After more than 7 years as a Happiness Engineer / Happiness Rocketeer at Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com, the Jetpack plugin, the Akismet service, and many more), I am moving on to a new role as Project Manager at Transit!

At Automattic, I have been privileged to be part of the mission of Democratizing Publishing; I was also lucky to travel the world. One thing that I always tried to do every time I could (Paris, Buenos Aires, Madrid, etc) was to take public transportation (especially metros!). And my love of public transportation eventually led me to creating the Transit Mapping Symposium (I’m still sad that we had to cancel this year’s edition, but we’ll try again at a later date). So, it seemed only natural that my next move is to something related to that passion. Hence, Transit! It’s the best app out there for trip planning on public transit and other mobility modes around the world.

Even though I’ve been working from home during my time at Automattic, I’ve still used Transit every chance I got. I’ve been a fan of the app ever since I read this 2016 post on how they generate their maps. I try to use their GO function as often as I can; I hope to improve my standings with time!

My GO stats

Transit’s co-founder, Sam Vermette, was kind enough to be our opening speaker in the inaugural edition of the Symposium, and I’ve been in touch with the people there ever since. I guess it was only a matter of time before something like this would happen!

I’ve made some very dear friends at Automattic, but the great thing about working for a company that’s distributed around the world is that now, I’ll have people to visit, no matter where my new role takes me!

I’ll miss my friends in the global WordPress community, but greater and better public transportation and active transportation (also known as active mobility) are sorely needed to fight against climate change; I’m very happy that I’ll be doing my bit to make the experience better and to help encourage people to use those modes of transportation more.

And now, with the crisis and uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 virus (see here the drastic drops in app usage everywhere, a proxy for ridership), I’m even more eager to pitch in and help in any way I can.