Woodward (@nozzlsteve), CEO of Nozzl Media – real-time Web data streams;

- Orest Pilskalns, Founder & CEO of Geomonkey Inc. – social and geolocation mapping (@Streetbrew); and

- Ryan Buchanan (@ryanbuch), Founder & CEO of eROI (@eroi) – e-mail, digital marketing.

These are just some of the sources for my inspiration; others come from professional relationships with top-tier vendors, colleagues in my industry, as well as innovative people in the public sector and private businesses of all sizes.

I plan to highlight some of these individuals over the next few posts and a pattern will hopefully emerge: Sincere, smart, passionate, hard-working people are doggedly pursuing their goals until they succeed while staying true to their core values. They come from all walks of life and from all levels of organizations.

Yet what I’ve found is that all of us trying to make a difference – for ourselves, for the benefit of our organizations, or both – need to stay connected to each other and encourage each other. It’s not easy to stay on the path of innovation and leadership; all the more reason why those of us who have chosen that way need to stick together.

This post wouldn’t be possible without the incredible idea (and execution) of Matt Mullenweg (@photoMatt), founder of WordPress and the creator of the awesome anti-spam tool akismet. I had the pleasure of meeting Matt last year at WordCamp Portland and the pre-conference Beer & Blog event (post here). He has changed Web publishing indelibly, for the better.

On the day of another notable Beer and Blog event (Old Spice ad campaign gurus Wieden+Kennedy are hosting), I can only hope to do my part to inspire others in the same way they have done it for me.

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt), center, at Word Camp Portland (#wcpdx) @beerandblog prefunction. Jeff Bunch, 2009

Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt), founder of WordPress, is one of the most humble (and brilliant) guys you will meet.

Mullenweg gave us one of the Web’s most useful tools from a simple desire to improve blogging for himself and, eventually, the world.  This blog is an example of the idea in action.

Mullenweg was in Portland, Oregon last week for the second annual WordCamp Portland (#wcpdx).  It was a wildly successful event, largely due to the efforts of event organizer Aaron Hockley (@ahockley) of Vancouver, Washington and a group of dedicated volunteers and sponsors.  The event at Webtrends (@Webtrends) brought many WordPress gurus to the tech universe that is PDX.

Portland is the scene of a tech-centered group of wild-eyed dreamers who are some of the most supportive and talented developers whose depth would be hard to match in any other U.S. city.  Only the Bay Area, Austin, and Seattle can come close to the geek mojo of this city.

WordCamp was just the latest in a series of events which are organized mostly locally but which draw attendees from throughout North America.  In the past year, there have been at least a dozen world-class tech/Web events here, including: Bar Camp Portland, Innotech, Web Visions, Internet Strategy Forum Summit, Digital Journalism Camp, Open Source Bridge, DjangoCon, LinuxCon, and WordCamp Portland.

“I’m not much of a coder,” Mullenweg admitted in an engaging hour-long Q&A with the audience last weekend in Portland.

Yet he explained how, back in the day, he dove into improving upon the unsatisfying existing blogging platforms (such as Moveable Type) by getting under the hood and writing a little .php script.  It became the WordPress platform, morphed into the non-profit WordPress.org, and led to the founding of Automattic (“Inspired by you Striving to create good. Nothing is perfect”), a rapidly building empire which he heads.  He also created the akismet spam-busting comment verification tool.

Mullenweg has rightfully been recognized with the distinctions of:

• one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the We;
• Inc.com’s 30 under 30; and
• Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web

WordPress describes itself as “A semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.” It meets all of those criteria and, with the support of a wide-ranging user community, is improved upon every day. The amount of themes, plug-ins, and the like are increasing every day.  Its rise is not unlike that of the iPhone and Apple’s App Store.  There is certainly not the volume of development going on as there is for the iPhone, but there is less noise and more quality.

It’s all about the concepts which underlie the most successful businesses in the world: creativity, passion, dedication to quality:

“I am the founding developer of WordPress, the blogging software that runs much of this site and millions of other sites around the world. The website says WordPress is “a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform” but more importantly WordPress is a part of who I am. Like eating, breathing, music, I can’t not work on WordPress. The project touches a lot of people, something I’ve recently begun to appreciate. I consider myself very lucky to be able to work on something I love so much.” – Matt Mullenweg, from his personal blog ma.tt.

His next big thing (I predict) will be the WordPress social media platform BuddyPress. To see an interview of Mullenweg while he was at WordCamp Portland, check out this one by @CamiKaos of strangelovelive.com.