Startup Houston

I got last minute notice yesterday that Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress) was in town last night at the Stag’s Head Pub and had to be there.  I’m glad I was.  There was a great turnout (about 40 people or more) and Matt had a lot of great info and input about everything WordPress and even answered some of my questions about what more we can be doing here in Houston.  Below are some of the observations I made and notes I took:

Matt on WordPress:

• Looking to make WordPress more like FireFox where it serves as a foundation and the community contributes great plugins
• WordPress is so popular that many publishers are looking for more people to publish books on the subject (hint, hint)
• Matt feels that WordPress is also a great platform for CMS and is interested in seeing if more people use it that way
• Some people from large companies were asking when Automattic is coming out with an enterprise version of WordPress.  It seems that their companies were hesitant to adopt WordPress as their blogging platform or CMS until it had an official “Enterprise Edition” sticker on it.  Matt referred to KnowNow who offer the KnowNow WordPress Enterprise Edition (KWEE).  He said it costs a lot more than “free,”  but this might be a good fit for larger companies.
• Questions on video.  He felt that managing video was “hairy” and for now was probably better left to a central service like YouTube, etc.

Matt on what can be done to help create a more favorable environment for developers and startups in Houston:

• Matt said that when he was in Houston he was able to leverage HAL-PC to gain free exposure to lots of technology and that really helped him.
• My thoughts:  It doesn’t seem like HAL-PC is as big an influencer as it used to be and the style of their site looks like it hasn’t been updated in quite a while.  Maybe there are some other forces that can step in here and fill in the gap.  Groups like … NetSquared Meetup Group, CSS Meetup Group, Web Design Meetup Group, the Houston Technology Center, Stir, Refresh Houston, and the WordPress Meetup Group.
• When I asked Matt what else we could be doing, he said that providing people more information about what is going on and what resources are available to them is a big help, so I will be redoubling my efforts to keep everyone better informed.

All in all, I met a lot of great people and look forward to trying to help pull together Houston’s resources to help promote small and startup companies in the Houston area.

Let me know if you have any other great ideas !