State of the Word 2022: A Celebration of the Four Freedoms of Open Source

WordPress belongs to all of us, but really we’re taking care of it for the next generation.”

Matt Mullenweg

A small audience of WordPress contributors, developers, and extenders gathered on December 15 for the annual State of the Word keynote from WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. Those who could not join in person joined via livestream or one of 33 watch parties held across 11 countries, with more than 500 RSVPs.

Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, introduced the event with a reminder of why so many of those gathered choose WordPress—the Four Freedoms of open source. As Haden Chomphosy noted, open source is an idea that can change our generation, and WordPress is one of the most consistent and impactful stewards of those freedoms.

As with past State of the Word events, Matt reflected on the year’s accomplishments, learnings, and aspirations as the project moves into 2023. From Gutenberg concluding its second phase of site editing in preparation for phase three—Collaborative Workflows, to the reactivation of meetups and global WordCamps, to the introduction of a new theme and plugin taxonomy, to musings on the potential of machine learning, WordPress enters its 20th year continuing to define bleeding edge technology in thanks to the ecosystem’s vibrant community. 

The one-hour multimedia presentation was followed by an interactive question and answer session where Matt fielded questions from the livestream and studio audience. All questions will be responded to in a follow-up post on Make.WordPress.org/project. 

Discover everything that was covered by watching the official event recording and join the ongoing #StateOfTheWord conversation on Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter. For another way to get involved, consider sharing your experience with WordPress in the 2022 WordPress Community Survey.

Referenced Resources 

• WordPress on Tumblr
• Engineawesome.com using Gutenberg
• WordPress Community Summit 2023
• WP20.wordpress.net
• learn.WordPress.org
• Openverse
• Create Block Theme plugin
• Make.WordPress.org
• WordPress Playground
• Matt on Tumblr
• Distributed.blog

Special thanks to @laurlittle and @eidolonnight for review and collaboration.