Beau Lebens, IRL
I’ve worked in the web industry since ’96, I guess that makes me a veteran or something — or just makes me sound old :-). When I’m not sitting in front of a computer screen, I’ve been an active student of Krav Maga, an Israeli self-defense system. I currently hold a Blue belt (Level 5), although haven’t been training too much lately. I like to get out riding my bike, hiking and camping, and have recently picked up fly fishing (tenkara, specifically) as well.
Currently I work full-time for Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and a few other interesting tools and services such as Jetpack, Gravatar, Akismet, VaultPress and Polldaddy. If you’re interested in finding out a bit more about me you can check out my résumé (or just get in touch).
If you’re looking for a more formal bio, try this on for size:
Beau is an Australian web developer who currently lives in Denver, Colorado. He has been working on the web since about 1996 and developing PHP/MySQL/JavaScript systems since 2000. He has been involved in a variety of technical enterprises ranging from an exclusively online division at a University to a niche Search Engine Marketing firm, with a short stint building an online scrapbooking network for parents. Interested in all things social, tech and web-related, Beau holds a degree in online community, culture and governance, and spends most of his time these days hacking on WordPress and related web apps for Automattic, the makers of WordPress.com.
Public Speaking
Now that I work at Automattic, I’m lucky enough to speak at WordCamps and some other events once in a while. I’ll try to keep this list up to date with my appearances:
- 2015-05-04; WordPress.com VIP Intensive Developer Workshop: Creating & Consuming APIs (3 hour workshop)
- 2014-10-11; WordCamp Saratoga: WordPress as the Backbone(.js)
- 2014-03-31; WordPress.com VIP Intensive Developer Workshop: Frontend Performance Workshop (1.5 hours).
- 2013-07-27; WordCamp San Francisco: Bringing WordPress to the Frontend with o2.
- 2013-05-14/15; WordPress.com VIP Intensive Developer Workshop: Frontend Performance. WordPress.com Functionality.
- 2013-05-02; WordCamp North Canton: Power up your WordPress with Jetpack (presented with Justin Shreve).
- 2012-11-20; NYC WordPress Meetup: WordPress as your Digital Hub/Home (See also: my post on the topic).
- 2012-03-27/28; WordPress.com VIP Intensive Developer Workshop: Post Formats & Custom Post Types. Open Sourcing Your Code.
- 2011-05-14; WordCamp Orange County: Jetpack-powered Plugin Development (Advanced plugin development techniques).
- 2010-05-01; WordCamp San Francisco: Gravatar Open Profiles (Lighting Talk, 7 mins).
- 2010-01-30; WordCamp Indonesia: What’s Up With WordPress (Keynote).
- 2009-11-14; WordCamp New York City: Advanced WordPress Development Environments (and Intro to IntenseDebate).
- 2009-09-19; WordCamp Philippines: Meet the Family (Extended Version).
- 2009-09-12; WordCamp Los Angeles: Meet the Family.
Beau Lebens online
I’m all over the web, normally with the username either ‘beaulebens’, or sometimes just ‘beau’. This site syndicates a lot of my content from around the web back to here, for safe-keeping. You’ll find a link to the same content on the service it was originally posted on in most cases.
Dented Reality, the company/website
I registered the business name Dented Reality in Australia in 1998 and consulted under that title for a while (side-work, while also working full-time). I registered the beaulebens.com domain for the first time in ’98 as well. Unfortunately dentedreality.com was registered by someone else immediately thereafter, and has been re-registered continuously since then (I’d love to get it!).
This site is powered by WordPress, which is an amazingly flexible piece of software.