If you haven't read Reed Hastings "The Future of TV" yet you should. While the WordPress community and WordPress developers are forward thinking, front of the wave technologists; we are fairly behind on being progressive in how we approach the future of our industry and ecosystem. Reed Hasting outlines the radical changes that Netflix sees coming in consumer behavior and video content and how they are positioning themselves to lead that movement. We need to take our forward thinking progressive programing spirit and apply that same methodology to radically disrupt and reshape the way we create and deliver new technologies.
How can open source technologies and technology creators come together to create world class ecosystems which create true value and aren't overly spammed by internet marketers looking to make a quick dollar on ads? How can we choose not to settle for a shotgun approach that leaves the end user with no real authority in their marketplace for the content they are looking to find? Even starting at the theme and plugin level would create monumental waves that would hopefully wash out the low hanging overly advertised sites looking for unknowingly visitors to come by and click on something they think is a free theme or plugin only to find themselves in some internet funnel created by some marketer looking to take advantage of the users inability to not click on shiny objects.
We also need WordPress to lead this front and develop enterprise level standards for themselves as well as being innovators in technology delivery not just technology creation. For instance, what would happen if WordPress was to come up with a more reliable version updating system where users could perform a private update testing their site to see what breaks or causes conflicts before actually rolling out the new version of WP? Taking it a step further, it would also have an update wizard which would recognize conflicts and errors and provide a toolset like Firebug which would help the admin trouble shoot before pushing that update live. LiveFyre has already done this type pre-emptive notification on their WP plugin, however this should become a standard and WordPress.org should set the example.
If WordPress doesn't create an enterprise level development environment we will never create enough demand for high caliber developers to create competitive world class solutions within the WP ecosystem. How valuable would it be to all users and what kind of standard would it set for theme and plugin creators if they were to see the example that WordPress were to set?
The need for more high caliber themes and plugins is only going to increase as the rest of the worlds businesses and organizations realize that their most important piece of real estate is their web-front. It's time we pivot as a community and take the high standards and expectations on the radical technologies we develop and place those same standards on how we distribute and deliver them.
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