He is the CEO of both wordpress.org (maintainers of the open source distribution of wordpress) and automattic (wordpress.com). He is the main visionary and fina

He is the CEO of both wordpress.org (maintainers of the open source distribution of wordpress) and automattic (wordpress.com). He is the main visionary and final say on all features that are released. Back in 2003 he forked an old blog tool called b2, then grew it until it became one of the most versatile and healthy CMSs out there. One of the things that has impressed me most about how he has run things is that he is able to balance the creation of a hosted blogging platform (wordpress.com) while respecting the needs and desires of those who wish to own their own data and operate their own systems (think about facebook vs diaspora here). I recently had a chance to meet him at the portland wordcamp. He was able to answer both highly detailed questions (why is x implemented this way and how will it be improved?) to big picture questions like how wordpress will continue to develop to compete with the likes of tumblr as well as providing the functionality of wordpress.com to everybody. Overall he is one of those rare CEOs who is very much enlightened about all aspects of the organization.