Thank you, Plone Community!

I’ve always been a fan of Hugh MacLeod — and if you haven’t read his How to be Creative yet, save it to your desktop and read it once you have a spare moment. It’s a great summary of how to “stay real” and enjoy what you are doing, as well as how to best pursue your goals.

Today, he announced that he landed a book deal, and in that context he wrote something that sounds very familiar:

The best thing about being a blogger is the people you get to meet. I have found this to be true and self-evident. When I was younger, the people who inspired me the most professionally were famous, dead, or both. Since I become a blogger the people who inspired me the most became good friends of mine. We hung out. We drunk beer. We ate pizza. It wasn’t a big deal, it was just… lovely. Back in 2004, my blogging buddies and I knew we were onto a good thing. Something powerful and creative and earth-changing. But that’s not the main reason we liked it. We liked it because we enjoyed it, because it was interesting, because of the smart, passionate, fun people we were starting to hang out with.

Sound familiar? It perfectly captures my feelings about the outstanding Plone community, which has been an amazing journey for me and hundreds of other developers throughout the years.

It’s been a crazy ride — starting from being unemployed in a small city in Norway, I got to build a world-class company with some of the smartest people I know. I now work at Google with another group of exceptionally talented people, call San Francisco my home, spend time with the most wonderful girlfriend in the world, and drive the only car I ever wanted. Plone has enabled several hundred companies all over the world to run their own businesses, and do what they love to do. It’s mind-boggling, and sometimes the massive reality of it all comes crashing down on me — in a good way.

If you’re interested in my personal perspective on how Plone happened, it was covered in the foreword to Martin’s book.

So thank you, Plone community. You’re fantastic, and my life is exciting and interesting because of you. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to change the world with. I can’t wait to see what the next eight years will be like.