Today’s WPOI is Danilo Ercoli, a native of Italy, and a WordPress mobile team member.
Check out his personal blog for some sweet photos from his travels and learn more about his time with WordPress mobile after the jump!
1. Tell Us About Yourself, The More ‘Unknown’ Facts the Better!
I was born and raised near Rome, in the beautiful countryside of Ciociaria, and moved to Bologna at 23. I decided to attend a CS course at the Bologna University, one of the most involved universities here in IT on Open Source. I spent 10 wonderful years in Bologna, but now thanks to Automattic, that is a distributed company, I moved back to my hometown.
I like the countryside and small cities. I’m a supporter of the Juventus Football club, and don’t miss a game. I use my tablets just to watch the mid-week match when traveling around the world. I’m a runner, and even was in a semi-pro running team at the time of University.
2. How Long Have You Been Working with WordPress? When Was Your First Experience?
I started working with WordPress late 2008. At that time I was building a mobile client for Nokia devices that was able to interact with major CMS’s, and hit on WordPress, which impressed me a lot for its simplicity and customization.
A few months later I was building the official BlackBerry app for WordPress.
3. What Excites You The Most About Working With WordPress Mobile And Automattic?
I like working at Automattic for tons of reasons, especially the ability to work remotely on my personal schedule. I can work in my home office, from the couch, or the desk, or I can go to the public library, or café. Automattic does a lot of cool stuff, and I’m more than happy to be part of the mobile gang.
We try to solve interesting real-world challenges, from optimizing content for small screen sizes, developing new ways to publish your content using tablet computers, overcoming slow networks, to experimenting with different ways users can interact with mobile devices and WordPress.
4. How Have You Seen WordPress Grow and Change? Where Do You Think It’s Headed?
WordPress started as a simple blogging platform back in 2003, and since then it has moved into a fully fledge content management system. It’s not just for blogs anymore. In my opinion the next big challenge is to improve some basic functionality, and better promote WordPress as an Application Platform.
I think that it’s not just a publishing platform, WordPress provides functions and modules that can be used to build your web-app, including Users Registration and Management, Authentication, DB functions, Sanitizing API, I18N, and other useful stuff. At the mobile team we’re using WordPress as an application platform to power the Mobile Reader, a site reader you can find in the Android/iOS apps.
5. What Can People Expect to See From You in 2013?
Definitely important updates on the Windows Phone app will see the light of day during 2013, together with new important updates about Notifications, both for Android and iOS. Push notifications are such a pretty big thing, that we’ve just starting exploring one year ago, and we’d like to explore better during 2013.
6. What Side Projects or Passions Keep You Busy?
I’m involved in a lot of projects related to WordPress, and WordPress mobile, and staying updated on all technologies and things keeps me busy all day. I try to reserve 2 hrs a day or so to play soccer or training at the gym school. “Mens sana in corpore sano” (haha!).
I’ve just started working on a new side project, but can’t tell what it is at the moment :), it’s a big project by the way, and yes it will be released under an OS license.
7. Would You Share One or Two Tips For Those That are Getting Into WordPress?
For those who are starting WordPress development, I suggest to take a look at wpshell. It is a command line shell suitable for any php project, includes code indexing, searching, and displaying built-in. It gives you a command shell that accepts native PHP code as well as all the functionality your regular WordPress install would give you.
I use wpshell on a daily basis when developing new things and it has boosted my productivity.
For advanced users, those users that want scale WordPress at the next level, I suggest to the a look at the Jobs Systems, Code Trac and HitchHackerGuide.
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