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The Blog Age

Continued from page 4

Published on October 28, 2004

For a long time, Matt's been fielding job offers from tech companies. He recently considered taking a job with a San Francisco search-engine start-up, but ended up turning them down. "They have a ton of money...But it would be 50- or 60- or 70-hour weeks, a lot of work, and I wouldn't have time" to do WordPress. That was definitely a deal-breaker for Matt, because he won't be abandoning his baby anytime soon. "A personal requirement," he says, "is that I wouldn't want to work anywhere that would prevent me from working on WordPress."

  • Courtesy of Elaine Mesker-Garcia
    The faces behind the blogs converge at Tiara Happy Hour.
    The faces behind the blogs converge at Tiara Happy Hour.
  • Matt's blog gets 10,000 hits per day.
    Matt's blog gets 10,000 hits per day.
But as of last week, it looks like Matt's time off from UH could be indefinite. He finally signed a contract with San Francisco-based media company CNET, which has agreed to allow him to work on WordPress for 15 percent of his time on the job. CNET runs sites including gamespot.com, mp3. com, search.com, download.com and news. com. "The idea is that they're a media company and not a software company," he says. "They don't need their software to be proprietary for it to work for them." So Matt will spend much of his time working on open-source software for CNET in San Francisco. He plans to go back to school eventually, but he doesn't know when.

Several weeks before accepting the job, Matt goes to Bad Art Night at Tropioca Tea and Coffee Bar in Midtown. The H-town bloggers have commandeered a large table, and construction paper, glue, scissors, crayons and markers litter the table. Kathy Ratliff, the blogger who loves stamping, is taking up a lot of space with her plastic boxes of materials. Matt's at the head of the table, paying little attention to making art and a lot of attention to his laptop (the coffee shop, of course, has wi-fi). It's forgivable, considering that he's checking on a TV program that aired a segment on WordPress.

This is another social event for bloggers, along the lines of Tiara Happy Hour, but much tamer. Like bloggers in other cities around the country, Houston bloggers really seem to have a sense of community. "We've probably got a core group of 20 to 30 socially active members," says Elaine Mesker-Garcia, who founded htownblogs.com and has a personal blog at cybertoad.us. "We meet for coffee and happy hours." There's even been a blogger wedding: Christine recently married a man she met at a coffee event in 2002. "Matt went to the wedding," she says. "He posted a photo gallery of wedding photos. Our wedding was very interesting. Probably half the guest had blogs." There were big pink cookies instead of groom's cake at the wedding.

When he puts down the laptop, Matt starts teasing Kathy about her suitcases of stamping supplies and goes to get some green-tea ice cream with his girlfriend. Sarah's been giggling and cutting up construction paper with her friend from high school who has streaked hair. With their funky appearance, both girls definitely look like HSPVA grads. Sarah soon will head off for her first year of college. When people start packing up supplies, she hugs the other bloggers, who she won't see again for a while.

Less than a week after Bad Art Night, Matt's blog shows that Sarah's left town. "Late last night I heard the screen door sway," it reads, "and a big yellow taxi took my girl away. Taking a break." If readers clicked on the entry, it pulled up a box that downloaded "Big Yellow Taxi" by Counting Crows. Then, three days later -- a rare lapse for Matt -- he posts again: "Just needed a few days off. Feeling a lot better now. :)" He gets several notes along the lines of "He's back! Hooray! It's good to have you back, man." But one, from blogger Randy Peterman, is particularly insightful. "Welcome back!" it says. "Hope you feel rested and take precautions to prevent any burnout that might have been caused by 1) Being a major WordPress pillar, 2) Being a very popular blog 3) Being a person involved with 'the rest of life.' "

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