Transcript
[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.
Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, learning about the work of the Automattic Special Projects Team.
If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast, player of choice. Or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcasts players.
If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox and use the form there.
So on the podcast today we have Christy Nyiri and Mike Straw.
Christy leads the design arm of Automattic’s Special Projects Team. She taught herself to design and code 17 years ago, and has since worked with a wide range of clients, many of whom you’ll hear about later.
Mike is an engineer with the Special Projects Team. He’s been writing code for over four decades and has been deeply into WordPress for the last seven years.
Today we’re pulling back the curtain on the work done at Automattic’s Special Projects Team, a somewhat mysterious entity within Automattic. Because of its low visibility and its detachment from regular product output, many have never heard of the team or what they produce, but that is about to change.
Mike and Christy, tell us all about the team, what they do and who they work with and for. They clarify the unique operational model of the team, which resembles an internal agency focusing exclusively on WordPress and open source projects. Their mission isn’t