Open Source, Open Road – – Some History

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Open Source, Open Road – – Some History

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pantheon-agency-summit

Talk for the Panthon Agency Summit, 2015

On Github xmattus / pantheon-agency-summit

Open Source, Open Road

Matt Johnson / @xmatt / alleyinteractive.com

Pantheon Agency Summit, 2015

  • Full-service digital agency: design, UX, development, content workflow strategy
  • Founding member of Pantheon agency partner program
  • Still have some unused Pantheon v1 invite codes (where do I redeem them?)

Some History

  • I learned to program in my parents' basement in the 1990s.
  • My first exposure to open source software was installing Linux on their PowerMac and experimenting with tools like gcc, Apache, MySQL and PHP.
  • Open source means open access, and open season on creativity.

More Recent History

I met the co-founder of Alley Interactive in 2008 at Drupalcon Boston and he got me a job at the New York Observer.

The Observer has always been a ragtag operation. That's what it took to be willing to use Drupal in the late '00s as your CMS.

The world has changed a lot since 2008.

Alley has changed too.

From Drupal to WordPress...

  • We work with the media and content industry.
  • Our mission is to bring creative open source solutions to that industry.
  • Alley was founded 5 years ago and did only Drupal. Now we do only WordPress.

...and from hosting to design.

  • Development has always been our most core service.
  • Clients need us to get their site onto servers. Now that Pantheon's here, we can do it without spending our own time on servers.
  • We've built a true value-add design and UX practice with those spare resources.

Freedom from hosting has been huge for us.

  • It has let us focus management attention on defining our media sector focus.
  • It has let us take the time to build a design and UX practice correctly.
  • Frankly, it has let us spend time with our friends and families, and turn off our computers at night.

The open source future is bright

  • Linux and its open source toolchain command the web server market; no one considers building a company like Pantheon on proprietary tools.
  • We've made inroads with WordPress in big media that no one would've dreamed of in 2008.

The End

Have a great day!