Products

Welcome John Hawkins, our new Director of Products!

It’s only February, and we already have news we are all too delighted to share!

Please join us in welcoming John Hawkins to our team! John, a long-time member of the WordPress community and old friend of the executive team, will be stepping in as the Director of Products. You may remember that we mentioned we’d be using our energies this year to focus on the products that we’ve worked on, and this is a major step forward in that direction. We’ve wanted to work with John for a very long time, and when the stars aligned in our favor, we jumped at the opportunity.

If you aren’t familiar with John, here’s a little bit about him:

John Hawkins caught the blogging bug early on. He used several platforms, including hand-coded HTML, to publish posts before installing WordPress for the first time in the summer of 2003. Even though it was brand new at the time, it was already easier to produce content than any of the previous methods. He’s been hooked ever since. In 2009, after growing tired of his corporate job, John turned his love for WordPress in o a full time gig as the founder of 9seeds, a WordPress development shop.

John is a huge fan of the community aspect of WordPress and loves to give back in whatever ways he can. He founded the Las Vegas WordPress meetup group and was its lead organizer for 4+ years. He’s also a frequent presenter at the meetup and at WordCamp conferences around the country.

John lives just outside of Las Vegas with his wife and two grown children. When he’s not working, John enjoys doing CrossFit and is a CrossFit Level 1 trainer. If you meet him at a conference, there’s a good chance he’ll challenge you to do some burpees with him.

I asked John a few questions about what we can expect and his history with WDS. Check it:

What was your first introduction to WebDevStudios?

I sat in on Brad’s talk at WordCamp Chicago in 2010. I keep trying to find myself in his fist pump video. I know I’m in the room, but can’t spot me. It’s like a game of where’s Waldo at this point!

What excites you most about joining the WDS team?

As mentioned above, we’ve looked for opportunities to work together in the past, but the timing or situations were never quite right. This time, everything just fell in to place and I’m excited for the opportunity to see where it takes us.

Why Director of Products? What about this position appeals to you?

Long before WordPress existed, I built and sold small applications that helped people sell products online. I loved it. Every aspect of it. I like figuring out what clients want in a product, what features should be there, how to make those features simple and understandable, and I could go on all day. Having the opportunity to focus 100% of my time toward products…that should have probably been my answer to the previous question!

Can you share anything about what we have to look forward to?

Nothing specific at this point. It’s still a little early. But rest assured, we’ll have some fun stuff to tell you about in the near future.


 

Once again, please join us in welcoming John aboard and keep your ears open for further updates! You can follow also John on Twitter @vegasgeek, and of course, you know we’ll be updating our Twitter with all the good stuff as well!

 

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