Jake Goldman
Jake is the owner and President of 10up, a full service agency that makes a better web with finely crafted websites and tools for content creators. Whether you’re a political junky glued to FiveThirtyEight, a car enthusiast reading MotorTrend, a Windows user who keeps up with Microsoft’s newsroom, an Apple fan reading 9to5mac daily, a tech entrepreneur keeping up with TechCrunch or VentureBeat, or even if you just use WordPress itself, you’ve experienced a small sample of 10up’s work, built atop WordPress. Jake grew 10up from a 1 man show (himself!) to over 100 employees with dozens of brand name clients in under 5 years.
Jake started focusing on web content management platforms like WordPress in 2006, releasing free plug-ins, diverting new projects to the platform, contributing code to the open source project, and engaging the community. He has been a writer and expert reviewer for Smashing Magazine, taught WordPress development at Boston University, and has spoken at conferences, universities, and programs around the country. He helped organize the first WordCamp Boston in 2010, founded the WordPress meetup in Providence, and rebooted the Sacramento meet up in a format that continues on to this day. He is a core contributor to WordPress, and maintains some of the highest rated plug-ins on the official repository, with over 500,000 active installations.
WordCamp Session Title
Distribute allthethings: WordPress And The Era Of Multiple Content Channels
Why Is This Important?
For better or for worse, the web is increasingly moving away from the traditional “website” as the single or even primary way that connected audiences consume content. From mobile apps, to Google AMP, to Facebook Instant Articles, to Apple News, being a digital publisher increasingly requires an understanding of an ecosystem of formats and entry points for content. On top of that trend, “modern” web front ends build for performance and scale – single page experiences powered by frameworks like React.js – are increasingly decoupled from the CMS or server-side application, relying on web APIs to pull content.
This is a threat for content creators that don’t know how to adapt or understand the ecosystem… but also an opportunity for a platform like WordPress, with a rich ecosystem of plugins and integrations for each of those channels, an open framework that can be extended by anyone to integrate new distribution options, and has already integrated a powerful RESTful API that is ready for modern custom mobile apps and newer build technologies like React.
It’s critical that content creators and consultants understand and integrate with this new ecosystem, and imperative that WordPress thought leaders and champions take advantage of this opportunity to position WordPress as a platform ready and positioned for these changes.
How Did You Discover WordPress?
I was looking for a simple web application to manage the news section of a website I was building as a freelance project back in 2006.
How Do You Use WordPress?
WordPress is the preferred / adopted platform of my company, 10up: we use it to make amazing, high scale, beautiful websites for some of the largest household brand names in the world.
How Has WordPress Impacted You?
WordPress has defined my career since ~2009: I started a company in 2011 focused on superior WordPress implementations just as it was starting to peak. It was a bet that paid off!
What Do You Do When Not Working?
Life outside of work these days is generally consumed spending time with my 17 month old daughter! I love a good family road trip with a cozy Airbnb, and if I do get a little time to myself, I’m prone to catching up on Netflix or Amazon originals (preferably with a sci-fi or cerebral angle), or indulging an expensive home automation interest I’ve been gradually developing.