Marcus Couch

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In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Chris Lema to discuss WordPress in the enterprise, the on boarding experience, and Calypso. Lema shares his experience beta testing a Windows version of Automattic’s new desktop application. We discuss how WordPress is going to grow its market share from 25% to 50% and how important Jetpack is to reaching that goal. Near the end of the interview, Lema shares what he’s most thankful for as it relates to WordPress.

Stories Discussed:

Automattic Unveils Open Source WordPress.com Desktop Application for the Mac

Plugins Picked By Marcus:

WP TAO by Michal Jaworski and Damian Gora from Poland, is a free powerful WordPress plugin for tracking website visitors. It allows you to identify your users and keep track of their activities in an easy to read digital dashboard and log format.

Cool Timeline is Narinder Singh’s first plugin in the repository. It creates responsive, vertical story lines in chronological order based on the year and date of your posts.

The Force created by Rohit Motwani from India, is a Hello Dolly clone that when activated, replaces music lyrics with random quotes from Star Wars characters.

What I’m Thankful For:

This has been a rough year for me. I’m struggling with my health and maintaining a schedule as a distributed worker. A dear WordPress friend of mine (Kim Parsell) passed away at the beginning of the year. My grandma was recently diagnosed with lung cancer and I’ve been dealing with wild swings between feeling positive and downright depressed.

The thing I’m most thankful for this year as it relates to WordPress are the people who make up the community. Some are personal friends, others live on the other side of the world. Their consistent reinforcement of positive vibes has helped me get through some turbulent times in my life this year. To everyone who has and continues to give me encouragement, advice, and positive reinforcement, thank you.

What Marcus is Thankful For:

This year was one of the hardest years for me in terms of professional struggles and hardships. I lost relatives and friends, a job, and had to start from square one. I had a lot of support from within the WordPress community coming really close to working with a few people directly. In the end, it was my WordPress skills that landed me a new gig, which I now call The Dream Gig.

I’m thankful for the opportunities to meet people from within the WordPress community in real life. From Chris Lema and Cory Miller to Jeff Chandler and beyond. Every time I meet someone, they not only share their successes, but their struggles. It’s good to know that I’m not the only one and be able to use their strength and perseverance to fuel my drive and passion for WordPress.

I’m thankful for the opportunity to share what I know to thousands of people around the world. I feel the best sense of accomplishment when I receive an email from someone that’s stuck on a particular problem and discovers a solution after they hear me talk about a plugin or technique on a podcast. It’s a great outlet for me personally that I hope to continue for many more years to come. Thanks to all who are listening and to those who are listening for the first time.

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Wednesday, December 2nd 9:30 P.M. Eastern

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Listen To Episode #214: