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Hey all. I'm Michael, a Developer Advocate at WooThemes and now Automattic. I'm happy to answer any questions. As you can imagine, we're all really excited abou

Hey all. I'm Michael, a Developer Advocate at WooThemes and now Automattic. I'm happy to answer any questions. As you can imagine, we're all really excited about this.

ryannevius 11y ago
Sort of unrelated, but still a question: what is the role of a "developer advocate"? Also, it sounds like job roles transferred over one-to-one?
- pionar 11y ago
  > Also, it sounds like job roles transferred over one-to-one? Usually when a company merges like this, there's a period just after acquisition where both companies still operate independently while the higher-ups try to figure out the integration plan. That doesn't mean titles/roles won't change, but the same day as the announcement? It'd be business as usual at both companies.
- DannySantoro 11y ago
  Michael works with other companies to encourage better integration, like payment gateways and shipping tools. It's a new position, but a sure exciting time to be there :)
ereckers 11y ago
Congratulations and thanks for going with Automattic and not a VC firm. From Magnus Jepson's blog: http://jepson.no/we-are-joining-automattic/ http://jepson.no/we-are-joining-automattic/ > We had talks with potential partners, including VC firms and competing companies. This led us to Automattic, who had previously shown great interest in the popularity of WooCommerce. CEO Matt Mullenweg, who is also the co-founder of WordPress, had built his company in the same distributed manner as WooThemes with a team of over 300. This was our dream partner! Here's a question: do you have any idea of what the first initial changes might be for developer/firms and how we work with WooCommerce/WooThemes/WooMatic?
- MichaelTieso 11y ago
  The WooCommerce eco-system relies on our third-party developers and we will continue working with them. We don't have any immediate changes that would affect developers and agencies. We do plan to introduce a new developer program (a re-imagined Affiliated Woo Workers) to help agencies and developers in the coming months but is unrelated to the acquisition and has been in the works for the last few months.
higherpurpose 11y ago
Does that mean we can expect the WooThemes store to be integrated into Wordpress(.org)? What other integrations can we expect?
- MichaelTieso 11y ago
  There are no immediate plans to do this but you can expect that we'll be discussing the possibility of different ways we can integrate better.
- arkitaip 11y ago
  I think it's more likely Woo will end up in Wordress.com and other commercial Automattic enterprises.
jbkkd 11y ago
Congrulations! This is a great step forward for the community and for both parties involved. As for WooThemes - will we start seeing proper documentation [1] when products are released? I've been bit in the past by something being released by WooThemes, and documentation taking another half year up to year to follow. [1] http://www.omerkorner.com/2014/09/wheres-api-reference-woocommerce/ http://www.omerkorner.com/2014/09/wheres-api-reference-wooco...
- MichaelTieso 11y ago
  You're right. We could have done a better job at documenting the REST API. We've been slowly introducing and fixing issues with the the REST API since it's debut. We never fully announced it as it was still very much a work in progress. However in WC 2.3 I'm happy to announce we've significantly improved the REST API and documentation. Without a doubt we're also going to have many more resources joining Automattic and their talented group.
  - octatoan 11y ago
    A humble dev is the best kind of dev. :)
pdevr 11y ago
After reading your answers, it looks like at this point, you don't have clear visibility into a lot of areas (integration with Wordpress, impact to third party developers, etc) as to what is going to happen in the future. Understandably so. Do you have any area (like better documentation, which you wrote about) where you have a clear vision about the future? Can you tell us about that? I think that will be more useful.

Hey all. I'm Michael, a Developer Advocate at WooThemes and now Automattic. I'm happy to answer any questions. As you can imagine, we're all really excited about this.

ryannevius 11y ago

Sort of unrelated, but still a question: what is the role of a "developer advocate"? Also, it sounds like job roles transferred over one-to-one?

pionar 11y ago
> Also, it sounds like job roles transferred over one-to-one? Usually when a company merges like this, there's a period just after acquisition where both companies still operate independently while the higher-ups try to figure out the integration plan. That doesn't mean titles/roles won't change, but the same day as the announcement? It'd be business as usual at both companies.
DannySantoro 11y ago
Michael works with other companies to encourage better integration, like payment gateways and shipping tools. It's a new position, but a sure exciting time to be there :)

ereckers 11y ago

Congratulations and thanks for going with Automattic and not a VC firm. From Magnus Jepson's blog: http://jepson.no/we-are-joining-automattic/ http://jepson.no/we-are-joining-automattic/ > We had talks with potential partners, including VC firms and competing companies. This led us to Automattic, who had previously shown great interest in the popularity of WooCommerce. CEO Matt Mullenweg, who is also the co-founder of WordPress, had built his company in the same distributed manner as WooThemes with a team of over 300. This was our dream partner! Here's a question: do you have any idea of what the first initial changes might be for developer/firms and how we work with WooCommerce/WooThemes/WooMatic?

MichaelTieso 11y ago
The WooCommerce eco-system relies on our third-party developers and we will continue working with them. We don't have any immediate changes that would affect developers and agencies. We do plan to introduce a new developer program (a re-imagined Affiliated Woo Workers) to help agencies and developers in the coming months but is unrelated to the acquisition and has been in the works for the last few months.

higherpurpose 11y ago

Does that mean we can expect the WooThemes store to be integrated into Wordpress(.org)? What other integrations can we expect?

MichaelTieso 11y ago
There are no immediate plans to do this but you can expect that we'll be discussing the possibility of different ways we can integrate better.
arkitaip 11y ago
I think it's more likely Woo will end up in Wordress.com and other commercial Automattic enterprises.

jbkkd 11y ago

Congrulations! This is a great step forward for the community and for both parties involved. As for WooThemes - will we start seeing proper documentation [1] when products are released? I've been bit in the past by something being released by WooThemes, and documentation taking another half year up to year to follow. [1] http://www.omerkorner.com/2014/09/wheres-api-reference-woocommerce/ http://www.omerkorner.com/2014/09/wheres-api-reference-wooco...

MichaelTieso 11y ago
You're right. We could have done a better job at documenting the REST API. We've been slowly introducing and fixing issues with the the REST API since it's debut. We never fully announced it as it was still very much a work in progress. However in WC 2.3 I'm happy to announce we've significantly improved the REST API and documentation. Without a doubt we're also going to have many more resources joining Automattic and their talented group.
- octatoan 11y ago
  A humble dev is the best kind of dev. :)

pdevr 11y ago

After reading your answers, it looks like at this point, you don't have clear visibility into a lot of areas (integration with Wordpress, impact to third party developers, etc) as to what is going to happen in the future. Understandably so. Do you have any area (like better documentation, which you wrote about) where you have a clear vision about the future? Can you tell us about that? I think that will be more useful.