Matt Mullenweg’s Keynote at WordCamp Dallas 2008

Photo courtesy of Matt Mullenweg

The following is a recording of Matt Mullenweg’s keynote presentation at WordCamp Dallas 2008. Recorded by John Pozadzides who helped organize the event, it’s the only video of Mullenweg’s keynote that exists. In the video, Mullenweg walks the audience through WordPress 2.5, the redesign of WordPress.org, and the future of WordPress. There’s also a question and answer segment in the second half of the presentation.

WordCamp Dallas 2008 was the first WordCamp I’ve ever attended and is the first time I met Mullenweg in person. Minutes before he took the stage, WordPress 2.5 “Michael Brecker” was released to the world.

WordPress 2.5 was the culmination of six months of work. In fact, Mullenweg announced on the WP-Hackers mailing list that WordPress 2.4 would be skipped so that extra focus could be applied to 2.5.

In light of the big changes happening in the codebase and admin section, we’re going to push back the next release to be aimed for early March.

This is the timeframe when 2.5 was originally scheduled for, so we’re treating the originally planned 2.4 in December as a skipped release, as a result of both the holidays and the large changes which we weren’t able to start on until late October.

There’s some good stuff in the oven, and we don’t want to rush it. The new release shall be called 2.5. Various official docs and roadmaps will be updated in due course.

The video is an important piece of WordPress history that needs to be preserved and if possible, uploaded to WordPress.tv. I’ve asked Pozadzides for permission to upload it to WordPress.tv and will update the post once I receive a response.