Kickstarting a Radical Month at Automattic

What is Radical Speed Month?

Today is the first day of Radical Speed Month at Automattic. For one month, I get to pair up with a colleague and build something real. No design reviews, no product sign-off, no marketing sign-off.

I am curious to see what a pair can actually ship in a month without the usual approval chain in place!

This is a structured innovation experiment for Automattic. For me personally, it is also a small experiment in how I work. I plan to learn a lot, and I will share what I learn along the way.

Who am I working with?

I am pairing with Lucas Radke for the month. We are both Automatticians. Automattic is a fully remote company, so we rarely sit in the same room. Lucas and I have bumped into each other at Cloudfest and at WordCamp Europe over the years. We had good conversations and shared interests, but never collaborated on a project until now.

That last part is what I am most curious about. We have no shared routines and no trained handovers. Figuring out how to build a working rhythm with a new partner, fast, without any ramp-up time, is something I want to learn more about.

Open-sourcing my work process.

Open source is how most of us work at Automattic. I almost exclusively work on projects that have open code. This month, I want to take that one step further and open-source my work process, too.

That means I will write about the decisions we are making and the experiments we are running. We will show you the rough drafts, the dead ends, and the bits we end up throwing away. And we will ask for your input while the work can still change direction.

You get an early look at what we’re working on. We get honest feedback before making final decisions.

What are we building?

Helping creators find the next story to talk about. That means content syndication for creators.

Here is the short version: launching a blog or social media profile is easy. Consistently publishing relevant content is hard. Finding the right stories and making those stories feel like your own is the challenge we’re going to simplify.

We want to explore how to:

• Pull together signals from blogs, news outlets, influencers, and press rooms.
• Deliver a personalized feed of stories that are actually worth your time.
• Suggest angles and formats for how you can speak about each story on your own blog.

This is an experiment. Some experiments grow into products. Others turn into a clear set of lessons. I am curious to see what the outcome of this month will be.

We need you: help us shape this!

Are you a creator? Do you publish on your blog or social media? What helps us most right now is hearing about your editorial life. Which stories have you been meaning to cover? Which sources do you actually trust? What formats do you wish existed on your blog or social media channel?

Tell us what your editorial pipeline should look like. How can we help you find inspiration? Is there a tool or specific functionality you dream about?

Drop a comment below or get in touch with me via email or any of my social channels.