WordPress Co-Founder Matt Mullenweg Delivers Annual State of the Word Address in Tokyo, Japan

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg delivered his annual State of the Word (SOTW) address today from Tokyo Node Hall in Tokyo, Japan. This marks the second time the event was held outside North America, following last year’s address in Madrid, Spain.

A Special Emphasis on Japanese Culture

This year’s event spanned three hours, with a special emphasis on Japanese culture. Matt explained, “We’ve gotten so much inspiration over the years from Japanese culture, we wanted to make this event really “of the space,” so we’re doing a few extra things this year. My presentation will include Mary Hubbard and Matías Ventura, but also part of it will be in Japanese and presented by Junko Fukui Nukaga. We’ll have a piano performance by Aiko Takei. After the presentation and Q&A we’ll do a panel in Japanese with Mieko Kawakami, Craig Mod, Hajime Ogushi, and Genki Taniguchi.”

WordPress Contributions in Japan

Matt enumerated the WordPress contributions of the Japanese community, mainly Translation, and Wapuu. Japan was the country that made him realize that WordPress was more than a blogging tool, and Kansei engineering fascinates him.

A Brief History of WordPress in Japan

A Japanese WordPress site was set up in December 2003, just six months after WordPress was launched. The version originally called “WordPress ME” (WordPress Multilingual Edition) was maintained by a user called Otsukare. Wapuu, the official mascot character of WordPress, was designed by Kazuko Kaneuchi in 2011 and is GPL licensed.

Statistics and Vision

Matt then shared some statistics:

• WordPress now powers 43.6% of the internet and, according to interoperability and freedom. The idea is not just to make WordPress more powerful but to ensure that it’s truly free. It’s the freedom to move content anywhere, to collaborate without barriers or constraints. WordPress Playground plays a critical role in this vision.

A Year of Growth and Focus

“Some people might see 2024 as a year of distractions or attacks from bad actors in the community. But it was really a year of growth and focus where we were able to accelerate so many things that we’re doing. It was also an amazing year of growth in a lot of areas,” he said.

Q&A Session

The event also had a short Q&A session where Mullenweg fielded questions about the future of blogging, whether the performance plugin of WordPress will be integrated into core, AI-generated content, digital identity, and democratising publishing.

Congratulations and Mission Statement

Matt also congratulated developer Aki Hamano. He then talked about Automattic’s missions – to democratize publishing, democratize commerce (with WooCommerce), and democratize messaging (through Beeper). These three things will keep him busy for life, and he revealed that he’ll work on WordPress for the rest of his life, which he considers to be an honour and privilege.

Panel Discussions

The event had two panel discussions moderated by Mary Hubbard. The first panel featuring Mieko Kawakami, Craig Mod and Matt explored ‘Publishing in the Open’ while the second panel of Hajime Ogushi, Genki Taniguchi, and Matt discussed ‘The Future of WordPress in Japan and Beyond’.

Live-Streaming and Availability

The event was live-streamed and is available on WordPress YouTube channel.