Matt West’s Blog

Blog

  • Hello Automattic

    Hello Automattic

    This week I joined the WordPress.com design team at Automattic.

    To kick things off I flew out to Munich, Germany 🇩🇪 for the annual WordPress.com division meetup—how about that timing! It was a little overwhelming to begin with, but ended up being the perfect way to start.

    Working remotely makes it harder to get to know the folks you work with. So Munich was great opportunity for me to hang out with the WordPress.com design team and get to know the engineering teams I’ll be working with a bit.

    After getting a glimpse of what’s planned for WordPress.com, I’m fired up and ready to get stuck in.

  • Making Kumiko

    Making Kumiko

    Fitting the infill pieces
    Assembling the frame
  • Treehouse escape

    Treehouse escape

    As a kid I loved to go out in rain storms. I found them calming. The sound of raindrops ripping through trees and bouncing off the ground. The feeling of hundreds of tiny traveller from the sky, existing for a few brief moments before being assimilated into its destination. The feeling of being soaked through and cold. So cold. That particular experience of cold that makes you yearn for the joy of warmth. Oh and the smell. The fresh scent of rain. Sitting in a treehouse cupping a hot mug of tea and watching the rain, I was transported back to those moments of my childhood.

    In between jobs, we decided to book a few days away to help me switch off and found an amazing treehouse just outside Stockbridge, Hampshire. No WiFi. No TV. Perfect for escaping from the world for a while.

    We arrived just as Storm Ciarán hit. Rain pelted the roof day and night. Anxieties about whether the track we’d taken to get here would be washed out were quickly replaced by a quiet optimism that perhaps fate would allow us to enjoy this break a little longer than we’d planned.

    With no work and no internet, the pace of life slowed. My mind could breathe. All the stresses of the past year and a half melted away. I let go.

    We passed time watching the rain and playing board games. I taught my daughter how to play checkers. Many rounds of Uno were dealt. Some kittens exploded.

    Once the storm finally broke we enjoyed a day of calm blue skies. Roaming the countryside I was reminded how lucky I am to have experiences like this. To be able to share them with my family. So much of my time is spent within the world behind a computer screen, but life is lived beyond it.

    A black treehouse set within woodland.
    Light escaping for the windows of a treehouse at night.
    The early morning sun rising above the hills beyond woodland.
    A bedroom with a picture window looking out onto woodland.
    A man and a young girl sitting on chairs on a deck, looking out across countryside.
    A young girl and baby boy playing on the floor of a treehouse.
    A man, young girls, and baby boy walking along the side of a cultivated field.
    A man and young girl playing checkers.

  • Farewell Emitwise

    Farewell Emitwise

    Today was my last day at Emitwise.

    Emitwise’s mission is to accelerate the transition to a Net Zero economy by helping enterprises with complex supply chains to decarbonise. I’m incredibly grateful to have played a part in their journey, for the people I’ve met, and for everything I learned along the way.

    Now, I’m looking forward to a couple weeks off to recharge, do some woodworking, and perhaps take a couple motorcycle trips.

  • Owning the whole

    I stumbled across this documentary about Sebastian Cox and his mission to prove that sustainably sourced British woods can be used to create wonderful furniture.

    Against The Grain – Documentary Film About Furniture Maker Sebastian Cox

    Something that particularly resonated with me was how the craftspeople in his workshop are responsible for realising a product from start to finish. There’s no division of labour. Forcing people to develop their craft in a wide range of areas from preparing the wood and assembly, to final finish.

    Sebastian refers to this principle of having people owning the whole process, as being derived from William Morris’ view of how mass production diminished craft skills during the Industrial Revolution.

    It made me think about how fragmented a lot of product teams have become when building software. It’s rare to have a single persons that owns a whole feature. Things get divided up into design/engineering, frontend/backend, mobile/web. The division of labour is very present.

    There are many good reasons for these divisions of course. But it’s a reflection of how the software industry is very much in the mass production phase of development.

    I’ve often considered how the lack of ownership over the whole is reflected in the end quality of a feature or product. It’s possible to build great products this way, but I can’t help feeling that something is lost.

  • Rainy evenings

    Rainy evenings

    A white desk lit by a silver lamp. A sketchbook is placed open on the desk with a pair of glasses and pencil nearby. The window is slightly open. Rain drops can be seen on the window panes.
  • Normandy

    Normandy

    Message to Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force on the eve of D-Day.

    Normandy American Cemetery

    Normandy American Cemetery Walkway
    The Chapel at Normandy American Cemetery
    The Fallen
    Map of military operations in Western Europe
    Walkway by the cliff
    Mosaic in The Chapel

    The beaches

    Utah Beach
    Coastal defence at ‎⁨Utah Beach
    Batterie Allemande de ‎⁨Longues-sur-Mer⁩
    Utah Beach
    Coastal defences at Utah Beach
    Utah Beach
    Pointe du Hoc
    Gold Beach
    Juno Beach
    Defensive bunker at Omaha Beach
    View down onto Omaha Beach

    Preserving history

    Douglas C-47 “The Argonia”
    Jeep
    Collection of WW2 military clothing and equipment
    Olympia typewriter
    Personal effects
    Personal effects
    101st Airborne Monument

    Lest we forget.

  • Meeting the maker

    Meeting the maker

    Triumph Trident 660 at the Triumph factory in Hinckley, UK

  • De Havilland DH.82A Tiger Moth

    De Havilland DH.82A Tiger Moth

    De Havilland DH.82A Tiger Moth Airplane
    De Havilland DH.82A Tiger Moth at Sywell Aerodrome
  • Top Books of 2020

    Top Books of 2020

    You can find a full list of the books I read in 2020 in my reading list.

  • 2020 Workspace

    2020 Workspace

    I broke out of my minimalist box this year and got a 27” monitor. I’ve always preferred to use my laptop screen when working. Less space forces me to focus and maintains a level of consistency regardless of where I’m working. I can’t deny that the 27” screen is useful though. Especially when working in Figma or Google Sheets.

    My current workspace setup:

    • 2019 MacBook Pro 16”
    • Apple Magic Keyboard
    • Apple Magic Touchpad
    • Logitech MX Master 3 for Mac
    • LG Ultrafine 27” Monitor
    • Vitsœ 606 Shelving System with Desk
    • Herman Miller Sayl Chair
    • Awair Air Monitor
    • Apple AirPods Pro
    • Hue Play Light Bar (Mounted behind the monitor)
    • Apple HomePod
    • Bonsai Tree 🌳

    I also use an iPad Pro + Apple Pencil for early UI sketches and reading documentation. A well loved Baronfig Confidant serves as a secondary scratchpad to capture thoughts. There’s something satisfying about feeling a Rotring Rapid Pro glide effortlessly across paper that’s holding me back from going purely digital.

  • Measuring the Environmental Impact of a Tech Company

    Climate change is real, it’s happening, and human activity is the driving force.

    Last year I helped establish an Environment Committee at Wildbit. The group is tasked with monitoring and reducing the company’s environmental impact, focussing mainly on business travel, server infrastructure, and operations.

    We recently published a report of Wildbit’s 2019 Greenhouse Gas Emissions along with some steps we’re taking to reduce our environmental impact. The report includes details on how we measured our emissions in the hope that it will help other companies to follow suit and measure their own environmental impact.

    I urge you to read the report and start a committee in your own organisation. If I can help in any way, please reach out.

    It’s not okay to stand aside and assume someone else will do the work. The clock is ticking and we’re running out of time. Act now.

  • My Favourite Books From 2018

    I succeeded in maintaining my reading habit in 2018 and ended up reading 25 books. I keep a log of all the books I’ve finished on my website, but wanted to highlight a few of my favourites from 2018.

    Brief Answers to the Big Questions

    Stephen Hawking

    Professor Stephen Hawking has greatly inspired me over the years. In his final book—posthumously published—Hawking discusses his outlook on some of the biggest issues facing our existence.

    Measure What Matters

    John Doerr

    If you’ve ever been interested in how OKRs can drive growth and ambition within an organisation, Measure What Mattersshould be at the top of your reading list. Written by the man that introduced OKRs to Google. John Doerr draws upon his wealth of experience working at Intel and other high-powered tech companies to demonstrate the power of OKRs in driving results where they matter.

    Unbelievable

    Jessica Ennis-Hill

    Unbelievableis the story of how a young girl from Sheffield became an Olympic champion. I found this book as I was training for my first competitive races earlier this year and it provided buckets of inspiration to keep me going. It’s easy to overlook the amount of hard work required to rise to the top of your sport. Unbelievable gives you an inside look into the work and sacrifice that Jessica Ennis-Hill went through to get there.

    To Pixar and Beyond

    Lawrence Levy

    I’ve long been fascinated with Pixar’s success and have read many books on the studio. Most of which have focussed on the creative/storytelling side of things but To Pixar and Beyondgives an insight into the business behind the hit movies. Lawrence Levy tells the story of his time as Pixar’s CFO, what it was like to work with Steve Jobs, and how he found meaning after leaving Pixar.

    It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work

    David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried

    DHH and Jason Fried once again prompt us to slow down, take a step back, and reconsider how we are working. If you read Signal v. Noiseyou may have already encountered some of the ideas in this book, but it’s always good to have a refresher.

  • Keep it Simple

    Keep it Simple

    I’ve recently started using an app called TeuxDeux to help me plan my work for the week. It’s a brilliantly simple tool. The TeuxDeux website includes a /Purpose that outlines the team’s motivation for building the product and their vision for the future. 

    1. Simple enough to compete with a piece of paper.
    2. Beautiful enough that we wouldn’t mind (and might even enjoy) looking at it all day.

    The purpose of the app is perfectly captured in these two short sentences. 

    Build it simple. Build it beautiful.

    The team’s vision for the future is equally inspiring:

    If you like what you see with TeuxDeux (for example, its sparse, lovely design or intuitive personal timeline), you can take comfort in the fact that we will stay true to what it stands for today. Ten years from now”‰”””‰when we’ve finally domesticated koala bears and everyone can have one as a pet”‰”””‰TeuxDeux will still be chugging along, making your day-to-day just a little bit brighter.
    On that note, why the heck does every app need to change all the time? Can’t something on the Web be more or less finished?
    We think so.

    The thing I love most about this vision is that there’s no mention of big feature developments, third-party integrations, or building a ‘platform’. The team behind TeuxDeux recognise that they’ve built a product that solves the problem they set out to tackle. They’ve resisted the urge to tinker.

    It’s okay to call a product finished. You don’t have to be constantly changing things in order to grow your product.

    By all means maintain your products, but don’t build more features just to create the illusion of progress in an attempt to attract more users. Build something useful and your customer base will grow with time.

  • Thoughts on Progress

    We must be prepared to disagree more often. To challenge those philosophies which do not align with our modern views. To ensure we are not guided by dogma, and consider ideas in the context of our current beliefs and experiences.

    To make progress we must understand the past. We must learn from our failures and our successes, but we must define our own future.

    To blindly follow the thinking of those that came before is a decision to forego progress in pursuit of maintaining the ideals of the past.