In reply to Alec.

Thanks for your provocations, Alec. And well said, Sara! You've been a great source of support and leadership for our community. As one of the newer volunteers on the marketing team, I appreciate everyone's efforts there, and see how much of a difference individuals can make when they "show up."

As an agency owner, I can also say that the flexibility and customizations that WordPress allows for has been transformational. I certainly don't see any reason to be concerned about Jetpack "taking over." There are many more plugin developers in the world making loads of useful plugins than there are folks working at Automattic on Jetpack. That will continue to be the case.

Our community also has many reasons to be optimistic about the current state as well as the future of WordPress. I see ourselves as leaders of the open web, and collaborators in an effort to KEEP the web open. This will not change. And if it does, I will do everything I can to prevent that change from taking place.

Our world works better with WordPress remaining an open platform with healthy community participation. The marketing team is just one small example of that effort, and I truly hope we can improve participation. Given the openness of the platform and community, people can also offer feedback thru the surveys, thru our blog on make.wordpress.org,m and on our slack channel.